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nsharks · 3 months ago

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bleeding blue | apocalypse au

part thirty-two —other parts

pairing: Simon “Ghost” Riley x fem!reader words: 5.1k tags: death. blood and gore. zombies of course. AFAB reader. single dad ghost. enemies to lovers. SA and implication of child SA (very subtle). summary: After losing your companions, you run into a skull-masked man and his daughter. They are your last hope for survival. a/n: clearly I am bad at estimating how long this story will take lol

The tray of food crashes to the floor at her feet. Salome gasps. Her hand shoots back, fumbling for the doorknob, and her lips part, ready to call the guard you know is just outside.

"If you call for the guard," you stop her, "I’ll cut deeper."

She clamps a hand over her mouth. "Please—stop! Hurting yourselves is a sin, a great dishonor to the body God gave you—"

“It is,” you agree calmly. You press the shard deeper into the cephalic vein, ignoring the bite of pain. Blood spills in a fresh, startling curtain down your arm, the wound mimicking the severity of an arterial cut. “And she’ll blame you for it. You’re the one she entrusted to watch over us, and you didn't notice we broke one of the mugs."

"I did not think you would—"

"What happens to you,” you cut her off, pointing the bloody shard at her stomach, “—and your baby when the two new child-bearers die because of your failure? Because I will die, if I cut any deeper. This artery,” you lie, tapping the wound for emphasis, “is important. If I finish slicing through it, I’ll bleed out in less than a minute. Not enough time for you to get help. Not even enough to try saving me yourself.”

Her lashes flutter rapidly through a swell of tears. "You could have a good life here—"

"Answer me. What happens to you if I die?"

She swallows hard. "She’ll punish me," she whispers frightfully. "I have seen what happens to those who fail her. She might take my child and I will... never see them. Please, don’t do this—”

"Why should we care about you and your child when you are okay with them killing an eleven-year-old girl tomorrow?"

A flash of shame crosses her face. "I'm sorry. I-I didn't know Maman would want the girl. The offering has never been so young before. But it is God's will, there is nothing I can do to—"

"What you can do is open the cell. Open it and we will kill Maman, then you won't have to worry about anyone taking your baby. But if you don't open it, then we die in here and you will face her punishment."

Her lips part, but nothing comes out. She looks between you and Nereida, eyes darting wildly, fingers twitching against her stomach.

"Decide before I bleed out!"

"I... I can't," she says pitifully.

With a glance at Nereida, she takes her cue, digging into her vein.

"Open the cell," Nereida urges far more soothingly than you can, blood dripping to her elbow. "We won't hurt you. We want Maman gone, not you."

Salome whimpers under her breath, but her fingers move before her mind catches up, reaching inside her robe to retrieve the key, gripping it like it might burn her. She shuffles closer but pauses, inhaling deeply before finally reaching the door. Her hands shake so violently that the key rattles against the lock. It slips against the metal, failing to match the hole, and your finger twitches when she nearly drops it.

"Mais si elles ne parviennent pas à la tuer..." The whisper leaves quietly, lost beneath the veil. "Sa punition pour moi sera pire."

Then, her hand curls back around the key.

She swallows hard—and steps back.

No.

You see red.

A growl curls at your mouth and you snap forward, grabbing onto her dress through the bars before she can retreat too far, and pulling her flush against them, her forehead banging into the metal. Before she can scream, you clamp a bloody hand over her mouth and then press the piece of broken mug to her neck with just enough pressure to make her panic. She gasps into your palm, struggling. You dig it harder, forcing her body to turn still and rigid.

"Twix—"

"I tried doing things the nicer way," you speak in a low snarl, veering off the script you and Nereida conjured. Round, glossy eyes stare into yours. "You should have made up your mind before getting within my reach. Now give her the key. I’d hate for my hand to slip."

Another sharp press into her skin wrings a squeak from her, her breath coming out jagged and uneven against your palm. Trembling, she extends an arm through the bars, offering the key to Nereida.

The moment Nereida takes it, she fumbles to find the lock from the outside, her fingers searching blindly. The key scrapes against the metal—once, twice—before a soft click finally reaches your ears.

The door swings open.

You don’t hesitate. Keeping your grip firm over Salome’s mouth, you shove through the opening and swing around to the other side. Before she can react, you force her back into the cell, driving her onto the bed. The veil tears free from her head as you pin her down, your weight pressing her into the mattress, the sharp fragment still poised at her throat. When her legs begin to flail helplessly, you order Nereida to grab them. She clasps Salome's ankles to keep her from bucking you off.

"You were afraid of the wrong person," you hiss, your nose nearly brushing hers. "Maman may have spared your life because she values her baby makers—but I don’t. Answer everything I ask, or I’ll show you just how merciless I can be."

The dishonest threat rolls off your tongue with enough force to make her nod frantically, fear widening her eyes. But what she doesn’t need to know—what you won’t let her see—is the part of you still holding back. Because even now, even as you pin her down and press the shard to a vital piece of her throat, you’re careful. You don’t dig hard enough to damage. You don’t let your weight bear down on the swell of her stomach.

"I'm glad we understand each other. I am going to lift my hand, and you're not going to scream. You're going to tell me everything we need to know about the guards out there."

Her lips are puffy and raw when you set them free.

"There is only one outside the d-door," she sputters in a whisper. "B-but there are more... more by the... h-homes and the keep."

"The keep?"

"Where they keep the new m-males," she chokes out, snot dripping from her nose.

"That's in the old slaughterhouse, right?"

She nods.

"How many guards are over there exactly?"

"I do not know." At your glare, she rushes out, "B-but there are less after d-dinner ends. Many go to sleep, and switch shifts at sunrise."

You mull over the information, eyes darting across her face. “And the child—the offering? Where is Maman keeping her?”

A terrible look of fear ripples through her eyes. "Only few are allowed near the offering b-before her ascension.

"So you're telling me you don't know?" you seethe in her face.

She sobs. "I know they... they will offer her to the démons right before the sun rises. The night is when God’s wrath is strongest, but it’s in the morning—when hope ascends—that we seek atonement."

Despite further pressing, that seems to be the extent of what she knows—or she's still withholding. Either way, you're satisfied enough. You rip strips of the sheet, using one to gag her and two more to bind her wrists and ankles. You and Nereida wrap your wounded wrists tightly to stop the flow. Then, you remove her white gown. You’ll need something to wear that doesn't easily mark you as an escapee, but there’s only the one white dress and veil. You hurriedly slip into them, making sure all of your hair and face is hidden, leaving Nereida still in the thin slip. The shoes Salome wears are thin and made of unsupported leather, but they are all you have to tuck your bare feet into.

Salome said there will be fewer guards after dinner. You and Nereida listen carefully to every sound that bleeds through the window. When you hear a few exchanges of bonne nuit, you figure people are starting to retire for the night. You take this as your cue to grip your makeshift weapon. The guard outside the door is expecting Salome to leave at some point, giving you the perfect opportunity to catch him off-guard while dressed as her.

You quietly open the door to the warm summer night, the long gown ghosting around your ankles. As expected, a well-built man leans against the side of the building, arms crossed languidly. No one else is in sight, which brings you some relief. When his gaze shifts to you, he raises a brow.

"Tout va bien, mademoiselle? Vous êtes restée là-dedans un moment."

The last word barely makes it out of his mouth. Within a heartbeat, you spring at him like the head of a snake, one hand over his mouth and the other stabbing his neck with the shard, then sweeping it through the thick of his trachea. A gush of blood oozes out in one thick stream, before he gargles out a strangled choke and turns to dead weight against the wall.

With Nereida's help, you quickly push his body inside the building to keep anyone from spotting it.

"Wear this," you usher, already starting to undress him. Like the man who visited you, he's wearing a grey cloak. Though it's too big for her, and bloodied, it will be enough to keep her discreet in the dark, her long hair safely tucked beneath the hood.

Two things race through your mind: the ticking time toward sunrise and the fact that you still don’t know how many more men you’ll have to take out to reach Ghost, Price, and Kyle. The knife you find on the guard adds a small weapon to your shitty arsenal. You have no idea where they could’ve stored the guns and ammo they took from you, or your bow. How you'll manage to fight through a community of cultists without those is a worry you can’t afford to dwell on right now—one step at a time.

After a few minutes of collecting yourselves, urgency pulls the two of you outside, free from the barred enclosure for the first time in almost four days. In the blanket of night, you quickly scan the area, taking in what you’re up against. The community appears fairly spread out, with only six small farmhouses like the one you just escaped from, along with a few larger structures in the near distance—likely where they house the men. You catch a glimpse of a fenced pasture’s perimeter and the unmistakable stench of cattle fills the air. Despite the faint shuffle of hooves and grey plumes of smoke from a few of the chimneys, everything is eerily still, leaving an unnerving amount of quiet for your heart to shatter through.

From what you can see, there aren’t many places to hide Blue, but there could be more to this place beyond what’s visible, especially since the chapel you first saw is nowhere in sight. But none of that matters right now; you need to find the others first if you’re going to have any real chance of saving her and getting out of here.

The next male you encounter spots you first as you make your way up the gravel road towards the barn, the sound of his boots making your hand tighten on the knife's handle. He greets you unassumingly in French, causing Nereida to startle beside you as his shadow approaches. Then he stops in front of her, his shoulders tensing and his hand hovering near a knife at his waist.

"Que fais-tu avec la femelle? C’est interdit!"

Again, you go for the throat, desperate to silence any screams that could cause alarm. You get a good swipe at the base of it, but he is at least a head taller than you, making it difficult to stab fully. He grabs you by the waist, clearly in shock that a veiled female just sprung on him with a knife, but swipes a fist at your face nonetheless. The force spreads through your temple, thrusting your head to the side.

"Take the knife from him," you hiss at Nereida through the pain, who until now was effectively frozen. She finally moves, using the distraction you've caused as he clutches his bleeding neck, and snatches the knife still hanging at his waist. Once she has it, you leap at the disarmed man again, this time stabbing his liver. With a muffled grown, he face-plants into the gravel, quickly soaking it with blood.

"The body," she stutters worriedly. "We need to hide it."

You look around, spotting stacks of chopped wood.

"Over there. Help me drag him."

Once the body is heaved behind the logs, you pat him down in search for anything else, but there's nothing.

"Keep that on you," you tell her, and she gives a quick nod, hiding the knife under her sleeve.

You keep following the road up to the fence, your white dress splattered with crimson, resembling the dotted stars overhead. The 'keep' is somewhere by the barn that man said, but you notice smaller buildings to the right and to the left of it. Which one looks like an old slaughterhouse? It's too difficult to tell even when you squint, so you grab Nereida's arm and quickly lower by a bush.

"Watch that one, and I'll keep an eye on this one. Whichever building has more guards patrolling is probably where they're holding them."

"Okay," she whispers, peering around the bush.

Minutes pass. The building on the right has more shadows skirting around it—three guards total. You take a moment to study their movements. One is stationed near the back, the other two at the front.

"I want you to take the one at the back and wait for me. I'll handle the other two."

"How do I take him?" she whispers uncertainly. "He’ll see me coming."

"You’ll come at it from an angle." You point toward a stack of hay. "Sneak over there, quietly. Once you're behind it, circle around and approach where he can't see."

She hesitates, rubbing the back of her hand across her forehead. "I’ve never—"

"Never killed anyone?"

The way she grips the knife, her fingers white on the handle, confirms it.

"These people deserve it, Nereida," you say, forcing her to meet your gaze. "John is in there."

She closes her eyes, and for a moment, the weight of it all presses down on her. When she opens them again, her jaw is set, and her grip on the knife tightens.

After reminding her where to strike, you pause for a moment, watching as she sneaks over to the hay. Then, you move toward the other two, slipping behind a tree for cover, but your foot catches on something and you almost trip, catching yourself against the bark. Your breath hitches and you steal a peek at them to make sure they didn't hear you. No—they are too busy murmuring to each other, laughing in a low exchange.

When you glance down, you spot a shovel half-buried into the ground, its handle sticking out. Carefully, you wriggle it free, having to grit your teeth to fully remove it. This will let you stun one while you deal with the other. Inhaling deeply to center yourself, palm tight over the splintered wood handle, you close in on the two guards.

The shorter one with curly hair spots you just before you take a swing, his eyes widening. The shovel slams into his skull, effectively making him stumble to the ground, but slips from your grip from the force. The other guard whirls around, hand slapping for the pistol at his belt. You deliver three consecutive stabs to his stomach, heart, and cheek. The gun never leaves his waist before he falls dead.

You suck in a gulp of air just as the curly-haired one regains his footing. His head is still heavy from the blow, and before he can draw his knife, you shove him in the chest, sending him crashing to the ground. You pin him easily beneath you, his movements sluggish and weak. The two of you wrestle in the grass, jagged breaths mixing with frantic, scraping nails, until, with a snarl, your knife finds purchase in his neck, stealing the life from his eyes in an instant. You stab him again and again, shaking, until the ticking urgency pulls you back into control. With a deep breath, you steady yourself and wiggle the knife lodged in his trachea, your hands slippery with blood.

"You got death," you spit in a whisper, thumbing his lids shut.

You lift up.

Now you have a single gun.

It is an old thing. Outdated and far from the military-grade weapons Ghost has. It takes a moment to figure out the parts—your fingers fumble for the small magazine, which is stocked with three bullets. You pull the slide to chamber a round with a click and keep it ready in your hand as you circle the building toward the back, praying that Nereida managed. When you find her, she is stood over the man's body, a deep cut oozing on her cheek.

"He saw me," she says, swallowing. "But I did it."

You nod. "We need to hide them before we go in."

All three bodies are hidden behind the hay stacks. You cover them with manure to mask the smell, not wanting a horde of Greys to materialize. You'd spotted a door at the back and hope it may be more discreet then blazing in through the front, given that you don't know who all is in there. Finger ready on the trigger, you hold your breath as you lead Nereida into the old building, instantly met with the rich smell of pennies. The space quickly unfolds into an old butcher house, rusted hooks hanging from the stone ceiling, the air cramped and cold.

"Une femme? Maman ne voudrait pas de toi—"

The voice echoes in your ear as you round the corner, and then a fiery bullet rips into the owner's chest. Nereida flinches. Another guard comes barreling over, shouting, but you slide the chamber and shoot him in the head.

You don't linger by the bodies, itching to check the first steel door you see. You lower the gun only to pull at the handle, but it won't budge.

"Check him for keys," you motion to the dead guard.

Nereida crouches, hands rifling through his pockets until she yanks free a ring of keys. Her fingers shake as she tries them one by one, the lock stubborn—until, at last, it gives. With a sharp tug, the door groans open, revealing a windowless chamber. In the center, a lone captive hangs from chains.

It’s Price. Shackles bite into his wrists, his bare chest mapped with deep bruises against pale skin. Beaten, but unbroken—his gaze sharp as it lifts to meet yours. Nereida chokes on a sob, ripping the hood off her head and sinking to her knees before him, cupping his jaw.

A weighted baritone manages: "Duchess."

"There is nowhere I will not find you," she croaks. Teary kisses find the corner of his mouth. "I'm here, I'm here."

"How did you—"

"We got out. Where are the others?" you ask.

His jaw grits. "I haven't seen them since they knocked us out."

"They must be here somewhere. We need to move quick before someone notices the bodies."

After finding the small key to undo the manacles, you leave them to each other for the moment, continuing down the hall until the next door. An undeniable pull rises in your chest, something that has nothing to do with the adrenaline rushing through you—something you can’t quite name. But when you open the door, your heart falters with unwelcome disappointment at the sight of Kyle. He looks equally battered, but still aware enough to lift his head as you step in.

"Who are you?"

You lift the veil.

"It's me," you answer, the words almost lost in the rush of emotions. Only when you fully take in the room do you notice Ari, curled in the corner. They’ve put them in here together. While there are no obvious injuries on the boy, the sight of the open Bible on his lap, and the empty dinner plate beside him, sends a cold shiver down your spine. You touch his cheek, feeling warmth, and reassure him he’s safe.

You release both of them. "Price and Nereida are through the door down the left. I need to find Ghost. I’ll be back."

Kyle rubs his wrists and manages to stand despite his black eye and shaky legs. "I’ll come with you."

"No. I’ll get him." The words come out sharper than you mean to, but you turn away before he can question them.

You are pulled further through the tight, cold hallway, movements turning more hurried as you look around. There are a few more half-opened doors, but they only lead to supply closets filled with whips and metal batons and empty chambers where old blood stains the floors. Something sharp tugs at your heart, and for the first time since initiating your escape, your fingertips succumb to a tremor of fear.

Where is he?

The hall spits out into a room where dried animal carcasses hang from the walls.

One final door sits on the far end.

The rusted lock resists, swears hissing from your lips—until a sharp kick forces it open.

The smell thickens with fresh blood, and a cold pit sinks into your stomach at the sight of him—bound in chains, his body slumped haphazardly. Unlike the others, he doesn’t lift his head. You rush forward, a shaky breath catching in your throat as you take in the blood caked on his shoulder blades, deep welts splitting through the inked skin. His back, too, is covered in wounds. He looks worse—so much worse—that a bite of anger swells moisture in your eyes.

"Simon, you idiot. What did you do?" The words slip out on a sharp inhale as you lower yourself in front of him. "Simon," you whisper again, silent tears hot against your lips. You thread a hand through his hair, tilting his jaw up with careful fingers. His eyes are heavy, but relief finds you when they flutter open. He’s alive. The reddened whites flicker over your face, unfocused—until something strange sharpens the haze. A flicker of fear.

"It's me, Simon. We're getting out of here."

The brief fear shifts into shock when he recognizes your face, and only after you fumble with the key ring does understanding click into place, causing his jaw to flex. "Where... where is she?"

