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chuluoyi · 11 months ago

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𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒 !

- gojo satoru x reader // zen'in naoya x reader

you are an empress perfect in every way... until your husband suddenly casts you aside for his expecting mistress. but you won't be dethroned just like that, because the newly coronated western emperor, gojo satoru, sets his sights on you, and thus your revenge against your ex-husband begins...

genre/warnings: 18+ suggestive content—minors do not interact!—might be ooc, kinda slowburn, angst to eventual fluff, divorce, marriage of convenience, heavy pining (from gojo's part), childhood friends trope, mentions of infidelity, misogyny, infertility, explicit smut

note: loosely inspired by and taking some elements of manhwa remarried empress (but i promise you, it's different). my god, for the past month this is all i can think about *sobs* wc. 10.5k ! this is the longest thing i've ever posted here, and if you'd give it a chance, then i'll be really, really thankful!

credit header goes to @/gojokko in twitter!

next. the crown of diamonds | long live the empire

general masterlist | series masterlist

“I accept the divorce.”

Your perfect life was done for. Everything you had worked hard towards— it was now in shambles and tatters.

You, an ethereal, revered empress... someone untarnished in the face of public and private, had just agreed to the emperor’s blatant request of separation.

“My god... how can this be!?”

“Your Majesty! Please reconsider!”

Emperor Zen’in Naoya of the Eastern Empire, your husband—and companion for more than ten years—smirked as he looked down at you, paying zero attention to the uproar in this courthouse.

But then you heard that kind, velvety voice from the back of your head:

“If you become my empress… that will make me the happiest man alive.”

This place has turned into a whopping circus ever since you and Naoya stepped inside anyway. And so, having nothing worthy left to lose, you declared, “And I demand an immediate approval for my remarriage.”

Your boldness once again stirred a wave of clamor among the crowd, and even Naoya was glaring at you in disbelief now. “A remarriage…? How dare you—!”

“Well... is it the time for my grand entrance?”

Deep from behind the curtains, suddenly he emerged, dressed in the most lavish robes befitting his own throne, outshining everyone in the room as if he was the one owning the place.

“Heh.” His low chuckle stunned even the mass as he took big strides towards where you were.

This would seal your fate. From now onwards, you would no longer be the perfect empress. Your messy divorce and remarriage will relegate that image to history.

“My goodness, that’s…” the woman in the front gasped. “Western Empire’s…”

“Gojo… Satoru?” Naoya's eyes lit with genuine fury as the other man took his place by your side. “You couldn't possibly mean…!”

You interrupted him regally. “Yes, he is the man I wish to remarry.”

This event was going to blow up tomorrow, with scandalous titles no less than The Deposed Empress Remarries! And there was no going back, ever.

How did your pristine life turn into such a shameful debacle? None of these turn of events would be imaginable for you several years prior...

SATORU, THE CROWN PRINCE OF WESTERN EMPIRE

To Satoru, you were more than just the east’s breathtaking empress—you had captured his attention long before you ascended to that role.

Seven years ago, you were the renowned noble lady, the paragon of perfection sought after by many lords and monarchs alike.

You were both cunning and fair, pretty in the face, came from an illustrious family known for birthing famous empresses in either western and eastern empires. You were the quintessential template that mothers advised their sons to seek in a wife.

The fairest in the land—that was how people called you. And Gojo Satoru is always and only interested in the best.

“Suguru... look at her.” His eyes would soften at the sight of you as he nudged at his closest ally and confidant, the duke. “She is so... pretty, isn’t she?”

Unfortunately, you had been promised to the Eastern Empire’s crown prince from a long time ago too. There was little that the outsiders, including himself—even if he was the heir apparent to his own throne—could do to sway your heart.

“There's more to women than their faces, Satoru,” Suguru sighed, thinking that what he had was a mere lust. “Moreover, she’s engaged to the Zen’in... and they have a very good relationship. Nothing you can do about that.”

“Hmph.”

To be honest, he couldn’t fathom what you could possibly like about that murderous Zen’in spawn. He was a pompous human being, no less.

How on earth could you stand someone like that? Satoru had always wondered… especially when it was well-known to the land that you and him were on good terms despite your arranged marriage.

—and once, he thought he knew who you are…

. . .

Satoru swallowed the bitterness rising in his throat as he attended the royal wedding of you and Zen’in Naoya. Despite hating the circumstances, he had to admit it was a fairytale wedding—albeit with the wrong groom.

You were the epitome of picture book princess. In his eyes, and in the eyes of the attendees of your wedding.

Oh, and he made headlines too, that day—

“My princess, may I have this dance?”

Two hours hadn’t even passed by after you swore your vows as Naoya’s bride, and there he was, asking for your first dance, in your own wedding ball, right in front of your newly wedded husband.

Everyone bet on you turning him down and making a fool of himself, but instead, to spare his feelings, you put your delicate hand in his, and with a wide, shy smile, you said, “Yes.”

Satoru thought it was his greatest achievement then. To have made Naoya red-faced, to have made him watch as he put his hands on your waist, twirl you around— and come one breath away from your face.

“Princess, you’re…” his breath caught as he pulled you close, staring straight at your face—and suddenly he felt like life was so unfair to him as the slow melody of waltz was all he could hear.

How could you be this close... and yet so far by being somebody else’s wife?

And yet he forced the words out, with sincerity he had never showed anyone else before, even as his heart bled and shattered. “You’re so incredibly beautiful.”

Your eyes widened, sparkling with wonder, before you thanked him with the loveliest of smiles. “Thank you. You’re too kind.”

Satoru was certain... you had ruined him, because no one else would ever be able to turn his world with just a smile like you did, even as you broke his heart too into a million pieces.

. . .

Ever since that day, everyone had branded him as a prince in search of scandal—coveting the princess married to Zen’in clan.

What everyone didn’t know was that it went beyond that. His obsession of you went beyond your beauty and charms and wits. Rather, it goes a long way back.

YOU, THE CROWN PRINCESS OF EASTERN EMPIRE

As inconceivable as it was, once upon a time, you and Naoya were a truly, happy couple.

Handpicked by the late emperor to become his son’s wife, you couldn’t be more proud. With you being the next empress of the Eastern Empire, your clan once again proved itself that it was always worthy of a seat in the monarchy.

But beyond that, you were elated that it was Naoya that you ended up marrying. Your own childhood friend, who often led you around his palace by hand and filled your days with many joy and laughs.

“One day soon, when we are the emperor and the empress—” younger Naoya was always someone who had big dreams about ruling his nation. “We will create a nation in which no one can do anything as they please! We’ll establish order, and anyone who goes against it will be punished! That way, it’ll encourage fairness!”

Not knowing it yourself, you had given your heart wholly to him. You had agreed to all his dreams and visions. You devoted yourself to them all, even more so after your marriage and coronation, as he promised you an ever after.

“From now on, it’s going to be me and you, Empress.”

YOU, THE EMPRESS OF EASTERN EMPIRE

“Your role is to give an heir to the throne, Empress.”

Your title had never sounded so heavy to you before now, especially when Naoya was the one saying it.

You sighed, gathering your wits and scattered feelings before levelling your calm gaze on your husband. “I understand that, Your Majesty. But it is not something that I can do on my own.”

This year would mark the fifth year of your marriage to Naoya. You understood that the fact you still weren’t able to be with his child would raise questions from the court, but still, must you be reminded of this fact over and over?

Your husband—no, the emperor—barked a satire laugh.

“Oh, really? As I understand it, being infertile is not something I can help you with.”

That hurt. It was a searing pain, like being branded with a red-hot iron. And it felt as if he had torn through your chest with his fist alone.

“I’m not infertile.” Your eyes gleamed with pure defiance as you lifted your chin, facing him in his audience chamber.

It dawned on you that lately, one of the few ways you could speak to him was by requesting an audience as opposed to your usual midnight talks in your private chambers.

When did it start to change? Or was Naoya this kind of person right from the very beginning and you were just blinded by love back then?

"Oh? And what would you call being childless for five years then?" Naoya sneered at you from his dais, placing one hand on his jaw. "Bad luck? You must be terribly cursed with misfortune then."

You fisted your dress, summoning all your strength to hold back tears. Don't you dare cry. Not in front of him.

It wasn't as if you didn't want to carry his heir. For many women, holding their baby in their arms is a cherished dream, and when they hold a position of power like yours, it becomes not just a desire but a duty.

You tried everything—calling in the best doctors, consuming horrible potions, even consulting with the oracle. And they all said you were perfectly healthy and fine. You were at your wits end too.

The irony. You were celebrated in public for your competence, while privately, you suffered your husband's cold detachment and cruel remarks.

. . .

"Empress, where should we put the welcome gifts?"

You studied the floor plan of the banquet hall for your annual New Year's ball with a thoughtful hum before pointing at the entrance.

"Place it here. We want our guests to know that we are generous, and it's easily accessible since the parlor is the first area they reach after arriving."

You loved planning festivities. It was therapeutic in a way, and it gave you little time to think of anything else.

"Oh, and I want to have a welcome arch and flowers placed at the entrance too. This is the grandest event of the year, second only to the Emperor's birthday... we must display the grandeur that befits such an occasion."

Your head maidservant, Hanabi, placed a hand on her abdomen and nodded with a warm smile. "That's a very clever suggestion, Your Majesty! I'll ensure they arrange everything just as you wish!"

As she scurried away, you watched her with an assessing gaze. Hanabi had been with you throughout the five years of your marriage, always at your side, assisting with day-to-day matters and serving as your confidant. She was a great aide.

And you were observant by nature... so of course you noticed things.

...and if you were correct, then she was most definitely with a child.

The thing is... she is unmarried. You hesitated to jump to conclusions without evidence, yet the timing struck you as more than coincidental—it nagged at you for weeks now, suggesting a connection you hoped did not exist.

Because if they really did... then...

You didn't dare to think, because it would be more than a nightmare. But you weren't able to let this go either, so you did what was necessary.

You planted a note in Hanabi's chamber, and then you waited in the gardens, the chilly midnight air wrapping around you like a shroud.

You had done everything you could. Five years ago, you let go of everything and had decided to spend your life with your first love—Naoya.

Because you truly and devotedly love him. You give your all for him—for your life together.

"Ooh, Your Majesty~! It's so cold out here, why not in our usual—"

Hanabi's voice faltered as soon as she saw your crimson gown, feeling like the world had collapsed on her. And you rigidly turned towards her, feeling more or less the same.

And yet, what you had received from him is the greatest betrayal.

SATORU, THE EMPEROR OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE

He first realized something was clearly wrong with you during the New Year’s ball that you hosted.

Satoru had just been crowned emperor during this time, and though rulers typically sent envoys to such grand celebrations due to concurrent festivities in their own lands, it had been several months since he last saw you. He wants to see you.

A meritless action, but he wanted to, regardless.

But that day, you were a fantastic actress in this stage called banquet hall and nobody was the wiser… but he would know, because you mattered a lot to him.

"Your Majesty, you don't seem well." He approached you with a glass of champagne, affixing a friendly smile. "Is there anything amiss?"

Taken aback, you didn't expect such close proximity that you took a step back. His smile almost faltered, but he kept it up.

"Emperor Satoru—"

"Ah, none of that, no. Address me just as you usually do, hmm?"

A smile finally tugged at your lips. "How is that fair, when you address me so formally?"

Satoru chuckled. "You, my queen, deserve all the finery and grandeur there is. And I will see to it that you do."

That was his nickname for you ever since you ascended the throne. Both of your countries refer you as “empress”, but he loves addressing you as “queen” instead.

There was a shift in your expression, and he thought you looked melancholic. It bothered him, stirring a desire to erase that somber look from you. Because above anything and everything, you had to be happy and smiling.

"You're still a flirt, I see, Satoru," you remarked, throwing him a soft smile. "It won't do you good if you're seen with me most of the time, you know."

No, I’m doing this just for you. He wanted to tell you that, but he sighed instead. "You've got it wrong. When I'm in the company of the most beautiful woman in the lands, what's there to be ashamed of?"

Perhaps hearing that finally melted you a bit as you freely giggled this time, and Satoru was glad that he made you laugh even a little.

"You would think that, huh..." you fondly mumbled. And then your expression crumbled, and he could've sworn something painful flashed in your eyes—

What happened to you? He so desperately wanted to ask, but then he saw that preying gaze on both of you. Zen’in Naoya. Satoru clicked his tongue as he watched him weave through the crowd, his gaze locked ominously on both of you.

“Seems like we don’t have much time, after all,” he began, urgency sharpening his words. “But rest assured, whenever you want to talk to me, just send a little birdie my way and I shall answer.”

“Huh?” you blinked at him questioningly, totally not getting what he meant.

He winked, then took your hand and placed a kiss on it, eliciting murmurs of surprise from the crowd at his bold gesture. “And chin up, my queen. You have nothing to fear, and if it makes you feel better...”

He leaned in to whisper in your ear, “To me, a diamond is most beautiful. And you… are one that sparkles above all.”

“Naoya, unhand me this instant!”

You were tired of this shit, of Naoya always manhandling you—of him always having a total control over you.

After seeing how close you got to Satoru, Naoya practically saw red. Still, in the prying eyes of public, he remained unperturbed, but his vice-like grip on your arm was sure to leave bruise as he unkindly led you out of the ballroom.

"Naoya!" you raised your voice this time, even louder than before, uncaring even when the wandering eyes of the servants curiously followed the two of you.

You were not made an empress just to follow him. And with that conviction, you forcibly pulled your arm away from his grip right after he shut the door to the drawing room close, not even wincing at the stinging feeling.

His eyes shone with anger. “You insolent—!”

“No—” You stood your ground, and suddenly you got very irate and burst out, “How dare you, Zen’in Naoya!”

He looked at you with equal surprise and mortification, clearly unprepared for your righteous tirade.

"You have made a mockery of our marriage! You have insulted me and your own throne by carrying on with— with the help! My maid!" you screamed at his face, pure anger coursing through your veins. "How could you!?"

Naoya took in your outburst with eerie silence, a sneer slowly forming on his lips. "You get riled up over that? Have you forgotten emperors are free to take mistresses, especially when the empress isn't capable to bear any heirs?"

A burning arrow shot straight to your heart at his response but you willed yourself not to show it. "Regardless, you could've done better and not put our throne to shame by fucking a servant."

"I've told you time and time again. A woman's duty is to bear children, and since you've proven yourself beyond barren, I did you a favor."

"A favor...?"

"As soon as Hanabi births that child, you can raise him as your own," Naoya frankly stated unabashedly, as if proud with his idea. "Saves you the trouble and I get my heir, a win-win solution, no?"

Raise him as my own...? Saves the trouble? You could've sworn that throughout your entire life, you had never been so insulted before now, right in this moment.

"What I do, I always have my throne in mind. And yet you..." his eyes narrowed into unsatisfied slits. "What are you trying to achieve by whoring yourself to that rake, Gojo Satoru? Are you telling people of the ton that you're having an affair?"

His voice made you want to throw up. The realization that everything you thought you had together might have meant nothing to him at all made you feel sick.

And so, hiding your trembling hands and swallowing you unshed tears, you responded to him with a clipped tone—

"You're most despicable, Naoya. And you are a complete fool if you think even for a second that I'd want to raise your bastard!"

He seemed taken aback by your rejection, but you didn't falter. "And oh, since you want to make use of that lowly maid so much, feel free to take her back and track her down yourself, because I've sent that wench away."

With that, you turned your back on him, striding out with your head held high, even as your life crumbled into dust.

Days after your full-blown argument with Naoya, your situation only worsened. By now, even the palace servants knew you had incurred his wrath, while Hanabi had won his favor by carrying his child—possibly the heir to the throne.

The child she was carrying was no threat to your position. After all, you were the empress. A child of your blood would trample over any bastard.

However, you'd be damned if you shared a bed with him again, and Naoya made it clear that his mistress would be elevated to the rank of royal consort. Given the current trajectory—and history's tendency to repeat itself—emperors often divorced or banished their empresses in favor of their mistresses.

Bah. You could only scoff at your laughable predicament. You came from a prestigious clan and were revered, yet now you were no more than a scorned woman.

Dark thoughts consumed your mind for a time—you couldn't deny that you had considered leaving the palace for self-imposed exile or even ending your life. However, reason always prevailed.

You wouldn't give Naoya what he wanted most: your compliance. And around the time when you resolved to do that, a finely decorated envelope arrived at your study, with no signature whatsoever.

Intrigued, you opened it to find an intricate dried rose bookmark and a folded letter nestled inside.

Greetings to you, my queen. Yeah, it's me. Hope you won't be too surprised. But if you do, know that I always mean well.

Satoru. You weren't expecting this. A small smile tugged at your lips. How long had it been since you last smiled so freely?

I've heard you love reading, hence the bookmark. Fun fact: I made it myself, with Shoko's help. She is sooo bad at explaining though so if the flower is wrinkled... please blame her.

This time, you giggled. He was an emperor, for god's sake. Should someone of his station write so informally like this?

Now... I'm no oracle, but even I know that you must be having bad days. And so, let me entertain you with several tales from my kingdom. So, the other day, my good friend Suguru, the duke—you must've heard of him surely (they said he is the most handsome bachelor in the West but they must be missing an eye for saying so because clearly I'm more!)—just fired a pair of his servants because he caught them in a thirst! He is so uptight! Why can't he let two people in love be!?

Before you knew it, you found yourself chuckling at the lines upon lines of anecdotes Satoru had penned in the letter. The way he wrote, it was as if he was right here, saying all of this to you in real-time. For a while, you were completely absorbed in the world of the Western Empire he described, and all your worries and anxieties seemed to fade away.

Okay, that's it for now. This is just a teaser actually, so if you want to subscribe to more tales of my humble little country, you can always be my empress reply to this letter! :D Look out for a white cat near your windowsill during the hour of snake—he is my trained pet, and put your message in his little backpack. Don't worry, he's cute and doesn't bite!

You were so giddy by the end. His message warmed your heart so much that your eyes grew misty. In the aftermath of Naoya's betrayal, you were certain your life would be filled with much sadness to come.

Yet, your friendship with Satoru might just be the thing that would save you.

No matter how much his friends Duke Geto and Countess Shoko urged him to see reason—that you were no longer available and occupied with your duties as the empress of your own empire—Satoru couldn't help but still cast an eye your way.

You were clearly unhappy, and to him, someone as radiant as you should be happy.

And so, that was why he took his quill and started writing that letter to be sent to your place, along with a rose strapped inside.

He knew that, being the kind person you were, you would most likely respond, but still, the moment his cat arrived back with your reply, he was elated beyond measure.

Of course I knew it right away! I omitted your name because who knows who might catch your cat on the way. Anyway, I hope Mr. Cat will arrive back to you safe and sound. Firstly, thank you for your letter. I must say I'm so happy to receive it :) I haven't had best days so reading it made me smile. And secondly, of course I'll subscribe to your stories of Western Empire. I've been wanting to visit it myself but just haven't gotten the chance to... so if you will continue it, I shall be happy to read :D

If anything he wrote brought you joy, then Satoru was content. He had achieved his goal then.

And it was his own little secret that... by corresponding with you, it allowed him to savor the feeling of having you as his own, if only through words.

Mr. Cat's name is Sugu-chan after Suguru but you can call him whatever you wish. And don't worry, he is strong and can fight if necessary! And don't be too formal with me, my queen. We have known each other forever. Anyway do tell me, what is your favorite color now? Let me guess, is it still that specific shade of crimson?

You name your cat after your best friend...? And you're making it hard for me to be less formal when you always address me as queen! Hmm, I suppose so. I love burgundy. I've even had my study designed with that exact color scheme. It just gives me the confidence I need, you know.

So you still love burgundy... I'll keep that in mind ;) Frankly, any shade of crimson suits you—you're always a vision in them. Back then and especially during your coronation. I love blue, so I think we're a match? :D

Back then...? Hmm, surprisingly yes, red and blue would make a good match... Anyway, I believe you promised me unusual tales from your 'humble little country', so please indulge me!

You've forgotten it already? Around the time we first met, back when I was still known as "the cursed prince"? It holds such importance for me but sadly it seems like it was just a passing moment to you :( Oh, yeah, I haven't forgotten about it! So, this time let me tell you about the time when Earl Nanami got wasted . . .

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Amidst the turmoil of your marriage, exchanging letters with Satoru became your sole respite. His stories regarding his own empire amused you, and sometimes it got you to wonder what it was like to live there.

However, running away from your problems would never solve them. Writing to Satoru may have helped you to cope, but still, your real issue with Naoya wouldn't vanish simply just by ignoring him.

. . .

"Your Majesty..."

For a good one minute, you stood still. Your lady-in-waiting had delivered an earth-shattering news—but admittedly, a possibility you thought was in the cards the moment you went against Naoya.

"His majesty has summoned the high priest to his study," the elderly woman added, close to tears. "But it is very likely that he has submitted the petition for—" her voice faltered when she caught sight of the emptiness in your eyes, unable to continue.

A divorce. Naoya had been considering a divorce. And by now, he was set on it.

"I'm so, so sorry..." she choked out, her voice breaking with sorrow to mourn you, but you remained expressionless, lost in your thoughts.

The last time an empress of Eastern Empire was divorced was more or less a century ago, because she had committed a grave treachery against a royal consort by poisoning her. She was sentenced to death by hanging afterwards.

The irony. You were in similar situation, only that you weren't vengeful enough to resort to poisoning Hanabi. Speaking of her, her baby was due in another four months, and now she was living happily in Naoya's quarters.

"Don't be. I'm perfectly fine."

To consolidate his illegitimate child's position, Naoya used the most effective way. Since you wouldn't listen to him, and Hanabi must be a far delightful companion rather than you, he was more than willing to cast you aside in favor of making her his empress instead.

You thought it would hurt more, and yet what you felt the most right in this moment was white-hot anger. This is unacceptable. It was the greatest insult to you both as a woman and as the empress.

Now, all you could think of was how to uphold your dignity and plot your exit from this palace with your head still held high.

If I can't be the empress here...

And after a sleepless night, you came to a daring solution. And your plan—

...I'll be one somewhere else.

It was an invitation, Satoru thought, almost in disbelief. Or it sounded a lot like one, didn't it?

Heart beating a little faster and blushing, he reread the latest letter you had sent him.

It's only the beginning of summer, and the heat is sweltering... I'm considering treating myself to a trip to the winery village on the border between the east and west. I think it'll be nice if I have a companion...

Winery village was right in the middle of the western and eastern empires, and it was a safe zone. Vineyards were vast and thick, but it wasn't exactly a popular vacation spot. So, it intrigued him why you would want to go there.

Just as he was about to reply to you that it was a very good coincidence that he too wanted to pay a visit to the said village, suddenly—

"Gojo! Gojoooo!" Shoko suddenly burst into his study, startling him.

"Shoko! What the heck?!"

Lady Shoko might be a countess, but she, Satoru, and Suguru all attended the same royal academy. Despite their prestigious titles now, Satoru insisted that in private, both Suguru and Shoko address him just as they did before he ascended the throne.

Still, she was ruder than Suguru in many ways. Satoru gave her a stink eye, but his confusion grew as she seemed to be delivering momentous news.

"Gojo, have you heard that Naoya will divorce Y/N?!"

"Wha?" it felt like a ton of bricks suddenly fell down on his head. And then his friend proceeded to tell him everything she knew.

"It wasn't made official yet, but even the townsfolk have been talking about it. They also said that Naoya have taken a mistress, and that she was formerly the empress' maid."

Satoru listened to her in silence, but the moment he heard that the Zen'in spawn planned to divorce you, anger flared within him. And to add insult to injury, he two-timed you with a servant?

The fucking bastard. He never deserved you at all. How crushed must you have been, enduring all this shit?

"Now, I wouldn't normally encourage you this," Shoko took out the cigarette she stashed in the folds of her dress and sighed. "But since you never let go of that weird fixation on her, should the royal divorce happen..." she shrugged as she took a seat in front of him.

"No matter how laughable it is, you might have a chance."

She is so right. These long years of longing for your affections and dreaming of having even a minute more of your time... there was now chance to turn it to reality.

When you arrived at the winery village for your vacation to breathe in some fresh air, honestly, everything was still in shambles.

You couldn't forget the horrified looks from the court when Naoya announced the divorce. Most were shocked and pleaded with him to reconsider. Some from your circle of ladies even sobbed, openly stating that you didn't deserve this fate.

“Empress... His Majesty shouldn't be that harsh...” Hanabi had said to you afterwards, seemingly concerned for you. “Your legacy here… I’ll make sure to carry them on.”

Sometimes you didn’t know whether Hanabi was pretending to be dumb or indeed she was. One thing you knew though...

“I wish you luck on that, Hanabi.” You looked down at her with eyes as cold as ice. “Beware, the Emperor is fickle, be sure to not run out of entertainments.”

You knew you deserved a better fate than being the empress of the Eastern Empire, but seeing those who still cared for you made you solemn. Your loyal maids, those who supported you... and what about organizations you've spent time and energy to?

“My queen, ah, there you are.”

Satoru's voice from behind startled you, interrupting your daydreams. He quickly came beside you and extended his hand, asking for yours.

You offered him your right hand, and he promptly pressed a kiss on it, his bright blue eyes gazing up at you.

It wasn't as if you just noticed how pretty his eyes were, but now that there was no ballroom and scrutinizing eyes around you, you couldn't deny that the way his eyes sparkled as he gazed at you—solely and purely on you—made you breathless.

What... would it be like to have this man... to be your husband instead?

"I missed you. I know we talk daily through letters, but seeing your beauty firsthand is always a sight for sore eyes," he cheekily commented as he let go of your hand. "Now, I get to see you without your pesky husband around, and yeah, you never fail to make my silly heart race."

You chuckled. "You always flatter me..."

He only gave you a toothy smile, and you two strolled the vineyard. For a while, you talked about nothing of importance, like where your ladies-in-waiting were, how things were from his side.

