#nor are they going to force their friend to stay

[scariusaquarius]

rehab. 40.

Avenger! Bucky Barnes x Winter Soldier! Fem! Reader

Summary: While on a mission to find any more possible super soldiers that were a part of the Winter Soldier program, Steve and Bucky make a discovery in an abandoned HYDRA base that was cleared out a few years prior to their mission. They discover the Reader, a long-forgotten soldier that was still asleep within a functioning cryostasis pod; still awaiting orders. While Bucky isn't happy about it, he is put up to the challenge of helping to rehabilitate the soldier in Wakanda where she may be able to become a person again.

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A/n: I'm so sorry if last chapter felt a bit ooc or counter-productive. It was kind of the point for it to be a big 'wtf' lmfao but hopefully, we'll get some good clarification and THE AVENGERS CAN STOP BEING STUPID. Also, if you enjoy my work, please consider buying me a coffee! If you would prefer to read Rehab on Archive, you may do so right HERE!

This is an au where Bucky joined the avengers but still rehabilitated in Wakanda (sometime before Infinity War [canon divergent cause NOPE]). I am NOT fluent in Russian, so I did use google translate cause I couldn't find a good translator that I trusted. If anything is wrong, PLEASE let me know!! Also, I tried to list as many warnings as possible so you know what the story will contain as chapters are posted. Stay safe!

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Genre: Slowburn, Enemies to Lovers/Friends to Lovers, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Humor, Drama, Dark Content Rated: Explicit Warning: Angst, Dark Content: Graphic Depictions of Sexual Assault, Blood and Gore, Mentions of Manipulation, Kidnapping, Canon-Typical Violence, Body Horror, Nonconsensual Body Modification/Scarring, Emotional and Physical Abuse, Mentions of Murder, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts/Ideation, Graphic Depictions of Human Remains, Mentions of Sexual Coercion/Manipulation, Death, Misuse of Drugs/Forced Drugging, Self-Harm (Graphic Depictions and Mentions), Nightmares

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Author: ScariusAquarius

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rehab masterlist. / rehab masterlist 2. chapter 38 / chapter 39

She didn't know exactly where she had ended up, but she was seated in a garden beneath a tree that was bearing a strange fruit she had never seen before. (Y/n)'s breathing was heavy and labored, and she was beginning to feel cold. The familiar sensation of frost crawling over her body had (Y/n)'s mind reeling with fear and forcing a barrage of voices that she never wanted to hear again breaking through her mind again.

Why would the Avengers do this to her? Why would they send her back? Did her progress, her mission, mean nothing to them? After all of that talk about how things hadn't been her fault, that she was a victim who deserved a chance at a normal life...was it all a lie?

They were just like HYDRA. She should have never trusted them.

Her knees came up to her chest, and she held them tight, sobbing into them softly. However, her ears pricked at the sound of footsteps, and she tensed up. Bucky's voice was quiet, and though she was still suspicious, her head slightly lifted to stare at his legs as he addressed her softly.

"(Y/n)?"

"Go away. I should have never trusted you."

Bucky's heart shattered within his chest, but he didn't relent nor give up. Instead, Bucky sat down on the ground in front of her, and he murmured.

"I'm sorry. I tried to tell them that this was a bad idea, I really did."

His voice was broken, a sadness lacing his words that she hadn't heard before, and it only made her more upset. She cried softly, asking.

"Why do they want to send me back? I...I thought that I was...I was being good...I thought they...they wanted me here...to help me...to...to keep me from HYDRA...what did I do?"

Bucky whispered softly, maneuvering to sit beside her as he replied.

"No, no, baby doll, that's not what they wanted to do."

"That's exactly what they wanted to do! You heard them, and you were going to help!"

She snapped, digging her nails into her arms deep enough to begin bleeding, and Bucky begged her softly.

"Please, look at me for a moment."

Despite her not wanting to, (Y/n) glanced at him from the corner of her eye, swallowing thickly as she shook. Bucky's eyes were downtrodden, a sadness deep within them that swirled like a storm, and she was almost surprised by how much the man looked as though he was a kicked puppy.

"I promise you that we weren't sending you back there because you did something wrong. It's not that at all. I didn't want you to go and I still don't. Hell, I want to fight everyone for even suggesting this."

She whispered after a moment of silence, furrowing her brows with confusion.

"Then why? Why do they hate me?"

It didn't seem possible, but the broken pieces of his heart were ground up into dust as he whispered soothingly, gently placing his hand on hers and rubbing his thumb against her skin comfortingly.

"Doll, nobody hates you. We could never hate you. Would you...be open to listening to me and allow me to explain what was happening?"

His touch was comforting despite the suspicion that (Y/n) wore like a safety net, and she nodded wordlessly.

"We found where the rest of HYDRA is, but we can't destroy them once and for all the way we normally do. HYDRA is always one step ahead, and you and I both know that. The best way to end HYDRA is from within. Shuri thought that you might be able to help with this because unfortunately, I can't. HYDRA knows that I'm no longer under their control, but they don't know that about you for sure."

Bucky took a shaky breath as he watched her face contort slightly into an expression of pain, and Bucky continued.

"Shuri knows that you've been making a lot of progress, and we're all proud of you for that. Shuri only suggested using you for this mission because you've become stable...at least, enough for all of us to trust you to succeed in this."

She became quiet, her lip trembling, and she whispered as she shook her head.

"I don't want to go back there...what if I can't get out...what if...what if I...what if I hurt someone again?"

"That's why I am here."

Strange's voice made (Y/n) jolt a bit, and Bucky whipped his gaze to the man who was standing before them both. (Y/n) looked guarded, curling in on herself more as Strange took a seat in front of (Y/n); a stool manifesting beneath him so he didn't have to sit on the ground.

"I am not here to convince you, but to give you the full truth in its' absolute entirety that you deserve...if you are willing to listen."

(Y/n) didn't give him a verbal response, but her eyes glanced up at him, her trembling lessening by the second. Strange took her gaze as confirmation before he sighed and continued.

"The plan is for you to infiltrate HYDRA, but not to become them again. HYDRA wouldn't think that someone that they see as their own would try to dismantle them. Shuri picking you for this...it's not a judgement...it's trust that you will do what's right."

(Y/n) furrowed her brows, hiding her face slightly behind her arms again as Strange continued.

"If you were to do this, then I would place a ward on your mind that would protect you from HYDRA's reprogramming attempts. I would also put reinforcements in place that would protect your mind and keep you emotionally stable."

(Y/n) frowned slightly, wiping her nose with her arm before she asked quietly.

"Like...like a wall?"

Strange nodded, stating.

"Well, more like a fortress with a very skilled sorcerer on the battlements."

(Y/n)'s lips twitched up slightly, and Strange took it as a good sign.

"But I’m not going to do any of that unless you decide it’s what you want. No tricks. No manipulation. No orders. You say no, and I’ll make damn sure Fury and everyone else hears it loud and clear. No mission is worth tearing you apart again."

(Y/n) was surprised by how firm his voice was, and she whispered to him.

"You...you won't...control me?"

Strange shook his head, his expression becoming steely.

"I would be able to tell what is going on, but there would be no control involved. Just me seeing through your eyes and being able to sense if their programming is getting through."

(Y/n) became quiet as she whispered, her lip trembling as she sniffled.

"I just...I just wanted to be better...to...to make things right."

Bucky's voice was full of conviction as he comforted her, saying carefully.

"You are. You are so much better than any of them."

Strange murmured after a moment of careful consideration.

"Just you saying that tells me that you're way ahead than they think you are. You know what you can handle and what you can't, so this is completely your call. I will not allow them to try to sway you if you say no."

(Y/n) then gave Strange a serious look.

"And if I...if I lose control...would you stop me?"

While Bucky didn't pick up on what (Y/n) was implying, Strange did. His jaw clenched slightly, and Strange nodded.

"In order to ensure the safety of the world, yes. I would."

(Y/n) nodded slightly, and she placed her head into her arms. Clutching her arms, she whispered softly in a broken voice.

"I don't want to hurt anybody...but...but I know...HYDRA...they won't stop. They never will."

(Y/n) then looked back up at Strange with a defeated and dejected look as her eyes became watery again.

"I don't know what to do."

Strange looked torn, unsure of what to do or say. Bucky, in turn, glanced at Strange, and the men both shared a look before Strange sighed and said.

"Do what you think is right, but don't push yourself. I'd really hate to have to get on your bad side."

(Y/n) shook her head slightly.

"I don't...I don't want anybody to be ever again...I don't want to become that again."

Strange comforted her then, reassuring her.

"I wouldn't let you if I can help it. I'd remind you of who you are...make sure to replay the memories that you hold close that way you don't lose sight of that. Especially the pretty woman in the sunlight."

(Y/n) head shot up, her gaze wide and mouth agape, and she asked with disbelief.

"How do you...how do you know about Rebecca?"

Strange smirked then and placed his finger to his head quietly. (Y/n) and Bucky shared a look of disbelief, and (Y/n) swallowed thickly before glancing down at her arms. Bucky then murmured finally, keeping his hand upon her shoulder gently.

"(Y/n), you don't have to do this if you don't want to. Just say the word, and we'll tell Fury to fuck off."

(Y/n) was quiet, her mind seeming to wander before she asked quietly.

"Would...would destroying HYDRA make...make everyone safe?"

Strange shrugged.

"From the current threat, yes, but there's always going to be some group of whackjobs that think they're above everyone and need to make it everyone's problem."

Strange let his words hang in the air before he rose from his conjured seat. The seat disappeared in a flash of golden sparks that made (Y/n)'s eyes widen, and Steve brushed his robes free of invisible dust. He murmured to Bucky, glancing between him and (Y/n).

"I'll give you two a moment."

Bucky nodded, and Strange then looked at (Y/n).

"You wouldn't be alone in this if you agree to go on this mission. Although you wouldn't be able to see you, I'll be with you every step. And I can pull you out at any time that you want to stop."

(Y/n) nodded and Strange opened a portal, the gust of wind from his powers brushing against her face and making the leaves of the plants around her rustle. The golden orange sparks danced around in the air, casting her in a pumpkin glow, and Strange said to her gently before he stepped through the portal.

"Remember the sunlight."

Then, Strange was gone. Silence fell over (Y/n) and Bucky, the weight of the situation falling on each of their shoulders again, and Bucky turned to (Y/n).

"Listen, you don't have to decide right now. Hell, you don't even have to decide at all. If you don't want to do this, then you don't have to, alright?"

(Y/n) bit her lip, furrowing her brows as she whispered.

"But...if I don't, then what if...what if someone gets hurt? What if they try to create another me all over again?"

Bucky was firm as he replied, shaking his head.

"Then we'll fight like hell to stop it. With or without you. This isn't worth losing you."

His words were heavy, carrying a weight that Bucky didn't even realize was there, and (Y/n) wasn't sure what to make of them. She wasn't used to someone being afraid to lose her; the person that she was, not her as a weapon. (Y/n) looked away, shaking her head.

"What if I'm the only one who can?"

Bucky was taken back a bit, clenching his jaw slightly before he stated.

"Then we do this together. Strange and I will be with you the whole time. Strange can remind you of who your are...can make sure that you're shielded and your memories are protected...and in the chance that you start to lose yourself or that you start to think you're alone...I'll be there to guide you back."

Bucky's fingers carefully interlaced with (Y/n), making her glance down at their hands as Bucky affirmed to her softly.

"Together."

(Y/n) bit her lip before her voice became a ghost that was complimented by the subtle breeze within the air.

"I'm scared, Bucky."

Bucky was quiet for a moment before he replied softly.

"I know. Me too."

Doctor Strange's words began to echo through her mind like a whispered mantra, his expression engraved into her brain as he spoke.

Remember the sunlight.

Shifting slowly, (Y/n) slipped out the picture of her and Rebecca, untangling her fingers from Bucky's to ghost her fingers over Rebecca's face, and a sudden memory hit her.

She was sitting on a porch that she recognized to be her Aunt Mavis' house from the picture. It was a sunny day; the heat warming her skin and causing the trinkets within the front garden to cast rainbow-like light against the ground. The breeze was warm, brushing against her face that she remembered hurt from smiling so much.

In the background, (Y/n) could hear children laughing and the voice of her Aunt telling them to stay out of the kitchen. Beside her, Rebecca was sitting on the step with her, her journal open and pen scribbling with an urgent fervor that displayed only excitement.

At the feeling of (Y/n) staring at her, Rebecca looked at her and smiled, tucking her hair behind her ear. The sunlight lit up her face, blue eyes turning into a beautiful whitened gold, and she spoke softly.

"Would you like to see what I've written?"

"Well, yeah. What are you writing?"

Rebecca smiled gently, a somber gaze settling on her face as she replied.

"It's a letter...to my brother. I like to write to him every now and then...force of habit, I suppose."

(Y/n) remembered the way Rebecca stared down at the words on the page before she whispered.

"Sometimes, I'll hear the door open, and though I know it's my husband...but there are nights where I hope that it will be my brother coming home finally."

"Don't think like that! I'm sure James will come home at some point!"

Rebecca looked surprised for a moment before she smiled widely despite the glassy sheen within her blue eyes, chuckling breathlessly.

"You think so? He always was a stubborn fathead."

The girls both giggled before Rebecca handed her journal to (Y/n), and she remembered how beautiful her handwriting was as Rebecca spoke.

"There are times where I find myself hating him for leaving, for not writing more, but with the draft, he didn't have much of a choice. And deep down, I always knew he had a drive to do something right."

"What do you mean?"

"James always looked out for the little guys...even when it didn't benefit him. It's just who he is. Always trying to do the right thing...even when it hurt."

Always trying to do the right thing even when it hurt.

Remember the sunlight.

The memory faded, but that familiar warmth of the sun never left her body; chasing away the frost that had been crawling over her. A feeling was settling into (Y/n)'s chest, one that she didn't really understand no recognize, but she was able to discern that it was something...good.

Her eyes fluttered open slightly, and the Wakandan garden seemed more alive than it had before. Sunbeams were scattered all over, increasing the colors of the flowers and the leaves. In a way, it felt safe.

Rebecca's image stayed within (Y/n)'s mind; burning like a fire that began to roar as (Y/n) began to think.

From the moment that she had begun to remember things and saw the picture of herself from before HYDRA, (Y/n) had felt a strange sensation since. It was a feeling that kept bubbling up in the back of her throat; trying to come out and be understood, but then, (Y/n) hadn't known what it was.

Now, however, it seemed that (Y/n) finally knew what it was.

It was hope.

It wasn't the loud and boisterous hope that many knew. It was gentler; quieter; warmer. It filled her body up with such a raging fire that it was the one thing that was keeping the internal cold away, and even though (Y/n) was still terrified and scared of going back to HYDRA, there was a sense of determination coming over her.

Always trying to do what was right...even when it hurts.

"But what if I fail? What if I never...make things right?"

Steve then gently spoke up, his voice gentle as he looked at (Y/n) the way a brother would their younger sibling.

"You can, and you're going to. Everyone here believes in you and wants to help you achieve that. It's not going to be easy, but even if it's hard, we're going to make it."

And then, another voice reached towards her.

"I...want to be good. I want...I want to be me again."

Sam's lips tugged gently, and he gently rubbed her back, the woman flinching slightly before relaxing for a second, glancing at Sam.

"That's just the first step, which means you're already doing pretty good, little lady."

Then, finally, a comforting voice that had her chest caving in with a feeling of yearning as her mother's voice seemed to whisper to her.

'Hush, now, I'm about to tell you. Even if you find yourself walkin’ through the dark, sweetheart… don’t let it convince you that’s where you’re meant to stay. The darkness and mean people can strip a gal of just about everything, but they can’t touch your heart nor your soul, honey. That part’s yours to keep—and it will always find its way back home."

A giggle, and a shushing noise.

"And, honey, if the world ever tries to make a weapon outta you, you make ‘em sorry they ever laid hands on you in the first place."

When the memory faded, (Y/n) took a moment to stare down at the picture in her hands; vowing to never forget. After a moment of silence, (Y/n) looked up at the garden around her; admiring the environment before she closed her eyes.

For the first time in a long time, (Y/n) took a deep breath, and she began to breathe.

A weight seemed to lift from her shoulders; a conviction coming over her from Steve's honesty, Sam's kindness, and her mother's grace, and she finally didn't feel like a ghost that was stuck between the past and the present.

Instead, (Y/n) began to feel as if she was truly real.

(Y/n) (L/n). Not the Winter Soldier; not a weapon of HYDRA.

Herself.

Suddenly, (Y/n) looked over at Bucky. He was sitting comfortably, a knee bent and his arm resting on top of it. His gaze was gentle; patient and kind.

"Are you alright?

(Y/n) just stared for a moment before she nodded and murmured.

"I...I think I understand now."

A confused expression came over Bucky, tilting his head slightly as he waited for (Y/n) to elaborate, and the woman swallowed thickly before her voice came out; not a tremble or shake twinging her voice as it once had.

"I think I understand now what it means to do right. It's...it's not about victory or loss...it's about trying...even when it's hard. Even when it's terrifying."

(Y/n) bit her lip slightly before she whispered, looking down at the picture within her lap once more.

"I don't want to run anymore. I...I want to do good because...because I can. I know I can...even if I'm still unsure of what that might look like. Even if I forget what the sunlight feels like, I want to remember that I chose to stand in it.”

The tears within her eyes finally fell as she looked back at Bucky.

“If what I’ve known—all that darkness—can help stop them, then I want to try. I want to do what’s right… because I believe I can.”

Bucky was in awe; a mixture of surprise and something akin to pride coming over him, and a small smile graced his lips as he replied firmly, his fingers brushing down her arm to clasp her hand within his metal one.

"Then I'm with you till the end of the line."

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STORY NOTES: The scene opens with (Y/n) in a Wakandan garden in the midst of a panic attack. She is angry and in disbelief, questioning why the Avengers would suggest this of her. (Y/n) is feeling betrayed, and she begins to think that she should have never trusted the Avengers and likens them to HYDRA. Bucky comes to comfort her, but (Y/n) is reluctant, telling him to 'go away'. Bucky is remorseful, and pleas with her to hear him out that he tried to convince the Avengers not to go through with asking her to infiltrate HYDRA. (Y/n) begins to ask Bucky why the Avengers would do this, and she states that she thought that she was doing better and that they wanted her to heal. She begins to believe that she has done something wrong, and Bucky is quick to tell her that they didn't want to send her back to HYDRA because they were giving up on her or that she did anything wrong. (Y/n), however, does not believe him.

Bucky begs (Y/n) to look at him, and when she does, she is taken back by how sad Bucky looks. Bucky then says reaffirms that the Avengers did not want to send her to HYDRA just to send her back. He tells her that he didn't want her to go, and (Y/n) then asks why the Avengers 'hate' her. Bucky is completely shattered by this question, and he asks (Y/n) if she would be willing to hear him out. She agrees, and Bucky begins to explain how the Avengers have located the rest of HYDRA. However, he notes that the Avengers can't go after the HYDRA the way that they always have because HYDRA always seems to be a step ahead. Bucky tells (Y/n) that Shuri thought that (Y/n) would be able to help because Bucky is unable to. He makes sure to mention that Shuri knows that (Y/n) has been making incredible progress with her rehabilitation and Shuri thought that she would be stable enough to carry out such a mission.

(Y/n) is skeptical and asks Bucky about the hypothetical of her hurting someone, and Strange makes his presence known. Strange tells (Y/n) that he isn't there to convince her to say yes, but rather to tell her the entire truth about the Avengers' mission. (Y/n) is willing to listen, and Strange begins to explain the potential plan to her. He reassures her that if (Y/n) were to accept the mission, then Strange would place magic wards and reinforcements to keep her mind in-tact and protected from any further traumatic experiences (i.e. shutting her mind down during torture, etc). (Y/n) questions if it would be like a wall, and Strange essentially agrees. He then reassures (Y/n) that he would not do anything unless he had her explicit consent and she was sure that she wanted to do the mission, and (Y/n) clarifies that Strange wouldn't control her. Strange tells her that he would be able to see through her eyes, but no control would be involved. (Y/n) suddenly states that she wanted to be better and make things right, and Bucky tells her that she is 'better than any of them'. Strange says after careful consideration of his words that her stating she wants to be better tells him that she is, and that she knows what she can handle. Therefore, the mission is completely her call.

(Y/n) asks Strange that if she lost control if he would stop her, meaning kill her, and Strange agrees reluctantly. (Y/n) tells Strange that she doesn't want to hurt anybody, but she understands that HYDRA will not stop. She then becomes vulnerable, telling Strange that she isn't sure what to do. Strange tells her to do what she thinks is right. (Y/n) becomes anxious, telling Strange that she doesn't want to become the Winter Soldier again, and Strange reassures her that he wouldn't let that happen. He makes sure to mention Rebecca, and (Y/n) is surprised by this. She asks how Strange knows about her, but Strange just gestures to his head to imply his magic. Then, Bucky tells (Y/n) that she doesn't have to do anything that she doesn't want to, and (Y/n) asks if destroying HYDRA would make everyone safe. Strange agrees, but adds that it would be until the next set of villains decide to show themselves. Strange offers to give Bucky and (Y/n) a moment alone, but cryptically tells her to 'Remember the Sunlight' before he leaves.

Bucky repeats that (Y/n) doesn't have to do the mission, but (Y/n) asks him that if she doesn't, then what if something bad happens. She is worried that HYDRA will try to create another Winter Soldier, and Bucky tells her that the Avengers would do everything in their power to stop HYDRA with or without her. (Y/n), however, asks what if she's the only one who can stop HYDRA, and Bucky states that they would do it together with Strange. He reassures her that he would be with her every step of the way, and (Y/n) reveals that she is scared. Bucky reveals that he is as well, and suddenly, Strange's cryptic message begins to play in her mind. Suddenly, (Y/n) begins to have a memory of her and Rebecca sitting on the porch of her Aunt Mavis' house. She remembers that her and Rebecca were writing together, and that Rebecca was writing a letter to Bucky out of habit. Rebecca opens up to (Y/n) about hoping that Bucky would come home someday, and she goes on to tell (Y/n) about how Bucky always had a drive to do what was right and fight for those who couldn't fight for themselves even when it hurt.

The words strike a chord within (Y/n), and she suddenly realizes that the feeling that kept settling within her since she arrived to Wakanda was hope, and she remembers Steve's words of encouragement that she could make things right and that she wouldn't fail in her mission to become rehabilitated. She then remembers Sam's words to her that her acknowledging she wants to be herself again was the first step and that she was already doing good. Then, (Y/n) remembers her mothers words about not allowing herself to sit within the darkness and that her heart will always find its way home. Moreover, that if the world tried to make her a weapon, that she make the world regret doing so.

(Y/n) comes out of the barrage of memories, and she tells Bucky that she thinks that she finally understands what it means to 'do right'. She says that it's not about victory or loss, but the matter of trying even with it's hard and terrifying. She tells Bucky that she no longer wants to run from HYDRA and that she wants to do good because she can; even if she doesn't understand what that looks like. She states that even if she forgets what the sunlight is, she wants to remember that she chose to stand in it. Finally, she states that if her time in HYDRA can help her to take them down, then she wants to try because she believes that she can do what is right. Bucky is moved by her words, becoming proud, and he simply tells her that he is with her until the end of the line. End scene.

TRANSLATIONS:

None

TAGGING: @mggslefttit @softpia @thebl00dwyrm @buckvoidsyy @chonkybonky @seemsxsketchy @tilldeathripsusapart @vicmc624 @mgchaser @aash3 @samfunko @seventeen-x @valckenaux @babybeeelle @sc4rrc @cjand10 @bane-y-zane @notsostrangerthing @thenameswinter99 @bumblebeebutter @torntaltos @highhopes1008

[justanotherspine]

Headcanons about Victoria Javadi:

Her favorite Disney movie is Tangled. Girl can relate just a lil too much to it

She has a secret tattoo she got out of rebellion when she was 18 with her other med school friends

She has gone out on dates, but only a couple of times during med school but it never went anywhere bc she knew her parents wouldn’t approve of her dating during school OR of dating anyone not in the medical field

She’s a good skier bc it’s the only hobby her parents let her pursue (mainly bc it also flaunts their wealth) but she also really enjoys dancing in the privacy of her bedroom. It’s the only time her body isn’t filled with tension. She’ll follow the YouTube videos of hip-hop dancing but she’ll never publicly explore that hobby

She latches onto McKay bc she’s the mother figure she wishes she had growing up (obvi)

Her lil pause when she said “still not old enough to drink… legally” makes me think she’s definitely tried it but didn’t like it

She DREAMS of moving far away from her family. Literally I’m thinking she’s waiting until she finishes med school before she takes off half way across the country (bc her parents are controlling her money rn)

She’ll still stay in medicine bc, literally that’s all she knows, but she’ll be miserable until she hits mid-20s/late 20s and realizes that she can do whatever she wants with her life

Cue her quitting her job and getting the most random ass job and she’s so fucking happy about it

And ofc her parents get pissed and yell at her for screwing her life up “we didn’t spend all that money just for you to throw away your education”

And her screaming back “an education I didn’t want!!! Nor was it a choice I made as an adult. You made me go to college at 13, med school at 17… all these big life-changing adult decisions forced on me as a fucking child!”

…needless to say, she’s not close with her family… at all anymore

She keeps in contact with Whittaker and McKay when she moves away frequently, like they’ll talk weekly and they’re the only people she’ll visit back home to see

She does eventually become friends with Santos, mainly at Whittaker’s insistence. But she does sit her down and teach her major boundaries and what friends actually do (bc I also headcanon that Trinity never really had any genuine friends)

She also learns how to be just as unapologetically snarky and bitchy as Santos is from being friends with her

aaaaand that’s all I got so far lol…

[gt-daboss]

JEALOUS GIANTS JEALOUS GIANTS JEALOUS GIA-

I want them

That face when you found an injured borrower, nursed it back to health, slowly, slowly gained its trust and companionship. you put your blood, sweat, and tears into making them feel safe above all else... only for Joey McSmallpants to barge in out of nowhere and try to steal YOUR tiny away from you? Worry not fellow giants! you can simply use your superior strength to flick the other tiny away!

On a serious note, I think the potential for this trope is always massive. Perfect for a dramatic payoff, and everytime i see it being used my heart skips a beat >.> like, realistically tol could simply force them to stay, go against everything they have wanted to represent for their tiny friend, and truly become the monster that they've been trying so hard to not be since their meeting. but they know it would only make it worse, despite their love for their smol, if they truly want to leave... its not in their right to keep them, no matter how much it hurts...

[rowarn]

IF YOU NEEDED ME !

simon riley/reader – 7.1k words sale of a lifetime mini series !

tags: smut, childhood best friend!simon, virginity for sale trope, unrealized feelings, soft!simon, protective!simon, virgin!reader, afab!reader, no prns for reader

cw: loss of virginity, cunnilingus, wet & messy, fingering, creampie, mid-sex love confession, a little arguing but nothing crazy tbh, petnames (love, lovie, sweetheart)

; he remembers the way you would look at him when you were children, all smiles and bright eyes. he never thought he was deserving of such happiness. but now, with you shyly covering your bare breasts, in his bed, he feels like he’s the only man deserving of you.

or.

he may not have been the first man you picked to give your first time to. but looking back, you realized he was the only right choice in the end.

Meeting some unknown, shady guy out on the street outside of a seedy bar wasn’t the smartest decision you’ve ever made. Nor was it how you actually intended to spend your Friday evening. But it was the only option you had at the moment, so you swallowed your nerves and forced yourself to stay put at the spot the guy had chosen despite the fact that being out on the street made you feel x10 more nervous and vulnerable. 

You could hear the loud music and chatter inside the bar every time the door opened to let someone in or out. There was a chill in the air that had you contemplating actually going inside and just telling the guy to meet you in there – you were about to give the bastard your damn virginity, the least he could be was accommodating to your temperature struggles. Plus, you could really use a drink.

A car, expensive by the looks of it, pulling up to the curb had you pausing in that train of thought. You recognized him from his profile picture when he stepped out of the vehicle – Lucas, you recall being his name. Whether that was really his name or not didn’t matter; all that mattered was he brought what he promised.

“You have the money?” you asked when he approached you, giving him a tight-lipped smile as a greeting.

“Yeah, got it in the car. All cash, I hope that’s alright,” he grinned, a sight that made a shiver go down your spine. His tone didn’t match the smile, all transactional and dull despite the glimmer in his eyes.

He wasn’t necessarily unattractive but he certainly wasn’t your type. There was a look in his eyes, one that made your skin crawl because you felt like you were nothing but a piece of raw meat in front of a starving, salivating predator. 

“We should get going,” he said, hurrying to open the backseat of his car for you.

You paused, “Aren’t we going to go inside or something?”

He looked confused, grip on the door tightening for a moment before he bursted out laughing. When he saw the shocked look on your face he sobered up, “Sorry, sorry, that was rude of me. Sweetheart, this isn’t a date. I’m just here to get what I paid for.”

“Oh…” you swallowed around the lump in your throat at the condescending tone, humiliation making your cheeks burn, “Right.”

Tears stung the back of your eyes and you quickly averted your gaze so he wouldn’t see how much that stung. Of course, you knew it wasn’t a date. This was a transaction. But you at least thought you’d get to know the guy who was about to take your virginity. You should have known better.

A man who was paying for your virginity wasn’t bound to be someone you could trust to feel comfortable around. You quietly sigh, resigning yourself to this all for the sake of some fucking money. 

You settle into the car, heart jumping into your throat when the door slams. It feels as if you’ve just sealed your fate and you can’t deny that you’re scared. 

But there’s an envelope next to you that you can see stuffed with bills and you clench your fists, trying to calm your racing heart by closing your eyes and breathing. 

You just hope this decision doesn’t cost you your life or something. You’d hate to imagine what that would do to a certain someone.

Suddenly, the car jostles. Your eyes snap open and you see Lucas is jacked up against the side of the car, a very familiar form caging him in. His scarred hands grip the man’s shirt in tight fists. You can’t hear what they’re saying but you can see Lucas is chattering frantically, gesturing wildly with his hands in an attempt to quell the angry man in the skull balaclava. 

You curse to yourself, a different kind of terror shocking through your system. Lucas is thrown to the side and you wince at how hard he hits the pavement before the car door is jerked open.

You can’t even say anything before a strong, rough hand wraps around your arm, yanking you out. You stumble once you’re on your feet, falling right into his chest. 

You try to pull away but his arm clamps down around you. 

Lucas is cursing and screaming his head off, words you don’t even bother to try and decipher because you’re too preoccupied with the masked figure that made his sudden appearance. Nerves make your knees shake and from the look of pure rage in his eyes, you know you’re in deep shit. 

Lucas opens the car door and slams it before driving off, tires squealing against the pavement before he vanishes. Along with that wad of cash that was going to be yours in just a short time. 

Suddenly you’re angry, shoving your hands against his chest to get him away from you.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Riley?!” you shriek, shooting him the fiercest glare you could muster.

“I should be askin’ you that,” he sneers, “The hell were you doin’ with that prick?”

“I–”

“Don’t answer that,” he snaps, cutting you off swiftly, “I know what you were doin’. If you needed money that badly you should have told me.”

“It’s not your concern, Simon!” you cry, resisting the urge to petulantly stomp your foot.

You’re so pissed. 

Simon Riley and you went way back, childhood friends. The two of you had always been in each other's lives. Simon especially was always there when you needed him, a beacon of safety and protection. Your best friend and someone you loved to the ends of the Earth. 

But right now, you’re so angry with him that you can’t seem to think straight.

How dare he show up now, when you’re about to do the most humiliating act of your entire life. How could he show his stupid, masked face here when you didn’t even ask for his help in the first place for a reason. 

“You are always my concern,” he shoots back, scarred knuckles turning white from how hard he clenches his fists, “I have always taken care of you. You should have come to me for help instead of puttin’ yourself in danger like this. You didn’t know that guy, what the fuck were you thinking?”

Anger makes your skin hot, sweat beading on your forehead, blocking out the chill that once made goosebumps rise. You feel ashamed that you were caught in this situation – that the man you’ve known your entire life knew you were about to sleep with some random asshole for a fat wad of cash. You don’t like that he’s made you feel ashamed and confronted you with it.

“Just fuck off, Simon!” you shriek, the only thing you can think of before turning on your heel and stalking away from him.

You don’t glance over your shoulder to check if he’s following because you know he most likely is – from a safe distance to make sure you make it inside your apartment alright but far enough that you can’t get mad at him for it. Your jaw is clenched so tightly that you feel a headache radiating down your neck. 

By the time you reach your apartment, the anger has simmered and all you’re left with is a festering shame that makes tears fill your eyes. You wrap your arms around yourself and quickly shuffle yourself inside, not bothering to check if Simon is out there or not. All you want is to get a hot shower and crawl into bed for the rest of the weekend. 

You do just that, letting the burning hot water scald your skin until you can’t feel any emotions except exhaustion. And then, you crawl into bed and let sleep overtake you without a second thought. 

When you wake up, it’s clear that it’s late into the afternoon. The sun is high in the sky and shining painfully bright through the crack in your curtains. You groan and roll over, slapping the bed to find your phone. 

You grab the device and unlock it, taking a moment to scroll through your notifications. There’s some angry messages from the guy from last night – cursing you out for setting him up to be jumped. It makes you roll your eyes before a particular notification catches your eye.

It’s from your bank – alerting you of a deposit. 

You sit up straight in your bed, brows furrowed before your eyes nearly bug out of your head when you see your bank statement. It’s more than you needed and you know exactly who was responsible. 

You jump out of bed, not even bothering to dress out of your pajamas before you’re shoving some slides onto your feet and storming out of your apartment. 

You’re so heated that you can’t even remember the walk to Simon’s place, your mind racing a million miles a second. You storm up to the door and slam your fist on it, the hard wood making your hand sting from how hard you pound. 

The radiating tingle of pain is quickly forgotten when the door swings open. 

Simon stands there, looking down at you expectantly. He leans against the door with his arms crossed over his chest. He wears an army-issued t-shirt that’s a bit too tight. The sleeves stretch taunt around his biceps and you can make out the swell of his pecs. It’s not very often that you get to see his tattooed arms, littered with scars since he tends to wear long sleeves most of the time. 

He doesn’t look at all surprised to see you, clearly having expected you. The apathetic look in his eyes just solidifies that you were right all along.

“What the hell is your problem?!” you cry without so much as a greeting.

He sighs, broad shoulders rising and falling with it before he opens the door wide and motions you inside. You duck underneath his outstretched arm, turning to watch as he closes the door and locks it. 

He wanders into the kitchen and you realize you can smell bacon. He doesn’t seem at all surprised by your outburst nor does he seem interested in acknowledging your question.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, only solidifying how unperturbed he is by your display of anger. 

“No!” you snap, “I want to know why you did that, Simon!”

He sighs again, much louder but doesn’t respond. You stand in the doorway to his kitchen, watching him plate his lunch – which is actually just breakfast food. He places the dish on the table and pauses, looking up at you.

“You needed the money, I had it,” he offered with a shrug of his shoulders.

“I was handling it on my own,” you say, “I-It was my problem to solve.”

“By sellin’ yourself to some prick?” he snarls, the anger he was masking coming out in a flurry.

“I wasn’t selling myself–” you refute but he slams his palms down on the table. His cutlery clatters with the action and you jump.

“I read that post you made,” he hisses, teeth bared, “There’s no fuckin’ reason you should be selling your virginity for some cash when I was right here the whole time!”

Your cheeks burn when he brings up your virginity, crossing your arms over your chest protectively, “I-It’s mine to sell if I want to! I needed that money!”

“And now you have it,” he says with finality. 

He takes a seat and you stand there, fuming. Your jaw is clenched, teeth grinding together as your mind races to find a rebuttal. He begins to eat, taking large, fast bites that just shows how he’s been conditioned to eat quickly by the military. 

“That’s not the point, Simon,” you huff, growing less angry and more frustrated by this conversation. You were just going around in circles. 

“Then what is the point?” he snaps, snatching his empty plate and angrily tossing it in the sink. He turns to you again, a frown evident on his face, “You got the money you needed safely. That’s all that matters.”

“It’s too much money, Simon!” you cry, “I was selling something in exchange for it!”

“I care about you,” he says, “That doesn’t matter to me. What’s mine is yours, you know that.”

You silently glare at him, wishing that the heated stare would get through to him. He stands unbothered, staring blankly at you with his fists clenched by his sides.