"I don't know, but we need to hurry. They have her." You undo the manacles, and his body rolls heavily into you, face falling onto your collarbone. You struggle to hold him up, gripping his shoulders without touching the wounds. A low groan bleeds through his teeth, and his eyes flutter shut again. No, no, no. "Please, you have to... you have to get up, Simon. I can't—she's going to fucking die!"

His upper chest rapidly expands with a breath, and he musters the strength to lift his weight off you and slap a hand against the wall. As he leverages his weight up, you help by grabbing beneath his other arm, until a final rush of adrenaline gets him on his feet. Urgency snaps tension into his limp shoulders, and he growls out another, more steady, breath.

"Price," he says.

"He's alive. Come on."

It takes some effort to help him walk at first, but eventually, he manages on his own. You guide him to the first room, where the others are pacing, murmuring in low voices.

"Simon, Jesus," Price mutters when he sees him.

Ghost brushes it off, his eyes narrowing. "They're going to kill her."

"At sunrise," you add, your voice tight. You pull out the pistol and show it to them. "I have one bullet left. I don't know how many more men are in this cult, but we've killed six so far."

"We have one shitty old gun." Kyle growls in frustration. "They took all our shit. How are we going to—"

"We find the weapons. They must have stored them somewhere," Price says.

"We can't just go searching through every building here. We don't have the time," you press. "And how are we supposed to get it back without everyone noticing we're gone?"

"I don't give a fuck about the guns. We find her first," Ghost grits, nostrils flaring.

"We can't help her if we don't think things through. We can't just start a war with these people empty-handed, Simon," Price says.

"We find her first!"

"Simon," you say, reaching for his arm, but he pulls it away, clenching his bloody fist. The energy radiating from him would scare you if you didn't feel the same way.

Just then, there is the faint sound of a door opening and footsteps clanging through the hall. You tense up, two male voices shouting in echoes, one of them vaguely familiar.

"Quelqu'un les a tués ! On doit régler cette merde avant que Maman découvre quoi que ce soit."

"Les putains de prisonniers!"

Before you can react, Ghost snatches the pistol from your grip. The second they rush toward the open door, he launches at them—an elbow to one’s face, the butt of the gun breaking the nose of the other. Price uses Nereida's knife to stab the fallen guard, while Kyle helps Ghost subdue the second one. You only recognize him as the man who made you strip when they forcibly drag him toward the manacles, the sight of his blonde hair making your nails curl into your palms.

"You stupid fucking Brits!"

Ghost strikes the gun into his left eye, making him jerk within the constraints, howling as the socket turns into bloody pulp.

Kyle grips the man's scalp from behind to hold his head up, while Ghost presses the gun into his cheek, where you notice a wound shaped like a bite mark.

"Tell us where she is," he roars. "Or I'll take the other eye."

Nereida cowers into the corner, holding onto Ari's arm.

"I don't know!" the man spits blood, and Ghost digs the gun into his cheek, ripping it open further until the bitten flesh hangs as a torn flap, exposed all the way to his eye. The scream that follows feels inhuman. "I swear, I don't—I don't fucking know!"

Fresh blood drips to the floor. Price, much more calm, lowers at the man's side. "How many people live here?"

The man grits his teeth, struggling to answer, "T-thirty males, and six females. Plus the infants."

Twenty-two now, you count in your head.

"And the weapons we had. What about those?" Price questions further.

When only staggered, pained breaths fills the room, Ghost tosses the bloody gun and grabs the knife from Price, stabbing the man's kneecap without hesitation. Another scream ensues, and there is the small itch to cover your ears, but you steel yourself against the wall to keep watching.

"Answer the fucking question." Ghost twists the knife in his knee.

He cries out, more bloody spittle flying from his mouth. "All of the ammo is hidden. Only A-Alexandre knows!"

"Who is Alexandre?"

“Maman's son, he enforces her commands and oversees the males.”

"Where is he?" Price asks, voice hard.

“He… he resides in the work shed, while the rest of us sleep in the quarters within the barn.”

You step forward. "We saw another building outside with just one guard, that must be it."

There is a beat of silence as Price processes the information, giving Ghost a satisfied nod. With pain still contorting his face, the man's eye drifts past Ghost's shoulder toward you. His lips twitch into a faint, bloody smirk that makes your skin crawl. Ghost follows his gaze, snarls, and abruptly slashes the man's throat from ear to ear.

It is still dark when Eloise comes to awaken her, though Blue's eyes never once fell shut with sleep. She spent the short-lived night alternating between staring at the crescent moon outside the window, and fiddling with the knitting needles left on the table. There is a new dress in the woman's clutch, beautiful white fabric embroidered with flowers, and a pair of beautiful leather shoes in the other hand.

"See? I told you the dress would be nicer." She smiles and hands it over, as if to offer something to be thrilled for. "You must change quickly. There is a lovely breakfast of framboises and milk waiting for you. Put these on as well." She sets the shoes on the floor.

Blue thinks it strange, to bother feeding her just before her death. Blankly, she asks, "How many people will be there? To watch me die."

Eloise's smile quivers slightly, a slight crack in her composure. "Not too many, I assure you. Only a few of us women, and one or two worthy men. Most are still sleeping." After a pause, she adds even quieter, almost ashamed, "Be thankful you don’t suffer through childbirth instead. It is... a painful thing. Long, too. At least this pain will be honorable and swift."

Blue's fingers tighten around the dress. "Okay. Do you mind if I change alone, please?"

Eloise bows her head. "Of course."

She casts one last gentle glance her way before shuffling out of the room, locking the door behind her and leaving Blue with only the dress and shoes. Once the door is closed, Blue quickly slips the dress on, shuddering as the cold fabric caresses her limbs. It’s more beautiful than anything she can remember ever wearing, and that disgusts her. Swallowing the churn in her stomach, she grabs the needles and sits back on the bed.

The wounds on her feet are shallow, her fingernails only able to pierce the thick skin slightly. Using the needles, she digs into them deeper, trembling from the pain that throbs as fresh blood begins to seep from the soles. She cuts and cuts furiously, teeth gritted, praying it’s enough to soak into the shoes she slips on over the new wounds. She covers the blood stains on the sheet with the blanket, then stands, almost crying out from the agony of walking on her torn feet.

"Please dad," she whispers, closing her eyes briefly, before calling to Eloise that she is ready.

"But if they don't manage to kill her... her punishment for me will be worse." "Is everything alright, miss? You've been in there for a while." "What are you doing with the female? It’s forbidden!" "A woman? Maman wouldn’t want you—" "Someone killed them! We need to fix this shit before Maman finds out anything." "The fucking prisoners!"

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kaiju-lightning · 7 months ago

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Tags by @hananono

Is it controversial to say that curly is a people pleaser and an enabler who tried to play both sides trying to help the abused while trying to please the abuser and ended up fucking everyone and himself in the process

#curly tried to smooth things over instead of taking punitive action #he did the same thing as jimmy. he tried to fix it and did it all wrong #and look how that turned out #mouthwashing

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capuccinodoll · 6 months ago

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Honey love, dark eyes

♡ Chapter six ♡

Summary: Going through a hangover, two knocks surprise your door. Travis asks you to be honest, and Joel tries to get closer again. WC: 12.8k A/N: Well… today I'm feeling things. I hope you like it <3 remember that I no longer use the tag list, and if you want to receive notifications you can activate them on this blog or on capuccinodollupdates. Thank you very much for your messages and comments!!!!! Love youuuu

You lay sprawled on your bed, the warmth of the shower still clinging to your skin, your body humming faintly from the ibuprofen you’d taken an hour ago. When you’d woken up, sunlight had pierced directly through the blinds, straight into your eyes, splitting your head with a sharp, immediate ache. The kind of morning that felt punitive, though you weren’t sure what you were being punished for. But the water had helped. It always did. Steam rising, muscles softening, your skin flushed pink in its aftermath—a small gift you didn’t know you’d needed until now.

Sliding into your softest pajama pants and a faded gray cotton T-shirt oversized enough to drown in, you caught sight of the corset lying next to your boots. Something twisted low in your stomach. A reminder.

You remembered it as soon as you’d blinked awake: Joel. Joel in your bed. Silence wrapping around you both like a second, unspoken language. You’d cried, hadn’t you? Said something reckless, something that burned on the way out but didn’t feel entirely true. His face swam back to you in bits: the wet sheen in his eyes, the way he’d hugged you, close enough to steal your breath. And your words—you’d told him you hated him. That much was clear. You didn't hate him, he knew that. The feeling was raw and slippery, hard to hold. Surely Joel knew. He was always the first to claim he understood these things, always insufferably sure of himself.

Your gaze stayed fixed on the wall, though your mind wandered to Travis and then boomeranged right back to Joel, replaying the fragments of memory you had like they were clues in a puzzle you couldn’t solve. It was exhausting. You were exhausted. Eventually, you shut your eyes, not sleeping, but not entirely awake either, your body loosening as the pain ebbed and flowed. Your feet still throbbed, but even that felt distant, manageable.

Then the doorbell rang. The sound sliced through the quiet and dragged you back to the surface. You groaned, pressing the heels of your palms against your eyes, trying to summon the energy to move. With a sigh, you swung your legs over the side of the bed, sliding your feet into slippers, and shuffled toward the stairs. Halfway down, you froze, heart stuttering in your chest. What if it was Joel? It made sense—too much sense, actually. Except, what if it didn’t? What if he wasn’t here to fix things but to remind you of everything you’d said and did last night? What if he wasn’t here at all, and the thought of him was worse than his presence?

You didn’t have the stamina for him today.

Still, you kept moving, your stomach coiled tight as you reached for the door. When you opened it, relief swept over you like a breeze. Travis stood there, eyes a little puffy, a wooden paper bag with Mcfly’s stamped across the front dangling from his hands. The smell—greasy, rich, tempting—hit you first. He smiled, sheepish, his fingers curling around the bag like an offering.

“Hey,” he said, his voice hoarse but warm.

You laughed softly, stepping aside to let him in. “Hey. You look awful.”

“Thanks,” he teased, his grin widening. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. Hungry, apparently,” you replied, following him into the kitchen. “What about you? Any lingering regrets?”

“Only a thousand.” He set the bag on the counter and turned to you, his expression playfully contrite. “Throwing up dressed as Patrick Bateman was not on my bingo card.”

“Your puke was blue,” you reminded him, unable to suppress your laugh.

He groaned, covering his face with one hand. “God, stop. Please accept my apology in the form of food.”

You pulled the containers from the bag, grinning as the smell intensified. “Apology accepted. But seriously, Travis, it happens to everyone. Though I’d say chugging a Blue Elephant probably increases your odds.”

He leaned against the counter, watching you, his smile softening. “Lesson learned. Never again.”

The two of you settled at the kitchen island, the plates piled high with burgers that felt almost comically indulgent—brioche buns, bacon, fried eggs, stacked patties. Fries on the side. It was exactly what you needed, and the silence between you was easy, punctuated only by the clinking of cutlery and the occasional laugh.

At some point, you noticed Travis watching you, his gaze a little too focused, a little too heavy. It sent a ripple of awareness through you, and you set your fork down, your cheeks flushing before you could stop them.

“I had a great time last night,” he said suddenly, his fingers tracing the rim of his plate. “Even with the, uh, puke thing. I hope we can…you know, pick up where we left off.”

Your heart skipped. He said it so casually, like he was talking about resuming a TV show or a book he’d put down. But you knew what he meant. His hands on your thighs, his breath hot against your neck—the near miss. You smiled, leaning into the moment.

“I’d like that,” you said, your voice softer than you intended. “I have a great time with you, Travis. It feels…easy.”

“I hope that’s a compliment,” he teased, his eyes glinting.

“It is,” you assured him.

He opened his mouth to respond, but the doorbell rang again, cutting him off. You sighed, pushing back from the stool.

“I’ll be right back,” you said, and he nodded, standing as well.

“Mind if I use the bathroom?”

“Go ahead. It’s under the stairs,” you told him, already heading for the door.

When you opened it, the air shifted. Joel stood there, your name falling from his lips like a quiet invocation. Your heart stuttered. His eyes locked on yours.

Joel stood in front of you, his posture deceptively calm, but his eyes betrayed him. They searched your face intently, as if trying to unearth some hidden answer you weren’t sure you even held. His voice, when he finally spoke, was steady but tinged with uncertainty.

“I, um... How are you?”

The words fell between you, simple enough, but they seemed to carry more weight than the situation demanded. You blinked, your response escaping almost before you registered it.

“Fine.” Automatic. A placeholder for the more complicated truth swirling inside you.

He nodded, his expression softening slightly, though his gaze never left yours. “I wanted to check on you. After last night, I mean. And... I thought maybe we could talk for a moment. If you’re up for it.”

The now-familiar tingle unfurled in your stomach, subtle but insistent. It was Joel’s effect on you, one you could neither anticipate nor ignore. His presence always seemed to trigger some deep, cellular reaction, your body responding to him before your mind had the chance to catch up.

You let your eyes wander over him, taking him in as if cataloging the moment: the disheveled state of his hair, the small strands poking out stubbornly at the crown of his head; the quiet intensity in his dark, swollen eyes, the kind that told you sleep hadn’t come easy. His sweater was black, soft-looking, and fit just snug enough across his shoulders. Below that, dark pants and boots that carried a scuffed sort of permanence.

He didn’t flinch under your gaze. He rarely did.

“Sure,” you said finally, fighting to keep your voice steady. “I mean... yeah. I feel better now.”

His brow lifted, and the corner of his mouth tugged upward in a crooked half-smile that felt almost involuntary. “Yeah?”

You nodded. “Yeah.” The tension between you felt oddly fragile, as though one wrong word could snap it altogether.

“Good,” he said, his voice soft, almost to himself. “Uh, so...when you’re ready, we can talk. Doesn’t have to be now.”

“No,” you interrupted quickly, sensing his sudden retreat. “I want to. Just—not sure now’s the best time.”

His eyes flickered, something like relief washing over his features. “Okay. Whenever works for you. Just let me know.”

There was something in the way he spoke that made you pause—a quiet hesitance, almost submissive, so unlike Joel that it left you momentarily off-balance. Before you could respond, the sound of a door opening and closing under the stairs interrupted the fragile moment between you.

Joel’s gaze darted past you, his body stiffening. “I should get going. Need to see Tommy,” he said abruptly, his words coming faster now, as if the interruption had jolted him. “But I’ll be back before five. If you’re okay with that.”

“I’ll text you,” you replied, your voice quieter than you intended.

Joel nodded once, and for a moment, his eyes softened again, lingering on you like he wanted to say more. But the sound of footsteps drew both your attention, and you turned just in time to see Travis approaching from the hall.

“Hi, Joel,” Travis said, his voice light and oblivious. “How’s it going?”

Joel’s demeanor shifted instantly, his polite but clipped reply sharp in contrast to the way he’d been speaking to you moments ago. “Fine. And you... regaining energy, I see.”

“That's right,” Travis nodded, a pleasant pout on his lips. “Never drink more than one blue elephant, trust me,” he teased.

Joel’s laugh was hollow, a noise that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Not on my agenda last time I checked.”

The tension was palpable now, thickening the air. Though you were sure the tightening thread was solely between you and Joel, and Travis had only moved in to tighten it even more. Joel’s gaze flickered to you briefly, searching your face, you looking at him almost as if silently imploring him not to say anything offensive. But he didn't seem to want to bother Travis at that moment, which surprised you a little.

“Call me later,” he said to you, his tone softening again but only for you. “Whenever works.”

“I will,” you promised, the words coming easily, though the knot in your stomach tightened as you watched Joel take a few steps back. He hesitated for only a second before turning and walking briskly to his truck. The sound of the door slamming shut echoed faintly as you closed your own door, letting out a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.

When you turned back, Travis was still standing there, his expression curious but unreadable. He didn’t say anything, though, as you brushed past him and returned to the kitchen, dropping back into your seat and taking a long sip of soda.

Travis joined you a moment later, resuming his seat across from you. He picked up his burger but didn’t take a bite right away, his fingers idly picking at the edges of the bun. His silence stretched, pressing against you, until finally, he spoke.

“So,” he began carefully, his tone light but probing, “how’s everything with Joel?”

The question caught you off guard, even though it shouldn’t have. You forced yourself to look at him, your expression neutral.

“We haven’t really figured things out,” you admitted, keeping your tone casual. "If that's what you're asking."

Travis nodded thoughtfully, leaning back in his seat. “I thought as much,” he said, setting his burger down. “Saw him the other day at the supermarket. Didn’t say hi—he looked...busy.”

You offered him a small, noncommittal shrug, hoping he’d let the subject drop. But instead, his gaze lingered on you, studying you the way Joel had earlier.

“Can I ask you something?” Travis said, his voice softer now. "And please be honest."

You didn’t blink, your body stilling in response to the deliberate softness in Travis’s voice. It wasn’t the kind of soft that soothed; it was careful, as if he was trying to handle something fragile without breaking it.

“Sure,” you said, your voice neutral despite the curiosity growing inside you. “What is it?”

“Listen, please don’t think I’m prying.” His tone wavered, brushing up against nervousness.

“I won’t, Trav,” you said, laughing lightly, though the sudden weight of his seriousness made the moment feel unbalanced.

“Okay.” He smiled, the kind of smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes. It reminded you of a kid caught holding something he shouldn’t but deciding to risk it anyway. “So, ever since I moved into the neighborhood, I noticed you and Joel were... close. At first, I thought you were together. Ian even confirmed that you were just friends, but for a while, I didn’t quite believe it. Then Helena told me the same; you were just friends.”

Your attention sharpened around his words, each one striking a chord of unease.

“And I thought that was good for me, you know?” he continued, leaning back slightly, his nervous hands fidgeting with the edge of his glass. “Because I liked you. Even back then. But then, Joel came over one day while I was working on the yard—offered to help me out. He was nice, friendly even.”

