#looks like he’s grown several feet taller again still

[ylly22]

Brian and Anita at the 2024 RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival, in Hampton Court, East Molesey, Surrey - UK - 1 July

©Mark Thomas/Alamy News

[bigmpregnm]

Becoming a Broodfather - Part 5

[Story Collection] | [Part 4] [●] ✅

“Hmmm. Even after all these months, your ass feels delicious. Even better now that you’re so big,” Tim said as he kneaded Ashton’s muscular ass cheeks after their first round of morning sex. “You really know how to please a man, big guy,” Tim added, slapping Ashton’s ass and sending shivers down his spine. Ashton smiled, rubbing his big belly and feeling the babies kick up a storm; they always got active after a hard fuck.

Five months had passed since the day Ashton embraced his role as a broodfather and spent his entire day fucking all the men in the house. The experience changed Ashton’s mind in many aspects, finally understanding and accepting that he was meant to become a broodfather like Tim. Many things had changed for him that day, but Ashton knew Tim was still in charge. The older man was shorter, but he still fucked Ashton whenever he wanted and in the position he wanted.

Ashton had grown a lot over the last few months. His massive frame had expanded even more after he accepted his future as a broodfather. He was taller than when he met Tim; his muscles were enormous, making him look cartoonish; his dick had grown to almost 3 feet long; and his pecs, belly, and balls were enormously full of children. Ashton was pregnant with 75 babies; most of them were Tim’s, but after his long day of fucking with the husbands, each had added a batch of kids to his massive body. 20 babies were in his pecs, 20 more in his balls, and 35 grew in his big belly. He felt gigantic, but it seemed like he wasn’t nearing the birth of the babies yet.

Ashton turned and looked at Tim, whose body had grown bigger than five months ago, even though he had given birth to the fifty babies he carried back then. Tim had been so impressed by his husbands’ and Ashton’s growth that after giving birth, he made them all fuck him hard for hours, resulting in the conception of 90 babies. He carried ten babies in each pec, 10 in each ball, and 50 in his belly, making him look gigantic even though he was only 5 months along with them.

“Well, you’ve taught me well, and I think your husbands agree that I’m a great broodfather,” Ashton said, caressing his belly with one hand while the other reached for Tim’s massive dick to rub it.

“We all agree, but never forget you’re mine to enjoy whenever I want. Even after you find your own husbands, I’ll come over and fuck you whenever I want,” Tim said, slapping Ashton’s muscular ass again.

“I’m counting on it,” Ashton responded as Tim slowly got off the bed, carefully walking toward the door to check on the husbands in the house.

Ashton sighed as he slowly turned his heavy body in bed to get in a sitting position. He rubbed the sides of his massive belly, smiling as he caressed his taut skin. He knew he should’ve given birth to the first batch of babies Tim put into him already. However, it seemed like the first batch of kids was waiting for the babies Tim and the husbands added five months ago to catch up and continue their development. The same happened with the other men in the house, resulting in a very long pregnancy for each one.

Ashton sighed and slowly stood up from the bed, heading for the door to meet with the other husbands in the house. He only wore a jockstrap, so the rest of his fertile body was on full display. Ashton caressed his pecs while walking because they didn’t let him see much past them. His body had grown so thick that his vision was limited, but he couldn’t wait to grow even more. If their estimations were correct, Ashton and the husbands still had four more months to grow before the birth of all the babies.

As Ashton was lost in his thoughts, feeling the babies moving, he saw Byron slowly walking down the hall, his breathing shallow and groans escaping his lips. Byron was very pregnant by any standard, and his balls made him move at a snail’s pace. After the intense fucking and several rounds of sex with Ashton and Tim 5 months ago, Byron carried 50 babies, and most of them were in his balls. 30 of those babies were in his balls, 10 in his belly, and 5 in each pec.

“Hey there, big guy. How are you doing?” Ashton asked, making Byron stop and turn around.

“I’m big and clumsy, but that’s not new,” Byron said, smiling at Ashton, who approached to rub his belly against Byron’s. “You look great today. You’re glowing,” Byron added, enjoying Ashton’s touch.

“No, I’m bursting; that’s different,” Ashton kidded, making Byron chuckle. “Just like you.” Ashton reached for Byron’s ass and firmly grabbed it, making him gasp and shiver.

Byron’s dick rose to full mast inside his jockstrap while Ashton moved his hands to caress his massive balls. Ashton knew Byron’s balls were sensitive, so he enjoyed teasing them before fucking him. However, Ashton only teased Byron until the big-balled man was heavily panting.

Ashton fucked all the husbands regularly, as often as Tim, enjoying each encounter and longing to knock them up even more. So with Tim and Ashton around, the husbands were in a permanent state of arousal that usually led them to long fuck sessions with the broodfathers.

Ashton smiled and leaned to kiss Byron’s cheeks while he panted. Byron stayed in the hall for a few seconds, catching his breath and rubbing his balls as the babies kicked. Ashton continued his walk to the living room to meet with the other husbands.

As he approached the living room, Ashton saw Carson struggling to reach his nipples, which looked incredibly engorged. Carson was as pregnant as Byron, but his body was very different. Carson was pregnant with 55 babies, with 15 in each pec, 15 in his belly, and five in each ball. The rest of his body was thicker, but his pecs looked enormous on his tall frame.

“Good morning, what’s up?” Ashton asked, marveling at Carson’s massive chest.

“My pecs are so full, and my nipples ache, and I need to get ready for work” Carson responded, groaning and rubbing the sides of his overpacked pecs. “These kids won’t stop moving and I’m running late.”

Ashton smiled and got his hands on Carson’s pecs to massage them. His large hands worked wonders on Carson’s enormous pecs, and when Ashton’s hands rubbed around the engorged nipples, Carson couldn’t help but moan in pure bliss. Ashton knew how to get each of the husbands going, instantly turning them on. As Ashton’s massage continued, Carson’s moans grew louder, and his nipples started leaking milk, prompting Ashton to lick them for a while to tease the big-chested man a bit more.

Ashton moved away from Carson as he panted heavily. Ashton loved to play with them like that because, when they got aroused, they always looked for him later, begging for the young broodfather to fuck them over and over again.

“See you later, big man. Come meet me after work,” Ashton said, leaving a breathless Carson behind.

Byron used to have a regular job, but his body had gotten so big that he only attended his job a few days a week. One of the biggest struggles he faced was finding clothes to wear for work, so he often worked from home, where he could stay naked or only wear a jockstrap. The same happened with Aaron, whose high fertility made him carry more babies than Byron and Carson. However, in Carson’s case, as a very important CEO, he didn’t have the option to work from home so he still had to go to the office every day.

Thinking about Aaron, Ashton finally entered the living room and saw the fertile man standing by the couch. If Byron and Carson looked ready to burst, Aaron was an impending bomb, bulging in all directions. Aaron carried 65 babies, 10 in each pec, 35 in his belly, and 5 in each ball. His body was thick all over, but his fat ass had grown so large that it rivaled the size of his pecs. If Ashton didn’t know better, he would think Aaron was also carrying babies in his ass.

Aaron was looking away from where Ashton stood, so as the young broodfather approached, Aaron only rubbed his very fertile body and groaned in discomfort. He was naked, so when Ashton got right behind him, the massive bare ass came into contact with Ashton’s belly, sending shivers down their spines. Aaron absentmindedly pushed his hips backward to tease Ashton, whose dick got immediately hard in the pouch, making the fabric tear due to its massive size.

Ashton rubbed his hard dick against Aaron’s fat ass, making the big, fertile man moan in pleasure. Ashton pushed his hips forward and buried the head of his dick into Aaron’s hole, quickly pushing more of the 3-foot-long fuck tool in. Aaron gasped as Ashton’s massive dick stretched his hole.

“This fat ass was begging for some fun,” Ashton said, slowly bucking his hips to fuck Aaron. “It feels as good as ever. So plump and delicious.”

“Yes. Fuck me hard,” Aaron cried out as Ashton pounded into him. “You and Tim did this to me, and I’ve been so horny. I need you. Fill me up with your cum.” Aaron was entranced as he leaned forward as best as he could to let Ashton fit more of his dick in.

Ashton grinned and intensified the fucking, feeling his balls churn full of cum. Moans filled the living room while Ashton continued pounding, soon releasing a long growl, announcing he was cumming buckets inside Aaron’s guts, whose eyes were blank due to pleasure. Aaron’s hands reached to rub his belly, feeling his skin tightening. He loved every time Ashton or Tim filled him up to the brim; it helped him deal with the magnitude of his pregnancy.

Ashton smiled and kept his dick inside Aaron for a few minutes, enjoying the feeling of the plump fat ass pushing tightly against him. Ashton massaged Aaron’s hips while they caught their breaths. Then, after a hard slap on Aaron’s ass, Ashton pulled his dick out and removed the remaining shredded fabric of his jockstrap.

“See you later, big guy,” Aaron said, rubbing his belly as Ashton turned around to head to the kitchen.

Ashton felt powerful when he fucked any of the husbands, but deep inside him, he desired to expand his brood even more. He’d heard Tim talking about him finding his own husbands, and he’d been thinking about it very often, and seeing the husbands enjoying the fucking so much, he couldn’t help but think that part of his responsibility as a broodfather was to make others join the fun.

As he thought about going out and finding his own husbands, Ashton entered the kitchen and found Dalton and Fallon talking by the counter. Dalton’s slimmer body contrasted with Fallon’s much thicker one, but each of their pregnancies made them look fantastic, even glowing. Both men smiled when they saw Ashton walking in, fully naked. Dalton only wore his apron as always, which barely covered his enormous belly and left everything else exposed. Fallon wore jockstraps like everybody else in the house because nothing else fit.

“Good morning, big daddy. How are you doing today?” Dalton smiled and sensually rubbed his belly when he saw Ashton’s naked form.

“I’m great. But you guys look fantastic,” Ashton replied as he approached, reaching to squeeze Fallon’s love handles.

“Well, I look like a whale. A helpless whale,” Fallon replied, rubbing his massive, somewhat squishy belly. “These kids won’t stop kicking and are making me so hungry. I eat 24/7, so I’m glad Dalton is always willing to cook for me.”

Fallon patted his belly and made it jiggle a bit. He was as pregnant as the other husbands, but his fatness made him look thicker. He carried 55 babies like Carson, but the distribution was different. Fallon carried 20 babies in his belly, 10 in each pec, 10 in one of his balls, and five on the other, which had grown even larger to balance the size. Ashton loved to rub Fallon’s balls because the sensation was incredible. One of his balls was firm and full of kids, while the other was softer and squishy.

Ashton smiled and got right by Fallon’s side, rubbing their bellies together. Ashton teased the big guy, moving his hands to his fat ass and slapping it hard to see his whole body jiggle. Ashton’s touch always left Fallon panting and gasping for air; his usually anxious thoughts faded away when the new broodfather was close.

“You’re making the babies very active,” Fallon said, groaning as large bumps formed all over his belly. “This always happens when you get this close or when Tim fucks me,” Fallon added, gasping as the babies moved even more when Ashton leaned to massage Fallon’s balls, sending shivers down his spine. Fallon started panting immediately, and the babies got even more active.

After a few seconds of teasing, Ashton grinned and moved away, approaching Dalton, who stood in front of them with one hand on the small of his back and the other on his belly. Since Dalton wasn’t as thick as Fallon, his belly looked huge on him. Dalton was carrying 45 babies—25 in his belly, 5 in each pec, and 5 in each ball. His apron didn’t cover much, so Ashton could clearly see Dalton’s huge dick fully hard beneath his belly.

Getting by Dalton’s side, Ashton reached for the guy’s dick and started gently rubbing it. Dalton smiled and moaned while Ashton continued teasing him. Ashton loved to fuck all of them, but he also loved to tease them just for fun. It was another way to show them he could do whatever he wanted with them.

“You guys look big everywhere. So fertile and so full,” Ashton said as he rubbed Dalton’s dick. “And this big dick. Seems ready to shoot a massive load,” Ashton added as Dalton’s moans grew louder.

“It is, and... you’re making it feel so good,” Dalton said, struggling to form words as his arousal took over.

Ever since all the husbands got even more pregnant, their pregnancy hormones left them in a constant state of arousal they could barely control. Ashton knew where to touch each one and what to do to each one to tease and leave them begging for a fuck. While Dalton gasped, Ashton leaned in and grabbed the cute bubble, which had grown thicker, to squeeze it hard and arouse Dalton even more.

When Ashton noticed Dalton was losing his mind in pleasure, he released his dick and moved away. Teasing all the husbands assured him that they would beg for a fuck later. Ashton loved to play with them, and he still had another big pregnant husband to see.

Winking at Fallon and patting Dalton’s belly, Ashton walked to the hall connecting the family wing and the children’s wing, leaving both men longing for a fuck. Ashton moved slowly through the hall, and even from a distance, he saw Eaton’s massive figure leaning in against a wall, leaving his bare muscular ass on display for Ashton. Eaton was the biggest of the husbands, even though he wasn’t the most pregnant. His muscles had grown so large that his massive frame made Ashton gasp. Eaton was the most muscular man Ashton had ever seen.

In addition to his enormous muscles, which would set him apart from a crowd of larger-than-life men, his massive belly, pecs, and balls made him look like a gigantic mountain of a man. With 60 babies—30 large babies in his belly, 5 in each pec, and 10 in each ball—Eaton moved slowly and groaned every time he took a step. Eaton didn’t struggle to carry the weight of his pregnancy, but his muscles were so big that they fought for space, making some movements somewhat difficult.

“Hey there, big man. How are you feeling today?” Ashton asked, approaching Eaton and playfully placing his hands on the massive man’s hips. Eaton was the only person in the house who outsized Ashton’s muscles, and the broodfather loved to tease the bigger man and dominate him.

“Tired. The babies kept me up all night, and it’s somewhat difficult to rub some spots on my belly, balls, and pecs with all these muscles on the way,” Eaton groaned and shivered, enjoying Ashton’s touch. “What about you? I bet you’ve been having fun with the others.”

“Yeah, but not as you might expect. I’ve been just... playing with their bodies and reminding them that I can do whatever I want with them... and with you,” Ashton said, feeling his dick getting harder and rubbing it against Eaton’s butt.

“Oh… You can do whatever you want. Fill me up with even more kids if you want,” Eaton said between moans as Ashton pushed the head of his dick between his ass cheeks. “Fuck me hard, big daddy. Please.”

“I love it when you beg, but I was going to do it anyway,” Ashton said, pushing more of his huge dick into Eaton’s ass and bucking his hips to fuck the massive man. “Let’s get this belly a little bit bigger,” Ashton said, smiling mischievously.

****

After fucking Eaton, making him groan and moan in pleasure, Ashton went back to fuck the other husbands, except for Carson, who was at work. Then Ashton managed to squeeze his massive body into snug, “oversized” clothes to take a walk. He couldn’t stop smiling while he walked down the streets, turning heads and enjoying the attention. People weren’t only surprised by the size of his pregnancy but by his entire massive, muscular body. Ashton loved how people stared at him with shock and respect.

His walk wasn’t long, but he stopped by a coffee shop to take a break and drink water. He sat on a bench in a corner and saw many people eating pastries and drinking different types of juices and coffee. Then, a tall, handsome man caught his attention as he walked in. The man wore a tight-fitting navy blue shirt and snug dress pants that accentuated his big bubble butt, wide hips, and narrow waist. Ashton felt his dick stirring to life in his pants as he observed the man ordering a juice.

He looked as young and tall as Ashton, but his body was very different. With broad, muscular shoulders, well-proportioned bulging pecs, narrow waist, wide hips, fat ass, and thick thighs. His handsome face and perfectly styled mid-length hair made him look like a supermodel. Ashton grinned as something in his mind clicked.

Ashton slowly stood up and went outside, calling the young man’s attention on his way out. Ashton winked at him, and the other man’s eyes widened in shock. Ashton waited outside for a few minutes until the young man walked out with a juice in hand. Ashton leaned back against a wall and rubbed his massive belly while groaning loudly.

“Man… Are you okay?” The young man approached, looking concerned and intrigued. “Do you need any help? An ambulance?”

“I’m fine, but these babies won’t stop moving and turning, and I can’t reach some parts of my belly. I’ve grown too big,” Ashton replied, groaning louder to capture the man’s attention. “The only help I need is a hand or two to rub my belly,” Ashton said, and before he managed to say anything else, the young man placed his hand on his belly and softly caressed it.

“How does that feel?” The young man continued rubbing his belly and didn’t notice Ashton turning around, away from the wall. “I... are you in labor or something?”

“No, I don’t think I’m due yet,” Ashton said, using his massive weight to push the young man’s body, sandwiching and pinning him against the wall. “Do you like how I look?” Ashton asked, keeping the young man trapped between the wall and his belly.

“I-I… yeah, I mean, you look great,” the man said, still rubbing Ashton’s belly.

“Well, I think you’d look great with a big belly full of my babies. You’re perfectly built to give me a large brood. Let’s get somewhere else, and I’ll give you a massive belly, as big or bigger than mine,” Ashton said in a dominant tone, and the young man could only respond with a nod. “I’m Ashton. What’s your name?”

“I’m Austin,” the young man responded, having already surrendered to his broodfather. He was still somewhat confused but knew he had to follow Ashton’s instructions.

Ashton grinned and pulled Austin into a kiss, also reaching back to squeeze the big bubble butt and making the young man moan. Ashton knew he was in control and could only think about filling Austin with a lot of babies. Ashton finally fully understood that, as a broodfather, he could have any man he wanted, and he was eager to find even more men to expand his brood.

The End

[askinkiskarma]

So It Goes... | Jake Sully x Reader

Summary: You meet Jake Sully at a party thrown by your dad for his military friends, and your life is forever changed as a result.

Pairings: Jake Sully x Human!Reader

Word Count: 1.9k

Warnings/notes: just pure filth (18+, Minors DNI).

A/N: I had a dream about Jake Sully last night and this is the result, hahahah. I might turn this into a series if people like it x

You did a number on me But honestly, baby, who's counting?

You don’t know how you found yourself in this scenario again, getting fucked dumb by a man you swore you were done with just a couple hours before. 

The noises coming out of your mouth were unholy, much like the way he was thrusting into you so hard, so deeply it was making you see stars. Over and over. Over and over.

“You like that, don’t you? You’re such a fucking slut for my cock.” 

You were, you always have been, ever since you first laid your eyes on Jake Sully, you were his. 

It was one of the nights your dad organised a get-together for his friends and colleagues, all military men, all 10 feet tall and so fucking hot and muscular, so forbidden, you were dripping in cum just at the thought of one of them drilling into you. 

You put on some nice clothes for the occasion, your dad stressing the importance of this evening to you several times. A little black dress, hugging all of your curves in the best way, some black pumps and a simple necklace with a pearl pendant. Your long hair was flowing softly down your back, covering some of the bare skin on display. You were wearing natural makeup, except for the lips, painted red, your favourite colour. You made your way downstairs to the living room, where you could hear soft chattering from outside the door, and with a deep breath and a glass of champagne in your hands, you walked in. 

You felt eyes on you as you moved towards your father, who was animatedly chatting to some of his colleagues. He smiled fondly at the sight of you, his only daughter, the jewel in the crown of his endless accomplishments. 

“There she is. The best thing I have ever done.” 

“I don’t know, dad, that car you built from scratch is pretty up there, if you ask me. I pale in comparison.” 

All the men around him laughed, and you knew you have done your part for this particular dinner. You came in, you looked pretty and presentable, you made people laugh, all in the span of a few minutes. You were getting good at this. 

You made the rounds, saying hello to all the people you have grown up seeing, knowing, making small talk with. They were nice men, most of them, and you felt comfortable in this situation, surrounded by them, knowing that you were safe in this house, in this life, that if anything were to ever happen to you, you have about 30 trained, powerful soldiers in your phone that would fuck up whoever wanted to mess with you. 

Eventually, you reached a smaller group that was chatting softly, and your eyes immediately glued to one man, that you haven’t seen before. A little taller than the rest, you were barely reaching his ribs even in 5 inch heels, and your knees went weak taking him all in. He was gorgeous, the most gorgeous man you have ever seen; younger - younger than most people here, although that still made him probably twice your age. His hair was shoulder length and braided in small braids, one rogue braid in front of his face, and you felt the sudden urge to touch it, and then his face, his chest, his - 

“So good to see you, kid. How is everything going?” 

“Good, Frank. How about you? How’s the family? I heard Emily got into her dream University, that’s a big accomplishment!”

You felt eyes on you - you felt his eyes on you. There was heat everywhere in your body where his gaze fell, and you felt yourself cowering a little under its intensity. You couldn’t give less of a fuck about Emily and her upcoming trip, not when you were worried all of them will see a line of your arousal dripping down your leg with how wet you were for this man who is yet to speak a word in your direction. 

“Have you met Jake? He’s a new transfer, best of us all if you ask me.” 

You forced yourself to look up at him, and your lips parted with a small gasp when you saw how he was eyeing you. Like you were prey, like a meal he was dying to eat up. Fuck. 

His hand was stretched out in front of you, expectantly, and you took it, shaking it once. He lingered, not letting you go for just a second longer - not long enough to be suspicious, but long enough that you noticed, that it mattered. There was ache in between your legs now, cunt throbbing painfully and desperate for attention. You have never reacted in this way, never had such a visceral reaction to anyone else you have ever met before. The way he was making you feel was so primal, so raw, you were panting in need and you knew then you had to have this man. Whatever it took, you had to have this man fuck you til you passed out. 

“I thought they were all exaggerating when speaking of your beauty, but I now see it was an understatement. It’s nice to meet you…?” 

“Y/N.” 

His head tilted slightly to the sight, and with a small smirk, he said. “Nice to meet you, Y/N. I’m sure I will see you again sometime.” The way your name rolled off his tongue drove you mad. You needed to excuse yourself. Now.