"How do you find being the emperor?"

"It's tiring! It's boring too to look through accounts and oversee those trivial state affairs! And not to mention how many people have been nagging me to take a wife soon!"

"Oh? You haven't been on the lookout already?"

"Nah. No one is good enough, I need someone already familiar with state affairs and such," he said, wrinkling his nose sourly at the thought. But then he cast his eyes on you.

"And frankly, you are my standard," he fixed you a meaningful smile. "No one comes close. If you weren't betrothed to the Zen'in back then, I'd have proposed you in a heartbeat."

Thump. Thump. Thump. Your dead heart suddenly came to life. Gojo Satoru had just confessed his affections for you so candidly, and it got you thinking how much easier your life would be with him. He would love you, take care of you...

And beguile you.

His eyes fondly crinkled at you. "You are everything I desire in a woman to be my wife."

He adores you so easily, so fluidly... and yet, Naoya, who has you fully, is throwing you away.

Satoru observed how your face fell once again, just as it had during the New Year's ball. And now he knew, it was because you were facing your impending divorce.

But he wasn't going to tell you that, instead, he would willingly be your confidant and offer you his very being. He was about to crack a joke to lift your spirits, when you blurted—

"What if I said... I want to be your empress?" you kept your pace, not looking at him at all. "What if I said... I'll leave everything and come to you?"

Huh? What…?

That was loaded. Have you entertained the thought too? Satoru had craved the very idea for so long he didn’t even miss a beat—

“Then I’d marry you.” His voice was straight and true, shooting straight to the most tender part of you that Naoya had torn to shreds. “If you become my empress… that will make me the happiest man alive.”

No hesitation. It almost reduced you to tears. You stopped where you stood, willing yourself not to tremble. There is still one person who sees this much value in you.

“Then I’ll be yours,” you breathed out. “I’ll be your empress, Satoru.”

Satoru could've sworn time had stopped. If one moment ago, you looked like you were about to shatter, now you were a vision of the dignified and perfect queen he had always known you were.

“I’ll be your queen— your everything.” You declared, locking eyes with him, the intensity of your gaze not escaping him.

How many years had he dreamed of this moment? How many long nights had he endured, yearning for you, knowing you were beyond his reach?

Finally, finally... Satoru grinned, swearing to all the divine beings out there that he had never known how liberating it was to finally have what he wanted. “That would be my greatest honor.”

He drew you close—you let him—and after one second of taking in your enchanting eyes, he crashed his lips against yours.

His lips started soft and gentle, then became fiery as his tongue met yours. He pulled you closer, one arm around your waist and the other holding the back of your head. You responded eagerly, pressing against him, fingers tracing his neck and feeling the lines of his undercut.

One is finally having the woman he had wanted for so long, and the other was plotting her escape from her misery.

You were using him. He knew it. Yet, he didn't care. Hidden behind bushes and vines, you shared your very first heated kiss, aware that this moment would leave its mark as both the greatest stain and triumph in your lives.

And when he finally pulled away, lips swollen and wet, with a wolfish grin, he promised you once again—

“Give me everything that is yours... and I swear on my life, I will do everything to turn your life into a living dream.”

“Empress, your husband His Majesty the Emperor, has requested a divorce.”

It was how your once pristine life transformed into the scandal of the century inside the courthouse.

"If you accept this petition, then you will no longer be the Empress of Eastern Empire. You will lose all the rights you have as a senior member of the imperial family..."

You donned your finest attire—the intricate crimson and black dress you had designed and commissioned the dressmaker to create. Today, faced with Naoya's divorce decree, it would be the last time you adorned the colors of his empire.

"The ties that bound you together as husband and wife would be severed—"

Good riddance, you thought.

"If this is not what you want, you have the right to—"

"I accept the divorce."

Your voice cut through the heavy solemness of the witnesses and turned them into a mass of disbelief. You disregarded Naoya's smirk and held the priest's gaze. "And I demand an immediate approval for my remarriage."

The crowd was in for a second wave of uproar when you boldly stood your ground, and they erupted into clamors once again when Satoru made his grand entrance and took his place beside you.

"You—!" Naoya was so furious that he roared. "This is my empire!"

"And?" Satoru challenged with a dauntless smile. "I'm here to propose, and since she accepts your divorce request, I believe she has no relations with you any longer and is free to marry someone else."

You remained motionless, until your cold fingers met warmth when Satoru linked his hand with yours reassuringly.

"This is treachery! I won't fucking permit it!" Naoya hollered as he faced the high priest, who had a grim face while observing this three-way headlock between the three of you.

"Emperor Naoya, that matter falls into the jurisdiction of the church." The high priest let out a sigh and then turned to you, assessing your calm gaze.

Regardless, Naoya paid him no mind. "I refuse to grant you any permission to remarry! You will be banished to the cold palace until the rest of your pitiful days! Not only do you fail miserably by being barren beyond help, you also dare to whore yourself—" he was now rambling curses at you before everyone in the court, and it pierced you deeply—

Until Satoru tugged you behind him, so that you wouldn't have to see his face any longer.

"High priest!" Satoru's voice blared as he clenched his jaw, irate at the string of profanities directed at you. "Do you still truly believe that the deposed empress can't remarry? When she has suffered through this man's downright betrayal?"

Your head was spinning. You wanted this whole ordeal to be over already.

And thankfully, even the high priest saw reason, that you were undeserving of this debacle. In the end, his words held more weight than anyone else's, even Naoya's.

"I accept Empress Y/N petition to marry Emperor Satoru!"

In the chaos of the courthouse after the high priest granted your wish, Naoya shook his head in disbelief, looking at both of you with intense disdain.

"You've always wanted that wench, haven't you, Gojo?" Naoya cackled with a malice you would never have expected from someone who had been your husband for ten years.

You had tuned out all the noise. This dumpster fire was too much even for you. But then, you felt a strong arm enveloping you, sealing your fate as the match made in this courtroom—

"I have, yeah," Satoru replied with a smug grin. "And now that she is mine... it's just the beginning of your downfall, Zen'in."

Your wedding banquet in Western Empire lasted a week long.

True to his promise, Satoru spared no effort to make you happy. The moment he brought you to his palace, he ordered immediate plans for wedding celebrations. Make it grand, make it unforgettable... he took charge himself.

And on the final, seventh day, as you were about to be formally crowned as the empress of the western lands, you were stunned.

"This is your coronation dress, Empress," your new lady-in-waiting, Shoko, said with pride. "Gojo— I mean, His Majesty, specifically has his late mother's dress altered to suit you."

You promised yourself that you would no longer wear any shades of crimson. As much as you loved the color, it reminded you too much of your homeland and Naoya. No matter how much you despised him now, once upon a time, he was everything you loved and more.

And you thought you couldn't possibly love another color until you saw the extravagant navy dress in your chamber. Made of luxurious satin and adorned with literal diamonds, it shimmered under the light and flowed gracefully with layers of brocade cascading to the floor.

To give you something so valuable... You had expected to enter into a marriage out of necessity, but your new husband had no intention of ceasing his ways to win your heart.

If it's with him, maybe... just maybe...

Today is the day.

Satoru sat on his throne before his court in the grand hall of his audience chamber. His hair was pulled back, and he was dressed in his official attire, robe of silk and a crown made of pure gold.

Next to him, another resplendent crown adorned with jewels and diamonds shimmered in the light—the empress' crown. Your crown.

Today was the day this empire would truly acknowledge his queen. He stole a glance at you on his other side, and his breath was taken away.

With your hair tucked into an elegant updo, you were the very vision of a fairytale queen. You were incredibly stunning, almost otherworldly— shade of blue suited you as much as crimson did, just as he thought.

This day would go down in history. But before that, he would ensure that the news would reach Zen'in Naoya. He would spite him so hard.

"Today marks a momentous occasion. We gather here to celebrate not only my marriage and my new wife's coronation," Satoru glanced at his audience with a smirk, his expression widening as he spotted his best friends Suguru and Shoko. "But also the start of her reign... and as we know it already, her fame and beauty are second to none."

The crowd burst into giggles, clearly aware of his scandal at the Eastern Empire's courthouse. And even you smiled.

Satoru shrugged, playfully rolling his eyes. "Spare me, I'm a newlywed, after all. Anyway..." His gaze shifted to the intricate crown, a relic of his late mother's, and then back to you. "Come."

You knelt before your new husband, bowing your head. The whirlwind journey from the East, your remarriage to Satoru... It had all felt surreal until this moment. Now, the weight of reality settled upon you, almost shaking your very core—

But just as the thought crossed your mind, Satoru placed the crown upon your head. As the jewels settled into place and you rose to face the crowd, his voice cut through the air:

"And here I present to you, your new empress!"

The room erupted in applause, the cheers echoing around you. Everyone congratulated you without fail, and your breath was taken away.

It was a sight beyond belief, as they chanted your name, over and over again—

“ALL HAIL THE EMPRESS!”

"I have something for you!"

You wouldn't expect that you would ditch your last night of wedding celebrations along with your husband, and yet here you were, led by the hand by a very giddy Satoru.

"Where are we going?" you questioned him, your pretty dress sweeping the halls in a rush.

He turned to you to send you a wink. "Trust me, sweetheart. You'll love it."

Somehow the way he called you made your heart thump a little faster inside your ribcage. This man is really, truly, your husband now.

He was such a refreshing person, it almost made you let go of everything that molded you into the perfect empress in the east, and be just... you.

"Here." Both of you stopped in front of a grand door, and he ushered you inside. "Come, come~"

A study, you realized as you stepped inside, but then a gasp left your lips—

"How do you find it, hmm?" Satoru put an arm around your waist, proud of how the burgundy walls and mats enveloped the entire space, creating a tranquil sight that perfectly matched your taste.

It was so much like your private study in the Eastern Empire's palace. You might now hate that place, but your private study was filled with the memories of smiles while writing back to Satoru's letters and waiting for his cat to come. And to have this now in your new home...

"You remembered..." you looked up to him, almost tearing up.

"Of course I do," he pressed a kiss on your temple. "I said that so long as you're with me, I'll turn your dream into reality, didn't I?"

This man really treasures you, or at least that was what his actions had proven so far.

"You're everything I've ever wanted and more," Satoru said, wrapping his arms around you from behind in a warm embrace. "You might not realize it, but I've been in love with you since you first visited western lands."

"What?" you turned to him with genuine confusion. "How?"

"That blind boy who you led by the hand... he had no friends," Satoru sighed against you. "The first and only person who asked him if he was lost... is you."

Suddenly, you were thrown back in time to your first encounter with Satoru many years ago. He was known as "cursed" for being born with peculiar eyes, had been blind for a period of his childhood, before he awakened the true extent of those brilliant blue eyes and brought his clan to power by wielding them.

Back then, you thought it was wrong for him to be left alone, so you took him by the hand and escorted him back to the palace, unaware that he was the infamously cursed crown prince.

"You made me feel less lonely. And I thought then... someday, somehow... through some sort of miracle in which I regained my eyesight and could see you... I'd immediately ask for your hand."

But you were named the crown princess of the Eastern Empire. The thought of how crushed Satoru must have felt upon hearing the news pricked at your heart.

You felt soft, you felt loved, and most of all, you felt an overwhelming certainty that with this man by your side, you would finally experience the genuine love that had been missing from your life for so long.

"You have me now," you whispered in response.

Unlike your first kiss in the winery village, this time, you were the one who faced him and pulled him into a searing kiss.

Be it impulse, overwhelming feelings or something else... you didn't care. You just want him.

And wouldn't you know, your new husband... is also a wonderful, dashing lover.

"You're so... fucking beautiful..." Satoru's lips were on yours, claiming them with a fierce passion that left you breathless. His hands roamed your body, tracing each curves and lines.

You moaned into his mouth, clutching his robes. He captured your wrists with one hand, using the other to tilt your head back so he could leave bruises on your neck in the process, making you moan.

"Keep making that sound, yeah?" Satoru rasped, his hot breath giving you goosebumps. "Keep me going with your voice."

As he gripped your waist, it dawned to him once again that you were here, with him.

Seeing his colors on you ignited desire straight to his cock. His empress was stunning, more so now than ever, more than any woman Satoru had ever seen.

He led you to the bed, his movements urgent yet tender. The air was thick with desire as you lay back, pulling him down with you. You arched your back, pressing yourself closer to him, craving more.

This wasn't your first time, yet you had never been this excited before. From heated kisses until somehow managing to get rid of your underwear and left you in your dress... your body nearly thrashed in response.

"Look at you... An queen of two empires, yet rendered putty in my hands," Satoru wickedly grinned as he slipped a hand under your dress, rubbing his thumb teasingly over your clit. You let out a soft sigh at the prodding. You were getting wetter by each second... and Satoru felt his cock straining against the tight material of his dress pants.

"More..." you pleaded, arching your hips. "More...!"

Any of your wishes would be his command, so he pushed two fingers inside you at once, and you let out an erotic gasp. Satoru was so close to tearing his pants off by seeing how tight you clenched around his digits.

Breathy moans fell from your lips with each harsh brush of his thumb over your clit, his fingers fucking you fast—

"Satoru...!" you shuddered, gripping his shoulders as you became limp and came into his hands in spurts.

"My queen..." he then captured your lips in a brash kiss, and you reciprocated it. He pulled away only to press his forehead against yours in an attempt to calm his raging heart. "No matter what."

His watery, sparkling eyes was mesmerizing to you, and you took one breath before you crashed your lips into his, tangling your fingers in his hair, pulling him closer.

"As pretty as you look in this, I'm going to take it off," Satoru murmured with a meaningful smirk, slowly undoing the laces of your dress. "I want to see you completely naked... just for me."

Soon, you laid bare, and the cold air made your body shiver. Satoru clenched his jaw tightly at the scrumptious sight.

It was almost difficult for him to take in all of you at once—your flushed cheeks, swollen lips, erect nipples, and legs spread wantonly for him. Satoru had been here so many times in his dreams, and to see it becoming reality...

"If back then, you had chosen me instead—" he sounded almost heartbroken, which startled you. "I would have treated you right from the start—"

You looked up to him. "You would..."

"Don't you know how many years... I've been just there— watching you and that bastard? Knowing I can do even more than him?"

"Mhm..."

You rose, tugging him closer, before you unclasped his robe, letting it fall to the floor. "Satoru... right now... I'm yours."

He allowed you to undress him and soon he too was out of his stuffy royal attire. Your eyes wandered on each part of his body you touched. His chiseled body, snow-like skin, and then the hardened bulge that sprung out the moment you undid his pants—

The sight of his cock alone only turned you on even more. You gently gripped the glistening head, running a thumb over the tip before gliding your hand towards the base of his length. With a gentle rhythm, your hand moved from base to tip in a slow, teasing motion... before pecking his head.

"Yeah... you're right." His eyes never left yours, admiring you as if you were the most precious gemstone, before catching you off guard. While you rubbed him, he snaked a hand around your waist, pulling you so that you tumbled on top of him.

You moaned loudly as his cock—big, both in length and width—entered you, his hands gripping your thighs to spread them apart so he can shove himself deeper.

You felt so, so full, as you pulled Satoru to you tightly, groaning into his shoulder. And he started to set the pace, moving against you.

"Ahh," you moaned out shakily, fingers clawing into his back. To him, the sounds you made drew him in like a siren's song, it made him throb inside you. "Ahh—hngh!"

"Feel good?" he asked, voice sultry and deep, as he thrusted into you particularly harder, causing you to stifle a moan. "Let it out—hah—sweetheart... I want to hear you, hmm?"

And you did. You felt hot. Your unabashed, nasty sounds with each thrust drove him to the edge. With every lift of your hips, you squeezed him so tightly it almost made his head spin. His breaths came in short pants too.

"You fit me so damn well," he groaned, holding your hips hard enough to leave imprints of his fingers. "So fine..."

One woman. It took just one woman—you—to unravel him like this.

"Satoru, harder—" You commanded, wrapping your arms around his neck even as you trembled. "N-not enough... harder!"

He actually had to swallow, because you and your pussy felt so damn tantalizing. "As you wish, Your Majesty."

He slammed his hips against yours twice—no, thrice the previous speed, and you incoherently squealed. The squelching sound of your hips slamming against each other, and the immense wetness coming out where you two were joined... it was clear: you were addicted.

"Did Naoya ever make you feel as good as I do you now?" he drawled, sinking into you impossibly deeper, squeezing your left mound and flicking your right nipple at the same time. "Did he... ever make you ride him like this?" And then he instantly regretted his words.

Because the moment he said that, you felt cold, reminded of nights in which Zen'in Naoya grabbed you just to forcefully breed you. You winced, and Satoru caught it.

"I..." you shifted your gaze away from him, and he could've sworn that it was sorrow he saw flashing in your pretty eyes. "I-I... don't want to talk about him..."

Feeling remorseful, Satoru reached for the back of your neck and pulled you to him, kissing your lips softly. "I'm sorry—"

"You don't have to—"

"Tonight, I'll make you scream my name so hard you'll forget him," he promised as he pulled away from you, his eyes darkening. "Tonight, give me everything and I'll show you how a man truly loves his woman."

And he followed through. He worshipped you meticulously, treating your body with the reverence one might bestow upon delicate glass. He peppered kisses on every inch of your skin he could reach, lips and tongue trailing down, his relentless thrusts so well-paced and brutal at the same time.

"I'm— close!" You whimpered, and yet still grinding your hips against him. He was watching your every move, every wave of pleasure that was evident on your face— committing it to memory for those moments when he couldn't hold you close.

You gasped—as a mind-blowing orgasm then ripped out of your very being, your hips faltering as you surrendered to ecstasy with a cry of his name, coming all over him. "Satoru... Satoru! Ahhh!"

And Satoru kept his gaze on your face as he too busted inside of you hard, feeling himself filling your womb with his essence, his hands kept your waist steady, memorizing the way your lips part and the way your body went limp into him with satisfaction.

Dear heavens, I love you. The sight of you was nothing but perfection, and with everything he had, he was very sincere when he said—

"You're flawless, sweetheart."

2 MONTHS LATER

"If you give me a son, I'll throne you as the empress right on that very day."

The Eastern Empire's palace was bustling as the royal consort's screams echoed through the halls. The day Naoya had been eagerly awaiting had arrived—his mistress was delivering his heir.

Yet unbeknownst to him, whispers in the dark suggested the royal baby was arriving suspiciously early. Many, still mourning the previous empress who had been dethroned so abruptly, were not exactly thrilled with this turn of events.

"My lady, just a little bit more!" the maid encouraged. Hanabi strained once again as the pain peaked and her body spasmed, letting out the loudest wail as the baby finally slid out of her.

"W-what... is it?" on the brink of passing out, Hanabi asked anyone who might hear her. She had to know, for she was so close to obtaining her throne—

"It's a girl, my lady!" the midwife announced.

What?

Her world crumbled at that very moment. A girl? A girl can't be the heir!

She wanted to sob, to utterly mourn, and right at this moment she was full of fear, because if Naoya knew—!

Like a curse, he suddenly made his presence known in the birthing chamber. His face scrunched in distaste at the scent of blood filling the air. He took one look at Hanabi, tearful and frazzled after the ordeal, then turned to the midwife, who was trembling at his presence.

"A baby girl, Your Majesty."

In that instant, fury flashed through him. He shot everyone in the room a glare before his eyes settled on his consort, full of spite.

"You useless tramp."

Your life with Satoru in Western Empire was wonderful.

He was everything Naoya was not. Satoru adored you, prioritized your well-being and happiness, often humored you, and made your days an endless delight.

And dare you say... you had begun to return his affections as well.

How could you not? Everything he did, he did with you in mind. He eased you into your position so seamlessly, and soon you found your place comfortably at court.

"He is mixing pleasure with his kingly duties," Suguru grumbled, watching his best friend order the gardeners to plant more blue roses simply because you mentioned finding them beautiful earlier. "Empress, you have to keep a tight grip on his leash."

"Well, at least he's happy." Shoko shrugged and nudged you. "Can't you see by now? How much of a loser he is for you?"

You did see him—a man who showed you everything he had. He had given you everything you unknowingly needed.

And you just wished... you could return the same for him. It still made you bitter, knowing you might never be able to give him heirs due to your condition.

. . .

"Sweetheart... what's on your mind, hmm?"

You looked up to him as he pressed a kiss on your cheek, an arm securely around you, sweaty and panting after your steamy session.

With his hair down and messy after you yanked him earlier, your lips curved into a genuine smile. "You look hot like this, you know?"

He clicked his tongue. "Hmm, I am, of course. But no use in changing topics, I know you well enough now."

Your bare body was pressed against his chest, fingertips tracing gentle lines on his skin.

"There's a possibility that... I can't give you any children." You almost felt ashamed saying this to him, unable to look at him in the eye. "I-I... I've failed for many years—"

"Hush," he silenced you with a finger to your lips, his expression firm. "No thinking that, yeah? I don't care."

"But—"

"Children are gifts," he said then, caressing your face tenderly. "It's not up to us to control how it'll take or not. And I married you not because I want heirs or such—I love you, you know?"

Your glassy eyes met his, and you willed yourself not to shed a tear.

He grinned cheekily. "Besides, you've felt it yourself—my sexual potency is undeniable. And I don't believe for a second, that you're what that bastard claimed you to be. I bet he's the one who is impotent—"

"Satoru! You're so obscene—!" you giggled freely and poked his chest.

At that time, you were just relieved that he didn't mind. Though it was still weighing in your mind on some days, you felt a newfound sense of liberation compared to when you were still in the Eastern Empire.

But you were in for another plot twist. Perhaps Satoru is correct, and your doubts are unfounded...

"Ugh..."

Your stomach churned in discomfort, a sickening nausea that seemed to twist your insides and threaten to force its way up. This had happened for days now.

You wanted to find a physician before Satoru was aware of your state. You didn't dare to hope or speculate, because you were tired of it by this point. You just wanted clarity.

Yet, the physician's words left you speechless.

"Your Majesty... it seems that you are with child," he remarked in wonder as he assessed your vein. "Yes, definitely. You are with child."

It was a revelation you hadn't expected. For years, you had been convinced that you were unable to conceive, but now...

You were carrying a new life. Yours and Satoru's.

You felt like bursting with joy as you made your way to his study. Your heart swelled with an overwhelming sense of happiness. Above anything else, you were eager to share this news with him—

...until everything you had known turned on its axis once again.

Right before you went past the ajar door, you saw a glimpse of your husband and his most trusted confidant, overhearing snippets of their conversation:

"Satoru, however you look at it, this is tantamount to declaring war," Suguru sighed, clearly at odds with his perspective. "It's not wise."

"We can finally put an end to them this way," Satoru's tone was steely as he moved a chess piece across the map, positioning it on the border between east and west. "No better time than now."

"The Empress will face the greatest backlash from this. They'll accuse her of being vengeful enough to provoke an attack on her home country—"

"On the contrary, her presence will encourage those still loyal to her to defect. That's why I have her here. We need defectors—"

You let out a choked gasp, backing away from the door in shock. For one good minute, you refused to comprehend what Satoru was implying.

. . .

Did your new husband... marry you for his own hidden agenda?

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capslocked · 3 months ago

Text

PARIS

male reader x sana minatozaki

30k words

"City's a shithole," you tell Sana, stepping out of a taxi. "Absolutely rotten."

"It is not a shithole."

"It is a shithole, Sana."

"You just got off the plane. Can we reserve judgement on Paris until we've seen the fucking place?"

(This is the one where you get over a fear of flying, of falling - and Sana's breeding kink goes a little further, gets a little more complicated - and neither of you give up much ground. It's an ordeal, that one. You really oughta stop surprising her in hotels.)

"Little known fact," Sana says to you near the beginning and looking for once a little less ethereally put-together, a bit more like she wants to go back to sleep. "St. Valentine was actually an incel who died in jail."

She's slumped onto your kitchen counter in a sweater several sizes too large - the one with your college crest, a hole in the armpit - and shorts, her long bare legs dangling above the tile.

"So, y'know."

And you haven't a fucking clue.

She shovels another spoonful of cereal into her mouth, "spending the holiday insufferably alone is something of an homage."

"What?"

"An homage," she crunches, happily.

Oh, you're charmed by her, have been for weeks now, and you chuckle despite yourself, pour her coffee while you're waiting for the toaster to finish. You've decided she's going to eat fruit today whether she wants to or not - it's barely breakfast if it's just a bowl of sugary carbs; and in a pair of fuzzy socks, a stolen crewneck, with last night's makeup still slightly smeared at the corners of her eyes and her hair mussed to shit, Sana makes you feel sorta responsible for her health. Your infatuation must be showing.

She lifts her chin, blinks lazily.

"I guess that makes us both artists by extension, or something," you say.

"Incels?" Sana snorts.

"No." Your toast pops. "Homage-payers."

You watch her mouth quirk around her spoon. "I kinda like that," she allows.

This morning, for the record, is only different than others in terms of superficial details - today Sana woke up with your hand cupped over her cunt, three fingers sinking slowly into her heat - annoyingly slow, the way she likes it least and best, depending on what she gets out of the teasing: her morning orgasm, in this case - and it was different enough that she moaned high and pretty, back arching as she squirmed on your palm, the sheets, whispering a delirious good morning against your jaw when her wits finally cohered into something more linear, understandable.

It's your new normal, sure: sleeping together - and its odd, comedy-forged counterpart, waking-up together.

It's eating breakfast, it's Sana stealing your clothes, sitting on your counters like breaking convention is some sort of biological imperative.

It's her legs wrapping around your waist while she kisses you soft and open-mouthed, leaving it to you to decide how much morning breath you can tolerate - and maybe that's a routine worth indulging, for a bit. At any rate: it's February 7th, which means there's this sword of Damocles hanging over your head that a whole financial system has been built around monetizing, a day people probably buy chocolates and flowers and write sonnets over - except Sana is jetsetting next week and you'll be spending February 14th in your apartment, possibly taking a shower, definitely sleeping in until noon, not being in love.

