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#it becomes about just figuring out what sound and gestures work for what you want!
the-everqueen · 2 years
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i cancelled class last-minute because i woke up super late and the whole weekend travel means i have not had time to lesson plan even a little (i don’t do a lot of planning for this class but i’ve truly got nothing today, including a voice). torn between guilt (i’m being inconsiderate!) and the recognition that students are not usually upset about classes being cancelled during midterms. in general i feel like i’m not doing enough in this class, like i’m wasting students’ time by asking them to show up when 90% of the thing is just practicing and getting regular feedback. going to try to change the format when i teach it again in the spring to get more collaborative engagement. but again! most of learning piano is just figuring out what works for you technically, practicing reading whatever kind of notation you’re gonna use the most, and listening to what you’re doing and whether it sounds like what you want.
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thexsilentxwordsmith · 4 months
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Simon "Ghost" Riley x Housewife!reader
From the request HERE
Fandom: Call of Duty
Character(s): Simon Riley, Reader
Summary: Such a good little wife you are to your military husband, ready to welcome him back home after he returns from deployment. This time you've even prepared a meal of all his favorites, but when Simon gets back early than expected and catches you flitting about the kitchen in nothing but his t-shirt, it isn't food that he wants.
Word Count: 6.4 k
Warnings:
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Simon has gotten in earlier than either of you expected, but instead of letting you know he doesn’t call, doesn’t text. There are other thoughts on his mind that cloud his judgment and the last thing he thinks about is wasting time focusing on messing with his phone when showing up back home is infinitely better. He’s excited to be back, chomping at the bit to get back his girl as he’s been missing you something terrible. Now that he’s back on home turf, that longing to see you again is only getting worse by the second.  
You had told him your plan for today: you wanted to make his homecoming right by cooking him a nice meal for the two of you as a celebration since he’s been gone for quite a while this round. The gesture is sweet and Simon is getting hungry… the only problem is that it isn’t for food.
He reiterates to himself on the drive back about the promise that he made to you that he would be on his best behavior today. All this trouble you are going to, he wants to be sure to show his appreciation by enjoying the hard work you’ve put in to prepare a dinner of all his favorite things and he plans to keep it by not letting his yearnings get out of hand…at least that is what he hopes.
By the time he pulls up to the house he is over two hours early from when he was meant to land and his pulse is racing as he parks on the driveway. Just a short distance more and he’s back in the company he’s been craving like crazy.
His key clicks in the lock and as he opens the door to his house he is hit by the sights and sounds of familiarity that instantly put him at ease. There are reminders of you everywhere, little touches that make this a place of comfort he looks forward to coming back to after being away. It is the sound of music echoing from the kitchen that urges him to continue forward after he shuts the door quietly, hoping to catch you by surprise. He sets his gear down by the door and creeps silently through the house, the metallic clangs of pots and utensils underneath the music now becoming more prominent as he reaches the source. 
And there you are.
The pupils of those caramel brown eyes dilate as you come into view; it has been too long since the object of his desire was standing right in front of him and fuck, do you look good. He watches you transfixed on the grace of your movements, unwavering gaze following the motions of your body as you go about the kitchen popping from the stove to the countertop singing along with the song playing over the bluetooth speakers. 
This is it, this is his little piece of heaven on earth, his oasis safe from the chaos that is his daily life, his sunshine that pierces through the darkness that clouds his thoughts, and she’s wearing his t-shirt. And only his t-shirt with your panties.
How the hell can you make something so simple look like perfection? He could very well be biased because he only has ever had eyes for you, but fuck your beauty could pull off anything. 
This right here is what keeps him going, knowing that this is what he will come home to.
He pulls his phone from out of his pocket and promptly snaps a picture, wanting to capture this innocent moment of carefree beauty that you exude now that you are alone in your own little world: humming happily to yourself, flitting about the kitchen, his baggy shirt randomly clinging to different curves as you move, your hair tied back into a low ponytail. 
In that moment, looking like you do, he wants you so bad it hurts. Your figure is only a few feet away from his grasp and yet his body is aching in pain still being this far. He has to be wrapped around you and it has to be right now. Moving with haste he pulls off his mask and gloves and discards them on the ground, removing any sign of Ghost so that he cannot taint his sweet thing with the unsavory dealings of his alter ego. He can’t wait, those lips and hands have to be on you the second they can.
Just as you go to stir the pot of vegetables bubbling away on the stove, the music cuts out abruptly and a familiar pair of arms snake their way around your waist from behind, lacing themselves across the middle of your stomach. You jump, not expecting anyone to be against you, but as soon as your eyes catch that forearm full of familiar tattoos you settle. He’s home, that’s all that matters and those nerves that have been brewing inside your chest all day turn into delicious flutters as those large hands begin to roam across your body.
The old familiar curves call to him, beckoning him to travel their paths once again. Who is he to deny them? He does not even wait as his hands paw over your stomach and hips, those large, exploratory hands taking the curves of your body into their embrace over the t-shirt until his grip is so full he can’t contain any more. 
“You’re early,” you say through a smile as you settle back into him, head resting against his shoulder. 
The warmth from his breath is at the edge of your ear as he moves his face in closer while his hands wander with purpose. His lips are ghosting themselves near the delicate skin of your earlobe teasingly until he has you squirming in his arms. "Woulda called, just wanted to get home as fast as I fuckin’ could," he groans as he tightens his grip around you to cause your back to form into the contours of his taut chest. “Had a craving for somethin’ sweet.” 
Pulling up the t-shirt just enough he moves under it with those large hands, splaying them across your soft flesh around your waist, your hips, your stomach as he takes your earlobe in his teeth to nibble at it playfully until it sends shivers down your spine.
“I missed ya, baby,” he says desperately against the side of your head.
"I missed you too," you return. 
The longer he plays up under the shirt, the more your sanity wanes. His touch is ecstasy and after not having it for so long, it is hard to not immediately succumb to its bliss. He’s barely even begun and you are already falling apart; if this keeps up you’ll never finish what you have started on the stove. 
"I wish you would have called,” you say, trying to break the spell, “cause I wanted everything to be done before you got home. I’m not ready, I’m not even dressed. I wanted this to be perfect." 
His lips move from your earlobe and start just below your jaw, making the connection against your skin over and again along the line of your jugular as he descends down your neck with kisses. He pauses against the vein there as his lips pick up the thudding as it pulses under his touch. The more his mouth lingers, the quicker it gets. 
With a smile he nuzzles his nose into your skin as his nostrils fill with your scent; the fragrance fills his head and it feels like he is being consumed. “Don’t need to get dressed,” his words breeze over your neck and down your chest, “ya look perfect just like this. How could I ask for anythin’ more?”
Simon takes the spoon out of your hand and rests it on the counter so that he can turn you around to face him; that stoic military officer is yearning to look into the face of the beauty he hasn't seen in far too fucking long. Meeting your gaze for the first time in months is akin to a contact high and immediately he is out of his goddamn mind as your eyes lock to his.
You are struggling just as badly. It is always a struggle not to miss him like crazy when he’s gone and now that he is back there is so much time to make up for. And the way he looks as he stands here in front of you, hands around your hips, isn’t helping. The universe knew what they were doing when they put Simon together and even though the black around his eyes is already smugged and his crinkled blonde hair is pressed down from being under his balaclava, the sight of him still makes your stomach flip. You are transfixed and it’s getting harder to breathe.
Brown eyes trail down your features to take you all in, drinking up every gorgeous facet of your face as his hands move to cup around the sides of your head like the frame around a work of art. Those eyes that light up whenever they look at him, that sweet mouth always ready with a smile, those soft cheeks glowing whenever he touches you, all of it a unique perfection that he cannot get enough of. Finally his sight lands on your mouth and as if drawn by an overwhelming urge he is compelled to move in.
He has to kiss you; it is suddenly unbearable that he still hasn’t tasted you yet. 
Leaning into your face he gives your lips a peck to test that they still feel the same as he remembers. Pulling back, he catches the sparkle in your eyes that tells him to do that again and he is ready to oblige. Then he steals another and another at an increasing pace until his mouth smashes against yours and latches on, drawing you in as he deepens the connection. 
His tongue meets yours and shoves its way past the barrier of your lips and into the confines of your mouth as he tastes you. Everything comes flooding back all at once and he is overtaken by all that familiarity. The longer the connection lasts the more he loses himself until he is panting into you, sharing one sticky, hot bit of air as his features shape themselves around your own to make your faces become one.
The thick stubble outlining his jaw abrades the skin of your cheeks and around your lips, making your face sting, but you don't want him to pull away. Not yet, not when his lips are making your mind hazy and your limbs tremble as all that tension that has been building for days as you wait for his return bubbles over the surface. 
His desperation is showing as his dick digs itself into your upper thigh, pulsing and throbbing the harder it gets until you cannot ignore it. Each heavy breath pushes his bulky chest against yours until you can feel his rapid pulse rushing angrily through his veins as his heartbeat pounds. 
"You’re gonna be the death ‘a me," he says quietly under his breath as he cannot think of anything else to say in that moment; his mind is too absorbed in the way your kiss is like heaven and he is succumbing to the feeling of it. “I know I said I’d wait til later, but I don’t think I can, sweetheart. It’s been hell without ya.”
At this rate Simon isn’t going to make it to dinner and you’re so close to being done, but maybe there is something you can do to sate him long enough that you can get through this. With a bit of struggle you break the kiss and pull away as he desperately tries to wrangle you back in so that you have to place your hand on his chest to get him to pause.
Giving Simon’s lower lip one last quick nip you slowly lower yourself to your knees before him, your fingers lacing into the leather of his belt as you fiddle with the buckle. “Then how about I give you a little something to keep you satisfied til dinner’s over?” you suggest as you look up at him with those pretty doe-eyes. “Something to make you feel better?” 
His chest heaves up and down with each laborious breath he takes as you jump into unhooking the metal of his buckle and pulling the leather through until the belt hangs loosely around his hips. Your fingers slide down the zipper, but before you can do more his hands press yours into place along the lower portion of his pelvis so that you can’t keep undressing him.
“Ya don’t have to do this,” he mildly protests. Simon knows if you don’t stop he isn’t going to be able to either and this dinner is going to take a detour, though he can’t lie that he wants you to keep going. 
Giving you a look, he waits to see if you stand back up, but you only smile as you pull your hands back out from underneath his. “I want to do this for you, baby,” you reassure, lifting the bottom of his shirt and leaning in to kiss along the light colored patch of hair that trails down into his boxers as you finish undoing his pants. 
How in the hell is someone supposed to resist this? Simon is strong, he would not have gotten far in life if he wasn’t, but not this strong. You reach the waistband of his underwear with your lips and meet the seam with your fingers to pull them down under his ass low enough that you can release his thick, fat cock.
He is hard already, the tip swollen and angry, and the veins running through it visibly throbbing. The inside of your mouth salivates as it remembers the feeling of being stuffed with that girthy appendage. You keep the spit gathered on your tongue as you lean in and open your lips.
Taking the tip of your tongue you trace the head of his cock as your hand at the base keeps his foreskin pulled back. A breathy moan rumbles out from somewhere deep inside his chest, low and guttural as his hips buck and his ass hits into the ledge of the kitchen counter, making his belt jingle from the movement.
“Fuck,” he chokes out as his head falls back and his eyelids momentarily close. “Forgot how that pretty mouth feels ‘round me.”
He can feel a tightening around him as your lips contort into a smile, excited that you can still make that big ol boy come undone with something as simple as your mouth. Clearly he has been just as worked up as you have been for him to get home. As Simon settles back against the countertop with his palm on your cheek, his thumb lovingly strokes the corner of your full mouth as you continue on.
Your lips around him, wet and messy, suck him in until his cock reaches the threshold of your throat. Those pretty eyes of yours lift back up to look into his face, keeping contact as you choke around him, vision swimming with tears while your head bobs up and down in a steady rhythm. Your lips are bright red and swollen from his kiss, your cheeks blossoming with heated color, that lust-drunk look plastered on your face; it all makes up the gorgeous picture. The visual makes his blood pressure rise until his limbs are vibrating with the racing beats of his heart. 
The slurping sounds of your saliva-filled mouth being fucked is punctuated by sparse gags; it hasn’t been this full for a while and it’s going to take some getting used to. Still, you don’t slow your pace, even as his hips begin thrusting against your face the longer you go. It’s like you’d rather suck him off than breathe and goddamn is that a turn-on. 
Simon releases your cheek so that he can rest his hands on the counter behind him. He hasn’t had you like this in so long that it doesn’t take much to overwhelm him now. That pressure deep inside is building to its peak, drawing his body to the edge of its release with each pass of your mouth over him from as far down the base as you can reach back to the tip. His hands grip hard into the surface behind him until his knuckles turn white.
Shit, he is going to come just like he knows you want, but it is at that moment that he realizes that he doesn’t want to just take this quick blow job and be done with you until later. Simon needs you, all of you, under his touch and at his disposal right this fucking second. Suddenly he is pulling out of your mouth and situating his cock back into the confines of his pants as you stare up at him with your head tilted in confusion. 
“What’s…” you start to ask, but before the words can even leave your lips you are being pulled to your feet. He doesn’t say a word as he wipes away a bit of spittle that has dripped from the corner of your mouth, using his thumb to remove it before he kisses you full force again. 
It's too much, too strong an all consuming feeling to stop and so without warning he pulls from you and throws you over his broad shoulder to carry you out of the room in a rush. He is frantic; he needs to have you now and can’t wait to drag you all the way to the bedroom. No, it’s too far.
Scanning around him as his aroused brain tries to find the fastest solution, he spots it. The dining table that you’ve set special for tonight is just a few feet away and he instantly brings you over to it. Dishes clank and clatter, ceramic and glass hitting itself as he hurriedly shoves everything out of his way to make room for your body before setting you on the surface.
"I know you’re not done cookin’, but I’m hungry for somethin' else," he breathes as he sets you down and lays you back. “I need ya now…waited too long for this.”
The movement has caused your shirt to get pulled up off your stomach and the uncovered area catches his eye; more skin that he desperately needs to claim and now. He brushes his fingertips down across your waist and over your navel, past to your lower abdomen until he lightly grazes the seam of your panties. He can feel the goosebumps forming under his touch and he can hear the hitch in your breathing the lower he gets. 
Reaching your sex he cups his wide palm over the mound and applies pressure. It is warm to the touch and he can feel it radiate into his hand. You buck against him, squirming at the unexpected sensitivity with a gasp. All that softness of your body, so delicate to the touch like silk against his skin, it’s too much for him to handle. Simon has had months and months of only rough, coarse, and rugged things from the brutal environment he was forced to endure, but the moment his fingers grace across all that balmy flesh his brain short-circuits.
It’s not just your looks that drive him wild, though. You are the one bit of happiness he keeps separate from the brutality of his work, the sanctuary that he looks forward to coming home to, the calm in his stormy existence. That's why he suggested he take care of the money so you could stay at home, not bother yourself with working, so that the harsh world wouldn't taint your sweet demeanor with its cruelty. And in return you take care of his life, never asking for anything as you make sure everything here runs smoothly.
"You're always takin’ care a me, makin' sure that everything is perfect when I get back home," he says as he gets more worked up. "Now it's my turn to return the favor. Goddammit, I just wanna screw the hell outta my pretty girl until she can’t move."
Firm hands cup against your hips as his fingertips slip between your panties and your warm skin, tangling them in the fabric so that he can pull them down your thighs and off your legs. Your bare petals faintly glisten as he gets a peak at them through the tight space between your legs, a product of his minimal touch already working on your body; nice to know he still has that effect on you no matter how much time you’ve spent apart. He slides his hands between your thighs, parting them easily as a knife in warm butter, until his hand is deep enough that he can stop and separate them so that the gap is wide and his body can easily fit in between.
"All this for me?” he asks as he stares like an animal starved at your pussy, mouth salivating to play. "Bet you’ve been achin’ somethin’ terrible since I left. Do ya need me ta fix that?”
“Yes,” you breathe.Your body is radiating with the intensity of every sensation that courses through your limbs like an electrical current everywhere Simon touches you.
“That’s a good girl,” he says as he glides his hand up so his fingers can part through the lips of your pussy.
Two of those thick fingers slide between the petals of your sex towards your entrance, gathering as much of your slick as he can on his digits. Carefully he teases them around the rim of your core, circling it through the dampness gathering in your slit. “One or two?” he asks as your back arches off the table, the stimulation driving you to the brink of insanity; it’s been too long since you’ve felt his fingers there.
You swallow hard. “T-two,” you beg. At this point, any amount will work as long as they are his and as long as they get inside you.
“Oh sweetheart, that’s what I like ta hear,” he praises as he aligns his fingers with your opening and slowly fits those two long fingers inside and up into you. “Fuck, there ya go. Just breathe for me, that’s it. Let your body do all the work and take ‘em in.”
They slip up further into your cunt and with a slow pace he begins to pump in and out of you while the overwhelming pressure causes you to arch your back up off the table. Instinctively, your hips buck against his hand, trying to make as much contact with him as possible. 
Those long, coarse fingers curl inside you continuously as his heavy palm rests over top of your sex to put pressure so that he can make more contact and cause more friction with your G spot as his thumb nestles against your clit. Your body writhes against the table, your head falling back with eyes closed as the twinges of pleasure spring up your spine and Simon is grinning from ear to ear to see he still knows how to work his sweetheart just the way she likes.
As he watches you fall apart to the stroking of his fingers, from the corner of sight he catches it: that bounce at the top of your torso under the shirt. It’s as if he suddenly remembers about those beautiful breasts as they rebound with his strokes and out of a drunken haze he is consumed by the need to see them.
Pushing the bottom of your shirt up over your chest, it’s revealed that you don’t have on a bra and his breath hitches to see those perky tits he’s been dreaming of burying his face in staring right back at him. Fuck, he can’t stop himself from getting at all that juicy meat and quickly he leans over you with a groan from the table so that he can reach you with his mouth. Lightly he grazes his teeth over the delicate skin of your nipple to make the little bud grow hard under the sharp contact.
"Oh God, Simon," his name falls from your lips in a breathy prayer.
The sweet sound of his name being spoken in such a desperate way only spurns him on; he needs to hear it as many times as he can make you repeat it, especially after not being able to hear it at all while he was gone. "Say it again," he demands, never lifting his face from your breasts, just switching sides periodically to get them both engaged.
His tongue flicks at the hardened nipple and it makes you whimper as the stimulation runs down your body like liquid fire until you can feel its effects radiating in your clit each time his thumb strokes over it. You know that he wants you to say his name again, but you don’t know if you can. It’s too much stimulation that you are losing your ability to speak.  
"Simon," you say as your voice shakes.  
His hum of satisfaction vibrates through the tissue of your breast. "Again," he repeats firmly before drawing it fully into his mouth. Latching on he takes as much of your breast as he can fit and sucks down hard. 
“S-simon,” your desperate voice clumsily moans. 
Tiny beads of sweat form along the line of your body as it burns with the intensity of the ecstasy you feel under his expert care. He’s in your head, in the very marrow of your bones; there isn’t a part of you that isn’t consumed by him. Those rough fingers grinding away into your pussy and his mouth on your body all pail in comparison to the way his kiss had felt on your lips. That desperate, consuming, overwhelming kiss is your drug and you need another hit.
Your fingers lace into his short hair and you tug hard to pull him from your chest, only then does he unlatch himself from your breast as you guide him back up to your mouth. Simon’s lips are nearly raw and yet he takes yours as roughly as he had in the kitchen, never slowing the pace of his finger fucking. 
It’s like liquid fire, your kiss, and he sucks down with a hunger that cannot be quenched. The sound of your sloppy lips match the wet slaps currently being produced between your legs. Simon is drunk as his mouth takes and takes and takes, and yet… 
His mouth craves more, another set of lips.
The pad of his tongue makes contact with your clit and you jolt, making the table creak as the over-stimulation sends shock waves through your needy body. You can feel the sigh he releases against you as he begins to suck on the nodule of pleasure while flicking it with his tongue; it’s hard to think amongst the staggering overstimulation is leaving you begging and pleading for mercy.
Simon pulls from you amidst your whined protests to drop to his knees before you, giving those thick thighs his attention. His face comes level with your pussy that is absolutely soaked from the work of his fingers and raising your legs to rest your ankles on his shoulders, he dives in. Instantly his face is buried in your heat and as he brushes his tongue through your slit his mouth is filled with your nectar, that tangy burst of flavor that he can not get enough of. It is slathering all over the lower half of his face, coating him from his nose to his chin in the scent of your arousal.
Your thighs squeeze around his head and then release. “I can’t…I-I can’t…” you murmur as you try to move from him.
His mouth releases from you. “Yes, yes ya can, baby. Now, come on my face,” he says fiercely as he grips into the muscle of your hips with all his strength, secures you to his sharp features, and dives right back in like a man starved. 
“F-f-fuck,” you groan as your hands seize the tablecloth in your fists, that coil of pleasure tightening in your stomach tighter with each flick of his tongue. 
Feverish movements against that erogenous button are no longer controlled as he devours all he can, forcing your body towards that ledge to throw you off into ecstasy. He craves it, burns for it, and would die for it: the way you feel, the way you taste, the way your hips writhe against his advances, it all makes him rabid.
As your breath grows shorter and shorter, he knows it's not far; just a bit more suffocation on his part and you will be done in. He moves his face down to tease your hole with his tongue as his nose takes over on your clit. You are so hot it feels like someone has set you on fire as the knot in your stomach gathers to its breaking point. It’s there, right there within reach; just a little more and you are going to come hard and he’ll get his wish. 
Those desperate whimpers quiet all of a sudden and he knows it’s happening; with a few more flicks of his tongue you plunge off the edge with a cry as your thighs clamp down tight around his ears so that he is blocked against you, but that is exactly what he wants. Those seconds after your orgasm shakes through you are his favorite: you writhing uncontrollably over him as he continues to stroke his tongue through you until that high has finally worn off.
Nothing has ever felt better and after not having this for months, it is pure heaven.
It isn’t until you settle down and your legs open back up that he emerges with his face covered in the sticky juices of your cum and his saliva. He is grinning like he has just been given a present, even as he wipes his mouth clean with the back of his hand before wiping the slick on his t-shirt.
“Fuckin’ fantastic as always, baby,” he breathes. “But I ain’t done with ya yet. I think we can get at least one more orgasm from ya right now. Come ‘ere.”
He helps your weak body to sit up on the edge of the table to embrace your lips, hoping to reinvigorate you to keep going with the intensity of his desire. You can taste yourself in his kiss, a mixture of sweet and salty that combines with his natural tang to become the flavor of your union. The kiss only lasts a few more seconds, but after just being made to come the exhaustion makes it feel like a lifetime… not that you are complaining.
Pulling from you, he tugs at the crotch of his pants; he can’t wait anymore. “I need ya ta get up and turn ‘round, sweet thing,” he says, guiding you up and rotating you around before pushing you back down onto the table, this time on your stomach. “Gotta get inside. Need ta fill ya.”
The sound of metal jingles as he lowers his pants as his knee pushes against your inner thigh to spread you wider. He releases his cock again and squats down lower so that he can align the tip with your entrance. You can feel it press through the swollen lips of your pussy and you ready yourself for that moment when you’ll be split open.
He can already feel your dampness on his cock as he guides it through and without hesitation he grabs your hips and thrusts inside all the way down to the very base of his cock. Simon instantly bottoms out and needs a second to collect himself; it’s been too fucking long since he’s been inside you and if he isn’t careful he is going to come to quick for him. 
Those rough fingers dig in deeper to your hips as he tries to hold on for dear life. “Goddammit, baby,” he groans. “I’ve missed this.”
His girth stretches your core wide to its limit so that the walls of your cunt can’t help but feel every single detail of his cock: every enlarged vein, the exact curve of it, each and every crease.
It’s like he’s imprinting it with his signature, letting your pussy know that the one it belongs to is home once again.
Hips begin to rock slowly at first and are immediately punctuated by deep-throated groans as he cannot keep himself calm for long no matter how hard he tries. Your body is too much like paradise, so devastatingly amazing that even though he is desperately clawing at his sanity it is slipping through his fingers faster and faster with each thrust like sand in a sieve. Pulling almost completely out of you he slams back into your core down to the base, repeating this over and over with a ferocity that only gets worse. 
Your body rocks, breasts bouncing and bunching the tablecloth as you are pressed into the surface; you can only moan as the uncomfortable fullness becomes euphorically intoxicating. The table squeaks and strains against each plunge of him deeper into your pussy, threatening to break under the force at any second. Plates and silverware clatter to the floor as they are knocked off and yet you do not care. He will just replace them anyway so there is no sense to take yourself out of the moment to worry about it. 
"Ya look so fuckin' pretty with my cock buried in ya," he grunts. "My sweet girl, my good little wife, always keepin' my balls empty. How'd I get so goddamn lucky to marry someone so good, yeah?"
Desperately he grinds harder and harder into you as if he cannot get deep enough, like he cannot fill you full enough. The recoil of your ass as he pounds into you from behind is something he can’t pull his sight from even if he wants to. He is mesmerized, watching himself disappear into the confines of your body only to reemerge more coated in your juices than when he went in. 
“I want ta feel ya pulse around me each letter of my name,” he says as his hand runs down the length of your spine. “Come on, baby, let me fuckin’ feel it.”
You follow his command and flex the muscles in your pelvis. Ten letters isn’t that much, not for him; you do it all for him, anything he asks, anything he needs because you know that he is just as whipped for you as you are for him and this is the way to keep him coming back like a good little pup.
He’s panting like a bitch in heat behind you. “That’s it, fuck, just as that.”
So wet, so tight, the pulsing, the throbbing, the speckles of sweat covering your bodies, his hands grabbing at skin, your hips grinding into him… it’s all too much. “Keep going,” you beg with a shudder. “Fuck, Simon right there.”
You can feel him hitting that sensitive spot inside, his cock pounding over it at the perfect angle, and your limbs tingle as the second coming is fast approaching. There is only one man who can make you come multiple times and it is and always has been your husband. And now his complete possession of your body is almost finished.
“Come on, my pretty girl, gimme another,” he urges enthusiastically as he hears your whimpers get louder while your body trembles. “I know ya have another for me and I fuckin’ want it.”
He pounds into you as if his life is dependent on your orgasm and you steady yourself by gripping onto the edge of the tabletop. The pressure builds and builds, a scourge to your sanity until all at once that bolt of hot electricity shoots through your limbs and your head falls forward with a whine as your second orgasm rockets through you so hard that you are left a mewling mess.
“Yes, yes, that’s it,” Simon growls as he finally allows himself to let go and all that build up, all that pining, all that longing for this moment comes to a head and with a few more hard, deep strokes inside your spasming pussy he too comes undone.
A roar rips through his chest as he pulls out and comes across your back, stroking his hand over his cock until he can milk himself dry. You close your eyes, laying your head down as he finishes and grabs a napkin that sits on the table above your head to wipe the cum off. His limbs feel heavy as he sits you back upright to face him. 
Simon simply stares into your face for a while, letting you both just work to catch your breaths. There are no words that need be said, not between you both. Once he is more calm, he gently pushes a strand of hair off your glistening face and tucks it behind your ear.  
“Ya did so well for me, sweetheart,” he says sweetly, placing a softer kiss on your lips as his heart slows. 
“Always for you,” you return with a smile against his lips. 
As you both stand there in the midst of the afterglow of your euphoria, a smell begins to waft in from the kitchen. It is unmistakably the scent of something burning. You poke your head around him just to be sure there isn’t a fire on the stove before turning back to his face.
“I hope you like your food burnt cause that’s what we’re gonna be having now,” you laugh as he pulls you back in for one more kiss, letting his forehead rest against yours.
“Guess its a good fuckin’ thing I filled up on the first course then,” he says as you tut in fake exasperation. He lowers his voice. “But ya know… if the food’s ruined, maybe we should just go ta bed.”
Something about the way he says it and the glint in his eye as you pull back, it doesn’t sound like you are going to be sleeping anything off.
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inkedells · 1 year
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look at me a little more | dbf!joel miller x f!reader
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A/N: first of all, SMUTTT so much smut up ahead. holy crap this is the longest thing i've ever written (pathetic, i know, blame the commitment issues) enjoy lovies!! also lmk if you want a part 2 maybe possibly!?
m!dni | requests open.
summary: dbf!neighbor!joel accidentally drenches you (virgin!reader) while washing his car and you can’t help but notice the way he eyes you up. it’s only once he’s in your bedroom, fixing your closet door as an apology, that you realize the best person to rid you of your virginity and teach you precisely how to please yourself and others had been right in front of you the whole time; it's getting joel on board with the whole idea that's the hard part.
word count: 5.5k
tags/warnings: SMUTTTT, virgin!reader, dbf!neighbor!joel faces moral conflicts (to fuck or not to fuck!?!?), porn with plot, sooo much tension, dirty talk, use of pet names, blowjobs, handjobs, cumplay, reader eats joel's cum, grinding, making out, oral sex, no!outbreak au, reader's innocent in the sense that she doesn't really know how to do a lot of things when it comes to sex but still has a ton of desires
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There was a certain shame that came with being infatuated with your dad’s best friend.