You hang your head, sighing, “I-I can’t take your money, Simon, alright? I’m already in debt and I’m not going to be in debt to you of all people.”

“You feel like you owe me, is that it?” he asks.

You nod your head, heart rate spiking when he stalks towards you. You’re close enough to smell his body wash and aftershave, a painfully familiar scent that you adore. He stares down his nose at you, brown eyes lidded and lazy. 

He reaches out suddenly, rough hand gripping your cheeks, smushing them together until your lips pucker, “Then give me a kiss as payment.”

“H-Huh?” you whimper dumbly, eyes wide in shock as his face grows closer and closer.

“It can be payment for a kiss, lovie,” he coos, syrupy sweet and soft, “Will that make up for it, then?”

The air in your lungs suddenly doesn’t feel like enough. This is a man that you’ve known almost your entire life so you’ve obviously thought about him in a romantic sense at some point. Hell, when you were a teenager you even had a crush on him. But he never once looked at you any other way than as a friend so you quickly got over it – or maybe that’s just what you told yourself. Because as you stand there, staring into his eyes, you realize that kissing him would feel like a dream come true. 

You find yourself nodding despite the inner turmoil going on in your head. Simon huffs through his nose before leaning down and pressing his lips against yours. 

There’s a shock of electricity that goes through you at the contact. Your eyes flutter shut as you lean into the kiss, letting him take over. He works his lips expertly against yours, eventually abandoning his hold on your face in favor of wrapping his arm around your waist. You gasp into the kiss when he suddenly yanks you closer, your body pressed close against his. 

He’s warm and sturdy against you, a solid form of muscle that makes you feel safe and content – just as he always has. His hands are big and rough as they grip your hips, kneading the soft flesh there as he gets lost in kissing you. 

“S-Si,” you find yourself muttering without realizing.

He hums in response, chuckling when you continue to mindlessly kiss him. He pulls back, one hand coming up to wrap lightly around your throat, thumbing at your jaw as your eyes slowly focus on him, “What is it, sweetheart? What do you need?”

“I-I don’t…” you swallow thickly around the forming lump in your throat, “I don’t know. I just…”

“Show me,” he breathes, softer than you’ve ever heard his voice. 

The sweet, tender look in his big, brown eyes is what gives you the courage to grab his wrist, leading it just under the hem of your shirt so he can touch your bare stomach. You give him a shy glance from under your lashes, hoping he’ll get the hint that you want more. 

You want him.

Simon, in all his experienced wisdom, understands immediately what it is you’re aching for. His hand travels up further, pausing at your ribs, just under the swell of your breast. Your heart hammers in your chest when your gaze meets his. His eyes are lidded, long lashes obscuring his pupils but still burning into you. 

He stares deep into your eyes, waiting for any sign of hesitation as his fingers creep higher and higher. You suck in a breath when he cups your breast in his palm, squeezing lightly to feel their weight. 

A large, calloused thumb creeps up, passing ever so softly over your nipple until the bud peaks and hardens under the attention. You sigh at the feeling, new shocks washing over you that you’ve never experienced before. 

Sure, you played with yourself plenty – you had a healthy masturbation life, you’d say. But you’d always just been focused on reaching an orgasm, never on the build up. You imagine, however, it would never feel as good by yourself as it does with him.

He pinches your nipple between two fingers and you whine, lips parting as the sound escapes. Simon takes the opportunity to slide his tongue into your mouth. Your hands grab his shoulders, desperately clinging to his shirt as you lose yourself in the sloppy kiss. 

Drool drips down your chin – it's messy and hot between the two of you. His hand switches to your other breast to give it the same attention as the other. You tremble in his arms, overcome by the insatiable throbbing between your thighs. 

You shift on your feet, the fabric of your panties stick uncomfortably to your core. You’re so wet, wetter than you’ve ever been in your life. By the time he pulls back, there’s a string of saliva connecting your lips to his. 

“You want more?” he asks, voice gravelly as he speaks, as if he’s drunk. You nod your head and he clicks his tongue, “You gotta tell me, sweetheart.”

“I-I want more, Si,” you whisper, feeling your cheeks burn as you admit it. 

“Let’s go,” he hums, taking your hand in his as he leads you around the couch towards the hallway.

“Where?” you ask dumbly, hoping that making some kind of conversation would ease the nerves steadily building in your chest. 

“The bedroom,” he responds, stroking his thumb over the top of your hand as if he can sense that you’re nervous, “Wouldn’t want to be stripped down in the middle of the living room, I imagine.”

“N-No,” you squeak, cheeks burning even hotter at those words. 

You’re going to be naked. In front of another person for the first time. In front of him. Simon. 

“There now, lovie,” he whispers as he shuts his bedroom door behind the both of you. He takes your waist in his hands, kneading the soft flesh there, “It’s alright.”

“I-I’m just–”

“Nervous,” he finishes for you, smiling softly when you nod, “I know. We can stop anytime you’d like.”

“I don’t want to,” you rush out, hands coming up to press against his firm chest, “Just…d-don’t be upset when I don’t know what I’m doing.”

The tender way he looks at you sets your heart pounding like a little rabbit. A ghost a smile appears on his lips, “I would never do somethin’ like that.”

“I-I know, I just…” you look down at your feet only for him to catch your chin in his fingers, pulling you to look up at him.

You swallow thickly around the lump in your throat, holding your breath as he descends down. His lips find yours all over again, as exhilarating and mind-melting as the first time. 

Just the sweet, deep kiss he gives you has your nerves dissipating a bit – back to normal levels. You no longer feel the desire to flee, you just feel an intense longing and anticipation. You crave more from him.

As if sensing this, his fingers find the hem of your shirt. He slowly starts to pull it up, agonizingly slow. But you’re grateful for it, it gives you time to prepare before you’re bared completely to him. You lift your arms for him, a sign that you’re still okay with this. 

He pulls it up over your head and lets the fabric drop to the floor. But he doesn’t look down, he continues looking in your eyes, softly pecking your lips as his hands cup your breasts once more. 

When you sigh and lean into his touch, he finally lets himself break the eye contact. He sucks in a sharp breath when he sees how pretty your tits sit in his hands. He touches them softly, sweetly brushing over your nipples in admiration. 

“Perfect tits, lovie,” he coos, chuckling when you whine in embarrassment. 

His head descends, pink lips parting to take one of your nipples in his mouth. It’s hot but his tongue is soft when it circles and flicks at the bud. He sucks, popping off lewdly before switching to the other one. 

The sensation makes you squeeze your thighs together, imaging what that would feel like around your clit. Your hole clenches around nothing, drooling messily into your panties. The fabric was so wet by now that it couldn’t soak it up anymore, leaving it to slick up your thighs instead.

Your core ached, a feeling only Simon would be able to soothe. 

“Please, Si,” you finally break, whimpering pathetically. 

He detaches from your breast, lips wet and swollen from the worship he had been giving your now sore nipples. His pupils were blown wide, black swallowing brown and you were sure that yours looked the same. 

He stands to his full height, nudging you backwards until your knees hit the bed. They buckled at that, leaving you to fall back against the bed. Simon’s bedding was soft, the scent of detergent and his own body wash filling your senses. You relax at the familiar, comforting scent, sinking into the blankets with a bashful smile on your face.

To Simon, you’re an ethereal beauty. You take the air right out of his lungs with the way you look at him.

He remembers the way you would look at him when you were children, all smiles and bright eyes. He never thought he was deserving of such happiness. But now, with you shyly covering your bare breasts, in his bed, he feels like he’s the only man deserving of you. 

He scooches you up the bed, crawling on after you until he’s on top of you. Though you’re still wearing your pants, you feel so vulnerable beneath his weight. He’s heavy and warm and he smells so good. You can’t focus on anything except for him – he’s all around you and it’s exhilarating. 

Feeling bold, you reach up and tug at his shirt. He pulls it off with ease, revealing his toned, scarred upper body. You can’t help but trace over some of the ones you’re familiar with – there’s one from a time he fell out of a tree trying to rescue a cat that you had been crying about. He fell out of the tree on the way down, a jagged branch stabbing into his upper arm and slicing it open. There was another one from when you were teenagers, some other kids jumped him and he took a stab to his shoulder trying to protect you. You kiss that one and he softens, as if he’s remembering it too. 

He’s always been there for you, an overwhelming presence that you simply couldn’t live without. The fact you’re here, in this bed, about to give him your virginity is something that you never would have expected. 

And to think, you were planning to sell it off to some random loser. 

“I’m glad you stopped me,” you find yourself whispering. 

He looks confused for a second before he hums, nodding in understanding, “I am too.”

“I-I want it to be you, Si,” you whisper, the confession leaving you embarrassed. It’s true, all this time, you realize, he’s all you’ve ever really wanted. You had just buried it deep down so you no longer felt those sparks towards him.

“I’ll take care of you,” he whispers back, as if the two of you are sharing some secret little moment that no one else can hear about even though it’s just the two of you in this room. 

“You always do,” you respond, the words making his dark eyes light up. 

He kisses you deeply, moving his lips slowly against yours. When your hands come up to grip the back of his neck, he takes that as his cue to move down to your neck, then your collarbones, down the center of your chest between your breasts, the spot between your breasts, and finally your navel. 

You lay back, head in his pillows with your hands on either side of your head. You watch him, breathing labored as you wait for his next move. He pauses in his path, looking up through his lashes at you before his fingers find the hem of your sweats. You swallow thickly, holding your breath when he slowly begins to pull the fabric down. You lift your hips to help him, pulling your legs free while being careful not to kick him by accident. 

He keeps his gaze on you until you’re settled back down into the bed and the pants are forgotten on the floor to be collected later. Then, he looks down. 

Even though you still have your panties on, you know that the white cotton is soaked through and hides absolutely nothing from his view. 

You watch as he licks his lips, as if his mouth is suddenly bone dry. His hands are burning hot when he touches you again, sliding over your thighs to your hips. He leans down, pressing his lips against each of your thighs. 

His thumb reaches down, stretches over your pubic bone to touch the sticky fabric. You nearly jump at the sensation – someone’s fingers other than your own touching you there for the first time. Simon’s fingers.

As if he can’t help himself anymore, he tugs the waistband of your panties and yanks them down your thighs. You squeal when you’re jostled under the force. 

He holds the material up and you’re mortified to see just how wet they are. He runs his thumbs over the crotch and you whine, drawing his attention from them. He drops them to the floor and returns his hands back to you, gripping underneath your knees, so he can spread you all the way open. 

Your hands fly to your face, covering your eyes in embarrassment at how exposed you are. He doesn’t seem to mind, pressing a kiss over the top of your hands before moving back down your body. 

You peek through your fingers only to find him already staring at you with a sparkle in his eyes. He carefully spreads your slippery folds apart with his thumbs, the movement causing a wet, sticky sound to emanate from between your legs. The little bud of your clit is hard and twitching as it’s exposed to the cool air of the bedroom. When he’s sure you’re looking he leans down, pink tongue hanging out of his mouth. You stop breathing as you watch a fat glob of spit roll down the surface of the smooth muscle and splatter right on your clit. 

“Si-!” your squeal of his name is cut off when your eyes roll back in his head as that sinful tongue slides right over your bud. 

Your whole body twitches at that, hands falling away from your face so you can reach down and grab his hair. It doesn’t even seem like he notices your grip, focused on slurping up that sensitive nub into his hot mouth. 

You choke out a moan, tilting your head back into the pillows as your back arches. It feels just as good as you thought it would when he was giving the same, lewd treatment to your nipples. 

He continues to suck and lick your clit until your mind is completely blank and all you can think is him. Then, all at once it stops and he pulls back, letting your bud slip from the heavenly clutch of his lips.

“You ever have somethin’ inside you, lovie?” he asks, bringing up one of his fingers to swipe through the folds of your entrance, as if to show you what he intends. 

You swallow to moisten your throat before nodding, “J-Just my fingers.”

“How many?” he asks, growing more confident in prodding at the tight little hole. 

“T-Two,” you breathe, any embarrassment you felt long dissipated in the face of true pleasure.

“Alright, lovie,” he hums, “Just lay back, I’ll take good care of you, yeah?”

You nod and do as he says, turning utterly boneless against the blankets. The sweat already slicking your skin despite the fact you’ve only just begun makes the fabric stick to you. 

He prods at your entrance for only a second longer before finally, he pushes his thick middle digit inside you. Your cunt is so wet and pliant that it hungrily swallows it up to the very last knuckle. You clench around it intentionally, getting used to the feeling of the foreign finger inside of you for the first time. 

It feels so different compared to your own, thicker and rougher. The sensation is so strange but you can’t say you don’t like it – in fact, it feels amazing. You already want another, feeling like one just isn’t enough to give you that unknown feeling you’re chasing. It’s like you have an itch that needs to be scratched and only Simon can do it for you. 

As if sensing this, ever the reliable one, he carefully introduces a second finger. The stretch is unfamiliar, a burn around your entrance following as he reaches the last knuckle on that one too. His middle and ring finger stuffed snuggly inside your gooey little cunt as you whine and squirm from the feeling. 

Once you’ve adjusted, he slowly begins working them in and out of you. You slick up his fingers easily, streaks of creamy white coating his skin and making his mouth water. When he crooks his fingers up suddenly, prodding at that tender little spot inside of you, your entire body twitches and the most beautiful moan rips from your chest. 

He can’t resist leaning down and trapping your pulsing little clit under the flat of his tongue. He doesn’t slurp it into his mouth like before, instead, he just licks over it, pressing it down with the muscle. Your eyes are rolled up and your mouth hangs open as you moan and moan, tugging mindlessly at his hair as he works you towards your orgasm. 

It grows and grows, the unrelenting pleasure of his fingers fucking deeply into you and his tongue lapping sloppily at your clit like a mutt driving that knot in your belly to tighten. Drool spills out around his tongue, slipping down to meet his fingers where he easily fucks it into you – the added lubrication not needed but so very welcome with how much wetter and messier it makes you. 

“S-Simon…” you pant, gasping to catch your breath as the pleasure makes it hard for you to even think. 

He glances up at you through his lashes but doesn’t offer any other acknowledgement. There’s a knowing look in his eyes that tells you he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s going to wring this orgasm out of your little cunt whether you like it or not. 

And fuck, do you love it. 

The orgasms you brought yourself in the deep of the night, little hands stuffed down your panties as you played with your clit and stuffed yourself with your own fingers was nothing like what you were experiencing now. Simon’s thick fingers and hot tongue were torturing your little clit until your entire body started to lock up.

You looked at him desperately, unsure what was even going through your mind besides him and how fucking good you felt right now. 

Just as you teetered on the edge of this orgasm, he suddenly changed up and swallowed your twitchy little clit into his mouth. He sucked, sending you flying over the edge with a shrill wail of his name. Your legs kicked and twitched, heels hitting him on the back as you trembled and shook through the orgasm that he eagerly fucked out of you onto his fingers. 

He suckled your clit, swirling his tongue around it until it was too sensitive and you were tearily pushing him away. When he finally released you, slipping his fingers from your cunt, you were boneless and twitching on the bed. You didn’t even try to close your legs when he pulled away, giving him the perfect view to watch your cute little pussy clench and messily drool cum in the aftermath of your orgasm. 

He popped his fingers in his mouth, eyes rolling and lashes fluttering at the taste of your cum tingling on his taste buds. As you came down, eyes closed and breathing heavy, he began pulling at his belt. 

You could hear the metal clinking as he dropped it to the floor, peeking your heavy lids open to see him pull the button of his jeans open. As he slowly pulled them down, his underwear went with and suddenly you were more aware than ever. 

His cock was something to behold. Thick and veiny, bobbing in the air where it hung – too heavy to actually stand upright. You’d seen dicks in porn before but none of them prepared you for Simon’s. Precum dribbled from the tip, creating a long, gooey string down towards the floor before it broke. 

He wrapped a big hand around himself, giving a few good strokes as he reached down to cup his own heavy balls. The hair wasn’t wild or offensive, but neatly trimmed short. 

“All good, lovie?” he asked, stepping out of the pool of his jeans and boxers so he could kneel on the bed again.

“All god-good!” you blushed as he laughed, leaning down over you to balance his weight on his elbows.

“You still want this?” he asks, hushed and sweet, 

You glance between your bodies to see that intimidating cock, drooling messily over your skin. You realize, quickly, that you’ve never wanted anything more in your life.

When you voice such, he looks relieved, like a weight was lifted off of his shoulders. He sits back on his heels and spreads your legs, pushing your knees up to your chest.

“Hold them there,” he orders, which you follow immediately. 

Your elbows circle around your knees, holding yourself open for him as he asked. He whistles low in appreciation when your cum-slicked cunt was spread and exposed for him to prod his cockhead against. 

He swipes the tip up and down through your folds, humming appreciatively when your little hole tries to suck him in every time he grazes past it. He nudges your clit, the little bud still hard and sensitive from your orgasm but so eager for more. He couldn’t wait to grant your wish and make you cream on his cock. 

You watch him with wide eyes as he starts to push into you. Your jaw drops as you feel that burning stretch, an ache settling between your legs as he continues to sink himself into you. 

“F-Fuck, wait, Simon!” you squeal and he halts immediately. 

He’s only reached just past the head of his cock but he reaches down to pet your clit. The pleasure shoots through you, making your toes curl and your walls relax around him. He keeps his eyes on your face for any sign that you want him to stop as he moves his hips again. 

More and more of his cock sinks inside and his thumb keeps working little circles over your clit until his hips are flush with yours. Your voice breaks as you moan when you realize you’ve taken every single inch of him. 

He’s heavy and throbbing inside of you and you clench around him intentionally, forcing a moan from his chest. 

He leans down, arranging your knees over his shoulders, folding you up and pressing down on  you. He’s heavy and it makes it hard to breathe but that makes it even better – the pleasure of being speared on that fat cock and being utterly helpless underneath this man is better than any fantasy you could have made for yourself. 

“Fuck,” he snarls, rolling his hips back before rocking them forward again, heavy balls slapping against you as he does, “Can’t believe you were gonna give this little cunt away to some prick.”

“S-Si,” you whimper, biting your lip at the feeling of him slowly and carefully rocking his hips against yours, “‘M sorry, sh-shoulda been you all this time.”

“That’s fuckin’ right,” he hums, “No one else gets to love you but me, sweetheart.”

“O-Only you!” you agree, nails digging into his shoulders when he hits that spot just right. 

He can feel you soaking his cock, drippy cum lathering him up to make every glide of his cock wetter than the last. He sits back up on his knees, adjusting his grip so he can pin your legs wide open, giving him the best view of your greedy cunt swallowing his length up. 

He begins to fuck you in earnest, pulling out halfway before sliding home again - nothing like the little movements he gave you to prepare you. He was going to show you exactly why you should only think of giving him this precious pussy for the rest of your life. No one will ever be able to fuck you as good as he can, he’s going to learn your body like the back of your hand and you’re never going to be able to cum as hard as you can with him. You’ll never even want to use your own fingers again when he’s done with you. 

You can’t do anything but lay there and take it, take the pleasure and take his cock. He hits so deep, prodding at your cervix in a way that aches but it only feels that much better when it’s mixed with mind-numbing pleasure. 

Simon looms above you, panting and groaning as he fucks you like he was made to. He angles his hips just right, blunt nails biting into your thighs where he pins you open, neither of you caring if he happens to break skin while he does. You don’t even register the bite of pain underneath the way his cock prods you g-spot so perfectly. 

Your own fingers would have been tired by now, no longer able to work that little spot like you need. Simon’s cock, however, is unrelenting. The pleasure builds and mounts uninterrupted, every stroke of his length sending you higher. His body moves fluidly, rolling his hips tirelessly so he can give you every ounce of pleasure your sweet little cunt needs. 

You’re creaming around him, a frothy, milky ring forming around the base every time he sinks in and becoming visible when he pulls back. It’s filthy and messy and makes your cheeks burn but Simon seems to not mind in the slightest.

“So fuckin’ messy, love,” he coos, breathy and slurred, “Look at that, pretty cunt needed some cock, huh?”

“Y-Yours!” you manage to choke out.

“What’s that?” he asks, a crooked, teasing grin on his face. 

“Y-Your cock! Only needed your cock, Simon,” you pant, reaching up to grope your own tits, pinching and rolling your nipples meanly. It hurts so good, making you clench around his cock. He moans at the sight, his pretty little virgin tormenting your own nipples.

“That’s right,” he hums, reaching a shaky hand down to thumb at your clit, “Keep pinchin’ those pretty tits, sweetheart. Don’t stop.”

You nod your head, unable to form a vocal response from the new sensation of your clit being played with while he fucks you. It feels so damn good that you could go drunk from it all. Everything in your brain is slow, thoughts of only him and how good you feel are all that’s there. Your entire world, right at this moment, revolves around Simon Riley. 

He knows it too, a cocky grin on his face as he works you to your orgasm. You dangle, almost helplessly, staring unblinkingly at his handsome face as he works it out of you. 

After what feels like minutes, but is probably only seconds, you cum. Hard.

Your head slams back against the pillows, back arching as you cunt clasps tight around him. You cry out in pure, unadulterated pleasure as he fucks you through it. His thumb keeps working your clit as it twitches and pulses under the digit, cumming nice and pretty for him just like he wanted. Just like you deserved. 

You cream his cock messily, it drips down his balls and down your ass to the bedding below. So fucking sloppy and wet, a perfect little cunt made to take his cock. 

His brows furrow, mouth falling open as his own orgasm mounts and builds. Now that your well-earned orgasm is out of the way, he can finally let go and allow himself to experience it as well.

“Where do you want it?” he grits out, teeth clenched from the ache of holding back.

His balls draw up, heavy and full. He feels ready to positively explode when you gasp, “I-Inside!”

His head falls back, the loudest, most drawn out moan you’d never expected to come from a stoic man like Simon falling from his lips. It’s deep and primal, full of nothing but euphoria as he spills into you. His load is hot and thick, drooling out of the sides of his cock as he slows his thrusts to milk the least bits of pleasure from the orgasm. 

When he comes down, he collapses. Your legs lock around his waist and he draws you tightly into his arms, neither of you caring for the way his weight crushes you. All you care about is being wrapped up in his arms where you belong. 

He pulls his neck from your chest and kisses your forehead. Then he kisses your nose. Then your lips. 

“Pretty,” he breathes, still drunk on the endorphins of the sex so his lips are a little looser than they’d normally be, “Always thought you were pretty.”

“Really?” you prompt, cheeks heating at his confession. 

He hums, “Glad you’re finally mine.”

You beam, “No one deserved me as much as you.”

He nods as if it’s the most obvious statement in the world, rolling off of you with a sigh. His cock unplugs your cunt and a gush of your mixed cum comes out, making you whine. He laughs softly, drawing you back into your arms. 

You’ve never felt safer and warmer in your life, knowing in that moment that you should have come to Simon all along. There’s no one in the world who would be there for you, more willing and able than he. 

this work belongs to rowarn. do not repost to third party websites or use for character ai. reblogs welcome and appreciated!

[ppjeterka]

i have a crazily elaborate au premise i outlined for a fic i was planning on writing for a pairing three fandoms ago and i'm seriously considering adapting it to fit hrpf now

[nemesyaaa]

rafe cameron x sleepy!reader

summary : you were just the sleepiest girl of the town. (kinda sweet smutty prompt / etablished relationship. soft! boyfriend!rafe.)

warnings : except smut, nothing much. bad sleeping shedule.

author's note : /.

“ I’m fucking tired.” you yawned as you entered the room. since the beginning of the evening, you had only been looking forward to getting back to the soft comfort of your bed.

you couldn't help but become sleepy, which meant letting your boyfriend take care of you because you were unable to stay awake. you never needed to be careful because rafe cameron always had his eyes on you. and as long as you were next to him, as long as he could feel you even if you were dead asleep and drooling over his chest, he allowed you to take a nap on his lap for hours. it was one of your few privileges.

something he didn't allow was people waking you up. if it he had to shut down every fucking noisy kook in a room to let you sleep, he would do it. it was his own version of let me burn the world for you but in a better way, more like let me quit this entire world for you.

you loved these moments of calm and peace when you slept wearing only one of his t-shirts acting like a dress around your naked body, and white high socks.

rafe was spooning you while you were already falling asleep, the reassuring and warm feeling of his cold fingers slipping under your t-shirt, his large hands covering the flesh of your waist , letting his strong arms gently slowly pulling you towards him. the shushing sound of his lips hovering your neck as you were dragged by his thick fingers. your barely covered body lazily comes closer, as soft breaths break the silence of your mouth, quickly followed by the sleepy whines of your tall boyfriend that holds his grip tighter in your hips, making sure you can't go anywhere, even if you were in a deep sleep.

you had a complicated relationship with your sleep schedule because you were sleeping both too much and not enough at the same. you could be fully awake at 5am but literally dead asleep at 12pm. for the simple reason that you were not sleeping at the right time, nor at the right hour, nor in the right place. you were one of those sleepiest girls who would disappear for hours not because you were going out on the town with friends or even stepping foot outside, but because you would sleep for hours on end.

you told rafe that you were just closing your eyes to take a nap but you ended up waking up in the evening.

when you woke up, you were completely lost and disorganized but above all so tired. it was almost ridiculous. your boyfriend was now used to your eyes half-closed, your hair completely messed up and across your exhausted face, drool on the corner of your lip with that oh-so-stupid expression.

he lay down on the bed, while you looked at him with wide opened eyes. at this point, you weren't even sure you recognized your own boyfriend. “ rafe ? ”

“still asleep, babe? "

his voice was usually low, while he brushed away the trail of drool that was leaking from your mouth with his thumb. you nodded, and he smiled. “ such a baby. ”

you were a terrible temptation. he could have fucked you while you were sleeping. and maybe that was even what you wanted sometimes when you slept so scantily dressed, leaving your tiny thong in full view while you lay on your back, legs unconsciously spread.

“let me help you…” he whispered as he flipped you onto the bed, pushing your thighs apart to make himself a place. he had pulled down his boxers without removing them completely, before forcing your legs open with one hand. "fucking wet. i bet you dreamed about that dick inside you."

the smirk on his face was pretty charming and sick, and he pushed the fat tip of his cock against your soaked slit, before making morning slaps on your little glistening cunt. his length was so hard, hitting your sensitive bud. the plushy mushroom getting glossy from your weeping hole. he looked at you, holding his dick in a hand with your wetness dripping from the shaft, as you had a hard times focusing on his movements but he squeezed your cheeks on his hands, pulling your face closer to him. “ get that mouth open, want to be able to spit on it whenever i want. ”

it was also a pretty excuse for him to force you to keep your eyes open. when he first pushed in with a hard thrust that literally arched all your body, you screamed out of pleasure and pain. he didn't wait before starting working his dick faster in your swollen cunt. you always take him so good, and he can't help but pound you even deeper every time he hears your sleepily voice moaning softly, the whining getting louder and bigger as he stretches you open. you were too good, a forbidden pleasure for sure, your sloppy pussy fully soaked him.

little by little, you begin to be fully awake, eyes filled with shining tears. you were a mess that was crying and panting from the roughness of your boyfriend, crybaby whines begging for rafe’s attention. your mouth getting muffled by his, he shushed you through the kiss, heavy breath and drool falling between your lips. “ s-s-slow down ! ” you cried out.

he mocked you gently, answering with a wicked smile. “ what about faster ? thought that's what you wanted ? ”he was still fucking you, but now a hand reached your throat, as the thickness of his length stuffed the inside of your walls, hitting all the spots. “ r-rafe. ” you exploded.

you were shaking, gasping for air and throbbing, eyes still locked in rafe's gaze while you lost your mind, thinking of how deep he was inside you. your cunt still twitching around his cock, making you unable to catch your breath and literally choking against the hand pressed on your throat. you were already tired, the inner of your thighs dripping with arousal and legs breaking with each thrusts. and those massive orgasms didn't help. his face was now sweaty from the heat and the sex, hot breaths escaping his lips and absolutely no sign of exhaustion. he could fuck you to death. and you wish you could reach this level but you were already too drained by the fast back and forth. “ this is how i should wake up my sleepy girl every morning. don't you think ? ”

he finally managed to cum, spilling thicks of loads inside you. your head failing in the bed as he slowly pulled his dick out, before pushing it into your mouth. the sight of your tongue licking every single drop of juice left him even horny, your pretty lips weeped with cum and wetness, that he smeared with the tip of his cock, before letting you clean everything.

“ it was not a fuck, it was an attempted murder. ” you told him.

“ don't inspire me for round 2, you will regret it. ”

“ don't complain me about why i sleep this much when you fucking me like that. ”

“ i'm fucking tired…” you said, a little yawn leaving your mouth as rafe and you entering the room after a living pool party, were you literally rested on your boyfriend’s lap during all the event, falling asleep on his shoulder as he was still talking with his friends.

he was now used to since he dated you from a long moment. he was now able to take care of you every time you fell asleep. as always, there was no warning. you could be smiling, living the party, it doesn't mean you were not sleepy. He sometimes complained about how much you slept, but at the same time, how much you didn't get enough sleep.

“ no shit. you were literally drooling over me. ” he said sarcastically. “ lift your arms. ” he commanded, before helping you remove your dress.

he almost passed out when your breasts literally bounced out of your bra as your arms leaned down, his dick slightly growing and forming a bulge inside his pants. but damn, it was not the moments because he knows for sure that you will now fall asleep. AGAIN.

“ do you think topper is mad at me for sleeping at his birthday’s party ? ”

“ do i look like the type of boyfriend that i care about what another man is feeling about my girlfriend ? because, i'm not. ”

“ it was rude…. it's his birthday ! ”

“ babe, i could even fuck you right in front of him that he wouldn't even care or remarks. don't you see how he was just drooling like a dog because of my sister ? ”

“ maybe, i should call…”

rafe had raised an eyebrow, his jaw twitching slightly as you pulled on one of his t-shirts. “ since when do you have topper’s number ? ”

“I mean with your phone. Why would I have his number. Anyways, i'm sorry for this…it's pretty embarrassing. ”

“ What about looking me in the eyes if you at least want me to believe you about your apologies?”

“ Don't fight me right now, i'm tired.”

“ And actually, when you're not ? ” he mocked, and you finally looked at him.

“ When i'm sleeping, it's obvious. ”

“ You forget when i fuck you’. It doesn't seems like you're very tired. ”

after showering and brushing your teeths, you moved to your favorite place in the world — your bed. you loved the clean of the sheets. you covered yourself with the blanket, dropping only your head out.

when rafe appareaded, you couldn't help but stare at his perfect body. you followed his moves, lurking to the good and big shape of his biceps, the well-sculpted ridges of his abs, the visible v-line curved on his hips. “ don't look at me like that. ” he warned.

“ then i will look at someone else. ”

“ funny. ” he said, chuckling without smiling. “ that you think i will let you do such a thing. but keep daydreaming. ”

“ no need to be jealous. there is no kooks better than you. ”

“ does it mean there are pogues better than me ? ”

you sighed, shaking your head and crossing your arms.

“ i don't even hang out with pogues ! don't take it in the wrong way. what about watching a good movie before sleeping ? ”

“ be serious. i know you well, you're gonna fall asleep before the movie even starts. ”

“ no ! i'm fully awake. ”

“ which movies do you want to watch ? and there is no way i'm gonna watch that fucking film with a black cat and a ladybug. ”

“ then what about five nights at Freddy's ? ”

“ sounds better. ” he simply said, while typing on the dashboard.

your gaze leaned down on his ringed fingers, fast and thick. your slowly opened your lips, imagining how much they can stretch your mouth, leaving her with a pool of drool from how wet they're from your saliva. but also, how much they will manage to keep your mouth open without effort.

a sparkle shone in your eyes, and you wrapped your arm around rafe's one, making him look without really giving you full attention. “ what you want ? ”

“ nothing. did you find the movie ? ”

“ you like horror movies ? ”

“ no, i like josh. ”

“ bet he died at the end of the movie. ”

“ rafe ! ”

“ yea, keep crying. ”

he started the movie but you were very sleepy. again. you forced yourself to keep your eyes open but it was really hard. you blinked so many times to fight the urge of sleeping, but you're finally falling asleep.

rafe didn't stopped the movie because he was now too invested in it, but let your head rest against his naked chest, stroking your hair gently.

at the beginning of your relationship, it was so new for him to be this close to a person, to reach this type of intimacy but now he was craving for it, finding peace and comfort.

you were his sleepy girlfriend that was now sleeping over him, but will probably wake up in five hours when he will be dead asleep while, you will be looking for a nocturnal activity, trying to not wake him up.

sometimes, and a lot of times, you have sleepless nights that make you even more tired, and fall asleep early or late in the morning. you could feel though the sleep, rafe's arm loosening around your body as he manages to leave the bed to start the day while you just catching your night.

“ good morning, rafe. ”

“ it's 7pm. ”

“ ... ”

[bitterrfruit]

southpaw [ii]

boxer!Ghost x reader cw: dub(verging on non)con. lots of blood if the pics didn't make that obvious. 18+ mdni here's part 2 to my boxer ghost fic. this one is feral. sorry [masterlist]

Your communications with Simon following the frightening tryst in his sitting room had been few and far between. 

After he had abandoned you throbbing and empty and you plummeted back to earth, you swiftly left. He had called you a spiteful little shit when you stormed out of his flat in a huff, with just a shred of caustic humour in his tone that belied his bitterness. 

When your wits — with the force of a kick to the belly — had returned to you in the taxi home, you had told yourself that was that. You’d block his number and you’d kick the revoltingly crude and violent stranger out of your life. Reduce him to a foul memory. 

But as you went to check your phone, looking at the six exchanged messages between yourself and his unsaved number, you faltered. A failure of your self-assertion. Instead you dumped your phone in your bag and glowered out of the window for the duration of the drive home, sucking on your vitriolic arousal like a sour drop. 

You resentfully returned to your quotidian routine the next morning. Catching the subway to work and back, slogging through the Monday at your desk while sorely trying to distract yourself from the residual sensation of his fingertips in your slit. You stared into the voids between the pixels of your monitor, offering one-word answers when any of your coworkers addressed you — so vacant throughout the day that your manager had to check in with you, and you dismissed your fugue as a mere headache. 

Your phone didn’t go off once that workday — no text from a friend, nor a relative, not even spam. Only whilst packed in the train car on the way home, sardine-squished between people taller than you, did your phone buzz in your pocket. 

A text from the number you failed to block. 

Can still smell your cunt on me. 

Mortified, you immediately tucked the phone to your hips and shut the app, hoping the people pressed against you couldn’t read the message that just mired your phone screen. 

The follow up appeared as a banner. 

Making me hungry. 

Your cheeks burned hot and you bit down on nothing, too humiliated to return to the app and reply to his filth. You stuffed your phone in your pocket for the remainder of the sticky train ride, and only reopened it once you had arrived back home and locked your front door behind you. 

You hammered out a reply with splenetic fingers as you took off your coat. You’re a degenerate. 

His answer came quickly. Still grumpy?

Stop messaging me. 

The bouncing ellipses of his typed reply appeared and vanished a number of times, and you scolded yourself for attentively awaiting the answer you had expressly refused. When no reply came, your chest became heavy. 

And it remained heavy, for the next two days, while your phone stayed as empty and dry as you were. Every time you picked it up you felt the flutter behind your ribs, the briefly lifted spirits as you silently hoped for a text from him. Maybe even a missed call. And every time it was blank, you felt your stomach sink. Stupid, for you had all but told him to fuck off. Perhaps you simply wanted him to persist. To insist. 

In your capricious impatience you even typed out a few messages to him, but your shame ensured that they remained unsent. 

You could have just apologised. 

Didn’t think you’d give up that easily. 

I didn’t mean never message me again. 

On Wednesday evening, after work, you returned to the bar you had met him at. Maybe he’d be there, waiting for you, hoping you’d return so that he could accost you. You even planned for it, practised your spiteful response for when you found him there — you’d ignore him for a bit, to make him squirm, to force him to make the first move. Maybe you’d even pretend to have forgotten his name. 

When he wasn’t there, you bitterly paid for your own drink and went home after only one. 

You gave up hope as another sluggish day came and went, arriving home to your empty apartment and getting ready for bed far earlier than you normally would. Washed your face and brushed your teeth before nine-thirty. 

You simply couldn’t face the indignity of reaching out to him. Not after setting your own boundary and he had aberrantly obliged it. 

Once it hit ten you tucked yourself into bed under your winter-weight duvet, forced shut your eyes as you resisted the urge to check your phone before going to sleep. 