She's a once-in-a-generation talent, a gorgeous face, a fantastic fuck - this is just what's in the cards for you.

"You're going to miss me," says Sana, flat-out declaring it, threading her fingers beneath your chin, hooking her ankles loosely in the small of your back.

The cereal bowl clatters as you set it in the sink. "I might," you say, noncommittal, enjoying the way it makes her press further into your body, clinging tighter. "How long did you say this trip was going to be, again?"

"Oh, forever, maybe," Sana breezes, waving her other hand.

"You're gonna change your mind about the whole concept of romance and think about texting me within five, ten minutes of dropping me off at the airport. But then you won't actually do it, because you'll figure that I'm busy, and then you'll spend the rest of my flight kicking yourself for not sending me, like, an emoji, or something, and that it could've been enough to bridge the gap, and instead I'll be off somewhere all dolled-up and glamorous, probably surrounded by hot models, and that's when I'll meet someone new. I mean, there'll probably be no comparison to well, y'know-" She palms your crotch, fingers skating across the fabric. You recoil, almost scowl, and she snickers. "-but that's what happens when you don't text me. We're not in contact for one week and I replace you with a French man named Pierre. Or Jean. Jean-Pierre, honestly. If I were you, I'd play it safe and shoot me a Valentine's text."

"Wow." You push your thumbs under the hem of her shorts. "You got it in one, I think."

She shrugs, faux-modest. "Naturally. Jean-Pierre knows what's up."

You slip your hands up further and her expression shifts as you meet skin under the heavy fabric: all suggestion, no pretense. Sana sighs contentedly, leaning back onto her wrists so that you have to chase her, tilt your head to follow the movement. This is natural. She takes your lip between her teeth and sucks, gently. The angle puts a crick in your neck. You let her get away with it anyway, press further in between her thighs, spread them wide - and then she bites harder, the flesh of your bottom lip giving under her canines.

There's a spark there, it makes you want to pull her hair, kiss her harder, dig your fingers into her hips and leave bruises that'll last through the next couple weeks of international press junkets and glitter-eyed meetings with like-minded, like-pretty strangers. You're starting to suspect she's psychic - because she slides a hand up your shirt, letting her fingers skate over your stomach, the dip of your hips, the places that make you tick.

You clock the twitch in your pants, growing, filling. You've slept with this girl an awful lot. It's a problem.

"Possessive," is Sana's assessment, with all of the derision of a tease.

"Cool it," you warn her, sliding your grip up from her legs to her hips, pinning her solidly to the countertop. "I've got a full enough schedule this morning without you making a mess of things."

"Mmm, you don't." She's petulant, kissing you again and letting the touch linger on your bottom lip. It's a strong argument.

"I do," you try.

"You really don't," she says, sing-song, breathless with expectation, anticipating rough treatment.

Her smile is syrup-sweet, oozing indulgence: the sight of her sprawled beneath you is a pure profligate pleasure. Like she's an apple you stole fresh from the orchard, red and shiny and dripping juice down your forearm, dribbling sticky on the grass, rotted with temptation. You wonder if she's always been this way - begging to be held down, fucked hard, edged beyond the realm of possibility - and recently her appetite for filth seems endless, like she's come into a taste for it. Sana Minatozaki doesn't often say no.

For all intents and purposes, your answer should be a given.

"Well," you drawl, thumbing the soft cotton of her shorts, that spot just above the waistband, where her inner thigh meets the crease of her pelvis and you can make her voice go to velvet. "Did you say he died in prison?" You pull away from her a bit, switching tactics, letting the subject slide from bedroom talk to regular breakfast chatter. "Of what, heartbreak?"

"You'd think," she says, almost curt, irritated at the prospect of edification and sorely lacking a good fuck. It's a pleasant mood to find her in - very manageable, easier if you slip your tongue between her legs, though still relatively straightforward. "It turns out the dude got beaten to death with clubs, then beheaded; hence the martyrdom bit, which I think is fair. Pretty metal death to warrant sainthood."

"Seems a little redundant."

"So does giving a holiday to people who are already, like, super in love or whatever, but." She gathers her hair off her neck - lets it fall, satisfied. "I guess romanticism and pragmatism are just mutually conclusive."

"Exclusive," you correct, lightly.

"What'd I say?"

You exchange looks: it's definitely something you've already joked about before. It's easy, like the rest of your dynamic. Sana smiles, slow-burn, and all you can do is try and one-up her: you shrug, sigh, like there's a lot to consider.

Her fingers work open one of the buttons on the front of your shirt, hover on the one beneath it - her patience is dwindling.

"Fine," you relent, rolling your eyes, feigning reluctance. "But we need to be quick about it. Fifteen minutes, twenty max. Then I absolutely need to leave and go sit silently in a room doing jackshit for eight hours."

Sana kicks you lightly in the shins. "Let me get on top, and we'll have time to cuddle, too."

"No dice," you tell her. The negotiations continue, as they always do. "Face-down-ass-up, princess. You can clean up the kitchen afterwards."

"Ugh. You're gross," she says, as you help her down from the countertop, maneuver her toward your room with one wrist tucked firmly in your palm, already rucking up her sweater to skim your fingertips along her ribs. Sana goes easy, her joints loose, willing to bend. "And annoying. And unaccommodating. You're totally wasting my last few days in town."

"I know. I'm sorry about it," you respond, stepping behind her up the stairs, her fingers gliding gently up the rail.

"Liar." She shoots you a half-smile, laughing with no bite behind it. You think, just a bit, that she'd let you get away with just about anything - that is to say, she'd get off on a great many things: you'd let go of your own guilt, just for a moment. For someone so hot and cold with her control, it'd be easy to slide the pendulum to the other side. Maybe she'd beg for it, and it'd sound real: a small part of you thinks she's close enough already. Sana tosses a smirk over her shoulder and your mouth goes dry. "But i'm sure you will be," she tells you, her gaze somehow already unfocused. You suppose all the daydreaming is beginning to affect her too. "In, like, four and a half minutes, give or take. Probably closer to four."

"Careful, Sana," you intone, pitching low; it's like warning a child not to touch an open stove. "Your ass gets red fast."

Sana wiggles her eyebrows in an endearingly ridiculous way - you can't believe this is the girl getting checks from all these designer brands - and twists your way for a second, pressing a soft kiss to the hollow of your neck.

"Promises, promises." She bats those unequivocally long lashes up at you. "You better know I'll hold you to 'em."

In any case, she was right: St. Valentine got fucking wrecked. It's the whole morning's lesson. Maybe there's something to be said for dying in a spectacular way, one so fantastically morbid that it has to have happened in another era.

Sana gets on top, sorta, in spite of any negotiations; Sana kisses you stupid; Sana talks nonsense while you eat her out; Sana cums when you get two fingers deep inside her ass and slam her cunt full of another, curling the tip of tongue right across her clit. She goes easily from her knees to bracing herself against the headboard; and you follow her up the mattress when she scoots forward so you can fuck her with her back flush against your chest, head tossed on your shoulder, throat arched so she can choke out sounds you've never heard from anyone, ever. She's not a screamer, but she makes these high, keening noises when she's close - when you're giving her just the right pace, the right rhythm, the right depth - and you lean back on your heels, slap her ass, pinch her hip, "make me cum, baby," and god, her pussy grips down on you greedily, hungrily, swallows every inch and fucks you back until the condom swells full, deep inside her heat.

"You." You say it like it's a half-formed threat, kissing her sweaty, satiny shoulder, nosing the bra strap barely clinging to her skin. "Are such an insufferable cocktease."

"That's me," she quips, out of breath, entirely too pleased.

It's such a familiar refrain now, her elbow bent back, hand trailing your neck, head tipped - she sinks her fingers into your hair and holds you against her pulse where it jumps sporadically under her skin. You flip her around - somewhat elegantly, somewhat not - nestle her soft, creamy thighs over your hips, warm your cock inside of her as she falls back from the clouds, pressing your hand to the tightness of her waist - she wasn't exaggerating: there's time to spare, to kiss her like a movie ending, and to come up smiling.

It's not just all the risky, illicit sex and reckless abandon already in play: it's also the entire lexicon and etymology of fated ends, of doomed sentiment - each verb conjugated twice and three times and five times over. She's got the filthiest parts of your imagination reined in with that face alone, like you're drowning in divinity; this is a girl so pristine and peerless and utterly without vice, staring up at you from underneath mascara-dusted lashes, waiting for her own devastation - always daring you to indulge her.

"You think you're corrupting me," Sana laughs in your ear, serenely, almost self-aware. "Is that it?"

"Well," you start, and there's a self-reflection somewhere in there - your fingertips on her jaw, her heartbeat in the hollow of her throat. The skin's so impossibly soft. Fragile. "It's a thought."

She lifts a shoulder, smiles lazily. Her mouth has that permanent imprint of sin, somehow simultaneously a crime scene and a place of worship.

"Baby," she drawls, all sugar-sweet. "I'm sure that's a given. I was such a good girl before I met you."

"Yeah," you reply, nipping the hinge of her jaw. "Such a sweetheart. So well-behaved."

"I'll take it."

Sana rolls the condom off of you, sitting cross-legged on your bed as you fold a pillow in half and prop yourself up, watching her do her thing.

She’s got so much control like this - wringing the thick mess out into her palm, then sitting back onto her calves. With two fingers and her thumb, she pinches at it, lets it drip back down. A beat later, she makes another string, decides she's all for swallowing today. That's an art. And it's mesmerizing, the way she concentrates with delicate precision, tipping her chin up and staining her lips, her tongue diligently slipping through the spaces between her knuckles.

"You're really cute," you inform her, and she flushes while licking up the rest - you love it, the little contradictions. "But that is filthy."

“Could’ve been inside me instead,” she muses, casually. She’s just testing it out, rolling the syllables on her tongue.

You raise your eyebrows. “Maybe.”

“Maybe,” repeats Sana, quietly. She reaches forward, runs her thumb along your slit, a little lower - just a semi-circle of pressure. Yeah, you’re still achingly hard. She eyes you and her focus shifts; she seems to come to a conclusion, nods her head once; this girl, really, with all her unpredictable tempers. She takes the length of you in her hand, a loose, idle grip, more to be playful than sexy. It works both ways, apparently: your eyes roll up at her, and you suppress a gasp, grabbing hold of the pillow.

It's those dreamy, half-lidded eyes, glazed over and vapid - ah, the total and utter loss of any brain capacity. Something like a prelude to the sweet surrender; Sana does the drooling part for you.

“You wanna go again?” you ask her, and this is another bit: the whole I-say-one-thing-and-do-the-other game, the winding, unwinding tension.

When she wants something, she talks to you like she'd burn a church down for you, then tuck her arm right into yours like the fire doesn't exist in the first place - Sana blinks prettily up at you, strikes the match behind her back. For her part, she doesn’t lie as often as she could, as often as you would expect her to; in the beginning, at least, you assumed she was a bad liar, a good flirt, that kind of contradiction.

If you didn't know better, you'd fall head over heels.

"Or are you just stroking me off because you like the way it feels in your hands?" you go on. You'd like to find out, actually.

Sana smirks, and slides her palm lower, gets a second hand involved, slow and steady - the friction is aching, fantastic. "Aren't you supposed to be working?” she asks, twisting both. You could cum again, but maybe you shouldn't. "Is this really how we spend all our time?"

“How conscientious of you,” you say, drily, and she laughs before tucking her hair behind her ear, kneeling on the sheets and bringing her lips to the end of you, letting her spit run down the head and catching it with her knuckles; just once, she licks. Then, twice. Okay, well - you could probably afford to stay away a while longer. In theory. Three times, four times - oh, her mouth is hot and silky and there's really no way around it.

You grab your phone, shoot off an email or two, and slip your fingers into her hair.

Sana's someone you know from work, in a real roundabout sort of way. That's the whole sordid story.

You've got the cushy office job, the creative credentials, she's art, the product; and the optics surrounding that means you're supposed to never, ever lay a finger on her; oils mixing like they shouldn't - the finished, the half-baked, the polished to a gleam versus the raw unvarnished clay; but she'd wandered into the employee-only elevator and said good morning with that smart, sarcastic little voice and you'd turned around, thinking of some entitled manager in the process of haranguing you - only it wasn't a suit-and-tie corporate climber, oh, no, no-

"Hey," you said, too stunned for eloquence, too dumbstruck for wit.

Because here's a perfect, pouty-lipped princess, dressed like an angel and grinning like she's ready to rob a bank; like the moon landing and Shakespeare rolled into one, fantasy and classic literature and a pastel linen shirt, with what felt like half the buttons undone.

You blinked, remembered to breathe.

"Hi." She tipped her head and let a curtain of copper-spun hair slide off one shoulder. Took a slow, appraising sip of her iced-coffee. "You're new. Or - new to me, at least."

The doors shut, and suddenly there was no going back.

The signs are there. Four different conditioners on the bath rack, her lotion on the bathroom counter, her shaving cream next to the soap. She prefers peppermint to vanilla. And date night takes a turn from red wine to ramen; you'll end up on your couch watching crime documentaries because Sana will hook her fingers into the loops of your jeans, saying, can't we just, like, stay in?

This morning, too: her hand clings around your forearm a little longer when you kiss her goodbye and help her find the shoes she's wearing home, make her promise to return your sweatshirt soon.

But you know that if anyone asked, Sana'd shrug and laugh, say I dunno, it's not really anything at all.

You're hooking up. You're being idiots - this whole thing, from the very start of it, was so off-the-rails, so questionable. You remind yourself she's never met anyone she didn't like.

She doesn't think about consequences, and she certainly won't start with you. You figure things will fester, get murky and muddled and frustrating - and the worst part isn't how she's ruining you for anyone else; it's how you're going to miss the idea of her, the impossible promise. She's living the glamour, the ceaselessness, the adventure. It's all planned out. She'll keep living her life this way until she doesn't. It's an occupational hazard.

And she won't pay it any attention once some Jean-Pierre becomes her next hot, enigmatic, incomprehensible, asshole genius plaything - hypothetically speaking.

(Or maybe he'll be the first one to really, really figure her out, and that's the more disconcerting thought.)

So you're just...you don't even know what you are, frankly. Friends who text? Sure, whatever: that makes sense. You can cling to that. It's the most sensible explanation so far.

Sana: i was promised an apology text (´;︵;`)

Sana: the pregnant man emoji seems wildly inappropriate given the circumstances

You, at ten fifteen in the morning on February 8th: i'm in a staff meeting, first of all.

You've been getting nonsensical, arbitrary stuff since, like, October: grocery lists, links to memes, notes on things she remembers in the shower. Occasionally, it's horny stuff - a water droplet emoji, the wink, and the peach; then a photo of her skirt lifted in the mirror and her naked ass in a pair of heels - and occasionally, you oblige it.

You: second, I don't want this to come off as arrogant or anything, but I didn't realize you think about me the minute you wake up

Sana: um, soooo arrogant lol wtf

Sana: but also ur not wrong, im desperate for some relief <333

You: poor, pitiful baby 🙄

You: go find miyeon

Sana: she's ignoring my calls

Sana: just send something nasty please PLEASE 😭

Sana: tell me how hard i make you

You: i'm in a meeting, sana.

Sana: I WILL RIOT.

Sana: jk don't tell me. i'm just looking at pics of us rn and i'm going to die.

Sana: (send a dick pic u coward)

She sends you a heart. And an eggplant. Then the tongue.

You: I'll see what I can do

She follows up with: thank u thank u god bless <3

Oh, it's dangerous, working in the same office, dealing in all that proximity - even with the floors between you.

You're constantly resisting the urge to slide by, to try and catch a glimpse, to find excuses to bump into her in the hallway, listen to her talk, say hi. So maybe you're a sucker for the devil, or maybe it's all just because she's Sana, and she's a vision in a pencil skirt, a beauty with her legs crossed and her chin tipped high; or it's worse: you'll catch her in yoga pants, hair mussed and shiny with sweat as she flits from practice room to practice room, to get water, to take a phone call, to rub chapstick over her mouth - the daydreams write themselves.

But it's not like you know any details of her job other than, 'singer' or 'professional tease' or the occasional tangential reference. She never really talks about work.

You walk through the halls, eyes flitting around every corner; there's a standing appointment, of sorts, and it has been for the past month, maybe longer - you've got your doubts that today will break the streak. You've never actually agreed to meet her; it's sorta an unspoken understanding, and you find her exactly where you thought you might, after you've made a loop around the seventh floor, wandered as slowly as humanly possible - as if stalling could stop you from inevitably descending the same stairwell you do every time. It's an awful, terrible descent and it's gonna get you both fired - or killed, if her manager finds you first. It's a miracle you're still here.

Sana's leaning against the railing, flipping through her phone; when she hears your approaching footsteps she looks up and meets your eyes. Smirks.

"Ms. Minatozaki," you say, like this is a high school and she's one of the tardies you can't stop calling out.

It's the nth time this has happened, and you have to know she comes looking for you, too.

"So," she drawls, standing and sweeping all her hair up off her neck, clipping it like it's habitual, and the way her hands rest at your waist is a scandal in itself. The watch on her dainty pale wrist glitters in the fluorescent lights, slides down her forearm as she pushes her sleeves past her elbows. You're not really thinking about things like propriety, restraint; Sana's very good at convincing you to shed all pretense of ethics, morals. You're slave to the thousand-kilowatt smile, the short skirts and thigh-high boots and every calculated display of skin. This girl has her agenda written plain on the walls and you've made it known in ten different languages: it's one hell of a view, and it's impossible not to stare.

"You here to escort me somewhere?" asks Sana, in a way that sounds vaguely dirty - which it is. "Need to go looking for pens again?"

She takes a step closer, presses a palm flat to your chest; hums a low, delighted sound.

"Or you could bend me over the railing and stuff me right here." Sana tilts her chin and squints upwards, assessing the metalwork. She drops her gaze, presses her fingertips to the knot of your tie; and then, a show of pity or mercy, drags her eyes back to your face, pretty lashes blinking slow. "Wouldn't be complaining."

"I really wish you could hear yourself sometimes, sweetheart."

"Trust me, it's been on my mind all morning," she confesses, all soft, wicked intimacy. "Distracting me. I doubt you want me keeping it to myself, either."

"No," you admit. "You've got that right."

Her fingers toy with your top button, pop it open. You grab her wrist, stop her, gentle and warning. Her hand goes limp in your grasp, acquiescing easily; this is the part where she likes it, getting pulled back on the right side of polite. "You should kiss me," says Sana.

Like she has to. Like this girl, rich and famous and inexplicably out of your league, a glamorous songbird living high up in her nest, and still wanting for the little taste of heaven she thinks she can steal away from you in dark corners

"Where?" You're playing, and the moment you brush your mouth over hers, the second her breath meets your lips, you've gone and forgotten all your prior reservations about fucking her at work. You let go of her wrist, allow her hand to wander lower, unbuttoning, dipping past the waistband of your pants. She slides her palm beneath the material of your underwear, tugs them just low enough that her slim, small fingers can encircle the base of your cock.

"Anywhere," Sana decides, and kisses the answer into your mouth, sighing into it - enough to pull you under, to submerge and suffocate.

It's funny; she smiles like she's the heroine of your life story, like the storybook star on the cover of an epic, or an infallible leading lady - like someone to love, like someone to admire and aspire to. Or maybe it's a touch sinister: her eyes sparkle and your worldview snaps a little sideways, just to accommodate her; she could be the villain all the same - not your protégée, not the good girl, not an angel or a miracle. There's your poison, and it's in her blood - it's a flashpoint of pure greed, and Sana doesn't need a mirror. She knows every single sin.

You drop your hand from her hair, the pretense, and give in: the railing creaks a quiet noise of protest as she wrenches her ass against the unforgiving steel, and then she's arching into your body, sighing again; it's a sound you've committed to memory, ingrained it, the sweet taste, the sharpness of her exhale when your hand wanders high up the hem of her skirt.

"Anywhere?"

"Sure," breathes Sana, fingers spidering further into your open zipper.

It's so incredibly risky, it's bad practice, not to mention illogical: the stairwell is a public, communal space, no escape, nowhere to hide - there's only seven floors to the building, seven opportunities for someone to stumble in, and none of these numbers are in your favor.

"I'll be quiet," she mutters, lips ghosting along your jaw. "I promise." She knows that's not what you're concerned with, but you appreciate the thoughtfulness; oh, who's fooling who? "We can just-" Her hips hitch up and press firm against yours. "-see where it goes."

And, well - you have the rest of your career to be responsible, probably. Professional, obedient and boring and ethical and so many other useless terms you could drag up and wave in the face of the fact Sana's fucking gorgeous. She's holding back from giving you the full-on pout, but just barely - you catch the shadow of it on her lips; the thinly concealed ache, the pretty agony. She kisses you like she's not gonna breathe until the second after you're inside her - then that's that, like some sorta ritual. A tradition, an instinct, it's a swan-song for every shred of decorum she's begging to burn up.

You hoist her, balance her on the railing. When your grip tightens, she shuffles forward, draws her legs up a little - that's the key, letting her settle just right: the end of the world could come now and she'd still feel fucking divine, pussy dripping through her underwear straight onto the crotch of your pants - there's a wet spot now, you can feel it on the side of your thigh where you've got a fistful of her skirt scrunched, rolled up above her thighs, all bare creamy skin, something to remember this by: her in the height of perfection, full of good intentions and eager to fall apart.

"Panties," you tell her, palm up, hand held out.

"You're fucking crazy," she exhales, but she's fiddling with her waistband and shifting on her ass in seconds - they're tangled around her boots - you're a goner from the start, it's like your soul leaves your body with a wet little snick. "Get - get them off," and it sounds so sweet in her voice, whining, ragged - not that it was in any danger but her own breath renders her resolve for composure pointless.

"Your little cunt's dripping," you note, with your hand cupping it, two fingers teasing along her soaked slit; no part of the conversation has ever needed to go in circles with Sana, or anyone else. You just sort of lean into it. "Been wanting me since you got dressed, huh."

"Your fault," she tells you, nose sliding over yours, seeking affection. "Explicitly. Never got those pictures out of my head."

"Um," you say, slipping into another finger, because she's hot and slick and insatiable and the friction will melt her right to goo - you think Sana's orgasms might be getting a little violent, these days. You're more inclined to inspire them. "I didn't actually send you anything provocative."

"See?" She grins at you, breathless. "Here lies my problem."

"Such a hard life." You crook your fingers a little deeper; Sana collapses against you, a flower drooping from too much rainwater. "Such a burden, being you, hm?"

"So I'm the issue in this scenario," she mutters, pushing back into your hands, squeezing her thighs. "Causing problems, all by myself, sluttly-little-me."

"I never said that."

"You called me a fucking cocksleeve, the other night."

"Sana."

"Which is absolutely correct. Like. One hundred percent. But don't act like you don't get off on it."

"Well," you say, innocuous: stroke up inside of her, stretch, reach - crook - and there's a breathy moan in your ear. "So do you."

"Shut up," she says, "this is about your inability to compartmentalize," and her cunt is so slick that it makes a delicious, lewd squelching sound as your fingers dip and curl in further, the walls of her pussy clenched tight, suffocating your skin - every time you roll a condom over your cock and sink inside her you do have to wonder if it's really, genuinely necessary.

"Wanna cum?" you ask, deflecting a bit, and stroke her with intent, relishing the way her little pink mouth drops open to exhale.

"Gotta be better than getting psychoanalyzed by a guy who has my fucking panties in his pocket," she grits out, hips rolling to the tempo of your fingers, now scissoring apart. You're only touching her cunt and still she moves against you like you've been railing her for hours - you think she's so wet you might hear it down the hall, down the street. "Might be a good tradeoff. Maybe." Then, more resolutely: "Fuck. Yes. Please."

It's hard to take her seriously like this, with her pretty features drawn up, all the facets of a statue rendered beautifully human, transient, falling apart in the pleasure. In moments like these, Sana looks most ethereal; when your thumb's fast on her clit and you croon compliments and the sweetest-bittersweet filth in her ear until her whole body becomes liquid-fire, sloppy and hot, desperately keening.

"On my fingers?" you ask, because maybe you're a lot like Sana: an insufferable tease.

You slip your fingers down to the next knuckle and curl it up against the slick heat, deep, until she's making soft, whimper-like sounds, brow furrowing in focus, straining for release, and Sana can't even look you in the eyes, too far gone already, lost in this. "Or," and here's the dangerous part - "I could get on my knees and eat this pussy until you can't see straight." You're dangerously close to taking the panties from your pocket and sliding the lace under her tongue just so you could see how pretty she looks like that, huffing, groaning, eyes flickering shut at the sensation - not the actual taste of herself, but just the way it's so undignified.

She looks pretty at any angle, any moment - you wonder if you can fuck it into her so she'll always know it's true: the kind of egomaniacal narcissism Sana might get off on. It seems appropriate.

Sana just hums at this, arching a delicate brow, considering.

"How about you give me your mouth and watch me fuck the hell out of it, hm?"

"Mildly threatening, but okay." You take one hand, smooth over her ribs until it's cupping the slope of her jaw, and draw her gaze upward, until she's staring into your eyes. "You always taste like a godsend - could get addicted to it, probably, baby - would you wanna ruin my throat? Make me drool all over you? Turn it into a little fucking mess, just the way you like?"

The sound she makes then is unearthly, somewhere between a moan and a groan. A reverb.

You know it's out of hand because you've started using the same euphemisms she does - breeding her, ruining her tight little pussy, stretching it out nice and full. Getting a second opinion, then a third and a fourth. It's a little crass for your typical repertoire, but she makes the sweetest, most ruined noises at that. You're an equal opportunist, and her whiny submissiveness is just as good - maybe a little less effortless. More demanding: there's always the feeling she's lording it over you.