You hurried to your bedroom on the upper floor of the house and closed the door. You didn’t even have it in you to remove your dress, the agony too much, too palpable to allow for such frivolous, pointless distractions. You pulled your lace panties down your legs and threw them carelessly to the side, and reached in your nightstand for your best friend in these kinds of circumstances. You lay on your back in your large, king-size bed and spread your legs, your fingers quickly finding your folds, that were so wet there was a small pool forming on the sheets, and you haven’t even started. You moaned at the contact, so turned on that you knew it was going to take very little to make you cum so hard your legs would be shaking. When you were ready, you directed the vibrator to the entrance of your pussy, sliding it in slowly, feeling every inch. You couldn’t help the moan that escaped, and you couldn’t help the image of the man you just met that was plaguing your mind, driving you to your release faster. 

“Jake...” you moaned his name, trying to will him into existence, into you. 

You came violently, legs shaking and feet curling, panting loudly at the powerful orgasm that enveloped you. It was the best orgasm you have had in a long time - that’s what this man was doing to you - just his image, just the thought of him. 

“Well, I was going to at least buy you dinner first before I expected to see you cum moaning my name, but I'm definitely not complaining.” 

Your eyes shot open and your body upright, vibrator still deep inside of you, and you were shocked to see him, just standing there, just looking at you, same smirk plastered on his face as earlier. Even with a clearer mind, you were still perplexed at his beauty, at his magnetic force just pulling you towards him and you found yourself forgetting about the horrendous situation you were currently in just to admire him a little longer. 

“You like what you see?” He raised an eyebrow, smiling crudely at your fucked out form and your curious eyes. 

“What are you doing here?” 

“I just wanted to check in on you. You seemed… a little flustered at the party, and I was afraid you might be sick. I wouldn’t want you to get sick on my watch, that would be against my duty as your father's friend and colleague.” 

He closed the door swiftly behind him, and made his away towards the bed. Towards you. 

You recoiled, removing the vibrator quickly and pushing your knees together, bringing them to your chest. 

“What do you think you are doing?” 

“I told you, I just want to make sure you are ok.” 

You wanted to tell him to go, but you couldn’t find your voice - not when he was stalking towards you the way he was, a hungry look in his eyes, not when you wanted him to devour you whole. 

He placed his knee on the bed and gently grabbed both your ankles in one hand, pulling you towards him so easily, like you were a tiny doll. You were startled at his actions, but curious to see what he was going to do to you, so you said nothing and waited. 

Once your feet reached the end of the bed, touching his knee, he spread your legs apart, and took you in, his mouth parted to accommodate for the deeper breaths he was taking looking at you. 

“Look at this. All of this for me?” He trailed his hand up your leg and you shuddered at the contact, at the feel of his rough hands on your body, sending pulses of electrical current up and down your entire being. You felt yourself becoming wet yet again, and the anticipation rising in your stomach was making you dizzy. You closed your eyes and let yourself feel him, feel his touch, feel the way his hands reached your folds and tentatively stroked them, removing the slick liquid with two fingers and watching as it dragged when he touched them together and pulled them apart.

Your back was arched now, eyes tightly shut, silently pleading for more, for anything to help you release some of the tension in your lower abdomen. 

“From the moment I saw you walking in that room, tight dress and those lips, those fucking lips, my cock got so hard I thought they would all be able to see, see what you did to me. I could smell you, smell your dripping cunt, and I knew you needed a good fucking, I knew you wanted it as much as I did. Isn’t that right, baby girl?” 

You moaned at his words, so hot, so wrong, you almost came just hearing them. He pushes two fingers in your damp pussy, and the groan he releases when he feels you nearly sets you off, and you buck your hips wildly on his fingers. He pulls them out just as quickly, and when your eyes found his, he had a serious, dangerous expression on his face, which made you gulp audibly.

“I asked you a question.” 

“Yes, yes...” you say panting, “that’s right.”

He pushes his fingers back in, starting a slow, torturous pace that drives you fucking crazy. “That’s right, what?” 

“That’s right…sir.” 

“Good girl.” He quickened his pace, not stopping until your undoing, which made your entire body convulse uncontrollably, cumming all over his long fingers. 

“Fuck, you are so hot. God, I will ruin you, girl. And you will let me, you will beg me to.” 

You knew then he was right. This man will ruin you, and you will watch, unable to do anything about it, but pray that when he’s done, there’s still something left of you to go on. 

[nariism]

sea, swallow me

pair. itoshi sae x gn!reader

content: hurt/comfort, exes to friends (?)

synopsis. you and sae have a conversation by the ocean

wc: 2.6k

"do you believe in the saying 'right person, wrong time'?"

sae blinks, looking toward the water when you ask the question. it's getting cold outside - his fingers are red and numb and his cheeks hurt a little from the wind. the sun set what feels like eons ago, but when you're sitting next to him in the flesh he can't find it in himself to move.

he turns slowly to look at you. you, with your head resting on the knees pulled into your chest. you, with your hair blowing softly in the ocean breeze. you, with that stupidly hazy look in your eyes. distant. it makes his heart sink to the pit of his stomach. he might be ill.

"i don't know. maybe."

your gaze shifts to him suddenly and he nearly jolts out of his skin at the eye contact. you'd been refusing to look at him for the last while, not that he can blame you.

"maybe?" you repeat, looking away again and focusing on the little hole you're digging into the sand with your feet.

he doesn't respond to that, unable to acknowledge your words without the fear that the lump growing in his throat would turn into a sob. the silence stretches long and thin between you as you both sit there in the sand, listening to the waves crashing against the shore.

your relationship was always like that, too. pushing and pulling, water meeting the shoreline and then retreating again. over and over and over.

you notice his quietness, uncharacteristically heavy even for a man so stoic and blunt like him. "sorry. forget i asked."

sae nods, but the question still burns in his mind. he dares to look at you again, this time taking in everything that had changed about you. it'd been nearly a decade, after all. you had grown, matured, maybe gotten just a hair taller. you're still beautiful in a way that steals the air from his lungs and refuses to return it. he has to tear his eyes away from you again when he feels the desire to reach out and touch you, just to see if you're really there beside him. instead, he just sits still with his fingers twitching where they rest in his lap.

"how was your flight home?" you ask him, but you're not even sure if he would call japan home anymore with how long he's been gone.

"it was fine."

"that's good."

another awkward silence.

"did you have a good time in spain?" there's a bitter twinge in your voice. he's not surprised.

he nods again, even though he knows you're not looking. you continue anyways, because you know him so well. regardless of the years you have his every response mapped out.

"how was football? i saw some of your games on tv. it looked like fun. you were really amazing."

he swallows down the thickness in his throat at your words, still supportive even though he was chasing his dream instead of being with you. he still remembers the day he left, the day he stepped onto that plane and couldn't bear to look you in your eyes as he did so. he didn't even watch the airport disappear into the distance from the window. he couldn't. not knowing you were down there.

when he landed in europe he thought he only had two choices: the first was to break your heart gently, softly, delicately. break your heart in a way that would give you hope for his return home. break your heart in a way that would keep you loving him, clinging to the threads of your relationship despite the distance. his other option, of course, was to break your heart cruelly.

he didn't decide which he needed to do until he read his contract for royale and realized he would be in spain for much, much longer than anticipated.

and so he was merciless when he broke your heart. he didn't even spare you a goodbye, just blocking your number and severing all ties with you after giving you a prompt, underwhelming text explaining how he had fallen out of love with you. how you meant nothing to him. he thought he knew you. he thought this was the best for the both of you. he was just a stupid fucking teenager.

you and sae had grown up together. for as long as he could remember you were side by side. and so that night he closed his eyes, pictured the face you must be making as you read his text, and turned his phone off. being a childhood friend had its perks, but right now it was a heavy burden on his heart.

what followed was complete and utter radio silence. eventually you stopped counting the days, the months, the years, and gave up on contacting him ever again. it hurt. more than he would ever know, it hurt. it's why your first instinct when he showed up unannounced at your front door was for you to slam it in his face.

he's back in japan now and nostalgia claws at his throat until he can't breathe, just by simply being in your presence.

"yeah, it went well." and he doesn't elaborate any more than that. he doesn't know how much longer you'll tolerate sitting next to him, after all. he's not going to waste time talking about what he did in spain when you're so clearly irritated about it.

sae watches you carefully. your stare lingers on him for a moment too long before you're turning to face the sea again. "why'd you have to leave me behind?" you ask him with your voice low and eyes misty. a breeze blows the hair into your face and he can no longer see the expression you're making. that's better, he thinks. better for the heart pulsing weakly in his chest.

"i had to," he tells you matter-of-factly, like he always used to.

"i know. fuck, i get it. you went to go follow your dreams or whatever. i just wish i was a part of them." you sound frustrated beyond reason.

"maybe you could have been."

you laugh at this, dry and humourless and bitter. "yeah, right."

you hear him shuffle around a bit before he stands, towering over you. his hand extends out, a silent offer for you to take it. you, horrifically, do.

with the chilly wind of dusk growing wilder, the waves roll loudly onto the sand. you can hear as they crash rhythmically against the shore, even over the screaming of your heart in your ears. being beside him again is surreal, the warmth of his hand inviting you to crawl back into his arms.

"i missed you," you blurt out before you can even stop the words from tumbling. it's mortifying, the expression you make. if he weren't grieving what he lost right now, sae might have laughed. he makes a funny face at you instead, twisted up with guilt and an indescribable amount of anguish.

"i missed you, too. every day. every moment i was thinking about you," he finally lets out the words he'd been refusing to acknowledge for the better part of his adulthood. he says them so quietly, the statement carried away by the breeze.

you look unconvinced as you step away from him. one step back, then two, then you're standing out of reach from him. his heart aches dully in his ribcage.

you may (unfortunately still) love him, but you're not sure you can forgive him. not for leaving like he did. not for never calling. not for breaking your heart. not for showing up at your door without warning and dragging you out of the house on the first day he's back in japan.

his mouth opens and closes as you watch him wearily, unsure of what to say. unsure of how to make things right. unsure how he could ever forgive himself. emotion swims in his expression, though he does a better job at hiding it than a normal person would. nothing about itoshi sae is quite normal.

he stands there for a moment, allowing the rejection to sink in. he's torn between accepting your rejection or screaming into the night sky that he still loves you, that he wants to hold you and beg and grovel on his knees for your forgiveness even though he knows he doesn't deserve it. it's overwhelming and eventually he cracks, a choked sob leaving him.

he flushes partly in embarrassment and partly in shame while he allows himself to fall apart in front of you. he's always so level headed, cool and calm and collected and you're not sure you can vividly remember a time he cried other than when he fell off his bike when you were both nine and he scraped his chin on the pavement.

you hate seeing him cry. watching sae cry is like taking a dagger to the heart. you can feel the remorse in every sob that leaves his mouth, because he never does this - not for himself and certainly not for other people. you would feel flattered if it were any other circumstance.

so you sigh, swiftly stepping back into his arms and gathering his face into your hands. you guide him to your shoulder where you let him cry, just like you used to when you were kids.

he leans into you, arms staying by his side in fear that you might scurry away again if he tries to hold you. he lets out deep, shaking breaths as he tries to compose himself. he breathes in the smell of you, of your shampoo, of the spray you're wearing. it's intoxicating.

"i'm sorry."

"i know," you tell him. it doesn't go unnoticed that you leave out any signs of forgiveness.

"i regret it every day. i still do, even after all this time."

"do you?" you hum. your fingers run gently through his hair, brushing out the tangles that you used to scold him for not combing when you were younger.

your touch is driving him crazy. he wants to kiss you and hold you close and never let you go again. he loves you so much, it almost feels as if it'll consume and drown him like tides in the ocean if he doesn't tell you now. he doesn't, for his sake and yours.

"i never stopped thinking about you. i wanted to run back to you so many times - run home - but i couldn't. i was too much of a coward. so much time has passed now and i-..."

he's rambling and he knows it. you were the only person in the world that he could talk to about things like this. his best friend. not that the sentiment really held up after a decade apart. to your credit, you never did love another person the way you love sae. how can you just forget your first love?

he's silent for some time so you ask him quietly, "was it lonely?"

"yes," his answer is instantaneous. his voice shakes with grief, the realization of everything he lost crashing down on him like waves in the sea. he wants to grab you and scream in your face that some part of his soul still yearns for you. instead he just cries. "maybe i deserved it, though. for treating you the way i did."

you huff with what sounds like laughter, and for the first time in almost a decade his poor heart races in his chest. "rin always did badger me about that. asking why i was dating you when you were a jerk," you muse. there's not an ounce of malice behind your tone, no hidden sting. you're just reminiscing, he realizes. "that's okay. he didn't know his scary big brother was such a softie."

he grumbles a little in weak protest, face buried into your neck where his nose pokes into the skin. your body is so warm, the same way he remembers dreaming about it in spain.

"i'm sorry," he says again.

another sigh escapes you as you lightly pry him off your shoulder. you're frowning as you fret over him, taking his cheeks into your hands and twisting him around so you can examine him closely. your eyes drag all over his face, drinking in how much he's grown, how tired he looks and the bags under his eyes. he can't find it in himself to feel embarrassed anymore.

"come on, i'm here. don't cry," you coo at him, and he melts. you've never been good with sae when he cries, fumbling over what to do in these rare situations. your thumb grazes his cheek, wiping away the wetness that stains it. then it wipes at his lashes, drying the tears gathering in his eyes just from being touched by you again.

"how could i not? i messed up so bad."

sae feels like every moment in his life leading up until now has been nothing more than a series of failures. he crumbled in spain, changed his dream from being a striker to a midfielder, lost contact with rin, and most of all he hurt you. again and again, countless times.

most people would take one look at sae and think he has his whole life together. but you know him, sanity stitched loosely together every time he tries to pick himself back up again. he always thought that keeping his head high and loving forward despite his regrets would never catch up to him.

he was wrong. fuck, he was dead wrong. because now you're standing in front of him and he can't help but look back at all his mistakes and have his soul crushed. he was so selfish - taking from you whatever he could and you would always give everything to him, every part of you; soul and heart and flesh. he's surprised you aren't stripped bare to the bone with how much he's allowed himself to take without really having anything to return.

he can do better. he knows he can. he just had to lose you first to see it.

"i don't know how to fix this," he admits quietly.

"it doesn't have to be all at once. you can make it up to me little by little, y'know?"

you were always too nice to him. too good to such a selfish spoiled brat. you deserve better. he'll make sure to be everything you deserve this time around. to be loved and cherished and worshiped. hell, he'll kiss the ground you walk on just to prove it.

"okay..." he nods with his face still in your hands. "okay."

you're still his best friend after all these years apart. no matter the distance. no matter the time. how he couldn't see that when he was seventeen makes him want to go back and punch himself square in the jaw.

"so when is the right time?" he asks, "if i'm the right person."

you smile at him, for the first time since he's seen you, and he's falling apart all over again. there's a little amusement glimmering in your eyes. "how about we just catch up for now?"

"yeah, that..." sae swallows thickly. "that sounds great."

you're dragging him into an embrace faster than he can handle. he feels like he might turn to dust right now, or wake up back in spain like this was all some distant dream.

he holds you like the sea hugs the shore. like the horizon meets the sky. like he can finally breathe again.

"so tell me," your voice is sweet and kind in his ear, "is your spanish any good?"

he laughs.

© ALABOADOA 2023 — please do not translate or post my works to other platforms.

[ladycatofwinterfell]

Father’s gentle hands

Summary: When Ned comes home to Winterfell he gets to feel a child of his kick for the first time.

I realised Ned never felt a baby kick in the womb until Sansa since he was away while Cat was pregnant with Robb and we all know what happened with Jon. So here’s early marriage nedcat fluff and Ned with his kids <33

Ned didn’t know why he felt a slight disappointment at that his wife didn’t meet him in the yard as he returned from Karhold. A moon’s turn he had been gone and though the weather had been unusually stable for that time of year in winter the trip had been no pleasure. Though why he had got through the journey home by imagining Catelyn meeting him as he rode through the gate he didn’t know.

Maybe because she was carrying his child. He had discovered so much happened in a moon’s turn when a woman was with child, surely he had missed something while he was away and he wanted to know what it was. It was the first time he paid so close attention to an unborn child, there seemed to be a lot he didn’t know.

He didn’t remember when his mother had carried his sister and younger brother, he hadn’t been there when Catelyn carried Robb. And Jon… well, he had come after it was all said and done.

“You wouldn’t know where Lady Catelyn is?” he asked the stable boy that took his horse as soon as he had his feet on the ground.

The boy shook his head.

“No, m’lord.”

Before Ned could say anything else a delighted yell could be heard and he turned to find his son running towards him. His absence hadn’t been as long as it felt like, but had Robb still not grown a little taller since Ned last saw him?

With a smile he scooped the boy up in his arms and held him up in the air.

“Father!” Robb squealed.

His little laugh was lovely. How Ned despised being away from home, how he despised not hearing Robb’s laugh for so long. His boy had the sunshine from the south and the north’s resilience.

“Robb!”

“You’re home!”

“Yes, I’m home.”

He put Robb back on the ground again, ruffled his mop of auburn hair with one hand.

“Did you do as I told you and kept the castle safe while I was away?” he asked.

Robb nodded, beaming. The pride would have been obvious from miles away.

“Me too!”

Only then did Jon make his presence known and Ned had to embrace him, as well. Ever the careful one, always a step behind his brother.

“My brave sons” he said as he ruffled Jon’s hair.

When he looked at them both there was a slight sting of sadness over that they could never truly be brothers. Not equal the way trueborn brothers were. Though as long as they were friends and there was no ill will between them he would be happy.

“Robb, do you know where your mother is?” he asked.

Now he had seen two of his children, he wanted to see the third. And he wanted to see Catelyn.

“The sept” Robb told him.

Idyn, the woman who most often attended to the boys, lengthened the answer a little.

“Lady Stark told me to bring your son to meet you as you arrived” she said. “She was busy.”

Ever since she found out she was with child Catelyn had prayed several times every day, and wouldn’t sway from that. It was most important to turn to the gods to keep the babe healthy, she had told him when he asked her.

“I’ll take the boys if you want to go to her, m’lord” Idyn then continued.

“That would be good, Idyn. Thank you.”

He would rather not set foot inside the sept though he could meet her outside.

Robb protested and wouldn’t agree to go with Idyn and Jon before Ned promised he would come to them afterwards. It was time for supper soon, he wanted nothing but to sup with his family after so long away from them.

So he made his way towards the sept. He was very rarely there, only when he needed Catelyn for something and she was there. He had been in there no more than twice since it was finished. That was her place, as the godswood was his. He needed not invade.

He felt like a fool when he stood there outside and did nothing but wait. People passed him, some looked like they wanted to ask what he was doing, but no one did. They just nodded towards him, said a polite greeting. Even though it wasn’t long he had to wait there it felt like an eternity.

Though all that was forgotten when the doors opened and Lady Catelyn stepped outside. The smile that lit up her face when she saw him made it all worth it.

“My lord” she said. “Do forgive me for not coming to you immediately, I was in the middle of my prayers.”

Just as he had suspected she had grown rounder since last he saw her, it was obvious even with all the clothing she wore to keep the cold off. It happened so quickly.

“There is nothing to forgive, my lady.”

She came to him and he got to lean down and kiss her cheek. The scent of her, of sweet flowers. He dared not embrace her, didn’t know if she wanted it, but as he straightened up again she took his hand, weaved their fingers together.

It made his heart flutter and he saw how a slight blush covered her cheeks.

“I’m happy to see you home” she said softly.

The sound of her voice was as lovely as she was.

“I’m happy to be home” he said to her.

If he had any luck there would be at least some time before he had to leave again.

“I believe our babe agrees.”

He didn’t have time to ask what she meant by that before she had moved his hand to rest against her stomach, putting her hand on top of it. And he felt a slight pressure against his palm from below it.

“It’s kicking” he said.

He heard himself how stupid it sounded when he said it with such wonder, but it was hard to care when he felt his child moving beneath his hand.

Never before had he felt a child of his moving before it was born. The world seemed to slow, he held his breath and his heart beat hard against his ribcage. When he thought of what he would return to during his travel he hadn’t even considered that. Yet it was as exciting, if not even more, as the rest of it. It was as if he had not truly realised he would have another child until then and there. He would once again be a father, his child was alive. It was there, kicking.

“It happened for the first time just a few days after you left, it’s stronger now” Catelyn told him.

The look on her face was as proud as Robb’s had been earlier.

Once again she weaved their fingers together, that time while his hand was splayed across her stomach. The kicking ceased and came to a stop, but the feeling in Ned’s chest didn’t do the same.

“Our child is strong” he said.

The feeling made his voice sound weird.

“It is” she agreed.

She looked at him and she looked so happy, her eyes sparkling. He must have been smiling back at her, it felt like he did.

When he kissed her she kissed him in return, raised a hand to his cheek. She was so soft, the mother of his children. Several children, two of them.

Her cheeks had turned even redder when they parted and she turned her face downwards. But she didn’t seem unhappy in any way, and her hand remained on his even as the child didn’t kick anymore.

“Every time I have felt it kick I have longed for when I would get to share it with you” she mumbled.

“Is that so?”

Catelyn had longed for him, longed to let him feel their child moving.

She glanced up at him, her eyes still gleaming.

“When I carried Robb you weren’t with me, now you are. I want to share what I can with you.”

“Now I’ll be here.”

He knew he couldn’t promise to always be there, that he wouldn’t have to leave again, but he also knew he wanted what she could share. He wanted to be there. With her and Robb and Jon and the child.

“I was going to eat a small something, would you keep me company?” she asked.

“That I would gladly do, I’m feeling a little hungry myself.”

[fountainpenguin]

"If you wanna stay young, get both feet in it! 18 'til I die!" (x)

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6 years ago I posted this art on my blog, and now it's finally time to share the story that goes with it! New Origin of the Pixies chapter today!