You were sitting around on the porch on a hot summer afternoon, wearing your shortest cotton shorts as you sipped the juice box brand you had loved since you were a little girl. Legs crossed, foot tapping the air, and most importantly, eyes absolutely trained on the ripple of Joel Miller’s biceps as he washed his car.
You didn’t know why you liked to stare at him so much. But you did know it was wrong. Immoral. Eyeing up someone in their forties? What was wrong with you? That was your dad’s best f—
“Hey, Mr. Miller!” You called over, shutting down every ounce of doubt in your mind.
He turned around without hesitation, and when he did, you waved. The first time you’d done that, he had to work a little harder to figure out the source of the voice, eyes searching in random directions before finally settling on you. But now, it was like he knew exactly where to look—And, well, that was all it took for you to decide you would be spending the next hour washing a car if it meant spending time with Joel.
So you settled your juice box down on the wooden floor of the porch and skipped over to his house. He must not have heard your footsteps behind him over the sound of the hose, so your simple tap on his shoulder resulted in him whipping around, hose in hand, as he consequently drenched you.
You yelped, breaking out into nervous laughter both from shock and how cold the water was. Joel fumbled to turn off the hose as he began profusely apologizing. “Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry—”
Then he properly saw you. From Joel’s perspective, your clothes were reduced to translucency, practically melting into your skin.
But you didn’t know that. You never fully grasped just how vulnerable you had become from his accident, so when you caught him averting his gaze as quickly as he could, you were a little confused.
“You—Uh—I,” Joel stumbled before clearing his throat, “There’s clothes. Inside. Sarah’s. You can, um, you can go and… y’know. Change into them. Walkin’ all the way back to your house doesn’t seem like a… viable… option.”
By then, a blush had already risen to your cheeks just from how delicately Joel was treating you. As if you were something he had to be careful with, like if he didn’t think long and hard about every word coming out of his mouth, there would be consequences. 
“Lead the way.”
Joel gave you a firm smile before swallowing the lump in his throat and motioning for you to follow him as he walked. Once he had the front door open, he let you go in first. Even as you carefully walked past him, you could feel his eyes staring at you.
“Up there,” Joel gestured, “Um, first door on the left. I’ll… be outside.”
As he explained, you subconsciously scanned over the planes of his body—probably a habit you picked up from the multiple weeks of watching him work. But then he was turning to leave, and you could tell he was still really tense. You didn’t know why a simple accident had him so tripped up, but you had the urge to alleviate his worry.
“Hey,” You called, arms wrapped around yourself in an effort to stave off the cold. He turned around, concerned until he saw your soft smile and relaxed a little, “On a scale of one to ten, how sick and tired are you of washing that truck?”
There was only one way to break Joel out of his nervous state; you had to make the situation lighthearted; you learned that from years of watching him hang out with your dad.
He searched your eyes for a beat, eyes completely unwavering, before muttering, “Like a fifty.”
You both breathed a laugh at that. For the briefest moment, you thought you noticed Joel’s gaze flitting to your chest. Your breath caught in your throat, but before you could do a double take, his eyes were glued to yours again.
“So then,” You started, regathering yourself and pushing away whatever your brain was conjuring up, “How do you feel about replacing one lousy chore with another?”
“What kinda chore we talkin’?”
“Well, my closet door’s all screwed up. And you know, instead of apologizing for soaking me by way of expensive concert tickets and a brand new car, like how I know you were planning on doing—”
“—Oh, of course,” Joel sarcastically remarked, playing along as you quickly noticed the worry on his face faded into a crooked grin.
“Well, I really think I can just settle for the closet door fix. Go ahead and save the brand new car for when you break my toaster.”
“Okay, okay,” Joel laughed, “I get it. Go change, then you can lead me to this broken closet door.”
-
Sarah’s clothes definitely belonged to a fourteen-year-old. Not your taste, but then again, if you were fourteen like her, you probably would’ve dressed like that too.
You couldn’t settle on a top, all of them were either too small or bore a graphic design too childish for you. You did find a pair of stretchier shorts that fit alright though, so you decided you’d just pick up one of Joel’s shirts from the pile of clean laundry you saw sitting atop the washing machine downstairs.
When you made it out the front door, the hose was away and his toolbox was resting on the ground by his feet. Joel was drying up his car with a cloth, and when he heard you hop down the steps and subsequently turned your way, you weren’t exactly expecting him to completely stumble at the sight of you in his shirt.
“Oh—You, uh, I thought you were gettin’ Sarah’s clothes?”
“I was, none of her tops fit so I grabbed one of yours from the laundry downstairs.” You absorbed Joel’s cryptic reaction and began to worry. “I’m sorry, Mr. Miller, I really should’ve asked—”
“—No, no, it’s fine. Really. Doesn't matter.”
Joel picked up his toolbox, then the both of you began walking over to your house. It wasn’t that far away at all, probably a couple of hundred feet at most, but he opted into small talk anyway.
“Um,” Joel began, “What’d you come over for in the first place? Didn’t really get a chance to ask ‘cause of this whole… debacle.”
You giggled at his old man vocabulary. Debacle.
“I wanted to help with your car, but looks like those plans got derailed.”
He breathed a polite laugh. “Yeah, well. Guess it turned out that way.”
Before an awkward silence could fall upon the both of you, your brain settled on something to bring up.
“Hey, my dad’s having that July 4th barbecue the day after tomorrow. You’re coming right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it, honey.”
Honey? Honey. Honey honey honey honey—
He cleared his throat. “Where is your dad, anyway?”
You were both standing on your porch now, Joel’s eyes raking you over as you fumbled with the front door.
“Um, I think he’s out working.”
“Great.”
Great?
Before you could ask him what he meant, Joel realized what he had said. “Wait, no, not great. I don’t—I don’t know why I said that. Sorry. I’m sorry.”
You pushed the door open. “Hey,” You brought a hand up to his chest and patted it, “You’ll give yourself a heart attack if you keep assuming all your mistakes are colossal and worthy of that much panic.”
His shoulders seemed to relax a little at that—you weren’t sure if it was your hand or your words that did it.
Eventually, you both found yourselves in your bedroom. You were sitting on the edge of your bed as you watched Joel work. Kneeling on one knee with a screwdriver in hand, he fumbled with one of the closet door’s hinges as he muttered little things to himself under his breath.
“Thanks for this, Mr. Miller.”
He turned to you, nodding as he seemed to process that he was in your bedroom. Your bedroom.
“So,” Joel began, as he dug through his toolbox, “Is your boyfriend visiting too? Or, y’know, girlfriend. Three months is a long ti—”
You softly smiled. “I don’t have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend.”
He turned to look at you again as he turned a screwdriver, this time scanning you over. “Hm, I don’t believe you. Sweet thing like you? Single?”
“Oh, stop,” You blushed, shooing him off.
Joel stood to his feet, dusting his hands off on his thighs. “All fixed. Next time you ne—”
“—I’ve never been in a relationship before. Actually.”
Joel stared at you for a moment before diverting his gaze to the ground. “I, um…”
“Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. You don’t wanna know about my completely nonexistent dating history,” You lightly smacked your forehead, “Wait, it’s existent if we count the boy I dated for a week in fourth grade.”
Joel laughed, sitting down next to you on your bed. “It’s okay. I haven’t really dated anybody since Sarah’s mom, either. Long-term, anyways.”
“Yeah, well at least you’re not a virgin.”
Joel seemed to tense at that, and you immediately regretted saying it.
“Oh gosh,” You cringed, hands gripping your head, “I really just say anything, don’t I?”
Joel chuckled, head hung between his shoulders with his eyes squinted shut. You eventually laughed, too, simply because—and you realized it sounded stupid—Joel’s laughter was contagious.
“Alright, alright,” Joel beckoned, “Lemme be serious for a second. C’mere.”
You slumped down next to him, staring up at the ceiling before turning to make eye contact.
“That’s not something you have to worry about. You got time, honey, you’re in college. All that crap about late blooming isn’t real. It’s about whenever you’re ready, and whenever you find the right person to do it with.”
You smiled up at him softly. “Thanks, Mr. Miller.”
“Joel. Just Joel.”
You couldn’t bring yourself to look away from him. So you stayed like that, searching his eyes for something you didn’t have the courage to say out loud.
“Joel,” You echoed, repeating his name back to him, bottom lip caught between your teeth.
“I, uh…” Joel trailed off, his gaze flitting down to your lips. “I…” He tried again, but it went nowhere.
You exhaled, and almost immediately, his hands cupped your face as he leaned forward and pressed a soft, fleeting kiss to your lips.
It was warm, and gentle, and amazing, and you didn’t know if you could ever let him stop kissing you with how delightful the scruff of his beard felt against your skin.
He did break the kiss after a few seconds, though, and it left you breathless. “Joel…”
His muscles seemed to visibly tense as he mistook your speechless state for confusion. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I don’t know why—”
“—No. No, I liked it,” You smiled softly at him, “I, um, you know. Wouldn’t mind if you kissed me… again.”
With reassurance that you weren’t absolutely appalled, his limbs relaxed. He leaned forward again until he was kissing you. Slow at first, languid. But then it turned fervent and desperate, breaths being exchanged into one another's mouths as lips slotted together like fingers intertwined—so perfect, as if they were biologically designed to do so.
It wasn’t long until he had your back flat against your bed, and you felt his growing hardness dig into your hip.
“Y’know what that is, don’t you?”
You nodded hesitantly.
“You know why it’s there?”
You shrugged.
He gripped the fabric of your—no, his—shirt as his voice rumbled, “You prancin’ around in my shirt did that.”
Without a second thought, you clumsily palmed him there through the thick fabric of his jeans and reveled in the consequential shuddering moan he let out
“Joel, I don’t… I don’t think I know what I’m doing.”
“That’s okay, honey, I’ll teach you.”
Propping himself up with his elbow, he placed his hand atop your own and guided the movements of your open palm. Things like pressing your hand further into him so as to increase the pressure between his legs, and encouraging back-and-forth motions that had his hips rutting and his breath hitching.
Once you got the hang of it, he removed his hand from your own. You felt his hand snake down your neck, then the side of your torso. 
“I trust you,” You whispered, fingers playing with the happy trail peaking Joel’s pants, hoping to absolve him of any guilt or doubt.
But the second Joel’s fingertips grazed the waistband of your shorts, he froze. He was staring off somewhere to the right, so you followed his gaze until you found what he was so disturbed by.
A framed photo on your nightstand, one of you standing next to your dad on vacation in Maui.
You understood immediately; that picture was an astute reminder of exactly who’s daughter Joel was about to debauch.
Your hand fell away from his crotch as he leaned back on his haunches and ran his hands through his hair with worried eyes.
“Joel?” You whispered, but then he was completely backing off of you as he muttered curses under his breath. “Hey, no, come back. What’s wrong?”
It was a dumb question. You knew what was wrong. Even though you were well beyond legal, it seemed to mean little in the situation—the facts were, if he touched you, it was betrayal.
“This is…” Joel panted, standing to his feet and raking his hands through his hair, “I shouldn’t have… Fuck. Fuck. I have to go.”
And just like that, he was gone.
-
That night, your lights stayed on and you didn’t close your curtains.
You stripped yourself of Joel’s shirt first, going excruciatingly slow in case Joel happened to be watching through his neighboring window. You occasionally shot glances at his window on the off chance that the window illuminated, but you quickly realized if the two of you made eye contact that wouldn’t be good either. You’d gotten all the way down to your underwear before you spotted his light flick on from the corner of your eye.
So you did the first thing that came to mind; You turned your back to your window. Panties halfway down your legs, torso bent with your knees straightened as you slowly shed your clothing. Hoping. Hoping for him to avert his attention ever so slightly and accidentally catch you like this. Hoping he would think of it every time he talked to you.
Without ever making eye contact, you would never know if Joel actually saw anything, and he would never know you hadn’t actually “forgotten” to close your curtains.
No pressure on either of you.
You went to sleep with a hand shoved down the front of your panties as you thought of all the things you wanted Joel to do to you.
-
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Jesus. What time was it? You stretched until sleep left you and opened your eyes as wide as you could (not very wide at all). From what you could gather, the sun was definitely up. You, however, did not have the willpower required to read off of your phone screen 5 seconds after waking up, so you answered the phone without reading the contact.
“Hello?” You groaned, voice gruff from sleep.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
You knew that voice anywhere. Almost immediately, you shot upright and cleared your throat as you rubbed your eyes. “Oh, hey Mr. Mill—uh, I mean, Joel,” You breathed a nervous laugh before remembering his question, “No. No, it’s okay I was like, basically awake already, um, so… what’s up? Why’d you—Why’d you call?”
“Right, so just to preface, I understand things are not... ideal... between us right now. But to be honest, you’re the only person available who I trust with this, and… let me just explain. I got called into work unexpectedly and Sarah’s gonna be home alone. Lately, she’s been getting into these rebellious fits, and I just don’t want to risk another situation where she sneaks out at night to meet up with her boyfriend again.”
“Sarah and rebellious fits? Really?”
“Yes, believe it or not. So do you think you could just hang around my place for, to be honest, a long while? It’s looking like I’m gonna be home really late tonight. Oh, and I can pay you.”
“Oh, shut up, you’re not paying me.”
Joel exhaled appreciatively through the phone. “Okay, well I’m home right now if you wanna come by and eat some breakfast. Least I could do. I gotta leave in like thirty minutes by the way, so. Take your time but also don’t take your time?”
You smiled, hoping he could hear it in your voice. “Yeah, I’ll be there soon.”
“Thanks, honey.”
Oh god. There it was again. You thought you might actually pass out, but you quickly turned off your racing brain enough to mutter a small “mhm” before abruptly hanging up.
Okay. Joel Miller. Your dad’s best friend, who was this close to absolving you of every ounce of innocence in your body… just asked you to watch his daughter. What could go wrong?
When you got to his house, he had left already (you definitely took too long in the shower). He did leave out a plate of food, though, along with the message, “Thanks again. Enjoy the pancakes,” scratched out on a post-it note.
And boy did it turn out to be a long day. Sarah wasn’t that much of a handful, she mostly took care of herself. The hard part was lunch.
You attempted to cook something for the two of you, but it only ended in disaster when you left the quiches in the oven for too long. Then you decided Penne a la Vodka couldn’t be that hard, and you couldn't be more wrong. A whole box of pasta was ruined because Sarah didn’t realize the pasta went in after the water boiled, not before. Eventually, you both just accepted defeat and ordered Panera Bread.
Later, Sarah popped into the living room to let you know she was going up to her room to take a nap, and you figured you’d do the same on the couch.
The last thing you read was the time on the cable box; 7:37.
-
Metal clanking. The turn of a key. The creaking of a door. The blaring siren of an alarm system.
“Jesus—Fuck. I thought I told her to turn off the alarm at 8.”
And Joel’s voice.
You jolted awake, blinking wide as you moved to sit upright on the couch. The time on the cable box was 11:50.
Soon, the alarm stopped, and not long after, Joel’s figure came into view. He was wearing a denim button-up with work pants and work boots.
“Hey,” Joel called, setting his things down next to the kitchen island.
“Hi,” You replied, “How was work?”
Joel gave you a polite smile before pulling open the refrigerator door to retrieve a beer. With his head still poked inside the fridge, he replied, “The usual.”
“Well, what was the usual li—”
“—Were you asleep?”
“Uh…" You cleared your throat in an effort to stall as you debated whether or not you would lie. "Yeah, I was. Sorry.”
Joel took a swig of his beer, staring at you from across the room for a minute before blurting out, “The usual is busy. Extremely busy and tedious. But, um, how was Sarah? Hope you weren’t asleep too long.”
“Nope,” You lied, “I Wasn’t asleep long at all. Sarah was great. We had a bit of trouble with lunch, but everything ended up fine.”
“Good. Good. Well you can head out now, thanks for taking care of her.”
No. You did not want to "head out." You rose to your feet. “Joel?”
He looked around as he swallowed his beer. “Uh, yeah?”
“I actually wanted to talk to you. About yesterday.”
He peered down at the ground, swishing around the bottle in his hand. “That’s—That’s okay, honey. I think it’s best we forget that happened.”
“What? But why?”
Joel crossed the room and sat down next to you, leaning back against the couch while you sat back down on the edge with your elbows resting on your knees.
“Come on,” He started, “Don’t act like you don’t know exactly why we’re… this… is impossible.”
“Joel, I—”
“—I’m sorry. You should get home now.”
You turned around to face him. “Joel. No one has to know.” 
“As I said, I’m sorry. I handled yesterday… terribly. There were a million different ways to go about that, and I somehow chose the worst one. But we don't work. We can't work.”
You felt your eyes begin to water, but you tried to push the feeling down.
“Hey, hey,” He lulled, the hardness of his attitude falling away as he noticed the sad shine in your eyes, “Don’t cry.” He pulled you against him, rubbing your shoulder firmly.
“Joel,” You mumbled in a small voice, sniffling against his denim shirt with a frown.
He swallowed the lump in his throat, trying to justify what he was quickly realizing was inevitable. You were an adult, somebody else independent of your father. It was your choice who to get involved with, just like it was his. This was mutual.
He knew he would regret it later, but your innocence and desperation allured him to the point of no return.
“It’s late,” Joel began, voice gentle as he offered you one last out, “You should go home. You need sleep, you’re not thinking straight. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“No,” You replied, removing yourself from his body so you could look him in the eye. “I don’t want to leave. I want you to… I want you to do what you said you’d do.”
Knowing exactly what you were talking about, he redundantly asked in a whisper, “And what’s that?”
You wiped a stray tear as you clumsily moved to straddle his lap. Almost automatically, his hands found their way to your hips, his thumbs rubbing circles into the slivers of skin peeking between your cami tank top and the waistband of your shorts. But it seemed at some point his consciousness realized what he was doing because his hands suddenly dropped to his sides. And, well, you just wouldn’t have that, so you grabbed hold of his wrists and returned them to where they were settled on your hips before you rested your own hands on Joel’s chest.
“You remember, don’t you?” You shifted in his lap, “You said you’d teach me.”
“How to have sex.” He said it more like a confirmation rather than a question.
You blushed at his blatant use of the word. It was like every fifth thing coming out of his mouth was sending your brain spiraling. You cleared your throat. “Yeah. Yeah, sex. Blowjobs, orgasms, literal sex. All of it.”
Silence for a beat. “I have one condition,” Joel warned.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“The second I suspect your dad is onto us, that’s it. It’s over. No more messing around, none of it. I can’t lose my best friend.”
You nodded. You probably shouldn’t have agreed so easily, but you didn’t actually think you and Joel would ever get caught.
“Okay, then,” Joel whispered. “Good. What do you wanna do first? Start off easy.”
You looked around the room nervously, careful not to make eye contact as you spoke. “Like. I dunno. Maybe for right now, I could just… touch you. Touch it, I mean.”
Joel nodded, and when your breathing began to grow the slightest bit uneven from nervousness, he noticed and rubbed your upper arm reassuringly. “Hey. Relax. Climb down and sit right there on the ground between my legs, and I’ll show you where to start.”
And so you did. Joel peered down at you with heavy lids as he tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, and thus began your first lesson.
“Unbuckle my pants.”
With shaky hands, you removed his belt and undid his fly. You couldn’t explain why, but as soon as you caught sight of the bulge in his boxers, your mouth watered.
“What…” You began, “What now?”
“Whatever feels comfortable.”
With a light, feathery touch, you delicately traced a singular finger along the outline of his cock. Joel shivered at the contact, hands shooting to grip the sofa. Touching it felt different this time, more intense because you could feel every ridge and vein; you blamed it on the much thinner fabric dividing your fingers and his cock.
Your breath shuddered before speaking, “Can I take it ou—”
“—Yes, God, yes.”
You hooked your fingers into the waistband of his boxers, pulling downwards until his cock sprang free. It was thick, long, and wet at the tip, and you found yourself instinctively leaning further into it.
“Okay,” Joel sighed shakily, “Now just form a circle with your fingers and stroke it.”
You did as Joel said, and when your fingers finally made contact with his cock, you sighed at how velvety the skin was there. Soft and smooth, except for the trimmed hair surrounding the base. You stroked him steadily, biting your lip as you watched the wetness leaking from his tip spread down his shaft.
“Twist at the tip, honey, twist at the—Yeah, just like that. So good, you’re doing so good.” You couldn’t help but smile when Joel tilted his head back from the pleasure of it all.
With Joel still reeling from the contact of your hand, you took his momentary refusal to look down at you as an opportunity to surprise him a little.
You leaned forward and kitten-licked his tip, and it had him finally making eye contact with you as he whispered, “Oh, do that again.”
And so you did, adoring the look of pleasure strewn across Joel’s face.
Joel offered you a quick, crooked grin. “How’s it feel?” He asked, brushing his thumb along your bottom lip as your tongue played with his tip.
You pulled away for a moment to respond, “How’s what feel?”
“Licking a man’s cock.”
You let the spit that had gathered in your mouth drip down onto his length. “I have the urge to do more with it.”
“Like what?”
“Like put it all the way in my mouth.”
And so kitten licks turned into long stripes up his shift, which turned into eager suckling on his tip, which turned into forcing his cock down as far as it could go without making you gag.
Joel’s hand gripped the back of your head, but he never pushed you down. Whenever you did accidentally end up gagging, he petted your hair, mumbling encouragements as best he could through the blinding pleasure. Things like, “Yeah, honey, doing so good. That’s it. Just a little more. Mhm.” And his affectionate nature, his gentleness, his reassuring words—he was exactly how you hoped he would be like. Not to mention, the general hotness of it all had your hips canting down against nothing, in desperate search of relief.
“M’close, sweetheart. Take it—Take it out.”
“I don’t wanna,” You replied in a hoarse voice as you jacked him off.
“You’re not ready for that, honey, just take it out. Take it out.”
You reluctantly complied, removing him from the tight heat of your mouth, drool dripping down your chin as you stroked him rapidly.
“Joel, I… I think I’m wet.”
He moaned a curse at that, his chest rising and falling in rapid breaths as his orgasm approached him. “Jesus f-fuckin’… Tell me more.”
“I need you to touch it for me next time. Please. Maybe you could… Maybe you could put your mouth on it like how I put my mouth on you.”
“Yes, yes, oh fuck, I’m cumming, don’t stop stroking it,” Joel moaned, hot white spurts shooting up and all over your hand as you stroked him through it.
With his breathing still labored, he panted out in a high voice, “You’re lying. You’re f-fucking lying. Tell me the truth.”
“About what?”
“This isn’t—You’ve done this before. No way you made me cum this hard and it’s your first time.”
“Well,” You breathed a nervous laugh, “That’s flattering. But you’re my first. Trust me.”
When his orgasm fully subsided, Joel lay slumped against the sofa with his legs spread wide. You remained between them with your head resting on his thigh as you just stared at his cock. Took it all in, every curve, every vein, and inevitably, the cum that spurted itself over the surrounding area.
“What are you doing?” Joel chuckled, petting your hair as you smiled.
“I’m… I don’t know really. I just can’t stop looking at it.”
But then curiosity got the best of you, and you began to drag your fingers through the mess at his base. It caught Joel off-guard, his entire body stiffening as he watched you.
“What does it taste like?” You asked quietly as you examined the cum on your fingers. 
“Oh my god,” Joel groaned through his labored breathing, “I swear, if you do what I think you’re about to do, I’ll be hard again in five seconds.”
“I’ll take my chances,” You joked, bringing your finger to your mouth and licking it clean, ultimately wincing at the taste. “It’s like, bitter. And salty. And kinda sweet. But mostly bitter and salty. To be honest, it’s kinda nasty but I can see myself getting used to it.”
“Wow,” Joel sighed, “You just really know how to set the mood. Make things real romantic.”
“Oh, shut it,” You huffed, playfully swatting his thigh before getting up and plopping down next to him on the sofa as he got to work stuffing himself back into his pants despite the mess he made—that was a problem for future Joel. 
“Gonna miss you, little Joel,” You joked to his crotch.
“Oh my god, you’re the worst,” Joel chuckled painfully with his fists in his eyes. “I’m never letting you near ‘little Joel’ again.”
“Mm, no, because I just made you cum so hard you thought I was lying about being a virgin.”
He sighed at that. “You got me there.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
You both laughed at that; In fact, you both were laughing a lot. And at everything. In your head, you blamed it on the ecstatic high of being in each other’s presence this way.
When the mutual laughter died down, Joel looked at you for a moment, admiring you. Then, slow and hesitant as ever, he leaned in to kiss you.
“Do you taste it?” You whispered, breaking the kiss as you fought another giggle.
“Yes, actually. Wait, don’t say it please, this is actually a nice moment—”
“—Your cum!” You loud-whispered.
Another sigh. “My cum.”
You eagerly kissed him back after that, swearing off mood-breaking jokes for the rest of the night. Eventually, you even became too tired to kiss, simply letting your forehead rest against his. Your eyes fluttered shut as his hand snaked up your leg and inched under the leg of your shorts, using force to push your legs open wider.
“Need me to take care of this?” He asked into your mouth before letting his kisses travel down to your neck.
“Joel,” You breathed, breaths beginning to come out in rapid succession as your hips gyrated in response to how dangerously close Joel’s hand was to your pussy. “I… I’m tired.”
“Sweetheart, you don’t have to do a thing,” Joel breathed, removing his hand from beneath your shorts in order to pull down the waistband. “It’s a yes or no question. Just give me a yes or a no.”
Your breath hitched as you opened your eyes and stared at the little bit of empty space left between you and Joel. The throbbing between your legs was bad, but it was something about the delayed gratification of saving things for later that stopped you from saying yes. “No, I… I think that’s it for tonight.”
Joel withdrew his hand, reassuringly cracking a brief smile. “Hey, uh, spend the night. It’s way too late, I’ll sleep on the couch.”
You shrugged. “Yeah, but what about Sarah?” 
“I came home super late, you fell asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you.”
You thought about it for a second before agreeing. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Thank you. But I’m taking the couch.”
“What? No—”
“—Joel. I’m taking the couch.”
He looked at you skeptically but then agreed. “If you change your mind just let me know.”
“I will. Goodnight.”
Joel squeezed your leg before getting up and making his way to the stairs. “Goodnight.”
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masterlist
A/N: strikethrough means i can't tag you, check your settings
taglist:
@basicoccult @myhusband2cool @fleuraimer @chunguk @xkyxkyxxlylcylulucufifluclu @pintsizedsunshine @s1eepy-bear @daddysuperduperlonglegs @worhols @evyiione @criesside @saph-cyare
@gswizzsstuff @baloobalee @gessmiller05 @trynasurvivelol @yazsos @marchai @pompii @alyssa1216 @daddy-din @msmagix4 @blooming-bubs @huffle-punk @whorrorain @iliketoeatstrawberrypocky @onlineplant @totallynotastanacc @hiddenbabynyc @thedoctorofpoop @kamcrazy123 @afterglowsb-tch13
@redplaidedandcladed @simping-soldat @martyluvsu @mingiast @teddybonkers1960 @brittmb15 @ellswilliams @laurasunsole @senaar-ika @whore4ellie @harrysbitvh123 @atremises @silkiers @bbyanarchist @pawnshopbluess222 @https-hann @cassiesolos @xanqels @jawgrinder
@daylighthrry @victoriamay1357 @jeezkiddo @its-spooky-these-days @pedro-luvr @chibimosa @sagethephantom @loathsome-gargoyle @alejaa-a @greenclues @june-julie @spenciesprincess @donttamethebeasts @alec0 @djarinsimp 
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f1-jay · 20 days
Text
Relax - Jenson Button
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Pairing: TeamPrincipal!Jenson x FemDriver!Reader
Summary: Jenson helps the reader relax after a bad result.
Warnings: MDNI - Smut (P in V), sex in the workplace, Age Gap
Words: 1.8k
The race didn’t go as well as you had hoped, especially after qualifying in 2nd and ending up in 8th, putting you from first to third in the championship. You went through the media pen, then had a debrief with the team. There was positive energy, and the team was still happy with the result; you got four points and your teammate got twelve. Yet, you couldn’t help but feel disappointed. You went into a small office area and really tried to determine where you went wrong.
The bright light from the sunset was streaming in through the window and into your line of sight. You closed the blind and continued analysing the footage. You can see the door open from the corner of your eye, and look up to see your team principal, Jenson Button. When you make eye contact with him, he tilts his head slightly. You pause the video.