"No, really." You're stroking your fingers in solid, even thrusts as you speak: gentle, measured, nowhere near enough. "You're fucking soaked," you remark, the corner of your mouth tilted up. "Like you can't stand not having something inside you, huh?"

"Something big," she grits out.

You laugh a little, amused. She's practically leaking down the heel of your hand.

"The problem is," breathes Sana, swallowing once, twice, eyelashes flicking lower, her cheek pliable in your palm and her nails scraping gently against the hair at the nape of your neck - she's dissolving. She's all yours to own, consume, to make cum. She's drenched and warm and perfect and there's a whine threaded through every expletive. She always likes things better when you're nastier to her; it's probably fucked up. Everything is, and it's Sana - so that should go without saying. "Fuck - whatever - please. Just-"

You laugh again, and the noise twists a little meaner this time in Sana's ear.

"C'mon," you say. "Tell me about this - about my issues. Your ideas. How badly you're gonna, what was it, destroy my life, I think? Just talk while I go down on you. Might help take the sting out of it." You pause. "Or make it all the more worse, really."

Sana whimpers, broken, liking the sound of that, judging by the way her cunt drips, swollen and fluttering and you can feel her pulsing against your fingertips.

"I'll tell you if you start to go in the wrong direction," says Sana, petulant and lovely as ever. "How's that - how's? Oh, my fuck-"

Sana's words drop off. It's well-warranted. You're hungry for her, insatiable; you sink down to the floor, get your mouth on her pretty little aching cunt and that's sorta how this always starts.

She gasps out and tangles her fingers in your hair, fucks her cunt against your tongue and cries out like this isn't a scandal.

You pray to god no one comes for a smoke, for the breeze to cool them off: because nobody needs to know how thoroughly you ruin the company's golden goose, their pristine girl-next-door, pop-sweet baby-princess. You pray because she's going to cum like the rest of your brain won't remember it tomorrow, like every teary-eyed scream won't stick to your lips like static.

Your tongue moves, pressing harder to her clit; she rides your face. Grinds down your lips while your gaze remains rapt, transfixed.

You won't blink, won't look away for even a moment. Not when Sana's falling apart above you: a complete fucking mess, a spitfire and a divinity and a filthy-wet-dream in heels, panting so hard that you're gonna need an excuse. That everyone's gonna see you've done it, broken the perfect facade and left her absolutely mangled. It's fucking obscene the sounds she's making. High, aching whines, squelch, wettened suction; her fingers tearing through your scalp; those god damn lip-gloss-flavored moans - they echo on your neck and chest, run down and through your rib-cage. They land in your gut and rest heavy and stale, ruminant, too thick. Sweet and molasses and unbearable, all stuck inside your throat. Fuck, fuck. She cums; there's your paycheck in the line of her body, arched into an acute, cataclysmic peak, an upstretched needle to pierce the surface.

It's a moment in a crystal-clear shot, one you'll try and lock in the bank, the hallows, your mind.

She's beautiful, obviously: in the aftermath, ragged, inelegant - you figure it's the fact that the poor thing's so damned unused to being fucked, has gone on for all her teenage years, then her early adulthood, barely scraping a few fingers, a low buzz of some unremarkable toy; no - she's used to the admiration. The flattery. The rapture and praise.

But you doubt anyone's made a thorough wreck, a beautiful slobbering, sloppy mess - and who would? She's worshiped like she's an icon. Some half-baked notion of reverence, like she's holy. An angel in the wrong hands - oh, the imagery's much too flimsy. Fawning. Unending, untethered; you might be a sucker, but you wonder when you'll meet the next guy in her rotation, and, not wanting to spend much thought on him, wonder instead about Sana and her subterfuge.

You've wondered on and off why the hell she chose you.

"You don't deserve that," says Sana, after, a little breathless but otherwise unfazed and smug, like it isn't a big fucking deal to talk back to you while your jaw is still covered in her slick.

"Pretty sure I do." You wipe at your mouth, come up closer to her again. "Seemed like it helped."

"I have a whole monologue prepared," says Sana, a touch irritated - ah, well, she might be spoiled after all. "It wasn't easy to put together. The idea of you fucking me is kind of distracting, just for the record."

"Sweet of you, baby."

"Oh, fuck off," says Sana, promptly.

You smile. It's charming and cheeky and Sana blushes, suddenly off her game. "I'm serious," she says, scrambling back to her point. "You deserve nothing for leaving me alone and miserable and not showing up for ages. You're so - I'm mad at you."

"Oh," you say, and raise an eyebrow, mock-horrified. You kiss her bare, sweat-sticky neck, trace a finger from her navel down past her hips. Sana shivers. "I had no idea."

It's just Sana's axiomatic response: all snark and sass and sly one-liners until you've got your finger against her clit, and then all at once she's begging, sobbing, falling to pieces, whining your name like it's a mantra. She doesn't give a damn about your apology now. The state of your relationship has hardly progressed - but it doesn't matter. It's only the sex, the endless hours spent with Sana's thighs bracketing your head, her lipstick imprinted on your throat, the red lines she paints over your shoulder blades. It's only that. Sana's cunt, clenching and raw from orgasm and soaked like you can never fill her up: dripping, drooling.

And, okay. Yeah, maybe you didn't show up when she asked you to, didn't listen. You admit it. She's needy every second, craves praise and your cock in equal measure - but you are guilty.

(What's that she said earlier - that you didn't deserve it? Right.)

You aren't really in a position to say shit about being ignored either, so.

Sana has you pegged to her whims: she doesn't have to do a damn thing, she just breathes and has you around her finger.

Well - actually, she's very proactive. She likes making demands. Well, really: she wants things.

It's February 9th, for anyone keeping track - the shortest month of the year and the one with a few more grey days in the bank than the others, which makes sense since you're deep into the heart of winter by then. On December 28th you and Sana had spent nearly three hours on the phone discussing the latest installment of this netflix miniseries of very questionable quality. There were a lot of different points to be made, apparently: you think both of the leads are, objectively, fairly attractive, but Sana wouldn't admit she had a crush on the lead until you got to the third season.

Anyway, she was upset on her birthday because of it.

"Happy new year, by the way," you told her, somewhere in the middle of the call. Sana had to speak quietly so her parents wouldn't hear, but she sounded kind of moody. "How are you gonna celebrate?"

"My ex," Sana groaned, ignoring the question completely, "made fun of my taste in guys. Like, my type or whatever."

You cocked your head. "And what is your type?"

"Oh, you know," she said, dismissive. "Hot." You laughed, and then she said, "A little less old and a little more muscular," and that shut you up, quick. Sana hesitated.

"Shit," you said.

"Shit," she agreed. "I really, really like you, though." And then:

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

And you've been kinda done for ever since.

Right, okay. You get sidetracked, easily. It's a running gag. Sana gives you shit for it, but then again she gives you shit for a lot of things.

On February 9th, evening leaking through a skyline cracked open and gushing like an oil spill, and the stars dripping silver - auspicious, potentially, on Sana's side - she turns up at the door of your apartment, tapping snow from her boot-clad feet, mouth tight.

"It's fucking freezing," she snaps at you, as a greeting - the hello goes unsaid. You open the door wider and she sweeps past, takes a glance around like she owns the place. You should have known - in hindsight.

Work was fine but felt lengthy. Sana shot photos for some designer brand you'd never heard of and felt pretty proud of the day's accomplishments. She talks your ear off about it while you lean against the counter and nod attentively, put water on to boil and think about getting a fish, a dog, maybe a plant; you haven't quite figured it out. Sana might have opinions about it all.

You make tea for both of you. It's this rose hibiscus thing that supposedly soothes the mind. It was a gift from a coworker at some point. Or maybe it was going to be a gift to a coworker and you just never got around to sending it; either way, it had a bow and everything. At some point in time, when someone received it, there was a bow involved. You'll work out the details - at the very least, you'll say the explanation was very elaborate and poignant, and it'd get Sana smiling. She'd trace your hand, thumb skimming your knuckles. All of a sudden you'd be sitting across a small table, talking and talking as a stream of conversation ebbed and flowed; you'd think about the stars in the sky, like blood in water. You'd kiss her neck and tell her you're not tired, ask her if she'll stay the night - it would be easy.

"So he's a total prick," finishes Sana, chin in one of her palms, blowing over the lip of the mug, "but at least he's good with a camera. Otherwise, I swear I would've left the label years ago."

"Wow," you say. You weren't paying attention.

"Mhmm," she continues.

You blink at her, slightly disoriented.

"I was talking for like, twenty minutes. You should have noticed."

"Were you," you say mildly, "seriously? Shit. I'm sorry. I guess I tuned out, just - went somewhere else."

"Huh." Sana leans on her arm. There's a lacy white ribbon tied in her warm, amber hair. It suits her, matches the gauze-thin chiffon sleeves of her sweater, the floaty skirt she's wearing, dark gray tights adorning her legs - a cossack blouse, maybe, would describe it. She's so fashionable, all the time, like it comes from the tips of her fingers, unbidden and instinctive. It makes sense; Sana's a muse for the finer things in life, all light and lovely like gold. Like - rose quartz, the blush of dawn. It's an indescribable sort of attractiveness - the kind that is rooted in her mind, in her character.

You're glad she hasn't made you spell this sentimentality out.

"Do you have a secret girlfriend you need to be confessing to?"

"I ran into Momo earlier," you say instead, which - bad timing, maybe. Sana's bright-eyed, brow lifted, curious.

"Where?" she asks.

"That cafe place. The one by the second-hand shop she likes. Near the theater."

"I've never been to a movie with you," she remarks, instead of pointing out that your explanation could apply to like, twenty places around the city alone. "Is it because you'd rather die than be seen with me in public? Like, are you worried I'm ruining your reputation?"

She's playing. Obviously. The script here is flipped: you're the secret fling, the casual affair, the quick fuck that isn't meant to mean anything, no strings attached - but maybe the implication in Sana's question is that she'd consider it otherwise. She'd like to go to the movies, or out to dinner. Somewhere crowded. Not exactly an ideal date, but you could see it on her. You want to take her places. Maybe you already do, anyway.

You roll your eyes. "Right," you say.

"Does she know?" Sana taps her bottom lip. "About us."

"Yeah," you say, too quickly.

Sana makes a face. "How? When?"

"She's your roommate," you explain, kind of at a loss. "And - you talk to her. I figured. How could she not know?"

"Dude," says Sana.

"Is this gonna be one of those moments where you pretend to be way angrier about something than you actually are?"

"Obviously, yes." Sana tilts her mug toward you in accusation. "What'd she say?"

"She asked if we were dating."

"What'd you say?"

"No," you say. "And then she asked if I wanted to be, and then I ran into traffic, like, literally, to escape."

"Do you," begins Sana, in her best innocent voice. "Or don't you?"

She looks delighted. You stare at her flatly. "Ask Momo," you tell her, and she dissolves into that creased-eye smile that sends all your faculties reeling. The gorgeous little tri-tone of laughter and her fingers combing through the silky length of her hair - she's still teasing you. You've figured out the steps, memorized the way this game moves forward. It's an indulgence and it's an obsession - and it's the same thing for you as well, really.

"Can't," she says, still laughing. "She'll lie on your behalf."

You have no clue what that means - but you guess that's just Sana.

So here's an inflection point, right before Valentine's day, because you have terrible timing - right before Sana ships out to Bruges, or Milan, or wherever the fuck it is for Fashion Week: you'll only catch a few days, maybe less, before she jets again for some other assignment. It's part of how her job works, and the situation's all roundabout, because she's probably spending the holiday eating French toast with a model and waiting in an airport, watching the world go by from the plane. So, sort of backwards. You should get the bouquets and heart-shaped boxes and share a plate of pasta, you suppose - but the main thing here is you'll only get a weekend. Then you won't even see her in person until the 28th.

Or not at all. Whatever the outcome - maybe she'll stand you up and have her revenge for you being so goddamn difficult and antagonistic in the first place. Who knows. Not you.

She's studying her reflection in your bathroom mirror, tying off an elaborately loose bun, pulling some curls free, working around the headband that she seems hell-bent on keeping in her hair, in case you should ever forget she's a total living doll. A pair of shorts reveals the creamy expanse of her thighs; she doesn't have a bra under her tank top. Your mind wanders.

"You look fine," you say, yawning, elbow to the sink's countertop.

The sound of the shower running is white noise in the background, droning away, and the door's cracked ajar so steam wafts into the hall. Sana doesn't spare you a glance, focused as she is on arranging herself back to magazine-cover perfection.

And it's not unreasonable: you've seen in her high heels and on runways, with cameras flashing, with a toned physique and carefully sculpted makeup and hair to match - but you think there's an authenticity here, the clothes she keeps in a bin above your dresser that have somehow mixed themselves in with a tube of mascara and a stick of deodorant, a set of bristled hairbrushes - the toiletry bag from her makeup case. If you were a more emotionally intelligent and honest man, perhaps you'd say something to the effect of, you look beautiful, or maybe, I'm going to miss you, you know, so if there were any big revelations that you might be having, if you might have something important you've neglected to bring up-

(Maybe it's not healthy - but you'll admit to some oddness, some habits: Sana sleeps better after she's been fucked senseless, her forehead pressing to yours; the sheets need washing more than once a week. It's a very regular development in her life and the fabric softener she prefers, the lavender and verbena, has started appearing in your cabinet; you're using that type now automatically.

And that's not nothing. That's probably an invitation for some sort of talk. It's not - well, yeah. Anyway: no one will ever accuse you of being great at communicating.)

You wrap your hands around her waist, pushing the cotton of her shirt up, spreading your palms flat to trace her skin, feeling the tight muscles in her stomach flex and quiver - your touch skates to the valley of her cleavage and back, around her side, shoulders to collarbones and the front of her ribs, then her hipbones. She squirms a little bit; her skin pebbles where you're touching her. She's sensitive - ticklish, maybe.

"Feels good, that," she admits, half into the sink.

And in the reflection, watching, you see her lean back, lean into you, without thought for herself; the familiarity of your touch. The easy intimacy of it.

"Well," you tease, "yeah, it's a bit of a problem for you lately."

The shower's still running. You kiss the side of her throat.

She smacks a hand down on your wrist - she's playful, though, teasing in her chide. "Get out," she says. "Unless you're getting in with me."

It's 11:34PM. You're already halfway to fucked-out; there was a particularly intense stretch, her thighs clenching and trembling on either side of you as she rode your face, hair falling and hitting her cheeks, her mouth parting open into the hottest sound you've ever heard, her shoulders arching; your palms braced tight against the soft skin of her hips, holding her just above your tongue as she whimpered please, more. She'd came on your face - like, all over - and then fell to your lap and was just so, so eager for a second helping. So you held her there, at the edge of your mattress as she took it so prettily; moaning and pleading until she'd sobbed through another and collapsed in a messy heap of satisfied flesh, slumped against you like the physical stress had stolen whatever architecture her bones had remaining.

It's not an unusual turn of events - and now, there's the two of you. A routine; a domestic dance, almost. A morning-evening-afternoon affair.

"Nah," you say, pressing a kiss to her hairline, her jaw, the nape of her shoulder. "You could use some space, baby. Wouldn't wanna infringe."

"It'd be worth it," she says - not even flirtatious. Just blunt, honest.

You run your hand through your hair, intimate deep-in-thought.

"Oh, c'mon." Her reflection scoffs at you. "Momo doesn't call us a pair of sluts with a love story because you're the uncomplicated, mature one."

"So you did talk to her." She shoots you a glare through the glass - but no fire to it. She's relaxed in your grip, compliant. "And listen, maybe it's my character arc, honey, let me have it. I think I'm really coming into my own."

Sana flushes just a little at the pet name. There's a roll of her eyes, too. It's intentional, and you adore her for it. "Are you?" she snipes, but you're her favorite frustration and this is all just prelude; there's heat in her tone, an anticipation of wanting to be grabbed, to be slammed down into the pillows and fucked hard until her thighs can't tremble anymore. It's an indulgence in familiarity. You understand - but you don't quite give her what she's looking for.

"I hope so." You lean further, push deeper into her space. Your arms bracket her in. She's a beard-burn shy of looking completely debauched. It's tempting. "One of us has got to get their shit together, and you're obviously not taking any interest," you continue, all clandestine and shrewd and serious. Your free hand presses at her thigh. It doesn't matter which one.

Sana rolls her eyes again. "You bitch," she mumbles, shifts her weight - nudges you a bit with her elbow. She keeps you close, either way. "I'm being serious."

You'd beg to differ, but the way she reaches her hand back into your hair and looks at your reflection is so loaded: lips plush, jaw smooth, a shadow resting across her shoulders. The honeyed quality of her hair. The rough shape of her collarbones, half-hidden beneath her loose cotton top, gray as gunmetal and baring her smooth, gorgeous shoulders. Sana is, above all, an attention-getter. It's hard not to fixate on the physicality. All parts of her - legs, ass, tits, hair, the swan's neck, the way she's just tall enough that you'd need her standing on tip-toe to kiss her, chin lifted, eyes down - that sweet little pout of a mouth - they're all an aesthetic intent; her waist has been grabbable since you've known her, and you would die to tug the ends of her hair free, ruffle the order and let them fall, a wavy-brown disaster, to her bare shoulders, frame her eyes with her eyelashes. That would make you soft, for sure. Or, anyway - more soft. As though you hadn't spent the past three months staring her down in the mornings, sneaking glances like she'd catch you at it, fixated and lust-ridden: Sana has all the elements to break you down.

You snap her waistband to make her flinch.

"You know what our problem is?" The water's still running - maybe she likes the sound of it, is trying to tune you out. "I always have to watch you for like five minutes before you kiss me," she chides, lifting her hair like she's fishing for compliments. "It's fucked up."

"A serious dilemma," you agree, without hesitation. Your thoughts are: 5'4", 120 pounds soaking wet, a perfect proclivity for being manhandled and made to feel cherished and worshipped and slutty as she needs. It's what you know of her, more or less. There are more things not on record. Things of consequence, weight. It would require context. "Truly."

"I mean, your mouth is never where it should be."

"Everyone's a critic."

Sana leans into you. Tips her head back. "Pay attention," she whispers, "be good," and lets her lips begin to part.

"Yeah?" your reflection replies, unkind.

She rolls her eyes again. Again again. There are many moments for this: the attitude, the incredulous stare, her naked body pressed to the marble walls of a bathroom she's becoming dangerously fond of - she sighs, like her heart's in it and it aches her. It's dramatic. "I'll teach you."

She spins away from the mirror and cups her hand around your mouth: another gentle touch, in contrast.

You think, all over again, of her thighs. Of the weight in her shoulders. The fine points of her wrists. She loosens the ribbon from her hair and places it on the counter. You don't know why that's so poetic. It feels like you've won something.

"Do I need to go get another condom?" you ask, dry, when your head goes south and your gaze gets low, right there - the cut of her clavicle, the way she'd probably like being handled rougher, hiked up on the bathroom counter, forced to submit like she's letting you do it.

Sana doesn't smile, but her lips twitch.

"Maybe," she says.

(You have an inkling, or two, or more.)

"Maybe you should take your clothes off before we talk logistics, huh?" she teases, and she does smile now. You laugh, despite your better judgment. "Don't look at me like that."

"I'm not looking at you like that."

"I swear," she mumbles - it's accusatory, the way she leans her weight against you. It's her signature move. "I think your new thing is just a dirty girl complex."

You stare down at her. "Oh, okay."

Her lips crease: disgusted. "Just a thought," she says. Her eyes are hooding, and it's what she does when she's letting herself slide. Her hands come down slow, so slow to your neck. You could bite her if you wanted to. There's plenty to mark, plenty of skin to bruise: she's at your mercy, and she loves it like that. She licks her lips and waits. "You're out of them, by the way. Like - the condoms. I grabbed the last one from your nightstand and - you know." She's shaking her head - something solemn about it. "No more. I'm telling you for your own benefit. So, um - yeah, that's your warning."

"My warning?" you repeat.

You take her jaw, watch her cheeks bloom pink - it's nice. Pretty. Very charming. Well, that's Sana - well, at least it fits.

"What I'm trying to say," she begins, slowly, uncharacteristically bashful, "is you could, like, do whatever you wanted, probably."

"Dirty girl," you repeat, quiet.

She blinks at you. A furrow forms, impervious, in her pretty brow.

"This isn't - I don't - listen, no one says that- they only do that shit in the movies."

You grin.

"But you're like, a guy in real life."

She swats at you.

"I can't believe I have to clarify the fact that-"

"You want me to fuck you raw," you interrupt, gently - and when Sana looks at you there's something guarded, and soft, and caught, and it's almost like-

Well, what's the word?

"I just mean I trust you," she mumbles.

You think: well, you could've led with that.

"Oh," you say, instead. "Oh - sweetheart," and then she blushes harder, but it's not because of you. She has a sudden and surprising sense of embarrassment, and you just blink at each other for a couple seconds - maybe you weren't expecting that from her, the sentimentality - and she doesn't want to apologize. "Listen-" you begin, and then cut yourself off. What is there to say? What did you just spend the better part of an evening trying to avoid mulling over?

(A fleeting, untoward notion. Some sort of unsolicited idea, illicitly tangible. As in: maybe you're both going a little insane.)

"I have a couple questions," you add, like an afterthought.

"I can't with you." Sana ducks her head, pulls on the bottom of her top. "Sorry, just," she starts, but lets the rest slip. "You don't need to make a thing of it."

"You seem - conflicted, is all." You catch her by the hip, guide her a little closer. There's a slow-simmering feeling stirring in your gut - something incessant, demanding of attention. "A little regretful. Look at me."

"I wasn't asking." She looks. It's a direct hit: she has a mean glare, one with the same capacity to bore through you, tear you limb by limb. She has the capacity for cruelty, is what you're getting at. "If you're that curious about the specifics, it was an expression of trust. Take it or leave it."

"Now you seem upset."

She arches an eyebrow: the normal one, the regular sardonic-you're-so-hot-I-hate-it eyebrow, not the sexy-sultry-dirty eyebrow.

"Five minutes," she huffs, without explanation. "Five whole minutes and I'm still not being kissed, like, why-"

Your laugh comes from somewhere in your chest; deep, surprised.

"There's no winning with you," she grumbles, but when she looks up you can already see it - it's in her eyes, she's not actually that upset. There's no stormy undertow, just the fondness lurking like a tidal wave underneath everything else. You feel the current a bit before it swallows her: there are hands tugging, winding, drawing the whole mess closer and closer. It's affection, an entire sea's worth of it, flooding and indiscernible. You can see all the stars that shimmer. It's just: her hips are so fucking grabbable, you know that already, that it's to the point of being inescapable, an absolute truth - and she wants to get off, she always wants to, but there's some greater, darker purpose to how her breath ghosts on your neck. How she blushes like it's the first time.

"I want," she breathes. It comes with intent.

(Yeah, a lot of fucking intent.)

"I know, baby," you tell her, low - and press a kiss to the juncture of her jaw, one hand lifting her top, palming her breast, the other sliding into her underwear. "You always want more," you murmur. Sana nods like a doll - you've reduced her, again, into a bundle of fussy limbs and breath and gasps, begging you to get inside her pussy. "I've got you," you coo, a bit darkly: and, well, Sana isn't wrong - it is a kind of dirty girl syndrome. At least for her.

For you, it's more like a daily reacquaintance with your sins.

Your mouths meet, clumsy and off-kilter; Sana's tongue is heavy, languid in the wet heat of your mouth, and the kiss tastes like everything else: her hair like flowers, her makeup, the faded sweat, her cherry lip balm, the flat, glassy quality of the cum dried on her thighs, her underwear around your fist. There's a lingering scent to her sex that reminds you of how badly you wanna fuck her; your finger ghosts at her cunt and it's wet again, dripping-pink and sensitive, ready, open, a bruised thing.

"You," she breathes into your mouth, and her teeth skim your lip, "are so fucking hard." She's skated her palm down into your sweats, taken a rough hold of your cock, as though to prove something: and she's so right. She doesn't break the kiss. Her thumb smears a bit of your pre-cum over the slit, spreads it up and down your length. You're already aching-hot and throbbing for her. "Baby," she murmurs, sounding devious, feeling it, too. There's more to say, more of that floodgate left to open up:

"You're going to cum so much in me, aren't you?"

(It's rhetorical.)

You hoist her onto the counter, shove her shorts down, pull your cock out of your pants: it's just muscle memory, the way the rhythm works itself out - and if Sana was trying to push you, she's definitely succeeding.

"You should be careful what you wish for," you offer, half-nonsense, half the judicious side of an agreement. The devil on the shoulder's not exactly in the business of sticking to your promises: "I should probably pull out, you know," you go on, mindlessly - but she's got her arms around your neck, is rolling her hips impatient and insistent like the conversation isn't even important enough for her to properly listen to.

"Gonna cum on all over me instead?" she asks, too quiet. "Is that the plan?"

And it's the least combative you've heard her be in a hot minute. You slicken your fingers with her cum and rub your digits along the flushed, throbbing surface of her clit: the only way you know to deal with her filthy mouth.

"Right on my tummy, or all over my chest," she goes on, heedless, dragging her fingertips over her shirt like you need a demonstration. She's just spewing bullshit for the thrill of it. The grin accompanying that is sly, cheeky, like her whole self; she rubs her nose against yours.

You gather her panties and let them ball up in your palm.

"Maybe a mess all over my ass?"

"Oh, definitely," you sigh, finally, and work her apart as the kisses fall out of line.

She looks up at you from beneath long, delicate lashes, fluttering like she knows the effect it's having on you: it's un-fucking-fair, the way she uses it, wields it like the weapon it is. A sigh slips from her, ragged, fucked: she's bracing herself, chasing the tip of your cock, leaning into the nudge. "Maybe you can push me onto my knees, shove your dick down my throat and gag me with it until I swallow every drop, yeah?"

"Sana," is your reply. "Of course." It's the conscientious, mature, adult thing to do.