Chapter 42 - “The Unicorn Years”

Read on FFN || Read on AO3

Start from Chapter 1

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Today's the day that Sanderson celebrates his adult wings… By which I mean it's the day that H.P. celebrates Sanderson's adult wings. I'm not getting ANY flashbacks to how Ambrosine treated H.P. when HE was young. Come say hello to the newest adult in the cloudlands (and party on)!

(First 1,000 words under the cut)

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The Unicorn Years

Autumn of the Murky Roots

I have to confess, it amused me how mortified Sanderson was to have his first real birthday party. He'd always been a difficult nut to crack. I knew of little that could fluster him. Of all the things to do it, it would be a birthday celebration. To my own surprise, I actually didn't mind the event… or the shifting of attention from me to him. Let him have his day. Things would be back to routine again soon enough.

"Are you still sore?" I asked when I fetched him from his apartment that morning. Hawkins and I had already started cooking breakfast in the other building. It wasn't like Sanderson to be late when it was his turn to help. Granted, at 159k myself, I'd been a loudmouthed rebel- but Sanderson? Nah. He was too dependable to bail on me without a two weeks' notice.

… Huh. I'd been 174,000 when I fled the Academy, jumping from Fairy World to Earth. I was over 491,500 when I came crawling back. And over 650,000 now, though Venus Eros had worked the best magic on my body that she could in an attempt to keep me youthful. How strange. A full 650k years of life experience under my belt, and sometimes I still felt only as mature as that sharp-tongued little "fairy" juvenile who dropped out of school. This body that I wore had been twisted up, dunked in the wash, scrubbed with bleach, and hung to dry again. I lived now on extremely borrowed time and Venus held my leash in the palm of her hand. That's not a favor I can ever repay. I am in her debt for the rest of my existence, and I suspect the rest of the pixie race is too. Which is just peachy. Love that for me.

"Incredibly sore, sir," Sanderson mumbled. He gripped my forearm with both hands, every step slow and wobbly as we made our way through the apartment hall. He'd put on fluffy snowflake socks that I didn't remember ever seeing him in before. No shoes. Still had his casual clothes on. His heels scraped along the thin carpet, scritching and scratching.

"It will pass."

Sanderson glanced over his shoulder at his new long, sweeping wings. I drank him in too. He's grown several inches taller than he'd been as a mere juvenile. Not quite as tall as I was, but getting closer. His wings now matched mine in length, though mine glittered transparent blue. His were tender, still smudged and milky-colored from the moulting. They reminded me in their haunting way of that afternoon nearly 160,000 years ago when Kalysta held him to her breast, nursing him until the flight casings cracked off his wings. He said, "The return to normalcy can't come soon enough, H.P.… I don't think I've ever ached this harsh in my life."

I trailed my eyes to his again. Sanderson, weak and winded, hadn't put on his shades. Those little lavender flecks looked just like mine. How strange. As a gyne, I was bulkier and more freckled than he was, but we shared every single one of our genes. We even shared the Ivorie brand cowlicks in our hair.

"That's only to be expected," I told him (in response to his complaint about the soreness). "You've just shed every pore on your body and put on several inches. The elasticity in your new skin isn't fully developed yet. Things will hurt more than you're used to. That goes for both inside and out. Be careful."

I didn't pressure him to help with breakfast, and especially not when he kept scratching off flakes of skin. His scalp had gotten the worst of it, so he kept pulling off little flakes from around his hair follicles. The younger pixies badgered him constantly about his new shape when he arrived at the pavilion. I had 320 of them now. 320 pixies who left me dripping with exhaustion and insanity every other day. Pregnancy had dealt a heavy blow to my once-youthful body, even though I didn't carry them the way that Fairy drakes did, but so far, Venus's medical intervention was winning. Hadn't died yet. And when we were in the pavilion and I sat across from Sanderson with my plate… it almost seemed a guarantee.

159,426 years.

Sanderson had his adult wings now. I'd known it was coming. Not the date, but I was just over 154,000 when I moulted into mine. He'd used less magic growing up than I did, aging more slowly because of it, but apart from that minor delay, our shedding patterns seemed nearly identical.

159,426. His inner organs, up until now the size of raisins in his tiny juvenile body, finally had room to grow. Exactly 500 years from now, he'd be fully fledged. Capable of reproducing… Well, if he were a Fairy, at least. I wasn't sure how things worked for pixies… I hadn't had Sanderson until I was almost 490k. Would his body draw the time out equally long? Or would there be third-generation pixies just a few centuries from now?

Three generations. My employees with offspring of their own. Yikes. Was I getting that old?

Bayard, holding little Featherstone (who scrambled over him), let out a whistle as Sanderson clumsily tried to push his new, longer legs between the picnic table and its bench. "Well, moulting sure acts fast. Your hips have already gotten wider, studmuffin."

"Have they?" Sanderson lifted his shirt and started to check himself over. I yanked it down down.

"Not here. Wait until you're alone."

"Yes, sir."

I contacted the Eroses during breakfast. Drk. Cupid answered my call, but he and his brothers had their hands full of work. That was fine by me. I was just glad a responsible adult - Drk. Ludell - poofed out in their place with his clipboard and wooden examination tools. Sanderson protested his probing, still wanting to eat his breakfast, but I held firm.

"Stay here and let him run his tests. You're the first adult pixie besides myself the Eros family has ever been able to observe. I need to get in contact with your Refract anyway. While I'm gone, show due respect to the Triplet of the Evening. He's overworked and underhyped."

Sanderson rolled his eyes, but that was the most youthful rebellion I saw from him.

[Cnt'd on FFN / AO3 - Links at top]

[lostintherealmsofthefandoms]

Shi Mei's Last Lament

In which Shi Mei find his mother in a limbo, after his death in the gates of hell

Hua Binan opened his eyes and all he saw in front of him was an endless expanse. The sky was yellow, orange, almost golden, like a sunset and the ground looked like a lake reflecting the sky above.

He sat up slowly. What was going on? He remembered... he had died, hadn't he? His body had turned into a smash of guts and blood at the gates of hell. And now... where was he? Was this place some kind of after-death hell for Beauties? Was he condemned to spend eternity there? So be it! At least he'd made it in the end. There were worse ways to spend eternity. As alive among humans using him.

He stood up and looked around.

"A-Nan." A soft female voice sounded behind him.

That voice made his heart drop. He never thought he would hear it again. Hua Binan turned around quickly, as if he feared that if he took a nanosecond, he would lose the owner of the voice.

There she was. Hua Gui, as beautiful and majestic as he remembered. With a gentle smile for him. A tiara on her forehead adorning her hair. Hua Binan ended up growing up to be a lot like her. As if he were her male version, but inferior in every way.

"Mother?!" His voice trembled and sounded distant even to himself.

She nodded and opened her arms to invite him.

Shi Mei ran to her, almost tripping over his own feet, and threw himself into her arms. He was taller than her but tried to curl up in her arms like a child. His legs became weak and he fell. She knelt with him, allowing him to stay in her arms, stroking his hair. Golden tears bathed his face without him realizing it.

"Mom." He repeated, sobbing. He had dreamt of this moment so many times, he couldn't believe it was actually happening. He raised his face to look at her.

Hua Gui wiped away his tears and smiled, "Look at you, so grown up."

"Mom... is this a dream? I... I think I'm dead, I'm dead, so what is it?"

"Calm down. It's real. I was waiting for you. I just wish I'd waited a little longer."

He shook his head, "It's okay, Mom, I did it. I did it!" He laughed happily with tears still flowing "I got them home. They're safe. No one will hurt our people anymore. I did what you wanted me to do. I did it."

There seemed to be a mixture of emotions in her eyes. Pride and sadness. "A-Nan, I know. I know you did it, we did it, but what did it cost?"

Everything. His soul, his mind, his life, his sister, those who took him in, the one he loved, everything. Shi Mei tried to smile, "It doesn't matter the cost, what matters is that we succeeded! You were also willing to sacrifice everything."

"Not you and your sister."

"I'm sorry, Mom! I failed to protect jiejie, I didn't want to... I... did you see her?"

"No, no, don't worry about your jie jie, she's fine."

He smiled, still tasting the tears that wouldn't stop flowing "good, good."

"I'm the one who failed you two. You should have been safe. The price you paid, the burden you bore, the sacrifice you made, should have been mine."

He shook his head again, "No, no, mother, I would never allow it. Jiejie and I would take care of you, that was always my destiny, my burden. I just, I just, I feel happy, I feel happy that I made it. It took ten years and through those ten years I almost failed several times, due to external and even internal forces that tried to stop me. But I triumphed against these adversities, sometimes created by myself, by my conscience or heart or fear. But I triumphed. Are you proud of me, Mom? Or are you ashamed that my hands are red with blood? Are you ashamed of the other version of me? He was a coward and abandoned our people! But it's still me... Mom... I'm sorry!"

"Hey, hey, it's okay." She wiped his tears again "You had no choice, and he did, and given the choice he chose to try to wipe the blood off his hands, to redeem himself. Doesn't that mean that if you had a choice, you'd do the same? Because you're good. And I'm proud of you, both of you. Of you for staying true to our people despite everything it cost you, and of Shi Mei, for staying true to himself."

She put her hand to his face, his tears finally stopping.

"I never wanted innocent people to die, I tried, I tried to use only the worst kind, but they wanted it so much, it was necessary so much and once I'd started... how was I... going to go back? And... what else could I do? It was the only way. Wasn't it?"

"It doesn't matter anymore. It's over. You did what you had to do for our people to be free. They will never forget your name. You must remember not only those you hurt but also, above all, those you saved. Our people."

"What happens now, Mom? It's over? Everything's fine now, isn't it?"

"Yes," she smiled, "it's all right now. You've done well a-Nan, you've worked hard and sacrificed everything you could sacrifice, you've managed to bring our people home. They're fine and they're free. Son, rest. You're free now, rest."

Free. Freedom. That was an alien word for Hua Binan. He had never felt free. The burden he had carried all his life had pressured and enslaved him, stripping him of any sense of freedom. Specially in the last ten years. He never thought he would be free.

But at that moment he believed it. He felt it in his bones.

Free.

Hua Binan smiled, as tears tinted his vision golden, and he closed his eyes with relief. He was free. Him and his mother.

Opening his eyes and looking at her, she was still smiling at him, still caressing his face. But her spiritual body was gradually disappearing, turning into golden dust. Hua Binan knew that the same thing was happening to his own spiritual body. In other words, his soul. Their souls. He wasn't scared. It was liberating. A tear ran down Hua Gui's perfect face. Golden like his son's. It was a tear of relief, he knew.

Free. He was free. His consciousness disappeared along with his soul, which became golden dust scattered through the air along with his mother's golden dust.

Then, the golden dust became golden butterflies.

And the golden butterflies flew free.

[voraciousvore]

The Half-Blood Giant (30/51)

Chapter 30: Hunger

Getting out of bed the next morning was a struggle for Hunter. Besides the fact that he was emotionally drained and devastated, his entire body was sore and cramped, as if he had overexerted his muscles. Hunter put on his school uniform, which felt a little tighter around the chest than usual, and shorter at the cuffs. With a sinking feeling in his gut, he realized he had grown again overnight. His concerns were confirmed when he subtly compared himself to his peers and recognized he was several feet taller than before. 

He rubbed his forehead with a sigh, but didn’t want to dwell on the issue. The more pressing problem was that he was absolutely famished. Not only did his gastrointestinal system feel empty, but his entire body, right down to the fat and glucose stores in his muscles, was squeezed dry like a rag. Empty, so empty, just like his heart, nothing more than a ravenous hole in his chest. His whole body felt huge and heavy as he dragged his feet to the lunchroom. He felt like he would die if he didn’t eat something—someone—soon. The humans looked more appetizing than ever: What he wouldn’t give, to just shovel them into his mouth in handfuls and gulp them down.  

With his hunger, he didn’t feel like a person: He felt like nothing more than an eating machine, just a mouth and a throat and digestive organs squelching about within a sack of flesh, begging for food. And “food” were those miniature beings that moved around his feet, his natural prey, unaware of how desperate he was. Just as he was dehumanized by his own hunger, so were they, nothing more than sentient snacks to be processed and digested within his entrails, their nutrients absorbed into his mass. Hunter, horrified by these thoughts, gorged himself without reservation, not caring about the disgusted, disturbed glances of his giant and human classmates. He ate every scrap, as much as he could possibly get, exhaling with relief when his growling beast of a belly was finally sated. It wouldn’t last long, but at least he had some temporary relief. 

He went to his first class of the day, history—the same class that landed him in the principal’s office. For once, since his starving belly had urged him to the cafeteria first thing in the morning, he arrived fairly early for his class, so there weren’t too many students in the room yet. A sharp, tiny gasp from the human section drew his attention to a diminutive girl sitting at one of the desks by herself. He squinted, distinguishing her fine features and brown hair. He recognized her as the girl he had bullied a couple of days ago. 

He stopped, staring down at her. She stared back, rigid in place. He thought about what he had done with some guilt. He remembered nearly drowning her boyfriend in the fountain, and how he promised to apologize to her in the aftermath. She was a small and pathetic human, but Hunter still experienced some remorse for his immature actions, executed in a fit of rage. Hunter stepped over to her and crouched down on his haunches. He didn’t mean to be intimidating, but he still towered over her with his immense size. She visibly flinched, raising her arms over her head in self-defense. Hunter’s eyebrows knitted together. 

Hannah cowered, squeezing her eyes shut. Hector had talked to her about Hunter. He omitted the part where he almost drowned in the fountain, but he mentioned to her that he had demanded the giant apologize for his behavior. He stated that he believed Hunter to be misguided and misunderstood, perhaps even good at heart. Nevertheless, Hannah was terrified of him. The memory of him snatching her up, raising her high in the air, squeezing the breath out of her chest with the slightest pressure from his fingers, bringing her up to his lips, his fleshy tongue sliding over his big blocky teeth—all these details were scalded into her brain, and she couldn’t stop herself from trembling in his imposing presence.  

When he didn’t say or do anything, Hannah cautiously lowered her hands and peeked up at the giant. He was studying her with a look of condescending pity. He did feel sorry for her, for being such a shrimp. “Look…” he began. His booming voice made her recoil again. He sighed heavily. She wasn’t making this easy. He felt he was debasing himself, to apologize to an inferior creature, yet deep down he knew it was the right thing to do. He promised he would. She was such a weak little thing, after all. Like his mother, she couldn’t do anything herself, without giants to help. 

���Um… I wanted to say…” His expression soured as he reluctantly forced the words out of his lips. “I’m sorry. For grabbing you like I did. I just wanted to prove a point.” 

Hannah averted her eyes, looking down at her hands. “I-It’s okay,” she said quietly. She slumped down in her chair, her face distorting with sadness. “I mean... you weren’t wrong. Humans are nothing compared to giants.” She crumbled further, huddling in her chair. 

Hunter cocked a brow, surprised and intrigued by this statement. “Wow. It’s nice to find someone that actually agrees with me for once! I’m glad there’s at least one person at this school who isn’t completely delusional.” He regarded the girl with a newfound interest, tilting his head and leaning forward over her. She remained uncomfortable and nervous with the attention, particularly as he shifted closer with that creepy glint in his savage green eyes. She didn’t trust him not to do something wicked. 

The start of class was fast approaching, and more students were filtering in. Hunter was blocking the stairway to the human platform with his mass, and the other human students were too petrified to ask him to move. A soft involuntary whimper from one of the girls captured the giant’s attention, distracting him from Hannah. His head snapped around and he glared down at the cluster of small students. They shirked back in fear. 

“What are you losers looking at?” he snarled, making them cringe away further. Hunter loomed over them, dripping with malevolence, but before he could say anything more the teacher walked in. 

“Hunter!” Mr. Miller barked. “You stay away from those human students!” He snagged Hunter by his shirt sleeve and hoisted him to his feet, propelling him to the opposite side of the room.  “Sit here.” He gestured to an empty desk, as far away from the humans as he could possibly be. Hunter glowered darkly at the teacher, bristling with rage. Mr. Miller was discomposed for a moment as he observed just how tall and brawny Hunter was, even bigger than he remembered. Hunter easily exceeded his height as a full-grown adult male giant, and even rivaled Principal Henderson, one of the largest men that he knew. Regardless, he didn’t allow the student to intimidate him, and flexed his authority unreservedly in order to protect the human students. Mercifully, Hunter obeyed his directive without complaint and sat at his assigned desk. 

Hannah tried to pay attention to the lesson, but her mind was on her interaction with Hunter. She was too jittery to take notes like she normally would. During the entire class, she clasped her hands together under her desk and trembled. Even with him far away and out of sight on the opposite end of the room, she knew he was there, was instinctively aware of his menacing presence. The way he had looked at her, at first like he was studying a distasteful insect, and then with such an odd fascination, made her skin crawl. She couldn’t fathom what Hector saw in him, even if he did apologize. He appeared more like he wanted to eat her than be friends with her. 

She wasn’t the only one whose mind was elsewhere. Hunter, too, was thinking about Hannah. He was intrigued to find a human that agreed with his views. He felt vindicated, since everybody else only regarded him with disdain for his perceptions, or fear. He liked that feeling. She was frightened of him, of course, but he expected that. He was a big strong giant who could effortlessly destroy her, and she was fully aware of that fact. He even enjoyed her fear, his power over her, savored it like a delicacy. Inevitably, as his breakfast digested down to nothing, his mind became preoccupied with his stomach again. His thoughts about Hannah began to take a dark turn as he fantasized about picking her up, dangling her over his mouth, and relishing her squirms and cries before he dropped her in. Hunter had never tasted a human before, but judging by her scent, she’d likely have more of a tart, fruity flavor. 

The bell rang, pulling Hunter out of his fantasies. As he shouldered his backpack and strolled out, he snuck a glance over at the human section. Hannah hadn’t moved from her seat. She was rooted to the spot, waiting for him to leave. Hunter imagined, with a bemused smirk, hiding behind the wall and ambushing her as he left the class. He’d scoop her up in his hands as she cried out in surprise. She’d look up at him with wide eyes, and… and… 

Scream? Probably. For some reason, her imaginary response annoyed Hunter. He didn’t want that. He wanted her to be scared of him, maybe a little bit, but it would be nice if she gazed up at him with awe. Reverence. Maybe even… warmth? Hunter frowned and adjusted his backpack as he walked down the hall. He was deluding himself: Nobody would ever like a monster like him. That truth was solidified by the uncomfortable stares, furtive glances, and students going out of their way to avoid him as he carved a path forward. He didn’t have to swerve or dodge people, human or giant, despite how much space he took up with his massive size: Everybody got out of his way, and those that didn’t he shoved to the side with no effort as they bounced off his muscular arms or shoulders. 

Hunter sat down in his next class, which was art, and slumped in his chair, crossing his arms around his midsection. His empty stomach clamored for food with a loud gurgle, making him wince. He was self-conscious enough as it were without his belly making obnoxious noises. The appetizing aroma of fresh humans made it worse as he started to drool. His nose was becoming sensitive enough to parse out individual scents from the crowd. He could imagine what each human would taste like if he slurped them up, how they would feel sliding down his throat into his gut. The compulsion to hunt and eat was incredibly strong. He was having trouble maintaining his composure in class. 

Hunter wasn’t much of an artist, but he tried to distract himself from his monstrous appetite by drawing. The art teacher set up a bowl of fruit as a still life that the students would try to copy. Hunter sketched crude, cartoonish shapes with his pencil. His strokes were heavy, broad, and clumsy as he pressed the pencil with excessive force into the paper, dulling the tip and nearly tearing the page. He started to color one of the apples with a lurid red, darkening the edges in a rudimentary attempt to shade and give the appearance of depth. A dribble of spit dropped from his lips and plopped onto the page, making him pause. He stared at the darkening wet stain as it bled into the crimson on the paper. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, hoping nobody noticed him drooling. His belly grumbled again and he cringed down in his chair, huddling over his drawing. He was beginning to sweat as he ran a hand through his ruddy hair. 

He tensed up when he saw the principal enter the room. The tension evolved into dread as Milton stepped up to his desk and placed a gentle hand on the edge. “Hunter, can you come with me to my office for a moment?” 

Hunter looked up at the giant with hesitation before nodding wordlessly. When he stood up, Milton’s face betrayed a hint of confusion and surprise when Hunter’s increased height equaled his own. He led the Hunter out of the class. Hunter frowned hard when he felt the eyes of his peers gawking at him, as usual, but tossed his head back with an arrogant flourish nonetheless as he left. 

“Am I in trouble again?” Hunter grumbled, his eyes darting around suspiciously as they passed by other classrooms. 

“No, not exactly,” Milton replied, “though we do need to have a serious discussion.” They entered his office and sat down across from one another. Hunter folded his arms over his chest defiantly. 

Milton chose his words carefully. “Some concerns have been brought to my attention. Mr. Pablo—you remember him, the human counselor—said he met with you yesterday, and he was worried... um...” The principal, normally so composed, had a flicker of nervous energy cross his face. “You might try to eat humans?” 

Hunter scoffed and rolled his eyes but stubbornly refused to respond. Milton leaned forward, intertwining his hands on the desk. “Hunter. Answer me honestly. Do you have cravings to eat humans? Like your father?” 

At the mention of his father, Hunter refocused on Milton darkly. He didn’t want to admit the truth and be viewed as even more of a monster. He considered what to say before finally answering, his words laced with lies, “Of course not. That would be messed up, considering I’m part human. Like cannibalism. Ugh.” He bit his lip, his mind racing to come up with a plausible explanation. “I just enjoyed seeing Mr. Pablo squirm. I wanted to frighten him.” 

His stomach interrupted with an audible grumble in protest, undermining his deception. The principal regarded him with skepticism. Hunter cleared his throat and confessed, “I’m just so hungry, all the time. I’m... going through another growth spurt, I think. My body, when it gets bigger, needs so much food... three meals a day in the cafeteria just doesn’t cut it.” 