“Yes? Can I help you?” You ask, even though you were pretty sure you knew what was going to come out of his mouth. The look on his face gave it away.
“I know you’re not pleased with your results, but that doesn’t mean you need to do this. We went through it in the debrief; you drove great; an unfortunate-timed safety car isn’t your fault.” He reminds you with a gentle smile as he comes in and closes the door.
“I know, but I was 6th after the safety car, then I proceeded to lose two more places, so I still want to see what I could’ve done better.” You say it with a shrug of the shoulders. Jenson leans against the desk next to you, crossing his arms over his chest.
“You did the best you could. No one’s disappointed in the result but you” he says reassuringly. He reaches out and takes the device from your hands. “You need to take a break. We’re headed straight into another race week; I would rather you prepare for that than stress about this.” You hold your hand out, wanting him to give the device back.
“Just 10 more minutes." You negotiate, but he shakes his head and places the tablet on the far corner of the table, out of your reach.
“No, I’ve seen you on a weekend like this before. Ten minutes will become one hour.” You know it’s true and figure that there is no point in arguing, so you put your hands up in surrender and agree to not do any more. “You put in some of the most intense hard work and preparation I’ve ever seen; you need to not push so hard sometimes. In the end, it won’t do you any good."
“That sounds a little hypocritical,” you say with a slightly confused look on your face. “Weren’t you like this back in the day?”
"Yeah, and that’s why I’m telling you to slow down.” He admits “Plus, Id hate to see you go grey early," bringing a lighter mood to the conversation.
“I think I’ll leave the whole ‘going grey’ thing to you for now.” You gesture at him.
“That sounded a bit judgy, I happen to look good with grey, thank you.”
“I never said it didn’t look good?” You place a hand on your chest as you defend yourself.
“Oh? So you think I look good?” a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He always had a natural flirtyness with the way he spoke.
“Shut up.” You laugh and shake your head at him. Your response caused him to chuckle softly.
“You can’t deny it. You think I’m attractive.” He teased
“That would be a little scandalous, no? Telling my boss that he is attractive” You lean back in your chair and fiddle with your fingers. Jenson looks at you amused; his eyes still fixed on you.
“I’d describe it more like…thrilling”
“Is that right?” You question. The conversation felt like it could be heading into dangerous territory, but with a man like Jenson in front of you, what else were you meant to do. You knew it was wrong; it was your boss, but it was also the man you’ve been crushing on for a few years. He leans down slightly.
“You sound intrigued.” His voice was a little deeper than before.
“I shouldn’t be.” You don’t want to be too forward, hoping that he leads the conversation if he wants to go in that direction.
“But you are, aren’t you?” His hands come down to both arm rests, caging you in, as he gazes down at you. You slowly nodded in response and confirmed what he said. He leans even closer, your noses almost touching. His eyes linger on your lips for a few seconds before meeting your eyes again. “And what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t think I can say. It’s not very work-friendly.” You can feel the warmth of his breath as he chuckles.
“What we do after work isn’t really anybody’s business but our own.” I look to the side and gesture outward.
“We’re still in the workplace.”
“The door is locked. The blinds are shut. Nobody is going to walk in on us or see.” His eyebrow slightly arches, as if he’s challenging you to go ahead and do something. You grab his jaw, pulling him forward to kiss him. He lets out a surprised hum, then closes his eyes as he eagerly kisses you back. His hands move from the chair to your waist, pulling you up from your seat so that your bodies are against each other. He slightly turns and takes a step, so your butt is against the table. He lifts you up to sit on top of it and stands between your legs as he continues to kiss you. Jenson’s hands move down to your hips as he deepens the kiss. His tongue runs against your bottom lip, you adhere and open your mouth slightly, and one of his hands makes its way to your hair. He slowly breaks the kiss and starts trailing his lips along your jawline and down your neck.
“Sir” you softly breathe out. He pulls back a little and looks at you with a grin. He leans in by your ear.
“Yes, sweetheart?” His lips hover over your skin.
“I need to know if we are going to go all the way.”
“Do you want to?” He asks, looking into your eyes again, and you nod. His eyes darkened slightly. “Are you sure?” He wants to make sure you are certain before you go any further.
“Yes, Jenson” His eyes roam over your face, searching for any hesitation. When he finds none, he kisses you again, his hands moving to the waistband of your pants. He works on getting them off, and they fall down to your ankles while you untuck his shirt and fiddle with the buttons. His thumb circles your clit over your panties for a moment until he can feel wetness on the pad of his finger. He pulls them down, and his fingers run through your pussy.
“I’d love to take this slow, but it’s only a matter of time before someone interrupts.” He pulls his pants and underwear down and holds his hand out under your mouth, telling you to spit. When you do, he begins to stroke his cock. His other hand goes to your shoulder, guiding you to lay down. He slides the tip through your folds before pushing it in; you can’t help the small gasp that comes from you. Inch by inch, he slides to rest in, and the slight stretch feels heavenly. You try to keep your voice down as you tell him how good he feels. He keeps hold of your hips as he builds rhythm, and you are forced to bite your lip to contain noise.
Honestly, it had been a little while since you had sex, mostly because you could imagine the things that the media would say if they found out, you would get torn to shreds just because you’re a girl. The desk beneath you creaks every so often, which reminds you where you are. Then the doorknob rattles. You both tense up a little, and Jenson stills inside of you for a single second.
“Who is it?” He calls out; it’s one of the engineers wanting to talk to him. Your pussy clenches around him, causing his attention back to you. He starts thrusting again, slow but hard. “Y/n and I are having an important conversation.” His voice was strained. “We need some time.” My nails dig into your back, and my hand comes up to my mouth as you speed up. His eyes close as a soft grunt leaves his lips. Once the guy acknowledged that and walked away, you asked him to go faster again, and he did. His hand comes to your mouth, moving yours away and covering it himself. “You need to be quiet, sweetheart. Can’t have anyone hearing us.”
“Sorry” you mumble into his hand. An amused grin is on his face at your apology, and his hand squeezes a little tighter, being sure to muffle any noise. Your back arches and you grab his hand that’s silencing you, gripping onto it. Your actions spur him on, and as he looks down at you with desire, his movements become more intense.
“That’s it. Come on.” His voice is low and almost rough. Your hand that’s on his back slides across to his bicep, and you tap a couple of times, trying to tell him you’re getting close. He’s also starting to feel the same way, with the same tension building in him. “Let me have it, sweet girl.” That’s enough to have your high hit you. Jenson feels your body shiver beneath him, and it pushes him to his finish. He keeps grinding softly as you ride out your releases. For a few moments, the only sound in the room was ragged breathing.
He pulls out and leans on the desk, then looks down at you lying on the desk. He reaches out and brushes a lock of hair from your face; his eyes roam over your flushed skin.
“You okay there?”
“Mmm, I’m great." You open your eyes to look at him. He smiles at you and slowly pulls you up into a sitting position, his hands on your hips to keep you there.
“You certainly look great." His words make you shake your head and giggle.
“I hate you” You say as you look away from him, almost nervous to make eye contact.
“You seemed to think I was pretty great a few minutes ago.” He gently turns you back to look at him and cocks his eyebrow.
“Well, we might have to do it again soon for me to actually confirm if it was any good.”
“Is that so?” He leans down to kiss your lips. “I think that can be arranged.”
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egophiliac · 2 months
Note
Hi there! I really love your comics and how expressive they are. How do you go about making the characters in your comic so expressive?
thank you! 💚💜💚 I am REALLY bad at explaining things, so my apologies if this doesn't make a lot of sense, but maybe there's something helpful in here somewhere. :')
1. warm up! drawing is a physical activity, after all! so if I'm planning on sitting down and drawing for a while, I usually start off by taking a couple of minutes to doodle a bunch of circles and lines and random shapes, just to get my drawing arm goin' again and get back into the physical groove. just stuff like this:
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and just do that for however long you feel like! you can kind of feel when your arm starts to loosen up and your strokes get more confident. it makes it a lot easier to get those swoopy big lines and gestures!
2. play around with how you use your lines! paying attention to the shapes that they're making will change a lot about how much force and life your drawing feels like it has. (no way is better than another, it just depends on what effect you're going for and how it looks as part of the larger whole.)
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and you can also use lines against each other to get different vibes:
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it's not really a matter of "you need to make sure all your lines are always doing this all the time", it's more like...being aware of it, and getting that into the general thrust of a pose, if that makes sense? like a lot of smaller lines of action, beyond the big one that goes through the spine.
(just gonna use my own art as examples, apologies)
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if you have a good foundation of tension, then all of the little bumps and contours of a character's details won't get in the way of it, and it'll still come through.
and don't forget about negative space either! the spaces between things have their own interesting shapes too!
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I don't mean this to come off as, like, all these extra things that you need to be constantly thinking about and stressing over. more like...just try different stuff and then see how it works and how it changes the feeling! if you find a good shape, see if you can exaggerate it and make it more interesting, and how that affects things! angles and shapes are a LOT of fun to experiment and mess around with, especially when you're going more cartoony. :D
3. acting!
just...spending a little time to think about what the characters are actually doing! (aka the "figuring out what everyone is doing with their hands" bit.) this is more a personal preference, but especially in multi-panel comics, I like to have them be in the middle of doing stuff. not just big actions, but smaller things -- like even just how they're sitting or standing -- so that it feels like we're looking in on the middle of a scene, instead of a couple of characters just standing around neutrally and staring straight ahead while talking at each other.
this probably sounds really obvious, but it is one of the most fun parts for me! I love trying to find some little action or something that they can be involved in, especially if it's relevant to their character or adds an extra joke. (for some reason this usually involves me being mean to Sebek) (I'm sorry)
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it doesn't need to be everyone Always! Doing! Something! all the time, especially if starts becoming distracting (sometimes they do actually need to just be standing around neutrally and staring straight ahead, especially if there's a bigger action going on that you want the audience to focus on instead). but even just figuring out some kind of non-neutral pose for them to be in can add a lot and make it feel less generic!
3. thumbnailing!
this is, again, very much a personal preference; unfortunately, every artist really is different, and we all have different processes that work better for us. so I can only speak to my personal experience! but I find what helps is to start REALLY rough -- not so much as in messy, as in not trying to start right into actually drawing everything out. like, literally just starting with stick figures and :O faces.
it probably doesn't sound relevant when talking about Drawing Expressively, but I find it's really, really helpful to have already figured out what everyone should be doing (acting!) and what the overall general layout and flow of things should be, before getting into the actual meat of drawing the characters. like having a sketch for the sketch!
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(good compositional flow is something I struggle with, and text layout especially, so this stage also helps a LOT with making sure things are fitting where I want them and staying consistent/not breaking screen direction/etc.)
then after that, I can go ahead and focus on getting those Shapes and Lines and Angles and all that, without having to think too much about the layout or where things should go!
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(of course, the downside of that is that my thumbnails are usually way better than my actual drawings, alas alas.)
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4. this is more philosophical, but...give yourself some slack. the stress of Making Things Look Good is, ironically, often the biggest problem. (see: thumbnails looking better than the actual drawings.) so...let yourself draw shittier and without regards to accuracy. make things just for yourself without thinking about posting or showing them to anyone else. draw stupid faces and wrong proportions because they feel better that way. focus on what's fun and not on getting a perfect end result. "draw expressively, not well", as they say -- you can always tighten up things like proportions and details later, if you really want to.
that's all WAY easier said than done -- god knows I haven't really managed it -- but even just aiming for that attitude really, REALLY helps. if your lines are confident, they'll look a lot more alive and expressive than lines that are exactly technically precise but have no rhythm in them. (this is why tracing photographs tends to look so weirdly stiff and unrealistic, by the way -- even if you're drawing realistically, you usually need to exaggerate and stylize a little bit so it doesn't look lifeless.) it's a balance between caring about what you draw, but also being willing to let things go a little bit.
↑ I hope some of this helps! I don't know if any of this was actually what you had in mind, let alone much of it actually made sense outside of my head. :') but hopefully you (or other people) will be able to get something out of it!
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undeadcannibal · 1 year
Note
Hello i saw you were taking requests and i want to ask if you could do Alejandro and König being jealous because Graves is flirting with there s/o and she's clearly uncomfortable with it but they gets jealous anyway and decides to make sure she knows who she belongs to.
Only if you're up for it.
Have a good day :)
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Summary: How Alejandro and König would react to Graves hitting on you and becoming jealous as a result.
Genre: Imagines, request(s) Characters featured: Alejandro, König.
Warnings: suggestive situations, spanking, and mention(s) of jealousy
A/N: So, at first, I nearly made this a poly scenario but rewrote it because I was almost certain that isn’t what you were asking for lol. I hope this suffices, and I apologize for the delay on my end OTL ( Gif credit: xxx )
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"C'mon now, girl."
Graves stepped in front of you, blocking your path as well as preventing you from leaving the conversation. Staring down at you with a shit-eating grin on his face.
"Let's say after all this bullshit is said and done, you let me take you out dinner. What do you say?
While you didn't let it show on your face, the thought of going on a date with Graves was off putting to say the least. He was too cocky in all the wrong ways -- and there was something else off about him you couldn't quite pin-point yet, but that underlying suspicion was there, always prickling away at the back of your mind. Maybe it was you were just being paranoid, but still. When it came down to it, you didn't find yourself drawn to him in any sort of way.
You still had to work with the man though, so instead of being honest with him, you offered him a practiced smile. One perfected over years of awkward interactions just like this one.
"As nice as that sounds, I'm afraid I'll have to decline."
"Yeah? And why's that, sweetheart?"
Figures he was the type that didn't know when to back down...
At that point, you'd crossed your arms over your chest. Physically attempting to close yourself off from him even further. You hesitated in coming up with an answer to that question. It wasn't exactly like you could confess you were in a relationship with a Colonel.
"I'm already in a committed relationship, sorry, Graves."
Why the fuck were you apologizing to him?
Alejandro―
As you were busy trying to anticipate Graves' reaction, you hadn't noticed that Alejandro had seen the entire interaction between the two of you. Especially noting the way you tensed up when speaking to Phillip.
Even though he knew better than to storm over and cause a scene -- he felt the urge rising within him regardless. He wanted to walk over there and ask him what the fuck he was doing to you that had you so uncomfortable.
Somehow, he'd managed to hold off just long enough for the interaction between the two of you to come to an end. Whatever you'd said to the Shadow Company CEO had sent him off with his tail between his legs.
Good.
He couldn't help but curse to himself in Spanish as he watched Graves leave the rec room. Once he was gone though, he didn't waste any more time in heading over to you. Silently gesturing for the two of you to have a private conversation elsewhere.
Shortly after the two of you had some privacy, Alejandro was stepping closer to you, looking you over with concern. "Are you okay?" He asks.
You nod. "Yeah, yeah." Offering him a small smile, you shrug a single shoulder. "He asked me if I was interested in going out with him. Mentioned something about knowing where to find him if I was ever interested in going out with a "real man"." You answered him, exaggerating Graves' words by giving air quotations with your fingers.
"Pinche cabrón." Alejandro could feel his jaw tense while he grit his teeth. Looking off to the side with a murderous glare. The fucking nerve he had to say such a thing to you!
Oh, if he ever had a chance to get his hands on that gringo...
Once his anger subsides, jealously takes its place. He knows he has nothing to worry about with your relationship. It's stable and healthy enough to the point he doesn't feel worried in the slightest that you'd cheat on him. However, knowing that Graves is so interested in you to the point he'd made a move, that had him feeling so conflicted.
Part of him knew it would be better than to let it go altogether and not worry about it for a moment longer. But, despite his intelligence and trust, Alejandro was still a man. He felt things that he probably shouldn't at times, and mostly knew how to deal with it.
This time... wasn't going to be one of those. He could feel it in his bones. Knew himself better than to just expect himself to forgive and forget Graves. He figured if he couldn't settle things physically like his instincts wanted to, he'd do the next best thing.
Staking his claim on you.
Sure, he knew he couldn't outright stake his claim on you and declare you as his own -- both out of respect of you as a person with your own feelings and independence, but also due to the trouble the two of you could get it in. That wasn't going to stop him from trying another way.
Glancing around to make sure the two of you were alone, he reached out and wrapped an arm around your waist. Leading you off to a corner of the hallway you two were in.
"Alejandro, what are you--"
You couldn't even finish your sentence before he was caging you in with his larger body. Leaning down so he could capture your lips with his own in a searing kiss that lasted only moments before he was pulling away. Already beginning a steady decline down to your throat with his lips, giving fleeting pecks and nips of his teeth wherever he could reach.
When he found a particular spot he enjoyed, he'd pause and seal his lips around the skin there. Sucking and biting at it over and over until he was satisfied with the marking that'd bloomed as a result.
Regardless of the sounds you made or how hard you clung and pulled on him, Alejandro didn't stop until he felt you had enough marks on you. Dark hickeys littering your throat all the way from your clavicle to just below your jawline.
"Apologies, mi amor." Alejandro smirked. "Let's just say I needed to make sure that bastard knew you were spoken for."
König―
The moment König saw Phillip Graves walk up to you, he was thankful for the fact that he preferred to obscure his face with his facial covering. He could feel his expression twisting with confusion and anger as he watched the other man clearly approach you with romantic intent. König might have spent most of his social life crippled thanks to his social anxiety, but even he could tell the intent behind men's interactions. Or, at least men similar to Graves anyway.
Fingers tightening at his side for a brief moment, he'd stand at his full height, appearing as menacing as ever as he tried to focus on the clipboard in front of him. Though, he found it nearly impossible thanks to the current interaction between you and Graves.
König wasn't a foolish man. He knew better than to let him emotions get the better of him and have his personal insecurities convince him of anything but the truth. You were kind, faithful, and honest with him in your relationship together. He knew you wouldn't throw yourself at Graves' feet simply because he paid you special attention.
Even so, it seemed despite all of his reasoning and rationality, he found a spark of jealously blooming within him. Burning right at the center of his chest so much he felt it difficult to breathe. Still, regardless of how he felt at the moment, he didn't storm over. The Colonel knew better than to make such a scene over something so juvenile as you being flirted with. Also, it'd probably lead to the two of you having to suffer the consequences of many other things given that - despite you not being apart of his own sector - he still technically was your superior.
König tried to focus his attention back on his paper but found it hard to do so when he caught the American eyeing you like his next meal. Discharge and other consequences be damned. The large Austrian man wanted nothing more than to show the smaller man a piece of his mind. Still, he refrained from giving in and storming over. Instead, he somehow managed to hold himself together until the American left. Seemingly with his tail between his legs from the looks of things.
Not even bothering to finish the forms on his clipboard, König tucked it beneath his arm before walking over towards you.
"Can I have a word with you in my office, please?"
After the two of you were behind closed doors and away from prying eyes, König wasted no time in striding over to you. Surprisingly quickly for someone of his stature but you didn't flinch or back away. Instead, you merely smiled up at him far too sweetly than someone like him ever deserved, he thought.
"Did I do something wrong, Colonel?" You questioned in a soft voice.
"Of course not, maus. And please, use my name for now. Not my title..." Since the two of you began a serious relationship, he couldn't stand when you had to refer to him as anything other than his name. Preferring the way it rolled off your tongue far more than whatever else you could address him as.
Staring down at your smaller form, König suddenly found himself at a loss for words. Many conflicting emotions began to overwhelm him as he debated on what to do now.
"Are you alright?" He asked, concern showing within his bright eyes. "What did he... say to you?" König questioned, a little unsure of how to deal with the predicament.
"Oh," You scoffed and waved you hand in a nonchalant gesture. "He asked if I'd like to go out with him but I declined his offer." You explained.
"Ah, I see." He nodded his head in acknowledgement but truthfully, he wasn't focusing much on your words. Instead, all he could think about was how jealous he felt that the he dared to even approach you in the first place. Sure, the two of you couldn't exactly be very open in the public about your relationship together, but that didn't mean he was just going roll over either.
In fact, he couldn't help but feel a little shameful as his mind went over numerous ideas and scenarios of how things could play out. Imagining many, many ways of which he could show that fool you were already spoken for.
It wasn't often he felt as worked up as he did emotionally, but now that he was, he wanted to do something about it.
"Maybe I need to refresh your memory..." König commented, his demeanor shifting to a stricter one as he straightened his posture, standing at his full height in front of you. Hell, he even decided to lean forward a bit just to loom over your tiny form even further than usual. Taking great pleasure in noticing the way you'd shrink in on yourself a bit from his intimidating leering.
"You're mine and mine alone. Do you understand, liebling?" Reaching out, he gripped your chin between his thumb and fingers so he could tilt your head up, coaxing you to look at him in the process.
Glancing off to the side, König would release your chin and then turn to walk away from you. Heading over to his desk so he could clear the top of it of. After the majority of it was clear, he'd gesture towards it with a nudge of his head. "Over the desk, now."
As tempting as it was to talk back to him, you remained silent and instead nodded in agreement before walking over towards his desk. Bending over the top of it with your chest and stomach pressing down against the top of it. Folding your arms beneath your head, you turned to look over at him. Daring to wiggle your backside at him just to be a tease. Silently, König moved to stand behind you so he could tug down your pants and underwear. Now gazing down at your form with a hungry gleam in his eyes.
Without warning, he lashed out and swatted your right ass cheek. Repeating the action again on the same cheek before delivering a swift and stinging strike to the other shortly after. Internally delighting in the way your skin flushed beneath his hand after each smack. The soft gasps and hisses you released were music to his ears...
"Next time he tries to make a move on you, you won't be able to think of anything else but me and how sore I'm going to make your ass soon enough."
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love-quinn · 3 months
Text
WOVEN TOGETHER ━━━ remus lupin x reader
━━━ 𖥻︰ 2091 words
summary: despite your best efforts, remus lupin might just become your friend.
pairing: remus lupin x reader
tags: platonic remus lupin x reader, she/her pronouns, reader is a gryffindor the same year as the marauders, shy reader, mentions of anxiety
The common room was one of your least favourite places to be, but your dorm room was worse, so there you were. It was getting late, and you had a potions assignment due the next day, so you were sitting in a quiet corner trying to work on it. Well, trying to want to work on it. You were only just passing by the skin of your teeth, and if you failed this essay then it would bring your grade down from an Acceptable to a Poor, and that meant that you wouldn’t be able to get the NEWTS you needed. You weren’t sure what those NEWTS were, as the idea of having to do anything after finishing school filled you with fear, but you figured it probably would have something to do with potions. You sort of just picked the electives you enjoyed and then did your best.
Unfortunately, your best didn’t seem to be good enough with this essay, as you had been working on it nonstop for the past four days and you still had another 10 inches of parchment left.
“Disfigurement,” a voice came from above you. You looked up from your homework at a boy, looking bashfully at your parchment.
“Excuse me?”
He had the good graces to look embarrassed by the way you were looking up at him. “Disfigurement is one of the major side affects of using lacewing flies in the potion, a big part of the reason that it’s level three restricted by the ministry,”
Now, normally, a man standing above you and explaining something that you already knew would absolutely ruin your day, Merlin only knew it happened often enough. But normally, the men doing it didn’t look like they were talking about it out of pure interest.
His eyes got slightly dimmer as he realised your annoyance, a darkened honey colour that people wrote songs about. “Sorry, I should’ve- Just because you paused writing doesn’t mean you didn’t know what you were talking about. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” You decided on after a minute. You knew who he was, of course, you didn’t spend seven years in the same grade as someone without learning their name, but you were nearly one hundred percent certain he didn’t know yours.
“I just came over for…” he gestured uselessly at the small collection of cups on the table beside you, with a metal pitcher of ice cold water that stayed full no matter how much you poured it. A group of boys in your year had tried to use it to flood the common room one time. You had a sneaking suspicion the boy in front of you had been involved, despite the fact that he never received detention for it like the others did.
“Go for it.”
He poured two glasses of water and paused, looking at you. “I really am sorry. I’ve offended you.”
“I’m not offended,” you replied honestly. “I normally would be, but I’ll allow it just this once.”
The boy cracked a smile, slightly crooked, and it evened out his whole face, as though he had been created just to smile like that. “Thank you, then.” He corrected softly. “For not being offended by my interruption.” He put the cups down gently and looked for a moment as though he might shake your hand, before thinking better of it and leaving them hanging uselessly by his side. “I’m Remus.”
“So I’ve heard,” you didn’t mean to sound pretentious. “I just mean- we share a lot of classes, so I’ve seen you around a lot.” Now it was your turn to be embarrassed.
Remus continued smiling. “No, I know. I see you all the time. You always snag the good table in the library.” He gestured to you, testing your name out experimentally on his tongue, as though afraid to get it wrong. You nodded.
You liked studying in the library because it made you feel like an actual student. Doing homework on your bed, while the more common alternative, made you feel as though you were doing it wrong somehow. As if, because you hadn’t put in the effort to go all the way to the library and bring your study materials with you that you didn’t deserve to do well on whatever it is you were working on. “Do I?” your voice sounded far away, even to yourself.
“I’ll forgive you, though,” Remus said good naturedly, noticing your change in tone. This interaction had gone on far too long for your liking. You were beginning to feel exhausted. How embarrassing.
Talking to strangers for longer than ten seconds makes my stomach do a backflip, you thought bitterly to yourself. That was why your dorm room didn’t feel as welcoming as it was perhaps meant to. The girls in there talked, like they were friends. And they were friends, it was easy to see that.
You’d been so removed when you first started at Hogwarts, when you were only eleven. So overwhelmed by the hundreds of rooms and the hundreds of students, that when your roommates stayed up all night chattering and getting to know one another, you had felt nothing inside you aside from a desire to go to sleep. It took weeks before your nerves calmed enough to even attempt to contribute to their conversations, and by the time you had realised that maybe you did want to be friends with them, they had accepted your silence.
You gave Remus an awkward smile, the polar opposite of the one he’d given you. As if your grinning was a defect, not something you were designed to do. Sometimes it felt like maybe you weren’t.
He was still standing there. How could you make him go away without explicitly telling him to? You felt nauseous, squirmy under his gaze. Why hadn’t he left yet? “That essay Slughorn gave us is a real doozy, isn’t it?”
You cracked a real, genuine smile at his word choice. You didn’t know anyone who used the word ‘doozy’ and the best part was, it seemed to be entirely unironic. “Yeah, I guess.”
“I was planning on spending the afternoon up in the library, working on it.” His hand fiddled with the hem of his button-up. “Any chance I could sit at the good table?”
You nodded almost instantly. “Yeah, no, sure. It’s all yours. Sorry, I didn’t mean to hog.”
“You’re not,” he let out a breathy laugh. “You’re jumpy, aren’t you?” You felt it, and your cheeks burned at the notion that he could tell. “If you wanted to still study at your same table, and I was also to study there, both of us in complete silence, then I don’t think that would be so bad?”
Remus could see that you wanted to say no, and he didn’t want to push it if you were clearly uninterested, but he also knew that it had been seven years of you being the only Gryffindor girl he’d never spoken to, and also being the only Gryffindor girl he’d ever felt a strong desire to speak to. The others were great, sure, Lily and Marlene had become friends to him more concretely now that Lily and James were seeing each other, and Alice had always been sweet. You, on the other hand, had been described by your roommates as sad. Not ‘pathetic’ sad, but a more deep sadness.
“She’s awfully kind,” Marlene had told him once, hushed in the back of a History Against Magic Lesson. He hadn’t remembered how your name had been brought up. “Think she just likes it quiet.”
“The table’s yours,” you offered. “It’s okay. I can just study down here, it’s warmer.”
“It’s louder, though,” Remus reasoned. “Up there there’s no… well, no guys coming over here to explain something you probably already understand.”
“I thought you said you were going to be there?” You were genuinely confused at what he was asking of you by this point, but he laughed it off. You staved off a frown.
“I always find that homework is nicest when you’ve got someone there,” he offered finally. “Even if you’re not talking, just purely sitting there.”
You didn’t see how that would help at all. You’d probably be too distracted by anyone to even get any work done. But, you realised with a start, the notion of someone wanting to spend time in your vicinity, as innocent as Remus’s intentions were, made your heart ache.
He probably just wanted to be able to sit at the good table without putting you rout, you understood that. But at the same time, if he really wanted to sit there, and he really wanted to not disrupt your routine, then you didn’t see why not, even though maintaining eye contact with him for any longer than a second felt as though you were going to combust in a caramel-irised explosion.
“You can come,” you conceded, gently, hoping as not to come off rude or too territorial about your space. Perhaps it would be better if you studied outside, or in an empty classroom. That way you weren’t getting in his way.
“Excellent,” he was talking too loud, and he could tell that by the way you shrank back in your seat.  “Maybe I can finally get my transfiguration grade up, Merlin knows you’re doing well in that class.”