“Oh,” you murmured, the word slipping out before you could stop it. Your voice sounded far away to your own ears. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah,” Travis said, shifting in his seat. “I told him I was almost done, didn’t really need help. But I thought, why not? So I said he could help me with something else.”

There was a pause. His gaze faltered, dropping to his hands. He clicked his tongue, closing his eyes for a moment as though bracing himself.

“And then I said something stupid.”

“What did you say?” The question tumbled out, your curiosity escaping before you could temper it. You couldn’t recall Joel ever being nice to Travis. If anything, his attitude toward him bordered on dismissive, sometimes outright cold.

“I, uh...” He hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck. “I told him he could help me with you.”

Your lips parted slightly, your expression betraying your surprise, but you didn’t interrupt him.

“I said something like... if he wasn’t careful, I might steal you from him forever,” he admitted, his cheeks flushing deeply. “You know, like a dumb joke.”

The breath you’d been holding slipped out in a shaky laugh. “You said what?”

“I know, okay? It was stupid.” He grimaced, glancing away. “His whole attitude shifted. He got... intense. Asked if I thought you were some kind of object. Said I was an idiot for underestimating you like that.” Travis’s voice softened, tinged with embarrassment. “I apologized right away, told him I didn’t mean it seriously. But he just turned and walked off.”

“Yeah, well, that sounds like Joel,” you muttered, a hint of amusement slipping into your tone despite yourself.

Travis, however, didn’t seem amused. He sighed, dragging his hand over his face.

“Yeah. And ever since then, he’s been... I don’t know. Dismissive. Like I don’t exist. And at first, I figured I deserved it—I was out of line. But after a while, I started to think... maybe there’s more to it. Something I don’t know about.”

Your pulse quickened, but you kept your face neutral. Still, you couldn’t ignore the way his gaze felt heavier now, like he was peeling back layers, trying to uncover something buried.

“And when we started seeing each other, I thought maybe it didn’t matter,” he continued. “You told me you and Joel had argued, and that’s why things were strained. I believed you. But when I see the way you two act around each other...” He trailed off, shaking his head. “It’s just... obvious. Too obvious. I’m sorry, but I have to ask—” His eyes locked onto yours, unflinching. “Did something happen between you?”

The question hung in the air, heavy and inescapable. Your heart raced, each beat loud and insistent in your ears. You felt pinned in place, his gaze pressing against your silence like a weight you couldn’t lift.

“Travis...” you started, but the words caught in your throat.

His expression shifted, softening, but not in a way that let you off the hook. He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice. “It’s okay. Just... be honest.”

You liked Travis. You liked how steady he was, how easy it felt to be around him. And it hurt to realize he’d been carrying this doubt, this unspoken question, all this time. But his words also unraveled something inside you—a confession that finally made sense of Joel’s behavior. The teasing, the frustration, the way he reacted whenever Travis came up in conversation. Joel’s coldness toward him had been about you all along.

“Yes,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper. The single word carried a weight that settled between you, unavoidable. “A couple of weeks ago.”

The flicker of hope in his eyes extinguished, replaced by something quieter. Not anger, but something like disappointment. A quiet hurt he tried to hide but couldn’t entirely mask.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice steady, though you could hear the tension beneath it.

You hesitated. For a moment, you wanted to lie, to downplay the truth for his sake, for your own. But Travis had been honest with you from the start, and he deserved the same in return.

“We slept together,” you said finally, the words leaving your mouth like a weight dropping. “It was... a mistake. On his own words, that’s what he said.”

“He said it was a mistake?”

“Yeah.” The word felt colder this time, sharper.

Travis didn’t say anything for a long moment. He only nodded, as if piecing something together silently. And though you couldn’t quite read his expression, the shift in the air between you was undeniable.

“Then why did you fight?” Travis’s voice was steady but probing, his eyes holding yours with an intensity that made your stomach twist. “Was it because you slept together, or because he said it was a mistake?”

Your breath hitched. The question landed somewhere deep, stirring thoughts you’d been desperately trying to suppress. There was something in his tone—a clarity that felt unbearable, like a light shining on all the truths you weren’t ready to confront.

“Is there a difference?” you asked, your voice quieter than you intended. It was a feeble attempt at deflection, one that neither of you believed.

Travis let out a soft sigh, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips—fragile and fleeting.

“I’m afraid there is,” he said simply. “Because if the fight was about him thinking it was a mistake... that means you don’t think it was.”

“No,” you said quickly, too quickly, shaking your head as if the physical act could erase the implication. “No, that’s not it.” But the words felt hollow, a lie that echoed between you both. “Do you want to know why we fought? It wasn’t about that. It’s because he was cruel to me. That night, before anything even happened, he treated me like I was insane—like I was jealous of the woman he’s dating. And afterward...” You swallowed hard, your voice faltering. “Afterward, he acted like it disgusted him to be with me.”

Travis’s expression shifted, his eyes slightly wider now, but he didn’t interrupt. You could feel tears building, threatening to spill, but you pushed forward, the words pouring out faster than you could stop them.

“He’s been awful to me, Travis. Every chance he gets, he finds a way to provoke me, to make me feel small. Even to you—he’s been horrible to you, and it’s... it’s complete bullshit.” Your voice cracked, and you exhaled shakily, wiping at your eyes. “Because he was my best friend. For years. And it’s hard for me to accept that someone I respected so much doesn’t respect me back. That’s what happened. That’s why everything’s so strange now.”

Travis nodded slowly, still quiet, his gaze steady but unreadable. You took another deep breath, your chest aching with the effort of holding it together.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” you added softly. “But it was... private. And when we started seeing each other, everything was so new, and I didn’t know how to bring it up. That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to tell you.”

The silence that followed felt like a living thing, pressing down on you. Travis leaned back slightly, his fingers grazing the edge of his glass. He looked at you with an expression that made your stomach churn—gentle, but heavy with something that made you afraid.

“I know,” he said at last, his voice calm. “I know you wouldn’t keep something like that out of malice.”

“No, never,” you insisted, your voice cracking at the edges.

“But...” He exhaled slowly, his gaze dropping for a moment before meeting yours again. “I can’t lie to you, honey. This does affect me. And I don’t think I can pretend it doesn’t.” His honesty was like a sharp edge, cutting through whatever thin veneer of composure you’d managed to hold onto.

Your chest tightened. “Travis, I—”

He cut you off gently, raising a hand. “Listen. I like you. I really like you. You’re smart, and kind, and... easy to be around. But I don’t want to feel like I’m an obstacle in someone else’s story.”

“No,” you said, the word coming out as a rushed, desperate exhale. “You’re not. That’s not how it is. Joel and I... what happened between us was a mistake. A stupid, heat-of-the-moment thing that ruined everything we had. It’s over.”

Travis tilted his head slightly, studying you with that same quiet intensity. Then he shook his head, a soft, sad smile playing on his lips. “I don’t think Joel believes that.”

“Of course he does,” you insisted, though your voice sounded small, even to yourself. “He barely tolerates being around me now.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” His voice was calm, steady, as if he’d already thought this through. “I think Joel has... feelings for you. And I think it scares him so much he doesn’t know what to do with it. That’s why he’s defensive. That’s why he can’t stand me. That’s why he kept watching us at the barbecue like I was committing some kind of crime.”

“Travis—”

“No, just... let me finish,” he said gently, his hand brushing against yours. “I like you. I do. And I love spending time with you. But I don’t want to get caught in the middle of something I don’t understand.”

You blinked, feeling the words lodge somewhere in your throat. There was an ache now, spreading through your chest. “What... what are you saying?”

He gave you a small, bittersweet smile. “I’m saying you need to work things out with him. Figure out what’s really there—if it’s nothing, or if it’s something you just don’t want to admit yet. And once you do, if things are clear—really clear—then I’ll be here. If you want me to be.”

You nodded, your gaze dropping to your nearly empty plate. The lump in your throat threatened to choke you, and you fought to keep your tears from falling. If Travis noticed, he didn’t say anything.

The silence lingered for only a few seconds before he spoke again, his voice shifting to something lighter. He told you a story about one of his friends you’d met the night before, trying to fill the space between you with something less painful. You appreciated the effort, even if it only barely reached you.

Later, when you settled on the couch, he pulled up a documentary on potatoes—something about their versatility and origins. You leaned against him, your head resting on his shoulder, as his warmth settled over you like a temporary balm. But as the documentary droned on, your attention blurred, your eyelids heavy with the weight of the night. Before you could process it, you drifted off, the quiet hum of his presence the only thing keeping you grounded.

When you opened your eyes, the room was still and dim, the TV screen darkened, its glow long since faded. You were stretched out on the couch, comfortably cocooned in the softness of a throw blanket that hadn’t been there earlier. You stretched lazily, a deep yawn escaping your throat, and for a brief moment, everything felt calm. You felt rested, better.

But the calm didn’t last.

The memory of your conversation with Travis resurfaced like a stone dropped into a still pond, ripples spreading out and disturbing your peace. You sat up, rubbing the sleep from your eyes, your body still tingling with the remnants of an unburdened nap.

That’s when you noticed the note on the coffee table, a piece of paper folded neatly, its corners perfectly aligned. You reached for it, your fingers brushing against the edges before unfolding it.

The note was simple, in Travis’s clean, deliberate handwriting:

"I had to go home, didn’t want to wake you up; thought the rest would do you good. See you later :)."

You sighed, reading his words again and again, overanalyzing every line, every punctuation mark. Of course, he was kind, thoughtful as always. But underneath that kindness was something else—a quiet truth he’d handed you earlier like a weight too heavy to carry alone.

He was right. You couldn’t have anything honest with him if you didn’t face the mess you’d left behind with Joel. And that, of course, was even more complicated than you wanted to admit. Because you knew why.

You loved Joel.

Not just in the messy, confusing way that kept you up at night. But in all the other ways too. Joel was your best friend. Losing him had been one of the hardest things you’d endured in years, and the ache of that absence lingered like a bruise you couldn’t stop pressing. You missed everything about him—his dry humor, the easy rhythm of your shared days, the unspoken understanding that only years of friendship could bring.

You missed the mundane, simple things: the lunches that turned into dinners, the quiet nights spent on his couch, watching some terrible action movie he insisted was a “classic.” The lazy afternoons in his backyard, the sun catching in his hair as he hosed down his truck, grinning like a kid when he’d spray water in your direction just to hear you yell. The way he listened, the way he told you things he wouldn’t tell anyone else. The moments with Sarah—how natural it all felt, like a little pocket of family you’d carved out together.

And then it was gone. The thought of it made your chest tighten.

Your phone was on the coffee table, its screen dark until you picked it up. 4:34 p.m. The nerves in your stomach stirred again, buzzing like static beneath your skin. You stared at Joel’s name in your contacts. His number had been blocked since that Tuesday. If he’d tried to text you, you wouldn’t know.

Your thumb hovered over the unblock button, then pressed it. There. Done.

But now what?

You stared at the tiny phone icon next to his name, debating whether to call him. Your thumb twitched, but you froze. Maybe it would be better to write. Calls made you nervous—they left too much space for things to go wrong.

"Hi, Joel, I was thinking—"

No. Too vague.

"Joel, if you want, we can—"

No. Still wrong.

"Hi, can you talk—"

No, no, no.

You sighed, leaning back against the couch, the phone still warm in your hand. Before you could talk yourself out of it, your thumb pressed the call button. The line connected almost immediately, and then there it was—his voice, steady and familiar.

He said your name like it was a sentence.

“Hi, Joel,” you said, your voice even despite the way your heart was racing.

“D'you want me to come to your place, are you coming to mine, or should we meet somewhere else?” he asked, skipping over pleasantries entirely.

Always to the point.

“Is Sarah with you?” you asked instead, needing a moment to steady yourself.

“No. She’s with Lea.”

Lea. Right. You remembered Sarah talking about her—her new friend from soccer. Lea lived nearby with her mom and older sister, had a huge collection of video games, and a mother who baked cakes Sarah couldn’t stop raving about. But even then, Sarah had reassured you with a grin, “No one’s better at baking than you.”

She wouldn’t be back until dinner, you realized. It gave you some space, some time.

“Okay,” you said, weighing your options. You didn’t want to cry in public, and your house... well, nothing good had come from Joel being there last time. “I’ll go to your house,” you decided, bringing a hand to your forehead. ��In fifteen. Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” he said simply, his voice calm. “I’ll be here.”

You hung up without another word, the silence in your living room rushing back to meet you.

For a moment, you stood there, gripping the phone like it might steady the erratic thrum of your pulse. Your blood rushed in your ears, drowning out every other sound.

Fifteen minutes. That was all you had to pull yourself together.

You rang the doorbell and swallowed hard, nerves curling tightly in your stomach. Your eyes flicked down to your body in an almost absent check. The pajamas had been swapped for something presentable but still low effort: tailored black pants that grazed your feet, a black t-shirt layered under a wool sweater of the same shade. Safe. Functional. On your feet, though, the betrayal of slippers—a detail you hadn't thought much about until now, standing on Joel’s doorstep.

Inside, heavy footsteps approached, steady and deliberate. A sharp pang of anticipation ran through you. Less time passed than you expected before the door swung open, and there he was, framed by the familiar threshold.

Joel’s dark eyes met yours, scanning over you with a quiet intensity. He hadn’t changed much from earlier—still in the same dark jeans, but his sweater was gone, replaced with a simple white t-shirt that clung to his broad frame in that way that made your throat feel tight. He smiled softly, disarmingly, like he’d been practicing this exact expression.

“Come in,” he said, stepping aside to make room for you.

You hesitated for half a second before crossing the threshold. The familiar scent of his home—clean laundry mingling with faint traces of coffee and wood—hit you immediately, stirring something warm in your chest. You took in the living room, unchanged since the last time you were here, though your memory painted it differently now. This house, this space, was the backdrop to so much shared history, yet it felt heavy with everything left unresolved.

You paused in the living room, your hands finding their way into your pockets. The couch sat there like a relic, the same spot you’d occupied last time taunting you with its familiarity. Sitting felt both inevitable and wrong, like stepping back into a memory you’d tried too hard to forget. You lowered yourself onto the cushion anyway, folding into the space where you used to fit so effortlessly.

“D'you want something to drink?” Joel asked, already heading toward the kitchen. “I just made coffee. Got some of that chocolate you like too.”

You nodded without thinking, your voice betraying you with a simple, “Chocolate’s fine.” It came out softer than you’d intended, like you were worried anything louder might shatter the precarious peace between you.

Joel nodded back and disappeared through the archway. You were left standing in the middle of the room, the stillness pressing in. The faint aroma of coffee curled around you as your eyes moved over the space.

The TV was on pause, the frozen frame capturing Arnold Schwarzenegger mid-glare, leather jacket gleaming under dim lighting. On the coffee table, a stack of DVDs sat next to Joel’s keys. It was all so mundane, so normal, but the weight of your own memories turned it into something else entirely.

Your gaze lingered on the spot next to you, the place where Joel had sat the last time you were here. The memory hit like a bruise being pressed, sharp and unwelcome. You could still feel the crackling tension of that night, the words that had gone unspoken, and the ache of things breaking further apart.

By the time Joel returned, balancing two mugs, you’d managed to pull yourself back to the present. He set yours on the coffee table in front of you—a perfect swirl of steam curling from its surface—before sinking into the couch beside you with his own. The proximity sent a flicker of awareness through you, unsettling but familiar.

The chocolate was perfect, sweet and rich, just as you’d remembered. You focused on the cup in your hands, grateful for something tangible to anchor you. Joel took a sip from his mug, the silence stretching between you like a taut string.

He spoke first, breaking the quiet with a voice that was both casual and loaded. “Sarah’s still mad at me.” He paused, glancing at you before adding, “Said she didn’t want to be home if I was gonna keep acting like an idiot.”

The corner of your mouth twitched in a reluctant smile. “Why’s she mad?”

Joel gave you a look, his brows drawing together like he wasn’t sure if you were serious. “Because of yesterday,” he said finally. “When I wouldn’t let her talk to you.”

“Oh,” you murmured, the memory of his sharp tone from the day before resurfacing. You took another sip, letting the warm liquid settle in your chest.

Joel’s presence beside you felt larger now, like it was pressing against the edges of your awareness. It was strange, this new dynamic—this quiet discomfort with a man who had once been your safe place.

Neither of you spoke for a moment, the silence turning awkward in a way that made you itch. Your mind churned with unspoken words, all the things you wanted to say but didn’t know how to. And then, without fully realizing it, the thought slipped from your mouth:

“This is a bad idea.”

Joel’s head snapped up, his body tensing.

“No, wait,” he said quickly, setting his mug down as he reached for your hand, still curled around your cup. The warmth of his touch startled you, grounding and overwhelming all at once. “Please, don’t leave. Let’s talk. Just… talk, okay?”

The quiet desperation in his voice made you pause. You pulled your hand back, setting the cup on the table, and leaned away slightly, trying to create some distance.

“Okay,” you said, your voice steadier than you felt. “Speak, then.”

Joel’s gaze dropped to his hands, his fingers fidgeting in an almost subconscious rhythm, twisting together before pulling apart, like his thoughts were straining against each other in his head. His tongue flicked out briefly to moisten his upper lip, a small, nervous habit you’d noticed but never commented on. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, almost too soft, but it carried weight, each word vibrating in your ears as if they’d been tailored just for you.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said, his words deliberate, as though he’d rehearsed them countless times but still wasn’t sure how they’d land. His eyes didn’t meet yours, staying glued to the restless movement of his fingers.

You straightened in your seat, your chest tightening, not because you didn’t know what he meant—you absolutely did—but because you needed him to say it. To finally put it out there, to stop hiding behind vague statements and unfinished thoughts.

