#oddly this feels comforting... i was going to feel Some Sort of Way at nothing coming close to rev but this kind of does without it being-

[dirtyoldmanhole]

I know it's not kosher to constantly say one game reminds me so much of another but holy hell linura reminds me so much of (yrmr)valla i'm flabbergasted. mentally jumping up and down at the constant WATER MOTIFS and the styles of ruins that feel like they're floating in the mists.

elden ring really was the absolute best game to larp as possessed!gunter lmao.

[madamechrissy]

Well, are you mine?

Pairings: Sukuna x fem reader

Summary- You're Yuuji Itadori's best friend since forever, and his older brother Sukuna is a grade A ass to you. After a nasty breakup with your ex, you text Yuuji who's out for the night, he gives you the go ahead to stay at his place. But it's only Sukuna there, and he is oddly comforting? You've had it bad for him forever, but little do you know, so has he, even if he doesn't show it, because Sukuna thinks Yuuji loves you (ahem, he's WAY wrong) Porn w/feelings, best friend's brother trope, Duo POVS

CW- Modern Sukuna, he's a gamer and tsundere af lol, this is SMUTTY asf, loss of virginity (don't mention much abt it aside from reader is one) Sukuna is ROUGH lol, oral sex (m and f recieving) overstimulation, dirty talk, Sukuna calls reader brat and slutty, lowkey breed kink, possessiveness, marathon sex lol. Sukuna is BAD AT FEELINGS lmaooo, but he whimpers? Reader- 20, Sukuna 25- 6.4k WC!

Comments/reblogs appreciated if you enjoy this one!

You’re walking out in that pathetic excuse for a tank top and the most revealing shorts that morning when Sukuna sees you, peeking up from his monitor, proceeding to get sniped like some damn noob when he sees your nipples perk up through the material. He curses loudly, slamming off his headset then, you look at him in surprise, lips parted just so.

“What’s wrong?” You ask, he glares at you then, standing up as he takes you in, irritated you have such an effect.

“What are you doing here? Yuuji isn’t even home until tonight.” He says with a glare, ruby eyes glinting, you tense just a bit, Sukuna is tall and intimidating, and constantly an asshole.

“He said it was fine, here’s the text.” You swipe up on your phone, he snorts as he looks at it.

“You have a teddy bear case? Stupid.” Your eyes narrow in irritation when he picks up the phone, scoffing as he sees the texts. “God. What a simp you’re making him.”

“What now? Am not even! He’s my best friend, not that you’d understand, you don’t even have any. You’re such an ass.” You snatch your phone back from him, earning his scowl.

“You’re an annoying brat, y’know that? If Yuuji didn’t simp so badly I wouldn’t have to deal with you.”

“Whatever! Ugh.”

“Why’d you need to come here anyway? Boyfriend piss you off?” You sigh, crossing your arms, just pressing your breasts up more for his view.

“He cheated on me.” Sukuna pauses then, hearing the hurt in your voice, seeing it on your pretty face, annoyingly pretty face.

“Shit.” Is all he manages, and you sigh, looking at him then, emotions in the back of your throat.

“That was mean of me to say, that you have no friends. I know you do… I’m sorry I said it.” His mouth opens, then closes, his brows lowering.

“You’re always bitchy to me, it doesn’t surprise me.”

“And you’re always an ass to me.”

“Tch, I’m not gonna fawn over you like your little best friend does, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, every time I stay or hang out you tell me you can’t wait for me to leave, or are just mean as shit.” Sukuna rolls his eyes, looking up at the ceiling then, it’s true he is mean to you constantly.

Every time you stay, he’s picking on you or making snide remarks, to the point he’s made you cry sometimes, and then felt like shit. Nothing was worse than seeing you cry, but he didn’t know what else to do, because you’re haunting his every dream, even last night he was stroking his cock to a stupid Instagram picture of you.

The thing is, Sukuna wants you, and wants you badly, so much it makes him pathetic, his little brother’s best friend, who Sukuna knows has had some stupid crush on since forever. Sukuna’s only five years older than you, but twenty just seems too young, you seem too inexperienced, too innocent and sweet, the last thing you needed was him around you.

And he knew you had some little crush on him, most of knowing him, you used to literally make doe eyes at him, he found it sort of cute at first, but now you’re a whole woman, walking around in nothing half the time. He was happy you got a boyfriend, despite the odd clench in his chest from hearing it, only because he wouldn’t have to see you as much.

So, the best course of action?

Make you hate him, and he thinks it’s worked, you don’t make doe eyes, you’re not fawning over him, or pathetically trying to flirt. No, you’re just as mean to him as he is to you now, god and you scowling and flipping him off? That turns him on more than fucking anything, unfortunately.

“Fuck him.” Sukuna says, and you’re shocked for a moment, as you stare up at the guy you’ve had it bad for since you can remember, Yuuji’s older brother, you thought he was so cool, you were always coming over more and more to see him.

Yuuji was the best friend in the world, so it wasn’t that you didn’t enjoy hanging out with him, it’s just your mind kept wandering, Sukuna was always a grump, but something shifted in the past couple of years, especially this year. He was downright mean and nasty to you, making jokes, pinching on you, ruffling your hair, rolling his eyes whenever you were near.

If his goal was to make you hate him, you don't, you just really can't stand him. Can't stand seeing him shirtless seeing the tattoos around his biceps, down his strong chest, hate seeing his stupid abs that have abs!?! Why does he have to be such an attractive ass, you don't know, but your crush hasn't gone away.

It's worse.

Last night you'd seen Sukuna was here when you'd used the key Yuuji let you have, he was crashed out on the couch sprawled out, movie ended, you'd covered him with a blanket and given him a pillow. In his sleep he almost looked sweet, you thought, having slept in the guest room, he'd swirled in your mind, your boyfriend having cheated hurt, but thankfully you hadn't taken that step with him…

No, you stupidly still wanted Sukuna as your first.

As if that would happen, he hates you so much clearly, and you have seen the girls he brought over, older and more experienced, more confident and worldly. You weren't there yet, especially when the man you're wanting doesn't see you as anything but a little brat.

“Sukuna, are you comforting me?” Sukuna scoffs.

“Of course I'm not, but also… he's a fucking idiot. You don't deserve someone who does that shit.” You blink back tears then, stepping to him, hugging him.

Sukuna freezes, as he inhales that scent, something floral and irritatingly delicious, your soft breasts pressing against his chest, your nipples taut under the tank top. You're tiptoeing, holding him around his chest, he grimaces, wanting to pick you up and drag you to his room, but he shoves at you.

“Annoying brat, off me god.” You shake your head, snuggling closer, when he realizes you're crying. It annoys him how you wrench his heart when you look up, tears falling out of your stupidly pretty eyes.

Did you have to affect him this way?

“Thank you, Kuna.”

“Don't call me that, ugh.” He places his huge hands at your waist to shove you off, but you gasp at it, taking over your waist, burning your skin then. He falters, his breath coming faster as he holds you there, just a little off of him, eyes going to your lips, tempting him to no end. “Stupid nickname.” He grumbles.

“I… you used to not mind it. What happened to make you hate me so much?” You whisper, hands slipping up his chest, so much revealed in the soft white shirt he's wearing, you feel his heart thudding under your hand.

“Don't hate you, just you're annoying.”

“How?”

“Just being here.”

“So I annoy you just existing?”

“Yes.” He speaks through clenched teeth, when you lean back, and he views your body. “Why do you fucking dress like that!?”

“It's comfy. What do you care, Kuna?”

“Stop it with the stupid nickname. Your… your body annoys me.” He is whispering now, hands slipping down your hips, you let this little sound out from the back of your throat that destroys him then.

“My body, what not your type? Don't wanna see it?”

“You're so fucking stupid.”

“How can a body piss you off? Ah!” Sukuna had you picked up now right on the kitchen counter, your breaths come in pants at getting handled like this, his big hands on your thighs, his eyes boring into you.

“All I can think about is all the ways I wanna fucking ruin you for any stupid boy you'll ever meet.” Your heart thuds in your chest, blinking rapidly as if you're in a fucking dream.

“Wh-what?” He moans softly, rough pads of his fingers slipping up your thighs, watching the goosebumps rise everywhere.

“Thinking how good your little pussy tastes, how pretty your tits must be, how your face would look fucked out.” You're moaning out loud when he finds you then, lips hovering just an inch from yours, he moans when he finds your slick cunt dripping, he laughs then, softly. “That wet for me? Haven't even done shit.”

“Shut up and touch me, please, Sukuna.” The way that his name sounds from your lips? Your eyes dilating? Your wet cunt on his fingers? His cock starts throbbing from touching you, watching your face when he shoves a finger in your hole, you grip him like a vise.

“Anyone ever made you cum? Any of your dumb boys?” You grip his wrist when his fingers curl in your gummy walls, finding that spot instantly and pressing on it, making you gasp as you gush down his fingers. “Fuck you're wet, why are you so stupid tight, fuckin feel you…”

“Don't know… I… Kuna, m’a v-virgin, ngh!” He yanks away then, panic on his face. “Don't stop, please.”

“A virgin, how the fuck?” You whine out as he backs off, sucking you off his fingers, his cheeks moaning, those crimson eyes dilated, the hottest thing you have ever seen. “Why do you taste so good? God I can’t stand you.”

“Kuna, please… just…”

“No, I won’t do that, I sure the fuck won’t take that. How are you even…”

“I’ve been waiting.” You murmur, earning his brows raised, barring you on either side with his strong arms, leaning close.

“You what now?”

“For you, stupid.” Sukuna cups your face with one hand, hot as your overheated cheek, so close your breaths mingle.

“No way, I’m not doing that, it’s bad enough I even touched you, now you’ll be all I can think about, annoying little brat ruining me.” His words hit, your pussy throbbing around nothing then, you lean your head and kiss his palm, melting him as you do. “Don’t do shit like that.”

“Do you want me?” You ask, thighs on either side of him.

“What do you think?” He grabs your hips, and you feel him, huge and hard against you over the fabric of his pants and your shorts, he grabs you tight, you’re looking at those lips, usually in a smirk or a sarcastic grin, so pouty right now, begging for your kisses.

“Doesn’t have to be anything serious-”

“How can you say that? No, it would be.” You would end him the moment he got inside you, he already knows it, tasting your sweet arousal on his tongue, looking at the color your cheeks are tinged, imagining your face as his cock leaks precum against his boxers.

“I can be… casual…” You’re grinding on him, you’ve never felt this, the longing for him in this way, you’re jutting your chin up, trying to kiss him, but he pulls his face away, shaking his head. “Kiss me.”

“No way.” He won’t be able to stop, at least at this point he can rip himself off of you, taking several breaths, turning away from how delectable you look sitting with your thighs spread on his counter.

“I’ve seen all the women you bring over the years, why not me? You clearly are casual about it?” You hate the emotions in your throat. “Am I not…”

“If you say some dumb shit like you’re not attractive, I swear you’ll piss me off. Look at you.”

“You won’t look at me.”

“I can’t right now, I won’t just fuck you, especially your… first I… can’t. Just drop it, just forget it even happened.” You jump off the counter then, breathing fast, heart nearly pounding out of your chest.

“I’m sorry I asked.” He curses as you run off to the room, his head is spinning from your scent, your taste, the images now burned in his brain, your slick still on his fingertips.

He could never just take your virginity, what if he hurt you? What if he hurt you emotionally, he sure his entire life has never had a real girlfriend, he’s had hookups and booty calls, that’s it. And for the past year he’s pictured you half the time when he’s played with himself, when he’s slept with them, but he can’t do that, you deserved better than him surely.

You’re all dressed now, you stand there and look at him, he hates the tears that have streaked down your face, your bag on your shoulder. “You don’t have to leave, just leave me alone.” He says then, and you laugh without humor, shaking your head.

“I can’t face you after that, too embarrassing. Don’t even tell Yuuji I came over, please.” You go to leave and Sukuna stops you, a hand on the knob above you, his hard body towering behind you, you feel so small next to him, god who didn’t?

Sukuna runs his fingers down your spine, you shiver from the sensation, he leans close, his lips against your ear. “You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

“No?” You look at him then, noses touching, so close.

“Everyone wants me, it’s fine brat.” He smirks, you glare then, smacking at his hand on the knob and pulling open the door.

“Fuck you, Sukuna.” You say, he grins at you like the asshole he is, but when you shut the door behind you, you don’t see him cursing himself, forehead resting on the door, his stomach sick.

Why’d he do that?

Why couldn’t he just give you what you wanted, what he wants so badly?

He’s terrified to disappoint you, but he already has.

*****

Two Weeks Later

“Please stay for dinner!? Please, please, please!” Yuuji begs you, literally on his hands and knees bowing, you giggle, shaking your head.

“No, I can’t… your brother-”

“He won’t bother you, he just yells at the game, it’s fine! Never used to bother you, and I miss you.” He looks up with sweet honey eyes, making you sigh then, nodding, he jumps up all excited. “Perfect, I need to show you the recipe my brother Cho showed me!”

“How is he? I miss him.” You say softly, Yuji’s other brother lived far away now, he was a sweetheart, much unlike Sukuna.

“He’s doing so well, his band is so popular now. I’ll tell him you said hi! You know he thought you were so pretty.”

“Cho did? No way.”

“Well who doesn’t, even Sukuna does.” You pause then, faltering as you look at the kitchen, where he’d had a long, thick finger inserted in your little hole. Where he’d tasted you.

“Um, I doubt all that. He hates me.” Yuuji shakes his head, checking his phone then. “Your girl?”

“We’re not dating yet, just talking, but we are going to a movie tonight. You know her, yeah?”

“Yes, she was so sweet in school.”

Sukuna walks in as Yuuji shows you their texts, his eyes darting to you, taking in your little pleated skirt and top with some dumb anime character you liked on it, you looked fucking adorable. So cute he hates it, so he scowls at you, earning your scowl right back, as Yuuji looks between you both.

“Woah, calm down. Sukuna, I have a date!” Sukuna’s heart drops, Yuuji surely would be good enough for you, he’s sweet (annoyingly sweet) and devoted. Choso and Yuuji were sweet, he’s not sure how he got all the asshole of the family, but he supposed it came from taking care of them both, being the oldest.

He should be a little relieved, you’d leave him alone now, right? You wouldn’t give him that look, he would finally know you’re untouchable, he clears his throat now, hating that his heart feels like it’s ripped in half. Just two weeks ago, the last time he saw you, he’d felt your heat, he’d had you begging for him, but he turned you down.

He did this.

“Finally, you two are going on a date, huh?” He says, trying to act casual, and Yuuji snorts, shaking his head, as your eyes go wide.

“Us, no! We’re too close, we’d never ruin our friendship. Though I sure asked her out a lot in school.”

“You tried.” You say with a little smile, as Sukuna stands there dumbfounded. “You’d never have liked dating me, I hate your zombie movies too much.”

“You have the worst taste, it’s true. Now, Sukuna, it's this girl…” Yuuji starts going on, and Sukuna can barely hold his composure, as he shows him a picture of her, as he’s rambling.

He was convinced his brother was in love with you, it’s a huge reason he has pushed you so far away, he’d never dishonor him like that, even if he knew you didn’t feel the same. He struggles to focus now, as you look down nervously, as if you could hear his thoughts, feel what he wants so badly.

“Thought you simped for the brat here.” He says, Yuuji laughs.

“No, she’s just a beautiful best friend.” He kisses your cheek and you smile warmly at him, it lights up your face, doing the annoying thing to his heart again. “If you’re not so mean, maybe she’ll stay for dinner.”

“Me, mean? Never.” You and Yuuji both roll your eyes at him.

“I don’t have to stay, Sukuna, I was just stopping by.” Your words break him down, remembering how mean he was, and he didn’t apologize, why should he though?

He should have said something.

You’re feeling his gaze on you, as he runs a hand through his pastel locks, the same shade as Yuuji but his are longer, messier, he has a little stubble on his cheeks you don’t remember seeing. As you further look, you see the dark circles under his eyes, how tense he is when he opens his mouth, just to close it, and re open it again, as if he doesn’t know what to say.

Sukuna is… on edge?

“You can stay, what do I care? Used to your ass around anyway.” He walks to his room then, and Yuuji excitedly talks to you, but your mind is in that room, with that asshole of a man.

The dinner is awkward as fuck, and when Yuuji leaves to get ready for his date, you hastily start washing your dish, you feel his gaze on you, he’s leaned back in the chair with his legs wide. You don’t dare say a word to him, you’re too mortified still, too confused, his one touch with no kiss has done more than anything you’ve experienced so far.

Awakened shit that was already there.

Made it worse.

“So you two never…” Sukuna trails off, leaving the question open, you look back at him as you dry your hand with a dish towel.

“Never what, dated? Of course not.”

“I thought the kid had it bad for you.” His voice is quiet, you clear your throat, shaking your head then.

“No, I tried to tell you, just friends. Yuuji is sweet and I love him, but I’ve never felt that way… like I…” Like with Sukuna. “Yeah, anyway, the girl is so sweet. I’ll head out when he does, don’t worry.”

Sukuna’s standing next to you before you can blink, he’s wearing this black dress shirt unbuttoned just so, revealing too much of his strong chest, pecs that are ridiculous, your eyes keep darting to it. To those collar bones, the black lines running along, making you wonder just where his tattoos stop, you physically back up, looking away then, unable to even look in his eyes.

“Running away, brat? Scared?” He raises a brow, you blink then, shaking your head. “Yeah you are.”

“Scared of what?”

“I’m ready guys! Oh… are you two gonna… hang out?” Yuuji asks with a little smile, you’re blushing then, shaking your head.

“Hang out with him? What, no.” Sukuna’s jaw clenches now, you smile as you feel how mad he is. “What?”

“What’s so wrong with me?”

“You’re an ass.”

“You’re a-”

“Okay, dumb question, don’t kill each other.” Yuuji does a little spin then, showing off his outfit, you giggle. “How do I look?”

“Amazing!” He kisses your cheek and hugs you then, just the sight of that alone has Sukuna infuriated, imagining kissing you.

What do your lips feel like?

Would they end him?

“She’s staying, she’s gonna… game with me.” Sukuna says then, you and Yuuji both look at him with shock. “Yeah, brat wants some lessons on Call of Duty.”

“Lessons? You game?” You want to burst out in laughter, the only video games you play involve very hot men on your phone.

Sukuna eyes you though, so intense it’s hard to breathe, you smile then, a little shy almost, realizing what he wants even though he’s not saying it. He wants to spend time with you, this shithead, this asshole of a man, he’s… he’s trying to express that he wants you to stay. And, to stay alone with him.

“I do wanna learn though, plus we should try to get along, hmm?” You look right at Sukuna, he’s not smirking or grinning, he’s vulnerable for a moment. His full lips parted just so in surprise.

“This makes me so happy. I love you both so much! If he pisses you off too bad, just text me.”

“What would you do, kid?” He demands.

“I’d… well I’d tell you to be nice.”

“I love you too.” You tell Yuuji then, and he runs off now to his date, leaving you alone in the kitchen again, with Sukuna. “Video games, huh?”

“Video games.” He answers, and before you know it, he’s right in front of you, gently holding you by your face, in a sweet manner you’d never think he could. “I want you, fuck I’ve wanted you for a long time now… but I thought you…” He’s trailing off, words escaping him.

“You thought Yuuji loved me, and you couldn’t do that.” You answer, everything starting to click now.

“That and you irritate the shit out of me. I don’t like what I feel.”

“What do you feel, Sukuna?” You step forward, arms wrapping around his thick waist then, he gulps visibly.

“Too much.” Is all he says, eyeing your lips hungrily.

“Maybe I feel too much. It’s scary, yeah?”

“I’m not scared of shit.” He’s leaning closer, you’re aching for him to just kiss you, licking your lower lip, tantalizing him as it turns glossy.

“If you’re not scared, then why are you so afraid to kiss me?” You whisper the words, his eyes flutter shut, a hand gripping your hair then at the nape of the neck, pulling it just so.

“Because I won’t stop there, I won’t stop till I’ve kissed every part of your body, till I’ve licked every part, until you’re cumming all over me.” Your little whimper from the back of your throat ruins him, he slams his lips down then, and it’s over.

Your kiss is messy, it’s desperate and sloppy, your tongues dripping saliva as he lifts you suddenly, you cling to him, thighs squeezing narrow hips, arms around his neck, your hand drifts through his undercut just so. He’s moaning as he kisses you so brutally, carrying you until you’re against a wall, pressing you there, you gasp for a breath while he starts licking down your throat.

“Kuna…” You’re arching against him, clinging tightly as he bites your throat, his big hands gripping your ass and squeezing.

“Hate that nickname. Hate how much I like it. Fuck you.”

You scowl, pulling away. “Fuck me for what?”

“Being so stupidly pretty. Driving me crazy forever. Fuck you for tasting so good, too.” You’re opening your mouth to protest, but he’s already carrying you to his bed, unceremoniously plopping you down on it, yanking off your top then, your breasts heave as your breaths come quickly, and he eyes you. “Fuck you for perfect tits.”

“Fuck you for being a dick.” You counter, but he’s gripping your breasts in his huge hands, squeezing them, sucking on your nipples, your hands enwrap in his pastel locks as he looks up at you, saliva strings dripping from your breasts. “Fuck that… feels s’good…”

“Fuck your sexy little moans, too.” You can’t be mad, not when he’s got your skirt off you, not when he’s ripping your panties to shreds, not when he eyes your pussy hungrily, shaking his head as he nips your inner thigh. “And fuck if you don’t have the most perfect pussy, what the…”

“Kuna, you’re c-crazy.” You whisper, he laughs then, breath tickling your cunt as he parts your plump lips, inhaling you like some psycho, burying his face. “Kuna!”

“Shut up, brat. Gonna ruin you for anyone.” He’s talking to your pussy it seems now, strong fingers pressing your thighs apart as he swipes a stripe up between your lips, licking you all the way from your hole to your clit, the sensation has your hips jerking, which he pins in place. “Ah- ah brat, stay still.”

“S’too much… I… oh my god.” Sukuna is devouring your pussy, there’s no other term for it, the way he laps at your pussy with his stupidly long tongue, his eyes bright red when they look at you, when he flicks it to your clit. You’re soaking him, hands pulling at his hair, earning his groan against you. “Wh-what… you’re… I…”

“Shut up, brat, I want to hear you cum, not run your mouth.” You should be offended, but you can’t be, not when he’s fucking your velvety walls with his tongue now, pinching your clit with two of his fingers, the stimulation far too much, you feel it, the pressure building in your core, spreading.

“Kuna!” You’re screaming that nickname, he doesn’t care in fact he loves hearing it, loves your pussy drooling around his tongue, he feels your walls tighten around his wet muscle then, looking up at your face, mouth open wide in an O, eyes rolled back, your hands yanking his hair out, and he knows you’re cumming for him.

He’s grinding his cock on the mattress, aching to be inside you, but he also wants to make you beg for it, wants to make you pathetic for him, only him. You’re cumming so blinding, stars bursting everywhere behind your eyelids, your body convulsing as you’re gushing all over his handsome face. You feel his grin against you when he pulls back his tongue, slipping two fingers inside.

“Hear how slutty she is, huh? So slutty thought you were a good girl.” He huffs, you’re reeling from cumming so hard when he quickly finds your g spot, as if he knew your body forever. “Can’t talk? Pathetic.”

“F-fuck… you I… it’s too much!” You whine, he’s scissoring those two fingers in and out of your now soppy little hole, you do hear it, the wetness so fucking loud, he’s licking your clit now, sucking it into his mouth, you’re pushing over the edge again. “Both!? I c-can’t!”

“Mmm, you can, cum again, pretty slut. Lemme drink it.” You’re trying to close your thighs, but he forces them open, smacking at one, shaking his head. “Again, y’can do it.”

“S’too much…” You’re whining over and over, it is so much pleasure you have trouble comprehending a thought, when he crooks his fingers in your gooey walls, and sucks your clit again, you’re shattering.

“Mmm, there you go, you can do it can’t ya?” He’s cooing to you, smirk on his features, that are coated in your slick.

“Please!” You’re yanking him up, he chuckles a bit, letting you, hovering over you with his strong arms, as he wipes your chin with one hand.