And just as a groggy, heat-dizzied slumber began to suck you in, hallucinations of his mammoth hand kneading between your thighs, you heard your phone vibrate loudly atop the wooden surface of your nightstand. Its bluish glow illuminated your dark bedroom for a few seconds before it dimmed again. 

Instantly awake and buzzing with adrenaline you reached to check, snatching your phone from its resting place and glaring bright-eyed at the screen. Probably just an email. Maybe a text from your coworker. Or a pop-up ad for UberEats. 

Fight tomorrow at 8. 

It wasn’t even an invitation. He was just informing you, and even that was a generous presumption. Maybe he was arrogant enough to assume you’d be there without an overt expression of his desire to see you. 

Your seat is by the ring. 

Bastard, you thought. Almost blurted it aloud. You chewed your lip. You knew you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. 

It took you a few attempts to conjure up a response. You typed some out and then swiftly deleted them. 

Eventually, you landed on; You rly think i’m going to come and watch?

Wouldn’t have got you a seat if i didn’t. 

You scoffed at your screen. Why should i?

Still wound up, are you?

The prick. Wtf does that mean?

All grouchy i left you high and dry?

You didn’t notice your thighs grinding together. No. You're a dickhead and i can’t believe i went out with you.

Quit bitching, jesus. Then, a follow up; You’ll get what you want after.  

Your better conscience told you to slam down the phone and abandon the conversation and the fling in its entirety. Unbridled asshole that he was. Instead you held your thumbnail between jittery teeth and rubbed your toes together. 

Who are you fighting? You asked, ungracefully changing the subject. 

Does it matter?

You bit your lip. Not interested in watching you lose. 

I won’t. 

His arrogance made you snort. How do you know?

Got a prize to fight for. 

His charm was shallow and crude, skirting a charade, and yet it unleashed a swarm of butterflies in your chest. Funneled a loathsome heat into a pool between your legs. 

You knew what he thought his prize might be. He hadn’t been shy about it, had he? He plainly believed he could win your cunt as easily as he could a championship belt. 

What’s that? You texted back, after a deliberate delay, wondering whether he’d follow up the text with something more explicit. 

You tell me. 

Dumped the burden on you to be the vulgar one. Not your strong suit, so you decided to attempt to emasculate him. As if such a thing were possible. 

Hm. The other guy might fight to win it too. 

The typing bubbles of his reply came and went for a minute. Wouldn’t put it past him. 

You know him? 

Mate. 

You’re fighting your mate? 

Yep. n I’ll beat him like last time. 

You couldn’t explain the blooming heat in your belly at the prospect of watching him beat and be beaten by someone like him, big and heavy, just as ribald. You imagined a rivalry, all in good fun, until it wasn’t. You imagined they’d be looser with their fists, less mindful of the rules, when it was only their mate at the receiving end of the blow. You wonder if his opponent knows about you. What he might have told him. 

And if you don’t? 

There was no sense in your question, and no vindictiveness in your doubt. Maybe you just wanted him to express some possessiveness. To double down on his certainty. To claim ownership. 

You nearly smacked yourself as the notion smeared its way through your head. 

He’ll be a lucky man.

Not even a lick territorial. You chose not to dissect your lack of disappointment. 

You didn’t reply to his final message, fingers too busy pinching at the angry clit under your knickers, hoping the castigation would settle the lust that throbbed in your temples — you knew it wouldn’t, but the compulsion to alleviate the burning in its nexus puppeteered your arm as though on strings. 

Didn’t let yourself come, though. His ragged words wended about in your head, leaden and demanding. You can wait, like me.

Trudging through the Friday was infinitely more gruelling than any of the days prior. Tumescent anticipation churned in the pit of your stomach, every waking minute. You could not focus on a single task beyond the picking of your fingernails and crossing of your legs. Busied yourself with regular trips to the bathroom, to wipe away the distracting wetness that puddled in your core every time you reread the (not even that sexual) messages in your phone. 

When a colleague glibly asked you what your Friday night plans were, you lied. Night in, probably. You told yourself that you hadn’t yet decided whether you would attend. A smarter girl would avoid it like the plague. 

You knew yourself better than that. 

Despite his lack of contact, you still tortured yourself under the shower after work. Scrubbed clean every mound and every crevice, re-shaved the same areas you tended to until they were raw, left a fruity-sweet hair mask in your locks for long enough that the tresses imbibed the scent. Smeared your body in your caramel-macadamia body lotion, brushed through your lashes a coating of mascara, painted on a layer of rosy-pink lip-gloss. 

You excavated your entire closet in the hunt for the right kind of outfit; you wanted to look pretty, but not like an overdressed deer in headlights. Like a cool-girl who knew how boxing works (you didn’t), but not like you were trying too hard. Settled for a miniskirt and a graphic tee, boots and stockings to keep you warm. You hadn’t forgotten his refusal of them the last time, but it was a cold and windy evening, and he could fuck himself. 

As the time passed seven and you still hadn’t heard from him, just as you began to wonder whether he had given up on you all together — he finally texted you. 

The only content of his message was the address of the venue, with no frills nor any sly attempts to provoke you. Simply the name of the arena and the street it was on. Knowing you’d need a drink, or two, or three — you plugged the location into Uber and booked a ride instead of driving yourself, and it was a ten minute trip through the dark sleet. 

The arena, so he called it, was barely an established venue — some kind of run-down community centre with layers of faded and peeling posters glued to its grimy brick walls, windows of steel-meshed glass and a single street light hanging over the push-door entrance. 

You carried your heart in your teeth. It evidently would not be a televised fight, like you had wistfully imagined. What kind of back alley shithole–

The resentful thought was knocked out of you along with the wind in your lungs as a shoulder collided with you — a pair of men with their hands in the pockets of their puffers steamrolled past you, noisy raillery as they went through the entrance. 

Attendees of the fight, you supposed – hoped – because you elected to follow them, with no other recourse, head held low under the hood of your jacket to avoid the rain. 

You elbowed the glass swinging door when the men in front of you didn’t hold it for you, and immediately you heard the rowdy din of a crowd elsewhere in the building, muffled by walls or floors. The interior was brutally bright, beaming fluorescent bars hung ungracefully from the ceiling, their glow bouncing off the painted white cinderblock of the walls and onto the peeling grey linoleum. 

Some kind of club or gym, you ascertained – peering down the halls and into doors, you spotted weights and bars, foam mats, black-and-red punching bags hanging from chains. 

You were suddenly fraught with the same discomfiture that simmered whenever you were somewhere you didn’t belong. You followed the men through another set of doors, and down a long flight of stairs — the light of the fluorescents gradually grew dimmer as you descended into the darkness, where the hammering of an unruly crowd only became louder. The walls were unpainted in the subterranean floor of the building, and instead gave way to raw cement. At the base of the stairs was a small queue that disappeared around a corner, and you self-consciously stood behind the pair of men you had stalked there. 

Uncertainty roiled in your stomach, suddenly feeling as though you had made a terrible mistake — the basement was dark, and loud, and it struck you that the only voices you heard were male. You should have had a drink before you left. And just as you anxiously considered turning around, three more babbling men piled in behind you, sandwiching you between the groups of them, conspicuously alone. 

As the line moved forward, it became clear that the queue was held up by bouncer, and you were next up. A tall man with thick arms, disconcertingly vascular, sinewy neck as thick as a buffalo’s — you wondered if he was a fighter himself, moonlighting as security for the fight. 

“This in’t a nightclub, pet,” he informed you roughly, and as though only just noticing the solitary woman in front of them, you abruptly felt the attention of the men behind you on your back. 

Sure as shit isn’t, you thought to say, but nervousness held your tongue. 

“I’m — yeah, um, I’m here to watch the fight,” you simpered, swallowing after you spoke. 

He let out a huff of laughter at that, and you noticed him catch the eye of the attendees behind you. “Got a ticket, then?”

You gritted your teeth, chewing back curses as you realised the bastard hadn’t even given you one, let alone notified you ahead of time that they would be checking for them. 

Adjusting your fists in the pockets of your puffer coat, you shuffled awkwardly on your feet. “I was invited.” 

“Yeah?” He probed amusedly, “by who?” 

“Simon—” you blurted, cutting yourself off upon realising you didn’t even know the man’s surname. “He’s — um, he’s fighting.” 

The bouncer chortled raucously at that. “Riley?” He laughed, “fuckin’ hell. Alright then. Go on.” 

His tone made your knuckles turn white. What was so funny? “Thanks,” you murmured. 

“Good luck,” he jeered after you, and before you were compelled to ask for what, he was already conversing with the men behind you. 

There was a short and narrow corridor of cement and dim yellow lights around the corner, old posters tacked to the walls, and the commotion of the crowd made your ears reel as it bounced off the concrete. The air was heavy and hot, dense with smoke and body heat, and you suddenly felt too warm for your puffer. You shucked it from your shoulders as you reached the end of the tunnel, sucking down a deep breath as you were birthed right into the snake pit. 

The room within was far larger than you would have believed possible, concrete ceilings high enough that they faded into the darkness. The crowd was deep, droning, perhaps three- or four-hundred strong. All seated in or standing around their rows of plastic chairs, bottles of beer and cigarettes in hand. 

You held your breath as you charily scanned the cement cavern, absorbing all the details you could fit in your congested mind, and wondering if you might see Simon lurking somewhere, waiting for you. But the space swam in shadows, barely lit by the odd crimson lightbulb hung on long wires from the ceiling; the audience’s faces only illuminated by the floodlights that hung in the centre of the atrium – blindingly bright and stark cold, they hammered down on the square ring underneath.

There, you caught sight of him. His back to you, standing in the corner and leaning on the ropes, shoving the end of an unbranded drink bottle into his mouth. You knew it was him by the buzzed auric hair that cladded his skull, the still staggering breadth of his titanic shoulders, the inky scratchings of his tattoos that sheathed his left arm and crept across his chuck to lick his neck. 

You found something of a fissure between the drunken spectators, so you gawkliy weaseled yourself through the braying men on your way to the seat you hoped had indeed been saved for you. 

And as though he had scented you on your approach, Simon’s head perked and turned over his shoulder, and his beady eyes immediately fastened on you. A rakish grin stretched in his lips as you came to a stop by the ropes – thankfully unimpeded – and he turned his gargantuan body to face you fully. 

You hadn’t yet seen him without a shirt on, and the gauzy disbelief was plastered across your face at the sight of him up close. Cumbersome muscles wrapped his ironclad form like the overworked meat of a bull, almost doughy with the lard layer of a well-fed man. His chest was stocky and broad, alabaster skin smeared with freckles and grisly mauve scars, hirsute with a coating of wheaten curls. 

He crouched down with spread knees to get a shred closer to your height, the stage of the ring a good metre off the ground. He wrapped his thick fists around the ropes, and peered at you through them as though behind bars. You tried not to glance down the leg of his shorts that hung loose from his thighs. 

“Look at you,” he crooned, toothy and oozing satisfaction. “Didn’t think you’d show up, pretty.” 

Your stomach went all tight when he called you that. “Didn’t you?” 

“Thought I was a dickhead,” he derided, a breathy chuckle at the memory of your churlish insult. 

“You are.” 

He tilted his head, no argument. “Just came to watch me lose, eh?” 

You cracked a smile at that, and his gratification at your capitulating scorn practically dripped from him. Sick of your bitching, so he said. 

“Yep,” you said, through a simper. 

He looked over his shoulder, then briefly leaned to the side – he pointed behind him with his thumb. “There’s your winner, then.” 

In the far corner, you saw his opponent. 

Not quite as tall but somehow heavier, so laden with muscle that he looked encumbered by it – but he couldn’t have been, not given how he bounced on the balls of his feet like he weighed a hundred kilos less, shanks turning carved and solid with every hop. He shook out the hocks of his arms, contorting his neck to stretch out the tight meat. 

The man wore an unkempt mohawk down the crest of his skull, shaven sides a few weeks grown-out, mottled by the little pink knicks of healed scars. His carved cheeks were coated in a poorly kempt stubble, brows pulled together in concentration, a deep crease between them. 

You froze when he noticed you staring – snagged your probing eyes with a tumid smirk – and cold embarrassment ran down your spine. 

You quickly looked back at Simon, who was all but chortling at you.  

“Not as pretty as me, is he.” 

You couldn’t think of a witty riposte before your mouth began to speak – almost formed the words just as pretty – but you at least had the sense not to inspirit him. “That’s your friend?”

He shrugged facetiously. “Wouldn’t go that far.” 

In the nebulous vacuum of the atrium you heard a bell chime, three sharp dings, and the already tumultuous crowd erupted into an uproar that made you wince. Time to fight. He glanced over his shoulder, kept a few short moments to bid you farewell before he turned into the bout. 

“Do I get a kiss for luck?” He goaded, and you could tell by the mordant tone in his throat he expected you to say no. 

And you did. Gave him an unflinching shake of your head and a pert smile. “You haven’t earned one.” 

He grinned wide at that, barbed and cocksure, as he stuffed a rubbery black mouthguard into his mouth and clacked it into place over his teeth with his thumbs. There was something rabid in his eyes, stark-black and puncturing, edacious at the challenge you had given him and rearing red-hot to fight for you. To earn his prize. 

Your stomach knotted up at the thought, and it made you a little queasy. 

He had already demonstrated an effrontery in his nature, forcibly indulging you with a hand over your mouth and fingers between your legs – an act he decided he didn’t need to earn. He just did. 

You couldn’t help but envisage what he might feel emboldened to do once he believed that he had earned it. What prizes he’d purloin from you. 

You hurriedly swung your head around to find yourself a seat. An empty chair – thank god – wedged between two bulky strangers, one in a suit and the other in a wifebeater. No indication that it was for you, specifically, but you elected to claim it. It was a good spot, too. Right in the middle, not at a corner. The men beside you paid no mind to you, eyes (and likely wallets) rapt in the fight. 

The two bulls in the ring turned to face each other, bouncing heavy on their feet, shaking out every meaty limb and rolling their ox shoulders. Adrenaline thrummed in your chest and sat high and humid on the back of your neck – the kind of heady anxiousness that felt like a hunk of steak between your teeth, one you weren’t allowed to bite into.  

An announcer stood in the centre of the ring, microphone in hand, a snaking wire hanging out of its base and coiling across the foam floor. He opened with gentlemen – the lack of a preceding ladies felt pointed and offputting – and his spiel lacked the dramatic flair you had seen once or twice in a televised match. 

No, instead, he bellowed gruesome statistics into the mic with no polish or class, and your mind went fuzzy as you absorbed it. 

Fighting out of Glasgow and still a little wet behind the ears. Record of 33 wins and 1 loss. 21 wins by way of knockout. Weighing in at 109kg. 1.88 metres tall. In the blue corner, slipperiest cunt alive �� Johnny ‘Soap’ MacTavish. 

In the red corner, a fucking ugly Mancunian with 41 wins, 3 draws, and 4 losses. 37 knockouts. 113kg. 1.97 metres tall. Deadliest southpaw this side of the Pennines – Simon ‘The Ghost’ Riley.

They smile at each other, frothing at the mouth and manic in the eyes, mouthguards making their lips all puffy and dumb. Even quantified, their magnitude is challenging to fathom. You can almost feel the ground vibrate as they jounce on the foamy canvas, watching their heavy muscles jiggle and tighten with each movement.  

Final decider of the trilogy. One win each. Odds are in the Ghost’s favour tonight – old dog with old tricks – four-to-six. Glaswegian underdog odds at six-to-five. Get your wagers in. 

There was something decidedly boorish about the way the announcer roared into the mic, the scathing badinage he spewed towards the two fighters had you believing he must have known them personally. There was nothing legitimate about any of it, when you came to think of it – a considerable griminess sunk heavy in the air and filled up your nose, and you didn’t know how you hadn’t noticed it earlier. 

The frigid realisation rinsed you like cold water, when the announcer stood between them and they raised their fists – ungloved. Wrapped only in tape, a few thick layers over their knuckles, but not remotely thick enough to protect their own bones, let alone their opponent’s. 

Simon invited you to a fucking bareknuckle. You weren’t there to watch a boxing match, you were there to watch bloodsport. 

Suddenly, the knot in your guts wrenched a lot tighter. The label of deadliest carried the weight of feasibility, however horrific the notion was for you to swallow. Distended dread simmered in your stomach and singed your throat.

So why were you on the edge of your seat? 

The dings of the bell made you jump, and the announcer hopped out of the ring as though fleeing from an unspent grenade. No referee. 

The two beasts faced down in earnest, smiles fading – though their impressions remained – huffing and bobbing their heads as though about to charge, loose fists hung in the air close to their faces, heavy cocks bouncing around in their polyester shorts. They were mirror images of each other, minor differences in stature notwithstanding – Simon in his sinistral stance, leading with his left, Johnny with his right. 

They circled each other like sharks, dithering about when to throw the first blow – you saw their mouths move as though speaking to one another, but you couldn’t hear it over the racket of the audience. 

Then, in a blink, Simon jettisoned a fist with such speed and barbarity it blurred through the air, and the smack of its collision cut through the uproar of the crowd – parried, by Johnny’s rigid forearm, and in the flurry Johnny had thrown a retaliatory roundhouse to his adversary’s ribs. 

You winced at every impact as though you could feel the strike on your own skin — they were so fucking brutal with each other, not dampened by even an ounce of concern nor a drop of reservation. No, they bulleted fist after fist, and the blunt smacks of knuckles beating thick meat made your teeth chatter with every collision. 

Round one was over as soon as it had started — three harsh dings of the bell, and then carnivores pulled away from each other, lumbering to their corners and grabbing their drink bottles. 

Simon was already dripping with sweat; he was glossy with it as though freshly showered, it beaded along his brow and traveled in rivulets down his back. His chest hounded with each haggard breath, he wiped his nose with his forearm and met your eye. 

You shrunk a little under his stare, because it didn’t look like him. Not to say you were exceedingly familiar with his face — only the third date, after all – but there was something potently unhuman in him. A reflection of some omophagous barbarian, a minotaur in both stature and constitution. 

He gave you no acknowledgement beyond a blink. He turned his back to you without so much of a nod, shaking himself out like a wet dog. His ferine mind was utterly ensnared by the hunt, you could see it on him, his eyes bulged with it. All red and frayed around the edges. 

Three dings. Round two. 

Their blood-hungry ferocity did not hamper, their vigour to remain at each other’s throats seemingly inexhaustible – the sheer violence made your eyes go glassy, delirious in morbid shock, unable to look away and yet unable to watch too attentively. Knuckles to cheekbones, to ribs, to ears; a volley of savage strikes that seemed aimless and unending, until–

Johnny’s gauzed fist slammed into Simon’s jaw, a blow that he almost followed to the ground, and hot red blood rained out from the site of impact. Splattered carmine in a fan across the grey canvas mat. Simon let out a currish snarl as he turned his head to shake out the blow, and the audience erupted into a deafening furore. Betters on the underdog especially jubilant, you supposed. 

The bells dinged. Round ended. 

When Simon turned to return to his corner and you got a glance of him, nausea climbed foamy up your throat. Blood cascaded from a deep split in his top lip, saturating his chin in bright-red that oozed down his neck and chest, pooling between his pectorals. Looked as if he had been down on all fours, tearing raw meat off the bones of a fresh catch with his teeth, letting the mess plaster him in his ravening. 

You couldn’t look away from him. Something purely eolithic, primitive, animal, simmered in the back of your head, sent leery little shivers down the nape of your neck, coiled up tight between your legs. Why was your mouth watering? 

“That oughtta hurt y’old bastard,” called Johnny from the far corner, voice plush with pride, beaming with it. “Maybe ah’ll win the prize, after all.” 

Your fingernails nearly tore ladders in your stockings. Was he talking about you? 

Simon’s head rocked back from his shoulders, and he cracked a smile, stretching the deep rupture in his lip. Riled. Pumped so full of epinephrine and testosterone that he hardly flinched. He turned back in. Ready to combust. 

The instant the bells chimed – round three – he charged. Hooked a colossal leg around the back of his opponent’s knee, and they were quickly down and knotted on the mat.

You knew vaguely that boxing was fists only – nothing below the belt, no holds – and yet, they wrestled around on the floor like it were a different sport entirely, flinging punches and elbows and hooks from prone positions, growling like skirmishing bears in the frenzy.

A few flips of heavy bodies and Simon had Johnny flat on his back, leviathan knees either side of his hips. Simon curled forward, then, pinning Johnny down with entangled arms – and ran his mouth and nose down the length of his opponent’s neck, smearing a painting of fresh blood over his sweat-soaked skin. Johnny bucked and kicked in an almost pitiful effort to free himself, but in so doing only had more of Simon’s blood slathered across his collar; some on his cheek, some in his mouth. 

You were by turn muddled and revolted by the roiling heat in your core at the sight – repugnant, you thought, unjustifiable– 

WIth a hard buck the Glaswegian broke himself free, and with a twist, managed to land an elbow into the side of Simon’s head, a hard crunch of bone on bone. 

Simon was inexplicably unruffled, his injurious grin almost pleased at the challenge – but with a rapid bludgeon square in Johnny’s nose, he finished the fight, and that was that. Johnny’s head ricocheted off the foam, and still twisted up with his rival, blinked dimly at the ceiling. 

You didn’t even know the man, and you felt pity for him hard and cold in your chest – always sympathised with the underdog, couldn’t help it. He lay there with his hands on his chest as Simon pushed himself to stand, towering over his victim, rolling out his shoulders after the exertion. In the pandemonium the announcer thundered out the count to ten, and when Johnny only rolled onto his side to let the blood of his broken nose pour from his mouth and not down his throat, the count concluded with a deafening knockout. 

If you thought the spectators were loud before, now you knew the true meaning of the word – chaotic uproar that shook the walls of the building, the triumphant howling of those who had bet on the southpaw almost as strident as the upheaval of the ones that bet on the wrong dog. You stood up to hesitantly applaud alongside the men beside you, only fearful that if you remained seated you’d get swallowed up by the stampede. 

In the uproar Simon turned pointedly to face you, his savage eyes riveted to yours – and, like that, the rest of the building sloughed away. It was only him, the fleshy beast, and you, glossy-eyed in his crosshairs. 

There was a weight in how he looked at you, something foregone, a fate already decided on your behalf. You felt it tugging you downward, hanging from your neck, and you could only stand there and wait for it to happen. 

He won. 

You couldn’t put up much of a fuss, after that. He hopped out of the ring once the show had ended, landing on the hard ground beneath with a thud. His eyes were peeled, his pupils pin-pricked, honed in, and you could only hold your breath as he paraded towards you. 

He reached out to take your jaw in his bloody hands, thumb and fingers dimpling your cheeks as he yanked you into a revolting, blood-soaked kiss - his lips were pillowy, wet with sweat and smeared in hot blood, and you could taste the briny metal in your mouth. Tasted like butter and corroded iron. It was awkward too to kiss him over his mouthguard, cumbrous in his mouth, you could feel its rubber on your bottom lip when he sucked it between his teeth. 

You wrestled him on instinct, smacking him on the chest to deter him, and your palm was instantly clammy with his sweat. There were people, men, surrounding you on all sides – spectating, jeering, hollering at the show the boxer was putting on for them. It made you shrivel in humiliation, and it only made Simon chortle. 

He burrowed under his lips with his free fingers as he separated from you – your jaw still in hand – hooking his fingernails into his mouthguard and unsealing it from his teeth with a pop. He pulled it out of his mouth with a repulsive slurp, dragging gooey bands of blood and saliva along with it that clung to his bottom lip. 

He grinned at you, then, and slick red filled every gap in his teeth, pooled at the corners of his mouth like a fucking rabid dog, and you could see the dark exposed flesh between the split in his lip. It made you shiver. It made your chest hot. 

He wiped away the blood he left on your mouth with a thumb. “Where’s my prize, pretty.” 

There was little you could do as he ferried you through the dissipating crowd, patting you on the bottom like he was guiding a cow, and you felt him huffing hot air down the back of your neck. 

When you initially hesitated to go anywhere with him, as he was, he threatened to throw you over his shoulder instead. And that, somehow, would have been even more mortifying than being publicly carted off to be victory-fucked by the champion, so you swallowed your pride and walked instead. 

Walking, if you could call it that – he was at your heels, practically driving you for the entire distance from the ring to an inconspicuous corridor at the quiet end of the atrium, out of sight and in the shadows. He all but pushed you there, nudging behind you if you walked too slowly, giving you a smack to coax you forward. Not the same entrance you had arrived through, but your frenetic thoughts hadn’t quite grasped that yet. 

“In ‘ere,” he instructed flatly, hooking a finger into the collar of your t-shirt to stop you from walking onwards. 

A door with a window at eye-height, steel-meshed glass that did not obscure anything behind it.

“What’s in there?” You asked quietly, perhaps stupidly, because he let out a huff of laughter at the question. 

“What d’you think,” was all he said, and your stomach dropped. 

You opened it with shaky fingers and shuffled inside. More gym, by the looks, though the room was dim and expansive; more empty boxing rings – practice rings, you supposed – punching bags and gloves hanging from walls, and the entire floor of the room padded in black rubber. 

It dawned on you, then, with a hot flush down your spine. “We’re - we’re not going back to yours?”

He was pressing behind you by the time you finished the question, nudging you deeper into the room, and he already had his sticky hands bunching up the bottom of your t-shirt. “Not waiting that long.”

Your lungs shrunk, suddenly too small to suck in a deep breath, so you sipped at the air like it was liquid; he flayed off your t-shirt in one go, forcing your arms up into the air to pull it from your head. Your hairs stood on end as he dropped it to the mat – the air was dusty and cool but were blistering hot to the touch, blood simmering in your veins. He could probably see it, rising blush-red in the back of your neck, sweaty at the nape. 

He huffed approvingly, and you winced when he snapped the band of your bra against your back. He hunched over your shoulder, looking down your chest – his humid arms hooked under yours, pumped up and vascular after their carnage, and seized your breast in a monstrous hand. He kneaded it roughly through the cup for his own gratification – paid no care to the chirp of pain that jumped from your throat at the needless strength of his grip, the firm core of your breast aching in the vice. 

“Nice little bra,” he grumbled. “Put it on just f’me, eh?”

You only panted, bashfully avoiding a real answer. Because, you did. You knew exactly where this night was headed, what you girded yourself for – you just didn’t expect that it would happen here, like this, while he was soaked in sweat and blood and ripe with lust worked up in the fight. 

“Knew you were a slut,” he said, under his breath, mouth and nose pushing into the crook of your shoulder and getting a good sniff. “Mh. Moment I saw ya.” 

You reeled at the denigration, so acrid it made you shiver. Praise webbed in his repugnant words, though — he said it hungrily, exuberantly, exalting you for it. Made your guts go all twisty. Made fluid heat sink downwards and pool in your core. 

His blood was viscid and icky on your skin, smeared up your shoulder — he was unperturbed by his injury, almost excited to get you covered in it, to mark you with it like a pack animal. 

“I’m not,” you breathed, no real defense, and he chuckled at that. 

“Yeah, y’are. Just picky, eh?” He crooned. “Made me fuckin’ work for it, didn’t ya?”

He unclasped your bra with deft fingers, and it came loose with a pop. As though he had made some unspoken command, you shimmied your straps down your shoulders for him, and let it fall from your arms. 

He took you by the hips and spun you to face him. Shark eyes sunk instantly to your tits when they bounced with the motion, and a pleased curl tugged in his lips.

“Mh, look a’ that,” he murmured to himself, thumbing your pebbled nipple and chuckling breathily when you squeaked at his pinch.

His heavy hand slid then your shoulder, giving you a downward nudge. 

“Knees, pretty,” he grunted dryly. “Suck it for a bit.” 

Your fingers went cold, blinking up at him as though feigning innocence might appeal to his human instincts. His face was stony, and the needle-sized holes of his pupils gave you no sympathy nor patience. Refusal crossed your mind, a gust of air, fleeting and skittish—

A transient thought, really, because there was no refusing him, and the thought of daring to frightened you more than the thought of a sweaty cock in your throat. 

Your eyes travelled the length of his torso as you awkwardly lowered yourself to your knees. Sweat pooled in the pit between his pectorals, sticky with congealing blood that clumped in the sedges of his chest hair. A thick and ungroomed blanket of straw curls trailed down from his navel, over the slight chub of his lower stomach, primordial padding over the rigid abdominals underneath. Met with the satin polyester waistband of his red-and-black shorts, loose on his thighs – the sheeny fabric strained where his cock hung heavy, and you could see every ridge of vein and head through the satin. 

You swallowed, and he huffed impatiently. 

With a wrapped hand he yanked down the front of his shorts – no briefs underneath — he unsheathed his cock with a fist around his base and narrowly missed hitting you in the nose with it. You concealed a grimace at the sight of it, inches from your face – it was ugly, burly, mauve at the smooth head, ruddy foreskin pulled back by his fist. Roped with plum veins that webbed under the rubicund skin, shuddering with heat.  

More frighteningly, though, was its magnitude – fucking prodigious thing, fat from base to tip, thick like a log and so long it made you dizzy with dread to even consider taking it in your mouth, let alone in the cunt that tightened up at the thought. 

You shouldn’t have been shocked, really – anything smaller would have looked disproportionate to the behemothic size of him. And yet, alarm was bright and hot in your face, and your throat dried up as you looked at it for too long. 

Simon chuffed, amused. Ego stroked. He fixed a hand to the back of your head, and a breath lodged your throat.

“Not gonna suck itself,” he growled, lightly slapping his cock against your cheek. “Open up.”

You drew in a shaky breath, resting a flat hand on his hip to balance yourself, and curled your trembling fingers around his shaft. Fist now free from carrying the weight of it, he combed his thick fingers through your hair at the crown of your head — not to encourage, only for a better grip. 

With parted lips you leaned forward, jutting out a wet tongue and running it from halfway up his shaft, along the ridge, to the underside of his head, and he let out a grunting sigh that made your nerves spark and your head spin. 

After another lick and a tug on the back of your head, you finally summoned the bravery to open your mouth — unhinged your jaw to allow his cock to fit, and it jerked in your mouth when you wrapped your lips around it. 

It was salty and sticky with sweat, fetid with the musk of riled up testosterone. You might have found it unpleasant if you weren’t dazed by your own concupiscence, molten lust roiling in your belly and turning the flavour of him into a sapid aphrodisiac. Your eyes fluttered shut as you tried to inch it deeper into your mouth, but the enormous pressure of the back of your tongue made you gag loudly around it. 

“Bit big for that little mouth, eh?” He preened hoarsely, but he took no pity. The hand on the back of your head was unforgiving and coaxed you forward with a nudge. “Easy. Wider. Careful with those teeth.”

Your eyes began to water as he stuffed himself deeper, driving you by the skull, until the thick head of his cock plugged the back of your throat and you could no longer breathe through your nose. You could only hold on to the air already in your lungs, wrenching shut your eyes as he drove his hips slowly forward, cockhead against your tonsils. 

“Mh,” he groaned, “tight little throat. Might park up in here.”

You blinked up at him when he said that, eyes wide and wet with strained tears as you silently pleaded with him through your clumped lashes. 

“Oh, girl, you wouldn’t like that would you?” He jeered, grinning at the terror printed on your face, “you want me in your cunt, eh?”

A whimper got stuck in your chest when the tip of his cock hit the flat wall at the very back of your throat, and your heart rate began to decelerate with the lack of oxygen in your blood. Chest ached with the need to breathe. 

“Poor girl,” he mumbled lowly, hand lodged at the back of your head and not allowing you to reel away. Cold horror rinsed you at the rigidity of his grip, a reminder of his strength, a hint at the sadism that bubbled under the surface of his skin. He wouldn’t let you breathe. “Neglected little cunt, I bet. She hungry, eh?” 

Your vision began to double, black spots around your periphery as you choked on him — you wondered if your cheeks were turning blue, and you wondered if he enjoyed the sight. 

“Can’t breathe, pretty?” He said, as you put both fists on his hips, shoving with all of your might — his massive hands kept your head utterly still, right where he wanted it. “‘M only halfway in and you’re choking. Not used to this eh?” 

He finally pulled his pelvis back, releasing the suction in your throat and forcing you to gag, and you were at last able to breathe — you heaved deep a breath through your runny nose, and the rush of oxygen made your head spin. He grunted as he raked out his cock from your mouth entirely, and it dropped heavy once it pulled out from between your lips. A long string of gooey saliva drooled from your mouth, and suddenly your entire head felt empty and hollow. 

You sniffed, wiping your nose and wet cheeks with your palms, your tears scarcely abating. A thick finger hooked under your chin and hinged up your head on your neck, forcing you to look at him. 

“None o’ that,” he growled, rubbing an errant tear away with the pad of his thumb. “Don’t want tears.”

“Sorry,” you squeaked on instinct, fearful of reproach, and a satisfied smile cracked briefly in his lips. 

He stepped around you, then, circling you like a vulture before looming behind you, and you remained dead still on your knees. A harsh hand fitted at the back of your neck and abruptly shoved you forward — you bleated as you tipped over and landed on your palms, on all fours on the padded floor. 

The ground vibrated under you as you heard him drop to his knees behind you, heart in your throat. “Gotta get a look at my prize.” 

He lifted up the back of your miniskirt, holding it against your lower back — before you heard him growl indignantly, and your skin prickled up. 

“The fuck’d I tell you about stockings,” he snarled, the indignant anger rumbling in his throat made your teeth chatter. He swiftly had his paws on your ass, fingers clawing up the stretchy nylon into fists and immediately tearing the thin fabric along the seam that flossed you with a shrill zip. “Just get in the fuckin’ way.” 

“I’m sorry,” you whimpered. You were appalled by your own obsequiousness – your lust rendered you sycophantic, grovelling, too eager to please. 

He let out a low huff of laughter. “Mh, all sweet now, aren’t ya?”

You felt his thumb wedge itself in the cleft of your ass, over the fabric of your knickers – you squeaked and tensed up when he pressed against your asshole, and he chuckled to himself. He dragged it down to the dip of your cunt, and he exhaled hoarsely. 

“Messy little thing,” he grumbled, hooking his thumb under your gusset and dipping between your folds, and you caught your tongue in your teeth. “Barely touched you and y’already ruined your knickers.” 

The rich pride in his voice made you melt, a potent inebriant that made your mind go foggy and your tongue wet. 

“Waited for me, did ya?” He asked huskily, heavy breathing growing more laboured with each inhale. You nodded obediently. “D’you stick your fingers in y’self while you waited?”

“No,” you breathed, eyes on the mat underneath you, though they fluttered shut when the tip of his thumb grazed your clitoris, pointedly declining it too much attention. 

“No?” He badgered, incredulously, you could hear the toothy grin through his voice. “Not even one?” 

“I didn’t,” you insisted weakly, shaking your head. 

“Haven’t come in a while then, have ya?” 

“I haven’t,” you promised. 

He grunted in approval, and his hands slid to the waist of your skirt. “No wonder y’been so bitchy,” he grumbled. “All worked up and fuckin’ grumpy.” 

He jerked down your bottoms with enough force that you heard seams popping, and you yelped – he shucked them down your thighs with little grace, and you fell flat on your belly as he straightened out your legs to tear them off entirely. 

“Just need a good fuck to sweeten y’up, eh?” He gibed, hooking both mammoth hands into your waist and hoisting your hips upward, propping you up on your knees. 

He hunched over the back of you, then, and you felt his cock rest heavy on your rear. He fixed a hand to the nape of your neck, resting a portion of his weight (you were sure that any more would snap your spine under his hand) to pin you down. 

“Don’t you?” He pressed, hucking up a lump of blood-drenched spit into the fingertips of his left hand, and he reached back to smear the emulsion against your already sodden cunt. 

“Yeah,” you chirped as he pushed a wide finger into your hole, voice high-pitched and laboured under his restraint. 

The girth of one rough finger was already enough to sting, even with the amount of slick that had saturated you – you shivered in dread at the weight of his cock against the crease of your ass, at the thought of your neglected cunt having to tear itself in half to just to fit him. 

And then he pushed another finger in, and your vision went blurry. 

“Gorgeous little cunt,” he hummed to himself. “Nice n’ wet. Must be aching, mh?” 

Restless, his fingers slipped out from you and he straightened his back, holding his cock and smacking it against your asshole, and your whole body went stiff. 

To your dizzying relief he instead dragged his blunt head down the cleft of you, nestling in the slick folds of your pussy – he offered you no time to gird yourself, bucking his hips forward and stuffing his cock deep into your cunt whether you liked it or not. 