“What, Joel?” you prompted, your voice sharper than you intended.

His head lifted just slightly, his brow furrowed in a way that softened his expression rather than hardening it. His eyes, however, told the real story—heavy and shadowed, the exhaustion there making him look older than you’d ever allowed yourself to notice.

“This,” he gestured vaguely between you two, his hand falling limp to his lap again, “this thing we’re doing. Acting like strangers or, worse, like seeing each other is some kind of punishment we’re both trying to avoid. I can’t stand it anymore. I hate it.”

You exhaled sharply, leaning back against the couch as your arms crossed instinctively over your chest. His words stung because, on some level, they echoed your own feelings, but hearing them from him made you bristle. “I’ve never acted like that with you, Joel. Never.” Your voice was steady, clear, every syllable landing with precision. “If anything, you’re the one acting like seeing me is a nightmare you can’t wait to wake up from.”

Joel’s mouth parted as if to protest, but you didn’t give him the chance. “Like yesterday,” you continued, your tone sharpening. “Forcing Sarah into the house, shutting me out like I was the problem. Or all those times you decided to pretend I didn’t exist. How do you think that makes me feel, Joel?”

His frown deepened, but he didn’t look away. “That’s not true,” he said firmly, though his voice lacked the confidence his words suggested. “Every time I’ve tried to talk to you, you’ve shut me out. Like you couldn’t bear to be near me. I saw it in your eyes, felt it in the way you’d flinch or turn away. Like at the Hoffmans’, when you wouldn’t even look at me. And every time I spoke, I could feel your... discomfort.”

The mention of that night sent heat rising to your face, a mix of anger and embarrassment.

“Joel, really?” Your voice pitched slightly higher, but you forced yourself to rein it in, refusing to let him pull you into a full-blown argument—not yet. “You were so mean that night. To me, to Travis. What exactly did you expect? For me to smile and pretend like everything was fine?”

“I remember,” Joel interrupted, his voice dipping into something closer to regret. He rubbed a hand across his face, as though trying to erase the memory. “I just—” He paused, his brow furrowing further. “I just hated the way you looked at me. When I sat next to you I realized right away how uncomfortable you were with me there. I couldn’t stand it.”

You let out a long, slow breath, rubbing your temple as you tried to keep your own frustration from boiling over. “What did you expect me to feel, Joel? Our last conversation didn’t exactly leave me eager to see you again. Honestly, I didn’t even think you’d show up.”

“Why not?” he asked, sounding genuinely baffled. “I never miss the Hoffmans’ barbecues.”

That made you laugh, a short, humorless sound. “You hate those barbecues. You’ve said it a hundred times—the music, the noise, the neighbors gossiping. You only ever went because of us, didn’t you?”

He sighed, leaning back against the couch and dropping his hands onto his thighs. His gaze drifted to some fixed point ahead of him, like he was trying to gather his thoughts. “Yeah,” he admitted after a long pause. “And I wasn’t lying; I went because I knew you’d be there.”

His words hit you like a punch to the chest, and for a moment, you couldn’t respond. You stared at him, searching his face for some sign that he was joking, but he wasn’t. A small, bitter laugh escaped your lips as you shook your head.

“That doesn’t make sense,” you said, your voice laced with disbelief. “You attended for me but spent the whole night treating me like dirt. And let’s not forget hooking up with Clara Pierce.”

Joel’s face flushed immediately, a faint pink creeping up his neck and settling on his cheeks. He looked down at his hands again, his fingers still fidgeting, but now with a new kind of nervous energy.

“I didn’t hook up with her,” he said suddenly, his voice cutting through the charged air between you. His gaze lifted to meet yours, earnest and unflinching. “I didn’t. I just walked her home.”

"Yeah, right." You snorted, crossing your arms again. “Do you really think I’m that gullible?”

“I’m not lying,” he insisted, leaning toward you. “I didn’t sleep with her. I didn’t even wanted to be around her. I just needed an excuse to get out of there. So I walked her home and I told her to stop... you know, whatever she thought she was doing with me. You can ask her, and she'll probably tell you I'm an asshole.”

There was something in his tone, a rawness that made you pause. He wasn’t lying—you could see it in his eyes. But the relief you felt was quickly overshadowed by anger.

“You knew she liked you, Joel. And you let her think she had a chance. Why? Did you even consider it for a second?”

He hesitated, his jaw tightening as he searched for the right words.

Joel exhaled deeply, his gaze roaming over your face like he was reading a language he used to know fluently but now struggled to understand. The irritation etched into your features mirrored his own; it was like looking into a cracked reflection. His shoulders sagged slightly as if weighed down by his own thoughts.

“No,” he said finally, the word flat, almost lifeless. “I don’t like her. I don’t like the way she talks to me, the way she... carries herself around me. And no, I don’t like the way I acted that night either. I know I was out of line. But I wanted to talk to you, and Travis wouldn’t—” He stopped, shaking his head, his frustration palpable. “He wouldn’t let go of you. And when I finally did talk to you, I screwed it all up again. I know that. I hate it, but it’s the truth. I was pissed off and fed up.”

You straightened your spine, your body tense, arms stiff at your sides. “What did you even want to talk to me about, Joel?” you asked, your voice sharp now, cutting through the air between you. “What for? If every time we talk, all you succeed in doing is making me feel worse?”

He blinked slowly, the weight of your words visibly landing on him. His dark eyes drifted over your face, heavy with something that resembled anguish. His hands rested in his lap, fingers clasped tightly together, his thumbs rubbing small, compulsive circles against each other. When he spoke again, his voice was unsteady, barely above a whisper.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, his head lowering until his eyes were focused somewhere around your feet. “I try to psych myself up to apologize to you. But every time I see you, I can’t think straight. It’s like my brain short-circuits. I get defensive, I think, whenever I see you looking... happy.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly. “Happy with him. You look like you’re doing just fine, and I think, what the fuck am I doing? Why am I here? Clearly, you don’t feel as shitty as I do. And then I get angry. I hate how easy it seems for you. How simple it is for you to move on, like my absence doesn’t even register. And that’s what I can’t handle, because that’s not how it is for me. Not at all.”

His gaze lifted to meet yours, and the intensity in his eyes was like a physical touch, hot and almost unbearable. “It’s not my case at all,” he said, his voice quiet but heavy with emotion. “Not a single day has gone by where I haven’t missed you. Do you have any idea how empty this house feels without you? How empty my life feels?”

Your lips parted, the sharp retort on the tip of your tongue faltering under the weight of his words.

“Joel—” you began, but he cut you off, his body leaning toward you, one hand lifting as if to physically hold your words at bay.

“No, I’m serious,” he said, his voice firm now, the rawness in it making your chest tighten. “It’s pathetic, how much it affects me. And it’s exactly what I was afraid of, you know? That we’d cross that line, and everything would go to shit. And now—”

“Is the thought of that night really so unbearable for you, Joel?” you interrupted, your voice trembling but still strong enough to slice through his stormy rambling. You leaned in slightly, your posture rigid, your gaze locked on him. The question caught him off guard; his breath seemed to hitch, his eyes widening. “Because it feels like you can’t even stand it. Like the idea of touching me—of having touched me—is some stain you can’t wash off. Like I was a nasty trap you fell into by mistake, like you needed an acid bath to clean off my handprint. Just a moment of weakness.”

He froze, his chest rising and falling with slow, deliberate breaths. The sunlight streaming through the window behind him illuminated the back of his neck, the soft curls there catching the light like strands of gold. His skin looking golden as honey, dark eyes safe in shadow against the illumination. You could almost swear he wasn't breathing.

“Yes, it is” he said at last, his voice quiet and careful. “But not for the reason you think. I hated how I acted. I hated how I treated you. I was impulsive and cruel, and that’s not how it should’ve been between us. That’s not how we should’ve been.”

You frowned, the confusion and annoyance sharpening your gaze.

“You always think you know how everything should go, don’t you?” you asked, tilting your head slightly as you studied him. “You map it all out in your head—the beginning, the middle, the end—and when it doesn’t go your way, you act like the world’s against you. Don’t you get tired of trying to control everything, Joel?”

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t reply. You leaned back, shaking your head softly.

“You’re impulsive. You’ve always been impulsive," you continued. "That night, at the barbecue, even yesterday. And somehow, you always manage to drag me down with you.”

“Stop it,” he said suddenly, his voice low and firm. He sat up straighter, his broad frame casting a shadow over you as he loomed closer. “You want to know what bothers me? That you act like I forced you into all of this. Like I made you do something you didn’t want to do. Yes, we slept together. I know I messed up afterward, but I didn’t manipulate you into it, and you know it.”

His voice softened but remained steady, each word deliberate. “I asked you, I asked you right before it, don't you remember? Tell me to stop,” he paraphrased, his thick voice sending shivers down your spine. “Do you want me to stop?. No, you said.”

You remembered, of course. The moment was burned into your memory, as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. His voice had been thick with urgency, his body trembling against yours. Tell me to stop, he’d said, his breath hot against your skin, your body pressed against the wall.

“I know,” you said quietly, your voice barely audible.

Joel’s voice was laced with something raw, an edge of frustration barely concealed. “Then why does it feel like every time we talk, you act like all of this is something I forced you into?” His words hit the air with force, each syllable sharpening the distance between you. “Like I’m the villain in your story. Like seeing me or even talking to me is some kind of punishment. You made that pretty clear at the barbecue.”

You watched him, your chest tightening in that way it always did when his anger met your own. It was ironic, wasn’t it? How he felt like you were the one dragging him down when you’d spent months drowning under the weight of him. You shook your head slowly, a faint, bitter smile curling on your lips.

“You don’t get it, do you?” you said, your voice quieter now but no less firm.

Joel blinked, the sharpness of his expression softening into confusion. His brows relaxed, his shoulders losing some of their tension. He looked at you like he was waiting for something, like you were about to reveal a crucial piece of the puzzle he hadn’t yet figured out.

“You left, Joel,” you began, your tone steady, each word landing like a blow. “You lied to me. You treated me like I was the liar, like I was the jealous one. You used my feelings against me, and then you kissed me like you were trying to win some kind of argument, to prove a point. You undressed me. You saw me naked, touched me, and fucked me. And then you left.”

The words hung in the air between you, and you saw how they hit him—hard. His face didn’t change much, but you noticed the way his brows twitched, how his lips parted slightly as if to respond. But you didn’t give him the chance.

“It took you days to come and talk to me properly. Days,” you continued, your voice harder now, every syllable sharp and deliberate. “And when you finally did, it wasn’t to apologize. You treated me like I was nothing more than an afterthought. A stranger. You said it was a mistake, Joel. That you let yourself go. That you regretted it. Do you have any idea how pathetic that made me feel? How used? My best friend decided that sleeping with me was the worst thing he’d ever done. A ‘torturous mistake,’ I think you called it. And no, you didn’t force me. But don’t stand here and ask me why I don’t want to see you anymore. You made me feel less than nothing.”

Joel’s gaze dropped, his head lowering until you could see the thin scar across the bridge of his nose. It was almost absurd, how familiar you were with it—how many times you’d wanted to trace it with your fingertips. Your hand twitched at your side, but you held still, the distance between you stretching impossibly wide.

When he looked up, his eyes startled you. They were glassy, shimmering with unshed tears that caught the light like fragments of something broken. His voice, when it came, was quieter, almost hesitant.

Joel’s voice was steady but low, weighted with something that felt too big to name.

“The first time I saw you, I felt something I wasn’t supposed to feel,” he said, each word measured, like he’d been rehearsing this in his head for years. “I liked you. Simply put. I’m not sure I was even trying to fight it then, but I knew I should have been.”

You didn’t interrupt. You couldn’t. The weight of his words settled into your chest, filling spaces you hadn’t known were hollow. He didn’t look at you as he spoke, his gaze lingering somewhere to the left of your shoulder.

“It was your birthday,” he continued, his tone softening as though he were wading into the memory. “You were having a bad time. I could tell the second I walked in. I wasn’t even invited to the party, remember? Brianna brought me, and I knew I shouldn’t have attended. It was small, intimate—you clearly weren’t expecting someone like me there. You looked at me like I’d ruined the whole night just by showing up.”

His lips curved slightly, a self-deprecating smile. “Brianna told me it would be fine. She was wrong, obviously. But I figured it out pretty quickly—that it wasn’t me or even the party that was bothering you. It was your birthday. You hated it.” His gaze flicked toward you then, tentative, as if confirming his guess. “Still, you smiled at me in the kitchen. I don’t think you wanted to, but you did. And I thought, this is dangerous.”

Your stomach twisted, memories of that night rushing back in sharp detail—the awkward weight of him in the room, the heat in his voice when he’d said your name. You’d never realized how much he’d been paying attention, even then.

“I was dating your friend,” he continued, his voice dipping lower, “so I didn’t let myself think about it much. But after that night, Brianna kept inviting me to things. And I knew you were always there, and that you probably would always look at me like I was some sort of intruder. So I turned her down every time after that. I didn't—I couldn't afford to find out how much I liked you. I've had enough."

His admission hit you like a punch to the ribs. You gripped the edge of the couch, trying to keep your expression neutral, though you weren’t sure you were succeeding.

“When Brianna and I broke up, I figured that was it. I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.” He exhaled, almost laughing at himself. “And then, four years later, you moved in next door. Can you believe that? I actually thought it was fate or something. Stupid, right?”

The corner of your mouth twitched, but you didn’t say anything. He didn’t notice. He was smiling faintly now, lost in his own thoughts.

“That’s when I realized how much I liked you,” he said, his voice softening. “Too much. But time passed, and you became more than that. You became my best friend. Sarah adored you. I adored you, i do. You made everything feel... I don’t know, lighter. I couldn’t ruin that just because of some crush.”

His words cracked something open inside you, the realization sinking in that he had never known how you felt. How many nights had you lain awake, cursing yourself for the way you looked at him? And all that time, was he doing the same?

“So I let it go,” he said simply, as if that explained everything. “I buried it. You were important to me. Too important. I wasn’t going to risk what we had for something that might not even needed to be real. I couldn't corrupt us. But that's just what I did, isn't it?”

He paused, his eyes finally meeting yours. They were dark, shining with a mix of regret and something else you couldn’t quite name.

“I threw it all away in one night. Let myself get carried away, let my anger take over. And now you’re hurt, and I hate myself for it.”

You stared at him, unable to speak. The tears streaming down your face were hot, but you barely registered them. Your whole body felt like it was vibrating, heavy and weightless all at once.

“You’re beautiful,” Joel said suddenly, his voice dropping. “The most amazing woman I’ve ever met. Don’t think for a second that sleeping with you was torture. It wasn’t. I was stupid and selfish and angry, and I hurt you. I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing to you, and I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

Your breath caught, his name leaving your lips like a prayer. He wasn’t finished, though. His gaze dropped again, his hands twisting together as he added, almost to himself, “I was too focused on my anger...I didn't realize how much I had hurt you. You look so good with Travis that I thought-”

“Joel.” His name slipped out of your mouth, barely audible, but he didn’t stop.

“He treats you well, doesn’t he?” Joel’s voice cracked slightly. “He’s good to you. Better than I’ve been lately, m'sure of it. I've been mean to him, I know."

"Joel, can-"

"Sarah is very happy for you. Says he's handsome and all that," he continued, almost as if he was thinking out loud. “I’ll stay out of your way,” he said finally, looking back at you with a kindness that made your stomach twist. His smile was soft but hollow, his eyes dark with resignation.

You wanted to tell him to stop. But again, Joel wasn’t looking at you anymore. And his thoughts were spiraling somewhere you couldn’t reach.

“I promise I'll be good. And you don’t have to forgive me. But if you’ll let me, I’d like to try. To make it right. Even just a little, may-”

His voice broke something in you. Your breathing quickened, your chest tightening with something that felt too big to contain. And Joel stopped mid-sentence, his body going still as he took in your expression when you suddenly got up the couch, interrupting the sound of his voice, which slowed down as soon as he saw you.

Joel’s eyes flickered with confusion as he looked at you, his body tense, like a taut string waiting to snap. Your expression must have told him everything he needed to know—or maybe nothing at all. Your breathing was uneven, shallow, as though you couldn’t find enough air.

There were too many feelings jostling for attention inside you, none of them distinct, all of them overwhelming. His words were still spinning in your head, looping back and forth without ever resolving into clarity. Was he stepping back? Letting go? Accepting Travis? Did you even want him to do that? The thought alone made your chest tighten painfully, but you didn’t even know if it was what he meant.

You caught his gaze one last time, something raw passing between you, and then you turned sharply. Your feet carried you toward the door like they had a mind of their own, your breath hitching, your pulse wild and erratic. The rush of blood in your ears drowned out the sound of your footsteps, the room, him. You reached out for the door, your hand trembling, when his touch—firm, warm, steady—landed on your shoulders.

He turned you to face him, and there he was, his expression cracked open with concern. His brow furrowed, his lips parted slightly, searching for words he didn’t know how to form. He looked lost in a way that made something inside you twist painfully.

“Please don’t—” Joel began, his voice low, careful, but he didn’t finish. He couldn’t, because suddenly, you were on your toes, leaning into him, closing the space between you like it was inevitable.

Your arms wrapped around his neck as your lips found his, desperate and unrelenting. For a moment, he froze, stunned, but then his hands moved to your waist, strong and grounding, pulling you closer until there wasn’t even a sliver of space left between you. His eyes fluttered shut, and yours followed, everything else fading to a blur.

Completely lost, that's how you felt as his lips kissed yours; the kiss deepened, his tongue brushing against yours, and the world tilted. Your breathing came fast and shallow, mixing with his, as if neither of you could quite get enough. His arms tightened around you, his chest pressed against yours, solid and impossibly warm. You felt his strength everywhere, his thick arms wrapped around you, the way he held you like he didn’t want to let go, and it undid you completely.