“You’re fucking drooling, god, fucked out already? Can you handle me?” He raises a brow, you want to retort, but you are fucked out, you came more than you ever have, now you’re opening your mouth and closing it. “Can’t talk, stupid brat?”

“F-fuck off… ass…” You manage, earning him more hard for you, kissing you deeply, you taste yourself then, but even more when he shoves his fingers in your pussy, scooping out more arousal, shoving them in your mouth.

“Suck them like a good girl, there ya fuckin go, pretty little slut.” You’re in tears from overstimulation as you suck him eagerly. “So ya can follow directions, ha… didn’t know that mouth could shut.”

“Shut it.” You whisper, pulling back with a pop, he falters at your seductive words, shaking his head.

“You sucked dick?”

“N-no.” You admit, he sighs then.

“Look, maybe not the first time.”

“Sukuna, are you being caring?” You tease, his brows lower, lips pressing in a firm line.

“No! Just… you need a lot of workup and… will you stop smiling like that!? Stop looking at me that way.”

“Like what?” You tease, hands unbuttoning him shakily, he pulls back then, taking a breath as he looks down at your pretty body, and you reveal more of his chiseled frame.

“Like… that. Like you’re…”

“In love with you?” His jaw tenses again.

“Shut it, now.”

“I am, stupid ass. Don’t know why.” You sit up when he stands, eagerly unbuttoning his pants, his heart races like he’s the virgin, brain short circuiting when you slip them down, his boxers following.

“I… you… shouldn’t…” He doesn’t remember what he was saying, you’re too sexy, too pretty, your words he’s never thought he’d hear. “You don’t love me. Don’t say it.”

“I do, and I will say it.”

“Then why did you ask for… casual!?”

You’re blushing when his cock is revealed, and it’s massive, thick and heavy, his reddened tip drooling precum. It’s so big you can’t understand how it would fit, your hand barely circles the girth, looking so tiny against him, he’s ridiculously big. You nervously look up, seeing his eyes dilated, his lashes lowered, Sukuna’s hands come to enwrap in your loose hair, gripping it.

“Answer me, brat. Now.”

“Because if that’s how you want to, I’ll do it. I want you, I have wanted you.” He exhales, jerking when you lick his tip.

“I don’t want to be casual with you, okay!?” You smile, he rolls his eyes. “Don’t you dare smile like that. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna be all mushy and dumb.”

“I don’t want to be casual either.” He cups your face with his other hand, groaning when your hot mouth starts sucking him in, there’s too much of him, you barely get the tip and an inch or two, swirling your tongue, tasting the salty precum, his musky scent filling your nostrils.

“F-fuck…” Sukuna’s stuttering, you swear you hear him whine, but you wonder if it’s a trick of your ears, his hand on your face shaky when he starts thrusting his cock in your mouth, eyes locked on yours. “Stupidly pretty brat.”

He might as well say ‘my love’ or ‘darling’ because your body reacts, already having had so much pleasure you’re wet again, when he yanks you more on his cock, shoving it deeper. You’re breathing through your nose as he fucks your throat, as he’s gasping and moaning out your name, you finally think you have a rhythm when he pulls you off.

“Was it okay?” You ask nervously, he shoves you on your back, between your thighs in an instant then, you gasp for breath.

“Okay? Sucked it like some pro. You lyin’ t’me?” You giggle, shaking your head and catching his gaze.

“Watch porn though.”

“Porn ain’t shit to what I’m gonna do.” You’re crying out as his tip leaks precum along your clit, biting your lip when he’s pressing into your tight ring of muscles, your nails dig into his back, feeling the taut skin. “If we do this, you’re never fucking anyone, never. Fuckin got me brat?”

You blink a bit, as his tip presses in, stretching your skin. “You love me too, don’t you Kuna?” You tease, he scoffs, but then nods just a bit, and kisses you, pressing past your barrier, you gasp at it, at the pain, being stretched by him. “Ow! Shit!”

“Shit… y-you’re too tight… loosen the fuck up, brat.” You glare up at him, throbbing from the pain now, he’s barely holding on.

“I can’t. Y-you’re an idiot!”

“Running your mouth?”

“You’re too big!”

“Fuck…” He eases back, leaning up on an elbow, hand slipping down and rolling on your clit. “Relax, annoying ass. Even your pussy is stubborn.”

“You’re… so… ah!” His circles are rough, calloused thumb pressing on your little engorged clit, when he sinks in again.

“Relax, now.” His husky voice gives you that order, you do so then, exhaling and looking into his eyes, that are so dark they look black, you nod weakly. “You… are you alright?”

“You care, aw.” You can’t help it, you’re grinning all fucked up.

He glares again, this time thrusting deep, you scream out at it, he moans, biting your neck again, big hand gripping your thigh and lifting it higher. “Fucking feel her, gripping me my god. She’s mine, huh?”

“Y-yours, Kuna.” Your little whimper destroys him, your cunt pulsing around him, stretching and getting wetter to accommodate, and he begins actually fucking you then, you’re so wet, hot and tight he can’t stand how good it feels, he’s already dreaming of breeding this little cunt as you convulse under him.

“F-fucking love it, slutty little pussy.” His words along with his tip dragging against that spot in your walls send you reeling, you hear it now the skin smacking, his balls slapping your ass, wetness squelching when he pulls back, gripping your hips with a wicked grin. “Look, fucking your guts up, huh?”

He forces your chin to look down at the ridiculous bulge in your tummy, you gasp at it, clinging to his sheets now, so full when he sinks more of his cock in you, so much you don’t think he’ll fit fully, he’s already slamming your cervix. His hands slip up your hips, yanking you down further, you scream out at how good it feels.

“Ruin you, no one… n-no one’s gonna do this, yeah?” He leans over just a bit, fucking you harder, thrusts so rough your tits jiggle, your body moves. “Use you as my little fuck toy, pretty toy, so fucked out and stupid.”

“Ngh!” You are stupid, your eyes are rolling back, you’re drooling, incapable of doing anything but pulsing on his cock now, of desperately clinging to him.

“S-say it, brat.” He’s shoved his cock so deep, your cunt is dripping down his veiny length, you’re whimpering desperately, nodding. “That’s it, cum f’me, lemme feel her clamp down. F-fuck, there she is…”

Now Sukuna is full of nonsense, you’re both mumbling as he does ruin you for anyone, as you ruin him for anyone, he’s kissing you sloppy, his tattooed hand wraps your throat. He squeezes just so, you’re fading as he rails your cunt, muttering filthy, nasty words, you were a virgin, but he sure the fuck wasn’t taking it easy.

Well, you didn’t think he was, Sukuna actually is taking it easy.

He’ll wait before he goes where he wants to, but you so eagerly open your mouth for his spit, desperately cumming all over his cock then. “Made f’me, pussy she’s m-mine, hmm?”

You’re getting choked, swallowing spit, and this asshole asks you a question? You manage a nod, as he slows finally, releasing your throat, hand slipping up your titty to pinch your nipple, hips rolling just so, jerking his cock against your bruised cervix. You’re a stupid mess under him, sputtering when he finally slows his rhythm, when he thickens impossibly in you.

“I’m never pulling out of you, on something?” He huffs, you blink in confusion as he grins. “Asked ya a question brat.”

“On… pill… mmm…” He moans now, exhaling.

“Good, hah-” He thrusts deep again, you’re fluttering around his length. “Wouldn’t pull out anyway. I’d knock you the fuck up, breed your slutty cunt.” You’re done for, when he starts spurting cum, crying out in your ear, taking over everything with his huge body on top of you, in you, around you. He’s cumming so much it’s ridiculous, coating your walls, filling your belly full. “Oh f-fuck… fuckin love you…”

You blink as you come to, as your cum and his are pushed out with each thrust, your thighs shaking, head buzzing from pleasure. He looks at you then, eyes desperate, biting his lower lip while you put it together. “You love me, Kuna?”

“Shut up.” You smile when he kisses you again, and well… you don’t just fuck once for your first time.

You’re fucking in the shower to ‘clean up’ and then he’s got you up on the counter, devouring your pussy again, seeing how many times you can cum, soon he’s got his game going, showing you the controls as you’re cockwarming him. You’re so sore no amount of ibuprofen will fix it, but you want more, you’re grinding on him as you wear his headset, getting shot hopelessly by the players.

That’s where Yuuji finds you all, your tits out, Sukuna half naked, big hands on your hips with his cock inside you, you gasp then, covering your tits with your hands, but Sukuna just laughs, kissing on your shoulders. Yuuji covers his face, turning away quickly in embarrassment.

“K-kuna… s-stop…” You whisper, but Yuuji waves at you all, covering his eyes with a smile.

“You’re getting along!”

“Um… yeah.” You manage, and Sukuna’s laughing so hard it’s annoying, he doesn’t pay attention to your glare.

“Cool… um… bye.” He hides in his room, you try to get up, but Sukuna has you pinned down, tilting your head and kissing you.

“You’re insane, Sukuna.”

“You love that shit.”

“Shush. Show me the… g-game…”

The teammates are very curious why Sukuna started sucking at Call of Duty that day, but he has his new very annoying girlfriend to blame, she’s just squeezing his cock too good.

A/N I really have been feeling some Sukuna latelyyy, I hope ya'll enjoyed the smut aha!! <3

Taglisttt: @yenayaps @schlokki @elliesndg @thelightknight21 @attackonnat @indiewritesxoxo @sylussss7 @ninikrumbs @zezedoesshit @iveiveim @spacefae-x @maomimii @moonchhu @jinxiewritings perma tags- @alt--er--love @seeing-stars-alt @nanasukii28 @labelt-san @makingtimemine @aldebrana

[senseichaos]

hi hi! That one-shot you did with Alastor broadcasting his and reader's..."love-making" was rather delicious but I can't help but think of you know..aftercare. It was quite rough and I'd love to see Alastor being sweet and sorta guilty for going so roughly cause we both know...reader was bleeding after😭😭😭

Yess I love writing aftercare and when I saw this I was immediately wanting to write it ! Thank you

"Pathetic" But still a princess,

Summary: Alastor roughed you up quite badly in your last.. fornication session.. so as to make it a more happy evening he gives you some very much needed aftercare! (Part 2 to "Pathetic")

Genre: Fluff, romance, slight sexual undertones

Warnings: Swearing, blood, Alastor is kinda bipolar considering how much more soft he acts in this compared to the last part, love confessions, lmk if I missed any

NOT EDITED NOR PROOFREAD (YET)

______

Alastor carries you the entire way to his room, not wanting to rough up your brain by teleporting to his room. And oddly he sort of enjoyed the intimacy of it all. It's weird, Alastor is never really one to enjoy intimacy, but this odd time he feels nice giving you this comfort.

As he enters his room, he makes sure to lock the door behind him so no one comes in whilst he bathes you, and with a smile to you walks to his suite. The suite isn't the largest but it's big enough that when he places you on the side of the bath he can walk around you with ease.

"Alastor I think I'm bleeding," You say, looking at some scratches on your thigh as Alastor takes off his overcoat and folds it neatly. He gives you a soft look, placing his coat to the side.

"Well of course you are darling! My fawn had to learn her lesson somehow, hm?" Alastor says with a small chuckle, squatting down (his knees clicking as he does so) to turn on the water of the bath. You roll your eyes, fiddling with the fabric of your shirt as you contemplate taking it off.

"Take off your shirt, dear, it's nothing I haven't seen before," Alastor commands with a rather teasing tone, arranging the correct soap to put inside of your bath. You nod, pulling off your shirt and bra, discarding them onto the floor next to the bath. You almost cover yourself, but understand if you did Alastor would probably tell you off.

After the bath fills a bit Alastor taps the side of the bath, capturing your attention.

"You can get in now, fawn. It should be warm enough," He says, and you give him a small nod. Rather awkwardly with your pained thighs you manage to crawl yourself into the bath, Alastor does end up helping you a bit when you almost faceplant into the water, shifting you so you sit with a weirdly empathetic look for him.

"Now let's not fall on our face, shall we. I'd rather not have you more injured than you are already,"

You giggle, leaning up and squishing his cheek playfully.

"Awe you care about me, that's new," you say, and he takes your hand off of his face with a stern look.

"I wouldn't call it 'new', you just haven't seen it yet," He says, and you give him a confused look as he starts pouring some bubble soap into the bath.

"What haven't I seen?"

He laughs, shaking his head as he begins mixing in the soap with his hand.

"Me caring about you, silly doe," He chuckles, ruffling your hair with his wet hand. This causes you to shake the water off and give him an annoyed look.

"Give me an example,"

He looks up for a moment, thinking of an instance where he's shown care for you.

"Well, how about earlier today when I told you not to drink the tea because it was hot?" He asks, turning the water pressure on the hot water slightly higher. You roll your eyes, pulling your aching knees to your chest as the water around you rises.

"Oh so what, the bare minimum.. how caring of you Alastor,"

"Now don't get pissy with me, dear. I was only giving you an example of my caring for you," He chuckles, giving your nose a soft boop as he continues mixing the water. You notice his sleeve is dangerously close to the water, so you push his hand from the water slowly.

"Careful, you're gonna get your sleeves wet," You say, and Alastor smiles slightly wider.

"Don't worry about it, my dear. It's nothing I can't handle," He says, his green magic surrounding his sleeves and rolling them up to just above his elbows. "You shouldn't have to worry about something so small as my sleeves,"

Your eyes go glossy with tears at the odd affection in his voice. It's something you've never heard from him before. Sure there's the empty compliments, the empty pecks, but this is different. It's as if he loves you.

"Do you really care about me, Alastor?"

Alastor furrows his brows, turning off the hot water tap as the bath is full enough with water. He leans over, pushing his hand against your cheek as he leans there.

"Of course I do, my dear," he pauses, looking into the distance for a moment as if contemplating. "And I do apologize for being so rough with you today, you had to learn your lesson somehow,"

You giggle, pushing his hand away and leaning against the back of the bath.

"It's okay Alastor, I liked it more than I'd like to admit,"

Alastor rolls his eyes at this, grabbing a sponge from the corner of the bath.

"Charming, my fawn," He says, putting his sponge into the water and squeezing it so the soapy water fills it. He begins to scrub you with it, staring with your face as he pushes your hair from your face, holding you there by it.

"Fuck you, as if you didn't enjoy it either!"

He laughs, scrubbing your nose as you scrunch your eyes.

"Well of course I did dear, I wouldn't have initiated it if I hadn't, hm?" Alastor hums, moving to scrub your other cheek. You sputter on a cough, your eyes squinting at the way he scrubs you. He just chuckles, scrubbing your chin and jaw.

"Do you really have to clean the entirety of me?" You ask, biting your lower lip as he tilts your head back by your hair. Alastor continues to scrub your chin, moving to the other side of your jaw.

"Well of course I do, a clean fawn is a happy fawn." He says, pinching your cheek and cooing in a sort of cute fashion. Rolling your eyes you attempt to splash water at him, only for the water to be caught up in his green magic and placed back into the water.

"Now don't try anything silly, fawn,"

You moan in annoyance, hissing when his sponge begins to scrub the raw skin on your neck from the collar he had you in. The skin is bruised and even as a couple cuts from the force he used. You wonder what he thinks about when he looks at the damage. Does he find it funny? Does it feed a possessiveness in him? Does he feel guilty?

"What do you think about when you see the marks on me?" You ask out of the blue, against your better judgement.

Much to your surprise, Alastor just tilts his head in acknowledgement before speaking.

"Hm, well I feel a tad proud, and I feel a tad guilty. But, I also feel like I want to eat you up!" He answers, ending his sentence in a teasing manor. But you don't miss the slight hunger in his eyes at the thought. You narrow your eyes, speaking: "Please don't,"

"Oh I wouldn't, dear. It's just a tad fun to think about," He says with a humor in his voice, and you can't help but laugh. Alastor moves his hand from your hair, placing it on your neck as he pushes your head back with his thumb.

"Bet you'd get your rocks off to it," You chuckle, biting on your cheek uncomfortably as Alastor scrubs the back of your neck. His eyes darken slightly, tilting your head down to get better access to the back of your neck.

"Don't tempt me, fawn," He says softly, pressing the spong to your collarbone to clean the slightly bruised area. Hissing in pain you flinch away from Alastor as his sponge brushes onto a cut. He gives you a sort of stern yet understanding look, reaching out for your arm to pull you closer to him again as soft as possible.

"Sorry my dear, it's going to hurt," Alastor apologizes, setting his hand back onto your neck so he can scrub your shoulders. Once again you hiss when the sponge hits a sensitive area of raw skin, but this time you stay put.

"You know I don't think it's fair that you get to sit outside of the bath.. how are you gonna clean my legs!" You ask, Alastor just humors you with a chuckle.

"Like this,"

He spins you around gently so your legs are hanging off the edge of the bath, dripping water down to the tiled flooring below. He takes a hold of your left ankle and begins scrubbing your foot, causing you to begin giggling at the way he scrubs the ticklish area.

"Ah! That tickles..!" You laugh, clasping your damp hands over your mouth as he continues scrubbing your foot. Alastor doesn't acknowledge you, instead going to scrub down your calf.

"I still think this is unfair, what if I want to clean you!"

"I had a bath this morning, no point in bathing again," He says with an obvious tone. You roll your eyes, looking up at the roof as he continues to clean your left leg.

"Can I at least wash you another time?"

"Maybe If you continue to be steadfast in no longer entering my studio unprompted, fawn," He answers, leaning over you as he finishes your left leg, beginning to clean your stomach.

"I'm bored.." You groan, leaning your head back into the splashback of the bath. Alastor narrows his eyes, and suddenly a tentacle with another sponge appears behind you, pushing you before beginning to clean your back.

"What a needy thing you are,". He says, causing you to huff out in displeasure. To your surprise he leans over you even more, even slightly towering over you as he cleans your breasts. It makes you blush, really. Having him tower over you like this in almost a lascivious manor whilst doing the most domestic of things. He's just cleaning you, for Christ sake!

"Alastor,"

"Hm?"

You wonder. Does he love you? You want to ask it so badly. When he towers over you like this and cleans every crevice of your body does his heart clench? Does his body feel warm? Does he get those butterflies that you do? You wonder.

"Do you love me?"

He stops moving, both him and his tentacle which had started cleaning your lower back.

His eyes reflect a myriad of emotions, many of which you can't even begin to fathom. He seems almost on edge. As if your question had sent him into his brain completely.

"I.. I think I might in my own.." he pauses, placing his pointer finger against his chin in thought. "Immoral ways,"

"Immoral?"

He continues to wash you, along with the tentacle, seeming to have gotten his point across enough to continue what he was doing.

"I'm not a moral demon, dear. When I think of you I want to devour you, but, I also want to hold you,"

Devour you?

"Well, I love you Alastor.."

"I love you too, fawn. Now let's get to cleaning your hair, shall we?"

You groan, pouting in annoyance at the thought of spending another 30 minutes in this bath. Though Alastor just laughs to himself, squeezing your cheek.

"How cute you are when you're all mad at me, hm?"

You stick out your tongue at him.

Normal, well as normal as you can be, once again.

[moonstruckme]

Ooh ok, so here are some ideas for vampire!James in case you feel inspired to write any of them! Maybe something where he comes home after going out to feed thinking reader is asleep and he's feeling guilty and reader comforts and reassures him? Or another idea is just reader finding out that James is a vampire now, or maybe just her being there for him through the turning process. Sorry if none of these tickle your fancy!

Thank you for requesting lovely!!

cw: mention of blood, nausea

vampire!James x fem!reader ♡ 906 words

James walks through your door with heavy steps. He’s glad that he can do it—the first time he tried to come home after turning, you’d both wondered at how his feet wouldn’t cross the threshold until you figured it out and invited him in. It had been embarrassing. Now, James all but stumbles into the kitchen, hopefully not leaving any drippings of blood in his wake. 

He always feels drunk and sluggish after a feeding. Nauseous, too, though he’s not sure if that’s from the bilious too-full feeling or simply his own disgust with himself and what he’s done. Sirius theorizes that if James fed more often instead of waiting until he’s wasting away every time, he might not feel the effects so keenly, but James doesn’t like to talk about it. He still can’t find it in himself to talk about his condition the way his friends do, like it’s normal. 

The water coming out of the tap could be cold or boiling, James wouldn��t be able to tell the difference. All he can think about is getting it all over him, cleansing himself. He’d imagine it as washing away his sins, if such a thing were possible for creatures like him. Still, he wants to be clean to slip into bed beside you. You deserve at least that. 

It’s probably his distraction that keeps him from hearing you come down the hall. (James is not a very good vampire, he thinks. Shoddy predatory instincts.) But when you touch his shoulder, coming up beside him, he doesn’t startle. 

“Sweetheart.” James has the urge to cover his mouth from your view. These days he’s pretty good at feeding neatly, but tonight had been messier. There’s blood down to his chin. “What are you doing up?”

You give him a little smile, opening a drawer next to the sink for a cloth. “I could ask you the same thing.” 

“No, you couldn’t. I’m a creature of the night now, remember?”

Oddly, this has been one of the most difficult parts of the transition for James. There’s the whole living-off-blood thing, of course, and the new ability to hear a fly in the neighbor’s kitchen, but James was always an early-to-rise, early-to-bed sort of bloke. His old schedule was dictated by the sun. Now, all his instincts are in opposition to it. 

He stays still as you adjust the temperature of the tap, wetting the cloth and then lifting it to James’ face. You smell like toothpaste, and underneath that the garlicky pasta you had for dinner. (James isn’t actually deterred by garlic, though he can’t eat it just like he can’t eat any regular foods anymore. Maybe that’s where the folklore came from. Only something truly cursed would stop eating garlic.) He can feel the veins pulsing in your wrist like a substitute for the heartbeat he no longer has, but he’s full enough now not to worry about craving you. 

Of course, he craves you in various ways, all of the time. Just not in that specific way at the moment. 

“You should be in bed,” James murmurs. He touches his thumb to the shadow underneath your left eye. “I can clean myself up.” 

“I wish you’d just use the bathroom,” you reply just as softly, dragging the cloth over the line of his jaw. “But anyway, I don’t mind helping.” 

You don’t mind much of anything, James has found. You don’t mind watching your boyfriend turn into a vampire, don’t mind letting him feed on you, don’t mind cleaning an animal’s blood off his chin at two in the morning. You’ve adjusted to James’ new lifestyle better than he has. He’s beginning to think there’s nothing about him you won’t accept. You’re a sweetheart to your core, your center soft and sticky sweet like a cinnamon roll’s. (James should know, he’d practically tasted it himself.)

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he says. 

You wave a hand. “You didn’t. I was up, I just came when I heard the tap come on.” 

So you’d been waiting up for him. James’ heart at once warms with fondness and heavies with guilt. 

You give him a searching look. “Does it still make you feel sick, after?” 

“Yeah,” James admits. 

Your lips pull down. “I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t worry about it, lovely.” 

“Mm, try and stop me,” you counter teasingly. “Do you think you could handle a sprite?” 

James isn’t sure. Solid foods only ever make him sick, but drinks have been hit-or-miss. 

“I could try,” he says, mostly for you. 

“Only if you want to.” You set the cloth down on the edge of the sink, kissing him softly on the lips. James doesn’t know how you can do it. To open your mouth to one that’s just done something horrid, and to do it so simply. 

“I love you,” you murmur. 

James’ unbeating heart gives a powerful squeeze. “I love you, too.” 

You press a kiss just below his lips, and another to his chin. If you’re trying to prove a point, it’s working. 

“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep if we go to bed?” you ask softly. 

“Mm, definitely. Like the dead.” 

A startled giggle spurts out of you. You smile up at him, your eyes sparkling in the dark. James thinks that maybe he could get used to the whole vampire thing, so long as he can keep you looking at him like this.

[revelboo]

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t log on every day to check for updates to your Trine x Reader series (Skywarp you lil shit 💜) but I do hope you continue your writing with Thundercracker and his love of movies.

I definitely will, I enjoy writing them 😁 Shockwave and Optimus arrived, Skywarp and Thundercracker got delayed

True Romance Pt 12

Seeker Trine x Reader

• There’s something oddly comforting about feeling all three of them hold onto you. Not demanding anything more than this as you stare up at the sky. Like you just belong here with them and it lifts through you with an ache you don’t quite understand. Because Skywarp and Thundercracker are always reaching for you, but Starscream’s only just started to lose some of his frosty indifference. Watching you more, glancing at you while he’s working to check on where you are, who has you. Gruffly asking if you need anything, his wings fidgeting. You’d assumed he’d been annoyed at having to look after you, but maybe that’s just how he is. Wondering if maybe the aloof, distant act is just that- an act.