A pained shriek erupted from your chest as he drove into you, cockhead ramming into the plug of your womb with a force that winded you, the girth nearly ripping the thin skin of your entrance as it bulldozed itself to the root. Turned quarry in the shock you jerked underneath him to unskewer yourself, wriggling eagerly to slither free. 

“Get back ‘ere,” he grunted disapprovingly, yanking you back and hoisting your hips back up. He snatched your clawing hand by the wrist, twisted it behind your back and pinned it to the arch in your spine. “Too late to run away now, pretty.” 

He wrestled you until you stilled underneath him, and you whimpered as he coiled back his hips and proffered you a very fleeting reprieve. 

“S’that hurt, mh?” He queried wretchedly, and you squeezed shut your eyes as you nodded your head. He pushed into you again, only slightly slower, and you could only whine underneath him. 

“Yes, fuck–” you sobbed, seeing stars in the struggle. “It hurts–”

He hummed, almost cooing at you. “Won’t hurt for long, love.” 

With his non-restraining hand embedded in the flesh of your ass, he rocked into you again, and you nearly bit your tongue off. Your body was as stiff as a board, every muscle tensed to brace yourself for each thrust – and each push stung, a shooting pain that bulleted up your spine every time he hit the deepest part of you. You could only squeak and hiccup and wriggle when he allowed you, but he kept you firm to the floor. 

Only when his rhythm steadied, and he let out low groans of satisfaction into your back, did your bones begin to loosen. The sharp pain abated into a swollen pleasure as your walls gripped and fluttered around his cock, each rut driving you deeper into the padded floor. 

“Mh,” he crooned, when your yelps softened into fluid whining. “Tha’s it. Just needed to stretch ‘er out a bit.”

You felt hot dribbles on your back, rilled up your spine and dripped onto the mat – his blood, leaking from the still fresh split in his lip, you heard him lick his teeth. It should have disturbed you, his iron-reeking blood drooling onto your bare skin, smeared around by the arm against your back. Instead it made you dizzy with some feral, animalistic lechery.

It made the air smell like rust and sex, and you felt like a rabbit caught in the wolf’s maw. You wondered if he’d sink his teeth into you. You couldn’t ignore the thought of his blood and his spit being fucked into the deep ridges of your cunt. Maybe the mucosa of your pussy would imbibe it and his impression would be permanently embedded in the sticky depths of you. 

“Fuckin’ perfect cunt,” he groaned, speeched slurred by his own intoxicant pleasure. He lifted a kneeling leg and planted his foot flat on the floor to drive himself deeper, greedy hands burrowing into the flesh of your hips as he speared himself into you. “Kept it nice and tight for me, didn’t ya?” 

You nodded winsomely, cheek smushed against the mat underneath you, panting out whines that left humid fog on the rubber. 

He snorted, then spat, and you felt a wad of warm saliva land directly on your puckered hole. It twitched on reflex, and you sucked a sharp gust of air between your teeth — he rubbed your other hole with the pad of his thumb, gradually increasing the pressure, coaxing it to loosen for him. 

“Pretty little asshole, too,” he mumbled gruffly, a growl in his throat that made your hairs stand on end and your body turn rigid. “Y’ever had something in here, girl?” 

You whimpered, heart racing with such ferocity it made your temples throb and your eyes sore. 

“No, I—” You chirped through a held breath, interrupted by a buck of his hips and a pounding into your cervix. “I h-haven’t.”

He exhaled, deep and throaty. “We’ll ‘ave to change that.”

A squeak lept from your throat when his thick thumb pushed through the clenching entrance, constricting around his knuckle as he stretched it open, until his palm was flush with your rump. 

“Mh — fuck. Be a shame to neglect a cute little hole like this, eh?” 

You expected it to hurt, braced yourself for the sting — but in your fuck-drunk stupor you let him in with a comfortable ease, and it felt good. 

A winded whine seeped out from your chest as you took what he gave you, a renewed surge of heat and slick flooded into your cunt and dribbled down your leg. 

“Like that, do ya?” He purred, tugging at the thumb inside you and pushing it in again with the rhythm of his ruts. “All your little holes stuffed?”

You babbled like an idiot, whining and squeaking as he savagely fucked into you with a bestial vigour. Yes, yes, please, yes—

His pace only hardened as he chased his release, panting like a dog and dripping his blood and sweat down your spine. Your knees began to ache under the weight of him, rocking forward with every thrust, grinding against the concrete under the thin rubber. 

“Mh — perfect little thing — takin’ my cock like a fucking angel, eh? Fuckin’ made for it, just for me, just for me to fuck proper—”

His ravening tirade turned you to pudding, rugged voice breaking with the fury of his pleasure, bullying your cunt as deep as you’d take him. 

“Shit—” He grunted through teeth, leaning his full weight into you and making your eyes water with the strain on your neck. He chased a few hard ruts, blunt head shoved hard against your cushiony cervix as his cock jerked inside you. “Agh — fuckin’ Christ—”

You gasped in shock when you felt his come pump into you, pressure building against your womb as he filled you up so full you worried you’d pop. 

“Simon—” You squeaked on instinct, unsure if out of maligned pleasure or the brief flash to reality that slapped you in the face — he fucked you without protection. 

“Yeah, pretty thing—” he puffed deeply, sinking down onto your back as his fervour was drained out of him and into your pulsing cunt.

With that, reality flitted away as fast as it appeared. 

A mournful sigh escaped you when he slipped his cock out of your pussy, his warm come quickly drooling out of your hole once it was no longer plugged; it ran down your thighs and dribbled onto the mat beneath you. He plucked his thumb from your pinched hole and rested himself on your rear. You felt immediately and woefully hollow, holes shuddering around nothing so eagerly they ached. 

“Simon,” you whinged, repeating his name, with your motivation utterly eluding you. 

“You’ll get yours, girl,” he growled breathlessly, come-sated sweetness gone as it came. “One fuckin’ second.”

Something abominable had slithered into your mind and taken root, you thought. The vitriol in his words should have made you bristle, but it only made you needier. Maybe it spoke to a recondite self-loathing buried so deep in your soul you had never touched it, let alone acknowledged it. Maybe you just liked the way his harsh voice went all gravelly when he snarled at you. 

You yipped as he suddenly grabbed you by the hips, his recovery brief, and you were flipped unceremoniously. Landed on your back with a thud, limbs flailing in the blur — he grabbed you by the ankle and dragged your body towards him, held your legs open where he was kneeled between them. 

He caught your eye, then; beady, shark-like, a glint of insatiable hunger that reflected in the pools of black. The split in his lip had reopened in his fervour, and his blood oozed fresh and red down his chin, into his teeth. Didn’t hamper him, though – he burrowed his gluttonous fingers into your hips and lifted your lower half off the floor. 

A yelp of disbelief jumped from your throat as he hitched your thighs over his shoulders, pelvis in the air while your head remained balanced on the mat. Only on your back, glancing briefly around the room, were you suddenly reminded of where you were. 

Fucking the southpaw on the floor, in the middle of a somewhat public gym – you could still hear the murmurings of the audience still in the building, and only then noticed that Simon had left the door to the quiet room ajar. 

“Wai– wait, wait– Simon–” You stammered, watching as he licked the blood from his teeth, wolf-eyes peering at you from over your mound. 

Figures that he didn’t care to listen. He buried his mouth in your cunt with the ferocity of a starved animal, flat tongue smearing over your slit for a taste, before he suctioned your clitoris into his mouth as though he might drink an orgasm out of you. 

Not remotely put off by the surfeit of his come that still leaked from you, nor by the open wound in his mouth that weeped blood into your cunt, amalgamating with your fluids and his into some abhorrent concoction of lust and violence. No, in fact, he ate you with such a hunger that he must have been deliriously relishing in the debauchery of it all.  You felt the emulsion drool down the valleys of your groin, glossy red beads trailing down your belly and between your breasts in rivulets. You felt it drip from your neck, into your hair. 

“Ah – fuck–” You whined helplessly, arching your spine, heels inadvertently slamming into the meat of his back. 

He groaned into your cunt as he sucked your clit between his teeth, seemingly fighting the urge to bite, and the vibrations of his low voice made a shudder wrack you from your skull to the soles of your feet. His grasp of your hips was harsh, thumbs burrowing into the tender pits of flesh behind the bone, and it only made the surging pleasure in your core even more voltaic. 

More than a week since the last time you came, and that was at the plastic hand of a shitty bullet vibrator you got for free with a magazine; a climax so unsatisfying and meaningless it left you feeling emptier than you did beforehand. A week since he had brought you so close with his vindictive fingers, and a week of trying to recreate the feeling of his with your own, only to be sorely disappointed every time you tried. Worked up and grumpy, so he said–

It didn’t take him long to bring you to the same point he left you, burning and twitching and squealing under his touch – but this time had you seeing stars, had you bucking into his head like you might suffocate him with your pussy. You were sure he’d be pleased if you did, because he didn’t once come up for air. Kept your clit in his bloody mouth, under his lapping tongue with a consistency of pace and pressure that made your ears ring. 

But, you could still hear the creak of a hinge. 

Feel the vibrations of footsteps across the floor. 

Your eyes shot open and you wrenched your neck to look towards the door – an enormously painful angle to have your spine at – and there stood a silhouette of a man, lumbering unfazed into the room. 

“Simon!” You shrieked, kicking his back and writhing in his grip in desperate effort to stop him or break yourself free. A fool’s errand, really. There was no escaping him once he had you in his snare. “Stop, stop – Simon – there’s someone, ah–”

Mortified horror rinsed over you, molten hot, as the man continued his approach, and Simon did not relent. Persisted in laving your clit with unfettered voracity and only reinforcing his grip of your pelvis to keep you still, ruthless fingers implicitly chastising you for making a fuss.  

Only when the voyeur was a few feet from you could you determine who it was – vision significantly impeded by the angle of your head, you only saw him upside down– 

It was Simon’s opponent. 

Johnny. 

He looked down at you with lidded eyes, piercing blue even in the dark. Still in his boxer shorts, shirtless, sculpted muscles of his shoulders and arms carved out by the dim light seeping out from the door behind him. Dabbed under his nose with a blood-soaked towel, before his hand dropped to his side. Even in the darkness you could see the pitch in his shorts. 

Your hackles were raised but your panic was forcibly smothered by your blinding pleasure; incoherent whines and pleas leaping from your throat as you felt your smouldering core unwillingly tighten up, ready to burst despite your humiliation under the eyes of a spectator.  

“Simon – fuck, please, stop – he’s, ah – you’re gonna–”

You were a spluttering mess by the time you were swallowed by the tsunami of your orgasm, so forceful that you suddenly lost the ability to breathe – it ravaged through you in waves that made you buck and wail like he was truly sinking his teeth into your flesh. He might as well have been, with how sensitive your pebbled clit was under his unceasing tongue, all puffy and shuddering after its beating. 

You whined desperately as the shattering climax abated, leaving your muscles frail and your bones all floppy, and any fight within you turned to milk and trickled out of you, buttery and soft. Johnny only watched attentively, and you would have shrivelled up with ignominy if all vitality hadn’t been drained from your body and into Simon’s mouth. 

He finally peeled his lips from you, licking them as though having eaten a succulent meal, and he dropped you from his mouth. Lowered your hips so that your buttocks rested on his lap, legs wrapped around his torso. You could only lie there, utterly breathless, turning your head away from both of them as though that meant they couldn’t see you. 

Simon gave you two reassuring pats on the thigh, wiped his mouth with his other forearm and smeared blood and come through the auburn arm hair that coated it. 

“Tha’ better, pretty?” He purred huskily, thumb grazing your skin. “Better be all nice n’ sweet, now, eh?” 

Johnny lets out a grunt, petulant disappointment in his throat. “So that’s what ye broke my fucken’ nose for.” 

Simon snorted vindictively. “I wasn’t losin’.” 

“S’not fair,” Johnny grumbled. “If I knew that was the prize I woulda snapped yer fucken’ neck.” 

The unbridled violence in the way they spoke to one another made you sweat – laden with something morbid, a perverted hunger woven between every word, oozed from the two of them like tar. 

“Easy, boy,” the southpaw chided roughly. “You’ll talk yourself into another concussion.” 

“Psh,” his opponent retorted. “Yer just worried I’ll clatter ye now that I know the stakes.” 

Simon let out a hoarse huff of laughter at that, unimpressed. Turned to look down at you, wide hand heavy on your lower belly, and he grazed your bullied clit with his thumb. You twitched with the shock, blinking distraught at him through wet lashes. 

“Kid wants a rematch,” he grunted. “What y’reckon, pretty?”

idk guys. don't judge me. i was ovulating while writing this and it has been the kind fugue state where i need skin between my teeth. i hope someone gets what i mean by that

[shaiyasstuff]

how to accidentally catch feelings while baby-sitting a man-child | sylus

synopsis : You were just a quiet, book-loving college student trying to survive academia and avoid emotional damage—until Sylus crashed into your life like a hot, smug hurricane who never left. content : fluff, college!au, sylus being drunk(not really), crackhead energy writing, comedy

It was a Saturday night—which, in your world, meant a sacred ritual of staying in your dorm, reading a good book, and letting Spotify decide your fate with its chaotic shuffle.

A peaceful, introvert’s haven.

Your roommate had long since abandoned you for brighter, sweatier pastures, hollering, “I’m gonna get laid tonight!” as she tottered out in an outfit that could’ve doubled as a napkin.

You’d only offered her a solemn nod and returned to your paperback and playlist, cocooned in your sofa bed like a content little hermit.

Nothing could disturb your peace.

Until something did.

A knock.

You blinked at the door. Once. Twice. Frowned. Who knocks past 10 p.m.? Who dares?

Your mind immediately went to one person—your best friend, Sylus. The same Sylus who had texted earlier, bragging about some frat party he was going to “grace with his presence.” You had rolled your eyes then.

You were rolling them again now.

Still, you peeled yourself from the embrace of your blankets with a martyred sigh.

“Coming,” you muttered like a wronged Victorian heroine.

And there he was.

Sylus, leaning on your doorframe like a drunken Greek tragedy. The unmistakable scent of alcohol hit you in the face like an offended slap.

“W-Wha—Sy??” you gasped, arms flailing as you caught his teetering form.

He slumped against you dramatically, mumbling something that suspiciously sounded like “Need… y-you,” into the crook of your neck.

Your entire spine straightened. Goosebumps. Betrayal.

“Again?” you asked, somehow dragging his dead weight into your dorm like a disgruntled EMT.

You dumped him onto the sofa, where he sprawled like a starfish in distress.

“How much did you drink?” you asked, already grabbing your emergency water bottle—standard best-friend-care protocol. You tilted it to his lips.

He tried to drink it sideways.

You sighed, loud and long. “Of course you’re useless.”

His eyes fluttered open just a crack as he sipped at the water, managing to prop himself up with one wobbly arm like he was posing for a very tragic Renaissance painting.

“You’re so… nice,” he slurred, dragging the word out with an attempt at a smirk that looked more like a sleepy grimace.

You exhaled sharply through your nose. “Yeah, yeah. Save the drunk flirting for someone who didn’t just haul your dead weight off the hallway floor.”

This wasn’t your first Sylus Situation.

Probably wouldn’t be your last.

You and Sylus had met on the very first day of college. You’d been an eager, introverted bookworm just trying to get to your dorm before anyone could talk to you.

And then—bam—Sylus. Tall, cocky, and very lost, standing in the middle of the corridor looking as confused as a cat in a swimming pool.

He’d stopped you by physically planting one muscled arm across your path and declaring, with absolute seriousness, “I need help finding the toilet.”

A moment you would never forget, nor forgive.

You had rolled your eyes back then too—but still showed him the way, mostly because he had somehow clamped onto you like a gym-sculpted koala.

To this day, you had no idea why someone at age eighteen had the physique of a Marvel extra, but you had learned not to ask too many questions when it came to Sylus.

Especially when he was drunk and whispering compliments like you were the second coming of hydration.

Now, two years in, you and Sylus were pretty much inseparable.

Not exactly by your choice, of course. He had basically crammed himself into your life like a determined cat forcing its way into a box half its size—and then refused to leave.

Ever.

But you, being the kind-hearted, ever-patient soul that you were cough pushover cough, didn’t really complain. Much.

In his own chaotic way, Sylus had proven… useful.

He was your self-appointed human shield against overly confident frat boys who thought “You read? That’s hot” was a seductive line.

More than once, he’d slung an arm around you and declared, “She’s taken. By academia. Leave her alone.”

You, in turn, had helped him survive the academic hellscape that was calculus. Which mostly meant sitting beside him during study sessions and watching him squint at formulas like they were written in ancient Sumerian.

At one point he tried to bribe you with tacos to do his entire homework.

You took the tacos and still made him do it.

It was an odd, messy sort of friendship. One built on sarcastic banter, mutual blackmail, and late-night ramen runs.

And maybe—just maybe—a little too much unspoken something lingering in the quiet spaces in between.

Like right now, for example.

He blinked blearily at you from your sofa, shirt slightly rumpled, hair a tousled mess, water bottle still clutched like a lifeline.

“You know,” he mumbled, “you’d make a great wife.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Drink your water before I drown you in it.”

He grabs the bottle and downs it in one dramatic go, like he was auditioning for a Gatorade commercial.

Then he thrusts it back at you with all the triumph of someone who just solved world hunger.

“There. I finished it,” he announces, his arm swaying a little as he wobbles in place, clearly very proud of his accomplishment.

You roll your eyes but take the bottle anyway, muttering something under your breath about man-children and alcohol tolerance.

You place it on the table and then, with the kind of exasperated sigh that only comes from long-term best friend duty, plop yourself down next to him on the sofa.

He immediately slouches, his shoulder knocking lightly into yours, like his body had decided it belonged at a thirty-degree angle from yours. You don’t move.

It’s not like this is the first time he’s drunkenly ended up in your space.

Sylus had a talent for turning up half-conscious on your couch like some sort of overgrown housecat that went out, got into a fight, and came back demanding affection and snacks.

Still, as he leaned a bit closer, you caught the faintest scent of his cologne beneath the layers of beer and poor decisions.

That same one he always wore—the one you refused to admit you liked.

He gave a tired little groan and let his head loll toward you. “You’re warm,” he muttered, barely above a whisper. “Like… those fuzzy blankets. But with better insults.”

You blinked. “Thank you, I think?”

He gave a lazy grin, eyes barely open. “Anytime, wifey.”

You smacked his shoulder with a throw pillow.

“OW.”

You had to admit—though only internally, and only under very specific, delusional circumstances—you might have feelings for the guy.

Not that you’d ever admit it out loud. Absolutely not. You’d rather eat a raw onion whole.

Besides, you and Sylus were practically heaven and earth. He walked through campus like he owned the place, girls tripping over their own feet just to bat their lashes at him. Your dorm mate had been one of them, once.

Keyword, once.

That ended the moment she got bold and tried to drape herself all over him like a weighted blanket in heat.

Sylus, being the tactful gentleman he was, had responded by physically lifting her off and shoving her away with all the grace of a bouncer at closing time.

She hit the floor with a squeak and a very visible bruise forming on her hip.

You’d been mortified.

While Sylus looked mildly annoyed, you were busy apologizing profusely, scrambling to help her up while simultaneously smacking him on the arm.

“What is wrong with you?” you’d hissed.

“She was being gross,” he’d replied simply, like that was an acceptable answer. “And touching me.”

“She’s a human being, not a leech!”

“A touchy leech,” he muttered, unfazed.

That was the thing with Sylus.

He never asked to be popular. Girls just looked at him like he was the answer to all their bad decisions.

But you? You were the one dragging him by the ear out of messes he caused. The one making excuses.

The one covering for him when he showed up drunk or bailed on class or told a professor their quiz “was an act of violence.”

You were the constant.

And somehow, in a very twisted way, you were okay with that. Even if your feelings stayed buried beneath layers of sarcasm and very loud sighs.

Especially now, when he was leaning half-asleep on your shoulder, muttering something about you smelling like books and cinnamon and safety.

And damn it, you liked that too much.

Your expression softened despite yourself when you heard the soft, steady rhythm of Sylus snoring.

He had slumped a little more against your shoulder, completely out cold now, mouth slightly parted in the most annoyingly adorable way.

With a small sigh, you leaned forward, grabbing the throw blanket from the armrest and carefully draping it over both your laps. He didn’t stir.

Just exhaled, warm and slow against your collarbone.

You reached for your book again, flipping back to the page you had abandoned during The Great Drunken Entry of Sylus.

And then, as if summoned by the universe purely to torment you, your Spotify decided to betray you.

Under the Influence by Chris Brown began to play.

Your heart dropped straight to your stomach.

“Oh, no,” you whispered like you were in a horror movie and the killer had just creaked open the door.

Because you remembered the last time this song had come on while Sylus was drunk—less drunk than tonight, unfortunately.

That time, he had turned to you, eyes low and voice deep, and said with a completely straight face, “This song represents the things I want to do to you.”

You had choked on your drink. He had passed out shortly after.

You had spent three business days trying to pretend it never happened.

And yet, for some completely inexplicable reason, you never removed the song from your playlist.

Why?

That was a question for your therapist.

You shot a nervous glance at Sylus’s sleeping form. He twitched a little, mumbling something unintelligible.

“No, no, no, no,” you whispered under your breath. “Don’t you dare wake up.”

He let out a soft sigh.

You stared at your phone, debating if skipping the song would be too loud and risk waking him.

You decided to risk it.

Your finger hovered—then paused.

Because deep down, despite your better judgment, part of you wanted to hear what he might say if he woke up again.

And that was the real betrayal.

You scrambled through your playlist like a woman on a mission, muttering curses at your past self while frantically searching for something—anything—less incriminating than Chris Brown.

Eventually, you landed on something soft and unassuming, a gentle acoustic ballad that sounded like it belonged in a rainy café montage.

Peace.

At last.

You settled back in, the weight of Sylus still warm beside you, blanket tucked around your legs, your book finally resting in your hands again.

You exhaled slowly.

And then, without warning, the air was violently knocked out of your lungs.

“Wha—!”

One second you were comfortably seated.

The next, Sylus had flipped you flat on your back, your book flying out of your hands with a soft thud.

A startled yelp escaped your throat, legs tangled in the blanket, brain scrambling to catch up to the fact that you had just been ambushed.

He hovered over you, forearms braced on either side of your head, eyes half-lidded but open—definitely awake now. Great.

“Sylus!” you hissed, face heating. “What the hell?!”

“Shhh,” he murmured, voice low and hoarse, like he hadn’t fully emerged from dreamland yet. “You moved.”

“I was reading.”

He blinked slowly, eyes flickering across your face with an intensity that made your breath catch.

Then he mumbled, almost like a confession, “Thought you left.”

Your heart stuttered.

“I—Sylus, I live here.” You tried to squirm, but he just shifted closer, lowering himself so his forehead bumped gently against yours.

“You smell like lavender,” he whispered.

You were going to die. Right here. Of cardiac arrest and secondhand embarrassment.

“And books,” he added softly, eyes fluttering shut again. “You smell like home.”

Your hands hovered awkwardly in the air, unsure whether to shove him off or pull him closer.

You did neither.

Because the worst part?

You liked hearing that more than you should’ve.

“Why are you… so cute?” he slurs, eyes glassy and unfocused, his breath warm against your lips.

You barely had time to process the question—if it was a question—before he leaned in and slammed his lips against yours with all the grace and coordination of someone who definitely shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery.

Your brain short-circuited.

Yep. He’s super drunk tonight.

It wasn’t even a kiss, really.

More like a very committed face-plant. His lips mashed clumsily against yours, all instinct and zero finesse, like his drunk brain had gone, “Target acquired—initiate smooch protocol.”

You froze. Arms still mid-air. Eyes wide. Mind absolutely screaming.

It lasted all of two seconds before he let out a satisfied little hum and promptly collapsed against you like a human pancake, burying his face into the crook of your neck as if the kiss had been a casual prelude to nap time.

“…Seriously?” you croaked.

No response. Just light snoring and a very warm, very solid Sylus draped across your body.

You stared at the ceiling.

This was fine. Everything was fine.

You were definitely not blushing.

Not still feeling the ghost of his lips against yours.

Not wondering why the hell your heart was racing like you’d just run a marathon.

Nope.

Totally. Fine.

—•

The next morning, sunlight peeked through the blinds, warm and accusing. You blinked groggily, only to realize that your limbs were pinned.

Sylus was still slumped against your body, face buried in your shoulder, arm thrown around your waist like a weighted blanket with abandonment issues.

He was out, dead to the world, breathing softly like last night hadn’t been a whole fever dream.

You stared at him for a long moment.

Then, very carefully—like you were defusing a bomb—you began to wiggle out from under him.

One leg. Then the other.

You held your breath as you slipped free, standing over him like some war-weary survivor of battle. He didn’t stir.

Honestly, you were impressed. You could have probably vacuumed the room and he’d still be there, drooling peacefully.

You didn’t have time to process it. Class was calling.

And you had never gotten ready so fast.

By the time you made it to your seat, slightly out of breath and still pulling your hoodie over your head, your mind was already spiraling.

The lecture blurred into a series of droning syllables you couldn’t quite absorb.

Because God, you hoped he didn’t remember.

If he did—if he looked at you with that signature smirk and said anything about last night—your soul might physically evacuate your body.

You kept your head down, notebook open but blank, your pen frozen mid-air.

And still, your thoughts wandered.

Back to the feel of his lips on yours—sloppy, warm, unexpected.

Back to the sound of his voice, low and slurred, calling you cute like it was a sin he couldn’t forgive.

Back to the way your heart had reacted like it was hearing something it had been waiting for.

Your teeth grazed your bottom lip, and before you could stop yourself, you caught it gently between them. Just to see if you could remember.

And—damn it—you could.

Which was exactly the problem.

Class ended faster than you realized.

One moment you were lost in a daze of accidental kisses and existential dread, the next, students were filing out around you and your professor was reminding everyone about next week’s quiz that you absolutely did not hear.

You packed your stuff in record time and bolted, telling yourself you’d walk it off. Or compartmentalize. Or, ideally, both.

It was a crisp morning, birds chirping, sun shining, world spinning just fine without dragging your dignity behind it. You were just starting to calm down, your feet falling into a steady rhythm along the pavement, when—

An arm slung over your shoulder.

You stiffened like someone had just hit your internal panic button.

“Thanks for not waking me,” came a familiar, smug voice from your right, laced with far too much amusement for someone who had been drooling on your hoodie six hours ago.

You turned your head slowly—like in a horror film—and there he was.

Sylus.

Disheveled but well-rested. Hair tousled. Hoodie slightly crooked on his frame.

Looking every bit like someone who had zero regrets and somehow still got eight hours of sleep.

And worse?

He was smirking.

You stared at him.

He stared back.

Then you exhaled, long and slow, a rush of relief loosening your spine. “So… you don’t remember anything?” you asked as casually as you could.

His smirk deepened. “Nope.”

You nodded, clutching your bag a little tighter. “Good. Great. Fantastic.”

He glanced sideways at you, amusement dancing in his eyes. “You look tense,” he said, as if you weren’t actively reliving one of the most unhinged nights of your life.

You kept your face blank. “Do I?”

“Mm-hm.” He leaned in slightly. “We didn’t do anything weird, did we?”

Your soul briefly tried to exit your body.

You cleared your throat, gaze fixed straight ahead. “Define weird.”

Sylus chuckled, his grip around your shoulders tightening playfully. “Knew I could count on you to protect my innocence.”

You resisted the urge to shove him into a bush.

Because he didn’t remember.

And maybe that was for the best.

Right?

—•

Later that afternoon, Sylus had peeled himself away from your side with his usual casual flair, stretching like a cat and shooting you a wink over his shoulder.

“Got a date,” he’d called, walking backward with that insufferable grin. “Don’t miss me too much!”

You managed a forced smile, waving him off like it was no big deal.

But it was.

Because the moment he turned the corner, a sharp, unwelcome pang bloomed in your chest. It wasn’t jealousy—not exactly.

Just… something heavy. Something tight.

Something you couldn’t name without digging into places you weren’t quite ready to go.

You sighed, long and low, and forced your feet toward your next class, pretending that maybe you’d feel better if you just kept moving.

Spoiler, you didn’t.

Classes passed in a blur, lectures droning like white noise in the background.

You tried to focus, really, but your mind kept drifting—back to last night, back to his weight against you, his breath on your neck, the taste of his lips.

Back to the way he didn’t remember.

And now here he was, out on a date, completely unaware of the emotional chaos he’d left you in.

You returned to your dorm that night with your brain fried and your heart somewhere under your shoe.

You flopped onto your bed face-first, ready to disappear into the mattress forever, when your phone buzzed.

Sy: getting drunk again tonight lol

You groaned, dragging your pillow over your head like it could block out both the light and your bad decisions. You tossed your phone aside with more force than necessary.

“He better not come here again tonight,” you muttered to yourself.

But even as you said it… a tiny, traitorous part of you kind of hoped he would.

And that was the worst part.

Of course he did.

Because why wouldn’t he?

You stared at the door for a solid five seconds after the knock. It was almost comedic at this point.

Like the universe had a twisted sense of humor and Sylus was its favorite punchline.

You dragged yourself up, already exhausted before you even turned the knob.

And there he was.

Leaning casually against the doorframe like he hadn’t been out on a date just hours ago, like he hadn’t already hijacked your emotional equilibrium last night.

The now-familiar scent hit you immediately—his signature cologne, warm and clean, now drowned under the unmistakable sting of alcohol.

Not subtle this time.

He smelled like he’d gone swimming in a cocktail shaker.

He grinned at you, lazy and lopsided. “Hey, wifey.”

You stared at him. Blinked once.

Then sighed. “I literally said, ‘He better not come here again tonight.’”

He tilted his head. “But I always come here.”

You resisted the urge to bang your head against the doorframe. “You have a room. A perfectly good room.”

“But yours has you in it,” he said, like it was the most logical argument in the world.

And just like that, your heart did the thing again—the flutter, the ache, the full-body sigh of someone dangerously close to caring too much.

You stepped aside wordlessly, letting him stumble in and flop onto the sofa with all the grace of a drunk swan.

He missed the armrest entirely and groaned into your throw pillow.

You closed the door.

“Don’t throw up on anything,” you warned.

“Never,” came his muffled reply. “I have standards.”

You rolled your eyes. “Sure you do.”

As you fetched the water bottle—again, you glanced over at him. Hair a mess, face flushed, shoes still on.

And yet, somehow, despite it all—despite the alcohol and the chaos and the absolutely maddening way he lived inside your head—he still looked like home.

And that was the problem.

You sighed—again—and knelt beside the sofa, already in caretaker mode. It was routine now. Predictable. You unscrewed the cap of the water bottle with one hand and gently lifted it to his lips, not even bothering to ask this time.

But tonight was different.

Because he didn’t drink.

He didn’t even move.

He just stared at you.

Silent. Still.

Your brows furrowed as you held the bottle there, confused. “Sylus,” you said softly, nudging the rim against his bottom lip.

Still nothing.

You looked up, properly meeting his gaze—and froze.

He wasn’t out of it this time. His eyes, though glassy, were clear. Awake. Watching you with an intensity that made your breath hitch.

Your hand slowly lowered the bottle.

“What?” you asked, voice barely above a whisper.

His head tilted slightly against the pillow, eyes never leaving yours. “You were biting your lip in class today.”

You blinked. “Wha—how do you even—?”

“I wasn’t that drunk,” he murmured, almost like an apology.

Your heart dropped.

He remembered.

He remembered.

The kiss. The things he said. The way he collapsed on you like you were something he could fall into without consequence.

He remembered everything.

Your voice caught in your throat. You straightened up a little, putting distance between you. “You said you didn’t remember.”

He smiled faintly. “I lied.”

And just like that, the air shifted—heavy, warm, dangerous. The room felt smaller. Your heart louder.

You didn’t know what to say. So you didn’t.

You just stared back, bottle still in your hand, feeling everything you’d tried to bury clawing its way to the surface.

He sat up with a sigh, rubbing a hand through his hair as if he could shake off the tension clinging to the air between you.

You watched him closely, bottle still in your hand, heartbeat pounding like a warning.

Then he looked at you—really looked at you—and said quietly, “I didn’t go on a date.”

Your brows lifted.

“I didn’t even drink tonight.”

That made you pause.

You stared at him, eyes narrowing slightly. And?

Your expression said it all. So?

He shifted, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced like he needed something to hold onto.

His frown deepened, not from annoyance but from something far more raw.

“Don’t you get it?” he asked, voice softer now—less teasing, more real.

You blinked.

No smirk. No sarcasm.

Just Sylus, stripped of his usual bravado, staring at you like he didn’t know what else to say—like the weight of what he felt had finally grown too heavy to carry without showing it.

And suddenly, everything felt louder.

The silence. The breath you didn’t take. The confession waiting just on the other side of his words.

Because maybe… you did get it.

You just weren’t sure you were ready to.

He groaned, dragging a hand down his face in frustration like he couldn’t believe he was having to spell it out.

“Come here,” he muttered under his breath—low, almost like he didn’t mean for you to hear it.

But before you could even react, his hands were on either side of your face, warm and certain, pulling you toward him.

And then—he kissed you.

Not like last night.

Not messy or sudden or slurred with alcohol and adrenaline.

This kiss was different.

It was gentle. Intentional. His lips moved slowly against yours, like he was trying to say everything he hadn’t had the courage to say out loud.

Like he wanted you to feel it—feel him.

There was no rush. No stumble. Just soft, quiet honesty.

Your hands, unsure at first, slowly rose to grip the front of his shirt. His thumb brushed along your cheek, steadying you, grounding you.

And for a moment, the noise in your head stopped.

No questions. No what-ifs. Just the feeling of him—real, solid, and heartbreakingly tender.

When he finally pulled away, barely an inch, his forehead rested lightly against yours, breath mingling with yours in the stillness between you.

“I remember everything,” he whispered.

“And I meant all of it.”

“I’ve liked you for a long time.”

The words settled between you like something fragile and warm, and terrifyingly real.

You barely had time to absorb them before he sighed, shaking his head with a look that was equal parts fond and exasperated.

“For someone who’s considered a nerd,” he muttered, thumb brushing against your cheek again, “you’re so stupid.”

Your jaw dropped slightly. “Excuse me?”

He gave you a look—the one that always came right before he said something that would both annoy and fluster you to death.

“You seriously didn’t notice? Two years of me practically living in your room, fending off every guy who looked at you twice, ‘accidentally’ falling asleep on your shoulder, telling you a Chris Brown song described what I wanted to do to you—”

“I thought you were drunk!” you hissed, flushing.

“I was,” he admitted, smirking. “But that doesn’t mean I was lying.”

You stared at him, heart a riot in your chest.

He leaned in again, voice softer now.

“I liked you even before I knew what to call it. When you helped me find the toilet on the first day, and I thought, ‘Well. That’s it. Guess I’m not letting her go now.’”

You blinked, wide-eyed. “That was… the first day of college.”

“Exactly.” He grinned, nose brushing yours. “And you’re just now catching up?”

You opened your mouth to argue. Nothing came out.

He laughed under his breath, pressing another kiss to the corner of your mouth. “God, you’re lucky you’re cute.”

You were still staring at him, wide-eyed, frozen in the moment like your brain had blue-screened.

Your mouth opened. Nothing came out.

You had so many things to say, but your thoughts were tripping over each other in the hallway of your mind, arms full of emotional baggage.

He just chuckled.

Low. Warm. Smug.

That infuriating smirk curved at the corner of his lips again, the one that always spelled trouble and somehow still made your heart flutter.

“You really are slow,” he murmured, tilting his head. “Guess I’ll just have to make it clearer.”

And before you could process that ominous statement—

He kissed you again.

But this time, it wasn’t sweet or tentative.

This kiss was deeper. Hotter.

Full of all the pent-up feelings he clearly hadn’t been hiding as well as you thought.

He pressed you back into the sofa, one hand cradling the side of your face while the other slid around your waist like he already knew he belonged there.

You gasped softly against his mouth, fingers fisting in the fabric of his shirt, body reacting faster than your brain could.

And he groaned—low in his throat, like just the sound of you was enough to unravel him.

He pulled back only a breath’s distance, lips barely brushing yours, voice rough. “Still think I’m joking?”

You couldn’t think at all.

And maybe, for once, that was okay.

You didn’t answer him.

You couldn’t.

Because the second your breath hitched, the second your lips parted like you might say something—he kissed you again.