Your body fit against his in a way that felt both foreign and natural, and when he pulled you tighter, you felt his unmistakable hardness against your belly. The sound that slipped from your lips was involuntary, a soft moan that melted into his mouth. He responded with a low, guttural sound that sent a shiver through you, leaving no doubt that he felt this just as intensely.

He broke the kiss, but only to trail his lips down your neck, finding that spot just beneath your ear that made you gasp. His teeth grazed your skin, gentle but firm, and your hands tangled in his hair, pulling him closer, as though you could anchor yourself to him, to this moment. Your body burned under his touch, heat radiating from your skin, your body so hot that if someone spilled water on you it would evaporate instantly.

This time Joel didn't ask, he didn't have to. His hand found yours, and he guided you toward the stairs, his grip steady, his presence a quiet reassurance. Each step was a blur, your feet barely keeping pace with him, but you didn’t care. You trusted him completely, even as your knees wobbled, even as you stumbled and he steadied you.

When you reached his room, he pushed the door open without hesitation, his lips already finding yours again. It was different this time, hungrier, more urgent, like neither of you could wait any longer.

How many times had you been in Joel's room? Too many. The space was familiar, you’d been there countless times before, and yet now it felt entirely foreign. The walls seemed closer, the air heavier, thick with anticipation.

He tossed you onto the bed with a gentle push, his hands sliding to the hem of his shirt, tugging it upward in one smooth motion before tossing it aside. And his eyes never left yours as he unbuckled his belt, the metallic clink sharp against the charged silence. You sat up, your hands trembling as you peeled off your sweater and shirt, discarding them without a second thought. His pants hit the floor, and as your hands unbuttoned your pants, Joel's hands took over pulling them down your legs, while your eyes devoured the image of him —fully, completely bare—, his thick, swollen dick staring back at you. And you couldn’t stop the soft gasp that escaped you.

Joel climbed onto the bed, his body hovering over yours, his mouth finding yours again. His skin was burning hot beneath your fingertips as your hands explored him, desperate and deliberate. You could feel the weight of him pressing against you, grounding you, and yet you felt utterly unmoored.

He paused, just barely, his eyes locking on yours in a gaze that felt criminal. There was something unspoken in his eyes, something intense and devastating, as his body pressed even closer to yours. The evidence of his desire pulsed against your skin; his silky pink tip throbbing against your belly. And your breath hitched as a wave of heat rolled through you, leaving you breathless.

Joel’s right hand slid under your back, his fingertips brushing against your skin in a way that sent an electric current racing through you. Instinctively, your spine arched, your body offering itself to him without hesitation. The faint plastic sound of the clasp unbuckling filled the charged air, followed by the soft sensation of his knuckles brushing your shoulder blades.

You lifted your arms above your head, releasing the hold you’d had around his neck, giving him the space to slide the bra free in one seamless motion. The fabric disappeared somewhere out of sight, irrelevant now, as his lips returned to the curve of your neck. They pressed there, slow and deliberate, his kisses trailing downward with a tenderness that felt almost reverent.

When his mouth reached your chest, everything else fell away. Joel paused, just for a heartbeat, before opening his mouth and taking one of your breast, his tongue circling your nipple with a teasing rhythm that sent shivers down your spine. His lips were soft, almost unbearably so, and the suction he applied was gentle but insistent, each movement pulling a quiet moan from your throat.

Your hands found his hair again, threading through the thick, slightly messy strands. This time, you tugged, harder than you meant to, and he responded with a low, guttural moan that vibrated against your skin, the sound so intimate it made your stomach tighten. His free hand claimed your other breast, his thumb moving in slow, agonizing circles over your nipple, each touch coaxing more heat from you, your body so sensitized it felt like every nerve was connected to him.

The ache inside you was unbearable, a tension building low in your belly that threatened to spill over with just the careful ministrations of his mouth. You felt wild, desperate, every inch of you on edge, and still, he moved with the kind of patience that felt like torture.

“Joel,” you gasped, your voice raw and unsteady, “fuck me already.” The words spilled out unfiltered, your head falling back against the pillow, your back arching again in a plea for more of him, more of his touch, more of his weight pressing into you.

His hands stilled for only a moment, his eyes flicking up to yours. Something passed between you then, a moment of recognition—of shared urgency, yes, but also something deeper. Then his hands moved, confident and certain, to the waistband of your underwear. With no hesitation, he hooked his fingers around the elastic and tugged downward, the fabric dragging against your thighs in a way that felt both intimate and freeing.

Joel sat back slightly, his weight shifting onto his heels as he worked the underwear off completely, his movements slow. The sun streamed through the window, catching him in a way that made your breath hitch. He looked unreal, the golden light painting his skin in warm hues, the flush on his chest and face deepened by the contrast. His eyes, darkened with desire, somehow glinted brighter in this light, a sharp clarity that made them look like liquid amber.

You couldn’t look away. He was beautiful—too beautiful, almost painfully so—and the way his chest rose and fell, his labored breathing, the way he looked at you, like he wanted to eat you whole, made your throat tighten.

Joel smiled then, soft but unguarded, and you swore you felt it everywhere. A double inhaled breath escaped his lips, more felt than heard, and then he let the underwear fall to the floor, forgotten.

His hands found your ankles next, his grip firm but tender as he slowly spread your legs apart, his gaze dropping between them, dropping to the throbbing heart between your legs. The shift in his expression as his eyes settled there—intense, hungry, almost reverent—made heat bloom across your chest. You felt exposed in the most vulnerable, raw way possible. But it felt good. Natural.

Desire was etched across his face, raw and consuming, his lower lip trembling slightly as though he was holding something back—something that threatened to spill over any second. The air between you felt molten, thick with the weight of what was about to happen. Your whole body ached with need, a fire burning so fiercely inside you that you couldn’t bear to wait any longer.

As though he could read your mind, Joel leaned over you, his hands bracing on either side of your head, the mattress dipping slightly under his weight. His body hovered just above yours, close enough that you could feel the heat radiating off him. His hips shifted, his movements slow, deliberate, as he guided himself to you.

The head of his cock brushed against your clit, swollen and slick with his pre-cum, and the contact sent a shockwave through you. Your cunt throbbed at the sensation, a needy whimper escaping your lips, soft and involuntary.

Joel groaned low in his throat, the sound vibrating through you as he took himself in hand, rubbing his length against you. The pressure, the friction—it was maddening, each stroke sending your back arching off the mattress. Your hands gripped his shoulders, your fingers digging into his skin like you might fall apart if you didn’t hold on to him.

Then, without warning, he pressed forward, the thick head of him stretching you open, slow and steady. A gasp tore from your throat as he filled you inch by inch, the delicious ache of it making your head spin. Joel’s breath hitched, his eyes falling shut as he stilled for a moment, buried fully inside you. His body trembled slightly, overwhelmed by the sensation of your warmth gripping him so tightly.

He dipped his head down, his face close enough that your noses brushed, and your lips found his instinctively, crashing together with a fervent kind of need. His kiss was messy, uncoordinated, but it didn’t matter—it was everything you needed in that moment.

Joel shifted, bracing himself on his arms, his body pressed even closer to yours as his hips began to move. The first thrust was deep, deliberate, setting a rhythm that sent shockwaves through you. Each roll of his hips drove him impossibly deeper, his cock sliding against your slick heat, glistening in the golden sunlight that spilled across the room.

The sounds that filled the space were obscene: the wet, rhythmic slap of your bodies meeting, your moans mingling with his, and the creak of the bed frame crashing against the wall with every thrust. The room seemed to shrink around you, the rest of the world fading away until there was only this—only him.

Your body sank into the mattress under the force of his movements, your hands clutching at his skin desperately. Your nails bit into the muscles of his back, leaving crescent-shaped marks as you cried out, each sound punctuated by the relentless rhythm of his hips.

You couldn’t think anymore. Your mind had been overtaken completely, drowned in a haze of pleasure so intense it bordered on overwhelming. All you could do was feel—the heat of his body against yours, the slick slide of him inside you, the way every thrust seemed to tear you apart and put you back together all at once.

His eyes found yours then, blazing with an intensity that made your stomach flip. His face was flushed, beads of sweat glistening on his forehead and neck, and the sight of him like that—lost in you, undone by you—was enough to make your chest tighten.

Your hands slid up to the back of his neck, pulling him closer, your lips finding the curve of his throat. You kissed him there, tasting the salt of his sweat, your teeth grazing the sensitive skin. Your tongue ran over the wet centimeters of his skin, and Joel let out a low, guttural sound, a noise so raw and primal that it sent a shiver through you.

His thrusts quickened, each one harder, deeper, the intensity building to a fever pitch. Your legs wrapped tightly around his waist, your heels digging into his skin as if to anchor yourself. You couldn’t hold on much longer—every muscle in your body was coiled tight, the tension growing unbearable, threatening to snap at any second.

Your mouth found his again, desperate kisses scattered across his jaw and lips, and just as his tongue slipped past your lips, his deep moan vibrated against your mouth. It was your undoing.

Your body tensed, every nerve igniting as you shattered around him, the release so powerful it stole the breath from your lungs. You cried out, your moans tangled with his as your walls clenched around him, pulling him deeper, holding him tight.

Joel’s hips faltered, his rhythm breaking as he followed you over the edge. He groaned, the sound low and hoarse, as his body jerked against yours. You felt him throb inside you, his release hot and overwhelming, spilling deep within you as he buried himself fully one last time.

The world went quiet then, save for the sound of your labored breathing and the soft creak of the bed as you both stilled. Joel collapsed onto you, his weight grounding you, and for a moment, neither of you moved. You were utterly spent, but there was a strange peace in the way his body rested against yours, the way his lips brushed your temple in the aftermath.

Joel’s lips lingered against yours for a breathless second before he pulled away, his face collapsing into the crook of your neck as though he couldn’t hold himself upright any longer. His body felt heavy, but his touch was soft, almost hesitant, as if the weight of the moment had finally sunk into him. Your labored breaths mingled, the only sound in the room, filling the air with an intimacy that neither of you dared disturb.

When he finally rolled onto his side, you turned to face him, unable to look away. His face was flushed, damp curls clinging to his forehead, and his lips were still swollen and dark from your kisses. There was something unguarded in his expression, a rare openness that made your chest ache. You drank him in with fascination, deliberately holding back the tide of guilt or confusion that threatened to rise.

His eyes caught yours, and when they softened, a warmth unfurled low in your stomach. He reached out, his fingers brushing against your cheek with an almost painful tenderness, and then he leaned in to press a kiss to your temple—delicate, reverent, like a vow unspoken.

For a moment, neither of you moved. Then, with a slight sigh, Joel pushed himself up and padded toward the bathroom. You watched him the whole time, your gaze tracing the lines of his back, the way his shoulders moved with every step. When he returned, he carried a damp towel, crouching beside you with quiet purpose. The towel was warm against your skin as he cleaned you carefully, the act so gentle it left your throat tight.

Once finished, he tossed the towel aside and climbed back into bed, his body sinking into the mattress beside yours, his arms wrapping around you again, bringing you closer to his warm chest. The silence stretched out between you, heavy but not uncomfortable. You weren’t sure how long you lay there, the two of you caught in the stillness, but the pull of sleep began to tug at you, the haze of exhaustion wrapping around your mind.

Neither of you had spoken a word. The quiet felt sacred, unbroken by explanations or apologies. You didn’t want to speak, and it seemed Joel didn’t either.

But then, the sharp sound of the front door creaking open shattered the stillness, startling you both. Joel bolted upright, his body tense.

“Dad, I’m home!” Sarah’s cheerful voice echoed up the stairs.

Panic shot through you like ice water. You sat up abruptly, your heart pounding as adrenaline surged through your veins. Joel was already on his feet, reaching for his clothes in a hurried, almost frantic motion. His eyes darted to you, his expression equal parts alarmed and apologetic.

“I’ll be right down!” he called out, his voice forced into an approximation of calm. He disappeared into the bathroom for a moment, and when he returned, his face and hands were damp. He rubbed at his skin with the hem of his shirt, then turned to you, his gaze steady but urgent.

“Five minutes,” he said softly, waiting for your nod before slipping out the door.

Left alone, you scrambled to pull yourself together. Your legs trembled as you stood, still tender, and your hands shook as you worked to smooth your hair and wipe your face. No amount of effort could erase the telltale flush of your skin or the lingering haze in your eyes, but you tried anyway. Still, you couldn’t shake the feeling that it was written all over you, I just had sex.

When you finally made your way downstairs, every step felt like walking into a storm. Your body felt too warm, too obvious, but Sarah’s voice rang out before you could falter.

“I can’t believe you’re here!” she exclaimed, her face lighting up as she rushed toward you. Her arms wrapped around you tightly, her excitement genuine and bright. “Dad told me you were upstairs, but I thought he was joking!”

Joel stood in the living room doorway behind her, leaning casually against the frame, his arms crossed. His gaze met yours, careful and unreadable, but the tension between you was a living thing, humming beneath the surface. And then, as Sarah beamed at you, reality crashed over you like a wave.

Travis.

Sienna.

Joel.

And Sarah, looking at you like this was the happiest day of her life.

“What should we do for dinner?” Sarah asked, turning to you expectantly. You opened your mouth, fumbling for a response, but your thoughts were spinning too fast. Your heart was pounding, your pulse roaring in your ears. You glanced at Joel, hoping for a lifeline, but he looked just like you; completely lost.

“Oh, I know,” Sarah said, her tone bright with enthusiasm. “Let’s invite Travis!”

“Sarah,” Joel warned sharply, his voice cutting through her excitement.

“What?” she asked innocently, glancing between the two of you.

“Don’t be nosy,” he muttered, but his voice lacked conviction.

Sarah only laughed, brushing off his scolding. She turned back to you, her expression softening.

“Did my dad apologize to you yet?” she asked conspiratorially, her voice dropping to a mock whisper. “It’s about time.”

Her words hung in the air, a weight that neither you nor Joel seemed willing to touch. And as her laughter echoed around you, you forced a smile, though your mind was already spinning, trying desperately to figure out what to say—or what to do next.

It was too much.

422 notes · View notes

xxsyluslittlecrowxx · 29 days ago

Note

Sending Zayne frisky pictures during work hours

Meeting him that night in a suggestive attire

Teasing him till he breaks

= no walking for atleast a day

And, I, thank you

𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒

— 𝒁𝒂𝒚𝒏𝒆

𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐃 the day with monastic precision—06:00 for procedures, 09:30 for lab analysis, 13:00 for final reports. The same sequence, adhered to without deviation, like liturgy. It gave shape to the silence. It excused his isolation. There was comfort in that—though he would never call it comfort aloud. It was discipline. Sterile gloves. Bloodied instruments scoured of memory. Silence. Always, silence.

And yet—

The message arrived precisely when the world was still.

He had just closed a file. His left hand lay quiet at the desk’s edge; a pen balanced between two fingers with surgical stillness. Then—vibration. A small sound, almost apologetic. Not urgent.

Her name.

That was all. A notification. A message. Nothing unusual. It might’ve been a follow-up question. A misplaced decimal. A joke. She had a way of doing that—disarming him, sliding into his thoughts with a kind of blithe intimacy, as if she had always belonged there.

He picked up the phone.

And at once, his breath faltered.

The image was not explicit. No, that was precisely the horror of it. Had it been vulgar, obscene—something he could discard with the sterile detachment of a surgeon—he would’ve felt nothing. But this? This was intentional. It was artful. A composition.

Her robe, half-fallen. Black lace visible beneath. Fingers at the knot. Lips parted. No face, not fully—but the mouth was enough. The expression there unmoored him more than any nudity could have.

He locked the phone. Too fast. As if caught. But there was no one. Only the hum of fluorescents and the sudden, suffocating thickness of air.

For a moment, he stood there—utterly still.

The pen had fallen. He hadn’t noticed. It lay near his foot like a desecrated instrument—dropped in a surgical theater, now unclean, now unworthy.

He peeled off his gloves and turned to the sink.

He did not need to wash his hands.

But he did.

Habit, he told himself. Reflex. Precision.

Lies.

The water ran for sixty-four seconds. He counted each one. Numbers steadied him, sometimes. The cold helped more. It shocked the system, drove the blood inward. His hands moved methodically—palms, backs, between the fingers, under the nails, up to the wrists—until the skin grew tight and flushed and borderline raw.

Still, she remained.

Not the image—he had closed the phone. But something in her lingered. Not in the eyes, but behind them. Not on the screen, but beneath his skin. She had entered him like a fever: slow, elegant, unannounced.

That robe. That fabric. That implication. That invitation.

A performance, yes. It had to be. Calculated.

And yet it felt—punitive.

As if he were being punished for something he had not yet admitted wanting.

He returned to his desk, sat, and stared at nothing.

Time passed. Minutes, maybe more. The edges of the room grew porous.

He imagined her wherever she was—still warm from taking the photograph. Did she check to see when he’d opened it? Did she wait? Did she wonder if he would reply? Did she hope?

He unlocked the phone.

Once. Just once, to confirm. To verify that he hadn’t hallucinated the severity of it.

It was worse.

He did not move.

He did not speak.

He did not touch himself.

But he was drowning in her.

It wasn’t lust—not merely. No, lust would have been easier. Familiar. Physiological. But this… this was sacrament spoiled. A reverence that strangled, holy and profane. The kind that ruins men—not with sin, but with devotion.

Zayne did not believe in possession. Not in the romantic sense. People were not things. Emotions were not facts. Love was a biochemical distortion. Lust, a reflexive betrayal of reason. He had built his mind like a fortress atop these principles—brick by brick, evidence by evidence. Rationality. Discipline. Observable data.