Why would he say that? That made him come across as a stalker who knew all your grades. He hoped you didn’t think that implied you did need help in potions. Your reactions weren’t giving him much, and it was making him nervous. He definitely shouldn’t have come over here, but he had been scrambling for something to say, and now he had to take water over despite the fact that no one had asked for water.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine.” You closed your textbook so gently it didn’t even made a paper noise as the cover closed. “But if you really do need help, then I might be able to.” You offered him one final smile, cheeks tinged with a visible blush.
You hoped he couldn’t see how dizzy you were getting. You wanted to go sleep and pretend this was all a dream so you could go back to ignoring Remus’s existence like he could go back to ignoring yours.
Unfortunately for you, though, he’d found your little hidey-hole study space that you occupied yesterday, coming in to tease you light heartedly about abandoning him for transfiguration. You didn’t not want to talk to Remus, it was nothing about him. He’d been nothing but sweet and funny in the very limited interactions you’d shared, you were the issue.
“Should’ve known you’d ditch me,” he’d said with a sigh as he sat down, opening his textbook up. You found you didn’t mind his being there as long as you weren’t expected to contribute much to the conversation.
“Thought it would be obvious.” You’d attempted to match his airiness in your tone. It came out strangled.
He sighed gently. “I wanted to pretend it wasn’t so, sweetheart. I thought you and me had something special. I told you about disfigurement in potions and you tell me about disfigurement in transfiguration.”
He’d been attempting to do the spell for about an hour, trying to turn a ball of yarn into a scarf. It was a simple spell that’d normally be of no issue to him, but he just couldn’t get it this time.
After nearly forty minutes of mumbling all but silently to himself so as not to disturb you, you had enough. You reached over and, so delicately he’d thought at first it was simply a breeze, uttered the spell while controlling his hand movements. A long, thickly knitted navy scarf burst from the ball of wool, landing pooled by his crossed legs. You looked up at him, expecting to be reprimanded for the touching, knowing you would have done exactly the same.
“You’re not real,” he said after a moment. Sometimes you felt that way too. “We’re officially studying together every time, now.” He grinned to himself, picking up the scarf and wrapping it securely around your neck multiple times, tucking the ends in to your jumper. It was soft. “Every single time, you little wonder.” You maybe didn’t mind as much this time as you had when he’d last suggested it. Your smile was almost hidden behind the mass of fabric you’d just helped him conjure, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t see it.
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wrestletotheground · 5 months
Text
you get me closer to god - matty healy x reader (part one)
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boss!matty
cw: ! minors dni ! smut, age gap (20/34), power imbalance, cheating, f!reader, dom/sub, male masturbation, spit, cumplay, voyeurism, semi-public, office work affair, general filth and nasty behaviour
wc: 2.1k
8:30am
you're sat on the sofa across from matty in his office, basking in the slanted rays of sunlight that peep through the blinds. the office is warm, the air filled with a faint musky scent that's recently become a comfort to you.
he called you in early supposedly to discuss your 'behaviour in the workplace', but so far it's just been him making small talk about work and typing away, deliberately acting oblivious towards the tension in the room. he throws you the occasional glance over his computer screen, but they never linger long enough to satisfy you. you're practically twiddling your thumbs in conversation, vying for his attention any way you can by throwing in little jokes and references or tapping your fingers on the chair, but he won't budge.
his breaking point is when you clear your throat obnoxiously loudly, spreading your legs and crossing them again in your skimpy little skirt just to taunt him. and oh, it works. this time it's more than a short glance. his jaw clenches as he watches you, knuckles turning white as he balls his hands into fists. it takes everything in him not to pounce on you, as if you'd mind. you smile sweetly, a glint in your eyes as you relax into the chair.
he mutters something under his breath before shutting off his laptop and clearing away the stacks of papers that litter the space in front of him. a few pens clatter to the floor as he carelessly throws everything aside. all the while you can't stop staring at him, trying to figure out the almost unreadable expression on his face.
he taps the desk in front of him twice, gesturing with his head and looking at you expectantly. the fiery look in his eyes tells you you're in for it today. he stares intently, hungrily, as you stand up and walk around as slowly as possible, just to push his buttons. before you have the chance to get up onto the desk, he grabs you by the waist and pulls you into him, making your entire face heat up.
'you know exactly what you're doing, don't you? been walking around all week in these little skirts,' he says, giving it a tug to emphasise his point. you bite the tip of your crimson painted nail and shake your head, acting naive and failing miserably. 'they leave nothing to the imagination baby, we can't be having that. nono,' he tuts, shaking his head and looking up at you disapprovingly. 'all those filthy boys in the office gawking at my girl, save it for the real man, the boss, yeah?' you feel yourself flush at his words, and all you can do is mumble out a vague 'yes' sound as your gaze wanders from his eyes to his lips and back again, almost like you're trying to memorise every detail in case he disappears.
'be good for me, darling,' he whispers, staring up at you like you're the messiah. 'mm, whatever you want,' you reply, tilting your head back as he starts running his hands up and down your body, squeezing your hips. you feel so small under his touch, acutely aware of how easy and effortless it is for him to hold so much power over you. he pulls at the fabric around your waist and you help him out by shoving the flimsy skirt down and kicking it off to the side somewhere, making his breath hitch in his throat.
without another word he lifts you up onto the desk. the cool wood touching your thighs sends a shiver up your spine, quickly being replaced by the warmth of his hands on your knees, spreading them apart without breaking eye contact. he's standing now, towering above your face and making you feel smaller than ever. 'you gonna help me out angel?'
you nod quickly, heart hammering in your chest and heat pulsing elsewhere. your thighs clamp around him, hips pushing towards the obvious bulge in his suit trousers. a condescending laugh echoes through the room. 'oh already? haven't even touched you yet and already you're fucking desperate for me,' he says, pulling your knees out from his waist. 'no, please, im just-' he cuts you off by grabbing the collar of your shirt and pushing his lips onto yours, unable to refrain from the way your voice wavers as you fall into subspace for him yet again.
the faint taste of your cherry lip balm makes him impossibly more turned on and his tongue presses into your mouth like he could just swallow you whole.
he unzips his trousers and you immediately reach out to touch him, desperate to help him, to feel him, regain some of that power, but as soon as your fingertips graze his stomach he swats your hand away and steps backwards. 'did I say you could touch me?' your head shakes of its own accord, and you whine in protest when he sits back down onto the office chair, leaving you exposed and helpless.
'you don't get to touch me or yourself. eyes on me, legs apart and keep them pretty hands behind your back unless I say, okay?' you sigh and breathe out a shaky 'okay', your head swimming at the thought of being there solely for his pleasure.
he grabs at his dick through the tight trousers and grunts at the relief. your eyes are trained on his hand, the way the veins push out as his fingers tighten around the clear outline. the way the silver band on his ring finger shines in the morning light.
you notice how his face is directly facing your cunt, drops of arousal spilling out and seeping into the baby pink cotton the longer he stares. it's getting harder and harder not to touch yourself, or him for that matter. especially when he lifts his hips and pulls down his trousers, letting them pool around his ankles. especially when he strokes along his length tantalisingly slowly, teasing the both of you. you're utterly fixated on the mouth-watering shape under the fabric, straining to be released.
he pushes his thumb under the waistband, momentarily denting the perfect shape of his rose tattoo. he moves them down, but only enough to free his cock. it's leaking already, red and angry and desperate and he groans at the feeling of the air hitting it.
'fuck, look what you do to me, love,' he says as he finally lets his hand wrap around his erection. your thighs twitch at his words.
he starts off slowly as usual. long, languid strokes as he drinks in your body in front of him, especially enraptured by the wet patch between your legs. you want nothing more than to wrap your mouth, your hand even, around him, help him feel good, but you're not in the mood of being punished today. instead you just let the coil in your stomach tighten with every little movement and sound that comes from him; let him render you an embarrassingly wet mess in front of his eyes.
you try your hardest not to squirm, not to give in and have him watch you disappointedly as you fuck yourself with your fingers selfishly, but good girls don't do that. you need to be everything he wants.
'lift up your shirt,' he huffs, teeth baring for a second as he pumps himself desperately. you oblige, gently hiking up the hem of your perfectly ironed white shirt and turning it into a vulgar sight as it touches your neck, revealing your chest to him, framed in pretty black lace that you always wear just for him.
'shit, my pretty little girl, fucking love those tits, all for me, aren't they?'
'all for you, no one else,' you reply, pushing them together and rubbing your fingers over your nipples in an attempt to ease some of the pressure inside you. you're so worked up that the simple action sends a jolt of electricity through you, making your back arch.
'what did I fucking say, leave your shirt up there, hands behind your back,' he spits. you inadvertently whimper as you obey him once again, catching the shirt under your armpits to keep it up above your tits as you place your hands back onto the hard wood behind you.
waves of humiliation crash over you at how bare you feel before him, and you have to look away for a second to regain composure.
your eyes flick to the gold rimmed photo on the wall and you can't help but wonder how long he's needed this. his appetite for you is seemingly insatiable at all times, despite the woman in white pictured next to him outside the chapel.
you're snapped out of your thoughts as a strangled groan leaves his chest. you look down and see his thumb swiping precum over the head of his cock. his hips start to buck upwards and he continues stroking up and down, faster now. you make a show of grinding up into the air as he stares at you with eyes clouded in lust. your pussy is throbbing, begging for anything, even a gust of wind, to soothe the ache that's worsening and worsening the longer you watch him getting himself off.
suddenly he stands up and comes towards you, eyebrows scrunched up in desire. he taps your jaw with one hand, the other continuing his unrelenting pace. you know the signal by now, and you open your mouth obligingly and let out a theatrical moan as he spits onto your tongue. seeing you swallow and grin devilishly up at him is what tips him over the edge.
'fuck- baby- come here,' a series of grunts falls from his lips as his chest heaves, fucking his fist hard and fast. he hooks a finger under the waistband of your underwear and pulls it outward, leaning forward so his tip is practically touching your abdomen. 'what...' you trail off, catching on to his plan as soon as spurts of cum start to dribble into your underwear, soaking and mixing into your slick.
'fucking hell,' he moans through shaky breaths. your breath catches in your throat, releasing a groan of pleasure as some of the warmth drips down and lands on your burning skin. he whimpers, eyes focused on your core and then rolling back into his head as he milks the last few drops out.
you can't help how quickly your hand goes to your aching bundle of nerves, desperate for more, hard contact, but he grabs a hold of your wrist before you get the chance. the glare he gives you makes you retract instantly, remembering his earlier orders. you lean back on your hands again reluctantly like a good girl, to please him.
he gives a satisfactory hum before gripping your neck, making you gasp and splutter with the force. even though he's a bit dazed and out of breath, the only thing that falters is his voice as he orders you around like his little plaything. 'you're gonna walk around with this pretty little cunt covered in me all day, right? come back to me at the end of the day and if you've been good I'll reward you,' as he speaks, he lets the elastic snap back against your hot skin and palms at your core through the soaked fabric. you nod and whine at the feeling of the warmth being pushed against you, the sticky mess spreading and mixing in an obscene concoction of lust, your head rolling back in ecstasy. it's wrong - so wrong - but you can't get enough.
'thank you sir,' you reply, your face burning up at the shame gnawing at the back of your mind. he rolls his eyes at how needy you look, not even 9am and you're already grinding against his hand, begging for anything he's willing to give you. 'pathetic,' he whispers, giving your cunt a light slap and dragging another sound from your lips. he slides his middle finger up his slit, collecting the milky remainder and shoves it in your mouth. he watches you moan in contentment as you lap it up, relishing in the salty taste and eventually releasing it with a pop.
without warning, all contact is lost and he's ordering you down off his desk to go back out to yours. you look up at the clock. fuck. 8:51. you scramble to get your skirt back on and fix yourself up as he pulls up his jeans with a smug look plastered on his face, throwing you a wink as he does up the zipper.
'enjoy your day sweetheart,' he smirks, grabbing your ass and pushing you out the door just before the first of your coworkers start to file into their respective cubicles. you check your reflection in a nearby computer screen to make sure you don't look as flustered as you feel, before sitting down. it's going to be a long day.
~
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wonderingpanda · 8 months
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Hallooo!
May I request reader catching the bayboys staring at them? Lovesick, maybe?
I just love the Eugene staring at Rapunzle scene.
Lovesick Stares
Hi! Sorry for not posting in so long, I’ve been really busy the past month. I also want to apologise, there was another Bayverse request in my inbox but I must of accidentally deleted it since I can’t find it anymore. If the person who sent me it wants to re-request it feel free to do so. Now, I decided to not really do headcanons for this one but I wouldn’t call them oneshots either. They’re more like mini-scenarios. Anyway, with that all out the way please enjoy.
Leonardo
I was just in the lair sharpening my katanas when I noticed Y/N sit down next to me. “Mikey becoming too much for you?” “Nah, I’m just tired and don’t feel like skateboarding right now.” They pulled out their phone and began doing something on it but I couldn’t see what. I decided to just focus on my blades since I was losing concentration. After a moment or two I heard the sweet sound of Y/N laughing and turned to see them smiling at some video. I couldn’t help but let my gaze linger for a moment, they were so pretty and calm I couldn’t look away. Y/N must of realised that I had stopped sharpening my swords since they looked over to me curiously. I immediately fixed my eyes on something away from them but I knew it was too late and I’d already been caught. “You do realise you’re staring at mouldy pizza right?” Yup, caught red handed. “Well I mean mouldy pizza can be interesting. Anything can hold a story. You never know this pizza could’ve been through amazing things, lived an incredible life.” “Ah yes an incredible life of slowly dying on a sewer floor.” We laughed together for a moment before Y/N decided to lie their head on my arm and smiled with their eyes glued to their phone. “You know if want to stare at me you can. I do it to you all the time.” “Heh, thanks… wait what?”
Raphael
I swear sometimes my brothers piss me off too much! It was late in the evening and I was beating up a punching bag to let out my rage. I was so focused on hitting the thing that I didn’t realise Y/N had walked in. They leaned against the wall and just looked at me. I stopped what I was doing and turned to face them. “What is it?” “I was just waiting for you to finish up.” “Why? You want to use it?” “I’d appreciate it.” I smirked and stepped aside as Y/N walked up to the punching bag, this was going to be interesting. I was surprised when they began to land pretty tough punches on it. “Wow, who got you so riled up?” They leaned back and rolled their shoulders. “Just an annoying co-worker, don’t worry about it.” They then threw their jacket onto the floor and continued to beat up the punching bag. As they went at it I kept wanting to look at them, their face and arms, eyes, lips… I shook my head and blinked a bit when I saw Y/N staring right back at me. “Is there something you want to tell me or…?” “Uh I think I hear Donnie calling me, I gotta go.” With that, I ran off. All I could do was hope they didn’t read too much into it.
Donatello
I thought it would just be another long night in the lab. I had been spending the night working on a few adjustments to my computers. Some of them were glitching and one had stopped working completely so I was trying to fix them up asap. I figured I’d be alone the whole night since everyone seemed to have already gone to bed but I was proven wrong when I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Agh! Oh Y/N, it’s just you. Wait, Y/N! What are you doing here this late?” “Well I was spending the night studying alone but I got bored, and knowing you I knew you’d still be up and awake in your lab.” “I suppose that makes sense.” I slid my chair to the side slightly and gestured for them to grab the free one I had sitting in the corner. They pulled the chair up next to me and sat down. “Oh, and apologies for not knocking. You didn’t answer before and when I peeked through you seemed so involved in your work that I didn’t want to disturb you too much.” “Not a problem. So, were you wanting to study or join me in my computer repairs.” “I figured I could just study while you do your thing, I was just desperate for some company.” “Understandable. I’ll just get back to this and feel free to ask me if you need any help with your studies.” “Of course. Thank you Donnie.” I grabbed a few of my tools and got back to work as Y/N began researching stuff on their laptop, looking through books and writing notes down. I looked over to them and noticed the way their face scrunched up at certain things, how they seemed so hyper focused on whatever they were typing. They were simply a sight to behold. My thoughts were cut short when Y/N sent me a curious smile. “What?” I figured I must have been staring and gave an awkward laugh, looking away to the computer I was currently fidgeting with. “Nothing.” Soon enough I heard the sound of books closing and felt a heavy weight slump onto my shoulder. “I know I should be heading home right now but I think it’ll be ok if I’m a little late to class tomorrow.” “Goodnight, sleeping beauty.” “Night, turtle boy.”
Michelangelo
I was bored, and I mean really bored. Nothing was happening! Leo and Raph were training together and Donnie was locked up in his lab again. April was busy with Casey, Master Splinter was meditating. I was so close to giving up on everything when a voice filled the air. “Oh guys! Guess what I brought?” I snapped my head around only to find my gorgeous Y/N standing happily with a stack of pizza boxes in their hands. I ran over to them but before I could grab a box they pulled the pizza away from me. “Uh excuse me! You’ll be waiting for your brothers before laying a hand on this pizza.” “Ugh! But everyone else is already busy. I’ll just take a few boxes and be on my way, pretty please?” They gave me a deadpanned look. “Mmm no.” “Well then…” I stepped back and readied myself. “I’ll just have to take it by force.” I lunged at Y/N picking them up and pulling the pizza out of their grasp. “Mikey, put me down!” “Mmm no” “Michelangelo Hamato I swear to god!” They proceeded to grab my face and get close enough to the point their nose touched my snout. “If you don’t put me down safely and hand over that pizza this instant I will beat you up with your own weapons, understood?” I wanted to make some sort of witty comeback but as I looked into their eyes I found myself at a loss for words. I knew they couldn’t really beat me and they knew it too but the determined look on their face was so adorable I wanted to just let them. After a little while I felt something hard flick my forehead. “Ow! What!?” “You zoned out dummy.” “Hey I’m not a dummy! You’re the dummy.” “You sure?” “Uh huh.” “Turn around.” I twisted my head to the side and noticed that all the pizza was gone! I looked back to Y/N only to be met with a fist to the face. But to see their cute face up close it was totally worth it.
I hope this was okay. Again, sorry for not posting in a while. Please have an amazing day/night wherever you are!✨
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steddieas-shegoes · 7 months
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teach me your kingly ways
for @steddieholidaydrabbles prompt 'platonic stobin' rated m wc: 652 cw: referenced sexual activities tags: established steddie, awkward robin, buckingham
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"You can't be seriously telling me that if I just walk up to her and ask her out that will work," Robin let her face fall into her hands.
"That's exactly what I'm telling you," Steve said. "It worked on him."
Steve gestured over to where Eddie was nodding along to something Chrissy was saying to him, fond smile on his face.
"That doesn't count!"
"Are you trying to say Eddie's easy?" Steve folded his arms across his chest. "Because it took me another six weeks just to get his shirt off."
"I'm saying he was already in love with you when you asked so obviously he was gonna say yes!" Robin started throwing her arms around as she ranted, forgetting that the object of her desires was standing not too far away. "Chrissy hasn't given me any sign that she likes me and she probably doesn't because I've been throwing signals left and right. I can only tell a girl she looks beautiful so many times before it becomes creepy, dingus!"
"Robs, does she know you're into women?" Steve sighed, starting to get frustrated with Robin's inability to make a move. "Or does she think you're just being a good friend?"
"I can't just tell her I'm into women! Then she'll know."
Steve threw his arms up.
"I hate to break it to you, but if you ever want to touch her boobies, you're definitely gonna have to tell her you like women. Or at least make sure she knows it's not platonic booby touching."
"Please stop saying boobies."
"If you ask her out, I'll stop," Steve smirked, nudging Robin's arm. "I might even offer to go on a double date so it's less awkward for you. Ease you into things."
"Oh, how chivalrous," Robin rolled her eyes. "That doesn't help me, Steve. I'd just be worried that you and Eddie would be so in love and Chrissy would expect me to be smooth or something and I'm not-"
"Hey Robbie," Chrissy was suddenly standing in front of them, beaming at Robin. "Eddie said something you needed to ask me before I head out?"
Steve's head shot over to Eddie, who gave a finger wave and then turned towards the kitchen like he hadn't just made bigger moves than Robin and Steve combined.
"Oh, did he?" Robin chuckled nervously. "I-"
"Oh yeah! The thing!" Steve smacked his own forehead. "Remember? You were gonna ask her to go to that place with you?"
Robin looked like she was about to kill him or pass out, in that order.
"Right, the place."
"What place?" Chrissy looked excited.
Steve threw Robin a thumbs up as he backed away.
"Oh, um, you know that new restaurant downtown? They have these fusion salads that sounded like the ones you make at home and figured maybe you'd wanna go? With me? Sometime?"
It wasn't the best, but it wasn't the worst.
Steve nodded in encouragement as Robin looked at him.
"I didn't know they opened already! I saw they have this plum salad with a ginger vinaigrette, and it sounds so good. I'd love to go!"
"Um, awesome!" Robin stood up straighter. "And it's okay that it's...just us?"
Chrissy leaned in and whispered something in Robin's ear, leaving her face bright red when she pulled away.
"Bye guys!" Chrissy turned and yelled to Steve and Eddie, who was standing beside him watching.
"Why does Robin look like she's gonna black out?" Steve asked Eddie.
"Probably because Chrissy just told her they could hang out at her place after."
"So you've been working that angle this whole time," Steve leaned his head on Eddie's shoulder. "Impressive."
"You should go check on her, she looks pale."
"She's in shock, she just needs a minute."
"Steve!"
"Be right there!" Steve turned to give Eddie a quick kiss on the lips. "Love you, you meddler."
"I come by it honestly, sweetheart."
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scary-grace · 1 month
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Enough to Go By (Chapter 8) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic
Your best friend vanished on the same night his family was murdered, and even though the world forgot about him, you never did. When a chance encounter brings you back into contact with Shimura Tenko, you'll do anything to make sure you don't lose him again. Keep his secrets? Sure. Aid the League of Villains? Of course. Sacrifice everything? You would - but as the battle between the League of Villains and hero society unfolds, it becomes clear that everything is far more than you or anyone else imagined it would be. (cross-posted to Ao3)
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9
Chapter 8
“I can’t believe this is happening,” the high school student at the front desk says for the millionth time. “He must be so scared.”
“That kid? No way. He’s probably killed half the League already.” One of the nurses scoffs. “He’ll be fine. The heroes will handle this and put an end to that mess before you know it.”
You’ve been hearing versions of this conversation for the last three days, and you were bored of them on day one. It’s an effort not to roll your eyes. “But he got kidnapped,” the high schooler says again. “He probably doesn’t even know what happened to his friends, if they’re okay –”
“The other students are okay,” you say. “I heard two of them are still unconscious, but they think they’ll be fine. Their lungs were just more sensitive to the gas than the others’ were.”
“Was it really mustard gas?” the high schooler asks, and you shake your head. “How do you know?”
“A friend of mine,” you say. You’re not talking about Tenko. “He’s helping the heroes gather intel. He says it’s more like Midnight’s sleeping gas, but with a cumulative exposure effect.”
“The news said that kid was in high school,” a passing doctor says. “What are we doing wrong that kids in high school are turning to villainy?”
“It’s a problem with the villain, not with us.”
You can’t hold in the derisive sound you make, and all three of them turn to you. “What is it?” the doctor asks. “You don’t agree?”
“I just think it’s weird for people who see what we see every day to act like every villain is just born bad,” you say. Your colleagues stare at you. “Some of our patients feel trapped. A lot more of them feel helpless, or hopeless. Most of them have had hard lives, and no one’s helped them or saved them. If they feel invisible in their suffering, it’s not hard to imagine why some of those people lash out. Not even to hurt others. Just to be seen.”
You know what it’s like to feel hopeless, to feel invisible. To feel angry and know that your anger doesn’t matter, because you don’t matter in the first place. You turned that feeling inward, but most people aim it out. “People don’t become villains because they’re happy with their lives, or who they are. The way the world works makes a lot of people unhappy.”
“Young people – present company excepted – want everything handed to them,” the doctor says. He gestures at you and the high schooler. “If we had more people like the two of you, it would be a different story. You know how to work hard.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” you say. You’re not making your point well. You try again. “The villains who currently exist are the heroes’ job. It’s our job as a society to stop new villains from arising. The only way to do that is to make things better for everybody.”
“Of course,” the nurse says tiredly. She’s probably been working at the clinic longer than you and the doctor combined, and longer than the high schooler’s been alive. “When you figure that one out, honey, let me know.”
You’d love to. Really. Lately the difference between what you feel and what you think has been growing, so fast that it’s consuming every thought in its wake. Kazuo might be right from a legal standpoint that not stopping something isn’t the same thing as aiding and abetting it, but that doesn’t change how it feels. The attack on the training camp succeeded. The psychopathic student was kidnapped. Students were hurt. Pro heroes were hurt. One hero is missing. Moonfish, Mustard, and Muscular were all captured. And you knew it was happening ahead of time.
This time, you weren’t powerless to stop Tenko’s plans. You could have contacted UA and warned them that the location of their summer training camp had been compromised, that villains were planning an attack. You could have done it without endangering Tenko – he wouldn’t have even been there, and with Kurogiri’s protocol of warping everyone to and from the hideout, none of the others could have revealed his location if they were captured. You could have stopped this. Part of you wishes you had.
And part of you can’t stop picturing the look on Tenko’s face if he found out you betrayed his trust. The hurt you’d see there in the moments before he sealed it away. He’d probably kill you, and you’d feel so guilty that you’d probably want him to – but it’s not the fear of death that keeps you quiet. It’s the fear of losing him again, by your own fault this time. So you’ll take the guilt over the attack on UA’s training camp, the kidnapped student, the missing hero. You’d rather feel sick over that than hollowed out by losing your best friend.
You’re on the night shift, but it’s slow tonight, and when the high schooler turns on the TV in the waiting room, you don’t stop her. UA is having a press conference, with the principal and the two teachers who were there at the training camp apologizing for allowing the students to be put at risk again. You shouldn’t feel guilty, but you do, and you almost ask the high schooler to turn it off – but then the hero whose student was kidnapped starts defending said student, and you get annoyed. “That’s not what he’s like?” You mimic the hero’s flat, almost-affectless voice, then revert to your own. “Bullshit. That’s exactly what he’s like.”
“Huh?” The high schooler looks at you, surprised – or maybe offended. “That’s his teacher. He knows him better than you do. You’ve never met him.”
“I’ve met dozens of him. I know what they’re like.” You think of your siblings, the twins, the triplets. You think of the people who made your life hell until you made stronger friends. “You know who knows that kid better than his teacher? Everybody that kid has ever picked on. They only show who they really are to people who can’t hit them back.”
The high schooler is staring now. “I’ve never heard you say that much about anything before.”
You step out from behind the desk and head to the lobby for a little cleaning. “I only get one outburst per month. You can tune in next time.” In general, you’re not reactive – growing up, you weren’t allowed to react to anything – but ever since you found Tenko, you’ve found it harder and harder to hold in your frustration with the way things are. Your viewpoint doesn’t align with the League of Villains or with Stain, because you don’t think that dismantling the heroic system would automatically create a better world, but lately you can’t shut up about the things that are wrong.
Employment and housing discrimination against quirkless people and heteromorphs, and the total lack of anti-discrimination laws. The constant threat of violence, triggered so often by heroes pursuing nonviolent criminals, in situations where violence shouldn’t be necessary. The disinterest most ordinary people show in helping anyone, changing anything, because they expect heroes to do it for them. Things people who have power never see or think about. Things you’ve been living with since you were a child.
Seeing the heroic system come tumbling down won’t fix any of that. All it will do is put the privileged on the same level as you are, force them to play by the same rules you’ve had to follow. And some part of you thinks that would be a nice thing to see. After all, you’ve been playing this game your whole life. For once, you’d like to have the advantage.
The UA press conference is just concluding when you feel the first vibration, a low deep hum traveling through the air. A chill goes down your spine, and you look up from cleaning the air conditioning filter in the lobby to the high schooler behind the desk, only to find her already looking at you. The TV switches to breaking news with a blast of trumpets, announcing that All Might and various heroes have teamed up to rescue Bakugou of Class 1-A, but even as they’re announcing the good news, another vibration travels through the air. A moment later, a similar vibration travels through the ground. Somewhere in the distance, you hear a crash – an enormously loud sound, coming from just far enough away to avoid rupturing your eardrums. Not far enough to avoid rupturing anything else.
“Get down!” you shout, diving for cover, and the high schooler drops behind the counter just in time for the windows to blow apart, spraying glass across the lobby.
Now you can hear explosions. Or you could, if your ears weren’t ringing. When you look out the shattered windows, you see a sky that should be cloudy and dark blue turning unearthly purple and orange. As the ringing in your ears dies down, you hear screams, sirens, the whirring of helicopter blades. Something terrible is happening.