And this time, it wasn’t hesitant.

It was consuming.

All heat and hunger and tension finally unraveling between two people who had been orbiting each other for far too long.

Sylus pressed you further into the cushions, his body aligned with yours like he belonged there. Like this had always been inevitable.

His hand slid from your waist to your hip, fingers curling just enough to make you shiver, while his mouth moved against yours with growing urgency—soft and then firm, teasing then demanding.

Your hands were in his hair before you even realized, pulling him closer, needing more. He groaned into the kiss, low and strained, like he’d been holding himself back for too long.

“You drive me crazy,” he murmured against your lips, his voice rough with restraint. “Always walking around in those stupid sweaters, acting like you don’t know what you do to me.”

You whimpered as his mouth trailed along your jaw, down the slope of your neck, finding that spot just below your ear that made your back arch slightly into him. His name slipped out of you before you could stop it—breathy, half-plea, half-warning.

He stilled for half a second, like he needed to hear it again.

“Sylus,” you whispered, and just like that, the last thread of control snapped.

His hands were under your sweater now, fingers splayed across your waist, not rushing—just feeling. Like he wanted to memorize you. Commit every inch of you to memory.

You gasped when his lips found yours again, this time slower, deeper. As if he were trying to tell you something he didn’t quite know how to say.

And in between every kiss, every breath, every graze of skin, you heard it loud and clear.

I want you.

I’ve always wanted you.

Only you.

You broke the kiss with a gasp, lips tingling, chest rising and falling in quick, uneven breaths.

Your hands were still fisted in his shirt, your bodies still pressed close, but you needed a second—needed to breathe. Because what the hell just happened?

“Holy shit,” you whispered, voice raw and dazed.

Sylus stilled, eyes searching yours, flushed and breathless. “Too much?”

You shook your head, still trying to catch your breath. “No. I just…”

Your brows furrowed, a stunned laugh escaping you.

“I’ve been walking around thinking you didn’t feel the same for two years?” you said, incredulous, voice cracking on the last word.

Sylus blinked, then tilted his head slightly, a small, helpless smile tugging at his lips. “You seriously didn’t know?”

“You hid it ridiculously well!”

“I practically moved into your dorm.”

“You ate my snacks and called me wifey. That’s not a confession, that’s just being annoying.”

He laughed, the sound husky and breathless. “I flirted with you constantly.”

“I thought that was just your default setting! You flirt with the barista.”

“I don’t press her against the sofa and kiss her like I’m about to lose my mind,” he muttered, his voice low, his thumb brushing along your jaw. “Only you.”

Your heart clenched, hard.

The air between you shifted again, softer now—less fire, more gravity.

He leaned in, resting his forehead against yours. “You really didn’t know?”

“I didn’t want to know,” you whispered, eyes fluttering shut. “I thought… if I hoped too much, I’d ruin it.”

His fingers curled gently around the side of your neck, grounding you. “You didn’t ruin anything.”

You opened your eyes and found him looking at you like you were the only thing that had ever made sense to him.

“I’ve been yours,” he said quietly, “since the first day you showed me where the toilet was.”

You let out a soft, disbelieving laugh—and kissed him again.

This time, you didn’t stop.

You kissed him like you were catching up on everything you hadn’t let yourself feel.

He kissed you like he’d been waiting for this moment since that first awkward hallway encounter.

There were no more games. No more pretending. Just whispered names and stolen breath, soft laughs between kisses, and the feeling of finally, finally being seen.

By the time you fell asleep tangled in each other on the sofa—his hand on your waist, your head tucked under his chin—it was quiet.

Not the lonely kind.

The peaceful kind.

The kind that only comes when you’ve stopped running from something… and finally let yourself fall.

masterlist

[k-hotchoisan]

body language

<yunho x fem!reader>

well, pining after your brother’s fucking attractive best friend isn’t a sin if he doesn’t know right? nobody has to know.

nobody has to know that you're lodged in his fantasies when the nights deepen.

nobody has to know what happens when you're forced to share a room with Yunho.

Genre/Warnings: smut, big dick! X Perverted! Yunho, unprotected sex, low key corruption kink, mutual pining, cream pies, fingering, orgasms, overstimulation, oh no they are forced to share a room!, sexual tension, dirty talk

Taglist: @bro-atz @diamond-3 @mcarebearsstuff @choisansplushie @voicesinmyhead-rc @pre1ttyies @hwallazia @songmingisthighs @yeosangiess @sanhwajjong @interweab @mylovelymito @softwsan @yourlocaljonghoe @itza-meee

🩷 back to staying perverted

A/N: send me to jail for being so inactive TT I know life happens and I shouldn't apologise for going mia for a bit but I still feel so bad! Nonetheless, please continue giving my works as much love as you all always do, and that ya'll are my source of motivation. Thank you for waiting ❤️

Undoubtedly, it’s either your brother has good taste in making friends, or you just have interesting taste in men, because out of all men you had a crush on, it had to be the one closest to your brother—Jeong Yunho. Something about him made your heart flutter uncontrollably. Maybe it was the way he would lean in towards you when he wanted to whisper something in your ear, keeping your brother an arm’s length while his voice tickled perfectly as it reverberates in your brain. Maybe it was the way he would hold your stare for a couple of seconds before his pretty smiles spreads across his lips, as if he was keeping a secret that he wants to tell you. Maybe it was the way he would bump his arm against yours when he wants to ally with you to piss your brother off. 

Whatever it was, you couldn’t deny that the feelings you had for him were growing exponentially. How you managed to keep said feelings in bay was a mystery. You could attribute it to knowing Yunho for as long as you did. Maybe he treated everyone nice and politely like that. It was hard not to keep your hopes up sometimes and it really made you frustrated. 

“A chalet?” You repeat. “What’s the occasion?” 

“Just a weekend out”, your brother replies. “A couple of friends will be coming. You know them, including Yunho.”

“Are you going?” Yunho suddenly asks. 

You break eye contact with Yunho, going back to your phone. “No. I’m going on a date.”

Yunho’s eyes widen. There is a flash of panic that flickers in his eyes. His words spill out of him before he realises it. 

“With who? How come I didn’t know?” 

You cast a confused glance at him. “Why would you need to know?”

That was when Yunho realises, and he simmers down, going back to hiding behind his phone screen. He bites his tongue, hoping you nor your brother ha caught on. But thankfully, no one else questions him. In fact, your brother doubles down.

“Yeah, you didn’t tell me?” Your brother echos. 

“As if you’re interested in my love life”, you playfully retort, rolling your eyes before you disappear into your room, before Yunho starts to hear your heartbeat right in your ears again. 

Yunho stares blankly at his phone, still processing that you’ll be going on a date. Something sits uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach. He’s running his brain, thinking of a million ways to make you cancel the date, half of it under the pretence of your brother. How could he do it without making it obvious? 

“And why would I cancel my date, Jeong Yunho?” You ask, your arms crossed. For some reason, your brother and Yunho were suddenly way too interested in your date. Especially Yunho. He would not get off your back about it. 

“It’s dangerous? Who knows he might be a serial killer!” He was really dramatic about too, might you add. 

You scoff, and an amused smile tugs the corner of your lips, as your hand reaches out to pat his cheek. “I’ll be fine, Yun. You’re on my speed dial if anything happens okay?” 

For a moment, you feel his gaze piercing right into you, as if time didn’t exist—the both of you caught in between each other’s gazes, Yunho looking like he wants to say something, but he stops himself. You quickly break the eye contact, remembering that he’s your brother’s best friend, and that Yunho is just being as worried as your brother. Nothing more than that. Yunho wants to hold the gaze longer. He almost wants to break the imaginary boundaries then both of you set, but he snaps into to reality when he watches you leave, his voice trapped in his throat. 

Fuck. Looks like he’s the one losing now. 

It doesn’t help that during that night, you slip into his dreams, and instead of you leaving, he has your face in his hands, and your lips are on his. He feels you in your entirety, and you feel so fucking good pressed against him. Yunho wants so badly to mark every part of you, to remind you he could do so much better than whoever you’re supposedly going out with. He could kiss you better, fuck you better. Then it switches—to you in front of him, your ass bouncing off his cock, loud smacks echoing from the walls as he sinks into your pussy with a broken sigh.

That’s when he fucking jolts awake, warm fluids streaming down his thighs, as he swallows an imaginary mass in his throat because what the fuck just happened? He stares blankly at the white ceiling of his room, mind as blank. 

How fucked is he?

Yunho reaches to the doorstep of the chalet, almost close to midnight. Dance practice had bleed past the time, later than he thought. He greets his friends at the barbecue pit, still grilling chicken and seafood, stealing a stick and getting playfully hit before he enters the chalet itself. 

Your brother sat there, comfortable with his girlfriend’s legs crossed over his lap as they had joycons in their hands, playing some kind of co-op game together. His friend turns to him, before his eye dart back to the screen once he acknowledges Yunho, much too engrossed with the level he and his girlfriend was at. 

“Your room’s to the left of the stairs. I hung your lanyard there”, your brother says, before his attention goes right back to the game. For a spilt second, he suddenly remembers that he wanted to tell Yunho something, something important, but when his girlfriend squeals at clearing the level, the thought is completely erased from his memory.

Yunho climbs up the stairs, pushes the door open, and completely stops in his tracks as his gaze locks with yours. You’re seated on the bed, relaxed and on your phone until the door suddenly pushes open, and Yunho stands there, looking as bewildered as you. 

There is a long moment of silence between the both of you. 

“Can I help you, Yunho?” You break it. 

“No…isn’t this my room?” Yunho clarifies. You glance around and shrug. 

Yunho drops his bag, his heart beating loudly in his chest. 

His eyebrows furrow, confusion sprawled across his face. 

“Hold on. Weren’t you suppose to be on a date?” 

You shrug again. “Yeah. It ended early. I thought of finding my brother and he asked me to use this room since it was vacant. I supposed he forgot to tell you? I could leave if-“

“N-no. You can stay, since you’re already here”, Yunho cuts you off. No fucking way is he wasting this chance. Somehow the thought of you within the same, close proximity is making his head dizzy. “You’re okay with sharing the bed? I can sleep downstairs.”

Your face starts to heat up. As much as it was the elephant in the room, for Yunho to bring up so straightforwardly like that was making your mind wander a little too close to the sun. 

You force a small smile. “It’s fine. It’s not like we haven’t shared a bed before.” Well, not a lie, the only thing was that the both of you were blacked out drunk when it happened that one time. 

Yunho’s signature smile appears. He looks comforted, at least. “Right. Then I’ll use the bathroom to wash up.” He grabs a spare towel on the rack, then walks back to dig for his clothes in his duffle before he disappears into the bathroom, leaving you with your messy thoughts. Your hand is over your heart, and you feel it beating a little too wildly. 

Nothing’s gonna happen. Two people of the opposite sex can share a bed just fine, is what you tell yourself. Yeah, that would have been the case, if the opposite gender wasn’t Jeon Yunho. 

Fifteen minutes felt like fifteen years in all honesty. The anxiety wouldn’t simmer down, so you end up burying yourself underneath the cold sheets, hoping that you’d end up falling asleep. 

And by some miracle, you did. That is, until you feel the mattress weigh down, and shuffling on the sheets, then something bumping against your leg. You stir slightly from the disruption.

“Sorry. The bed’s a little…cramped”, you hear Yunho’s voice tickling your ears as his legs press against yours. 

You stay silent, the only things that you hear are the whirling of the air conditioning and the sound of your heart about to fucking burst from your rib cage. 

“It’s fine”, you finally reply, your body completely still, unsure how actually close the male is against you, only his legs pressed up against the back of your knees and his arms are barely touching your back as a gauge. Well, you weren’t in the mood to find out. The myriad amount of assurances you repeat to yourself that he’s just a friend, that he’s just Jeon Yunho, does nothing to comfort you to say the least. 

You hear his voice ring a little to close to your ears again. “How was your date?”

You don’t want to answer, your eyes are focused onto the darkness of the door in front of you. You fear that he might hear your thoughts if you speak, even though that’s literally impossible. 

“It was fine”, you curtly reply, squeezing the spare pillow in your arms. 

“What did you think of him?” 

“I think he’s okay. He’s quite a decent guy. Then again, it’s just the first date”.

The mattress shifts suddenly and you freeze when you feel him inch even closer to you. You have no clue what expression he’s making but from the way he suddenly shifts rather dramatically, you would assume that he seemed shocked? 

Oh, you were definitely about to find out. 

“You’re planning to see him again?” He’s closer now. You feel his chest almost pressing against your spine. You feel his gaze piercing daggers into the back of your head. You feel his agitation. But over what?

“I haven’t decided on that yet”, you reply. But you cut him before he says anything, “but what’s it to you? You usually don’t care about the things I do. Let alone my dates.”

This time, it’s Yunho’s turn to fall silent. The weight of the mattress beneath you shifts once more it stills. For a moment, you assume that he’d shifted away from you, and maybe he’d let the matter die off.

“Who said I didn’t?”

Now he’s completely pressing his body against you—you feel his lips just a hair’s length from the back of your neck, his chest completely flat against your back. 

His crotch right against your ass. 

“Yunho-“, you try turning to face him before the both of your start making any mistakes, but his hand presses your waist down, halting any movements you were about to make. Heat is flushing your cheeks.

“I’ll stop if you don’t want to, and I’ll turn away, and sleep downstairs. I won’t force you if you don’t want to.”

Shit, shit, shit. The more words Yunho speak, the more they aren’t registering in your damn head. His voice is melting in your ears, low and dangerous. The consequences that once rang like alarm bells in your head slowly grow muted, and now it’s just your carnal desire to let Yunho do whatever he wanted to you.

“I’m not doing this without your consent, my dear”, he reminds , and his hand is slowly trailing off your body. 

All the repercussions, completely wiped off when your feelings that you once tried to fucking hard to suppress behind to bubble up to the surface, and for Yunho to just summon them so easily when he says it so gently and with such  temptation.

But you should still probably stop this-

From the way you’re staying quiet, Yunho is ready to just cut his advances. After all, he’s not interested in making you feel uncomfortable, as much as he wants to just ruin you all for himself. He keeps his breathing light, but his heart is still beating loudly in his chest, bracing himself for the rejection, his hand gradually lifting from your waist, very much reluctantly-

Until he feels your hand cup his. 

“I wanna feel you, Yunho”, you answer him, loud enough for him to hear, even though it was only the two of you within the confines of the room. 

Yunho feels like he’s not close enough to you, even though the both of you are squeezed together, and his erection is evident—pressing shamelessly against the curve of your ass. It’s driving up the wall. 

Another thing he doesn’t expect is the way your fingers curl around his wrist, and you bring him to your braless tits, and he short-circuits when his fingers press against your hard nipples. You curse softly when he rolls them gently against his fingertips, and you lean back against his chest. Yunho takes the chance to kiss your neck down to your shoulders, making you melt all over again. 

But he doesn’t want to stay there for long. His cock is just throbbing and it’s overtaking his rationale. 

You always offhandedly complimented that Yunho had such long, slender and pretty fingers, and that he made mundane actions—writing, typing—look so attractive.

And now, his fingers are prying your legs to spread open for him.

His fingers dip into the wetness of your soaked folds, and his mind almost completely blanks out for the second time at the way you’re drenched for him. 

“Fuck. All of this for me?” He asks rhetorically, as he easily sinks two fingers in, hearing you choke from how his fingers are filling you up so well. The tip of his fingertips press against a spongy spot, and your head tilts back, face so flushed from the pleasure when he begins curl his fingers while in you and while he fucks your wet cunt. 

He’s not letting you form any coherent thoughts in your head, not while he’s finger fucking the thoughts right out your poor brain.

“You’re so fucking soft. Shit. I really want to fuck you so fucking bad”, he grunts in your ear, his hips grinding against your ass like a natural instinct to. 

“Your cock”, you mutter, struggling to keep your eyes open and mind clear. “Fuck. Need you to fuck me so good.”

Yunho inhales the scent of your hair wash as he peppers bites and kisses down the nape of your neck, smiling when he feels goosebumps spread across your skin.

He’s so tempted. But not yet. He desperate—desperate to see you fucking fall apart just with his fingers.

So he pulls his soaked fingers out, and for a moment, you whine at how empty your cunt feels, just ready to fucking beg him to fuck you with his fingers, his cock, whatever. 

He sits up, pushing the thick and heavy blankets aside, tugging your wet bottoms and panties off, giving himself a mental reminder to pocket your panties when he’s done with you. 

You’re spread open and perfectly wide for him to admire and drool over. By now, his eyes are pretty much adjusted the darkness, and the both of you are lazy to switch on the nightlight, so he’s definitely able to see your pussy in full view.

“Y-yu-“, your words completely cut off when he plunges two fingers right into your pussy again, filling you up completely. And this time, his other hand is on your clit, fingers rubbing, sending sparks flying beneath your eyelids. 

The pleasure makes you buck your hips, and it builds so dangerously quick in your abdomen. The sounds of your pussy growing so fucking wet only encourages Yunho to pick up the pace, catching a rhythm of fucking and rubbing your clit so perfectly that you realise the feeling is growing way too funny. 

“Y-Yunho-“ you try again. “Oh god. Feels weird.” Nonetheless, you don’t say it without your eyes rolling back and your abdomen flexing. 

“That’s it. Let it go for me, baby. It’ll feel so fucking good.”

Oh fuck. You don’t even register it before it happens—it totally washes over you, and you’re just helplessly submitting to how fucking good this feels as you squirt all over Yunho, your mind swimming in the depths of ecstasy, your moans drowned when Yunho seals your lips shut with his, greedy to just keep them all to himself, and well, also not trying to wake the whole chalet up. 

When Yunho pulls back and sees how flushed spent your face looks, he can’t help but sink deeper into his feelings for you. He goes in for another kiss, this time with your mind slowly clearing from the mind-blowing orgasm. Your arms wrap around his neck instantly, pulling him as close as you could, soft moans in between kisses only making him impossibly harder than he already was. 

He shifts to lie down on the bed with you again, this time the both of you facing each other. He tugs the hem of your shirt and lugs it over your head, before lowering himself slightly to face your chest. You don’t know how but his pants are somehow kicked off, somewhere on the bed, and he’s bare and so fucking hard when he presses his cock on your pussy. 

“Lift your leg for me, babe”, he says, palm sliding on the underside of your thigh as he feels you spread your legs open for him once more. 

Yunho rubs his cockhead along your wet fucking folds, before he pushes himself in, a whimper leaving his lips as he bites on your shoulder to stop any loud noises from slipping past his lips. 

He pushes himself in even more, and your arms are around his neck once more, light red imprints from your fingernails dig into his skin.

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Feels like fucking heaven. So fucking tight and soft”, he mutters, eyes so glazed, and arms so tight around you when he finally buries himself into the hilt. 

Your mind is complete mush by then—combined with Yunho’s cock that’s stuffed in you and the scent of his hair wash, you swear you were gonna cum for the second time. You knew he probably packed something, but holy fucking shit, you just never thought it would fill you up this fucking good. The rest of your senses slowly start to dull, the feeling of Yunho’s cock almost taking them  all away. 

“Shit. You’re fucking squeezing me-fuck!-here,” Yunho says, but it comes off as a broken moan. His head is buried into the crook of your neck, and you hear him trying to steady his breath through a slew of curses. 

“You wanna move now?” You ask, your fingers combing through his messy locks. Yunho thinks he might have some sort of hair combing fetish with you now. 

“Fuck, yes, please,” is all he replies before he pulls out slightly, then thrusting right back in, projecting fucking stars into your eyelids when he fills you up again and again. 

You press your head against the pillow, eyes shut from the pleasure. When you find the strength to open them, Yunho’s glazed out expression is what comes into view. He’s looking at you like you’re his fucking treasure. 

“Does it feel good? You feel so fucking amazing, y/n.”

“You can’t be asking me that when you’re fucking the thoughts right out of me”, and you squeal when he thrusts into you once more, filling you up to the brim.

“Even better. So my cock will be only the cock you know, right?” He smiles, fighting the urge to roll his eyes when your walls clench around him again.

And when you don’t answer, his hand slithers to your neck, and he squeezes, making you gasp. 

“Answer me, pretty.”

“Yes, fuck yes. Don’t need anyone else’s when you’re fucking me so good”, you cry, relishing in the way he’s gradually cutting off your oxygen supply. 

His thrusts grow harder and faster, his hands slowly letting go of your throat.

“That’s my good girl.”

And that makes your cunt flutter and pulsate uncontrollably for the second time, only now it’s on his cock this time. 

“F-fuck. Oh, that’s it. That’s a good fucking girl, cumming all over my cock like that”, his voice ups a pitch when you fall apart again. “I’m gonna cum. Make sure you’re full and dripping when I’m fucking done with you.”

And when he does, he leaves a whole garden of bites on your chest and shoulders on top of filling your pussy up with his thick and warm cum. You never thought his face would get anymore attractive, but when he cums? You could get addicted to pulling that expression out of him, that’s for sure. 

The both of you are panting as your highs wear off, hands still not off each other despite the shared warmth. He’s the first to let go, and you’re about to say something until he turns you around, and it’s then when his cock starts to harden in you. Your heart is beating rapidly again when his cock is filling you up once more, as it slowly displaces his cum that leaks past your sopping hole.

Your hand grabs onto his arm that’s snaking around your waist. 

“W-wait. We need to talk about my broth-“, and he hears you whimper when he pushes himself deeper into you, throbbing in you. The way he’s littering kisses down your neck is sending you into a spiral, and now you’re nothing but weak against him, and his fat cock.

“That can wait to tomorrow, babe. I promised that I’ll make sure you’re full and dripping once I’m fucking done with you right? Well, I’m not done fucking you yet.”

[hwallazia]

HOT TO GO – 김홍중

⋆ synopsis. during a xmas eve dinner with your family, your best friend disappears. concerned, you search the entire apartment complex, only to stumble upon him watching porn alone. unable to resist, you decide to tease him a bit about it.

pairing. best friend! kim hongjoong & fem! reader.

wc. 2,9k

warnings. smut (mdni!), F2L, soft dom! hongjoong, suggestive language, cussing, liquor consumption, getting caught obviously, teasing & flirting, porn watching (this whole thing is porn but wtv), auralism?, getting interrupted ughhh, hongjoong comes on reader’s face and tits, praise, dirty talk, nicknames (pretty boy, pretty, attagirl & more), blowjob, implied cum eating but not explicitly written, an awful attempt at comedy in the end.

nic’s notes ⋆ second of the event & december’s already ending, i knoww (ᵕ—ᴗ—) i’ll finish the event in january i promise !! i really don’t like how this came out, but i couldn’t leave y’all without a christmas gift! merry xmas, loves <3

living room, dining room, bathroom, backyard, even inside the fucking oven. you had searched everywhere for hongjoong, and yet he’s nowhere to be found.

just an hour ago, you were enjoying some drinks with him, the strong alcohol of the tequila burned your throat deliciously, and the surroundings only caused the liquor to impact you even harder. small bright lights provided dim and comfy lighting to the room for those who were under the influence already — which were probably your uncles, who actually were spending a lovely time playing some drinking games. your mother and her sisters were chatting pleasingly near the kitchen aisle, your aunt looking for a new bottle of red wine only meant that the conversation was going to last longer than what anyone could predict, whereas your grandma was nowhere to be seen — she probably headed to her bedroom to get some well-deserved sleep, your mother had already forced her enough to stay awake past midnight.

“so yeah, that’s pretty much it. never met up with that bitch again, she prolly moved to somewhere far from here since i never heard from her again either. or well, at least that’s what i’m manifesting.” you summarized, chuckling at the end before you chugged another sip of tequila. hongjoong stared at you intently, one brow up, as your throat bobbed up and down with one smooth gulp.

“you sure are going hard on that tequila,” he said whilst glancing at your drunken irises. the way you frowned your brows and cringed almost made him laugh. how cute.

“excuse me, you’re the one who hasn’t drank one sip.” you deadpanned, a low laugh escaping his lips unintentionally as he covered his mouth with the back of his hand; his body rocking forward, driven by habit. “c’mon, let’s get you a drink. a cocktail for starters.” you said without giving him a chance to defend himself, grabbing his forearm as you led him towards the kitchen, where an exasperating and almost unbelievable collection of bottles, full of any kind of liquid you could imagine. your mind was already scheming what to prepare for your dear best friend; some vodka mixed with any energetic drink that you could find in the fridge seemed like an excellent idea.

but you could never fathom what your dear friend’s mind was envisioning, nor what held his eyes so intently. while you walked him whenever you were taking him, your cute ass was swinging, side to side in a smooth motion that had him going nuts. actually, if you held a gun against his head and asked him if he had thought about anything else that night, he’d let you shoot him, because he could never fathom the thought of you finding out how much of a pervert he was. but it was true though, the way that black, tight, and short dress hugged your figure made him salivate all over himself like a dog, the nastiest one. your curves were to die for, and hongjoong would gladly prove it — just so you know. god, what wouldn’t he give for just one night with you—to hold those hips with his own palms.

but that’s his secret. so shush.

hongjoong just couldn’t handle the view anymore. he halted you when he sank his heels onto the wooden floor, and with a deep sigh, he crafted the best excuse he could muster. you gyrated your head and let go of him when he began speaking. oh here we go. “wait, i actually have to go to the bathroom.” you glared at him, not believing a single word that was coming out of his mouth. “it’s an emergency!” he yelped in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, quite amusing to hear.

“fine. i’ll just pretend that you actually wanna go to pee and that you’re not a pussy that can’t handle a round of drinks with me.” you scoffed in a teasing manner, an almost invisible smirk showing up on your lips as your hand positioned on your hip.

“i’ll take the blame.” he sentenced, putting relaxed hands in the air as if he was being accused of committing a crime — and to be honest, he was just about to commit one.

after that, he headed towards the bathroom, your eyes followed his figure as it disappeared into the large, bright lighted corridor. with a sigh and an unopened bottle of tequila in your hands, you made your way back to the kitchen, determined to join the endless conversation that was taking place in its aisle. you aunt jessica looked in your direction, and when her blue irises landed on the delicious tequila that you had with yourself, she couldn’t help but let out a squeak sharp enough to shatter glass, immediately inviting you to participate in their talk with a smile plastered on her face.

you had to do something while hongjoong was gone after all.

but an hour had passed, and the conversation had turned rather depressing, your maternal aunt’s marriage problems overshadowing the happy, joyful christmas vibes. you needed to find hongjoong; otherwise, this conversation would only fry more brain cells than it already had. you exhaled as you rose from your seat, a glass of red wine resting in the palm of your hand gracefully — or you also could call it the other reason why you’d wake up with a mind-scattering headache.

“excuse me, i’ll go upstairs real quick,” you announced to the six ladies that you had just chatted with.

“darling!” your mother stopped your movements. “where’s hongjoong? haven’t seen him in a while now.”

“i don’t know. i was wondering the same thing just now.” you paused briefly. “i’ll go find him.”

normally, you’d find him in the backyard, playing with your younger cousins — to be honest, he nailed the role of the cousin way better than you. but strangely, he wasn’t, which only led you to do what you’d normally call research because at this point, the man had either gone invisible or was aiming for the world record in the longest game of hide and seek. at least, ten minutes passed and he was still missing.

you dragged your feet towards the bathroom, the tiredness of being in a tight and rather short dress and high fucking heels with your best friend missing as a bonus started to hit you. as you made your way to the guest bathroom, you passed by your bedroom, but something odd happened to catch your attention. a weird light was coming out of your room and you were absolutely sure you had turned everything off and closed the door—you didn’t want any babies sleeping in your beloved bed, for god’s sake.

your feet moved backward in a quite amusing motion, your body now standing in front of the semi-open wooden door. with a cocked brow, you peeked through the crack in the door and saw hongjoong’s figure laying on your bed; back facing the door. as the gorgeous, lovely, and very funny best friend that you are, the only idea that came to your mind was to surprise him. little did you know that he was the one who surprised you.

with slow, cautious steps you approached his lying body. you noticed he was watching something on his phone, the bright white light from the device illuminating his face, yet his shuddering pants were the thing that caught your eye.

and one or two steps were more than enough for your eyes to finally and fully take in the scene unfolding before you.

your best friend was jerking off while watching porn. in your own house, in your own bed, in front of your goddamn eyes. and fucking hell, you could clearly see his dick grazing your blankets in a slow, sluggish tempo.

now, in this situation you have two options: either get mad at him and yell at him for being a pervert and a lunatic, and never speak to him again for ruining everything up only because of being an idiot for doing that in such an inappropriate place and situation and day and just everything,

or

help him.

“well hey there.” you purred as you grazed the sides of his undone pants, his hand flew away from his hardened cock as well as his phone, which glided through thin air; a heavy and rough thud reverberated through the walls—a crack on its screen is guaranteed. wide open brown eyes stared at you, a pinkish, tender blush creeping up his cheekbones. “i was feeling kinda lonely out there, y’ know?”

your velvety tone tickled his spine, delicious goosebumps creeping up his limbs. “yn, w-what’re you doing here.” a breathless hongjoong spoke, trembling hands trying to put his dick back inside that wrinkled, damp, and surely uncomfortable fabric.

“that’s what i should be asking, don’t you think?” a little chuckle penetrated hongjoong’s mind, it took everything from him to not grab you by the arms and kiss the shit out of you. at this point, the poor man is delirious—thankfully, your soothing, reassuring hand calms his nerves down when you rested your palm over his. well, sort of. “heeeyy, already cutting the fun short? don’t tell me you’re that much of a wet blanket.”

you got on your knees greedily before your hand glided over his dampened length, first rubbing his girth and then his cocktip smoothly. hongjoong hissed before cursing under his breath. “why’re you doing this.” he couldn’t help but ask, though it wasn’t as if he had any intention of stopping now. if you were going to start something, you’d better see it through. he adjusted his position, finally sitting properly whilst giving you enough space to do your work.

you chuckled as you glanced up at him, doe-eyes stabbing daggers into his heart, mind, and soul. “is it so bad that i don’t want you to go back there with a boner inside those pants?”

a low, growly fuck was shot into your eardrums when your thumb slid over his now leaking tip, trembling fingers almost digging holes into your sheets. “i could do it on my own—nguh” a gravelly moan sent shivers down your spine as soon as you swirled your tongue around the trail of precum his tip was spreading over his hard-on.

“y’ sure you could?” he couldn’t compete against your seductive voice and teasing touches. matter of fact, he couldn’t compete against you at all, not when you were so kind, sweet, sexy and just fucking stunning. the way this man was wrapped around your finger is fucking comical. with a deep sigh, he gave in to you.

“fuck no.”

“that’s what i thought.”

no other words needed to be said for you to swallow his whole length, his tip tickling the back of your throat. hongjoong’s head tilted back as he placed his right hand behind him for support, while the other rested gently on top of your head; fingers provided soothing massages to your scalp. you didn’t expect his moans to be so heavenly sweet, yet low and masculine, and they were impacting you in the most pleasant way; thighs started to rub together incessantly, in search of some friction, some relief.

“oh fuck thaaat’s it. you’re so sweet for doing this, so—ugh, fucking gorgeous.” dead eyes stared down at you, following your every movement, every gesture, every breath. his irises casted shadows over you, and a dark fire sparked within them.

and being totally honest, you were more than ready to lose yourself in them.

after some minutes of just pure sinful, wet sounds, your jaw was starting to hurt, causing you to get some of his girth out of your mouth unintentionally.

poor you, ‘cause hongjoong was already way too into it.

you felt how his palm applied light pressure down the crown of your head “oh c’mon pretty, you were doing so good before, what happened?” he cooed at you, a devilish expression ruling his eyes.

and did that smirk drive you over the edge. “i—“ his hand glided over your neck and pushed you all the way down, making you pathetically choke on his cock. tears filled your vision and soon began to stream down your cheeks, ruining your mascara—not that you were concerned about that, your red lipstick was all smudged anyway. spit dripped from the corner of your lips, a string of saliva connecting your swollen lips with some hairs of his pubic zone.

what a view, hongjoong thought.

“attagirl.” he purred in a silky tone. all pain was gone in just a sec.

hongjoong could feel and hear everything. and when i say everything, i mean every fucking thing. the way your tongue danced over his tip, how it enveloped his length greedily and lapped at every bit of precum it could collect, or how you would whine when his cocktip hit that spot of your throat, how you’d gag around him and just how fucking sinful you sound and look with his dick in his mouth.

“you’re seriously gonna—ah be the death of me.” he heaved, that familiar coil was starting to form in his stomach and he was more than happy to give you every last drop of his load.

even though this may not be his ultimate fantasy, he’s more than content with what he’s receiving. he’d die happily when he gets to come inside you while in mating press. but let’s not get too excited.

“fuck—c’mon, joong. cum all over my face, i know you’re close.” you popped his cock out of your mouth so you could jerk it off properly, at a fast pace that had him seeing stars.

“god you’re—that gonna make me— shit!” he cussed as he jolted beneath you, under your control and intoxicating ministrations. with your poisonous irises and vicious manners, he came completely undone for you, because of you. tensed, muscly limbs and a deliciously arched back formed the scene that surely won’t leave your mind for the next two weeks. a satisfied moan of yours accompanied the melody of grunts that were escaping helplessly from his swollen lips—too reddened from biting them so harshly.

his hand replaced yours and began doing the same motion, but now angling his dripping tip towards you. “show me that pretty face and those pretty tits, cutie.”

what a pervert, you thought. and naturally, you wouldn’t have done so. but god, you were so fucking blissed out that you didn’t even think twice before popping your breasts out of that dark, fitted dress and presenting your face to him — totally surrendered to him like a slut.

the remaining white shots of cum spurted all over your face, a sinful string of that white essence connecting your lashes with your cheekbone, whilst a brief load of his seed painted your tits.

“fuck you’re kinky.” you deadpanned, giggling.

“guess you kinda have that effect on me,” he smirked, breathlessly. fuck, you want him to fuck you right now.

you smiled as you stood up just to push him onto the mattress, easily straddling his naked lap. “so, tell me.” dangerous grins were plastered on your faces. “why would ya be watching porn over here, behind my back…” your manicured nails traced scribbles on the exposed skin of his forearm, slowly shifting in an upward motion. “… when you have me.”

“well if i’m being honest, i had you,” he explained, confusion filling your mind. he chuckled at your tilted head and cocked eyebrow. “that specific pornstar has a similar voice to yours, and whenever she moaned…” his eyes drifted from your eyes to your lips. “she just sounds exactly like how i dream of you moaning.”

and that pushed you over the edge.

you pressed your clothed crotch against his unintentionally, your instinct to seek friction overpowering your senses. his dark, low chuckle penetrated your mind. he straightened his back as he sat correctly and enveloped your torso with his strong arms. with one deep, endearing look into your irises, he whispered with a honey-dripping voice. “can i fuck you, yn?”

“thought you’d never ask.”

a harsh knock at the door made both of you jerk. “yn! i know you’re in here! come on, we gotta take some pictures with the family! get outta there, you got two minutes.” the high-pitched, squeaky voice of your mother sentenced as if she was the goddamn FBI or something.

with a profound exhale, you stared at each other. “well, i don’t know about you, but i personally don’t want to fuck with a time limit. it’s not like i’m able to make you finish in two minutes. i don’t even know if i can finish in two min—“ you grabbed his lips with your fingertips, shushing him immediately.

he glanced at you with puppy dog eyes. “would you shut up for once?” you giggled. “okay, pretty boy, we’ll get there. now, let me clean myself up and change into some new clothes so i can go take the damn pictures before my mom splits me open.”

you sighed, unlike hongjoong who smiled like a little kid. “i’d like to split you open.”

you chuckled as you threw the nearest pillow to him. a muffled awh was heard and your heart sank a bit, in the most tender way. that foolishly in love kind-of smile just could not leave your face. “shut up, you romeo.”

| masterlist

[salem-s]

06 ── PLAYING THE PART UNDER THE SICILIAN SUN ── RAFE CAMERON

── SYNOPSIS when your image-obsessed mother catches you and Rafe Cameron ─ your friends with benefits ─ in a compromising situation, you must lie and say you're dating. It spirals out of control when your mother invites him to your cousin's upcoming wedding in Italy, and spirals even further when he says yes. ── WARNINGS language, angst (familial issues), mentions of body insecurity and unhealthy eating habits. 18+ mdni. ── WORD COUNT 8.6k. ── NOTES edited from third person perspective to second, so let me know if there are any mistakes. ── SERIES MASTERLIST | NEXT PART ── SONG OF THE CHAPTER lacy by olivia rodrigo

Saying goodbye to Lorenza is harder than you would like.