She's batting her eyelashes. You should do something about it, maybe: you line your cock up against her entrance, holding steady, and slap your hand on the smooth expanse of her right thigh. "Spread," you snap at her, and then grin back.

Her face scrunches: genuine exasperation, tight cunt, real feeling.

She huffs, opens her thighs wider, gives herself up to you - and that's another victory. Her fingers reach up and dance against the scruff on your jaw like it's a fond curiosity. You watch her search your face for affirmation like it'll fix everything. There's not much to do but to slip your arms around the waist, let her wrists cross over your shoulders like she needs the anchor to survive.

"So pull out then, mister-good-ideas-at-work," she taunts, nosing at your throat, the underside of your jaw, up to your ear: "Show me, if it's so easy."

You can barely breathe, it's so tense; the way she teases the shape of it, her cunt slick and open against you. She'll stretch like she was tailored for the fit, easy and familiar, taking, taking, taking - she's always such an angel, but she's halfway in hell already, legs spread out, slick pussy lips bumping against the blunt head of your cock, so wide, so vulnerable.

"Sana," you hear yourself say, voice like sandpaper, throat drying. Her smile twists her features to something more-knowing, all full-lipped and curving at the corners - she's a little more practiced in sinning, knows the game better. It's an act and it isn't, all at once.

"C'mon, I need it," she drawls, but the soft little plea comes back: "please."

Your hand drops from her mouth, smoothing over her chin, down the swell of her breasts, her ribs. You slip your cock inside her and can see the exact moment her face blanches - it's so sweet, so sharp: her eyes widen and her jaw goes slack, lips falling open as her brow furrows. She's so wet around you, taking you, swallowing up every inch like it's no work at all, her perfect pussy clenching just as it hits the base: like it's muscle memory, like she's been molding herself for it, opening for you. The very thought makes you want to fuck her even deeper: you tighten your hand at her hip, drag yourself out of the slick squeeze of her cunt.

"Oh," Sana breathes out, eyes half-lidded. "Holy- oh, you're-"

Your cock sinks deeper. The word gets lost in her moan; a crease forms on the bridge of her nose, between her brows, and she presses her fingers to your nape, clutching at the skin like she's unsure of the support. One of her palms strokes across your cheek: a wonder, a mercy, a favor, all of it. You'll ruin her, just like she wants, just like you promised. You're sure of it.

You have to fight the urge to ask if she's okay, because you know what kind of face she'd make: exasperated, disappointed, incredulous. Instead you snap your hips and drive yourself inside of her again.

All her thoughts and her confidence - the casual faux-command, the playful, arrogant tilt in the turn of her words - unspools, dissolves, crumples in her eyes, collapsing to dust around you: she can't even choke out her filthy demands, let alone the sugar-soaked slights and slander that came first. The innuendos, the bullshit, all those deliciously-subtle negotiations. She blinks, and the second you slide a couple inches back in and in and in, her eyes flicker shut and you both exhale into the same breath: an oh-my-fuck-Sana, and the answering whimper-moan that falls so effortlessly out of her mouth. Your palm burns against her hip bone, sinking deep, trying to press her tight against your cock, skin-to-skin and full-to-the-brim.

"How," Sana gasps out, sounding delirious, out-of-it, her brain rattled by nothing more than the full, perfect fit of your cock inside her. Her fingers lock behind your head, pulling you even closer. She gasps against your mouth, "-how does it- fuck, oh my god, fuck-"

You see what she's getting at.

There's nothing separating you, and it feels - well, her pussy is unbelievable. The realization is hitting you harder with each glide you sink inside her; just like everything else with Sana - charged, thrilling, slightly inappropriate and hotter for it.

And you'd tell her if you had the words - how fucking good she feels, the grip around your shaft as you hilt inside her, the exact feel, taste, texture of Sana's perfect, pretty, slick-squeezing cunt. Oh, you're slaking a kind thirst here they write stories about, the kind you die for: it'll never be sated, you'll always be seeking, and the deeper you go the further you drown.

"Yeah," is all you can say. "Fuck." The only explanation.

Her voice goes tighter with each stroke, her legs wrapping around your waist like rope. You're touching everything of Sana that can be touched: you kiss her hair, suck marks into her collarbone, cup her face and force her eyelashes open; you fill her up so deep you can feel her throat tremble when your name just brushes the roof of her mouth.

Oh, it's rough, messy, somehow incandescent; you're pounding her right there on the counter, against the sink. The showerhead's hissing just loud enough for you to miss the string of expletives you know she'd be spitting, the half-bitten curses. She keeps her ankles hooked like she's afraid you'll fall, afraid that you'd slip out of her, leave her empty, unoccupied, unfulfilled, wanting.

"Fuck, baby," you hear, feel against you: her lips are near your ear. She shivers. "If I knew," a pause as Sana swallows, her hair clinging damply to her forehead. "If I knew- felt this good- you're going to- your fucking cock, I swear, ohmygod, I swear-"

You press your mouth right at her temple, harshening the rhythm and loving the way her fingernails dig hard, bright crescents into the skin of your back; there'll be marks there tomorrow, the perfect imprints of her grasping, coming apart, holding on.

"God, Sana," you mutter, almost desperate. It's such a fucking disaster. She's wet on your skin, soaking everywhere. It's so fucking hot.

You want her cumming on your cock; you want her on her back, knees up, shaking; you want her a sweat-shining mess, breathless and glassy-eyed. You'd worship her body if you didn't have your hands clenching her ass so you could push her (one, two, three, four) times (five) against the tile, (six) against your skin.

It's more imperative than religion, really.

Three months later and you suppose there's been a lot of perfect, sopping-wet, begging-and-creaming, broken-off, rough-thrusting, sinful fucking, and sometimes it's in her apartment or in the backseat of her car or in your fucking kitchen, her braced up against the island countertop with her legs spread and you railing her in her pajamas. Sometimes it's when Sana whimpers in this awful way when she's kissing you, pressing a soft, barely audible "ruin me," into your mouth - it's then when she gets really, truly fucking filthy: you're actually going to fucking cum inside her, sobbing and stupid, if she doesn't fucking knock it off. If this doesn't just kill you both - and that's how it'll go: her legs locked so tight around your waist, hands white-knuckled around your shoulders, face-to-face and with the base of her cunt kissing your cock so sweetly.

Sana makes a weak, overwhelmed noise, like the same thought's gotten the best of her, too.

"My pussy," she says in this high, thin whisper. "It needs you. Like I fucking - oh, fuck - like I think I was made for your cock." Her words have gotten little manic, voice edging at hysterical: "It's a perfect fit. Just feels fucking-" A whine pitches in her throat and she grinds her clit against your lower stomach, her abs quivering like she's had three cups of coffee.

You thrust once - no, you really, truly fuck her: you snap in and in and in - you hold her fast to the sink basin and bury your cock all the way to her deepest point, to where Sana clenches and her muscles ripple around you.

She's always so sensitive. Like in a smearing-lipstick, fucked-through-half-a-box-of-tissues, you-absolute-angel kind of way.

But there's no tease, no falsified modesty to it - none of the push-and-pull from either of you; your expressions are blissed-out, stuck in awe, in reverence. Jaws dropped and punching out each hard, deep fuck into her, gasping for air. "Oh my god," she's saying, head lolling like there's no rigidity left to her spine, nails digging into the hard muscle of your back. She's saying other shit - and you're talking, too, talking a bit: it's the kind of delirium that strips language to the bone. "Holy fuck- I know- Yeah. Fuck, I know."

The nodding is excessive - but in your shared defense, so is the sensation of fucking each other raw. Who the fuck coulda guessed?

She's hot and tight and god-blessedly gorgeous - and you tell her that. From the first time you watched her stretch a condom over your cock, roll it down with her palm, and felt her pussy sink onto you inch by inch and the pressure was immediate and aching - "It feels so fucking good," she'd been saying - to the fifth, to the fiftieth. To her draining you dry, her moans winding you up and around her finger - even that first time in a filthy, nasty, cramped bathroom stall, drunk as all fuck, and then the next morning. "More, more, more," and now, too, all: "It's everything, please, fuck, keep going," all the other times where your tongues have turned to satin, curling into the place of your own destruction, where the warmth is licking out all sense.

In the worst of moments, in the best - she's clung to you, body arched up, hips up, heels dug into you so hard you might be bruised under her.

All her moans are punched-out, high-pitched, shuddering with her exhales.

It's everything: "Don't stop."

And that's really how the last shred of coherency slips past, disappears down the drain: her voice twists as you graze the spot inside her you want her to cry at, and you sink into a pleasure so intense, a release so in-tune, it's like it'd only be complete after you both sank to hell.

"Such a good girl," you kiss into her skin, sinking your fingers into the round fullness of her butt, spreading her apart so she knows, even better, exactly where her cunt ends and your cock begins. "The prettiest fucking girl; your fucking pussy is so tight; hot and soaking wet for me." Your voice sounds worse with each dirty little nothing: you've both been babbling for a while. Maybe ten seconds. Maybe since the beginning. "I think I could fuck you forever."

"Cocksleeve," she agrees, and tips her chin to the ceiling, blinking hard at nothing, trying not to lose it, but maybe also, in the same sense: "Literally could just - be my cunt. For the rest of time. Cocksleeve."

"Gorgeous," is what comes next out of your mouth; and, in some warped parallel to the truth, "All mine."

For her, too, really: she likes being tossed around, told how much you need to breed her, how slutty she is - but then you watch how her brain fries with the softer, sweeter stuff. Oh, you're making love to the thoughts she keeps trapped under a box in the back of her head, and all the things she'll only dare admit to under dim lamplight; when she thinks she can disguise how they might come across as anything at all besides absolutely fucking tragic.

You could bottle her tears for how sentimental this shit is - well, you could do that anyway - the whole messy situation. You say her name once and she whimpers out your own. That's the state of affairs. Just one look at her face is all you need. It's an instant trigger, it's how the electricity rushes and buzzes through the wires.

"You're stunning," you say, totally earnest.

And the heat goes straight to her guts.

It's the transparency of it all, or the bordering bratty-tilt to it, or something, you're not a therapist - it's just what sends Sana toppling, fluttering like a heartbeat as her hips stutter into your own, legs spasming, pussy clenching - and right on the heel of that, with a strangled: "So fucking good to me, I swear, please-"

The moan barely passes the boundary of her lips as it breaks like dawn over her body, sending her spine arcing, chest heaving. It's a kettle-whistle pitch and you think your neighbors are sick of the screams, the late-night-to-early-morning, pounding rhythm against the thin walls, the laughter, the headboard beating like a drum. And they would have to be blind, to not look at her and see a sin they want to taste, too - she's divine like this, moans broken-off and falling into each other, a slur, a blur, her tits bouncing under the flimsy tank, rising higher with each stroke - the fat, firm weight of them; and this is when you know she's going to cum on your cock, the way her muscles go loose, pliant, willing, relaxed - it's all an afterglow in the waiting, she's wriggling into her death, in anticipation, arching up to meet you.

When you pull your hand out from under her ass to grab a fistful of her shirt, right at the center and pulling up to keep her back arched off the counter, her breasts spill from the loosened material and up, and up - they bounce higher, tighter; you're pounding her sopping-wet pussy harder than you have any right to.

There is no heaven to compare.

You'll tell her, if you'll survive the sight of it: Sana is an absolute fucking wreck. Her jaw is slack, her lipstick has long smeared to obscurity and she is a vision in the sexiest, sluttiest sense. She is the kind of fucked that's worth staying dead for. Worth taking last breaths to witness, dying to witness.

And, the moment her lips graze yours: your insides crackle and smolder.

Her hand hits the counter, knocking whatever's next to you onto the tile - the clatter would've been distracting, but you're balls-deep and you think it'd break her if you hit it any rougher-

"Ruin me," Sana pants into your mouth, barely audible. "Fucking ruin me, please, ruin me-"

"Sana," you manage through the hot clench of her around you, the near-painful crush of her arms tight at your waist.

"Need your cum," is what she sounds like. "Like fuck, do you feel that?" She's breathing into your ear. "God, fuck, your cock is right against my tummy, right here," she mewls, one slender hand slipping down to tap a knuckle right below her belly-button, "can feel it pressing up against me," and your mind's gone off, racing down every back-alley, all the old dirt-road streets: "You'd cum right up my little womb. You could. If you wanted, you could breed me up - pump me full, fuck me full. Give me- just - give me everything," and she has no idea - no idea what she's saying, what she's doing, how hard it is to think around a girl with such a perfect, pretty, slick-squeezing cunt-

"Sana," is all you can manage, warning and plea in one. "Careful." It's stupid: you have half a foot on her, outweighing her by more than the other direction, and yet Sana makes you weak. You're like clay for her to mold, bending beneath her fingertips and falling straight through, like the word please: a request. You don't know how she has you all figured out. It's no fun this way.

"Or else what?" Sana smirks, winning. "Gonna get me pregnant?"

You swear you see stars, that it's going to end embarrassingly fast for you, and the thought of you hilting right into Sana's tight cunt, knocking up against her insides, breeding her like your stupid fucking cock knows it wants, that's so, so fucking filthy - no, no, fuck no: that's not what this is, this is supposed to be innocuous, or some approximation of it - you're gonna put her on her knees, cum on her face, fuck a load across her tits, in the bowl of her cupped palms and watch her lap it up and lick clean her long fingers, maybe push the whole, aching head of your cock between the lips of her plush, pink, sweet-as-can-be mouth. Send the load directly down her throat, tugging those gorgeous tresses while her brown, liquid eyes peer up at you. A mess: a sopping, fucked-out, splayed-out, mess.

"Filthy fucking mouth," you deflect, because you can't keep on track with how pretty Sana's perfect cunt's clutching you like a fucking fist, her tiny frame somehow matching you, thrust for thrust.

"What about it," and Sana isn't even flinching.

"Gonna cum in it," you snap, a growl, and it's supposed to be a threat, but then it hits - right at the crease between her torso and legs, your favorite place to pound into her; you're fucking her like a toy, treating her like the easiest little hole you've ever had your hands on, and you'd never pull out, you'd never give this up and Sana knows it, too - you have to make sure to take the base of your cock and work your cum deeper into the bowels of her perfect, hot cunt.

"Yeah?" she hums resplendently.

Somehow, fucked-out and blissful, soaking your cock as you split her open, there's a note of tease in her voice - and an echo in the swell of her womb, clenching, just as willing; Sana's a genius, so she must have found all this shit out already - but it's the type of thing you have to admit, privately and to yourself, through gritted teeth, not within hearing-distance of a girl whose smile could undo every thread in the fabric of time: it's kind of really, ridiculously hot.

"Can you promise?"

"Yeah," you choke.

"Go on," breathes Sana, a dare and a request in one. "Love hearing you say it."

"On your knees," you try to swallow, "gonna pump your cute little throat full," you groan, a man unmade, "gonna have to fuck you like this again, baby. I'm going to make you-"

Make her what: a mother? A whore? A wife, a baby, something she'll be afraid to call out loud, but will say anyway-

"Yours," and that's Sana, fucking the thought out of your head, "so you could use me up, so you'd make me take it, give me everything - cum, cum in me, I need it- please," her voice climbing, crescendoing, "Cum in me," a broken record, all instinct. Sana and her tight, creamy little pussy, you pumping full, you flooding her insides and spilling out, the messier the better - it's how she gets off, her voice wavering until you can feel the shivering, the shaking, the quivering; that perfect moment of collapse, where you're there with her, just the same.

There's a certain kind of pure, self-destructive stupidity in trying to rationalize it, you know, but that's the fucked-up part.

"Oh," she breathes, deep and deliriously hot, and it's an aftershock of its own.

There's no reasoning with how badly you're pounding into her, fucking your cum as deep as it'll go, letting her soft curves rut against your body, to meet her rhythm in turn, to fill her up to the brim and then just a bit over.

"Oh, I can feel it," and Sana sounds like you've done the unthinkable: as if you'd broken a prayer, a hymn, the key to heaven held beneath the wetness, the heat, the fluttering pulse, the tightness, the sex, this body of yours. Like she could die. Like she should die. "That's - oh, oh - your cum's filling up my pussy," and it doesn't register that she shouldn't say it, and you should be telling her to shut the fuck up, but it just doesn't cross your mind at all: "Oh, God. You're - it's so hot inside of me, can - feel it," and it's all true.

There's nothing like it, her silken, creamy, slushy warmth surrounding your softening cock, the way you fit so easily against her.

"I told you," is the first thing out of her gorgeous, swollen mouth. Her lips brush your jaw, your neck. Sana's breath tickles, light on your skin. "No shot you were pulling out."

"Shut up," is the best you've got - it makes her laugh, eyes creasing, throaty and sweet; oh, there's that quintessential Minatozaki charm.

(That's it: she has your number; you watch her smile, watch the way her legs shake when you slip out of her, watch her warm brown eyes flit upwards. You can't let her leave. And she knows.

Sana's fingers graze the curves of your cheeks as she holds your lip between hers, tongue tasting, teasing. A long beat before she releases you, and her smile spreads over the line of your face, slow and steady, like a sunrise. She's impossibly gentle, all silk and sweetness. Unthinkingly soft as her palm smooths your hair out of your eyes - her skin on your skin. Sana's eyes are dreamy like this. The radiant gleam in her irises clashes with the moonlight on her lashes.

She's glitter, gold.)

The pharmacy. The one by your apartment that's open a little after 1 am on a Saturday.

And this should be your cue: walk on by, look forward, straight ahead.

Walk, like you have somewhere to be. Toss some distractions into the basket, drain cleaner, detergent, a fifth, new, foreign bottle of conditioner; maybe some light beer, too, to fit the stereotype, to balance things out.

You tell yourself you have no place here, amidst boxes of birth control pills, gels and patches and syringes and capsules of every single kind. Don't dawdle - don't linger.

Sana's milling the aisles in pursuit of candy, or a bag of those heinous fucking Takis, probably. A bottle of gatorade, realistically; she likes the blue one, says it tastes like putting your tongue to a nine-volt. What an eloquent princess, you think, and find it hard to hide the smile, the simpering stupidity, the tenderness.

She's someone you text about shitty things, who complains to you about her coffee stuck in the vending machine, Mina's ongoing billionaire-affair and Nayeon's chattering over some boy she likes from way back when. Someone whose high ponytail can be found above a pair of comically large glasses, a paperback novel pressed between the bend in her arm and her ribs (bitch, of course there is, she'd said when you'd asked, there's smut in everything these days); whose laugh, tinkling and lilting and silver-bright, has no right to sound as rich or as deep or as richly deep as it does.

Someone who looked in your eyes and found it - that gaping hollowness, a vacancy in the marrow - and who laughed at that, too. She makes it worse. You might actually love her.

"You're like, really nervous," she tells you, not asking.

"Well," and that's when the wall between your mouth and your brain finally collapses: it all rushes through; no air left in the room. "Maybe I'm a fucking idiot."

"I've actually always known this." Sana looks at you, half a smirk. It's almost impossible to imagine the last time you were anything else. "But, like, aren't all men, really?"

"Yeah, yeah. A genius observation." You run a hand through your hair; her smile blooms wider.

"If you insist," and Sana tosses her head, exaggerated, before dumping a shit ton of Twizzlers into the cart. "They're for Tzuyu," she explains. "She's been fucked by her publicist more times this week than she's had hot meals."

"Y'know I actually caught wind of that," you say, moving one step forward in line. "It was neck and neck until she skipped a lunch. Although I don't think those count as like, substantial nutrition. It doesn't negate the other thing."

"Fuck, you're probably right. Gummy bears next time, then."

"Right. Better, slightly."

"That's the spirit," and she peels away, leaving you with her smoky sarcasm - a hand on your bicep as she saunters off to the parking lot. "Also: get some of the good Tylenol from behind the counter. You fucked my brains out and I think I'm coming down with a concussion."

"Jesus christ," you groan. "Again with the outdoor-voice, Sana."

She flashes you her megawatt-grin, flips you off, and the whole transaction at the register is over before you've made sense of it. It's an opportunity for some perspective, a chance to decide you've got it wrong. You should walk home, Sana should ask for a ride, or an Uber - neither of you should need a night-time pharmacy. You could change it if you tried. It's almost absurdly simple, but the way she takes your hand on the walk home is so soft. She's so close: her profile is elegant, poised in the streetlamp's sick, sulfur glow.

You turn the key. There's her laughter again, echoing like windchimes through the city.

And, fuck. It's going to be harder to forget this than you think.

"The internet says it's best to use within twenty-four hours," is all Sana says about it. The tablet's small and green. She hands the plastic bottle to you to check it. Her hair's fallen over her shoulders like ribbons, soft as her eyes. "And the way Momo described it," she explains, almost playfully, "if I wait to take this tomorrow, I think we'd get an excuse to fool around some more."

The look she gives you then is somehow uncharged, despite the suggestion, and she has that habit, when she's laughing or when she's moaning, of chewing on the inside of her lip. She's sitting on top of your breakfast table and looking like starlight. She uncrosses her legs, tips her head.

"What do you think?" and it's everything, a complex trap in four syllables. She's caught you well and squarely. "Do we have a reason?"

"Hm," you say. Sana crosses her legs the other way.

"It's bona fide," she says, teasing you a little, running a finger along the tabletop, her eyes flicking up. She's impossible. It's terrible. "You can creampie me over and over. Can fill up every inch of my pussy - fill my guts right up, and breed me good."

"Huh." It's all you have left to deflect with, when she's laid it all out like that. "That's not what bona fide means, by the way."

Sana lifts a hand, cocks her head. "Means you can do whatever you want." She clicks her tongue, scandalized. There's not much point in refusing, and not even a chance.

"Carte blanche might be what you're after," you offer.

Her laugh is a little breathless, annoyed. "Yeah," and it's like she's flushing pink. "That's what I said. Are you gonna ask me if I know what creampie means too, smartass?"

"Princess," you say, grinning a little, setting the plastic down beside her. You're pretty sure it's rhetorical anyway. "If you read even another sentence from one of Momo's incognito tabs, you'd end up drooling on my sheets." You keep her gaze, eyes locked - well, at least one of you's taking this seriously, you think, as the corners of your lips curve, unbidden - fuck, she's always making you smile.

"Does this mean you're into me, or something?" You tilt your head, pretend to consider. Sana makes a show of scowling. "Or do you just have a thing for being a cumslut," you gesture vaguely, "like, generically?"

Sana leans in and kisses the underside of your chin.

Quick, easy; she snaps back into place like you'd somehow never notice. "A little of both," she says, as breezy as possible. "I'm surprised you're ruling out me taking pity on you." Her eyes have all the mirth you'd expect, and the warmth - the fondness. She looks up at you, and her smile's not as bright or sharp as it used to be. She just seems happy. "Wishful thinking, but whatever."

And maybe Sana's on to something: wishful thinking - but, then again, maybe you're getting close to the part where you've both got it all so, so wrong. You'll have to figure things out from there. Either way, you're at a place where you're genuinely taking medical advice from Hirai Momo.

So, it is what it is.

You don't exactly talk about it. Which is to say neither of you ever bring up how this whole arrangement came to be.

Because it's not romance, it's not sweet, it's not soft or sentimental - it's not even halfway serious: the way everything unfolds haphazardly and with no real, defined idea of what you're getting yourself into, other than a precautionary 'hey, we're not gonna know each other' rule that got broken almost instantly is all that you can divulge, for now. There's all these complexities, layered and tangled and difficult. It's all-consuming. It's an emotional quagmire. It's the kind of thing that'll take years to unpack, the kind that'll never really have an actual explanation; a mistake, probably, you think, one worth repeating, definitely.

"Look. You're leaking out of me," she murmurs from against your pillows, thighs parting - you glance at her cunt, exposed by her twisted panties, and sorta get stuck there. Sana laughs. "Wow," she says, watching you with that wide-open smile of hers, dark hair splayed across the pillows. "Your obsession's worse than I thought."

She's leaving town in the afternoon, so it's been this lazy, lingering fuck all morning, just to pass the time.

You're working from home in the most metaphorical way possible - taking advantage of the daylight streaming in the windows, playing with her hair, fucking her on and off until you get tired of having a mess of a stranger in your apartment. Right. That's the explanation you'll give, when anyone asks. It's a miracle you've slept at all - but then again, Sana gets blissfully and completely tuckered out, turns into putty in your arms, and this is the most dangerous thing of all, the sultry, doe-eyed beauty of her slack mouth in the dark.

You fell asleep together the first time you shared a bed and now never seem to wake up on your own anymore.

She's lax on your mattress, and the blanket's riding low on her thighs, revealing the slopes of her perfect ass. Her little cunt's gaping. Leaking cum. There is no denying it. You think the devil would look a lot like this.

You place your reading glasses delicately on the nightstand, pretend you haven't heard her - or the squelch of her fucked out cunt as she slides a finger down, down, down-

"Oh. Am I distracting you?"

"You have a breeding kink," you say, once she's on a second bottle of water, when her skin's less flushed. You're rubbing between her shoulder blades - she's glowing in your sheets like she belongs there, all white satin and innocence, even with the sweat matted at the ends of her hair.

"Probably," sighs Sana, eyelashes fluttering. "Do I?"

"Definitely," you say, amused.

"Maybe," hums Sana, sounding winded still. You dig your fingers into the nape of her neck, and the next sound out of her mouth is not entirely uncontrolled. You have a point; you're both thinking it. You're just not going to make it. "What's your excuse?"

"Excuse?"

You're not asking her to clarify the question, you're simply buying time to scramble for an answer. Because- "I have no excuse." You shrug. "Just - biology." She rolls her eyes at the apparent insufficiency. "Something about filling up this perfect little body and ruining your whole" - you make a gesture toward her - "pristine-ness."

"Ah, there we go." Sana sits up, the sun casting golden streaks over the angles of her back as she goes.