• Aware of his brothers around him, his trine together and at peace, the warmth of you against him, there’s the uncomfortable realization of how fragile this is. Finding you had been pure chance. You might not have survived the wreck. Might have run towards the Autobots instead of staggering his way. What he’s sure of? Skywarp and Thundercracker are happy and there’s nothing he won’t do to protect that. “I thought we could all watch a movie together when we go home,” you say, voice soft and hesitant. Asking. And that word, home, rings through him coiling warm about his spark. Because it’s right.

• “Not the sappy stuff,” Skywarp mutters, turning his face against your throat and venting. Because if Thundercracker picks, it’ll be a love story. It’s all he wants to watch lately. Since finding you. Feels your fingers brush a wing and he shivers slightly, leaning into the touch, wings flaring. Aware of Star shooting him a look to behave when it’s so hard when you don’t know what your soft touch does to him. Tempting him to bite the curve of your shoulder when you absently brush over his sensitive wings. Growling when Thundercracker reaches up to grab your wrist and pull your hand away.

• “Wings are sensitive,” Thundercracker says, gripping your hand to keep you from accidentally finding any other sensitive spots. Sees your face redden slightly as he rubs a servo against the back of your hand. “Like mesh.” Carefully tugging your hand so your fingertips brush his neck. Shivering despite himself and avoiding Star and Sky’s optics as they stare at him. Judging the little teaching lesson, recognizing that he’d just wanted to feel you touch him.

• And everything just sort of shifts even though you have no idea what just happened. Aware of a tension that hadn’t been there just a second ago as Thundercracker keeps your hand trapped in his, servos rubbing absently against you like you’d been touching Skywarp’s wings. “I don’t care if you touch my wings,” Skywarp grumbles, looping an arm around your neck, face so close to yours you can feel it when he vents, brushing his cheek to yours so your skin prickles with awareness. And then Star is gently pulling Thundercracker’s hand from yours.

• “Everyone keep their hands to themself.” Stiffening when you pull your other hand from his helm, Starscream has to resist the urge to pull it back to him after just saying that. Because he understands Skywarp’s grumpy muttering. You’re soft and warm. And absolutely off limits. Even if Skywarp is right and you are compatible that way, he’s not interested in the drama of his trine squabbling over you. Which means keeping the other two and himself in line to keep the peace. Resisting the temptation that you pose, something that had never occurred to him might be an issue. Realizing he likes the feel of you against him a bit more than he should.

Previous

Next

[intheshadowsbehindyou]

hiiii! Can I request all mercs w/ somebody who doesn’t talk due to self consciousness, but to an extreme? Like smbody who only says a few words a month and talks rly quiet.

if you need to choose specific mercs, either medic, sniper, or Engi <3

/p

(Some) TF2 Mercs and a semi silent S/O

Warning: Medic. Just Medic in general honestly.

—————————-

Engineer:

- To be honest, he has no idea how to cope with this at first and he’s rather thrilled to meet somebody like this. Engineer talks people’s ears off when they’re willing to listen and you’re no exception. Your silence makes his flood gates of pointless information open up and one could easily mistake him for Scout in this moment.

- Uhhh… Why aren’t you responding to his theory on black holes? Eh, who cares. He stops talking after a while and you watch him scribble calculations on a small sticky note mindlessly. He doesn’t seem too offended by it. He’s more than happy to sit in somebody’s presence quietly all night.

- Engineer starts to notice after a while that you just.. RARELY talk at all. Not that it bugs him much, but he starts to suspect some sort of trauma disorder.. Or something along those lines. His mind is going crazy with possibilities as to why but ultimately never asks out of worry he’ll erode something you left behind in the past.

- Prolonged and completely dead silent eye contact is rather easy for you with him. Even if this doesn’t naturally come easily. You can’t make out any eyes behind those dark goggles of his. Oddly comforting.

- You swore you caught a smug smile creep up on his face a bit when you finally do say something. As if he was thinking ‘AHA! I knew my charisma would pay off eventually.’ This gotcha moment for him makes his ego massively inflate. This is Engineer. What do you expect? He knows he’s smart, and always plays his cards right. Manipulative bastard.

—————————————————————————

Sniper:

- Notices you’re starting to hang out with him more in a window he likes to camp at. He properly identified you as a fellow introvert from the start. Your mutism is noted, your presence is noted.. and rudely fucking ignored.

- Sniper doesn’t typically find anybody too interesting. Yes, even those who are quiet. He’s not a people person by any means, and only feels intrigue rarely. I guess you were that rare person evidently. He never even looks your way even ONCE as you sit there with him, but today was different. You saw his attention divert momentarily.

- “At least Y/N doesn’t fuckin’ talk my ears off like a bloody nonce trying to proclaim his innocence to a brick wall. You wanna know who drives me the LEAST insane in this bin? People like them. People who don’t talk their arses off and instead focus on a clean shot. Focus on the bloody job.”

- Next, you find an extra cup of coffee on the table in the nest that morning. It’s clearly not meant for him and you’re the only person who sits with him. He doesn’t even look at you as you pick it up.

- Begins to become slightly irritated when you break routine and don’t show up. Starts grumpily asking around for you and you notice this quite quickly. Dude has completely let his emotions clear to you and he’s oblivious to it. The reason you were absent that day is because you needed extra bed rest. (Existence is tiring.)

- You wake up to find him sitting at the edge of your bed reading a fucking newspaper. Yes, i’m not even joking. He’s so angry at you for not showing up that he decided to show up for you.

————————————————————————-

Medic:

- Medic doesn’t.. Process empathy/compassion like most people do. I’ve alluded to this before. He is very, very bad with emotions. For some reason your silence bugs him in a certain way. It worries him slightly, and he REALLY doesn’t like it. Especially since he can’t exactly ask the cause of it. He wouldn’t get a clear response back. Or just get shrugged off and assured it was nothing.

- You sit at the opposite side of his desk and hang out with him every night. Your sleep schedule had been recently fucked. Medic doesn’t even try to tell you to go to bed or school you on a night’s rest like he would everyone else. Instead when he’s not writing, he taps his pencil on the desk and stares at you… menacingly. Is he judging you?! He narrows his eyes. He’s definitely judging you. He has to be. Right?

- Indirect and awkward staring contest for a fucking hour. You begin to grow nervous because it’s like he’s trying to fucking beam thoughts directly into your head telepathically. It looks like he’s trying to use the fucking force to choke you. What the hell is going on through his head? Was he thinking about gutting you like he’s expressed for pretty much everyone else?!

- Stops staring to get up and use his coffee machine. Comes back and continues staring. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON??!?!

[happy74827]

Bring It In

[Sam Winchester x Female!Reader]

Synopsis: After a rough hunt, Sam seeks your comforting touch.

WC: 1747

Category: Hurt/Comfort

Sammy!! My adorable pookie. God, he was so precious in the early seasons that I just had to write about him.

『••✎••』

Waking up to a shadow in the middle of the night, especially when you were staying in a motel that was miles away from any civilization, was never a good thing. Especially when you could feel it even before opening your eyes, its presence heavy on the air. It made your senses scream and your heart race.

The feeling of being watched and studied was not something a normal person would like to wake up to, and as you lay there in bed with your eyes closed, that feeling struck you right into your core, making your muscles tense. Adding into the fact of the complete awareness of the supernatural world you were a part of, that was just the cherry on top of the cake.

But as you lay there, your brain going at 100 miles an hour, you realize this instance wasn’t one of those life-threatening situations you were so used to. It was an oddly comforting feeling as the flashlight you flew into the darkness was caught in the hands of someone you trusted with your life, the same hands that have touched every inch of your body in a way you could never forget.

He had been hunting all night, you could tell. Although it was dark, and only the soft glow from the motel sign illuminated the room, you knew his clothes were covered in dirt and leaves, and his hair was a mess. He didn't care, though, as he walked closer to you, his eyes becoming clear as he turned the flashlight on.

Sam had a tendency to get into these moods. A mood where he needed something to ground him and remind him that the life he was living was worth fighting for. You had always been that thing for him, his anchor, and as he approached the bed, his mind was racing with everything and nothing all at once.

As he sat down on the edge of the bed, his large hands reached out, touching you softly. It wasn’t sexual; he had no interest in that right now. He was looking for comfort. He just needed you.

You sighed, pulling yourself up from your position on the bed to get a better look at him. His eyes were tired and glistened over with some sort of sadness that he tried to keep hidden from you, but he knew he couldn’t. The tears reflected the moonlight that shined through the blinds and through the flashlight, and although the shadows under his eyes were more prominent than usual, he still looked at you with the most love you could imagine.

You didn't have to ask him why he was here, why he had been gone all night. You knew. He was a creature of habit, and Sam was very good at reading people. He knew when you were at your weakest when you needed him the most, and you did the same for him.

He needed reassurance. He needed to know he was doing the right thing, or else the guilt and shame would eat him alive. So when he saw the soft expression on your face, the gentle smile, and the look in your eyes, he nodded. It was soft, barely noticeable, but you saw it.

“You scared me.” You said, reaching forward to take his hand in yours. The flashlight was still clutched tightly in his other hand, the light shining up at the ceiling.

He sighed, squeezing your hand and looking away. It was silent for a moment before you felt him shift. The mattress moved slightly under his weight as he scooted closer, his eyes meeting yours once more.

Without a word, he reached forward, the hand that had been holding the flashlight coming up to rest on the side of your face. You leaned into his touch, the roughness of his hand feeling nice against your soft skin. He ran his thumb over your cheek before moving to cup the back of your head.

He was slow, almost hesitant, and you gave him a reassuring smile. You loved this man more than anything, and the gentle kisses he placed on your forehead and cheeks were the most tender of moments. You felt your heart swell as he finally kissed your lips, his hand moving from the back of your head to wrap around you, pulling you closer.

He let the flashlight fall to the floor, the loud thud it made against the carpet going unnoticed. You felt his lips tremble slightly, his emotions getting the best of him as he deepened the kiss. You wrapped your arms around him, tangling your fingers in his hair as you pulled him closer.

It wasn’t long before he pulled away, just slightly, his breath warm against your lips. Now you saw the blood, the bruises, and the cuts covering his face. He didn’t seem to care about them, but you did. It broke your heart, knowing that he had spent all night killing monsters and demons just to keep you safe. To keep everyone safe.

He let out a sigh, a long, hard breath as if he had been holding it in forever. Relief, the kind that came after a good cry or after a bad case of the flu was gone, washed over his face, and you could see the tension leave his shoulders. He leaned forward, resting his head on your shoulder, his arms tightening around you.

“I know,” He spoke, his voice cracking slightly. His tone was soft, his lips brushing against your ear. You shivered, rubbing your hands over his back. “I’m sorry, I just.. I needed- I needed to make sure that you were okay. That we were okay. It just... It gets overwhelming, and with what happened to Jess-”

You shushed him, turning to place a kiss on his temple. He sighed again, his breath tickling the side of your neck. His scent surrounded you, a mix of dirt and sweat and a hint of gunpowder. Dean’s presence was there, too, a bit of cologne and beer mixed into the air.

You didn't need to know where Dean was. You were pretty sure he had been on a hunt with Sam, and now he was at a bar, trying to get over his demons. The two brothers were so closely similar and yet so different, but in moments like this, where they were both torn down to their core, you could see the resemblance.

The two of them had a lot of things in common, but their biggest similarity was their stubbornness. They refused to ask for help, and they were afraid to show weakness, especially in front of each other.

Dean was off, drinking his worries away, while Sam came to you. A pattern the two had developed.

You had met the brothers in a motel very similar to the one you were in now. You were there for a simple vacation, a break from all the stresses of your life, but things changed when you were woken up to the sounds of gunshots and glass breaking.

Dean had burst into your room, dragging you out with him. He was a smart guy, and although he had no clue who you were, he knew you were in danger. He had gotten into a fight with a… well, it didn’t matter what it was; all that mattered was that the thing had a taste for human flesh.

You and Sam had bonded instantly, and Dean wasn't too far behind. It was the start of a beautiful friendship despite the poor circumstances. After a year of being around each other, helping each other out with whatever situation came, the three of you became closer than you ever thought possible. A little more with Sam, of course.

So, now, when Sam comes to you late at night, needing you, needing reassurance, you don’t hesitate. You give him all that he needs and more, and when he holds you close, his body trembling and his words shaky, you know it was the right decision.

His grip on you tightened, pulling you into him. You let him, holding him just as close, your hands gently running up and down his back. You could feel the fabric of his shirt under your fingertips, and the heat from his skin radiated through.

After a moment, he pulled back, his eyes searching yours. You could tell he was worried about Dean, about you, about the whole situation. He was afraid of what was coming, and although he didn’t know it, his fears were valid.

There was a lot to come, and it wasn’t going to be easy. The two of you had been through a lot, and although you didn't regret it, the thought of something happening to him was enough to drive you crazy.

You were about to say something, but the words never left your mouth. He was kissing you again, the force much stronger than the last, his hands gripping your arms tightly. It was an amazing kiss, filled with all the passion and love he had for you, and as he moved you, pushing you onto the bed, you felt his desperation.

It wasn’t a desperate need for sex, but a desperate need to be close to you. You knew this, and as you tangled your fingers into his hair, kissing him just as desperately, you knew he needed you more than anything. Who cared if you ended up losing more sleep than normal? Who cared if the sun came up and Dean returned to the room, finding the two of you still tangled up together in a mess of sheets? Who cared if the world was coming to an end and this was the last time the two of you would ever see each other?

He needed you, and as he whispered your name, his voice cracking with emotion, you knew he had no plans of letting you go. Not now, not ever. And when Dean did pop up a few hours later with messy hair and his shirt on backward, he would take a single glance and walk right back out the door, knowing he was going to be okay.

The three of you would be okay, and when the time comes and the world starts ending, you would fight till the very end. Because there is nothing worth fighting for more than your family, and you would do anything to protect the people you loved.

[majoryeager104]

Sweet nothings

A/n I’m still working on Betrayal part 4 so I figured I’d drop this lmao

Touya x gn!reader

Summary: You love Touyas scars, and he’s confused as hell about it

Warnings: language, a sprinkle of coquette angst, but fairly fluffy 👌😌

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Petting you”

“Use any other word for the love of God”

“Stroking you”

“Fuck you”

Touya rolled his eyes, cringing at your use of words. The two of you were flopped over on an old couch in an abandoned apartment building, the leagues current ‘base’. There you were, lying between his legs, your fingers tracing feather light patterns on his left arm, your very fingertips sending shivers down his spine as they brushed faintly against his scarred skin. 

His face was contorted into a frown when you looked at him, his brow furrowed, his nose crinkled slightly- adorable, you thought, giggling up at him. He scoffed, rolling his eyes as he shifted underneath you

“Quit touching my scars, it’s annoying”

He said hoarsely, moving his arms to rest his head behind him. You pouted, sitting up on your elbows. “No it’s not! Why don’t you ever let me touch your scars?”

“You do touch em. When I let you.” He smirked at your pout, pleased with himself, as well as his bossy retort. “You’re just mean” you sighed, lying back down against his chest. You smiled slyly as snuck your hand up under his shirt, your fingers brushing against the scar wrapping his torso. You felt him huff underneath you, as if annoyed, but you heard his heart rate pick up too. He likes this. 

“Why’d you wanna touch em anyways?” He scoffed, unmoving as he stares at the ceiling. You giggle a bit, your fingers continuing to brush along the burnt and scarred skin plastered across his abdomen. The cold feeling of the staples holding his skin together had become oddly comforting for you, but you’d always wondered what he’d look like without them… the staples, the scars, the trauma. 

“Because your scars deserve some love every once in a while too” you said softly, your fingers’ pace coming to a stop over the warm charred surface of his skin. He sucked in a soft breath, blinking at your words. You always found a way to say the right things to him, and he could never find a way to reciprocate.

“…they’re ugly as hell”

“I don’t think so”

You responded so quickly, like it was nothing. He couldn’t help the small sigh he let out at your soft voice. These moments reminded him just how much he loved you. 

“They’re a part of you… I can wish it wasn’t like this all I want…but that doesn’t make them go away…so I’ll appreciate them”

You said it like it was simple, and to him it sounded like some sort of promise. He closed his eyes, reveling in the small affections you always doted him with. Slowly, he laid his arms around you once more, letting you continue your gentle touches, because no matter what he said, he craved them, and you knew it. 

“You’re stupid”

“Never said I wasn’t”

“I love you, idiot”

“I love you too, Touya”

A/n y’all I can’t stop associating Taylor Swift with Touya 😭😭😭 I love him it’s ruining my life

Banner Creds to Artist 🙌🙌🙌 lmk if you recognize it in the comments so I can add their tag here 🙏🙏🙏

[mariposa-drowned]

Some purely indulgent period comfort bc I feel like death rn.

Abby x Fem!reader

Abby walked through the door to your shared home, a cozy house in the safe haven of Jackson. She eagerly toed of her boots and dropped her pack onto the floor, relief flooding her muscles as she relaxed for the first time today. Her brows furrowed, finding the atmosphere oddly quiet, normally you'd be in the kitchen trying a new recipe, or in the living room rewatching one of your many DVDs and VHS tapes that you had traded for over time.

Abby checked around the downstairs, calling out your name a few times, trying not to panic, but she knew for a fact that you were home today, as this morning you let her know that you felt as if you were coming down with something and politely asked if she could let Maria know that you'd be out today. Abby had offered to stay home aswell to look after you, but you stubbornly refused, assuring her that you'd be fine, and it was nothing major. She made her way upstairs letting out a sigh of relief when she found your normally closed door slightly open, your shared silent signal that one of you was home and welcome to come into the room. You had this odd system to communicate easily when one of you was feeling a bit too overwhelmed. If the door was closed, you didn't want to be bothered, and it was best to check back in another 15 minutes. If the door was open, it was a green light.

Abby slowly pushed the door the rest of the way open "Angel? You alright?" She spoke softer than normal, being cautious of a possible headache.

You grumbled, rolling over in your queen sized bed to look up at your beautiful girlfriend, her braid was a bit messy from patrol, the lightest sheen of sweat still remains on her skin.

Abby's eyes widened. That would definitely explain your recent feelings and attitude with her lately. You met her gaze, looking down to the bed and seeing a small bloodstain right where you were laying before you moved to see Abby.

"fuuuucckkk this is not what I needed today" you groaned out, hopping off the bed you started stripping the sheets off the bed, throwing the blankets and pillows aside.

Abby came up behind you gently peeling you hands off the sheets "how about you go start a bath for yourself and I'll take care of this hm? I'll join you in a bit if you'd like, just leave your clothes outside the door and I'll throw em in with the sheets."

You smiled at her kindness, "thank you my love but it's my blood, Im sure I can handle it" you gave her a peck on the cheek and reached back for the sheets, before you could get your hands back on them you felt an intense cramp bloom throughout your lower abdomen causing you to clutch your stomache and fold in on yourself to try and relieve the pain.

Abby quickly caught you before you could make it to the ground, she picked you up like a toddler, you holding on tightly to her front as you buried your face in her neck. "never said you couldn't handle it sugar, just said to go start your bath, bein all stubborn and sorts" she set you down on the bathroom counter, moving to the tub to start some water, throwing a small amount of your soap in there to create a sheen of bubbles.

Abby went back to standing in front of you, you leaned forward to give her a kiss, her hands coming to your hips and rubbing gently to try and soothe your pain. She pulled away first, knowing she had to go out the sheets in the wash before they were permanently stained, not that she'd mind, but she knew you would always feel terrible about it and she couldnt have that.

Your gaze drifted down to her pants where you saw a small red spot on her cargos, her eyes followed your line of sight, "I'm sorry" you muttered out dropping your gaze to the floor in shame.

Her hand moved to grab a hold of your chin, making you look to her "hey, none of that, s'not your fault, I'm the one who picked you up, I'll just throw em in with everything else, totally not a big deal. Speaking of which, let's get you into that bath"

Abby helped you strip your clothing, easily lifting you once again to the bath, causing you to mumble out "I have legs y'know."

Abby smiled, setting you down in the bath, "I'm aware grumpy, but I like carrying you, and I didn't feel much protest, so looks like your stuck with me."

Settling down into the bath, the water soothing your aches you stuck your tongue out at Abby, to which she quickly reciprocated before beginning to rid herself of her stained pants. She could feel your eyes on her, drinking in every detail, appreciating her muscular legs covered by her boxers.

"You keep staring like that there's gonna be more than a lil' stain on those sheets" You blushed at her comment, quickly hiding your face in your hands, even though you were sitting in the bath. Abby smirked at your reaction, quite pleased with herself that she could still do that to you even after years together.

She walked over to you, bending down to give you a loving kiss on your lips, pulling away before you could pull her back into you.

"I'm gonna go throw this stuff in the wash, I'll be back to check on you in a bit"

You gave a small nod, watching her leave the room and close the door behind her to trap the heat in, you sunk back down into the bath, focusing on how the warm water slowly soothed your cramps, helping your aching muscles. You closed your eyes, letting the time pass by as you drifted in and out of consciousness.

You were snapped out of your daze by a small knock on the door, followed by the creak the old door made as it opened.

"hey sweet girl, the water is probably getting a bit cold now yeah? You ready to get out?"

Not that you had really noticed, but now that you were activley thinking about it the water was getting colder.

"yeah I think I'm ready to get out, my stomache is starting to hurt again"

"alright you pull the drain for me, do you want some help out?"

A small silent nod was all you could muster

Abby gave you a sympathetic smile, knowing how easily embarrassed you got, and not the biggest fan of asking if asking for help unless it was absolutely necessary. She slowly helped you out of the bath, wrapping you in a fresh towel.

Giving a small peck on your head she left you to continue drying off, disappearing once again into your room.

She came back with a set of comfy clothes and a washed period cup that Maria had gifted to you and many others. Setting them down on the counter she looked back to you as you started to towel dry your hair.

"You want help changing as well? or do you want me to come check on you in a few minutes?" Abby said

"I think I'll be okay to do it myself, thank you abs. love you"

" 'course baby, anything for you. I'll come make sure you aren't dead in a few minutes alright? I love you too."

A few minutes had passed and just as Abby was getting up to come check on you, the bathroom door opened to reveal you in one of abbys oversized t-shirts and a pair of your own comfy underwear, her shirt practically looked like a dress on you so you didn't mind the lack of pants.

"Hi beautiful, you wanna come lay down?" abby asked as she pat your side of the bed next to her, the sheets changed and abbys attempt at making the bed.

"ugh please do not call me that right now. Im barley passing as human at the moment"

Abby snorts at your comment. "oh no! should we take you to get tested for cordycepts?!! If you go down I'm coming with your ass, you arent getting rid of me that easily"

Her comment causes you to let out a small laugh "haha very funny. I forgot to do the dishes last night and i need to finish them, so ill come lay down after."

You turn around to walk out of the room before baby could start protesting. You genuinely thought you had gotten aways with it too, reaching the top of the stairs before being tugged back into the solid chest you knew by heart.

"in what world do you think I'm going to let my ovulating girlfriend go do house chores when she almost collapsed earlier from her own cramps" Abby eyed you down as you tried to avoid her gaze.

She bent down a bit before tapping the back of your thighs, signaling you to jump. "Cmon sugar, no getting out of this one, lemme take care of you like you deserve."

You huffed, but jumped up regardless, Abby walking the both of you back to your room.

Abby set you down gently on your shared bed, situating the blankets over you til you were comfortable.

"Thank you for taking care of me" you smiled up at her

"always" abby returned the smile, leaning down to give you a kiss on the lips.

"Will you come cuddle and hold my stomach please"

"course i will. you want something to eat first though?"

"not right now, i think itll only upset my stomach more. maybe we could make soup together for dinner"

Abby slid in the bed behind you, her warm arm coming around your lower abdomen "That sounds great baby"

you hummed in content at her comforting embrace, letting out a deep breath as her warm hand helped soothe you cramps. "will you read to me? please?"

"you want me to read one of my medical books to you?"

"I dont care what you read as long as I get to listen to your voice"

"yeah I'll read to you"

[chiropter36]

Three or More Foxes Form a 'Skulk'

Read on Ao3

AN: Oh my god it has been so long since I've actually finished a fic, I'm just going to post this before I overthink it too much.

