#pine was the better lodge and i stand by that

[starlitvases]

I want to talk about my experience at Timberline Knolls, an all-women's residential facility located in Lemont, Illinois.

On July 9th of this year, I checked into my local psych ward and was eventually placed into the car of Timberline Knolls about two weeks later. My admission date was July 25th and my discharge was August 24th. I was placed on Pine Lodge, but was merged into Willow due to staffing and patient enrollment. There were many positives to the experience, but also negative ones.

For the positives, I was able to get my suspicions on Dissociative Identity Disorder confirmed. I learned I was diagnosed with an eating disorder, Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, and I learned some extra coping skills. I was an active journaler and kept a notebook and puzzle book everywhere I went. I was often the BHAs' favorite resident because I was respectful, active in the process, and kept myself away from fights. I had a resident confess to a BHA that they were very anxious about talking to people and fitting it. That BHA's first recommendation to the resident was to talk to me because I was so welcoming. I still keep in touch with that resident to this day. I made many friends that I still commune with, even though we're all states away now. I was often told that I was the best person to rely on because I stood up for myself, kept myself out of trouble, and was very compassionate towards anyone that needed a listening ear. Overall, I found the peer-support, BHAs, and therapists to be overwhelmingly positive and productive in my care.

As for the negatives, I found they were the same for some other patients. For those of us that struggled with physical disabilities, nurses tended to ignore us or were reluctant to provide us with physical care. I was diagnosed with POTS in May of this year and have had the symptoms for well over two years. I knew fainting was a possibility. Because of the summer heat, I was fainting around three times per day, on average. This was especially bad because I am an Alaska resident that only had a previous history of fainting three times per week. I suspect the drastic weather and pressure changes impacted my POTS and pushed it to the extreme. I was told by a nurse that, "if you keep fainting, TK might not be the best fit for you." Another patient there had Diabetes and needed insulin to live. At one point, she was denied an insulin injection by a nurse, who also denied a blood sugar check. I'm unsure of the rest of the details, but I do know that the patient ultimately signed a 72-Hour Release due to how staff regularly mishandled her disability.

Overall, I found the experience to be mostly positive and helpful for my mental health. I haven't had suicidal thoughts or urges in a few months since my release. My friends and close family have noticed a massive difference in my demeaner and overall outlook on life. I'm starting to understand my dissociative symptoms more than ever before. After over a decade and therapy treatments that failed to work, Timberline Knolls finally made a dent in helping to heal my mental health and trauma.

I'd recommend this place to any woman (cis or trans) or nonbinary individual struggling with drug addiction, an eating disorder, traumatic past, or other mental health issue. The only people I would not recommend it to are people with physical disabilities that moderately to severely impact their physical health, such as a fainting disorder, blood sugar issues, bone fracture, etc.

If you have an ESA, you are allowed to bring them with you provided you submit the required paperwork. During my month stay, I saw two ESA dogs on my lodge. My only advice is to be aware and respectful to those that have an allergy or phobia to dogs.

Trans women, you are welcome there. I'm unsure as to if the screening is different for trans women compared to cis women, but I did see at least two self-identifying trans women during my stay, one of which was still masc presenting as she was very early in the transitioning process. I still talk to her to this day, and as far as I'm aware, she hasn't reported any problems with TK.

If you're struggling with mental health or an addiction and you think a residential program may be beneficial to you, go for it. It has helped me tremendously and I cannot thank TK enough for helping me out.

[luveline]

𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠

You begin to have intimate dreams about your roommate, Spencer. [9k]

c: pining roommates, dreams, tipsy non-confessions, spencer being a sweetheart. fem!reader. this fic was requested! 

｡𖦹°‧⭑.

i. a dreamt bruise 

“What are you doing?” 

Your chest lists slightly forward as a body warms your back. Arms wrap around you, solid but gentle, arms you’ve been held by a thousand times. 

You cover them with one of your own. “What does it look like I’m doing?” you feel yourself ask. 

The room is golden, gaussian, better now he’s behind you.

“I don’t know, dove. That’s why I asked.” His voice is soft in your ear. His hair presses to the side of your face as he hugs you —you’ve never felt love like this. It’s palpable. It’s in his hands. 

Nobody’s called you dove before, but he is, he has. It might feel strange if it weren’t for how softly he said it, affection in the very marrow of the word, warmth of it kissing your cheek as he holds you. He says ‘dove’, and it feels like he loves you. Feels like you’ve done something beautiful to earn it, but that’s the beauty of it: you didn’t do anything. 

The room turns narrow, sunlight on the dining room table of your apartment. A table usually crowded thickly with books, or your work. A space has been cleared away and filled with pieces of a jigsaw. 

“I thought you were going to do this with me,” you say, dragging a piece across the table with your fingertip. 

“Maybe later.” 

“You can’t stand there all night.” 

Are you sure? you think he says, but things are hazy, and he’s turning you toward him suddenly, you’re standing, the puzzle forgotten. “How’s your bruise?” 

“What?” you ask, almost sleeping as a big, kind hand drags up the front of your shirt, holding it to the underside of your breast. 

“Does it still hurt?” 

His thumb brushes over your contusion, skin on your side, your back. It’s tender. Any breath is lost, any sense of breathing at all. You’re not a girl so much as something being touched with care, warm joy and love and a contrasting ache wedged under your heart as he draws a circles into your skin. 

He hums sympathetically, the weight of him ebbing as he leans away, letting your shirt fall back into place. 

The dream stretches on for a lifetime, the two of you standing in your living room, dining table behind you, couch and TV opposite. Your life in one room, his life, his books, his furniture, but your home. You know it all well, just, in the light, you can’t see the stitching. 

He takes your face into his hand. Nobody’s ever touched you like, turned your face up like they were moving through honey, staring at you with eyes that shade of brown. Brown, brown… so big. So melting. 

Spencer holds your face gently. 

His nose touches yours. He tips his forehead into yours, his breath skimming lips he’d just warmed as he says, “Don’t worry, alright? You’ll be okay. Just take it easy,” he says, the last of his pleading lost to your mouth. 

You wake up with a caught breath. 

Your eyes are glued together, eyelashes threaded, gummy. You turn into the pillow beside you, slightly deflated and cold where you’d turned away in the night. 

The room is dark when you manage to pry your eyes open. You close them just as quickly, begging your body to sleep, to plunge back into the dream. Just five more minutes of golden colour, hugging your pillow, love in somebody’s hand, in Spencer’s hand… five more minutes…

Your eyes open again. 

Spencer’s hand on your cheek, guiding you carefully upwards for a kiss. 

You raise your hand, feeling along the swell of your bottom lip with your thumb and index finger. They tremble with the weakness of having just woken up. With having something torn away from you. 

What was that? you think, the hook of sleep lodged in your throat as you struggle to sit up. Your face tips forwards heavily, but your back doesn’t hurt like it tends to in the early mornings before work. There’s no ache there —your body slept well. You use your hands as anchors and drag yourself foot first from the bed. Your sheets fall to the floor with a quiet shush. 

It felt so real that for a moment you’re wondering where Spencer went. 

He was touching you, he was caressing your waist. You rush to the door of your room, every night left ajar, pushing it open and beelining for the bathroom. You flick on the light and stop in front of the mirror, staring at yourself, wondering if you’re foolish enough to do this, before peeling your shirt from your stomach to analyse your bruise. 

It’s not there. 

You turn and contort yourself to catch the light. Maybe it was further back? But no… there’s no bruise, nothing for Spencer to check. Your torso is a stretch of unharmed skin to run your hand down without pain. 

Your head whirs. 

From somewhere in the apartment, Spencer puts down a mug. You flush with heat at the realisation that he’s home, and panic flares when his footsteps move in your direction. Your bedrooms are on opposite sides of the apartment, and there are two bathrooms —the bath and toilet near your room, and the en-suite to his room— meaning Spencer’s coming to see you specifically. 

“Hey, Y/N?” he says. 

It’s been a few days since he was home, and you aren’t just roommates, Spencer’s your friend. He sounds happy that you’re awake, pausing at your bedroom door. 

“I’m in the bathroom!” you say, your dry throat turning your voice to fractures. 

“I just wanted you to know I’m home. Are you working?” 

“It’s Saturday.”

He laughs. “Oh. I know, I forgot. Well, can I make you breakfast? I was gonna have oats and sliced bananas and stuff.” 

“Okay.” You clear your throat. “I’ll be right there.” 

“Sorry,” he says, like he’s just remembered where you are. “This is harassment. I’ll be in the kitchen.” 

You wash your face and brush your teeth. You head back into your room to change from your pyjamas into loungewear that’s just as soft. The flavour of your dream follows you around, you’d like to call it sweetness, saccharinity, but it doesn’t fit the bill. The feeling you’d woken with wasn’t a sugar high but contentedness, like a warm evening meal. You’d felt utterly sated, your arms reaching out for a body that wasn’t there. 

A heaviness takes your heart. Suffocating longing, you carry it to the kitchen with you to find Spencer’s already made you a cup of your tea. He’s warming oatmeal on the stove, blueberries and bananas on the countertop. You sit at the island. You should hug him. If you hadn’t dreamt of his hands on your waist what felt like mere moments ago, you would’ve. 

“Did you go shopping?” 

“I did, I went to Leaven last night. You were already sleeping at ten.” He peeks at you from over his shoulder. “Long day yesterday?” 

“I get too tired by Friday,” you say, averting your gaze to stare down into your mug, steam twirling up to kiss your chin. 

“No, I get it. Me too. Are you feeling any better today?” 

You were sick when he left. “I’m fine.” 

“Okay, good. I’m gonna put the blueberries in with the oatmeal, is that okay?” 

“Sure.” 

“Okay.” Spencer’s gaze lingers on you. He turns back to the counter. 

He cuts two bananas. You realise he has strawberries, too, watching as he cuts them, wetness leaking from their punnets where he must’ve rinsed them in the sink. He slices out the stems and cuts the strawberries in clean halves like hearts. 

“I missed you,” he says. 

You can’t read his tone, but you aren’t cruel, even feeling shy as you are. “I missed you too. How was the case? Everyone made it home in one piece, right?” 

“Everyone’s fine. Emily got into a car accident and it was pretty bad, but she’s okay now. Recovering from her concussion at home with Sergei.” 

That’s good. You’ve met Spencer’s boss, Agent Hotchner (very scary), and Emily, JJ, and Penelope (who aren’t scary at all). You’re glad to hear they’re all okay, because they’re good people, and they risk a lot to keep others safe. You forget sometimes how much Spencer puts on the line whenever he leaves. 

You poke at him for details of the case, though legally there are things he has to keep from you, and you don’t mind either way. Nothing personal can crop up while talking of murder, and for now you’d like the conversation to stay far away from you and your bed and your sudden dream. 

You assume you’re safe, but then Spencer mentions the bruise one of the sergeants got from their weapon’s kickback and you’re flushing nervously all over again. 

Spencer grabs two bowls from the cabinet, dark brown ceramics he got from Koreatown, the perfect size for each helping of oatmeal. The purple from the insides of the blueberries bleed into the oats as he pours.

He lays each bowl with a curve of banana slices, strawberries, and covers half with a drizzle of dark fudge sauce. “Salt?” he asks. 

“Yes, please.” 

Spencer grabs two spoons from the cutlery drawer. He grins when he finally turns, bowls held aloft, making his way to the stool beside you. He puts his own down first, then the cutlery, standing ever so slightly behind you as he lays your breakfast down in front of you. “What have you been doing while I was away?” he asks softly. 

You can’t look at him. Can’t think. 

What are you doing? 

What does it look like I’m doing? 

I don’t know, dove. That’s why I asked. 

You lean away from his presence, desperate to have him follow, and ashamed. Spencer’s a friend, a good one, he’s kind and loving and handsome beyond description, but you’ve never thought of him like that. Each time your mind slips wondering what he might be like in love, you’ve let the thought go. But now... 

You shrug, grabbing your spoon. “Not much, Spencer. This looks amazing, it’s really pretty. Thank you for cooking.” 

“No problem. Are you sure you’re feeling better? You don’t look so good.” 

You take a quick bite of oatmeal, the spoon scalding your tongue, “Ah,” you say, breathing harshly around it, “I’m fine. Woke up a little wrong, that’s all.” 

Spencer sits in the seat next to you with a soft smile. “Good. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.” 

Oh, no, you think, reading way too much into how he says it. No, no, no.

—

ii facts 

We should explore the city, Spencer declares after breakfast, before we forget what it’s like to be outside!

You were outside yesterday before you got home, and everything sucked as much as it usually did —it’s the weekend, and the point of it is to stay home resting and or lazing, but you wouldn’t usually say no to Spencer so you can’t now. He can’t ever know about your dream, so he can’t know how you’re feeling, so you have to be the friends you’ve always been. 

Spencer analyses people for a reason, but you have practice. You’ve successfully hidden what it was that morning that made you feel cagey and tender. He knows something is wrong regardless. He attempts to fix it the best way he knows how: Spencer talks. 

“Cheese production globally outshadows coffee, tea, tobacco, and chocolate, over twenty two million metric tons of it every year, with almost half of that made in Europe alone, which is only a half million metric ton more than what’s being eaten. The average American eats forty two pounds of cheese a year, but I don’t really like cheese that much? So I’m bringing the average down. Besides, every time I eat cheese I get strange dreams.  There’s actually a chemical in cheese called tyramine which is linked to nightmares. Hey, you okay?” 

“Cheese gives you weird dreams?” 

“Why, have you been eating a lot of it lately?” 

“No,” you say resolutely. “I hate cheese. I’ve never eaten cheese before.” 

“That’s a lie.” 

“Let’s get donuts.”

Spencer is easily swayed. You glance around the square for the McDonald’s and follow that to the street with the bakery, landmark to landmark, until the smell of sugar and oil is strong enough to follow. “Do you wanna know something about donuts?” he asks, crushing in behind you as you pass through the heavy wooden door of the bakery and join the line. 

“Sure.” 

“They were first called oily cakes.” 

“I knew that,” you say, “you’ve told me that, Spencer. That’s the first fact anybody thinks of.” 

“Okay, don’t be rude,” he says, giving you a playful poke in the ribs, right into the bruise that isn’t a bruise. 

You look over your shoulder at him, catching his eye. You share a long look that’s daunted on your part and confused on his, brown eyelashes tangling in the corners the longer he looks at you. “What?” he asks, squinting. 

”Nothing.” 

“Okay,” he says, his voice lowering, quiet to match the hush of the bakery and its humming fridges, “don’t tell me. I’ll work it out eventually.” 

“Dude!” 

“What?” he asks with a laugh. 

“Boundaries!” you laugh back. “Stop trying to figure me out.” 

“But there’s something to figure out?” 

He’s evil when he smiles like that. His pride is adorable, giving his sweet face an even fresher look. You’d pinch his cheeks if they weren’t already pinking in the October cold. His scarf hasn’t saved him, his coat buttoned tightly no match for the winds. Not to say it’s a bad day. The weather is fine if you keep your fingers in your pockets and your nose in the depths of your coat. 

“What do we want?” you ask rather than answer. 

They have white icing, chocolate with sprinkles, jelly middles, smiley faces. They have donut holes by the bag. “Hazelnut spread,” you say, pointing at the side of the case. “That looks good.” 

He enters in conspiratorial whispers with you. “Apple cider doughnuts with cinnamon sugar,” he says, pointing at the row below. “What about a double chocolate chunk cookie? They look good. Hey, there’s cake in the fridge.” 

You let him lean into your side. His hair kisses your cheek.  

“Pick whatever you want, okay?” he asks, offering a smaller smile than before. “I’m buying.”

“You can’t, Spencer Reid, I want so many things.” 

“It’s fine, I missed you, I dragged you out when you wanted to stay in bed.” He stares at you. “Let me,” he mouths. 

You ignore the hot twist of your stomach and nod. Okay. 

Spencer buys the baked goods you’d admitted to wanting and the three others you’d eyed, as well as a cookie and two fat slices of red velvet cake. He asks you to carry the box while he pays. The woman behind the counter gives you a knowing look and a flick of her head, as if to say, Lucky you. You can’t quite smile back, distracted by the insinuation. You haven’t thought of it before, but you and Spencer, naturally, look like a couple. You could easily be one. And the idea that she thinks so fills you with a shocking amount of smugness. 

You and Spencer head home before dinner. On the walk back, he pulls the cookie apart and offers you half. 

—

What if, when you fall asleep tonight, you dream of Spencer again? 

You lay on your back with your hand on your chest, drawing circles. The cold of the evening is explained by the rain lashing your window, distant winds coming forceful now. A thunderstorm. You tap the middle of your chest in an attempt to be idle, rather than restless. 

It isn’t a dream you’d like to have again, you decide. Spencer had been soft. You’d been familiar with each other. 

What would it really feel like to have him touch you like that? Is Spencer confident, when he’s comfortable? Is he imposing? 

My stomach, you think slowly, is never going to stop spinning. 

“Y/N?” Spencer asks. 

You can hear him all the way from the kitchen. 

“Yeah?” you ask, raising your voice so it carries. 

“Can I come and sit with you?”

It’s an odd request. You know Spencer’s like you, no social butterfly, quiet and content to spend time by oneself because being with others hasn’t always been an option. He isn’t timid, however, and his asking shouldn’t shock you, but it does. “Sure,” you say, shifting onto one side of the bed. 

Spencer arrives at the ajar door and lets himself in. He carries two bottles of water and a heat pack, which he likes to use when the weather allows it. A creature comfort, you assume. Something soothing and constant, like the sound of a fan at night, or rain on a window. 

“I can’t sleep,” he says, “which doesn’t make much sense.” Spencer sits on the empty side of the bed, his lips pulled into a grimace. “I like the rain.” 

He’s more handsome when he’s smiling, but there’s a charm to him as he passes you a bottle of water and crosses his legs. The plaid slacks he’s wearing are rough with age, dark blues that seem black in the low lighting. 

“Maybe it’s because of work,” you say. 

“Maybe, but I’m pretty used to getting woken up.” 

“Right. It’s not easy, though, the stuff you do. It would keep me up at night if I did your job.” 

“I think sometimes doing my job is the only reason I can sleep.” 

“It's hard. Sounds hard, Spence.” You relax into your pillow, turning to see him. Spencer’s eyes run along your hip for a millisecond, just long enough to remind you that he’s a boy, that he could see you in a different light. 

“It’s okay,” he says. 

“Was it hard, this time?” you ask. 

“No,” he whispers. “I don’t know, it was bad when Emily got hurt, but she’s so stubborn. If Morgan didn’t strap her down she would’ve kept going like nothing happened.” 

You and Spencer have lived together for so long that you remember a time before he even knew Emily. You answered his ad in the paper —you hadn’t realised people still put ads in the paper— looking for a roommate. His apartment was already furnished and he didn’t want to change much, but the second bedroom was spacious and the bathroom could be monopolised. As a girl, you’d been a little dubious reading about a single male looking for any gender, but his self-description was inviting. Twenty-two, just finished a doctorate, working for the FBI and expected to be away from the state at least once a month. 

You’d met Spencer and felt even less intimidated. He was awkward and dorky but friendly, too, with his glasses he apparently didn’t want to wear, but would eventually give in (before choosing contacts), and his big red sweater fit for a grandpa. “I can make more room for you but I can’t get rid of the books,” he said, “so I don’t expect you to pay a neat half.” 

How could you pass it up? 

“I can’t believe I’ve never met them,” you say. 

“Do you want to?” 

He sounds so surprised. “They’re your friends. I’m your… friend.” 

“You’re my best friend. I’ll arrange something, or try to. It’s hard to get us all in one room when that room isn’t the conference room,” he says. 

“You look nice in a t-shirt,” you say, not thinking as the words come out. 

Spencer leans in to whisper, “Thanks. You like this one?” 

His t-shirt says, I may be NErDy, but only periodically. The NErDy is made up of elements from the periodic table. It’s a bad pun. 

“I love it.” 

He reaches for you. Tentative, he squeezes your elbow. “Is there something wrong? All day it’s like… I don’t know, did something happen when I was gone?” 

“Don’t worry about it.” 

“But…” 

“Please,” you say, as he catches the last bit of light from the hallway, every eyelash illuminated for the counting. “I don’t wanna talk about it, Spencer. But thank you.” 

He, in a move that’s almost uncharacteristic, pushes your arm into the mattress and leans over you. “I wanna be the first one to know when you do wanna talk,” he says firmly, holding your gaze. 

How’s your bruise? 

You nod mechanically. Spencer recedes. “Okay, good,” he says, grinning. 

“Good,” you echo, thinking of Spencer in the dream, his hand on your hip and climbing up your sore ribs. “Let’s watch TV.” 

—

iii. scared of snow 

“You’re being weird.” 

“I’m not,” you refute. 

“You are.” 

Spencer frowns at you, a show full downturn of the lips. A dusting of snow lands in his hair and you both look up to catch it, a drift of it from the marquee as you pass. You don’t remember when it started snowing, but it feels like it’s been coming down for days. It’s in his eyelashes. Your sleeves are wet with it. 

“The snow’s making you strange.”

You hold out your hand with fingers parted, feeling his laugh travelling down his arm and into yours as he takes it, intertwining your fingers tightly. He doesn’t feel cold. 

“It’s making you strange,” you mumble. 

You and Spencer walk down a cobbled road. Snow crunches under your shoes, turned to slush in the high traffic spots by vendors booths left curiously empty of shopkeepers, though their festive wares still line the insides, carved cuckoo birds and metal ornaments, glass balls made to be personalised for mantles. You can smell orange oil and chocolate fudge, crepe carts and churros and cinnamon, and then suddenly any hint of your olfactory sense is gone. 

“It’s so quiet.” 

“It’s the snow,” he says, pulling your arm against his chest as you walk and walk, your footsteps the only sound. “It acts as a sound absorber when it’s fluffy like this. The sound waves get caught.” 

Caught. You think, or say, not sure if it makes it out of your mouth. 

“Like you,” he says, stopping in the middle of the road. 

“What?” you ask. 

Snow lands in his eyelashes. “You’re caught,” he says. 

You wake up thinking his hand is on your cheek. Like a nightmare, you start, still picturing his lips moving around the words. Caught, you think again, heart a hummingbird in your chest. Your mouth is dry. The heat is up —Spencer must be home again. 

You suck in a deep breath and sit up, curling over yourself protectively. 

You dream about Spencer more often than ever, and half the time they’re normal dreams, which is to say, they follow no rhyme or reason, with no discernible plot. Spencer loses all his teeth, or he takes you to the movies to see one of his long Swedish films, or he’s an afterthought, a bystander. The main plot of your dream doesn’t involve him at all. 

But the other half of the time is ruining your life. You dream of Spencer holding your hand like you had been, or touching your shoulder. Never again do you dream of that tender bruise, but Spencer lifts your shirt in other scenarios. He pulls your pyjamas off, his hand inching between your legs but never touching, or he helps you out of your bra. And every time you think, why is this happening to me? Perhaps a sex dream could be explained away by want and Spencer’s proximity, but all these constant intimacies weigh heavy in your head. 

You head to the shower and picture Spencer helping you out of your bra, and all of you goes hot, so you turn the water to lukewarm and stand until you’re cold to the point of misery. You clamber out and shiver into a towel, then your robe. 

Spencer’s humming in the kitchen. 

You honestly wish that the dreams made you like him less, that the sound of him might send you running back into your room, but you poke your head out of the bathroom and wait until he enters the living room. He sees you waiting, his face splitting into a smile. “Hey, good morning, did you sleep better?” 

You can’t explain the discombobulation of your dreams. Spencer had become convinced you have insomnia. You may have let him assume. 

“Slept fine,” you croak. 

“Okay, well get dressed and I’ll make you some coffee.” 

“‘Kay.” Your stomach pangs with nerves seeing him, reminded of tonight’s big event. “Are we still, uh, on, for tonight?” 

“Nervous?” he asks. 

You feel like you're about to be a fish in a pool of sharks. “Of course not.” 

 “Yeah, still on, even JJ.” 

Awesome. Spencer turns around to make you your cup of coffee and you go to your room, dressing quickly, two pairs of socks. You tone your face and moisturise, fanning yourself slowly. You don’t hurry to the living room, but you aren’t slow, and it’s not Spencer, you tell yourself. Not Spencer. You’re just craving the warmth of a cup of coffee. 

You spend the morning together on the couch. Spencer reads and occasionally chats to you about whatever tome it is that specific half an hour. You make sandwiches at lunch time, he showers in the early evening. You get dressed and primped while he’s gone, and at 6PM, Spencer knocks your bedroom door to ask if you’re ready to go. 

“Could I fake an illness?” you joke nervously. 

Spencer’s hand falls on your handle. The door is ajar as usual, but he doesn’t tread any further inside. 

“Come in,” you say. 

Spencer takes a single step inside before stopping. He looks you up and down without the hunger you crave from him, a more clement, familiar appreciation to him as he says, “You look pretty.” He traces your arm, leaving the skin tingly in his wake. “Really pretty.” 

“Thank you. I didn’t want to overdress.” 

“It’s perfect, don’t worry. And no, you couldn’t fake an illness. They all know when I’m lying, especially Hotch. And Emily, actually.” 

You squeeze your hands together tightly at your stomach. “I don’t know why I’m sooo nervous.” You lick your lips. “I feel like I can’t stop fidgeting.” 

“They’re used to it, I promise. They know that they’re gonna make you nervous, but they’ve sworn to be on their best behaviour, and besides, you’re not the only plus one. JJ’s bringing Will, and Morgan’s bringing his sister, I’ve only met her once. The focus won’t be all on you.” He lowers his voice. “After two drinks they forget they’re supposed to be scary.” 

“What if I say something extremely stupid to your boss and get you in trouble?” 

“What are you going to get me in trouble for?” 

“I don’t know. What if I accidentally tell him that that sick day you took a few weeks ago was to help me make brownies?”

“Everyone lies about sick days.” He deliberates. “Maybe not Hotch. But I’m pretty sure he knew I was lying, and it’s explainable. I felt… irate.” 

You raise your eyebrows. “What?” 

“Staying home with you made me feel better. Which made me a better worker the next day, it’s fine.” His phone rings from somewhere in the apartment. “That’ll be JJ. Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine.” 

“Yeah?” He grins. “Okay. You’re wearing a coat, right? It’s cold. The forecast says snow. It’s thirty degrees out.” 

You layer a coat onto your jacket and a scarf to make him happy. You and Spencer get a taxi, black leather gritless under your hands, though you squeeze the seat like it’s gonna stop the car the whole time. Spencer doesn’t talk much, but he looks at you unapologetically, and he smiles, and the quiet is as severe as it was in your dream that morning. If this were a dream he’d be leaning over to cradle your ear. He’d ask in whispers if you were alright, and he’d let his hand rest kindly on your knee. 

“What?” you whisper. 

His lips part like he might answer. The car comes to a crunching stop outside the bar, and whatever it was he was going to say is kept for later. “I’ll tell you after,” he says. 

He pays for the taxi before you can work it out and you say thank you to the driver. The sidewalk is clean, broad, and glowing with the last bit of light. The sun sets behind you. The bar beckons in front. 

Your fear is daunting. 

You have years of practice fooling Spencer. You know that he knows your tells, so you’ve changed them, and Spencer cares about you enough to ignore obvious truths if he thinks you might not want to share. His colleagues, FBI agents trained to detect deception, are going to take one good look at you and know you’re lying about… this. 

You’re plagued by dreams of Spencer, but nothing can touch the real thing. 

You feel the space between you like it’s aflame. Spencer checks you’re with him and opens the door. 

The bar is busy even for a Saturday. You aren’t expecting the volume, the boisterousness of the patrons already slumped together over tables and waiting at the bar to get their drinks. It’s smaller than you’d pictured too, but its size is made up for with a patio at the back, smokers haunting the door, wary of the cold. 

You know what his friends look like already, yet seeing them in person is odd. Hotch is taller than you’d thought, Emily more startlingly pretty. JJ’s frowning, and her partner Will looks like he’s about to fall asleep despite a lazy grin. 

Hotch notices you first. He taps Emily on the elbow, who pauses in a thought to follow his gaze. Her face breaks into a smile, and if you weren’t in love with Spencer Reid, you might take a tumble for his pale coworker. 

“Hello,” Spencer says, ushering you to the table with an arm behind your back. 

“Hi,” you say. 

“He-llo,” Emily says, leaning into the table, a strand of her hair dangerously close to a short glass of juice. “I can’t believe we’re finally seeing you in person. I’m Emily.” 

“Y/N,” you say. 

“Aaron,” Hotch adds. (Aaron! He’s far more intimidating casually than as a boss, it seems.)

“Derek was just here,” JJ says in way of greeting, while Will drawls from over her shoulder, “I’m Will, it’s nice to meet you.” 

Spencer pulls out a chair for you and promptly sits in the one beside Emily. “Sorry we’re late. I forgot my wallet and we had to go back up to the apartment and the cab I called got so angry about it that he left.” 

You slide between the table and your chair, looking to Spencer for guidance, but he’s distracted taking his coat off and you have to look at Aaron instead. 

His smile is immediately knowing. Read for filth in seconds. “We don't bite.”

“Not so early in the evening,” Emily says. 

You take a shuddering breath, thankful they can’t hear it over the sounds of the bar. 

—

“I’m caught!” you exclaim. 

Spencer hugs you under the arms. “I know,” he says gently. 

“Caught!” 

He holds back a laugh as your arms react, practically flung behind his head in a hug that threatens to cut off the oxygen supply to his brain. “I think you’ve caught me, instead,” he says. 

You laugh in his ear. There’s gin on your breath and the sweeter smell of orange juice. It’s not bad, but weird to know it’s from your mouth. Or not weird. It gives Spencer a feeling like seeing the soft curve of your hip when you’re lying on your side. Like watching you bite your bottom lip when you’re distracted by the TV and worrying to yourself, which you do more often than not lately. They’re private things that Spencer shouldn’t know about. 

“I’m not trying to,” you say, and Spencer can smell the shot of vodka you did too, which is less pleasant. “Not trying to catch you. Not… I’m sorry.” 

“What for?” 

“It’s hard to explain.” 

Over your shoulder, Spencer spots Hotch’s entertained gaze. All the team has done since you sat down together was pick on Spencer and his obviousness. Boyfriend? they’d asked you. Looking? Sights set on someone? All while JJ nudged him under the table. 

Things are falling apart now. JJ’d departed to hold Emily’s hair back, and Will with her. Hotch caught the eye of a woman across the way, and they sit chatting amicably at the bar with more peanuts than drinks. Derek, when he did appear, stayed for an hour with Desiree, recounting to you his most embarrassing stories of which Spencer had taken care to shield you from, and laughed at his subsequent blush. 

He never wanted you to know about his run in with anthrax, and he especially didn’t want you to know he’d been stripped nude afterwards and hosed off like a muddy dog. 

You’d turned to him with wide, worried eyes. “You were poisoned?” you’d asked. 

It’s stuff like that that makes this difficult. 

“I don’t know if you know this,” he says now, rubbing your back, “but I’m good with difficult concepts.”

“I did not mean to be like this.” 

“You didn’t eat much.” Spencer helps you stand on your own two feet. “They kitchen’s still open. I can get you food, how about a burger? Or we can go find you something.“

“What kind of burger?” you ask, poorly concealing your excitement. 

Spencer gets you back to the table. “I’ll be right back.” 

“Wait, don’t go.” 

“I’m gonna get food. Do you want fries?” 

“Spencer, what if I throw up?” 

Spencer shrugs. “I can rub your back?” 

“I don’t want to throw up.” 

“Then drink that,” he says, sliding his glass of coke toward you. “Alcohol irritates the lining of your stomach and increases the production of stomach acid. If you drink,” —he flinches as you knock the cup back— “slowly you can dilute your stomach contents without upsetting it. Slowly,” he says, squeezing your hand, “I’ll order food.”

“No, wait.” You drop the glass and grab him. “Please don’t go. I don’t want to throw up by myself.” 

“You won’t throw up.”

“Please,” you say, holding his wrist in both hands, your eyes shiny. “Spencer, don’t go.” 

“I won’t.” He doesn’t know how true it is and then suddenly he’s sat down. He won’t go. He wouldn’t leave your side ever again if that’s what you asked of him. 

He puts your chairs together, entertaining your tipsy thoughts with light conversation and the occasional slight of hand. You have an aura about you, like Spencer’s doing more than close-up magic, hanging on his every word. Your nervousness had you gasping like a fish, not so subtly downing one drink, then another, but now that you’re feeling the effects of them (and a few extras), the tightness you’d held in your fingers is gone. You’re leaning against the back of the chair with all the ease of you on the couch at home, but the easy fondness you’d usually wear while he speaks is replaced by a bright and shining awe. A sweetness like he’s remarkable. The soft line of your lips and your widened eyes. 

You’re not the sort of drunk that leaves you listless and ready for bed. This is giggly and fun, and so long as you don’t push it you’ll be alright. It wasn’t enough alcohol to leave you inebriated all night, anyhow. In a few hours the giddiness will wear away, leaving you with a headache and a deep longing for your missed dinner. 

“I’m glad you didn’t let me fake food poisoning,” you say. 

“Is that what you were thinking? That’s a terrible excuse. You need something with sudden onset symptoms, like an asthma attack, or pneumonia. An acute illness.” 

You take his hand. “I love that you know that stuff.”

Feeling as in love with you as ever, and sorry for you drunken state —he could’ve stopped you, he just didn’t think— he folds your hands together, both of his, rubbing the hills of your knuckles with his thumb. Your hands look right together. 

That’s what Spencer likes to think, anyway. 

You slow like you’re tired, hand lax in his grips. Your mouth opens but nothing follows, no sigh or gripe or conversation. 

“You okay?” he asks softly. 

“I think I’m having one of those dreams again.” 

“You’re awake,” he says. 

“I don’t know about that. They’re all like this.” 

He hums, smoothing his thumb down the back of your hand. “If this were a dream, you wouldn't have control over what you’re doing. Why don’t you do something you wouldn’t do in a dream?” 

“Like what?” you ask. 

“There’s a ton of stuff you can’t do in dreams. People find they have a poor memory, but I can’t ask you to recall anything. You might not remember regardless. How about temperature?” he suggests. “Most people can’t feel warm or cold in their dreams. Do you want to feel something cold?”

You watch him for a few seconds, your eyebrows pulled together unhappily. “Your hands are warm,” you say. 

“Right.” He suspects they’ll feel warmer in just a few seconds when the hot flush in his face manages to work its way down. “I’m warm. So are you.” 

“Sometimes I feel like you’re warm in the dream, though. You make me feel warm.” 

“It’s remembered, maybe.” 

You don’t look any happier. “Sometimes I wish I could stop having them, but…” You duck your head. “Sorry, Spencer.” 

“What are you sorry for?” 

Your head ducks lower. With a start to his chest, your shoulders shake, like you're inhaling the first half of a sob. 

“Hey, hey,” he says, reaching for your cheek, ducking his own head to see you, “what’s wrong? It’s okay, you don’t have anything to be sorry for!” he whispers emphatically. “You have nothing to be sorry for, why would you think that?” 

“I keep having these dreams, all the time, and– and I– I’ll mess everything up. Everything we have, I’m going to–” You hiccup, eyes turned glassy, imploring him to forgive you for something you haven’t done. “I don’t feel good.” 

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” he says, his hand sliding back to your ear, down to your neck, “you’re just drunk. You’re confused.” 

“But the dreams–”

“What dreams?” he asks gently. 

You blow out a daunted breath. “Where you love me.” 

“I do love you.” 

“But more than this. You love me more than this,” you say, shaking your head. “I really don’t feel okay… Do you think we could go home?” 

You’re so sorry and frowny that Spencer would attempt, in all his unfitness, to climb Mount Everest for you should you ask. “Yeah, we can go home,” he says, rubbing your arm up and down and up again, a line of affection from shoulder to wrist. “I’ll take you home. It’s okay, Y/N. You don’t have to be upset, I shouldn’t have asked.” 

He’s not sure what he asked, really, but the answer upset you. His heart’s racing like he just sprinted the length of the bar and you’re close to tears, this strange weepy sullenness about you as you say, “It’s okay. Let’s just go.” 

—

It’s cold to be sitting out by yourself, though the snow stayed its hand another night while the temperature fell again. Your coat poses a weak defence against the chill, nipping at your nose, burning the insides of every breath, and your feet are stiff like ice in your shoes. Yet, the idea of returning to the apartment is a leaden stone in your stomach. 

Spencer could barely look at you that morning. You hadn’t given him much of a chance, slipping out of the apartment with little more than a call to say you’d be back later. Your groceries freeze in a paper bag by your feet. 

You’re not too embarrassed about getting tipsy. It was drinks with Spencer and his friends, not dinner. Emily had been twice as drunk, and Derek had encouraged you to drink with a round on him. You’re mortified, however, by what you’d said. Your memory is clear enough to know you’d told Spencer about your dreams. 

He’d been confused at the time, but he’s a smart boy. He’ll figure it out. 

“This headache,” you mumble, tipping your head into your hand morosely. You rub your brow, fingers against the ache, the cold getting worse. 