She stretches like it's an accident, reaches for the hair-tie on the nightstand, and it doesn't matter if you see her do it. "Well." She combs back her damp curls, piling it in an errant bun with practiced ease. It looks good. It's hot, actually. Your cock's still sensitive - but, well, so is Sana's everything. "We're fucked in the head. We get it out of our systems."

"Speak for yourself," you say. She raises a pointed, unmistakably Sana-ish brow. "I'm well-adjusted," you insist. "No baggage."

You watch her go through a moment of disbelief, trying to find some leeway before she snorts. She's climbing on top of you, apparently. Theoretically, you've been keeping an eye on the clock - counting down the minutes before she has to be checking bags and folding up a boarding pass into her purse - first class, because the company believes luxury begets beauty. You'd argue she was both regardless, but-

"That," she says, very matter-of-fact, and settles down so the curve of her ass is over your thigh. It's light pressure. Barely. "Is bullshit."

"I thought that's what you wanted, Ms. Corporate-wunderkind. A therapist type."

"Shut the fuck up." She smacks your chest, too hard to be playful, but a beat later and her hand's snaked back behind her, palm curved over your cock with a promise that makes the rest of the world seem sort of dull.

You shift beneath her, involuntary. Let your hands trail to the warm hollow of her hips, brushing your thumbs over the pink blush marks that blossom on her skin when you touch her for too long.

"Wanting, wanting," she muses, with a strangely alluring sense of casualness, "you've got one track mind - ah - don't even try to hide it." You're more interested in her fingers dragging over your tip, the graceful knuckles that go rigid as she finds your cockhead grazing over the pad of her palm. "For all you know I'll fuck another guy," she says, in a matter-of-fact, it doesn't matter anyway type tone. "Or, god, a dozen."

"Please." Your incredulity and chagrin slip out in equal measure. "Have pity."

Sana cocks her head, intrigued, and takes ahold of the base of your dick.

"No," she decides, "can't say that I can."

There's the stretch, the press. She sinks onto you with no resistance; she's all velvety and wet and you know you were the one who'd gotten her that way. You hiss - so does she. Then it's just quiet again, except for Sana shifting above you, her long legs tangling with yours, the heels of her palms pinning your thighs down to the mattress behind her. She gives a languid little swivel.

"Do you remember," you hear Sana saying, very dreamily, and that's what makes you think perhaps it isn't a serious inquiry and that your input isn't required. She goes, "there was that last day of scheduled rehearsals, that we had before the long winter break. And we got through the numbers in four hours, maybe? Tons of time to kill, and there was nowhere for me to be."

"You came over to my place," you mumble, a vague, wordless reminder of your role.

"Right." Another shift; you're still sensitive as fuck but Sana's weight feels good in your lap and the view of her tits is objectively excellent. "And I took a shower."

"Sure."

She squeezes and rises in tandem, sighing blissfully.

You sit up slightly, support yourself on one elbow and watch yourself disappear, reappear in the wet slit of Sana's pussy. "For a really long time."

"Like an hour," agrees Sana, almost humming, and snaps her hips forward. The jolt forces a groan out of you. She tilts her head up as she does it again, eyelashes fanned, and the reverberation of her movements shakes loose that damned piece of hair clinging to the arch of her temple. You watch a thin stripe of cum leaking out of her, too; that'd been inside her an hour ago. Maybe less. She's fucking you like it doesn't bother her, like she'll never grow tired.

She pulls at the long lock of her hair, seems to examine it contemplatively. She's so perfectly content in her self-aware, blasé, cat-like smugness, purring and untouchable and arching back. Then she says, "That was because I was fantasizing about getting filled with so much cum that I just started running down your shampoo bottle - that's, like, the ultimate breeding fantasy for me, honestly."

"What about that one time," you say, as though unhinged, as though half-conscious, as though every word has the consistency of molasses and there's a bright pulse of blood flooding your brain and rushing out your cock, "when we snuck out to the parking lot, and I made you sit on the hood of my car-"

"Shh, not the same," dismisses Sana, leaning into you, and you hold her there, lock your fingers into the swell of her ass to steady the desperate throbbing inside her pussy. Her tongue darts to the corner of her mouth, but her head lolls to the side, the gauzy curtain of her hair swaying at her waist.

"But," she concedes, an exhale, "that was good, yeah."

"You came really fast - like, so fast," you insist, thrusting up to the sound of her small groan. Her body, all lush skin and ample, unresisting curves, is flushed and gleaming. There's so much of her to take in: the inky fan of her lashes, the ridge of her ribs, the way her breasts hang heavy as she moves. This kind of debauched view feels exclusive, as if reserved just for you. "Remember that?"

"Did I?" She blinks owlishly.

"I'm remembering it for you." Your palm is heavy on her ass; it's what keeps you grounded, lets you get leverage. "What were you thinking about then?"

She bares her teeth in an indecent grin, tugs on the corner of her lip, as if reveling in the memory.

You watch her mouth open, close again.

It clicks: "Right," she answers, finally, and rides you all the harder. "Errant thought, but." She climbs up onto her feet, knees swung wide, her tiny soles balanced perilously atop the duvet - it's all slippery friction and she's so light you could flip her right over. It's all at your discretion. You lean up further. Your arm braces her back, low and hot. "Was imagining how you'd feel in my ass," Sana continues, carelessly, matter-of-fact, as if discussing dinner plans or a movie rental, and you don't expect a laugh from your lungs, but it comes out harshly, all surprise and hot delight, like a confession.

"This was a few years ago," Sana says.

She lifts off, teases your cockhead with the shallowest grip. Watches all the lines in your face start to wobble, and then sinks back down, all the way, burying your cock in her pussy again. Her lips move, you bottom out, you know she's going to ruin your next orgasm like that.

"Someone online posted some bullshit comment about me being - quote-unquote - easy," she tells you, turning her head to the side, to the window. You know the expression on her face: her mouth curved, eyes dark and so, so full of that amused contempt. "Just this thing that you see on the internet all the time. Everyone just doing the same thing - said I probably love it in the ass and - yeah. Can't recall. Fucked off right away."

"Really stuck with you, huh?" Your hips snap, and you swallow hard. "Brought that - image. Up. Didn't it."

"Guess it kind of did."

"Uh-huh."

She licks her lips. "I'd heard worse," she says, and hums, low.

Your grip on her back, her waist, her hip - they're steel-tight. "Felt like someone had put it in my head," Sana remarks, dreamily, then raises an eyebrow. "So y'know. Had a thought and let it take me there. Only made sense. Let myself. Daydream a little, take a long shower," and her smile goes lopsided, her eyes drift, "breathe hard against the bathroom tile, take two of my own fingers up there-"

And she drops, sinks, the lewd, sloshing sound of it resonant; your hands pull her to you by the roots of her hair and she gasps, heaves a small, faltering breath. She's so fucking wet.

"Baby," you groan, completely flat. "I'm gonna cum in you."

"Yeah." Sana looks like she's miles away. She could be. "I know."

She brushes the hair out of your face, holds her nose to your cheek, starts riding you fast, faster - and you do.

This is where the story actually starts - which, in retrospect, is kind of ironic, because everything was technically pre-written, already preordained:

You're in an airport, arriving late and harried, your hair a mess, Sana's luggage slipping from your shoulders. It's snowing biblically outside, the pavement frosted and dangerously slick with ice. The precipitation heavy and thick and white enough to obscure vision. You keep checking your phone, checking your texts, trying to stay grounded even though the forecasters specifically said the skies would clear by sundown.

Flying conditions: sub-optimal - but only barely.

You think serendipity could be something of an old friend to the two of you - if only the pantheon of weather-adjacent gods didn't seem to like her just a little more.

She's calm and unruffled and preposterously cool, with one hand slipped into her coat pocket, her face tipped towards the window so she can survey the falling snow. She looks the part of the chic world-traveller, clad in leather gloves and a tweed peacoat, the collar popped high and stern.

In contrast, you feel like the embodiment of frazzled, clutching anxiously at the handle of her suitcase and turning frantically to ask her which direction to head in; you're not her manager, you didn't plan her flight, didn't schedule any car services for the ride to her hotel. In a few odd hours she'll be on a different continent, standing in a different hemisphere, and you don't really know what to do with your hands.

"When am I gonna see you again?" she asks, pointedly sidestepping all forms of goodbye, bypassing any polite small-talk about the state of the storm.

She's done up in semi-dramatic makeup, a pair of gold earrings swinging when she tilts her head, fixes the edge of her fringe with her fingers: you watch her catch herself, relax - like a true work of art, you suppose, nothing to imply a separation.

There's the duality, you guess. You're looking at a profundity in motion.

And there will be a thousand cameras in her face when she touches down, vying for attention, swivelling and clicking, seeking shots that are just perfect enough - the internet is rabid and frothing at the mouth for a glimpse, some semblance of truth to satiate the rumor-mongers and their constant dissections of the arch of her spine, in the sway of her walk. She's got knee-high socks on and the fashion mags will be desperate to tear her apart at the seams, claim a sliver of all that profundity - they'll never know it's less of an aesthetic decision and more just a stopgap for the thumbprints blooming yellow-bruised in the curves of her calves.

Sana's watching you watch her; expectantly, eyes shining, big enough to fall into.

"Soon," you say, like you have a choice, and hope it sounds like reassurance, not resignation. "Hopefully soon."

She lifts her carry-on to one shoulder, smiles.

The lens you have is quieter, subtler - that's all.

(You can feel Sana turn to look from the terminal, paused, hovering, her jaw catching on her silhouette; and she waits until you're gone before she strides confidently to the desk, brandishing documents and asking sweetly, charmingly, for the check-in. Her walk slows, stutter-stops. Her posture straightens.

She brushes back her hair and keeps going.)

"You better not be romanticizing your melancholic solitude," Momo says later, with a tray of food in her hands.

It's the next day - same time, probably - you'd gotten back from the airport, hailed a cab and stewed in something like self-reflection before deciding you'd bury yourself in your work. You've been letting Sana distract you too much recently - not that you particularly mind it - but if she's not here to drag you into a conference room and drop to her knees, you might as well start making some progress elsewhere.

You roll your pen around your fingers. "What exactly do you think I'm gonna get up to? Staying up until midnight writing shitty poetry and getting blackout drunk?" Momo snorts. "She'll be gone for two weeks, Momo, not ten years. I think I'm gonna manage okay."

"Don't go punching through glass windows just yet, buddy. It's been twenty-four hours, that's nowhere near enough time for your brain to bathe itself in all the wrong chemicals yet." She plops a bowl of instant udon down in front of you. You realize suddenly you haven't eaten in - well, quite some time.

She wrinkles her nose. "God. So morose."

When you glance up, Momo's regarding you with one fist balled tight to her hip. You stare back at her. Her shirt is doing absolutely nothing to contain the top-half of her chest and your coworkers keep passing and rubbernecking. You get it. Her lanyard just goes right through the center of her cleavage; you sorta squint.

Some things never change.

"Um," she says, mock-scandalized. "Can you not?"

You lean back in your seat. "That was totally professional. I looked right at you."

"Yeah, like I'm a specimen." Momo pulls out the chair next to yours and takes a seat.

"I mean, you kind of are," you deadpan.

Momo chortles, pointing her chopsticks at you. "That was almost flattering, thank you." She slurps up the first noodle. "If you're nice to me, I won't tell Sana you're flirting with girls at the office while she's away. I think she'd come all the way back and wring our necks."

"And wouldn't we deserve it," you add. Your computer screen is frozen, blue-tinted with failure. Great. Momo sits down and the sky's falling within seconds. You assure her for the umpteenth time that she's not really your type anyway.

"Excuse you," Momo says, indignant, because that's a joke.

See - Momo's everybody's type, if you had to peg the definitive example of universal attractiveness. She's everyone's favorite eye-candy whether they swing right, left, upside down or none-of-the-above; it's the ass, ostensibly. The big eyes, the gorgeous cheekbones too - her jet-black hair's cut short, practically the opposite of Sana, sleek and androgynous and hanging off her shoulders in the prettiest sort of way.

If they made dolls they'd be collectibles, wildly sought after as a pair, mint-in-box-worthy - the perfect, polished icons of feminine beauty: brains, bravery, strength. But also definitely the ass.

You blink. "Is there something you're here to harass me for, or is my total lack of interest in banging you just something you're interested in re-establishing?"

"I dunno," Momo says around a mouthful of noodles, "it's distracting. It feels weird when Sana isn't here. Things don't feel very funny. Or cute, y'know? I feel like a standup act missing the lead comic relief."

"Are you saying I'm not hilarious and entertaining?"

"I think you're funny, but." She munches happily on some spring onions. "Not intentionally, not usually."

"So why are you getting soup all over my desk?"

"You're pouty for one, all sad-like," Momo says, swallowing. "And you're supposed to be coming up with this advertising pitch and the only thing written in that word doc was 'hey guys'."

"First draft's the hardest," you recite automatically. "I'll figure it out."

"But not anytime soon," Momo drawls.

You slump your shoulders. "But not anytime soon, no."

"If you miss her, just call her," Momo urges, with all the delicacy of an elephant on stilts. "I'm sure she's bored and horny. Like, wicked horny."

Momo is both direct and filthy - there's another difference. Sana's a layer cake: whip it into shape, top it off in pink icing, drizzle white syrup on top; she looks good and acts good and you can swallow her whole, every inch of her tasting sugary, syrupy sweet. Momo doesn't hide that she's the filthiest mess in a five-mile radius; the complete opposite of Sana - well, sorta.

"I heard you dropped a load inside her, earlier." She laughs out loud, true to form. "What the fuck are you thinking? I mean, serious talk: that shit will also rewrite your brain-chemistry. And the farther Sana is from us, the more your neurons are going to start feeling like they're fucking dying, so don't give me your stupid bullshit and tell me you're 'fine' when you're like, a total wreck."

"Can you fucking keep it down?" You rub a hand over your face. "Also wasn't it you who called us 'all-or-nothing?'"

"That was like a month ago. The whole being-casual-and-making-it-work shtick seemed neat and I wanted in. Also it's February 14th, you jackass. I think you two skipped past normal the second you could get into each other's pants." Momo slurps the broth. "Totally unhealthy."

"Also not fucking true." You exhale. "What am I gonna do?"

She gives you an are you stupid? look. "Text her," she enunciates slowly, like you're hearing her wrong. "Call her, I dunno. Romance is all about grand gestures and unreliable narration. Or at least she reads enough trashy Nancy-Meyers-movies-adapted-into-books-style romance to try and extrapolate something. Go out, and find some flowers." The next bite of her noodles is overly enthusiastic. "Make the girl feel special or something."

"Right, she's gonna love that."

"That's what all the books say."

You purse your lips. "So basically all the books have lied, but Sana loves them anyway because they make her cum with how badly they're written, and now you want me to act like they're an instruction manual on fucking courtship. Am I missing any other steps? Like, does this take into account the fact that I'm also really not that romantically inclined-"

"I think you have to do something nice, put some effort in," Momo interrupts, sagely. "Y'know, the gesture's important. A little creative thought. Something better than you've got going on in that empty husk of an advertising pitch. She doesn't actually care about flowers, but it means you think of her."

You slide further into your seat. Momo grins at the glare you give her, too-friendly. The girl is the only person on the premises who can call you out on your bullshit with any actual weight and expect to get away with it. She doesn't technically even work with your department - has more or less established herself as some combination of A-lister, sex icon, social darling - all rolled into the body of a curvaceous woman barely dressed. And everyone's just sorta charmed by it.

If you were a slightly-less-rational person you'd probably try to date her, too.

"Did you know that St. Valentine was actually beaten to death with clubs before getting decapitated?"

It's an aside question, because the only thing worse than arguing a point with Momo is when she happens to be right.

"Where are you pulling this shit from?" Momo wonders, deadpan, wiping her chin. "Why would you tell me that?"

"Thought it might be relevant." You swirl a plastic spoon in the bowl. "Do you have anything else for me, O great and venerated sage of modern womankind?"

Momo snickers at the sarcasm. "Sure," she says. "Tell me your current thoughts on Paris."

You drag a breath through your teeth. "City's a shithole if you aren't rich, famous and absolutely beautiful. In which case, the city exists solely to bask and dote upon your presence. What was the question?"

"Stop checking the travel sites."

"I'm not."

"Are to."

"Don't."

"Do," Momo replies, primly, and waves her hand dismissively. You are very, very mature. This is your professional space. "Keep it simple." She adds, casually: "Or something."

Far, far away and farther still, a girl ducks into a hired car, takes her heels off and turns up the air conditioning, wiggling her toes in relief.

She ends up slipping out of her clothes, taking a hot shower, changing into sweatpants. A private meal is offered to her; she turns down a glass of champagne, instead requesting iced coffee with an obscene amount of espresso shots - pours a ridiculous amount of milk in until the contents are a creamy beige, not even close to being a light-roast.

Later, much later, after a scented candle is extinguished and a notebook is closed shut, the night sky still dark and unchanging, the time zones shift, and then a single, glowing notification flashes across the screen - 4.42 am, her phone says. She's drifting in and out of sleep, dreaming in monochromatic pixels.

It's a mundane, totally insignificant message: nothing fancy, nothing new. A quick update - something along the lines of where are you, what are you doing, are you safe and happy, thinking of you. But it's punctuated with an exclamation point and followed by a pair of hearts - which is something new - like you're thirteen and she's just given you her home-room assignment list on a slip of paper and made you promise to exchange homework with her in the morning.

"How cute," she breathes, softly, and feels warm.

Here are the three rules about falling. Another anecdote; another wish-wash of creative editorializing, again: you really hate that you're quoting Momo on literally any of this, but unfortunately Momo has a lot of practical advice in the form of shitty armchair-psychology.

You know because you have a literal book full of the worst pithy maxims, delivered by her in varying states of drunkenness and hysteria and grudges borne of much heavier drama, all edited to her personal taste. It's a different thread, but also all part of the story: she and Sana are best friends. Take it or leave it.

Anyway: the rules,

1.) Grand gestures. Unreliable Narrations. Know that the idea is romantic, but the process is totally horrifying.

There aren't really any guidelines or requirements, not an exact science, anyway: there are softer, slower and easier ways to love than an impulse transcontinental flight; it comes in different forms, with much fewer headaches, far, far less red tape.

Try a knee nudge in a cab, a smoke-flavored kiss on the back porch, a text me when you get home, murmured in between yawns, the click of heels coming into the house after work - maybe, outside her apartment, making out against a wall of bricks like it's all you'll get, breathless and laughing under streetlights; if Sana were any less captivating (a loaded word if there ever was one) there'd be no good reason to think or to dwell on the semantics.

2.) Bending at the knees makes you less likely to get a concussion when you lose your balance. It's still risky, still a shot in the dark: in physics, there's a certain amount of grace under pressure - Sana's adored not by men, not by people, but by the universe itself.

It feels like: she's too loved, too known. The number of followers she has is, frankly, abhorrent to your sensibilities.

3.) An object at rest remains at rest: it is up to someone else to try and change its trajectory.

For all practical intents, purpose and reasonable application: forget them.

The only lesson that counts is 4.) Fuck logic, and that goes in the book.

February 14th.

Presently, we're flying at an altitude of twenty-eight-thousand feet as we begin our descent into Charles de Gaulle Airport. I'd like to ask you to please fasten your seatbelts, place all tray-tables and upright seats in their fully-vertical positions and power off all personal electronic devices. The local temperature at the landing strip is eleven-degrees celsius or about fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit. The forecast for the rest of the afternoon predicts clear blue skies, and we would like to thank you for flying Air France. Please have your passports and immigration documents handy for quick and efficient processing.

Then the same message in French, you're guessing. Welcome then, to the City of Light.

Your cell service pings back to life as you navigate through customs. Her texts and voice-mails are short, clipped, inane: news bulletins of random things she's heard of, things that catch her attention, new designs, newly-founded associations, this gallery and that gallery, this statue, that museum - all without her own commentary or editorializing.

The deluge of information almost makes her seem impersonal, disconnected from her own thoughts, like you're getting everything secondhand. Like it's accidental.

9:00 AM - Sana: oh btw just saw the 80's hairdressing revival special in studio e. 7000 times worse than the 70's one. nothing. nada. not a single ounce of cool. not like, at ALL.

Sana: never in my life will I EVER, in the history of fashion, agree with it.

Sana: photo attached

The photo is honest-to-god terrible. You have no idea what she's referencing.

11:30 AM - Sana: idk how it happened or why, but there's this tennis match thing i guess i'm supposed to be at

Sana: im honestly too zoned-out to tell whether i actually like this game lol

Sana: how tf does everyone know the rules. what is for-de-all? is that just a made-up thing people scream when a serve bounces into the net???

Sana: we'll see how it ends

Sana: ok the pro in the white suit is kinda hot and like, sosososo talented

Sana: he hits hard and his returns are perfect

Sana: how have i gone so long without knowing how deep i could get into the sports of men in fitted shorts??

There are countless more: small-talk, casual banter, lighthearted teasing, all going at her own speed of 5000 centimeters per second. You skim through, not sure how to parse the implications: she seems at best half-focused, unengaged, probably tired - maybe high on local-jet-lag, more interested in telling you she misses you and that her hotel room bed feels massive than telling you about her afternoons wandering art museums in a designer dress; oh, the magazines are frothing over her.

For reasons you don't feel entirely ready or qualified to address, you're reading between the lines to all sorts of things.

3:00 PM - Sana: could i call you? it'd just be like 5 minutes, i'm not busy or anything but idk if youre busy. not sure if you'll reply to this right away.

Sana: sorry don't mean to disturb you (´;︵;`)

Sana: well tbh i actually kinda do mean to interrupt.

She sends an obnoxiously bright, cloyingly pink 'V-Day' Gif in place of the last text and then doesn't answer. And suddenly, in a way you hadn't considered before - you think you're losing your goddamn mind, trying to construct an actual picture from fragments, assembling all the puzzle-pieces back into a single, discernible whole. She hasn't so much as signed off her text, let alone give you anything concrete to follow up on; this whole chain reads like the equivalent of sending her a lunch break meme, asking what her day looks like.

Inconveniently: it's the 14th of February, and Sana is the kind of person you'd get chocolates for - would tear open a Valentine's Day card and sign the message and seal it off with a stamp. It'd be tacky, and overly sappy and gaudily, horribly romantic - like a suitor from the Renaissance. You've always suspected she was something like an antique, in this very modern kind of way. It's how she looks best, all draped in antique jewels, chiffon and damask, dripping pearl and lace and silver threads, all in expensive, cosmopolitan aesthetic that makes sense within itself: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

The insanity is that it's making perfect sense right now. You have been ruined in ways unimaginable, and you have not, as Momo kindly warned you, even known.

You are not, in fact, alright - or casual about the situation.

You need flowers, urgently: this is a gift-giving crisis.

It's funny - this winter fling, as ill-fated as they come, a few months in: time seems to pass fast. Too fast, to the point where it starts to slip away in longer and longer increments, faster and faster, further and further intervals - like shadows stretching inexorably towards dusk.

There's no flowers, no cards, no nothing - and that is sort of the nature of it, the romance of the everyday.

You're in the metro so you can't even use your data, can't send her a quick selfie of your charming visage, with the background blurring like you're getting real poetic about it. No moon, no stars, no gaslight illuminating the dark. Just plain-ass subway tracks, a near-soviet expression of concrete, and some stupid ads for full-body waxes. The trains clear the station at 8:57 PM local time. That's Paris's time, Paris's city, her backdrop. The frame of this portrait.

So, in other words: you are not poetic, at all. You've probably got nothing in your hair except dust, dirt, and a bit of airfare grime. You've still got yesterday's cologne and nothing worth sending her except an afterthought.

No photos, no video, no cards, no ring; no pearls or lace, no gold and silk - and this is total luck, by the way; serendipity must still like her more - you look across the platform and watch the lights of another train arrive: the girl stepping off is stunning.

And even further in terms of non-comparisons: she's the type who laughs too hard at your jokes and wipes away the smeared tears on her cheeks afterwards, who will drop a dirty joke at every moment, who lets you see her mouth open in a perfect, dripping-wet gape, who will sink into the mattress after a good, rough fuck, the headboard creaking; a girl who will tell you your coffee is too bitter and when you ask, sweet enough? - she'll still say no; not yet; no; don't; harder, don't you dare stop - that type of girl, is the one inching off the metro, glancing down at the watch on her slender wrist.

The trains start again and the girl is left standing on her own. In another five seconds, someone will probably say, mademoiselle? - which, also: there's a class on language you have not passed; you'll pay that back later - and in response, she'll sigh deeply, stretch her arms out. Tilt her head upwards for some fresh air.

You blink once, twice: and no - that really is her, on the other end. Sana Minatozaki - somehow inexplicably, for no reason you're privy to - has materialized as though she just decided on a whim to visit her home planet again.

You call out across the chasm, like a man possessed, and it is incredibly loud, incredibly embarrassing, incredibly out of character. You hardly notice.

Your voice catches on the draft of the tunnels; it must've echoed. She spins around to see who's calling her.

When she spots you, her face glows.

"Holy fuck," she rasps, trying to catch her breath, putting her forehead to your shoulder. "Jesus christ. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"We were in the same city," you respond, hoarse and almost panting, palms flat against her skin. Your muscles have that third-rail electricity running through the tendons and straight on through, too; Sana feels like pure tension, just burning off. There's something vaguely buzz-high about you. "Couldn't resist. I was gonna call eventually-"

She hits your shoulder like she's mad, but her face has more or less melted in pleasure, her mouth parted into a wide smile, all sharp edges and incisors. Her hair's almost a disaster: you can see the barrette slipping out, the edges of it, the glittery accents; you think about getting your hand all knotted up in the up-do and pulling - just to watch her spill off the end of the spool, tightly wound, twining around you like ribbon, sinking in and refusing to leave.

The doorman tried to ask for your coats before you fell on each other - in the middle of the lobby, if that's possible - and it's not like he even really saw anything, you were sure: just saw her smile when you pressed the tip of your fingers up under her chin, just your thumb grazing her lip before you bent your mouth to hers and didn't come up for air.