Rafe gives her a warm hug with a million thanks for taking such good care of him, to which she kisses each cheek talking a mile a minute. Even though he has no idea what she’s saying, he assumes it’s all good stuff with the way she’s smiling – no – beaming at him, patting his cheek and fixing the collar of his shirt endearingly.

He doesn’t want to leave, like, really doesn’t want to.

He’s just gotten used to staying at the cottage, lounging at the beach, playing in the garden with the dog, being essentially catered to in a loving way versus in an obligation. 

But Rafe can't imagine what's going through your head right now.

He decides to give you some space when you say goodbye to your nonna, pivoting his focus to Ticino and scratching his belly, his head, his back. The dog completely collapses at the special attention, unknowing of the tidal wave of emotion happening in the doorway of the cottage. 

Sneaking a peek, Rafe flickers his gaze to watch you and Lorenza pull back from a hug, your nonna gripping you tightly by the biceps and saying something deliberately low to you: who is simply standing there and nodding with frown. It’s almost as if Lorenza is trying to reassure you of the upcoming days, smoothing down your hair and gently shaking you to get you to focus on her words.

Eventually, you respond solely with a small nod, pulling your nonna back in for another departing hug, a bone-crushing one. 

Rafe physically forces himself to look away.

These past few days were simply child’s play, and now you're transitioning to the main event where your behavior matters most. He knows you're dreading it, dreading the performance you have to put on whenever you see your family.

Rafe knows the added pressure of pretending to be in a relationship is also straining your conscience, even if you don't deliberately tell him that, because he can already tell whenever you discuss the wedding and your fingers anxiously pick at your nails or your hair. 

The taxi ride is quiet. You don't offer much conversation, instead somberly gazing out the window at the landscape. Rafe’s eyes shift between your profile and the land, noticing the transition between local territory to touristy attractions, the cottages and quaint shops and cafes turning into luxurious hotels and resorts with Michelin star restaurants. 

The resort is right on the water, the taxi entering through a gated community to bring them right to the lobby. The contrast in settings is comically drastic, the hotel guests decked out in ridiculous designer clothes with an overpriced cocktail dangling precariously in their hands. The entire set up looks fresh out of a White Lotus episode.

Your shoulders sag at the sight, the taxi stopping right in front of the grand doors and mentally preparing for the emotional turmoil that lies ahead. You really you'll be able to slip into your room and head down to the beach to have a few hours of quiet before the storm.

Those hopes and dreams die at the door when you see Paulette standing on the steps waiting for you. 

She doesn’t bother to help you with your bags, nor does she extend her arms for a hug. You're grateful for that, especially in front of Rafe who lingers behind you silently. All he does is politely nod in greeting, not trusting his words.

After some of the stuff you told him about Paulette – and he assumes there’s much more that you didn’t share – he doesn’t trust his words, anger and resentment cautiously bubbling in his chest, especially at the sight of Paulette giving a careless up and down to your outfit. 

“You’re late,” is all Paulette says, pulling out her phone as if this conversation is beneath her. 

You grab your bags and bite back a snarl. “Sorry,” you say, completely unapologetic. 

“Yeah, you sound heartbroken over it.” Paulette types a few buttons on her phone, bringing it up to her mouth as she speaks into it, “Yara, push my five o’clock to six and book that Himalayan rock salt massage. My shoulders are already starting to ache. Bring my daughter's room key to the front.”

The color drains from your face. “Yara?”

At your slight-panicked tone, Rafe looks to you in concern, but knows better than not to ask questions right now. Instead, he continues watching the scene in front of him. 

Paulette hums, shoving her phone back in her comically large purse, unfazed and looking bored. “Yes, angel. She’s my assistant now."

“And she’s here?”

She says your name incredulously. “I can’t take a weekend off of work, you know that.”

Then from behind Paulette, a beautiful blonde emerges with bright eyes, waist length hair, and a chipper smile that shows off her pearly whites. She dangles a key card in her thin fingers, perfectly manicured. A pretty peach sundress adorns her body, a white bathing suit poking out by her neck, and it takes everything for you to not jump back in the taxi and ride back to Lorenza's.

Especially when Yara squeals when she sees you, plastering an impossibly giant smile on her face and lunging forward to hug you. 

You pat her back cordially, straining to even manage a polite smile but instead it comes out as a grimace. 

Yara pulls back, unfazed by your distant demeanor. “Ohmygosh, hi! I haven’t seen you in ages. You look great!”

“You too–”

“Who’s this?”

Reeling, you nearly forget about Rafe, who stands lean and tall behind you, no doubt checking the pretty blonde out if you have to guess. You don't need to turn around to know, instead pursing your lips and jabbing an absentminded thumb in his general direction at the thought of him probably drooling over Yara. 

“That’s my boyfriend, Rafe.”

Rafe hates the way his heart stutters at your words, the b-word always weakening his knees, but the deadpan in your voice also makes him resist the urge to frown.

The whole ploy is fake, he doesn’t know why he’s all worked about your lack of enthusiasm when introducing him as such, but he needs to zoom out: you don't want to be here, you're probably anxious and irritable about having to deal with your family, so Rafe needs to cooperate with that. 

So, cooperate he will.

A large hand splays on your waist, a possessive claim over you that pulls you taut to his side. Stunned, you manage to look up at him, surprised to see him flashing a polite smile to Yara instead of that stupid condescending smirk you've seen him use to pick up girls. 

“Nice to meet you,” is all he says, but it’s enough to make you visibly relax.

Yara double takes between the two of you, almost out of shock, before flashing back to that charmer of a smile.

“Oh! I’m Yara. We went to high school together. Oh, god, that feels like ages ago!” Then she leans forward and squeezes your forearm, nearly squealing again. “Agh! This is going to be so much fun. We’ll definitely have to hang out this weekend, the four of us.”

Four?

You look from Yara to Paulette. “Four?”

You don't even try to hide the disgust in your voice at the thought of hanging out with her, your mother, and Rafe for more than five minutes. 

Quizzically confused at your tone, Yara follows your gaze, then reeling back on her point with a chipper laugh. “Oh, no. I meant my boyfriend, he’s also here. It’s basically how Paulette convinced me to come all this way for work.”

“Careful, angel,” Paulette teasingly warns, and you frown when you realize she’s talking to Yara. “Remember you’re getting paid to be here.”

The pretty blonde laughs, and it’s an unpleasantly pleasant sound. “Right, of course. And quite handsomely, if I say so,” she jokes, nudging your arm.

You don't have the gall to laugh, instead offering a tight smile in return.

It doesn’t seem to faze Yara as she hands you your room key, clapping excitedly. “Your room is 405, right next to me and Grant’s. Neighbors!”

Rafe instantly looks down at you when he feels you impossibly stiffen even harder when you hear that name, your breath hitching in your throat. His mind overdrives to panic mode, noticing your apprehensive demeanor suddenly skyrocketing to heights unknown.

Toggling from this pest infecting this already torturous event, your mother calling Yara angel, and even the mere mention of him has you spiraling, checked out from whatever the girl yaps about now. Your head spins, a wave of nausea suddenly overtaking you as you shift your weight between feet. 

God, you could be sick right on Yara's designer shoes.

Before you can make that incorrigible thought come true, you feel Rafe grip onto you tighter, to ground you, politely interrupting Yara. 

“Could you point us towards the room? We were hoping to relax before dinner.”

After pointing in the general direction, Rafe carries his bag and wheels both his and your suitcases towards the room, passing Paulette without so much as a glance. If he wasn't so worried about your shift in demeanor, he would’ve taken the time to really look at what the resort actually looks like, noticing its extravagance and flaunt of wealth for a fraction of a second so he can keep up with your speed-walking. 

Unlocking the door quickly, you beeline inside as Rafe follows cluelessly, pinching his brows in worry when you instantly start to pace back and forth without bothering to inspect the qualities of the room. The door shuts behind him, locking you both in the comfort of your own privacy, but the isolation does nothing to soothe your nerves.

He says your name worriedly, knowing not to ask if you're okay because you're clearly not. 

You bite the edge of your thumb nail with a disassociated gaze. “I’m going to actually kill her this time.”

“Yara?”

“No, my piece of shit mother.” You clench your hands in tight fists, resisting the urge to King-Kong destroy the room. “She knows damn well that–”

You interrupt yourself, forcing a deep exhale to avoid saying too much, because voicing it aloud only makes the situation more real. 

As if this trip can’t get any worse. 

Rafe stalks towards you slowly, testing the waters by putting his hands on your shoulders and guiding you to sit at the edge of the bed (yes, bed, singular).

There’s a sliver of fear that if he kneels in front of you, he might be in the splash zone if you decide you want to hit something, and it looks like you do given how tightly you clench your knuckles, so he decides to cautiously sit next to you, barely brushing his shoulder with yours so you don't feel bombarded.

There’s a fine line of understanding, because when Rafe is pissed, utterly pissed, he doesn’t want to be touched. Let alone looked at. 

In waiting for you to speak, Rafe darts his gaze between your hands resting in your lap and to your profile, your eyes distant which tells him that your mind is elsewhere, reeling, spiraling. 

He decides to attempt to break the ice. “How’d you do it?”

The confusion pulls you from your delusion. “Huh?”

“How would you kill her?”

You scoff, not really in the mood to joke around.

But then you pause, trying to zoom out of the moment to see this whole scenario from his point of view. His befuddlement is probably through the roof, undoubtedly, and you're not really offering much to give him any clear answers. In his own, weird way, you realize that he’s trying to help. 

So you relent. “You ever seen Game of Thrones?”

“No?”

You whip your head to face him. “You’ve never–?” Then pull yourself back on track. “Someone gets their head crushed like a melon. I’d do that.”

“You’d crush her head open like a melon?”

“Precisely.”

Rafe whistles low. “Sheesh. Remind me to not actually piss you off.”

That earns an eyeroll from you, your anger slowly subsiding into frustration instead. Your fists unclench gradually, crescent moon indents piercing through the skin of your palm. You sigh, looking down and smoothing out the marks that are already starting to irritate.

A part of you wishes that he’d do it for you, but the thought of being touched right now actually sounds repulsive. 

"Obviously, I went to high school with Yara," you start slowly, her name leaving a bitter taste in your mouth. "We weren't friends. Like, at all. We were civil, sure, but definitely did not run in the same circle. She was..."

You trail off. The thought of Rafe knowing your life before college seems intrusive, so you shake off the mile long soliloquy and wave your head, signaling the end of that part of the spiel.

“And Grant’s my ex.”

Straightening up, Rafe’s heart drops.

Is he gonna have to fight someone?

“We dated in high school,” you continue, refusing to look at him. “It started right at the end of my sophomore year, he randomly asked me out after never really talking but I didn’t think too much of it because he was, like, the Troy Bolton of my high school.”

“Who?”

You scoff. “Really? I– whatever. We started going out, it was really fun. He was my first…everything, really. It wasn’t until right before junior year where we broke up, literally days before school started, because he said he’d gotten what he wanted from me.”

That makes Rafe’s skin crawl. 

“Hypothetically,” he starts slowly before he can stop himself, “if you wanted me to hurt him, would you prefer it to happen before or after the wedding?”

You ignore the warm feeling in your belly at the possessiveness, but snort and nudge his shoulder teasingly. “Easy. We aren't doing the masculine gorilla-chest beat thing. There will be no fighting, okay?”

Silence. 

At his lack of response, you finally look up at him to discover he’s already staring at you, definitely dead-set on beating this guy up.

As much as that would settle some long lost revenge plot in your brain, you know that's the last thing that needs to happen on this trip.

“Rafe. You’re not fighting him."

He blinks back at you.

You narrow your eyes. "Promise me.”

Rafe huffs like a kid on Christmas who didn’t get the toy they wanted. “C’mon–”

“Promise.”

Reluctantly, he bites his tongue and nods, earning a satisfied hum from you. “Fine. But don’t expect me to be nice to him.”

You roll your eyes and wave the whole thing off as if it means nothing. “It’s not even about him. The whole reason he asked me out was because my mom asked him to.”

Rafe instantly frowns.

That has him pinching his eyebrows in confusion, trying to connect the dots on why she would do that, much less, what she would gain from it. 

You continue when you notice his befuddlement, swallowing the lump in your throat at the memory. “Back home, my mom runs a country club in the suburbs of the city, and promised him and his family free access for the summer if he dated me so I’d have a respectable date for the various charity events she organized.” You drop the confession so casually that his head spins. “Something about reaffirming my image and saving myself from detrimental embarrassment by being single, whatever that means.”

Rafe nearly has the urge to kill Paulette himself. 

How could your own mother do that to you?

A part of him understands the circumstances, as his father would do something conniving like that for the sake of keeping the family name clean. Rafe’s gotten a swift backhand more times that he can count to keep him in line for the seasonal galas that all the wealthy families on the island host to flaunt their money. One time he even got choked out in the ballroom kitchen for accidentally spilling a glass of wine over the white tablecloth, claiming that anything he does is an embarrassment to the family.

So, yes, in some ways he can understand. 

“That’s…evil,” is what he settles on saying. 

 You hum in agreement. “Yeah, well, that’s my mother for you.”

Rafe’s heart aches for you, deciding that you don't need lovey-dovey coddling right now. “I think she’d get along with my dad.”

The anecdote makes you lift your head, brows pinching as if to urge him on saying more, because if he can relate to having a shitty parent, then his life can’t be all rainbows and sunshines, either.

You aren't sure if you appreciate being able to empathize with him or not. 

“Whatever.” You stand, letting out a breath you didn't realize you were holding. “I want to tan and drink. Are you coming with or not?”

The rest of the day is spent in lazy leisure. 

You both manage to sneak down to the resort beach without being kept too long by lingering family members. A few aunts and uncles recognize you and try to spark conversation, but you merely brush them off politely, dragging Rafe by the bicep away from the chance to introduce himself and delay your beach day even longer.

It’s pathetic the way he relishes in the way he’s essentially getting pulled around. 

After your second drink, Rafe is carelessly swimming in the water, the crystal clearness of the ocean reminding him of the better parts of home. Meanwhile you stand on shore, simply getting your feet wet to cool off before you lay back down to tan longer.

There’s a point where you insistently refuse his request to join him, so he pouts and retreats from the water, pretending to go back to your spot but instead heaving you over his shoulder. You squirm and yell and attempt to break free, but the pleas fall onto deaf ears as Rafe carries you into the water, precariously throwing you where it’s too deep so you have to either tread the waves or cling to him. 

He boyishly laughs when you emerge from the water, hair clung to your face like a second skin as you curse and splash him.

You - unsuccessfully - try to dunk him under the water, and then he does it to you successfully, causing you to splash him once more. Eventually, you end up trying to swim away to keep tanning but Rafe stops you by pulling at your ankles, claiming you're already in the water so you should just relax for a little.

“How the fuck am I supposed to relax when I don’t know when you’re going to dunk me next?”

Rafe pinky promises that he won’t, not anytime soon, anyway.

It takes a lot of convincing, but soon enough you're perched on his back as he swims around, pleasantly pleased to get what he wanted.

Whenever you snip at him, he simply ducks his head under the water to get his hair wet and proceeds to shake it out like a dog, which elicits a light slap on his shoulder and a curse. He doesn’t even care. 

The only reason you leave the water is because you both collectively decide to get another drink. After a little chit chat and sipping, Rafe ventures back into the water claiming it’s good for his skin. From your vantage point in the chair, you stifle laughs as you watch him practice his handstand. Truthfully, it hasn't improved since the day at your private cove.

Another ten minutes go by while you peacefully tan, and you almost forget the purpose of the trip until a shadow looms over you.

Assuming it’s Rafe begging to drag you in the water again, you snort. “What is it gonna take for you to let me tan for one second? A blowjob?”

“I hardly think that’s necessary.”

You shoot your eyes open when you realize it’s not Rafe standing over you, but Paulette. 

Your cheeks flush as you sit up, clearing your throat and feeling hot under your mother’s disgusted gaze. Well, that look is nothing new, it’s practically her default expression. You know better than to not try and defend yourself, knowing your words will only make things worse – like they always do, according to your mother. 

“Angel, it’s nearly five, you need to start getting ready for dinner,” Paulette snaps, looking your body up and down and analyzing the way your swimsuit hugs your curves. 

You frown. “I thought the rehearsal was tomorrow?”

It better be, you think. You were really hoping to just get some resort food in a drunken splendor and bring it back to the room, along with a few bottles of wine to soothe over the double-whammy discovery of your high school past meeting you across the Atlantic.

Although it's hard to concentrate on anything besides your mother's stare right now, trying really, really hard to ignore the condescending gaze. 

Paulette checks her watch, as if the conversation is taking too long. “It is. Tonight is an immediate family dinner.” Then, Paulette sighs deeply. “God, do you ever listen to anything I tell you?”

Nope.

“Yeah, alright,” you grumble, beginning to collect your things. “What time do I need to be ready by?”

“Seven thirty. And it’s still a formal gathering, so none of this…” Paulette pauses, scanning your body once more up and down, “casual attire will be tolerated. I hope you have another dress than the one for the wedding.”

The dress for the wedding.

The one that "somehow" didn't fit.

Your anger spikes when you remember the dress you were supposed to wear, the lilac silk that barely zipped up your spine and was formed to fit your body type about six years ago.

“Speaking of," you snap, "it didn’t fit. I think your tailor is dyslexic.”

Paulette frowns angrily. “Those measurements are a goal. You’re telling me you didn’t work into it?” When you shake your head, not trusting your words, your mother scoffs as if it’s some major offense. “Of course.”

Great, another disappointment for the books.

“I found a replacement,” you grumble, half irritated and half defensive. 

Your mother, however, is always able to pinpoint the part of the conversation when you cower, giving her the perfect opportunity to strike where she knows it'll hit you at your most vulnerable.

“If you’re not going to wear it, then give it back to me. I’ll give it to someone who deserves it.”

Ouch. 

Trying to ignore the sting of her words, you simply nod and your mother takes that as her cue to leave, trudging back to the resort with difficulty as she decides to wear designer wedges on the sand.

Watching her leave, you absentmindedly collect your things, so caught up in your fleeing agenda that you don't notice Rafe emerging from the water with a skeptical look.

“What was that all about?” he asks, grabbing the towel and fluffing it over his head.

You catch a glimpse of his chiseled chest and force yourself to look away, stuffing your belongings in your bag. “Duty calls. Apparently, I’m supposed to be in my glam chair right now for dinner.”

Rafe feels a pull in his chest, not wanting to leave the beach, but begrudgingly nodding and mirroring your actions of gathering your stuff. 

But you stop him. “No, you don’t have to come with. Just…stay and hang out for like another hour.”

And he does.

Rafe decides that trying to bargain with you is almost always impossible, so he reluctantly stays behind at the beach while he watches you retreat back into the resort.

But, as a matter of fact, it is extremely boring without you. Detrimentally so.

He tries to entertain himself in the water, or on his phone when he lays down, but he huffs like a child in boredom. Allowing himself an hour of wallowing self pity, on the dot he’s packing up his things and racing back to the room, hating the silence of solely being in the presence of himself. 

When he arrives back at the room, you're doing your makeup at the desk with your hair cascading down your back in beautiful nonchalance, and Rafe has to suppress a smile when he sees the colorful beaded dress he got you laying on the bed, ready to be worn again. 

Despite already seeing you in the dress before, it takes his breath away all the same when you're basically out the door and on your way to the lobby. 

When the elevator makes it to the correct floor, Rafe’s slipping a hand in yours just as the doors open, ignoring the way your posture stiffens at the gesture. You don't know if it’s from his fingers intertwining with yours or the sight of your immediate family all congregated like cattle in the lobby, dripping in overpriced designer dresses and suits. 

Spotted within the crowd are your parents and brother, your father talking animatedly to a relative while Paulette leans forward, fixing your brother’s tie and babying him like usual.

You nearly roll your eyes at the sight of your pretentious younger brother, Patrick. He’s the definition of a coddled momma’s boy: always having the most prestigious clothes, running to Paulette when there’s a sliver of inconvenience in his life, blaming everything in the world either on you or his new target of the month. 

One would think siblings would have a bit of solidarity for each other, but not Patrick.

He only cares about himself, and one of his favorite pastimes is getting you in trouble. There’s too many times to count where he went and cried wolf, getting you in trouble for shit that didn’t even involve him. It's as if he thrives off of your misfortune, simply counting down the minutes until he can see you again just to make your life that much more miserable.

Point being, you don’t really get along.

And your father is just kind of…there. He doesn’t offer any assistance or support besides the occasional Venmo to help you with the bills that you didn’t ask for. Truthfully, you think he’s an airhead. 

Whatever. You have to approach at some point.

Your heels clicking on the floor alert some of them. 

One of them is your cousin, Jessa, the one getting married. 

She gasps when she notices you, a bright smile adorning her features as she races forward, tackling you in a big hug. “Ugh, thank god you’re here. This shit would’ve been boring as hell,” Jessa winks at you with a knowing look, before turning to Rafe. “You must be Rafe, it’s so nice to meet you!”

Rafe reciprocates the politeness, flashing a charming smile. “Thanks for letting me come on such short notice.”

Jessa has such a natural beauty to her that sometimes has the tendency to make people stare, and her smile and words are (mostly) always so genuine that at first people think she’s mocking them, but she rarely ever is. She’s too nice for her own good, and it’s the main reason you and her got along so well and why you were close growing up. You both could recognize the horrors and dishonesty of your family from a mile away. 

Although, while you leaned away from the monetary values in life in high school, Jessa embraced it, and that's when you started drifting apart a bit. You were still close, just not to the same degree. She was still your anchor during family events, and vice versa.

“Please,” Jessa waves him off with a laugh, “it was no problem. Besides, I wasn’t gonna let her fend off our family all on her own.”

You slip your hand back to Rafe’s, who gives it a gentle squeeze at the gesture. “Yeah, well, that means subjecting him to unlimited access to bigotry and misogyny.” Then you shrug as if the whole thing is beneath you. “At least it’s just the immediate family tonight, that way he’ll slowly get introduced to the crazy instead of all at once.”

The wince on Jessa’s face sparks a flash of panic in your chest. Why is she looking at you as if she’s walking on eggshells? 

“Don’t be mad,” she immediately says, and warning bells go off in your head that you barely register Rafe’s thumb, smoothing out the skin on your hand in an attempt to comfort you. “But Yara and Grant are joining us tonight. Your mom organized the dinner so she added them to the list. If I had known–”

Then you scan the crowd behind Jessa, noticing Yara and Grant are engaged in conversation with your aunt, your ex-boyfriend’s back turned to you so you don't have the unpleasantness of seeing his face just yet.

God, this really is enemy territory. The good, the bad, and the ugly all standing here in one room.

You shush your cousin with a distant smile, as if to try and reassure that it doesn’t matter. “It’s fine, honest. I’m a grown up.” Then, you jab a thumb at Rafe, “This one, on the other hand, might start a cat fight.”

Jessa laughs in relief as Rafe rolls his eyes, but a playful smile ghosts his lips. Your cousin goes to say something else but is interrupted by her husband, Kevin, who flashes you a warm smile then leans down to whisper something in his fiance’s ear, pulling Jessa from the conversation with an apologetic smile, spinning around to tackle the next objective in sight. 

It’s constantly go, go, go when it comes to her, and you can’t help but feel bad, wanting your cousin to just be able to take a deep breath. However, weddings are never a time of relaxation, especially for the bride no doubt.

To your dismay, the table isn’t ready yet, which allows time for your brother, Patrick, to saunter up to you and Rafe with a gleam in his eye that indicates he’s ready to stir up trouble, especially when he utters your name in that mousey tone that makes you want to drop kick him.

“Wow,” he nearly tsks, strolling right up and crossing his arms to buff out his chest dominantly as he looks at you up and down, “I see you’re still keen on dressing like a clown.”

Rafe has the nerve to hit the guy for coming up to you like that unprompted, and before he can cause a scene, you merely roll your eyes and scoffs, as if you're used to the behavior.

“I see mom and dad still haven’t funded your forehead reduction surgery,” you snap back, then mockingly shield her eyes with the hand that isn’t holding Rafe’s. “Jesus. Could you take a step back? It’s reflecting light right into my eyes.”

Patrick laughs condescendingly. “Wow, I almost forgot how fucking sensitive you are.” Then, he finally turns to Rafe with such a lax demeanor that he’s seconds away from slapping it out of him. “You her guard dog or what?”

You answer for Rafe, who’s holding a look that genuinely can kill. “This is my boyfriend, Rafe.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. I’d take that step back, he bites,” you deadpan.

Patrick takes his time analyzing the scene in front of him, wearing an ugly smile when he alternates looking between you and Rafe. Despite being older, you hate how you nearly squirm under his gaze, and slip your hand out of Rafe’s to cross your own arms defensively.

God, words can’t describe how much you can’t stand him.

“This is interesting. How much did she pay you to be here?”

You wince. “Jesus, Patrick. Could you fuck off for once in your life?”

“Nah, you’re too easy to piss off,” he says teasingly, but his eyes are trained on Rafe. “There’s no way you’re actually into that.” Patrick nods towards you with a look to say, amirite? “Did mom pay you? Be serious. It wouldn’t be her first time getting pimped out–”

You scoff, seething through your teeth, hating the way your palms sweat at the mere mention of Grant, especially in front of Rafe. “How’s that OnlyFans model, by the way? Or, wait, is that the one that took half your trust fund and ran, or am I thinking of Celeste–?”

Seeing red, Patrick takes a dangerously close step forward to get in your face. “I think you should shut the fuck up, because we can totally go band for band right now in front of your little–”

The edge in Rafe’s voice startles you. “Her little what?”

Patrick falters when Rafe takes a step forward, having a noticible few inches on your brother, as he stares down at the already cowering man. Taking a step back to compensate for the spacial intrusion, Patrick simply huffs, already seceding to the intimidation.

He goes to add some pathetic excuse but Rafe cuts him off again.

“If I hear one more word out of your mouth about her, I’ll cut out your fucking tongue.”

There’s a palpable silence between the two men, having a masculine-off and staring at each other to see who’s the first to break. With the way Patrick’s eyes are wide and fearful, it’s going to be him, as Rafe’s unfaltering stare is narrowed, cold, threatening. It’s a look that someone does not want to be on the receiving end of, and as a witness to it, now a part of you understands why he said he’d rather be feared. 

Because he knows how to instill it, you realize.

Rafe is fuming yet trying to keep his anger in check. It’s obvious to everyone that he’s severely holding back. “Now fuck off.”

Patrick doesn’t need to be told twice, tucking tail and scampering back to Paulette like he always does. 

Making sure your brother is fully set on not coming back, Rafe then spins around to face you, the cold stare now replaced with concern and you nearly melt at the sight, because you feel like this look is reserved just for you.

“Are you okay?”

All you can do is nod, not trusting your voice. Although you do suppress a grin, because nothing satisfies you more than your brother getting what he deserves. It doesn't happen very often given his track record of being the favorite, but those once in a blue moon opportunities are gold mines, and you know to appreciate them when they come.

Rafe doesn’t recognize your relief, instead distraught about the whole interaction as he runs his hands up and down your arms. “Baby, who the fuck was that? That wasn’t Grant, right?”

If it was, Rafe definitely would’ve knocked him out cold.

You push the thought down. “No, that was my brother.”

That causes him to pinch his brows even further. “Your...brother?”

You simply nod again, sighing out a breath you don't realize you hold.

“He’s a prick.”

“Yeah, no shit,” you complain. “He’s such a primadonna. More than you.”

Rafe’s eyes nearly bulge out of his skull as he scoffs, deeply offended. “Baby, never compare me to that jackoff ever again. You hear me?”

All you do is bite your lip to suppress a grin. He hates that you're teasing him right now.

His irritation is through the roof, especially when you don't respond, and simply look up at him with your doe eyes. “You hear me?”

“You’re so worked up,” you murmur low, a tone that makes him shudder. “We should go talk about it. Upstairs.”

“Sweet girl.” A warning. 

You then laugh, and as endearing as the sound is, frustration still continues to bubble in his chest, half out of disbelief that that prick is your brother and the other half in slight arousal.

It makes Rafe spiral. His relationship with his sisters is much, much different than that, the three of them having a sort of solidarity together against their parents. A pinch of sadness pricks at his chest when he realizes that he’s who you've had to deal with your entire childhood, and given his charming behavior, Patrick probably wasn’t a very good brother.

“That’s not…” he trails off, trying to get back on track. “That’s not funny.”

You go to retort but one of the workers approaches the group to announce that the family's table is ready. 

The scene in front of you is almost comical: a large group of obnoxious, wealthy socialites herding to the private outdoor table like cattle, probably already drunk off of the all-inclusive bar that hangs just outside the lobby. Expensive heels click against marble floor, jewelry clutters together at any slight movement, the men laugh with their bellies, it’s already severely overwhelming. 

Unfortunately Jessa and Kevin are seated at the opposite side of the Last Supper kind of table, Jessa taking the head on that side and Yara, surprisingly, taking the head of the other end. You're placed to her right with Rafe on your right, which places you right across from Grant, who offers a timid wave to you.

Rafe puts two and two together, a lightbulb clicking in his head when he notices you overly refuse the gaze of the guy across from you. 

If Rafe’s glare could kill, Grant would be six feet under in an instant. 

And Grant definitely notices, and doesn't glance in your direction again.

Fortunately, Paulette and Patrick are seated at the other end of the table, so you really only have to deal with one of the two obstacles of the night, who are sitting in the closest proximity possible. Bless Yara’s heart, because she offers endless chatter so there’s no awkward pauses between you all. It’s practically the four of you in your little nook with the exception of a random aunt next to Grant who barely pays them any attention. 

Appetizers run well, and you manage to stay under the radar from the table discussions, simply conversing with Rafe quietly to keep your sanity at bay. Thankfully, he indulges in your rambling, keeping your mind occupied and sharp.

Then, of course your luck runs out, because you suddenly become the topic of the table when an uncle asks Paulette about you. 

“Oh?” Paulette asks in mock surprise. “Yes, she’s still in school. She’s at the end with her boyfriend, Rafe. Angel?” 

You hate how you and Yara both pick your heads up at the nickname. 

“I’m sure everyone wants to hear about you two,” Paulette jabs innocently, everyone else missing the very pointed look she gives you.

Well, everybody except you and Rafe, who finds your thigh under the table to squeeze in comfort.

Everyone’s eyes are on you, and you absolutely hate the attention. “Uh, yeah. This is Rafe. We met at school.”

There's a pause, your family expecting you to continue, but the words die in your throat at the implication.

How much of the truth should you reveal? Do you say you've been dating since you started fucking? Or from when you met? Should you introduce him instead of talking about your so-called relationship? What do these people really want to know?

Your anxiety spikes at your mother's raised brow, a wordless plea to keep talking, to not embarrass her.

Yara, surprisingly, saves you. “What do you study, again?”

Phew-

“Software engineering and romantic languages,” you reply, thankful for the distraction. 

Rafe tries to play it cool, but his heart pinches. He didn’t know that. He should’ve asked you way sooner. 

“Oh!” Yara beams. “That’s so interesting. So you must be, like, a hacker, or something!”

Despite how annoying she is, you find yourself stifling a chuckle. “Uh, yeah, something like that–”

Paulette interrupts tightly by saying your name, a fake smile plastered on her lips as she blinks like a doll. “Enough about computers. Tell us more about you two, your aunts are dying to know.”

Ah, there it is.

The obvious distaste for your real hobbies and interests, always pinnacling the conversation back to your relationship status, to your desirability. Of course, because no one actually cares about what you want to do with your life. Why would they?

Your eyes dart between your three aunts at the end of the table, leaning in eagerly. Rafe’s hand gives another squeeze under the table, and before you can speak up and bullshit some lie about your relationship, he cuts you off, to your surprise. 

“She started tutoring me last semester,” Rafe starts charmingly. “It was American history, and I really suck at memorizing stuff like that so she was nice enough to help me out. Ended with an A, even. Eventually, we became friends. I’d bring coffee to our study sessions to basically beg her to go out with me.”

That earns a few endearing laughs from your aunts. Patrick rolls his eyes. Your father raises a brow.

“But she always said no. I was almost tempted to take another history class so she’d be able to tutor me again.”

Rafe sneaks a glance at you, watching him make up the story on the spot with a soft gaze. Even though it’s pretend, he sounds pretty convincing. 

“And I did. Art history. Unfortunately, I’m not much better at it,” he laughs, scratching the back of his neck. “But, then again, I have a pretty good tutor. So I made a deal with her that if I got above a ninety five on my Italian Renaissance exam, I’d get to take her out on a date. And I think she agreed to that thinking I wouldn’t score that high.”

The table chuckles at that. You find his hand under the table and squeeze. 

Rafe shrugs. “But I did. I studied a lot in secret, but scored a ninety seven. So, I had the privilege of taking her out to dinner, and then one thing led to another…” he trails off.

God, that was charming. 

You aren't sure whether to be impressed on how he commands a room or how quickly he had that lie locked and ready to go.

Maybe his inspiration came from you talking his ear off about Macchiavelli and the fifteen-hundreds in Italy, as well as knowing random tidbits about the Sicilian architecture that you'd point out in town. Truthfully, you assumed he wasn’t listening to any of it, letting it go in one ear and out the other like people normally do when you have something to say.

But, to your surprise, he listened, whether fully or partially, it doesn’t matter. He still listened.

One of her aunts, Willa, nearly swoons at him. “Oh! How lovely.”

Another aunt, Nancy, leans in further. "Where are you from, Rafe?”

“North Carolina, ma’am.”

“And what will you do when you graduate?”

Rafe subtly tenses at the question, you being the only one to notice. “I’m studying business affairs and commercial real estate, so I’m hoping to work under my dad to get some experience and then move up north and join a firm there.”

The table seems pleased with his put-together plan. This time, your father speaks up while swirling his wine glass. “What does your father do?”

“He owns a real estate firm, Cameron Developments,” Rafe responds curtly, offering a tight smile. “It’s catered to the Carolinas and neighboring states, selling estates and buying out buildings to make affordable housing on the island to encourage more commercial viability.”

Eventually, the talk fizzles into something that pushes Rafe out of the conversation, but he doesn’t mind in the slightest so he can turn back to you, staring at him with a grateful smile. 

“Holy shit,” you whisper to him. “Thank you. I thought I was going to have to make something up. How’d you pull that out of your ass?”

Rafe shrugs, suppressing a grin, feeling pride that he got to swoop in and save the day. “Contrary to popular belief, I was actually listening to your little nerd rants.”

You flush. “You seem to get their approval.” You roll your eyes playfully. “Of course, you get it in five minutes whereas it took me nearly twenty years.”

You take a long sip of wine, missing the way he frowns. 

“Who cares about these bastards,” Rafe grumbles, grabbing your hand in solidarity, skimming his fingers over your rings. “Software engineering sounds pretty badass.”

“Oh, please, it’s not cool at all.”

“It is,” he says, softer, yet firm. “What else are you hiding from me?”

You beam, laughing a little louder than your quiet volume. “Nothing that warrants a search.”

Rafe narrows his eyes playfully, intently staring. “Nah, I feel like there’s something so crazy about you that I can’t guess. Like, you’re secretly a klepto. Or a rockstar.”

“Oh!” Yara interrupts gleefully, catching the tail end of your conversation. “That’s so funny, because she kind of was in high school.”

Annnnnnnd now Yara's back on your shit list.

He whips his head to look at you, eyes wide in surprise. “You were a klepto?”

The scoff you let out is far from attractive, and the dramatic eye roll kickstarts a migraine. “I was not a klepto.” Then you pause. “I stole from CVS once, and it scared the shit out of me and I never did it again. But no.”

Rafe furrows his brows in calculation. “You were a—“

“Rockstar!” Yara practically beams. 

You ignore Rafe’s stare, as well as Grant’s.

Suddenly, you're squirming under the spotlight, hating the way your chest pulls tight at your two very different works colliding right now. Rafe knowing tidbits about your high school endeavors feels intrusive, and you practically rip your hand from his at the breach, and continue to ignore his stare.

Swallowing thickly, you suck in a breath. “That term is a bit dramatic.”

The shift in tone is sure to set the conversation elsewhere, but happy-go-lucky Yara doesn’t seem to get the hint, instead she further leans into the topic and even grabs Grant’s bicep to emphasize her point, who doesn’t look pleased to have been dragged into the discussion. 