And yet—

The thought of another man seeing her like this—her robe falling open line scripture undone, her mouth slack with suggestion—sickened him. Not out of jealousy. No. That would imply entitlement. He knew she wasn’t his.

But it would be… wasteful.

A desecration.

A crime against something he did not yet have language for.

She was—

No.

He could not name what she was to him.

He feared what it would mean if he could.

He stood abruptly. The chair shrieked against the tile. The sound was too loud, too human. He paced. Once. Twice. The door loomed, a threshold he could not justify crossing. Where would he go? Where could he possibly leave her behind?

She was inside him now.

And burning.

Another message arrived.

He did not move.

The screen glowed in the periphery, a silent commandment. He knew what it was. Knew it would not save him. Still, the light held a gravity—like confession. Like damnation.

He could ignore it. Pretend. Resume the script of the man he was before.

Instead, he tapped the screen.

And exhaled through clenched teeth.

She was standing now. Or half-standing—angled toward a mirror. The robe was gone. In its place, red lace clung to her hips like capillaries, veins blooming over skin. Her back arched just so, her head tilted. And on her shoulder—something blurred. A smear. Lipstick. Or a bite.

He gripped the counter’s edge until his knuckles paled.

It wasn’t lust.

It wasn’t even want.

It was reverence—terrible and holy. The kind of reverence that destroys. The kind that drips from Psalms and The Book of Job. The kind that made desert prophets wail beneath the stars and tear their garments in the face of God.

She had become an altar. And he—her heretic.

The thought struck him not with awe, but with shame.

Because he had known. He had always known. From the moment she first crossed the sterile threshold of his lab—unannounced, unafraid—something had shifted in him. Something tectonic. She was not simply beautiful. She was consecrated—and he had let her linger too long in the corridors of his restraint.

Now her image had become scripture.

And he was no longer a scientist, but a man unraveling at the feet of his own hypocrisy.

His fingers hovered above the keys.

A message bloomed in his mind:

My office. 8PM.

Simple. Clinical. Commanding.

But it rang like blasphemy in the stillness. To write it would be to cross a line—one he had drawn in blood and vowed never to breach. Not out of cowardice, but devotion. The kind of twisted, reverent denial that made monks tremble in their cells. The kind that gnawed holes into the soul.

No.

He could not write it.

To speak desire was to own it. To own it was to name it.

And once named, it would not be contained.

So instead—

He turned the phone over, face-down, as if shunning an idol.

He stood, methodically. Walked to the sink.

And washed his hands. Again.

Not for cleanliness.

Not even for control.

But because the ritual was the only thing left of him that still obeyed.

He loathed the warmth in his palms.

The water had long since cooled, yet still he scrubbed them together beneath the faucet, as if friction might cauterize the part of him that had responded—eagerly, hungrily, stupidly—to the sight of her. It wasn’t shame, not exactly. It was something darker. A recognition of sickness, as though desire itself were contamination and he’d breached his own sterile protocol.

He shut off the water, but lingered. Staring. As if the faucet might offer judgment. Or absolution.

Then the towel. Too rough. Too violent. He dried his hands with the force of a man punishing himself, and the fabric tore slightly at the edge. His grip again. Excessive. Undisciplined. He discarded it into the bin and returned to his desk, each step clipped with the weight of self-reproach.

The phone remained face-down. The screen black. Like an eye deliberately shut against sin.

He wouldn’t check it again.

He wouldn’t.

A knock broke the silence.

Zayne didn’t answer.

He didn’t have to.

The door opened, uninvited—as it always did when Elias was involved.

“Still here?” Elias stepped inside, balancing two files in one hand, a tablet in the other. His tone was light, unaware. “Not even a coffee break. Do you ever stop?”

Zayne said nothing. Not out of cruelty—though it might have seemed that way—but because speaking required breath. And breath might summon scent. And scent might bring her back. He was convinced her perfume still haunted the air, like a spirit refusing exorcism.

“Right,” Elias muttered, unbothered. “I’ll make it quick.”

He crossed the room and laid the files on the desk. Zayne didn’t look at them. Couldn’t. His eyes were fixed on the phone—face-down, inert, yet radiating like an unholy relic.

It wasn’t a device anymore. It was a presence.

Not mechanical.

Not digital.

Something worse.

Organic.

Pulsing with implication.

“So,” Elias tried again, undeterred. “You doing anything tonight?”

A dozen answers flared in Zayne’s mind. All of them inappropriate. All of them true.

I’m planning to self-destruct. I’m planning to dissolve twenty years of control in the wake of a photograph. I’m planning to abandon the man I was for the promise of something I shouldn’t even want.

Instead, he rasped, “No.”

Even that single syllable felt like betrayal—spoken past a throat tight with disuse.

Elias looked at him more closely. “You okay?”

Zayne looked up.

Mistake.

Because at that precise moment, the phone vibrated again.

A brief pause. Short. Surgical. Inescapable.

He didn’t need to turn it over.

He knew.

“Another emergency?” Elias asked, half-laughing.

Zayne’s voice barely made it out. “No.”

“Well,” Elias exhaled, missing the weight entirely, “some of us are heading out later. You should come. You’ve looked like death all week.”

Zayne inhaled. Slow. Controlled. “I prefer solitude.”

“Yeah. Clearly.”

And then Elias was gone.

The door closed behind him, swinging like the last breath of something dying.

He did not move.

He let the silence settle again—let it congeal around him like a second skin, one that no longer fit. His hands remained still, his spine locked, but inside, everything was spiraling. Decay disguised as discipline. Reverence masquerading as restraint.

Then, slowly—inevitably—he reached for the phone.

Face-up now.

The light struck him like judgment.

He opened it.

And what stared back was not cruelty.

It was not vulgarity.

It was revelation.

She was lying down this time. Somewhere soft. Somewhere unseen. Her hair unbound—he’d never seen it like that before—and it spilled across the frame like silk undone. Light caressed her in places no light had the right to touch. Her thighs. Her stomach. Her breasts—bare now, the lace pushed aside, forgotten.

Her fingers rested between her legs.

Not crude.

Not obscene.

Intentional.

It was art. In its way. But it was also more.

A confession.

A provocation.

A dare and a liturgy all at once.

Something twisted in his chest.

Not a flutter. Not arousal. No—something deeper. A contraction. As if guilt had a physical shape and it had begun to devour him from within.

There was no longer space for denial.

This was not an accident.

Not a flirtation.

Not innocence.

It was orchestration.

She wanted him undone.

And what horrified him most—what sank teeth into the hollow of his stomach and turned slowly, like a ritual blade—was that a part of him wanted her to succeed.

He closed the image.

Then opened it again.

Longer, this time.

He told himself it was analysis. Confirmation. A study of composition.

He lied.

He knew better.

He could hear his own voice—cold, clinical, merciless—echoing in the recesses of his mind:

This is beneath you. You are not ruled by this.

But the image remained. And with it came memories he had not consciously summoned—like blood seeping through a gauze dressing long believed secure.

The pitch of her voice when she said his name—always softer than it should have been. The peculiar weight of her gaze when it lingered too long on his hands. And the smallest thing—the one that undid him the most—was that she always remembered. Every word. Every insignificant thing he’d ever said to her.

No one did that.

Not with him.

Zayne stood.

His entire body felt wrong.

The blood in his veins moved too fast.

His spine was too rigid, his breath too shallow—as if he had been occupying this form without permission and it had finally begun to reject him.

He paced. Not for relief. Not for order.

He didn’t count the steps this time.

There was nothing left to measure.

The lab behind the glass wall glowed with quiet sterility—unchanged, untouched—but it might as well have been another planet. He was no longer part of that world. That man. That silence.

He had crossed a threshold. A sacred line now blurred by heat.

He’d exiled himself the moment he opened the second message.

He could message her now.

He could summon her—

with a line, a time, a place.

He could lock the door behind her, speak in absolutes, claim her as if desire were proof enough.

He could pretend this descent was deliberate.

But he didn’t.

Because doing it would make it real.

Would transform the ache into action, the want into history.

And if it became real, then there would be no undoing.

No unseeing.

No forgetting.

No return to the cold safety of indifference.

Zayne—rational, clinical Zayne—had always relied on the possibility of erasure.

So instead, he sat.

And let the image devour him in silence.

Not as indulgence.

Not as pleasure.

But as punishment.

He stood. Then sat again. Then rose—

as though his own body had grown foreign, ungovernable.

As though stillness itself had turned against him.

The chair groaned in protest. He ignored it.

Paced the narrow span of the office like a prisoner retracing the same four steps—except this cell had no bars, only thoughts. No guards, only the self. And he, the most merciless warden of all.

Once.

Twice.

His fingers grazed the edge of a bookshelf, paused briefly at a drawer handle, then moved on. He was not touching objects—he was testing the world, searching for weight. But everything felt distant. Unmoored. Functionless.

Even the room seemed altered now.

As though someone had shifted it in his absence.

Not visibly—no. But fundamentally.

As if the space itself had turned on him in some slight, cruel way he couldn’t name.

He crossed to the window.

Of course there was no view. Just the sterile corridor beyond the reinforced glass-fluorescent lighting, shadows that moved like ghosts of routine. Reflections. Echoes. His own outline, faint and pale, stared back at him with too much knowing in the eyes.

His mouth was set in that same neutral line he wore before patients, before colleagues—impassive, unreadable. But his eyes….

He turned away.

He could not bear the sight of himself.

He opened a file on the desk. Reflexive. A patient’s chart—nothing urgent. He scanned the text, sought solace in numbers, margins, diagnosis. He had annotated it earlier that day. His own handwriting blinked back at him, unfamiliar.

But the figures lost their shape. The characters bled.

She returned—not in the data, but behind it. Beneath it. Her form slid between the lines, her legs replaced vital signs, the slope of her neck inserted itself into white space. Even the ink seemed to carry the impression of her skin.

He shut the folder. Too fast. Too violently.

The paper crinkled under the force of it.

He exhaled—slowly, deliberately—like a man attempting to bleed poison from his lungs.

It’s just arousal, said the rational voice in him.

The physician. The empiricist.

But it wasn’t.

It was longing, and it had metastasized. Not into want, but into need.

Not for her body—at least, not only—but for her presence. Her attention. Her voice when it dipped in pitch. Her gaze when it lingered too long.

Absurd.

Undignified.

Unacceptable.

And yet, undeniable.

He no longer craved her skin. He craved her awareness—the way she remembered things he said that even he had forgotten. The way she looked at him as if he were still human, not just useful.

It was not attraction. It was not obsession.

It was the beginning of a disease.

He sat again.

Not from fatigue—he was far past the luxury of tiredness—but because there was nowhere left to stand that didn’t feel exposed. The room no longer accepted him. It watched him now, complicit and unkind.

His hands moved to his tie. Without thinking. The knot loosened slowly, reluctantly, as if its unraveling might relieve the pressure beneath his sternum. The air hit his throat sharp, medicinal—too cold.

He glanced at the clock.

No—not the clock.

The phone.

It hadn’t buzzed again. Not once.

That should have brought relief.

Instead, it felt like absence—raw and echoing.

Like a presence withdrawn.

A silence that accused.

Had she grown bored of the game?

Had she sent that last image, and then—simply moved on? Gone back to her life? Her evening? Her mirror?

Was someone else seeing her like that now?

The thought struck him like a blunt instrument—no blood, just bruising.

A slow, spreading sickness in the chest.

He nearly stood again.

Instead, he forced himself down, fingers digging into the armrest like anchors.

It didn’t matter.

It shouldn’t matter.

But it did.

He stared at the device.

Daring it to light up.

Dreading what would happen if it did.

Time no longer moved in sequence. It expanded. Warped.

He could not tell whether minutes or hours had passed.

It might still be afternoon.

It might be near midnight.

The light in the office was always the same—artificial, unfeeling.

So was the air.

So was the silence.

So was he—

or had been, until today.

He let his head fall back against the chair.

The ceiling stared down—blank, uncaring, the color of anesthesia. He could have been anywhere. In a morgue. In a chapel. Inside a dream.

The moment stretched.

Not a pause, but a void.

Then, unbidden, he remembered Elias. The offer. The bar.

Zayne rarely drank. Two, maybe three times a year. Alcohol dulled his thinking, made his mind heavy. Sluggish. But tonight—

Tonight he already felt impaired.

Hollowed. Humming with something he didn’t know how to hold.

And there was logic—cold, brutal logic—in sedating a wound before it turned septic.

The thought arrived like a prescription:

Leave the building.

Say yes.

Sit in a room full of noise and let other people’s voices drown out the one in your head.

He wouldn’t have to speak.

Only listen.

Only forget.

ANd if he drank—just enough—maybe he would sleep.

And maybe—if sleep took pity—

he wouldn’t dream of her.

He leaned forward.

Elbows on knees.

Eyes locked on the phone.

It didn’t ring.

It didn��t buzz.

It didn’t move.

Neither did he.

The stillness returned—but it no longer soothed.

It had calcified into something hostile. A vacuum that amplified the smallest things: the tick of his own pulse in his throat, the electrical hum threading through the walls, the dryness crawling across his tongue like dust.

And beneath it all—her.

Not the image.

Not anymore.

She had transcended the screen.

What she had sent him was not a photograph. It was a threshold.

And he had crossed it—

unwilling,

uninvited,

but entirely unable to look away.

He imagined her fingers parting the lace—

but not for a camera.

For him.

No performance. No angle curated for effect.

Just her. Unedited. At ease in her ruinous power.

The kind of intimacy that didn’t demand witness, only presence. A gesture not made to provoke, but because it felt good to do so. As if she were bored with subtlety now—done with the elegance of implication.

He saw her look at him through lowered lashes, amusement curled at the corner of her mouth. A soft laugh—not unkind—when his hands hovered, reverent, just short of contact.

Not posed.

Not choreographed—

just lazy, instinctual, indulgent.

He would touch her—

God, he would—but not in desperation.

In detail.

His hands would move like confession, slow and deliberate.

He would begin at her wrist, press his mouth there first—as if to repent.

Then upward.

Each inch of her arm a gospel to be read in flesh.

His fingers would find the fragile architecture of her hips, splay there with measured reverence. No grabbing. No claiming.

Only worship.

His thumb would brush that place where skin turned—

softest,

warmest.

The point of surrender. The place where breathing changed.

He would ask her—quietly, without accusation—

if she knew what she had done to him.

And when she smiled, he would kiss her like punishment.

Not violently.

Not cruelly.

But with a kind of relentless devotion—

the kind that pressed too long, too deep,

Until even pleasure began to ache.

Until reverence became unbearable.

He wanted her trembling.

Not from fear, but from restraint.

From the exquisite pain of being denied what she already ached to receive.

He wanted to make her wait.

Make her feel the weight of what she’d done.

Not because he was cruel.

But because she had undone him first.

ANd fairness had to mean something.

His mind betrayed him further.

He saw her mouth open against his neck, felt the pause—the sacred, breathless space before sound escaped her throat.

Her body tensed beneath his—not in resistance, but in surrender.

A tightening that begged for release.

That told him she trusted him enough to break.

And in the moment before he gave in—

before he pushed into her with all the ruin she had earned—

he would say something he hadn’t said aloud in years.

Not an endearment.

Not a promise.

Just her name.

Only her name.

His hands curled around the armrests.

He hadn’t realized how hard he was gripping until the fabric groaned beneath his fingers—tense, strained, as though the chair itself were trying to resist him.

He wanted to bury himself in her.

To forget who he had been before she touched him—without touching him at all.

He wanted to erase the space between their bodies until there was nothing left to deny.

His eyes burned.

And then—without warning—he stood.

Violently. Absolutely.

Both palms slammed down on the desk, a thunderclap in the quiet.

The sound ricocheted off the walls, louder than any alarm.

His breath was ragged.

His posture undone.

His tie hung half-loosened at his chest like a mark of defeat.

He couldn’t stay here.

He needed to move.

To leave the room, the building, himself.

He reached for his coat. The fabric felt foreign—cold, stiff.

He dragged it over his shoulders with frantic urgency, the sleeves bunching, resisting. He yanked them straight, uncaring. Next came the scarf—creased, tangled, irrelevant.

It didn’t matter.

Nothing fit right.

Nothing softened the pressure building beneath his ribs.

He just needed barriers.

Cloth. Movement.

Distance.

Anything to armor himself against this heat that wasn’t physical.

He crossed the room in long, agitated strides, shoulders hunched like a man pursued.

His reflection caught him in the window—

briefly.

Enough.

Pale. Hollow-eyed.

Mouth clenching against something unspeakable.

He looked away.

The door opened with a shove, hard enough to echo.

The hallway outside was too bright—obscenely bright. The kind of light that revealed things best left bruised.

He walked anyway.

The elevator waited at the end of the corridor.

It’s light glowed steady above the closed door—silent, expectant.

It looked like a mouth. A mechanical throat ready to swallow.

Maybe that was what he wanted.

To disappear into motion.

To be pressed between strangers, noise, anything.

To be drowned in the anonymity of other bodies.

To forget the shape of her skin and the sound he imagined she would make when—

No.

He pressed the call button harder than necessary.

The panel lit. The gears behind the wall groaned to life.

And Zayne stood there—

breathing like a man who’d just escaped a burning room.

The elevator didn’t come.

He stood motionless beneath its steady, indifferent light, jaw clenched, breath caught somewhere between chest and throat. He didn’t press the button again—what would be the point? Even that motion felt laughable now. As if action could atone for thought. As if descending one floor might deliver him from himself.

The air was wrong. Too clean. Too still.

Every breath scraped against the back of his throat, as though filtered through gauze. The corridor hummed faintly with electricity—but beneath it, something else vibrated. Something internal.

A low, gnawing heat.