You struggle to your knees, then your feet, doing your best to avoid the broken glass. “Are you okay?” you shout to the high schooler. You hear a whimper from behind the desk, and a split second later, the phone starts to ring. “Can you grab that?”
No answer. You stumble through the glass, kicking piles of it aside, and find the high schooler crouched behind the desk, shaking. She doesn’t look hurt. Shell-shocked, sure, but not hurt. You aren’t seeing blood. You grab the phone. “Yokohama Free Clinic South. How can I help you?”
“This is Yokohama PD. Your building has been designated as an evacuation site. Please prepare to receive evacuees from Kamino Ward.”
“Kamino Ward?” You fumble the clinic’s disaster preparedness binder out of the desk and start flipping frantically through it. “Our windows are gone from the shockwave that just came through. Is that going to be a problem?”
“Is the building still standing?” The officer on the other end doesn’t wait for confirmation. “The first evacuees should be arriving within minutes. Once the hospitals are full, the remaining casualties will be directed to you.”
“What? We’re an urgent care, not a mass casualty –” The line goes dead and you stare at it in horror. The rest of the night shift, doctors and nurses and techs, are just emerging from the back of the clinic. You turn to look at them and try to convey the information as quickly and efficiently as possible. “Evacuees from Kamino Ward are coming here. Once the hospitals are full, the casualties will be coming here, too.”
“What’s happening in Kamino Ward?”
“Look.” The high schooler’s voice is almost as shaky as her hand as she points to the TV. You do as she says and everything gets worse in a heartbeat.
Kamino Ward is gone. It’s a smoking crater, ringed by the ruins of buildings, and in the center of it all stand a collection of small figures. Half your thoughts come to a stop on the buildings, on how many people must be trapped in the wreckage. The rest are with the group of people in the crater. Wherever the news feed is coming from, whoever’s filming zooms in until you can see their faces. All Might’s there. So is Tenko’s master. And so is Tenko, him and the rest of the League, everyone who wasn’t captured after the attack on the training camp – alongside the student they kidnapped.
LIVE: All Might fights unknown villain, the scroll at the bottom of the screen says. Kamino Ward leveled. Rescue efforts underway.
Two of your friends live in Kamino Ward. Your mind floods with emotion, the leaks in your defense mechanisms coming from a dozen different sources. Worry for your friends, panic about the evacuees who are about to descend on your clinic and the casualties that are sure to follow, terror that the fight will break from Kamino Ward and come to you. Fear for Tenko, who’s right there in the middle of it all. Shame over the fact that when you realized he was there, your fear for him drowned everything else in a split second.
But you don’t have time for worry or panic or shame or fear, because you can hear voices in the street. People are coming here, looking for shelter, and there’s glass all over the floor of the lobby. “We need to clean this up,” you call out to the others, even as you run for a broom. “We have to hurry.”
Somebody yanks the broom out of your hands and passes it to one of the CNAs. The doctor forces the disaster preparedness binder into your hands instead, only for one of the older nurses to snatch it away. “Put her on triage. We need to keep them calm and we need to move fast.”
You’re good at those two things when the lobby is full. Not when an absurd number of people are being directed your way. You pull the blinds over the glassless windows, hoping it’ll stop people from seeing them as entry points to the building, and prop open the door, stationing yourself just inside it. When you see the crowd coming down the street, led by an overwhelmed-looking police officer and two minor heroes from the area, you take a deep breath and do everything you can to clear your mind.
“Get a list of who’s here,” the nurse who took the disaster preparedness binder hisses in your ear. “Uninjured to the right and left, injured to the front.”
“Got it,” you say. Someone drops a pile of nametags and a permanent marker into your hands. That’ll work. One of the heroes has jogged ahead to meet you, and you square up. “Get everybody in a line. Keep families together. We’ll take care of the rest. How many do you have?”
“A hundred, plus or minus twenty. Some fell behind.”
And those are probably the injured ones. “Go back and pick them up,” you say. “We’ll handle this.”
The hero conveys your instructions to the others, and a line begins to form. You address the first person in line – a grey-haired man, carrying what looks like either a grandchild or a random kid. “Family name, first initial,” you say. Iwamura K, granddaughter Iwamura T. “Injuries?”
None. You peel off the stickers, apply them to each evacuee’s arm, then herd them inside. “Next?”
Your handwriting gets worse and worse with every nametag, but you’re moving fast. You screw up the system you were supposed to implement almost immediately. Uninjured evacuees go to the right side of the lobby. Injured ones go to the left, where the other nurses are waiting to triage them more effectively. All the while the air vibrates with distant blows and you vibrate with it, your mind teetering between focusing on the tasks at hand and worrying about your friends, about Tenko. You’re scared that one of your friends will come through the door on a stretcher. You’re scared that Tenko won’t come back at all.
The phone rings somewhere behind you while you’ve still got dozens of people in line, and a moment later, the high schooler shouts to you. “The teaching hospital’s full and the route to Yokohama General is cut off. They’re directing casualties here.”
Fuck. When you find out who cut off the route to the city’s biggest, most modern hospital, you’re going to break your foot off in their ass. That goes double if the guilty party is Tenko’s master. You start hustling people into the building at top speed, trying to think of which entrance will be best to direct the ambulances to. The rear entrance, probably. Somebody else will have to take care of that. You’ve still got people coming through the door.
The closer to the back of the line you get, the more damage the evacuees are working with. The last few are covered with dust, their clothes torn, their bodies already bruising. You try to ask them what happened, but your words are drowned out by a collective gasp, followed by dead silence from inside the building. The TV is still going, the words tinny and distant, but you hear the first person who speaks up loud and clear. It’s a kid. “Mama, what’s wrong with All Might?”
The noise comes back up immediately, leaving you with no idea what’s happening, no idea if All Might’s been defeated or killed, no idea whether the fight’s shifting, heading this way. You hear ambulance sirens wailing, getting louder with every passing second, and someone yanks your arm. You turn to find one of the medical assistants. “Go to the back. They want you helping with the ambulances.”
You don’t want you helping with the ambulances. You’re good under pressure, but not that kind of pressure. Not the kind where someone will die if you screw it up. You try to reason with yourself as you weave through the lobby and head down the hall, aiming for the back doors. You’re not running point on any of these cases. Your job is to assist the doctors and the nurse-practitioners. They’ll tell you what to do. You just have to do it. It’ll be fine. You think that, and keep thinking it, right up until you put on your mask and gloves and turn around to find yourself facing a patient whose legs have been crushed below the knee.
It’s awful. There’s blood and sinew and tissue everywhere, and sharp fragments of bone emanating from the exposed kneecap. Bitter saliva floods your mouth and your stomach turns, threatening to upend itself, but you grew up with siblings who could make you vomit on their command. You learned to resist them, and this – you clench your jaw and step forward. “How can I help?”
“Pinch off the femoral artery on the left side.” The doctor’s face is pale. The patient is unconscious, must be unconscious, because otherwise you can’t imagine the doctor saying what he says next. “We’re in hell.”
You’re not given to dramatic statements, but as the time wears on, you start to agree with him. You lose track of which patients you’re seeing. It’s all you can do to remember to switch gloves between patients. Your scrubs get sprayed with blood, but you can’t change them. There’s not time. The site commander for whatever’s happening in Kamino Ward sent your clinic twelve patients who should have gone to Yokohama General. You can’t save them. Your job is to keep them alive long enough to transport them to the people who can.
It’s a task you fail once, twice, three times, five times. One of the nurses, someone who worked somewhere else before coming here, tells you that the patients wouldn’t have made it anyway, but it doesn’t help. Even with the EMTs of the ambulances staying to lend a hand, there aren’t enough hands, not enough eyes to spot the signs of someone crashing and not enough mouths to call out a warning. You lose five, stabilize seven. If this goes on much longer, you might lose them all.
News of what’s happening in Kamino Ward trickles back slowly. All Might’s deflated, or decrepit. Skeletal. Disfigured. All Might’s getting an assist from the Number Two hero – Hiro will be thrilled. All Might’s winning. All Might’s won, but the League of Villains has escaped. All of them except their backer – All For One.
All For One. It’s not a villain name you’ve heard before, but you’re pretty sure that’s Tenko’s master. Whoever he is, wherever he came from, he was strong enough to hurt All Might, to nearly kill All Might. If he could do that, what the hell does he need Tenko for? What’s going to happen to Tenko with his backer gone? Where is the League going to go? You’re pretty sure they can’t go back to their hideout – it was where they were planning to take the captured student, and if they and the student wound up in Kamino Ward, something went wrong. Where’s Tenko now?
That’s not your problem right now. Your problem is your patients, and whether or not any of them will still be alive by the time the route to Yokohama General reopens. You throw yourself back into work. Back into hell.
Relief eventually arrives in the form of basically every off-duty staff member – all of them who don’t live in Kamino, that is. You stay in the mix, not wanting to be the first one to call for help. You’re not that tired, anyway. You just got on shift at six. You have a long way to go before –
“It’s seven am. Get out,” your supervisor says, and you stare blankly at her. Seven am? That can’t be right. It was midnight two seconds ago. “This patient’s stable, and the route to Yokohama General is finally open. Transfer them and go home. With all the repairs we’ll have to make, we can’t afford to pay you overtime.”
Transfer, then home. You transfer the patient, who hasn’t been conscious once since they arrived in the clinic with a skull fracture wide enough to see their brain through, to the waiting EMTs, and then you go looking for a change of clothes. There isn’t one. You’ll be wearing this home. You wade through another crowd of people to clock out, then step out onto the street. The trains probably aren’t working, but that’s fine. It’s not that far. You can walk.
The sky is still purple and orange. Clouds of smoke are billowing up from whatever happened in Kamino Ward, and you can smell it, along with gasoline and ozone and who knows how many other acrid stenches. You check your phone as you walk and find frantic messages from your friends, everyone trying to confirm that everyone else is alive. You tap out a message confirming that you were at work and you’re fine. Then you put your phone away and trudge the rest of the way home.
After the noise of the clinic, unabated for hours upon hours, your apartment building is weirdly quiet. At this time of day people should be up, getting ready for work, getting their kids ready for school, but instead it feels like time’s stopped. Maybe they left. Maybe they’re in an evacuation shelter somewhere. You don’t know. You unlock the door to your apartment and step inside – and freeze.
Your apartment should be empty. It isn’t. Your apartment is full of people, and you’ve met them all at least once before – Spinner, Dabi, Magne, Compress, Twice, Toga. Kurogiri. Tenko. No, Tomura. They’re all staring at you, just like you’re staring at them.
Toga’s the first one to speak. “So that’s what you look like,” she says, smiling. “I knew you were cute!”
“Don’t scream,” Tomura says. You shut your mouth and shake your head. He looks you up and down, frowning. “Whose blood is that?”
“At work. I was at work. We got some of the casualties from – from Kamino –” You’re stammering. You’re making approximately zero sense. There’s only one question that matters. “What are you doing here?”
Nobody answers you. Dabi’s mouth contorts into a sneer. “No wonder you wouldn’t show your face before. You’re a fucking civilian.”
“Yeah, she’s a civilian. That’s why her place is safe to stay at,” Tomura snaps at him. He turns back to you, the frown still present behind the hand. “Is all that blood somebody else’s?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.” You don’t feel fine. You feel numb, but your heart is racing so fast that you’re worried you might faint. “Did anybody see you? Or hear you?”
“Kurogiri delivered us right to your living room,” Compress says. “We’ve been quiet. Most of us.”
He’s aiming a dirty look at Magne, who glares back. “It hurts,” she snaps. “If somebody stabbed you in the chest –”
Your stomach lurches. “Stabbed?”
“I hit my face on that giant hero’s face. Do you hear me complaining?”
“You were stabbed?” You step around Tomura and cross the room to where Magne’s sprawled in one of your armchairs. “How long ago? Is it still bleeding?”
“Not with a knife,” Magne says. With what, then? “Boss’s daddy forcibly activated my quirk with his hideous little tentacles.”
There’s nothing about that sentence that you don’t hate. “The same thing happened to Kurogiri,” Spinner adds. He’s leaning against the wall. Grimacing. “A hero messed with him first, though.”
The answer to the question of why they’re here finally clicks in your overworked, exhausted brain. You’re the team medic, and they’ve all been hurt. They need you to do the same thing you’ve been doing all night, when all you want to do is peel off your bloody clothes and go to sleep. Instead, you need to triage. “Okay, who took an injury that knocked them out?”
Hands go up – Magne, Dabi, Kurogiri. Compress might have a facial fracture, based on the way his mask is askew. Spinner’s ribs hurt, but he never lost consciousness, and he’s not bleeding from anywhere. Twice, Toga, and Tomura are all beaten up but otherwise fine. You point them in the direction of the freezer so they can put together some ice packs, then turn your attention to the group who passed out.
Of the three of them, Dabi was unconscious the longest, and his injury was a head injury. He threw up when he regained consciousness, although thankfully not on your floor or your couch. He reports a splitting headache, and when you shine the penlight from your keychain in his eyes, you see that one of his pupils isn’t reacting normally to the light. That’s not a good sign. “Do you remember what happened immediately before the blow to the head?”
“Why do you want to know? So you can make your story sound better for the cops?”
“No, I’m testing your memory. It’s an indicator for the severity of the concussion. Track my finger with your eyes.” You observe his eye movements. It could go either way. “What happened before you were struck?”
“The damn kid turned us down. Who does he think he is?” Dabi scoffs. “Shigaraki told Compress to turn him loose, like a fucking moron, and then the fucking heroes broke through the wall. One of them kicked me and that’s all I remember.”
“Kicked you in the head?”
“That’s right.” Dabi groans. “Fuck off with that light in my face.”
You put the penlight away and think through your options. “I’m going to give you some medicine. Over-the-counter NSAIDs –”
“What?”
“Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs,” Tomura says. You glance at him, surprised, and find him smiling slightly from behind the hand. “Acetaminophen or ibuprofen. They’re over the counter. You can get them without a prescription.”
“I know what over the counter means,” Dabi snaps. “I didn’t ask you. I asked the medic. Do you have some?”
“Yeah. Acetaminophen’s best for this. The bottles are opened, but I’m going to go get them – Twice, will you come with me and watch me get them?” you ask. Twice looks startled. “You can watch me and tell Dabi that I’m not tampering with the pills at all.”
“I’m not that fucking paranoid,” Dabi says. But he doesn’t tell Twice not to follow you.
You’ve been wondering if Twice remembers you. So far it seems like he doesn’t, but something jogs his memory as you come back with the bottles. “I knew I’d seen you before,” he announces loudly, and you shush him alongside Compress, Toga, and Tomura. “You stitched up my mask!”
“Did the stitches hold okay?” you ask. “I know it was a little rushed.”
“Barely,” Twice says. Then: “They were great! Lasted until Giran hooked me up with a new one.”
“You’ve met her before?” Compress asks, suspicious.
“Sure thing. If she’d showed her face, I could have backed up the boss and said she was all right!” Twice sounds cheerful. He slaps you on the back and you nearly spill acetaminophen tablets all over the floor. “Nicest nurse I ever had. No screaming, no calling the cops. Just stitched my mask and gave me the good drugs and sent me on my way!”
“He got the good drugs?” Tomura says, incredulous. “Why didn’t I get those?”
“You behaved. Sort of.” You need to get into the kitchen, but Toga and Tomura are both there, holding bags of ice to their various scrapes and bruises. “Can one of you fill a glass of water? The cabinet to the right.”
Tomura does it – with warm sink water – and hands it off. You head back to Dabi, drop a double dose of acetaminophen into his hand, and order him to drink the whole glass of water with it. You’ll hit him with the same dose in six hours, if they’re still here in six hours. It won’t do anything good for his liver, but if he’s in too much pain to rest and starts trying to do things, his liver will be the least of his worries. You order him to hold still, eyes closed, and focus on Magne and Kurogiri.
Your friends got you a stethoscope as a gag gift a while back, but the stethoscope is real, and you know how to use it. You listen for any irregularities in Magne’s breathing and heartbeat, then tell her to go into the bathroom and check for bruising on her torso – at which point she whips off her shirt. “Check for yourself.”
“Agh, no!” Spinner twists the other way, but not before you see his scales flushing. “Don’t do that!”
“Or at least give some warning,” Twice says. Then he gives a thumbs-up. “Looking good!”
“Put those away. There are children here,” Compress says.
“It’s okay.” Toga is staring avidly. “I don’t mind.”
“You should. We’re the League of Villains, not the League of Perverts.” Spinner is still facing away. “Are you done yet?”
“Are you done yet?” Magne asks you. You’ve been studying her torso and the series of bruises on it. “Well?”
“Nothing that suggests internal bleeding. You’re good to go.”
She pulls her shirt back on. “I hope you all enjoyed that. I won’t be doing it again.”
“Don’t,” Spinner says. “Please.”
You commandeer one of the ice bags Toga made and hand it to Magne, then turn your attention to Kurogiri. Kurogiri’s going to present a problem, and both of you know it. “What do you have in the way of internal organs?” you ask. “Heart, lungs, digestive tract –”
“Everything, but it will not be possible to listen to. This is in the way.”
“He can take it off,” Tomura says. “Kurogiri. Go somewhere else and show her.”
You’d say the bathroom, but Kurogiri’s a lot taller than you are. There wouldn’t be room. You go to your bedroom instead, leaving the door slightly cracked so you can listen to what’s happening in the living room and intervene if it gets too wild. Kurogiri shrugs out of his waistcoat, followed by his shirt, leaving nothing but a pair of pants and a swirling cloud of mist. Then, as you watch, the mist begins to peel back, revealing a body underneath it.
It’s pretty clearly a human body. It looks like it’s been stitched together out of multiple other bodies, but all the requisite parts of a human body appear to be present. So is the metal neckpiece of Kurogiri’s costume. Above it, though, there’s a face. It’s a young face. Younger than you, younger than Tomura, and it looks back at you with enormous yellow eyes. Its mouth moves, and the strange doubled voice issues from it. “Hurry up. I can’t do this for long.”
You conduct a quick physical exam. Unlike Magne, Kurogiri has actual puncture wounds. One actual puncture wound in his ribcage, and when you listen to his breathing, there’s a whistle on that side that shouldn’t be there. “You’ve got a punctured lung,” you say. “It might repair on its own. If there’s anyone else who can –”
“The doctor will perform the necessary maintenance,” Kurogiri says. That means zip to you, except that the doctor’s apparently willing to treat everybody except Tomura. “Is Shigaraki Tomura safe in your company?”
You look up into that young face, see the shadow of human eyes within the yellow ones. “He is.”
“Tell him where I have gone, and that I will return shortly.” Kurogiri vanishes.
You go back out to the living room and deliver the message, then check in with Compress and Spinner about their injuries. Compress won’t let you look under his mask, but does a self-exam under your direction and somewhat confirms your diagnosis of a cheekbone fracture. He gets NSAIDs and an ice pack. Spinner has a rib out of place. You need to put it back in.
He’s not making it easy. “Stop tensing up,” you say. “Every time you do that while I’m trying to put your rib back, the likelihood of a muscle tear goes up. That’s a lot harder to fix than a dislocated rib.”
“It hurts. I’d like to see you try it!”
“I haven’t had the privilege.” The temper you swear you don’t have is doing its best to break out of captivity. “Okay, here’s the deal. I have some vodka in there. You’re going to drink that while I check on the others, and then we’ll handle your rib. Okay?”
“Sure,” Spinner says, surprised. “You lift the bottle down from the top of the refrigerator and hand it over. “Thanks.”
Twice has mostly bumps and bruises, as well as complaints about the fact that Spinner got alcohol but he didn’t. You shoo him off to share with Spinner, then check in with Toga. Toga’s really interested in your scrubs. “How many people’s blood is on there?” she asks eagerly. “You’re so lucky. All that blood everywhere – doesn’t it smell good?”
“It just smells like blood to me. But my sense of smell probably isn’t as good as yours.” You look Toga up and down. “Did you get hurt anywhere?”
“No.” Toga keeps studying you. “Can you get some blood for me? If everybody’s already bleeding –”
“Sorry,” you say, and she pouts. “I’d get caught. Plus, don’t you want those kids’ blood? Blood from some random patient of mine probably won’t help much.”
“No,” Toga agrees, “but it would taste good.”
“I’ll take your word for it. You’re good to go, also.” You watch as she skips off to join Spinner and Twice, then turn your attention to Tomura. You saved him for last on purpose, hoping you’d get a chance to talk to him, and now that you have one, you don’t know what to say. “Um –”
“Don’t.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.” The fact that you don’t know either is immaterial.
“It was probably going to be some kind of pep talk. In your evil shrink voice,” Tomura says, and your mouth twitches. He notices, and a moment later he’s mimicking you. “Tomura, this could be a lot worse. You could have gotten everybody captured instead of just Sensei. The kid you handpicked to join the League of Villains blew Father’s hand off your face, but at least you’ve got a face, right?”
The joke occurs to you, and you’re so tired and overwhelmed that it comes out of your mouth with zero edits. “That’s one more face than Sensei has.”
Tomura coughs. “What?”
“Also, you missed part of what I was going to say,” you say, seizing the momentum and running with it. “Well, what you were going to say. You were going to complain about All Might winning, and I was going to say that he didn’t really win, because he leveled Kamino Ward and I spent all night trying to keep the people in those buildings alive, and mostly failing –”
“Wait, what?”
“And then,” you say, wishing you hadn’t said a word about your job, “I was going to remind you that everybody saw All Might’s scarecrow form. So nobody’s going to want him to fuck them now.”
Tomura’s expression contorts to a degree that looks painful. “That’s – not – funny,” he grits out.
“I mean, when we talked about rendering All Might unfuckable, I thought it was just a pipe dream,” you say. Tomura’s shoulders are shaking now. You don’t know what else to do but keep going. “But this is proof. The sky’s the limit. Anything is possible. I mean, if you can set up a situation that takes All Might from fuckable to unfuckable in a split second, then you can do anything you want to do.”
Tomura is staring at you, speechless and twitching like he’s caught in an electric fence, and even though you think there’s a nonzero chance you’re going to get killed over this, you can’t resist. “How’s that for a pep talk?”
“It sucked,” Tomura says, and then he bursts out laughing.
You’re proud any time you can make him laugh, and this is no exception. At first he’s just laughing. Then his breathing starts to hitch, and you realize that the laughter’s tripped another circuit in his brain – one he probably doesn’t want the others to see. “What the hell are you two laughing about?” Dabi demands from the couch. “Let the rest of us in on it.”
“Yes,” Compress agrees, “we could use something to laugh at.”
“Inside joke. You wouldn’t understand.” You catch Tomura’s sleeve and tug him down the hallway, out of sight of the others. His laughter is sounding less and less like laughter with every passing second, and he’s clawing at his neck with one hand. You keep your voice quiet, trying above all not to drop into the conflict-resolution voice. “No. Tenko, don’t. That’s not going to make things better.”
“I really fucked up.” His voice, already raspy, cracks in a way that sounds painful. “Things were supposed to – I’m not ready. I haven’t learned. He was supposed to teach me. I can’t –”
Something tells you that right now’s not the time for a joke. You think Tenko might be crying. No, you know it, and he knows you know. “Don’t look.”
You remember that from forever ago. He never wanted you to see him cry. You turn your back, as much as it hurts you to do it, and as soon as you do, his arms come up around you. His hands are curled into fists, shielding you from his quirk, one balled up against your shoulder and the other balanced over your hipbone. Something thuds against the floor behind you and you glance to one side, a jolt running through you. There’s the hand he calls Father, discarded.
Tenko’s body shakes, strongly enough to rattle you both. He’s taller than you, but not so tall that he can’t duck down and press his face into the curve of your neck and shoulder to muffle himself. After a few seconds, it’s clear that it’s not enough. You feel his mouth meet your skin. A moment later, his teeth.
It stings, and you will yourself not to flinch. You remember the few times you actually saw Tenko cry instead as opposed to just hearing it when you were kids, remember seeing him shove his fist into his mouth to stay quiet, but both his hands are occupied holding you. You wonder if he even knows he’s biting you. Or how hard he’s biting you. His breath is hot against your skin. So are his tears, and you stand there, not flinching, letting your best friend take what he needs from you. He let you hug him the last time you saw each other, when you were upset over something as small as meeting his master. Over something this big, he can have this as long as he wants.
When you cry, your tears usually stop quickly. It’s a skill you developed on purpose. But Tenko’s take a while to trail off, and it’s a little while after that before his mouth lifts away from your skin. He doesn’t mention the bite, and neither do you. He keeps holding you close. “What were you doing tonight, again?”
“Forget about that,” you say. “It’s not important.”
“Say it again.” Tenko’s hand drifts from your hip halfway under your shirt, three fingers resting against your stomach and his index finger raised. “Please.”
You try to think. “Um, I said you had one more face than your master has –”
This time Tenko snorts. “After that.”
“I said you’d say All Might won, and I’d say he didn’t, because he leveled Kamino Ward,” you continue, “and I spent all night trying to save the people who were inside those buildings –”
“That’s it!” Tenko stiffens. One hand grabs your wrist and pulls you around to face him, and you see wild excitement in his face. “You didn’t blame me for those people getting hurt. You didn’t blame my master. You blamed All Might. My plan – turning people against heroes – what you said about making them choose wrong – it worked!”
“It worked,” you say, bewildered. “Ten, I’m not exactly the common denominator here. Everybody else –”
“The ones who worship the ground heroes walk on – they were always a lost cause,” Tenko says. You won’t argue with that. People like your parents and siblings will never listen. They won’t even try. “It’s people this system hurts who will see what I’m doing. People like you. You –”
He breaks off, looking at you, grinning with tear tracks down his face. You remember this look, too. Except when you were five years old, you never saw it in the split second before he kissed you. His mouth fits against yours, messy and enthusiastic with blood on his lips, blood that could be his – or yours, depending on whether his bite broke the skin. Tenko pushes you back against the wall and keeps kissing you, only breaking away for air when he has to. You wrap your arms around him, since he can’t touch you safely, and try to deliver a reality check. “Tenko, I’ve known you forever. If I understand you –”
“Then I don’t need anybody else to,” Tenko says. “Everyone else can get behind us or get out of my way.”
He kisses you again, but before you can really get into it, Magne calls out from the living room. “Are you two done fucking yet? Spinner’s got the hiccups.”
Tenko’s face turns bright red. He scrambles to pick up the hand, and you head down the hall ahead of him. “If we were fucking, it would take a lot longer than that,” you say, and Magne lets out a low whistle. You turn to Spinner. “Sorry about the hiccups, but we can use those. Stand up, over here. And hold your arms out like this –”
Spinner does it, grimacing. You observe the timing of the hiccups for a few more minutes, then step in and apply the necessary force, popping the rib back into place. Spinner lets out a small yelp that would be more problematic if any of your neighbors were around, then lowers his arms. “Is it done?”
“It’s back in place. Feel better?”
“Yeah,” Spinner says. Then he hiccups. “Fuck it. No.”
“We can fix that, too,” you say. “Follow me.”
Tomura comes back while you’re feeding a spoonful of sugar to Spinner, instructing him to hold it under his tongue until it dissolves. He fixates on the two of you. “What are you doing?”
“Curing the hiccups.” You direct Spinner to sit down, then focus on Tomura. “What else do you need?”
“Food,” Toga says, to general assent. “Do you have food?”
“Not enough for this many people,” you say. “But we can order in.”
Five pizzas at nine in the morning isn’t the weirdest delivery order you’ve ever placed, and it’s also not the most expensive. You have a coupon, and the members of the League of Villains are surprisingly willing to pitch in – although Twice and Compress try to give you counterfeit at first. Tomura calls them on it, and they pay up in real money, after which Compress gives you a quick and unexpected lesson in how to spot counterfeit currency.
“Obviously, none of that holds if it’s a copy of Twice’s,” he says at the conclusion of the explanation, “but it’s much easier to tell with Twice’s currency. Observe –”
He drags a nail across one of the coins Twice gave you, at which point it collapses into sludge on your kitchen table. “That’s the problem with Twice’s stuff,” Toga says. “It doesn’t hold together long.”
“It looks great while it does,” Twice protests. Then: “I’m a failure!”
Toga and Magne both console him, which is weird to watch. Weirdly supportive. You didn’t think villains were supportive of each other – but why wouldn’t they be? Villains are people, just like anybody else. They have enemies. It makes sense that they’d have friends, too.
Kurogiri’s return from the doctor is poorly timed – it happens right as the pizzas arrive, and it takes every ounce of people skills you possess to prevent the delivery driver from carrying the pizzas inside for you. Kurogiri goes immediately to check in with Tomura, while everyone else tears into the pizza like they’re starving. It’s all you can do to retrieve a piece or two for Tomura. You’ve sort of lost your appetite. The last time you remember having one was last night, before everything went to hell.