So... watched Sonic Prime, wanted to give my boy Nine some interactions with Mangey and Sails, plus explore the immediate aftermath of where things were left with him and the other Shatterspace folks, and... here we are.

(There's a reference in here to a headcanon from @the-knucklesverse, specifically one regarding Gnarly. He doesn't feature much in this and it's not the focus, but I like the headcannon and felt it worked with something I wanted to have happen here, so I included it. I'm not involved with that blog, but check out their stuff for fun multiversal Knuckles shenanigans!)

---

Nine wasn’t sure exactly when he’d closed his eyes, but he really didn’t want to open them right now.

A small groan escaped his lips as he halfheartedly fought against whatever stupid self-loathing part of his brain kept trying to drag him back to full consciousness.

What had… happened? Disjointed images whirled through his head, and he weakly struggled to force them into a coherent order.

The Grim…

The Prism, gone…

Sonic… Sonic fading away, because of him...

The pink jungle hedgehog taking him on her bird mount, then her two counterparts leaving with Shadow on the Kraken…

They all got too far away to see…

A blinding flash of light from the distant Green Hill portal…

And then…

Nine didn’t remember passing out, but that was the only explanation he could think of. (Urgh, thinking, why did thinking hurt?) With no more imminent threat to deal with or time-sensitive problems to solve, everything he had been through over the past… had it even been a full day?...must have just hit all at once.

Another groan – this one almost more of a whimper – slid involuntarily out of his throat.

With consciousness returning came the awareness of just how exhausted he felt in every way imaginable. His head still ached from the strain he had put on himself using so much Prism energy so indiscriminately. (Idiot, you idiot, you should have known there would be consequences for that, but you just couldn’t stop, could you.) He doubted he could lift himself a centimeter off the ground right now with how sore his flesh-and-blood tails felt. His right cheek was still throbbing horribly from the sucker punch that damn echidna had got in, which had felt more like being smacked with a concrete block – judging by the taste of blood still in his mouth, Nine was pretty sure he could count himself lucky if just one of his remaining baby teeth had been knocked loose.

And then there was the awful ache in his chest that had nothing to do with any physical injury he’d sustained.

Not having to think or feel was such an enticing prospect right now…

At least, for some reason, one thing Nine wasn’t feeling was the hard floor of his base. Logically, that should have been what he’d collapsed on, but instead he felt almost like he was floating on air without moving his tails; his body gently swaying from side to side, trying to lull him back to sleep. It made no sense, but it felt so nice that he didn’t feel like questioning it.

Conversely, it seemed strangely as though gravity was pressing harder than usual against his body, but in an oddly pleasant, comforting way. Like a heavy blanket, sort of; warm and soft and–

Wait.

Gravity seemed to be breathing.

Nine forced his eyes open.

The first things he saw were the leaves of his two palm trees, their trunks stretching directly above him. So he was still in the Grim then; that made sense, but… wait, was he in the hammock? Had he climbed into it before blacking out…?

Before he could ponder that too much, his gaze turned down to where the soft, snuffling breathing sounds were coming from… and his brain froze in confused disbelief at the sight that greeted him.

One of the fakers. The one from the jungle world. Fur slightly more orange-ish with red-brown stripes and clearly having never once seen a brush; no cybernetic tails; gloves and shoes made of leaves and vines; but otherwise so nearly identical to himself in appearance that he could have been looking in a very distorted mirror.

And it was laying on his chest.

“What the- Hey! Get off me, you flea-ridden--”

The other fox let out a surprised yowl as Nine shoved him, leaping off and landing on all fours. The sudden movement sent the hammock swaying, and Nine overbalanced and tumbled off the other side. His tails instinctively extended out to catch him before he hit the ground; he set himself on his feet and immediately ducked into a defensive crouch, glaring at the offender and preparing for a counterattack–

“Oi, you’re awake!”

The sudden adrenaline rush throwing his self-defense instincts into overdrive cut off as abruptly as it had hit, replaced with a surge in the throbbing pain in his head. Nine put a hand to his head, groaning miserably as he waited for the hammer apparently inside of his skull to stop bashing his brain over and over.

A few moments and the pain faded to more-or-less the background level Nine had woken up to; able to think slightly more clearly, he turned to focus on the new speaker.

Ah, of course, the other one. Pirate-him. That ridiculous bandanna over one ear, cutlass hanging from his belt, the odd mechanism extending from his back that Nine supposed made a passable prosthetic tail, though nothing as sophisticated as his own of course. He stood next to where the feral one was still crouched and watching Nine warily, but in contrast was sporting an easy grin that instantly put Nine on guard. Meeting Nine’s eyes, he raised a hand in a hesitant wave.

“What did you…?” Nine stammered, his brain still struggling to catch up with the events of the past minute. “What… how did I…?”

“Oh, er, we put ye up in yer hammock there after ye conked out a bit ago.” The young pirate shrugged, smiling sheepishly. “I’ve taken me fair share of naps on a hard deck floor, an’ I figured ye’d prefer somethin’ a mite more comfy.”

“You…?” Nine did not know what he was supposed to do with that, so he pushed it aside in favor of addressing his other point of confusion.

“And why was that one sitting on me?”

The pirate fox shrugged again, patting his jungle-dwelling duplicate on the shoulder. “I guess he just thought ye could use some company after… everythin’.”

Nine frowned, glaring suspiciously at the two of them. Did they really expect him to buy that? More likely the rebels just had the idea to place one of their allies in position to hold him down in case he was faking sleep to lull them into a sense of security.

Wait, where were all the others?

Making sure to keep the other two foxes in his peripheral vision, he took a quick look around. They seemed to be mostly alone in the main room of his base, save for one other: the echidna pirate (“Dread”, he vaguely remembered Sonic referring to him as), who was leaning casually against the wall just inside the hole that had been blasted through the crystal pillars. He raised his eyebrows slightly in acknowledgment when Nine met his gaze, but otherwise seemed to be off in his own world, not paying him or the other two much mind.

Out past the echidna, on the other side of the hole at the start of the vast, featureless plain of the Grim, Nine could see a large gathering of all of Sonic’s friends and allies from across the Shatterspaces. Among the various rebels and pirates milling about, he picked out the other two echidnas, the three bats, the cyborg Rusty Rose and her two pink hedgehog counterparts...

Wait, if those three were back…!

Nine jerked his head back to the other hims, this time ignoring how the sudden movement aggravated his headache.

“Did… did he make it? Sonic…?”

The pirate and the wild child both pulled their ears back and exchanged a look.

“Well… can’t say for sure either way. Black Rose- that is, Cap’n Rose, she said that Thorn Rose’s Birdie got injured not ‘alfway there, so the Kraken picked ‘em up and took ‘em further. Then the ship got damaged too, so Shadow said he’d take ‘im the rest o’ the way. Rusty Rose says she saw Shadow make it to the portal; ‘twas too far for her t’ see for certain, ‘specially with how, well... faded Sonic was by then, and then there was that flash o’ light, and…” He shrugged helplessly. “She didn’t see either of ‘em after that.”

Nine swallowed, trying to hold back whatever emotion was trying to claw its way out his throat.

Pirate-him looked at him with... concern?... in his eyes, then put on a reassuring smile that somehow managed to look mostly genuine.

“If’n ye ask me, though, I’d say there be no doubtin’ he made it home. That hedgehog be tougher ‘n gristle an’ barnacle grit! No matter what any of our worlds – or any of us, truth be told – threw at ‘im, he always took it, got back up an’ kept runnin’ – heck, even when there weren’t any ground t’ run on!” He shared a grin with the jungle fox. “Not bad for a landlubber. Aye, an’ with that Shadow fella backin’ him, the Devil himself couldn’t stop ‘em! He made it home, we’re all sure of it.”

The jungle fox nodded emphatically.

Nine just stared as the other fox made this declaration. It was not escaping him the similarity between the pirate’s words and ones he himself had spoken to Mr. Dr. Eggman back at the Yolk, and he didn’t like it.

Grimacing through his headache, he tried to parse through his whirling too-many-thoughts and focus on the factual data that pirate-him had provided. Silly optimism that blatantly ignored the realities of the hedgehog’s deteriorating physical state aside, it sounded like there was a decent chance that Shadow had successfully gotten Sonic back to Green Hill before he faded completely. That… that was something, at least. He just wished there was a way to know for sure...

“Um, so…” the pirate broke the silence, shyly scratching the back of his head when Nine looked up at him again. “Don’t think we ever got rightly introduced. The name’s Sails, formerly of the Angel’s Voyage, from No-Place, and this here’s Mangey, from Boscage Maze. No ship, but we don’t hold that against ‘im.”

The jungle fox chittered happily and gave Nine a wave.

Nine stared at them blankly. “Okay,” he said with a dismissive shrug.

An awkward silence ensued, and both other foxes’ smiles dimmed slightly as Nine held their gaze, stubbornly refusing to engage them any further.

“And, erm, ye be called Nine, aye?” Sails finally broke the silence.

Nine rolled his eyes. He glanced over at the pirate echidna again, then back to the other foxes.

“Look,” he said with a tired sigh, “I get it. You three got put on watchdog duty – keep an eye on the traitor to make sure he doesn’t go all crazy again…” Not that he could really blame them for that. “But frankly I really just want to be alone right now. So if you could go tell your friends” – he gestured to the crowd outside – “to get off my world and go back to theirs already, I’d really appreciate it.”

“Wha- no, that ain’t–” Sails stammered. “Well, aye, some o’ the others thought that maybe… but that ain’t why…”

The pain in his head flared up again, and Nine couldn’t help the pathetic whine that came from him as he shut his eyes tight and gripped his head in both hands.

“Are ye okay?” Sails’ concerned voice cut through the pain. “Do ye need…?”

“I’m fine,” Nine growled out. He extended two of his tails threateningly in the direction the voice came from, just in case either doppelganger got any ideas about trying to approach him in his moment of weakness. “Just a headache. It’ll pass.”

And it did, or at least died down to a more tolerable level, though the process could have gone much faster in Nine’s apparently inconsequential opinion. When he could think clearly again he opened his eyes, only to see the same two uncomfortably-identical foxes still in the same spot where he’d left them, looking at him with twin looks of concern and… and sympathy, and still there even though they had no reason to be.

Nine scowled, trying to ignore the more confusing emotions in favor of one more familiar to him: annoyance. Why hadn’t these people left yet? They had promised Sonic they’d leave him alone, yet here they all were still invading his space, and the two he least wanted to interact with seemed inexplicably invested in doing so.

Sails cleared his throat awkwardly before speaking again, keeping his voice soft as if trying to be… considerate of Nine’s headache or something.

“No one told us to stay with ye. Th’ fight’s over, we know that. It’s just that… well…” He shrugged awkwardly. “You’re… and we’re…” He gestured somewhat helplessly between himself and Mangey as though that would articulate his thoughts better, smiling apologetically.

Nine didn’t smile back. “We’re what?” he asked coldly.

Sails wilted slightly at his tone.

“I mean, there’s differences, t’ be sure,” he continued hesitantly, “but... well, we all three of us got the tails” – he gave his own a demonstrative helicopter twirl – “an’ the brains, an’–”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Nine muttered, looking pointedly at Mangey, who had chosen that moment to sit on his haunches and scratch at his ear with a hind leg. “Not sure your little pet there knows how to use a toilet, let alone basic mechanics.” He allowed himself a small smirk. “Unless you mean he knows some hacking, but I think that’d be more the hairball variety than computer, you know?”

For the first time since they’d started talking, Sails’ expression turned angry. He scowled and took a protective step in front of the jungle fox, glaring at Nine.

“Mangey figured out your fancy-pants gizmos just as quick as me,” he snapped. “Fresh out o’ the jungle and an’ ne’er seen any contraption more complicated ‘n a vine bridge before, an’ he was pickin’ out the right bits from yer bots to build the bomb what took out a whole platoon of ‘em like he’d been at it all his life. An’ then ‘twere a two-man job pilotin’ that Catfish bot o’ yers, and I’m fair sure yer metal Birdies could tell ye how the both of us handled that… if’n they weren’t piles o’ scrap at the moment.”

Taken slightly aback by the vehemence in the pirate’s retort, Nine averted his eyes… and caught Mangey’s downturned gaze instead.

The upset frown and, well, puppy eyes the other fox was giving him made Nine instantly certain of two things: he had understood the insult, and was hurt by it.

A sickening guilt suddenly bloomed in his chest and began clogging his throat, suffocating him, as he stared at that pitiful face.

His face. The face Nine must have had in the early days, before he’d hardened himself, before he’d built his defenses; when the older foxes had thrown names before graduating to throwing punches, a variety of epithets but all telling him essentially the same thing: your existence is wrong, you are less than a person so it’s okay for us to hurt you. And him just curling up and waiting for it to stop and wishing he knew what he could do to be acceptable to them, but not wishing for someone to come to his defense (like Sails was right now for Mangey) (like Sonic had for Tails but not him) because even then that notion had been so outside the realm of possibility that it had never entered his mind…

He wrenched his eyes away from Mangey’s face. He felt like he was going to throw up. Is that what I’ve let myself become now?

To distract himself, he latched onto the last thing Sails had said. “How… how did you even manage to take over the Grim Big?” His voice trembled despite his efforts to sound composed and unaffected. “There should have been built-in safeguards against anyone but me taking control.”

Sails shrugged, scowl lightening only slightly. “Aye, that there were, but really ‘twere a simple matter o’ rewirin’ the computin’ base with an improvised Prism-energy redirector. All yer bots seemed to work on th’ same system, so while ye thought we were out o’ the action we took a closer look at th’ broken ones t’ figure ‘ow they worked, then scavenged enough scrap t’ put together a rudiment’ry adapter that could block out yer programmin’ long ‘nough for us to hack into th’ system an’ take control – an’ with no hairballs involved from either of us,” he finished with a smirk, crossing his arms defiantly.

It took a moment for Nine to realize his mouth was hanging open dumbly, and he quickly clamped it shut.

“Oh. Uh, yeah, I guess… that would do it. Um… that’s impressive. I guess. Of you. Both. I mean, I wouldn’t have expected…” He felt his face heating up, and cut off before he could embarrass himself more with his stammering. “That, well, that was smart. What I would’ve done in that position.”

He hesitantly made himself meet Mangey’s eyes again. The other fox met his gaze, and his upset expression turned into a small, almost bashful smile. Nine had to clamp down on a sudden urge to return it. The nausea in his throat faded slightly.

Another awkward silence filled the space, and Nine looked back at the rest of Sonic’s rescue party. He noted in particular the bat and echidna from New Yolk – Rebel and Knucks, he remembered vaguely – in the middle of what looked like an intense conversation. At something Rebel said, Knucks shot a look at Nine; his scarred face melted into a scowl as he met Nine’s eyes, before turning back to grumble something to his companion.

“But anyway, as I were sayin’…” Sails’ voice – less testy now – drew Nine’s attention back. “Ever since we first saw t’other in No-Place, I’ve… well, I’ve had ye on me mind. Wonderin’ what yer life be like, if it be anythin’ like me own…”

Truth be told, Nine had also been thinking about these foxes since their initial brief encounters, speeding through the Shatterspaces with Sonic on the way to Ghost Hill (where one other fox had also butted into his headspace). Putting together what their existence implied about his own; what had happened when the Prism had shattered; the reality of what the Shatterspaces were truly hitting him for the first time…

“...An’ then I met Mangey here in the egg-heads’ city, an’ we started gettin’ on, an’, well… Didn’t have much time ‘fore things got all…” He started awkwardly fiddling his thumbs, not meeting Nine’s eyes. “An’ then everyone was focused on goin’ after Sonic, an’ people’s blood was runnin’ a bit hot for a while there, but… now that things’ve calmed down a bit, I thought that maybe…”

He bit his lip nervously.

“Well, t’others all have three of ‘em.”

Mangey, who had been looking back and forth between Sails and Nine, now flicked his gaze over to the crowd gathered outside. Nine followed his eyes, and noted that he seemed focused specifically on the three Roses. The pink hedgehogs were huddled close together, the pirate’s hands on each of her duplicates’ shoulders. Presently, she was making some remark that had the bird-tamer laughing out loud and even brought a small smile to Rusty Rose’s normally impassive face.

Nine looked back at his own duplicates, the anger he had felt at their presence not moments earlier now fading in place of confusion and… something else, something he didn’t want to couldn’t give a name to, but seemed to be coming from the same place as the steady ache in his chest that he had woken up to and, unlike his headache, hadn’t been fading at all since.

When he managed to make himself respond to Sails, he couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice. “I literally tried to kill both of you just like an hour ago.” Another wave of guilt crashed over him, and he fought to keep his expression neutral.

Tried to kill them, yeah, and thought he had succeeded – even if the bomb had been their own, he had specifically targeted them with the robot assault that had forced them to use it at such close range – and had felt nothing but spiteful satisfaction at the notion of their deaths hurting Sonic.

Or at least, told himself that was all he felt. Anything else, any shock or sickening horror at the notion that he was responsible for ending the lives of two actual real living people, had been easily drowned out at the time with yet another channeling of Prism energy to send his brain into a manic power high.

After all, there was only one him.

(He’d yelled at Sonic that he was just as real as Tails, but he’d looked at these two and from the start seen only feeble, insulting copies of himself.)

“Aye, ‘tis a fact,” Sails said with a careless shrug, seemingly oblivious to Nine’s inner turmoil, “but we’re no worse for wear now!” He shot Nine a devil-may-care grin, putting his hands on his hips and puffing out his fluffy chest. “Ain’t th’ first time I’ve cheated Davy Jones’ locker, an’ I’m fair sure it won’t be th’ last! S’no reason to be holdin’ a grudge.”

Nine had been fairly dismissive, back on Ghost Hill, in his first impression of “Tails”; the friend Sonic had shared so many happy adventures with may have shared his face, but his bearing was too sunny, his eyes too bright, his whole demeanor just too… obviously cared-for, to have anything in common with him outside the superficial. Granted, all Nine had seen was a faded reflection of Tails repeating just one moment over and over, but even just that had made it clear that having had Sonic in his life from early on had made all the difference.

Except... here was this other two-tailed fox, also his own person separate from Tails and with no blue hedgehog in his past, but clearly nowhere near as beaten-down and cynical as Nine.

“How are you so… perky?” he finally asked, shaking his head. “You didn’t have a Sonic to… to protect you on your world either, right?”

Sails blinked, looking surprised at the question.

“Well, no… but I had me crew.” A small, nostalgic smile came to his face as he spoke. “They found me when I was just a kit, all alone on an island, strugglin’ just to find food every day without it bein’ stolen by the birds... They took me in, gave me a place, a home. A name.” There was something more vulnerable in the fox’s voice at that last admission than Nine had heard from him to this point. “Adventure on the high seas, an’ a share o’ the salvage to build me contraptions. Wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for them. Prob’ly wouldn’t be here today.”

He frowned, his ears drooping a bit as he looked at Nine. “Ye… ye never had a crew, aye?”

Nine swallowed a lump in his throat, not meeting the other fox’s eyes, and just shook his head.

“Well… maybe that can change now!” Sails exclaimed, his ears popping up again hopefully. He gestured over to the pink hedgehog trio still chatting happily outside. “Look at the Roses! Th’ worlds they all come from couldn’t be more different, an’ I heard ‘em callin’ each other ‘sisters’ earlier.” He put a companionable arm around Mangey’s shoulders. “Why, I’ve hardly known me mate Mangey here for more’n a day, but we’re already thick as thieves!”

Mangey yowled a happy affirmative, leaning against his double’s side affectionately.

“What d’ya say, Nine? The three of us… could we be friends?”

Mangey nodded in agreement, bright blue eyes wide and earnest… then to Nine’s shock, opened his mouth and echoed:

“Fuh-rends.”

His voice was rough and growly, clearly not used to forming words, but that he made the effort to use it at all implied a deep sincerity that Nine couldn’t convince himself was faked.

A snide remark informing them exactly what they could do with their “friendship” immediately jumped to the tip of Nine’s tongue… but when he opened his mouth, it didn’t come out. Maybe it was Sonic’s influence getting to him once again, maybe he was just still so exhausted that he didn’t have the energy to keep being hostile, but all that he could manage was a tired sigh, his shoulders slumping despondently.

He hadn’t been able to handle this kind of openness from Sonic when he had offered it so freely; how could this new scenario possibly come to any better end?

“I-I’m… I’m not really good at… friends.”

“Yeah, no kiddin’,” a harsh voice scoffed.

Nine’s neck smarted as he whipped his head to face the voice, an adrenaline spike instinctively snapping his tails into a threatening defensive configuration as his heart suddenly burst into frenzied hammering in his chest.

The speaker – Knucks – was already raising his fists in response, glaring at Nine from behind them. Nine tried to glare back, but between his ragged, agitated breathing and his limbs trembling from a combination of frayed nerves and exhaustion he doubted he managed to look very intimidating.

“Woah, hey, hey, it’s okay!” Sails exclaimed, waving his hands and moving forward as though to interject himself between the fox and echidna. “Nine, ye be fine, they just want t’ talk to ye!”

At the same time a hand was placed on Knucks’ shoulder, and Nine became aware of the other person who had entered the space without him noticing: the bat resistance fighter, Rebel. She gave the echidna a pointed look, and he scowled but lowered his fists, though clearly with great reluctance, and not taking his eyes off Nine.

“Sails is right,” she said, stepping forward to stand slightly in front of Knucks. Behind her, Nine could see that the rest of the crowd was now watching them, though they remained outside. Dread was still in the same place Nine had last seen him, looking completely unperturbed.

His cheek throbbed even worse as he continued staring down the echidna, and he was more aware than ever of the coppery taste on his tongue. For a second he was back on the top of his tower, cowering behind his forcefield as punch after punch tried to batter through to get at him, which had itself sent him back even further to a time where he had no forcefield to protect him, trying in vain to shield himself from blows and words that just wouldn’t stop–

He shook his head sharply, actually welcoming the throbbing pain as a distraction. Trying to reclaim some semblance of dignity, he forced his tails to relax and focused on getting his breathing under control. He looked up and met Rebel’s eyes, already resigning himself to whatever this group had decided his fate would be.

“And here it comes. Without Sonic around to make everyone play nice, all that talk about leaving each other alone goes out the window.” He tried to sound droll and unconcerned, but all the eyes on him were just reinforcing how utterly helpless he was now, and his false bravado faded almost as soon as he could summon it. Dropping his gaze down to the floor, he muttered gloomily, “Just do whatever you want to me. I don’t care anymore.”

“Nine, that ain’t what…” Sails began, his ears drooping sadly.

“We promised Sonic we would leave you be, and I for one intend to stick to that,” Rebel spoke up, her voice calm and level. “Unless you plan to break your side of the deal?”

Nine looked back up at the bat. She was looking down at him with her arms crossed but her expression didn’t appear actively hostile. He sighed and shook his head.

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t anymore.” He looked over at the still-empty platform that had once held the Paradox Prism. A harsh fact that he had been trying not to think about since he woke up shoved its way to the forefront of his mind. “The Prism is gone; without it, I can’t reshape the Grim. It’s a clean slate, but now that’s all it’ll ever be.” He sighed morosely. “Probably for the best. No one should be trusted with that kind of power. It messes with your head. Makes you think you’re invincible. You’ve got so much power you can do whatever you want, so you should do whatever you want. And if you cause any harm it doesn’t matter ‘cause you can just fix it later once you have just a little more power…”

Nine almost didn’t realize he had been muttering all that out loud until out of the corner of his eye he noted Dread’s ears suddenly perk up.

“That’s actually something we wanted to discuss with you,” Rebel said, pulling Nine’s wandering thoughts back to the present. “When we all made that agreement with Sonic, it was under the assumption that you would continue to have access to the stabilized Prism. Without it… will you even be able to survive here?”

“I…” He shrugged, trying to look unconcerned. “I have some food and water stored. Once I go through that… I’ll figure something else out.”

Except, there wasn’t really anything else to figure, was there? The Grim only reacted to Prism energy. Without the Prism itself to harvest from, he wouldn’t be able to alter it to create supplies and sustenance.

He found his eyes migrating from the empty platform to the palm trees, the empty hammock strung up between them – out of the Grim’s endless potential, the first things he had chosen to make.