He felt it beneath his collar. In the hollows of his palms.

Between his legs, where logic had lost jurisdiction.

He hadn’t looked at the phone again. He didn’t have to.

The image was fused to memory now—a neurological brand.

Her bare body reclined, so deliberately unaware of mercy.

He hissed between his teeth—sharp, involuntary.

Then turned.

Slammed a palm against the wall.

Leaned into it, hard enough to jar his shoulder.

It didn’t help.

Nothing helped.

He tried to count his breath, tried to impose rhythm, control—but it wasn’t breath anymore.

It was need.

It was humiliation.

It was rage masquerading as restraint.

“Pathetic,” he muttered, a breathless sneer. “You’ve dissected neural tissue under pressure, and this is what ruins you?”

The words came like vomit.

Bitter, involuntary.

They sickened him.

His forehead pressed against the cold plaster.

He could feel his pulse in his temple—erratic, defiant.

As if his own body had tried of obedience and now moved on its own terms.

The world narrowed into raw sensation:

the dampness gathering at the nape of his neck,

the sting coiled behind his eyes,

the bite of clenched teeth barely holding back—

what?

A cry? A confession? A fall?

He wanted to rip her from his mind.

Not because he hated her.

Because he didn’t.

He wanted her in ways that had no language.

No anatomy.

No cure.

There was no clinical explanation for this kind of ache.

No scan that could chart it.

No sedative strong enough to blunt it.

And the thought—

God, the knowledge—

that she wanted him too?

It didn’t thrill him.

It hollowed him.

He swallowed the sound rising in his throat. It hovered between a groan and a prayer.

She had sent herself to him in pieces—image by image, suggestion by suggestion—until her presence no longer lived in photographs, but inside him.

She was no longer a thought.

She was a condition.

A fever.

A state of being.

He didn’t know where she ended and he began anymore.

He shut his eyes.

Then—

a sound behind him.

Soft. Measured. Clicking.

He froze.

No.

No. No, not now. Not like this—

The sound came again.

Deliberate. Rhythmic.

Heels.

Each step unhurried.

Not mechanical, not rushed.

Intimate.

The air thickened. Grew heavy, as if sound itself displaced the oxygen.

He didn’t turn.

He couldn’t.

Not yet.

The steps drew closer.

One.

Then another.

Measured like a ritual.

Unhurried as a heartbeat beneath silk.

His body locked.

Every muscle drawn tight, every breath withheld like it might break him.

Spine rigid, hands still planted against the wall.

Was he hallucinating?

Had his mind—already scorched, already unraveling—finally abandoned logic?

No.

He turned.

And the world ended, gently.

She walked toward him with the kind of composure that made madness seem holy.

A trench coat belted at the waist. Loose.

The fabric moved with her—fluid, sinless, damning.

From the slit at its side, her leg emerged, then disappeared again.

A rhythm that mocked modesty.

her skin glowed under the corridor’s sterile light.

Her expression—

unreadable.

His hands fell to his sides.

The floor tilted beneath him—

or maybe it was just his blood abandoning reason.

The air thinned. Gravity stuttered.

He couldn’t look away.

Not from the way her hips moved—graceful, damning.

Not from the place where the coat parted with every step, revealing flash after flash of skin like a secret told in stutters.

Not from her eyes—

that unbearable alchemy of innocence and audacity.

As if she had always known.

That he would come undone the moment he saw her.

That she had planned for it.

Her hips swayed.

The coat parted.

Her eyes held him there.

His knees almost gave.

Not in some romantic, tragic metaphor.

In truth.

His body faltered under the weight of her—

not her form, but her knowing.

The way she moved with intention. The way she looked at him like he was already hers.

Like she could take him apart without ever touching him.

He kept himself upright through force alone—

jaw locked, breath dragged through nose like discipline could save him.

Like a man seconds from collapse.

A sound escaped him.

Raw.

Involuntary.

Low in his throat—closer to a groan than a word.

Almost a prayer.

Almost a moan.

He didn’t even care.

He didn’t know what he was anymore.

Not a doctor.

Not a scientist.

Not the man who once measured everything in proof and principle.

Just a man—

bare, wordless, trembling—

reduced to one silent, devastating plea:

Touch me.

Let me touch you.

Just once.

Let me worship what I was never allowed to want.

But he said nothing.

Because nothing he could offer—no word, no gesture—

would be equal to this.

So he stood.

Trembling.

Waiting.

As she moved—unhurried, unstoppable—

toward the point of no return.

She drew nearer.

He wanted to speak. Truly, he did.

A protest. A warning. A plea.

Anything to wedge between this moment and its consequence.

But the words—so many, urgent and inexact—clotted in his throat like stones.

He opened his mouth.

Nothing came.

Only air.

Thin. Unsatisfying.

His hand moved.

Just a tremor at first. A small, shameful spasm near the wrist.

But it betrayed him more than any cry could have.

A man in control didn’t shake.

A man in control didn’t falter.

Her gaze caught it instantly.

Of course it did.

She stopped just in front of him.

Close.

But not touching.

No—never that. She didn’t need to.

Proximity was its own form of possession.

She looked up at him—unapologetic, unhurried.

Her eyes held no urgency. No shame.

There wasn’t even cruelty in her expression.

It was almost passive.

Almost.

But at the corner of her mouth, something shifted—

a shadow of amusement, subtle as breath.

Not mocking.

Not cold.

Something gentler.

More maddening.

She was enjoying this.

Not sadistically. Not with malice.

But with the patience of someone who understood exactly how men broke—and had chosen, gently, not to intervene.

She watched him come undone like one watches a fever run its course—not willing it, but allowing it.

Knowing it would break something.

But not caring what.

Zayne swallowed. Loudly.

It felt like dragging gravel through his throat.

His fingers twitched again. Both hands this time.

He wanted—

God, what did he want?

To drag her against him?

To fall to his knees?

To beg her to leave before he did something he could never take back?

His heart pounded—not fast, but hard.

Each beat landed like a drum struck by purpose.

War drums. Warning signs.

His vision blurred—not from heat or emotion, but from the sheer overload of sensation.

And still—

she said nothing.

That silence—hers—was unbearable.

Because it was full of knowledge.

She knew.

She knew what she’d done to him.

And worse—she knew he wouldn’t stop her.

The scent of her—warmth, skin, faint perfume—reached him like an affliction.

Subtle. Precise. Unrelenting.

It slipped into his lungs and made a home.

His throat worked. He tried again.

“I—”

But it died there.

What could he say?

I can’t.

You shouldn’t.

Please.

Useless.

His shoulders stiffened in shame.

But his eyes—traitorous, starving—remained locked on the small space between the lapels of her coat.

Just there.

A breath of skin.

The soft valley he knew, from memory now, led to lace and ruin.

The faintest smile deepened on her lips.

She hadn’t moved. Not an inch.

Not even a shift of weight.

And yet—

the entire hallway felt tilted toward her.

As if gravity itself had been rewritten.

That was when he understood.

With the brutal clarity of a man falling:

This wasn’t a whim.

Not a game.

Not even a test.

It was mercy.

In her language.

A quiet offering.

A chance to surrender before he shattered.

And still—

he did not move.

Not because he lacked the will, but because he had already offered it.

He simply stood there.

Trembling.

Held captive in the silence she had made sacred.

Waiting for her to decide whether he was worth the fall.

She tilted her head.

Barely.

But it broke the stillness like a whisper in a cathedral.

And then she spoke.

“Did you get my messages?”

The words were soft. Almost playful.

But tucked between syllables was something far more dangerous—a blade wrapped in velvet.

He flinched.

As if struck.

The elevator behind him chimed.

Sterile.

Emotionless.

Perfectly timed.

Perfectly cruel.

He didn’t turn.

Didn’t move.

His breath hitched—

then held.

She hadn’t stepped closer.

She didn’t have to.

The silence between the crackled now—alive.

Charged

Like something pulled too tight.

He looked down.

Her leg—bare where the coat parted.

Light grazing along the line of her thigh, revealing everything and nothing.

No tights.

No stockings.

No pretense.

She had arrived like a secret.

Not offered—meant to be discovered.

His eyes climbed slowly.

He didn’t blink.

Didn’t rush.

Each second felt like an offering, a moment suspended in something larger than choice.

And it undid him more than anything that had come before.

The muscle in his jaw twitched.

His fingers curled faintly, as if remembering what it felt like to hold nothing.

Then—without a word—she reached for the belt at her coat.

And pulled.

Just enough.

The fabric loosened. Shifted.

What lay beneath wasn’t vulgar.

Wasn’t loud.

It was intentional.

Burgundy lace.

Bare skin.

Soft shadows that invited and condemned in equal measure.

She didn’t reveal everything.

She didn’t need to.

He saw only what she allowed—and yet, in his mind, he traced the rest with the precision of a man who had studied her in dreams.

And something inside him—

snapped.

Not in rage.

Not in lust.

In relief.

His body moved before though could stop it.

No hesitation.

No stutter.

Only gravity, finally obeyed.

He stepped forward—not staggering, not rushed, but with the finality of a man who knew there would be no turning back.

One arm curled around her shoulders.

The other pressed firmly at the small of her back—anchoring her. Anchoring himself.

And then—

his mouth was on hers.

The kiss wasn’t soft.

It wasn’t careful.

It was starvation—

the mouth of a man who had survived restraint, only to discover that discipline had always been a slow kind of death.

He kissed her like she was air after drowning, heat after frost, absolution after sin.

She tasted like the only way out—

from the silence,

from the waiting,

from the nightmare he’d never woken from.

She yielded without surprise.

As though this had always been the ending.

As though his restraint had only ever been a curtain waiting to be drawn.

Her hand rose to his chest—fingers curling into the fabric of his coat—but he didn’t let her linger.

He turned.

Guided her back.

The elevator doors had already begun to close.

He caught them with one hand—forceful, unnecessary—and pulled them open like a man reclaiming something he’d been punished for wanting.

They stepped inside.

The light overhead flickered once, as if even the system knew this moment wasn’t meant to be observed.

The second the doors sealed, he lost what little remained of his restraint.

His hands seized her waist—possessive, not gentle—and he turned sharply, pressing her into the cold steel of the elevator wall.

Not thoughtfully. Not carefully.

With suppressed violence.

Not to harm.

To hold.

To tether himself to something solid before he fractured into vapor.

Her gasp bloomed against his cheek as her back hit metal.

He drank it in like a man starved of grace.

His hands moved—frantic, reverent.

He palmed her ribs, her stomach, the delicate underside of her breast through the lace.

The fabric was thin.

Too thin.

He hated it.

Wanted it gone.

But more than that—

He wanted to feel her through it.

To make her shiver beneath the barrier.

To know he could make her arch—not with skin, not with friction—but just from fingertips and will.

She leaned into him—arms sliding around neck, fingers threading into his hair with a trembling kind of care.

She tugged once.

He nearly lost his fitting.

His mouth found hers again—

but this time, it wasn’t a kiss.

It was a confession.

He kissed her like a man begging for mercy he knew wouldn’t come.

Tongue tangled with hers, breath caught between teeth, groans swallowed into heat.

There was no rhythm. No choreography.

Only want—

ugly and unfiltered.

He broke away—breathing hard, hoarse, wrecked.

Her eyes were already heavy-lidded.

Cheeks flushed.

Chest rising beneath the open coat like she’d been running for miles.

Zayne lowered his mouth to her throat—and bit.

Not cruel.

Not deep.

But sharp enough to leave something behind.

A mark.

A warning.

A memory.

Something she’d feel later and think of him.

His right hand slid down her thigh—fingers wrapping, firm, reverent.

He lifted. She let him.

Her leg curled around his hip, bare skin brushing the rough fabric of his slacks.

He was already hard.

Already aching.

And the pressure of her—right there, so close, so ready—

made his head spin.

Her head fell back—a soft thud against the elevator wall, exposing the vulnerable line of her throat.

He stared at it—pale, perfect, impossibly delicate.

And then kissed it—not with hunger, but with the kind of urgency reserved for last rites.

Not lust.

Not control.

Devotion.

Her coat slipped open—fully, finally.

And there she was.

Not in parts.

Not in suggestion.

Not in memory.

But whole.

No lens. No barrier.

Just her.

His breath caught.

All words abandoned him.

He said nothing.

Couldn’t.

He buried his face in her shoulder, inhaling the warm scent of her skin like it could steady the tremors in his hands.

It didn’t.

Nothing calmed.

Nothing could.

Her fingers slipped beneath his coat—dragged lightly down the back of his neck.

Nails grazing skin.

He shuddered.

It didn’t feel like seduction.

It felt like being claimed.

He kissed her again.

And again.

Each one rougher.

Each one slower.

Each one worse than the last.

They weren’t about pleasure anymore.

They were about surrender.

Each kiss another nail in the coffin of the man he had once pretended to be.

Her lips were swollen now.

Her thighs tightened around him—bare, trembling, unbearably warm.

He could feel her—not just body, but permission.

Every part of him wanted to tear the space between them into nothing. To sink into her until he forgot what it was to be alone.

But he didn’t.

Not yet.

He held her tighter.

Not to take.

To remember.

This moment.

This body.

This surrender.

Because after this—

after her—

he would never go back.

His mouth hovered near her ear, breath unsteady—words clawing their way up his throat before he could tame them.

“You wore this for me,” he rasped, voice raw—gravel dragged through reverence. “This little thing under your coat… do I’d see it and lose my fucking mind?”

She didn’t answer.

She couldn’t.

Her fingers clutched the lapels of his coat like a lifeline.

Knuckles white.

Chest rising too fast against his.

He laughed—low, bitter.

Not mocking.

Punished.

“You wanted me to snap, didn’t you?” His lips brushed her jaw. “You wanted to know what I’d look like when I finally stopped pretending.”

She whimpered—soft, breathless—and it undid something low and deep in his spine.

“You like being watched?” he murmured, lips dragging down the column of her throat. “Standing in front of that mirror… touching yourself…”

His mouth brushed her skin.

“Knowing I’d see it. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to forget.”

He pulled back—just long enough to spin her beneath his grip.

She gasped as her body turned, coat slipping from her shoulders like a veil in slow motion.

Her spine met his chest.

Her palms struck the elevator wall—a muffled slap of flesh against steel.

Bracing herself.

He pressed into her from behind—chest to her back, hips grinding slow and deliberate between her thighs. Cruel in rhythm. Worshipful in intent.

Her breath caught.

She tilted her head to the side—automatically. Wordlessly.

Exposing her throat like it belonged to him.

He nuzzled once—then bit. Not hard.

But deep enough to hear her moan.

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” he whispered, voice thick with grit and fire. “One look at you and I knew.”

His hand dragged slowly down her side, fingertips skating over ribs, waist, hip.

“You wore that lace, stood in front of that mirror, sent me that picture—just to end up here.”

His fingers dipped, teasing the curve of her thigh.

“To be bent over. Held like this. While I ruin you.”

He nudged her legs apart with his knee—deliberate. Decisive.

She didn’t resist.

Didn’t hesitate.

His breath ghosted across her ear.

“Good girl,” he breathed. “Keep them open.”

His hand slid upward—slow, unmerciful—along the inside of her thigh.

The skin there burned.

Velvet and heat and want.

She gasped when he reached her center—slick, soaked, shameless.

Zayne groaned—

deep and guttural.

The sound vibrated against her spine.

“Fuck—so wet,” he whispered against her shoulder. “You’ve been like this all day, haven’t you?”

She nodded—barely.

He watched the motion of her cheek against the wall, her lip caught between her teeth.

“I should make you say it,” he muttered, his fingers teasing slow, punishing circles just shy of where she needed him. “Make you admit how much you need me.”

She arched—pushing back against him, hips desperate, thighs trembling.

He smiled against her skin.

Slow. Dark. Inevitable.

“No patience,” he murmured. “Good. I don’t have any left either.”

And then—

he slid one finger inside her.

Deep. Slow.

Deliberate.

until he was buried.

She cried out—muffled, desperate, beautiful.

His breath faltered.

A curse broke beneath it.

Her warmth—it was obscene. Unholy. Alive.

She clenched around his finger like she already knew how to hold him when he fucked her.

He curled his finger—once.

She shuddered so violently he had to catch her—one arm braced across her stomach, anchoring her to him.

His mouth pressed to her neck.

“You feel like sin,” he groaned. “And I don’t give a fuck if it damns me.”

She was melting.

Bent forward, hands braced against the wall, body trembling with every slow, deliberate thrust of his fingers.

Zayne couldn’t look away.

Everytime he pushed inside her, her hips jolted. Her breath caught. Her thighs clenched.

And fuck—the heat of her, the way she tightened around him like she knew he belonged there—it made his cock twitch so violently he nearly gasped.

He pressed his chest harder into her back, mouth at her ear.

“That’s it,” he breathed. “Let me feel all of you.”

Her answer was a broken maon—

half-swallowed.

Pleading.

He slid his hand higher, fingers curling again—deeper this time.

Her knees buckled.

“Fuck, you’re perfect like this,” he whispered, his voice shredded at the edges. “So wet for me. So fucking tight.”

She whimpered when he twisted his wrist—just right—pressing against the spot that made her body jerk forward like he’d struck a chord.

His other hand moved to her breast, cupping it roughly. Thumb dragging across the peak until it responded—until it peaked against the lace.

She cried out—sharp, breathless, shattering.

He groaned, deep in his chest.

A sound that trembled out of him like pressure escaping a crack in stone.

His cock throbbed—hot, slick, restrained.

He was soaked—leaking for her, so hard he could feel every beat of his pulse in the shaft.

“You don’t even know what you do to me,” he growled into her hair. “I’ve been hard since you sent that first fucking picture.”

His breath hitched. “There hasn’t been a second since that I could think straight. Could barely see straight.”