Milton’s features softened with sympathy. “Hunter, why didn’t you say something? We’re not trying to starve you here. I’ll talk to the lunch staff and make sure they prep you extra meals, okay?” 

“That... would be helpful, yes,” Hunter admitted. 

“You know that you can come to me with any concerns you have, right? I know you’re probably not happy with me disciplining you for the way you handled that human student, but you must understand, Hunter, that I am on your side here. I only want the best for you and all the students at this school.” Milton radiated warmth, like a fresh cup of coffee. 

“Right,” Hunter agreed, hanging his head with mild shame as he recognized that maybe the entire world wasn’t against him. 

“Mr. Pablo agreed to keep seeing you as well, so if you don’t feel comfortable talking to me you can confide in him instead. He said his door is always open to you.” 

“Really,” Hunter vocalized, incredulous. With how he had treated the human counselor, he figured the small man would avoid him like the plague. He was surprised; he underestimated the brave human. 

There was a long pause. Milton gave Hunter a penetrating gaze. “I see now why you suddenly became so much taller, if you’re still growing,” he remarked softly. “These growth spurts... you’ve had them before?” 

“Yeah. When I was younger, I started out at human size, you know,” Hunter explained. He gestured with his thumb and index finger to emphasize just how small, grimacing at the memory. Milton tilted his head, looking at him with wonder. “So, I’ve grown quite a lot!” 

“But you’ve already exceeded your father’s height, if you’re as tall as me,” Milton pressed. “And I’m 235 feet tall. How is it that you’re still growing? Just how big...” He trailed off, realizing that Hunter obviously could not answer this question. 

“Oh, my father is relatively short for... where I’m from,” Hunter elaborated. “I mean, my grandpa is way taller than him. I think he’s around 280 feet?” Milton raised his eyebrows and blinked. He’d never seen or heard of a giant THAT tall in his entire life! He was accustomed to being the tallest giant himself in any setting, most of the time. The bell rang for lunch, and Hunter placed his hand over his gurgling guts, giving the principal a pleading look. 

“Go get some lunch. You’re dismissed,” Milton said, and Hunter was more than happy to leave and fill his aching belly. Milton leaned back in his chair and stroked his chin, deep in thought. This kid was a difficult case. He hoped he was telling the truth; he would need to keep a close eye on him. 

Chapter 31

Chapter 1

[jeanmoreausautismstickers]

The Boy in the Shop

Diagon Alley was brilliant to Remus Lupin. According to the 8-year-old, nowhere would ever be able to top it. He'd been coming with Minerva and Poppy for four years, and each time they went, he'd find another thing that amazed him.

"Minnie, may I please go to Flourish and Blotts?" Remus begged, trying his best to look sweet and innocent. He knew she'd probably say no, she was busy and she hated the crowds in the bookshop anyhow.

To his surprise, Minerva smiled down at him. "Do you think you're capable of going on your own?" Remus nodded quickly. "Then yes I suppose you may, but I expect you to be back by 14:30, we're meeting the Pettigrews for tea, alright?" "Thank you!" Remus hugged her quickly before sprinting across the street. A whole hour and a half, he thought to himself, feeling very grown up all of the sudden.

Remus spent the better part of his hour and a half looking through the Hogwarts books. He knew he didn't need them, and he wouldn't for another three years, but a part of him was hoping maybe he'd be able to get some advanced lessons from Minerva. She was a professor, after all, she'd know the basics. Then he could be top of his year, maybe he'd even get to skip some of the first-year lessons because of it. He hadn't noticed how long he'd been standing in front of the shelf until a severe-looking girl tapped his shoulder.

"Oh, er, sorry," he mumbled, looking down at his feet. He could feel his face flushing. "Then move, will you? I need a book," she responded. He flinched at the tone and shuffled out of her way. "Sorry about her, it's her second year. She thinks she's so cool now that she's in Hogwarts," another voice pipes up from next to Remus, making him jump. "I'm Sirius, that's my cousin, Narcissa." Remus looks up at the other boy, Sirius, and startles. "Like. Sirius Black?" he asks, incredulous. "The one and only," Sirius grins. "You are not. You're the third in our family," another boy, nearly identical to Sirius, pipes up. Remus hadn't noticed him. "Shut up, Reg. Sorry, I forgot to introduce him. This is my little brother, Reggie. Reggie, say hi." Sirius says, shoving the other boy forward.

The younger boy hunkers down a little, shaking his head. "My name is, um, Regulus. Not Reggie." Remus watches as Sirius' face flickers with worry before he wraps an arm around him. He murmurs something to Regulus before looking up and smiling at Remus. "Sorry for him, he's still a bit shy. What's your name?" he asks, ruffling his brother's hair as he subtly steps in front of him again.

Remus shrugs. "I'm Remus Lupin." Sirius snorts. "You know your name is Wolf Wolf, right?" he asks. Remus winces a bit. "Yeah." "Anyway, what were you looking at the Hogwarts books? You don't look old enough to go yet," Sirius asks. Remus shrugs. "I'm not, but I was hoping I might be able to get a head start," he explains. "My guardian teaches at Hogwarts, so I figured she might help."

Sirius snorts, giving him an odd look. "That's funny." Remus crosses his arms. "Why?" he asks. Sirius shrugs. "Your mum or dad can't be a Hogwarts professor. There wouldn't be anyone to care for you for ten months," Sirius explains. "It just isn't possible." He says it like it's obvious, which bothers Remus. "You're right. It's not my mum or dad. I'm cared for by Minerva McGonagall." he argues back, annoyance seeping into his voice. "Prove it then." Sirius challenges.

Remus rolls his eyes. "Come on then, she's in the shop across the street." Sirius hesitates, looking at his cousin. "Cissy?" "What?" she snaps, clearly not paying great attention. Sirius flinches a little, and Remus watches as Regulus' fingers wrapped around his brother's wrist. "Reg and I are going to go across the street for a moment," he says, standing a bit taller now that he's noticed Regulus' nervousness. "Whatever, Sirius," she responds, waving him away. "Don't get caught."

Sirius nods, taking Regulus' hand and following Remus. They jog over to Scribbulus, and Remus immediately spots Minerva. "Minnie!" he calls, pulling the Black brothers over to where she's standing. "Yes, Re- Oh, hello," she says, turning. "Hello! Are you really Lupin's mum?" Sirius asks her. Minerva chuckles. "No, I'm not his biological mother. I do take care of him all the time though, so I suppose I'm something akin to a mother. Why do you ask?"

"He didn't believe me when I said you and Poppy take care of me! He said Hogwarts professors can't be parents," Remus explains. "I had to prove him wrong." Minerva nods, smiling. "I suppose it can be a bit difficult occasionally. It isn't impossible though. . ." she trails off. "Sirius!" Sirius tells her, and she nods. "Right. Not impossible in the slightest, Sirius." She gives him a kind smile, right as Regulus gasps and yanks on his brother's sleeve. "Sirius! Sirius, mother's coming," he says, panic evident in his voice. Sirius' eyes grow wide and he turns, just as Walburga walks into the shop, pulling a very nervous Narcissa behind her.

"Walburga! Lovely to see you again." Minerva says. Remus can hear the disdain dripping in her town. Walburga doesn't pay her any mind. "Sirius Orion Black!" she shrieks, grabbing her son by the ear. Remus and Minerva watch as she wrenches her elder son out of the shop, the younger trailing behind anxiously as their mother spits threats at the two.

When the family's gone, Remus turns to Minerva. "She seems rather. Unpleasant," he tells her, and Minerva laughs. "Her son, Sirius, is nice. Regulus is very quiet though, they don't seem very similar." Remus continues, trailing behind Minerva as she pays for her things. "I'm sure you and Sirius will be great friends when you're in Hogwarts. Come along now. We've got to pick up Poppy before we go to tea."

Remus grins, following her from the shop. Maybe they will be good friends.

[azvibes]

Poisonous

Friends (story introducing Amanita Zircon)

There was a tiny gnomish child napping in Amanita Zircon's left arm, and a slightly less tiny gnomish child attempting to climb up her right leg.

“Would you quit that, Hilla?!” hissed Amanita, trying to keep her voice down. “Pepper's sleeping.”

“I'm bored,” whined Hilla. “Play with me!”

“I'm too old to play. I'm supposed to be watching you.”

“You're the same age as me!” said Hilla.

That was true. At least within a year or so. Amanita was something close to thirteen now, and Hilla was twelve and a half. But gnomes, Amanita had realized several years ago, grew up much, much more slowly than people like her.

Hilla grabbed at the hem of Amanita's shirt and yanked.

“Stop it!”

Baby Pepper's face scrunched up and he began to cry loudly.

“Oh, look what you did!” Amanita hastily began to bounce and shush Pepper in both arms. “Go inside!” she told Hilla. “I'm telling your mama you wouldn't let him sleep.”

Hilla's face crumpled in a perfect replica of her little brother's, and she ran into the nearby mud and thatch house with the domed roof.

Amanita felt a bit like crying herself. She didn't like being put in charge of the little ones. At least Vicky and Violet, the twins who made Amanita want to pull her hair out, had been deemed better off going with the rest of this branch of the warren to the city. Everyone was predicting an incredibly harsh winter, and the warren hadn't preserved enough food to last through it because of the drought. And even though the whole rest of the warren except the riverbank family was still at home, somehow Amanita was the one stuck with watching these two.

Pepper wasn't so bad. He mostly slept and ate and put rocks in his mouth and babbled. Keeping him entertained was easy. But Hilla never stopped. She and Amanita had been friends once. Inseparable. But Amanita was basically a grown-up now, and Hilla still wanted to play make-believe.

After a few minutes of rocking and off-key singing, Pepper settled down again. Amanita could hear sniffling coming from inside the house. Feeling guilty, she sighed and went inside. She was starting to have to duck her head in these houses. She hoped that she wasn't going to get much taller.

Hilla was sitting on her bed in the corner, her knees pulled up to her chest. She looked at Amanita through reproachful tears.

“I'm sorry,” Amanita said. “Shush while I put Pepper down.” And she tucked him into his cot, making sure the blanket covered his whole body. He sleep-babbled a bit in protest, but didn't wake up.

“You won't really tell on me, will you?” Hilla pleaded.

Amanita rolled her eyes. “Are you really worried about that, you big baby? It's not a big deal. But no, I guess not. Come on, if you wake him again, I will tell. Let's go back outside.”

Hilla perked up immediately. “Will you play with me?” she demanded.

“Better. I'm gonna show you magic.”

With a shriek of delight, covering her mouth with both arms to muffle the noise, Hilla leapt to her feet and practically flew out the door.

The kids had been begging Amanita to show them the bits of magic she was picking up from Uncle Morrie. But she was expressly forbidden from doing anything of the kind. “It's too dangerous,” Jasmine, the mother of Hilla and Pepper and the twins, had said, and the parents of the young children in the rest of the warren had agreed.

Amanita pouted about it to Morrie, of course, but he had just shrugged and told her it was best to do as everyone else wanted. “Besides, this can just be special for the two of us, Aizie-daisy,” he had added, using the nickname he had given her when she had first disclosed the new name she wanted to go by. She didn't let anyone else nickname her–she had chosen Amanita Zircon, tying herself inextricably both to her chosen kinship with fungi and the forest and with Morrie (whose full name, Morel, was also a type of mushroom), as well as the earth genasi heritage that her warren assured her she had every right to claim and to connect to. But Uncle Morrie was special, and if he wanted to call her A-to-Z, which morphed into Aizie, which eventually became Aizie-daisy, she wasn't going to stop him.

Hilla was dancing excitedly in place as Amanita joined her outside. “What are you going to show me? Will you teach me how to do it? Will you make things grow?”

“It takes a long time to learn how to do,” Amanita said. She ushered Hilla further from the house, staying close enough that she would hear Pepper cry if he woke up again. “But yeah, I'll show you how I ask the earth to grow things for me. Come sit down on the ground.”

There was a thick layer of dead, decaying brown leaves on the forest floor. Autumn was nearing its end. There were hardly any leaves on the trees anymore, and the ones that were left weren't vibrant shades of red and orange anymore, but the same rich brown as the ground. It smelled good, like rot and moisture. Not everyone's favorite scent during the cycle of life in the forest, but Amanita loved it. She knelt down in the wet leaves across from Hilla, whose eyes were shining bright with anticipation. Amanita couldn't help but smile back at her.

“Breathe in deeply,” Amanita said. “You smell that?”

“It's yucky,” Hilla observed.

Amanita shook her head. “That's life. Or it's going to be, very soon. It's what we all are, eventually, and it's what becomes us, too.” As she spoke, she reached down beneath the leaves, into the soil. Not with her hands, though her fingertips dug into the dirt a bit. She reached with something in her soul, something that resonated with the mycorrhizal network clinging to the threaded roots of plants and the mycelium that stretched up, up towards the surface to form the fruiting bodies that shaped into their characteristic stalk and cap, up until…

“Oh!” Hilla gasped.

Over half of the leaves that had been on the ground in a circle around them were completely decomposed now. The nutrients within them had fed the fungi, and now dozens of mushrooms were sticking up out of the soil. There were puffballs and buttons, but mostly there were amanitas. Red and yellow and white amanitas.

Hilla reached for a red one, fascinated.

“Don't touch!” Amanita snapped. “Just look with your eyes, Hilla.”

“They're poison?” asked Hilla.

“Yeah. See how bright they are? They're warning you, don't mess with them.” She added quickly, “Lots of mushrooms are poison, and not all of them are nice enough to warn you, so don't eat any that a grown-up hasn't told you is safe.”

“Why are these ones nice?” asked Hilla.

“I don't know if nice is right, actually. I think they're mostly lucky,” Amanita said. “They were born so bright that nothing will try to eat them. Nothing clever, anyway.” She brushed a finger over the cap of one of the biggest amanitas.

“How come you can touch it?” complained Hilla. “That's not fair.”

“I can touch it ‘cause we understand each other. It knows I'm not gonna eat it. And I know it won't hurt me unless I stick my hand in my mouth before I wash it, which I won't. Besides, we share a name. This is Amanita, too.”

“Why are you named the same as something poison?” Hilla said curiously.

“‘Cause I want to be. I like things that are poisonous. They can defend themselves. And I've promised myself to the mushrooms when I die, so I can't let anything else eat me first,” Amanita said.

Hilla giggled. “You're so weird.”

Amanita was about to agree when a call came from a short ways downstream.

“We're hooooome!” It was Aunt Jasmine's voice.

Amanita jumped. She hadn't thought that they would be home until tomorrow or the next day.

Hilla lit up. “Mama!”

In the next few moments, the riverbank was swarming with the dozen or so warren members who had been traveling. Amanita didn't move, hoping that nobody would notice the very obviously magically grown patch of mushrooms around her.

Jasmine scooped Hilla up into her arms and kissed her cheeks. “How are you, my darling?” She glanced at Amanita. “Where's your brother?”

“Napping inside. Amanita was showing me magic!” Hilla exclaimed.

Amanita almost groaned.

Jasmine had been about to give Amanita a warm smile, but her face froze. “Has she? That's nice.” She placed Hilla on the ground. “Go wait inside, alright, Hilla?”

Hilla, seemingly not noticing her mother's irritation, nodded and ran off.

“Aunt Jas–”

“Amanita Zircon, I'm very disappointed with you,” Jasmine said. “You know you're not supposed to use what Morrie's taught you around the little ones!”

“It was just once!”

“Once is one time too many, young lady. You're supposed to be responsible! You promised me you could be responsible enough to look after them!”

Amanita crossed her arms. “They're alive and well, aren't they?” she retorted.

Some of the other warren members were standing nearby and watching. The twins were laughing behind their hands.

“Luckily, yes! But you can't always rely on luck, Amanita. You're such a bright girl, why can't you think?” Jasmine berated.

“Oh, come on, I grew a few mushrooms! It's not like they're going to explode,” said Amanita. “It's not dangerous.”

“It's always dangerous,” Jasmine said grimly. “And those mushrooms are poisonous.”

“I wasn't going to let her eat any,” muttered Amanita. Bitter indignation gnawed at her chest.

“You can keep your eyes on her every second, can you? You can guarantee she wasn't going to touch any of them?” Jasmine asked.

“I…”

“If Pepper had started crying and you'd gone in to get him up from his nap, you don't think Hilla wouldn't have tasted one when your back was turned?” added Jasmine.

Amanita slammed her palm onto the ground. A few more mushrooms grew out of spite. “Well, I told her not to and that they were poisonous, so maybe I have more faith in your kid than you have in me!”

“Oh, don't take that tone with me!”

Scrambling to her feet, Amanita cried, “Don't assume I'm gonna let your daughter do something so stupid, then! I'm glad you're back, Aunt Jasmine, so I don't have to play their mama anymore.” She grabbed at the hidden nature of the mycelium under her feet and fled, disappearing swiftly into the woods. The branches and soil bent and smoothed behind her to cover her path.

The cave at the foot of the rocky hill where Morrie had been bringing her to teach her about fungi and magic for years was a welcome sight. She crouched so she didn't hit her head on the entrance. The ceiling rose again quickly, though stalactites dripped down like icicles and she had to take care to avoid them.

Slick, blue, faintly glowing algae grew in the dim corners of the cavern. Where some sunlight reached near the mouth, green ferns and mosses and shrubs grew. Cave fungi sprouted underneath them and up the crumbling walls.

Amanita touched a patch of the moss, and urged it to spread along the floor until there was enough space for her to sprawl out on her stomach with her face pressed in the moss, and she let out a loud, weary sigh.

It wasn't fair. She wanted her warren to see her as responsible, to trust her with things as an adult. She was responsible! She was! Hilla and Pepper were safe and fed and mostly happy, and the house was clean. And she hadn't even done any magic until today. 

The moss was soft and damp against her lips and eyelids. She was tired. She'd go home to Begonia's at some point later today, but right now, she was content to stay far, far away from anyone else.

Her heart seemed to beat in time with the water dripping from the stalactites, which carried minerals down from the base to the tip and let it grow, slowly, drop by drop. The earth grew and shrank like people did, but much, much slower. Amanita wondered why, if she was so closely related to the earth, she grew so much more quickly than it did.

She slowed her breathing, which slowed her heart. The dripping slowed to match. Listening to that sound and feeling the connection to the cave, Amanita began to fall asleep, or at least slip into a state less like full consciousness.

She felt the soft footsteps, one, two, tap, as reverberations in the stone beneath the moss, rather than actually hearing them. It was an unmistakable rhythm, and she didn't even raise her head before mumbling, “Hi, Uncle Morrie.”

“Thought I'd find you here,” her mentor said amiably. There was a shuffle and a grunt as he sat beside her and then the clack of the handle of his cane resting against the cave wall. “Jasmine asked me to let you know that she's sorry she yelled at you.”

“That doesn't make me feel better,” Amanita said, though it kind of did. “Maybe she should let me know herself.”

Morrie chuckled. “Well, as she tells it, she went after you a few minutes after you stormed off but couldn't find a trace of where you'd gone.”

“Hmph,” said Amanita, a bit proudly.

“So she came and found me, instead. And she told me what happened.”

“...hmph,” Amanita said again, less proudly.

“And she shouldn't have yelled, but Aizie, you have been told not to use magic around the little ones.”

“I know that! I wasn't doing anything dangerous!”

Very seriously, Morrie said, “That's not how most people see it, Amanita. Magic is powerful, even the small things. Magic is power, and power frightens people. As well it should.”

She rolled onto her side to glare at him. “It was literally just some mushrooms I made grow a bit quicker,” she informed him.

“So I've been told. And that's most of what I've taught you so far–making things grow like that, asking the forest for little favors and tricks. The whole disappearing act you pull sometimes wasn't something you learned from me,” added Morrie with a laugh.

“No, I just…know how to do it,” Amanita said. “It's easy.”

Morrie nodded thoughtfully, his silver curls bouncing around his long ears. “It comes naturally to you. All of this does. It's why I've been slow to teach you more, and it's why my granddaughter and so many other folks in our warren are a little scared of what you can do.”

“You're not scared of me,” Amanita said. Pleaded.

“I'm not,” Morrie replied. He reached out and took her hand. “Neither are they, not really. They're scared of the magic, yes, but not of you. Scared for you, I think.”

Feeling his soft, wrinkled skin against her own firm, smooth palm, Amanita said, “But I know what I'm doing. I'm safe with it. I'd never hurt anyone with it!”

“Not on purpose. We know. But…” Morrie sighed. “Maybe I should have taught you more sooner. Here, sit up, Aizie-daisy.”

She sat up, the soft leather soles of her shoes touching and her knees flat out to the sides. “Are you going to show me something new?”

“I am. I won't ask you to promise to use it wisely, because I know you will,” Morrie said. He was still holding her hand. “You know how it feels when you reach into the ground to sense the connections in the roots and mycorrhizae? Or into a tree, or a flower, and you can feel all the nutrients and the water and the fibers flowing between place to place?”

“Yes,” Amanita said. “Yes, of course.”

“Do that now. But don't reach into the earth.” He squeezed her hand. “Reach with your magic until you can feel all of those same things inside me.”

Amanita's eyes widened, and she felt a bright thrill. She had never really thought about that possibility. So she closed her eyes and reached with her intuition and the indescribable sense somewhere in the center of herself.

She felt a thrumming first. An electric buzz, more active than what she felt in plants and fungi. Then a rushing, pounding sound like a rhythmic waterfall, which she figured out was the blood flowing through Morrie's veins, pumped by the beating of his heart. The initial buzz clarified and amplified, and Amanita was suddenly aware of nerves sending signals. Her consciousness stretched, and she felt every fiber, every bone, every bit of connective tissue.

She gasped and released his hand. With the connection broken so abruptly, the world seemed rather quiet and still.

“Well done,” Morrie said.

“That was…amazing,” she breathed. “What do you do with that?”

“Lots of things. Here.” He took a small pocket knife out and cut a tiny nick in the side of one of his fingers. A very small drop of blood welled up. “Now I want you to reach out again, but focus all of your attention very, very hard on my finger here.”