You come back to Tomura and Kurogiri in the kitchen. They’re strategizing, and Tomura takes the plate from you with one hand and pulls you into the conversation with the other. “This can’t be our base,” he says to Kurogiri. “It’s too much of a risk for all of us, her included.”
“What if it were to act as something of a way station?” Kurogiri suggests. “It will likely be some time before we can establish a base with some of the creature comforts we are used to. Perhaps if we were to come here for things like showers, or laundry –”
“I don’t want them alone with her.”
“I’m not here for most of the day,” you say. “I’m at work, or running errands, or with my friends. As long as you aren’t seen and you don’t run my water bill through the roof or eat all my food – or steal my stuff – it’s fine with me.”
“Having access to a place like this would improve morale,” Kurogiri continues. His eyes tilt towards Tomura. “It would also give you an excuse to visit that no one would question.”
“I don’t need an excuse to visit. I can do what I want,” Tomura says. It’s quiet for a second. “Fine. If you’re okay with it –”
“I’m okay with it.” Your phone buzzes and you check it, hoping it’s Sho or Hirono, but it’s neither – just work, telling you that you’re not on until tomorrow morning, instead of tonight like you were supposed to be. “How long do you think you’ll be staying this time?”
“Until dark,” Tomura says. “We have to lay low for a little while. Then we’ll move.”
“I would recommend getting some rest,” Kurogiri says. “After eating that.”
“I don’t need to rest.” Tomura picks up the pizza and takes a messy bite.
On your first date, such as it was, Tomura said that villains argue like kids do. Based on what happens after the pizza’s consumed, they fall asleep after they’ve eaten like kids do, too. They hold off sleep long enough to fight over sleeping positions, but none of them go after your bed, and when Tomura starts yawning, you take the empty plate out of his hands. “My room’s darker. It’ll be easier to sleep there.”
You feel yourself relax the instant you shut your bedroom door behind the two of you. The other villains might be friendly to you, but you only trust Tenko, and to a lesser extent, Kurogiri. Tenko, paradoxically, tenses up. “I don’t need a bed. I sleep standing up.”
“Standing up?” you repeat, baffled. “How?”
“So I don’t destroy it. Once I touch something with all five fingers, it’s gone.” Tenko looks at the bed, almost longingly. “And I don’t have gloves.”
“I’ve got some,” you say. Tenko looks at you, surprised. “I took yours with me when I left last time.”
They’re folded on your dresser. You bring them over, and Tenko pulls them on, a moment before he knocks you backwards onto the bed. You give him a few seconds, then put your forearm against his chest to push him back. “Whatever we’re doing, I’m not doing it in bloody clothes. Let me get changed.”
“Fine,” Tenko complains, and shifts slowly to one side to let you up. At least he doesn’t ask you if he can help.
If you were alone, you’d shower, but you don’t want to risk being that vulnerable with an apartment full of villains. You change into your regular pajamas, the kind you’d wear if you were sleeping by yourself instead of in the same bed as your best friend, who’s a guy, who’s into you. You’re pretty sure Tenko’s not going to try for sex tonight. Not with his level of experience. And not after the day and night he’s had.
When you step out of the bathroom, changed for bed, Tenko’s sitting cross-legged on your bed, pretty clearly lost in thought. The hand is resting on your nightstand. “Hey,” you say, and he looks up.
He looks you over slowly, color coming up in his cheeks with every second that ticks past. Your pajamas aren’t particularly revealing, so you’re not sure what he’s getting excited about – but then his eyes fasten onto something and his gaze sharpens. “What the hell is that?”
You look blankly at him. “On your neck. It’s –” Tenko realizes what it is in the same moment as you realize what he’s looking at. “Fuck. Why didn’t you say something?”
“You were trying to stay quiet. I wanted to help.” You take a step back as Tenko rises from the bed and comes closer. “It’s not a big deal. It just looks –”
Tenko’s fingers brush over it and you wince in spite of yourself. “It looks worse than it is.”
Tenko steps past you, headed for the bathroom. The light switches on, and a moment later you hear him rummaging through the cabinet above the sink. “You’re a nurse. You don’t have band-aids in here?”
“The first-aid kit’s under the sink,” you say. Then something occurs to you. “This isn’t a first-aid thing. It’s just a bruise.”
“You’re not looking at it. I am.” Tenko comes back and drops the first-aid kit on the bed next to you. When you reach for it, he shoves your hand away. You reach for it a second time with the same result. “Stop. I did it, so I’m fixing it. Hold still.”
You sit there, bemused, while Tenko fumbles through the first-aid kit, trying to figure out what to use on a bruise that isn’t bleeding. “You could always kiss it better.”
“That’s lame,” Tenko scoffs. Then he leans in and does it anyway, lightly enough that it doesn’t sting. Your face flushes, a flush that only goes down once he’s come back with what feels like half a tube of Neosporin. When he speaks up again, his voice is quieter. “Why did you let me do that?”
“I didn’t let you,” you say. “Was I supposed to punch you or something?”
“Yeah. Or say ‘hey, don’t fucking bite me’. That would work, too.” Tenko sounds more than a little sarcastic, but it fades fast. “I don’t know how to do any of this. Not that out there –”
He gestures towards the door, the hallway, the League. “Or this in here,” he says, gesturing between the two of you. “You’re going to have to show me how. At first. Then I can pick it up as I go.”
“How to do what? Put a band-aid on a bruise?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Tenko says. You figured you probably earned that one, but you’re going to make him say it anyway. “Be – with somebody. Master never – it’s not like I’d ever do what my parents did – or that happy-ending bullshit on TV – I don’t know. And I figure you do, since you’ve got condoms in there.”
You weren’t expecting that. “Are you slut-shaming me?”
“What? No.” Tenko gives you a weird look. “There were, like, two missing. And they’re basically expired.”
“You counted?” You look at Tenko, and he snaps at you to face front again, his face turning red. “Don’t do things like that. It’s weird.”
“Look at that. You already taught me something.”
You’re tempted to retort that Tenko shouldn’t need to be taught not to snoop through your bathroom cabinet, but then you remember that Tenko wasn’t raised like you or anybody else you know. Tenko was raised by villains, and proper socialization doesn’t appear to have been a priority. It hasn’t taught him much about first aid, either. He’s peeling open the biggest band-aid in the kit, touching all kinds of stuff he shouldn’t be touching, before lowering it gingerly down over the bruise. “You’re already good at this part,” you tell him.
“What part is this?”
“Aftercare.”
Tenko’s heard the term before. You can tell by the way his ears turn red. He presses down the bandage at the edges, then sits back. “Next time, tell me not to bite you.”
“See? You can teach me stuff, too.”
Getting into bed is weird. Sure, you both made jokes about sleepovers the last time you saw each other, but this time there’s a bed – and thanks to Tenko’s snooping, you’re both well aware that there’s a mostly-full box of condoms somewhere in the offing. You get under the covers, and after a moment Tenko copies you, fully dressed. He doesn’t stay there too long. “This is too warm.”
“You can sleep outside the blankets. Or take something off.”
The rustling tells you that Tenko’s opted for door number two, most likely with his shirt. “Now what?”
“We sleep,” you say. You decide to save cuddling as a concept for another time. You close your eyes and within seconds, you’re asleep.
You wake up to your phone buzzing on your nightstand, and Tenko tossing and turning in a restless sleep on the far side of the bed. When you flip your phone over you see notifications from the group chat. A whole pileup of them. Hirono and Sho must have finally checked in. You unlock your phone to respond and your heart goes still in your chest.
Kazuo: They didn’t make it.
Kazuo: Sho’s building came down. He died instantly.
Mitsuko: fuck you
Mitsuko: if you don’t quit fucking around
Kazuo: Hirono was trapped in the wreckage. Once she was extricated, she was sent to Yokohama General and died there ninety-eight minutes ago.
Mitsuru: and you’re just telling us now???? what the fuck
Kazuo: We had to notify their families first.
Yoshimi: we’re their family
Yoshimi: what are we going to do
Ryuhei: Sho’s family treated him like SHIT, why do they get to know before we do??
Ryuhei: what the fuck
This isn’t on Kazuo. Whoever else it’s on, it’s not on him, so you wade in, your vocal cords tied in a knot. It’s a good thing this isn’t happening in person. Your friends already saw you cry once this year, and they need someone to be calm. I know Kazuo let us know as soon as he could. And Ryuhei, you’re right – we love them more.
*loved.
You look at Mitsuko’s addition, feeling sick to your stomach. Love. It doesn’t go away. It never goes away. If anyone knows that, you do. We should be together right now. Kazuo, are you okay to host tonight?
Kazuo doesn’t send anything more than a thumbs-up, which is how you know that whatever feelings he has left are hurt by how everyone’s treating him. What’s he been doing all night? Using his quirk. Identifying victims. You’re overcome suddenly with the need to see him, to give him one of those hugs he always stands awkwardly in but never pulls away from. He’s your friend, too. Your friend who’s never hurt you or dragged you into the middle of his disastrous crusade against society. A crusade that just got two of your other friends killed.
Your breath hitches in your throat, and beside you, Tenko stirs, sits up. “What?” he asks, but you don’t answer. Can’t answer. You’re too busy jamming your fist in your mouth, a move you didn’t realize you learned from Tenko until right this second. “Who are you talking to?”
Notificaitons come up – your friends, setting a time to go to Kazuo’s – and you power off your phone and shove it away. You’ll get there early. You need to talk to him first, tell him that you get it as much as anyone can, that you’re sorry he was forced into this position, sorry he was the one who had to say it. Sorry because this is your fault. If you’d told UA ahead of time what was happening, then the student wouldn’t have been kidnapped. Then there would have been no fight in Kamino Ward that led to hundreds, maybe thousands of casualties. If you had just –
“What is it?” Tenko shakes your shoulder. “Hey. Take that out of your mouth and talk to me. What –”
You pry your fist from between your teeth. “I’m going to tell you something, and I need you not to say anything.” You can’t sit through his justifications, his arguments for why it’s All Might’s fault, when all you care about is your friends and what happened to them. If they knew what was happening. If they were scared. “Two of my friends died in Kamino Ward tonight. I just found out.”
“I –”
“Don’t say anything,” you say. “Just –”
You turn to face Tenko, wrapping your arms around him, burying your face in his shoulder. The two of you have been through the hugging procedure enough times now that he knows what to do in response. He hugs you back, hauls you closer. His skin smells like sweat and smoke, but yours smells like blood, and you know already that you’ll be tearing the sheets off the bed, throwing them away, getting rid of the evidence. But it doesn’t matter how much evidence you get rid of. You can’t hide the truth: This happened tonight because of what Tenko did, and what you didn’t do.
You made this bed, you and Tenko. At least you get to lie in it together.
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heyidkyay · 4 months
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And I'm petrified of being alone, now |
Part Sixteen
Matty Healy x reader
Summary: She’s just trying to get by, really. What with being a single parent to her four year old son whilst simultaneously trying to kick start a successful career as a radio presenter. She’s got everything she’s ever wanted though, friends close by, a mum who’s merely a phone call away, and of course her baby boy. What else is there to wish for? But then, it’s not long before her relatively normal life gets upended and turned on its head, and she’s suddenly forced to deal with situations she’s never even thought to imagine.
What happens when one mention of a certain controversial singer on her show sends a flood of unexpected challenges her way? 
Authors Note: let the drama commence.
> Last update: look back here if you'd like!
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Everything fell apart in those first few short minutes. 
It felt as though the entire world had just gone mad. Drunk on the very idea of Matty having a family, of growing up, of suddenly becoming this new man, this father figure. As if anything like that had even occurred here at all. The thought of it had my stomach rolling, bewildered by these possible fantasies and the images being conjured up. How idiotic it all appeared, and how incredibly stupid I felt to have figured that any sort of connection to Matty would’ve worked out.
I blinked back the sting of my tears, rolling my bottom lip between my teeth as I slowly set the phone back down onto the settee cushion.
“I’m sorry.”
I frowned, startled by the unexpected apology I’d been gifted, and glanced back up to find Matty still sat there, waiting. For what, I didn’t know. “Why are you sorry? There’s nothing to say sorry for. You didn’t tell people to do this shit. You didn’t take the pictures and post them on the fucking internet.” I waved a frustrated hand out, gesturing towards the phone between us. “So don’t say you’re sorry.”
Matty locked his jaw, as though he was trying to bite back whatever answer that wanted to spew right back out at me. He kissed his teeth quietly though as he dragged his tongue out in thought, still wringing his hands together as though they were a wet cloth he needed to dry.
“Stop that too.” I told him, tilting my head back to heave a sigh up at the ceiling, like that would force the majority of my frustrations out instead of consuming me whole. “I can’t fucking believe this.” I murmured, letting my eyes fall shut.
It was at that that Matty scoffed and the sound of it had me whipping my head back around to catch sight of him.
“What? You can’t honestly believe that I’m overreacting here, can you?” I immediately asked him, so quick to jump on the defence, even though I had only just told him not to apologise for anything a second ago, seeing as he had done nothing wrong. 
“I’m not fucking sayin’ that.” Matty ground out, eyes trained on one of the blank walls laid out before us. He’d stopped his fidgeting but continued to keep his hands in a tight hold.
I rolled my eyes, grinding my teeth together. “Then why the noise? Why aren’t you more bothered about this? This is my kid, Matty. This is his face and his life being plastered all over these stupid fucking magazines!”
“It’s not his face.”
I paused, mouth falling open in shock. “You didn’t just say that.”
Matty turned to look at me then, “What? It’s not! Best picture they got was of us at the til.”
Blinking, I reeled away from him. Hurt by his nonchalance. “Oh and that’s alright then, I 'spose? It’s fine, ‘cause they only managed to get a picture of the back of his head!”
Matty released a heavy sigh and then lifted a hand to rub at his eyes, growing impatient or frustrated now too, I wasn’t sure. “I don’t mean it like that!”
“Then how do you mean it!” I shouted back at him, standing up from the settee in hopes to diminish the ever rising panic that had shaken me to my core. “How the fuck do you mean it then, Matty! Because this, whatever this is, isn’t what I signed up for!”
“Signed up for?” 
His voice was thick like tar, gritting and deep, pulling my attention as quickly as his eyes snapped up to meet my own. Filled with an anger I hadn’t actually expected.
“The fuck is that meant to mean then, Mouse?” He provoked, jerking his chin outwards as he watched me slow in my pacing of his living room, his voice giving off an eerie calm he didn’t truly feel. “No, go on. See, ‘cause I’d honestly love to hear it. Get it off your chest and all that, tell me how you really feel.”
I slumped, guilt washing over me. “I-” I looked away, throat suddenly tight, “I didn’t mean it like that.”
He chuckled, a low and pitiful thing that showed me just how hurt he really was. “Yeah, right.”
“Matty-”
But before I could go on, Teddy was suddenly there, in the dim light of the doorway, somehow having toddled his way across the house and into the room with us. My guilt intensified by tenfold.
“Ghetti now?” He asked with a slight pout, staring up at me with those big beautiful eyes of his, brows dipped in utter confusion. What must we have looked like?
“Shit.” I hissed under my breath, turning away from him to keep the tears that had rapidly gathered in the corners of my eyes from spilling down my face. God, how had I managed to fuck things up this bad? Why had I let it get this far?
I sniffed at the thought when it hit me, but only after a moment did I somehow manage to pull myself together quickly enough to put on a brave smile for my son. But it seemed that within the few short seconds I’d stolen, Teddy had wandered his way on over to the settee, close enough to Matty that he was now looking up at the man instead of me.
And Matty was looking back.
“Okay, Matty?”
I choked on a silent cry, shaking my head at Teddy's question before I let it fall into my hands. How, how, how had I fucked this all up so badly?
There was a long stretch of silence before I finally heard him speak, before Matty finally answered. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and then opened them again to glance over and see that the man had gone and done the very thing I should have as soon as I’d seen Teddy walk in, pulled him up onto his knee to comfort him as best as he could.
“I’m alright, monster.” Matty told him weakly, gazing down at my son with the same fondness he had always held for him, that previous anger of his, that hurt, swallowed up whole by his doting need to always put a smile on Teddy’s face. “Just lots of people annoyin’ me today, you know?”
I expected Teds to just frown up at him or blink confusedly at the response, but instead he dipped his chin in a slight nod and placed his little hand on the collar of Matty’s hoodie. Looking up at Matty, Teddy said, “Like when Leo takes my truck.”
Matty huffed out an amused chuckle, smiling down at him with the softest expression I’d ever witnessed.
How had I managed to hurt Matty so easily when all he had done was treat me so kindly? When he doted on my son the way he did, when he went above and beyond?
“Exactly, mate. Just one of them things I reckon. But we’ll sort it, won't we?” Matty replied, thumb stroking along the cuff of Teddy’s sleeve whilst my son continued to toy with the fraying edge of Matty’s hoodie.
“Matty sort it.” Teddy whispered with another nod, so sure of that fact.
The sight broke me, enough that I could no longer just watch. I sniffed again, willing myself not to cry anymore than I already had, and instead moved to cross the floor, ready to tell Matty that we’d be best leaving now. Desperate to get away, to give him some space. Only, he glanced up at me at that exact moment and must’ve seen the utter devastation that painted my face.
“Yeah,” He whispered back to Teddy, although the words seemed to be meant for me. “Matty will sort it.”
It was later now. Much later. The house was quiet even with its current occupants roaming around, the walls just seemed to absorb the sound. Matty had managed to wash up for once, doing it by hand instead of just tossing the plates in the dishwasher or leaving it for the cleaner to get to tomorrow morning. He’d just needed some time is all. To clear his head, he reckoned. 
They’d dished up the spaghetti together in silence, with only the low patter of rain pouring outside and the hum of the record player to fill it. Teddy had moved on from their earlier altercation, more worried over his tea than the shift in mood, but Matty supposed that was just kids. He’d been the same growing up. At least until he’d been old enough to understand, to remember the shouting, the sharp looks, the hissed words.
Mouse hadn’t been able to meet his eye throughout the entire affair. Not when they’d sat down, or as they’d eaten, or even when they’d wrapped up. Teddy had kept up a current of conversation though, talking of their previous trip to the zoo and then to the park, mentioning his recent waltz around the studio as well as the phone call he’d received from his grandmother.
Matty had gone along with it, letting her stew. Her words from earlier had fucking hurt, but not because he hadn’t heard them a thousand times before. With earlier girlfriends, mates, even relatives. No, he could deal with shit like that, this life had fucking hardened his skin. The words had only managed to tear away at him now because they had come from her.
“Cab should be here soon enough.” Matty spoke after a long moment, giving way to the fact that he’d been standing in the living room doorway for a short while now, watching as she fussed over her tired toddler.
She’d made her quick escape whilst he’d started tidying away the kitchen, claiming the need to clean Teddy up, and so he’d just let her go with only a hollow dip of his chin. 
In truth, it had given him the time and space to mull the whole situation over, to see her side of things- a trait he knew he had never really been any good at. He had wondered over the way she’d reacted too, not just to the allegations that had been plastered all over every webpage and news outlet, but to seeing how much his presence could also affect somebody else’s life.
She’d hurt him, yeah. But that was only because all of that shit had scared her, so he couldn’t really find it in himself to blame her. Not when he’d seen the obvious regret on her face the second she had realised what she’d gone and said.
Mouse looked up at him then, a little startled, the lamp that stood in the corner of the living room illuminated the open space, shrouding one side of her face in orange shadows. Teddy was already falling asleep against the settee cushions beside her, wrapped up in his winter coat. 
“Thank you.” She replied after a second. 
Her voice was too quiet, too soft.
Matty pushed off the wall to draw closer to them both, his socked feet pausing only a step or two before her. 
He knew he’d miss her once she was gone, he always did. But now that she’d been here, in his home, he knew that he’d never be able to escape the thoughts of her that would linger. He’d look at that settee now and only picture the way she was currently staring up at him.
He swallowed at the thought. 
“Are we good?” He asked her gently, scared to push her too far, or to wake Teddy.
Slowly, she blinked up at him, and in that moment the shadows danced, cutting pieces of her skin into shapes and framing her tired eyes.
“It’s fine.” She whispered, wearing a sad sort of smile, her jacket laid out to the left of her. “I’m sorry, for before. I didn’t mean-”
He cut her off with a slow shake of his head and moved to sit down beside her, bold in the way he let his hand settle over her own. She shifted, knee knocking against his. “I know.” He told her, because he truly did, “I’ll sort it, alright? I’ll clear things up, talk to Jamie or something, whatever it takes.”
He felt her hand clasp his more firmly and squeeze.
“I don’t want to lose you.” He added, thoughtlessly. Carelessly. 
She squeezed again, pulling their hands into her lap. “You won’t.”
Matty wanted to question it, ask her how she knew and if she was certain, but he couldn’t force the words out. “I’ll sort it.” He said again instead, letting his thumb brush the back of her hand. Retracing the length of it again and again. Whilst he still could.
“I know.”
He looked over to her then, seeing the exhausted smile she gave him in return and the warmth hidden behind her eyes. He wanted to kiss her then. 
“We’ll take it one day at a time, alright?” He murmured instead, unable to tear his eyes away from her, from the way she stared back at him. 
She nodded, hold tightening once more.
Matty wondered what she was thinking at that very moment, if she could see all the messy thoughts and feelings she forced up out of him. If she could feel them, too.
“Alright.”
February seemed to fly by. Pancake day came and went with a sugar loaded toddler and too much leftover mixture, and then quickly fell into the next. 
Valentine’s day had never been a holiday I’d favoured, too young, too hungover, too single, too pregnant, too busy. I’d never really celebrated it, and only had very vague memories of the ones my mum and dad had made together. Because they had been happy at one point, a very long time ago.
So it was safe to say I was promptly ignoring it again this year too. Seeing as I had no prospects, no secret lover, and no cupcake covered cupid flying over my head. 
Things felt worse this time around though, and I knew why. Because of course I did. But it didn’t make knowing it any fucking easier.
“Matty come ‘day?” Teddy asked for the umpteenth time since we’d seen him last.
My eyes slipped closed at the question, my back to him, but only for a second before I carried on like normal. “Not today, bub.” I answered, wiping down the kitchen counter before completely changing the subject, “How’s your fruit then, hey?”
It had been a little over a week since I’d last seen Matty. We had texted, once or twice, mostly him asking after Teddy and the show, or me wondering how the album was coming on, but that was it.
The whole fiasco resulting in Matty’s apparent ‘found family’ had ebbed slightly but hadn’t died out. There was still the odd article, the mass of tweets, although none of it compared to those first few days. 
I shook my head thinking back to it. The way I’d been accosted in the bakery near the studio and on the way into work, the nonstop calls I’d gotten to be interviewed, the way the show’s ratings had skyrocketed and its comments had been overwhelmed by the same exact question.
So yeah, I had pulled away from him a little. Or, I guess a lot.
But I didn’t know what else I could do. We’d gotten lucky last time, whatever idiot had snapped those photos of us hadn’t managed to get a glimpse of Teddy’s face. But what if the next time they did? And what if I couldn’t protect him from whatever backlash or fallout followed?
Because I knew how people saw me. Single mum, young and disfigured. I caught the way they watched me wherever I went. How they stared. The looks I garnered.
And Matty, well, Matty was good and sweet, and he was everything I hadn’t known I’d needed. I’d let him in so easily and had hardly even had a second to question it. And now I was left in the ruins of it all, on my own because it felt easier that way. Because it should have felt easier that way.
Like it had before.
Before Matty.
It was only when the doorbell went that I realised I’d been staring off into space again, Teddy happily munching away on his mango whilst watching a new episode of his current favourite show. 
I sighed and dropped the cloth I’d been using to wipe the sides, puttering out into the hallway to answer it.
I paused at the sight of our usual postie, having thought that we’d already received the morning post through the letterbox only a half an hour earlier.
“Package for you.” He said with his accustomed smile, holding out an odd little device for me to sign.
“Um,” I fumbled, trying to remember whether or not I’d ordered anything whilst reaching out to scribble a halfhearted signature for him. “Where from?” I asked, letting him take the pen back and hand me a rather large brown box in return.
He shrugged, “Sorry, love. I just deliver them. But I suppose you can always look for the return address if you’re unsure.”
I smiled in response, shifting the box in my arms with a slight furrow to my brow whilst he descended the few steps, “Right, thank you.”
He waved me off inside and carried on down the pavement to his van. I let the door rattle close behind me.
Standing in the hallway, I frowned down at the package, certain that I hadn't ordered anything to the flat. Then decided to double check it was in fact for me, peering down at the address label, still sort of surprised to see my name written there just like the postie had said.
Well.
I guessed that there was no better way to work the mystery out than just diving head first, so I picked at the brown parcel tape on one side of the box and ripped it off in one fell swoop. 
The rest came off pretty easily after that, letting me open up the top flaps of the box. Peering inside, I was confused by the array of items I found.
Socks, slippers, an expensive set of pjs… chocolates, an arrangement full of tea bags and my favourite hard boiled sweets, there was even a pretty watercolour vase safely secured in bubble wrap, as well as a bundle of face masks and a little teddy bear in the form of a cow.
I stared blankly down at the items before the doorbell went once more. Bewildered, I turned on autopilot and unlocked the latch, only to be met by a huge bouquet of wildflowers.
My face must have made a right picture, so startled by the odd occurrence I'd been met with, but the delivery person only beamed at me and wished me a happy day. I nodded dumbly, unable to reply due to the apple sized lump in my throat. 
The door closed quietly behind me that time around and frowning I took the box and the bouquet and walked down the hallway into the kitchen, glad to have Teddy so preoccupied by the tele for once.
I set the box down on the table, as well as the flowers, and then simply stood and stared at them for a little bit.
Dragging a hand through my hair, I knew I couldn’t just stand about all day in confusion and so took a small step, and then another, before I slowly pulled all of the items from out of the box and settled them down. Searching for any sort of message from the sender.
Could it be Adi? Finn, or my mam?
I licked at my lower lip, not finding any sort of hint as to who it could have possibly been from in the bottom of the now empty box, and so, with a small exhale, I then let my eyes drift on over to the bouquet.
It was a big arrangement. 
Actually that was an understatement. It was massive, completely unnecessary and utterly, utterly, beautiful. 
I was scared to even reach out and touch them, they were so gorgeous. Never had I seen a bunch so perfectly well-crafted, they must've been really expensive…
Which only left-
My heart clenched at the very thought, because no, he wouldn’t have. 
I was quick to reach out then, fingers brushing along dainty petals and verdant leaves to find an elegant ivory coloured card buried amongst the colourful array.
Squeaks, Happy Valentine’s Day, love. If anyone deserves anything on a day that celebrates love, it’s you. The one person I know who’s so very full of it. I know this’ll be a bit strange, especially as we’ve not been on typical talking terms as of late, but Teds and I decided on this a while ago, and I couldn’t let him down, could I? Anyway, I hope you got the care package too, it was all the monster’s idea, see, so don’t get too huffy over the price of ‘em, yeah? You deserve it.  Enjoy today and when you find the time, check your email. Matty x
I must have stood there for far too long. Long enough for my fingertips to chill in the early afternoon breeze, which swept in through the window, and for Teddy to wander over in search of me.
“Came!”
I startled at the sound of his excited little voice and the way he was quick to wiggle his way up onto a chair to get a good look at the various items which littered the table.
“See? See it?” He asked me, positively beaming at the sight.
I swallowed thickly and smiled, and although my mind struggled to catch up with what was happening, my heart had not. It beat rapidly in my chest, pounding against my ribcage, demanding to be heard.
“Yeah,” I croaked out, before I cleared my throat and let go of the breath I’d been holding. “Yeah, I do. Did you do all this then, monster?” I asked him, running a hand through his mane of curls and hardly even noticing the use of Matty’s given nickname.
Teddy did though. “Matty, mama! I picks! Matty picks!”
Smiling, I leaned in closer to kiss his cheek. “I love it. Thank you, baby.”
I received an all but beaming grin.
“Call! Call, peas!”
My forehead pinched, “Call?”
“Matty! Call! Can we?"
Oh.
My heart swelled at the thought before it quickly felt like it wouldn’t stop, constricting in my chest and consuming whatever space my ribs had to offer. 
Call Matty.
I could do that, I could call him.
I should call him.
Shouldn’t I?
Yeah, I had to. Of course I did, I mean, how could I not? When he was mental enough to do.. all this!
God. What the fuck was I even gonna say?
But then Teddy was bouncing in his chair, hands grabbing at everything he could touch and I was swiftly picking up the bouquet and pressing on Matty’s contact.
I was calling Matty.