What did it matter if he was doomed to waste away here once he ran out of supplies? Even if he could figure out a new way without the Prism to turn this place into a paradise, it would still be empty.

“Well. Several of us have been talking, and taking the changed situation into account, we would like to propose an alternative.”

“For the record, this is a very generous interpretation of the word ‘like’ for some of us,” Knucks added.

Rebel elbowed him sharply. Knucks rolled his eyes, but stepped back to give her the floor.

“It’s honestly hard to believe that the Chaos Council is finally defeated for good – or at least, they’ll be out of the picture for a long while. Thanks for your help with that, by the way; seeing them float away into the void was immensely satisfying.”

The bat’s lips briefly twitched up in a small smirk as though replaying the scene in her head.

“But now we have the responsibility to take charge of our own world and heal what they broke. Once we return, we plan to start working on dismantling however much of the city we can manage safely at this point, and restore the natural environment. And… much as I hate to admit it, the Chaos Council’s tech would probably be useful for a lot of that, if we can repurpose it. Plus it would be prudent to build some sort of defense in case they ever do return. And while I’m sure we’ll be able to work it out on our own… the work would go a lot faster with someone who already understands that tech.”

Nine hardened his expression and squared his shoulders in preparation for what he could already see was coming.

“We have Rusty Rose, of course, and she’s already agreed to help however she can, but she told us that her expertise is more focused on weapons and vehicle operation and her personal system maintenance. She still has a better background than the rest of us, so it’ll help, but…” here Rebel gave Nine a significant look, “we could also really use the help of someone with a broader understanding of the city’s tech and the creativity to adapt it for new purposes.”

Nine scoffed tiredly. “There it is. Thanks, but no thanks. I had enough of my help being used when I was captured by the Chaos Council.”

“We ain’t the Chaos Council!” Knucks barked angrily. “We’re tryin’ to make a better world for everyone, not just ourselves! Though I guess that ain’t a concept that’s really on your radar.” He crossed his arms heatedly and turned to Rebel. “You’re wastin’ your breath. I told ya. He ain’t gonna help.”

Rebel held up a hand to cut Knucks off, still keeping her calm demeanor.

“The rebellion is over,” she went on. “It’s not going to be easy moving past all the paranoia and mistrust that we needed to survive in that environment… but we need to try. Or else, what was the point? The whole goal was to create a better world, one where all that wouldn’t be necessary.”

She sighed, a bit of exhaustion showing in her eyes. “Maybe as part of that… we can accept having misjudged you a bit.”

Nine’s eyes widened slightly in surprise.

“We followed Sonic here to help him because we assumed that you weren’t intending to keep your word after he gave himself up,” she continued. “Now… I’m thinking we may have been wrong about that.”

“Not that ya gave us any reason to buy that you wouldn’t betray us again,” Knucks grumbled. Then his scowl softened ever so slightly. “But Sonic… well, even after everything, he never seemed to doubt that you were on the level. And, well, he sometimes had good instincts.”

‘Even after everything you've done, everything we've been through – together, against each other – you're still my friend, Nine.’

Nine’s breath hitched, and he had to bite his lip against the something he felt building in his chest.

“I never wanted to harm your worlds,” he said, voice thick and shaky despite his efforts. “I swear. I-I know that I did, and I don’t… I don’t have any excuse for that. But I was certain that I could fix all the damage I caused, and I intended to. Even when… even when I was still angry at Sonic. My only goal was always just to build my own world here, and for everyone else to leave it alone.”

He swallowed thickly, avoiding their gazes.

Rebel nodded. “And honestly, after everything that’s happened… I am inclined to believe you now.”

“Don’t get us wrong, I ain’t gonna hold back if ya do turn out to be pullin’ somethin’ on us, but…” The echidna shook his head and sighed. “Whatever. I’m tired of fightin’ for now. And I never thought I’d say that.”

Rebel tried to meet Nine’s eyes again, but he stared resolutely at the floor.

“Look,” she spoke up again. “We don’t know you very well. But we are from the same world, the same home, we all lost the same things thanks to the Chaos Council. And if we-”

“Well, you’re right about not knowing me at least,” Nine interrupted sharply. A tiny spark of anger had fizzled into existence at the bat’s words, and he latched onto it, nurturing it into a tiny candle flame and slowly fanning it larger and larger; and he knew, he knew he shouldn’t because anger was what had gotten him to where he was now, but anger at least overwhelmed the something festering underneath. “I hated the Chaos Council as much as anyone, but I didn’t lose anything thanks to them. Can’t lose what you never had in the first place.”

Neither Rebel or Knucks seemed to know how to respond to that. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Sails and Mangey both looking at him with concern. He chose to let that fuel the flame in his chest even more.

“I used the Paradox Prism to restore New Yolk alongside the other Shatterspaces. I fixed what I broke, and a lot of what the Chaos Council broke too. Consider that my contribution to the rebuilding effort. But there’s nothing you could offer me that would make me go back there. It’s your home, you take care of it. I’m not letting anyone use me for their own ends anymore.”

That actually seemed to get Rebel mad. She grit her teeth and took a deep breath before speaking in a clipped tone, “We are not trying to use you, and we’re not going to force you to come with us if you’re so insistent on staying here on your own–”

‘We’re all on our own.’

“–but Sonic made a sacrifice to save all of us, you included, and somehow I don’t think the spirit of the agreement he specifically insisted we make with you involved leaving you to starve and waste away here. If that’s what you really want, though, fine. We’ll head back home without you and–”

The flame exploded.

“That city, that world, never gave me anything but pain! Why do you think I did this to myself?!” He flared out his cybernetic tails; Knucks flinched and raised his fists defensively, but Nine ignored him. “Why do you think I lived underground, away from everyone?! No one in that world ever wanted me. They made that abundantly clear for as far back as I can remember. I may have been born on that world, but it was never home.”

And then just like that the flame had completely burned itself out, leaving Nine with nothing but a horrible cold emptiness just as vast and pointless as the Grim. Standing was suddenly too difficult; he stumbled back against one of his palm trees, and slid down to sit so he could hide his face behind his knees, his tails falling limp on the floor.

“I-I don’t h-have a home. I don’t have anything.” He hated himself for how his voice hitched and shook, but he just couldn’t muster any energy to fight it. “S-sonic’s gone, the Grim is empty. I have nothing. Just like before, only now it’s my own s-stupid fault.”

He pressed his forehead against his knees, trying desperately to resist the pressure he could feel building behind his eyes, although part of him wondered what the point was – it wasn’t like these people could possibly think any less of him.

No one spoke, which only made Nine’s stomach start twisting into knots waiting for some sort of fallout from his outburst. After a moment he chanced a brief glance at the bat and echidna, and was vaguely surprised to see neither looked angry or harsh like he had expected; Rebel was frowning uncertainly at him, a trace of sympathy in her turquoise eyes that just made Nine feel even more pitiful, while Knucks was awkwardly averting his gaze, fiddling with his glove spikes.

Over to the side, there was sudden movement as Mangey, eyes wide and glossy like he was close to tears himself, took a few steps toward Nine, only stopping as Sails’ mechanical arm-tail settled on his shoulder, the pirate giving him a small head-shake, even as he bit his lower lip like he was struggling not to come over himself and try to administer some comfort that Nine knew he wouldn’t deserve.

He looked back at his knees, but could still feel everyone’s eyes on him – Sails and Mangey, Rebel and Knucks, the entire crowd of rebels and pirates and jungle-dwellers.

He wished they would all stop staring at him, wished he could just disappear, wished someone would say something so he didn’t have to listen to his own pathetic ragged breathing…

He wished Sonic were here.

A gruff throat-clearing cut through the lull.

“If I may.”

Nine’s ears twitched in surprise at the sound of the echidna pirate speaking up up for the first time, his tone light but clearly conveying that he intended to speak regardless of any objections. He looked up to see Dread strolling casually to stand beside his resistance fighter counterpart.

“What do you want now?” Knucks grouched, his scowl reasserting itself.

Dread shot a patronizing smirk at the other echidna.

“As entertainin’ as all this jabber be, I find meself itchin’ to get back to No-Place at some point in, oh, the next decade. So in the interest of speedin’ this up…” His flippant tone changed to something more serious. “I may have some smidgen of understandin’ what th’ lad is goin’ through right now, is all.”

Oh do you? Nine wanted to spit out, but he didn’t trust himself to speak right now without losing the fight to hold back tears, so he just forced a glower that he was sure wasn’t fooling anyone.

Dread stepped forward so he was a bit in front of Rebel and Knucks but keeping a polite distance from Nine. Briefly, he glanced over at Sails, his expression unreadable; the fox frowned uncertainly, but gave his ex-captain a hesitant nod. Then the pirate turned to look down at Nine, and spoke.

“Ye’ve lost it. The one thing in the whole wretched universe ye thought mattered. That if ye just managed to get yer paws on it… ye’d finally be satisfied. Finally be happy.”

His words were blunt, but spoken with a depth of emotion that despite himself Nine was certain they were born of intense personal experience.

“An’ now that it’s slipped from yer grasp… ye feel there’s nothin’ more what matters. Nothin’ t’ strive for, nothin’ t’ do but mope yer days away dreamin’ of what ye could’ve had.”

Dread looked away from Nine for a moment, staring off at something only he could see, before breathing a wistful sigh and meeting Nine’s eyes again.

“I got no business tellin’ ye what course t’ set for yerself now. I still be figurin’ that out for meself. All I’ll say, lad, is that whatever ye choose… don’t define yerself by what ye lost. Find somethin’ what matters to ye, and make a new goal t’ strive for. Or ye’ll just find yerself forever chasin’ somethin’ – even if only in yer dreams – that was never goin’ t’ give ye what ye truly wanted, an’ makin’ the same bloody mistakes each time ye grasp for it.”

With that, the pirate backed off and returned to his previous spot, leaning against the crystal pillar wall as if he’d never moved.

Leaving Nine to sift through a confusing swirl of emotions that had replaced the emptiness but still gave him no relief.

Disdain and anger were the easiest for him to parse out at first, naturally.

What could that idiot pirate know? What Nine truly wanted? He wanted the Grim. He wanted to be left alone, in his own perfect world. He wanted… he wanted...

He felt the hard bark of the palm tree against his back.

‘So… what else did we do?’

“I used t’ have nothin’.”

Nine looked over at Sails, his vision a bit watery despite his efforts. He quickly wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm as the other fox spoke.

“Then I had the crew, but… I didn’t quite know how I fit in with ‘em, at first.” His voice was soft and hesitant, like he was forcing into words something he usually kept very private. “Weren’t certain I was truly a crewmate, or just a… a temp’rary cabin boy they’d be ready t’ abandon again if’n I became more trouble ‘n I was worth. Ev’ry mistake I made, in those days, I thought were gonna be th’ final straw for ‘em, an’ they’d leave me at some village or maroon me on an island or just tell me t’ fly off an’ ne’er come back, an’ I’d… I’d be back were I started, alone.”

He swallowed thickly, then continued. “Took some time, an’ getting’ t’ know ‘em, an’… lettin’ ‘em get t’ know me. Which were really th’ scariest part. Didn’t happen all at once… but now, all these years an’ adventures an’ troubles later, I know they be where I belong.”

He turned to scan the crowd outside, passing in turn from the bat, cat and hedgehog in pirate garb, who each smiled fondly at him (the giant cat in particular was unabashedly wiping at his clearly watering eyes); even Dread gave Sails a small nod of acknowledgment when the fox caught his eye.

Mangey pressed his face against Sails’ side, before catching Nine’s gaze with wide, imploring eyes. He started looking pointedly back and forth between Nine and his fellow jungle-dwellers in the crowd. Nine suddenly found himself wondering what the wild-child’s story was, what he was trying to convey with those big blue puppy eyes that he couldn’t with words.

Disdain and anger faded to the background noise in his head, the wall that he had actively cultivated them into over long merciless years crumbling apart, and Nine finally forced himself to examine the less-familiar, uncomfortable feelings that just one evening with an aggravating blue hedgehog had managed to bring out in him.

What would Sonic do…?

Tch. Sonic would recklessly jump into things without any thought. He’d take it upon himself to help everyone, and in the end make a huge mess of everything.

...And then, once he realized he had done that… he would try to make amends however he could.

And he would always put his trust in other people.

Even if past experience might have made that trust difficult to give.

What Nine truly wanted…

Sonic was gone, but maybe… maybe what he had offered to Nine was still something he could find for himself.

But if it was… it definitely wouldn’t be here in the Grim.

Slowly, Nine pushed himself to his feet, setting his tails back in their relaxed non-combat configuration. He stepped forward to stand in front of the resistance leaders, forcing himself to look up and meet Rebel’s eyes; and, taking a deep breath that only shuddered a little bit, he spoke.

“...Back in New Yolk, before all this, I had a lab in the underground. I’m sure the Council ransacked it when they tracked down the shard I took, so I can’t really live there anymore, but it was… my sanctuary. A safe haven. If I do this, if I agree to come with you and help restore that world… I get a place of my own. I’ll put it together myself, you don’t need to do anything, but I get a place, outside of the city, away from everyone. And it is off. Limits. Whether I’m there or not, no one else is, unless I give explicit permission.”

He swallowed, trying to ease the scratchiness in his throat. “Deal?”

Rebel shared a quick look with Knucks, who frowned but shrugged in answer to her unspoken question.

“That sounds reasonable. Deal.” She held out her hand. Nine stared at it silently for a moment before reaching out his own, and they shook.

“Don’t make me regret this,” Nine stated. He tried to make his voice sound stern, but was pretty sure he just came across as tired.

“Same,” Rebel responded in a similar tone.

Releasing Nine’s hand, she straightened up and turned to look out over the rest of the eclectic collection of beings.

“Now with that business over with, let’s start working on coordinating getting us all back to where we’re supposed to be. Black Rose, how’s the Kraken looking?”

The hedgehog pirate stepped forward from the crowd, grimacing. “She jus’ barely limped us back here on one engine an’ a prayer. An’ it’s been slow-goin’ tryin’ t’ patch her back up. Ain’t sure if she’s got enough left in ‘er to make it to one world, let alone three.”

“Um… I could… take a look at it?” Nine offered hesitantly. Everyone turned to stare at him, and he again had to clamp down on the instinct to bare his tails. “A-and we can probably salvage some parts from the Council’s mothership, enough to at least get it working long enough to get everyone to where they need to be.”

“Aye, and the Catfish bot still be flyin’,” Sails proclaimed. He moved to stand just behind Nine’s shoulder, Mangey still at his side; Nine flinched slightly but actually found their proximity not as distressing as before. “It ain’t exactly speedy, but if we can take the engines for the Kraken that could boost it enough t’ keep it goin’ the whole trip.”

Rebel nodded decisively. “Alright, sounds like we have a plan.” She raised her voice to speak authoritatively to the crowd. “Everyone, let’s get out there and help them gather the parts we’ll need. Rusty Rose, do you think you can help with that?”

“Affirmative,” came the monotone reply. The cyborg hedgehog gestured out to the debris-strewn plane. “Come, sisters.”

As the gaggle of beings began to disperse, Nine found his eyes drawn from the hedgehog trio still sticking together like glue, to the jungle echidna running up to walk beside Knucks, to the other two bats fluttering over to join Rebel as she took flight.

He looked to his side, to Sails and Mangey. The other foxes shot him identical soft smiles, and while Nine couldn’t quite muster up one of his own, he found that the something in his chest was somehow no longer as painful as before; that the presence of these two people who maybe understood more than he had given them credit for was… comforting.

But noticing that, he also realized what was nagging at him, and a heavy knot formed in the pit of his stomach.

“Wait!” he called out, running over to the hole in the wall where everyone was exiting, Sails and Mangey on his heels. “There’s, there’s one more thing…”

Everyone stopped in their tracks and turned to look at Nine again; ears pinned back against his head, he swallowed nervously and tried to stand tall.

“I-I should tell you, just… to make sure you’re all on the same page. Without the Prism or any stored energy, there’s no way to create the portals the Chaos Council used to travel between worlds. Once you return to your respective worlds… you won’t be able to leave.”

Everyone’s faces fell as they absorbed this information. The three Roses looked particularly devastated as they exchanged crestfallen looks between themselves (Nine wouldn’t have ever guessed the cyborg was capable of such expressiveness). The jungle echidna rubbed his arm and bit his lip, looking at Knucks with dismay; the other echidna placed a hand on his shoulder, his own face determinedly stoic. Mangey whimpered and sidled up next to Sails, who put a comforting arm around the other fox’s shoulders.

“I… suppose that’s the way it has to be,” Rebel said, glancing around at her fellow bats. “Those portals were what started the collapse on all the worlds; even if we still had the Prism it would be too dangerous to start it up again.”

There were reluctant nods from among the crowd.

“Well,” Thorn Rose pronounced, her face set, “then it has been an honor to know you, sisters.”

“Oi, we ain’t splittin’ up yet!” Black Rose exclaimed, managing a grin despite everything. She slapped Thorn on the shoulder. “Save the heartfelt goodbyes for th’ actual goodbye!”

The mood slightly dampened, the crowd nevertheless began splitting into groups to begin scavenging.

As Nine prepared to follow, he stumbled as his foot slipped on one of the myriad broken crystal shards scattered around the opening in his fortress wall. Frowning, he kicked the shard away, and prepared to take flight over to the Kraken to see what he could do about it…

...But the glimmering of the crystal as it skidded along the floor of the same substance, bopping against other shards before coming to a stop, caught his eye.

Something niggled at the back of his mind, the same feeling he got when he had his ideas for inventions; arresting his take-off, he knelt down to examine the shards more closely, ignoring the remaining traces of his headache as he wracked his brain trying to get a lead on what had drawn his attention.

Something to do with the physical crystalline structure of the Grim? He’d done an analysis when he’d first arrived, of course, but then he’d been thoroughly distracted by the applications of Prism energy and had subsequently pushed any data not pertaining to that to the back of his mind...

Wait. What if…?

He was belatedly aware of Sails and Mangey beside him. Mind racing as he ran equations and factored in variables, he grabbed two shards then straightened and turned to his fellow foxes.

Both wore confused frowns as they looked at him, but as Nine worked the problem out further and further in his head and started arriving at some very promising conclusions, he found himself somehow feeling lighter than he had since waking up.

For the first time, he looked into those two pairs of identical blue eyes and a small but genuine smile came to his face.

“Here.” He handed each a shard. “Take these. Bring them with you to your worlds, keep them intact.”

Mangey curiously turned his shard over in his hands a few times, sniffed at it a bit… then gave it a good lick.

Nine felt his right eye twitch, but he gritted his teeth and pushed down the urge to snap at him and snatch the shard back.

If he was really going to attempt this whole friends thing, he supposed, he should start getting in some practice at not judging the other fox’s scientific process.

“What’re ye thinkin’?” Sails asked, staring inquisitively at his own crystal.

Nine reached down and picked up a third crystal for himself, then looked past his two counterparts out to the pitch black sky above, and the shimmering, far-off Shatterspace gateways floating through it like planets. The light green radiance of the farthest gateway seemed to shine the brightest to Nine’s eyes – a faint beacon in the dark to guide him on this new path.

“I have a theory. Don’t tell anyone yet, it’s nothing definite. But maybe… the Grim can still be useful after all.”

---

~ Several months later ~

Even before Knucks had noted where the light show was coming from, he knew it had something to do with Nine.

Normally he would have taken some time to appreciate a stroll through the countryside outside the city boundaries. Just spend a few moments taking in the soft green of the grass regrowing over the rolling hills, kneel down to look at the tree saplings slowly but surely pushing their way up into a world that would welcome and nurture them now, feel the sun on his face shining down from a sky no longer dreary red with smog but a shade of blue that he had almost forgotten. He would revel in the sweetness of breathing air not heavy with pollutants and the smell of ozone and slag, and just the simple joy of being able to see the horizon unobstructed by a skyline of ugly, pointless buildings.

He may have had to get used to the city life during the days of rebellion, just out of necessity, but Knucks had been hatched and raised in the untamed wilderness, and with said wilderness finally making a comeback, he was never going to take it for granted.

But right now he was an echidna on a mission, and that mission involved a certain arrogant antisocial fox brat, and the searing flash of light that had all of a sudden burst into existence over his house not twenty minutes ago.

A beam of light had suddenly crackled into the sky off in the distance, but loud and large enough to draw the entire city’s attention, and probably most of the folks who had moved out to settle in the countryside as well. For an entire minute it had remained as a pillar reaching up into the heavens, swirling with an admittedly rather beautiful rainbow of colors, then had faded away as inexplicably as it had appeared.

There had been some panic as civilians wondered what it could have been, but Rebel had managed to mostly calm people down, especially when she put Knucks on the case to investigate. They had shared a significant look at that, because they were both aware of a fact that the general citizenry were not.

Namely, that there was only one person who lived around the area where the light had appeared to be coming from.

And so Knucks stomped his way past the sapling forest, leapt from a large rock to give himself some height to glide from, swiftly making his way toward where the hilly grasslands met the beach, and soon enough had arrived at the entrance to the fox’s house.

Well, it was really more of a bunker than anything. The fox had claimed one of Dr. Don’t’s hidden underground labs close to the former city’s outer boundary and repurposed it. That part of the city had been the first to be deconstructed – the work going faster through the use of reprogrammed Chaos Council bots – and as the city boundary retracted further and further, Nine had soon attained the private sanctum away from the city that he had been promised.

With nature slowly reclaiming the area – aided in no small part by the seeding and terraforming machines Nine had developed – the entrance (at least, the one Knucks and Rebel had been made privy to; they were both fairly certain the fox had multiple other entrances and exits he kept to himself) was difficult to spot unless you were right in front of it. Built under an unremarkable grassy hill and looking out over the shifting sand dunes, nothing about it really drew the eye...

Save for one prominent landmark that seemed oddly inconsistent with the fox’s clearly-stated desire for people to stay away.

Two palm trees, with a homey-looking hammock hung between them, planted just a little ways off from the entrance.

The fox hardly ever left the place – or at least, was not often seen doing so. The rare times he emerged, to gather food and materials or discuss plans and issues with Rebel and the rest of the reconstruction council, there was some… animosity from the general populace. Many of them had seen Nine’s giant image in the sky, taunting Sonic to save them all as the world turned sideways, and few had been present at the final confrontation in the Grim. Rebel had so far managed to spin their arrangement with Nine as the fox’s “community service” to anyone who started making noise about locking him up or… anything further. So far there hadn’t been much more than grumbling and distrustful glares, but the decidedly unfriendly atmosphere clearly didn’t give the fox much incentive to come out of his hole any more than necessary.

Knucks frowned thinking about that. He was far from Nine’s biggest fan, but some of the folks passing judgment on the fox were… well, ‘unreasonable’ was probably a polite way of putting it.

Especially the ones who obliquely implied that Nine’s past actions were somehow related to his… unique physical traits.

Finding himself wanting to punch a face in on behalf of the fox kid during that one particularly heated council meeting had definitely been a new and unexpected experience.

(Ugh, why couldn’t this fox just be a complete unrepentant bastard like the Chaos Council? Feeling sympathy for someone who had once callously abandoned him and his teammates to die, and later almost destroyed everything he held dear, was not something this echidna was built for.)

Though, it was a big city, and there were some who were willing to give the kid a chance. There had been one instance where a little rabbit girl and her mother had hesitantly come up to Nine and thanked him for all he was doing to help restore the world, and even given him some home-cooked food as a gift.

The look on the big bad aloof super-genius fox boy’s face as his big bad aloof super-genius brain apparently short-circuited and he stammered out an awkward “You’re...welcome?” had been priceless.

Hey, Knucks wasn’t supposed to fight the jerk anymore, he had to take what he could get.

But who knew, maybe that was about to change. Maybe the lights from Nine’s home had come from some superweapon he was building, and the situation could just be nice and straightforward and solvable through punching.

With that happy (if, admittedly, unlikely) thought, Knucks began banging loudly on the metal door.

“Hey, Nine! We all saw the fancy light show, what’re ya up to in there?! Open up!”

His yelling was interrupted by a life-size holographic image of the brat in question suddenly vwip-ing into existence in front of the entrance.

The flickering semi-transparent fox looked down at him – the hologram floated in the air so that its head was about a foot above Knucks’, which the echidna was certain had been done deliberately to spite him – and put on a lazy smile.