She arched.

Her legs trembled.

“You close?” he asked,

voice a rasp,

teeth grazing her shoulder.

“Yeah? You’re gonna come just from my fingers, aren’t you?”

She nodded—desperate, trying to grind back against his hand, chasing the edge he held just out of reach.

He smirked—dark, reverent, ruined.

“Such a good girl,” he murmured. “Taking it so well. Fucking dripping for me.”

He pinched her nipple—a tug, just enough.

She nearly collapsed.

“I’m gonna eat this pussy after,” he whispered, the words so low they barely existed.

“When you’re shaking…when you’re overstimmed—face down, ass up—I’m gonna spread you open with my tongue and keep going until you’re crying.”

Her whole body locked.

He pushed deeper, twisting his fingers just right—once.

She wailed.

The sound split from her chest—

cut off and strangled at the throat.

“Not yet,” he hissed, his breath shaking against her skin.

“You don’t come yet. You wait.”

She moaned—high, needy, broken.

But she obeyed.

He leaned into her fully, panting against her neck, his cock throbbing—painful now, slick inside his soaked boxers.

He was losing it.

Every inch of him flushed and trembling, the pressure unbearable. His own arousal smeared hot against the inside of his slacks.

He was going to snap.

He knew it.

If she clenched around him again, he’d come untouched.

But he didn’t stop.

Not yet.

because he needed her to break first.

She was breaking apart.

Every muscle in her back tensed beneath his chest, her breath reduced to shattering whimpers.

He felt her thighs twitch around his hand—desperate. Aching. Lost.

Her cunt clenched around his fingers, tight, greedy, rhythmic—each pulse a plea.

Zayne could barely stand.

He was seconds from coming—without friction. Without mercy. Just from the sound of her falling apart on his hand.

Still, he didn’t let her come.

Not yet.

Not until she earned it.

“You gonna fall apart for me, baby?” he rasped into her hair, his voice nothing but heat and grit. “Gonna soak my fucking hand?”

She whimpered, nodded—

hips rocking helplessly back into his hand.

“You want it so bad, don’t you?” His fingers curled deep and slow.

She cried out—louder this time.

“Feel that?” he growled. “That’s how deep I’m gonna fuck you. I’m not gonna stop. You’ll be shaking, crying, begging me to slow down—and I won’t. Not until I feel you come all over my cock—just like this.”

She gasped, legs threatening to give.

His palm never stopped—fingers stroking through the slick obscene heat of her, pressure building perfectly.

“You gonna cream for me, sweetheart?” he groaned, voice breaking against her ear. “Right here in the elevator, huh?”

His hand flexed.

His breath stuttered.

“You want to be my filthy little mess?”

She nodded—frantic, wild, one hand lifting from the wall to claw at his wrist.

Begging, wordless.

Zayne closed his eyes.

Her body was vibrating with the force of her need.

He kissed her neck—once.

A vow sealed in skin.

Then he whispered it,

low and final,

the only benediction she needed.

“Come for me.”

The words were still on his tongue when it happened.

PING.

The sound sliced through the moment like a scalpel.

He froze.

So did she.

The elevator doors began to open behind them—

bright light, footsteps, motion, reality.

Her body clenched—tighter than before—but still held,

suspended on the edge.

Zayne didn’t move.

Didn’t breathe.

The world had just walked in on his damnation.

And she—

trembling, soaked, panting—

was still waiting for his permission.

#zayne lads #doctor zayne #zayne love and deepspace #lads zayne #l&ds zayne #zayne x reader #love and deepspace zayne #love and deepspace #lnds zayne #lads #zayne smut #zayne fanfic #zayne fanfiction #smut writing #smut fanfiction #smut

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cipheramnesia · 1 month ago

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Rule 34 needs a comeback, because complaining that searching for some specific kinda content in an online space brings back porn in the results kinda disingenuously fails to mention that lots of content has porn in search results, because a lot of people like fuckin' and like porn, and that's like a thing that happens as part of people existing. Plus making it out as a uniquely bad problem in specific contexts is kinda how we got to the point where "pornography" gets used to turn the online and offline world into a hyper-surveillance society where anyone can face punitive and severe consequences just through being defined as someone subject to pornographic restrictions.

So remember Rule 34 but not as some stupid meme joke but like the fish who forgot water exists. It's porn, it's a human experience, and complaining about it as a general negative is just gonna be leveraged for authoritarian power. El problem es el hegemony not the generally neutral act of visibly fuckin, okay.

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nudityandnerdery · 3 months ago

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"Hey, Germany, why did you descend into fascism?" "Oh, we lost World War I, the treaty enacted very heavy punitive measures in retaliation, we had hyperinflation, our economy was in shambles, and then there was a worldwide depression." "Shit. What about you, America?" "They elected a black man to be president, so that was too much of an insult and our right wing party decided they needed revenge, so they turned to an untrustworthy white guy who had a bunch of failed business, a reality TV show, and sketchy ties to Russia."

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bamgyw · 11 months ago

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˚₊‧꒰ა ♡ c.bg; six nights ♡ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

summary: six nights of emo boy gyu sneaking into your room without your daddy knowing. aberrational catholic guilt ridden catcher in the rye wannabe porn document. afab reader x softdom!beomgyu. warnings: everything, unfortunately. minors dni. heavy smut ahead. lots of pretentious writing, too. catholic guilt and imagery. abusive behaviour, parental neglect. drug use. violence. everyone is sad. i’ll keep on updating part-specific tags. index: prologue: the house of god, first night, second night, third night, fourth night, fifth night, sixth night, dawn of the seventh.

prologue: the house of god

when daddy wanted to hide something from you, he would turn to his beloved bible. and ever since you turned fourteen, he had been holding on to a passage that he would repeat to you every night before going to sleep:

"let no one say when tempted, "i am being tempted by god," for god tempts no one. but each person is tempted when lured by his own desire. then desire gives birth to sin, and sin brings forth death."

that is the only sex talk your daddy ever gave you. it was more of a sex mantra than a talk, or a warning, or even a prohibition. just a rule of nature that he wanted you to have engraved in your mind: desire is sin, and sin is death.

when daddy didn't want you to do something, he'd blame the rule on god. and there's little you could say against that.

as you grew up, you realised that god might not be real, but daddy most certainly was. a punitive, disciplinary god. and one feels much more compelled to obey divine rule when god lives under your roof. when you can touch him, and he can touch you.

when god lives in your house and his wrath can tear your flesh apart not in hell, not in heaven, but in this life; you become more cautious than the most devoted of christians. so even when everyone in your grade started drinking, dating, having sex; you had it very clear that the priority was to protect yourself. not from the dangers of drinking, dating, or sex; but from daddy, that is to say, from god.

none of your friends from school understood it, that the fear of god was not irrational. you had scars and bruises that god had given you which you could perfectly show them. but then daddy would get in trouble. besides, he wouldn't like you showing your body around.

none of them could ever understand what living with god was like, so they were the kind of people who would ask that stupid question; if god loves us, why does he hurt us?

the first person to understand god was a boy called choi soobin.

daddy had remarried choi soobin’s mom the year before you started college. she was a beautiful woman, lively and hopeful to start a second life after becoming a widow. it must be thrilling to get a chance at a second life when your first one has gone wrong. soobin’s mom could have been very happy in another universe. you felt sorry that she had stepped into daddy‘s trap.

you had always wondered how daddy had managed to get a woman like her. bright, cultured and affectionate. but then you figured that maybe, as he was god, he didn't necessarily need to be yahweh, or elohim. he could also be zeus and disguise himself as a swan to kidnap and rape leda.

you found out later that soobin‘s mom had never fully recovered from the passing of her first husband, and she often suffered from major depressive episodes. daddy saw that void in her, and her urgency to fill it. he forced himself into the hollowness of the void, and obstructed her veins, bones, and heart with the word of god.

soon enough, soobin’s mom had no limb or internal organ she controlled herself. she had once had colours, you remembered; rosy cheeks, a hazel head of hair, lips tinted with vibrant red. but daddy had turned her grey.

soobin’s mom had been kind enough to see the good sides of daddy, you had liked her for that. but you regretted that she hadn't learned to hide her colors so that daddy couldn't steal them away, like you did.

she became a shadow of herself, an almost non-verbal phantom trapped between the real world –that is, the confines of daddy's house– and the world of hopeful prayers and the salvation of soul.

the boy called choi soobin would never forgive daddy for that. but it was alright. you understood. in a sense, he had killed his mom. you had to love daddy because he had created you, but you didn't think choi soobin was obliged to.

people said choi soobin had changed, too. that he used to be a gentle kid, polite and sweet, but he had turned hostile. that, like most teens, he had become self-absorbed and belligerent without a cause or that he had gotten those adolescent mood changes so late in his life because he was an attention seeker. people say things like that when they don't understand what living with god is like.

you were the only one who didn't believe daddy when he said that soobin had a demon inside. you knew better than that, you knew that daddy saw demons everywhere. but soobin’s own mom believed it. when daddy tried to exorcise the demon away from soobin with fist and blood, she looked away.

all that soobin had wanted by acting up against daddy was to save his mom. to bring her back from the dead. but after that betrayal, he stopped trying.

soobin had never been violent towards you, though. not once. not even mean. you were the only one who understood him, the only one who told him he wasn't evil. you knew that god's tyrannical rule could break a person, fill them with hate. and so soobin and you became close, often talking against god. every whispered defamation, every blasphemy, the danger of it felt so exciting. not because of the mischievous sin, or because of the disobedience, but because you felt like you could speak your mind at last.

your first kiss was soobin. you felt loved when it happened, something you realised you weren't used to. the feeling bloomed throughout the following week as you hid from god's watchful eye to be together.

soobin told you a hundred times that you were the most beautiful girl in the world, kissing all over your face, clasping you as close to him as he humanly could. he would sneak his hand under your skirt and whisper, "don't think about him right now. it's just you and me." and though his touch never went very far in the magnitude scale of sin and punishment, it was enough to breathe a new life into you.

you sensed that a big part of why soobin wanted you so bad was because he got turned on at the idea of defying daddy, and groping his holy daughter was the greatest offence he could commit. but that was alright. you felt the same way. and you hoped that that hate-induced lust would turn into love, in time. you could then be happier, even in the house of god.

or you could have been happier. because god is omnipresent. and he would soon act to see you separated. the blossoming flower was brutally ripped from the soil.

when daddy found out, he locked himself into the master bedroom with soobin one morning and didn't let him go until the sun began to hide. soobin left that room broken and dead in life, just like his mom, but he didn't have one single bruise. maybe daddy really was god, after all.

soobin never talked to you again. spoken, yes, but it was hollow. you never felt loved again. you learned a lesson that day: your pleasure brings pain to everyone around. the mantra became true. desire is sin, and sin is death.

so if there was any need left in your body to touch, to kiss, to lick, to possess or be possessed; you confined it to the darkest pit of your ribcage, way past your heart, never to be accessed again.

until choi beomgyu came around.

he was the second person to understand god. but he had brought his lesson learned from home. he knew god’s ways even before he met daddy. he had a god of his own. you called yours daddy, he called his ‘that narcissistic sadist’. but strangely enough, you felt like they meant the same thing.

choi beomgyu was sort of soobin's friend, if you could even call it that. they never labeled each other as such, never sought out each other's company for the sake of friendship. they just wanted to live through their loneliness while sitting in the same room.

beomgyu’s dad was a dealer. he made a living out of ruining people's lives, as beomgyu saw it. growing up, he had promised himself that he would never be like that, the kind of person who doesn't care about poisoning someone's body if that meant keeping the cash flowing. but as he grew up, he learned that it wasn't all black or white. that all of those fools kept showing at his father’s doorstep, like they had no other choice. like they enjoyed hurting themselves.

beomgyu, like soobin, had become hateful. one of the things that bothered him the most was the "why me?" question. how unlucky he could have been to be born of such a father. but then again, he could run away. he could sort his shit out, get a job, never see his father again. but he kept going back. like he had no choice. like he, too, enjoyed hurting himself.

his dad barely knew he existed, and if beomgyu ever tried to make himself heard, he would silence him in cold blood. so any semblance of love or validation beomgyu could aspire to, he sought out with mathematically strategised plans. he craved the drug of attention and knew exactly where to get it.

he'd linger around fancy schools and church events, scoping out a certain type of girl. there was always a few of them going through a rebellious phase, desperate to go out with a bad boy and piss off their high-official dad.

it didn't take much effort for him to get what he wanted. he was handsome enough to make it easy, and even though he was a spiteful nihilist, he could be charming on command. just a smirk, a tousle of the hair, and some cheesy lines like, "i'm messed up, but with you, i feel like maybe i could be better," or "you're too beautiful for a screw-up like me." and he would have them wrapped around his finger.

he would bring them over to his place and fuck them rough on his drug-money-bought mattress. if there was shouting, or a gunshot coming from another part of the house, he'd fuck into them harder, muffling their fear with a rough kiss, using their panic to fuel his own twisted thrill. you fucking scared? i've gone through this crap every day since i was a kid.

if he could crack the shell of a privileged princess, dragging someone along with him down to his mud, his pain would slightly numb out.

for just a little, but never enough.

that pattern of behavior didn't lead to happiness. not even to satisfaction. it was a vindictive way of muffling his pain with the aching moans of someone who had it easier. but in reality, it only pierced what was left of his soul, making him even more hollow. it was soobin who made him realize that.

until that day, beomgyu saw soobin as almost a kid—pitifully weak and too sheltered. but when he told him about his exploits of going after posh girls, soobin didn't applaud in shared bitterness as he often did.

beomgyu explained to him how hard he got seeing the fear in their eyes as they realised that the life he led, that freedom of the rebel, wasn't as cute and bohemian as they had romanticised.

soobin responded curtly. "and then what? you cum, the spell wears off and you stare at the ceiling in silence, thinking of how miserable you are." he said. "and then you feel guilty for being a piece of shit and using that girl as a blow-up doll. and because of that you feel even worse about yourself, which means becoming more hateful and ruining more people. its not a you thing, you're not that special. that loop has been said and done. probably how your dad feels after beating on you."

beomgyu was taken aback. he didn’t even find it in himself to get offended. he remained pensive for a while before saying, "hyung. do you think i'm a bad person?"

soobin replied; "i think you can choose not to be."

and beomgyu took the advice. he put an end to the hunter-gathering of rich girls. he respected soobin from then on, too. soobin had therefore been a good influence, one could say. or at least an influence beomgyu was willing to accept. he started hanging around your house more, to the point of almost never leaving.

you learned about him as if he were a mythological figure—someone everyone talked about but whose existence you couldn't confirm. as a friend of soobin, beomgyu was bound from the start by an unspoken rule to maintain the least possible contact with you.

beomgyu was made aware of that rule very early on. what he didn't know, because he had been misled, was your age. that's why he didn't think much of it at first; he thought you were a kid. so, whatever—he couldn't talk to soobin’s annoying little stepsister. big deal. he didn't care about kids anyway.

this, combined with the prison-like structure of daily life in that house—minimal time in common areas and endless hours rotting in your own cell—fulfilled daddy's command to keep your life and soobin's, and therefore boemgyu’s, completely separate.

but even though you hadn't seen choi beomgyu in person, you had been able to construct a fairly accurate forensic portrait of him, pieced together from your father's warnings about people like him.

about the piercings, daddy believed that the body is holy, and anyone capable of mutilating within sin. about the music they played when locked up for whole afternoons in soobin’s room, he believed that god is serene, and disturbing that peace is a sign of the devil. he considered long hair on a man an abomination, and much like the eccentric clothes, a mark of a sodomite.

daddy didn't approve of him, and saw him as no more than a threat to the sanctity of his home. but beomgyu was quick to remedy the situation.

beomgyu was most acquainted to the ways of gods. he knew they were capricious, proud and pathologically narcissistic. so he made sure daddy could see he was a troubled young man and played the role of the lamb seeking guidance. he convinced daddy that he could abduct him, like he had done with soobin and his mother.

when soobin recounted the scene to you, his voice had sounded more hopeful, more full of admiration than you had ever heard. "he went to your dad and talked to him as if he was the buddha. said that he was lost and needed someone to guide him on the right path." soobin said. "he had some quotes from the prodigal son parabole learned, and he just delivered so naturally. not a trace of shame because when he lied to his face like that. it was like watching a play. your dad bought everything."

from then on, beomgyu became an unsung hero in your eyes. the boy who had outmanipulated daddy into having it his way. the boy who had defeated god.

around halloween that year, beomgyu and his dad had a terminal fight. it ended on a threat so destructive that beomgyu thought it was for the better if he stayed away from his father's place for a couple days. maybe a week. soobin, knower of the impotence and humiliation of having to sleep under the roof of the one who lacerated you and torn you to pieces, offered him shelter.

daddy's eyes lit up with greed. he saw the definitive chance to welcome a prodigal son into the fold. for beomgyu it was almost a joke. he was amused at how fast daddy allowed him in. so clueless and hasty, like one of the girls he used to charm into his bed.

in truth, beomgyu wasn't even to blame when he inevitably bumped into you. it had been daddy's mistake, he had let him in himself. you thought maybe that made daddy more human, somehow. that he forgot to close the back door to the prison and the devil strolled in.

but it wasn't really a matter of having let his guard down. daddy was still as stern, still as disciplinary, still as paranoid as he had always been. choi beomgyu was just much smarter than daddy.

he was a demigod, he was a promise. he was soon to make you his.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ next part

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ please let me know if you think reading about booty sex is gross (i'm doing market research)

#i know nothing happened #consider this a teaser #incoming depression sex yay !!#beomgyu #beomgyu angst #txt smut #beomgyu smut #txt hard thoughts #beomgyu hard thoughts #beomgyu x reader #txt x reader #beomgyu fic

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