Why did it take a dream for you to realise you had feelings for Spencer? And why did you have to realise at all? If you’d never had that dream, never had that phantom bruise, his hands careful and caring and touching up to the band of your bra, you wouldn’t know now what it is to want him. The dream gave you a bruise, and Spencer presses against it real or otherwise every time he looks at you. You were wrong thinking that it never happened; it’s still there, a purple lash against your ribs. 

Every time he makes you breakfast, or he texts you from a different state, or he sits down on the couch just to talk to you. Every time he says something smart, or he tilts his head back as he laughs, or he draws a smiley face on the mirror by the door–

“About those dreams?” 

You rub your eyes hard. Of course he’d come to find you. “Please don’t.” 

“Please,” he says. You see him through your fingers. His thick scarf is unravelled at his neck, his hair ragged around his face like he’s been raking it repeatedly behind his ears. 

You straighten. 

“I don’t get it,” he says, “you’ve been dreaming about me? Why is that such a big deal?” 

“It’s embarrassing.” 

“I dream about you all the time,” he says. “We’re in each other's lives, we live together, it makes sense that your hippocampus would use me. You have a lot of memories with me.” Spencer crosses his arms in front of you. “It’s freezing.” 

“I’ll be home in a bit.”

“I’m not gonna go back without you,” he says, like that’s a given. 

You move across the bench to make room for him. Spencer sits. 

You settle. The occasional bus trundles past, a limited rota for an early Sunday morning. Spencer shoves his hands into his pockets. His lips are already turning blue. 

“I know you know what I mean,” you say. 

Spencer presses his knees together. “Even romantic dreams where I’m… where we’re together, it’s all easily explained away by brain science. You can’t control what you dream, and I’m not going to hold you to it.” 

Silence, silence. You tip your head back to see a horrible grey cloud closing in on you both, the sun a white and gauzy memory behind it. Spencer’s right about control, but he doesn’t get that you like them. It’s not fair to him that you’ve somehow rallied a second life when you’re sleeping, where he’s your mind’s puppet, hugging and holding you, pressing his cheek to the side of your face. Saying things you wish he’d tell you now. 

“Well, I like you.” 

“What?” you ask, coughing. 

“Not to make things awkward or anything, but I like you. Romantically.” Spencer’s voice takes a sharp veer into high-pitched freneticism. “Does that help at all?” 

“What?” 

“It’s far more embarrassing that I like you on purpose than your accidental dreams, right?” He thumbs at the inside of his wrist. “You don’t have to say anything, or think anything, and I’m not going to change, but I have feelings for you.”  

You feel like you’re standing at the top of a very tall building. “Oh?” 

“I kind of thought you knew.” 

“How could I know that?” you ask, cringing as a cold gust of air bites at your face. 

Spencer takes his scarf off and pushes it into your hands. “I don’t know. I guess we know less about each other than we thought.”

The way he says it. 

Spencer wraps his scarf around you when it’s clear you aren’t going to do it yourself, and he touches your cheek briefly, a brush of his fingers like he thinks he’s doing something he shouldn’t be allowed to. 

“I dream about you all the time,” he says quietly. 

A bus passes by and shines headlights at your feet. The wind blows, your ears roar, and just above you, in a cold front to mark the season, snow begins to fall. 

You look up simultaneously. A snowflake gets caught in Spencer’s eyelashes. 

Just one. 

“This is so weird,” you mumble. 

Spencer wipes at his eye. “Could you tell me why?” 

“I had a dream just like this.” 

He laughs warmly. “Of course you did. Forget all reason, then. You’re prophetic.” 

“I don’t think I could’ve predicted this.” 

“Why? It’s only snow. Virginia gets an inch of snow most Decembers.” 

You laugh. In a dream, this is where you and Spencer would kiss or hold hands, or rest your cheek on the other’s shoulder, but neither of you are brave enough. And, as the snow turns to a sleet below freezing, you can’t ignore the cold. 

—

iv. the end 

The longest anyone has ever slept in recorded human history is eleven days. Two hundred and sixty four hours, or nearly sixteen thousand minutes, just shy of one million seconds of sleep. 

The first pillow was invented in Mesopotamia more than nine thousand years ago, in a time where the amount of pillows a person had directly correlated their personal riches. The history of pillows is tumultuous and eclectic. Headrests made of wood, stone, or jade. Curved neck holders worn soft with use. 

And, of all Spencer’s gifted facts, you find yourself circling back to the same one as you wait for him to wake: most dreams are no longer than twenty minutes. However, it’s important to note that the longest dream ever officially observed was in 1994, when a man managed to be in REM for just over three hours. You’ve had dreams that felt like they lasted for hours, but likely took place for just twenty minutes. If you could dream for three hours a night, you could live an entire life of longing in a pocket of time. 

Thankfully, you have no need to hide from reality anymore. Spencer sleeps beside you and you don’t want to sleep, you just want him to wake up. 

“Good morning,” you whisper, drawing your fingertip across his cheek to encourage the hair that’s fallen there back in line. 

He doesn’t stir. It’s alright, you hadn’t meant to wake him. 

“I love you,” you whisper, shuffling across the sheets to feel the heat and weight of his body against your own. He doesn’t move for a while, snoring gently, his breath kissing the top of your head as you burrow into the slip of space under his chin. Then, as if he were awake, he wraps his arm around you and drags you in further. His face angles down and his nose finds your forehead, and a hum of what you’d personally say is content kisses your brow. 

You tuck your hand behind his back and rub a circle. 

Spencer didn’t last long after the initial realisation of requited feelings. In a day he’d asked if you wanted to be his girlfriend (vaguely apologetic, still worried about scaring you, though you’d already come clean about wanting him as you’d warmed your cold hands by the stove). A week later he kissed you on a date outside of the cosiest Indian restaurant in Washington, D.C, and things have been nothing but smooth sailing from there. 

Now, when he’s feeling romantic, he brings home butter chicken and turns your face up for kissing, fork in hand. Every night before bed, he tells you to have good dreams, a self-satisfaction in his eyes that you dearly love. 

You knew he was a dork and you liked him because of it, but the sheer increase in him is amazing. Yesterday he sent you Close to You by Carpenters over text claiming they wrote it about you. When he got home, he tried to make you dance with him in the living room. After two or three kisses, you’d let him pull you to your feet. 

Spencer has turned loving one another into an everyday spectacularity, and not some mystical dream you ached for. 

He squeezes the skin of your shoulder as he wakes. Heavy in the hands of sleep, Spencer rubs the tip of his nose to yours, nudging your face up, and waiting there with your lips a few millimetres apart as he finds his bearings. You don’t open your eyes. There’s no need. 

“Time?” he mumbles.

“I don’t,” —you clear your hoarse voice, his hand flattening protectively behind you— “know, um. Maybe seven. The sun was rising…” 

“You could have woken me up,” he says, and kisses you slowly. It’s almost gluttonous, how he does it. Not chaste at all. His hair falls into your face and tickles your cheeks, his nose smushes your own with his easy depth. 

You hold his face and kiss him twice, following a line under his chin, where you pause, smelling yesterday's cologne on his skin. “I was hoping I’d fall asleep again,” you confess. 

“Oh, no, don’t do that.” He scoops you against him and turns onto his back as you laugh. “Angel. Let’s stay up now. Let’s just… stay here.” 

If you stay here he’s going to waylay you with a smattering of his voracious kisses, and he’s going to turn you on your back and kiss your neck. He’ll touch that place on your ribs where you’d once dreamt a bruise. It’s a secret you couldn’t keep. He likes to kiss you there when he remembers, but most of the time his hands run along it without mention. A slow caressing. 

You push your face against his shoulder and sigh as his arms close in around you. With a little effort, you get your arms around him in turn, and you hug him for as long as you can stand the pins and needles in your fingers. 

“You smell so good,” you mumble.

He pats your back absentmindedly. 

Today, you’re going to make Spencer oatmeal with banana and chocolate. You’re going to shower, maybe together if the small space can handle it, laughing at the soap in his eyebrows and the way he squeals when you touch his hips. You’re going to drape yourself across his lap as he reads, and he’ll lean down to kiss the tip of your nose or some other strange part of you unused to affection. The top of your ear, the palm of your hand, maybe the crook of your elbow. He’ll ramble through dinner or creep up behind you to sniff your shoulder, and it’ll all be choices you’ve made. Nothing left to want or wanting, but being in love while wide awake. 

“Are you tired?” you ask him. 

He takes a deep breath of your hair. “No,” he says, drawing a light line up your side, “I’m okay. There are worse faces to wake up to.”

You try not to fluster noticeably. He’s always been a good roommate. You’re still getting used to the boyfriend part, the intimacy of being complimented, but Spencer seems to have slipped into the part easily.

“Sorry, that was mean. There’s nothing I’d rather wake up to.” 

“Thanks,” you mumble. 

You’re tired, suddenly. The minutes pass in heavy blinks —you don’t want to sleep now that he’s awake, but being here with him is warming you from the inside out.  You doze and wake and Spencer doesn’t say a word. His breaths come evenly against your cheek. 

Eventually, he clears his throat, asksing, “Did you dream at all?” His voice is hewn. He rubs your chest, right over your heart.

”I’m not so sure that this isn’t one,” you say, your heartbeat a crawl under his touch.

“That’s corny.” 

“Mm, the Spencer in my dreams is usually kinder.” 

“Does he ever get to hold you like this?” he asks, letting his hand fall from your chest to wrap it back around you again. 

You take a sleepy breath in. “No,” you say slowly, “he doesn’t.”

｡𖦹°‧⭑.

thank youuuu for reading!! please like comment or reblog if you enjoyed!! thank you❤️

this fic was requested! I usually link to the request I was sent at the top, but I lost the post for this one, but this is what the request said: 

“hi angel! i have a request for roommate!spencer where r has a very romantic dream about him and starts avoiding him because she's really embarrassed but spencer is so confused as to why his roommate suddenly can't even look him in the eye. maybe one of them realizes their feelings aren't entirely platonic in the end? love you!!!”

thank you original requester! 

[tetzoro]

HELP ME HELP YOU — ༉‧₊˚.

ft. dick grayson !

꒰ SYNOPSIS ꒱ : poison ivy has been flying under the radar and weaponizing her pollen to fellow criminals. it’s a shame you and dick find out the hard way.

꒰ CONTENTS ꒱ : MDNI. f!reader. dub-con bc of sex pollen (they’ve both been pining for each other tho), dry humping, slight exhibitionism, unprotected sex, oral (f + m receiving, 69, face sitting), cum eating, multiple orgasms, missionary, mating press, cowgirl, pet names (baby, pretty), praise, creampies, mentions of breeding, light impact play (slaps your thigh once), begging, mentions of sweat and saliva, slight overstimulation, almost pure smut tbh it’s just filth — WC : 6.1k

꒰ NOTES ꒱ : mind the tags !! i’ve been wanting to write a sex pollen fic for so long i’m so excited i finally did it ! enjoy !!

reblogs and interactions are always appreciated ! (*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ᰔ*.ﾟ

another drizzly night in gotham, filled with blaring police sirens and a heavy dose of crime. patrol was going as planned for the most part. apprehending a few criminals here and there, but nothing major. to dick, it was a semi-quiet night. one that left him reflecting on his life or rather, his recent choices.

truth be told, he had missed gotham. even though it wasn’t in a much better state when he had left, a large part of him knew he belonged here. bludhaven had been a good experience for him to try and break away, start his own thing. but when it came down to it, he missed it here. missed the people here, some more than others.

dick eventually got a tip from tim, stating that there were a couple of criminals causing a scene a few blocks down the road. he made it there quickly, only to run into you.

normally, it wasn’t a rare sight to see you out on patrol at the same time as him, but lately, it’s been harder to be around you. he knew he was developing feelings for you, no, he already had feelings for you. but it was all so confusing. the two of you had been friends for so long, since you were teenagers.

but then he left and you stayed. even though he’s been back for about a month, it still feels like he doesnt get to see enough of you. and when he’s finally around you, he just doesn’t know how to act anymore. 

“and here i thought you’d never show up, nightwing.” you tease, getting ready to apprehend the criminals that were trying to make their next move. he easily side stepped to get into a closer range to them, ready to bring them down with you. but truthfully, a large part of his focus wasn’t on them at all.

“you know i can never resist.” he smirks. the two of you start fighting off the criminals, landing quick, steady punches. 

“resist showing off, you mean.” you scoff, swinging your fist around, lodging it in one of the criminals' sides.

“ouch,” dick takes out one of his batons, twirling it around in his hand before using it against one of the enemies. “and here i was going to help you out of the goodness of my heart, my mistake.”

the two of you move in sync, your fighting styles mimicking each other as you attempt to take down the criminals. even though it’s been awhile, the two of you mesh well together just like old times.

“why don’t you sit back and watch how it’s done, boy wonder.” you drop down, palm hitting the pavement as you dodge an incoming attack. you use the momentum to sweep your feet under the apprehender, knocking him on his back. 

“i must’ve struck a nerve for you to use that nickname on me.” he smirked, trying to see how far he can crawl under your skin. the criminals were still trying to fight you both, but it was a cakewalk for him. he’d rather just stand around and tease you all night if he could.

“you’re always on my nerves.” you huff, pushing a villain off of you, watching them hobble backwards before you ready for another attack.

“gotta get your attention somehow, don’t i?” he hit one of the criminals in the gut, trying to swiftly take him down.

before you can retort, you hear something clink to the floor near dick before gas starts to surround it. you both pause, attention shifting on the strange device. the criminals use the momentary lapse to their advantage.

“that’ll keep them busy for awhile.” one of the criminals snicker as they make their escape. you take a step towards them but dick holds you back, his hand gripping onto you.

something felt like it was crawling up his spine, a heat that grew more the longer he touched you. 

“what are you doing?” you question him, ripping your arm from his hold. but then he realized, not touching you sent spikes of pain throughout his body, yearning for some sort of relief that he didn’t know how to get.

he tries to shake it off to focus on the task at hand, pressing against his ear piece, trying to contact tim.

“nightwing.” tim greets as he presses the button. dick crouches down to look at the device the criminals threw, your eyes tracking his movements with curiosity. “report?”

“looks like the criminals threw a toxin at us, i’m not sure what it is but it let out a puff of gas when it hit the ground. judging by the design of it i’d say,” dick pauses, eyes widening as he flips it over in the palm of his hand. a small, green plant painted onto the side of the device. “ivy.”

“alright, report back to the batcave. there’s been rumors that she’s been weaponizing her special pollen so we will have an antidote ready. did anyone else get hit? or are you alone?” tim replies, typing away on his keyboard.

dick looks over at you, holding your gaze for a moment. his mouth feels dry, words lodged in his throat as his body shivers. he tells tim he’s with you.

“dick, whatever you do, do not give into any urges, okay? christ, i didn’t know she’d be out on patrol too, she wasn’t even scheduled.” the frustration in his voice is tinged with anxiety and panic, knowing fully well the extent of getting hit by ivy’s pollen. “both of you get back here immediately. signing off.”

“affirmative.” dick nods, letting tim break the line for now. his eyes hadn’t left yours and he watched as you back up towards the wall behind you. he mirrors your movements, his thoughts growing hazier by the second. his more primal urges start to fight logic, a new battle unfolding in his mind.

he holds onto the wall, planting his back firmly against it as his hands form a fist. the sensation is back again, prickling under his skin like an itch he can’t scratch. it’s driving him mad, sweat starting to coat his body. everything was hot, searing. any self control he had was quickly slipping through his fingers, his heart racing out of his chest. 

even looking at you seems to make it worse, so he keeps his head against the wall, looking up at the dark sky as he tries to find the strength to move. he needs a plan, something to grasp and ground him to reality before he throws caution to the wind and takes you right here in this alleyway.

so he decides he just… won’t give in. that’s it, he’ll stay on this side of the wall while you stay on the other and then you go back to the cave and get the antidote. perfect.

“dickie.” or well, it would’ve been. his attention reluctantly goes over to you as you use his nickname, eyes burning trying to keep them on your face. but the way your voice sounded, the lilt of desperation packed into it had him curious. his eyes trail down your body, watching the way your chest heaves up and down, your thighs clenching together.

“yeah?” he swallows, eyes averting to the ground, his fingers curling deeper into his fist until he’s sure his nails are about to break the skin. 

“it hurts.” you all but whimper and his resolve cracks in half. it was always his dream to be your hero, to be someone you look up to and respect. being your knight in shining armor and eventually wooing you over one day. with the way your voice sounded, he needed to save you, do anything to make you feel better. seeing you in pain like this clawed at his heart, leaving his chest wide open. “please, i don’t know what to do.”

he’s never seen you look so helpless. you’ve always had an air of confidence about you whenever you put on your suit. you took being a hero seriously, one of the many things he admired about you. but this? he’s never seen you like this. and it stirred something within him.

he swallows thickly, trying to grab control of his thoughts once again, gripping onto logic even though the pollen was directly challenging it. one by one, another decent thought slips out of his hold and is instantly replaced with one that was much more improper. the kind of thoughts he’s tried his best to repress, especially when it comes to you.

“i know.” he says, tim’s word of caution fleeting from his mind. pressing himself off against the wall, he bounds over to you, finding himself directly in front of you, his palm pressed against the wall by your head. you gasp and it takes every last bit of him to not devour your sweet sounds. “fuck, we have to get back to the cave.”

your eyes flutter shut as his words breathe across your face, the raspy tone from his voice luring you in. 

“please.” you say again, the words barely above a whisper.

the rubber band snaps and the tension breaks, your bodies surging towards each other, clicking into place as your lips finally collide. the pollen saturating every nerve in your body, an overwhelming tsunami threatening to consume you and take him down with you.

but he wasn’t faring any better. his hands were shaking with need, his movements clumsy, not because they weren’t practiced, but because he had never needed anything more in his life.

he kisses you with a bruising force he usually reserves for when he fights, unable to hold himself back as the pollen dances throughout his veins chanting more, more, more.

visions invade his mind, betraying all the walls he’s so carefully put in place over the years. the amount of times he’s dreamed of having you, the amount of times he’s fisted his cock to the thought of you, was all coming to a burning point. if he didn’t have you now, it felt like his body would disintegrate. 

a groan rips from his throat, rumbling against your lips as he tries to devour you. his hands roam all over your body, almost kneading against every part of you to get a proper feel. but it wasn’t enough.

“have to feel you, please- need you closer.” he manages to choke out, his plump lips swollen with your passion, his dark blue eyes blown all the way out into a dark, stormy abyss. with a small nod of your head, he’s pushing you against the wall, slipping his thigh between your legs. he grinds against your hips, seeking out any sort of relief while also trying to provide you some.

the kiss is hardly graceful — teeth clashing against each other, trying to consume the other. there’s no fight for dominance, no careful hesitance, just pure unabridged desperation. he feels you reach for your mask, already trying to take off anything that serves as a barrier between you and him.

“f-fuck, wait, keep your mask on. we can’t-“ he didn’t finish the sentence as you rolled your hips against him instead, body jerking in his hold. somehow the gravity of the situation rings in his head for a moment. “shit, wait, we should talk about this, right?”

“we’re just helping each other out,” you gasp, kissing along his jaw. your fingers dig into his biceps, voice straining as you try to keep yourself together for a moment. “it hurts so much, i can’t stand it. help me and i’ll help you.”

“can’t say no to that logic.” he picks you up, pressing you against the wall as he presses his aching cock to your core. the relief it brought had his eyes rolling to the back of his head, gripping onto you tighter as his body reacts in a way it’s never done before.

he grinds against your clothed cunt, the fabric of your suits making it easier to hurriedly slide against each other. he wishes he could feel how tightly you’d wrap around him instead of this but he needed release now, and this was the quickest way to get it.

and you’re just as bad as him, bucking your hips against him to gain any sort of friction, your hands pawing all over his body.

“please-“ you whine in his ear, “stop teasing me, let me feel you.” your body felt on fire, something crackling just beneath the surface. the friction you were getting wasn’t enough, giving you pleasure but you also craved more.

“c-can’t.” he gasps, moving his hips faster as he feels a high coming on. “m’close.”

it was all building up deep within him, pleasure fighting pain and hurtling him towards the unknown. but he knew it would help, god, he knew anything with you would save him somehow.

his aching cock was still pressed up against the tight suit he had on, throbbing and pulsing as if it was trying to make its great escape. but the sound of your moan brought him back to the moment, the sweet mewl tumbling out of your lips as you reach your high. it sends him over the edge, cumming in his suit, hips stuttering against yours.

after a moment to catch your breath, you look at each other. the pain and fire are still as strong as ever, in fact, it might even be worse now. he needs to be inside you, feeling your warm walls hold onto him as he releases load after load deep within you.

“we need to-.” he pauses, breath hitching as you start rubbing against him again. the words die in his throat, no longer thinking of the batcave and the antidote. 

“i need more, please we can’t stop here.” you whine, looking up at him. whatever you were doing felt so good, feeding into the unstoppable desire that ignited in him. 

“we need to find somewhere to go.” he decides, holding onto you tightly.

“there’s a safehouse close by.” you suggest and suddenly it was like a veil was lifted. the fog cleared, and all he could see was you. your unfocused eyes, the way you pawed at him, he knew exactly what to do.

“i know the one, let’s go.” he grabs your hand, practically running down the street with you dragging behind him. but you manage to keep up with him. he’s relieved that no one is really out here, even though the night life was never tame in gotham, he considered it a small blessing that the streets were somewhat quiet tonight.

the safehouse was nestled in between a slew of apartments. he easily grabbed the key from under the mat and shoved the door open, the hinges yelling in protest. he all but pushes you inside, slamming the door shut and sealing you both in.

your body hits the door as soon as he closes it, his brute strength easily manhandling you into any position he wants. you were more than ready for it, wrapping your legs around his waist as your heels dig into his perfect ass, pulling him closer.

he groans as you roll your hips against his, trying to get closer to his straining cock. depravity takes over as you're practically humping against each other, shimming out of your suits. some part of you had to still be touching him —  your lips, your hands, anything.

finally, you’re both freed of your restricting clothing, ripping it down just enough so he could gain better access to you, barely caring that he was shredding your hero suit. but it didn’t seem like you minded either as your nails raked against his chest.

“you ready for me?” he fists his aching cock, throbbing and glistening with his cum. the tip was so red, you wondered if he was in any pain — or if it matched the same one you felt in between your thighs. 

“hurry, need you to-” you didn’t get a chance to finish your sentence. 

dick slipped into you with one rough shove, filling you all the way up in one delicious motion. you gasp, throwing your head back into the door at the sudden intrusion, your back arching off of the wooden panel.

“sorry, baby.” his arm slips around your waist, his palm spreading along your back for support. “s’okay, you’re okay, yeah?”

he doesn’t move for a moment to try to let you adjust, his body practically screaming at him for waiting. but he felt so weak for you, couldn’t help but start rocking his hips. it didn’t take long for his urges to take over. 

his hands pushed down onto your waist, steadying himself so he could get deeper. the only thought that crossed his mind was how good you felt, how well you took him — and it only made him more determined to make you fall apart just like you were making him.

why had he waited so long to make a move? he could’ve done this sooner, years ago. it pissed him off, frustrated he’s gone so long without knowing how good your cunt felt wrapped around his cock. the anger only intensifies his thrusts, the door rattling behind you in protest.

“s-slow down!” you cry out, not really thinking of what you were saying. the last thing you wanted was for him to slow down, but everything felt so fast, so overwhelming that your brain couldn’t keep up with it.

“that’s not what you really want.” he grunts out, lips latching onto your neck. he needed to leave little marks on you. a reminder for him that this is really happening, that this is real. he’s finally fucking you. “you’re so tight, you feel so good f’me.”

“all for you, only for you.” you start to babble, drunk off the sensation he‘s feeding you. your legs wrap tighter around his waist, driving him deeper than he already was. his pace stutters for a second, his release already sneaking up on him. “ah- m’already close!”

“me too, baby.” he breathes, his voice raspier than you’ve ever heard it. “please let me cum inside, need to fill you up and breed this pretty pussy.”

you clench around his words, nodding your head profusely, body tightening as electricity shoots through your body as you cum around his cock. your eyes roll to the back of your head as he continues to thrust into you, desperately chasing his own release.

“yes, yes, need it, please!” you moan, practically milking his cock. once you give him the okay, he drives as deep as he can and lets out a broken moan as he fills you up.

“shit.” he grunts out, his breathing far out of his control. he lowers you down, letting you land on your feet. but you can hardly stand, his grip tight on your elbows to keep you upright. the two of you just stare at each other for a moment, trying to process what just happened, what’s currently happening. intense need swarms his mind again and pain spreads throughout his body with every passing second he isn’t inside of you.

instinctively, you drop to your knees, your hand lightly grasping around his slick base. dick lets out a hiss of pleasure, tossing his head back as he feels the slight essence of reprieve. 

“need you in my mouth,” you look up at him, slowly pumping his cock. he twitches in your hand with interest, the sex pollen still sending his body into overdrive. he doesn’t even feel overstimulation, all he feels is lust and the overwhelming need to wreck you.

“go ahead, baby.” you wrap your lips around his cock, hollowing out your cheeks as you get right to work. his eyes roll back and he needs to grip onto the back of your head for support — otherwise he’d fall backwards. “damn, knew you’d be good at this, always running your sweet little mouth whenever you’re around me. feels like heaven.”

you hum in approval, the sensation tickling his tip. you take him in deeper, your hands grabbing onto his ass for support.

“fuck, baby.” he mutters under his breath. normally, you probably wouldn’t have heard it, but the pollen heightened all of your senses when it came to him. his voice sounded so raspy, so desperate, it had you squeezing your thighs together. “please don’t tease me right now or i’ll fuck you against the wall again.”

so you don’t, swallowing his whole length, your pretty eyes filling up with tears as you look up at him. he feels like he’s going to pass out — his head is fuzzy, his thighs are trembling, you have him under your spell and a primitive part of him is screaming at him to fix it.

“i’m gonna cum.” he moans, gripping your hair. he almost lets himself, but it wouldn’t feel fair. he needed you to cum with him. the two of you were in this together. he pushes you off of him, regret already swarming his body as the pollen viciously attacks him again.

“what’s wrong?” you ask, wiping the spit that was pooling in the corner of your mouth. he picked you up, bringing you over to the couch.

“i have to taste you.” he tosses you on the couch, “so you’re gonna sit on my face.”

the way he said it doesn’t leave any room for argument so for once, you listen to him. watching as he sits next to you on the couch. your bodies pivot so he’s laying down instead of you, an eager smile on his face. 

you climb on top of him, going to move your hips over his eagerly awaiting mouth. but he’s impatient, the need to taste you on his tongue is too great. hastily grabbing your hips, he pulls you down on his face. you yelp in surprise, nails digging into his abs to ground yourself. he doesn’t waste a second, diving into the delicious meal you’ve presented him.

even without you touching him, he started to feel his own relief by swirling his tongue around your clit. his hips thrust in the air, unable to control himself. your moans and small gasps of pleasure fuel him to keep going, not planning on stopping until he’s gotten his fill.

he groans into your cunt as you start to take his leaking cock in your warm hands, focusing on his tip. you lean over his body as he holds you firmly in place so you can pull him back in your mouth, engulfing him in an instant.

his hips involuntary jerks up, pushing himself deeper and eliciting a gag from you. he would feel bad but with the way you gushed around his tongue told him otherwise.

“god, you taste incredible.” he mumbles, making sure he’s not missing a drop. but honestly, it’s too much. your slick mixed with his cum has his mind spiraling — the taste settling on his tongue, nestling deep into his senses.

it was all a haze, trying to devour every drop of you, gripping onto your thighs so tightly that if he was thinking more clearly, he might feel bad. but the way your tongue wraps around his cock, your throat enveloping it all the way down, leaves him with very little coherent thoughts.

but he couldn’t stop lapping at your cunt, every tremble, every moan, every taste of you has him wanting more and he knew that this wouldn’t be enough — it might never be enough. you’ve created an insatiable beast that only craves your touch.

“dick, i’m gonna cum-.” you take a gulp of air, using your hand to furiously pump his cock, fingers dancing around his tip as you usher out your words. a flare of pride spikes up with him and shoots throughout his body, his hand getting away from him as he encouragingly slaps against your thigh.

“please, baby. come all over my face.” he knows he sounds wrecked but he doesn’t care. he gets back to work, suckling on your clit more intently than before. your mewls vibrate along his length and he can’t help but thrust into your mouth a little, overly excited at the prospect of you releasing all over him. 

he helps you ride his face, guiding your movements by his grip on your thighs. with a cry of his name, you cum again, gushing all over him. at this point, he could die a happy man, cleaning you up as your thighs shake in his palms.

he’s not sure if it was your skilled mouth, your messy cunt, or the fact he managed to pull that strong of an orgasm from you — but he came in your hand that was still rubbing at his tip.

“f-fuuuuuck.” he moans out, hips jerking in your hold. after a few minutes, he feels you slide off of his face, pivoting yourself and sitting on the couch, head hanging off the back of it.

it had to be over, right? all of the pollen should be out of your systems. he sat up and mirrored your movements, looking over at you to see how you were faring. and you were already looking over at him, half lidded eyes as you were catching your breath. your skin was glistening in sweat, much like his own.

the itch creeped up his neck, sending chills over his body. it definitely wasn’t done and the agony of not touching you anymore was starting to get to his head. he lunges over to you, pinning you on the couch as he lines up his cock once again.

“god, i need to have you.” he breathes, searching your eyes to see if you feel as messed up as he does.

“you’ve got me.” you mewl before looking up and adding, “you’ve always had me.”

“really?” disbelief coats his words, somehow managing to pause his motions even though his body is screaming at him. the fire inside of him is licking at the tightly wound coil within him, but somehow he’s able to push it down — even if it’s just for a moment. but he needs to hear this, needs to hear you.

“i’ve-” you start squirming under him, no doubt feeling that same fire he did. he almost felt a little bad by delaying your gratification but god, he really needs this. he can’t tell if the tears forming in your eyes are from the pollen or from the emotion that’s been building up after all these years.  “i’ve always loved you dick.”

his hormones fly out of control, his hold tightening against you. every nerve in his body tells him to move but he’s somehow frozen, transfixed on your confession. 

“i love you so much.” he manages to choke out, desire boiling in his gut once again, fueled by the sweet words he’s been dying to hear from you. it was too much, the overwhelming itch consuming him once again as “fuck, ‘m sorry, need to-.”

he doesn’t finish the sentence, instead he’s plunging into your warm, welcoming walls. fitting together like a puzzle piece that was always destined to connect. the pollen swirls with the love shared between you two and he can’t help but ruthlessly drive into you, relishing in your sharp cries of pleasure.  

his cock slips out of you, exasperated groans both leaving your lips and into each others mouth. he reluctantly pulls apart from you, shoving himself back where he belongs before he resumes his pace.

“dick, more-.”

something shatters within him. he couldn’t say it was self control — that had long been gone. but something else deep within him broke by your hands and yet, he could already feel you mending it back up.

there’s no way to tell the passage of time, but none of that mattered to him anyway. all he could do was revel in the warmth of your soft, silken walls. his eyes scan over your face, taking in your blissed out state no doubt mirroring his own.

it had him wanting — craving more. like a man starved who had his first bite, who wouldn’t be sated until he had his fill.

dick’s movements were even faster now that his body could hardly keep up. his cock slipped out of you again, and he let out a strangled sob.

everything was just so wet, both of your bodies coated in a mixture of sweat, spit and cum. he felt your slick coat his thighs, your saliva mark his neck — every inch of his skin is completely covered by your essence.

he drives himself back into you, humping against you as he chases another release. everything was burning up the longer he staved off. at this point, he needed to keep filling you up. you made it so easy for him too, greedily sucking him back in every thrust, squeezing around him so tightly his head was spinning.

driven by pure instinct, he pushes your thighs against your chest, pushing himself deeper into you. 

“wanna take my time with you s’badly.” he rasps out, hands pushing against your legs. “but you just feel s’good i can’t stop.”

his mouth hung open as unsteady breaths left his lungs, trying to gulp up any air he could. but he’d much rather breathe in the sight below him, watching you sprawled out for him, sucking him into your pretty cunt has his mind short circuiting.

“you take me so well, you’re so good to me.” he babbles, eyes squeezed shut for a moment to soak it all in. “you were made f’me.”

his head falls forward and he feels a bead of sweat drop down the side of his face. your trained eye watched it fall, before you lean up and lick it clean off of him. he gasps in surprise, lips chasing yours once again.  

at this point, you really couldn’t call it kissing. your lips were pressed against each other but neither of you could move them properly. just unsteady breaths and moans keeping the two of you connected as pleasure overrides your senses.

arousal pours like gasoline beneath his abdomen, your pleas serving as a match to ignite his body into flames. the pollen warps his mind, drunk on your taste and only craving more of it. 

but he needed you to cum first. he was still trying his best to help you, to relieve you of any pain. he doesn’t know how long it’ll take but he needs you to at least cum as much as he does. 

“oh god, oh, it’s never, fuck, felt like this before, so good-“ you moan out, arching your back up so he can get deeper. 

“i know baby, i know.” he keeps going, harder than he had before. “you’re so, so good to me.”

it was all too much for you, clinging onto him as he relentlessly thrusts into you. he watches as your body freezes in his grasp, bliss saturating all your features, before you forcefully come around his cock.

he wasn’t much further behind, gripping the back of the couch and pushing his hips flush against yours as he fills you up once again. 

the pollen was still tingling in his system, he could feel it. but he felt so drowsy, and he knew you were too. he presses his forehead against yours as your legs fall helplessly by his sides.

“you okay?” he can hardly recognize his own voice.

“mhm, you?” you ask, your eyes fluttering shut for a second. he sees your face constrict with pain and he knows you feel what he feels. it’s not over yet.

“can you handle another round?” he asks, gently caressing your cheek, wiping off what was either sweat or tears. it took so much not to jump you, but the desire was starting to lessen and becoming easier to control, but that didn’t change the fact he was still so damn weak around you. one more round would soothe it all, he can feel it.

“can you?” you laugh breathlessly, always trying to challenge him. a lazy smirk takes up his face as he adjusts you, sitting back against the couch and pulling you up into his lap. his fingers rub little circles along your hips before he digs his fingers in.

“since you’re so confident, why don’t you show me how it’s done.” he meant to sound cocky, but his voice came out twisted with need and desperation.

“with pleasure.” you grab a hold of his still hard cock, lining it up with your sopping entrance, cum from the previous rounds dripping down your thigh. he can’t help but swipe some on his finger, playing with the slightly sticky substance.

you slide down on his cock, moaning the entire way down. all he can do is look up at you, unconsciously sliding the two coated fingers in your open mouth.

you swirl your tongue around them, sucking them clean as well as you were sucking him off earlier. he moans, head hitting the back of the couch as you start rolling your hips.

“you’re so pretty — fuck — i mean, just look at you.” he slurs, eyes glued to where you were connected. his fingers leave your mouth, sliding down your body. “you’re the most beautiful person i’ve ever seen.”

your nails dig into his shoulders, using it as leverage to grind yourself more in his lap, his neatly trimmed pubic hair brushing along your swollen clit.

he slumps back a bit, letting you take control and take what you need. mesmerized by the way your tits jiggle with each movement, he wraps his tongue around your nipple before giving it a sloppy, open mouthed kiss.

he was lazy with his movements, swirling his tongue around the perked bud and nuzzling his face against it. the more he touches them, the more he needs to. 

your hips drag along his, bodies pressed together as it feels like lead fills your bones. but you can’t stop moving against him.

“want you to be mine.” he moans against your tits, thrusting up into you more as he feels himself getting close. all he needs to hear is your confirmation that you’ll finally be his. “say you’ll be mine.” 

“m’yours!” your cry out at the increase of pace, fingers digging into his hair as he leaves his mark all over your breasts. “i’m all yours.”

with one final groan, his hips jerk up a few times, releasing another load into your already overflowing cunt. the grip on your hips loosen as his forehead lands on your shoulder, wincing as you keep going to chase your release. overstimulation was starting to creep up on him as the pollen started to clear out of his system. but he didn’t care, he’d keep going as long as you need him to.

“c’mon baby.” he slurs, leaving open mouthed kisses along your collarbone before looking up at you like you summon the sun every morning, beaconing it with your radiant, blissed out smile. “you’re doing s’good for me, give me another one c’mon.”

“cant, i’m trying but i need more.” you move your hips a little faster with a whine of his name tumbling from your lips.

“i’m right here, fuck baby, let go f’me. you’ll feel so much better i promise.” his fingers slip in between your bodies, thumb pressing firmly against your clit as you keep riding him. it sends you over the edge, gripping onto his shoulders and tossing your head back. he’s never seen a more ethereal view and if he could’ve, he would’ve cum all over again at the sight alone.

he doesn’t move his thumb as you ride out your high, squirming around in his lap as pleasure courses throughout your body. he lets go after you start twitching in his grasp, showing you mercy for the first time tonight.

you collapse into a heap on his chest, your heart racing as you try to catch your breath. he feels you curl into him, exhaustion starting to take you. he’s still nestled inside of you, with no desire to move. 

he blinks a few times, starting to take in his surroundings. you guys definitely messed up the couch. anyone who passes through this safehouse will see the traces you two left behind for weeks to come. the thought makes him smirk a little bit.

his phone buzzes and somewhere deep in his fucked out mind he realizes he should check. he’s still technically on patrol. with one arm still securing tucked around you, he uses the other to grab his phone.

everything is a little blurry, the fog still clouding his mind, his eyes drooping as he tries to read it. your soft snores start to fill his ears as he opens the text from tim, reading the line over and over a few times in hopes of processing it better. but then he gets it — clear as day. it was from tim.