“Always a pleasure to have you stop by for a visit, Knucks.” He spoke in the bored, mildly patronizing tone that never failed to get Knucks’ hackles up. “As it seems you’ve forgotten some of the details of our arrangement – understandable, as they involve several multi-syllable words – I’ll remind you of the parts relevant to the current situation–”

“Just shut up and let me in, fox! You got some things to explain!”

“–and provide you with aid regarding the environmental restoration, and in exchange, my personal space shall be respected–”

“Okay, ignorin’ me, fine, whatever, you’re only delayin’ the inevitable, brat.”

“–without my permission. Now, with the understanding that issues requiring my technological expertise will not always conveniently come up when I am outside my home, I have invented a radical new piece of technology to facilitate communication in such an event. You may have noticed, next to the door, a simple-looking square-shaped panel, but it is in fact so much more. When only a mild amount of pressure is applied to it, you see, it causes a musical tone to sound within my dwelling, thus politely alerting me to any visitors without any unnecessary banging or shouting.”

“Alright, alright, I get it–”

“Or, to put all that in layman’s terms…”

The hologram suddenly leaned forward directly into Knucks’ face, glowering darkly down at him.

“Ring. The doorbell. First.”

It straightened and resumed its casual tone. “Now, shall we try this again?”

Another vwip, and the image vanished.

Knucks growled, taking several deep breaths as he debated the pros and cons of just punching down the fox’s door.

Glowering for the benefit of the hidden cameras he was certain were showing Nine his every move, he reached one fist to the blue panel, moving exaggeratedly slowly. With his entire fist, he pushed it inwards and held it for several seconds longer than necessary, then finally released it. A muffled musical tone sounded from behind the door.

Knucks quietly seethed as he counted the seconds, certain that the fox was taking his sweet time opening the door just to annoy him. Finally, the metal panel slid to the side, revealing Nine standing in front of him, hands clasped nonchalantly behind his back, all nine tails swishing casually behind him, and looking up at him with a lazy smirk that Knucks desperately hoped he would have an opportunity to wipe off by the end of this interaction.

“There, now was that so hard?”

“Can it, brat.” He stomped past the threshold into the bunker proper. “What was with the light show? I know it didn’t have nothin’ to do with the world repairs. You up to somethin’ out here? Some schemin’?”

Truthfully, as aggravated as he was right now, the accusation wasn’t quite as serious as it might have been months ago. Knucks was still far, far from ever calling the fox boy a friend, but “ally” had slowly but surely become slightly less begrudging. There had been no signs over the past months of the fox going back on his word, and with how much faster the restoration efforts had been going thanks to his help, Knucks had to admit that Rebel had made a good call. He wasn’t to the point of letting his guard down around Nine… but he could see maybe getting there someday.

(Plus... there had been the whole uncomfortable revelation that the kid was not, as Knucks had originally pegged him from his overall demeanor, just a rather short teenager, but in fact not yet even past single digits.

(He still hadn’t worked out how he felt about… certain actions he had taken during the Grim battle in light of this information.)

The fox boy in question just shrugged at Knucks’ accusation.

“Welp, I guess you got me. I’m actually enacting my evil plan to betray you all again and eventually crush every world under my heel.”

“Ha ha. Look, ya didn’t warn anyone about any experiments you were doin’, so ya can’t blame us for–”

“Relax, Knucklehead. It’s–”

“Don’t call me that!”

“It’s nothing dangerous.” The smirk on his face softened, into what Knucks would almost be tempted to call a genuine smile. “I just... invited a few friends over for a brainstorming session.”

“‘Friends?’” Since when do you have friends?, he barely managed to keep from blurting out. (And Rebel said he couldn’t be diplomatic.) “Who-”

“Ahoy! City Dread!”

Knucks looked around with a start. The voice had come from another hologram – one that he at first mistook for Nine again, and briefly wondered if the fox was experimenting with creating a horde of holographic duplicates, before spotting a few more… pirate-y details that made his eyes widen in recognition.

“Wait… that’s…”

Another holographic fox bounded into view on all fours and drew his attention with a wave, this one dressed in leafy attire and with a semi-feral look to him. Both were full-color and life-sized, only their transparency and the slight crackle in the pirate’s voice betraying what they were.

“Wait… are they actually…”

“Here?” Nine finished for him. “Well, not yet, but this is actual real-time audio-visual communication. We’re still in the early testing stages, but if this continues to hold, it looks like we’ve finally cracked it.”

There was an understated pride in his voice that Knucks didn’t think he’d ever heard from the fox before.

Shaking himself out of his shock, Knucks belatedly noticed two small beams of light extending from each fox’s form and leading to a mechanical contraption over in a corner. Knucks’ first thought was that it looked like some sort of high-tech chimney more than anything, with a portion of it extending up through the ceiling – probably connected to some hidden antenna or something that had been the source of the light pillar, he now suspected. A circular opening in the center contained a shimmering cylindrical crystal shard floating in some sort of force field. It was from this shard that the beams of light were projecting.

“The ‘light show’ you saw was a side effect of the energy necessary to boost the signal through the Shatterspace gateways,” Nine continued explaining. “We’ve been testing it on smaller scales, but this is the first time it was large enough to be noticeable. Hopefully we’ll be able to fix that in the future.”

“Sorry ‘bout that, by the way” Sails chirped. “We be sailin’ uncharted waters with this here tech, it ain’t always easy to predict what the effects’ll look like. I be on an island right now ‘cause th’ first time I tested this on my end th’ flashes ended up attractin’ a glowin’ sea leviathan from the depths what almost capsized us!” He gave a little self-deprecating chuckle. “Cap’n Rose an’ I both agreed that maybe I should do me experiments from a greater distance movin’ forward.”

“Wait, all of you’ve been workin’ on this?” Knucks asked incredulously. The three foxes nodded. “How’d you… I mean, if this whole thing is new, how’d ya even manage to work all this out between you three?”

“Not easily,” Nine admitted. “It took over a month to even establish reliable two-way auditory communication. But now that we’ve worked through those problems it should be easier to coordinate our efforts going forward.”

Knucks nodded, stepping around the other two foxes (he supposed he could have walked through them, but that just seemed kind of rude) to scrutinize more closely the contraption that was projecting their images. Nothing about any of this looked sinister, but Knucks had never been the type to take such things for granted.

“So, ya say you’ve been workin’ on this for a while?”

Nine nodded. “Whenever I’ve had free time, for the past couple months. And before you say anything,” he added, rolling his eyes, “this project is entirely irrelevant to the restoration efforts so I was under no obligation to disclose it.”

Knucks frowned. “I thought you said we wouldn’t be able to communicate between worlds without the Paradox Prism.”

If Nine heard the suspicion in his tone, he didn’t acknowledge it. “I thought we couldn’t. And we can’t, really, at least not with methods utilizing the Prism. But before we all left the Grim, I… had an idea for a potential alternative.”

He gestured at the crystal in the heart of his machine. “The Grim’s physical structure is… well, I won’t bore you with the details, but essentially it’s one giant crystal with a strong elemental plasticity. Even when parts of it are separated from the whole, they still share a morphic resonance with each other and the entirety of the Grim itself – even, as we’ve confirmed over the past months, when transported to completely separate worlds. And it turns out it’s not only Prism-energy they react to.”

Knucks raised his eyebrows as Nine paced around, gesticulating excitedly with both his hands and tails as he spoke. He didn’t think he’d ever seen the fox brat like this, so eagerly showing off how his tech worked – heck, he didn’t even sound like he was deliberately trying to patronize Knucks by “dumbing it down”, which Knucks honestly would have fully anticipated.

“With these physical pieces of the Grim sharing the same energy signature, we figured out a way of using the Grim itself as a sort of ‘signal tower’ to project communications through. The biggest hurdle was honestly figuring out what energy to project with, since most forms physically can’t penetrate the Shatterspace gateways without an open portal.”

He stopped pacing and stood beside the two other foxes, nodding slightly toward the jungle-dweller.

“Mangey here had the breakthrough that allowed us to get to this point. Thanks to your counterpart on his world, actually.”

Knucks started, the image of another red echidna popping into his head, smaller and malnourished and with wild eyes constantly darting around, but still very much like him in so many ways.

“Wait, you talked with Gnarly?”

He hadn’t had much time with the jungle echidna, but after his interactions with Dread it had been an immense relief to encounter a version of himself whose nature didn’t utterly offend him to his very core. During their time sheltering in the Yolk together Gnarly had awkwardly gravitated towards him, and they’d shared words; from what Knucks gleaned from Gnarly’s stammered stories, the kid (he didn’t actually know if Gnarly was younger than him, but he just gave off that vibe) had never known any other echidnas on his world, which had… hit uncomfortably close.

Knucks had quickly found himself feeling rather protective of the other echidna (especially with their “allies” in the Chaos Council making snide remarks about his “unsophisticated” origin and mocking his skittishness). Gnarly was a good kid; a little off, yeah, but with a good heart, and loyal to his friends and allies (unlike certain pirates Knucks could name).

Plus, just… talking with a fellow echidna.

He had largely resigned himself to the notion that it wouldn’t be possible for them to see each other again.

“Not directly,” Nine answered. “Mangey’s been our go-between.”

“I thought Mangey didn’t talk.”

Nine shrugged.

“There are ways to communicate aside from words. Mangey knows how things work, even if he can’t always articulate it.”

The wild-child fox ducked his head bashfully and waved a hand as if to say “aw, shucks.”

“Anyway, apparently with the Paradox Prism stable again, Gnarly’s been picking up on some previously unknown form of ambient energy that he’s sensitive to, and Mangey was able to devise a means of utilizing it with the Grim shards. It’s taken a while – this energy is, well, chaotic and hard to pin down to make it work for us – but combining it with these” – he gestured again to the floating crystal – “we’re able to utilize it to produce similar effects to the Shatterspace portals.”

Huh. Knucks wasn’t certain what that was about – if it was an echidna thing, it was nothing he’d ever felt. But thinking about Gnarly brought up another thing that was bothering him.

“And did ya consider that some of us might wanna know that you were workin’ on a way we could talk with our friends in the other worlds again?”

And apparently Knucks was just going to keep having novel experiences today, because Nine bowed his head and actually looked genuinely contrite.

“I… I wasn’t one hundred percent certain whether this would even pan out. I didn’t want to give people false hope until we had something definite to show.” He settled his face and looked up to meet Knucks’ eyes again. “There’s still things the three of us need to work on right now while we’ve got this communication going, but I’ll come out to the city later and explain everything to Rebel and Rusty.”

Knucks shrugged, uncomfortable with the kid being so… agreeable. “I mean, I’m gonna be tellin’ ‘em anyway, but, yeah, that’d be appreciated. They’ll want the details from you, at least.”

Nine nodded, then turned back to look at his machine, his expression turning pensive.

“But anyway, once we can fine-tune this process and make sure it won’t cause any degradation like the Prism-energy portals did – it shouldn’t, since it’s not actually using Prism-energy, but we still want to be safe – we think we can probably eventually crack actual physical transportation between our worlds.”

“That be one of our two long goals,” Sails said in aside to Knucks.

Knucks frowned. “And what’s the other?”

The three foxes all shared a meaningful look between themselves.

“Finding a way to communicate with Green Hill.”

Knucks’ eyes widened. For a second he was back on the Grim, a washed-out hedgehog leaning against his shoulder for support, his seemingly endless vitality drained through his sacrifice to save them all…

“Oh.”

“Aye, this only worked ‘cause we each got a shard of the Grim to be actin’ as a connective point between worlds,” Sails said. “We been battin’ around a few ideas, but… well, even if’n we get a signal through, someone on t’other side needs to be there to pick it up.”

Nine again got a pensive look on his face.

“Yeah, that’s the major issue. Best case scenario, though, it’s possible – maybe even likely – that our counterpart in Green Hill will have the tech to pick up our signal if we can manage to force it through their gateway. And if Sonic…” He broke off, grimacing, and took a deep breath before continuing. “If Sonic’s okay, and if he’s told his friends there about us, then… Tails might be actively investigating the Shatterspace himself, which would make it easier. I mean, if he’s anything like us…”

The other two nodded in agreement.

Knucks… felt very much on the wrong foot here. None of this was what he had expected when he’d set out to this place. He couldn’t make himself feel upset about it though. Frankly, he was finding himself imagining the future with the foxes’ new tech – the chance to see Gnarly again; heck, even the prospect of meeting up with Dread too, if only because he’d been itching for a good fight…

And, of course, finally getting confirmation whether or not Sonic had made it home.

“You really think you can pull all this off?” he asked quietly.

“Well…” Nine turned to look at his fellow foxes.

He smiled then, and it wasn’t the insufferable smirk that Knucks had become used to seeing on the fox’s face when he wasn’t scowling. It was something hesitant, but soft and genuine and… happy.

He turned back to Knucks, Sails and Mangey on either side, identical blue eyes shining and each matching his smile.

“With the power of our three brains together, there’s nothing we can’t do.”

[red-doll-face]

Snow Angel 7

Chapter 7: conserving Series Masterlist

low - medium honor Arthur Morgan x fem. Reader

Arthur has been living by himself, laying low (for real this time) somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. After the whole Pinkerton and Micah debacle, he has been hiding away, waiting for it all to blow over, occasionally getting letters from the people who still know that he’s alive. He’s been alone awhile and at first, he thought he could handle a little loneliness. He has been wrong before. Lucky for him, you look like the perfect thing to break up the monotony.

Warnings: dubious consent, low honor Arthur, darkish fic, a bit of naive reader minor character death, guns, reader has dated and period typical ideals, not very good ideas about men and marriage… if you want reader to be strong and a fighter… this is not for you sorry WC: 3676 Hiiii : ) so sorry for taking so long with this. I know I promised a really long chapter but instead, ive broken it up to keep it at a readable length and i will be putting out ch 8 later today to make up for taking so long, i hope you can forgive me 😔 I was so honored to see all of your lovely comments and feedback, im so happy, omg you have no clue, all of the little notes i got that were excited to see updates make me cry 🥹 Tags: no TB, weird but not that toxic relationship, some sweet arthur cuddle, arthur and his foul mouth : )

Arthur reveals a truth about himself.

Waking late in the night, there is a heavy presence behind you. On the verge of suffocating really, Arthur breathes; slow and even, asleep. It comes as a surprise to you that both of you fit in this tent; Arthur being such a large man. The fire crackles on and casts a deep orange glow still lighting the night around you. The warmth that surrounds you, however, comes completely from Arthur. It’s a little uncomfortable with him so close, the rough leather of his gun belt presses into your lower back. You wiggle, but he hardly stirs. But you can’t help to appreciate the heat he wraps you up in, the simple pleasure it gives you to have him hold you so close.

Your thoughts wander in the opposite direction of your appreciation. You think of carefully slipping out and going to your horse, leaving Arthur at this camp alone. But you opened your big mouth and told him where you and your parents lived. There’s no way you can keep Lucky very quiet, he would snort and stomp around grumpily. 

If Arthur woke while you were leaving, he would be furious. Worse then, is the idea of him waking up, cold, searching for you. Your stomach sours at the thought of Arthur waking alone. How angry he would be, how lonely. Maybe you would be lonely without him too. Would you miss him? Miss his lustful acts, his kisses? His overbearing presence, his heavy warmth? 

Some part of you can’t go back to the ignorance you had before. The innocence in not knowing entirely what he wanted with you when he took you to bed. You thought such an act to be sacred, reserved between man and wife, not just for pleasure, to feel so whole. It would feel like something was missing if you couldn’t have what Arthur had given you. It’s a strange thought, it makes your eyes scrunch shut. How awful a thought, that you need Arthur and all of the things he's done to you, that you want them to happen again. That you don’t want to leave him. 

Who knows if you’d even be able to lift Arthur’s arm off of you, anyway. He has a big arm slung over your hip, you imagine how he fell asleep holding your own sleeping form close to himself. It’s an oddly comforting thought, twisting your stomach with some sort of affection. He may not be traditional, may not be the perfect love story you had wanted when you were a girl. He hasn’t even been so bold or vulnerable to tell you that he loved you. But all of his actions point to some untold feeling that he harbors for you. You had never met a man who tried so hard to be with you, who met you and wanted nothing else but to have you at his side. 

Just as you’re about to drift back to sleep while thinking of him, Lucky starts to snort anyhow, nervous and shuffling. Somebody’s voice breaks the calm of your state immediately, like you’ve jumped in a cold river, shock freezes your limbs.

“Quiet, stupid animal,” a nasally male voice says over the sounds of the night and Lucky's anxious chuffing. You try to nudge Arthur, wiggling to face him but he only breathes deeply. You can hear the man looking through your things, pocketing items. You poke hard into Arthur, making him groan. 

He sees you when he groggily opens his eyes, face to face. He’s about to open his mouth when you shake your head, trying to convey your panic. His eyes stare confusedly and bleary from sleep. It’s not until he can hear the man rifling through the supplies on the wagon that he seems to understand. You see his features harden like tree sap, a look you’ve never seen on him before. He squeezes your hip, to comfort you, you think; before he sits up slowly, hand already on his revolver. He sleeps in his gun belt, as if already expecting some stranger to creep in on him. 

With an ease you didn’t think such a big man like him could have, he’s out of the tent and up on his feet. You can hear Arthur raise his gun and click the hammer back, making the man freeze. 

“Startin’ to miss when it was me doin’ the robbin’,” he says. The man turns so suddenly. You peek outside of the tent. You know Arthur wouldn’t want you to make yourself known but you can’t help but peek out of the thin sliver between the flaps. 

“Now, well, I was only hungry, ain’t ate nothin’ in three days! Slim pickin’s out here,” the man’s voice is strained. Arthur doesn’t falter. As if thinking over the man’s words, he hesitates. The burglar does look worse for wear but he did have every intention of taking all that he could carry. The panic wells in his eyes, the fear makes him shake. 

“I can give it back! No harm done, right?” He begins rifling through his pockets in an attempt to appease Arthur, but he fumbles, dropping something to the ground. Arthur’s words interrupts the moment. The thief puts his hands up. 

“Reckon you was gonna take more than a can of beans,” Arthur has his easy drawl to all of his words. His revolver doesn’t sway, doesn’t lower. It’s focused on the man. The calmness he possesses sucks the air out of the space. You think of his comment. He misses when it was him robbing others. He has done this before and he has no problem doing it again, holding his gun up at somebody, his commanding voice making his victim tremble in fear. 

A loud bang and a puff of smoke scares birds from their nests. You cover your ears and slip from where you were peeking down to your bottom. Arthur stows his weapon against the leather of his holster. Once you can hear clearly again, the gentle ringing of his spurs is all you can make out.

You come out, shocked at the sight of the thief crumpled on the ground. You’re almost afraid to look, walking up to where Arthur stands and the man lies in a pool of his own blood, soaking the earth underneath him. Arthur’s shot was perfect. Right in the center of his forehead. The contents of his skull leak out all over the floor of this clearing. Much too visceral for you. You cover your mouth. Nausea hits you, seeing such a disturbing display. You had never seen a dead man before. He has such an odd look on his features, his last moment of fear is stuck there on his face. His eyes look like they could still blink at any moment.

“Y’alright? Don’t look if it’s gonna make you cry, girl,” he’s picking through the man’s pockets, taking back the things he stole, a pocket watch and a coin purse from your saddle bag. “Damn rat,” he sighs, nudging the body in the side with his boot. He tosses all of the stolen goods into the back of the cart. 

Arthur has no reaction akin to yours, only indifference which borders on cruelty. His irreverent behavior has you flinching. You can’t seem to look anywhere else but at those lifeless eyes, at the hollow stare. It’s hard to say if the man deserved to have a hole in his head the way he did. 

 Arthur clicks his tongue in a small irritation when he notices you stuck to the scene, unable to look anywhere else but the vacant stare of the thief. He’s marching over and pulling you away, gently taking you into his arms. He puts himself between you and the body, til you can’t see it anymore. Comforting strokes down your back make you ease, albeit slowly. The fire flickers weakly, not much left to burn but daylight would be here within the next two hours. You sigh and let yourself sink into Arthur. It isn’t fair how warm he is with no coat on. 

“Alright, back to bed with you, too cold out here,” he’s ushering you back to the tent. 

“Are you coming back to bed?” You find your ask sounding more like a plea. You notice when it comes out of your mouth, your face warm. He shakes his head, shrugs on his coat. 

“Gotta clean up this mess, unless you like the extra company,” your face crinkles. How he finds humor after killing a man, you don’t understand. You kneel down to enter but turn around to look at the shape of Arthur in the fire light. Broad and dark, a shadow. 

“I-I don’t want you to go,” you don't look at first (out of embarrassment) but you do look up when your words make him stop in his tracks. He stops his dutiful striding. He looks over his shoulder but not turning completely. His posture before was upright and ready for action but with your words, he sags a little, putting his hand on his hip, huffing a barely audible chuckle. 

“Won’t take me too long,” he’s off and he picks up the body, up over his shoulder. As if it were a sack of potatoes or corn. His boots crunch in the snow, walking for a few minutes down into a thicket. You can hear him toss the body. No reverence. You don’t know how to feel. You’re sure that man wasn’t planning to kill you. Arthur could have let him go. But he had kept you safe. 

Arthur returns with little change in his attitude, letting the events of the night slide off of him, water over the scales of an alligator. He’s in the tent with you, more than happy to relax. Laying down, crossing one leg over the other. Like nothing has happened. He has his arm out for you to tuck into. You do, as always. How strange you are to take comfort and safety in the arms of a man who shot down another not even ten minutes ago. The both of you are strange, two mismatched people looking for comfort in one another. 

“You killed him,” you whisper in the night air, the sound of branches swaying in the wind is the only thing nature can give to break up the utter silence of winter. You say those words like you can’t believe he took a life so easily. Like instinct, a second nature. Arthur did seem to have something lurking just under the surface. Waiting for the right opportunity, the right provocation. 

“I did,” he has nothing else to say. As casual as anything else. You can’t find an argument to give him. A sigh escapes him, a slightly fed-up tone to it. “And you give a shit?” He’s a bit forceful, like he wants you to lash out at him, to tell him he’s a monster, a bad man. Your fingers tighten as they grip onto him. You settle into his warmth, his hold. Like a house cat. Your heart rate slips slowly into relaxation as you sigh against him.

“Never seen a dead man,” Instead you tell him the truth or as much as you can reveal of it. That you’re twisted enough to only remark on the fact that the man was a new sight. Your voice is a whisper, almost too quiet for him to hear.

A small tension in him is released when you say that.“ Lost count of how many I’ve seen,” he’s stating a simple fact. You wonder what he’s done in life to not remember how many men he’s seen like that, crumpled like an old newspaper and forgotten. You want to ask but you’re afraid of the answer after what he said earlier. 

Your hand is on his chest, head on his shoulder. You try not to think of that man’s head popped open, spilling on the ground. You must seem so childish to him. A sheltered girl kept from the world. You breathe slowly. Can hardly stand to sleep but Arthur lays awake with you. 

“Ain’t nobody else comin’, honey, just go to sleep,” he doesn’t sound exasperated. His voice feels like it's confined to this tent, so quiet. Like the world stops outside of the canvas woven around you. 

You don’t know why but you feel the sudden onslaught of emotions, some delayed fear rouses from the depths of you, washing over you in one big wave. You try to keep it from happening, feeling rather immature. Tears leak from you anyway. You grip onto Arthur before you start to cry, fingers scrunching into the fabric of his shirt and vest. 

You don't have the capacity to read Arthur for his reaction but you can feel him close around you, his scent, his gentle shushing. “You’ll be alright now, ain’t nothin’ to worry about,” The comment is a little awkward, unpracticed. But his desire to comfort you feels genuine. 

You sob into his chest, sniffling and curling in on him, overwhelmed. It takes you a while to come back, quieting down as he lays a kiss in your hair. He’s pulled you almost entirely into him, pressed flush against him. He pulls his riding gloves from his hands, untucks your shirt from where it's trapped underneath your riding pants. His hands are warm and rough, sliding over the give of your soft belly up to your back. His touch feels like hot tea with honey. Pleasing in this soft moment, where he holds you. 

You sniffle, wetting his shirt with your tears. You're so sapped of energy, barely able to keep your eyes open. Embarrassment unfurls in you too at the thought of you crying your eyes out on his shirt. 