She laid her own finger over the little scratch and began concentrating again.

“You should be able to feel the interruption,” Morrie said, “between the intact skin and the cut. The edges match up, at least mostly. Not every wound leaves so clean a mark, but you can worry about that later. For now, I want you to just pay attention and memorize how the cut feels and how the healthy skin feels on either side.”

Even the small injury made Amanita feel a sense of general wrongness as she explored the gap, the cessation of messages and function. She felt different nerves than had been active before. They lit up now brightly with a localized but obvious pain signal. The fibers of the skin had split, the narrow capillary blood vessels burst open.

“Can you feel it?” Morrie asked.

“I can feel all of it,” Amanita said in a hushed voice. “I can feel that it's broken.”

“Good. Fix it.”

She was about to protest that she didn't know how, that she had never even attempted healing magic before, and what if she messed it up and made everything even worse? What if she couldn't do it?

But it was…so easy to match the edges of the cut up and get the skin to grow back together. The cells multiplied pretty much just the same as a mushroom or a plant, except a little less rigid in their structure. It followed the same pattern as the skin around it for the most part, so it was simple. The slight differences, like the ridges of the fingerprint, came naturally to the healing tissue. Amanita only had to prompt it to grow and it did.

“That was just perfect,” Morrie praised. “And very quickly, too.”

Amanita couldn't think of anything to say. She lifted Morrie's hand up into a bit of light coming into the cave and stared at the little smear of blood where the nick had been. If she squinted, she could tell that it was paler and pinker than the surrounding skin, like a fresh scar, but only barely.

“When you know how a person's body is supposed to feel in its natural state, you can fix it when something goes wrong,” Morrie said after a moment. 

“Can you really just fix anything?” Amanita wondered. “Why doesn't everyone do it all the time whenever anyone gets hurt?”

“A few reasons. For one thing, it's a very difficult skill to learn. You've been practicing on plants and fungi for years, learning to make tissue grow. And even so, if you tried to heal something much more substantial than this scratch without a lot more practice and instruction, you might accidentally make it worse. Or just exhaust yourself magically.”

That made sense. Amanita nodded. “What are the other reasons?”

“Well, the learning of healing magic is very restricted in most places. Because there's not any difference between closing a wound and opening a wound, except you do one of them backwards. With practice, you can kill someone just as easily as you can make mushrooms sprout from the ground.”

Amanita dropped Morrie’s hand like it was a fistful of stinging nettle. “I don’t want to know that!”

“I know.”

“Why would you tell me I can do that?!”

Morrie held his hand out to her again, keeping it outstretched even though she shook her head and refused to take it. “It’s better than stumbling upon it accidentally, hm? Ignorance protects nobody, my dearest girl.”

She didn’t want to acknowledge that he had a point. “So they’re right, then,” she said. “Magic is too dangerous for anyone to use, especially around kids. I should never, ever use it again.”

“Amanita Zircon,” Morrie said, very gently. “Someday, you are going to be faced with somebody who has been hurt much worse than that nick in my finger, and you will want to save their life. And you will be grateful that you practiced.”

She crossed her arms and buried her face in them.

“And someday,” continued Morrie, “some creature will pose a real danger to you or somebody you love. And that, too--what you will have to do in defense--you will be grateful that you practiced.” He was almost laughing as he added, “For someone who’s been insisting that she wants to be poisonous so nobody can eat her since she was old enough to know what poison means, you don’t seem to like the idea of being capable of hurting anyone.”

“I want to be poisonous,” she said, her voice muffled. “I only hurt them if they hurt me first. I don’t want to be venomous.”

“And that, Aizie-daisy, is why I am perfectly comfortable with you knowing the magic of life and death.” Morrie nudged her. “Do you need time to mope, or should we practice some more?”

Amanita heaved a weary sigh. “Give me a minute,” she stated. “And then we can practice.” She raised her head after a few seconds, apprehension melting away to a ravenous curiosity much more quickly than she had expected. “What do I try next?”

[casspurrjoybell-22]

Master - Chapter 66 - Part 1

*Warning: Adult Content*

"I have been sent here to collect a very special person."

I stiffen as a familiar voice echoes around the court.

"He's the sweetest person in the world and he has a very disturbing love of all things floral."

I giggle as I stand, looking at Drew, who nods quickly, she was fine.

I hug her tightly, promising to see her again soon before I rush towards Wenquie's voice, finding him standing within the doorway.

The second he spots me, a wide smile breaches his face and he spreads his arms.

"There you are, flower."

Squealing, I run over to him, landing in his arms as he holds me and spins me all around.

It didn't matter that we saw each other every day, we still reacted the same way each time.

When Wenquie sets me down, I smile up at him, his height still hard to adjust to now that he had taken his original form.

Before, Wequie was only a little taller than me, with soft features and a small body that made him all breed-able and cute.

Now, Wenquie was as tall as Lincoln, with tanned, golden skin and smooth muscles that showed in all the right places.

His face was stronger, more masculine and tempting and his voice was so much deeper.

It made me feel very naughty things to be around Wenquie now, which was probably why Master hated us cuddling so much but it wasn't my fault.

It was Wenquie's for being so handsome now.

"What are you doing here?"

"Well, I've been tasked with escorting you to the ancient one's personal library and I take my jobs very seriously," Wenquie replies with a grin.

"Are you all done here?"

I turn around, looking at the newborns, who all smile at me, waving me off before I turn back to Wenquie and nod.

"Great, then, shall we?"

Wenquie offers his arm and I take it with a giggle, holding on tight as we start walking together.

"Do you know what's going on?" I ask while nibbling on my lip.

"Yes and it's nothing bad," Wenquie promises, crossing a finger over his chest.

"And don't even bother asking me what it is because for the first time in all my existence, I'm keeping these lips shut."

I pout, not liking the sound of that at all.

"That's too bad."

Wenquie's golden eyes narrow on me before he shakes his head.

"If you keep flirting like that, you're going to get me in trouble."

I shrug.

"But you like trouble."

Wenquie gasps.

"I told you that, in confidence, Kalem."

Laughing, I pull him in even tighter, forever grateful for the friendship we'd formed together.

Wenquie and I had gotten along before but over the last few months, we'd grown something so close that sometimes I didn't even have to say what was on my mind, he just knew.

I worried that maybe I was stealing Master's friend but we all had fun together on special movie night and sometimes, when Wenquie was really down, Master let him stay with us in bed.

Wenquie said it was coping, I thought it was love.

"Alright, flower," Wenquie says when we reach the door to the room, I'd always love more than any other in the castle.

"This is where I leave you."

"I'm scared," I admit, feeling tense for what had seemed so simple at first but now felt so important.

"Don't be," Wenquie says, leaning down to kiss my forehead.

"You guys deserve this."

With that, Wenquie walks away, leaving me to turn over those words as I face the door.

I could feel Master waiting on the other side, his emotions were too strong to miss, his excitement, nerves and glee.

They were mostly happy feelings and with how much I loved my Master, it was enough for me to open the door and peek inside.

Standing in the centre of the library that was shining from its most recent clean, Lincoln stood with a nervous smile and several bags at his feet.

They were full and zipped up and he was wearing... weird clothes.

They weren't weird, really, just weird on Master, who usually wore fitted things but now he stood in a loose open white top and black pants.

"Are you okay, Master?" I ask as I step inside, blinking twice to make sure I wasn't imagining this.

Lincoln laughs while he rubs his hands in front of him.

"I'm fine, love. Is it really so strange to see me like this?"

I nod because lying was bad and I never lied to my Master.

Lincoln laughs again as I walk toward him, looking more nervous with each step I take.

When I'm standing just in front of him, he looks down at me, his lips struggling to stay curved up.

"Lincoln?"

"I um... I came here some few days ago, for some specific book I suppose but I took one look around and I was met with all these memories," as Lincoln speaks, he looks around.

I follow his gaze, running my eyes over the armchair we always cuddled on to read, the shelves I cleaned one by one and all the special candles I'd gotten for him.

"I remembered so much of our earliest time together and I realised that I was failing us both in an aspect," he says, his eyebrows pulling closer together.

"I promised you the world with the condition that it would all be done once the war was over but the war has long since come and gone. This world is as I made it, safe for us, for you and we haven't even explored it."

I shake my head, not liking the guilt coming from him.

"We have the clan and you're Pylen..."

"I will always be Pylen," Lincoln cuts in quickly. "I will always have some responsibility or the other and so will you. I love it all, I enjoy fulfilling my duties but I did this all for you. This all started because I wanted to give you the world and be sure that you'd be able to lavish in all of your heart's desires."

My heart warms as I look up at Lincoln, watching him closely as he steps forward.

"I know these last few months have been horrible for us both. In all we prepared for, we never expected to lose the ones closest to us...." Lincoln swallows hard, taking a moment before continuing.

"But we can not continue to press pause on all we want because it is not how we expected it to be. We both deserve so much more than that. You deserve more."

Dropping his gaze, Lincoln breathes in slowly, looking lost and anxious all at once.

"Before I met you, Kalem, I was living in darkness. I've seen every inch of all these realms but never once without this shrouding cloud of darkness over it and then I saw you. From the moment I first saw you, Kalem, I started living."

Tears fill my eyes, making my vision blurry as Lincoln takes my face in his hands, holding me so gently like I was the most precious thing in the world.

"I've told you before, love, you are my light and I meant it. You brought me out of that darkness and I want to do the same for you." Lincoln confesses, his voice trembling slightly now.

"You have this beautiful light, Kalem. It's like nothing I've ever seen before and it's a tragedy that it hasn't gotten the chance to shine, to truly shine, that changes today."

"H-How?" I ask, feeling my heart charging between us.

"We're going to see it all," Lincoln says with a shaking smile.

"All this planet, this realm has to offer. We'll travel together, just like we always planned. We'll see those Northern Lights I told you about, dip our toes in every ocean and enjoy all sorts of festivals, not just the pixie ones."

I laugh and Lincoln does as well as he rests his head against mine.

"We're going to live life the way we deserve to."

"But what about the clan?"

"Wenquie and my council will take care of everything while we're away," Master answers quickly.

"A-And my newborns?

"All your friends have pledged to devote every bit of care you do to them as well."

"Malcolm?" I whisper, knowing how Lincoln visited him every day.

Master tenses for a moment, just like he did every time someone said his name.

It had been months since Malcolm had gone to sleep but time didn't make it any easier seeing him like that, as still and cold as stone.

But Master and Wenquie saw him every day, talking and caring to him and there were enough guards for an army protecting his resting place.

"Malcolm is protected," Lincoln says carefully. "I have seen to it and Wenquie is here. I trust him with the clan and with Malcolm as well."

I look up at Master, my mind whirling as I try to think of something else because there was always something else.

"Kalem, we're not leaving forever. We will be only one jump away if we need to come back and we will," Lincoln promises.

"But love," he rubs his thumbs against my skin.

"There's nothing holding us back anymore. We're free to do whatever we want."

Free. We're free.

The words replay themselves over in my mind, growing louder each time it does until it's blaring louder than ever before.

"We're free?" I repeat softly.

Lincoln's dark eyes dart between mine, filling and breaking just a little.

"Yes, Kalem. We're free... in every way. Free."

Maybe he felt it through our bond or maybe, he knew that it was what I needed to hear, that it was what I was looking for before I'd even started searching.

Either way, Lincoln had just given me the very last piece, the most important piece.

[en-hale-archives]

hii can you write a first time sex w hee?

YES OF COURSE I WILL.

tittle ⑅ Are You Hungry?

pairing ⑅ hee x fem!reader

warning ⑅ 18+ content/smut(oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, grinding, nipple play), cussing, read at your own discretion

word count ⑅ 5k (oops)

author's note ⑅ I tried so hard not to go overboard with this one, but ya know, that didn't work. I feel good enough to release this seeing as the members are doing better. Thanks for your patience as we continue to pray for their recovery!

————✧————

The sound of the doorbell ringing echoed throughout the house, and you could feel your heart begin to drum against your chest. You were panicking. Heeseung was here, 5 minutes earlier than what you had asked him. This was your umteenth date with him, and you finally built up the courage to invite him into your home for a more private setting. Heeseung was popular all over the world, so finding a place that was secluded was not easy. He had to make a multitude of precautions before you both could even go on a date, but when he did, it was amazing. Like the time he had taken you to several big restaurants in which he rented out just so it could be the two of you. He took you numerous times to his house to watch movies in his ginormous home theater, and let's not even discuss the other outrageous dates he took you on, like once flying you out to Maimi, and that one time to Tokyo. Heeseung was the kindest man ever, and he didn't have a problem spending his money on you, but this time, you wanted to be the one to pamper him. Even though your house wasn't extravagant like his, you decorated it with candles and lights and played jazz in the background. You ordered food from both your guys' favorite restaurant and had dessert for later.

But when the doorbell rang five minutes earlier than it was supposed to, you began freaking out. You had just set the coffee table and lit the candles, but you still haven't finished your makeup and you had no pants on. "G-give me a second!" You shout out. You hurriedly grab your glossiest lipgloss and smear it on quickly. you do some other finishing touches while pulling up your cheetah-print skirt that went accordingly with your plunging white halter. You then hurriedly dig your feet into your black platformed shoes while dashing towards the door, almost falling at least a couple of times.

Finally getting to the door, hot and panting, you fix your hair in the reflection of the door before taken a deep breath and swinging it open. You can feel your lips turn upward in an awkward smile. "Hi."

"Hey," he replied, plastering on his pretty smile that showed off his pearly whites. You could smell Heeseung's cologne even from the door. His hair had grown longer since the last time you'd seen him, and even with the platformed shoes on, he was still a few inches taller than you. His style was the same as last time, casual but sexy, pairing a bright blue button-down with slick black pants and a large leather jacket to go over. At that moment you felt a bit overdressed.

"You look -- really nice." He complimented.

You can feel your body flush with heat, "thanks." You see his eyes dart to your chest just for half a second before meeting your eyes again. You began to ease up at the sight of his eyes scanning your body. You suddenly realize the tingly feeling of your breast and remembered you weren't wearing a bra, so your ladies were free to nip as much as they wanted. You pushed Heeseung in the hope he doesn't see them go hard, but a slight smile on his lips confirms to you that he did.

"It's cold outside." You're quick to come up with an excuse, and Heeseung nods in agreement, but his eyes fall back down and admire your breast for the second time.

"I hate that you don't want to go out, your outfit is too cute to not show off," Heeseung closed the door behind him. "But, I actually think it's best that we stay inside cause, you're right, it is cold."

heeseung stripped his jacket off and turned towards you. You realized how close you two were and panicked. You and heeseung have already kissed -- multiple times. You both have even done a bit touching here and there, but you made it clear to him that you were still a virgin. As soon as you said that, it was like Heeseung made it his civic duty to take his time with you. He'd touch you but never finish, or he'd give you goosebumps and leave it there. finally, you wanted something more. But with him standing so close now, it seemed impossible to let his aggravating touches just stay touches.

Heeseung smiled down at you and stepped closer. This close, you could see his pores and just how crystal clear his skin was. You paid attention to the way his eyes were shaped and the way his button nose curved up. You were sure Heeseung was going to go in for a kiss until he reaches up and hangs his jacket on the coat rack behind you.

You swallow with embarrassment. "Yeah, it is cold." You cringe with annoyance at your repeated words. Heeseung just chuckles.

He licks his lips before continuing, "Are we going upstairs?"

"Actually, I set everything up in there," you point out to him in the direction of the living room. He turns and takes a moment to admire the atmosphere, taking in your decorations and the slow jazz music.

"This is really nice," Heeseung doesn't move his eyes off of your work as he compliments it.

He turns to you, obviously trying to hide a grin. "Were you trying to set the mood for something?" He moves closer to you and without thinking you move back, bumping into the coat rack. "Are you okay? You seem nervous."

You search for a response but you weren't sure you could without stammering or sounding scared. And why were you scared? Heeseung was coming onto you like you wanted, but when you felt his body heat come into your bubble, it made you physically shift. All the fantasy you've had, all the things you listed that you wanted to do to him and it came down to this? You colliding with a coat rack cause he stepped close?

"Yeah, I'm fine." You manage to squeak out. Your voice was above pitch, so he still stood there with his eyes furrowed in worry.

"Y/n..." He whispered. He grabbed your hands and held onto them tightly. "You know you don't have to be nervous right? I'm not expecting anything, I was just playing around."

You smile. It was nice to hear that Heeseung wasn't expecting anything but little did he know that you wanted to skip the mingling and eating and head straight up to your room to rip the buttons of his shirt and expose his broad shoulders. You've never seen him without a shirt, but his outfit teased you like treats do a dog. You wanted to explore his body, more than you were willing to admit.

"Thanks, Heeseung," His words still made you feel a sense of relief, even though you knew where you wanted the night to go. "Come on, I ordered our favorite meals." You held onto Heeseung hands as you led him in the direction of the kitchen. You could feel Heeseung's eyes on your bareback as you head down the hall, walking slowly so he could take his time at exploring your body. You opened the kitchen junk drawer that held everything under the sun and took out scissors. You turn to Heeseung and them to him.

"Would you like to do the honors?" You joke around. Heeseung laugh filled the area, and you're alarmingly aware of the way Heeseung looked inside of your small kitchen. he stood tall and masculine -- at some point, he felt like he overran the room. He looked out of place, yet the most appealing meal of the day.

He walked over to the large brown bag and cut open the sides.

"I'll get the drinks," You had hid a special bottle of wine in the back of your fridge, the one that you'd hope your roommates wouldn't spot and take. They knew about your special night and made sure to be out of the house the rest of the night, While you got ready, they blew up your phone with eggplant and kiss face emojis.

Heeseung got the meals out of the bag as you stuck your head in the fridge to feel around for the bottle. It didn't take long until you felt a cold glass touch your hand and was sure that it was the Merlot. You took the corkscrew from the drawer and popped it off. It came with a pop that Heeseung cheered loud for. "Woo! Let's get this night started!" Heeseung held the wine classes as you poured. he took a sipped and it helped you admire his looks yet again. his lips were occupied by the glass, but you liked watching his lips pout as he drank, you liked the look of his strong jaw and the way his adam's apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. You could only hope that his apple would move like that again later tonight.

You washed away the dirty thoughts that threaten to take over your head and grabbed your glass, drinking down all of it.

Heeseung watched you in surprise, "slow down cowgirl." He joked. You laugh with him and wipe at your mouth. You might've drunk too fast as you feel a drop slowly move down your chest like a tear on a cheek.

"You got a little--" Heeseung motions with his hand the drop that keeps moving. You reach to get it, but Heeseung's words interrupt you.

"Would you mind if I got it," he whispered softly while moving closer to you, his eyes never leave your chest. "...with my mouth?"

Your heart raced wildly, "yes." You told him, flushed at how fast you spoke and amazed at your boldness.

Heeseung's tall figure leaned down over your small frame and pressed his head into your chest. It's not long until you feel his tongue lick across your flesh. You can't help but close your eyes as you reel in just how hot and wet his mouth was. You feel the tingle between your inner thighs and let the feeling settle in, trying as hard as possible not to whimper.

Heeseung moved his hands to place them lightly on your waist, but the mix of his hot tongue and his warm hands made you stumble back. You brace your hands onto the counter behind you.

When you feel him begin to suck against your skin, you try your hardest not to squirm, but inevitably tremble against him. You can tell Heeseung felt your movement as he begins to suck harder, tracing his tongue up the trail of the droplet, and landing on the bottom of your chin.

Goosebumps rose against your sensitive skin. Heeseung kissed slowly against your chin, sucking it and moving along the entirety of your neck. You were never sure where his tongue would move next, but you always knew that it would be an adventure. Suddenly, Heeseung's body leaped off yours. The absence of his heat left you cold.

"Sorry, I got carried away," he combed his hand through his hair and took a deep breath. You couldn't contain his mouth not being somewhere on you and violently let out a groan. Heeseung looks back at you with a surprise.

"You keep doing this to me." You step closer to him, shocked at your own truthfulness. "You keep making me feel this way and then stop." You're as close to him as you possibly could want to be. "I don't want you to stop." Your truth shocked Heeseung. He stood in bewilderment, but not for long until you landed your lips onto his.

Your kiss is slow and gentle. You feel your lips sync in motion and it drives your body crazy. You feel the vibration of Heeseung's moan on your lips as he takes over and presses you back against the counter.

the kiss turned on its head, now becoming teasing and spicy.

"Can I kiss you harder?" He said against your lips. You don't even give him time to respond before you press your lips deeper onto him. He reaches his hands around your neck and kisses you back.

Heeseung dug even harder into the is, making it urgent, hot, and desperate. Your hands and his groped for one another, both of your breathing quickened, and you felt his tongue lick your bottom lip, asking for entrance.

You moaned when you felt his tongue enter your mouth. The sound you were trying so hard not to make escaped without warning. Your mind went foggy as you realized how magical the moment was getting; you never wanted it to end. Heeseung's hands were wrapped around your figure while you help his neck, massaging at the muscle underneath. Heeseung pressed you closer to his body. Your chest was now on his, you felt his waist connect to yours. You felt Heeseung moan against your lips and it drives you crazy. Your body was flushed with passion and desire. You felt yourself slipping into a kind of personality that didn't match your own. You wanted him more than anything in the world. You wanted any and everything Heeseung could offer you. Even right there in the kitchen, you wanted heeseung to throw you on the island and take away your virginity.

Heeseung's voice hitched as you realized your hands had made their way down to his hips. He pressed into you and you could feel just how excited he was with his erection against you. You felt his hands move down slowly to caress your ass. You could feel his thumb moving along your panty line, and wondered what was taking him so long to rip them off.

His grip on you tightened and you felt him pull your body in as if trying to be one. You both were kissing manically, leaving no time for taking a breather. You could taste the red wine that Heeseung sucked off your chest, and his nose rubbed up against yours, cold and smooth. You ran your hands up his arms and into his thick hair, tugging on it agony with pleasure and desire that you have never felt before.