“Dramatic? But it’s true!” To your horror, Yara turns all of her attention solely to Rafe, who’s still frowning about his hand not holding yours anymore. “She played guitar with college kids, which was all the rage as a junior in high school. Their band won the student music competition which is, like, the Oscars for NYU students.”

“That’s the Grammys, angel,” Grant murmurs, Rafe narrowing his gaze at the first words he’s heard the guy say all night. 

Yara doesn’t flinch. “Oh! I’m sure he gets the idea. But isn’t that crazy?�� She doesn’t give Rafe time to respond before she turns to you, almost apologetically by the way she places a dainty hand on your forearm. “That’s why I was so surprised to hear you weren’t studying music. Everyone thought you’d be the next, like, guitar person, or something!”

Strongly resisting the urge to scoff, you simply shrug politely instead. 

You aren't sure why Yara is so insistent on this notion that you were friends in high school. You weren’t. At all. You existed in different social circles that occasionally intersected at parties and other gatherings. 

Realistically, you only had two really close friends in high school, Joel and Quinn, who always got into fun trouble together. You didn’t care about having a large friend group, and preferred keeping your circle small because you knew that it was genuine. Sure, you liked to show up to parties — not to show face but to get free drinks — which ultimately made Yara’s group think you were all tight. 

Yara and Grant were friends with the pretty rich girls and athlete guys who dated within their group, their personalities thin and weightless and their pockets deep with cash. They were stuck up and arrogant, walking around the halls as if they owned it (which their families probably did) and often picking fights with the nerdy kids or snorting in the bathroom. They were the cool ones, the popular ones, the people that everybody wanted to be. 

You remember a time when Paulette incessantly tried to push you into that friend circle: the rich kid group. She’d force you to attend charity galas and sit with all of them since all of your parents were friends, she’d invite Yara’s family and other families to your house without telling you and would proceed to force you to mingle.

She’d even go as low as bribing one of her friends’ sons - a certain someone sitting across from you at this very moment - to go out with you to prove you can be like them, talk like them, look like them. 

After that stunt, you separated yourself as much as possible from that scene, much to your mother’s dismay. You joined Joel’s older brother’s band and the three of you simply preferred their company to those from your high school.  Word eventually got out that you, Quinn, and Joel were kicking it with college kids, and of course Yara’s friend group had to intrude on that as well, proving that they, too, could be cool. 

So, yeah. Yara went to your shows. Not as a friend but for attention. 

“Well,” you feign nonchalance. “That was a long time ago.”

Yara sighs dreamily. “Indeed it was.”

The food arrives, pulling them from the trip down memory lane. Rafe’s hand reluctantly leaves your thigh to pick up his fork and knife, nearly salivating at the assortment of pasta and meat sitting in front of him. 

The thought still lingers in his mind, though, about you in high school.

He ponders over if you'd be together like you are now, or even friends. But as much as he wants to believe that, he knows you probably would’ve never given him the time of day.

Contrary to popular belief, Rafe was a bigger asshole in high school than he is in college. His chest feels funny at the notion that you have this whole other side of you that he doesn’t even know about, envious of those who’ve known you for the entirety of your life. How could he not know you played guitar? Or joined a band?

His mind only reels. What other mischief did you get into? Why don't you do any of that stuff at college? Or do you, and he simply has no idea?

Rafe frowns at the fact that he wants to know more. Not even more, he wants to know all of it. But he shouldn’t. This is fake. He’s playing a part. 

Then why does he yearn for more?

Physically shaking his head at the thought, Rafe pushes it away and begins to eat. It’s good, but he finds himself sagging his shoulders. 

Rafe leans down to you with a joking smile. “I think Lorenza ruined food for me. I’ll never have anything as good as her cooking ever again.”

A quiet hum is all you respond with. 

Displeased with the lack of enthusiasm for his banter, Rafe goes to say something else but notices you're looking down at your plate, swishing the food around with a fork. 

Or lack thereof. 

First, he’s confused at the notably smaller portion that you have in comparison to his. Then, he furrows his brows and looks around the table, seeing everyone has a normal, hefty plate, except you. It’s as if the meal is for a child.

Rafe scoffs. “Baby, the kitchen totally scammed you.”

“Wasn’t the kitchen.”

Rafe studies your indifferent expression, not looking up at him but instead down the table past his eyes. With curiosity, he follows your gaze and his stomach drops when he realizes you're looking at Paulette, who eats a veggie platter rather than the pasta with a bright smile, completely oblivious to his stare. 

Then Rafe starts fuming. 

His hand curls around his fork and knife, knuckles turning white at the ferocity of it, at the thought of your mother pulling this stupid shit again. Of course she would. She’s the one who organized the dinner so she’d have full reign to make her own accommodations, always jumping on the first chance to embarrass her daughter. 

It makes his blood boil. 

Rafe takes a deep breath, reminding himself that a loud crash out is not the appropriate response, especially in front of your entire family, even though he has more than enough words to say that are nothing nice. Despite his flaring temper, he regulates his breathing and composes himself. 

Without question, Rafe starts scooping out pasta and meat from his bowl into yours, not trusting his words. 

Your voice is so small, so unlike you, that it further pisses him off. “Rafe. Stop. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fucking fine,” he hisses quietly, gradually piling more food from his plate to yours. “You’re having some of mine.”

“But I—“

“No. End of discussion.”

“You don’t—“

Rafe ceases his movements to glare at you, really glare, with such intensity that it shuts you right up. Your breath hitches, feeling hot under his piercing blues, squirming uncomfortably as if you're in trouble. There's no baby or sweet girl to lull you through this dilemma, and you can't help but shrink under his gaze.

The two of you stare at each other, having a silent discussion that you aren't going to win. He almost relents when he realizes that you're not looking up at him with anger, but rather embarrassment, shame, guilt.

It makes him hate Paulette even more for putting you in this position to begin with. 

“We’re sharing,” he says evenly after the tension filled silence. “Okay?”

You blink, knowing you're not winning this one. “Okay.”

Reluctantly, you let Rafe continue until your portions are the exact same, deliberately trying to ignore your mother’s laser gaze from down the table as you quietly take your fork and eat.

You want to agree with him that, yes, your nonna’s cooking is better, but you can’t seem to find the words. Or any words, for that matter. Not while your mother is watching you like a hawk, and not while Rafe eats next to you as if that whole thing wasn’t severely intimate, as if he also isn't watching you to make sure you do what he wants you to do. 

Because you hate the way that he understands what’s wrong without you having to say anything.

You're not sure if you appreciate someone being so in tune with your thoughts, or if you're scared of it.

Teetering between the two feelings, you continue to eat and sip your wine every few bites, refusing to look up from the plate to let the flushed feeling in your face relax.

“I’ve seen you hangry before,” he says after a few minutes, his voice barely heard over the laughter and chatter of the rest of the table. “You literally choked Elliot last week because he forgot to place our bagel and coffee order after waiting an hour.”

You shrink at the anecdote. “I was hungover.”

Rafe snorts. “Baby, you were so scary. I feared for my life.” Then he notices you're looking at him instead of eating, and nods towards your plate. “I’m not ready to die. Eat.”

Suppressing a giant grin, you swirl a forkful of pasta and take a bite, for once thankful for his bossy attitude.

He’s been stupidly perfect tonight, saying the right things and smiling in a pretty way that makes your knees weak, but also glaring at Grant so intently that he doesn’t try and attempt small talk with you. His touch alternates from your thigh, to your hand, to your shoulder when he slings his lean arm across the back of your chair, as if he’s caging you in, a notion of possession you're surprisingly grateful for. 

It’s too much. But in the right way.

Rafe’s playing the hell out of the boyfriend role so hard that you're beginning to believe it, too.

You've already made up your mind: you're totally going down on him later. 

© salem-s please do not copy or replicate work without permission. mdni.

notes apologies for the delay on posting. thanks for all the support, genuinely !!!!!!

[traveler-at-heart]

Stuck together

Wanda Maximoff x F! Super Soldier R

Summary: Canon divergence after Wandavision... what if Tommy and Billy are alive and stay with their mom?

Only a handful of people have this number.

So, when the phone rings, you know it’s trouble.

“We need a favor” Hill says. That we means Fury and her, as they constantly operate outside of the government’s rules.

The world has been too messy since everyone came back from the dead, making it easy to slip through the cracks.

You only say yes because Natasha was her friend.

The ride to the rendezvous point is quiet, only interrupted by the engine of your motorcycle. Throughout the road, you cross paths with one other driver who couldn’t care less about you.

“Sorry for the short notice” Maria says when you park outside the warehouse, walking up to you. “We didn’t know who else to call. There’s a safe house ready, food for a couple of days… that’s all we can offer for now”

You nod, walking up to the car.

The last thing you’re expecting is Wanda Maximoff, fast asleep in the back seat, a kid on each side of her.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Keep an eye out” is all Maria says and you sigh.

For a moment, you wish you had ignored her call. Leave someone else to deal with whatever this is.

“It won’t be long, right?”

“Couple of weeks, tops”

Again, it gives you the impression she’s either lying or leaving out a big chunk of information.

But you’re here, and you won’t back out. She hands over the car keys and a burner phone, which you accept with a nod. Neither Wanda nor the kids notice the car moving, and you drive in silence for a couple of hours.

You’re still two hours away from the safe house when there’s a shift in the environment. The first thing you notice is how the radio malfunctions, changing stations randomly. Out of instinct, you look out the rearview mirror, eyes meeting bright red orbs.

It’s as if something stabbing your brain, pain blinding as you feel your mind unravel. It stops abruptly, but you’re too stunned, shaking your head and almost crashing against a tree.

Some outside force keeps the wheel steady, parking the car on the side of the road. The minute it stops, you open the door, breathing heavily. The throbbing pain begins to subside, and you can hear and see again.

“I’m sorry, I woke up and didn’t... didn’t know if we were safe” Wanda says, her voice small. You didn’t even hear her get out of the car.

“Ask next time, instead of trying to kill me” you turn to look away, to hide your confusion.

Even if you knew her for a small time, you don’t remember the Maximoff girl having this kind of power.

“I was just reading your mind” she defends herself. You’re about to argue again when she turns to the car, looking at the kids who are wide awake.

“Boys…” she begins, but looks your way and stays quiet. “Is there a restaurant nearby? We could have some food and a bathroom break”

“The safe house isn’t that far away” you say. You really don’t want to stop, considering Maria didn’t tell you anything specific.

“Please” Wanda says when you clear your throat. With a sigh, you nod. But before she can open the car door, you put your hand over it, looking straight into her green eyes. “Don’t ever do that again, Maximoff”

It annoys you that she doesn’t answer, only glaring at you until your hand drops and she gets in the car, smiling at the kids.

Luckily for them, there’s a small diner by the side of the road, along a gas station and a couple of old restrooms. Open 24 hours, probably to cater to truck drivers and other people who have to go miles without seeing another soul, never mind a place to eat.

Food probably sucks.

“Stay in the booth over there” you point to the back of the restaurant, sitting at the counter where you can see anyone walking in or driving by.

Within minutes of entering, you have already found any weapons you could use, emergency exits and potential obstacles.

But there’s nothing, no one seems to care about your presence.

The kids eat pancakes while Wanda watches them, making small talk. You wonder who are they.

Then again, the bleep brought a shit load of troubles with it. Maybe they disappeared five years ago and their parents are nowhere to be found.

So many people disappeared, aside from the ones that turned to dust.

“They just have to use the bathroom and we’re ready to go” Wanda says, frowning when she notices your empty cup of coffee. “Did you eat anything?”

“I’m fine. Don’t take too long” you leave a couple of bills on the counter, more than enough to cover for the food and your cup of crappy coffee.

The sun is starting to rise and you really wish you could get moving. It’s always better to go when it’s dark, even if enemies can hide in the shadows.

What’s taking so fucking long?

Walking away from the car, you find Wanda trying to stop a man from approaching her any further. He must have come from the other side of the road, as you didn’t see him until now.

“Just wondering what a cute girl like you is doing all alone down this dirty old road” he says.

“None of your fucking business” you say, making the man jump out, scared. “Leave her alone”

“You her guard dog? Be a nice mutt and go dig up some bones” he says, pulling out a knife.

With a roll of your eyes, you reach for it, twisting his hand and punching him in the face. It takes you five seconds to knock him out. Just for fun, you spit next to his motionless body.

“Told you to make it quick” you say to Wanda, pretending to be annoyed.

“We’re done” she says, walking back to the car. The kids share a look as they walk past the unconscious man, giggling when they pretend to be fighting each other.

Wanda smiles when you open the back door for her, while you pretend not to notice her eyes on you.

“Thank you”

Luckily, the rest of the ride to the safe house goes smoothly.

—

Maria didn’t lie about one thing.

This place is a shithole.

Wood pannels are broken, there’s dust everywhere and you’re gonna have to cook and get heat the old fashioned way.

“Yikes” one of the kids says as you walk through the door. You have to agree.

“It’s going to be fine. We’ll make it work” Wanda promises, feigning excitement.

“Can’t you just…?” you make a movement with your hands, and she frowns at you. “Abracadabra the place?”

“I’d rather not use my powers unless it is strictly necessary” she says, closing the front door. That falls off its hinges.

“Home security doesn’t strike you as a necessity, Maximoff?”

The tilt of her head is all the answer you get. With a sigh, you walk up to the shed, hoping there are some tools you can use to fix the door.

Well, at least there are weapons, cash, and all the essentials to make sure the door doesn’t fall again.

Home chores are not your favorite thing in the world, but at least it’s distracting you. Wanda is inside, cleaning the second floor while the two kids come up and down, carrying things and laughing.

“Do you need any help?” one of them approaches you.

“It’s fine. Sorry, I don’t know your name”

“I’m Billy, and my brother’s name is Tommy” the boy says, smiling. Though his brother seems reluctant to give out that information so freely.

“Well, Billy, like I said. I’m almost done. Thanks anyway”

“Oh. Ok”

The disappointment in his voice annoys you.

Kids.

“Fine. Nail that for me”

You hand over the hammer, holding the nail between two of your fingers. The first time he hits your hand, and you barely flinch. You encourage him with a nod, and he crashes the hammer against the rotten wood, adding another task to your workload.

“Sorry”

“That’s on me” you say, inspecting your hand. No damage.

“Are you bullet proof?”

“Not quite. Just harder to kill, that’s all”

Wanda clears her throat and you turn to look at her, frowning.

“Boys, come help in the kitchen” she asks and they both nod, walking past you. Before you can go back to work, Wanda approaches you, hissing. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention things like killing in front of two kids, Y/L/N”

With a glare, you stand up, and Wanda doesn’t back down when you tower over her.

“And I would appreciate it if you could make jazz hands and save me the trouble of fixing this shithole. But alas, we’re both stuck, aren’t we?”

“Brute” she spits out. You give her one last glare, and kneel back next to the door, fixing the wood.

Spoiled brat.

You hear a gasp and a small ball of red magic hits your side. It barely hurts, and it feels more like a warning.

You’re pretty sure you didn’t say that out loud.

“You thought it very loudly” Wanda says.

“Oh, for that you don’t mind using magic” you mutter. Wanda turns to glare at you, and you decide to shut your mouth.

You don't want to push your luck.

—

The better part of your day is spent securing the house. You’re a soldier and an agent, not a handywoman. Still, you hope this won’t take long and pretty soon you and Wanda can be on your separate ways.

After showering, you go out into the porch and open up a beer, taking a large gulp.

“Where’d you get that?” Wanda appears out of nowhere and you resist the urge to roll your eyes.

“Someone left a secret stash”

And thank God, because you’re gonna need it if Maximoff will be breathing down your neck for who knows how long.

“Beer on an empty stomach? There’s food inside. Not my best, but with the groceries we have is what I could do”

“No offense but if I don’t make it, I don’t taste it” you mutter, taking another sip of your beer.

“Yeah, well, you’re no use if you’re drunk” she complains, crossing her arms.

“Do you really think this gets me drunk? I’m a super soldier, remember?”

“You’re a pain in the ass, that’s what you are” she says before going back inside.

Well, she’s not wrong.

The sounds coming from inside the house tell you the kids are getting ready for bed. Once you notice the lights upstairs are off, you decide to go to the kitchen.

Wanda’s right, whoever got the provisions is an idiot. There’s canned food, some cereal, but nothing that can actually work if you put it together.

Unless…

Could there be another hidden stash?

You examine every inch of the kitchen thoroughly, knuckles testing the wood to find an empty panel. After a few minutes, you stumble upon one and smile.

“Bingo” you say, lifting the pannel and finding a cabinet full of cookies, chips and candy.

You pick a bag of chips, and go back outside, drinking another beer. As you look at the woods surrounding the safe house, your mind can’t help but go back to what little you know about Wanda Maximoff.

Natasha had told you she was just a terrified kid, that HYDRA had taken advantage of her and her brother to conduct experiments and turn them into weapons.

You could definitely relate to that.

You barely spent time with her, as shortly after the entire Avenger initiative went to shit and well…

Best not to think about what happened after that. The nightmares are enough reminder.

The night goes by slowly, but you refuse to sleep. One, you are supposed to be looking after them, no matter how much Wanda annoys you. Second, if it were up to you, you’d never sleep. So, you struggle to stay awake, even if it’s freezing outside.

Around five in the morning, you begin to doze off, and decide to take a walk around the house to make sure everything’s in order.

By eight, the lulling sound of birds chirping relaxes you enough, the way it always does when you’re back home, so you begin to drift off…

Until you feel a little flick hitting your cheek. It’s annoying, like a bug, but you think nothing of it as you settle in the chair.

But then it happens two more times. You huff, smacking your own cheek hoping to catch the bug. You look at your empty palm, skin stinging with the force of your own hit.

For a few minutes, you close your eyes, pretending to be asleep. Alert to any change around you, you finally manage to reach and catch the little culprit.

“You little shit” you mutter, but are surprised to see Tommy right next to you, struggling with the hand that is holding to his shirt.

“Mom!” he begins to yell, scared out of his mind.

What the fuck do you mean mom?

You don’t have time to ask out loud, as a burst of red magic throws you out of the porch and into the front lawn.

The sight of Wanda levitating, eyes glowing red makes you crawl back, terrified. It’s been a while since you’ve been scared shitless by something, that’s for sure.

“I will kill you” she states, her accent heavy as a hand reaches forward, red magic curling around your throat and lifting you up in the air.

Oh, well. You had a nice run. It’s very clear that nothing you do will overpower her. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, Wanda’s magic can hold you down, throw you around, choke the life out of you like she’s doing right now.

There are worse ways to go.

“Mom, stop, please!”

The lack of air is probably making you hallucinate, but a second later you’re dropped to the ground, coughing violently and rubbing your neck.

“Tommy, don’t” Wanda pulls him to her side when he tries to reach you and you see fear in her eyes.

She thinks you’ll hurt the boy.

Now, that stings more than the murder attempt she just pulled off.

When you feel like you finally caught your breath, you stand up on shaky legs, and walk away from the house and into the woods.

You don’t stop until you find a small clear and drop against a log, panting.

Maria picks up immediately.

“You’re gonna tell me the fucking truth”

“What…”

“She’s more than capable of taking care of herself. Why the fuck did you call me, then?”

There’s a pause that extends for longer than you’d like and you’re about to tell her how Wanda almost killed you when Maria sighs, giving up.

“Her powers are… unstable. Or rather, she is. I don’t have clearance to tell you everything. But we want to know if she can be a threat”

“To whom?”

“To the world”

You feel like throwing up. You should have never answered the call, you’re way over your head.

“I’m not someone who should be making those decisions. Find anyone else”

“We don’t trust anyone else enough to…”

“Call Barton”

“He’s retired”

“Well, unretire his ass. He knows her better than I do, Hill”

You have a feeling this is is an argument you’re not gonna win, unless you just pick up your shit and leave. Which you could very well do considering what just happened.

A scream that tears throw the quiet of the forest makes you look up.

“I have to go” you say, discarding the burner phone and running back to the house.

Billy’s the one screaming, but you can’t tell why until you reach the edge of the property, looking between Wanda and a strange woman, piercing blue eyes and wild brown hair making her look deranged.

“What…?”

Then, you notice the dagger she’s holding against Billy’s throat.

“Don’t pull any tricks, Wanda. I’m done playing nice”

[spooklies]

# Sinister - Platonic!Yan!Mark Grayson & Older!Sis!Reader

♡ ... › Her little brother saw the worst of it that night and since witnessing the death of their mother he was never the same. Gone was her sweet and joyful little brother who’s smile could rival the sun — his diminished light leaving a sinister shadow of what once was. But she has hope he could return to his former self one day, unaware of what else she lost that night.

— Words - 3.2k

♡ ... › Warning(s) - Forced imprisonment. Forced eating. Mentions of death. Dubious/nonconsensual touching (hugs, hand on jaw, etc)

She should have stayed home that night, she shouldn’t have rolled her eyes at her mother before leaving, she shouldn’t have avoided her mother when she leaned in to kiss her forehead–

But she had, and now she’ll never get the chance to make it up to her. At the age of eleven, she’d been pulled aside by her friend’s parents asking if they could drive her to the hospital to go be by Mark’s side. Initially, she had assumed Mark was the one who got hurt, possibly snuck back onto the roof despite her constant warnings of why he shouldn’t be up there, but then she was pulled into an all-encompassing embrace with the words she’ll never forget whispered into her ear sorrowfully.

Your mother had been found dead.

They’re saying your little brother had seen it all happen.

Your father hasn’t responded to any of his calls or messages either, so they’re asking if you could go be by Mark’s side since he’s all alone at the hospital right now.

The drive to the hospital was spent with her staring at her hands as tension pounded into the sides of her head. She’d done her best not to think about her mother or the way they’d left things off earlier and instead put all her focus on Mark and his well-being. She couldn’t even begin to fathom what he must be feeling if what they were saying was true – at just seven years old, he’d watched his mother be killed.

She spent the rest of the drive trying not to puke, and by the time she made it to Mark all of the adrenaline that had been building up was instantly expelled. She ran to Mark’s side and pulled him into a hug, the blanket they had him draped in the only thing between them for a moment before she felt his little arms peek out from the fabric to wrap around her in return.

“You’re okay now, Mark. I got you, everything will be okay,” She continued to whisper to him, her lips meeting the crown of his head after each sentence. The more she repeated the reassurances, the more she questioned who they were really for – him or herself. Meanwhile, Mark hadn’t uttered a sound, nor had he shed a single tear like she’d started to. She found it concerning at first, and when she was pulled away from Mark and ushered out of the room she’d asked the nurses about why her little brother wasn’t saying anything, or why he wasn’t reacting like she was.

Mark was just recently traumatized, they explained. He’s most likely suffering through the first symptom of that which is shock. And given his recent witness of events, he’ll need to receive a constant flow of attentive care and affection from here on out. As his older sister, she didn’t hesitate in promising the nurses as well as herself that night that she’d do just that. She’d take her role as his older sister more seriously, unknowing that in Mark’s mind, he’d made a similar vow; to ensure that he’ll never be so weak as to let someone he cares about be hurt ever again.

\\\

Life after their mother’s death was incomparable to what it once was. With their father stricken with grief and a new motive for revenge against the person who’d taken his wife from him, he’d begun teaching her and Mark how to fight. She’d played along with the lessons in the beginning, if only for Mark’s sake. She wanted to be someone he could rely on more thoroughly, and the other reason which she wouldn’t outwardly admit given how allergic to affection her father had become, was seeing how happy the training made Mark.

It was rare to see her little brother smile so much after that eventful night, she’d done everything in her power to bring back that spark by using methods that would’ve worked before. She got him his favorite comics and even offered to read them with him. She offered countless times to play catch with him in their backyard all the while regretting the numerous times he used to do the same and she would decline. But none of her methods worked nowadays, the only ones that did were when she asked to spar and practice a new move she learned.

Mark was competitive, more so than before. He never held back with each punch, leaving her with a bruise or two on more occasions than not. Meanwhile, she let him. She knew that with her taller frame and more developed muscles she’d be able to win each fight effortlessly, but she wanted to be the reason her little brother smiled again – whether that be in victory from a fight, or when she’d playfully throw him to the ground and begin tickling him while pretending to be an enemy called, “The Tickle Monster”.

She tried her best to give Mark that semblance of a childhood back, it’s what their mother would have wanted. But she’s not around to help guide them anymore, which left their father in full control. His way of parenting contradicted everything their mother had preached; where she was gentle, he was harsh. He’d see the bruises Mark would give her and pull her aside and out of earshot to call her weak-minded for letting someone else win a fight they shouldn’t have won in the first place. And instead of arguing back, she’d bite her tongue, making empty promises to not do it again only to break that promise the very next day.

A bridge had begun to build between them, and she had convinced herself that she was fine with it. If it meant Mark could be a kid for a little longer, then she’d make those necessary sacrifices in a heartbeat. So by the time she turned eighteen and still hadn’t developed her powers, she was cast aside by him in favor of Mark. With her bags packed and at the door, she was quick to train her expression into calm neutrality at Mark’s expected appearance.

“You’re leaving? But why?” Anger carved harsh lines across Mark’s face, hardening his jaw and turning his cheekbones into slashes of tension. She felt a pinprick of anxiety poke its way into her heart, the sound of her blood pumping making her almost dizzy.

“I have to, Mark. Dad doesn’t want me around and… and this house isn’t what it used to be.” She needed a change of pace, she’d spent so long putting all of her time and energy into keeping the family together. But after all of these years of failure, it was time she faced reality and lived for herself for once.

“You can’t just leave! What would… what would mom say?” She shut her eyes, inhaling her initial anger at his words, and then exhaling any regrets she could have possibly felt at that moment towards Mark.

“Don’t, if Mom was here then she would have scolded you for even saying that.” Mark huffed, shaking his head and then turning away from her, his fists clenched.

“You can’t survive on your own, you’re weak. You’ll regret doing this.”

Y/n took in his words, and as she processed them another realization settled in – one she’d kept buried in the recesses of her mind.

“I know, and I’m sorry.” At her confession, Mark scoffed and walked back to his room. By the time he was out of frame, she cupped her mouth and hiccuped, tears warming her eyes and causing her nose to sting as if she were breathing in water instead of air.

She had failed Mark – she’d failed as an older sister.

After she’d left her childhood home and all but abandoned what she had left of her family, she stopped receiving random texts and calls from Mark. It wasn’t until four years later that all of that would change when the world would be forced to plummet into despair when she’d see him again.

But he was different, attempting to compare him to the sweet and outgoing boy from their youth was laughable. She’d heard of him through the news before everything would be changed to “Viltrumite” propaganda, that a person dressed in yellow and black had begun enslaving humans alongside the man she recognized to be her father.

So like everybody else, she’d gone into hiding. People who resisted the Viltrumite empire were slaughtered without remorse. And after a while rumors had begun to spread that those who went into hiding were deemed rebels too. She’d carved her death sentence the moment she joined a group known as the Resistance, that fact would only be given more merit when more rumors began to spread, this time involving her specifically.

“They’re looking for a person who matches your description, Y/n. And they’ve promised a reward to the first person to turn you in.” Eve, a prominent figure in the resistance, had been the first to break the news to her. Her features were drawn into concern, but her eyes told her a different story.

She had considered it at one point.

“And you’re telling me this because..?”

“I’m trying to warn you, there are people here who wouldn’t hesitate in turning you in if it means they get to save their hide.”

A hypocrite, everyone who had considered turning her in, or currently still is was a huge hypocrite in her eyes. But she needed to hear Eve out, she knows better than to take things like this at only its surface level. And what she’s beginning to understand from her words caused dread to coil furiously inside her gut.

“You’re going to suggest I leave, aren’t you?”

Eve heaved out an exasperated sigh, her elbows which were propped on the table they sat at brought into a position where she could cover her face with her hands. “I’m sorry, Y/n. I’ll give you supplies to leave with, but you being here risks the entire foundation of this group. People could begin turning on each other, or worse, they could start killing if it meant being the person who turns you in first.”

She didn’t want to argue with her either, she’d spent a year at the resistance already and the whole time of her staying there, she’d rarely contributed to the few excursions she was sent on. It was clear she’d overstayed her welcome, and that Eve wasn’t suggesting – she was demanding that she leave.

So without bothering to argue, she did. But without a clear destination in mind, she was lost. The rations they supplied her with were just enough to get by for a few days, a small mercy to reprieve the possible guilt they felt for forcing one of their own to fend for themselves in the ruins of what once was. She kept to the shadows, never lingering in one place for long, and found clothes to keep her identity better hidden. After a week of surviving on her own, videos began to display on every screen she’d come across – Mark, in his recent attire, asking that she come back home.

She didn’t want to for numerous reasons, but then the lives of others were threatened, a dozen people would be killed each day she didn’t return. So with a heavy heart, she finally relented and returned to the one place she promised to never return to.

She went home.

Upon opening the door, she was surprised to see everything perfectly intact. The other houses in the neighborhood were either ransacked or destroyed altogether. But stepping inside her old home was akin to traveling back in time. With trembling hands, she approached a picture frame of her family, her eyes immediately zeroing in on her mother’s smiling face as she held both her and Mark in her arms.

She didn’t know how long she was standing there just staring and stuck reminiscing in nostalgia, but she’d been there long enough to hear the door open and for the setting sun to paint the living room in orange hues. His shadow somewhat blocked her view of the picture frame, his arms wrapping around her and pulling her into his chest was what blocked it entirely. He smelled of smoke and iron – she tried not to dwell on the implications of it either. His arms, which she remembered used to be barely long enough to reach the top of the counter, now held her in a vice-like grip as if she were still a flight risk. He rested his chin on top of her head and exhaled a shaky breath, a smile apparent in his voice as he said,

“I knew you’d come back,”

She wanted to curse at him, to refute his statement and defend her reasons for ever stepping foot in this place again. But Mark had become someone beyond reason – he only listened to what he wanted to hear. That day when she’d left, he claimed that she’d come to regret her decision. But Mark was wrong, she didn’t regret leaving, she regretted staying for as long as she had.

\\\

Mark never let her leave the house, claiming that she’d become all skin and bones compared to the last time he saw her, and that as a human she was more susceptible to disease given her prolonged lack of nutrients. She wanted to argue back with, “And who’s fault is that?” but bit her tongue, opting to give him the silent treatment instead. He’d tut, claiming her to be the childish one now whenever he didn’t get a response, and then he would leave her be as she remained cooped up in her old room. And like everything else in the house, nothing had changed. A few pictures of her as a kid enjoying her old hobbies had been moved around, some flipped upside down and others remained standing.

She had a guess on who had messed with her things, but she didn’t have plans to call him out on it anytime soon.

\\\

“Seriously? You haven’t touched a single thing on your plate!” Mark exclaimed, walking over to her untouched food with a scowl. “Wasn’t it you who used to scold me for skipping out on meals?”

She was bundled up in her blankets, her knees pulled to her chest as she faced away from him. She saw the irony in his words and remembered back when their mother had first died how difficult it was for Mark to finish meals if she weren’t around. It took their father reprimanding him and promising a more sure method to motivate him to eat again for Mark to change his bad habits.

She hopes Mark doesn’t resort to the same methods.

“Y/n… I even got your favorite, can’t you at least be a little bit grateful?”

She ignored him, like usual. Today it would seem that Mark wasn’t in the mood for her defiant nature. She heard the bed creak beside her, her entire body tensing at the proximity before she felt a hand grip onto her shoulder, just tight enough for the pressure to sting faintly.

“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t give you a chance to eat by yourself.”

Fingers were suddenly wrapped around her jaw, forcing her to turn in his direction. Mark was unmasked, his eyes set into a glare as his eyes followed his other hand which came up with a pinch of her discarded dinner. Her eyes widened when she realized what he was about to do, she tried to squirm out of his grasp but given their difference in strength it was futile. His fingers were forced down her throat, she gagged and tried to spit the foot back out but everything he was giving her was forcefully swallowed. He made sure it was.

By the time the food on her plate was gone, she was a mess, snot running down her nose and tears pouring out from her eyes and dripping down her chin. Mark let out a sigh and finally released his grip on her in favor of grabbing a tissue to wipe his hands clean. Y/n backed up on the bed until her back hit the wall, not letting him leave her line of sight.

“Next time, don’t make me do that, please.”

She made sure to finish her meals after that before Mark would come to visit her.

\\\

“Please… just say something!” He yelled, the bags under his eyes had been gradually becoming more prominent with the passing week. She was curious about what had been causing his recent bout of exhaustion and partly blamed herself for contributing to it if her current situation was anything to go by.

“You haven’t spoken a word since coming home! Did you lose your voice? Did… did someone do something to you?” He was pacing back and forth in front of her, a hand over his mouth as he began to mutter to himself at a speed that was incomprehensible to her. She could just barely make out, “I’ll kill them” before he stopped altogether, both of his hands covering his face now before he knelt in front of her… and wrapped his arms around her waist. She had been sitting on the edge of her bed, having just finished her meal, when Mark had entered and decided to spiral right before her.

He pressed his head against her stomach, the sounds of his breathing beginning to settle and then quiet sniffles breaking the silence between them. “Y/n… Y/n…” He whimpered, his body beginning to shake as the last of his resolve crumpled and he began to sob unapologetically. “I thought you had died… I thought you were gone forever!”

“I missed you so much, why aren’t you saying anything?”

“Do you hate me that much? Please don’t ignore me, I don’t know what to do without you.”

“I was so lost without you, please never leave again!”

“No… no you won’t– you can’t leave, I’ll make sure of it…”

His rambling didn’t take long to escalate, his fraying sanity on full display as he sobbed into her shirt and soaked the fabric. If she shut her eyes and pretended she was elsewhere, then she could pretend that Mark was still that same boy that held onto her in the hospital that one night and not the murderer who he’d later become with delusions that his actions were necessary – that keeping her locked inside the house was something he had to do, and that if he didn’t she would die out there because she was human.

“I love you, Y/n… never abandon me again…” She imagined it was her little brother from before confessing this, and in her delusions, she decided to comfort that same boy by gently stroking his hair until his sobs had settled down.

“Everything will be okay, I’m here.” She rasped, her voice not coming out right due to weeks of disuse. “I got you, you’re okay.” Mark had settled in her lap, his breathing finally evening out as he fell into a peaceful slumber.

“Your big sisters got you…”

[highdramas]

fresh out the slammer | dr. jack abbot

pairing: jack abbot x f!reader

warnings: language, age gap (unspecified, but reader is late 20s/early 30s and jack is mid/late 40s), talks of cheating and emotional manipulation

word count: 2.1k

summary: after a failed engagement and a move back to pittsburgh, there's only one person you want to run back to.

notes: if you are under 18 do not interact with my work or this fic. fresh out the slammer really is that girl, and i'm happy with how this fic turned out! please let me know what you think because i am a slut for feedback <3

your thumb hovers above jack abbot’s contact in your phone, a green tea shot in your opposite hand. a recipe for a mistake, or the best decision in your life, after many bad ones-- who can say?

realistically, you should be heartbroken. and maybe that feeling would come later. but right now, all you feel is burning, fiery anger. and a determination that supersedes anything else.

if someone had told you that you would’ve sat through five years of an unhappy relationship, then engagement, you would’ve called them crazy. if they told you that it would end with catching your fiance, conrad, having sex with his twenty one year old assistant in the bed you paid for– well, it bruised your ego to even think about it.

it hadn’t been all bad. on the good days, it was like the clouds would part and conrad would warm to you, remind you why you had stayed for the better part of five years. remind you why you had agreed to help pay for his law school. why you covered the rent on the apartment that you shared. why you had turned others down, even when you had felt that insatiable pull. well, not others, plural. just one very specific other. that temptation that you never quite broke from, the person who lived in the back of your mind as a what if or an if only things had been different.

at this point, you’re sure that jack has heard the news of your failed engagement and relocation back to pittsburgh– you knew that dana wouldn’t be able to keep the secret for long, from any of your former coworkers. there was a part of you that figured he had to be somewhere, chuckling to himself, told you so, kid ringing through his mind.

the move to philly was supposed to be temporary– just while he goes through law school, and then back to pittsburgh we go. but when he was offered a position at a firm, you were forced to put down roots, despite your better judgement. you didn’t have very many friends in philadelphia, nor any family– just conrad. you got a good job at a good hospital, but it wasn’t PTMC, and you knew that it never would be. the first thing you did after your blow-up argument– him, half naked, you, drunk off of a bottle of red wine– was you put in your resignation, and gave dana a call, drunk and crying, to see if they, maybe, needed a night shift nurse. to your delight, she said yes– and you were on the first train to pittsburgh to crash in dana’s guestroom. you planned to surprise the whole lot at your first shift towards the end of the week… but, to be honest, you didn’t know if you could wait that long.

you’d never fancied yourself a sit at the bar alone and drink your sorrows away type, but there was a first for everything. you already hated feeling like you were mooching off of dana and benji’s kindness, despite their insistence of the contrary. and, as lovely as they were, there was still something that stung about being privy to their happy marriage. that was what you had wanted for yourself. that was what you tried to hold onto with two hands… but fate didn’t seem to think it was your time.

but now, with the absence of a diamond on your finger and five years of your life down the toilet, all you wanted was to feel warm. all you wanted was to feel those specific eyes on you.

fuck it. you hit call. the dial tone drones on, and on. at a certain point, you’re ready to swallow your pride and accept that he’s not going to answer, but you hear his familiar voice come through the other end, “well, look what the cat dragged in.”

you have to press your lips together to stop a full smile from spreading across your face. “guilty as charged.”

the silence on the phone is heavy. he knows. you can feel it, even without him saying anything. “how are you holding up?”

that’s the only confirmation that you need. you laugh into the phone, letting out a long, drawn out sigh. “oh, you know.” you circle the rim of your glass with a finger. “never been better.”