“let me guess. you stopped at a safehouse.”

another text.

“have fun explaining this one to bruce.”

taglist : @the-tenth-shadow @petriquors @boogiebooboo @lucifersidepiece @oikawabi-sabi @collin-thegreat ᰔ

[ruewrote]

𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑑𝑎𝑦.

PAIRING: josh washington x gn!reader WARNINGS: reader has longish hair, no use of y/n GENRE: fluff SONG INSPIRATION: out of my league by fitz and the tantrums WORD COUNT: 1.2k REQUESTED: yes

navigation | ask | josh washington masterlist

the chill in the air was biting, but you felt warm, tucked close beside josh as you both settled on a bench near the edge of the overlook. the mountain stretched out before you, blanketed in fresh snow that sparkled under the clear winter sky, while the lodge loomed in the distance behind you, cosy but full of life.

he had one arm wrapped around your shoulders, holding you against him, while his other hand gestured animatedly as he recounted some story from his childhood. you weren’t even fully paying attention to the words; you were more focused on how happy he looked, his eyes bright with laughter, the smile on his face one of the most genuine you'd ever seen.

“and then,” josh said, chuckling as he shook his head, “chris, of course, freaked out, totally bolted. we’re all yelling for him to come back, and he just kept screaming, ‘it’s gonna get me!’ i think we all got grounded after that one.”

you laughed, imagining a younger josh and chris running through the snow, getting into trouble the way they always seemed to. “let me guess, you were the mastermind behind it?”

“hey, i was just an innocent bystander!” he held his hands up in mock innocence, grinning when you raised a sceptical eyebrow. “okay, maybe a little bit. but who can really blame me?”

you laughed, leaning into his side, he tightens his arm around you, brushing his lips against the top of your head. for a moment, you just sat there in comfortable silence, breathing in the crisp air and listening to the quiet sounds of the mountain.

“this is nice,” he murmured, breaking the silence, his voice soft and thoughtful.

“yeah, it really is,” you agreed, smiling as you looked out over the expanse of white and towering pines. the mountain felt serene, almost untouched, and being there with him made it even better. 

josh glanced down at you, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. “wanna go sledding down one of these hills?”

you looked at him in mock horror. “are you serious? i don’t trust you to steer.”

he laughed, reaching over to poke your side. “come on, where’s your sense of adventure? besides, i’d steer us perfectly… into the nearest snowbank.”

you shook your head, giggling as he tickled you, pulling you closer when you tried to squirm away. finally, you gave in, nodding. “alright, but only if you promise to actually avoid trees.”

“no guarantees,” he grinned, standing up and offering his hand. “But i guess i’ll try for you.”

the two of you tramped through the snow, finding an untouched hill nearby, your laughter echoing through the trees as you settled onto the sled from the lodge, holding tightly onto each other. 

as you flew down the hill, nothing but non stop laughter was shared. you were both out of breath when you finally landed in a heap at the bottom, a mix of happy tears and snowflakes.

josh brushed snow off your face, his thumb lingering on your cheek, his gaze softening as he looked at you. “i think this was the best idea i’ve had all day.”

you leaned in, pressing a quick kiss to his nose, feeling that familiar warmth spread through you. “it was perfect.”

with a soft smile, he leaned down, his lips meeting yours in a kiss that was slow and gentle, melting away the cold and wrapping you in a warmth. 

when you finally pulled back, josh’s eyes sparkled, his grin widening. “ready to go again?”

you laughed, shaking your head as you leaned into his side. “as long as you’re with me? always.”

after an hour or so outside in the snow, you decided to finally make your way back into the lodge, cheeks pink and hands cold but hearts happy. you busied yourselves in the kitchen, gathering mugs, marshmallows, and chocolate to whip up hot cocoa for everyone, while sneaking kisses and lingering touches whenever you could. 

every few minutes, josh would tug you close, wrapping you up in his arms, pressing kisses to your forehead, making you giggle and playfully roll your eyes as he grinned down at you.

as the mugs were finally filled, you shared a look, a silent agreement that the rest of the afternoon was yours to make the most of. the two of you set off, grabbing mike and jess for a quick round of card games that spiralled into laughter and not so serious arguments. 

josh kept one hand resting on your leg as he played. each time you leaned into him, you felt the warmth of his breath on your neck, his smile against your shoulder. it was clear to everyone around you just how smitten he was.

as the hours drifted by, the two of you wandered back outside to catch the last of the daylight, throwing snowballs and making clumsy snow angels before retreating inside, cold and ready for a warm meal. 

in the kitchen, you all got together and prepared a big dinner. josh passed you ingredients, occasionally reaching over to tuck a stray lock of hair behind your ear, his gaze never faltering as he looked at you. between each dish, he’d pull you close, pressing a soft kiss to wherever he could reach.

when dinner was finally served, everyone gathered, voices filling the room with easy chatter. you and josh exchanged smiles across the table. he reached over to squeeze your hand under the table, his thumb brushing over your knuckles.

after the meal and another round of games, the lodge gradually grew quiet as everyone started retreating to their rooms, the warmth of the day leaving a glow in the air. the two of you slipped away to his room, where the fire crackled, casting a golden light across the space. 

you could hear the faint murmur of conversation from down the hall, but as he pulled you into his arms everything else faded away.

pulling the blankets around you both as you settled in, limbs tangling together in a comforting embrace. his fingers combed through your hair, moving slowly, gently, before trailing down your back. you shivered, feeling the warmth of him pressed against you, the steady rhythm of his breathing calming your own.

“i know i joke around alot, but i mean it when i say you mean alot to me,” he murmured, his voice barely a whisper as he gazed at you, his hand tracing slow circles along your back..

you didn’t need words to respond; instead, you let yourself lean into him, nuzzling closer into his chest as you felt his arms tighten around you, anchoring you in the gentle quiet. the warmth of the fire filled the room, wrapped up in each other, content in a silence that needed no explanation. 

as the minutes drifted by, his hand moved to stroke your hair, his fingers threading through in a soothing rhythm, and you felt yourself growing drowsy, his warmth and presence lulling you into a peaceful haze. with every gentle touch, you felt cherished. 

as you lay there, eyes heavy, you felt him press a kiss to your forehead.

“i love you,” that was all it took for you to finally fall asleep.

comments and reblogs are appreciated ˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗ @daisydark

© ruewrote 2024.

[uhohdad]

THE GIRL WHO CONQUERED THE MOUNTAIN

KÖNIG X READER

You & König have been chosen as unwilling participants in a twenty-four person fight to the death.

WARNINGS: 18+, NSFW, 183k WORD COUNT, AO3, Protective!König, Virgin!König, Loner!König, 18yo!König, Possessive!König, TouchStarved!König, GentleGiant!König, To You Anyway, König Pines Hard, Fem!Reader, Mentor!JohnPrice, Slow Burn, Smut, Fluff, Angst, Blood & Injury, Graphic Violence, Death, PTSD, Suicidal Ideations, Alcohol Abuse, Explicit Sexual Content, Dom!König, A Lil�� Sub!König Too, Dirty Talk, Size Kink, Nipple Play, Blow Jobs, Fingering, Slight Exhibitionism, Consensual Degradation, Praise Kink, Gentle Sex, Rough Sex, First Time, …And A Second, Perhaps A Third & Forth

CHAPTER ONE | PREV | CHAPTER NAVIGATION

➤ THE GAMECHANGER II

First Part Of This Chapter Here

You can’t move, can’t open your eyes. You don’t want to know what’s going on one couch cushion over.

You cannot handle another memory of brutality.

It’s happening inches from you, close enough you can feel the breeze of flailing limbs on your face, disturbing tufts of your hair. But your couch cushion might as well be your own private island, immune to the sound of Ellaine’s haunting screams and the repeated puncture of flesh and the air so thick with the smell of metal you can taste the tang on your tongue.

The past is your friend in this moment, a collage of gory distractions to keep you from adding another to the collection.

Ellaine - Ellaine is making it difficult.

Her shrieks are starting to break through, shattering, continuous, she hardly seems to pause for breath.

Pharus’ thigh isn’t helping. It knocks into yours as he struggles for the life that steadily escapes him.

Ellaine’s heels take off in a sloppy, uneven run, and Konig leaves you alone with weird and awkward once more, present to listen to him take his wet, gurgling, final breaths.

Ellaine is muffled in an instant. There’s the sound of a quick, mild altercation, and then Konig’s heavy footsteps return.

You don’t open your eyes even when he stills. You don’t want to know, you don’t want to. The blackness behind your eyelids is a better alternative to any of this.

You wait, and you pretend.

You wait until the nothingness lulls you into a false sense of security, and you pretend that you aren’t where you are, that Konig hasn’t done what you know he’s done, and there was never anything before or after this inky blackness.

Eventually you do find the courage to pry open your tear-blurred eyes.

Konig stands a few feet from the other side of the drink table, illuminated by the soft flickering glow of a hundred fake candles. Ellaine is snug to his front, airborne with an arm around the crease of her core. You’re reminded of the boy from eleven, flailing as he was lifted into the air by his ribcage moments before his death. Konig has silenced her with a palm flush over her puffy lips, her stifled screams have turned to stifled pleas.

You take a deep breath before you carefully turn your head to the right.

A swollen face, a limp body, and a pair of silver medical scissors lodged through Pharus’ repeatedly punctured throat. A steady stream of blood gushes from his wounds, his button down and tie stained with a growing patch of brilliant red.

Konig’s voice isn’t grit, nervous, or frantic. It’s spoken clearly and evenly.

“What do I do with her?”

After a beat, you carefully tilt your head up, and finally meet Konig’s eyes.

His face is entirely unreadable. Stone cold. The only thing of note is the heavy rise and fall of his chest.

He’s offering her to you.

Laying her fate in your palms, the judge and jury to his executioner.

You’re frozen in your spot, as if making any action will cement your fate, as if moving will make it real. If you just sit here, maybe, just maybe, the problem will go away.

It does not.

For minutes you sit on their couch, watching as Ellaine thrashes in Konig’s unyielding hold. Her hysterical tears collect on the side of his index finger and the blood stain on Pharus’ suit grows in your peripheral.

You’re processing.

Konig’s kill, the life that sits in your palms, the catastrophic consequence that is to come - but your brain won’t let you. You keep trying to cram the information in, in hopes to conjure up a plan, an opinion, or at the very least a thought, but you can’t seem to make sense of what has happened.

Konig waits patiently, letting Ellaine scratch up his forearms with her golden fingernails, until you give up trying to think your way out of the impossible.

You clear your throat, fix your hair, and rearrange your skirt. You sigh, and give yourself an encouraging nod before you meet Ellaine’s tear-welled eyes and pick up your croaked voice.

“Well, Ellaine, - I - I guess you ought to be extra good.”

Your lips warp, your shoulders pull up, and an awkward laugh leaves your lips. It’s almost like you’re trying to wave away tension at an uncomfortable dinner party with a joke you’re not confident in - but Ellaine does not find this as disarming as you intended.

Her exaggerated tinsel eyelashes pinch shut, and her muffled screams reach a peak before petering off in a fit of sobs.

You lock eyes with Konig, holding his intimidating stare for a few moments longer. You look to Ellaine, and then back to him, and when you speak, your voice is hesitant but challenging.

“Tie her up.”

Konig nods, and when he searches for something to restrain her with, you have no moral qualm reaching over Pharus’ fresh corpse, fussing and ripping the blood-soaked tie from his collar.

Ellaine’s pleads and sobs are at full volume once Konig releases her mouth to take the tie from you. He lingers for a moment on handoff, exchanging Pharus’ blood with a graze of your fingers.

You haven’t been able to let go of him since you lost him - but this - it’s like it’s the first time you’ve ever touched him.

A spark starts at your fingertips and shoots up your arms until your chest is blooming with that cozy, dizzying warmth.

Konig’s eyes are twinkling and his mouth is stretched into a cozy grin. He takes the bloody tie as carefully as he took your ribbon, even with a woman scratching and screaming desperately in his arms.

It’s too far gone now.

There is no amount of good behavior that will breathe life back into the fresh corpse of the Capitol elite on the couch next to you.

Every worry, every fear, every problem that became pressing the moment they called your name on reaping day has melted away and been replaced with a rush of intoxicating freedom and power. That same feeling you had at the oasis in the arena - because it is easy to not worry today when there is no tomorrow.

Ever since the games you have been living in purgatory. Half awake, half asleep, and a million miles away from the nearest living soul.

But now -

Now you are awake.

Knowing that you and Konig both took a turn you could never turn back from, and clearly don’t regret in the slightest, is exhilarating.

This is entirely uncharted territory. Exploring the boundaries that lie beyond the boundaries you never imagined you’d cross.

Together.

Konig studies your face for a few more seconds before he lets Ellaine fall from his arms and to the floor.

You shift on the couch to put some distance between yourself and weird and awkward, snatch an untouched wine glass, and take careful sips as you watch Konig restrain Ellaine with her husband’s blood-soaked tie.

So rough.

You’re afraid he might just break something on Ellaine, the way he’s jerking her limbs and yanking her back into his reach when she tries to crawl away.

You’ve gotten so used to him being your refuge - you almost forgot how dangerous he truly is.

Those arms, big and so unfathomably strong, could crush your bones to dust with less effort than it takes for him to tie his shoes.

You can feel it when you’re in his arms. The potential of his strength. Dulled down for your comfort, but still very much present. Dormant, but waiting.

It’s thrilling.

Watching him use his full strength, easily overpowering another one of your threats, especially while dressed like that. Half of his chest exposed and glistening, his forearms tensing as he tightly binds her wrists and ankles, the occasional grunt of frustration aimed at her for not being the ideal hostage.

Oh, and how she begs and pleads and cries and whines.

Poor thing.

“Gag her.”

Konig moves to follow your command the moment it finishes leaving your lips.

He doesn’t bother looking around. His fists curl into the fabric of his shirt and with one stiff tug, he sends buttons flying in all directions. One of them bounces off the drink table with a plink. He slips the shirt from his arms, rolls it up, and creases Ellaine’s cheeks with the taut, bunched fabric nestled between her puffy lips. He plants a dress shoe in the center of her spine to keep her muzzle tight until it’s tied off on the back of her head with a few harsh jerks.

He then waits for his next instruction.

Your faithful, dedicated servant.

Standing tall and proud with those pretty blue eyes locked onto you and that glistening chest rising and falling. Ignoring the bound and squirming woman at his feet until he knows exactly what he’s to do with her. Putting you in full control of his strength.

The thought is entirely intrusive.

Snap her neck.

Snap her neck like you did the boy from eleven.

Snap her neck and remind me one more time that your love for me knows no bounds.

You hold Konig’s stare. Dangerous and safe, icy and warm, unhinged and devoted.

You don’t want to think about Ellaine or her fate, resting in your sweaty little palms.

All you really want to do right now is explore this new, intoxicating feeling with the love of your life.

So you put a pin in it.

You beckon Konig to your presence, and he’s with you at once, sidestepping the glass table to snatch you up by the back of your thighs with a bounce, resting you around his bare waist and holding you tight in those strong, deadly arms.

You meet in a rough, passionate kiss, exchanging hums and messy tongues. Your hands are all over him, smoothing over his tight, warm shoulders and chest, devouring any part of him in reach.

Konig squeezes the crease of your thigh, and gives an approving hum at the sharp gasp that leaves you. He uses his rough hold to grind you against his slacks.

“Konig!”

Your stare briefly darts over his shoulder to remind him of the pathetic one-woman audience behind him. His eyes narrow, and a sly smile spreads on his face.

“Tell me you don’t want it.”

He savors your stunned expression, the breath he stole and the pretty wide eyes that flit around his face.

At your compliant silence, the corner of his lip twitches up, and he pulls you back into a sloppy kiss. Bloody nails tighten into the back of his shoulders with each brush he makes across the front of your skimpy panties.

Konig’s hands thread through the back of your hair as he carries you down the hall and away from the uninterrupted grating song of muffled sobs and pleas. You don’t break the kiss the entire journey to Ellaine and Pharus’ bedroom, held together by overeager tongues and wandering hands. He closes the door behind you both by forcing you against it. He holds you here for a moment, three shameless, drawn-out ruts into you, before he hauls you to the bed and places you on the rose petal covered blankets. He straddles one of your legs and climbs up the bed until he’s looming overtop you. You can feel him - already straining against the give in his slacks and seeking relief with your thigh.

“You’re all mine,” He grits.

He dips his head to kiss your neck, and rolls hungry, needy grunts along your skin while his assured hand trails up your stockings and sneaks underneath your skirt. He cups the entirety of your cunt over your panties, his large hand swallowing you whole and his possessive touch robbing you of breath. A warm, demanding presence between your thighs.

“Alle meine.”

He breathes his jagged words between the slobbering kisses and sucks on your neck. His brute fingers sink further into your slit, nestling your panties between your lips and pressing his fingertips into the inviting stain of arousal.

“Mein Gott - So fucking wet.”

His tightly pressed fingers massage wide circles and turn your breaths hitched.

“All for me,” He reminds you, “You want my fingers? You want to feel me inside you? Hm?”

“Yes!”

Konig doesn’t bother taking the time to pull off your panties. He tears them with a grunt and lets the meager scraps fall to either side of your hips. The side of his finger glides up and down your slit, his knuckles grazing against your twitching thighs.

He scoffs, and his eyes meet yours. A smug grin grows on his face as he drags his teasing finger through your arousal.

“You’re dripping, you need me this bad?”

You nod with a truly pathetic whine, but it’s still not enough. He swirls the pad of his finger around your entrance and ignores the way your hips mindlessly search for pleasure.

“Tell me how bad you need me.”

His prods at your ego scorches your cheeks, and you can’t seem to look anywhere but the floor as you coax the words out.

“I need you,” You whine, “I- I need you more than I’ve ever needed anything else.”

He scoffs as his finger pushes into you.

“I know,” He says. His eyes narrow, and his brows pinch, “Where would you be without me, little one? Hm?”

He doesn’t get much of an answer, only sputtered breaths and squeaky gasps.

“You were made for me and I was made for you.”

The pad of his thumb presses to your clit and rocks back and forth, working your dripping cunt.

“There is no other way.”

He’s pushing you this time, giving you just a little more than you can handle. Keeping your breaths choked and your body squirming.

“You want me to stop? You have to say it.”

Your teeth sink into your bottom lip to bite back the desperate noises on your tongue, and your legs are trembling from his slow but strict plunges to his knuckle.

He gives a pleased hum, baring his teeth when the corner of his lip lifts in a grin. His half-lidded eyes trail down to your chest, watching you heave on your uneven breaths.

Without breaking his pace, his free hand rests on your hips and smooths up your side. He trails up the curve of your torso, bunching your shirt at his hand.

He stops on the cup of your lingerie. His large, hardened hand palms your breast, roughly kneading and following your squirms.

“Take off your shirt.”

Your shaking fingers can hardly obey, fumbling for your hem and peeling it off, revealing the lingerie and Konig’s groping hand beneath.

Gluttonous eyes scour you from head to heels, devouring your body in your skimpy outfit.

Suddenly you don’t mind it as much.

He meets your stare again, and something shifts in him. His brow creases, his eyes soften, and his pace slows.

“Dressed up all for me?” He breathes.

This one is not so much cocky as it is a genuine question. A reassurance.

“All for you,” You whisper.

A breathy, relieved laugh spills from him. He ducks his head, and presses a kiss to your neck while his fingers continue to thrust into you. The kiss starts gently, just a brush of his lips against your skin, and steadily deepens until his tongue is licking wide strokes over your shoulders. His teeth graze over your flesh, a sharp contrast to his slick, soft tongue.

“You want another?” He whispers against your skin after a long, wet stripe, “Hm? You want me to fill you?”

He kisses your neck as you nod, breathy, squeaky moans on your lips.

“Say it.”

“Konig- I need you, I need more, please-“

He scoffs, lubing up a second finger with your arousal and lining it up with your cunt.

He’s a bit more patient with his second finger, pushing in with gentle movements while he sucks on the sensitive skin of your neck.

Every rut he makes against you draws a huffy, warm breath from him.

“I can’t wait to feel you.”

He’s fucking you at teasing pace - slow, seamless glides in and out of your slick cunt while his thumb rolls up and down your clit with each gentle pump of his finger.

You can only offer a whimper in response, your back arching off the bed to lean into his touch, jutting your hips out to keep his fingers hitting that spot that floods your lower abdomen with an intoxicating warmth. He sits up, flitting his stare between your face and his fingers as he carefully builds up speed.

“Look at you. So wet. You’ll soak my cock with this dripping cunt.”

You’re hypnotized by his touch, by his fingers, his filthy, growled words. Putty in those powerful, killer hands.

When you close your eyes and your head throws back in defeat, Konig puts his hand just under your jaw with a strict grip, warping the flesh of your cheeks beneath his fingers.

“Look at me. I want to see you while I fuck you.”

You obediently meet his crinkled eyes, his gratified smile.

“Do my fingers feel good?”

You can only nod weakly in his hand, a stuttered breath tapering into a squeaky moan.

Konig’s eyes flit around your face as he grinds against your thigh.

“You want me? Hm? You want me inside you?”

You nod against Konig’s forceful hand.

He doesn’t need much convincing. His soaked fingers leave your cunt and he releases your face, smearing your arousal along his waistband in his scramble to undo his slacks. His fingers are impatient to his own detriment, he struggles to pop the button and fumbles long enough for his teeth to clench in frustration.

He kicks his pants to the side and not-so-gracefully strips off his underwear. Firm hands leave little choice on spreading your thighs as he settles between them, and as soon as he’s towering over you, he guides himself to your soaked cunt and slides the tip of his cock down your slit.

You both let out a whine, and you can hear it - the obscene sound of him lubing himself up with your arousal.

Konig presses one of his hands to the mattress next to your head, and lowers himself to press his lips to yours. He keeps his face inches from yours when he pulls away, captivating you with intense eyes.

“Are you ready for me?”

He sounds dangerous. His husky purr offers you one last chance to back out before you take on more than you can handle. It’s exhilarating, tightening the knots of excitement he’s making of your insides.

He swirls his tip around your entrance and applies a bit of pressure, giving you just a taste of what he has in store for you.

You offer a shaky nod, and he presses a gentle kiss to your forehead before he sinks his soaked tip into you.

“So eine enge muschi.”

Konig’s head falls forward as he mumbles gruff praises, or degradations, you’re not sure.

Your nails claw at the tensed forearms locking you in at either of your sides. Trapped by massive arms and perfect physique. Pinned under such a powerful being, his form consumes you while he fucks your entrance with his tip.

“You’re going to take it all this time. I don’t care how long it takes. You will feel all of me.”

An insatiable, ravenous grin stretches on his features at the look of worry you give him.

He lapping at your walls with a pace that keeps you squirming and whining beneath him. Not quite uncomfortable, but intentionally provoking, giving you just a little more than you can handle. Reminding you that you’re out of your depth, making sure you know that you are at his mercy. Keeping your nails clawing at him and the strained moans flowing freely. Taking pleasure knowing all you can focus on is how he’s splitting you open and stretching you out.

“Das gefällt dir? Ja? You like that?”

Your affirmations are wavered, you can hardly finish a word once it’s started, each one ending on a raspy breath.

“No one can fill you up like I can,” He grits, “This cunt is all mine.”

He pauses when you wince and your head throws back on the mattress.

“Mm, too big for you?”

You respond with a whiny sigh, which he must find amusing, because he laughs.

Konig lowers himself, pressing his front flush to yours, the tip of his nose brushing along your cheek as he leaves you kisses. His hands graze over your stomach and sink between your legs, tightly pressed fingers massaging over your clit.

“Braves mädchen - working hard to take me.”

His praises are just warm breaths against your skin, and he groans when you clench around him.

“You ready for more of me? Hm?”

You nod, and Konig resumes gently working you open with a hypnotic roll of his hips and a rusty sigh. His arm flexes as he rises, getting a better look at the pathetic, squirming thing beneath him on the mattress. Taking pride in the way you unravel before you’ve even managed to swallow all of him, full and drooling after just a few fingers and half of a throbbing cock.

“Weak little girl.”

Konig’s head tilts down, his eyes narrow, and he snarls.

“You need me.”

Konig eases more of himself into you, his eyes lull behind his eyelids and his bottom lip snags between his teeth. His shoulders pull up, and he shudders.

“So warm und eng um mich herum.”

A cry leaves your lips, legs trembling and head thrown back in defeat. Konig gives you a few much-earned breaks to let you adjust to his size. As he waits, he leans down and buries his face into your neck, back to nibbling at the sensitive skin. Entertaining himself by licking and slobbering and sucking more marks to the surface while his tightly pressed fingers trace wide circles over your clit.

The breaths he takes between showers of his affection are huffed. He occasionally forgets he’s supposed to be patient with you, such a delicate little thing, his hips rutting into you momentarily before he corrects himself. You can feel him pulsing inside of you when he stills.

He pulls away from your neck, meeting your stare with half-lidded, drunken eyes.

He studies you for a moment, and his voice turns soft and wispy.

“I love you,” He says.

“I love you, too.”

You give his shaking biceps a squeeze and smooth your hands up his shoulders. You cup his jaw, drawing him closer to meet you in a tender kiss.

He presses his forehead to yours when he breaks the kiss with panting breaths.

“You feel so good,” He whispers.

You lace your fingers together around the back of his neck.

“You too,” You whisper back.

He smiles down at you, crinkled eyes sparkling and a weak laugh of disbelief on his lips.

He narrows his eyes at you again, his smile turning into something smug.

“You want more, little one? You want to feel more of me?”

You nod with a nervous, choppy sigh. It’s more than a tight fit, you cling to his shoulders for support as you focus on taking him. You can feel his muscles working beneath your fingertips as he eases himself in and out of you.

“So ein guter schwanzwärmer.”

You stutter through a moan, and even though you’re obviously struggling to take him, you’re still grinding down on him without thought.

“Sehr gut-”

He shivers overtop you, panting breaths and his head hung. His bulging muscles are shaking, struggling to restrain himself from pounding into you.

You can’t think about much else other than him, filling you to the brim and teasing that spot that makes your thighs twitch. As he nears bottoming out, the condensation pours from his tongue, huffed and strained.

“Going to take all of it, ja?”

You let out a whine, your fingers trembling and pathetic moans leaving you without permission.

Both of your strangled breaths stop as the base of him presses to your front.

“How does it feel?” He huffs, “To feel all of me?”

You can’t even respond, intoxicated off the feeling of him stuffed deep inside of you.

“Does it feel good to be full?”

The pressure between your legs is splitting, painful - but in a good way. You don’t dare ask him to stop, aching to keep yourself full. You nod up at him, meeting his stare with drowsy eyes.

“You look so pretty on my cock.”

He sinks his hand between your thighs, his fingers making wide circles over your clit once more.

“Es ist meins,” He breathes, “It’s for me.”

He lets out a choked groan when you tighten around him. He can’t hold himself back from grinding into you.

“So eng.”

His eyes roll, huffy pants on his lips. His thumb hones in on your clit and gives it gentle scrubs.

“Konig?” You whine with a grind, “Need you.”

His cock twitches inside of you, and he’s happy to oblige.

He gently slides out about an inch before slowly pushing back in. The circles tracing around your clit waver, a broken groan on his lips.

When you don’t ask him to stop, he does it again, coaxing himself in and out of you, fighting every instinct in his body to fuck what little sense remains from you.

Konig’s eyes pinch, a breathy moan leaving him.

“Too - sch- too weak to handle me? Too much for you, little one?”

Konig’s dirty talk is wavering, strained and slurred and interrupted by heavy pants.

His flushed lips are perpetually parted, face rosen. He can’t resist quickening his pace, entirely submit to your warm, dripping cunt.

“Es tut mir leid - Bitte - ”

His rhythm quickly melts into one of desperation.

“Konig!”

“Tell me - tell me to stop.”

And while your cunt is aching and sore with him buried deep inside of you and his thrusts transitioning into pounds, you don’t dare tell him to stop.

He’s rocking your entire body, your chest bouncing in response to his quickened thrusts. The sound of your slicked cunt lubing his cock intertwines with the claps of his thighs against yours in an obscene chorus.

The moans leaving you are choked and squeaky, but when you try to cover your mouth, he grabs your wrists and pins them to the mattress.

“No,” He grits, “I want to hear you.”

You let out a cry, twisting and writhing your core under his hold.

“Konig - Konig please!”

You’re not even sure what you’re begging for, all you know if you don’t ever want him to stop.

Each of his brute pumps into you is a burst of pleasure, and as he quickens his pace, it melts into one continuous euphoria. Everything is aligning, it’s like he’s helping you fulfill your destined role on this earth. This feeling - it’s why you were born, it’s your purpose.

To be fucked by him.

Used and filled with his thick cock, to let him spread you open and lose himself to your warmth at his whim. A sore cunt is your price to pay, your burden to bear for not being worthy of handling a being so powerful.

You’ve come entirely undone at his hand, drooling and mindless while he forces your body further up the bed with each of his reckless pumps into you.

His grunts are ravening, gravelly and low.

“Genau so… Du willst mehr, nicht wahr?”

He lets go of your wrists, his hands finding your chest instead. He slinks into your lingerie, roughly kneading your chest beneath greedy fingers.

With little warning warning, Konig pulls out and flips you over with enough force you have to steady yourself with your palms and a gasp. You’re already babbling incoherent pleas at his absence, but before you can even move your weak, shaking limbs to lift yourself, he’s smearing your arousal between your thighs and searching for your dripping cunt with his eager cock.

As soon as he’s sinking into you, he leans down and presses his glistening chest to your back. His palms slide down your arms until he’s engulfing your hands, lacing his fingers with yours to pin your locked hands to the mattress.

You let out a cry when he bottoms out, his hips rutting against you and a low, sinful grunt in your ear as he works his cock against the walls of your tight cunt. His grip on you tightens, and he gives three gentle thrusts before he’s back to snapping his hips into you, returning to his reckless rhythm.

“F- ha- Konig!”

“Gut,” He breathes, “So good for me.”

Each plunge forces you further into the mattress, cheek smushed and fingers clawing at the blankets beneath his hold.

It’s all you can focus on, the overwhelming sensation, not a thought that runs through your mind as you take him, all of him. Lost to the addictive heat in your lower abdomen and the splitting ache between your legs.

Your vision is just a blur, and you can feel the vibration of his grunts on your back, the heat of his moans on your cheek.

“S’big!”

“Take it, mein seiger.”

He kisses the side of your face before he presses his cheek to yours, scratching you with his prickly stubble with each thrust.

“Nimm meinen schwanz.”

Konig breathes a low groan.

“Feel good?” He asks through clenched teeth.

It’s more of a taunt than a genuine question, because the answer already lies in the shake in your legs, the squeaky moans coerced with each powerful thrust of his cock into your wet cunt.

“You like it rough? Hm?”

He’s without restraint, plowing more of his needy cock into you before you can recover from the previous thrust of his hips.

“Naughty girl.”

Each moan that leaves you is filtered through the speed of Konig’s merciless slams, stuttered and choppy with each bottom out.

“Konig, F- Konig!”

“That’s it, mein sieger. Who does your cunt belong to?”

“You- you!”

“It’s mine,” He grits, “I earned it.”

He releases you, and his arm snakes around the crease under your stomach to yank you to your hands and knees, tightening his grasp on your sides to keep you from squirming away from his greedy cock. In this position, he’s somehow able to stuff even more of himself into you, and each thrust forces an embarrassing, repetitive squeak.

“Pretty noises, little one,” He grits.

He plants a kiss to the top of your head without breaking his pace, his hand reaching down to knead the plush flesh of your ass.

“Taking this cock so well, aren’t you?”

The only thing you can offer is a wavering moan, thoughtless and surrendered to the brute cock stretching you out and abusing your cunt.

“Schau dich an. Can’t even talk.”

His forearm wraps around your collarbones and he gives you another tug, lifting your hands from the mattress and arching your back into his chest. A possessive hand wraps around your front, groping your breast under rough, avid palms.

“Mine.”

A sharp breath is sucked through your teeth as cruel fingers tighten around your nipple. You nod frantically, offering desperate, unintelligible praises.

It’s not good enough, though, because his fingers only squeeze harder while he holds you in place by his tensed forearm.

“Yours!” You get through a cry.

He releases you with a pleased hum, intemperate fingers gliding down your soft stomach until his palm melds to your front. The tips of his fingers swirl into your lips, spreading you open to rest on your clit. He doesn’t even have to move them, each of his cruel thrusts forces you across his thick fingers.

All you can do is take it, overwhelmed by his ruthless cock and his possessive hold on your cunt, passive to his powerful thrusts. You couldn’t fight it off if you wanted to, every limb weak and trembling.

Konig suddenly lets go of your cunt and gives you a guiding nudge back onto the mattress. You can’t hold yourself up on your useless arms, let alone catch yourself, so you end up with your face buried in the covers while the hands on your hips keep you right where he wants you, on display.

He changes his pace, he begins to give you one powerful thrust and waits for you to finish bouncing back before he gives you another. He’s using his full strength, not at all holding back.

He’s fucking you like he’s mad at you.

It’s like he’s trying to prove a point. Just the pace itself feels mocking. Degrading, even. So rough and brute on each plunge before he slowly pulls himself out of you, only to force himself back in with everything he has. After his hips collide with the soft flesh of your ass, he lingers on the bottom out, a slow grind against your drooling walls. Again and again, forcing a gasping moan with each merciless pound. Bullying your poor cunt, filling you to the brim with little warning other than the rhythmic beats he makes with your flesh, like he’s training you to be prepared to take all of him at a moment’s notice.

“A filthy little girl,” He spits, “Listen to you.”

And you have no choice, his ruthless cock burying inside you and forcing the moans to spill from your lips whether you like it or not. His fingers dig into your skin to keep you from being shoved across the mattress at his strength.

“You are mine.”

Konig changes his pace again, he keeps the same force of his thrusts, but he picks up speed, giving little time to recover from each ram of his ravenous, throbbing cock.

“I’m going to fill you up, now, ja?”

You can’t even respond, limp in his hold, the world a blur and half your irises hidden behind drunken eyelids.

Konig gives you three brutal, sloppy thrusts, a sinful grunt on his lips and your hips crying under his tight grip. He holds his final thrust, snug against you as his finish marks his claim deep inside you. His body writhes, his moans stuttered and choked as he milks himself with a few lazy, wavered pumps. You can feel him pulsing against your walls, the grip around your wrists tight and shaking.

You can’t move, can’t even think, riding out your high as he catches his heaving breaths overtop you. Both his body and his cock twitch in the aftershocks of his finish.

He stays inside of you as he carefully rests your pliant arms back on the mattress, hunching over to press the first of many soft kisses on your shoulders.

His question is hesitant - small and ashamed.

“Are you okay?”

You nod into the blankets, and after a polite pause, he peppers more gentle kisses along your shoulders.

“That felt really good,” You mumble.

Konig laughs and brushes your miskempt hair from your face, getting a better look at your blissed-out grin and after-sex glow. He nuzzles his way to your cheek to leave a kiss.

“Did so well for me,” He whispers, “Mein sieger.”

Konig sits up, his hands smoothing down the curve of your back, slowly pulling out of you with a few overstimulated tremors.

He collapses on the covers next to you with a heavy sigh and a hand lost to his hair.

You still can’t seem to bring yourself to move, humming contently into the mattress. A light knuckle traces along the dip of your back as you soak in thoughtless bliss.

“I love you,” You mumble.

He scoffs, and while you’re still face down on the mattress with your eyes closed, you can tell he’s smiling, too.

“I love you too.”

Konig rises from the bed, and disappears into the master bathroom. He returns moments later with a damp washcloth and prompts you to roll over so he can clean up the puddle of arousal and finish between your thighs.

It’s weird, but even though he was inside of you moments ago, you feel embarrassed at being exposed like this to him, letting him tenderly swipe the cool cloth over you.

He tosses the washcloth carelessly to the ground before crawling back into the bed with you. He lies face up, and lifts his arm above his head to invite you into his side. You happily accept his offer, resting your head on his chest and slinging your arm over his waist. He’s warm to the touch, silken and inviting, cozy and safe.

You hum behind a content smile as he plucks rose petals from your hair, and when you speak, your words come out like a tune.

“We are so fucked.”

Konig snorts, and his chest bounces your head on the following laugh.

“Why are you laughing?” You ask through a giggle, “It’s not funny.”

“I don’t know,” He says, “Why are you?”

You both devolve into a fit of contagious laughter. Everytime you think you’re winding down, a snort kicks off another round of stuttering bodies and wheezing, squeaky giggles. It goes on for far too long, until your stomach hurts and there are tears in your eyes.