Heeseung moved his lips to your neck again, giving you time to take a breather. You panted against his ear while you asked about the food.

"Are you hungry?" Heeseung stopped kissing your neck looked you dead in the eyes. At first, you thought he was joking, but he looked serious, almost worried.

"Well I was, but not really anymore." You shrugged off laughing slightly. Heeseung furrowed his eyebrows and took his hands off your ass rested them against the counter.

He let out a sigh, "Sorry, I'm wasn't thinking. We should've eaten first."

"It's okay Hee, I'm fine really." You try reassuring him. You could feel him looking deep into your eyes like he was searching for something. And you were too. Here you were standing against the kitchen counter, horny as hell and wanting his lips anywhere he pleased, and yet, he stood there with his puppy dog eyes looking concerned.

"I don't want you to think that I only came here for one reason." Heeseung reached for your hand.

"I really like you y/n, and I don't want to look like a douche." Heeseung eyes darted down to your hands and he rubbed them gently.

You couldn't help but let out a giggle. Heeseung was worried he was making you feel used and that was the very thing you wanted; for Heeseung to pleasure your body while you did the same for him.

Heeseung looked back up with confusion. "Heeseung," You whispered. You took your hands out of his and wrapped them around his neck. In instinct, he wrapped his arms around your hips.

"I'm hornier than a cow during mating season." You smiled. Heeseung turned his head, shocked at your words, and so were you. You couldn't help but laugh loudly while your cheeks flushed red.

Heeseung laughed with you. "-- Okay." You both were standing in the kitchen, giggling and finally letting out that gust of stress.

"Well, if you feel that way," heeseung bent down to meet your cheek against his. "Let me help you."

You couldn't contain your smile and the tingle between your legs. Heeseung grabbed both your hands and led you back into the living room. He lightly pushed you down on the couch, and with a smirk, was back on his duty of kissing you fiercely, first on your chest and then back at your lips.

In a matter of seconds, his hands were able to untuck your halter top from your skirt and make their way underneath to cup your breast. He lightly massaged them, but it drove you crazy. You couldn't even contain your excitement, surprised at how close to the edge you already were. Anything more, and you'd be finished.

He murmured something against your neck, but you weren't paying enough attention to hear, worried that your sudden excitement would ruin the moment. So you held in your moans and whimpers, focusing on anything but what was happening. His breath tickled against your neck as he licked and sucked. Without acknowledging your actions, your hands had reached around Heeseung and pulled him down onto you. You could feel the heat of his body warming yours.

"Spread your legs," Heeseung says. You were basically following his actions before he could even finish. You gave him plenty of space so that both your knees were resting against his thighs. Without hesitation, you slowly began to bump into his knee, moaning hard when it came in contact with your arousal. You were sure that you whimpered, and at this point, you didn't care. Heeseung for sure heard it, and you got confirmation when he moved his hands from your chest to your hips, grinding you onto his knee deeper, faster.

You sent out more and more whimpers, almost positive that you might've even moaned out his name. Now, you went just close to the edge, but you were damn near on it.

Heeseung moved one hand under your skirt as he moved his mouth down to your chest, pushing your halter top up and swirling his tongue around your nipple. His actions were so fast and unexpected that it gave you a shock; a shock at how good it felt. You felt your hand cling onto his shirt. He bit down lightly and it sent a spiral of tingles throughout your body. You could feel your knees squeezing against him harder. Heeseung continued to move you against his knee as he stroked softly against the front of your panties.

"God, you're so wet." He mumbled. You knew the second that Heeseung moved his hand into your panties and rubbed circles against your heated flesh that there was no holding back. You were going to come.

You ground your teeth and felt your back arch. What only were a few moans came to a manic attack of pants. Before the moment could even arrive, you felt his finger slip in and stroke. You could feel your muscle tighten the second he entered, and then with a little shudder, you held your breath while you let your orgasm play out. You could feel your eyes roll back and at that moment you wanted Heeseung to fuck you until you weren't able to walk.

You felt Heeseung smile against your breast while he continued to stroke, going slower and slower as you rode down from your high.

"Fuck, that was hot." Heeseung giggled. He kissed your cheek that was flushed with heat.

"Wow." Those were the only words that seem to be able to escape your mouth.

Heeseung looked into your eyes and smiled wide. You felt your heart thump at the way his eyes looked down at you, full of love and desire. It was crazy, you had just finished, but you felt the spot between your inner thighs begin to tingle again. You took in a long breath and were met with his amazing cologne, basking in the reality that you were living at this very moment.

You reached up and cupped your hands around his face, lowering him down to meet your lips. He kissed back, slow and gentle.

Heeseung broke the kiss ad looked back down at you. "Y/n, I just need to know that this is what you want."

Had Heeseung not been paying attention? Did you comparing yourself to a cow not give him confirmation enough? "I'm absolutely sure."

Heeseung nodded, but you could still see the concern that crossed his eyes for just a short moment.

"Are you okay with doing this?" You asked. Heeseung looked down at you and smiled. He nodded.

"Okay then," You both got over the weird beginning part, but now you were ready for the fun.

Heeseung went back to kissing you before stopping again. "Should we go up to your bedroom? I don't want your first time being on a couch." Heeseung's words made you giggle. He leaped off of you and you fixed your top back down and smooth out your skirt before lifting off the sofa, realizing that your shoes were still on.

You grab Heeeseung's hand, "lead the way beautiful." you both made your way up the stairs and into the first room on the floor. You felt yourself getting shy again when you closed the door and felt Heeseung masculine presence take over the dramatic pinks in your room. You held your hands in front of you as if not sure where to place them.

Before words could even be spoken Heeseung reached up and unbuttoned his shirt quickly.

He tossed the shirt to the floor as you gawk at his lean figure that was masked in muscle and veins. You couldn't help but lick your lips. Heeseung slowly walked closer to you, taking off his shoes and socks in the process. You gasped when he took your hand and placed it against his warm chest.

You run your fingers lightly over his skin, pausing at his abs and at the waistband of his pants. You ran your hand back up his stomach and heard him groan. You took both hands and placed them against his sides, loving the way they curved. You purposefully brushed over the top of his nipples and were rewarded with a slight hitch in his breathing.

Heeseung wrapped his arms around your waist and brought you closer, kissing your eyes. You felt the warmth of his lips and the wetness of this kiss. He switched between both eyes while you kept your hands on his chest. He moved to your temples, then to your cheeks, then to your mouth. He moved his hands to behind your neck and kneaded softly before reaching the neatly tied bow of your halter top and letting it loose. The top slid down the front of your body and down to the floor.

You let your heart rush but tried not to think much of it, doing your best to just live in the moment. He continued to kiss you, but it grew deeper and urgent. his hands fell back onto your waist and tugged on your skirt, gesturing that you wanted them off. You took your hands and pulled them down without breaking the kiss. A chill ran through your body realizing just how naked you were. You held back onto his arms as he walked you to the bed. He pushed you down gently down and broke the kiss to help you slide back onto the bed. You felt his eyes scan your body and you wanted to do nothing more than to cover your chest.

"Fuck." He cussed.

"What's the matter?" You worried that Heeseung was now thinking about his yes decision. But he put his knee between your legs, "You look so fucking beautiful. So gorgeous."

You could practically feel your mouth gape open. Heeseung rubbed against his pants roughly while he used his free one to free you of your platforms.

He threw them and they fell with a loud bang. He climbed over you and took your hands above your head and held them gently.

"You really want this right? Because I really need this." Heeseung voice was shaky. You could practically hear the urgency in his words.

"I really need this too," you claim. You rap both legs around his sides and pull him in, once again surprised by your own actions. "So stop asking." And he did. His worried eyes turned to hunger as he covered his mouth with yours. The kiss was passionate, the small groans that he let out made you want him even more.

Heeseung un-grasp his hands from yours and you could feel him rustling at his pants, unzipping them, and pulling out his wallet to set to the side.

He laid his body on top of yours and gave slight pressure that made it feel agonizingly good. He tilted your head to the side as he made his way down your neck. You watch all the action unfold in the mirror of your dresser, gripping at the sheets when he pulled down his briefs.

You swallow hard when you see his cock and how long and veinly it was. Heeseung met with your eyes in the mirror.

"wow." Once again, the only word you seemed to know.

"We'll go slow, I promise." You nod slowly at his words. You were nervous that it would hurt, nervous that it wouldn't feel the way you anticipated, especially seeing it so full and large. You wanted to close your eyes but you restrained from doing so, not wanting to show Heeseung any signs of nervousness. You felt Heeseung take in your breast and suck lightly. You watched his actions, mostly staring at the top of his head, but seeing the pink of his tongue and the way it flicked against your nipple and left it wet. it made you squirm.

His tongue felt absolutely amazing as it traveled all around. He kept the pace light and gentle following the curves of your body until you couldn't take it anymore.

"Please hurry Heeseung." You begged. Heeseung chuckled before giving you a quick kiss and focused on taking off your panties.

He repositioned himself on top of you and licked his lips. Before he could say anything, you nod in approval. He takes a deep breath before holding himself up with one arm while using his fingers to spread you apart and ease into you. You hear him moan against your ear as your toes curl. You could feel yourself stretching against his cock and hold in a whimper. You blink slowly, focusing on Heeseung face and the way his eyes focused on the action happening.

You feel him stop and rest before moving a little more in. You could tell he was hesitating with continuing, but you moan in approval, and he moves the rest of the way into you. You held onto his biceps and tried your best not to claw at his skin. You couldn't;t help but tighten around him, and he let out a groan of pleasure.

"I'm going to start moving," he whispered. They were long and slow, steady and gentle, in and out. You continued to stretch against him, but it felt numb with a ting of pleasure.

Heeseung took your hair in his hands and lifted your head to kiss you deep on his lips. He took a long thrust out and a sharper thrust in that sparked something you and a pleasurable moan escaped your mouth.

"Just like that." You groaned. Heeseung gave a small growl on your lips and trusted harder, hitting that spot one after another. Your moans were impossible to hold back, and you tighten your thighs against his sides.

You once again knew that this wasn't going to last long.

"I'm gonna come." You whine. Heeseung's hold on your hair tightens and he jerks harder into, moaning nothing but encouragement against your lips. You felt your back arch and your body explode in euphoria. Seconds later, Heeseung pulls out and comes. You look down to watch him jerk his cock with small tight pulls So much spill on your stomach that you wished for a second it was in your mouth.

Heeseung let out a large sigh as he laid back against you, his breathing unsteady and fast. You ran your fingers over his back as you both calm down from your high.

You feel him giggle against your shoulder and make you giggle as well. He lifts up to press a soft kiss against your cheek. "Are you okay?"

"I'm great." You smiled. That had been the best experienced you had ever had. Heeseung felt so hot and slick inside you, and for a split second, you wanted to ask him to do it again, but harder and deeper.

Heseung lifted off of you and looked at his mess. "Um, let me grab some tissue." he leaped off the bed and into your bathroom. He comes back out and wipes softly against your skin. When he's done, he leaves a loving kiss in between your breast.

He looks back up at you with a questioning look, "are you hungry?"

————✧————

[wicked-elfie]

Time Swap (ROTMNT)

Time Swap AU created by @teetlezhere

Chapter 5

TW: Trauma, mentions of action violence, mentions of hospitalization

Beginning / Previous / Next

( I’m gonna put some notes at the end! I hope you enjoy this one. I had to do SO MUCH MATH. And I SUCK at math so if any of you are really good at it and notice I was wrong about anything- just don't tell me :’( enjoy! )

~*~*~*~*~

In the present…

The elder of the two Leonardos held his water glass by the rim and rotated his wrist, swirling the liquid inside. He had taken a couple sips, but his mind was busy. He pushed back the deeply buried memory he had woken up from before Raph had questioned him; He had too much on his plate and too much to confront right now to think about it; Now, all he had to do was wait.

And man, did he wait: It was probably only an hour, but the silence that dragged on made it feel like years. He examined his surroundings to distract himself. He found several things he had forgotten about his genius brother’s lab: a statue carved to look like Donnie’s face - he chuckled at that, narc, the smooth metallic desk it stood upon, the machines he still didn’t understand, and - finally - Donatello’s battle shells. Leo sighed and lowered his gaze, finding interest in the water glass again.

He was mesmerized for a moment till he heard a loud crash. Jolting his head up, he observed the cracked-open door. His eyebrows lifted as he listened to a rambunctious discussion in the hall.

“The future?! You mean to tell me that’s how tall he becomes?! I want to be that tall! Donnie, Donnie! When I’m old, will I be tall, too!?” He recognized the excitable and squeaky voice of his youngest brother.

His lips pursed when he heard the second one, with a flatter tone, “That’s what you want to know? I want to know why I wasn't the first one to come back! I should’ve invented time travel by now! But I guess if I were to think about it, I could say that from the analysis I performed on the subject after he had passed out: I date him to around forty years old, give or take a couple of months. If I’m correct- and I am- then it is safe to assume that since Leonardo was born in 2004, then this Leonardo resides in the year 2044. This would put you at thirty-nine years old; this means you’re far beyond full grown.”

Leonardo smiled to himself at Donatello’s elocution. “That being saaaiiiid; Red-eared sliders, in their natural state, can grow anywhere for 4-12 inches. Box turtles usually average out at around 5-7 inches. This means that since this Leonardo measures at 6’3”, you could be anywhere from 3’8” to 7’8”.” A pause: They’ve stopped walking. “Given that you are taller than the former calculation already, with you currently standing at 4’7…” There was a tapping noise, potentially a foot on the ground. Leo could imagine Mikey leaning in with dazzling eyes, anticipating the answer. The purple banded whiz mumbled and his steady footsteps continued down the hall, followed by Mikey’s scattered ones. “Leo’s 5.42 to 6.25… 86.72% meaning… 13.28%…4.58… that’s 5.19, so therefore…” The door metallically screeched open as the older of the pair pushed it aside with his back.

“Gosh, I need to oil that… Hm… 5’2”?” Donnie’s left hand held up his right elbow, while the opposite palm rested under his chin in thought. Leo took a moment to watch him, continuing to tap his foot now that the brothers had made it to the lab. He missed their antics dearly. “So in short- Hah! See what I did there?- You are not tall!” The snarkier brother leaned down to Michaelangelo and grinned.

“5’2”?! No! This is the worst news ever!” Mikey threw his arms up in despair. “I only get to be a foot shorter than him?!”

Donatello grumbled at the dramatic reaction and the mathematically incorrect revelation, “No, Miguel. You get to be eleven inches shorter than him.” He nodded in resolve to his brother. Mikey humphed and crossed his arms, pouting at his feet. Leonardo chuckled, drawing their attention.

“Actually, he taps out at 5’4”.” He fought back the urge to fling his arms around them. They don’t know me. “Hey, guys.”

Donnie let his hands hang to his sides and gave a disapproving glare to the newcomer, “Nine inches, then.” His statement is quickly ignored by the box turtle with stickers on his plastron. Mikey leapt towards the warrior.

“I have been waiting so long to meet you!” The smallest turtle stood in front of Leonardo. “Donnie said that you looked cool, but you’re even cooler up close!”

Donatello’s face scrunched up and he whisper-yelled, “Don't tell him I said that, Mikey!” He yanked the thirteen-year-old backwards, and continued to scold his brother softly, “We don’t know him. There’s a 50/50 chance he could be a bad guy! Splinter said Krang can corrupt things. This includes, but is not limited to: people, animals, inanimate objects, and mystic mutants! We don’t know what that looks like, remember? We’re only here to get affiliated. All business, no talk. Where is Dr. Delicate touch?”

Mikey sighed and shook himself out a bit. “Hoo. Okay. You’re right.” His lips tugged down into a stern frown, “Serious stuff.” He gave the larger mutant a suspicious sideways glance. Standing straight, his arms locked together and he stepped slowly before the warrior. “So… They say you’re from the future.” His lower lip pushed up in an attempt to look menacing; It didn’t work, but it made Leo laugh.

Donnie ducked between his younger brother and the new ninja, shoving his face up close to the elder turtle, “Why are you laughing?! Have you tricked us?! Gasp! I knew it… You are a bad guy!” He swung an accusing finger at Leo, only to continue to humor the elder mutant.

Mikey gasped and held his head, tugging on his imaginary hair, “O-mi-gosh! What if he already got Raph and that’s why he was being so weird?! Donnie you were right!” He cried and held onto his brother’s arm for comfort, only to be pushed off.

Leonardo’s laughter dissipated at the remark; This was serious. He looked up to the taller of the pair and calmly retorted, “I’m not krangified, Don. If I was, I would have probably killed you all by now.” Donatello’s hand dropped, and Mikey froze up behind him.

The moment passed when they all turned their attention to the door, hearing a deep voice with a hint of an NYC accent, “Donnie, Mikey, leave him alone.” The younger two backed out of the way.  Raphael approached Leonardo and held out a cylinder with shapes carefully carved into it. “This tha key you were lookin’ for?”

Leo nodded his head in amazement. He hesitantly picked it up from Raph’s palm and looked it over. You shouldn’t be surprised. You weren’t here to mess it up.

“We went on a mission while you were out to get back a stolen artifact. When I came home and you were up: The description y’a gave me was way too similar.” The red banded mutant rubbed the back of his head. “Do y’a know how to get rid of it?”

The older ninja traced a thumb over what would be the brow of the face-like carving on the relic and pondered out loud, “Splinter had said that four mystic warriors created it.” He raised his chin to gaze upon his brothers from another life. “Maybe we need four mystic warriors to destroy it.” He bit the inside of his mouth, and let his head hang down again, “But we only have three.”

The purple-clad turtle raised a questioning eyebrow, “You’re Leonardo? That means we have four?”

Leo shook his head and sighed, “I lost my powers to the Krang leader after… well, after something… difficult happened to me.” He closed his eyes.

Red. A sea of red. Waking up to April and Mikey crying. Hearing Raph’s monitor beep steadily in the back. Hearing his own monitor beep beside him. Donnie. Ringing ears. Donnie. A new face scar. Donnie.

This can’t be happening. Don’t act like this is goodbye. Don’t you dare.

“Uh… Leon?” Mikey’s quiet beckoning brought the warrior back to his senses.

Leonardo blinked back a couple tears that had managed to pop up on his waterline. He clenched the artifact till his hands felt numb. “There was a blast. Krang have the ability to take mystic powers away by releasing this…  scream.” He whispered bitterly to the key in his hands, “My portaling abilities were hardly the worst loss that I suffered from that day.”

Donatello was holding a trembling Mikey in his shell. Leonardo’s gaze softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, kid.” The youngest brother barely lifted his head above the opening.

“It’s okay, Leo.” he meekly responded. I forgot how nervous he could be.

Raph pinched his chin in thought. “Could we… I don't know… get y’a powers back?”

The purple banded brother released the shell, sending Mikey down to the floor with a thud. “I’ve got it!”

“Ow!”

“Sorry.”

Mikey unfolded from his hiding place and rubbed his back, puffing his cheeks out at his older brother in response to the betrayal. Donnie sheepishly helped him to his feet. Leonardo chortled, “Well then: What’s the idea, Don-Tron?”

The younger turtle groaned, “Jeez, even you call me that?” He lifted his arm monitor to his face and slammed his fingers against it. “Well, I was thinking we could-”

Raph interrupted, “Smash it?”

“Um. No. That’s barbaric.” The genius rubbed his temple, “We could-”

Mikey piped up, “OH! What about flushing it!?”

Donnie rolled his eyes, “Still: No. You’d clog the toilet. We could-”

“Burn it!” Raph exclaimed, holding his hands on his hips and sticking out his chest, very proud of his idea.

“NO! Would you please let me finish!,” he snapped at his brothers. After a couple of quiet apologies he continued his thought. “Thank you.” He turned back to his monitor and began clicking at it again. “We could restore his powers through a series of emotional unpacking sessions, or therapeutical practices of sorts. He needs to address whatever is keeping him from feeling removed from the Hamato clan. In other words, Old Leonardo, here, must be blocked from his familial connection to the Hamato Nimpō.”

Mikey gasped in mortification, “Donnie, don’t call him that!” He whispered into his brother’s ear, “It’s rude.”

Donatello crossed his arms in irritation and rolled his eyes, “What else am I supposed to call him? Warrior Leo? Apocalypse Leo? Leonardo, but six feet tall with under eye bags?” He flicked his brother in the nose, eliciting a minuscule yelp from the youngest.

Ignoring the bickering between the younger two, Raphael crouched down beside old Leo. His face lifted in curiosity, “Do y’a think that could work?”

“With all of you guys here?” Leo looked back to the key again. His lips twisted up into a hopeful smile, “Maybe... It’s possible…”

~*~*~*~*~

Finally! A chapter with substantially LESS trauma! I’ve had lots of spare time on my hands the first week I’ve been writing this. However, my college classes start up again today, so I’ll be posting less often (hopefully like once every three days? The chapters are pretty short.) I feel like I’ve gotten it off to a good start, and I have a whole arc planned out for each of the storylines so it hopefully doesn't drag. I hope you all continue to enjoy! Please feel free to comment on the story and thank you for reading!

[saabbi]

Regret - part 1

Genshin Impact

Adeptus!reader & father figure!zhongli

Part 2, part 3

Characters: Zhongli

Warnings: [CRAP QUALITY] Angst, grammatical errors

Summary: Adeptus!Reader and father figure!Zhongli, where Zhongli is a father figure to you- or once was. Until the archon war broke out, where you were forced to send to the Tsarista in means of a peace treaty. You are the child he failed to raise, the child he abandoned. He did not expect to reunite with you after millenniums, on yet another battlefield, only to witness how you’ve changed, the irreversible mistakes and decisions he had made.