My eyes widened when the ringing stopped and I heard him pick up. He was quiet for one, two seconds, and then, “Mouse?”
He heard her soft breaths break up the silence that came through the speaker, he let her have a moment. Unsure on what reaction he’d get right then.
Matty had felt confident a little over two weeks ago, when he and Teddy had been scheming and planning. But now? 
Now he had to face the storm he’d called upon, anticipating the questions and the uncomfortable thoughts over whether or not she thought the whole thing had been too weird.
Who the fuck did he think he was? Gifts on Valentines day, what was he playing at, being her boyfriend?
Matty felt the urge to defend himself, or to just brush the whole thing off and sweep it under the rug, and then set said rug alight, but instead he simply rubbed at his forehead to still his shaking hands.
They’d been doing that all morning, shaking. Reminding him of when he had been desperate for a good hit, as well as the few months he’d spent in rehab. The withdrawals had always been the worst bit. They plagued his thoughts even now, a year clean.
“Thank you.”
Matty dropped his hand at the sound of her whisper, echoing in his ear. He wished it would hollow a space out in there somewhere and just settle, live there for a while. If only to soothe him.
He hadn’t realised he’d forgotten to breathe until right then and sucked in a rather deep breath. He then swallowed and felt his lips quirk up into a sheepish smile, thankful that she wasn’t there to see it or the pinking of his neck. “You got it then?” He replied, skipping over the ‘your welcomes’ and other pleasantries. That just wasn’t him, it wasn’t them.
It was like he could feel her smile, even from down the phone. “I did. I,” She paused then and he could hear the slight rustling of paper, he hoped that she was looking down at the flowers, toying with them. “I love them. I love it all. I can’t believe you did this.”
Love.
Matty pulled a pack of Marlboros from out of his back pocket, and with one hand struggled to put one to his lips and light it.
“It was all Teddy.” He told her, grateful for the way the nicotine ebbed some of that anxiety he’d been latching onto as of late, though not the shake of his hands.
She chuckled, a light soft thing that he probably hadn’t meant to hear, that she probably hadn’t meant to let escape. “I’ve never been given anything like it.”
The truth seemed to tinge her voice into an octave lower, so quiet too that he struggled to hear each syllable she made. 
His heart constricted in his chest, pulled and stuttered and stretched.
Matty took a long drag.
“Did you check your email yet?” He asked her, his eyes surveying the brick wall of the side street he’d slipped into when he’d seen her call. He knew the area well enough, had been walking around just for something to do until their studio time started. He had lots of spare time as of recently.
“Not yet,” She answered him, her voice softening the chaos that was his mind. “What is it?”
He found himself smiling, blowing out a billow of smoke and squinting around the edges of it. “That would be telling.”
Her laughter warmed the coldness that had seeped its way into his bones the night she’d left. Then he heard the call of a familiar voice, one that seemed so excited and was growing closer.
“Matty? Matty?” Teddy sounded through the phone, a little breathless although Matty could picture his bright grin.
“Hey, monster.”
“Matty! They came!” Teddy informed him, obviously talking about the presents Squeaks had received.
“Did they? Just in time then, hey?”
He chuckled when Teddy started to ramble away, telling him what he’d found laid out on the kitchen table and the ‘big pretty flowers’ his mum was still holding. Matty’s chest warmed at the thought.
“She happy then?” He heard himself ask once the toddler had stopped to breathe.
Teddy must’ve nodded then because Matty heard Mouse laugh and then mumble something or other. “Yeah! Like very much.” Came the actual answer and the skin around Matty’s mouth stretched.
“I’m glad.” He said to the boy, hoping that she could still somehow hear him. Hear the truth in his words, the things he hadn’t said but wanted to.
They spoke for a little while longer, Teddy taking up the majority of it seeing as they hadn’t phoned in a while. Something he hadn’t wanted to linger too long on whilst still on the call. Desperate to understand everything and anything that had happened in the short time he’d been waiting for her to come to terms with things. 
She managed to wrangle the thing back off him when he got distracted by something happening outside of the kitchen window and a part of Matty settled when he finally heard her voice. 
“Hey,” She exhaled, he hoped she was smiling.
“Hey.” Matty mimicked, and he definitely was smiling.
“Hi.” She chuckled again, and he rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, you said that.”
“Oh, shut it.” 
He laughed, the sound of it echoed down the side street, bouncing off bricks and crawling to the very edge. “I’ve missed you.” He murmured, and as true as that fact was, he wished he hadn’t. Because a second passed, and then four.
But then, “I’ve missed you, too.”
Matty inhaled sharply, licking at his lower lip, feeling how he’d practically chewed it almost raw during the last few days. “Make sure you put those flowers in a vase or something, yeah?” He said, still jittery with her admission, like a little kid on the school playground. “I wanna see them soon.” See you.
“I will.” She answered him, ever so soft. 
“Good.”
“I’ll look at that email, too.”
Matty grinned, although his pulse jumped at the very thought.
“Call me after?”
She went quiet, and he was stuck waiting again.
“Yeah, okay.”
He breathed a little easier at that, having heard the smile in her voice.
“After, then.”
“After.”
When their call finally ended, Matty went to drop his cigarette and noticed then that his hands had given up their constant tremble. 
He shook his head and wandered back out onto the main street. Everything seemed to come back to her.
It had taken me ages to finally get around to opening up my email. My day had been jam packed full of mishaps, from a giant spillage of Teddy’s doing, to sorting out a mistake in the show’s upcoming itinerary. 
It was only once I’d put Teddy to sleep and cleaned up what mess he’d made of my living room, that I got the chance to grab my laptop and climb into my own bed.
I was met with an email from Matty’s personal account when I logged in, one which contained a single file. 
This feeling (demo).
For a long time I just stared down at the tiny clip, my cursor hovering over the tail end of it, because I knew what it was, what it could have only been. But he’d been so adamant about me hearing the album with everyone else, would even get into a right huff about it whenever I’d accidentally catch him humming or singing a tune he hadn’t realised he’d even been making.
And now this?
It left me feeling all sorts of emotions, a majority of which I couldn’t quite make out. But the one I definitely did was all too obvious. Though it had been a long time since I'd last felt anything like it.
Butterflies.
My stomach swarmed with them and as I clicked to open up the file they only grew bigger, distracting me, until finally, I heard his voice.
97 notes · View notes
lewkwoodnco · 8 months
Note
Hii I wanted to request Anthony Lockwood×fem!reader with Invisible string, where they're neighbours for years, and used to play together as children. When Lucy joins the agency, she becomes friends with the reader, so the reader starts to be more around their house. Then Anthony starts interacting with her more, and they become friends, but Anthony realises his falling for her, so he starts to become awkward and shy around her she notices it and confronts him about it, then he confesses.
Invisible String - Lockwood x Reader
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A/N: fluffy fluffy, though there is like the baaarest hint of angst which is kind of brief as long as you dont dwell on it too long + most of it gets resolved hehe and its made up for in the happy happy ending! yay!! personally i imagine the song she's humming at the piano to be invisible string heheh wc 5.4k
Lucy is waiting by their garden gate impatiently. They weren't running late for their job, but it was chilly out and she wanted to get in a cab before it got much colder. Lockwood walks out soon enough, holding a letter, but he walks to the fence rather than the gate. Over the fence, there's a girl pulling on her gloves as she walks towards her own gate, but Lockwood waves her over.
"What's this? Another lawsuit?"
"Not for me, at least. Our mail got mixed up again."
"Ah. Thanks."
They talk about their week for a while. Lucy watches Lockwood's polished exterior melt as his body language becomes more casual and fluid. The girl pockets the letter and the two of them look at each other for a while. He lamely gestures to her outfit.
"You look nice. Going on a date?"
"Yeah, with this guy in my pottery class."
"That sounds nice. Have fun."
"Thanks. You stay safe."
"I'll try."
Lucy walks over, looking at Lockwood meaningfully while he stiffens reflexively. "Who's your friend?"
"We're just neighbours." The girl smiles pleasantly, but Lucy doesn't miss the way he carefully watches her. They introduce themselves to each other. They chat a little, and Lucy picks up on her good-natured teasing of Lockwood appreciatively.
"So you must have known Lockwood for a while now, right?"
"Try ever since I was born. Our parents got on so well that we used to have dinner together every other day. And that was excluding brunch on the weekends. Trust me, I've had enough playdates with him to last a lifetime."
"Lockwood! You've never mentioned her, not even once."
"Well, to be fair, that was all years ago. We've been a little busy for the, um, last decade or so." There's a silence.
"Oh, there was that summer..."
"Yeah."
"Hmm."
"That had been nice."
An uncomfortable prickling accompanies the silence this time. She finishes fiddling with her gloves and looks ready to walk away, but Lucy recognises the suppressed look in Lockwood's eyes and tries to salvage the situation.
"You should come over sometime. We're doing some spring cleaning tomorrow, if you want to join."
"Luce. Let's not burden Y/N with chores."
"No, no, that sounds nice. I'd love to help. Though Lockwood never struck me as the spring-cleaning type."
"He's being coerced. We're holding his favourite rapier hostage."
Her lips twitch as she slices the envelope open. "Well, I wouldn't want to keep you from your job. Be careful. Mum sends her love." She says the last part more to Lockwood, who smiles with a warmth Lucy had seen little of. He watches her walk out, skimming the letter, and it isn't until George joins them that he looks away.
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Their case is so exhausting and Holly piles so much work on him the next morning that he forgets that she's coming over. It isn't even until the afternoon that he realises she's there at all, when looking for someone to help him rip the stitches off some old curtains. He walks into one of the spare rooms, calling out for George, but he stops short when he sees an unfamiliar figure standing on the bed, peeling posters off the wall. She glances behind and he suddenly remembers the events of last evening.
"Oh - Y/N. Hello. Have you seen the others lately?"
"Lucy went out to get another scraper and I think George went down to the Archives. Holly just left for the post office."
"Oh. I see. Er, do you need help?" She turns around from the poster she was steadily peeling off, dropping it into the pile with satisfaction.
"Nope, that was last of them. Anything I can help you with?"
He hesitates, and she picks up on it.
"Lockwood, I don't have anything to do until Lucy comes home anyway. I don't mind, really."
He relents and she agrees to help immediately, poising to step off the bed. She pauses before making the step, looking at the floor nervously.
"...need help getting down?"
"No. Just...give me a minute." She tries to hold onto the bed's headboard but still suffers from some internal struggle in stepping down. The image triggers a decade-old dormant memory in him, of the time she had slipped from the picnic tabletop in her garden and twisted her ankle. Instinctively, he holds out a hand, which she grabs thankfully and is down so quick he doesn't even realise until she pulls her hand away. The feel of her fully-grown hand in his is a jarring yank back to the present.
"Still so afraid of heights?"
She shudders. "My ankle still twinges if I so much as think of making a small leap. Now, where are those curtains?"
They decide to occupy the couch in the living room, and it's a bit of a tight squeeze with the piles of linens towering around them, but they manage.
"So you take the seam ripper, like so," Lockwood fumbles with the comically small seam ripper but somehow slots it under a tiny stitch, "and you rip the seam. Just like that."
She rips the stitch on her curtain with greater efficiency than him. He looks mildly startled. She glances at the pile of curtains next to her, and then the one next to Lockwood.
"Looks like I'll be done with my pile first."
There's a pause as Lockwood processes her words and the glimmer of competition in her eyes, and then they both leap into action, tugging down yards and yards of fabric, painstakingly unravelling the seams stitch by stitch. It doesn't take long for them to start playing dirty. She tries to block Lockwood's vision by flapping the dusty curtains at him and he tries to slow her down by holding her curtains down. But by the time the rest return, they're too engrossed to sabotage each other so that Lucy finds them sitting in some weird contorted manner, ripping seams feverishly.
"I was only gone two hours! Both of you've done all that?"
She tries to shush Lucy, already feeling herself slow down as she tries to free up enough mental capacity to answer. She feels rather than hears Lockwood giggle in delight as he picks up his pace. Lucy shakes her head, walking out to the kitchen.
"Find me when you're done, I'm having tea." She groans, heavily enticed by the suggestion of biscuits and sweet tea after an afternoon of stringing her fingers to bits.
"Wait, wait, truce please, I want tea."
Lockwood reluctantly lets up, stretching under the sea of curtains around them. They part ways for the evening, taking breaks or helping out with other smaller projects, but they reconvene after dinner, though with significantly less fervour.
An hour or two past midnight, once his neck had started to ache too much, he looks over at Y/N, and realises she's fast asleep. He moves to shake her awake, but she looks so peaceful and alarmingly similar to the little girl he remembered her as that it gives him pause. Lockwood wasn't one for sentimental doting, but it felt nice to have a piece of his long-forgotten childhood in his home again, safe and warm.
He makes a quiet phone call to her parents before fetching a blanket for her. That night, the childhood memories he falls asleep to are warm and happy.
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Lucy wakes up from her nap in a delightfully warm haze. The house is quiet, likely because of everyone staying up late the previous night. She shuffles to the kitchen, but pauses when she hears a curious sound echoing in the hallway. She blearily follows it to the living room, where she sees Y/N and Lockwood sitting opposite each other at the coffee table, playing poker. She seemed to be trying her best to stop giggling, yet failing, while Lockwood berated her.
"Your poker face sucks, Y/N. I know more about your cards than I do mine."
She shakes with silent laughter, covering her face with her cards ashamedly as Lockwood joins in with the laughing. It's a weirdly surreal sight to see. Everntually, Lockwood's eye drifts and he spots Lucy standing in the doorway.
"Luce. Have a good nap?" Lucy grumbles some incoherent reply, pulling a biscuit out of the biscuit tin. She sits down and watches them shriek at each other (Lockwood was right, her poker face was downright terrible) as they finish the game, and Lucy can't help but smile over the idiots.
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"Where's Y/N?"
The first words out of Lockwood's mouth the next morning were arguably his most poorly-chosen yet, especially without any buffer from the relentless mocking of Lucy and George. One of them alone was bad enough, but with both of them joining forces, it made for a very weary breakfast.
"Cool it, she's my friend. Get your own."
"Then what does that make us, if not friends?"
"Neighbours." Lucy smiles innocently as Lockwood throws a dish towel at her.
The rest of breakfast passes up uneventfully, which makes the incident the first thing out of Lucy's mouth as soon as she steps through the door.
"Morning!"
"Lockwood missed you at breakfast this morning."
"Did not."
Between Lucy's smirk and Lockwood sullenly hiding in the shadowed hallway, she wasn't sure what to start with.
"Did too, he so wanted you to be there."
Lucy turns to Lockwood, daring him to contradict her. Holly steps out of the kitchen, straightening her pinafore, but doesn't pick up on the tension so she just smiles. His eyes dart between the three of them and some part of his body decides that panic is the best reaction of choice.
"DEPRAC wants to steal my papers," he says as some odd form of explanation, before disappearing into his room. Lucy snorts while Holly and her share a puzzled look.
"I think he's talking about our case report."
Whatever it was, it was being tucked away into his coat when she ran into him at the front door about ten minutes later. His smile is part grimace.
"Sorry about earlier." He stops talking, but looks like he wants to say more, so she patiently hovers. "About breakfast - I just feel bad for doing all this free labour, breakfast is the least I could offer-"
"Don't sweat it, I'm fine."
"Well, I'd feel a lot better if you popped by for a bun every now and then."
Her lips twitch. "Maybe I will."
There's a concerned look in his eye and his gaze that lasts a little too long to be comfortable, and it reminds her of the last time he looked at her like that. It had been near the tail end of the summer a few years back, late at night. She had been crying something awful on her front porch after a certain Noah Lewis had dumped her, and he was neighbourly enough to play a good samaritan in talking her through it.
It had started with a lot of unrestrained swearing and dragging of Noah Lewis' name through the mud as soon as she walked through the front gate, the kind that made her father peer out the window in alarm and then disappear back into the house. After a good quarter of an hour of this, her rage faded along with her energy, and she ended up crying embarrassingly on Lockwood's shoulder. "That's it," she had sobbed into his soft, forest green sweater that smelled like clean cotton. "I'm done with dating. It's the single life for me from now on." What flimsy grip she had managed over her emotions started to slip once more, as she burst into a new set of wails.
"Oh God, I'm going to die alone!" Lockwood rubbed comforting circles on her back as she clutched him tighter.
Looking back, she understood the smile on his face a little better, though a part of her still wanted to stay peeved at him for laughing at her misery. At least he had the decency to cold-shoulder Noah when he came around a few days later.
The memory occupies the back of her mind for the rest of the day, and it's still there when Lockwood returns. She doesn't realise it, but it makes her soften around him, though not noticeably so. By then, they've cleared up enough of the house to uncover the piano tucked away in the basement. Holly had spent the afternoon lovingly tuning it and polishing it up, but no one else seemed much interested in it.
After dinner, she sees Lockwood sitting at the piano, watching the keys as if he's too afraid to touch them. She joins him at the bench, taking in the sight of the glossy keys she could barely hear being played from her room when she was a child. Maybe that's what she's thinking about when she asks him to play something for her, and he obliges.
He plays a short piece that isn't extremely elaborate by any means, but it's beautiful and makes her want to rest her head on his shoulder. When he finishes, there's a short silence, and she tells him it was beautiful. She feels him smile against her head. Her fingers meander over the keys and she plays the occasional note as she hums some tune tucked away in the recesses of her mind. He picks up on it after a while, playing a more complete accompaniment to her stilted humming. She tilts her head where it rests on his shoulder to look at his face, and his hand slips on the note. She wishes to stay there forever.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hey."
"Hey."
"Hey." The last one was from Lucy, and it earned her a reproving glare and there was this silent yet intense communication between the girls. It's the next day, and now they've started on the library, sifting through the masses of newspapers dating well back into the past century. Lockwood had just returned from helping George at the archives (all the dust and cleaning was making his allergies act up so he wasn't at peak performance, as much as hated to admit it). She finally looks away from Lucy with the air of washing her hands of her, looking up at a forgotten Lockwood.
"Your coat collar's turned up."
"He does that to look cool. And because you're here. Dunno if you've noticed, Lockwood, but the coat hanger's by the door."
"Ha-ha. I'm leaving for Satchell's soon. Just...wanted to see how you were getting on."
"Wanted to see how Y/N was getting on."
"No, no." But his voice is a little too high-pitched to be fully convincing, and Lucy bursts out laughing, and his annoyance evaporates his nervousness. "Just making sure you haven't bullied her to tears, Luce."
"I've been such an angel."
She traces the outline of Lockwood's coat with her gaze fondly. "I remember the morning you bought it." She leans conspiratorially towards Lucy. "Preened in front of me for a good ten minutes, shifting his weight around to look cool. He only stopped when he heard my dad coming out to get the paper."
"That's awfully patient of you. George and I just try to suffocate him when he gets too unbearable."
"Are - are you hearing this? Admission of assault."
'Oh hush, you big baby."
She smiles as she watches them bicker. Lockwood clutches his chest with an exaggeratedly injured look, and their eyes briefly meet. He looks away first.
"What can I say? When you're stuck with this...peacock of a neighbour, you're bound to be forced into being an adoring audience on more than one occasion. Comes in and disrupts my peaceful mornings."
"Someone had to appreciate it, and you're always up at the crack of dawn."
"So are you, but you don't sleep so it doesn't count."
Lockwood lets out an uncharacteristic bark of laughter. Lucy's eyes look like they're about to fall out of her head.
"Sue me for wanting to share first thing I bought with my hard-earned money with someone."
She chokes on her breath, barely holding herself back from a fit of giggles. Lucy looks as though Christmas had come early.
"Lockwood had a job? Like, a proper one?"
"Well, I don't know if I'd call it a job so much as a cosplay of being working class. But yes, he manned a frozen yogurt cart in the park a few summers back. First and last time i've seen him willingly sit out in the sun."
"Oh, please, at least I didn't spend my days making eyes at Noah Lewis."
She shrugs in mock ignorance in a way that Lockwood can't help but match her smile. For a while the only sounds that could be heard were of the girls shifting through the newspaper with inky fingertips, until Lockwood finally gets up to leave for the client meeting.
It's an uneventful trip and consultation, but looks promising enough in terms of commission. It's tedious enough to make him peckish for a mid-morning snack. When he returns, he walks into the kitchen to sneak a biscuit and finds her fiddling near the stove.
"Oh, hi. Lucy and I wanted some tea but I'm not quite sure I know how your kettle works..."
He fiddles with the plug a little, twisting the wire in ways that make her concerned for his safety, but eventually they hear the kettle hum cheerfully, and they silently wait for the water to boil. She fidgets, trying to make small talk.
"How's George's room coming along?"
"I told him to pick out his favourite biohazards. The rest would have to go."
The kettle starts to crackle louder now. She eyes it apprehensively but Lockwood doesn't seem to even register it.
"House looks...pretty much the same."
"Yeah."
"I like it."
"Thank you. But I'm glad we're doing this. The spring cleaning, I mean. Sometimes I wonder if it's too crowded."
"I like it. I think it's crowded with life."
He gives her a soft smile and when he looks at her, he's not as quick to look away as before. But then he remembers her outing last evening and carefully broaches the subject. After all, it had been a while since they talked about things like this, and she was by no means obligated to, but he tried.
"How was your...date?"
"Hmm? Oh, yes. It was alright. He's a nice guy. Patient. Down-to-earth Unlike someone I could mention."
Her teasing smile is back, and Lockwood feels as though a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. His features contract into a familiar melodramatic expression.
"I'm sorry I disrupted so many peaceful mornings."
A smile slides back onto his face as she scoffs and gives him a shove. "Very funny. You were plenty insufferable before your friends came along. You're lucky I wasn't as creative as them."
"Mm, so grateful."
More silence. "They seem nice, George and Lucy. I see why you spend so much time with them."
And not so much with me, she wanted to add, but she didn't want to cause unnecessary strife, so she just focused on keeping her tone light. But Lockwood still picked up on the subtle edge of bitternes.
"I thought you...moved on to other things in life. You don't stop to chat by the fence much anymore."
"You got so busy with your agency business. I didn't want to impose."
She glances at Lockwood's genuinely puzzled expression, his lips barely parted as she saw the cogs turning in his head, trying to reconcile the idea of their chats being an imposition. She feels awkward in a way she's never felt with him, even when it was just the fence in between the two of them. They went from close, to distant, to kind of close again for that one summer they were 16, and now...now she wasn't sure.
"I'm sorry I made you feel that way. I...I didn't mean to."
"Yeah, well...you can say hi more often. Or bye. If you wanted to." It was stupid; she knew she was being childish but she couldn't help it. Something still smarted inside of her when she saw the three of them traipsing off most nights, something she didn't quite understand.
"I always want to."
"Lockwood? You better not be withholding tea."
They get startled by Lucy's voice and take a step back. Lockwood fumbles as he pulls off the top of the cottage-shaped container, scooping out piles of teabags. "Look, plenty of tea. All the tea. Please don't tell Lucy."
She shakes her head, bemused, pouring water into their mugs just as Lucy walks in, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at Lockwood. Luckily, she gets distracted quickly enough and starts dumping sugar into her mug. She watches Lucy for a while until Lockwood fold his jacket over his arm, brushing her shoulder as he walks past.
"Hm?"
He stops by the door to the kitchen, a familiar easy smile on his face. He looks like home.
"Bye."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Why do you call him Lockwood? Surely you knew him when he was 'Anthony,' or - or was it 'Big A'? Please tell me it was 'Big A.'"
She had started to become a regular visitor at the breakfast table, which meant more time for Lucy to spend interrogating her on everything and anything about Lockwood. Even George had joined in briefly; it was too good of an opportunity to pass up for an enigma like Lockwood. All the while, he anxiously flitted around, on guard to brush off anything too incriminating.
He carries the kettle away, mildly peeved. "I think that's enough tea for you, Luce." Lucy makes a face behind his back and the girls share a muffled laugh.
"Oh, he hasn't been Anthony for ages." She smiles briefly, but gives Lucy's hand an intentional squeeze, her eyes asking Lucy to not press it. She doesn't realise how Lockwood has suddenly become much more interested in the paper only because she too is avoiding eye contact.
She remembers it like it was yesterday. Her parents had done their best to help Lockwood, but there was only so much they could legally do (not that it stopped her mother from sniffing disapprovingly at every inept social worker that walked up the garden path). It had been after Jessica's funeral, and for once they were both on the same side of the fence: sitting on the steps to the porch. He was wearing a suit that was a bit too big for him, not unlike his daily attire now, and the smell of burnt rubber hung in the air.
"I don't think I want to be Anthony anymore."
It was a decision that never confused her, not even for a minute. Anyone would have needed a reconstruction of identity after going through such traumatic experiences at an age as young as his. Adjusting to the change had been surprisingly smooth too; he didn't look much like Anthony after that day either. But it was bone-deep agony to watch time drip by, like lazy honey, and only being able to hope that he was getting happier.
Lucy picks up on the hint and starts asking George about the rooms they need to tackle today. Meanwhile, she walks past the kitchen window, nearly bumping into Lockwood. They breathe a reflexive apology and laugh lightly. Her eyes land on the angry red cut on his forehead.
"How's the-?"
"Oh, it's fine. Just a scrape. I've had worse."
"Aw, you poor baby."
Lockwood laughs weakly as she gently tugs at the skin near the cut, which at least seemed to be better than the previous night. When looks away she notices the pink tinge to the tips of his ears. She frowns at the slightly ajar window, closing it firmly. There still was a chill in the air from the frost that hadn't completely melted away yet.
True to his word, Lockwood comes home with a broken wrist a few days later. George is rather miffed and Lockwood insists that he's making it sound worse than it actually was, but that doesn't stop her from wincing when George claims he heard the snap of his bone from the floor below. Despite Lucy's insistence that he had survived much worse, she can't help but fret over him a little.
"I can pour my soup myself, you know."
"Yes, yes, you're a big strong man who needs no help. Now go sit down, I'll bring your toast." It might have been more convincing if she hadn't been absent-mindedly muttering, or even without the pat on his head, but he still took his seat at the table, not entirely unhappy. George had managed to wrestle him into his bed in the afternoon and his body finally succumbed to the beckoning of sleep, making him sleep through dinner. It was just the two of them in the kitchen, one anxiously watching the other sip their soup.
"Really, you didn't need to do this. It's no trouble on my wrist."
"Lockwood, the doctor said not to put any pressure on it. It is, by definition, trouble on your wrist."
He sighs, frowning at how she worries her bottom lip. "You're not...doing this out of guilt, or something, are you?"
She opens her mouth to deny it, to say how preposterous such a suggestion is, but her protests die on her lips. She takes a shaky breath.
"I was thinking about the days after...you know. How exhausted and lonely you must have been. How I didn't care enough to visit you more, to even cross that fence, unless it was to come running to you with my own silly problems."
"Y/N," he looks like he wants to smile but is trying not to for the benefit of the situation, and it rubs salt in her wound. "Of course you cared. You were just a kid, acting like kids do."
"I yelled at you about Noah when I was 16. 16."
"And I appreciated it. You gave me something more normal to be mad about. You made me feel like a teenager again." He reaches out and covers her hand with his uninjured one. "And I don't ever want you feeling like any of your problems is too tiny or insignificant to bother me with. I'm your neighbour, what else am I good for?"
She gives him a watery smile, feeling the tension that had been bunching around her temples all afternoon start to dissolve. He always knew just what to say, the ointment to every wound and scratch. He made it easier to live, easier to breathe.
"Wait, where's Lockwood?"
"Going down to Arif's."
"With a broken wrist?"
"He still has his left hand!" Lucy calls after her, but she's too busy scrambling for a pair of mittens and hurrying to the front door. Luckily, she catches him just as he's about to head out, and a smile cracks open on his face when he sees her.
"Everything alright?"
"You forgot your mittens."
He eyes the patterned woollens in her hands. "Y/N. I haven't worn mittens since I was...six, maybe."
"Obviously, since that's about how long they've been collecting dust in your old coat - which, by the way, is in no shape for the Salvation Army. You didn't set it on fire, did you?"
"Look, when it comes to fires, I may have an affinity for them but not necessa-"
"Fine. Just wear the mittens."
"I'll only be a minute! What's the worst that could happen?"
"Oh, yes, because a cold is exactly what you need on top of a snapped wrist and cut." She holds the mittens out expectantly, and he reluctantly takes them. They spend a few awkward minutes trying to figure out how to get them on without his cast getting in the way, and Lockwood nearly drops them when he gets startled by the brush of her fingertips on his palm, until she decisively puts them on his hands herself. When she looks up, his ears are tinged red again, as well as his nose.
"See, you're already getting cold. Are you sure I can't go to Arif's for you?"