“Maybe no one will notice,” He says after a long-winded sigh.

“No dice.”

You both fall into a lull, lost in the sensation of fingertips playing with locks of your hair or tracing lazy patterns over your back.

“Are you hungry?” He asks.

“I could eat.”

“Want to see what they have?”

You go to sit up, but Konig stops you.

“Ach. Äh, hold on.”

“Right,” You say, “Forgot about her.”

You rub out your knuckles in a moment of consideration, and find you don’t feel like thinking about Ellaine right now.

“Lock her in the bathroom,” You say with a dismissive wave of your hand, “I’ll figure it out later.”

“I’ll take care of it,” He says.

He puts his pants on, and goes to work.

You’re thankful he’s willing to do the dirty work. You don’t want to see Pharus or Ellaine right now.

He leaves the door cracked so you can hear him, to reassure you he is still present. His footsteps, the occasional shut of a door.

No screaming.

You pick at your painted fingers until he returns. When he steps back into the room, he lingers by the door, his eyes darting to the side and his bloody fingers wriggling at his sides.

“Want to shower?” He asks.

You nod.

He looks to the side again, and his hand reaches over his chest to rub the crease of his elbow, smearing blood on himself.

“Together?” He asks.

Your eyes follow his, and you nod again.

You use Ellaine and Pharus’ master bathroom, and it takes far too long for you both to put your heads together and figure out how to work the excessive buttons and knobs, but eventually you manage a heavy stream with a survivable temperature. You both finish stripping down, and step into the countless water jets spraying from every direction.

You don’t even have to say it, there’s an unspoken agreement between you to clean each other. He leans down so that you can reach his hair to wash it out, massaging the soap over his scalp until it foams at your fingertips. Konig’s eyes close, humming contently at your touch.

As he rinses off the suds, you get started on his body, lapping up the sides of his neck and rubbing wide circles down the curve of his shoulders. Your trail to bulging biceps and forearms, washing blood off as you go. You linger on his firm chest and torso longer than you need to as you lather him up.

“Thank you,” He says.

“Mhm.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” You ask.

“For - For ruining it.”

Your brows pinch, and your voice softens.

“You didn’t ruin it,” you say, “You saved me.”

He follows your whim when you gesture for him to turn around, and there’s a long pause as you work suds over his back.

“I’m different,” He says softly.

“It’s okay. Me too.”

“No, not like that.” He turns to face you even though you aren’t finished with his back, and he sighs, “I keep hurting people.”

“Me too.”

“No,” He says, “Physically hurting people. And I-”

Konig swallows, and looks down at his open palms. He takes a deep breath before he finishes, his hands turning to fists and dropping at his sides.

“I like it.”

His eyes finally meet yours, a crease in his brow and his weight shifting from leg to leg with a weak sway as he waits for you to respond to his confession.

“Okay,” You say.

He looks to the side, and reaches up to rub out the back of his neck.

“Okay,” He says.

The heavy stream of water on porcelain soothes the following calm silence before he breaks it again.

“I keep having nightmares,” He blurts, “Where I hurt you.”

You wince, shoulders braced and face warped, and you have to refrain from saying ‘Me too.’

“I’m afraid I will,” He says, “I don’t want to, but I’m- I’m not - “

“It’s okay,” You cut, forcing your shoulders back into position, “You won’t.”

There’s a pause before he whispers, his words almost lost to the water raining down on you both.

“You’re afraid of me.”

You tense again, and you’re honestly not even sure if the next statement is a lie or not, but you’re not eager to give it much thought.

“No, I’m not.”

“In the dreams,” He clarifies.

“Oh.”

You let out a heavy breath.

“I’ve been having nightmares too,” You say.

You’re hoping it helps him to know you’re going through the same thing, but you can’t help but feel like it wasn’t the right thing to say. Like you’re just minimizing his pain or redirecting the focus to you when he’s obviously trying to lean on you in this moment.

“Do you dream of me?” He asks carefully.

You swallow, your eyes flitting around the tile through the blanket of steam clouding the shower.

“Sometimes.”

“Bad dreams?”

“All of my dreams are bad.”

“But-”

You turn and snatch up his forearms with insistent but gentle hands.

“Konig, it doesn’t matter. They’re just - they’re just dreams. We- that was fucked up, and our brains are just trying to make sense of it, and it - it all just blurs together. I don’t know. All I know is that after the nightmares I wake up and I love you more than I did yesterday. I need you more than I did yesterday.”

Konig can’t bring himself to speak. He just swallows and nods, those soft puppy dog eyes staring at you as the water rushes over his skin.

When he finds his voice, it’s soft.

“I love you,” He says.

“I love you too,” You whisper.

You give his arms a squeeze before you let go of him.

Your stares linger on each other for a moment. You’re usually pretty good at reading his eyes, but this one eludes you. Somewhere between worry and awe.

As Konig washes out your hair, you fall victim to the tingling sensation on your scalp. You close your eyes and tilt your head back for him until it’s time to rinse.

His hands are gentle as they smooth bubbles over your body. You feel tiny - watching his big hands swallow whatever part of you lies beneath his touch.

“You’re beautiful,” He says.

“Oh yeah?”

“Ja.”

You bite back your smile.

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

Those pretty blue eyes flit down to your shoulder as he delicately massages bubbles over your skin. He lingers here, and it takes you a moment to realize his thumb is running side to side over the spot that you clipped against the hedge maze.

You look down, and with furrowed brows, you breathe your discovery in a tone that suggests you left something important behind.

“My scars are gone.”

“Mine too,” He says as he begins to work down the rest of your arm, “Even the ones from home. You didn’t notice?”

You look down to the arm Sapphire split open with her knife, and find there’s no evidence of your altercation.

“No.”

You stick your leg up to inspect your calves and find spotless skin, no evidence of the cuts the peacekeepers made when they forced you into the shards of your tantrum. You haven’t really been paying much attention to your body, it’s felt so far away from your thoughts ever since the games.

“I don’t like that they do things to you while you’re sleeping,” He says as he lathers up your sides.

Your lips pull to the side.

“Yeah, I guess I never thought about it.”

“Don’t now,” He says.

“Okay,” You say.

And so you don’t.

Konig takes extra care in sudsing your chest, massaging your breasts beneath kind fingers.

“Just being thorough,” He says with a responsible nod.

“Of course.”

After you’re both clean and dry, you help yourself to one of Ellaine’s shirts, Konig replaces his pants, and you make your way to the kitchen. You position yourself behind Konig, almost like you’re hiding from whatever waits for you at the end of this hall, your steps light and your fists tight at your sides.

You’re surprised to see little evidence of Pharus’ death and your hostage.

Pharus’ body has been removed from the sitting room, presumably in the hall bathroom with Ellaine. You can’t make out a sob, a whine, or even a snivel as you pass the closed door.

You squeeze Konig’s hand when you notice the blanket he threw over the blood stain on their couch cushion, surely for your benefit, and Konig squeezes back.

It feels weird to be rummaging in someone else’s fridge, especially since the owners are being held captive in their own home, one of them a still-warm corpse, but you get over it fairly quickly.

It’s your final meal, after all.

You both spread just about everything in their kitchen on their fancy dining table, your feast illuminated by a chandelier that rain shimmering crystal droplets from its golden branches.

While the table is about the biggest dining table you’ve ever seen, you and Konig pull your chairs as close together as you can, sipping on wine and picking apart your feast.

“Should we run away?” You ask.

He shrugs as he tears off a hunk of meat from the wing of a cooked bird, answering through a mouthful.

“If you want. Where would we go?”

“I- I don’t know. Maybe we could-“

You trail off, not really knowing where you were going with the sentence when you started it. Everyone in Panem knows your faces, you wouldn’t make it two blocks, let alone escape the city.

“All these people - they look crazy. So what if we just made ourselves blend in? Dress up and hide in plain sight. Or -”

Your eyes find Konig. How do you disguise a boy this big? In the arena you clocked him from yards away even when he was covered head to toe in gear.

Your eyes flit away as you think on it some more.

“Price?” You ask, high pitched and already doubtful.

Konig shrugs again.

“Yeah,” You sigh.

Not even Price could save you from this one. You didn’t really want to drag him into this, anyway.

You push away your plate, leaning back in your chair with another weighty sigh.

“Let’s come back to it.”

Konig gives a hum that suggests that he knows that you both know you’re absolutely fucked.

There’s an awkward pause, where you tap your nails on the tabletop and you suck on your teeth.

“Wanna snoop?”

Konig hums again, this one a mixture of amused and curious, and a smile tugs at his lips. He wipes his face off with a cloth and tosses it on the table.

“I’d love nothing more.”

You’re hardly gentle about anything as you shuffle through drawers and rifle through cabinets. Making a mess of the place more than you are looking for something, really.

Ellaine and Pharus’ suite is your new temporary oasis, a once-arena to make a playground of - because you know come morning you’ll be dead.

“Found a remote,” You say, holding it over your shoulder and giving it a wave.

“For what?”

“Dunno.”

You turn, fingers fumbling over the sleek, smooth screen of the remote.

It seems to be in control of everything. Their fireplace, the lights, the television, the automatic curtains. One of the buttons turns on a water fixture that you didn’t even realize was there. A waterfall cascades from the ceiling and pours into a small pool that reveals itself from retractable tiles in the floor.

You near the stream and stick your fingers into the flow, watching as the water parts, creating gaps in the seamless, perfect wall of water.

When you’ve had your fix, you shake your wet hand, flinging droplets in all directions before you return to the remote.

Another press of a glossy button and a camouflaged glass door slides open with a zip, leading to their balcony outside.

You approach the window of their suite and peek out into the open air. Their balcony is bigger than the one at the tribute tower, and much higher up.

If you had pants on, maybe you’d ask to sit in the crisp nighttime air, but the harsh wind on your bare legs already draws goosebumps to your skin and makes you shiver.

Wait, though.

You step out onto the balcony, and find the switch for the heater. Almost instantly, a blast of air drapes you in a cozy warmth and protects you from the high winds.

Thanks, Ruby.

You don’t need to coax Konig outside, he’s at your heels without request. You intertwine your hands and snuggle up to each other on one of the many patio couches, wearing warm smiles and exchanging plenty of kisses. It feels eerily empty, there’s enough furniture on this balcony to host a party. And while it’s barren with just the two of you - you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Konig breaks the silence first.

“It’s too bad,” He says weakly.

“What is?”

He doesn’t answer right away.

“It would have been nice.”

And you sigh, because you know what he means.

The sun is setting over the desert, and your time together is limited. You will never get to have your happily ever after, and what little time you have had together is tainted by games and suicides and prostitution and twenty-two dead tributes.

“Yeah,” You say, “It would have been.”

Your heart aches for domesticity with him. Living in victor’s village back home, so rich neither of you would have to break your backs in the fields again, and still have enough to go around for the starving people in Nine.

Waking up next to him, cooking meals with him, grieving together in the privacy of your home. Cuddling each other to sleep every night and being intimate without all of Panem watching.

Oh, and you would have had a shower.

You’re not crazy about a lot of the displays of extravagance the Capitol has to offer, but now that you’ve had a taste of a steamy, warm shower, you’re not eager to let it go.

Konig doesn't look up from his lap.

“I’m sorry,” He whispers.

“No,” You say, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s my-”

“No,” You cut, “We did this together.”

Maybe it is for the best, anyway.

Maybe joining the twenty-two is a better fate than being haunted by them.

It still would have been nice.

You wonder what Konig would be like in your little hypothetical life of domesticity, and you come to the realization that you really don’t know what he does in his leisure.

“What did you do on Sundays back home?” You ask.

Konig shrugs.

“Chores.”

“Well, yeah, but - for fun.”

He shrugs again.

“Y’know,” You start, “I just realized that I really don’t know that much about you. I mean, I know enough. But-”

Your eyes flick to him.

“Who are you?”

“Not much to know,” He says with a shrug.

“Oh, come on.”

“Ich weiß nicht. I ruined my life and it’s been the same ever since.”

“Ruined your life?”

You look at him expectantly.

His eyes dart between either of yours, his irises slightly flicking side to side before he looks away.

“S’okay,” You say, “You don’t have to say.”

You look back to the sky, your foot rocking back and forth on its heel.

“You don’t know?” He asks quietly.

“Don’t know what?”

His face warps, and you frown.

“What’s up?” You say.

He just shakes his head.

You don’t push.

“Do you want to play a game?” You ask.

“That depends,” He says with a hum, “What do you have in mind?”

“It’s called Love Hate.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s ’cause I just made it up,” You say with a grin.

“And how do you play?” He asks.

“You tell me things that you love and things that you hate, and I’ll win the game because then I’ll know things about you.”

He hums in consideration as he half-heartedly inspects a lock of your hair.

“Okay,” He says, “I love you.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“No? Why not?”

“Because I already know that.”

“Hmm. I love…”

He trails off as he thinks on your prompt.

“I keep trying to fill in the blank, but you are the only thing that comes to mind.”

“Stop it.”

He kisses the height of your cheek, and raises his brow.

“Make me,” He prods.

“Them’s fightin’ words.”

“You don’t remember the last time?” He says, “How did it turn out for you?”

“Oh!”

You lunge at him, and you’re not really sure what your plan is, but you find yourself in his lap and your arms wrapped around his waist in effort to force him onto his side.

It’s as laughable as you think, and he confirms it with that hearty laugh that makes your chest bloom with a fuzzy warmth.

He’s immovable, and once he has a hold on your forearms, you’re done for.

A firm but gentle grasp, just enough to keep you from yanking free while you squeal and giggle and squirm on his lap.

He gives a tug on your arms until you’re face to face. His eyes narrow and a riling smirk grows on his face.

“I love you.”

He closes the gap between you with a wet, slobbering kiss, and pulls away with a smack before he lets go of your arms.

“Looks like I win.”

“That’s not fair,” You whine.

“Mm.”

He feigns his innocence with a shrug as he rests his hands on your hips.

“All is fair in Love and Hate.”

You scoff.

“I hate that.”

After a pause, your brows furrow and your smile fades.

“Do you not like talking about yourself?” You ask.

He shrugs.

“That’s too bad,” You say with a defeated, dramatic sigh, “I guess you’ll be hot and mysterious forever.”

“Hm. If I’m less mysterious, does that mean I will be less hot?”

“I guess we’ll never know.”

He looks away, and takes a breath.

“I love reading,” He says.

“Yeah?”

“Ja.”

“What’s your favorite?”

He looks away, and gives something of a reserved laugh as he thinks on it.

“What?” You ask, nudging him with a grin.

“I really liked the love stories,” He says.

“Yeah?” You ask.

You find your grin growing into a full blown smile.

“Yes,” He says with a nod, “It’s stupid, but-”

He trails off, his eyes staring off at the clouds.

“What?” You ask with a laugh.

His lips fold in as he bites back a grin, dimpling his rosy cheeks.

“Äh, I - I always used to picture the girl as you.”

“Yeah?” You ask through a laugh.

He bites his lip, and nods.

“Ja.”

“That is stupid.”

While your words are harsh, your smile could not be wider. It’s obvious you don’t mean it.

“Do you want to see if they have any books?” You ask, “You could read to me?”

“If you want,” You add.

Konig leaves a featherlight kiss on your forehead.

“Yes.”

You both head back into the suite, and poke around for a bookshelf. This suite is so massive, you wouldn’t be surprised if it had its own library.

One of the walls in an office is lined with shelves, bursting with books and golden nicknacks. There’s so many books, you don’t think you’d be able to read them all in just one lifetime even if you tried.

You hop up on a desk, crossing your legs at the ankle with a gentle sway, and watch as Konig browses their book collection. Ogling his form from behind, really, mesmerized by the hypnotic push and pull of his back muscles with his movements. His fingers run over the spines, occasionally pulling a book from its place to thumb through it.

He must have found one he liked, stepping over to hand it off to you, silently waiting for your approval. He doesn’t have to wait long. You agree without even skimming it over, handing it back to him before you both make the maze-like journey back to the balcony.

You nestle between Konig’s legs, pressing your back flush to his front and resting your head on his chest. His bare arms wrap around you, hovering the book just over your lap. He reads to you like this, the deep vibration of his words on your back and his raspy voice painting a story in your head.

A love story.

And even though it’s stupid, you picture the boy as Konig.

So cozy, so warm, wrapped up in those safe, deadly arms. You rest your eyes, and let yourself melt into his hold.

Even with a hostage and a corpse waiting for you inside, and the price to pay for this rebellion just around the corner, it’s the most relaxed you’ve been since that last day in the arena. A pleased smile on your face and your thoughts replaced with the story he reads to you. Losing yourselves to another world, a world without games and kills and forced intimacy and impending execution.

At the end of the first chapter, Konig takes a break to shower you with kisses from behind. He starts with the top of your head and trails down your neck, quickening the pauses between kisses until you have no choice but to giggle and squeal, his rapid kisses and scratchy stubble too stimulating to handle.

At your pleads and insistence that it tickles, he hums in consideration through the furious kisses in rapid succession on your neck. Holding you tight in those strong arms as you try to squirm away while the book flops around in your lap.

When you’re really out of breath, he relieves you with one final, slobbering, noisy kiss before turning the page and starting a new chapter.

You settle back into his chest with a huff, and get lost in his voice, his story, the vibration of his words on your back.

He even does voices for the different characters, and after every chapter, attacks you with his kisses from behind until you’re out of breath from laughing and squeaking.

Somewhere around chapter seven, your mind starts to wander away from the book.

It’s not intentional, but Ellaine creeps into your thoughts. The sight of her restrained and gagged and trapped in a bathroom with her dead husband clear in your mind.

Oh, Ellaine.

Ellaine, Ellaine, Ellaine.

Whether or not she lives or dies, it will not change the consequence that is to come.

Your fate is sealed, you have nothing to lose.

Do you want to drag her down with you?

You do not want to think of her. You don’t want to decide her fate. You are desperate to free yourself of her so that you can go back to enjoying yourself with the love of your life.

… It’s funny, though.

Maybe you should feel bad about taking a life, about traumatizing a woman by slaughtering her husband in front of her, restraining her and forcing her to be held hostage with his fresh corpse while she knows her fate is to be decided by two unwell district kids -

But you don’t.

The detail that bothers you the most, the tricky little hang up that keeps you from feeling guilty - is that when Ellaine was begging and pleading for her life, screaming at the top of her lungs - no one came to her rescue.

If it had been you, if it had been Konig - it would not have mattered what was done to you, how much you screamed and cried for help -

It would not have come.

And then you find yourself thinking of Price.

Days after his games, forced into the bedroom against his will so soon after losing the love of his life, unable to defend himself in the face of grave consequence.

And you find yourself thinking of all the victors that have come before you. And of the twenty-two tributes who have sacrificed themselves so you could live, who very well would have been subjected to the same.

Willow and Sapphire and Eleven and Sage and The District Twelve tributes with their hollow stares -

Even Titan wouldn’t deserve this.

You keep trying to put yourself in Ellaine and Pharus’ shoes, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t.

You can empathize with the ignorant Capitol citizens somewhat. Because if it had been you, born in the Capitol instead of an outer district, living a prosperous life from the start, maybe you would be just as ignorant.

But you just know, deep down in your core, even if you were elite, you would have never purchased a person with the intent to have them pleasure you against their will. You would soon end another life at your own hand than do such a horrendous thing to another person. The is no level of ignorance that could possibly justify this.

Before the chapter ends, before Konig takes his kiss break, you interrupt him mid-sentence.

“Kill her.”

You ride the expand and deflate of Konig’s chest with one deep breath.

“I already did.”

You peel yourself from his front, core twisting to face him.

“You did?”

He doesn’t look worried, or scared of your reaction. His expression is even.

He nods.

“Okay,” You say.

“Okay,” He says.

He finishes out the chapter, and showers you in kisses until you’re laughing and squealing and rid of your thoughts of Ellaine.

When the end of three far-too-short hours nears, it feels as if the sun is setting over the desert quadrant.

Neither of you acknowledge the bittersweet air.

After the ninth kissing session, you sigh and lull your head dramatically on his shoulder.

“I should probably put pants on,” You groan.

“If you must.”

“I feel like I should. A girl should wear pants if she’s going to be executed.”

“Ja?”

“Ja.”

He gives that inaudible, amused laugh, the one that bounces his shoulders.

“Wanna poke around their closets?” You ask.

He gives you a kiss on the top of your head.

“Yes.”

There’s enough clothes in Ellaine and Pharus’ closet, you’re sure you could wear one outfit a day for the rest of your life and never run out of something new to wear.

Usually wearing the lavish Capitol outfits repulse you, but you find you’re actually having fun rummaging through Ellaine’s closet. Maybe because it’s in your control now. You get to pick what crazy, outlandish outfit you get to wear instead of being forced into some uncomfortable get-up against your will.

“Oh hoh hoh,” You drum up, “What about this one?”

You program the screen that controls their automatic closet. The outfit you selected whips out, a truly ridiculous thing.

You think it’s technically a bathrobe, but it’s so grand you feel it could be the dress of a princess.

A silken pink wrap with a matching belt to be tied around your waist. Adjustable, just what you need while playing dress up in someone else’s closet. The hem would drape onto the floor, but not too much, just enough to create an alluring drag behind you. Both the sleeves and the hem are lined with a soft, bushy pink fur.

Dramatic, but above all, comfortable.

Konig offers little commentary, just watches as you slip the silly thing on and secure the ribbon around your waist. You give the long, loose sleeves a shake, arms entirely swallowed by shiny silk and dancing tufts of pink fur.

You move to a mirror to get a better look at yourself in your puffy outfit.

“Can you believe these people wear this stuff? And actually - mean it?”

You twist your body in the mirror and move your arms, watching as the furry edges slink with your movements like big fuzzy caterpillars. You try to imagine Ellaine wearing such a thing around her house while she -

What do Capitol citizens even do in their freetime?

Surely not chores.

Would Ellaine wear this just to nurse a glass of wine and read a book?

These people are so strange.

When you don’t get a response, you turn to Konig with a mockery of the Capitol accent primed on your tongue, but your face falls when you see his expression.

His brows are raised and his lips are the slightest bit parted. He catches your eyes and flits his stare away, but his cheeks are almost as pink as the fur.

“Oh?” You ask, looking down at your silly outfit with a laugh, “Yeah?”

He clears his throat and shrugs.

“You just - it suits you, is all.”

“Alright. I think I’ll keep it, then. It’d be quite the execution outfit, don’t you think?”

Konig smiles.

“Now we have to find one for you,” You say.

“Ja?”

“Ja,” You say, “Unless you want to be executed shirtless.”

“Hmm.”

Konig steps over to the giant mirror and takes in his form. Giving baby flexes and staring at himself like he’s actually considering it.

“I just might.”

You wrap your silken, fuzzy sleeves around him from behind, a cheeky grin peeking around his ribcage, catching his stare in the mirror as your hands glide up and down his torso.

“I wouldn’t mind,” You say.

His eyelids lower.

“Mm. I’m sure you wouldn’t.”

You give his waist a squeeze, smushing the apple of your cheek against his side.

It was supposed to be the end of your backwards little embrace, but you find yourself lingering. Drawn into his scent and melting into the heat radiating off his muscles.

You close your eyes and take a deep, satisfied breath.

Without breaking the embrace, Konig shuffles in place to face you, and you let him, loosening your hold until you can clamp your arms back around him. His hands find your shoulders with a reassuring squeeze before smoothing down your back to hold you tight in return.

A feeling you’ve felt only a handful of times returns - stepping through the fall forest, funneled into a barbed hedge maze, an exchange of a ribbon as the sun sets over the desert.

That ominous finality.

It feels like it will be the last time you will ever hold him, and it makes your throat ache and your eyes swell with tears.

So you don’t let go.

You hold him, a tight and warm embrace, breathing in his scent. It feels as if everything, all of it - paranoia and mistrust and tokens and young love - games and kills and deaths and double suicides - has led up to this moment.

It’s long overdue, but this is where your story ends.

You don’t let go of him until the doorbell chimes its song throughout the suite. You jump, face already contorted in a wince as your wide eyes dart around Konig’s face in a silent plea for help. His hands find your shoulders, and he gives you another squeeze.

He shrugs, and it seems he will be executed shirtless.

Konig cups your trembling jaw in his hands, bends down, and presses a long, tender kiss on your lips. Gentle enough to nearly convince you that you’re made of glass.

He pulls away slowly, and intently studies your face with a ghost of a smile.

His thumb brushes along the height of your cheek before he pulls away, and you know that it’s time.

Konig keeps you behind him as you make way to the foyer. He creeps open the door, and the peacekeepers are quick to surround you as you step from the crime scene and into the hallway. You prime yourself to be handcuffed, picking up your arms to display your wrists in surrender.

And nothing happens.

Without really giving it much thought, you just assumed as soon as the time was up, they’d somehow know you killed Ellaine and Pharus. As if the peacekeepers would bother to stick around and check on them, to make sure you both lived up to expectation.

But they don’t.

They just escort you from the suite and march you down to the armored car.

You had not accounted for this.

In your head, your fate was cemented. You knew where you would be killed, when, and at whose hand.

This delay has flooded your oasis with uncertainty.

It’s coming, you know that. The President will absolutely be checking in with them for a full report, and have someone check on them after radio silence.

But when?

The countdown is ticking, and you no longer know when it will expire. You almost wish the peacekeepers would have put the bullet in your head as soon as time was up, because you know waiting for the other shoe to drop is going to be incredibly agonizing.

While you look more than guilty, fists clenched and sweating from every pore, your saving grace is that everyone thinks you just endured an evening of being forced into intimacy for the first time. Surely anyone would think that’s the reason you’re acting strange.

Konig, on the other hand, looks unfazed. Standing tall with his bare shoulders back, his eyes half-lidded with indifference. His hold on you is still tight, though.

Only the echo of commanding boots and almost comical slaps of slippers fill the silence as you’re both escorted back to the suite. You didn’t want to be executed in heels, you decided, but Ellaine’s feet must have been huge. Your feet have to cling to the slippers to keep them from falling off while her ridiculous bathrobe drags behind you.

Price is waiting for you on your return, buried in papers spread over the dining table. He sighs loud enough you can hear it from the elevators, and without looking up, he waves a dismissive hand to relieve the peacekeepers.

“You two - Go change and get cleaned up. C’mere when you’re done.”

You follow his order without pushback, abandoning Ellaine’s robe for something just as comfortable, but nowhere near as fancy, and replace the underwear Konig destroyed in the throes of passion.

Ruby practically runs over to you both on your return.

“Oh, my victors! I missed you!”

She gives you a kiss on the cheek, and has to beckon Konig to lean down so she can do the same to him.

“Your very first dinner party! How did it go?!”

“Ruby!” Price barks from across the room, “Let them breathe.”

Ruby clicks her tongue and rolls her eyes at you both.

“Nevermind him. He has been in such a mood,” She waves a limp hand in your direction, “You’d think having not only the first victor of his career, but the second as well - he’d find time to unsour that attitude.”

You just give her an uneasy nod. Price ignores her jab and pointed glare, and instead makes a sharp, one-note whistle to beckon you both.

Price doesn’t acknowledge you right away. He’s focused on his paper with tense shoulders as you stand at attention before him, the scratch of ink dragging across the page the only sound filling this stale room.

It feels like you’re in trouble.

He must know.

Somehow, somehow he figured out what you’ve done, and he’s about to lose it on you both.

You glance at Konig, who meets your stare from the corner of his eyes. His brow perks and a sly, knowing smile tugs on the corner of his lips.

“Are you hurt?” Price finally asks without looking up.

“Huh?”

“Are you hurt?” He repeats, “Did they hurt you?”

“Oh,” You say, “No.”

“Romeo?”

“No.”

When Price looks up he gives you a quick scan, and his face hardens when he locks onto your neck.

Your hand springs up to touch the spot he’s scorching with his stare.

Blood? Is there blood there?

The jig is up, caught, busted.

He knows.

Price’s bruised eye twitches and he turns his head to snap in Ruby’s direction.

“Take her down to medical. Get those fucking marks off‘er neck.”

Oh.

Konig’s strawberry kisses.

“Its so late, John, at least let her-“

You flinch when Price slams his fist on the table, stationery hopping on the tabletop and clattering on their descent.

“Just do it!” He shouts.

Ruby flinches, her hand springing up to her collarbones. She stammers for a moment before swallowing whatever words she had in mind, clears her throat, and looks to you.

“Come on, dear.”

Ruby coaxes you down the stairs with a gentle wave, her hand resting on your shoulder to guide you along.

You shoot a look back to Price, who’s staring at the table with a hand covering his jaw. You wonder if you should just tell him they were marks Konig left behind, but your instincts don’t let you. You deem it to be too incriminating. Like if he knew Konig was the one leaving strawberry kisses on your skin instead of Capitol buyers, he would somehow jump to the conclusion that you committed a double homicide.

You can’t figure out how he would make the connection, but you go with your gut regardless of the potential to relieve his distress. It seems too risky.

Price is rather intuitive.

Konig accompanies you down to medical, obviously, and strangely, Ruby correctly assumes that Konig is the one who left the marks. There’s no one in the halls, but she still leans in and speaks low as you walk to avoid embarrassing you.

“Y’know, it’s not very proper for a young lady to be parading around with love marks on her skin.”

She looks over you to tilt her head at Konig.

“Maybe more discreet next time?”

If you hadn’t just killed two people, maybe you’d find it annoying that Ruby’s so worried about your modesty. How much modesty is left to preserve when you and Konig have not only been intimate in front of all of Panem, but just hours ago you were two murders away from being victims of forced prostitution?

In medical, some foul smelling concoction is smeared on your neck, and you’re both sent to bed almost as soon as you’ve returned to the suite.

Konig isn’t as upset at having to sleep in separate rooms tonight. At his door, he pulls you into his front and slings his arm around the back of your waist. He tips your upper half backwards, leans down, and presses his lips to yours. This one’s neat - precise and firm and unable to be ignored.

He keeps you pinned to his chest in his suggestive hold and studies you with crinkled eyes and a pleased grin.

“See you tomorrow, mein sieger.”

You swallow and give a faint nod.

“I hope so,” You whisper back.

Getting to sleep is no easy feat. You keep waiting for the peacekeepers to barge into your bedroom and have you drug away to be executed in front of the whole country for your crimes.

But they don’t come, and the arms of rest eventually become too tempting to resist.

You sleep in your quarters.

Willow and Sapphire sit at the foot of your bed, their knees folded and their legs just to the sides of them. You’re feet from them, but it looks and sounds like you’re underwater. The words they’re speaking aren’t making sense, but their faces are relaxed and they wear smiles. Occasionally one of them will burst into a fit of laughter.

You feel so at ease, so peaceful. You find yourself entranced by Willow’s nimble fingers as she braids Sapphire’s hair.

All three of you flinch at the bang, and whip your heads around to catch the door splintering into a thousand shards. The warmth in your chest ices over as Konig’s menacing form steps through the rubble.

You try to look back to Willow and Sapphire for help, but Willow’s been flayed and Sapphire’s only got an empty, bloody socket for an eye.

Willow’s skinless body lets out a haunting, guttural moan, smearing blood on the covers as she crawls over to you. You try to run from outstretched hands made of only bone, but Sapphire snatches you by your bicep. She and Willow lock you in place so they can let Konig run his sword straight through your neck.

Breakfast is a lot.

It becomes obvious very quickly that Ruby doesn’t know what’s going on. Not just about the murders, but about the prostitution in general. She keeps asking about how the dinner party went.

Did you have good table manners? Were you polite to the sponsors? Did you thank them for the gifts?

Price gets stiffer with each question she asks. You give polite, reserved answers when it’s clear Konig’s not interested in responding.

You try to keep your responses to a two-word maximum, terrified you might let your secret slip. The entire meal you are worried Price can somehow read your thoughts. Like your misdeeds are written on your skin in bold capital letters.

Thankfully he doesn’t look up from his plate. He’s busy picking at his meal with his fingers, hardly taking bites. Separating something from his food and tossing it roughly around his plate.

Konig doesn’t seem worried. While you can’t sit still or untense your muscles, he’s entirely relaxed next to you. His legs spread and his thigh pressed to yours, slouched in his chair to Ruby’s dismay.

You start when his free hand finds your knee.

He smooths up your thigh, delicate fingers tracing along the inseam of your pants. His touch is stirring, curious fingers exploring the sensitive skin of your inner thighs.

Konig plays it casual, his face bored, keeping his attention on his plate.

Your first urge is to swat him away -

But you don’t.

Instead you sneak panicked glances at Ruby and Price to make sure they’re oblivious to Konig’s wandering hands.

You shoot Konig a look, but he doesn’t meet your eyes. You do catch his lip twitch up in a barely-noticeable pleased grin, one you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for it.

You don’t have the forethought to suppress the sharp breath you suck in when he squeezes.

When his fingers relieve their possessive hold on you, Konig continues to trace circles on your inner thighs.

His movements don’t waver, he continues to eat his breakfast as if he’s not feeling you up in front of an audience.

He runs out of leg, his hand sliding further down the valley of your inner thighs. His pinky lifts from the crease of your leg to graze over your front.

Your fork shakes in your hand, your lips parted to release shallow breaths. He’s just barely touching you, but his faint touch has a powerful rousing effect. A burning heat scorches your cheeks, and you can feel that familiar, thrilling wave of heat rushing to your lower abdomen.

Your fidgeting legs and twitching hips push into his touch with little thought.

You’re having trouble hiding the shake in your fingers and the look of horror on your face, but you still don’t swat him away.

“You have another dinner party tonight,” Price says gruffly.

Konig’s hand pulls away from your thighs the same time your head whips up.

“What? Tonight?”

Will you even make it that long?

At any moment, peacekeepers will barge in and take you both prisoner.

“Yeah. A sole sponsor,” He grunts, still inspecting his plate, clearly displeased with his flawless meal.

“Wha- Are we both going?”

“Mhm.”

You shoot a nervous glance to Konig, but he’s still eating his breakfast, unaffected by this news.

“Okay.”

You say it’s okay, but your voice is pitched so high it’s nowhere near believable.

“This is just marvelous,” Ruby beams, “I’m so proud of you two! How far you’ve come! And you know, these are very powerful connections to have! Who knows what kind of-”

“Ruby,” Price warns with a draw.

“Oh, what is it?” She says with an eye roll.

“Leave them alone.”

Ruby smacks her lips and shakes her head at you both with a wordless complaint.

“No, no, it’s… great,” You say, “I just - I just wish I would have known sooner. To prepare? How many more…dinner parties?”

“One day at a time,” Price sighs.

You’re starting to come to the conclusion that the reason the Capitol has been working so hard to keep you and Konig supervised at all times is to keep you from planning something disastrous.

Say, for instance, a murder in the tune of rebellion.

But Konig doesn’t need to take you somewhere private, and he doesn’t have to use his words.

In fact, he doesn’t even have to turn to face you.

His chin tilts up, and the curve of his fork rides down his bottom lip on a draw. He looks to you from the corner of his sly eyes, an eyebrow perks, and a smile grows around the prongs of his fork.

There is a moment of hesitancy - but you eventually agree with a faint nod and a harsh swallow. He thanks you with a squeeze on your thigh, and his bouncing leg knocks against yours under the table for the rest of the meal.

The silver lining of Price harboring the burden of thinking you really were forced into intimacy last night is that he can hardly say no to you. So when you and Konig ask to sit on the balcony after breakfast, Price lets you, with the one request that you keep the glass door open.

You don’t have the heart to break it to him that his attempts to keep you and Konig from planning something rebellious are useless, so you indulge him.

You and Konig cozy up on the balcony, nestling yourself between his legs and leaning back on his chest, just like you did when he read to you. His strong arms wrap around you as you ease yourself into his hold and let him plant soft kisses anywhere he can reach.

You lay like this for a while, trying to keep your focus from straying anywhere but the fresh air, the buzz of the city below, Konig’s generous kisses.

“Mein sieger,” He breathes into the crook of your neck, "Es tut mir leid-”

He kisses your shoulder, his wide, assertive hands gliding down your ribcage, your stomach, your hips.

“You got me so worked up yesterday,” He whispers, “I never made you finish.”

His hands wrap around the apex of your thighs, kneading the supple flesh beneath his fingers.

“Verzeihen Sie mir.”

His strong, rugged hands slide up your hips until he can hook under your waistband, slinking his fingers into your pants with a slow, teasing descent.

“I’ll make it up to you now? Ja?”

“Ko-”

“Shh.”

His hush, right in your ear, thickens your breaths and sends a shiver down your spine.

He flicks his head in the direction of the balcony door.

“Don’t want anyone to hear, mein seiger.”

Your thighs spread for his wandering hands, his warm, assured palms running over your bare thighs. You watch the outline of his hands through the fabric of your pants as they seek out the front of your underwear. Your breath catches at his firm, presuming hold over the entirety of you. He plants a kiss on your cheek as he massages wide circles over your panties, and keeps his face pressed to yours when he whispers his filthy nothings.

“I’m going to make you cum on my fingers. You can keep quiet, can’t you?”