Notes: A very sudden idea I had. In here,Zhongli feels as if he has failed as a dad. In here, Xiao, Ganyu and reader are around the same age and grew up together as fellow adepti, and zhongli raised you three like his own children. Until the war broke out, when he decided that protecting Liyue is more important than his young adeptus child, and brutally sent reader off as a political gift, only to find out reader has been raised as a killing machine, a war tool by the Tsarista when they once again reunite in yet another war. Also posted on ao3

Zhongli watched as the bloody corpses laid beneath your feet, the field splattered in the ugly red of blood, the horrible stench filling up the surrounding air. Inazuma had declared war on Liyue, and Liyue was severely short in manpower and resources after the incident caused by Childe. As compensation for causing such a huge mess, the Tsarista offered to deliver one of her treasured harbingers, the twelfth harbinger, to aid Liyue’s battle.

His heart almost stops at the sight of you, eyes widening. He wasn’t expecting you, not you, not the adeptus he gave up on. The child he abandoned.

“You’ve grown up.” He tried to stay as composed as possible, hoping the shakiness in his voice was not obvious. His eyes wavered dangerously, ineffable emotions rising up his chest.

“It has, Zhongli.” You are all tall now, unlike the small child you once were, even taller than Xiao who is more or less the same age as you. Your voice deepened a lot more, no longer having the childishness in it. You had a firm and well developed figure, muscles bulging as you gripped your sword, scars on your body visible.

Zhongli’s hand trembled, feeling as if he’d break down any time soon. He didn’t know why you appeared so emotionless, he didn’t know why your arms, you legs- where cloth didn’t cover, scars showed. He hasn’t visited Snezhnayan ever since the archon war, he never once heard of how you are over there. He felt guilty, ashamed, and avoided any sort of information relating to you. After millenniums of separated from you, he never saw you back. This surprise from the Tsarista, surely she knows what’s up when she sent you over to aid Liyue.

“How have you been?” He tried hard not to stutter. Zhongli never actively sought for information of you for millenniums, but you never left his mind, the precious child who he failed to raise.

“Okay.” Your answer was short and cold, you didn’t show any sort of disgust or hatred towards him, however. You gaze, much like your lonely figure, was cold and dull.

What happened to you after he sent you away? What made you like this? He recalled you running gleefully around the city with Xiao, your smile as bright as the sun when you held hands with Ganyu and Xiao, sitting on the three children’s father figure- him, giggling as you write your wishes on the lanterns and releasing them. The time the four of you enjoyed a nice day of picnic, the times all three of his precious children spent their time together like a real family. Everything went downhill afterwards.

“I’ve always regretted it.” The rushing memories and overwhelming emotions took the best of him, as he clenched his chest and the bitter words spilling from his mouth.

“I’m not sure how to respond to that, Zhongli.” You stared down at the archon, watching him as his eyes reflected your figure, and pain.

“Aren’t you mad at me? Don’t you resent me? For abandoning you? For giving you up to trade peace with the Tsarista?” Zhongli’s voice cracked.

“No. I feel nothing. So I suppose you shouldn’t feel guilt ridden too. You did it for the safety of Liyue, after all.” You answered plainly, not understanding his intentions of bringing up what happened long ago in the past at all.

Zhongli knew, knew how you became an emotionless doll, knew how you could not feel anything from the way you slaughtered the battlefield without batting an eye, from the way your dull eyes looked and your words containing no sort of emotion in them. He had a hunch that you would not leave a string of attachment in this world if you died. You couldn’t feel anything. The very last time he witnessed you displaying intense and genuine emotions, was when he agreed to give you up, when he decided to sacrifice you to the Tsarista. You were still a very young adeptus back then, weeping as the Fatui rips you apart from zhongli’s side, screaming as you watched zhongli only stood afar, letting the fatui take you away, eyes widening in despair as the small hands you reached out in attempt to grab Zhongli’s hand, but his figure didn’t budge to reach for you. That was the last time he saw you, when you still had emotions, when your true feelings are displayed on your face like any other regular human. It was all his fault, you were no longer the precious child who loved the world. Zhongli would have preferred if you resented him, if you screamed at him for abandoning you with such ease, hated him for throwing away the family-like bond you shared like it was nothing.

Zhongli wanted to hug you, to beg for forgiveness, to say that he’s sorry. But he knows he doesn’t deserve to do this. After you were forced to leave with the Tsarista, Xiao and Ganyu changed, drastically. They grew further apart, no longer the close friends they once were, Ganyu indulged herself in endless piles of work; Xiao being closed off to others and distancing himself from humans. But nobody blamed Zhongli, nobody blamed him for giving you up. Zhongli doesn’t know what he should do anymore, how would he explain it to Xiao and Ganyu? How would they react when they see you? To see you moving under Tsarista’s order like a war tool, sweeping the battlefield without a single hint of emotion in your eyes.

“Will you return to Liyue...return to us?” He asked hopefully, extending a hand to you. Maybe he could still repair this broken relationship, maybe he could have his child back, have his children reunite and live on the same land again, maybe it was a chance offered by the Tsarista, to pick back up the abandoned child.

“I work under the Tsarista.” You watched as his hands extended out to you, in attempt to hold your hands. But you didn’t budge, not reaching out to the offered hands and only stared at them. It was his fault, Zhongli knows, it was all his fault, and the Tsarista was mocking him for it.

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[adorerdraco]

Healing Heart ✧ Draco x Reader Mini-Series PART 1

Summary: Draco meets and accidentally falls in love with reader during his sixth year (HBP). Part 1 of a upcoming series.

Warnings: angst, some fluff, mentions of blood, crying, panic attacks

Words: 6.4K words (I made this so longgg)

A/N: my first Draco writing !!! i am sorry ahead of time if there are any misspellings, typing with long acrylics is hard omg. ALSO PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SEND ME REQUESTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! also i do not own this gif.

It was almost satirical how Draco managed to fall in love with someone at what might be, is, the lowest point in his life. It was his sixth year at Hogwarts, the dark mark burned into his left forearm, the restless mending of the vanishing cabinet, the impossible task of killing his Headmaster, the Dark Lord looming over him and his family with promises of torture and death if he didn’t follow through with the orders he was given.

Draco was an empty shell of what he used to be. The playful and mean remarks that would leave his mouth to anyone that stood in his path were gone. The devious twinkle in his eye and the smug smirk that used to grace his face almost 24/7 was reduced to a permanent scowl and red-rimmed eyes. He looked as if he had aged a rough 10 years since the last year he was at school. Everyone noticed it.

Everyone noticed the skipped meals, the lack of sleep, the empty look in his eyes, the falling behind in class. But no one dared say a thing to him. It almost seems as though people were afraid of him now more than ever. The sneer on his face and the reckless and impulsive attitude he held now was like a repellent for anyone that tried to come near. He was completely alone, whether he liked it or not and he decided to keep it that way.

That all changed a few months into the year, however, when you were rushing to DADA, your long house colored scarf getting tangled underneath your feet causing you to trip and lurch forward, dropping all your books, your wand, and crashing into, you guessed it, Draco Malfoy himself. There was a loud cracking sound as you both tumbled onto the ground, a yelp slipping past Draco’s lips as he held his hand in pain.

"Oh, Merlin,” you gasped, Draco shooting you the dirtiest glare. “Draco, I’m so sorry.”

Before he could open his mouth to tell you off and incessantly insult you into oblivion, you reached forward and took his wounded hand in yours, the softness of your hands and tender touch throwing him off guard. He watched you as you examined the damage on one of his fingers.

“It’s just a sprain,” you finalized after inspecting it for a couple seconds. Draco recoiled his hand from yours as if he had touched a hot surface. He moved to get up and you huffed out a “wait, hold on,” as you scrambled around the ground for your wand. When you felt the wood underneath your fingertips, you clutched it and jumped to your feet, gently grabbing onto the sleeve of Draco’s robe who was already trying to retreat.

“Get away,” he snarled, snatching his arm out of your grasp.

“Let me help,” you pleaded softly, “it’ll be quick, I promise.”

Draco looked down at you with annoyance. He was about to leave again until he felt that same tender touch from just a few moments ago. The feeling stunning him again as he looked down at his hand that was now lying palm up in yours.

“Episkey,” you drawled the wand over his injured finger, the both of you watching the swollen and purple bruise beginning to form suddenly fade away.

Draco gave you one last scowl before he snatched his hand out of yours and turned around to leave the corridor, leaving you standing there dumbfounded as he quickly walked away, his cloak floating behind him like the professor, who’s class you now realized you were very late for.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 

That night, Draco lied awake staring at his ceiling he had charmed to resemble a starry night sky. His mind wandered off to think about spells he could try to help fix the vanishing cabinet and different ways he could kill Dumbledore without actually having to face him. He thought of his parents, mostly his mom, and how much he wishes he could save her and himself from this life. He thought of this school and how much he missed being an unknowing child who just did his schoolwork, played quidditch and bully the Golden Trio. He missed the two-dimensional life he used to live. Even if he used to be a complete ignorant and snobby arse, he was a happy one at that. Only now he knows that life isn’t what mummy or daddy say it is, in fact, it is so much worse.

He found his mind wandering to his uneventful day of dragging himself through his classes and failed attempts on the cabinet in the room of requirement. He then all of a sudden remembered the klutzy y/h/c girl that tripped into him and sprained his finger. He remembered how soft her touch was and how gentle she was in fixing said finger. That feeling was hard to forget. He hasn’t felt such tenderness since he doesn’t know how long. He recalled his mother’s hug before he boarded the train to Hogwarts, but that was ages ago.

In his ever growing turmoil, there wasn’t an ounce of warmth in Draco’s life since he’s returned to school. The coldness he was feeling on the inside was just as apparent as it was in his surroundings. He catches himself wishing he could feel that touch again, something about you radiated warmth, and just as quick as that thought appeared, he pushed it away. 

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

The next day, as Draco was leaving the room of requirement and into the empty corridor, he felt the familiar ache in his chest that began to flow through his body. He had made little to no progress today on the cabinet. He felt a panic attack on the horizon, his breathing becoming staggered and tears pricking his eyes. He hated it. He hated feeling so weak.

He began rushing towards Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, his tears blurring his vision and just like the day before, he crashed right into someone. Instinctively, he held the other person in place by their biceps so neither of them would fall. But that still didn’t stop how upon impact, the other person’s head had collided with his bottom lip. He squeezed his eyes in pain as he felt the skin break and blood quickly escaping it. When he pulled back, he focused on the figure in front of him and realized it was you. The same klutzy girl he bumped into yesterday. 

“Oh no, not again,” you frown, placing your hand on the part of your head that met Draco’s lip.

“You ought to watch where you’re going, you twit,” he snarls, stepping away from you in anger.

“It was an accident,” you responded just as harshly. You take a deep breath and throw the attitude aside. He was bleeding for Merlin’s sake and you felt bad that it was because of you. “I’m sorry, please let me heal you again,” you offer, taking a step towards him, closing up the space he had made.

“I think you’ve done enough,” he backs up, eyeing you down.

“Draco, please, just let me heal your lip and i’ll be out of your way,” you ask again, your soft and guilt ridden e/c eyes peering up at him through your lashes. Draco’s heart flutters, his anger subsiding for a second and he nods.

You step towards him once more and unexpectedly place a warm hand on his face while the other brings your wand up to his lip where it hovers. It was a non-verbal spell you used this time and he felt the pulsating pain in his lip subside to nothing. 

Even though he was healed, you both stayed in that position, your hand still on his cheek and his eyes gazing into yours. He didn’t realize it at that moment, but the pain in chest had also subsided, just a little. The tears had gone. His breathing was drastically slower.

“What’s your name?” the question tumbled from his lips before he could stop it. You gave him a small smile, your hand falling from his face and he frowns when he feels the cold on his skin from the loss of contact.

“It’s Y/N, Y/N Y/L/N” you answer. “We have potions together this year, actually.”

Draco thought back to that class, now that Slughorn was teaching it he hardly paid attention, especially since he felt he was skilled in it anyways so he would let himself slip into his thoughts and let the whole period pass by in a haze. He feels as though he might have heard your name here and there, but he wasn’t so sure.

“Hm, funny, I’ve never noticed you,” he says, not intending it to sound rude but it did. He watches your face fall and he feels a slight guilt poke at him.

“Well, like I said, I’ll be out of your way now,” you mumble to him, brushing past him softly as you continued your path out of the corridor and out of his sight.

He didn’t know why, but he felt a little sad to see you go. He shook his head, shaking the thought from his mind and instead of the bathroom, he decided to go to his room, no longer feeling like he did before your little encounter.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

As days went on, Draco ended up paying more attention in Slughorn’s class. Not to the chubby old professor, but to you, who he shared subtle glances with throughout classes and half-hearted smiles.

You wanted nothing more than to continue talking to him. To be in his presence. He was like a magnet to you, while everyone else thought the opposite of him. Even Pansy, who usually was up his ass, distanced herself from the ghost of the boy she once obsessed over. You couldn’t lie, the small crush you harbored on Draco had only grown more and more each day. It started about three years ago, during your third year when you had seen him in the hospital wing after his run-in with Buckbeak.

You remember the sheer shock you felt when you had seen him for the first time that year. The slicked back hair was gone, he had grown several inches taller, maybe even a foot taller now that you thought about it. His voice had deepened into that haughty tone you somehow couldn’t get enough of. But just like you, many other girls noticed these changes too and began pursuing him. Something you’d never had the guts to do.

Until now.

The feelings you had been suppressing for the past 3 years had come back in overflow the second you bumped into him the other day. Even worse this time since you’ve actually had a conversation with him now and the fact that he won’t stop looking at you.

Slughorn pulled you out of your thoughts when he announced to everyone to partner up to brew the potion he had been lecturing us on all week. Draught of Peace.

“This is your chance,” your friend besides you sings to you as you looked longingly in Draco’s direction who hasn’t moved from his spot.

“No, he usually works by himself, I don’t want to bother him anymore than I have,” you sigh, slumping down in your seat.

“Y/N, you’ve been in love with him since third year,” she huffs, “besides, maybe he only works alone because no one can stand being near him.”

“Shhh, someone might hear you,” you hiss, slumping even lower into your seat. “I am not in love with him, it’s just a stupid crush,” you whisper angrily to her while she only rolls her eyes.

“Okay, well, have fun working alone,” she smirks, getting up from her seat and scurrying across the room to join another classmate. You gape at her in distress, she returns the same gesture, mocking you. She then points over to Draco and smiles, giving you an encouraging thumbs up.

You rest your head in your hand for a second, feeling the hot blush that had made its way onto your face and focused your gaze onto the table in front of you. You mentally hexed your friend, who thought it’d be a good idea if she were ditch you so you would be forced to look for another partner. Jokes on her, you’re not getting up from this seat.

‘I can’t go up to him,” you thought, ‘he probably thinks I’m some annoying creep who won’t leave him alone. I’ll just work by myself.”

Draco looks over at you, noticing the empty space beside you and the frown on your face as you pushed your Potions book to the side and sat up to get your cauldron ready. You were alone, and so was he. He fought himself on whether or not he should join you. It was a bold move, especially for him. He was used to working alone, but the longer he looked at you, the more he found himself missing the sound of your honey sweet voice and soft eyes. Before he had any more time to argue with himself about it, he gathered up all his things and walked over to the empty spot next to you.

“Do you want help?” Draco asked awkwardly, immediately regretting his decision to move. Your eyes shot up from the potion book, not expecting to see the blond next to you with a faint blush on his cheeks.

“Um, yes, actually, that’d be nice,” you mutter out to him, moving some stuff around on the table so that he would have space for his. You could hardly contain the deep red blush that was already on your face from intensifying at his presence. You swallowed thickly as the realization set in that your longtime crush was right beside you and even offering a helping hand. Which in Draco’s case was extremely rare, almost unheard of. Matter of fact, this is something the Slytherin Prince has never done.

He sets his bag down and his supplies and takes a seat, rolling up his sleeves so that he could get started on crushing the porcupine quills into the moonstone powder. The amount of times he has made this potion by now for himself was sad, but good in this case since he would be able to impress you with his skill.

He worked diligently and quietly and you watched as his long slender fingers worked everything with attention and precision. You were looking up at him every now and then which you now realized was a terrible idea considering you were in the middle of cutting ginger root and you weren’t exactly coordinated to begin with. You felt the sharp blade slide across your finger and a small gasp left your mouth when the pain instantly began once the first drop of blood fell.

Draco looked at you in confusion, his eyes widening slightly when he saw the blood dripping from your hand and your face contorted in pain. You ignored the looks Draco was giving you, afraid that he might be looking at you with contempt for being sloppy.

“Y/L/N, perhaps you should go to Madam Pomfrey,” Draco suggests, now seeing that the cut was very deep as you inspected it. In fact, it was so deep he swore he could’ve seen bone.

“No, it’s fine, I can heal it,” you ignored the sharp pain and placed your hand on the table and pointed your wand at the cut with your uninjured hand. You focused on the cut and closed your eyes, letting your wand do its magic with your unspoken spell. When you opened your eyes, the cut was gone, just a small scar in its place and drying blood around it. “You see,” you smile, turning towards Draco and waving your finger, “brand new.”

“You don’t want dittany for the scarring?” Draco asked with an eyebrow raised.

“No, I don’t mind them and this one is small anyways. They’re like memories to me. Some come from good experiences, some bad. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a little clumsy,” you explain, a small smile on your lips.

“Trust me, I’ve noticed,” he sighs, “so you’ve managed to become your own healer because of that?”

“Exactly that,” you hummed. “That’s actually what I’m studying to be. I plan on being at St. Mungo’s once we graduate. I’ve been studying for it my whole life.”

Draco was silent for a moment. He watched as you carefully threw ingredients into the cauldron and stirred them with caution. He noticed that despite your clumsiness, you handled everything you touched with a care and gentleness. It was a calming sight to him for some reason and he faintly smiled.

“I think you’d be a great healer,” he complimented quietly. You looked at him with one of the brightest smiles he’s ever seen and his heart swells at the thought of it being because of him. He feels a smile mirroring yours that tries to break through, but he fights it.

“You know, you’re a lot nicer than you let on,” you say quietly, waiting for his reaction from the corner of his eye. Draco wants to give you a snarky remark, just to uphold his cold reputation he’s given himself since his first day back at Hogwarts, but he doesn’t.

Instead of saying anything, he just shrugged and gave you a small smile, turning his attention back to the task at hand. You do the same, choosing to enjoy the comfortable silence that had settled.

When Slughorn came by to check when you finished, he eyed you and Draco and smiled.

"Ahh, Mr. Malfoy, I’m glad you’ve finally decided to partner up with someone,” he gleamed. “Miss Y/L/N here is an excellent potions student such as yourself.”

“Yes, she is,” Draco responded, keeping his eyes trained on the professor. He didn’t want to look at you, feeling embarrassed that he has now complimented you twice in the last 20 minutes. You smiled to yourself, something you’ve been doing a lot of since the slytherin boy sat next to you.

“Well, I suppose you’ll be pleased to know the two of you have brewed an outstanding potion,” Slughorn grins, “both of you will receive perfect marks on this. You can be excused from today’s class now.”

“Thank you, Professor,” you begin gathering your things and turn towards Draco. “I’ll see you next class? Or maybe somewhere around the castle when I accidentally bump into you.”

Draco chuckles and shakes his head, “perhaps. I’ll see you soon, Y/L/N.”

With that, he strides out of the class, you staring at the back of his platinum blond head with a stupid smile on your face.

“You’re welcome,” your friend suddenly appeared next to you, playfully slapping your arm. “I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen Draco look so... calm.”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Weeks had gone by, and several Potions classes. The seat beside you now belonged to Draco and the two of you had in a sense, become friends. Or acquaintances. You couldn’t quite say. 

He was still brooding and mostly kept to himself, but he would converse with you here and there about things, almost always school. The two of you continuously getting outstanding marks on everything you produced much to Slughorn’s delight.

Sometimes he would come to class looking disheveled or angry and those were the days where no matter how much you tried to talk to him to at least maybe get his mind off things, he would ignore you. Wouldn’t even look at you. You couldn’t deny how it had hurt your feelings, but you would brush off the hurt and remind yourself that it wasn’t personal. He was obviously going through something, you didn’t know what, but you had to respect that sometimes he just didn’t want to talk. That was hard. Especially because you just wanted to hear his voice or see him give you that rare smile when you would say something he found amusing or you would accidentally drop something off the table with your elbows or knocked over with your hands. 

You were rounding a corridor when you saw the flash of blond zoom past you. He didn’t see you, but you saw the pointed look in his eyes and the tears that were pooling in the stormy gray eyes that you adored. You mentally fought yourself on whether or not you should follow him, he looked so upset and all you wanted to do was give him a peace of mind. So you followed him, all through two corridors until he disappeared into Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

Your heart broke at the sobs that filled the bathroom. They were full of pain and despair. The sound of his rapid breathing mixed in with his cries was more than enough to let you know that he was having a panic attack. You pushed open the door slightly to see him hunched over a sink, his robe discarded on the ground along with his vest and tie leaving him in only a white long sleeved dress shirt. 

You wanted to run in and help, but stayed back, realizing that this was something that was extremely personal. You knew he would be livid if you or anyone saw him like this, so broken and emotional. You were about to leave, all of a sudden feeling very ashamed for even following him in here. You watched as he looked up into the mirror, an anger flashing in his eyes as he stared at the reflection looking back at him. Not yours, but his. All he could see was a monster staring back at him. A failure. A weak man. He was disgusted and angry with what he saw and before he knew what he was doing, he had pulled his fist back and you watched it collide with the middle of the mirror where he had been. The glass shattered upon impact, the shards now flying in all different directions and embedding into his knuckles. He fell to the ground on his knees, in pain and clutching his fist as his cries only got louder. 

That was when you threw open the door, rushing in to help him, not caring that you were going to have to put up a fight in order to even get near him. Draco’s eyes shot up to meet yours, and just like you thought, he was beyond pissed to see you. 