“Got a little crybaby, don’t I?” He’s poking fun, not too mean spirited. However he still derives joy from seeing you tuck into him, hiding your face shyly. 

Arthur doesn't say much after that. Tucking you into the safety of his shoulder. You listen to his lungs fill with air. You don’t know how he can be so cruel in one moment and so docile in the next, he’s a completely different person.

You adjust so that your noses almost touch, his eyes snap open when he senses you looking at him. 

Perhaps a day or two ago, you would have minded more if your thoughts wandered to him kissing you, messy and loving despite your situation. But all you want is for him to kiss you. Though heat climbs up your neck and cheeks, you still find yourself wishing he just knew what you wanted, too embarrassed to tell him. You could only imagine the smug smile he would have, he probably wouldn’t give in either, he’d make you beg or some other humiliating act. He’d revel in your shyness. 

He doesn't seem to realize your desire. You have no desire to share it in a verbal manner or an actionable one either. Though you're not brave enough to initiate a kiss with him, you know he likes it when you touch him. 

And you do. Up his chest, to his cheek, the stubby hairs poking the delicate skin of your finger tips. Your touch makes him react too, makes his eyes relax, the smallest sigh leaves his lips. With you touching his face, he finally fulfills your wish, pressing so close, lips chapped but the flick of his tongue adds a bright warmth. The contact sends your heart into a frenzy. Why you're so happy, why you enjoy it so much isn't such a mystery anymore. You've started to internalize his words, how he'd be your husband, how he’d take care of you. And that’s all he’s done so far; taken care of you. 

He pulls you so close, grabbing everything he can, squeezing at the flesh that gives on your hips and bottom. His tongue pushes past your hesitance, licking into your mouth. You let him lay claim to you in every way he wants to. After he’s had his fill, he holds your face in his hands. Your fingers skim down to where you can feel his heart the strongest. You can taste the tobacco he smoked earlier. Playfully, you pull away, pushing your smaller hands against him. For a moment he’s displeased until you open your mouth to speak.

“You taste bitter,” your whisper is quiet and he grins at you. 

“There a problem? Wasn't me pulled out that cigarette,” 

You shake your head, a smile breaks on your lips. You bite your lip before kissing him anyway. From the feel of it, he smiles too. ‘That's what I thought’ is mumbled against you before his tongue meets your own again.

 It's euphoria that breaks up on your tongue like candy, melts away and slides down your throat. The soft sounds you make are returned with his own sighs and groans. Your kiss has him as close as he can be but you want him closer. The thought of him killing sours the moment for only a second before you rush to right his wrongs for him. Your valiant protector, keeping danger away at all costs. Every second between you two, you savor. You know that he would do anything to keep you safe now. 

“Arthur…” he hums; calling his name can't pull his attention away from trailing his mouth down to your chin and the underside of your neck. Giggles come from your lips, his beard tickles the sensitive area of your neck and face. He rights himself so he can bow over you, open mouthed kisses on your neck turn into a startling sting when he latches on your skin. You vainly push at his shoulders, whining, but he won't stop until he's satisfied. You don’t understand why he’s kissing so rough, too weak to push at him enough. When he pulls away you stare up at him, no doubt making a pout that he touches with his thumb. 

“That hurt,” You rub at the spot, wet with his spit. His smug grin doesn't drop at all. He just finds your confusion endearing. 

“Jus’ gotta make sure you know you’re mine, s’all,” He says, as if his actions were an obvious reality. His words touch some unknown part of you, sensitive to his odd sentiments. Even though theyre dipped in his usual cool attitude, a breathy chuckle that betrays him. He liked that more than he let on.

“Yours,” you say, almost offhandedly but the simple word has Arthur looking at you. In the dark, you can't see much but you can hear his breathing pick up. That urge of his to utterly possess you is stoked like a fire, burning brighter. He bears down on you, face so close to yours. You can feel the ridge of his uneven nose bump your cheek. 

“Supposed to be puttin’ you to bed, girl,” He speaks like you're a tempting thought, a seductress. Nothing you do strikes you as particularly flirtatious but you might try your hand at it.

“What would you do instead?” you ask, knowing what he would have in mind but teasing him would do him no harm. 

“You're messin’, playin games with me,” He sees right through you. Arthur is always too aware to have one pulled over on him. All of your bravery has drained from you, you might have liked getting a rise out of him but Arthur is obviously a man not to be tossed about. Not so easily anyway. His words have you looking away, even in the dark but his hand guides your face back up. He looks down at you but he grumbles. “This tent is too goddamn small for this, maybe I can fuck on you proper in your bed. With your folks in the next room, on a little bed you had since you were a girl no doubt,” He flops down onto his back again, pulling you so you’re at his side, tucking an arm underneath you. His laugh rumbles through his chest, his hand playing with the edges of your hair, sliding over your shoulder. You feel your face heat and a worried look pull your brows into each other. You smack his chest lightly, feeling scandalized at the mere thought.

“We-You can’t do that, Arthur!” That petulant tone to your voice embarrasses you even more than his perverted statements. A scratchy whine, childish. 

“And why the hell not? Must be big enough to bend you over the damn thing,” He scratches nonchalantly at his chin, as if discussing the weather. “I’m tired anyway, your little pussy cat can suck the milk outta me tomorrow,” His vulgar words make you turn away. How undignified they are. But you can’t deny how they make you feel. He has a chuckle, thick with his puffed up pride. 

He sighs and adjusts himself. The thrill you get at thinking of doing such a thing with your parents in the same house makes you sick. You had never dreamed of doing something so deplorable. 

“Arthur, you- you’re-” 

“I’m what?” His voice is gruff in your ear as he presses up behind you, turning so that he can hold your body close to his chest. You can feel how big he is like this, how you are nowhere near the very length of him laid out at your back. 

“Disgusting,” He huffs a small laugh against the curve of your ear lobe, tickling your hair. 

“Do I revile you? My poor princess,” It's only a little sarcastic, his arms tighten around you, comforting. You realize that he has completely distracted you from your outburst, from the incident with the thief. The exchange with him has pulled you away.

You hold his arms around you, brushing over his roughened and dry knuckles. Relaxing on him has his words stopping there, ready to soothe you to sleep. Just as you're slipping into slumber, Arthur mutters a ‘G’night,’ to you, kissing your hair. 

Thank you for reading ! Arthur is such a weenie omg, arthur and his nasty mouth, i love him your honor. i would be so happy to cuddle with him, omg, cuddle with arthur is perhaps a transcendental experience, i think. sorry i made reader a weenie in this chapter but i mean if i saw arthur blow some guys head off, i think id be kind of 😶 as well. either way i would probably just think it was kinda hot at the end of the day like my man is a murderer 🥹💖 pardon him of his crimes : ) cant wait to show you guys ch 8 tomorrow !!!

[moonstruckme]

Okay hey me again 😞 was hoping to send a request for more TASM!Peter x reader but one where he is comforting the reader bc they were stood up by their friends(cough cough me😬) like they were supposed to go out and she got all dolled up but they ditched her

This might be an oddly specific ask but I thought. Why not 😝 feel free to take the concept and RUN! I am all for writers doing whatever the hell they want

-🍁

Hi honey!! I'm so sorry that happened to you, I sincerely hope it wasn't anything like the scenario I chose for this story but if your friends did intentionally abandon you, that speaks far more poorly of them than you. I had that happen to me when I was younger, and now that I have more perspective it's easy to see how those girls were using that as an immature way to deal with their own insecurity. So once again, I hope you weren't in this sort of situation, but if you were please know that it's likely got nothing to do with you and you're amazing and lovely!! <3

Peter Parker x fem!reader ♡ 586 words

Peter’s hand is warm on your back, rubbing big circles with a steadying pressure. It’s comforting and undoing at the same time, because you’re stubbornly sure you wouldn’t have become so discomposed without his tender sympathy. Another tear slips down your cheek, splattering mascara-black on your thigh. 

“They’re idiots,” Peter says, not for the first time. His voice is weighed down by helpless distress. “They don’t know what they’re missing, sweetheart.” 

You inhale wetly. “I just don’t get how they thought I wouldn’t find out.” 

“My point exactly. They’re idiots.” 

You sniffle again, your tear ducts finally emptied, and you want to lean your head on Peter’s shoulder, but that feels too pathetic and needy right now. Come to think of it, it was probably your pathetic neediness that got you ditched tonight. 

It isn’t the first time this has happened. At least, not the first time you’ve made plans with your friends only for them to all become suddenly busy right before. It is the first time, though, that you’ve received a text meant for someone else, saying that your friend is on their way to dinner and will meet everyone else there. The natural conclusion is that this was just the first slip up; that every time you’ve gotten dressed up only to have your plans canceled, the rest of your friends are carrying out the night without you. 

Like he can feel the want, Peter stops rubbing your back to wrap his arm around your shoulders, encouraging you downwards until you’re leaning on him. He pets your hair, mindless of your makeup and snot getting on his shirt. 

“Can I say something about them that you might not like?” 

Trepidation creeps into your throat, but you nod. Peter would never say anything to make you feel worse than you do right now. 

“I’ve never thought they were very nice people,” he confesses quietly. “The way they talk about each other when some of them aren’t around, not to mention the way they talk about other people…I mean, you’re not like that.” His hand comes to rest on your shoulder, thumb stroking soothingly just above your collarbone. “I think that’s why they don’t always want to hang out with you, honey. You just don’t engage with that stuff. And I don’t mean that as a bad thing.”

You’re silent but for your quiet sniffling, unwilling to condemn your friends but not really finding fault in Peter’s assessment either. 

“They don’t deserve you,” he says softly. “I’m not just saying that because I love you, okay? I mean it. You’re nicer than them, and I think they know it. They don’t want to have to measure up.” A pause. “You hearing me, sweetheart?” 

“I’m hearing you,” you reply croakily. “Thanks, Pete.” 

He squeezes your shoulder. “Nothing to thank me for. Listen, I’m sure you’re not feeling it tonight, but if you still want to wear this outfit somewhere, I’d love to take you out tomorrow. You look so pretty, it’d be a shame if no one but me got to see you all dolled up.” 

You raise your head from his shoulder to give him a look, knowing there’s mascara tracked down your face and snot glossy under your nose. “You think? Should we go out right now?”

Peter knows what you’re about, but his smile is teeming with sweetness anyway. “Absolutely, if you wanna.” 

“You gonna show me off? Just like this?” 

“Grab your bag, sweet thing. Let’s show ‘em who runs this town.”

[lilacxquartz]

Those Late Summer Nights | Chapter 4

satoru gojo x f!reader × suguru geto

plot: you moved to tokyo over the summer to take a teaching job. as you get settled in, you find yourself entangled in a toxic dynamic.

chapter summary: suguru has an unavoidable family event to go to, shoko is needed for inner city training and satoru was busy with clan related activities. As a result, you’re the next in line.

warnings: boundaries get pushed

< Previous Chapter • Next Chapter >

4. Plus One

You blinked as you stared at Suguru.

He wanted to meet up with you today while everyone else was busy, not explaining much over the phone call prior. This was the first time you had been to anyone else’s apartment that wasn’t Shoko’s and his place seemed oddly fitting for someone like him. Minimally yet tastefully decorated and tidy with warm accents.

“A platonic date…?” you repeated it, hoping that it would sound less absurd the second time around but it only became weirder the more you processed it—especially when you were the one who said it.

He explained that he wanted you to be his plus one for a family event because nobody else was available for night. He could have taken someone random he said, but he wanted to be around someone he could both tolerate and trust not to embarrass him in front of his family.

So that’s why he couldn’t just find someone random, he claimed.

You weren’t sure if this type of request was common among friends but you tried your best to be understanding about it. Friends did favours for friends, right? So maybe this was normal.

“For a family gathering type of event, yeah,” he nodded along, throwing you a piece of black clothing, “you can wear this, Shoko wore it the last time she stood in for this sort of thing.”

You scrambled as you looked at the dress in its entirety; a midi length black dress in a soft and breathable fabric with a slit down the skirting, sporting a square neckline.

You could see this looking great on her but you couldn’t imagine it on you. Maybe it would? Who really knows.

“It’s nothing serious, I promise,” he said once again, talking you into it, his voice melodic and yet so casual, “it’s just some family thing I can’t avoid so I would rather not go alone, you know? It’s regular people so you won’t have to talk about sorcerer stuff, if that makes it less scary for you.”

It did make the prospect less scary, he was correct about that much. His eyes focused on the dress as you seemed to consider it and then a little on you, something in his face lighting up just a little bit as the seconds passed but whatever it was, he didn’t comment on it out loud.

“I suppose I could…” you considered, feeling just a bit pressured. You knew already that you wouldn’t do too well in new social situations, but you also wanted to be someone that your new friend group could rely on.

Or would that only make you into a pushover?

Was that why he asked you to begin with, so early on into knowing you? To see if that’s what you potentially were?

Your mind stirred at the thought.

It certainly felt that way at least, the longer he continued to stare at you with those almost knowing eyes. There was something about him that you couldn’t quite read too well.

“Perfect. I’ll pick you up from the halls at let’s say… 6 in the evening tomorrow?” Suguru replied as he walked you out of the front door. “Wear something comfortable on your feet though, there’s a lot of standing involved.”

You stared at the now closed door with some further disbelief, sighing at the idea. You spent an extra half hour getting lost on your way here and you were already being turned away so soon.

You didn’t really want to do this but you didn’t want to be a disappointment either.

You texted Shoko on your way back to the campus as had to take the bus to get back there as it was quite out of the way of the city. You wondered if it would just be easier to live in the city, the commute be damned but you’d be closer to everyone else.

You asked her how to possibly get through this thing, how to interact with his family and why it had to involve wearing something so formal.

Her texts came back as a chaotic stream of broken down replies but you were able to piece them together bit by bit. As far as you understood it, all you needed to do was smile and nod, laugh at the jokes told by his family no matter how bad they are and to help yourself to the complimentary booze provided in the kitchen.

Maybe you could get through this after all.

You surrendered to this sort of idea as you texted back and forth what you actually needed to be doing and by the time you were back on the campus, the idea didn’t seem too bad after all.

This was just something he did with friends, just as you suspected.

He just didn’t want to be alone for something potentially boring, maybe even daunting and that was something you could understand.

***

You were ready by 6 the next day just as you had promised you would be. You slipped into the dress relatively quickly and styled your hair to rest a little better on your shoulders. You decided to accessorise the dress with a simple silver necklace to make it look less plain and wore some flat black sandals to finish off the look, figuring they would be comfortable enough.

There was then a knock on the front door not too long after and you opened it up, revealing a slightly more dressed up Suguru who looked good in what he wore.

You could admit that much, but you didn’t dare tell him. Would it be weird if you did?

You both eyed each other up before anything was said. He wore black slacks and a form fitting black jumper with his hair pulled back. It all looked a little too much for the weather, but his sleeves were rolled up and he didn’t seem to be dying from the heat.

He took a good look at you but didn’t say anything, leaving you both thankful that he didn’t comment on your appearance but also a little nervous all at the same time.

“Don’t you get scared living in a place like this all alone?” he asked after a moment as he took a look around, his eyes scanning the halls with some familiarity in this gaze.

“It’s not that bad,” you shrugged, unsure how to reply. Your expression slowly grew nervous, overthinking his comment.

“You know, Shoko might be quiet about it, but she is looking for a roommate,” he said after a strained moment of silence.

You liked that idea though. You wanted to live with someone in a way, both for reassurance but also because you genuinely wanted to be her good friend.

“I can think about it…” you added after another moment of pause, realising that you didn’t quite reply immediately. You were too lost in thought.

In fact, the silence between the two of you only continued to brew. You were both too reserved without the two other people who would otherwise fill in the gaps that were vacant from your presence.

“Anyway,” he spoke up at last, clearing his throat as he did so, avoiding staring at your body as his eyes couldn’t help but trail over to the way you wore the dress again and again, “I’ll be driving us there, so just follow me.”

He let you into his car which was conveniently to his style as well, a sleek black car that seemed to be a semi recent model. The drive happened in relative silence aside from what played in the background as the road gradually grew slowly darker, but not quite night as the sun began to set. He listened to chill house music that idly played, not seeming too bothered by the mutual quietness.

You felt his eyes wander back and forth to your body as you tried to pay attention to the outside, catching a glimpse of him staring in the reflection every now and then. Such a feeling left you feeling just a little uncomfortable whenever he would do so and the fact that he never once said anything only added to the tension that you didn’t even know was there.

At some point, he pulled over to a less travelled spot where the cars didn’t pass by as much, right beside some trees. He fanned his fingers and his palms over the steering wheel before taking a deep, sharp breath before exhaling through his mouth in a controlled manner.

His closest hand drifted away from the wheel as if by pure impulse and off towards you, balling into a fist as he seemed internally conflicted with something before returning his hands back to where they were supposed to be.

You kept incredibly quiet throughout this encounter, unsure where it was going and not feeling too safe as it happened.

“Sorry about that,” he said after a while of sitting in silence with you. His eyes didn’t dare move to look at you as he took a few more deep breaths to calm himself down from whatever it was that was bothering him before driving off again.

“I just had a thought that I shouldn’t have had,” he muttered to himself, just loud enough so that you could hear him too.

You didn’t reply anything to him, but you did gulp somehow absurdly loud as the discomfort on your end finally made a more noticeable appearance.

What was that?

For your own sanity, you chose to ignore it for the rest of the ride, (but you knew that you shouldn’t have).

***

He finally pulled up to a house in the countryside off of a more beaten road. Many other cars were parked in a array of chaotic ways around each other, some cars locking others in. The house reminded you a little bit of home, but that sort of design wasn’t really that uncommon in areas like these and especially with older builds.

“You’ll be fine,” he spoke up, his voice finally normal again, “most people are from a bit further out into the country.”

He was glad in a way that he didn’t have to educate you on the correct mannerisms the same way he had to do with Shoko, but he didn’t say it to you directly.

He led you out of the car instead and introduced you to the people inside. You tried your best to follow Shoko’s guidance rather seriously, smiling and laughing and nodding, subconsciously drifting to the table that had refreshments as you sought out liquid courage to ease the social pressure.

You weren’t doing too badly you thought, but your heart raced the entire time, gradually being replaced with a heavier sort of feeling as the wine settled in your system and relaxed you.

Slowly but surely, you could get through this.

Suguru stuck closely by you to your surprise, you were expecting him to do his own thing for some reason.

The reality was that he was still feeling what he did back in the car when things got a little too heated for him and he didn’t like that sensation nor what it did to him. There was something about you in that dress and the way that it sat just a little tighter on you than it did on Shoko; your body filling it out in all of the right ways that made him see you in a way he shouldn’t be looking at you.

At least not if he wanted to keep your friendship.

You didn’t notice the male attention on you like he did, so he was just being protective of his friend in a new setting, that was it. Nothing more. But with the way his own relatives looked at you, he couldn’t help but just feel a little jealous—not that he had any right to feel that way, of course, but it did trouble him all the same.

You, on the other hand, didn’t notice a thing aside from the fact that you were just being closely watched though, thinking that this was all just a part of his intense personality. You didn’t know that he was actually quite a relaxed person, not too far off from Satoru when he was around his friends, that he was equally casual and non-caring, but that wasn’t the side of him that you were getting to know.

And as the gathering seemed to eventually thin out, he didn’t quite know why he took off with you in such a hurry either, without as much as saying a single goodbye to the rest of his family. It was just you and him, straight into the car with even more silence that followed you both on the way back.

This time though, he drove faster down the road once he got onto the freeway, not quite caring about the speed. The veins on his forearms were beginning to tighten as his knuckles that firmly gripped onto the wheel grew pale, driving off somewhere that didn’t quite seem like you were going home before he pulled over once again to the side.

The same sort of thing repeated as before; the breathing exercises and the internal struggle and the tension to top it all off. He really tried his best to talk himself out of it but surrendered this time to crossing the barrier of where you two sat, his hand spilling into your half of the car and his hand meeting your knee, wrapping around your leg where the dress didn’t reach.

His grip around you continued to tighten as he enjoyed the sensation of your soft, smooth skin as he slowly brushed it up, reaching just the edge of the skirting to your dress, so close to your thighs, so close to your—your—wait.

“Please stop,” you interrupted him, causing him to freeze in place.

His eyes widened as he realised what he was doing and he kept frozen in place for about ten painful seconds or so before lifting his hand away in a sudden hurry—quickly gulping down what he actually wanted to say.

From your peripheral vision, it seemed that he was acting based on a different type of thinking entirely as he stayed silent, his hand drifting over to his trousers as his legs pushed him up a little, quickly adjusting what was going on in his pants to ease the problem he had.

Luckily for him though, you didn’t notice that part too well, your eyes instead pointed directly at your legs instead as you tried to process your own discomfort.

The rest of the drive continued on in pained silence until you both got out at the campus and much to your building up concern, he followed you right to the door, but he didn’t seem to be pressuring you anymore. In fact, he seemed normal again.

“Hey, so, I’m really tired, I don’t think I can drive again,” he spoke, stretching his arms out as he yawned, “think I can take the hall sofa? I’ll be out of your way right where you can see me, I promise I won’t do anything again. I don’t know what I was even thinking.”

Your judgement was a little off but you could still feel the buzz from the drinks before at the event cloud your judgement. You sighed and allowed it before heading off to your room to process everything that had happened today.

If you could both simply forget what happened, then that would be great.

Something told you that it wasn’t quite the end of that, though.

And with the way his eyes couldn’t keep off of you as he followed you inside, your hunch was about to be proven correct—not that he’d let you catch on, though.

He was going to be subtle about it, if he could help it.

Just for you.

[quinklequonkle]

I CHALLENGE YOU 🫵🫵

Ren headcanons with a dominant MC

AAAGGGGHHH EHEHEHWHHEHEHEHEHRHDHHR

No one's ever asked about my headcanons before! I'm all giggly and shix

Let's get to it shall we?

WARNING: contains manipulation, Stepping on the pp, degradation, and overall being a biiiggg meanie to Ren

-Ren thinks he's the one in control here but he just doesn't know what he's gotten himself into

-After being in his care for a couple of weeks, he noticed something wasn't as he expected to be. The way you addressed him was casually mean, bossy, and even a bit condescending at times yet... he didn't feel as though he should punish you for it.

-Usually this sort of thing was sure to piss him off but Instead he felt... Put in his place? It's almost as if he didn't mind the treatment he received from you. This was working in your favor, the pieces were falling into their rightful place

-The first time you demanded something out of him you surely thought he would snap but you were instead pleasantly surprised by eager compliance and an even happier trot

-At first you had to ask and practically beg him to get what you wanted, but you soon learned that throwing in a sweet affirmation or two changed his tune real quick. Asking became optional and demanding became your go-to.

-Soon he was at your every beck and call, not even realizing that the dynamic had dramatically flipped. The metaphorical collar on his thin snapable neck

-Wanted breakfast in bed while you flicked your hand vaguely in the stairs direction? He already knew what that meant and had it in hand. Wanted him to drop what he was doing so you could have him fawn over you while you do nothing? He doesn't even remember what he was doing beforehand as he tends to you.

-Whether he acknowledged this switch or not didn't matter. but oddly enough he did seem happier with this arrangement, as if it were something comfortably familiar.

NSFW headcanons:

-WHAT A WHINY MAN

-Go anywhere near his ears and he's pleading at you to kiss, lick, or even bite them

-And even more fuss just from you barely even stepping on his hardening cock.

-It was pathetic in the most adorable way, you decided to throw him a bone. Ya gotta treat your pet at some point!

-Trapping his cock inside you cause him to becoming squirmy. Kneading his claws into your skin as he begs to have some sort of release from you.

-"What a selfish creature you are, be a good patient fox boy for me and you might just be rewarded."-

-You could tighten your hand around his throat and he'd eat up every interaction and every word. Desperately trying to grind against you

-his protests mean nothing because after every sensual session he thanks you for it

-he can cope tbh

-Congrats! Ren is successfully your bitch :^)

[haziwritesstuff]

My little rose, part 3

"You are meant to be the love of my next life."