“Here?” You squeak.

His free hand slinks out of your pants to run over your chest, kneading you through your shirt and brushing over your nipple with his thumb.

“Here,” He hisses.

He sneaks into your panties, gliding up and down your slit, spreading you open and lubing his fingers on the flood of arousal waiting for him. A low laugh leaves him as he plays in your slick mess.

“Did I get you wet earlier, little one?”

His question, whispered and cocky and rhetorical, hitches your breath and sends a heat of arousal straight to your lower core.

“Did you like it when I touched you with everyone watching?”

You flinch when he squeezes your chest, not painfully, but firm enough to make you suck in a breath sharper than a knife through your teeth. Your wide eyes dart to the open balcony door, dreading the moment someone walks out and catches you in the act.

“Mein unartiges Mädchen.”

Konig leaves another kiss on your cheek, as his fingers trace around your clit.

“It’s okay,” He whispers, “I will give you what you need.”

The fingers lost to your panties are teasing, light strums over your clit, an eerie contrast to the sudden drop of his next words. A warning, a reminder, a threat, and a promise - a low, dangerous growl against your cheek.

“I am what you need.”

You nod through sputtered breath, and while there is a chill frosting your spine, a desperate want to please him while at his mercy regardless of the truth - you know his statement is true.

You do need him.

You and Konig are intertwined, so tangled together at this point you might as well be one entity. Your love, your misdeeds, your victories, your deaths, your kills, your lust, your fears, your feelings.

Your very lives depend on each other.

You need him.

You’ve known it since the beginning, as much as you fought and refused and denied.

He fulfills his promise, his threat, keeping the heel of his palm flush against your front as he sinks his middle finger into you.

He huffs in approval from behind you, warm breath rolling along your flesh.

Your eyes flit to the open glass door - at any moment someone could come strutting out onto this balcony to see one of Konig’s hands stuffed down your pants, the other manhandling you like you’re his doll, and your need for him.

And maybe you should bat him away and tell him to stop to save you a level of an embarrassment you know you won’t be able to handle -

But you don’t.

“Hn-!”

“Quiet, mein sieger.”

The hand palming your breast moves to your jaw, two of his fingers brushing over your bottom lip. Obediently you open for him, letting him coax his fingers into your mouth and press them to your tongue.

You can feel him against you, aching against the slack in his lounge pants, making steady grinds against your lower back while he quickens the thrust of his fingers.

You have to resist the urge not to bite down on him as you suck on his fingers and choke down your strangled whines.

“Good girl,” He purrs, “Does it feel good?”

You give a muffled affirmation around the drool-soaked fingers in your mouth.

“Is this tight cunt still sore from taking your fucking yesterday?”

He punctuates his filthy question with a teasing swirl inside you, working you open before he begins to roughly plunge back into you.

His lips press against the dip of your shoulder and your neck. A gentle, disarming kiss before he nibbles at your skin and provokes a squeaky gasp.

“Sei doch still,” He hushes.

The flat of his tongue runs along his bite, his spit soothing the dull ache and his stubble prickly against your skin.

“Es ist okay,” He breathes, “Ich werde mich um dich kümmern.”

Konig’s finger is unrelenting, fucking into you as fast as he can without making too much noise while his massive arms bulge around you to keep you locked in place.

“Ich werde dich beschützen.”

Your carve indents into his fingers with your teeth, biting back the noises aching to leave you.

“Weil du gehörst mir.”

His voice drops to a growl, snarling against your skin.

“Für immer.”

When he sees you’re struggling to choke back your moans and whines, he allows you a break. His fingers come to a slow stop before he carefully pulls from your cunt, dragging through your arousal and up to your clit.

He keeps his cheek smushed to yours, his stubble grinding along your jaw as he rubs circles in your slick. His fingers slide from your imouth to sneak up your shirt, smearing your cool spit over your breast.

“Do you feel me?” He whispers with a drawn-out grind, “Do you feel how excited you got me, unartiges Mädchen?”

He gives you a firm tug until you’re sitting on his lap, a squeak escaping you as his tightly pressed fingers flick side to side over your clit at full speed.

“You have to be quiet,” He says, “You can handle that, can’t you?”

You can hear your own arousal as he quickly scrubs back and forth with a light hand. Maybe more accurately flicking side to side over your entire cunt, not at all precise, but effective. There’s no way he’d be able to go off course with the way his hand works all of you.

“S’too much,” You choke.

Your nails claw into his thighs, pressing yourself further into him to get away from the overwhelming, bordering on painful pleasure.

“You want me to stop? Hm?”

He scoffs when you shake your head. The arm slung over your front tenses, and your back involuntarily arches off his chest as you fight the cries and moans that sit on your tongue.

Konig’s fingers are ruthless, following your squirms and furiously swiping over your clit. Overstimulating you, daring you to make noises you have to fight with everything you have to hold back.

Your writhes against him turns his breaths huffed and only encourages the fingers seeking to ruin you.

Your teeth dig into your bottom lip, eyes pinched shut and swallowing squeaks to keep them from breaching your lips. Konig’s limbs are inescapable, blocking you in and navigating your wriggling with ease. The guiding pressure of his forearm on your middle to keep you against his chest or a firm leg hooked around yours to prevent you from closing your thighs.

Your trembling hands claw at his legs, and when you let out the start of cry he knows you won’t be able to hold back, he clamps his hand over your mouth, silencing your wail and forcing your head against his shoulder with his warm, stern palm.

“Sch, sch, sch.”

The pleasure building between your legs is so intense you’re unintentionally fighting it off.

“You’re going to cum from just my fingers? Hm?”

Your squeaks and cries are muffled by the hand that swallows the lower half of your face.

He knows very well you can’t respond to his taunts. Even without the clammy hand silencing you, you wouldn’t be able to form a coherent sentence because of his other hand.

You’re confident the sound of your own slick and his brute fingers can be heard all over the Capitol, and you’re sure at any given moment a figure will appear at the balcony door and catch you in the act.

Your fears do little to stop the return of that white hot star building in your lower core - flickering and expanding at Konig’s hand. Your entire body trembles in his hold, the struggle against your own pleasure weakening with every passing moment.

Your hands find his thighs, scratching at the cotton of his lounge pants as you brush against a grand finish.

It is intense.

Shockwaves of euphoria shoot from your core in all directions of your body. It’s for the best that Konig’s hand is muting you, because the cry that tries to escape you would have echoed through the streets below. Konig’s muscles tighten around you to keep you pressed against the strain in his paints as you stiffen and convulse in his hold.

Konig doesn’t let up through your intense finish, his fingers still swiping over your pulsing clit unforgivingly and manipulating your pleasure into something twisted. Trapped in his arms as you twitch and moan into his hand.

You tap on his thigh twice, and he takes the hint, coming to a graceful stop before he carefully slides his hand from your pants. He releases the bottom half of your face, freeing your huffs to catch your breath. His arms wrap around your stomach and tighten to keep you steady while he grinds on your backside.

“So gut,” He strains, “Mein gutes Mädchen.”

Your limp body is pliant to his hold, doing nothing more than pushing out heavy breaths. You melt into his whim, letting him keep you still with firm hands on your hips while he rubs against you through his sweatpants.

“I thought about you all night,” He whispers in your ear, “So pretty on my cock yesterday.”

His grinds quickly turn desperate.

“You feel so good. Ich kann nicht anders.”

His pants are nothing short of erotic, heavy in your ear and cut short with each rut against you. Snatched up in his hold and letting him slobber over your neck while you bask in the bliss he wrought.

His fingers tighten into your hips, and he has to stifle his groan with your shoulder.

“Ich bin dein,” He breathes, “Ich- Ich werde Euch dienen.”

Konig sputters through clenched teeth behind you, his hips spasming and his arms constricting around your ribcage so tight he’s making it hard to breathe.

He untenses after a few seconds, still except for the chest that presses into your back with each of his huffy, gravelly breaths. His hold loosens and he slumps his upper half on you, burying his burning face into your neck with a whine.

You rub the top of his thigh and turn your head, his hair tickling your nose as you plant a kiss on the side of his head.

“Did you make a mess?” You tease.

He whines again, squeezes you around your middle, and nods shamefully against your neck.

His apology is so quiet it’s barely audible.

“I’m sorry.”

“Awh. S’okay. You’re still my good boy.”

“I love you,” He whispers breathlessly, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

You trace soothing circles on his thigh while you lean on each other, cooling off and enjoying that relaxing feeling that comes after finish.

Once his breathing has evened and his face drains its flush, you both wander back into the suite, avoiding making eye contact with anyone.

You return to the balcony with clean underwear. Konig lays back, and you follow suit, worming your way into the crevice between the cushions and his side.

You rest your head on his shoulder and a palm on his chest, riding the billow of his ribcage. You melt into each other like this, bodies conforming to one another as you bask in the day.

“I thought about your little game,” He says after a bout of silence, “About what I love and what I hate.”

He gives a proud smile, and adds, “Just for you.”

“Oh?” You say with a curious perk of your brow, “What do you love?”

“I love you,” He says.

A finger comes up to poke your nose, and before you can object to his unsatisfactory answer, he delivers what you were promised.

“And the stars. And bird song and jam.”

“Jam?” You ask with a smile.

“Elderberry, preferably,” He says, “But strawberry will do.”

He smiles, and plants a kiss on your forehead.

“And what do you hate?” You ask.

“I hate,” He draws, “That I’ve never had a pair of shoes that fit until I came here. I hate that this world has put you in danger. And I have never, ever hated someone more than that boy from District Two.”

Konig’s hands tighten into fists.

“It scares me,” He says, “How much I hate him.”

You just nod, and ignore the return of that uneasy feeling needling at you.

“So,” He starts, a fist untensing to delicately brush a strand of hair behind your ear, “Am I less hot now that I’m less mysterious?”

“Hmm. Let me see.”

You squint one eye and reach up to cup his face. He lets you guide him, tilting his jaw side to side while you hum and hah throughout your mock evaluation.

“It’s as I suspected,” You confirm with a sensible nod, “Still hot.”

“Gott sei Dank.”

You and Konig cuddle on the balcony, dozing on and off for the rest of the morning, catching up on the rest you missed out on last night. Plenty of kisses and sweet nothings are exchanged on breaches in wake.

Occasionally either Ruby or Price will pop their heads out to check on you and make sure you’re not up to no good.

But of course, you are.

Lunch is uneventful, and before you know it, you’re shipped back to the prep team to get ready for round two.

Tonight’s color is a deep red, a color that immediately reminds you of blood - so much so you get a whiff of a coppery tang. While your gruesome crimson is softened with more lace and frills, Konig’s silky button down is a solid deep red and offers little to distract from the bloodshed.

And this time, when you and Konig meet eyes in the dressing room, you share a smile.

Faint but unmistakable.

NEXT CHAPTER | CHAPTER NAVIGATION

[asnowfern]

(Probably) How not to teach someone how to fly

A/N: It’s @cassianappreciationweek !!!💕💕💕 I’m gonna try my best to post a drabble each day and this is a little baby Cazriel brotp to kickstart day 1: Flight! I hope you enjoy!

“You’re so terrible at this, it’s embarrassing.”

Azriel bit back a groan. He used his battered palms to push himself off the ground and brushed off the pine needles that had lodged themselves in multiple spans of exposed flesh. Not deigning to look up from the sandy grounds, he flipped off his camp-mate, “Fuck off”

Cassian gave a noncommittal shrug. “I could. It’s not like you can chase after me with that pathetic movement you call flying.”

The taunt wasn’t particularly searing. In fact, it was comparatively mild compared to what the other bastard or anyone else in the war-camp had once said to him. But after leaving multiple Azriel-shaped dents in the terrain over the past hour, he had just about had it.

His fist shot out by instinct. Azriel might not have the so-called natural Illyrian call for the air but the thrumming call for blood in his veins was undeniable and unquenchable.

The hit went unblocked, striking Cassian in the cheeks, who did nothing more than wear a vicious white smile. Azriel barely shook his shoulders out before Cassian retaliated, arms swinging, wings spread.

The duo rode on training-honed reflexes. Strike and dodge. Tackle and lock. Swerve and grapple. There was no finesse in the way the two males entangled in a brawl, swinging punches until one was pinned down to the ground in a chokehold.

Azriel barely resisted the urge to spit in Cassian’s face, the other sporting a victorious grin despite the blooming purple eye and split lip. He huffed instead, sending a blood streaked spit to the side. If it just very narrowly missed Cassian’s face then that was too bad.

Cassian released his limbs, letting him collapse into the ground while he himself leaned back to stand upright on his knees.

“Feeling better?” He asked with a smirk, stretching out a hand to him.

Azriel grunted as he accepted the hand.

“Good.” Cassian nodded before sliding a broad arm around his shoulders to hoist him up, another arm supporting the back of his knees into a ridiculous bridal hold.

Azriel sputtered. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Cassian barked a laugh and shot up into the star-flecked sky. The icy whip on their faces was somehow a relief from the blows each of them took just minutes before.

“You’ve been thinking too much,” Cassian commented as he glided through the sky, his voice as smooth as the flight. It was comforting, soothing. “Every muscle in your body is made for this. There’s no need to try steering or balancing with your arms. Those are irrelevant.”

They circled over the trees, climbing higher with each loop. The scream of the wind quieting down to a whisper, a lover’s caress. Eventually, the muscles in Cassian’s back tightened and he halted in midair. His wings outstretched, catching the airflow with the most minute of movements, the span of rust and ebony so wholly a part of him.

“You’ve just got to remember. You are Illyrian, no matter how much you like to forget sometimes. And we do not obey the wind, it obeys us.” With a last parting smirk, Cassian released Azriel.

He cursed the wavy hair idiot throughout his entire descent. Even more so when his wings caught him, the muscles in his back and wings finally working in tandem.

It didn’t last long and still resulted in another, albeit lighter, Azriel-shaped dent. The motion was still too much a stranger to him. But for the first time ever, Azriel thought that perhaps flying wasn’t all bad.

[tinfoil-jones]

Gravity Falls: For Your Own Good, Ch. 6

Summary: A few years after moving to Gravity Falls and having his lab built, Stanford Pines happens upon his estranged twin brother, Stanley. He mentally prepared himself to be suffocated by his brothers neediness all over again - what he wasn't prepared for was Stanley walking right past him like he didn't even notice him.

Rating: M for language, violence, and adult implications

Preface: Dialogue only, but some actions will be annotated for clarity. Cross-Posted on AO3 Here

First - Prev - Next

CH.6

“Good evening, Stanley.”

“...”

“I can see in lieu of speaking, you have instead chosen to communicate with an obscene hand gesture- two obscene hand gestures. I'll excuse your immaturity because I understand you might be feeling… upset.”

“Upset? Me? What could I possibly be upset about?”

“I understand your current state of… lodging is making you apprehensive. On account of being involuntarily committed.”

“You not picking up sarcasm doesn’t surprise me. And this isn’t an involuntary commitment; this is an unlawful abduction and confinement. I have enough experience with both to know the difference.”

“You what?”

“Ask me whatever stupid questions you’re about to ask, but I refuse to stand up. This is literally the first bed I’ve had since prison; and in that bed I had to worry about bed bugs, dirty needles, poisonous snakes… and Jorge.”

“What was that last thing that you just whispered to yourself?”

“Don’t worry about it. Now, what do you want, Doc? You here to scan me again? Get me to take more drugs? Ask me weirdly personal questions like your hot friend?”

“I want to talk. I may have come on a little strong when we crossed paths in town, in order for you to truly understand where I’m coming from, I’m going to have to give you some context in place of your lost memory.”

“Please tell me you’re not about to give me the tragic backstory of you and your missing twin.”

“Listen, Stanley, you don’t remember this; but we had a falling out ten years ago.”

“Aaand you’re doing it. Yeah, that’s pretty much what I was expecting. Fine, I’ll play along.”

“We were in our senior year of high school. You ruined a project of mine, and it cost me my dream college. We had a fight, and you got- you left home after that.”

“Man, dunno why I’d do something like that.”

“You were scared of me leaving you.”

“Did a shitty thing, and ended up alone anyways. That's something I'd expect from me.”

“And then you tried to justify it and say there was a silver lining-.”

“I’m sorry.”

“...What?”

“I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

“... Where’s your excuse?”

“Hm?”

“Your excuses- your reasons? You cannot just apologize- so casually.”

“Sure I can. I just did. You don't accept it, that’s your right."

“...You don’t mean that.”

“Naw, I’m pretty sure no one deserves to be betrayed. I’m sorry you were.”

“Saying sorry doesn’t make it okay.”

“Didn’t say it did. Nothing can- it’s already happened, and there’s no changing it. You don’t wanna forgive and forget? I won’t make you.”

“And you’re going to simply… move on?”

“Look, PhD, I can’t tell you why your real twin did what he did, or what was going through his head when he did it. But he did the wrong thing to the wrong person, and paid for it. It’s too bad you had to pay for it too.”

“You are-.”

“Can see why you’d get us mixed up though. All I do is ruin things, too. Maybe if that thing with your project hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be a wackjob who carries a tranq gun with him everywhere and abducts people off of the street.”

“I’m not mixing anything up. You are exactly who I keep trying to tell you that you are. You’re just not you right now.”

“I’m never anybody but me. You feel better now? Get all of that out of your system?”

“Now that I have told you what separated us-.”

“I’m gonna take that as a no.”

“Can you fill me in on the years that followed?”

“Doc, a lot of what I remember is like smoke - it’s hazy, and it’s hard to hold onto, can you be specific?”

“How about we start with something tangible?”

“Like what?”

“I am going to slip a paper and a pen through the slot in the door. Write down a list of the people who’ve tried to kill you.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. You told my associate a number of alarming things during his interview with you, and he reported that a not insignificant number of those things revolved around people trying to kill you.”

“A lot of them still want me dead, you know. If they figured out where I was, they might raid this place. It’s not too late to just… let me go, and we can pretend none of this happened. I’m not gonna hold a grudge against you, it's clear to me you've got issues because your real twin is either dead or hiding in Cuba.”

“They can try. They’ll fail.”

"Gutsy. We coulda been friends if you weren't insane."

"...We were."

"If you say so."

To be continued...

[daryascurse]

He Makes His Hot Roommate Suck Him Off!! ~ Eren Jaeger x Reader

In which Eren Jaeger is a pretty scummy roommate...

. . .“I think watching pοrn on the couch is a reasonable thing to bitch about,” you snap. “And yeah. I don’t need to see your dick out on my pillows.”

“I put your pillows on the chair,” Eren says with a short nod of his chin towards the other side of the living room. “You sure, though? I’ve never heard any complaints about my dick.” . . .

version one (scummy eren) || version two (scummy reader)

reader: POV second person, AFAB (*non-specified in part 1, will be specified in part 2), nongendered pronouns ⟡ content: modern AU, scummy sIutty roommate Eren, use of "bitch" as a verb, pοrn, oraI (male recieving), mentions of weed, mutual pining ⟡ wordcount: ~3.3k ⟡ ao3 link ⟡ recommended mood playlist: red velvet cake

ɴꜱꜰᴡ ᴍᴅɴɪ. I have a very strict adult-only interaction policy. Ageless, blank, and clearly minor-run blogs that interact will be blocked. If you have questions about what that means, please read the byf in my pinned post.

Author's note: This is my first time trying an AU as someone who usually is glued to canon..! It's a fever dream that hit me drifting off to sleep the other night and has consumed me since. I almost wanted to make it so Mikasa and Armin are the pοrnstars he’s watching but I don’t want it taken as an insult to them (just a fun little hey-there) so I did not.

“Ah! Oh my god yes – fuck – fuck! ”

The sound of it is unmistakable, embarrassingly unmistakable as you stand frozen in the foyer with shoes half-kicked off. You squeeze your eyes closed and wordlessly thank whatever cosmic force gave you the good sense not to invite your friend into your home today. Because your roommate, Eren Jaeger, is slouched in the corner of the sofa watching pοrn on his phone. 

Normally, he’s just a kinda bad housemate. He isn’t the worst you’ve had. That honor goes to that girl from freshman year who puked in your closet and wasn’t shy about bringing home guys from the bar on school nights. But he’s comparable. Eren drinks the juice straight from the carton and puts it back in the refrigerator empty. He lets dirty dishes soak a day too long. He takes over the common area like a second bedroom, scowling at the television as his thumbs scuttle across the controller. He’s asked you to leave the small lodging on multiple occasions for privacy reasons. But, all of that being said, Eren pays rent on time. And, on those sheepish occasions you’ve locked yourself out, he only rolls his eyes when he opens the door and quickly goes back to muttering into his headset. 

And up until now, you thought he made up for it enough by being eye candy.

“Oh - mmm- fuck yes right there - ”

The back of his head is to you, hair slipping from his loose knot over his hunched shoulders. His elbow is pressed in the back of the couch in a way that must be uncomfortable, but it’s the perfect angle to pinch his phone in one hand and hold it up to his face. The other hand is out of sight from where you stand. The glare on the screen hides whatever he’s watching so avidly that he didn’t hear you open the door.

Unless he didn’t mind you opening the door.

“Dude,” you say, and your voice stutters. What the fuck can you even say to - ? Your mind goes fully blank. You try again. “What the fuck are you doing?”

That works.

“Oh,” Eren says by means of greeting without even turning his head. “I’m not gonna jizz all over the sofa, don’t worry. Nowhere close yet.”

You push your shoes to the side with your feet. “Better not,” you say, with all the disdain you can muster. “But man - come on. Are you… actually doing what I think you’re doing?”

He lifts his phone up and waggles it, the visual jostling before your eyes. 

“Why?”

“‘S comfy out here.”

You stay, bound by your horror, in the foyer. “Do you do - this,” you say, almost stammering over your words, “regularly?”

“I don’t have a set schedule,” Eren says. “But yeah, sometimes, if you’re out of the house for a while.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Your words are punctuated by tinny “mmm - yeah - ah!” sounds from the phone.

Eren sighs irritably, and finally turns his head to the side. His eyebrows are slack, his cheekbones only barely starting to flush as he fixes that heavy-lidded gaze on you. “Are you going to stand there and bitch all day?”

“I think it’s a pretty reasonable thing to bitch about,” you snap. “And yeah. I don’t need to see your dick out on my pillows.”

“I put your pillows on the chair,” Eren says with a short nod of his chin towards the other side of the living room. “You sure, though? I’ve never heard any complaints about my dick.”

It’s so absurd you snort. “Don’t be a dumbass,” you say. “Don’t joke around.”

“Not joking,” Eren says, and he lowers the phone. There’s a light clack on the screen as he mutes or pauses the video. He pushes his elbow further into the couch, angling to look at you straight-on past the thin slope of his nose. “C’mere.”

You realize you’re breathing out of your mouth.

This is not what you expected. Actually – it’s not what you expected now. Because the tension has been there. Of course it has been. Every time he slouches shirtless into the kitchen with a threadbare towel ruffling his hair dry over his shoulders, you pointedly stare at anything that isn’t the lean muscle of his stomach. At least once a month, he knocks on your door for a trivial manner when you’d pointedly announced you’re spending the night in the bubble bath. Sometimes girls stay over after house parties. You can’t deny pausing at the wall to hear how he groans. You wonder if the performance changes once you slam the front door shut on your way to seek refuge elsewhere.

All things you’d only admitted to your best friends over bathroom counters sworn to secrecy and vodka sodas. Things fantasized about in half-jokes, and nothing you would have thought come to fruition on this random afternoon.

Oh. He absolutely did this on purpose. You wonder what expression is on your face, because Eren just looks back at you with eyebrows lifting at the corner.

You’re padding across the carpet, stepping over the mess of his socks, the lid of the silver grinder. The rest of the contraption sits open on the coffee table with glinting spikes winking at you. You frown at the dirty pipe next to it.

“Oh, you’re just stoned,” you say dryly.

“I’m actually not,” Eren says, throwing your tone back at you in a mocking half-question. That’s another familiar little crack of tension – the conversations so automatically sardonic you can barely keep your thighs from trembling and lips from curving into a grin. You smirk back absently even now, despite the electricity shuddering through the room and you turn towards the couch.

Your eyes had been a little too fixed on the pipe, your brain chanting something about the ashes, the filth, the need to just soak the stupid thing in rubbing alcohol to get it back to whatever color it should be, and it takes a half-moment to register him. Eren’s hands are at the waistband of his forest green gym shorts. He looks up at you with those eyes deeper than a summer storm, a curve of hair falling in front of his forehead and joining those strands cascading around his neck as he hunches against the arm of the sofa. The hem of his black hoodie has scrunched higher up his stomach below his phone resting precariously, to reveal a snaking ribcage of hair branching down to where his thumbs meet the shorts. His forearms are tense, red aching at the tight cuffs of his rolled-up sleeves.

“Take it off, then,” you hear yourself say, and Eren’s lips twitch in a smile.

His thumbs curve, knees drawing up as he lifts his hips. He hesitates a moment, as if daring either of you to chicken out, and then it’s as if you imagined the pause because he’s pulling those green mesh shorts down. He kicks them off the cushions and you sway to avoid the motion as his heather grey boxes follow in a tangle. Eren pushes his hips down on the sofa, sprawling to take up the entire length. His foot braces against the back of the couch, and his other settles on the floor. He rolls his knee out, framing a perfect patch of rug for you to kneel on.

Well.

Your shitty roommate is right. Who could have any complaints about his cock?

Eren’s eyes burn on you as you hesitate between his sprawled legs, adjusting your knees on the carpet, your elbows against the couch. He doesn’t reach forward to guide you, to pump his already half-hard shaft in his palm. He shrugs his shoulders and picks up the phone again, tapping the screen again.

“Mmm- that feels so good, yeah!”

You lick your bottom lip. Eren has the phone lifted in a way that blocks his face from you, or yours from him. You pause another second and raise your hand to him.

When you wrap your fingers around his cock, the taunt muscles of his stomach tense. His Adam’s apple shivers in a swallow. Your fingertips squeeze at his firmness, your thumb slowly sliding hider as your fist rises up. You pause, running your thumb around the tip. A bead of slick precum slides where your skin meets his.

It’s that oily slip that makes this whole thing actually real at last, makes the breath hitch in your throat and makes some pressure beat hard bellow your belly. Your knees push into the carpet. You adjust your other forearm on the cushions for balance, leaning in closer as you flutter in a delicate circle again across his sensitive head.

“Fuck,” Eren says as if the word bursts from him.

“Ohh yeah!”

The air is cut with heavy breath and the cries from his phone.

Your hand is moving without thinking, your eyes hazy and locked on your first. His cock is actually fucking pretty, smooth, large, the vein fluttering under your palm rising with urgency. You bend into the couch, reaching forward with your other hand and stretching to support it, giving a brief dancing squeeze of your fingers. You withdraw your dominant hand and raise it to your lips, drawing a breath, and spitting messily.

“Mmm!”

“Oh – ” but the breath comes out of you as you bring your hand webbed with silver down to his cock again. Eren’s skin is silky under your touch as you smear up and down him, rubbing up to his head again and mixing your fluids together. And Eren groans, a low, musical sound that breaks at the end.

That’s an aching you haven’t heard behind walls and closed doors. You tense your hand and pump faster.

“Suck it,” Eren says suddenly in another strangled blurt, interrupting the moans of the pοrnstars.

You look up, and his phone has slipped in his palm, showing the darkening of his dilating pupils as he stares at you with a thirst. His cheeks are flushed high. Drool involuntarily pools over your tongue and you look down and hunch yourself closer, as his knee straightens on the floor besides you to open more space.

Kneeling before Eren, you can track the contours of his skin in a way more intimate than just roommates should normally know. His thigh muscles are taunt, strong, dusted with wiry hairs that gather closer and closer the higher they climb. The shadow of his hipbones flexes as he shifts into the couch. And you look up again, just as Eren reaches out with his hand not gripping the phone.

“Wow – wow oh fuck, I’m so close - !”

More hair has fallen loose from the bun, enough for his hair to be half-down and framing the strong angle of his jaw like a dark halo. His eyes are sunken deep, and staring at you, wide. You keep eye contact, leaning on your elbow, and sink your mouth onto his cock.

Eren’s hand closes at the back of your head, and your arm slides into his leg, a warm, strong barrier pushing your bodies together in this collapsed tableau of fallen angels. Your first stroke of your tongue is light and short, your second dragging a little longer, before your lean for the and take his head fully in a long, languid, slurping swirl.

He tastes sweeter, cleaner, than you would have thought.

The sounds suddenly cut off as the video ends, the last smack of your tongue loud in the abrupt silence. Saliva drips from your mouth as you drag your tongue down to his balls in a fat swipe, and back up.

“Fuck,” Eren mutters. His hand drops, shifts his back and hips rock into the couch as he takes the phone in both hands again. You adjust your fingers, sliding at his base and rubbing along the shaft neglected by your mouth.

There’s a muffled click-click-click and the volume rises. It sounds like he found a new video, this one full of a gruff masculinity and a gasping crescendo.

“You like that? You like how that tastes?”

“Ohmygod yes, yes, I love it mmm – ”

Your eyes slip down, demurely, and then with a breath squeeze shut and force yourself lower.

“Mmph,” comes from your lungs, and Eren moans in turn.

Your lips are dancing, tongue licking continuously in desperate sucks down his cock. Eren is breathing shallowly, little gasps coming from him. His elbow angles into the couch, dipping the cushion below you to the side, and you can hear the phone speaker almost directly above your head. He must be staring at the screen, his chest rising and falling rapidly that you can feel through him.

“Yes I love that - oh - fuck me harder - ”

And of your own body, cramped against the cushions and the couch frame? Every time you can tell Eren responds to your motions, you clench the delicate muscles of your cunt – and every time you can tell that he’s responding to the stupid video he’s watching, it makes you rush and pulse. Sweat prickles at your shoulders, across your forehead. Your body is tense with arousal, the groans slipping from your lips aching whimpers.

Actually, some of your sounds might as well be coming from the phone too.

Eren throbs in your mouth, and you force your head all the way down his cock. He hits the back of your throat and you clench your fingers into a fist that scratches at the rough cushions. You inhale, closing your cheeks into a hollow suck and bidding him further down your throat.

“Oh, oh – god damn – ” Eren says, and his voice is absolutely raw. “Oh, fuck.”

“You like that?” the man on the phone says again.

Eren’s thighs turn towards you as you pull yourself up, gasping for breath and trying not to cough. Water pricks at the corner of your eyes. His eyes are low, staring at the screen with a slack mouth and harsh breath.

You lean, lowering yourself again, running your tongue in light agitation over and over his tip again and again before widening your jaws and taking him in again.

“Mmmm,” you whimper in a suffocated tone around him, pushing your hips harder into the floor.

“Yeah, yeah,” Eren groans. “Yeah, right there.”

His other falls hand on the back of your head again – not to push, but, to brace, as you feel his hand steel himself. You take him fully out of your mouth again to lick his length and Eren’s hand moves with you with each dip and turn of your head, hesitating as you take another shuddering breath and then locking in again when you go back down.

You can feel it, you don’t need the cues of the video, or even Eren’s own beautifully desperate voice. He’s close, filling your mouth, your senses, as your hand slides up and over and over where your lips just can’t reach in these faster motions. Breathing is harder, the shallow reserves of air coming shorter and shorter.

“Fuck – I’m gonna cum – ”

The words were the woman’s, not Eren’s, but he groans a harsh, ragged, “fuck” in turn.

He tightens his stomach muscles, turning into a half-crunch as his hips thrust up pathetically, helplessly, in a primal attempt to fuck into your mouth. You’re so painfully aware of your own hips shifting in response, your neglected cunt wet in response as you choke and gurgle sloppily around him.

And then Eren cries out your name, your name so anguished on his lips –

So much sharper, so much louder, than anything you’ve heard come from his room –

The tears stream from your eyes as Eren gives one last thrust of his hips into your mouth. His hand is strong at the back of your head, the taste of him suddenly more and more bitter. It’s something you feel through him. You freeze, your hand holding him and lips sealed around as he comes, hot and sharp to the back of your throat.

“Mm,” you choke.

“Oh, almost, almost,” Eren groans, and tenses out another spurt.

His cock gives a last twitch in your mouth as your tongue gently washes around him as your lips release. You guide him out and swallow again, and again, every last bit of flavor dancing around your mouth.

“Fuck,” Eren says.

Your breaths are a cacophony together.

“Oh – oh – oh!” the artificial orgasm screams from his phone continuously. You clear your throat, and give an inadvertent cough. Eren hurriedly pushes at the screen until silence falls over the room again. He looks at you, and smirks his usual grin, but something about it lacks the familiar sass.

“You know, you look good down there,” Eren says.

A thrill goes through you, and you try to play off the shudder of glee.

“Ew. Cheesy. Stop watching so much pοrn,” you say with a not-too withering glare. You reach behind you, fumbling for his shorts to wipe your lips with one leg, your eyes with the other.

“No,” Eren says, and the word stutters short as he cuts himself off with a deep, sucking breath. You look up at him. And to your surprise he looks so kind somehow for a moment – some innocent yearning beaming in his eyes breaking down whatever walls he’s built around him; walls that you somehow hadn’t realized before now had been carefully kept high and strong.

“I. I want to – ”

And in that moment, the phone rings a shrill tone.

“Oh, shit,” Eren says, staring at it.

“Great timing,” you say as you feel your heart drop into your stomach. “Saved by the bell, you could say.”

“No, no,” Eren says with a sigh and a glare at the screen. “It’s my brother, and – I mean, if he’s calling, it could be important.”

“I get it,” you say, waving your hand and sitting back on the carpet, wrapping your arms around your knees and ignoring both the ache pushing at your cunt and adrenaline racing through your veins. “It’s okay.”

You toss the shorts in your hand at him, and Eren takes them in one hand, absently tucking the phone between his ear and shoulder. It nestles in his hoodie as he speaks a greeting into the phone, eyes settling somewhere in the middle distance. He sits up, feet on the floor, and begins to pull them on.

“Hey, Zeke. What’s up?”

You turn your head, giving him a moment of privacy that feels strangely appropriate, for all of that that just transpired. There’s a groan of the couch cushions as Eren stands. You see his boxers, abandoned on the carpet, and feel an involuntary grin break across your face.

What a turn of events.

You rock forward on your knees again. Eren walks behind the couch, his voice carrying the conversation into the kitchen. You reach forward on the coffee table, finding a mailer advertisement under the dirty pipe, a marker. Flipping the paper over to the blank side, you scrawl a quick message.

It’s harder to stand than it should be. Your bones creak as they unfold from that hunch into the sofa, your muscles and hips weak with desire. But you make it swiftly to the kitchen, where Eren has the fridge open. He leans on the door, phone still in the crook of his shoulder, one sleeve slumped down to his hand and the other still pushed up to his elbow as he unscrews a bottle of cranberry juice. He casts his eyes to you as he lifts the bottle to his lips and drinks, listening to his brother.

All you do is slap the paper to the refrigerator with the first magnet your fingers encounter, and walk to your room without a second glance back.

My turn next.

.