Draco has never felt such humiliation in his life. The beautiful and kind y/h girl he had acquainted himself with, was now looking at him with pity. He grabbed his wand from his pocket, pointing it at you with such quickness that you faltered in your steps.

“Get. Out!” He yelled, his wand shaking violently in his uninjured hand. He would never hex you, but he figured you would fall for his bluff and leave. But you didn’t. You only sat yourself down a few feet away from him and felt your own tears begin to fall. “Y/L/N, I swear to Merlin, if you don’t leave, I’ll-”

“You’ll what?” you challenged. “I just want to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” he sneered, his wand still pointed at you.

“You’re bleeding, a lot, Draco,” you point to his bloodied hand that curled to his chest. “You know I can save you a trip to the hospital wing and Madam Pomfrey’s interrogation.”

After a few moments of silence and a wand still pointed at you, you slowly scoot towards him. Your hand encloses around the one holding his wand and you lower it for him while he watches you. He was still crying and breathing heavily. His panic attack somehow getting worse now and no longer having the energy to fight you. You finally reach him, now knee to knee with him and you place a hand on his shoulder.

“Draco, just breath with me,” you say calmly. “In,” you took a long exaggerated inhale, and after a few seconds, “out,” and let out an equally exaggerated exhale. You did that with him for a while, his pained gray eyes focused on yours the whole time, never breaking eye contact. Once he was calmed down enough and was just left with the post crying hiccoughs, you took his injured hand in yours. There was shards and particles of glass stuck in his reddened and bloody skin.

You reached into your robe pocket and pulled out a set of tweezers you kept with you. You often found yourself getting splinters or tiny rocks stuck in your skin when your hands hit the pavement when you’d fall you try and catch yourself.

“This might hurt,” you warn, starting to remove one of the biggest pieces. He sharply inhales as you try your best to do take it out carefully.

It was quiet the rest of the process, just sniffles and gasps from Draco when you had removed a piece that especially hurt. When you were done, you waved your wand over the gashes and watched as they faded into faint pink scars. You got up, pulling him with you and took him to the sink where you rinsed off the blood from both your hands and his. 

He couldn’t say anything. He didn’t know what. He just stared at you, dumbfounded and confused. You turned your body to face his and he did the same, eyeing you carefully and still very cautious to any move you made.

“I can leave now, if you’d like me to,” you offer quietly. He stayed silent, wondering if he should just send you off. But he didn’t want to. You had already seen him at his worst, and he was terribly alone, so he just shook his head ‘no.’ You looked up at him and decided to risk it all. “Can I give you a hug?”

Draco was stunned at the question, his heart pounding against his chest. “I suppose,” he managed to let out in a strained voice.

You slowly stepped closer to him and slid your arms up his biceps until your hands met behind his neck. You stood on your tippy toes and pulled him into you, his chin now resting on your shoulder as your hand smoothed the back of his head. You felt him stiff under your touch and as he got comfortable in your embrace, his arms raised from his sides and snaked around your waist, pushing you flush against him. You stayed like that for what felt like forever, and he held you tightly, not wanting to let go.

This was the first time in a long time that he had felt any type of relief. It had been such a constant uphill battle for him, day after day. He took a deep inhale accidentally, but the smell of your perfume and shampoo filling his nose and his mind made him feel at ease. The warmth of your body from underneath his fingertips brought him peace and succor.

“Thank you,” he whispered into your hair so quietly that if you weren’t so focused on him, you would’ve missed it.

“Anytime.”

That was the day Draco Malfoy became your friend.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Potions class was no longer the only place you would see Draco. Now that the two of you were comfortable with one another and he trusted you more than anyone else, he found himself hanging out with you every day during his free time when he would be done messing with the cabinet.

It would be taking walks around the castle. Sneaking out at night and meeting behind statues to talk. Sitting together at a bench in the courtyard. Skipping stones along the Black Lake. It’s been months of this. Months of friendship he so desperately needed. You had helped him through several more panic attacks and meltdowns, each time coming closer together. He never told you about what caused them. The worst ones were when he found he had almost killed Katie Bell and Ron Weasley, and as much as you begged him to tell you, he kept his mouth shut. 

He had spent so much time with you that it was affecting him. But for the better. He found himself eating again at the Slytherin table and his friends were more than excited to have him back. He still wasn’t too buddy-buddy with everyone as he once was, but he joined conversations and shared a couple jokes. He was even sleeping a little more. He was still beyond stressed, but it wasn’t as gut-wrenching. He enjoyed Potions again and even started paying a little more attention in his other classes. His new found energy even helped him greatly progress in mending the vanishing cabinet, finally making a breakthrough in fixing it.

He would lie awake at night sometimes and thank Merlin you crashed into his life, literally. You were like an angel to him, healing his heart with every word and smile and touch you sent his way. It was easy with you. He tried his best to keep his emotions at bay, reminding himself that when he would have to follow through with his task, he would lose you and that thought pained him to no end. But he was selfish, and he adored you with every fiber of his being so he couldn’t leave you alone. And especially not when he needed you most.

Today, you lied in the grass, shoulder to shoulder and staring up at the sky and watching the clouds. You were a little ways from the castle, away from all your other classmates and teachers and it was nice. Finally being able to enjoy time with the Slytherin Prince without people gawking at the two of you.

“My mother used to do this with me when I was a small,” Draco trailed off, his eyes following a particular funny shaped cloud. “She would take me out to the garden behind the Manor, usually when father was doing some work at the ministry. But we would sit against this tall oak tree and I’d be on her lap and she’d have her arms wrapped around me and she would point out the funniest shaped clouds and try to pinpoint what they resemble. Sometimes she’d even joke around and say the weirdest shaped cloud looked like father.”

You giggled at that last part, your heart swelling at the story. He rarely talked about his family, but when he did, it would always be of his mother and a happy memory he had with her, never his father.

“Draco, can I ask you something?” you turn onto your side, your elbow holding you up as you gazed down at him.

“What do you wanna know, darling?” you blushed at the nickname but brushed it aside, knowing he only meant it in a friendly way.

“Forgive me if it’s rude, you don’t have to answer,” you begin, “but do you miss your father? I know it’s none of my business and I’m so sorry the Daily Prophet put your family business on blast like that. I can’t imagine how that must have felt.”

Draco frowned and followed you in turning onto his side and propping himself up with his elbow to face you. You remembered the image of Draco and his mother on the newspaper, bright lights flashing across their faces as all the press tried to get picture of them after the sentencing of Lucius Malfoy to Azkaban. You remembered seeing Draco look so sad, yet strong beside his mother as he looked from her and then into the camera with disdain. 

“Sometimes, I do,” he answers, eyebrows furrowed as he thought of his father. “My whole life, he’s expected nothing short of perfection from me. There were no room for mistakes, and if I made any, I would be punished for them. I remember coming to Hogwarts was like an escape, a place where I could finally sort of relax and be a child. I don’t miss his scolding or his coldness. But I miss having a father, I miss going home on that first day of summer and seeing both my parents even if he was going to reprimand me for something later on in the day. He’s been with me my whole life, and now he’s gone, stuck in a cell in Azkaban. He’s never going to be the same. Home is never going to be the same.”

You felt tears prick your eyes as you listened to the boy beside you, a distant look in his eyes as he turned back over on his back to look at the sky in the middle of his explanation. You sat up and he did the same, looking at you with a frown when he noticed you were about to cry. You took your hand in his and held it tightly.

“I’m sorry, Draco,” you mumble. “You don’t deserve any of the bad things you’ve been through.”

“I do,” he shrugs. “I’ve been a real git since I’ve been at Hogwarts, you know.”

“You’re different now,” you say. “Sure, you still haven’t lost a little bit of the Malfoy snobbishness and you’re still a bit of a git, but you’re kinder and more gentle. You’re a lot more empathetic and perceptive. I mean, I’ve never spoken to you prior to this year, but your reputation follows and the Draco in front of me doesn’t seem anything like the Draco you were.”

“How you’ve managed to insult me while complimenting me is something I’ve never seen anyone be able to do successfully is astonishing,” he laughs, a smile growing on his face as you laughed with him.

“I’m serious, Dray,” you giggle, “I think you’re a good person.”

“I’m not good,” he thinks to himself. The compliment leaving your lips made him feel foul. He didn’t deserve to have such a kind soul complimenting him to be something he’d never amount to. He frowned and harshly stood up, and you quickly followed. Suddenly afraid that you might have overstepped your boundaries.

“Where are you going?” You ask, fear trembling in your voice. He begins to hurriedly walk off and you chase after him, stopping in front of him so you could place your hands on his chest to stop him. 

“Y/N, let me go,” he pleads. “I’m not who you think I am.”

“I think I’ve been around you long enough to know who you are.”

“Not long enough.”

You stare up at him, but he refuses to look at you. His body feels rigid under your touch and it pains you to see him beginning to shut down again.

“I know something has been bothering you this year, and I know it’s not just because of what happened with your father,” you start. “I don’t know what is hurting you so deeply enough to make you hate yourself, but I’m here to tell you that whatever that thing is, it doesn’t define you.”

Draco swallows thickly, the tears already falling down his cheeks. “It does, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t,” you cry with him. “Even if you don’t see your goodness, I do.”

Both you and Draco are crying, the tree you were now standing under was swaying violently in the wind, as if it was picking up on your guys’ emotions. You placed a hand on his cheek, and he leaned down, pressing his forehead against yours.

“I’m not good,” he whispers to you, “and once you see that, you’re going to hate me.”

“I could never hate you, Draco Malfoy,” you promise, a complete sincerity in your voice that it makes his heart jump.

Draco lifts his head up and sniffles, he watched you do the same, peering up at him through your wet lashes. He brought his thumb up to smooth the crease in between your eyebrows, letting it fall down to your cheeks where he wiped away the stray tears that had stilled. His hand then landed on your mouth that was pulled down in a grimace that matched his own. His thumb grazed over your lips, the softness of them nearly driving him mad. He wanted nothing more than to feel them against his own, but he couldn’t bring himself to kiss you. He didn’t want to drag you into the darkness of his life more than he already has.

“Kiss me,” you said to him, so softly but it rang loud in his ears. You had seen the way he looked at you and how he seemed so focused on your lips. You knew what he was thinking because it was exactly what you were thinking. You wanted this just as badly as he did. “Kiss me.”

Every argument he had in his head vanished and suddenly he closed the small space between the two of you and gently placed his lips onto yours. It was a fluid movement, like two puzzle pieces fitting together.

Your hands found their way in his hair, holding him closer to you and he did the same by gripping onto your hips. His lips were soft against yours, filled with fervor and desire. He was gentle with you, but you could still feel the deepness of his kiss and how it intensified with each second. He had put all his emotions into it, his care, his appreciation, his want, his sadness, his grief, his love.

When he pulled away and the two of you stood there staring at each other with love stricken eyes, he realized he had made a grave mistake.

He realized he was in love with you. He realized that he would never be able to let you go, and you would never let him go. And he knew that with the direction his life was going in, one way or another, you would get hurt and he would lose you, maybe even to death itself.

So in that moment he knew. As much as he loved you and wanted more than anything to be with you, he couldn’t put you in that position where you would be staring evil and death in the face. He wouldn’t tarnish your beautiful soul like that.

“I have to go,” he breathed out. “Please, leave me alone. For good.”

And with that he turned away, leaving you standing under the tree with tears falling down your face, a sob escaping your throat and the sound of your knees hitting the grass below you. He held back his own cries and walked faster away from you, knowing you had finally done damage to yourself that you couldn’t heal, and it was all his fault.

PART 2

[messyspacespades]

Late Bloomer

Rating: General Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Category: M/M Fandoms: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime Relationships: Breakdown/Knock Out (Transformers), Knock Out & Starscream (Transformers) Characters: Starscream (Transformers), Knock Out (Transformers), Breakdown (Transformers), Megatron (Transformers) Additional Tags: Humor, Fluff and Humor, Attempt at Humor, Crack, Growth, Growth Spirt, Cuddling & Snuggling, no beta we die like cliffjumper, seriously this is so dumb Language: English Part 1 of the Big Boi Starscream series

Starscream suddenly wakes up several feet taller.

Confusion and some chaos ensues.

I’m kinda known for writing stupid shit, so here, take this fic. Which was inspired by this post. Seriously I love that post so much there’s so much potential there. In the fic itself I made Starscream like.... 36 feet instead of the 35 feet in the actual post bc when I wrote the thing and made the size chart I couldn’t find the post at the time but eh its only a foot difference we’re fine.

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The first sign that something was off that orn was he woke from recharge slightly sore and with his peds hanging off the edge of the berth. That wouldn't have been so much of a problem, since Starscream did move around in his sleep, but he did find it suspicious that his helm was still on the pillow. Weird. He at first thought that he had dragged the pillow down with him, but when he stood up and stretched, he noticed that his pillow was still at the head of the berth.

  Weird.

  His morning did not start off well. His balance was off, and it was aggravating. It was like his own heeled peds were no longer equipped to handle his body, and his frame was now just clumsier overall. He took care of his soreness by taking a trip through his private washracks after he refueled. The warm water hitting his sore protoform, combined with him gently rubbing it in circular motions, seemed to help. It didn't go away completely, but it helped. Considering how his time with Megatron usually went, Starscream would consider it a good orn if he didn't return to his hab even more sore than when he had left it.

  The nagging feeling that something has changed, a feeling he acquired in the washracks, didn't leave him when he left for the command deck either. Especially after he hit his head on the doorway on his way out. He had given the doorway a piece of his mind, ignoring how that had never happened before, ever. Had something about his frame changed?

  His body had felt... different... when he had scrubbed it down. Starscream just shrugged it off. There was nothing visibly wrong with him, he told himself, brushing off the concerns his processor was throwing at him. (Had his claws been thicker? Had his waistline increased in width? Had the roof always been that close to his helm, or had he grown taller?) He shook his head. He was simply having a weird morning, and it wasn't unusual to feel weird sometimes after coming online from recharge.

  Starscream ignored the stares of the Vehicons he passed as he stalked his way through the halls, how they had to crane their necks more to look up at his helm. Had they always been that short? He shook his head, temporarily distracted by the lift doors opening. Stepping inside, he noted that they felt more... cramped than before. Then again, the lift's had always been cramped, especially for him. They couldn't accommodate his wingspan, and his claustrophobia would always act up in them. Nothing had really changed there.

  Then he had entered the Command Deck.

  Megatron, despite being insane, was far from lazy. He was always up there before Starscream (somehow,) and the seeker sometimes seriously questioned if the warlord ever even left after his shift was over. So, when the doors to the command deck slid open, he was not surprised to see Megatron already there. However, he was not expecting Megatron to give him a look when he entered. A wide-opticed expression that only seemed to grow in intensity the closer the Seeker got to him. Not good. However, Starscream lacked self control when it came to his words, and he couldn't help but smirk.

  "What," he quipped, "is there something on my face?"

  Megatron blinked once, twice, thrice, before shaking his head. He seemed to be in denial. Thats when Starscream realized that... he wasn't looking up at the warlord.

  He was looking down.

  He had CERTAINLY never been taller than Megatron. He stopped hunching, straightening his spinal strut (It cracked, sending relief through his frame. He really needed to fix his posture, he was starting to look like an Earth Shrimp,) and was pleasantly surprised to discover that he was now a full head taller than Megatron. By pleasantly surprised, he meant SHOCKED, because what the hell did he do that made him taller that MEGATRON?!

  "Starscream... Might I suggest you go see Knock Out for this sudden and... unexpected increase... in your stature..." The warlord bit out.

  Starscream did not need to be told twice. "I will... go do that... M'lord," he said, before quickly absconding from the Command Deck, ignoring the stares of the Eradicons as he fled.

  ***

  "Well, commander, you seem to be in perfect health. Not a single thing wrong with your frame, aside from your horrendous posture." Knock Out purred, eyeing the scanner on the berth. Starscream scowled at him.

  "Of course I'm perfectly healthy Knock Out! That still doesn't explain WHY I AM TALLER!!!"

  Knock Out grinned nervously. "Of course, Commander, I was just saying that to let you know that it's not the result of some sort of virus. For all intents and purposes this appears to be quite... natural."

  The seeker huffed, laying back down and crossing his arms. It was weird, having no legroom on the medical berth anymore: the berth was as long as he was tall now. He was used to having some empty berthspace beneath his peds whenever he lay in this (familiar) position. Knock Out had offered to fix the dents he had gained on his way down to the medbay, on offer which Starscream had declined since he had wanted to figure out why he was like this now as fast as possible. He suggested this sudden... growth spurt had seriously thrown off his balance, and it made walking on his stiletto-styled peds insanely difficult now.

  "Commander?" Knock Out was holding that nervous smile, his voice knocking Starscream out of his thoughts. "What?" Starscream bit out, voice dripping with acid.

  "Is there anything you can remember that preceded this... event? I suppose I should call it that... Anything suspicious, perhaps?"

  He actually had to think about that. Nothing had seemed too off the past few days, aside from an increased apatite. He had a few extra rations horded away, for when Megatron cut his normal ones as punishment, and he had drank those. The night before he had... grown... he had felt sore and overly tired, and ultimately skipped writing reports in order to recharge.

  "I did feel a bit more peckish for a few days before this happened, and I may or may not have felt exhausted last evening and went into recharge earlier than usual." He responded, acting unperturbed. In reality, he was connecting dots in his processor. It was suspicious.

  "Hm. Sounds like what Younglings go through before a natural frame upgrade. You wouldn't happened to have lied about your age to your primary physician, eh, Starscream?"

  The seeker sputtered. "Of course not! How ridiculous! I am just as old as I say I am! There's no benefit to lying about my age!"

  "Well... unless you're interested in a romance..."

  "As if!"

  Knock Out smirked, "Oh, I'm just teasing you Starscream. If anything, it seems more like... a late growth spurt."

  "If it is," Starscream sneared, "Why is it late by several MILLION years?!"

  "Lack of Energon, probably," The red mech shrugged, "I mean, on Cybertron, there was strict rationing. You remember, right?"

  Oh, Starscream remembered. There were times where he was barely given enough to fly. "Oh, I do, but there's still rationing now."

  "It's... not as bad, I would say. At least right now. We're probably getting more now than we have since Cybertron died. Your body probably thought it was prime time to shove in one last-ditch effort to get bigger. Plus, didn't you tell me that you were short for a seeker?"

  Starscream's face burned. Yes, he had always been shorter than his fellow seekers. It was a source of shame and taunting from his enemies, that was, until most seekers had died out, and he seemed tall by comparison. Dreadwing was taller than him, and Dreadwing was an average sized seeker. He remembered his Sire and Carrier, large even by seeker standards, towering over him.

  "... I suppose I did say that, but that no longer matters! What matters is that I take advantage of this new form as quickly as possible, and I cannot shirk my duties! I have an army to run!"

  With that, Starscream attempted to stand up, and Knock Out was reminded of how much Starscream towered over him now as well. If he could clone himself, and his clone stood on his shoulders (without ruining his magnificent finish,) his clone would be face to face with Starscream. Mostly. He really had to crane his neck, especially this close to the Seeker, to look him in the optic. He took a step back, just as Starscream wearily let go of the med berth. He took a step forward, and then almost immediately fell over, with Knock Out barely being able to catch him. With much indignant squawking from the seeker, and a lot of grunting and effort from the red racer, Knock Out was able to safely dump the seeker back onto the med berth.

  "Curse this frame! What point is having a new body if I can't even walk correctly!"

  "I think..." Knock Out panted, trying to regain his breath (and mourning over his now-scratched up paint,) "I think..... I think your stiletto heels can't... can't handle your new weight... Screamer..."

  "KNOCK OUT HOW DARE YOU IMPLY THAT! I AM YOUR SUPERIOR-!"

  ***

  Despite the fact that he was no longer as graceful as he had been (a nice way of saying he was currently a klutz,) Knock Out still found himself... strangely attracted to this new Starscream. He was used to finding himself eyeing mechs, especially large, buff, strong ones (just look at his WONDERFUL conjunx,) but Starscream? Despite the increase in size, and the new bulkiness of the seekers plating, he was still quite lanky and thin. He had gained some bulk, but not much.

  So then why was Knock Out feeling attracted to him?!

  His feelings haunted him throughout the entire day. After helping Starscream stumble and trip his way back to his own quarters, he felt himself missing the seeker and hoping he would see him again tomorrow. Knock Out was probably the first bot to EVER feel that way, considering Starscream's venomous personality making it impossible for most mechs to even see the good in him. He couldn't even recharge because of the storm in his spark, even with Breakdown cuddled up against him, something that usually calmed him and helped him relax. His processor was DETERMINED to keep him awake. He sighed, shifting again under his conjunxs arms (which were slung loosely around him) to snuggle closer to Breakdown's boxy chest.

  Unfortunately, his loud thoughts and twitchiness had woken up his beautiful conjunx.

  "Mmm... Knock Out..." Breakdown muttered, voice full of exhaustion and sleep, "Y're keepin me awake... wh't's wrong...?"

  Knock Out patted the arm wrapped around him in reassurance. "Its... It's nothing..."

  "Bullshit." He croaked, sounding slightly more awake and lucid.

  The red mech was silent for a moment, before sighing in defeat, "I... I'm finding myself more... attracted to Starscream..."

  Breakdown was silent for a minute. Knock Out shivered as his warm breaths hit the back of his neck, the only noise in the quiet of the dark room.

  "I mean... He is kinda hot..." The larger bot finally mumbled. The medic's felt his face heat up, surely now bright blue from how hard he was blushing.

  "Breakie-!"

  "Aw, Doc, even I can tell how hard you're crushin' on him! Can't exactly hide that from your conjunx now..."

  "So you're okay with...?" Knock Out made a vague motion with his servo.

  "Yeah. Frankly, I think he needs someone to lean on. Go for it. I-In the morning though..." Breakdown yawned, "Its late, 'nd 'm tired..."

  "... Okay. Goodnight Breakie."

  "G'night Knock Out."