Pairing | Aemond and Aegon x reader Wordcount | 4.2k Warnings | Medieval misogyny, Aegon isn't the nicest Previous chapters | Part 1, part 2

You make your way to Dragonstone, landing on the stone steps of the castle. Your family isn't there yet. It's quiet as you approach alone. You feel like you're walking into an empty castle, with nothing but your own footsteps echoing in the vast halls. The air is still and you feel like you're walking through a desert of stone and silence. You find it oddly peaceful and tranquil in a way, despite the solitude. The change in environment was refreshing and cleansing, after the tense atmosphere that you've just exited. You feel like a weight has been lifted off of your shoulders, a sense of calm and contentment wash over you as you look around at the vast halls and empty rooms.

You find yourself wandering through the gardens, your attention being drawn to the roses as the vivid colors and sweet smells fill the air. You feel your heart skip a beat as you take in the sight of the lush foliage and vibrant petals, and you can't help but feel a jolt of nostalgia. These were the roses that you've always loved, the ones that used to bring you joy and peace when you were a child. Bittersweetness washes over you as you remember those years growing up in solitude, with only Silverwing and the roses for company. You feel like the roses were like your faithful companions, always there to bring you comfort and joy during those times when you felt lonely and isolated. The  roses remind you of those comforting moments of companionship and the bittersweetness you feel is a reflection of the mixture of feelings that those times brought to you. You feel a bit of anger and resentment towards your father for keeping you hidden away from the world for years. You feel like he robbed you of a proper childhood, leaving you alone and isolated with no real friends in your life, he deprived you of so much, he was selfish and callous in his treatment of you. Although you made peace with it, you haven't forgotten it either. You've learned to accept and come to terms with your past, but you haven't let go of the bitterness and resentment that you feel towards Daemon for what he did to you. You've learnt to live with this injustice, but the anger and hurt still remains deep inside your heart.

You've been so deep in thought that you haven't realized someone else has joined you in the gardens. You're startled by Rhaena's sudden appearance and you feel a surge of relief as you realize it was her. "Where have you been? We almost started a search party!” "I'm sorry, I was just..." you stop short, realizing that you don't have an explanation for your absence. You feel like Rhaena's sudden appearance has caught you by surprise and you feel a bit embarrassed to explain why you were away. Rhaena’s staring at you and she’s not willing to let this matter go. There is still more to be said, but there is a certain level of awkwardness and tension and between you two right now. You didn’t want to make a bigger deal out of it than it already has been, so you keep your answer brief and simple. "I just flew alone, I wanted some time to be alone with my thoughts..." Rhaena nods her head, seeming to accept your explanation and she doesn't press the issue any further. “So what did you think of King’s Landing? And what did you think of your other family members?” "Well... it was certainly an experience..." you respond nervously, not sure exactly how to answer the question.

“Mmh. Did you manage to fix your issues with Aegon?” You feel a wave of awkwardness wash over you as Rhaena brings up the topic of Aegon. You're not sure what to say, or how you would even begin to explain the situation between the two of you. “Sort of.” You whispered, feeling like you haven't really fully resolved your issues with Aegon. The two of you still have some things to work out, but the tension is not as bad as it was before. Perhaps kissing him wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Rhaena's observant and perceptive, noticing that you're holding something back when you give your answer. You're not sure if you should give more details to her, you wanted to. You wanted to scream that you’ve kissed Aegon, that you hugged Aemond. That you were utterly confused. This was your first ‘experience’ with the other sex and you weren’t sure what to do now. You wanted to tell her everything that’s going on inside your head, but you decided against it.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

It's been a couple of weeks since you had your experiences with Aegon and Aemond in King's Landing. A lot has happened since then, and things have shifted and changed in your life. Viserys is dead and they have crowned Aegon as King, stealing Rhaenyra’s throne.

"You're going to King's Landing and you're going to give Aegon this.” You are caught off guard by the sudden declaration of your father. You're not sure what he's referring to, but you feel your heart beating faster at the prospect of meeting King Aegon and giving him something. You struggle to contain your anxiety as you look at your father, wondering what he has in mind for you. You're being thrown into a dangerous situation, and you're not sure if you can handle it. There are so many ways this situation could go wrong, you're being pulled into a situation that is bigger than you are ready for. “I don’t think I’m ready… For th-“ his eyes narrow and his voice becomes more demanding. "You must go. It is your duty as my daughter." He stares at you intensely, his eyes sharp and piercing. He's not giving you a choice, you must do his bidding. Daemon's eyes narrow even more as he glares at you. "I am not giving you a choice," he says harshly, "You will go to King's Landing and you will give Aegon this." He leans forward and holds up a small black pouch. "This is the message that I want you to deliver to him. Do you understand?" The intensity of Daemon's gaze leaves you feeling scared and intimidated, as if he's determined to not let you refuse or refuse his demands. You realize that you have no choice but to go, and are left feeling like a pawn in this game of power and politics. “Yes, I understand." you say softly, having no choice but to comply with his orders, since he is your father and you have been raised to obey him. Daemon doesn't respond. Instead, he hands you the small black pouch and begins to walk away, his walk slow and measured.

Daemon's words leave you feeling scared and uncertain about your upcoming trip to King's Landing, where you are expected to deliver a message to the new king. You don't know what the message contains, and you feel a sense of anxiety and unease about the situation, as well as a sense of trepidation about the journey ahead.

It turns out you weren't the only messenger. You learn later that same night that Rhaenys, Jace, and Luke were also sent off with messages of their own. Thinking about the message you're carrying, you can't help but wonder what it could be. It's a heavy burden, with your life potentially hanging in the balance. Every step you take on the road to King's Landing is a step closer to danger and potential confrontation with the new ‘king’. The gravity of the situation suddenly sinks in, and you feel like you're walking into the unknown. Aegon wouldn’t hurt you, would he?

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

It's a long journey to King's Landing, but after countless hours of flight, you finally make it to the city. You land in one of the city's landing spots, feeling both relieved and exhausted as you finally made it. That sense of relief and exhaustion is quickly replaced with a sense of anxiety and uncertainty as you realize that you still have the task left: to deliver the message to the new King, Aegon II.

You make your way to the castle in King's Landing, walking up to the gates. There are guards stationed on both sides of the gate, who keep watch over the castle grounds. You feel anxious and fearful as you approach them, they keep an watchful eye on you as you draw closer. Eventually you find your way to the throne room of the castle. Aegon is sitting in his throne, his piercing eyes looking down at you. He is flanked by a handful of guards and advisors, forming a circle around him. As you enter the room, the quiet conversations and whispers stop instantly, and all attention is focused on you. His gaze is like a blazing flame, his look burning into you as he waits for you to speak. The guards and advisors stand close by, as if they are ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. Everyone in the room is watching you intently, and you feel the pressure of everyone's eyes bearing down on you.

“I brought you a message from Queen Rhaenyra.” Your voice sounds small and strained as you speak, the weight of so many eyes upon you is overwhelming. The atmosphere in the room is thick with anticipation. After a pause, Aegon speaks, his voice calm and measured. "And what is the message?" "The message is personal and private, and it is to be delivered only to you and no one else." Aegon’s eyes narrow and his expression becomes more intense, as if deep in thought. He's silent for a moment, before finally speaking. "I see. If the message is personal and private, then why are you delivering it instead of Queen Rhaenyra herself?" The tension in the air increases as he speaks, his tone is stern and his face is fixed in a serious expression. He's awaiting a good reason for him to accept this message as legitimate and not a trick or ruse. "There must have been some reason for you being sent here, rather than Queen Rhaenyra coming herself," he says, "Is there a reason why she wouldn't have come here herself? If this message was so personal and private, why didn't she come herself to deliver it?" “I’m not sure.” Aegon raises an eyebrow, his expression becoming even more skeptical. "You're not sure?" He asks in a skeptical tone, "That's a rather unsatisfactory answer, don't you think?" After a few moments, you finally speak again. “My father sent me as the messenger.” “And why would he have done that, I wonder?!”

Aegon stares at you for a few more moments, with a stern and intense expression, before finally speaking again. “Well, I suppose we shall just have to read the message for ourselves, and see what Rhaenyra has to say.” He finally reaches for the small black pouch in your hands, and begins opening it. He removes the message inside and examines it, reading what is written on it. After a few moments, he looks back up at you. "That cunning bitch," he mutters under his breath. His fury seems to be reaching a boiling point, as he speaks again. "Everyone out!” As the room falls silent, you look at Aegon, who is now standing in front of you, still clutching the message in his hands. His face is contorted with fury, and his expression is like the face of a raging bull, ready to charge at a moment's notice.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, he speaks again. "How dare she send you here with a message like this!" He shouts, his voice full of rage and anger. "She thinks she can tell me what to do? Who the fuck does she think she is!?" He stares at you for a few moments, his eyes narrowed and his face full of rage. "And does she think I'm just gonna let you walk away after this?!" "Pardon me?" Your face began to grow darker. "I will not let this pass. I will not let her disrespect me in such a manner. And I'm not going to just let you walk away either. I will not let you go. You're going to be my prize of war, and you'll stay here with me, where I can take my time with you." The threat of violence is now very evident in the king's tone. He continues to stare at you, his expression growing darker and more intense.

This was probably a big mistake. You can feel the weight of his glare digging deep into your skin, and you feel like he's considering what he's going to do to you even more seriously now. After a few moments of silence, Aegon takes a deep breath and starts to speak again. "You're going to stay here with me, and I'm going to take my time with you. Your queen might think that she's being clever and making a request, but I'll show her just how foolish she is." "The fuck I am! You can't keep me captive!" Aegon takes a deep breath and nods his head slowly. "Oh, can't I?" He responds calmly and politely, but his tone is one of pure menace. “I can keep you here for as long as I like, and there's nothing you can do about it.” His face grows even darker, and he slowly steps towards you. He moves in closer and closer, getting right into your personal space. He's so close that you can feel his breath on your neck, and it's an unbearably intense feeling. His face just a few inches away from your ear. You feel his breath tickling your neck, and it sends a shiver down your spine. His voice is like a whisper, but it's a whisper of pure threat and power. "You're mine now." His breath tickles your skin, you feel like you can't move, like your body has frozen up and you can't even scream.

Aegon’s breath continues to tickle your skin as he pulls you close to him, his lips just brushing against your skin. You feel powerless to move, as if your body has been frozen in place by the fear he is instilling in you. "Worry not sweetling, we'll have a good time." He whispers into your ear, his voice is like a snake slithering its way into your head. "N-no..." His breath continues to whisper into your ear, and his voice is full of a predatory kind of sensuality. "Oh, yes.." He replies slowly, dragging his next words out for a long time. "You are mine, there’s no running from me now. I’ll take good care of you..." You try to break free from the his grip, but it's hard to get away from him. He holds you close to himself and his hold on you is tight. He seems to be enjoying himself far too much at the prospect of taking you for his own. Your body is filled with fear and trepidation, but you also feel a strange sense of excitement and arousal. Your body is responding to his touch in a way that is both terrifying and pleasurable at the same time. Aegon’s hands are caressing your skin softly as he pulls you closer to him, holding you even tighter and not letting you go anywhere. You let out a whimper as the caress of his touch sends a tingling sensation down your spine. You're being consumed in a very intimate way, your body being overwhelmed by his presence and you feel yourself melting in his grasp. Your attention was completely focused on Aegon that you didn't notice Aemond entering the room.

Aemond sees the two of you, and you can tell from the look in his eye that he is absolutely furious. He walks up close to you, and you feel the heat of his anger radiating off of his presence like a fire. Aegon finally notices Aemond's presence and looks over at him with a dark expression, his mouth curled up into a sneer. His grip on you becomes even tighter, and you can feel the heat coming off his body like a furnace as he stares at Aemond. He seems very protective of you, and he is not going to let anyone interfere with his plans. Aemond's eye was burning with fury, staring down at Aegon, his voice is a low and menacing growl. "What do you think you're doing with her?!" Aegon looks up at Aemond with a dark and menacing expression, he continues to hold you close to himself. "I'm taking her for my own." He replies in a cold voice. Aemond's eye is still fixated on Aegon, and the two men seem to be locked in a fierce staring contest. You can feel the tension in the air increasing as both men glare at each other, their hostility and aggression rising even higher. Aegon’s grip on you tightens even more, and you feel like you're being smothered.

"I will not let you touch her!" Aemond snaps, and you can tell he's barely holding back his anger. His face is a mask of fury, his body is tensing up, as if he's preparing to attack at any moment. He seems absolutely determined to protect you, and you can feel the raw power and aggression coming off of him like a storm of fury. Neither man wants to back down in this stand off, and they continue to glare at each other with a sense of simmering fury. You're trapped in the middle, with all of this tension and hostility growing around you. Your body is being overpowered by Aegon’s grip and you can't move away. "Please let me go..." Your voice is completely being ignored by both men as their confrontation becomes more intense and heated. You try to plead with both Aegon and Aemond to let you go, but they both seem to have lost all rationality and their sense of logic. Now all they're focused on is fighting over your possession. You’re trapped, scared and helpless as you continue to plead with him to let you go. But his resolve is like iron, and you can't help but feel like this is the endgame for you, and that you're going to be carried off in the king's arms at any moment now.

Aegon finally releases you from his grip, and you fall to the floor at his feet. You can feel him looking at you with a cold and menacing glare, but you're also relieved to be free from his grasp. You have a few seconds of hesitation and fear before Aemond pulls you behind him. You cling onto his back as he faces Aegon and you can feel his anger overflowing like an overflowing cup of wrath. "A-aemond..." you whimper, clinging onto him for support. He's the only thing in this room that seems like it could protect you right now. You feel like you're safe with him, but you still can't help but feel terrified at what might happen next.

"I am going to escort her to a guest room and then I’ll deal with you, Aegon." Aegon stares at Aemond with a deadly look of fury, but he doesn't resist. He lets Aemond lead you out of the room, and you're still clinging onto him for support. You feel safe and protected in Aemond's arms, but you still can't help but feel a bit of hesitation and uncertainty. Aemond's tone is stern and authoritative as he leads you out of the room. He doesn't look back at Aegon, and he keeps his eyes focused on the task of safely getting you away from him. You can feel him breathing softly next to you, and you can feel his muscles flexing slightly with each step he takes as he leads you out of the room. He leads you through the halls of the castle. Your body still clinging onto him as a source of protection and comfort, and you’re slightly trembling with fear and nerves. Despite being stern and authoritative, he's also being very gentle and careful with you.

The two of you finally arrive at a room, and Aemond closes the door behind you. He turns to face you, and you can see the intense look in his eye as he stares at you for a moment. You feel like you're being scrutinized by that penetrating gaze, and it makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. He's not smiling or being friendly like before, but instead he seems to be assessing you in an oddly intense way. Aemond stays silent for a minute, continuing to look at you with that intense gaze. You feel like he's looking at you like a stranger, and you feel like he's judging you based on what happened back there. You feel a bit nervous under his intense stare, and you feel like he's not being friendly at all. You have no idea what sort of reaction he is going to have to this situation, and you feel very vulnerable as a result. You still feel like a trembling nervous mess under his stare. After a minute of silence, he finally speaks in a stern voice. "So...what happened back there?" His tone is very serious and stoic, there's no hint of friendliness in his voice. His eye is penetrating, looking into your soul. You don't know what to say, and you feel like your words are being scrutinized heavily. "I, I gave him a message from Queen Rhaenyra." Aemond’s face remains stoic and unchanged, and he waits for you to say more. His face show no hint of a reaction to what you've said, and he continues to stare at you with that piercingly intense gaze. "I have no idea what it says... But I can only imagine... Aegon isn't the rightful king." His face still remains expressionless, studying you intensely. He still seems very cautious and distrustful. He seems suspicious of your reason for delivering the message in the first place. "So, you're trying to steal my brother's crown?" Aemond finally spoke, and your heart skipped a beat when you heard his voice. His tone filled with a suspicious kind of disdain. His words were loaded with malice and anger as he accused you of trying to steal his older brother's crown. You could not help but feel your heart beating in your throat at his accusation. "Your queen is a usurper, and a thief. She is trying to steal my brother's crown."

Your heart skipped a beat when Aemond moved closer and caressed your cheek gently, your body shuddering slightly at the touch. You could feel the heat of his breath and his touch on your skin, and your whole body felt like it was trembling under his grasp. "I'm afraid your our prisoner now, dove." His touch made you shiver and tremble in a way that you found both thrilling and frightening. The way he caressed your cheek with his thumb was so tender and gentle, his touch was like a gentle caress sending butterflies through your whole body. "My father will have your head for keeping me hostage!" Your words seem to be have a profound effect Aemond's stance as he stops caressing and backing away slightly. His eyes are filled with a sudden flash of anger and hostility, and he seems to be glaring at you with a mixture of distrust and fury. He then speaks in a harsh and stern voice. "My brother will also have your so called queen’s head for being a traitor to the throne! You should be grateful that I have chosen to keep you safe." His sudden outburst of anger and hostility took you off guard, and you had no idea how to handle his sudden change of mood. You felt like a small and powerless creature facing off against a giant beast. His tone was menacing and he seemed so much stronger and more frightening than you remembered him to be. As he spoke, his anger and hostility made you feel even more vulnerable and scared. This was not the gentle and friendly Aemond you remembered, this was a whole different beast entirely. "I am protecting you. Your so-called queen would never treat you with such care as I have." He took one step closer again, his tone sounding more insistent and authoritarian than before. You could feel the heat of his breath and the intensity of his gaze, and your heart was beating out of your chest. "I will take care of you. I will protect you." He spoke softly this time, almost sounding like a whispering voice. You felt like your whole body was trembling with fear and nerves, but you felt a strange sense of comfort underneath the intensity of his gaze. You felt like a small animal being held tightly in the grip of a predator, but in this predator's eyes you found a hint of kindness and tenderness. "Do you see how I am treating you? Like a precious jewel. Like a delicate flower. Like my little rose."

[valcetious]

"𝑺𝑰𝑪𝑲 𝑪𝑹𝑬𝑨𝑻𝑼𝑹𝑬𝑺."

pairing: childe x reader

tags: toxic relationship, manipulation, delusional thinking, implied abuse, implied entrapment, romanticised physical harm, reference to death

w/c: 1349

a/n: the themes of this fic are a tad, uhhh… questionable. i like to indulge in the fucked up characterisation ideas in my head sometimes, so here we are. tartaglia is obviously my victim for this because of reasons that i do not believe need further explaining lmfaooo. author has bpd so there’s lots of undertones of that, my bad y’all. heed the tags!

translations: милый (miliy) = “dear”, “darling” [gn] // любимый (lyubimyy) = “beloved” [masc]

“it didn’t matter that he was a wolf behind the guise of a sheep. it didn’t matter that he hunted you from the shadows. for you, the lamb, were willing no matter the consequences – for you all are sick creatures.”

childe was many things. many contradicting things. as were you.

maybe that’s why it was so easy to find yourselves entangled with each other - unable to tear yourselves apart. lost amongst each other.

you didn’t mind, truly. you were content to be lost amongst him of all people. he was your everything. the reason your heart beat, the reason your lungs filled with oxygen, the reason your eyes could see. he was everything.

nothing would change that, ever. nothing could sully this idolised view of him. nothing could ever erase him. he was a form of unattainable perfection – the epitome of all things right in this world of deluded views.

maybe if life had been kinder to you, you never would never have found solace in him. maybe, if life had shown you true love, you would have seen the truth behind what you perceived to be love. but alas; life was not kind, nor had it shown you true love.

and so, when kindness and love is devoid – it’s easy to find yourself falling for what your brain believes you deserve. you begin to break yourself down and rebuild yourself. piece by piece, block by block, you become an entity different from what you first came to this world as. you rebirth your soul, telling yourself that this life, this life of instability and pain, is the only constant you will ever have. and over time, you develop a certain view of life and love. you develop a certain attachment to people. one that consumes your entire being – an attachment that poisons everything it touches.

like a moth to a flame, you remember so clearly the first time your eyes fell upon him. it was as if he demanded your gaze, an indescribable force pulling you towards him. he looked back at you, or maybe through you. you weren’t sure. you can recall the shivers that went down your spine, his gaze strong and steadfast.

he was the enemy. at least, supposed to be. no enemy should shine as brightly as he did, you thought.

you remember so clearly the first time you saw that look in his eyes. the one that gazed at you as if you were the most desirable thing in the world.

in that moment, his hands were wrapped around your throat, a sickening grin on his face. despite the feral madness he wore, somehow, he seemed like a work of art. so strong, determined, passionate. and yet, he was going to kill you, you were the enemy. of course he was going to kill you. but the panic that should’ve been filling your body simply ceased to exist. no alarms bells. no warnings symbols. just a single, floating thought.

he was beautiful.

the weight of his hands around your throat seemed to be less of a burden at that realisation. it was almost as if it morphed into a comfort - something to remind you of how fragile you were under his fingers. maybe that thought should’ve disturbed you, but it didn’t. instead, you felt some sort of satisfaction.

some sort of purpose arising at the concept of being discarded by him.

the way his eyes searched yours left you feeling oddly charmed – his attention focused on you and you only. his orbs were dull, as if he were dead inside; funny, considering he had such a disarming smile. you looked over his face, really looking this time. he truly was beautiful, physically too.

you remember the way his fingers loosened around your neck after a moment, his orbs darkening as he smiled. though this smile wasn’t the same grin of sadistic pleasure he had previously worn. he seemed almost pleased, as if you were some sort of treasure that he’d been searching for all his life.

“you’re perfect.”

in childe, you found purpose. he loved you. he did. and you loved him. madly so.

and that was precisely the problem. you loved each other. too much.

you loved each other so much that pain and suffering were synonymous with love. you loved each other so much that not even death would do you apart. and childe knew this. he knew this all too well.

childe knew you were irrevocably his. knew that no matter what would happen, you would never run. you were simply his. his to have forever. his to keep, to own, to have. and he would have all of you. your body, your mind, your thoughts, your actions. all of it would be belonging to him, and him only. he would make sure of it, no matter the cost.

perhaps you should’ve known better. maybe part of you did know better. but did any of that matter? did any of it really matter? the world without childe was dark, threatening, consuming. everything was horrible — until him. he arrived and suddenly, things seemed to take shape. a sense of self started to emerge.

and yet, it was hardly a sense of self; rather a collection of delusional ideas that were fed and tended to by the one you fixated upon. you had fooled yourself into thinking it was you.

but see, there was some simplicity in losing your mind.

there was peace in indulgence of your delusional thoughts.

it was sick — you were sick. and you could not be treated — this sickness rotted you from the inside out. no amount of medicine or healing would quell your soul of this darkness.

“милый,” the harbinger purred, a blood-stained hand wiping a tear from your cheek, “you’re so pretty when you cry.”

you trembled underneath his touch, the pain from your abdomen flaring up throughout your whole body. and yet - the pain was nothing compared to that adoration in childe’s eyes. a whimper escaped your lips as you shifted, and the harbinger cooed. it was a soft, sweet sound. like a parent hushing their young. a bloody finger pressed against your lips, a sickeningly sweet smile painted upon his features.

“shhh, you’re doing so well for me,” childe murmured, pressing a kiss to your exposed collarbones.

your eyes flicker to childe’s right hand, catching the glint of the dagger in the moonlight. stained in your blood, and your blood only. a special dagger, just for you, as childe had described it. your eyes trail back to his face. his eyes watched you with so much curiosity, it made you feel so bare under his gaze; as if he were peering into the deepest parts of you. his gaze aligned with yours, his empty eyes boring holes into you. despite the dullness, there was a glint of passion burning within them.

he revelled in your pain. and you loved it.

you loved him.

“would you die for me, милый?” childe’s voice questioned, the hand that sat upon the back of your neck tightening with his words.

“without a second thought, любимый,” you had replied, eyes sliding shut at the pressure of childe’s fingers.

you didn’t need to think about the answer. you knew without childe, you were lost. death was a sweeter release than a world without him. you couldn’t live without childe. it was impossible. you couldn’t let him go. he was worth the cost of everything.

the red-head hummed, a satisfied look on his face. you were so perfect – truly. no other soul so blindly loved him in the way you did. no other soul had ever come close to the sickness within him. until you.

that lovestruck look in yours eyes when he would hurt you only proved your loyalty.

and he was determined to keep that loyalty. even if it meant destroying you and rebuilding you all over again, by his hands only.

no other would ever come close to you.

you were a sick creature, as was he.

you were made for no one but him.

© valcetious, cross-posted on ao3.

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