Author's note 2: So I actually wanted this to be MEANER! I wanted MEAN SCUMMY EREN! But I think it ended up being a little soft… and maybe for this, it worked the best? Please please let me know what you think!! If there's interest, I would absolutely do a part 2 in inverse where it's actually Reader being the naughty roommate? :)

[bekkachaos]

✨ Bekka's Buddie Fic Recs ✨

I just thought it would be nice to do some fic recs for some of the wonderful creators in this fandom because there is literally so much talent it blows my mind that these beautiful people are out here giving us pieces of their beautiful brains 💕

Long fics and AU fics

☀️ Kiss Me Before it's Over (if only for a Minute) by @buddierights aka the Baseball AU (Rated E, 54k words). Buck and Eddie are pro baseball players on opposing teams, and Buck never gets nervous getting up to bat, until Eddie Diaz, the new star pitcher for the LA Angels, is standing on the pitcher's mound, and his stomach flips and twists. He's pretty sure it's because he hates the guy, until, you know, he doesn't. {I love this fic, it's such a beautiful kinda enemies to lovers ride that you will love every sweet and sexy moment of}

☀️ Let My Ink Stain Your Pages by @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels aka the Castle AU (Rated E, 107k words). Buck is a professional crime fiction writer in need of a new muse. Eddie is an LA homicide detective, and the last thing he needs is to be followed around by a reckless author. A sexy six foot plus mystery writer who he absolutely does not find charming and attractive. But when Buck decides that Eddie would make the perfect muse for his new book, that's exactly what Eddie gets. {I might have read this fic 3 times, it's one of my absolute favourites and you better believe I will go back and read it again}

Stupid People by @gayhoediaz (Rated E, 160k words). Eddie is new in town in LA, and he's just come to terms with the fact that he's gay. He figures that hiring a sex worker is the easiest way to explore that side of himself and keep it separate from his son and his work, to keep things uncomplicated. And that's how he finds his way to Buck. His plan works, for a while. {This was one of the first buddie fics I read, and it is an epic sexy, moving, emotional fic that I thought about for so long after, honestly I recommend anything that Nie writes!}

Unless You Ask Me To by @elvensorceress (Rated M, 182k words, in-progress). Eddie starts dating a man, and Buck is completely, one hundred percent Fine(TM). This is a beautiful fleshed out journey of a fic. {I believe one of the tags is 'the most oblivious obtuse pining idiots you will ever meet' and the accuracy of this is insane, I can't wait for the last chapter!}

☀️ never felt this way before (yes I swear) by @rewritetheending aka the dirty dancing AU (Rated M, 50.8k words). Buck and his family go on vacation to the 118 ranch and lodge, where Buck meets a number of new people including Eddie Diaz, and he's pulled into the world of the one-eighteen in a way he never expected, and learning to dance from the most beautiful man he's ever seen. {What more do I have to say other than dirty dancing AU? This fic is amazing from start to finish and so so hot!}

Explicit fics

Bases Loaded by @lamardeuse (Rated E, 2k words). Eddie wants to take things slowly, and Buck obliges him. {It's a sexy slow build between the two of them and just sucks you right in!}

More bang for your buck by @prettyboybuckley (Rated E, 14.2k words). Eddie's got a problem with a noisy neighbour, only, he can't exactly confront him because how do you knock on someone's door and say 'you have the loudest sex I've ever had the pleasure of hearing through the wall'? Because it is, a pleasure, the sound of him is just doing things to him. And then he finds the guy's twitter, and then his Instagram, and he is too far down the rabbit hole to back down. {This is hot the whole way through, and Buck testing toys and posting online? Spicy hot content!}

I lit the match, the firemen can do the rest by @honestlydarkprincess (Rated E, 6.6k words). Eddie needs to see Buck, so he drives over to his place to see Buck getting railed by Natalia with a strap on, and he can't look away, especially when Buck comes just by Natalia mentioning Eddie's name. When she leaves, Eddie feels the need to prove that it's even better when he takes things into his own hands. {This is Eddie pining for Buck and then getting to have him, all to himself}

☀️ today I live for a single drop of you by @alyxmastershipper (Rated E, 38.9k words). This is the 5 + 1 blowjob fic, five times Buck dreams of sucking Eddie's cock and the one time he gets to do it. Nuff said {Ryan just has such a beautiful lyrical way of writing that they can make an epic fic about blowjobs poetic, a masterpiece}

More AUs

mark me like a bloodstain by @monsterrae1 (Rated M, 6k words). A fic where your soul marks appear on your skin when they appear on your soulmate, when they are badly injured. Buck's first marks show up in college, and his first thought is that his soulmate is dead. He doesn't figure it out until his best friend is shot in front of him, and then he realises it's been Eddie all along. {I love soulmate fics and I love the shooting arc, and this fic is just so wonderful from start to finish}

and I'd choose you (in a hundred lifetimes) by @monsterrae1 (Rated E, 16.7k words). Eddie and Buck are pen pals when Eddie is in the army, and god it shouldn't have been so romantic, but he got Evan Buckley. And he thought maybe he might just be the person he spends the rest of his life with, until he completely disappears. Four years later, they meet again, only Buck has no idea who Eddie is. {did I include another Rae fic? Yes I did, because this one was just too good to leave out}

☀️ all I know is a new found grace (all my days I'll know your face) by @heartbeatdiaz aka the photographer Buck AU (Rated E, 4.5k words). Eddie is participating in the annual firefighters calendar, and the photographer is stupidly beautiful. Like, crazy gorgeous with big blue eyes and a smile that makes Eddie's palms sweat. {Photographer Buck is just such a beautiful thing to imagine, and honestly you could hit shuffle and pick any of April's fics and you're bound to love it}

even gods die by @kitkatpancakestack (Rated T, 7.6k words). This is quite a heavy fic, Buck has brain cancer and he and Eddie are at a cabin together talking about his diagnosis and how they feel about it. It's angsty with a hopeful ending. {This is a beautiful, emotional fic and it moved me so much to read. Not for everyone, but wow was this amazing}

Fun, Flirty and Fluffy fics

☀️ To have and to hold (what's mine is yours) by @the-likesofus (Rated G, 3.3k words). It's Buck and Eddie's one year anniversary (paper). Eddie gives something Buck has had all along, that last piece of his heart. {This is such a heartwarming Buckley-Diaz family feels fic and made me smile so hard}

Everything But (temptation) and Worth the Wait by @spotsandsocks (Rated T, 4.7k & 5.4k words). Five times Buck is tempted by Eddie and the one time he finally gives in, or, five times Eddie attempts to tempt Buck and the one time it finally works. {These fics are from Buck's pov and then Eddie's, and they were so much fun to read both times!}

smile to hide the truth by @fallingthorns (Rated T, 5.1k words). Eddie is getting married, only it's not to Buck. And Buck should really say something, should have really said something earlier. Because now Eddie is standing at the altar, only he's staring back at Buck and asking what would make him happier. {This isn't exactly fluffy but god the anticipation and the build up to that wedding, and the ending? You won't regret this read, I loved it}

still by @gayhoediaz (Rated T, 9.3k words). Based on an episode of Castle (are you sensing a theme here?) where Eddie steps on a plate in a house where they've just put out a fire, and he just knows that he's stepped on a pressure bomb. Buck refuses to leave him standing there alone while they figure it out, but time is literally ticking for them. {These two just fit the Caskett shoes perfectly, and this was tense, emotional and just a wonderful read}

between who you are and who you could be by @paranoidbean (Rated T, 5.6k words). Eddie is working at a plasma donation centre, and Buck just keeps coming back in, after making an impression the first time by passing out. {This is an adorable meet cute that just made me feel fuzzy inside}

(tell the gravedigger) better dig two by @mysteriouslyyounggalaxy (Rated G, 7.2k words). In which Eddie is buried alive, and Buck loses his mind with worry and grief. Basically a missing part to Eddie Begins. {This was a beautiful exploration of Buck's emotions as he's afraid he's lost Eddie}

I hope you all enjoy these fics as much as I did, just wanted to spread some love and appreciation 💕

[late-to-the-party-81]

Suddenly I see

AN: Thank you nonnie for this request - I hope you enjoy this. I can’t seem to write anything short at the moment!

heyyy, this is my first request, i love your work!! i was wondering if you could do a blind reader or blind OC and bucky barnes. Bucky has been attempting to help her around even if she doesn’t always need it. he keeps trying and it’s dosent really go his way and he keeps just doing the wrong things but they get there and eventually they fall for each other and it ends with them trying to navigate the only thing they haven’t yet, a sex scene. sooo angsty fluff with a smut ending. thanks you much love 💕

This also fills square K2 on my BBB card - Flowers - @buckybarnesbingo

Beta’d by @lunarbuck

Dividers by @firefly-graphics and mood board and banner by me,

Masterlist | BBB Masterlist

Summary: Bucky just wants to help you, but it would be better if he asked you first.

Relationship: Bucky Barnes x Blind SHIELD analyst Reader

Word count: 5.1k

CW: Human disaster Bucky, mild angst, fluff, Nat being Nat, miscommunication, pining, disabled Bucky Barnes, sex with banter (oral - m receiving, unprotected PinV sex)

The first time you met him, you did have to forgive him. 

Most people didn’t know how to react when they met you, not expecting someone in your…position, to be doing the job that you were. For the most part you’d given up being mad about it - people either realised very quickly that your disability didn’t affect your job at all, or they felt the sharp end of your tongue and scuttled off with their tail between their legs, so to speak.

You were busy concentrating when Nat brought him into the room where you were working, but not so engrossed in your work that you didn’t register the arrival of new people. Your fingers were flying over the keyboard, typing out your code, and you knew that Nat would wait for you to finish before introducing you to whoever she’d brought into your sanctum. You pressed ‘enter’ and turned your chair towards her and your new guest, lifting your chin and tilting your head to the side as if regarding them - an action left over from when it made a difference.

“Hey, Nat! Good to see you. What brings you to my neck of the basement? And who’s the fresh meat?”

You grinned at the same time that she chuckled. 

“Do I need an excuse to come and spend time with my favourite Oracle?”

You rolled your eyes at the nickname.

“I’ve told you before - I don’t know the future. I’m an ordinary human, just like you.”

She snorted at that, and you heard her pull over one of the other chairs before she dropped down into it, settling behind your right shoulder as you resumed typing.

“Nothing ordinary about you. And speaking of which, I’d like to introduce you to Bucky.”

Oh! That’s who it was.You’d heard of Bucky, Captain Rogers best friend, released from decades of Hydra brain-washing, but this was the first time you’d been introduced. You spun your chair back towards where he’d been standing when he entered and held out your hand.

“Nice to meet you, Bucky.”

There was a heartbeat of silence, and you heard the tiniest exhale off to your left.

Shit!

“I’m over here, doll.”

You turned your chair more, grateful when Nat moved out of your way, and stood up, taking a step closer to where Bucky had spoken from.

“Well, you move as quietly as they say. Normally it’s only Nat who gets the drop on me. If you hadn’t guessed by now, I’m blind. And don’t you dare say you’re sorry.” You heard Nat’s muffled giggle, confirming your suspicion that Bucky’s mouth was flapping up and down with the apology he was about to make lodged in his throat.

You held out your hand again and gave him your name. “But Nat, here, calls me Oracle, because of my knack of interpreting intel and predicting likely scenarios.” His hand, warm but calloused, took hold of yours and gave it a gentle shake.

“Ummm, nice to meet you, Oracle.” 

You could feel the awkward tension in the air, and you couldn’t help but let out a sigh.

“Let me get this out of the way, and then we can move on, okay? I was born sighted, but was diagnosed with a condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa as a child, which meant that I slowly lost my vision over time. I became completely blind about 18 months back, but I remember seeing. I know what colours look like, animals, etc. I learnt to touch type as a teen, and although my keyboard does have Braille on the keys I don’t really use them. I manage just fine. FRIDAY reads back my code to me, so I can spot errors, I have my cane and I have Jimbo.”

“Jimbo?”

Aha! So the famed former assassin hadn’t noticed everything.

You gave a quick whistle and felt Bucky start as your faithful companion uncurled himself from under your desk where he’d been sleeping and came to stand at parade rest by your right leg.

You crouched down and gave him a pet, and in return he booped his nose against yours.

“This is Jimbo. The best seeing-eye dog ever. Aren’t you, boy? Yes you are!”

You stood back up and made your way back to your chair, Jimbo returning to his sleeping spot now that he realised his services weren’t currently required.

“So that’s me. I’m damn good at my job, and I promise that you’ll never have to worry about any mission information that you get from me. And if you can’t trust me, trust Nat. I’ve never steered her wrong.”

“Ummm. Good to know. I… ummm… if Nat trusts you, then I do too. And it was good to meet you… and Jimbo… but I… uh… gotta go. So… see you later, Nat? And again, nice to meet you, Oracle.” 

His footsteps retreated from in front of you and you heard the sound of the door opening and closing before Nat burst into a fit of giggles. You turned your chair towards her, crossed your arms over your chest and raised an eyebrow at her.

“Really Nat? You didn’t let him know in advance?”

“Hey, it’s not my story to tell, it’s yours. And besides, I wanted to see what you made of each other. Suffice to say, I wasn’t disappointed.”

“It’s a good thing I love you, Nat, otherwise I’d have to sic Jimbo on you.”

Nat moved towards you, and must have crouched down from the way her hand brushed your knee. You knew what she wanted. You scootched your chair back to allow her to reach under your desk. A satisfied huff from Jimbo let you know that Nat had found the sweet spot behind his right ear.

“This sweetheart? I’m more scared of you than I am of him.”

“Damn straight!”

After your less than stellar introduction to Bucky, it seemed that from then on you kept bumping into him. Or rather he kept bumping into you. Literally.

You were making your way back to your office from the bathroom, cane in hand, although you knew the route like the back of your hand, when something caught on the end of it, sending it flying out of your hand. A heavy body then crashed into you, pinning you against the wall.

“Shit! What the fu… Oh. it’s you! Sorry. Sorry.”

Oh, god!

“Bucky… could you get off me please?”

“What? Oh! Yes, yes. Of course… umm.” 

He pushed away from the wall, and you sucked in a deep breath. Boy, was the guy heavy. Part of your brain decided to tell you it was the right kind of heavy. You told it to shut up. 

Bending down you reached out your hand to find your cane, only to find Bucky’s hand - he was obviously trying to help. His fingers closed over yours, and you turned your head upwards in reflex.

“Bucky, you are not my cane. Do you have it there?”

“Yes… umm.. Yes, of course. Let me, just…”

Without any warning you found yourself jerked back to your feet. The sudden movement unbalanced you and your free arm flailed, searching for purchase. Which it found by curling into the fabric of Bucky’s top, bringing you flush up against his chest, pressed to him for the second time in that many minutes. That part of your brain started clamouring for attention again. It was telling you that this was actually quite nice, and that Bucky smelled wonderful. Then, to add insult to injury the rest of your body started to join in, a gentle throbbing starting from between your legs.

Jesus, you needed to get laid, or at least find time to schedule some ‘self-care’, if you were reacting like this to a frankly frustrating man you’d only ever met twice.

You pulled your captive hand free and let go of his shirt, smoothing down your own top to cover your discombobulated state.

“Well, thank you, but I was capable of standing back up myself. I just need you to pass me my cane.”

“Oh, right. Hang on.” You felt the movement of air on your face as he quickly ducked away, and then he was back by your side, pressing your cane into your hand.

“Can I… umm… walk you back to where you were going?”

“Well, I do know where I’m going - I’ve worked here longer than you but, sure, you can tag along. Just going back to my office.”

“Sounds good!”

You couldn’t help but giggle. He sounded like an eager puppy. Maybe he wasn’t so bad… no scratch that…

You were just about to set off walking again, when Bucky threaded your left arm through the crook of his right. You couldn’t help it, you rolled your eyes. It was obvious he meant well, but by the same token, wasn’t used to being around someone with a disability like yours. You lurched forwards as he set off walking, effectively dragging you along with him.

“Bucky! Stop! Wait!” He came to a halt and you bounced off his, very muscular, arm.

“What? Are you okay? Did I hurt you when I bumped into you?”

“No, it’s not that, it’s just that it’s actually harder for me to walk with you pulling me along like this. I need to walk at my speed, and use my senses. I’m a grown woman and perfectly capable of navigating the couple of hundred yards between the bathroom and my office. I do it every day.”

“‘M sorry. I just…” You held up your hand.

“... wanted to help? I get that, I do. But if I need help I will ask for it. Assuming I need help is ableism, pure and simple. I may be blind, but I’m not helpless. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. I’m already behind schedule.”

As you strode off down the hall, your cane moving from side to side in front of you, you did feel a bit bad for chewing him out. He did mean well, after all, but you’d had your fill of ‘helpful’ people - people who saw a problem that they had to solve for you, instead of trusting you to sort it yourself.

Lost in your thoughts you didn’t hear the dejected sigh from behind you.

It would have been alright if that had been the end of it, but it wasn’t. Bucky seemed intent on helping you every chance he could. Unfortunately it just kept going wrong.

Like at a mission briefing when you were making your way to the table. You pulled out your chair and went to sit down, but suddenly it wasn’t there and you were landing on the floor with a shout.

What the fuck?

“Shit, I’m sorry, doll. I just pulled your chair out a bit further to make it easier and…”

You gritted your teeth, trying to ignore the smell of his cologne and what it did to your equilibrium as he helped you back up.

“It’s fine, Bucky. But I was okay.

Like the time he accompanied Nat to see you in your office. He’d said hi, but nothing else, leaving Nat to check some mission intel over with you. But then you heard the tell-tale sound of hands patting thighs, and Jimbo brushed past your legs, followed by the sounds of canine mastication.

“Umm, Bucky… Are you feeding my dog?”

All was silent apart from the sounds of Jimbo snacking.

“Errr…”

You pinched the brow of your nose and tried to ignore the tremors of suppressed amusement from Nat next to you. You strode forward and somehow managed to swipe the offending bag out of Bucky’s hand.

“I thought he might like a little treat for being so good…”

“And that’s very sweet, but he’s not allowed treats when he’s working. And even if he was it’s good manners to ask. He could be on a specialised diet or something. If he gets an upset stomach, not only do I have to deal with being without him while he recovers, I somehow have to clean up doggy diarrhoea, which I can tell you isn’t fun when sighted, let alone blind.”

“Doll, I’m…”

“Yes, Bucky. I know. You’re sorry… You always are.”

You turned your back on him and went back to your chair, tucking the doggy treats into your desk draw and going back to your conversation with Nat. You tried to pretend you didn’t notice when Bucky slunk out. Nat, sensibly, didn’t say anything.

One thing about working for SHIELD was that for those that wanted, you could have accommodation to live in on site. You’d jumped at the chance - anything to do away with an annoying commute. You just had to walk from the main building to the apartment block.

Jimbo sat down at your side as you let go of the handle of his harness, and pulled your key from your purse. You opened the door and signalled for Jimbo to go in, then closed it behind you and hung up your purse, keys, cane and coat, before removing your faithful companions' reflective harness.

“Good boy. You did so well today.”

You walked down your hall and into your open plan living room and then halted as an unexpected smell assaulted your nose.

Flowers?

How and why were there flowers in your apartment?

“FRIDAY!” You called out the AI, a little louder than necessary.

“Yes, Oracle?” 

Damn Nat. And damn Tony.

You let out another sigh. You seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.

“Are their flowers in my apartment?”

“Yes, miss. Roses and carnations. A large bouquet on the dining table. The roses are blush pink and the carnations are red.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“And did Sergeant Barnes put them in here?”

“He did, miss.”

You stalked back towards the door, grabbing your cane, coat and keys.

“And does Sergeant Barnes live in this complex?”

“He does. Would you like to know his address?”

You thrust your arms into your coat and pocketed your keys.

“If it’s not too much trouble, FRIDAY. I need to give him a piece of my mind.” 

“Sergeant Barnes’ apartment is 2C.”

Okay, so one floor up and third apartment along. Not quite overhead of you.

As you opened the door you felt a nudge to your leg. Jimbo.

“Good boy, but stay. I’m sure I can make my way upstairs.”

You gave him a pat and then walked out of your door.

You hadn’t been on the other floors of the apartment block more than a handful of times. Nat always came to you if you organised to hang out, and you worked mostly on your own, not having really made friends with many of your co-workers. However, you found your way to the elevator and rode it up to the next floor.

You knew that apartment C should be the second on the left hand side of the corridor, so you walked along that side, and used your cane to identify the first, and then the second door frame. Squaring your shoulder and mentally preparing yourself, because you didn’t really like confrontation, you raised your hand to knock and brought it down… on nothing.

No. Not nothing. A person. Bucky. You were confused.

“Why is your door open, and why are you standing in it?”

“Heard you coming, doll.”

“Oh…”

You could swear you almost heard the smile in his voice. Shit! Your hand was still on his very warm, very broad chest.

“You wanna come in?”

“What? Oh, yes. Thanks.”

You snatched your hand back to yourself as he stepped back and you walked through the door, using your cane to work out where he was.

“Can I take your coat, and cane? This apartment is set out the same as yours, more or less, and I can help you to the couch?”

“Umm, sure.” 

God! He was being so nice and considerate, which was going to make this more difficult. You could feel your frustrations evaporating by the second, and damn it, you wanted to stay mad.

You passed him your cane and shrugged out of your coat, then waited patiently for him to escort you. He moved to your left side, and this time he waited for you to start walking, gently steering you around his furniture until your hand made contact with the back of his couch, allowing you to find your own way onto it. As you settled onto it, feeling the soft leather under your fingers, you felt the other side dip. Bucky was sitting next to you, on your right, but not too close.

“So, what can I help you with, doll. Can’t say I expected you to turn up at my door.”

“Bucky, you broke into my apartment and left flowers in it.”

“Well, I realised I’ve been a bit of an ass, and wanted to apologise. And you never let me actually say the words.”

You sank back into the couch and mulled on what to say.

“You gotta realise that since I got this diagnosis when I was five, before I even understood what it meant, I’ve had people saying sorry to me all the time, and then trying to help me. Over and over and over. Running roughshod over my autonomy because I happen to have a disability. My brain works fine. I manage just fine. It’s just so frustrating and it’s hard for those without disabilities to understand.”

The silence between you stretched for a few moments, before Bucky started to speak.

“I…” You cut him off.

“Don’t you dare say it!”

Then you heard something you hadn’t before. A chuckle. Bucky’s chuckle. 

Deep. Velvety. Downright sinful.

“Wasn’t gonna, doll. But I did want to show you something, so to speak.” He took hold of your right hand with his own. “Can I?”

You nodded, wondering what he meant, but it all became clear as he raised your hand and placed it on his left shoulder. You could feel the soft cotton of his t-shirt, but where it should have been stretched over his upper arm and bicep it in fact hung loose.

There was no arm there.

Your mouth dropped open and you whipped your head up towards him.

“How did I not know?”

Your words were a strangled whisper, and full of shame.

“Dunno, doll. It’s in my file. Although I do have a prosthetic. A very fancy one at that. It gives me more than normal abilities, but I will admit, like any other amputee, when I get home, I like to take it off.”

“Nat never mentioned it.”

“Like she never mentioned you being blind to me?”

“Oh…”

You didn’t know what to say. You knew what it was like to be bombarded with questions about something so personal.

“Well, if you ever wanna talk about it, you know where I am.”

“I do, doll. One floor down and to the left.”

Your hand was still on his shoulder, and you felt a little awkward.

“I… well… I was wondering, could I feel what you look like? I mean, if you don’t mind?”

He picked your left hand up from your lap and lifted it up towards his face.

“I was waiting for you to ask. Go ahead.”

You placed both your hands on top of his head, feeling his hair. It felt long; tied back.

“What colour is your hair?”

“I’d say brown, but Nat says it’s chestnut.”

You hummed as you trailed your fingers down, finding his brow and sweeping your fingers over his eyebrows and round his eye sockets and cheekbones.

“And your eyes? What colour are they?”

“Sorta blue-ish grey, I suppose.”

There was hair on his cheeks and jaw, long enough to feel soft  against your sensitive finger tips.

You realised you were finding it hard to breathe. There was a tension in the air between you, a tension that you knew had been there from almost the beginning, but that you’d tried so hard to ignore.

Your fingers moved towards, and then traced across his lips. They felt plump, albeit slightly chapped and you found yourself wondering how they’d feel against your own. With your left hand still on his mouth, your right trailed over his chin, feeling a small divot. You smiled as you imagined using it in order to grip him, hold his face still.

You were just about to pull your hands away, when Bucky reached up again, and held your left against his lips, so he could press small kisses to your fingertips. Your breath caught in your throat.

“I’m gonna say it, doll. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was such an ass, and that I didn’t listen to you. I was stupid because I was trying to impress you. I wanted to show you how good I’d be for you, because almost from the first moment we met I was totally enamoured. You’re so smart, and confident, and I just felt useless. And then every time I tried to help I made it worse. Nat had to give me a talking to because I was just making a fool of myself.”

You could feel the heat rising in your cheeks at his words.

“Bucky, I…” but it was his turn to cut you off.

“So, I’m saying sorry, and I hope you can give this one-armed super-soldier a chance to show he isn’t an ableist ass, because I’d really like to get to know you better.”

Your heart was beating so hard you thought it was going to burst out of your chest, and you could no longer resist what your body and mind was telling you to do. You took hold of his chin, just the way you’d imagined a few moments ago, grabbing his attention.

“You’ve frustrated me from nearly the moment we met - I hope you realise that. Gotten under my skin in a way I couldn’t describe. I didn’t know why. Well at least, not at first. Every time I wanted to chew you out, I also wanted to kiss you. For trying so hard and so earnestly, but still getting it so very, very wrong.”

“You could kiss me now?”

Your lips twitched. “Smooth, Barnes. Smooth.”

“I like to think so…”

“Shut up.” You broke out into a full smile as you pulled him towards you by his cute chin until your lips met his.  

It was everything you’d imagined in your private moments. The warmth, the restrained passion. Everything.

Your fingers tangled in his hair, strands coming loose from his ponytail. His arm was wrapped around your waist… and when and how had you ended up on his lap? You didn’t care, you just wanted him to keep kissing you. When he finally pulled his lips from yours you ducked your head down to his neck, wanting to keep any kind of connection. It was like a dam had burst and you had no way of stopping the flood.

“Doll, you gotta stop. Please. ‘Cause I’m dying here.” He was panting. You could taste the sweat on his throat, feel his pounding in his chest, feel the firmness at his groin.

“You really want me to, Bucky? Or do you want me to help you dig your grave?”

“Oh, fuck, doll!”

In one swift movement his arm shifted to cradle your ass and he stood up. Your legs clenched around his waist and your arms went around his neck.

“I got you. I got you, doll. Just moving somewhere more comfortable, if that’s alright with you?”

“Sure is. I need space so I can ‘take a look’ at the rest of you.”

It was only a short walk to the bedroom, and he placed you, oh so reverently, on the bed. You pulled your top over your head and shimmied out of your work pants.

“I have no idea if this underwear matches - I was in a rush this morning.”

There was a rusting sound and the mattress dipped. Bucky took hold of one of your left hand and pulled it down so you could touch his, now bare, chest.

“You look like a million bucks, doll. Now, I gotta warn you. I got some pretty ugly scarring going on here.”

You brought your right hand up, and lightly stroked over the left side of his chest. You felt the edge of the scarring that started just above the nipple, raised and hard, which led up to cool metal which covered all over the shoulder area.

“Is this what your prosthetic attaches to?”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, when it was first done, the people doing it weren’t concerned with the aesthetic of it.”

“Good thing I’m blind then. I don’t care.”

Bucky let out a bark of laughter.

“You’re incredible, doll.”

“And so are you. Now lie still, so I can take a good look.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Your hands roved over the rest of his body, feeling where his chest hair grew in patches around the scarring. When your palms brushed over his nipples he gasped and you felt him shift beside you. Impishly, you did it again, grinning when he let out a warning growl.

You took the hint, however, and continued your explorations, discovering the solid plains of his abdomen and feeling the strength within his core. No wonder he’d been able to lift you so easily, even with the help of his super-soldier serum.

When you finally ‘saw’ his cock, your hands gently learning the size and shape of it, every vein, every sensitive part, you heard his laboured breathing as he tried to control himself under the sweet torture of your touch.

“You’re so pretty, Bucky. I wonder how you taste?”

You bent over, and licked a stripe up the length of him, revelling in the sound of his indrawn breath. It had been a while since you’d been with anyone, but muscle memory was your friend. You traced the contours of his cock with the tip of your tongue, tasting the sweat, the musk, the essence of him, before taking him into your mouth.

“Oh, God! Doll! I wasn’t lying. You’re killing me!”

You pulled off him with a pop.

“Don’t resist it, Bucky. Give yourself over to ‘le petit mort’.”

You returned to ministering to his cock, sucking strongly on the tip of it, while stroking the shaft with your hand. You teased his slit with the tip of your tongue, then swirled around the head. His whole body was trembling with tension and you could feel how wet you were, how aroused you were by the power you held over him.

“Doll, I’m gonna cum! Fuck!”

You wished you could see Bucky’s face as he came, but instead settled for reaching up to twine your fingers with his. When his hips twitched under you, you hollowed your cheeks, and took him as deep as possible, moaning low in your throat as he spilt down it. 

You continued to suck and stroke him through his orgasm, until he shifted under you, sitting up and dragging you up his body. You straddled his lap again, pleasantly surprised to realise he was still hard, pressing up against your heated core. He kissed you, licking into your mouth, either not caring about or enjoying the taste of himself on you. His hand pulled at the fastener of your bra, but this was obviously something he couldn’t do one handed, so you reached behind you, quickly releasing the offending garment and discarding it.

“I need you, doll. I need to be inside you.”

“Please! I need you too!”

You didn’t want to pull away from him, even to remove your panties, so you pulled the flimsy fabric to the side, before taking hold of him and guiding him to your entrance.

Bucky let out a gasp and fell back onto the mattress as he started to slide into your heat. Your hands went to his chest, looking for stability and leverage as you moved yourself up and down, drawing him into you, inch by glorious inch.

It felt so fucking good! The stretch, the slight burn. And you were also certain that it wouldn’t matter how long it had been since you’d last had sex, this, with Bucky, would still be mind blowing. His hand was on your waist, helping to keep you stable as you moved. You were so fixated on how he felt inside you, that it took you a few moments to realise that he was talking to you.

“You’re fucking glorious, you know that? I swear, tomorrow we’re gonna do this when I have two arms and I’m gonna take you apart. ‘M gonna fucking feast on you.”

You laughed and tossed your head as you continued to ride him. “Is that… fuck!... a promise?”

“Sure is! Gonna help you remember what stars look like.”

“Get that hand on me and you can help me now!”

“Yeah? You close, doll? I fucking hope so, ‘cause I swear ‘m gonna cum again, any second.”

Bucky moved his hand from your waist, sliding it between you and searching for your clit. You gasped, the bundle of nerves so sensitive, so engorged you knew it wouldn’t take much to make you…

You let out a loud whine, your body clenching down on his cock and your fingernails curling into the flesh of pecs as the pleasure washed over your body.

“That’s it, baby. That’s it. Fuck! So beautiful when you cum. Gonna fill you up… you’re gonna have me leaking outta you for days…”

His words were cut off, becoming a shout as he came. And, fuck, he hadn’t been joking. You could feel him pulsing inside you, feel the warmth of his cum filling you, and then leaking out of you, coating your thighs. It felt as though your orgasm just kept going as you rode out the aftershocks, jolts of pleasure continuing to shoot through you, just as you thought there couldn’t possibly be any more.

Eventually they stopped and you slumped forward onto Bucky’s sweaty body. His arm came around your waist and rolled the pair of you to lie sideways on the bed. Your eyelids drooped; you were so tired. You desperately wanted to sleep but…

“Jimbo!”

You tried to sit up, but Bucky urged you back down.

“It’s okay. You sleep, okay, doll?” I’ll pop down, take him outside then make sure he has his food, yeah? Then I’ll be back, ready to sleep next to you, all night long. That sound alright?

You smiled softly, high on dopamine and sleepy as hell.

“Sounds perfect, Bucky. Thank you for helping.”

“No problem at all, doll. No problem at all.

Tag list: @jobean12-blog @bucky-bucky-bucky-bucky @tuiccim @yarnforbrains @sidepartskinnyjeans @flordeamatista @krissy25 @bodeckersdiamonddoll @goldylions @luxeavenger @wheezy-stucky @doasyoudesireandlive @chemtrails-club @seitmai @peaches1958 @pono-pura-vida @writing-for-marvel

[blackseafoam]

These Wells Are Dried

Part 1 of 2

Next

The Red Lantern is a story I rolled up with The Broken Cask self-guided rpg book. It’s about an inn on the edge of a barren wilderness, owned by a "grumpy on the outside, soft on the inside" half-elf (Nicco) and run by his staff (Arturo, a human ranger and Elleh, a gnome bard). I highly recommend the book! It is so fun, and it got my confidence way up for DMing and creative writing.

The setting is based on the high desert and shrubsteppe of Eastern Washington and Oregon, a very special place.

whumptober 2024. Day 04. sunburn l healing salve l heatstroke l "if my pain will stretch that far"

WC: 2445

SFW no warnings really just peril, bad decisions, and someone almost dies

The high plain’s summer race was brutally hot this year. So bad that many participants had scratched before the starting gun even sounded, despite having trained years for this moment.

Nicco knew his horse could handle it. Cataldo was made for this weather, and the two of them had braved worse together. If anything, the severe heat wave would give them a competitive edge. 

Each year, the Red Lantern Inn hosted the race as one of the checkpoints as well as the first aid headquarters. The famous location had been run by Nicco’s family for generations. The rustic wood paneled operation was self-sustaining, being this far out in the shrubsteppe wilderness. Despite the remote location, travelers came from all over for the experience. Not only was it a place to see riders coming and going, it boasted famously delectable dishes, had quaint lodging, and a haunting bottomless spring in the cellar with healing properties.

The spring had always been open to the public, until five years ago. Nicco had boarded up the cellar and magically sealed the door with no explanation. Since then the inn had lost a good chunk of business, making the High Plains Horse Derby a crucial opportunity to catch up on profits. 

The starting line was twenty miles east of the Red Lantern. Where the tall ponderosa pines on the edge of the nearest mountain range offered the last shelter any of the riders would see for days. From this spot the high desert stretched out below, rolling hills stretching out until they became flat plains far beyond.

Nicco trotted Cataldo in the nearby clearing, a race veterinarian standing by to assess the beast’s gait. A horn rang out. Ten minutes till start. The half elf secured his long black hair into a ponytail and checked his pack one last time. Water was a concern, but he knew this land well, probably better than any of the other racers. Several springs along the way should be his saving grace, so he skimped on water. His gaze drifted up to the other riders heading for the starting line, heavy water skins bouncing with every stride. Nicco would make do with just two. He knew this land, it had always cared for him, and he for it. It was a risk, but calculated. 

Riders stood abreast at the line drawn in the dirt at their feet. The fresh scent of pine needles crunching under hoof perfumed the air along with the excitement and adrenaline of three dozen horses and three dozen riders. Nico patted Cataldo’s already sweating neck, a confident smirk gracing his face as he made eye contact with the rider next to him, who was ogling at Nicco’s lack of waterskins. 

The chatter grew more quiet as the three minute flag holder ran across the field.

The race marshall began the count down.

“TEN, NINE, EIGHT…”

Nicco ground the balls of his feet into the stirrups, heels down.

“...SEVEN, SIX, FIVE…”

He choked up on the reins and flexed his elbows.

“...FOUR, THREE…”

He shook a stray hair out of his face.

“TWO”

Breathe in.

“ONE”

Breathe out.

BANG. The starting gun went and so did thirty six horses. In an instant, Nicco positioned himself up in the saddle, taking his rear off the leather. As everyone around him whipped and kicked, he simply gave Cataldo the space to do what he did best. 

Run.

-

“He’s here!” Arturo leaned out the window as he watched the telltale dust cloud of a group of riders nearing. They were just dark shapes, peeking in and out of view as they traversed the low hills and short sage bushes. Elleh put down the dish she was cleaning and ran to the door. The two of them jogged to the checkpoint station to cheer for their boss. As they neared they saw his waterskins were shriveled, completely empty, his face was flushed red. 

“Nicco are you okay?” Elleh was immediately concerned. 

“Quite fine, Elleh.” He dismounted as the race volunteer signed him in. He leaned closer to her and Arturo “First spring was dry, but it was the smaller of the three.” He said in a hoarse whisper, his lips were severely cracked already. “The next one will have water."

Arturo hummed doubtfully “We have extra water bladders, Ni–”

“NO.” Nicco cut him off. “If you help me I’ll be disqualified, remember? I’ll just refill here, and the next spring is 10 miles away.” He stormed off, leading Cataldo to a cooling off station. Arturo cast Elleh a worried glance, she shrugged and went back inside. When Nicco was cranky AND set on an idea, there would be no convincing him otherwise. 

-

The next spring was dry. 

Nicco tried digging into the cracked earth but it was no use, the deep-rooted plants bordering the basin had already begun to whither and drop their seeds. He bit his thumbnail as he decided what to do next, he looked over at Cataldo. The horse was absolutely drenched in sweat, and they still had a long way to go. He weighed his remaining water in his hands. Surely the next spring, the largest one will have water. With a decisive nod he lowered his hand and mounted again. 

The heat had become even more unbearable as the day wore on. It made Nicco feel like he were fermenting from the inside, sticky sweat clinging to every inch of his skin, nausea creeping up with every stride of his mount.

-

Seven miles further, with 25 more to go. Nicco left the marked trail once more, to find his secret spring. He followed a small gravel line to a low spot behind a hill, anxiously leaning forward to see what awaited. 

A basin of dust. 

Panic immediately rose in the half-elf’s throat. He most certainly was not going to make it to the finish line, that much he could decide right then and there. He had gambled and lost, but what was worse is that Cataldo was an equal in these consequences. He dismounted, wringing his hands and looking at his steed. Taldo probably looked better off than he did. Being a thin-blooded desert horse, he could withstand the lack of water if Nicco was careful. 

He had already given all of his water to the horse on the way here, with a pinch of salt for electrolytes, but Nicco hadn’t had anything to drink but one sip on his way to the second spring. He scratched at his beard nervously one last time, still looking around at the ground as if water would spontaneously erupt out of the earth. There was only one thing to do, head back as efficiently as possible. The rider undid his top wrap. He would share his sun protection with his horse to hopefully save on sweating. Upon remounting, he tucked one end of the fabric into the browband of the bridle, between Taldo’s freckled ears. Then he took the rest of the fabric and tucked it into his belt, creating something of an umbrella for the nag’s neck. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do. 

Nicco chirped and squeezed his legs ever so slightly, sending Cataldo into a trot, the most energy efficient way home. Immediately, he could feel the heat of the early afternoon sun begin to prickle his exposed chest, shoulders, and back.

-

A cowbell rang on the west corner of the inn, the cooling station volunteer had been instructed to ring it upon anyone returning to the checkpoint, alerting the staff and medics to prepare for something to potentially be wrong. 

Elleh and Arturo, in the middle of serving food, hurried to the windows along with most of the guests. The cowbell hardly ever went off, but this was the third time they had heard it today, two other riders had scratched out of caution for the heat just an hour ago.