The doors of the elevator up shut close, and suddenly there's nowhere left for you to go: no further to climb, to hide, to disappear.

"You," she begins, biting off the end of the sentence in exasperation, settling instead for letting the word trail away. Her lips ghost across the hollow of your throat, the curve of your jaw, the little dip between the column and your ear, pressing hard and insistent - marking her territory.

"Do you just, y'know, pop up in fucking New York once in a while, too, for like a spot of breakfast and then, yeah, I'm good." Her voice sounds tired, worn. It's kinda cute. "No plans to stay, nothing booked, just passing through, huh?" She taps your shoulder, pulling away to run her fingers through your hair. "Idiot," she breathes, in that saccharine way of hers, smiling; you are helpless; you are done for, fully done-for: she can take as many digs at you as she wants. "Also what the fuck, you didn't answer my texts," her face crumples a little when you grab her, haul her against you - holding on, tight. It's an intoxicating rush, seeing Sana falter like that.

She's as stunning off-kilter as she is put together: more real than any human being should be allowed.

"Well," you say, not apologetic at all. "It's a holiday."

"You're making it really hard to be angry right now," she replies, lifting herself in her pumps and slotting her lips over yours. This time, the kiss lingers. It is the point of departure, a threshold of arrival: who knows whether or not she can feel you melting beneath the heat of her fingertips. You want her to take as many soft, easy-going kisses as possible - a stack, a row, a wall. If she keeps leaning into you like that, you'll do just about anything. "Not just to make a boner joke, either," Sana whispers, fingers gripping onto your shoulders for balance. "I wanna go slow for once. Real gentle."

"Say that again?" You hum, unable to leave well enough alone.

"Something slow?" She lilts.

"A boner joke."

"God," she groans. "Would it kill you, you massive fucking prick, to have a modicum of compassion and not act like you're five?"

And look - there's not enough elevator for the whole story, let alone the novel it would be to properly explain everything there is to know about Sana; how the sky goes dusky-hued when the streetlights come on; how she always fiddles with her hands in her pockets when she's bored, the impatient flex of fingers, pulling at the loose threads. How you'd kiss her knuckles to calm her - how she was annoyed that she let you in the first place.

The story of the two of you would take, well - it'd take a few months.

"Actually," you counter, "it would. Probably kill me dead. Obituary, a single photo of a smirking ass in a dress suit. Very sad."

"Christ. I've put up with way too many assholes today," she huffs, shaking her head, "for you to be the way that you are."

"Oh, trust me. It's not my favorite either." You lean back, can't quite help it: she's not at all ruffled - only curious, only teasing. You pull her hips tighter towards you. She kisses you, sighs a little: her neck smells like orange-blossoms. You had no idea that could be as sensual as it is. "You'll just have to deal," you murmur.

"Like always," she complains.

"It is pretty rough."

Sana meets your grin. Her hand cups your face - it feels oddly tender.

"How," she says, slowly, the words very carefully enunciated - "the hell did you think this would turn out?"

You open your mouth: this is what you are capable of.

Sana never actually gets around to telling you the things she meant to say: the confession of a valentine, all sappy and serious, almost candid, with gravitas - a five-paragraph essay, four pages long.

It's a messy affair - you've got a fistful of hair and the other's shoved down the front of her skirt. She's been wanting to be here all day, it seems - you've seen the text-book spread of supermodels and old-money socialites and she's wanted a moment's escape from them all, has been pining for someone, anyone (most certainly you); waiting in her pretty dress and her high heels, a set of pearl earrings, the starlet curls of her hair - the clutch she left on the floor by the door because you shoved your hand underneath the fabric, said: I'll eat you out right fucking here.

So there's a common thread, if nothing else: you and Sana are verifiably incapable of having anything resembling a serious conversation. There isn't a single point of departure: the entire thing starts out casual and remains, firmly, casual.

You are deeply unserious people; this is just how it is. So clear from your head the ideas of saviours, soulmates.

You stumble together into the sitting room of her hotel suite - the luxury is appalling, almost, the floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto a gorgeous balcony and overlooking the Seine - "It's fashion week," is her excuse, "all the good penthouses have been booked since last November," she apologizes, which you can't really wrap your mind around anyway. You nod like that's reasonable, the right answer, pull at her lip with your teeth, and she melts right into the open palm of your other hand - oh, she'll fit well here. It's where she belongs: soft, sweet, yielding to you.

"Don't need your pity," she pants, breaking the contact to speak, to drag her tongue up your collar and up to the hinge of your jaw, grinding her hips down so that you hiss and close your fist tighter in her hair, give her that sudden tug, that sweet little rush: that thing she doesn't need, wants anyway.

Her expression flicks something in you - the eyes, the mouth; the trademark Sana-sneer. And suddenly you need to pin her to the wall, the floor, hold her still for the taste. You look up to get your bearings and find the world gone monochrome: night, cold, grey, grey-on-grey, black, dark - and that's fitting somehow. Sana tilts her head away to observe you back - you have a feeling she's observing how fucked-up you are over her already, and for some reason, you can't give her the satisfaction, not quite yet: can't admit the defeat of how you can't ever take your eyes off her, the thick swell of her legs and the smooth curves of her calves. Can't lay out what you'll do to her.

Though that's about when the storybook romance vanishes, and in its place - a more familiar arrangement; the reality you'd built with her over the past half year, the awful, easy rhythm you're going to settle back into with little ceremony: all playful affection, no sentiment. Zero pressure to pretend - or to pretend anything differently.

(Which brings you to this.)

"Sana," you drawl, grabbing her chin, making her twist in the direction of your touch. "Is that your dildo stuck to the coffee table?"

Because in the middle of all this, that's what she left lying out in plain sight: a some-odd inch silicon cock, unabashedly translucent, obscenely clear; with a ridiculously realistic head, veined shaft, balls - she had gotten her vibrator out of one suitcase and forgot the rest. It's literally sitting right next to the complimentary drinks; so obviously out-of-place, it's impossible that someone could mistake it for anything.

"Oh god," is the only reply, mortified. "Please, dont. I didn't think I'd be-"

"Should I be offended?" You are doing a truly appalling job at sounding seductive. You are, in fact, kind of choking down a laugh.

Sana takes a hand through her half-disassembled hair. Tosses the bobby-pin holding up her bangs: there. Full dishevelment - the effect is startling. You can almost trace the silhouette of a girl so very badly kept together; frayed ends, straying strands, half-gossamer and half-permanent dye.

"It's a toy," Sana explains, like you hadn't pieced together that much. She shrugs off a strap of her dress, the other. "It's just plastic and stuff." She looks at it. You can see the wheels turning, trying to figure out if it's worth salvaging. Then: "Here, c'mon - don't think. Don't," she tries, unconvincingly: "think too much about this."

You raise an eyebrow.

"I was planning to fuck myself senseless, maybe because somebody wasn't answering their texts," she adds, glibly. It is absolutely stunning, watching Sana Minatozaki shamefaced, pouting - trying and failing, failing miserably - to look even a little apologetic. "Just lemme - if you're into it, y'know, we could. Use. It. Or something."

"Or something."

It's too late: you're cracking up.

"This is really what you use on your off hours? On yourself?" You pick it up: it's heavier than you expect, mostly because the thing is made of clear jelly, probably some kind of latex-powdery-water concoction - just the sheer thought is bizarre, foreign to you. The base suction cups to...any surface, you suppose, to provide stability. It's not altogether very practical, now that you're getting a closer look. "Is this," and you hush conspiratorially, "Is this Jean-Pierre?"

Sana smacks the side of your arm, flushing. "Shut the fuck up," she responds, laughing. A beat later, her lips tilt. "His name's Woody."

"That sounds like a conversation starter."

"I shouldn't have to explain the reference."

"You're sure it's a he?"

"It's got testicles don't it?"

"Oh yeah," you say, weighing the toy in your hand. "Look at that."

"Would you just, like," Sana coughs delicately, looks around the room for something interesting. "-put it somewhere."

"Phrasing," you can't help but point out. "Jesus you moved the mirror in here, too."

And you'd caught the moment originally, when the blush had filled her cheeks, her forehead, her nose, all the way on to her ears. She had known. "Maybe you really did corrupt me," she counters, turning her head pointedly away. "Wiped away the good girl veneer and turned me into a degenerate pervert."

"Which is basically how you started," you remind her - and you catch her in your arms. She relaxes almost instantly; you sink a palm down the small of her back to rest in the dip of her spine. You've learned a little: Sana prefers closeness, intimacy, touch. No questions, no fanfare, no gimmicks, just the simple offer of body warmth. She'll curl into your chest and stay quiet, almost content; an ineffable smile leaking up the back of her throat as your nose tickles the side of her neck, mouth open and warm and pressed into her skin.

Her eyes crease. She feels more real, a little less ethereally divine.

"How could you?" she asks, faux-affronted. You can feel how she breaks character, the laughter reverberating against your fingertips. "I'm, like, so fucking demure."

It takes everything to resist kissing her until she moans: which is the danger. You do anyway, but at least the damage has already been done.

She locks her wrists loosely behind your neck. Kisses you slow. Heavy. Giggling - you've been demoted to giggles in the end, it seems, a slip from seductress back to child-like delight. "Seriously," Sana sighs, rolling her shoulders out and circling her hips slowly. Your heart drops. Your entire face turns hot; you're really fucking gone for this girl. "Wanna watch me ride it?"

The thing is, a bed-time story would have paper-hearts, and candles, and maybe a field of birds; an open space, a plush meadow, a wide, beautiful, clean canvas for this little romance to run wild across, uncontained.

Sana instead, reaches for a bottle of personal-lubricant, glances back with a smile; your breath catches - you think it's a momentary trip, a chemical reaction.

You realize it's the lighting instead, the frame of this moment. The simple concept of art, how the hues of the dark deepen, saturate into something a shade off - purples and blues; something to capture and press into paper, inked forever.

She holds the bottle above the end of the toy, pours generously. As you can already tell - no lack of initiative, imagination: she takes both her legs to the edge of the table, stretches them outward - makes a pretty little show of herself, arches her back off the glossy wood - and sets the tip just against the inner junction of her thighs. Sana pushes, tilts: gasps aloud, sharply inhaling, watching you watch her with heavy-lidded eyes. Her shoulders relax and the rest of her muscles follow the tension - easing in a slow, languid circle, hips grinding down. She sighs at the cool feel of it, before pulling it back to rest the edge just in-between her lips, a teasing movement, right where you would reach - two fingers inside, hook up and outwards and open, stretch her wide to fill.

The girl looks like sin, looks like decadence; near-saintly: holy and sacrosanct. You think they've beatified less.

Sana reaches with her free hand for the front of your shirt.

"You," she whispers, and your hands flex involuntarily.

"Yeah," you reply, soft, even-keeled. "Me."

(Romance me, she'd said, only half-sarcastic. Sweep me off my feet and ruin me. Then I'll show you just how obsessed I am with you.)

There's always the itch, the impulse: to undo and dismantle everything around her, take everything to pieces; reduce her to tears until all she knows is your hands and your voice. To stop treating her like a masterwork and treat her more like something you're carving out of a block of stone. Maybe she'd lose that divine edge; she'd fall from that angelic grace into something mortal, and it wouldn't be anyone's fault. Not really.

Well - until now; because this is all you.

"Oh, Sana," you murmur, watching her tear up like it's killing her. "God, look at you."

You’ve got your fingers running through her honey-blonde tresses, got her wet lips slipping down the length of your cock, got the cutest little whimpers coming from her chest when you push a little too far, force yourself a little too deep - got the prettiest girl on her knees, working your cock to the back of her throat and letting her hips grind a few more inches of silicon inside her. The visual isn’t even in competition, in comparison - her huge amber eyes all innocent and glassy, those flawlessly plush red lips - you really shouldn't do it; if she hates something it's being mussed up, but here she is, anyway, because if there's anything she hates more, it's not getting a full serving of exactly what she wants - and she's swallowing your dick down her tight little throat without asking anything in return.

"You love this, don't you, baby," and when she bobs up - sinks back down - your next breath drags through your teeth.

The mirror's behind her; you don't need the nod for confirmation.

You can see it clear as day: her pussy creaming, glistening as she takes it even deeper, leaving a white, glistening trail from the base to the tip of the silicon shaft - how far she's gone; how far she'll still go.

"You love having my cock down your throat," you keep talking, and you curl your fingers gently in her hair, not enough to guide or press, but Sana - bless her - takes it like an indication and does the work for you; she nods anyway.

The waterline of her big doe-eyes is swimming, nearly spilling over - and if this doesn't prove it, then nothing will, certainly not anything she could say herself.

But, really - you can't get over her face, and she must know that.

Prada, Fendi, Chanel, Dior - they've got similar ideas, sure; straight to the gutter, only if they could see how you're replicating their vision - her eyes: too huge, too shimmery, too imploring; her hair spills from your fists in loose, glossy coils; that magazine-cover-ready look all flushed, mascara-thick lashes wet from the strain, jaw a little slack to accommodate the size of you - you're not too much easier to take than the dildo stretching her cunt wide right now, either.

Oh, she's filled up on both accounts.

"Mmnhph," is how Sana hums around you, tongue working obscenely over the head. Her mouth feels velvety-tight on the upstroke.

It doesn't take much to forget her mouth's playing second-fiddle to the work her cunt's doing, and her free hand's curling tight around your thigh, a steadying mechanism - which, isn't that the very root of the matter: the first time you'd cum in her tight little pussy, hadn't it been just like that, where all the pieces slotted right back into place, a certain order to the chaos? The desperate cling of her pretty-fingernailed hand.

Eyes wet and blinking: trust, don't let me down.

And you'll indulge her like tomorrow's the end of the world. Work her through it; watch her fine eyebrows pinch tight together; note how her high-strung breathing sounds muffled in her nose. How she lets you slide to the edge of the chair to fuck her face, lifting your hips and knocking into the slightest gag-reflex possible. She gets progressively filthier, tongue lathing the underside of you, sucking the head with the tight seam of her lips whenever you pull back to give her a second to breathe.

"Jesus." Your fingers loosen in her hair, combing her wild bangs from her flushed face. It's suddenly delicate. Gentle. Doting. Sana's pretty little forehead deserves a kiss for how fast, how deep, she's taking your cock in the softest part of her throat.

"There we go - just relax, sweetheart," you tell her, the very same girl who is making herself cum in the full-length mirror: pussy stretched and pulsing wet around the toy. "Catch your breath."

She doesn't even flinch when you touch your thumb to her cheekbone, carefully pulling her face back, feeling the wet press of her tongue at the crown. But her lips pull into a pout like she's sad you're stopping her. "No more?"

You inhale, deeply, and try not to laugh out loud. Her cheeks have flushed this adorable rose color. "Baby," your voice trails off with a click, and it's entirely your fault for teasing her; you might not get out of this room for the rest of the night, after all. So much for red wine and valentine's on the Seine - the perfect, the picturesque-

"I can't help it," Sana cuts in. She doesn't even hesitate. If anyone can redefine perfection, well. She's wearing that look: her mouth an utterly sinful pucker and her tongue skimming pink up the wet mess her throat's made of you. Her big, heavy-lashed eyes gazing at at you, and her pupils - well, that's no doubt what happens when something hits too hard, and it's the last thing you should notice, really, in this moment.

Her tongue is flat, stuck out. Very pink. She slaps your cock against it. Jesus christ, you think.

But: who can blame you, when the gorgeous, nude, marble-perfect woman on her knees is riding her toy with no qualms whatsoever, gazing straight into your soul?

"The faces you're making are really fucking hot and it's valentines day and you, like, taste and smell so fucking good-"

"Okay." You're twitching in her hands, and it's making her give you the most awful bedroom eyes in the world. "Okay, baby, slow down-"

She doesn't, but she can't do much worse; Sana presses her plush, swollen bottom lip to the crown of your cock, makes a show of licking the precum beading from your slit - licks her lips like it's a present, like she'd flown halfway around the world just for that, and it's an ambrosia she'd rather savor than spill.

"Sana," and your laughter falls out in a gasp, because, fuck - she's got a tight grip on your thigh and the most selfish desire for your orgasm you've ever seen; her other hand is already set, too, the one rubbing away at her own dripping pussy, wrist working just underneath her, catching her clit. "You're going to make me cum like that."

"Okay," she tells you, all round-eyes and wet-mouth; she's so fucking insatiable. "Then cum."

You're not sure how a goddess who worships your cock ends up like this: propped up the hotel-furniture, sinking down a thick, gleaming dildo and the slightest hitch in her breath a fucking non-sequitur. "Fucking hell," you gasp. "Princess-"

And, well - it's not like you really protest; her mouth's already at the tip of you and she's working it there, in and out, with a teasing wetness.

She sighs, heavy, but also blissful; sinks lower in one, rolling agonizing movement; meets your eyes when you go heavy-lidded and biting your lip - like it's a competition for who can end up the worse wreck. She swallows, slowly, so slowly. Lets her nails lightly dig into the sensitive skin behind your balls, drags them back up with her tongue and her throat constricting.

It's her expert mouth, that's the thing. You close your eyes because you think you might cum right then; right down the back of her pretty, porcelain throat. You can hear her humming like she's enjoying it more than you - can hear the clicking sound in her throat when she bobs her head, fucks herself deeper. Can hear the slick, filthy slaps of her pussy taking the cock fastened to the coffee table under her. And, you think, opening your eyes just a crack: when your girl's making a mess of the expensive hardwood with the cream spilling from her needy cunt - that's worth giving into. That's an image so good and perfect and god-damned filthy that you'd bet, when you cum, all the devil will want is a deal for a replica, for a pact to possess every woman out there who fits the mold: this one's yours.

You're fucking her mouth so hard, she's drooling.

"Jesus- ah, fuck. I'm going to fucking cum, Sana," and, not that she listens, “down your fucking throat, honey- I'm, oh," - not that she cares, really - you've just managed to grit your teeth - to arch your back up like that could pull you out from the sensation: it doesn't.

She does moan around you, then. Pulls the vibration deep and uses her tongue, works the pink, slender muscle right down to where you're half-gagging her, making her eyes water.

It's easy to knot your fingers back in the locks of her hair, pull tight.

Easier still, her face is framed with your thighs and the effect's immediate - it feels as hot and wet and tight as a vice and your voice shakes along with the rest of your neurons, firing, collapsing, keening - and, of course: when your hand fisted in her hair tries to pull her hot mouth off your cock, well.

There's a few more inches of sloppy-wet friction and slippery-tight drag you hadn't really budgeted for.

You're cumming all over her face, not that you had much of a choice - it's just one wave and another, your thighs tensing and the breath going out of you in stilted, long, stuttering moans - Sana looks up, when your brain has unscrambled enough to register her name and the light of the world and the absolutely perverted expression she's got: there's a shot of cum that streaks across her closed eyelid and another string making a sticky-white mess out of her button-nose and, god-

You don't mean to cum in her hair, but-

"Fuck," your teeth clatter around a biting-gasp, "Sana, oh fuck," but - as expected, she does have your cock gripped tight at the base, her lashes clumped with the mess, her cheeks sticky-messy.

Sana's looking up with the innocent sort of mischief only she could ever get away with, you figure, cum-covered and beautiful: the good girl with her good girl mouth, all the evil inside of her.

She lets your cock fall out of her hand, down, with an obscene, wet thud, right where she can press it against her face - press it against those sharp cheekbones - and those doe-eyes, and those lips: the ones she draws across the dripping tip, pulls at them with a sultry sort of sigh. Sinking the curve of her nose down the belly side of your cock as you paint her, gasping for air; and it gets worse - when her tongue catches between your balls, when her lips are pouting right around the soft skin there and her soft moans make you pump the white-hot ropes of cum until it's a mess in her hairline, in the silky locks that fall to the crests of her ears and down to where they rest over her tits, hiding the flush of her hard, puffy nipples, her tiny little pink clit-

"Messy," Sana croons, without much of an inflection; one eyelid flutters open and a milky-stream runs down the curve of her cheek; the other seems hopelessly stuck.

Oh, she's usually such a wet blanket about getting anything in her hair (which is more often just an excuse to ride you brainless on the shower bench, but it doesn't come without her grumbling on the way), and even then she's lifting up off her heels and resting her chin on your thigh to make sure you can watch when she spreads the mess along her slender throat and back behind her ear, almost shy, drawing strands of cum into her mouth with her long-lashed eyes locked onto yours.

"It really hasn't been that long," and she says it with some exasperation, with a bubbly little bout of laughter that has the same weight as her pecking kisses along the muscles of your abs, cleaning her cum-hand against the patchy wetness across the flat plane. "Geez - you must've been so pent up -" and she stops for breath, for another suckle to your shaft; your cock twitches in her grip, the sensation too much, but it makes Sana give the most self-satisfied smile. It'd be unbearably irritating if she wasn't your entire universe - she is, so you try not to move as she steadies herself on your thighs; presses her messy face into the side of your throat and mewls. "All mine," Sana decides, sounding quite content about it. "Do you need a few minutes?"

She asks this like she isn't pumping you still, using her delicate fist to keep you upright for her while she speaks into the line of your jaw.

"Um," you say, before anything else. Before thinking about her clinging, wet heat around you. Before anything else: "yeah."

She purses her lips. Presses her free hand to your chest with a needy arch of her body. Pants for you, lashes falling shut - and, there's the problem, she's so much more fuckable like that. She's painted red from her cheeks all the way down her tits and you're just realizing how much drool fell off her chin, how much of a mess is between her tits, how much she revels in it - getting her face-fucked until neither of you can survive the fallout.

"How about," she huffs against you, all breath and the curve of a whine, "I clean this up," her hand's still tight at the base, where your nerves are singing with all sorts of new sensory input - "and god, your heart," she whispers, and her chin hooks over your thigh. She's looking up at you, ruined, flushed and dewy. "-is beating so fast for me -" she says, almost wistful.

That's the point, probably. It's the entire problem: she has a few ideas of how beautiful she is, the kind of destruction she wreaks.

Her breath catches in her chest when her hips shift back and that thick, fake cock pops out of her cunt; it sounds fucking filthy, and the softest of keening moans escapes her - it has the weight of your existence and she probably knows it; her amber gaze fluttering shut as she doesn't move for a second.

You don't either, can't really; Sana sliding up your body as graceful as ever, even naked and used-looking, leaves you barely functional and running on over-stim. "I mean," she starts, like the two words just tumbled out of her cunt with the rest of the mess and that's a great explanation; Sana's moving around in your lap anyway, dropping that nice, hard dildo on the seat beside you, still dripping. "I can't let you cum in my pussy," she says, all gentle matter-of-fact, while her mouth opens across the arch of your jaw and she gets cum down her wrist. "Well," she amends, "-not yet anyway, not right now," and she does look guilty, for some reason.

It makes your smile twist wry and unattractive, probably. "I'm good at controlling myself," you manage.

"Liar," says Sana, which is a reasonable reply. You'd laugh, but her cunt's wet and hot against you, already sinking, settling, just an inch deep into her cunt. It's easy to take in hand - you grip her hips, thumb her little pink clit.

Sana's response is to rut against it, rubbing all over where the swollen head of your cock rests between her thighs. Her smile goes a little blissed out, dreamy.

"There's another place," she's saying, while her hair spills down your arm, between you, sticking in the space between her tits, "that would be a perfect home for this thick, gorgeous cock."

"I think you should let Woody and I sort that out," and, shit, that doesn't make her stop moving, dragging her soaked slit over your shaft. "Maybe he'll be your valentine after all, huh, babe?"

Sana narrows her eyes, tilting her head forward in her best attempt at threatening. It's cute, almost, if your dick wasn't trapped between the wet heat of her body and your belly. You pick her up so, so easily. And that's hot, you think: your strength, her whole lithe-waisted petite-tits everything.

"Hey," her lips part against yours, a protest there - until you move her by the hips, pushing up and watching her spread for it.

And if that doesn't go straight to your ego.

Sana huffs, playing aloof, petulant - a character you draw out when she's really hoping and praying you'll fold her up and show her what the good parts of worship mean. "You think you can share?" she's asking you, voice already growing rough. She's trying to fuck back, take her hips again, but you still her with your palms, fingers sinking tighter and her ass spilling out between your knuckles.

"Get your knees back on the table for me, pretty girl," and you lift her as she squirms; set her down, until her body is arched forward, tits pressed punishingly to the hardwood.

You think you're maybe spending next-century's savings on a wet-dream made real; maybe being too rough, too mean about your hand twisting through that mess of golden-strawberry curls at the base of her spine and making her spine curve deep as she breathes out a heavy, messy curse.

"Give me what I deserve, then," and she can't reach under her body and tug at your cock, but she gets the words out. The order. "I'm aching, it's sore and empty and, it's so fucking tight," and that's not a demand but a whine. She wants you, that's the real point. "You know, I want," and she doesn't finish that, but:

She's blinking at her reflection in the glass, watching it. You really fucked up that pretty painting, and she's appraising the art, tilting her chin just a bit to appreciate the effort: how she's made to be wrecked.

You grab Woody, attach it to the table without thinking; the weight's warm, solid; he's hard-used and wet enough from her body that it's not an issue; there's enough lube leftover to slide your palm once or twice over and drag it wet across Sana's ass, around your length, even over Sana's pink cunt, wet and swollen and bunched with the toy she'd used, stretched deep as you'd seen. She whimpers out the softest sound, then, and you think: what a miracle, and maybe she does too because her hips arch into it like she's begging for praise, for your touch, anything; there's a few seconds of pressure, just enough time for you both to realize what's happened.

"This'll get messy, you know," you tell her, which isn't fair. "It won't feel the same in there," because your baby needs her explanations.

"Want to feel you both in my guts," is what she offers instead, and- yeah, it's so not fair for her to say stuff like that either.