“yeah?” you hear him groan. you can picture him stretching out on his couch, putting his hand behind his head while he talks to you. the thought makes your mouth run dry. “dana told me.”

“oh, i’m sure she did. traitor.” dana’s opinion on who you should be with was not lost on you, and you assumed it wasn’t lost on jack, either. “i’m alright, though. seriously.”

he hums and you can tell he’s turning the information over in your mind, trying to assess how honest you’re really being with him. “good enough to call me, apparently.”

“apparently.” you squeeze your eyes shut and go for it. “i’m actually already back in pittsburgh. i don’t know if dana told you. i’m staying with her and benji.” he’s still quiet on the other side. always so quiet. always giving you the room to fill the silence, as he knows you often like to do. “and i was wondering… if you’re not doing anything…” he already starts to chuckle on the other end, knowingly. “if you’d want to meet me at lefty’s?”

his silence peters out to thoughtful quiet once more, until you hear movement in the background of the call. “i’ll be there in ten.”

jack makes it in seven.

you try not to look too eager; you cross your legs and make small talk with the bartender, occasionally glance at your phone and force yourself not to look over at the door every time that it opens. but, of course– it opens, you look over, and there he is.

jack isn’t the type of handsome that you usually go for. conrad, despite being a lawyer, wasn’t so clean cut. he was a little messy, a little rough around the edges– jack looks precise, strong, sturdy. capable. and god, those arms– the spring evening has them on display, and you’re quickly remembering why it was so difficult to stay away. every cell inside of you jumped when he came around, as if you were programmed to want him.

he doesn’t quite smile, but he doesn’t need to. you stand up from your stool and he saunters right up to you, those arms going to circle around your waist. you let out a nice, long sigh– finally, it’s like your heart seems to say.

you close your eyes and rest your face in the crook of his neck. for a moment, you allow yourself to just breathe. despite all of your bravado, you really aren’t okay, or as okay as you would like dana and your mom and your best friend back home to believe you are. you’re not okay because you’re not happy with the person that you have allowed yourself to become. you’re not okay because you with that you had listened to your gut all those years ago. you’re not okay because you threw everything away for someone who who didn’t even love, not really– and that self realization fills you with shame. with jack, for a split second, it’s like you can let that facade drop at his feet. you pull back and you look at each other, and jack pushes your hair back behind your ear. “i think you need a drink,” he flags the bartender down. “another for the lady.”

you settle into barstools, and he hooks his ankle around the leg of yours and tugs you a bit closer. you can still find it within yourself to smirk and prop your head onto the palm of your hand. “you can say i told you so. i give you permission.” your voice sounds downtrodden, even in your own ears.

he raises his eyebrows and shakes his head. “i’m not saying shit.” he thanks the bartender and slides your drink to you, taking his ipa. “tell me what happened. dana didn’t give me any details.”

“oh, bless her,” you roll your eyes. but, you begin to divulge the story to him. he knows the beginning– the fights that would end in you crying and walking down pittsburgh streets by yourself, which always resulted in calling jack to pick you up. but you begin to explain the middle, and the ending, everything that happened in philly while you avoided his texts and calls, purposefully. you knew that if he knew the truth of the situation… well, he would’ve shown up, and you think he would’ve kicked conrad’s ass.

that doesn’t sound so bad now.

but, slowly, you tell him. about the cheating, the fighting, the emotional distance and the nights that you spent alone, not knowing where he was. you explain to him how you were paying for all of your joint expenses, even after he joined a firm, when you tell him how much you were working to pay for all of it, jack’s nostrils flare. “don’t,” you warn, laying your hand on his arm. “it’s my fault. why would i put up with that, i mean, really?”

“because he manipulated you,” jack says effortlessly. “he made you think that was okay. come on, you’re not telling me you blame yourself?”

“regardless–” your eyes find where your left hand rests on his arm. no ring in sight. he looks down and stares at the same spot. “regardless… it’s over.”

jack huffs a laugh that you feel right down to your bones. there’s a vulnerability in it– a hope that you could detect from a mile away. “is it?”

you squeeze his arm once. “yeah.” your hand retreats, and he doesn’t stop you. “it is.”

it’s not fair, a voice in the back of your mind says. it’s not fair to do this to him, to come back and lay at his feet for his attention– but you want him, you’ve wanted him the whole time, and you’re so tired of rejecting yourself of the things that feel good and right and real. and when he looks at you, you have to reckon with the fact that it’s not his attention that you’re looking for. it’s his understanding, his friendship, it’s him– you didn’t want to call anyone else. you didn’t want to be with anyone else.

there’s a war going on in his mind, and you can feel it from a mile away. he shakes his head and puts his face into his hands and you look away, sheepishly… but not that embarrassed, either. “oh, kid, you kill me.” he wipes his face one last time. “you know that?”

when you bite down on your lip and nod your head, you watch something shift in his face. whatever tension he was holding onto seems to release– his limbs go a bit loose, and he leans in to be closer to you, faces inches apart. “what’s the real reason you called me?”

the eye contact is invasive. you feel like he can see through every inch of you, and it creates an unease. you’re used to being unknown, unseen, and not cared for by your partner. you got used to taking the crumbs of affection and making a meal from them. you’re not used to this undivided longing that jack hits you with every time he looks in your direction. you don’t know how to handle it. if you’re being honest with yourself, you don’t know if you can handle it.

in a way, it was easier to be in a loveless relationship. in a loveless relationship, you never have to fully open yourself. you never have to worry about heartbreak, because being left is more of a relief than anything else.

if jack broke your heart, you don’t know what ruins would be left of you. that was the truth.

“because,” you start, the words feeling heavy on your tongue. “i’ve thought about you every single day since i left pittsburgh,” you swallow. “and i felt like i made a big mistake, walking away from you when i did.” the sheer intensity of his gaze grows to be too much, and you want to look away– but you know he’ll just coax you back to his hazel eyes. “and i’m selfish enough to see if maybe i can get a second chance.”

jack continues to look at you with a precision you can’t quite place. he breaks only to turn to the bartender and say, “can we close out, please?”

your eyebrows shoot up. “where are we going?”

the bartender runs jack’s card and he thanks them, scribbling a tip and a signature onto the receipt. he doesn’t look up as he says, “we’re going to my place.”

[acphengene]

Golden Hour

₊ ⁺ pairing: Jay x reader

₊ ⁺ genre: soulmate au, angst, slight miscommunication and teeth rotting fluff that’ll make your heart hurt because you’ve never been loved like this

₊ ⁺ wordcount: 3.9k

₊ ⁺ note: ugh i love these two so much as always let me know if you wanna be added to thr taglist

₊ ⁺ Jake ₊ ⁺ Jungwon ₊ ⁺ Jay ₊ ⁺ Sunoo ₊ ⁺ Heeseung ₊ ⁺ Niki ₊ ⁺ Sunghoon ₊ ⁺ Masterlist

When Jay discovered his mark, he didn’t even realize what it was at first. But by the stroke of midnight on his 13th birthday, his dream changed.

Instead of battling Pokémon’s he was suddenly in school. He had groaned and tried to go back, there was no way in hell he’d be staying in this class. He however quickly realized that he was indeed stuck here.

When he had looked around he noticed that the classroom wasn’t his, nor was his friends anywhere to be found and even the teacher was one he didn’t know. No one even acknowledged his existence, it was as if he was invisible. But most importantly of all, no one even spoke korean.

In his bones he knew what this meant, and the girl he was currently sitting right behind could only be one person. You.

He followed you throughout your day, learned your name, your likes and dislikes in the cafeteria, the name of your friends and teachers, and he clung to every bit of information.

And when he woke up, it was as if the most important parts had slipped his mind, and that unfortunately included both your face and your name.

He had with one of his pillows trying to force the information out by slamming it against his head. But after a conversation with his father, he was told that that was just how the mark worked. It couldn’t and shouldn't be that easy to find one’s other half.

The next couple of days he could’ve sworn someone was watching him, but whenever he looked over his shoulder, no one was there. He did however feel a presence there.

It took him a couple of days, or nights he supposed, of you to continuously looking over your own shoulder. Looking at him, but not really, until he realized that that presence was you, following him around while you slept.

He was happier than ever, and he swore that he would do all he could to be the best version of himself. He did his best to be a good friend, to listen and be kind to those around him. He started joining his parents in the kitchen, just as he had done when he was a child, wanting to be able to take care of you one day, by cooking you food.

It didn’t take more than a few weeks until the emotional maturity and overall kindness was second nature to the teenage boy, and you were so proud of him being yours.

Jay had always enjoyed dancing, and now he had an audience, and knowing you were watching along made him wanna be even better. He danced and he sang, and in the end that took him all the way to BigHit, a company you could never remember the name of when you woke up.

His overall passion inspired you, and even though you didn’t really have the voice for it, music had always been dear to you, so it seemed like the obvious thing to follow in that direction when it became your time to pick schools. Hopefully the love for music would bring the two of you together in the end.

One afternoon on your way home from your classes you had fallen asleep on the train, and as you slipped into the dreams that was his world, he never showed. All that was there was a mist of grey all around you.

You were in complete denial, and refused to accept that he was gone, but after a few minutes the constant flow of no’s you muttered to yourself became sobs and in the end you were nothing more than a ball on the ground as you screamed into the grey abyss.

Was this how it felt? To lose your soulmate before the bond was really sealed? An empty ever stretching room of nothingness?

When your breathing stilled and you finally removed your hands from your mouth, you heard an almost muffled sound coming from somewhere within the mist.

He had just like you panicked when everything around him had slowly disappeared, when he was no longer next to you. The train cart had become what to him almost looked like grey clouds.

Instead of panicking he tried easing his mind, his breath was faster, and all he heard was his heartbeat, but he knew he needed to calm for him to be in any kind of position to figure out what had happened.

A small voice inside his head told him to run, to hurry, to yell out for you, and he had nothing to lose so he listened.

No more than a few minutes later he heard you scream and he had thought he already ran as fast as humanly possible, he was wrong.

He called out for you, called your name because as long as he slept he could remember it.

In the distance he saw a figure and he knew in his heart it was you. “Darling!” He yelled out, breathless and tired, but it didn’t matter, you needed him, you thought he was gone.

“Jay?” You whispered in shock as he was finally close enough for you to see through your teary eyes.

He flew the last few steps and dropped to his knees without really stopping, and therefore crashed right into you. And for the first time, he was able to hold you.

His arms snaked around you, pulled you as close to him as humanly possible, all while he kept repeating two words “I’m here”

The two of you had cried together, finally able to touch and hold one another and to ask and answer questions. It didn’t matter to the two of you that you’d forget the most important parts, because he could finally take a walk with you through the grey clouds. He couldn’t care less about the lack of view, because to him you were the most beautiful view he had ever laid his eyes on.

His arm was snaked around the small of your back, always pulling you back to him in a polite but somehow possessive nature, and it made your heart flutter.

He was almost gone as quickly as he had arrived, and as you woke up in the train cart, you still felt him right there by your sides and your heart had never been fuller.

After having finally held you, Jay made it a part of his routine to nap whenever he could. It didn’t matter where he was, if it was possible he was asleep in seconds.

The two of you had started to talk out loud whenever you were alone, you both knew that the only person who really mattered was right there listening.

And every now and then you were lucky and fell asleep at the same time, and those minutes and sometimes hours were the most presious to you both.

When Jay joined I-land your interactions changed, you knew he was doing something different than usual, the background had changed from his usual training room, and instead of him training with the same few people, others had now joined.

You could feel how stressed he was, how afraid, and you hoped your presence helped him just a little.

You did your absolute best to scour the internet for whatever this place was, and then one day at twitter you stumbled upon it.

Kpop was nothing new to you, you had a few friends in your circle that were ARMY’s and when BTS joined for an episode on I-land, clips of those oh so familiar backgrounds were everywhere on your feed. And that’s when you found him.

You started the first episode and when he popped up on screen it was as if every memory you had forgotten whenever you woke came rushing back. It was almost as if you had opened a door in your mind that held the rest of information you knew about him.

He had told you about him being a trainee, of him wanting to debut, how he hoped it would lead you to him one way or another. He had sung to you in the grey clouds, and you had complimented him every time, you were in fact his biggest cheerleader and number one fan.

You cheered him on, voted for him and did your absolute best to make sure he succeeded with his dream.

That didn’t however stop you from having fun once in a while. You and your best friend had been wheezing when your presence was noticed not only by him but by the remaining boys, and you were suddenly not just his soulmate, but also the ghost of I-land.

After Jay debuted his whole world was turned on it’s head and he was from one day to another no longer just Jay, but Jay of Enhypen.

As proud as you were it also stung. You saw and heard how every woman around him talked about him, how people much more beautiful and successful than you all wished for him to be theirs.

He felt how you had distanced yourself, and he begged on his hands and knees that you would open up, but you never did.

There was a constant fear that he would find your jealousy and possessiveness of him off putting. But what you feared the most was that he would rather have you as a platonic friend instead of a romantic partner in his life.

You hated the feelings, hated that it all got to you. But how could it not? There was no guarantee with soulmates, you could choose to work on a relationship, but it wasn’t a given that it lasted. Some would turn out to be better friends with one another than they ever were partners.

Despite him showing you affection, despite him paying attention you couldn’t shut down those thoughts, they were all consuming.

What you didn’t know was that he too hated seeing how people around you reacted to your beauty and overall presence.

He knew you didn’t notice, you were just walking through the world blind to those who gawked after you on the street. Blind to the boys in the back of your classes as they fought one another to be the one to ask you as their date for a school dance.

There was no way in hell you would say yes if they asked, he had thought to himself.

So when one of them finally did muster up the courage, he smugly watched as you stumbled for the right words to let him down easy. Or so he thought.

You had looked over your shoulder and sighed, as you finally had said that one word: yes.

When Jay woke up he was fuming, and it was clear to everyone who lived with him that something had gone terribly wrong that night.

“Soooo…” Niki said as he took a sip of water in the kitchen, all while Jay was throwing around pots and pans, making enough noise to wake the entire block.

“Don’t poke the bear you idiot!” Sunghoon said before hiding behind a chair dramatically.

“What happened?” Sunoo asked as he gently rubbed his friends back in a soothing manner.

Jay had gone still at the motion, and they all watched him as his shoulders started to move. He was crying.

It lead to a chain reaction as they all formed a protective circle around him, a safe space for him to express his emotions.

“She’s going on a fucking date” he spat out the last word as if it had been poisonous.

“Wow, wow, wow… a date?” Heeseung said as he looked to the others for any kind of explanation. But they were all a mirrored image of his own surprise.

Jay took a deep breath. “Yeah, this low life of a so called ‘man’ asked her to a dance, and she said yes” he ran his hands through his hair a few times as he tried to steady his breathing.

“Dude that’s messed up” Jake said as he plopped down on a chair. Jay nodded in response.

“You have to talk to her” Jungwon said in that stern leader voice.

Jay smiled a sinister smile. “I honestly don’t even wanna see her”

Jungwon shrugged. “I don’t care, you’re not letting this misunderstanding ruin what the two of you have build”

“Who says it’s even a misunderstanding?” He crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned back on the kitchen counter.

“Uhhhh mom and dad are fighting” Niki said in an unserious and teasing tone. He was instantly shut up by the look his two hyungs sent his way. He raised his hands in surrender, earning a laugh from Sunghoon.

“The two of you have known each other for close to ten years, you know each other better than anyone. And from what you’ve told us about her, she is not one who hurts people for sport” Jungwon had too crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“He’s right Jay, you two are lucky you can even communicate, the rest of us have no idea who’s waiting for us, what they’re doing, if they’ve dated people or not. When it comes down to it, none of us have any claim on them” Heeseung echoed.

The rest of the boys both nodded and sighed at the oldest words. It was a harsh truth, one that hurt them all.

“Talk to her, stay up or take a nap or whatever it is that you do” Jake said with a somewhat reassuring smile.

Jay rolled his eyes. “Fine” he said before he skammer the door to his room.

He had stayed up all night until he felt you were finally there. He had been so tired he had fallen asleep within seconds.

“What the hell was that?!” He yelled as soon as you were in front of him.

You had stumbled back in shock. “W-what?” You asked with surprise over his anger.

“Why the hell did you agree to go out with that douche?”

He watched as you rolled your eyes in annoyance, and he had never been more annoyed, disappointed or mad at you.

“How are you surprised? We’re nothing to each other Jay! We’re basically stalkers appointed by the universe itself, we’re nowhere near one another for fuck sake!” You yelled at him, up until now you had never done that.

“I don’t understand any of this… how could…” he ran his hand over his face as he felt how his voice was close to breaking. He was heartbroken, and it was your fault.

“I know who you are okay, I’ve known since I-land. I follow you everywhere, I see the people who thirst over you, I see the young women who would die to be in my place, and honestly? I’m pretty sure you’d much rather be with one of them than with me…”

He saw your tears stream down your face as you admitted everything to him. He didn’t know you knew, he had seen no indicators whenever he was with you. But what he failed to understand was how you would think so little of yourself.

His hand grabbed yours and he pulled you into his chest. His other laid on your cheek as he forced your eyes to meet his.

“Listen to me carefully when I tell you this darling. I want no one, but you. Every moment I’m not here with you, a part of my soul, my heart, is missing. Don’t ever think that you’re not good enough, not beautiful enough. There is no one but you. I scan every crowd, every concert, every fanmeet for your face. It’s you or no one else”

You stared at him as the tears fell, he had managed to wipe away every insecurity in a matter of seconds.

He sent you a shy smile. “I love you darling, you and you alone . And trust me when I say I will continue to love you until the day I die”

You had pulled him into an embrace. “I love you too” you had whispered.

He still smiled when he woke up. You loved him, and he loved you.

“So, I’m taking everything went well?” Sunoo said as he stood in the door.

Jay sat up in the bed with a grin. “Yeah it did”

“Good” Sunoo said before he opened the door wide and his room was suddenly flooded with his brothers.

“She loves me” he said and was instantly knocked over as they all screamed and tackled him into the mattress.

“Of course she does” Jungwon said as he ruffled his hair.

“Thank you Won” he said as he pulled the younger one in for a hug.

“Any time”

“I’m coming” you said as your head was in his lap. You felt him freeze beneath you.

It had been almost a year since the two of you had said those three little words to one another, and hearing about both Jake and Jungwon finding their other half’s had been the last push you had needed to buy the plane ticket without a return date.

“Don’t lie to me” he whispered.

“I’m not, I’m currently on my way” you said with a small smile as your hand came into contact with his cheek.

“How am I going to find you?” Jay said as he leaned into your touch.

“I don’t know… I can’t tell you where to be, or even where I’ll be but don’t stay too much in the dorm or at work okay? Go out and search for me”

“Darling as I’ve said, I always search for you”

You smiled, you knew he was. Instead of telling him you had considered surprising him, and had he been any other man that might’ve been possible.

“I can’t wait” you said.

He took your hand and kissed your knuckles. “Me too”

Jay did exactly as he had promised, he walked around the city, ate every meal outside the comforts of his home. He even attended some of their own lucky draws just to see if you were there.

As the days went by he became more and more desperate. It helped that you were now on the same sleeping schedule, the two of you had never spent this much time together. But he wanted you with him.

He sat by the Han river on a bench, as he tried to calm himself. Usually bodies of water had that effect on him, but it seemed that that wasn’t the case today.

He ran a hand through his hair as he sighed. He closed his eyes as he let the sun warm his face. It was getting late, and soon it would be pitch black, but the golden hour was so beautiful from here.

In the corner of his eye he saw someone sit on the other end of the bench. Whoever they were, they too seemed smitten with the view and the golden colors.

“It’s beautiful” you said as you looked at him.

Jay gave you a small nod and polite smile in return, never taking the time to actually look your way. You laughed. “My love, look at me” you said and the sound of that laugh, of that voice finally made something click inside of his very soul.

He whipped his head your way so fast that he fell from the bench and onto the ground. You laughed, unable to figure out how to process all of these emotions.

“You… you’re here” he said in disbelief. Instead of pulling him up you sat down on the ground next to him.

His breaths were quick and shallow, his eyes were big in chok and despite the warm colors of the sun it almost looked like he had gone completely pale.

“Is this a dream?” He asked between breaths, he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to hear your answer by the frantic beating of his own heart.

He saw you smile at him, that wonderful wonderful smile. He took you in, all of you, he knew every little part of your face, of your hands of your body. But up until this exact second it was as if he couldn’t remember, as if the precise details had been lost in his memory. But now everything came back to him.

You reached out with your hand and he hesitantly took it, almost as if he was afraid that you would disappear if he made any sudden moves.

“You’re actually here?” He asked, and you nodded in response.

“Yeah. I’m actually here”

“Oh darling” he said as he pulled you as close to him as he physically could. The interaction reminded him of that first time he had had you in his arms. When the two of you had finally met in those grey clouds that were your mind. But this time you were actually here.

He could smell your shampoo and that sweet scent of vanilla from your perfume, he felt the heat from your hands where there usually were none, and the fast beating of your heart that matched his own so beautifully.

“I love you” three words he kept repeating, three words you repeated back to him over and over again.

He had both of his hands in your hair pulling you away from him to really look at you. “Gosh you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. How did I get this lucky?”

“Just kiss me already you fool” you said with a flicker of your eye. God you would be the death of him.

He closed the distance between the two of you, and finally his lips met yours. He was gentle but you could feel the desperation, the need to claim you right then and there.

He groaned into your mouth as his hands snaked around your waist and pulled you into his lap. Your hands flew up into his hair as you combed through the soft locks, earning small whimpers from him.

You smiled at his reaction. Smiled into the kiss and felt how he did the same. “You’re never leaving my side ever again” he said before losing himself in you once more.

“Never” you echoed.

He rested his forehead against yours with closed eyes and you saw how a tear slid down his cheek. You made a little hum, and he looked at you with such love you thought you’d be able to write love songs about this, about him for the rest of your life.

You started to stand but he pulled you back to him. “Where do you think you’re going?” He said in a teasing tone.

“I was thinking now might be a good time to go home.”

Home, home with you. You did not have to tell him twice. The two of you stood and he pulled you close to him, a hand resting on the small of your back as you walked back to his car.

Everything around you looked as if it had been dipped in gold, even that bond inside your chest seemed to be the color that the sun painted the world in. It was singing, humming a tune more beautiful than anything you had ever heard, with exception of your soulmate's voice of course.

Your walk finally had a view, and you had never been happier than in this moment. But you knew there was much more happiness to come as the two of you embarked on this journey that would be the rest of your lives.

And when you fell asleep in each other's arms, only to meet each other in your dreams once more, the grey clouds had been substituted for golden ones. Just as they had been when you had met.

Taglist: @why4anne @juicygirl4life @azzy02 @bluxjun @why-did-i-just-do-this @elairah @ramyeonzwithspam @floating-moon-dust @skyearby @acourtofmoonlightandstars

[call-sign-shark]

Of Bending and Breaking || Tommy Shelby x Reader

Summary: Always being the one who cares for others comes with a price: you break down, but the most unexpected person is here for you: Tommy, the man you were forced to marry.

Words: 2,3k

TW: Hurt/Comfort, very tiny mention of past sexual assault, no proofreading 'cause it comes from clearing my drafts.

Notes: Aunt Isabella's is a tribute to my own aunt Isabelle who, unfortunately, died because of cancer a few years ago.

It all started with Polly shaking Tommy like a tree, her thin hands firmly grabbing his nephew’s broad shoulders: “You can’t keep sabotaging yourself like this, Tom.” These were the words that left her quivering lips as she dragged his staggering frame to the bathroom and pushed his face into the bathtub right under the tap. When the freezing water splashed all over his neck, Tommy opened his blank eyes wide and inhaled sharply, as if he had suddenly come back to life. Since Grace’s awful death, the gangster was the shadow of his former self. When he wasn’t waging a senseless war with Father Hughes and the Italian, or when he wasn’t keeping his buzzing mind busy with work, Tommy usually numbed himself with a deadly combination of whisky and opium until his deep-seated pain became bearable. It was the night he almost overdosed that Polly decided to take charge of his nephew and found him a new wife, in the hope of soothing his nephew’s mind and finding a mother figure for poor little Charlie. The idea had obviously sent Tommy in a fit of anger but Polly Gray couldn’t care less.

Regarding your own situation, it was not the opium nor the loss of a dear lover that had led you to Birmingham’s most dangerous man but rather the bump in your belly. Aunt Isabella had understood what you were suffering from the moment you had stormed out of the vardo to throw up your breakfast in the nearest bush. The tall and lean woman, whose light brown and curly mane danced in the cold autumn wind, had looked at you right in the eyes and raised one of her thin eyebrows. If there was something pleasant with her, it was that words weren’t necessary.

Yet, later she encountered Polly, with whom she had been a great friend since childhood, and explained that a powerful American man had forced his seeds in you during his stay in England. Not willing to go through the traumatic experience of aborting, Isabella only saw one solution to your problem: you needed a husband who could protect you and your future baby from the evil man with his scarred lip. A wedding would be your salvation. At the realization of what Aunt Isabella had planned for you, you tried to run away from the camp in the middle of the night but she knew you too well and soon caught you, her sly hand firmly grabbing your wrist: “Y/N! It’s for your sake! He’s rich, he needs a wife and he is feared! You’ll be safe with him, don’t you understand?” She explained, cupping your face with her long fingers adorned with claws painted in red and far too many rings. “I don’t need a man to protect me! I don’t need anyone. He’s older and he’s a criminal! Who’s going to protect me from him eh? Have you think ‘bout that?” You cried, the soft light of the sunrise turning your tears into liquid gold.

But still, you wedded him and what was supposed to be the happiest day of your life turned out to be a dull event during which you dissociated the whole time. The only memories you had in mind were two piercing and frightening turquoise eyes staring right at your soul and soft whiskey-tasting lips stealing a quick peck from your cherry lips. A kiss devoid of any form of affection. And then, the groom left.

From what Aunt Isabella told you, your husband had spent most of the celebrations with his brothers, drinking and taking bets outside of Arrow House. Months had passed and still, you felt estranged to this place and its staff. The only moments your heart lightened were when Aunt Isabella visited you, or when Charlie spent time with you, otherwise you remained emotionally closed, trapped in your own mind. Overall you could not complain: You had a house far too big for you with plenty of workers willing to exhaust every one of your wishes. Charlie was a sweet boy, who loved you with all his heart even if you were well aware that you’ll never replace his mother. As for the Shelby clan, they were cordial with you without being really friendly either. And there was Tommy…

Cold and distant Tommy, who you only saw late at night when he discretely slipped under the bedsheet and turned his back to you without uttering a single word. Busy Tommy, whose replies remained concise and spoken with a quiet husky voice each time you asked him something — at least he talked to you a little bit. Trapped in a loveless marriage, that was what you were: Tommy was more a stranger, a mere gust of wind in your life, than the love of your life.

Still, the gangster stayed true to his words and he provided for everything, never refusing to give you money when you asked, and protecting you from the man who had taken your innocence. He even gifted you a wonderful stallion because he knew how much you missed riding. In exchange for his protection and riches, all you had to do was take care of Charlie and do your best to be there for your husband when his darkness threatened to swallow him whole.

You found out about the nightmares shortly after your wedding and quickly decided to do something about it. When he woke up screaming and drenched in sweat after tasting the tunnels’ dirt and Grace’s crimson blood in his troubled sleep, you always cradle him, your fingers losing themselves in his wet dark hair to pet his head gently. At first, you feared his reaction, expecting the infamous Tommy Shelby to push you and not-so-kindly ask you to keep your distance but, to your greatest surprise, he never did. Instead, he would bury his face in your cleavage, panting and trembling, and let you reassure him. Just like he let you bring dinner to him each time he drowned himself in paperwork and forgot to eat. He never commented on your cooking skills though, even if he always handed back empty plates.

The blood on his skin? You cleaned it.

The wounds of his flesh? You never failed to patched them up.

The hole in his heart? You tried to seal it off with caresses, soft kisses, and shoulder massages. Maybe one day he would slowly turn his iciness into affection. Little did you know that he needed it. And by it he needed you. Just like the whole family. How many times did you walk the streets of Birmingham at night, seeking for Arthur and then bringing him home to take care of a wasted and high him? Far too many to keep track. Similarly, you had spent countless evenings helping Ada when she felt overwhelmed, either nursing Karl or cleaning her house when, just like her brother, she overworked herself. And finally, Polly could never thank you enough for everything you did to soothe her mind after the gallows, still haunted by the bite of the hanging rope on her throat.

“Thanks Poppy.” Arthur muttered, the gravel in his voice coated with shame now that you were down clearing and disinfecting his split knuckles. The oldest brother had started to affectionately call you so for the sole reason that, according to him, you must probably grow better when blood was considering how much you had seen when patching the Shelby siblings. “Sorry for errr… For the mess.” He went on, his steel blue eyes fleeing yours.

“That’s okay.” You replied in Romani, “You, sweet idiot.” Endeared by how surprisingly soft Arthur’s harsh complexions could turn, you couldn’t help but gently put your hand on one of his cheeks. And during this tender display of affection, Arthur was convinced he had caught sight of a smile — a scarce event barely happening on your beautiful but resigned face. Comforted by the warmth of your palm, he leaned into your touch and looked at you through dark lashes, his lids half-closed.

“Tommy’s one lucky bastard to have ya for himself, eh."

"Let's both flee together then." You teased, the familiar tone of Romani language rendered even more melodious by your siren-like voice.

"Don't tempt me, little one." Arthur replied, softer than intended and probably only half-joking.

The oldest Shelby brother had barely closed the door when your smile disappeared and tears flooded your eyes. Admittedly, spending months of repressing your own anguish didn’t do any good to you despite thinking that focusing on others would have helped. Quite the contrary, all those negative emotions you had left on the back burner turned into a silent and deadly parasite that was eating you up. Dragging your tired frame to the cold and empty marital bedroom, you curled up in a ball in a corner of the room, your bruised knees pressed against your chest, “Positive. You gotta stay positive and push forwards y’see Y/N? Do the right things for the family…” You whispered to yourself as your breath started to quicken for the ball of sorrow in your throat was growing more and more. Yes, you had to smile and say that all was just fine because you knew you were lucky to be here and that you hadn’t any real reason to complain now according to the rest of the world. And yet, the truth was you were tired. So tired and overwhelmed by everything around you. With your wild soul trapped here in the mighty walls of Arrow House, you could not help but drown in an excruciating feeling of worthlessness.

You were lost in a world too difficult for you to understand. Lost and unprepared for a life that asked for too much. When you were living in the vardo with Aunt Isabella life seemed so much easier despite the lack of money and, sometimes, food. Prior to your wedding, she used to tell you that everything would become clear once you’d be a wife and a mother. You’d be an adult adult, you see? But she lied. They all lied. Even with a husband and kids, you still felt like a scared and confused child, who wanted to hide under the blanket of her warm bed and never face the world ever again. These concerns of yours? You never shared because you wanted the Shelby to keep seeing you as a reassuring presence— moreover, God knew how much their broken hearts needed your silent care.

Bringing your trembling fingers to your mouth, you muffled a first sob, convinced it would be enough to keep you from crying. What you didn’t expect was to burst into tears, uncontrollably weeping. After all this time forcing yourself to be strong, your mind had enough. As your heart-wrenching cries echoed in the room they muffled Tommy’s footsteps that were coming closer and closer. When the door flung open, you did not even move, lost in a spiral of pain and psychological exhaustion.

“Y/N?!” Tommy called you, his usual coldness swept away by a surge of panic. He closed the distance between you and him with hastened steps, and put one of his knees on the floor to be at your level, “What’s wrong, ay?” His husky voice asked, worries thickening his Brummie accent even more. You hiccuped and raised your flooded eyes towards him, parting your lips to answer. Yet, as soon as your gaze met his turquoise iris you started weeping again, louder this time. Words were at a loss by dint of never having the chance to express what you felt throughout your life. “Bloody Hell, Y/N! Speak!” Tommy hissed, his heart now drumming in his chest at the sight of his young and always-so-strong wife crumbling in bits in front of him. Never in his life, he had felt so powerless, not even in the tunnels… And, God, he hated it.

“N-nothing. I don’t… I don’t even know it’s just that— I’m so fucking tired, and lost, and confused, and afraid!” You spoke with a very fast pace, spitting years and years of repressed emotions flowing from you all the while feeling deeply ashamed of your mental breakdown. When you were done venting, you simply turned your head and waved off the topic, tears still rolling down your reddened cheeks “Anyway! You’ve got — more important things to do.”

“Stop it, Y/N,” He scolded, low voice rumbling in his chest. His strong and calloused hands, damaged by the war and hard work, cupped your face with a softness you didn’t know he possessed. For the first time in your life, his grip felt utterly reassuring as if you knew these scarred palms were not going to let you fall apart. Never. “You’re what’s important right now.” With that being said, Tommy leaned his forehead against yours and his enchanting eyes soon met yours to force you to focus on nothing else but the vast blue oceans which composed them. “I want you to calm down.”

“I can’t, I can’t—“ You tried to speak but you couldn’t, struggling to breathe under the crushing weight of your panic attack. Your mouth gaped, looking for the oxygen it couldn’t find.

“Oi!” Tommy said louder. So loud that his voice managed to overcome the cacophony of your beating heart and the buzzing sound of your anxiety that filled your head, “I want you to breathe with me, Y/N. Alright? You can do that for me, ay?” He asked, his eyebrows slightly frowned and charming crowfeet appearing at the corner of his eyes — how odd it was to see Tommy’s face veiled with something else than unsettling placidity. Caught off guard by the sudden realization of how close he was, you quieted down a little bit and soon followed the pattern of his breathing.

One long inhale through the nose, one longer exhale through the mouth, and a short pose.

Do it again.

Your shaky hands slowly grabbed his wrists in a desperate attempt to anchor you to reality. This, as well as the focus you had on his mesmerizing complexions.

His long dark lashes — you inhaled slowly.

His cat-like turquoise iris — you exhaled.

His salient cheekbones — You stopped breathing for a very short while.

The myriad of freckles — “Breathe with me, Y/N.”

The soft, hoarse lilt guided you through the dark and thick fog of your own brain, just like a lighthouse. Coming back to clearer waters, your body finally relaxed and fell almost limp in his arms. And once again he caught you, keeping you all safe against his chest. Tommy’s voice, low and steady, resonated one last time in the bedroom with a reassuring warmth as he uttered the simple yet powerful phrase, "I'm here." Each word carefully enunciated, carrying a quiet strength that soothed and reassured, like a comforting anchor in a stormy sea.

Keep your writers motivated: Reblog and/or comment if you liked it, you filthy animal! o/ English is not my first language btw.

Taglist: @adaydreamaway08 @theshelbyclan @jomarch-wannabe @esposadomd @zablife @woofgocows @anathemasworld @anastasia000 @kate654 @kxnnxy @babayaga67 @meowtastick @shelbyssins @sarai-ibn-la-ahad @bluevenus19 @raincoffeeandfandoms @kishie8 @zablife @alexandra-001 @dearshelby @alexizodd @helen06dreamer @kmc1989 @emotionalcadaver @peakyswritings @peakyltd @chaosinkest1996 @vanhelsingsbigtoe @red-riding-wood