“Can you see the rider?” short-statured Elleh couldn’t see past the crowd, and began to make for the door.

Arturo squinted and craned his neck, “It’s Nicco.” He looked back at her with wide worried eyes. Elleh burst out the door.

Elleh was concerned by Nicco’s sun-baked face before, now she was horrified. Nicco swayed on the saddle as he came in, eyes half-lidded and red, red like the rest of his blistering skin. His black hair was plastered to his forehead, neck, and shoulders with sweat. He swayed harder as he slowed Cataldo to a walk, leaning forward and gripping the front of the saddle, his wrap top that had been protecting the horse’s neck fluttered to the ground. The tiny gnome rushed toward the pair “NICCO!” Arturo was right behind her. The station medic was already on the way as well, and the three of them helped Nicco down. 

“All dry.” Nicco huffed as Arturo supported him, the half-elf’s hand still gripping the saddle. His skin looked an awful lot like the rotisseried pheasants they served in the winter time, blistered and charred deep red.

“Damn it Nicco…” Arturo began to pull him away. 

“No… Can’t leave… Dissqualiff’d” Nicco slurred as he gripped the saddle harder. 

“Boss, your race is over.” Arturo said gently. “We have to go inside, now.” The burly man could feel heat radiating off Nicco’s body like a cast iron pan. He reached out and broke Nicco’s grasp on the saddle. He muttered and protested the whole way to the aid tent as Elleh hurried the horse to the shaded stables.

The race medics had already been prepared for dehydration, heatstroke, and sunburn as the number one concern of the day, but did not expect to see a case this bad. Nicco had been sick, twice, in the short walk to the tent, in between incoherent complainings. Arturo was basically dragging him by the time they got him to a cot, and deposited his lanky figure onto the frame like a dead fish. 

-

Nicco’s blank mind didn’t even try to figure out where he was when his eyes squinted open at the gently rustling canvas ceiling of the tent. He had been drugged by an angry customer once, and that was the first thing his mind went to as he felt like his whole body was made of fog. Like how he imagined performing “misty step” would feel, if he knew any magic. He heard a gentle scratching sound above his head, he tried looking up to see, the cold rag on his neck sliding off. A tiny arm caught it before it tumbled off the cot, and placed it back in its place. Elleh’s rosy-cheeked face came in to view, tight with worry, she set her sketchbook on the stool she’d been sitting on and kneeled next to her boss. Her friend. His eyes started to close again.

“Nicco.” She whispered, she would shake his shoulder, but it was the worst burnt part of him and covered in a strange mint green salve. Instead she reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Nicco.” She said a bit louder. 

His eyes opened a little wider now. Some of the fog had lifted and he could comprehend more of the space now. The little gnome was grabbing his hand, it felt nice. He squeezed it back weakly. He took stock of his surroundings, he was on a hammock-like cot, with naught covering him but his underpants and a few cold wet rags draped over him strategically. Several potions and a canteen sat on an empty stool by his feet. 

“It’s bad Nicco.” Elleh frowned. She was never this serious, something was very wrong. “You almost died.” She barely choked out the words while her eyes went glassy. Nicco was still confused, why was she so upset? He hadn’t seen her cry since the first day he’d met her. Elleh was supposed to be the uplifting one. 

“Cataldo…” Were Nicco’s only muttered words in response. 

A flash of frustration heated Elleh’s sorrowful expression. “Your horse is fine Nicco, you gave him all of your water!” She shook her head, then got serious again. 

She hesitated. “Nicco… you have to unlock the cellar. The medics… they said you could have permanent internal damage.” 

His eyes shot up at her with that all too familiar stubborn look. He shook his head as much as he could before he was too dizzy after two shakes. 

“Whatever… whatever it is, Nicco. Whatever it is you won’t talk about. It isn’t worth this. Please, you’re not thinking clearly. Just tell me how to open it. You could die.” She was begging now, having pulled his hand to her chest and squeezing it even tighter. “Just this one time, then we can lo–” She stopped talking when his dark eyes locked with hers, his cracked lips parted to speak. Nicco rolled over and was sick on the ground at the bard’s feet. Elleh released his hand to grab a nearby bucket, patting her boss on the back as the only secrets he let out were what he had for breakfast that morning. 

-

Nicco fought the severe burns and inflammation for days after, the main medic stayed long overdue her contract to tend to him. Arturo offered to call in someone else so she could get home, but she declined, she had to see the job through. A cleric happened to be passing through the second day and treated the innkeeper to the best of his abilities. Nicco fully woke up the next day, to his caring employees again begging him to open the cellar so he could use the healing waters. He simply shook his head, voice too hoarse to respond. 

Once the boss was semi-ambulatory, the medic left, and he sulked around the inn like a lost ghost. Elleh and Arturo constantly fussed over him to stop moving around. He insisted at least to sit in the kitchen to oversee things, but never lasted long. It was only when he was snoring like a bugbear in his seat that Arturo would force him to go to bed. Nicco was unusually quiet for weeks after, clearly hiding his pain from his doting employees, who were also his closest friends. He laid in bed and tears ran down his blistered cheeks once he was alone. They cared so much for him, care he in no way deserved. He could feel his body not working like it should, the horrifyingly abstract wrongness of it. The magical healing of the cellar pool could help immensely… NO. He buried the idea as quickly as it sprouted. No one could go down there ever again. He wasn’t even sure if he could remember how to break the magical seal anyway. He would take his suffering as long as he could, would he die for his secret? Undecided. He drifted off to sleep. 

--

Author's Note:

I've been so excited to share this! I was struggling to come up with an actual story for these characters until I started writing for this prompt. The second part will show up later for whumptober :)

I just gave it a final edit and I'm so glad I wrote this when it was actually hot out because I would never have thought of some of the descriptions otherwise. I've never actually gotten heatstroke but came close when I went to Pompeii in August a few years ago, that place is like a huge brick oven that is also a maze (but also full of really cool stuff). I fell asleep in the taxi home and woke up on the Airbnb couch, whoops! Stay hydrated, gamers.

[timtrent]

Kept it to myself

Stolen goods taste better

so I gobbled them all up on the bus from

Canoga

I didn’ t want you to fret

Fell flat on my face

Such a disgrace to the family

I know one song-

that's all I know

no one saw me standing there 

With egg on my face

“It wasn’t my time” You guessed

I’m always late

I missed my train 

Too late for my fate

It will have to wait

The man that time forgot

the time that man forgot

it’s too late! How many times do I have to tell you

He's gone to bed, so tomorrow he’ll be here

so there's nothing left for you to do so just go 

He’s not here! just go 

On the ground?

Its a wood  floor he said

Knotty pine, it splinters my mind

it's OK.

it’s bedtime

it's a bad time.

“Now is not a good time.” Cheri says 

“Stick to your line. If you want them to go, you gotta have u

your phrase so they don’t go craze. 

"No matter what they say" Cheri continued-

" Mine is : Now is not good time."

Don’t elaborate, don’t give them what's wrong or they will solve.

"Now it’s not a good time, I don’t why, it’s just not"

That's why I kept it to myself.

that way, there's no way to tell, if I was joking or stern

“I don’t feel comfortable.” I’d say if things had not gone my way

“I don’t know why I just don’t feel comfortable" I repeated

"Get your shit together and go. Now is good+

I won that time.

otherwise my actions are called out

Affective disorder

That’s what this ghosting is all about.

One sings,  the other doesn’t

The gingham suit she bought for a penny, a tie that I found in the alley, a pair of socks I got from the booster I met on the bus bench 

Besotted, unspoken, misanthropic .

It was on a Saturday.

“In the afternoon. Ya know kids were playing outside 

I didn’t know where to go”

Mom said,

“My cleaning ladies coming tomorrow”

“Maybe you have a brain tumour ” the Cop in charge said. 

i passed out at the wheel crashed my Benz into 3 parked cars,  I went to the Travelers lodge to meet up with from the bi bodyguard from Torrance I met in a zoom room

before he sent me off to CVS to get the Gun Oil,

“And can you get some lube…” I’ll reimburse you 

The wind didn’t back down like I did 

when the shit hit the fan 

in the sleazy dive I went down rust water from the low flow shower head 

My feet were my bed 

the plans in my dead head brain

I  totalled a fender bender  then dismantled 

I was infant, still wet with brine, that night turned to day, I woke up next to this hairy ape, with his plans his scams ,his meandering rants

“What’s the fate of an airy fairy quite contrary- nothing out of the ordinary or extraordinary 

The judges sealed the case, so homeless bound was my fate. Out on the street, my Aussie and I, wandered away wobbled on the cobbled steps, On the asphalt, its all my fault, forgetting family who prayed together to the  patron saint of blame  “it’s your own fault” dressed for regret

[hamishpetersen]

Belly full of green

Text commissioned for the exhibition Belly full of green by Caitlin Clarke at Hot Lunch Gallery, Ōtautahi Christchurch, 18 June–3 July 2021

Text on Instagram here:

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Documentation images here:

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Dear C,

A greasy seam is sewn in the dewed yard. Hedgehog Way. It’s 7:18am and I’m greeting the hens. I wiggle the feeding bucket’s nipple and lodge a chickweed bundle under a brick. This is my time with the past before today begins. I stare at the wet mulch. I see soil-ordinary nothing. I see all the pits people have dug in this soil: midden, kiln, kumara... Maybe if it had never been drained to build roads it would have one day resembled a peat bog: mattressed with moss and heather. So I listen to the stories you tell with your hands to braid yourself back; Neolithic memory humming; immigrant weeds singing in the pot; a shadowed need for old relations; a gift of new language.

*** The ground itself is kind, black butter. [1] 

***

“Could you conjure a church?”

Yarrow asks, in reply to the woman now rolling about on top of them. Weeks ago, she asked Yarrow about the stories in the ground around these lowlands, and how to hear them: the chorus of navigators who’d each found their way up this estuary at different points in the double spiral of its memory. She introduced herself as C. A weird name.

“Well, we need somewhere to gather and listen together.” Says Yarrow, “So maybe make something of hay and mud, or wattle and daub? Maybe we just find the five biggest rocks within rolling distance of this old swamp, bury a third of each in the sandier soils, backfill, and put the biggest on top. Call it a dolmen.”

“Or” C adds, “should we go cottage-core and reassemble that falling-down worker’s hut in a sunny spot and scatter-sow hollyhocks, and foxgloves, and batchelors’ buttons? Or, I know, I’ve got an architect friend. How ‘bout we ask them to draw up something modular with an outdoor kitchen and a bunk house for friends to stay in. We could start a vlog about it and run a PatreonTM to pay the engineers, and pile-drivers, and bristly electricians...”

Some of the geese have gathered and are shaking their heads, sharing glances and knowing brows. A moment passes. Others join.

C brushes her palms across the tops of her tarpaulin thighs, getting the picture. She leans forward on two tree knots and stands, putting one wet leaf palm against her lower back, and then the other. Schlup. Schuup.

“Alright, yeah, good point.” Yarrow breathes out, thinking, “That was close, almost lost another one.” And puts on an encouraging look: five tiny white petals around a domed arrangement of pollen receptors and nectar teeth.

C turns back around to the small assembly.

“Right then, it’s agreed: our church will swallow us and be made of us, house and require us, ingest and digest us. Finally, a place to be together in some mycorrhizal chorus of sensation and story. But it’ll be no bigger than you, y’hear!”

Hedgehog nods, smiling a pine needle grin.

“It should be just big enough to fit the congregation of clovers,” C continues, “So we’ll use those 110ft scots pines over there, let them sit in the river till soft as black pulp, pack them into woven willow, and clear these old pioneer trees to make ash for the potato drills and to glaze the goblets. I don’t think the market will ever recover this time, so let’s not worry about the depreciation of attached dwellings like these. We’ll insulate it with ryegrass in April and wash its walls in kelp slime to keep the rain out. That sounds better eh?”

Walnut drops from the canopy in affirmation. The assembly has grown.

“But where?” C asks.

On an incoming wind, the Harakeke raise their precise voices to the group,

“We know how these soils slip around here. If you can help us keep our rito safe from those steel predators, we’ll send the kōmako out to sing you to the sound places for your structure. There are only a few spots down here where we would all have enough soil around our roots and be woven tightly enough by those last kahikatea to hold us all together, to sing at once under a single roof. Just ask, and we’ll tell you what’s needed.”

A sweet old peach rustles a round of applause and mumbles underleaf to its neighbour,

“I wish that rumply old couple had listened to those folks when they planted us in this slump in 1949. My boots have barely had a breath of fresh air in all those 130-something years!”

C thanks the stand of harakeke and takes another plotting pace in algal galoshes, then back again in sappy clogs, plan crystalising while turning a chestnut and two acorns over in her paw.

There’s an urge to begin in pricked ears and cocked beaks held around the yard. Piwakawaka winks and does a kickflip. The assembly seems to be in agreement. Convivial chatter and planning rises amongst the stray cats and buried family dogs, budgies, and chinchillas. C gets to work drawing up plans with the ants.

“Engage bug mind,” they say. And C sinks in. 

***

Then he is standing very still, concentrating, rocking on the breeze, and he wriggles his fingers and there are hazelnuts. [2]

***

She gives me slushy tiles and bursting stones. Overflowing geology. Extrasensory archaeology. Blinded by the city, we look for miner’s lettuce and ploughman’s luck. But it’s too early. Or all gone. All I can do today is sit near and watch your back. You cast the space between your fingertip and nail in earthenware and ironsands to record who happened there. What was left and what you made from that. It’s warm to the touch now: bleating, bloated, bleeding, beating. Stained grass windows in the last light of the day.

*** My body is the tent of my body And dwells here on earth 

Among us [3]

* * *

1. Seamus Heaney, “Bogland,” Opened Ground (London: Faber & Faber, 1998), 41.

2. Max Porter, Lanny (London: Faber & Faber, 2019), 202.

3. Tusiata Avia, “Apology,” Fale Aitu (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2016), 59.

[xtruss]

The site in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where Robert J. Oppenheimer and his team developed the First Atomic Device in the 1940s is now a United States National Historic Park. It includes structures like this replica of the campus’s main gate. Photograph By Brian Snyder, Reuters/Redux

Trace Oppenheimer’s Footsteps, From New Mexico To The Caribbean

The Father of the Atomic Bomb Chased History—and Then Ran From It. Here’s How to Visit Places Important to the Influential Physicist, Including a U.S. Virgin Islands Beach.

— By Bill Newcott | March 06, 2024

As Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer reintroduces the “father of the atomic bomb” to audiences, there’s no better time to hit the road and retrace some of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s most momentous steps—from New Mexico, where the physicist’s dream of a nuclear weapon was realized in the Manhattan Project; to a Nevada testing ground, where his worst fears about the bomb were demonstrated; to a remote Caribbean beach where he could, at last, quiet the demons that haunted him.

Los Alamos: Birthplace of The Atomic Bomb

The Gadget, as the first atomic device was called by its creators, was born not at Trinity—the New Mexico desert site where it was detonated—but about a hundred miles north, in the sleepy mountain town of Los Alamos. It was there that Oppenheimer, who’d spent some of his teen years in New Mexico, commandeered a former boys’ school as his base of operations.

Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project campus, now a national historic park, is virtually unchanged from his time.

Strolling along the tree-shaded “Bathtub Row”—so named because these were the few houses on campus equipped with full baths—I walk past the squat bungalow Oppenheimer shared with his wife, Kitty, and their two children. At one end of the street, I nearly brush shoulders with a pair of life-size bronze statues: Oppenheimer—resplendent in his famous wide-brimmed hat—consulting with the project’s military head, General Leslie Groves.

Beyond them I push open the door to Fuller Lodge—the former school assembly hall, now an art gallery and community center—and I am transported into the most riveting moment from the film Oppenheimer.

You remember it: Following the bombing of Hiroshima, the scientist stands before a stone fireplace in this room and gives a victory speech to the Los Alamos staff. But even as he mouths words of triumph, Oppenheimer privately suffers searing visions of the devastation the bomb has caused.

And now, here I am, standing before that same fireplace, facing the long expanse of the room’s ponderosa pine walls and timbered ceiling. It is not hard to imagine Oppenheimer at this spot, in awe of what his team had accomplished in three short years; horrified by its implications for the rest of human history.

Trinity: Site of The First Atomic Blast

Most of the year, Trinity, the site of the first atomic blast, is still an active tract of the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico. On two special days, however—usually the first Saturday in April and the third Saturday in October—the U.S. Army hosts a Trinity Open House. (Due to what the U.S. Army called “unforeseen circumstances,” the 2024 April Open House has been canceled).

On those days, vehicles with plates from Alaska to Florida line up at the White Sands Stallion Gate, then bounce the 17 miles south to the circular chain link fence that encloses the spot where Oppenheimer’s Gadget ushered in the atomic age. They park in a seldom used lot and enter through a narrow gate, approaching the stark, black monument at the circle’s center with almost visceral solemnity.

Even in spring, it’s kind of hot here in the treeless, open-air oven the Spanish conquistadors called Jornada del Muerto (Journey of the Dead Man)—but not as hot as it got at precisely 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945, when a fireball half as hot as the surface of the sun scorched the earth of this basin.

Tourists at the White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, check out an example of the “Fat Man” bomb casing, built to contain a nuclear device. Here at the remote Trinity site on July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project successfully detonated the first atomic bomb. Photograph By Martin Specht, Agentur Focus/Redux

The 100-foot tower on which the Gadget was mounted is gone, but the Trinity crater remains: a broad, surprisingly shallow, plate-like depression. At its greatest depth the hole that Trinity punched into the desert floor measures only about 10 feet. The 100-foot cushion of air under the tower prevented deeper excavation.

“As a reminder,” a guide tells a clutch of tourists, “you are not permitted to remove anything from the ground.”

“Anything” would be samples of trinitite, the glass-like element that was created in the bomb’s searing blast.

Trinity is the main attraction on visitor days, but the curious can hop a bus to a small cabin, the old Schmidt Homestead, about two miles from Ground Zero. It was here, in the former dining room, where Oppenheimer supervised the final assembly of the Gadget.

With its bare walls and polished floors, the empty house looks as benign as a fixer-upper awaiting a redo by a resourceful real estate agent. But it’s not hard to imagine the team of scientists, just days before the blast, gingerly piecing together the Gadget: A sphere of 32 little bombs surrounding a softball-sized ball of plutonium.

All 32 bombs would be ignited simultaneously. And then, literally, all hell would break loose.

Nevada Test Site

After the war, the U.S. government continued to test nuclear devices of ever more harrowing capability—first in the Pacific, and then at the Nevada Test Site, about a hundred miles north of the then backwater gambling town of Las Vegas. (On the 26th floor of Binion’s Gambling Hall in downtown Vegas, you can still dine in the restaurant where tourists once watched their “Atomic Cocktails” slosh back and forth as nuclear tests made the building sway.)

There is no indication that Oppenheimer ever set foot on the Nevada test site, where more than a thousand descendants of the Gadget were detonated over a span of three decades. Still, the site is essential to Oppenheimer’s story in that it represents his worst nuclear nightmares.

“If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world…then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima,” he declared in 1945.

A hundred miles North of Las Vegas, the Nevada Test Site is where the U.S. and Britain continued to test Nuclear Devices after World War II. The ​site is open once a month for a free tour. Photograph By Karen Kasmauski, National Geographic Image Collection

“Basically, Oppenheimer was against nuclear testing post-Manhattan Project,” says Joseph Kent, deputy director and curator of the Atomic Museum in Las Vegas. “He felt the Manhattan Project was necessary, but when they started working on the hydrogen bomb, which was much more destructive, he wasn’t comfortable with that.”

We’re standing in the lobby of the museum, now in its 25th year, just a few blocks from the excess of the Las Vegas Strip. Near the door rests an enormous, bulbous “Fat Man” bomb casing, built in 1945 to contain a nuclear device like the Gadget I saw in New Mexico.

Primarily, the Smithsonian-affiliated Atomic Museum serves as a visitors center for the Nevada Test Site, officially known as Nevada National Security Sites (NNSS). Thanks to the museum’s continuing relationship with NNSS, once a month a busload of 50 or so history buffs leave from the museum’s parking lot to begin a free eight-hour tour of the site.

It begins with an hour drive up US 95, a trip that vividly explains why the site is here: The landscape is a mix of wide, flat valleys, perfect for bomb blasts, interrupted by occasional mountain ranges that would discourage unauthorized watchful eyes.

The highlight is a visit to Sedan Crater: a 300-foot-deep, 1,200-foot-wide crater blasted out by a 104-kiloton bomb to see if nuclear devices could be safely used to dig canals and sea ports. The answer, apparently, was “no, they can’t.”

Your guide will take a group picture at Sedan and send it to you later, but that is the one and only souvenir you’ll get: On the Nevada Test Site tour, you can’t take home rock samples and you can’t bring your camera along.

“Oppenheimer Beach,” St. John, USVI

On the eastern shore of Hawksnest Bay in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, a low-slung white structure sits on the broad, sugary sand. The building is a community center, but until just a few years ago, before a hurricane swept it away, a tidy wood cottage crouched there. It had been built in the 1950s by a quiet man who periodically arrived with his wife and family, keeping mostly to himself. In his later years, this is where Oppenheimer escaped the stresses of a world he’d helped create. And Hawksnest Bay is where he and his wife had their ashes spread out.

The sun sets over St. John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Oppenheimer and his wife and family spent time at a cottage here on Hawksnest Bay in the 1950s. Photograph By Michael Melford, National Geographic Image Collection

Today, locals call the spot Oppenheimer Beach.

Walking this beach, Oppenheimer could wish away the daily reminders of a nuclear arms race, far from the politicians who had exploited his genius to build the bomb and then, as the Nolan film portrays, turned on him when he expressed regret over his accomplishment.

On St. John, “no one was going to harass him,” local historian David Knight, whose parents house-sat for Oppenheimer during his absences, told the BBC. “No one knew who he was or cared.”

[saetoru]

#𝐈'𝐌 𝐇𝐎𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐘𝐎𝐔'𝐋𝐋 𝐊𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 (𝐈'𝐋𝐋 𝐊𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐎𝐎)

☰ SYNOPSIS ⋮ he doesn’t make a lot of good decisions, but ran thinks threatening you with a gun was one of his better ones. or basically haitani ran slowly falling in love with you every time he climbs through your balcony

— pairing ⋮ haitani ran x reader

— length ⋮ 10.6k words (my fault boss)

— contents ⋮ nsfw and 18+ content, fem! reader, mentions of blood, drugs, and violence (bonten activities), strangers to lovers, bonten! ran, jealous! ran, kind of slow burn-ish, mutual pining, stab wounds (on ran), med student! reader, he threatens you with a gun to patch him up rip, fingering, gun play, edging, dacryphilia, handjobs, unprotected sex, creampie, praise, pet names (princess, doll, pretty girl)

— notes ⋮ this is the most cliche thing i’ve ever written—and i’ve written a lot of cliche things. but i wanted to write at least one cliche gangster romance. ty ris and cat for hearing me ramble about this and reading over it ily <3

the first time ran comes to your apartment, it’s by mistake. he’s got a stab wound to his arm—from who, he doesn’t quite know, but he’ll sure as hell find out eventually—and a couple of cops tailing him. he doesn’t know what else to do but climb to the first-floor balcony of the apartment building behind him. 

your first-floor apartment’s balcony, that is.

scaling up the wall and climbing over the railing is easy enough, he’s got a great build and even better athletic ability—although, it does leave a searing sting in his wound and a throb up his arm that makes him stagger for a moment. and then he crouches under the little table you’ve set up for reading—there’s not much fresh air or wowing sights to intake in this side of the city, so all it’s really good for is to sit down and read at sometimes. 

he hears the cops turn the corner, listens as their footsteps pound against the sidewalk as they run, and then he grins to himself when the sounds become more and more faint, and it becomes more and more apparent that he’s lost them. he waits one more moment before standing—because being in this game as long as he has, with a name as big as his, he knows that being messy is nothing if not a gunshot to your head and the rest of your affiliates being  tracked down. so he waits a few minutes, chuckles through a gritted jaw from the pain at his victory, and he stands. 

and then he comes face to face with you. 

you stand there, staring at him through the glass with your mouth agape, eyes falling immediately to the blood on his arm and the small knife lodged in the skin through his sleeve, and you tremble. and now he’s doomed because you’ll scream, the cops will come running, and there’s no way he’s gonna scale back down in time to run away—nor does he think he has the stamina anymore. so he does the one thing he’s good at. sweet talk. 

and by that, he pulls out his gun and holds it to your forehead through the glass door—with a smile, though, that’s the part that makes it sweet. 

“alright, listen here woman. i won’t shoot your brains out if you don’t start causing a scene. deal?” he raises a brow, and you look almost like you’re seconds from taking the gun from out of his hands and pulling the trigger on yourself. it almost makes him feel a little bad. 

almost. 

“i-i…d-don’t worry, i’d never!” you quickly stumble over your words, frantically trying to persuade him you’re not going to make things worse and he won’t have a reason to splatter your brain all over your room for your family and friends to find. “i d-don’t even…it’s not like i care! you can do what you want,” you chuckle nervously, “seriously, i don’t judge. i’m totally not a judgey person, really. no tattling to any cops here,” you even make a show to zipper your mouth shut with your hand and throw away imaginary keys.

he almost snorts. to be quite honest, you’re kind of cute— in a pathetic and weak kind of way. and you seem to be trying to convince yourself more than him that you’re not a threat, but still, he lowers his gun. 

and since he’s not exactly known for being a good man—which is not without reason, either—and because he argues to himself he’ll never see you again and it couldn’t really hurt, he taps against the doorknob with the head of his gun. 

“open this door,” he demands, “unless you want me to shoot at the knob and let myself inside. then i won’t be nice, though,” he smiles with sickeningly faux sweetness. if he shoots at the door, the cops will definitely find him, and then he’ll definitely get caught. not before he’d have managed to kill you though, but something tells him knowing you’re dead won’t really make jail all that more enjoyable for him. 

but it doesn’t matter anyway because the threat is enough that it makes you gulp before you move to unlock the door. 

“p-please don’t hurt me, mister,” you sniffle, opening the door as you stare at him with watery eyes. 

ran doesn’t kill strangers, and he certainly doesn’t kill women and children. not that you know that, of course—and not that you have reason to believe it either. he’s sure you’ve spotted the bonten tattoo on his neck by now, and he knows it doesn’t really paint a great image for him in your head. bonten isn’t exactly known for having morals—however loose they may be—that leaves women and children out of it. but ran and rindou come to an agreement at young ages that the two of them would live by that rule, even if any organization they join doesn’t.

“i’ll let ya off the hook if my wound’s cleaned and my stomach’s full,” he spits—he doesn’t really talk to people this way, that’s more rindou’s style. ran is a bit smoother, purrs out saccharine words. the first thing you learn in this line of business is that drugs are easy to mask under sweet, sugary tastes. one wrong move and that drink you’re offered is the reason you’re tied up with a pistol pressed to your skull. that’s how ran likes to go about business, so sweet and undetected, the pistol is pressed against the back of your head before you even have a chance to realize it’s coming. 

“i don’t…i haven’t m-made dinner yet—”

“then you better get cooking,” he chuckles condescendingly, tapping his gun to your arm. you whimper in fear, and he almost feels remorseful…until his arm throbs again, worse than ever this time. he lets out a low groan in pain, hissing as he stares down at his injury, trying his best to assess how bad it is—until you reach forward and catch his attention. 

he takes a step back, and instinctively holds his gun up until you hold your hands up in surrender. gulping, you fumble over your words again. 

“i can…umm, i work in a hospital,” you say quietly, “i just…i can treat that,” you point to his arm, “it doesn’t look too bad, so don’t worry.”

ran stares at you for a moment in disbelief—how can someone so close to passing out, who stumbles over their words so much, work in such a stressful place under such pressure? but he counts his blessings and simply nods. 

“kay, get to it then, i don’t have all day.”

“it’s uh…it’s night,” you whisper, and then your eyes widen before you sputter. “s-sorry, i just…i have an awful habit of like…you know, being too literal when i’m nervous. my boss, she uh, she hates it. well, i think she hates me in general, but i—”

“you talk a lot,” he says bluntly, “it’d probably get you killed by now if it wasn’t me.”

“oh,” you squeak. this time, he does let himself snort in amusement. “my bathroom is this way,” you point to the door on the opposite side of the room. he waits a moment, watching as you simply stand before raising a brow. 

“feel free to lead the way.”

“oh, right!”

——

in your defense, you didn’t think someone would climb onto your balcony the same second you come home from work ready to cry your eyes out. whoever said get a job and be self-sufficient and work to be successful and be a woman-in-stem and all that other bullshit being a good idea was a liar. you are not defining your own future—because at this rate, you’re not even sure you’re gonna live long enough to have one. 

either the stress will cause you to drop dead in the middle of your shift or the lovely gangster man who forcefully broke into your home right before your breakdown will kill you. whichever comes first, your money’s on either one. 

you don’t usually act this pathetic. usually, you just bite your tongue and hold onto the long thread that is your patience. but this man has caught you in a very bad moment with a very bad situation and well…you’re only human. 

so you may be making a tad bit of a fool of yourself, but he seems to be decently approving of your actions if he’s whistling behind you as you gather the first aide kit in your bathroom. 

“tiny bathroom you got here,” he mumbles, peering over your shoulder as you gather disinfectant, and the bane of his existence—needle and thread to do stitches.

it causes you mild irritation because really, who does this guys think he is? he trespasses onto your property (it’s rented, but that’s not the point), interrupts your mental breakdown, holds a gun to your head, enters your home, demands your services and food, and now he’s nitpicking over the size of your bathroom? you almost wish the stab wound was over his heart and not his arm, just so you can tell him there’s nothing you can do and watch him bleed out over your sink with your own two eyes. 

but then there would be a dead corpse in your bathroom, and explaining how that got there would be an entirely new problem, and you’re not sure an aspiring healthcare professional can afford to have a smudge quite like this one on their record. so you keep yourself levelheaded—but that doesn’t mean you can’t be at least a little petty. 

“i’m a medical student,” you huff, “you try paying for a large bathroom and tuition.”

“touchy subject, huh?” he chuckles. ran glances around some more—there’s a towel with stethoscopes on it by the sink, he eyes it with an amused look. 

“that was from the hospital i work at,” you mumble when you notice where his eyes have wandered, “they gave those in a bag as a little welcome gift. i thought i might as well use it instead of buying one myself, you know?”

“right,” he nods, biting back another laugh, “saving money. i like it, it’s financially responsible.”

“it’s a cute towel,” you huff, pouting slightly. when you’re not nervous and seconds from passing out from fearing for your life, you’re funny, ran decides. in an unintentional, rambling type of way. it’s kind of cute, but also entirely too naive—which is dangerous in a city like this.

“it is,” he nods seriously—because really, it kind of is. the stethoscopes have hearts on them. “so, what made you decide to be a med student? you love people? wanna be a hero? you have a passion for helping those who need—”

“i didn’t know what else to do,” you shrug, “so i picked it, and now i’m in too deep to back out.”

that’s not the answer he was expecting, but somehow, he likes it better than his guesses. it’s not that disgustingly self-righteous talk of giving back to the world or doing good for others he was prepared to hear. and in a world that doesn’t offer any good, he’s glad you’re not naively handing it out for free. 

“so how—”

“give me your arm,” you cut him off, and now there’s a completely new side of you that he’s seeing—which is funny considering he’s known you for five minutes tops, but by now he’s seen you go from terrified to bashful to now serious. he figures this is the work side of you, the side that actually does seem equipped to shoulder working at a hospital—he has to hand it to you, you seem quite suited for the field. 

“here you are, milady—ow, fuck, that shit stings,” he hisses, clenching his teeth as you pull the knife and begin to clean the wound. 

“for someone who’s in the most feared gang in the nation, you’re kind of a pussy when it comes to injuries.”

“the fuck did you just call me?” he growls, sweat collecting on his forehead as he lets out labored pants. now it’s your turn to chuckle, and ran decides that since your laugh isn’t the ugliest, he’ll let this slide. 

that and his arm really fucking hurts. 

“i said you’re pussy when it comes to injuries,” you grin.

“not takin’ shit from the same woman that cried like five minutes ago. please don’t hurt me, mister,” he mocks, voice turning a pitch higher to imitate your voice as he fake sniffles to reenact your moment of weakness. rolling your eyes, you shoot him a light glare. 

“they don’t hold guns at my face in the hospital,” you grumble, “excuse me if i was scared. and you aren’t the nicest when asking for help, you know. a please and thank you can take you a long way.”

“spare me,” he grumbles, “pleases and thank you’s don’t do shit in my line of work.”

“well, your line of work is what made you hold a gun to my head in the first place, so i already hate it.” he laughs—genuinely this time. not because you’re helpless or because you’re so awkward it’s entertaining. you pull a real laugh out of him this time, and it’s a boyish one, a bit too charming for someone who can kill you in under five seconds.

“true—”

“okay, done.” you interrupt as you tighten the stitches and tie the knot. he flinches a little as you pull on the thread to tighten your handiwork before registering what you just said—done.

“already?”

“aw, did my company entertain you enough to keep you distracted?” you tease. he realizes now that he’s been so busy bantering with you, that he doesn’t even realize you’ve started stitching him up, let alone finished. he has to admit, you’re definitely cut out for your job, even if you really don’t seem it at first.

“don’t flatter yourself, doll,” he grunts, letting you wrap his arm as he looks off to the side. now that he’s not worrying about the hunk of metal sticking into his flesh anymore, he’s a lot more aware of your proximity as you finish patching him up. 

it’s oddly comforting—he’s never really been patched up in a small bathroom with cute stethoscope towels. usually, it’s in bonten hideouts, with people they’ve hired to take care of injuries like this. that or he does it himself, he’s figured out how to treat at least a few injuries after all these years. but he’s never had someone so close in a setting that’s almost domestic, never had anyone hum as they clean up the medical kit, never had someone who pokes their tongue out a bit when they’re concentrated. 

but before he can internally curse himself for letting him enjoy something a little less rough than what he’s used to, you’re interrupting his thoughts. 

“so, dinner and then you’ll leave me alone, right?” you raise a brow. obviously, you’re not too keen on keeping him here for long—and that’s probably for the best, he rationalizes. 

so with a scoff,  he stands, shooting you a small glare. “nah, forget it. i don’t need dinner anymore.” you blink before furrowing your brows, and he walks towards the door. he stops for a moment before just barely looking over his shoulder to cast you a glance. “thanks for fixin’ up my arm.”

———————————————

for a while, you’re mildly offended he skipped dinner after he already got free medical service from you. arguably, if you had charged him for either, you’d have made a decent number off of the stitching, and you can’t help but roll your eyes that of course, he didn’t choose to bail on the more pricier of your (forced) free services. plus, he’s left drops of blood on your balcony that you had to scrub at and rinse away.

what an asshole. 

but still, a part of you kind of wishes maybe he’d have stayed for dinner—which is crazy, absolutely foolish. but he wasn’t bad company…at least when he wasn’t threatening to kill you, of course. and he didn’t even tell you his name, which you were kind of hoping you could ask over dinner. not because you wanted to get closer or anything, just that you feel it’s at least courtesy to tell someone your name after you trespass, threaten to kill, and then break in and demand help. 

really, he’s such an asshole. 

but life goes on, and you return to your shitty job with your shitty hours and your shitty boss. and it’s all back to normal for maybe…one week—and really, you probably should’ve figured that an encounter that’s as downright cliche and out of a novel as that one would lead to your life being anything but normal afterward, but for a small period of time you really let yourself believe. 

he’s back in one week with that grin on his face that makes you want to smash your head against the wall. and, because he’s just that taunting, he has the audacity to tap against the glass of your balcony door with that damn gun of his again. 

“i don’t suppose you’re here for a free physical now too, are you?” you huff as you open the door, making him grin at you widely as he lets himself in. he seats himself on your bed, spreading his legs widely in a way that almost seems inappropriate. he smirks a little when you quickly look away. “unfortunately this is not a free clinic.”

“i did not want a physical,” he chuckles, “but if you really wanna do one on me that bad, i won’t say no—”

“i’m calling the cops,” you spit. he only lays back against your mattress, hands behind his head as he snorts in amusement. 

seriously, how much of an asshole can a guy be?

“i’ll just shoot you,” he shrugs. “i’ve shot people for less.” somehow, the last part doesn’t feel like a lie, so you decide to drop the topic all together—you don’t really want to test the theory of whether or not he really will shoot you.

“what’re you here for,” you squint, crossing your arms and tapping your foot against the floor at him like you’re waiting for an explanation he owes you. your ability to have so many personalities is truly astounding, ran thinks, you’re almost completely different from the sniffly and petrified woman he met just a week ago through the glass door—except you’re still kind of trembling from a distance away, a distance you seem keen on keeping.