They hear a scoff from behind, and turn to see George watching them. She looks at him questioningly but he ambles past her to the kitchen, muttering words under his breath she couldn't quite understand. Lockwood takes advantage of the pause in her fussing and steps out before she can continue protesting, but the sight of the mittens securely pulled over his fingers gives her some relief.
George turns his snigger into a poorly concealed cough.
"What now?"
"If you keep kissing his scrapes better, he'll throw himself off a cliff one of these days."
"George." Lucy admonishes him while she tries to settle the awkard swooping sensation in her chest.
"It's true and you know it."
Lucy nods awkwardly at her. "I mean...he's got a point."
When she thinks about it, it makes her feel funny in a way she can't deicide.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Later that evening, she's sitting on her porch, brooding, when Lockwood leans over the fence.
"Home so soon?"
"Thought I'd come here for some quiet thinking."
He nods affably, his flyaway hair gleaming in the setting sun. "You left your cards in the living room."
"Come on over," she says unexpectedly, possessed by a sudden desire to be close to him. It surprises her as much as him, but as she watches him walk out of his own gate, and strangely walk into her gate, the foreign sight reassures her with a distant sense of familiarity. She had been on so many crazy misadventures, but they all led her back to the same place: in his arms. Maybe the universe had grown hoarse from yelling at her to open her eyes to what was right in front of her.
He sits down next to her and hands her the cards. She looks at the quiet face of Anthony hiding inside the sallow face in front of hers, and marvels at how the same time that put her through hell as a child had somewhat healed his wounds. She puts them to the side and links her fingers in his, resting her head on his shoulder as their breath misted in the chill.
"Remember that summer at the yogurt shop?" She feels him relax against her as he hums in agreement. "You looked so fresh in your teal shirt."
"I wondered what you were doing, sitting under that tree all day. Was it really just to watch Noah all day?"
She shrugs. "Maybe. It was a weird sort of year. I had this restlessness in me...this desire to sit outside in the world and wait for things to start happening to me. For someone to find me and for my life to begin." She shifts, a ghost of a smile playing on her lips. "Speaking of Noah...did you know he got married last year?"
"Someone wanted to marry Noah Lewis?"
"You say things like that as if I wasn't ready to have his children just two years ago."
"To be fair, you weren't the brightest two years ago."
"Anyway, they're expecting a child. Him and his wife. I even sent him a baby shower gift."
"A gift? What, TNT?"
She laughs into his shoulder, and she can feel him metaphorically swelling with pride. And when she stops laughing, there is nothing to distract her from the dull ache in her heart, the string that tugged at it as it desperately reached for Lockwood's. Lockwood, who invigorated her spirit and quelled her anxieties, who was the balmy breeze on a warm summer evening, who smelt of a pleasantly sharp soap. She stumbled and fell a million times with all the wrong people in all the wrong places, but now she felt as though she were being reeled home by the invisible string that permanently and irrevocably tied her to him.
She looks up at the sky, a thousand different shades of blue, purple and pink. The temperature continues to drop, but with Lockwood's arm wrapped around her after a particularly vicious gust of wind, she feels warm enough. She murmurs into his neck and feels the hair at the back of his neck stand against her lips.
"Isn't it just so pretty to think...all along there was some invisible string," she inhales, "tying you...to…me."
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Text
they forgot ~ corpse husband
word count: 2022
request?: yes!
“Corpse husband asks his S/O why they are upset two days before their birthday and they reply, "I just got a text from my parents saying to have a happy birthday today." ”
description: in which an early birthday text sends her mood on a downward spiral just days before her actual birthday
pairing: corpse husband x female!reader
warnings: swearing, shitty parents, some self hatred/insecurities due to shitty parents
masterlist (one, two, three)
Tumblr media
I never liked my birthday. Cliché, I know. That’s how every sad story with a happy birthday ending starts.
I was a cliché from my high school days, too. I only had two friends, so “birthday parties” were always just the three of us in my basement watching the same movies. I tried to have an actual birthday party once for my Sweet 16. Only because my mother insisted upon it. Made me send out invitations to my entire class and decorated our house before leaving for the night so we could “have a real good time”.
No one showed up besides the usual two friends, and we ended up in the basement watching movies yet again.
That was another issue: my parents.
I know they loved me...in their own way, anyways. Most years we didn’t celebrate my birthday. Not how I would want to celebrate it, anyways. If it were up to me, we’d go out on the night of my birthday to one of my favorite restaurants and maybe have a board game night or something. Just be together as a family for my day. But that’s never how it went. My parents were always “busy” the day of my birthday. Mom made the mistake of telling me once that she forgot it was even my birthday and booked a day out with her friends. She didn’t ask if I wanted to come with them. If we ever did anything, it was usually whatever they decided with very little input from me.
I thought I was weird for disliking my birthday, until I met Corpse.
Corpse didn’t like his birthday either. When it came around the first time when we started dating, I didn’t make a big deal over it as he asked. I got him a gift and a cupcake with a candle in it, but that was it. He did the same for me - small gestures as to not make such a big deal over my birthday.
But, as time went on, Corpse started making a little bit of a bigger deal about my birthday. He’d order in take out form my favorite restaurant, make me dinner (once he also tried to make a cake for dessert), invited over a few of our friends once just to hang out for my birthday. I didn’t notice at first, and by the time I realized what he was doing, I was too happy to be upset. I was finally enjoying my birthday for the first time in...well...almost ever.
Until my parents dragged me back down to Earth.
I was getting ready for work when my phone chimed signaling I had gotten a text. I ignored it at first, figuring I’d answer whenever I finished getting ready. But when it went off a second time, just moments after the first, I figured it was important. I picked up my phone and the screen lit up, displaying two unread texts from my parents.
“Happy Birthday sweetheart. We hope you have a wonderful day.”
“We love you very much and we are so proud of you.”
It would’ve been a really sweet series of messages if it weren’t for the fact that my birthday wasn’t for another two days.
I sat down on the edge of mine and Corpse’s bed. I kept re-reading the texts until they burned into my eyeballs, the words “Happy Birthday sweetheart” standing out every time I blinked, until welling tears washed the image away.
I thought things were different. I thought I was actually becoming someone worth celebrating, or at least worst remembering my fucking birthday. But if my own parents couldn’t even be bothered to remember when their only child was born, how could anyone else be bothered to remember or care about me?
“I thought you had work.”
I jumped at the sound of the deep voice I usually loved so much. I hadn’t heard Corpse come out of his editing room. It had been another night of Corpse’s fucked up sleep schedule keeping him up from sun down to sun up. I had gotten used to our sleep schedules often conflicted, especially when my work required me to wake up semi-early in the morning. I guess I had momentarily forgotten he wasn’t in our bed while I was getting ready for work.
I quickly wiped my eyes and shoved my phone into my pocket. “Yeah, I do. I got distracted, I guess.”
I stood and made my way out of our bedroom, pausing only to give Corpse a quick kiss. I mumbled a “Goodbye, love you” as I exited our apartment, leaving before he could notice I was upset.
~~~~~~
The day passed in a blur. I couldn’t stop thinking about the text. I hadn’t responded, which didn’t trouble my parents too much. Part of me hoped they would realize their mistake if I didn’t respond and would apologize for mixing up the dates. But that never happened. They didn’t text me back at all. Didn’t even acknowledge that I hadn’t responded. They probably hadn’t even noticed.
I couldn’t wait to get home and crawl into bed and end this shitty day. If I was lucky, Corpse also would’ve forgotten my birthday and we wouldn’t do anything to celebrate the day I was once again dreading the most.
Corpse was laying in our bed, re-watching Death Note for the hundredth time. I kicked off my shoes and shrugged off my jacket before getting into bed with him.
“I can’t believe you started without me,” I teased, trying not to let my upset show in front of him.
“There was nothing else to watch,” he responded.
“We have Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu, but there was nothing to watch?”
Corpse put a hand over my mouth and shushed me. I giggled and rested my head against his chest. I was starting to feel somewhat better after the day I had had.
He moved his hand from my mouth to my back and started running his fingertips up and down my spine. “How was work?”
I made a grunt sound in response. “It was okay, I guess.”
“Only okay?”
I shrugged. “Nothing especially good or bad happened. It was just a day.”
His hand ran from my back to my hair. I shivered from the cool feeling of his metal rings against my skin, leaving a tingling feeling in their wake. His fingers tangled through my hair as he started to play with it.
“What’s on your mind, honey?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I responded, although it didn’t come out very convincingly.
“You’ve seemed upset since before you went to work. Did something happen this morning?”
Tears started to prick my eyes again. Corpse always knew when something was wrong. It was like he had a sixth sense about when I was upset, and he wouldn’t let up until I talked about it even a little bit. It could be annoying since I was so used to just dealing with my upset and sadness myself, but it did always help me to feel better when I talked to him.
Corpse paused the show and moved so he could face me. He wiped away the fresh falling tears with his thumbs. “What happened, baby?”
“M-My parents,” I sniffled.
That was really all he needed to hear. Corpse knew about the relationship I had with my parents. He had only met them once and decided that was one too many times for him. His once soft gaze at my sad face immediately darkened when I told him. “What did they do?”
“They...they sent me a text this morning,” I said. “Two, actually. Wishing my a happy birthday and telling me they love me and they’re proud of me.”
His brows furrowed in confusion. “But...your birthday is...”
He trailed off as I started to nod. The dam officially broke within me and I began to sob. Corpse quickly pulled me to him, burying my head in his chest and allowing me to cry into his shirt. At least he loved wearing black clothing so it wasn’t like I was staining the material with my sadness.
“Th-They couldn’t even be bothered to remember,” I said. “All these years I thought...I thought I was finally becoming important enough for other people to even...remember the day I was fucking born.”
“Of course you’re important enough.”
I shook my head. “Not important enough for my own parents to remember my birthday. My own fucking parents, Corpse! They were fucking there when I was born! You’d think, of all people, the person who popped me out of her fucking vagina would remember what day she did that. But she doesn’t, and she’s never given enough of a fuck to remember that day and make it special for me. Never! So why would anyone else care that much about me when my own parents can’t?”
Corpse pulled me away from his chest and looked down at me. He wiped the tears from my face again, gently running his thumbs under my eyes and down my face to catch the tears.
“I care,” he said. “I have since the very first day that I met you. If you hadn’t told me that you didn’t like your birthday, I may have thrown you the best party I possibly could just to celebrate you.”
I couldn’t help but let out a shaky chuckle. “You hate people.”
“I love you, though. And if you wanted a party, I’d try to give you a party.”
I shook my head. “Everything you’ve done for me since we got together is more than enough.”
“You say that, but to me it feels like it’s far from being enough. Your birthday is one of very few days that I actually want to celebrate throughout the year because you are something I want to celebrate. I don’t know what I’d do if I never met you.”
“Probably be doing the same thing you’re doing now: watching Death Note all night until you fall asleep at 5am.”
He chuckled. “Okay, yes, but I wouldn’t have someone to do that with me. And that’s what means the most to me. Since I met you, I haven’t felt as alone as I once did. You make me feel so happy, (Y/N). More than I think you could ever know.”
I could feel my eyes welling up again, but this time it was happy tears. I leaned forward to kiss Corpse, before pulling away to wipe my face again. Kissing someone while you’re crying, or while your face is still wet from crying, can be slightly awkward. Not that I thought Corpse would’ve minded at all.
“You make me happy, too,” I told him. “I’m glad I found you, and that we’re building this life together and starting our own family. Well...our found family.”
“One day it’ll be a real family. Whenever I start feeling better.”
I took his hands in mine and kissed them. “I can wait. As long as I have you.”
He eventually coaxed me to lie down with him again and pressed play on the show. I tried to stay awake to watch it with him, but after working most of the day and having cried a number of times, my eyes were feeling very heavy. I had to fight against my eyelids to keep them open, but it was a losing battle. At one point I had even managed to drift off to sleep for a few seconds before a sound on the TV caused me to jolt awake.
Corpse chuckled. “Do you want me to turn it off so you can sleep?”
I shook my head. “No, that’s okay. I don’t mind listening to it while I fall asleep.”
“Falling asleep to Death Note. And I thought I was fucking weird.”
If I had the energy I would’ve playfully hit his chest. Instead, I just grunted and turned into him more.
I felt his chest vibrate as he chuckled again. “Goodnight, baby. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I mumbled before finally drifting off to sleep.
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jumexju · 1 month
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LAVENDER KISS
Pairing !! : L / Reader
Fic Type !! : Comfort / Fluff / Oneshot
CW !! : Mentions of depression (PDD), severe depressive episodes to the point of it being debilitating, reader is described to have curly hair
Summary !! : L is surprisingly good at taking care of you.
Note !! : This is highly self indulgent.
✦ MASTERLIST
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There were times when you weren’t alright. Times in which the nights felt better than days, the isolation of your apartment better than socializing with people & when the cold breeze felt better than the warm rays of sun on your skin. It wasn't that you preferred to feel so.. empty. No one truly wants that for themselves. But nonetheless, it was something you’d dealt with since your adolescence. You couldn't control it.. Or maybe you’d just given up. In a way, it’d become a comfort to you. A sort of warm blanket that was forcibly wrapped around you every few weeks.  
You always knew when a specifically bad episode was about to happen. 
You started off your day with a cup of coffee. Or, well, you would have if you hadn’t had trouble getting out of bed in the first place. You peeled the blanket off of your skin, exposing yourself to, what you felt, was the biting cold of your apartment. Trudging through your empty, dimly-lit apartment, you tiredly brushed your teeth and made yourself a cup of coffee afterwards. You didn’t even drink half of it before deciding to go back to bed. Maybe if you slept through it, it’d get better. 
But you knew better than to lie to yourself. 
It was 8 PM when you awoke to the sounds of the door opening. Your brows furrowed as you rubbed the sleep from your eyes. You hadn’t invited anyone over.. And you were the only one with a key to your apartment besides.. Oh. You got up from your bed and walked to where you heard the sounds of his presence. Leaning on the wall, you smiled a little as you gazed upon his hunched frame. He was still taller than you despite his posture, which he found to be amusing. 
“Did you solve the case?” Your soothing voice ricocheted off the walls of your apartment. The soft sounds pleasing to his ears. He wasn’t an emotional man but he could admit that he missed you. Though.. You looked more tired than you usually did. He wondered why that was. 
“Yes.. It was particularly easy unfortunately. Did I come at a bad time?” His calm tone brought you a sense of comfort. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t miss him too.  
“No, no.. I was just sleeping but,” you chuckled nervously as you yawned, “I’ve basically slept the whole day away, So..” His wide eyes narrowed at your seemingly worn-out figure. Were you not sleeping enough? 
“Are you okay?” He was never the type to sugarcoat things. 
But then again, neither were you. “No, ..I’m depressed.” You reluctantly admitted it but you knew he wouldn’t judge you. He dealt with it too.. Maybe that’s why you two worked so well together. 
You didn’t know how — or when — he’d gotten so close, but you weren’t fighting it. In fact, you desperately wanted his warmth. The feeling of knowing that someone knew what you were going through and validated you was priceless. You appreciated him greatly, you just hoped he knew it too. L wrapped his arms around your neck in a comforting gesture, you inhaled the scent of lavender that he carried as you brought your arms up and hugged him back. Whenever you two hugged, it was never just a hug. It felt like nothing else mattered when he had his arms around you, in the same way, everything melted away whenever he had you in his arms. Though he could never express his feelings clearly, he knew that you would understand. You always did. 
“Have you showered yet?” He asked you as he played with your frizzy curls. You hadn’t had the energy to shower in a week.. It was embarrassing and you felt guilty about it. But whenever you thought about showering, all you could do was sigh. It all felt like a huge chore to do. Especially with your curly hair, just thinking about the sectioning, the detangling, the creams, the diffusing.. Lord. You just didn't want to think about it. You didn’t want to lie to him — he would find out the truth anyway — so you shamefully nodded. 
“That’s ok. I’ll start a warm bath for you.” L usually didn’t spend his time doing such trivial things, he was the World's Greatest Detective after all! He should be solving cases and serving justice, yet instead he was here. With you. Taking care of you. 
You couldn’t be more grateful for him. 
“..Thank you.” You meekly said as you looked up at him, his softened dark eyes gazing at you. He didn’t say anything else, just gave you a kiss on your forehead and told you to go get your towel while he started the bath. 
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The sound of your soft humming matched the quiet jazz that played in the background as you let L detangle your hair for you after he divided it into sections. He was familiar with the routine both because he had seen you do it multiple times and because he did his own research on it. Unsurprisingly, he was great at it. His pale fingers were meticulously gentle as they worked to get the tangles out of your hair. 
“I’m not hurting you, am I?” He carefully asked as he unclipped another section of hair and began detangling it. 
“No, you’re good.” You smiled to yourself as you felt him take his time combing through your curls. “You’re actually really good at this y’know.. Thank you.” 
He smiled a little, “Your hair smells nice.” 
“Yeah? It smells like you.” You played around with the water, your knees pressed up against your chest as he took care of you. 
“I have a smell?” He snickered. 
You watched as the water from your hands poured back into the body of water in the tub, “Yeah. Lavender.” 
“Did you know that lavender soothes anxiety and depression?” 
You chuckled, “I didn’t know that,” You turned to look at him, “Is that why you wear it?” 
“Mmm.. No, it’s just a benefit.” He planted a kiss on your nose, you scrunched it in reaction to it before turning your back to him again. 
“Either way, I like how it smells. It reminds me of you.” L smiled as he heard your words. 
“Are you feeling better?” 
You nodded lightly, “Now that you’re here, yeah.” 
After shampooing and conditioning your hair, he helped you scrub your body to get you all clean. It was the first time he’d ever seen you naked, but it didn’t feel sexual at all. He didn’t make comments on your body or make you feel awkward in any way — in fact he made you feel seen. 
And not at all in a bad way.  
That was when you realized the difference between a man that respected you and a man that only saw you as an object. He loved you and he’d shown it many times, but he was still respectful of you — even after 2 years. Hell, he still asked if it was alright when he kissed you. 
It was one of the things that you loved about him. 
He wrapped your towel around you and helped you dry off. “These are the creams you use, right?” He asked as he took out two containers & a bottle of light-weight liquid gel. 
“Yeah, this one, too.” You handed him the bottle of mousse and continued to dry yourself off. He took the lid off of the containers and began to work his magic after sectioning your hair off again to make sure that the product was evenly spread throughout your hair. His gentle hands wasted no time in getting themselves sticky with cream as he did your hair for you, maybe acts of service was one of his love languages? 
You didn’t know, all you knew was that it was strangely domestic for the two of you to be doing this. But it wasn’t unwelcomed. It was a simple gesture, him helping you shower and do your hair.. It was simple. Maybe.. “..Why are you doing all of this for me?” 
“..Does there need to be a reason?” He was rather quick with his response. But you knew that L never did anything without a reason, hardly any of his actions were without one. You decided to tell him so. “You’re telling me there wasn’t a reason..? You just wanted to help?” You sounded surprised. And rightly so. 
Because L didn’t do trivial things like this, you noted again. L didn’t just visit his lover just to have to take care of them. L wouldn't go this far for his partner.
But.. “Is that unreasonable?” he asked you. “I empathize with your situation.. And you’re dear to me, I do not want to see you go through it by yourself.” ..Maybe he really did do trivial things like this.. Or maybe they weren’t so trivial to him in the first place. 
“..Oh.” you felt the heat rise to your cheeks as you combed and scrunched your curls. You never would have believed that he’d do this if he wasn’t behind you doing just that. 
“Have you eaten?” He asked as the soft jazz played in the living room of your apartment, he decided to make a calm environment while he helped you bathe and figured it’d please you if you had music as background noise. He truly was a sweetheart, more than you initially gave him credit for. 
“Not yet, I spent the whole day sleeping..” As if on cue, your stomach began to grumble.  “Do you have anything you’re craving? I can have Watari bring something over.” He offered to you as his skilled hands carded through the last section and scrunched it up. 
“I don’t want anything heavy so.. Can we get chocolate cheesecake?” You looked at your hair in the mirror, admiring his skills. 
“Yeah of course. Is that it?” He asked. 
“Mhm.” you answered with a warm tone to your voice. Him doing all this for you didn’t cure you from your debilitating episode of depression, but it lifted your spirits. He got the hairdryer out of the cabinet you had it in after calling Watari and telling him to bring over some cheesecake. You handed him the diffuser attachment and he snapped it on. “It should be on medium heat,” You told him before sitting back on the lid of the toilet to make it easier for him to dry your hair. 
It was nice having him care for you, you had to admit. 
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After he had finished with your hair. The both of you indulged in that chocolate cheesecake you wanted, he had surprised you with macarons too since he knew how much you liked them. One of the things you two had in common was your sweet tooth, though his was stronger than yours. That’s why you accompanied your cheesecake with a cup of milk instead of a too-sweet coffee like he did. 
Now, you laid in bed with him at your side. Your arm loosely splayed across his torso while he laid on his back with his arm under your neck, basically keeping you at his side. “..Thank you for coming today.” You told him softly, the moonlight seeping in through your window. “I really needed it..- no, you.” 
“Why didn’t you ask me to come over sooner, ____?” he asked you. His black eyes gazed upon you with only warmth and care in them. 
“..I didn’t want to bother you.” You almost whispered it, but it was true. You knew he was busy. And you knew you’d get better soon anyway by yourself so what was the harm? “Did you really want to know?” 
“Yes.” He answered without hesitation. “If you’re hurting, I would like to know. Even though I cannot take the pain away, I could be there for you.” L answered confidently. “You’re not a bother to me. I know that cases keep me busy, but I can always make time for you.” 
You swear you could almost tear up at what he was saying to you. He sounded so genuine.. It almost felt as if you would be insulting him to think that he wouldn’t want to know about your mental health. “I’ll try to let you know from now on, then..” You smiled into his white tee. 
He planted a kiss on your forehead, his fingers grazing your cheeks. “Go to sleep, you need it.”
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wolfjackle-creates · 9 months
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Bring Me Home Arc 2 Part 15
Happy WIP Wednesday! (Ignores the fact that it's almost an hour into Thursday my time.)
Story Summary: Tim and Danny are both neglected by parents who care more about their work than their families. They deal with this by spending too much time online and find each other playing MMORPGs. They keep up their friendship as Tim becomes Robin and Danny becomes Phantom and don't bother keeping secrets from each other.
First, Previous
Word Count: 1.2k
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“Shit. Okay. I’ll fly us back. Bye Tim, everyone!” Danny picked up Tucker and flew away, turning invisible before he was more than a few yards away.
Tim sighed as he watched them. “Invisibility would be such a useful power. Paired with intangibility? Do you have any idea how much that’d help us out in Gotham?”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Cassie dismissively. “So what’re we doing for the next few hours?”
Wulf cocked his head and looked at them. Tim waved to him. “Let’s see what we can find out from our maybe-friend here.” Then, to Wulf, he asked, “Walker?”
Wulf’s bemused expression turned angry and he snarled.
Tim laughed and gave a thumbs up to show his agreement. “I’ve”—he pointed at himself—“heard”—this time his ears—“bad”—he scowled—“things about Walker.”
“Malbono,” said Wulf.
Tim grinned. “Very malbono,” he agreed.
Wulf bared his teeth, but this time, Tim thought it was more of a grin.
Cassie sat down on the ground. “So, Wulf and Danny are both targeted by this Walker ghost. How do we keep them safe?”
Tim shrugged. To Wulf, he said, “We”—pointing to him and his friends—“keep you”— pointing to Wulf—“safe. Secure. Protect.” Hopefully at least one of those words would be similar enough to the Esperanto word for the same concept.
“Protekti,” agreed Wulf.
Bart pointed at himself. “One.” Then to Conner, “Two.” Tim was called three and Cassie four. With a stick, he drew a crude figure of Danny’s ghost form, Sam, and Tucker, counting each one to seven. Then he pointed to Wulf. “Eight.” He drew the number in the dirt to reinforce the count. “Walker, how many?” He lifted his hands in an I-don’t-know gesture.
Wulf started with his hands close and slowly spread them wide. “Multaj.”
Tim’s stomach sank at the answer. They’d faced bad odds before, but it was never good.
“What does Walker want?” asked Conner.
But Wulf only looked at him in confusion and none of them could figure out how to ask that in charades.
Cassie grabbed another stick and began drawing. She started with a line and on one side, she had humanoid ghosts with tails instead of legs, on the other side she had stick figures. Then she drew arrows from the ghost side to the human side. Under the arrows, she drew question marks. Looking up, she asked, “How?”
Wulf bared his teeth again and pointed at himself. “Wulf.” He flexed his hand showing off his claws. Conner tensed at the action, but Wulf ignored him. Instead, he drew his hand down the air. Tim felt like he could hear tearing, but it was as if the sound originated in his brain, bypassing his ears entirely.
In the path of Wulf’s claws was a glowing green portal. Another gesture and it disappeared.
Tim stared in wonder. “So, if you’re here and with us, Walker can’t send any more ghosts to Amity. That makes things so much easier.”
Wulf only grinned at him.
Bart poked Tim’s side. “Think he needs to eat?”
Tim laughed. “You’re just hungry yourself. He’s already dead.”
Bart shrugged. “We haven’t had lunch yet.”
“I’m with Bart,” said Cassie. “I’m getting hungry. And it’d be rude to not offer anything to him. Bart, get us stuff from that burger place Danny took us to. And grab extra in case our new friend wants anything.”
Tim rummaged around in his bag and pulled out two hundred dollars cash. All three of his friends had metabolisms to match their powers. “Here, get as much as you want. Simple cheeseburger and fries for me.”
The others gave their orders and Bart was off.
The rest of the afternoon was spent mostly hanging out in the woods with Wulf. When Bart had offered him a burger, he’d sniffed it before pulling a face and giving it back. Bart just shrugged and ate it himself.
“Shouldn’t you be doing homework?” Conner asked Tim after a while. They’d run through most of the questions they could ask via pantomime and Bart and Cassie had taken to pointing at things and asking what they were called in Esperanto. “Bruce won’t be happy with you.”
Tim sighed. “No, you’re right. If we can’t research in the library, I should do something productive.”
Though it only took an hour and a half of going through his schoolwork for Tim to want to tear his own hair out. He slammed his book shut, making four pairs of eyes instantly fly to him.
“I can’t do this anymore! I can’t wait until I don’t need to be in school anymore. Who wants to spar with me?”
Conner stepped forward. “I’ll take the first round.”
“Great. I’m going to use the staff Danny gave me. I want to practice with it more.”
Wulf watched them as they sparred. Tim held his own against Conner, though ultimately the half-Kryptonian won. Cassie beat him next.
Bart sat the spars out because he won every time if allowed to fight. But he made a very good referee.
Tim and Cassie were having their third match of the day when Danny, Sam, and Tucker rejoined them.
Tim was breathing hard as he blocked another blow from Cassie with his staff. “Hey, Danny,” he said. Then he did a twist he’d learned from Dick coupled with a move he’d learned from Lady Shiva and Cassie was flat on her back. Tim grinned as he offered her a hand to help her up. “Looks like I win the last match of the day.”
“Well I won our two previous ones,” retorted Cassie as she took his hand.
Sam let out a whistle. “Damn, that was impressive. Where’d you learn to fight like that?”
“B sent me to Europe for several months to train from a bunch of different masters when I forced him to take me on.”
“Must’ve been good teachers if you can hold your own as a regular human against metas.”
Tim nodded and moved so he could nudge Danny. “I’ve been trying to convince this one to join me for a few weekends so I could get him some training, but he’d rather rely on luck and his powers.”
Danny rolled his eyes and scoffed. “You know that’s not what it is. I’m just afraid that if I leave any more often than I have to, something will happen!”
“Sure, sure,” said Tim. “But now that your parents know me and I can see just how bad it is, I’ll be coming to you to train you. No getting out of it now!”
Danny just groaned.
Tucker grinned. “Let me know when you come, and I’ll fit your training sessions into Danny’s schedule.”
“Absolutely.”
Sam pointed her thumb at Wulf. “So, how’re we gonna sneak a giant ghost through town and into my house anyway?”
Danny shrugged. “I figured he and I could fly there invisibly. I’ll drop my invisibility and enter through the door so your parents or grandma see me enter, and Wulf will drop it once we’re in private.”
“Fine, fine. Come on, then.”
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Next
In the show, there was a time skip between when Danny caught up with Wulf during his school lunch period and the four (Danny, Sam, Tucker, Wulf) all cramming into Tucker's bedroom that night. So I have no idea if Danny returned to school or not. And if he did, what did Wulf do all afternoon and evening? How did they meet up again? Or am I right and Danny skipped?
Good thing we have other people here to help out this time and it doesn't matter!
I no longer do tag lists for this fic, but please checkout the Subscription Post if you want notifications when this updates.
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