“for dinner, of course,” he grunts like it’s obvious. “i had to cut our last date short, but i did say dinner was part of the deal. otherwise, i’ll just have to shoot you,” he says with a dramatic sigh. it almost makes your vein pop—of course, he picks the time convenient for him to snatch a dinner out of you, and of course, it has to be the night you decide to buy more pricey items from the grocery store to treat yourself for once. 

you’re almost certain that his bank account has more than enough funds, and even if it doesn’t, he really isn’t someone people would deny free services if they want to live—you can attest to that yourself, so you can’t imagine why he can’t just get dinner elsewhere. but still, you sigh before you let your shoulders slump and your arms drop to your sides. 

“it was not a date,” you firmly remind him, “but fine,” you grumble. “but the deal was dinner—and then you have to be out of my hair for good,” you warn. 

“of course,” he grins, winking at you. 

it’s not all too convincing, but you sigh and nod anyway. 

——

the rest of your apartment is just as small and cramped as your bathroom is, ran notes this almost instantly. it practically feels like the size of a storage closet in the bonten mansion, but he doesn’t tell you that. he might be a gangster, but he’s still got some manners in him. 

still, something about the little throw pillows you pile on the couch and the small glass figures you have on the tables makes him feel a bit more at home here than he ever has in the mansion. it’s small and cozy and it has what it needs, nothing more and nothing less. 

he likes it—thinks the couch might be a perfect spot for him to nap on occasionally. but just as the thought trespasses his mind, he shoves it back out with a frown on his face. he cannot be daydreaming about napping on your couch. 

“dinner almost ready?” he asks impatiently, head on his arms as he has them folded over your dining table. you chop vegetables and scowl, throwing him a dirty look as you scoff. 

“dinner doesn’t happen in ten minutes,” you roll your eyes. he mumbles something under his breath and you move back to chopping vegetables—and then you ask the question you’ve been waiting to ask. “what’s your name?” 

“what’s it to you,” he raises a brow. 

“i scrubbed your blood off my balcony floor, let you point a gun to my head multiple times, cleaned and stitched your injury for free, and now i’m letting you eat my dinner. you can either pay me the bills for your maintenance or you can tell me your name,” you snap, making his eyes twinkle with amusement as he gives you a lopsided smirk. it grates at your nerves, makes you want to grab him by his lilac hair like it’s the scruff of his neck and toss him off your balcony. 

but he hums before shrugging, “guess you’re right,” he admits. “haitani. haitani ran. you?”

“what’s it to you,” you mock his earlier statement, and he rolls his eyes in a way that can almost be described as fond. 

“i like to at least know the names of the people i shoot in the head,” he teases, and you contemplate if you’d be able to aim straight for his heart if you threw your knife at him right about now. but once again, that probably would end with a tarnished legal record, and you don’t really want to watch all your hard work wash down the drain for a man whose hair looks like he showed the Trolls movie poster as his reference photo. instead, you just huff and mutter out your name for him, which he repeats quietly as if testing the sound as it rolls off his tongue. 

“i’ve heard your name on the news,” you add, “you sure do have the cops running in circles for you, haitani ran.”

“‘s not like they’ll ever catch me,” he shrugs, “and if they get close, it’s not like they ever live long enough to get any closer.”

“that’s very reassuring to hear,” you say sarcastically, but either the sarcasm flies over his head, or he simply doesn’t care to acknowledge it. 

“no worries, i’m not getting caught any time soon,” he drums his fingers on the edge of your table, throwing you a cheshire grin as you toss the vegetables in the pan and stir. 

“very glad to hear that,” you scoff. 

“i’m sure,” he hums, chuckling lowly, “more dinners i can keep you company during.” 

you throw him a warning glance, making him turn away with a grin as he whistles. it gives you deja vu to the night in your bathroom, which almost instantly springs on a headache. in fact, you think ran might as well be a living, breathing, walking headache. 

“the deal was that you’d spare me and leave me alone if i cleaned your wound and fed you dinner. you never said anything about this being a regular thing.”

“well, that’s why you gotta read the fine print, they always got catches in them,” he retorts, and now you’re really considering throwing your knife at him. at this point, you don’t even care if it lands at his heart—as long as it lands somewhere. 

“there’s no fine print in a verbal agreement, asshole,” you spit. 

“i whispered it,” he winks, “it’s basically the same thing.” 

you’re starting to see why the police want to lock haitani ran behind bars so much, this man can’t possibly be allowed to wander freely amongst others—he’s horrendously bad for physical and mental wellbeings. 

———————————————

ran likes your cooking. it’s hearty and homely and tastes like something you’d make on a budget—but it’s still good and that’s why he likes it. 

it doesn’t taste like the expensive stuff he always eats, he doesn’t eat simple dishes too often—in fact, he can’t remember the last time he even had something simple to eat at all. it must’ve been back when he was younger, when he and rindou lived off of cup ramen and other snacks all the time, when they reveled in being able to eat all the junk food in the world without being told no. but even then, ran never got to eat a real home-cooked meal very often, and your cooking satiates a certain type of starvation he still suffers even after living such a lavish lifestyle. 

so he returns every once in a while, joins you for dinner as he sits at your tiny dining table and watches you cook, lets you complain about your boss and your patients and your classes as you add spices and stir the pot. he laughs, makes a joke or two, which then, of course, makes you laugh too, and he thinks he can get used to this. 

eventually, he starts leaving cash on the counter before he leaves to make up for all the extra grocery shopping you’re now doing to feed two mouths instead of one. he quietly leaves it there before you can say anything, and after a few back and forth arguments, you finally just let it be. if he could, he’d fund for you to move to a nicer apartment, something bigger, somewhere safer and a shorter distance from your work, somewhere where the balcony of your room isn’t just good for reading, but for some fresh air and a nice view of the city. but he knows you’ll never let him, and he doesn’t dare offer.

a short while after that, he even starts helping around the kitchen—which mostly only means he washes dishes and taste tests for anything the food might need because he’s not much skilled in doing anything else. but it’s nice, you form your own rhythm together, and it almost feels like he’s a well-knit piece to your carefully woven life. 

and he doesn’t threaten to shoot you anymore—even if he never really meant to in the first place. he ends up changing phones often, being in a criminal organization means he has to use burners left and right, but he always sends you a text every night he leaves and signs it with a water gun emoji. 

the first time he signs off with it, you tease him. great emoji for a gangster, you send, and you giggle when you all but imagine the scoff you know he must’ve let out. not my fault there’s no real gun emoji, he sends you back. it becomes a nice added bonus you look forward to with each visit. 

that, and getting away with making him do your dirty work. 

“ran, make yourself useful and help me carry these,” you point to a pile of books by your door. he raises a brow, staring at them like they’re too suspicious for him to touch. 

“what'dya need that many books for?”

“to study,” you scoff, rolling your eyes, “they just got delivered and they’re heavy. and seeing as you had no trouble climbing my balcony with a stabbed arm, you’re strong enough to lift these,” you point at the pile. he rolls his eyes and scoffs, but still, he reaches and easily lifts the pile that would take you maybe three trips on your own. 

“already got me being your little maid, huh?” he mutters, “washing dishes, carrying things around, what’s next? you gonna make me do your plumbing too?”

“can you do plumbing?” you giggle, “because then—”

“not happening,” he snorts, “nice try though, princess.” he sets the books down by the desk in your room, turning to flick the tip of your nose gently. it makes you crinkle it slightly before swatting his hand away. he thinks you look cute like that, nose crinkled and a soft grin tugged at your lips—blissfully unaware of how good you look. “you really need all these books to study? why can’t they just teach you the shit in class instead of makin’ you buy all this.”

“it’s additional aid that’s optional,” you inform him, like it’s common knowledge. but then again, you don’t think haitani ran is the type of guy who spent most of his time in school, let alone worrying about higher education. “but that almost always means it’s gonna be on the exams, so then it’s not really optional anymore,” you grumble. “college is a scam.”

“that’s why i just steal,” ran grins, “didn’t need college to pay my bills.”

“so then how do you have that cash you insist on leaving me for the groceries?”

“i steal that too, princess,” he snorts, “unless we get it from shit we sell—usually that’s stolen too.”

“i’ll stick to college then,” you mumble.

“probably for the best,” ran nods, almost a little too seriously. you raise a brow, and it makes a smile tug at his lips before he finally lets out the chuckle he’s been trying to fight back. “you would probably start cryin’ and turn yourself in after the first day.”

“would not,” you scoff, “i’m not stupid.”

“right,” he grins. “well, i’ll be on my way if that’s all the maid work ya need me to do for today. i’ll swing by tomorrow and—”

“oh, i won’t be home tomorrow,” you hum as you straighten out papers on your desk. he tilts his head, furrowing his brows a bit in confusion—and slight disgruntlement. 

in all honesty, he shouldn't be this irritated that you have your own plans and your own life, you really only see ran once a week—sometimes less than that if he’s exceptionally busy, or you’re loaded with work and school. but he can’t deny that there’s just a small bit of him that’s irked that your free time isn’t only reserved for him, even though he knows it’s highly irrational. 

“and why not?” he asks, trying to mask the unimpressed tone his voice desperately wants to lace with his words. 

‘because i—” you spin, to face him, grinning widely, “—have a date. and he’s cute. and,” you drawl with a sing-song voice, “he’s smart.”

“smart,” ran repeats. the word tastes acrid on his tongue. it fuels something in him that doesn’t come out too often, a part of him that’s hungry for something worse than a petty fight. something purely dangerous and purely violent—something ugly that only shows up when he’s in charge of taking down a traitor, or rindou’s been messed with, or he’s been disrespected by a subordinate. 

“yeah,” you nod, and you giggle—like he’s your friend and you’re telling him about some schoolgirl crush on the playground. he clenches his fist. “he’s really smart,” you say excitedly, “it’s really hot.”

“right,” he spits. “well, you have fun with that. i’ll see you…” he hesitates for a moment, trailing off before he ultimately doesn’t even care anymore, “i’ll see you when i see you.”

“what does that mean—”

the door to your room is closed shut, and a moment later, so is the front door. you stare at the spot he stood at just a moment ago in confusion, sitting in silence for a few moments before shrugging and turning to your textbooks. 

it’s alarmingly difficult to focus when you don’t get a text signed with a water gun tonight. 

———————————————

smart. 

the sound of your voice repeating that one word replays on his mind on loop—and he’s sick of this track, has been since he first heard it.

haitani ran is a lot of things, but he supposes smart isn’t one of them—which isn’t to say he’s stupid, he’s just not an academic guy like your supposed date. it makes his fists clench because he basically (sort of) has a domestic little life with you, and some asshole with a perfect gpa is pulling giggles out of you without even trying. ran would love to see the look on this guy’s face when he finds out that you and ran cook together—even if you do most of the cooking and all he really does is wash dishes. and he especially wants to see the look on the guy’s face at the fact that you make his favorite for dinner every time he visits. 

and at this point, rindou thinks everyone in bonten can tell something’s eating away at his brother, it’s crystal clear. it’s extra evident today because rindou is almost never the voice of reason, it’s always ran.

except right now—right now, haitani rindou is the voice of reason, and it’s alarmingly out of the ordinary. 

“bro, i think the guy’s had enough—”

“shut up, rindou,” ran grits, his baton slamming away at the very disfigured face under him. blood paints the concrete in splatters, and at this rate, rindou thinks the man’s face and the sidewalk might just become one with how violently his brother is thrashing away at the man’s head. 

“dude,” rindou tugs once at ran’s shoulder, and almost too easily, he’s able to pry him away. ran should never be this easy to pry away from an opponent. he casts a slightly concerned glance at the older of the two before he pulls ran to his feet and raises a brow. “the fuck’s gotten into you?”

“what do you mean? i’m fine,” ran grunts, spitting a mixture of blood and spit on the ground, rubbing away at the spot on his jaw where he’d been punched. it’s unlike him to start fights through hostility, ran has a charm to him that rarely lets things escalate unless they were meant to be escalated from the start. he sweet talks his way through any and everything, doesn’t involve himself until he absolutely has to—he never instigates a fight that lands him getting the first punch. 

“yeah, sure,” rindou scoffs, “fuck you. tell me or i’ll wrestle it out of you,” he threatens. 

“you won’t beat me,” ran raises a brow. in a way only a younger sibling can get away with, rindou flashes his brother the brattiest grin he can manage—which is rather bratty for a grown man in the largest criminal organization in the country.

“yeah i would,” rindou snickers, “you’d never hit me back. now what’s up your ass, bro?”

on any other day, ran would throw a (very soft) punch to his brother’s shoulder to prove rindou wrong, but he doesn’t care to at the moment—which only concerns rindou more. sighing, ran runs a bloodied hand through his hair. the sting of his knuckles reminds him of you, how you’d scoff as he holds them up at you, how you’d make some snide comment about your apartment not being a clinic and your services not being free, how even despite that, you’d carefully cradle his hand close to you as you’d clean the dried blood and disinfect the busted skin, how you’d stick your tongue out in concentration while ran would smile at the sight. 

and for a moment, it really hits him how much you have someone like him softened up for you—and that might be dangerous, but he thinks the even more dangerous part is that he doesn’t find it in him to care. 

he wants you, and whatever means he has to go through, ran thinks he’ll do it to have you. but he doesn’t think there’s anything he can really do, no matter if he uses his gun or baton or fists, if you don’t want him back. 

“is this to do with that girl?” rindou asks bluntly. throwing his brother a dirty look, ran scoffs as he shakes his head. 

“no, it’s nothing to do with that girl,” he grunts, “and she has a name.”

rindou snorts, looking his brother in the eye with amusement on his face that makes ran scowl. “yeah right,” he rolls his eyes, “that’s about as likely as this guy’s nose not being broken,” he deadpans, gesturing at the unconscious figure laying on the ground a few inches away. 

“man, fuck you,” ran clicks his teeth, letting out an irritated huff before looking off to the side. it’s quiet for a moment before he finally grunts lowly. “fine. she’s got a date,” he mutters, barely audible. 

rindou must hear it though because he offers a slow, sympathetic nod as he takes in the words. 

“damn, sounds like it sucks.” ran almost wants to scoff at the words. you think? he wants to spit, but he doesn’t have the energy to start an argument. “you should probably…i don’t know, maybe just tell her how you feel?” rindou raises a brow. he’s judging ran a little bit, he can feel it.

now ran really does want to start an argument because who does rindou think he is, acting like this is as easy as he thinks? 

if it were that easy for ran to admit he cares, he wouldn’t let you walk alone from work to your apartment at night on this side of town just because it saves you a bit of money. if it were easy, he wouldn’t let your boss take advantage of you to work hours you don’t want to work when he could easily drop in a little threat. if it were easy, he wouldn’t let you go on a date with a smart-ass know-it-all who probably lives off trust funds and his parent’s money on a joint bank account—even if ran is a wanted criminal and isn’t much of a better option. 

but it’s not easy. and he doesn’t quite know how to tell you no one can touch you as long as he’s around, that as far as he’s concerned, no one can give you what he can as long as he’s around either—and he should be the only one that can actually stick around. 

“shit’s not that simple,” ran spits. and once again, rindou is alarmingly the voice of reason—twice now.

“could be,” he shrugs, “if you just grew a pair.” 

the man on the ground groans slightly, and ran swiftly gives his crotch a kick before walking off. 

———————————————

the date was boring. you don’t talk to the guy again.

but more importantly, ran hasn’t shown up in about three weeks. that’s twenty-one days. five hundred and four hours. a number of minutes you don’t feel like calculating—but you know the number is high, and you’re mad. 

you’re mad the first week because you brought a bunch of groceries to try a new recipe. it was good, and you think ran would really like it. you think he must be busy with whatever work a criminal does, so after waiting a while and realizing he’s not showing, you pack it up nice and tight in a little container, write his name on a sticky note, and after much contemplation, you add a small heart next to his name with a smiley face in the center. he doesn’t show, and eventually, you eat his portion for dinner before it goes bad. 

you’re mad the second week because you’ve got loads to tell him, and he’s not here to fucking listen. your boss has been promoted, which means you have a new boss, and this one is finally a reasonable one. you’ve also found out your final replaces your lowest exam score for one of your classes, and you’re thinking about saving up to buy your professor a cruise ticket for his kindness. and now that your semester is almost over, you’ll finally have a little more free time. ran needs to hear all this, and you’re increasingly irritated he’s not here to poke fun at your “mundane” joys as he grins against his glass before taking a sip. 

by the third week, you’re mad because you’re hurt. it’s apparent by now that haitani ran, the asshole who broke into your apartment and threatened to shoot you in the head, who not only got free medical services off of you but also free dinner a number of times, who made himself a part of your life against your will by incessantly tapping away at the glass of your balcony door no matter how long you try to ignore him, is avoiding you. he’s avoiding you, and it’s starting to leave an ache in your chest he never should have the opportunity to leave. and now you’re mad because not only has he hurt your feelings, but also because you’re foolish and naive and all the things he called you before for falling in love with someone like him. 

so you curse his name, wipe your tears—you refuse to admit you cried over him, so you tell yourself it’s just stress from work and school—and you sit down at your desk to do some studying. you are defining your future, even if it’s one overpriced textbook and one underpaid work shift at a time. 

but then there’s a tap at your balcony door and you almost contemplate calling the cops. but like clockwork, before you can even realize it, your feet are padding against the floor as you walk to open the door. 

“stupid fucking haitani ran,” you mutter, “doesn’t he know i’m fucking studying? and i fucking hate him?”

he has the audacity to scowl at you through the glass when you pull the curtain of your door—if you stood a chance against him, you’d have killed him by now. 

“well that only took forever,” he grunts, “hurry the fuck up, it’s cold out here.”

“you can freeze then,” you spit, crossing your arms. “because this door is staying closed,” you say firmly.

“then i’ll fuckin’ shoot the doorknob in and let myself inside, you choose,” he glares at you, and because he’s an asshole—because he always has been an asshole, he pulls out his gun. “then i won’t be so nice when i come in,” he offers you a faux grin. 

“then do it,” you raise a brow. 

for a second, he’s shocked. he didn’t think you’d actually challenge him—and you’d win this challenge of course, but still, he didn’t think you’d actually do it. 

“open this fuckin’ door, princess,” he squints his eyes at you. 

“where have you been, haitani ran?” you don’t back down. your hands are on your hips, your brows are furrowed and your lips are curled into a frown, and you’re calling him by his full name like you mean business—and it all means you’re mad at him, and he should apologize. 

but all he can really feel is a tad bit excited because that must mean you missed him. like his absence meant something to you like it meant something to him. 

he grins, you scowl deeper, and he grins a bit wider at that. 

“oh is that it?” he grins, “did you miss me, princess? is that why you’re mad? you defini—”

the door opens all too quickly, and you’re coming forward with a finger prodding at his chest accusingly as you glare at him—face to face this time with no glass separating you. 

“listen here, you asshole—”

you’re cut off by a kiss. haitani ran has the audacity to wrap his stupidly muscled arms around you, pull you flush against his stupidly firm chest, and press his stupidly soft lips to yours. and what’s worse? you let him. you let your eyes close, hands fist his shirt, and mouth mold against his. 

he kisses rough, but still like you’re fragile. he bites and sucks on your bottom lip and drinks the oxygen from your lungs, but he cups the back of your head and rubs the small of your back. he groans against your mouth and lets his tongue explore you with heated passion, but he lets out a soft sigh every time your fingers smooth through his hair. he’s everything you want—painfully so, and you hate it. 

so you kiss him deeper to forget. 

“i’m listenin’, princess,” he chuckles lowly against your mouth, nose bumping against yours as he looks you in the eyes. if you weren’t sure your eyes were just as hazy as his, you’d be proud of yourself for the way his pupils are so unfocused. “but i think you’re a bit distracted,” he grins smugly. 

he’s an asshole—has been since you met him. you don’t think that’s ever going to change at this point. 

“fuck you,” you spit. 

“you wanna?” he grins, “won’t say no,” he says as he pecks along your jaw, pressing hot, searing kisses to your neck before he nips gently at the skin, sucking into it until a small mark starts to form that makes you let out a quiet gasp. “won’t say no to you—ever,” he grunts. 

“where have you been?” you repeat, fisting his shirt tightly as he moves onto the other side of your neck. 

“you enjoy your little date?” he pulls away and looks you in the eye again, and you almost whine at the loss of his lips from your skin. instead, you notice the way he masks his hurt with a teasing grin. “did he help you study while you waited for the food?”

“he was boring,” you admit, cupping his cheek. ran presses closer against your palm, watches you carefully while it’s your turn to press gentle kisses along his jaw, how you take your time kissing the corners of his mouth before you press one soft, lingering kiss over his swollen lips. his breath hitches at that. “i don’t think he even owns a gun,” you smile, “how boring.” 

he grins at that, lets out a soft chuckle before his smile widens and the chuckle turns into a boyish little laugh, coming right from his chest that you feel vibrate against your own. 

“yeah?” he teases, “not as innocent as you seem,” he reaches behind him to close the door shut before he has you pushed onto your mattress, hovering over you with a smirk on his face. he pulls out his gun—you’ve seen it so many times before, but this time there’s no dread. it just makes you fill with excitement, excitement that pools as slick between your legs. “this thing here makes me interesting, huh?” he dangles the gun over your face. 

you nod, gasping when he chuckles and loops a finger under the waistband of your pajamas. 

“hips up, princess,” he hums, pulling the fabric down your legs as soon as you do, grinning at the way you're so wet already, making him chuckle before he presses the barrel of his gun to your head. “bet this excites you, huh?” one hand holds the gun to your temple, the other travels down to your clit, his thumb teasingly rubbing slow circles against it and making you whimper. 

you’re dripping, he can see trails of your slick glistening against the insides of your thigh, and he can feel his cock twitch at the sight alone. slowly, his fingers tease against your entrance, making you whine before your hips buck to get more of him. 

“ran, ran please,” you gasp, staring up at him with a pout on your face and his gun to your head. and you look fucking perfect. 

he groans, slips his fingers into your tight walls, and watches as your face goes slack with pleasure at the intrusion. he curls his fingers into you, letting his palm glide against your clit before angling to find your spot. you gasp before letting out a breathy whine, trying to match his rhythm with your hips before he presses the barrel of his gun harder against your skull as he stops his fingers. you whimper at the loss of movement. 

“no moving,” he growls, “you’ll take what i give, ‘kay princess?” you nod, staring up at him with wide eyes as he bullies his digits into your cunt, try your best not to move and just take it while his gun is right there against the side of your head. you close your eyes, moaning when he slams his fingers against your sweet spot, feeling the slow drag of his palm over your sensitive clit. 

he fingers you slowly, takes his sweet time and watches you writhe under him as you fight your body to keep from moving. you can’t remember the last time you’ve felt this good, the last time something has excited you this much and left you breathless from just the thought alone. you mewl when he slams against your spot over and over, and ran listens like each whine from your mouth is the note to a song you wrote just for him. you serenade and he listens, that smug grin on his face that you want to kiss off. 

“feels…oh god, feels good, ran,” you encourage, making him chuckle quietly as he rolls his thumb over your clit. you’re practically sucking his fingers in on your own, walls tight as they flutter around his digits—he can only imagine how you’d feel around his cock. but he wants to take his time with you, get to know you in and out like he has for weeks now. 

he likes the sound of your voice when you ramble over dinner, and he likes the sound of your voice when you moan on his fingers, and he thinks he’ll like the sound of your voice as you wake him up in the mornings. 

“don’t cum yet, baby,” he warns—because that’s just how ran is. he’s that sweetness you mask drugs with until you wake up with the barrel of the gun pressed to your skull, that soft glimmer in the grass of what you think is something shiny, but turns out to be the scales of a serpent waiting to sink its fangs into your skin. “you’re not cummin’ till i say so,” he hums, “gonna make sure i wipe that date from your memory.”

“p-please, ‘m gonna…’m so close—no,” you shriek, latching onto his wrist with your hands as he stills his fingers. he laughs at the way your lips wobble and your eyes tear up—and he grins all cocky at the way your walls flutter around his fingers while they’re stilled inside you. “please, ran,” you sniffle. 

“please what?” he asks like he doesn’t know. “use your words, princess.”

“please, wanna cum,” you whine, “keep going,” you roll your hips for added emphasis, and he presses his gun a little harder against your head as another warning. 

“anyone ever touch you like this?” he asks, pulling his fingers out and making you sob quietly at the loss of his fingers keeping you full. he teases over your clit, making you pant harshly as your thighs quiver. more, you need more—and he knows it too, gives you just enough that it’s not enough at all. “anyone ever make you feel like this? or get you this wet?”

“no, just you,” you insist, “no one else.”

“good,” he nods approvingly, and then his fingers slip into you once more, fucking into you hard and fast, making you throw your head back as you mewl. he tosses his gun to the side, creeps his hand up your shirt—he’s pleasantly surprised to find you’re not wearing a bra, so he squeezes and pinches at your nipple, rolling it between his fingers and watching as you squeal. 

your hips are bucking against his hand now, the wet sound of his fingers bullying in and out of your pussy filling the room before he rubs harshly at your clit again. and then you cum, hard. your back arches, and you let out a quiet sob of his name that makes his cock ache in his pants as he watches your face break with your orgasm. he leans down and kisses you, lets you whine against his mouth. he drinks in your moans like he’s thirsty, like you’re the first drop of rain after a cruel drought. 

“oh—f-fuck, ran,” you cry, spasming around his fingers before your hips fall back onto the mattress and your chest heaves with labored pants. you peer up at him as you come down from your high, and he looks down at you and meets your gaze. 

he’s quick to pull his shirt over his head, letting you take in his tattoos through hazy eyes, watching slowly as your fingers lifts to trail over the lines and dips as you map his body. he shivers a little when you trace down the middle where the pattern is cut off. 

“my brother has the other half,” he tells you quietly. you stare up at him in awe—it aches a little in his chest. 

“it’s perfect,” you hum, “you have a whole side to dedicate to me now,” you grin cheekily, pulling a warm chuckle out of him before he leans in to kiss you again. and again and again. his lips press onto yours as soon as you pull away. 

“would that make you happy?” he grins, “having your face on my chest?”

“not my face,” you scrunch your face in distaste. he grins, kisses the tip of your nose. “that’s just weird. but you should definitely get my name. big bold letters,” you wink. 

“big bold letters, huh? i’ll keep that in mind,” he muses. you giggle, and he kisses you again, humming against your mouth as you wrap your fingers around his hair and tug gently. 

you let a hand travel between your bodies, slipping past his pants to grab his cock. ran groans against your mouth, eyes fluttering shut as you smear the pre cum weeping from his tip along his length, wrapping your hand around him and stroking him a few times. he moans lowly, helping you slip his pants down his hips to fully expose his cock. 

“fuck, princess,” he pants, rutting his hips into your fist, grunting when you squeeze the tip with each upstroke of your hand. he’s thick, heavy in your hand aching for the friction. you watch his jaw clench as you pump him slowly, watch as his forehead presses against yours and strands of his purple hair fall over his face to curtain his features. he looks pretty, like he’s yours, like he climbs through your balcony and comes home to you and your arms. 

“next time i go on a date,” you mumble. he stiffens before cursing under his breath when you glide your thumb through his slit, “i wanna go with you.” 

he moans softly, pants into your neck as his face falls to the crevice by your shoulder, muffles his sounds against your skin as you drag your palm along his pulsing cock, rolling over his tip before stroking down again. his hips are bucking to chase the friction of your hand, the squelching noise of your hand pumping him and his choked grunts filling the room. 

“princess,” he groans, a hand coming on top of yours and gently forcing you to stop. you furrow your brows, but he pulls you back in for a brief kiss as he collects himself. “didn’t wanna cum yet,” he mumbles against your mouth, pressing a quick peck to the corner of your lips, “that’s for later—when i’m fillin’ you up so you know who you belong to.”

your breath hitches, and he grins when you whine his name, letting his hands squeeze your hips before he pulls your shirt over your arms and slips it off of you. he leans down, tongue rolling over your nipple, hand coming to cup your other tit and roll a thumb over the pebbled nipple so it’s not neglected. you gasp, throwing your head back as you moan, the dull ache between your legs returning as your clit throbs. he kisses between the valley of your breasts before taking the other nipple in his mouth, switching places with his hand and repeating his earlier actions until you’re tugging at his hair with a plea. 

“ran, ran please—please, i need you,” you beg, making him let out a breathy chuckle in amusement. 

“yeah? need me to fuck this pussy, baby? need me to make you cum?”

“please,” you whimper, lips pulling into another pout. ran learns two things—you like being spoiled, and he likes spoiling you rotten. because with just a simple pout and a bat of your lashes, he’s groaning before he strokes his cock a few times, lining up with your entrance.

your hips are greedy, raising up to get more of him, but he grunts and pushes you back with a warning glance, making you pout again. you both gasp with a shudder when he teases his fat tip along the slick folds of your cunt, dragging it along slowly before pushing into inch by inch. you mewl, arms flying to wrap around his neck and cling to him while he lets out a deep groan, panting at the way your walls constrict around him and all but suck him in. 

“fuck, baby. so fuckin’ tight,” he grunts, “feel so good, pretty girl.” 

“think i’m pretty?” you still have it in you to throw him a teasing remark even as he’s bottomed out, which only makes him want you more, only makes him want to come home to you every night instead of once a week—sometimes less than that.

“think you’re fuckin’ gorgeous,” he says instantly, “next man who tries asking you out’ll get shot in the head. swear it.”

“don’t worry,” you kiss the side of his head. he melts at the gesture, head tucking into your neck again. “only you.”

with that, he snaps his hips, pulling a soft moan from you and a choked groan from him before you’re both rolling your hips against each other. your hips snap against his, the sound of his cock slipping in and out of your wet heat and your skin slapping ringing through your ears as ran ran pants into your skin. the sound of his breathy moans makes your walls flutter around him, clit throbbing until his thumb catches it to rub slow circles. 

“g-god—ran, like that,” you squeal, making him grin against your neck, thrusting his hips sharply and kissing the head of his cock with your sweet spot. it makes you dig your nails into his shoulder blades, makes him hiss with pleasure at the slight mix of pain. 

“like that? that feels good, princess? my cock makes you feel that good? you’re fuckin’ dripping, you know,” he smirks, and if you weren’t so lost of the drag of his thick veins along your walls, you’d have been embarrassed by his words. 

“yes, yes,” you mewl, “make me feel good—so good!”

“yeah, i bet i do,” he chuckles, “pussy’s squeezin’ me in,” he teases, “i don’t even have to do anything.” he angles his hips to slam into your spot again, making your legs wrap tightly around his waist as your thighs quiver. his thumb rubs harshly against your clit and you feel tears slip past your cheeks as you tug at the roots of his hair. “fuck—you feel so good, princess. so t-tight, not gonna last long,” he pants. 

“c-close,” you cry. ran fucks you like he hasn’t committed crimes and doesn't have sins that taint his name. he fucks you like you’re an angel—like he deserves an angel, like he’s got one foot over the gates of heaven and there’s nothing to tug him back to hell. he pulls your body close and cradles it to his chest like the weight of you in his arms outweighs the weight of his crimes, like the sins of every person he’s hurt are undone with the slam of his hips into your heat. 

he fucks you like he’s loved you in this life and the last—like you’re gifted to him in this life and he promises to find you in the next. 

most of all, ran fucks you like he owes you for the healed scar on his arm, like he owes you for the warm home-cooked meals and the sweet laughs behind the rim of a cheap glass. like he owes you for the silly texts at three am and empty threats of not landing himself in jail in disguise for your worried concerns. like he owes you for the constant ache in his chest that’s replaced the vacant spot—because he loves the ache, and he loves you. 

so he groans into your skin, peels his face from the crook of your neck, and presses his lips to yours and he kisses you like he loves you. because he does. he loves you like he loves climbing through your balcony and invading your dinner plans. he loves you. 

“me too, baby,” he pants, voice lilting to a soft whine as you squeeze around his cock, pleasure burning through his spine in a slow build-up until it’s everywhere at once. “god, i love you, baby,” he rasps, the words spilling before he can even realize he��s said them. 

it’s not until you repeat them back that he realizes what he’s said. “love you too, love you too, ran. so much,” you sob. and with a few more harsh rubs of his thumb over your clit, you come undone with a loud sob, hips rising from the mattress and head tossing back against the plush of the pillow beneath you. “fuck—ran, oh god.”

“sh-shit, ‘m close,” he breathes, “g-gonna make me cum, princess.”

the fluttering of your walls as you ride out your high makes him reach his, letting out a choked grunt of your name against your mouth before he lets out a wanton moan. he cums hard, filling you up with thick ropes of his release, and you feel his cock twitch in you through each one. you whimper against him as he fucks you through his orgasm, letting him fill you up and paint your walls white before he pulls out with a shaky breath and collapses over your body. 

he blankets you with his weight, and you pull him closer like you’re tucking yourself in. it’s silent for a bit, comforting and sweet as you both linger in the bliss. 

“i’m still mad at you for avoiding me,” you whisper against his bare skin. he scoffs, wrapping his arms tighter around your figure. 

“and i’m still mad you went on a date with another man,” he grumbles. 

“so then stop being mad and take me on one yourself,” you say back with a huff.

“if you go on a date with me, it means you gotta let me start walkin’ you home after work,” he warns. you smile to yourself, elated. 

“deal.”

“and you gotta let me threaten that shitty boss of yours.”

“can’t. i got a new one,” you hum, stroking through his sweaty locks and scratching at his scalp, “this one’s nice. you’d know if you didn’t stop coming to visit.”

“i don’t wanna come to just visit,” he grunts. “you gonna give me keys to your door?”

“you’ll come every night?” you raise a brow, and he nods against your chest, pressing a soft kiss to the skin near his lips. you smile into ran’s hair, his weight in your arms and his heart in your hand. “okay, deal.”

© hanmas do not plagiarize, repost, translate to other sites, or recommend on platforms outside tumblr such as tik tok

[aerynwrites]

The Hidden - Din Djarin x Reader (Complete)

After landing on a planet in search of a place to lay low with the child, Din finds himself in fight he can’t win. So, when a local shows up and is the one saving him for a change, he can’t help but accept their offer of lodging and safety. However, the Mandalorian isn’t prepared for the feelings that develop along his journey. (21.5k words)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Epilogue

Liberation - Platonic!Din Djarin x Reader (discontinued)

After stumbling upon a rookie bounty hunter, Din begrudgingly ends up with two kids under his watch. Despite this partnership being unexpected, they both find themselves drawing closer and forming a bond neither of them see coming. Perhaps this newfound relationship will be the freedom that they both seek.

Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9

White Rose - Knight!Din Djarin x F!Reader AU (Ongoing)

This series follows the relationship of a seamstress!Reader and  Knight!Din Djarin. This is basically a series of one shots that can be  read as stand alone parts but is better if read all together! This is  just a little universe I created to add onto as I get ideas, so it  should just  be a fun little project for all of us!

Masterlist located HERE

Cin Vhetin - Clan Leader!Din Djarin x F!Reader AU (Hiatus)

After the Mandalorians save the reader’s village from a tyrannical leader, her father teaches her the trade of blacksmithing and forging beskar. Ridiculed by those in her village and shy in nature, the reader never expected to catch the attention of Clan Leader Djarin...or an arranged marriage.

Part 1 |

Protector -   Din attempts to protect reader from the people after him and the child. (2.5k words)  

Words Unspoken - Din is terrified of not seeing you again as he lies at death’s door. (1.8k words)

Trust is a Fragile Thing -   You tamper with the one thing that matters most in your relationship with Din - Trust. (3.9k words)  

Touch -   You introduce a touch starved mandalorian to the idea of touching and being touche. (2.5k words)  

In Secret -   after sneaking around for way too long, Din asks princess!Reader a very important question. (1.1k words)

Reunited -   Din unexpected has to leave the reader in the dead of night. Five years later he returns to her, only to find that he has a son he never knew about. (3.6k words)  

Ice Cold -   The Razor Crests heating unti goes out on a bitterly cold planet. So, the reader must find a different source of warmth. (1k words)  

Nightmares -   Din panics when he wakes from a nightmare and you aren’t next to him. (1k words)  

Come Back to Me -   Din keeps his promise to come back to reader. (1.1k words)

Helping Out - Reader hires Din as a temporary body guard for her cantina. They both end the night with something they didn’t expect. (2k Words)

Not Enough - Reader struggles with her feelings of inadequacy and only plunges even deeper in her thoughts when her and Din get into a fight. (1.4k words)

Little Yellow Sundress - Reader buys a sundress in hopes of finally getting Din’s attention....it works  🔥 (4.4k words)

Cyare’se’tuur - After landing on a small backwater planet, Din realizes a holiday is going on and gets the reader a gift. Then he asks for something in return. (1.5k words)

“You’re bleeding” + “I’m pregnant”

“You’re basically a marshmellow. Perfect for cuddling.” + “I can’t imagine my life without you anymore.”    

“What the hell were you thinking? You could have been hurt!” + “I can’t feel my legs.”  

“I came to say goodbye.”  

“Please tell me you feel this too?” w/touch starved!Mando  

“You need to leave.”  

“I think you’re beautiful.”

Exhausted - Din holds reader after a very long day.

Road to Recovery - Reader helps Din work through his feelings about his creed after he removes his helmet.

Pregnancy

Din Having Nightmares

Mutual Pining + Nap time

First “I love you”