You touch the silicone head to her puffy folds, ease him up and down - just how you would for her, only taking care to feel where she's pinkest. Where's the pressure on your fingers? There, probably, but there, too. Where does she gasp the softest when she's full and tensing in anticipation? Oh.

Her cunt is so slicked she sinks on it, opening fast and beautiful and dirty.

The sound Sana makes is unreal; no way to measure her reaction otherwise. You don't know whether it's good or bad; all you see is the way her reflection dips into nothing, into pain, but: her head jerks up in time to watch and she moans like she's begging - loud and pretty and shocked, eyes fluttering. Her hair falls like curtains around her face, a wildfire behind her. She's stunning; of course you think it.

"See that," she says, through clenched teeth, "the pretty way it pushes out of me-"

"Makes room for me," because yeah, fuck, okay. You know it too.

She's perfect for this: a body like she's the centerfold in a dirty magazine and then a disposition that says yes, you do want me like that. Or, she's asking for a pounding. That's the least you can do - straddle the surface with her, line your cockhead up, push just barely to the resistance - force Sana's hips down until Woody's bottomed and her legs shake for the first time.

"You good, baby?"

"You can," and-

Oh, man. "Let me do it," you tell her, sliding your hand up her back to grab her hair, winding it between the thick of your knuckles. "I'll take care of you, I promise-"

That's another shot in your veins: her lips bitten red, her expression ruined; the way her face falls for you like she's meeting you in that elevator for the very first time, the straw of her iced coffee between her lips, her nose wrinkling for the cliché.

She blinks at you again, nods and keens and oh-

Your cock works in that next fraction of an inch, just the head spreading Sana open.

"Holy-" but she chokes it back, so you'll keep doing this, making her think, fuck- "oh my-fuck-okay," is what she gives you, breathing in pants; what her expression tells you, the lines cutting over her brows and between her nose.

"Sana," is as far as you get, and Sana's grinding, gasping. She'll sob. She'll get loud. You can see from your angle; just feel how much it burns, the way Woody's working inside her, splitting her to the core.

You watch the line of her back work, tense, clench - where it's just that simple and base and human.

And the mirror's got the full story: it all comes up with the same obscene details - Sana's mouth a deep open pink, her eyes rolling closed as she swallows thickly - as she's wetting the air down and relaxing her whole body for it: her toes curling. She sinks another inch onto the toy, you figure, and she makes this fucked-up mewling noise, half-cry, half-begging. Your cum is tacky all over her front, drying sweaty; her makeup's runny. She's a disaster and so pornographically stunning.

You sink deeper, and she bucks, takes her time riding. "Feels- fucking incredible, doll, I'm going to start fucking you, ok?" and you groan; you are. You pull back, seeing where her cunt is creamed out and ruined, where there's the ghostly wet lube smeared on your cock, all sticky like her.

Sana nods, looking back - she finds your face, doesn't falter; she'll see her tits spilling against the table; the dark shade of her nipples. Her cunt's sliding over the toy in a rush; she's shimmying her whole body, impatient. You let go of her hair and touch between her shoulder blades to the base of her spine, marvel in the stretch of it, the pretty flush you're fucking into over and over.

"It feels-" Sana's talking, her forehead bowed against the table, her mouth hanging loose, "feels-good. Good. Amazing. Feels-" and she can't breathe, you know, but fuck, neither can you- "so. Full. Full."

You nod; know. She knows.

She's saying it for herself, in a slur, the words on the edge of a gasp: "I'm-holy-"

Your fingers pinch her ass, just gentle; enough to spread her, catch a view of her stretched asshole. Her teeth knock together - she's trembling for this. She'll cum.

"Trying to kill me," you tease, but fuck- it's good; so fucking good.

You've been brushing your cock to the back of this girl's throat and it's still the hottest thing you think you'll ever see; her personal toy buried to the hilt beneath you, just the tight little opening of her pussy fucked-out and slicked-up, raw and red and utterly ruined-

"Shh, sweetheart," you manage, burying yourself in as far as possible, leaning over. You move the hair falling into Sana's face and trace her features with the tip of your index finger, smudging a fingerprint of eyeliner. You're kissing her hair, her skin, tasting salt, sweat, cum: "Such a slut, taking that big fat toy all in you, opening you up-" and the last you get out isn't her name, it's a murmur- "look what a whore you're being," and her cunt is fucking throbbing-

You lean back, catch a sight of it; her thighs trembling and pinkish and oh, fuck, no. She's got one of her hands worked back and on her clit, stroking it feverishly-

"Baby-"

"I need you," is what she cries out; not an explanation. "So," and it's something mangled- "God, please. Come on."

She tells you twice; she can't help herself. Sana's ass is unbelievably tight. So pretty; so the little fucked-out cocksleeve you always needed. All her eyeliner's fucked to hell and her hair's still a knotted disaster; you've got all your inches inside her, she's pressing the heel of her hand to her clit and drawing patterns over her face with her fingers like she can't remember-

"My pussy, jesus-fucking-christ." Her mouth is falling slack again. "God. God. Harder, it feels too good, don't stop-"

"Such a good fucking girl," and there's this picture-perfect moment-

She cums. You're all up in her guts, spilling to the tight space, that she's fucked beyond the stretch and that's got to burn, paradoxically making her go all crazy with this feeling. Your cock's making space - you'd hate not fucking her until she's overfull and all those slick muscles are clenched and bruised-

"Does my princess need something?" you ask her, while your palm teases the flare of her hips. It's teasing; she won't stop; she'll cum again. You're pounding her ass and that toy's still there, buried to her cervix, her pussy's a mess and it's almost an itchy pleasure, too much stimulation, too sensitive; she's slick, sodden.

Sana is nodding furiously. One hand's doing it again, and the other's got the thumb trapped in her mouth; she's trying for silence; it won't last. Her throat's loud and filthy and you've always probably known, since the very beginning, that Sana loves taking you in whatever gorgeous, wet, tight hole she can.

"Please," she manages. Her hand's moving quicker- "Let me. Let me." And she's grinding against you, taking in every inch you have for her, arching her back; her clit is raw and throbbing and she's a fucking genius. A natural at begging. She deserves the win. She's being good. She's letting you fill her with cum.

You're not even fucking her into particularly fast, particularly deep, just grinding, using the tight ring of muscle, the heavy, bruising press.

"Tell me," and she can't focus- "Tell me when you're going to cum, princess. Can't wait to feel you-".

Oh. And, then-

You want it to last.

Her feet are tapping, toes curling into the hardwood, and it's over: she's tightening her grip against the table and making sure to keep the vibrations direct, her cheek pressed to the wood, drool drenching the corner of her lips. You've seen enough dirty shit, done enough kinky stuff. This - this might actually have you dumbfounded: watching her convulse; watching her bring her hand away, just touching. Her cunt's all milky and soft.

"Stay still, sweetheart," you're saying; as if she can move. You're holding her steady by her hips. You're massaging lightly; taking all the rest you can. "That's it, come here, you're so-" and your cock's easing its way out- "fucking."

She gasps when you slip all the way free; your cum slides back down. Sana's languid and fluid, skin sweating, hair everywhere. She's not crying, but it's the closest she's been in ages; the closest, most pure you can get a girl: your cum spilling out and all over you, and you're telling her it's alright, telling her she's gorgeous; saying it's okay she's already stretched herself so thin, exhaustion pooling, seeping out of her mouth, the line of her thighs and-

"Thank you." It's that genuine, melodic cadence, the honesty - it's that the first time she's looking down and she's blinking tears- "Want you to- right here," and she's moving forward, slowly.

You're cupping Sana's thighs before you can even think; lifting, bending them to her chest, her lips bitten, kiss-swollen. Her tongue darts to the corner of her mouth: Sana knows where this is going.

You can taste her. You can taste your own sins - the vanity, the hubris, the glutton, the greed - taste how wet, how flushed. She's putting that expert mouth to good use and keeping quiet again: a pant, a whine, an ahhhh, a whimpered half-curse. Her chest is flushed the prettiest, sweetest, lightest shade of red.

It's too intimate. You could lie in it, keep her warm like this until the very earth rotted. All the rough, dirty things you could do to her; it's almost sacrilegious that this is what brings the closest feeling of bliss, peace.

You don't realize how still everything is, all stilled, until Sana's small, quivering legs hook your shoulders; until the end of her toe brushes the shell of your ear, presses. Her spine arches into your mouth and the scent of her cunt - the taste. You could stay here, in your hands, and take, and - and give it right back: take, take, and take.

You eat her cunt until her voice is wrecked raw, your tongue dragging across her ass, over your lower lip, smearing her slickness, tasting her from your fingertips. She doesn't beg and she doesn't tell you what to do, she just spreads her pussy and rides her clit against your lips, moaning unashamedly as she rocks herself on your face, coming on your tongue in two, three hard, heavy pulses.

"Good fucking-"

"-God," you finish for her, and it's all the most sacred kind of silent. Your face buried back in between her thighs, just breathing. Just loving her, and holding her steady, because aftercare's a bigger part of the game than either of you let on, and you know she's ready and safe in your arms by now.

Sana pants and heaves, eyes shut. Bites her lips red as she smiles.

The lines of her face relax as if you're soothing her, tucking her in: good job, I've got you. When she isn't such a tender wreck, it'll happen all over again.

"You know," you say conversationally to Sana, who's lying in the fetal position at the foot of the bed, "you look cute right now."

It's another day, same time-zone, different house, same game. You've never stopped in your pursuit of what exactly a muse looks like: perfect, empty, caught in the bright white exposure of her hotel room lamp; all hard black-and-white, tonal range; in the scratch of the pen and the haze of the film developing, on the translucent material of the photo you'll print. There's the image, there's her breathing-

(There's all the ones you don't even know you'll find: her belly growing large, skin smoothing with child, a birth, a growth, a transformation; the dreams.)

-she's told you as much, but you can never know for certain if she really, truly-

"I'm dying," she grumbles. "You fucked me to death."

"You're bad for my ego." You plop down next to her and rub a hand between her shoulder blades. The curve of her back makes your fingers ache and your throat close up. "How do you feel, really."

Sana takes a moment before she replies.

"Hurt," she finally murmurs, quietly. You hum back a soothing noise. "But good. The best. Everything I've always wanted." She pauses. "Also: dead."

"You said that already." You're rolling your eyes, fondly.

She doesn't reply, just pushes herself up, legs crossing, one hip propped up. She's in a hotel bathrobe and she's supposed to be at a runway in an hour. "Hey."

"Yeah?" you're already tilting your head. She's sitting in the middle of the bed now, legs crossed under her; this is definitely a hotel robe, you've never been around her this long. "What's up?"

Sana just tucks her hair back, bares her shoulders and moves the fabric down the curve of her side.

"I told you," she starts, and her teeth snag on her bottom lip, "I think you're good," and she's suddenly shy: this little fuck-off of yours, of yours. "For me."

"You-" you start, and there's a way that things are and you have the gut instinct, the conviction of it, but-

(Then again, a girl with hair the color of a caramel confection and eyes you could be lost in for eons told you the other day without having to say it, eyes widening in the haze and light and gloss, that she could love you forever.)

"Yes," she answers, because it's your question, that slow smile making her features draw inward, the wrinkle of her nose: yes, it's your decision. That she's telling you the truth. "Exactly."

Actually, to frame this right, you probably ought to have started with her, at the girl with idyllic, copper-spun hair and a thousand-watt smile. It reads main-character energy from fifty feet away: you should've pulled the curtain back and simply said, meet Minatozaki Sana.

Your significant other, sorta - few people on earth know that, for a lot of reasons, and depending on the day, you can't be entirely sure if she wants it that way or if she'd rather scream it from the rooftops; Sana is - well, it's tricky. She's beautiful in a way you never got to conceptualize before, that nobody probably does. She's magnetic. It's effortless. It's gravity, and it's only natural that you'd always want to pull yourself back to her, to orbit her; she'd ask and you'd die, right?

She assumes you'll ask to marry her, someday - you're starting to suspect she's probably right.

And there's a pattern of nuance to how you know her, all the definitions of her - you bring her fresh-cut flowers, you call her princess, you fuck her until she begs, you hold her while she rinses her hair in the shower. You run your mouth, you eat her cunt until she can't walk straight. It's a big role, a broad palette to capture.

Sana, in the morning for example:

Can't drink her coffee black; steals sugar packets from cafes and slips them into her pocket; sleeps so still and so quietly that sometimes it almost scares you, worrying that she’s slipped off into a coma. She likes being doted on, likes getting compliments, likes melting under someone’s full attention as if she's waited for that from you her whole life. She says it directly: listen, okay, don't laugh at me, I get needy.

Or, beneath starlight:

Flitting across hotel balconies, grabbing you by the arm and pulling you into open bars.

She'll buy you a drink and loves when you buy her another, her glass never half-empty. She climbs on top of you and presses her mouth to your ear, sings the song in her head for the next five minutes, hips jolting when she sways a bit too far - a light bulb over a diner counter. Tips the waiter extravagantly, rolls her eyes when you lecture her for spending your money. Smiles at you anyway and takes your hand in hers on the way out the door.

Sana Minatozaki, on herself:

A nightmare. I don’t even know. Seriously. An absolute mess. Completely nuts. (You said you were a 'total fucking catch.') Oh, yeah. I guess that's true too.

(Or maybe, Sana, on you:

Well, when you ask on the flight out, she says something sweetly innocuous. When you press her again, she blushes. When she might be feeling especially adoring, she'll look at you and say, with utmost certainty and uncharacteristic lack of sarcasm, 'I mean, it's you. What more can I say?')

#sana smut #twice smut #sana #twice sana smut #kpop smut #male reader smut

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fairyofshampgyu · 22 days ago

Text

☆ Captive Royalty !

genre: crack, royalty au, fantasy au, smut, fluff

pairing: sub prince ! beomgyu x dom afab poor reader ?

synopsis: desperate times call for desperate measures…so you kidnap the prince of the kingdom and he turns out to be more of a handful than you expected.

warnings: kidnapping !! sub beomgyu, dom reader, beomgyu gets drugged, slight knife play, bondage, ropes, degrading, choking, riding, creampie, hand job, kinda dollification, overstimulation, hair pulling, orgasm denial, finger sucking ? (this sounds really dark from the warnings but it’s kinda unserious and silly and consensual)

word count: 4.6k

Prince beomgyu lets out a long, theatrical sigh, wandering aimlessly and weaving through the bushes and trees of the mystic forest a few metres away from the castle, needing a break from his duties even for just a second of reprieve. The air smelled of damp earth and fragrant wildflowers. Butterflies flitted their pretty wings lazily around him as he stepped over a cluster of bluebell flowers on the mossy floor, where mushrooms were also scattered of all different shapes and colours.

As he ventured deeper into the forest, vines and ivy curled around the tall tree trunks, practically moving and alive, shaking loose pink petals off the branches and falling atop beomgyu’s long hair instead.

He stops when he comes across a small, crystalline pond tucked away, watching as purple dragonflies hover over the surface, lily pads and petals floating on top and, beneath the clear water, koi fishes whose colourful scales practically glowed, swimming and flicking their tails elegantly. Beomgyu stood there for a moment, captivated by the tranquility of the scene. For a small second, it was as if he could finally forget everything.

But then, he mutters to himself, scowling. “I swear to the gods, hate the court, hate those stupid advisors. I hate them all.” Prince beomgyu kicks a pebble rather aggressively into the pond in his frustration.

A tiny fairy emerges out of the water, angrily screaming, hovering and pointing, coming very close to his face high pitched in a language he cannot understand, then vanishes in a puff of glitter.

Beomgyu stares blankly, then merely shrugs.

Instead, he takes a look back at the ethereal scenery, the forest nothing short of enchanted. Closing his eyes, he tilts his head back, basking in the golden sunrays peeking through the canopy, inhaling deeply.

But his moment of peace is abruptly interrupted when he feels a cold, sharp blade pressing against his throat.

Beomgyu’s breath catches, eyes snapping open to meet a much less aesthetic view: A dagger, pressed very intimately underneath his jaw and already practically digging into his adam’s apple, “What the fu-”

“Don’t move.” Came the voice behind him.

Oh my god. He’s going to die. This is where prince beomgyu begins to panic, immediately stripping himself of his jewellery and any valuables, tossing them onto the grass, hastily. “Here! Take it! Take all of it! Please! Just not my face! I’m too handsome to die!”

You stare at him, baffled beneath the mask you were wearing, almost forgetting to keep the dagger steadily pointed at him.

“I’m not robbing you.” You say flatly. “I’m taking taking something far more valuable...”

There was a moment of silence as he looks at you cluelessly.

Then he gasps. “You’re taking my hair?”

“I’m kidnapping you.” Tightening your grip on the dagger, you roll your eyes, grabbing the cloth from your bag, shoving it over his nose and mouth, drugging him.

“Mmfph!” The prince protests, flailing but then his eyes roll back and his limbs go limp, simply falling unconscious.

You warily eyed up the prince who now sat unconsciously tied to a chair in your cottage, head lolling to one side.

Surprisingly, it was much easier kidnapping the prince of the kingdom than you had imagined. He didn’t put up much of a fight, nor were there any guards around him, or any witnesses at all. Quite underwhelming really.

But at least everything was going even smoother than planned, you’d even written the ransom letter and had already sent it off to the king. Now you just had to wait and soon it would all be yours.

You study the prince’s face. You’d never seen him before, too preoccupied and shut away in your cottage in solitude. You didn’t care for them. Besides, what have the royals done for you other than tax you and steal all your money? Why were they even praised anyway? They just sat around doing nothing really. It was practically their fault for your situation right now.

Other than that, the prince was almost achingly pretty. He had quite handsome features, long, thick eyelashes that practically kissed his naturally flushed cheeks, perfectly round, plump lips, messy bangs falling effortlessly over his brows. His regal attire, though a little dirtied from the abduction, still extravagant, embroidered with gold thread and intricate patterns. He looked dainty and fragile all tied up. The prince reminded you of a doll.

A quiet groan breaks the silence and your staring. The prince stirs, lashes fluttering before his pretty eyes slowly blink open, dazed. He takes in his surroundings, strangely without much alarm, gaze sweeping across the decrepit interior of your cottage before landing blankly on your black cat perched menacingly on the window sill. They have a tense, silent stare off before his eyes make their way to you, looking you up and down since he hadn’t seen your face properly before, eyes raking over your figure with a brow raised. He looked almost…amused?

You supposed you didn’t cut the most terrifying figure. No scary scars, no missing eye or other limbs. Just plain clothes, a dagger at your hip, and an unimpressed expression.

The prince speaks up. “Are you part of a rebellion? Do you want to overthrow the monarchy?”

“No.”

He lazily grins, eyes trailing down to the ropes binding him. “Hmm. Then this is… a little provocative, don’t you think?”

“The hell.” You furrow your brows at a loss of words. “No! Ransom. This is for ransom! ”

“Ah.”

“You’re the prince. Your face is probably worth more than my entire life. When your daddy finds out his beloved son has been captured, I’m sure he’ll give me all the money I ask and you’ll go back to your fancy castle.” You lean back, sighing, just imagining how much gold you’ll accumulate soon, “Don’t worry, your kingdom will pay good money to have you back.”

The prince snorts. “Will they?”

You frown. “…Yes?”

He gives you a pitiful look, “I hate to say it but I think they’ll be more relieved than horrified I’m gone, to be completely honest.”

You cross your arms in confusement. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” He says, shifting in his restraints, “that my father finds me to be an insufferable disappointment. If you think he’s going to shell out a fortune to get me back, you’re sorely mistaken. No one in that castle can stand me, too much of a ‘troublemaker’ or something apparently.”

You stare at him. “You’re joking.”

“Wish I was.” The prince replies cheerfully. “You should have kidnapped my brother Prince Huening Kai instead. They would have had a heart attack. If you’d taken him, they’d probably have sent an entire army after you by now.”

“I wasn’t even aware there were two of you.”

“Five actually.” He adds, “Maybe you should have done some research before kidnapping royalty.”

You roll your eyes, “Well, which one are you then?”

“Prince Beomgyu!” He beams, grinning widely, looking proud and smug, his expression entirely too relaxed for someone tied to a chair in a stranger’s cottage.

Maybe this wasn’t going to be as easy as you were beginning to think.

It had been days.

And absolutely nothing.

No guards barging down your door, no royal army marching through the forest, no frantic messenger bird clawing at your window with a desperate letter from the king, promising to give you all the money in the land for his poor son back.

Just pure silence.

You were starting to think either something happened to your messenger bird on the way or gods forbid, they really, truly didn’t want him back.

“I told you.” Beomgyu’s voice was maddeningly smug from where he was still bound to the chair. “Face it. They don’t want me back.”

You put a hand to your hip. “You’re lucky I haven’t gagged you.”

“Oh?” The prince raises a brow, smirking.

You sigh, rubbing your temples. “Gods. You’re disturbed.” You turn away to check the kettle heating by the fire. You were going to need tea. Lots of it.

You take a tea cup in your hand, pouring the earthy, floral brew that you had foraged from the forest, steam rising in swirls and you bring it to your mouth to drink. The warmth seeping through your fingers and into your chest, making you slightly more calmed about this whole maddening situation. Beomgyu’s eyes are on you the entire time. You supposed you could give him some too. “Here. Have some tea.”

“Can’t exactly help myself, can I?”

You huff, rolling your eyes, walking over to him, bringing a cup to his soft lips for him to sip and he looks up at you with a teasing glint in his eyes almost like he’s heavily enjoying that you’re doing this for him.

He swallows, furrowing his brows and smacking his lips together, savouring the taste. “Ooh Peasant tea. I like this. It’s very different to how all of my many chefs have made it for me.”

You cross your arms, nodding in approval, “It’s the best. Practically survive on it.”

He seems amused by your love for tea, nodding, sipping some more until he’s finished and you place the cup back on your counter.

You study him intently, intrigued. “So, why were you sulking around so much by the pond, kicking rocks at fairies before I—well, pointed a dagger at your throat.” There’s no easy way to describe the situation.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to! How was I supposed to know there was a fairy there?” Beomgyu protests, finding it humorous. “But, they’re forcing me to marry some princess from some other kingdom. I don’t even know her. I don’t want to get married at all.” He grimaces, staring at the ground with furrowed brows. “I hate being a prince. I have no freedom or say in anything. It’s so suffocating. I must act in a certain way, all these duties, now marriage. I don’t want any of it.” Beomgyu looks uncharacteristically and genuinely upset about it, the most sad you’ve seen him, and that’s you holding him captive.

You blink, then almost laugh. “Wow. Poor you. You really have the worst life. Must be so hard having all your meals cooked and servants at your beck and call, sleeping in a massive bed with silk sheets. In a castle. Truly.”

The prince furrows his brows at your mocking tone. “You don’t get it. It’s not all that great, you know.”

Your scoff, crossing your arms. “No, I get it. you’re incredibly privileged for those to be your only problems.”

He sulks at you, shrugging. “I guess so. I’d still rather have your life though, a peaceful, mundane, peasant life.”

You give him a flat look, nearly amused at his comical, out of touch words. “It’s far from peaceful. I’m incredibly in debt at the moment and owe money to lots of people, scary people I can’t even begin to repay. I’m doing this because I need the ransom money. You wouldn’t last a day in the real world.”

“I would!” He heavily pouts at you, taking offence. It’s almost endearing. “Anyway honestly, being held hostage has been much better than any day at the castle.”

You shake your head at the prince, sighing.

Beomgyu talked. A lot. About the castle gossip, about the ridiculous scandals of the court, all their carefully polished lies sold to the commoners, about all his other brothers, Prince Yeonjun’s scandalous new affair.

You were very entertained, the tea you make, since it seems to be one of the only things he likes, and these conversations weirdly happening regularly.

“I swear to every god in existence.” Beomgyu had said, with all the endearing dramatic flair of someone telling ghost stories with a candle, “Prince Yeonjun was caught HALF NAKED, sneaking out of the royal astrologer’s tower.”

“No way.” You gaped, sipping on your tea.

He grins, victorious, revelling in your shocked expression. “Swear on my crown. I don’t even know why I’m the one they call troublesome.”

Somewhere along the way, you’d begun to like having beomgyu around, in a way that both irritated and intrigued you.

He was for sure a bratty prince, complaining endlessly about almost everything, the chair, food, the ropes digging into his skin (you had tied them more gently), dramatically whining about a small splinter he got because of the chair (you actually took it out for him and gave him a bandage).

But…for all his whining, very strange comments, and being a royal pain in the ass, (and though you wouldn’t admit it aloud), the strange companionship he offered, despite the messed up predicament, was starting to feel…maybe comforting? when you’d had nothing in the past but your cat, living alone in your cottage.

He’d become company. Real company. It had been so long since you’d had that.

You had one thing in common, you both hated your realities and wanted to get away. And you could, if this damn king would send you the ransom money and come collect his son. You’re honestly astonished. Would they even come for him? What were you supposed to do with him if they never come?

“Ughh.” Beomgyu groans dramatically, wiggling his tied hands pathetically. “I’m suffering.” He says with such an exaggerated pout it was almost impressive.

You turn around to look at him, wondering what it was now.

“My bangs are all in my eyes. I can’t see anything and I can’t move them away.” He blinks at you. Then, very deliberately, batts his lashes, those ridiculously long, doll-like lashes. “You kidnapped me.” Beomgyu says pointedly, deadpan. “The least you could do is brush my hair out of my eyes. Basic courtesy.”

You raise a brow. The audacity. But with a long sigh and contemplation, you wandered over, standing before him. He blinks up at you, the brown strands of his hair over his eye, genuinely a little pathetic and silly looking.

You brush your fingers through his messy strands gently, absentmindedly. His hair was so soft. His pretty brown eyes locked with yours, eyes following your face, unblinking, unusually quiet for once. Close.

And gods, was he pretty.

Your touch lingered longer than probably necessary, tucking the last of his bangs behind his ear, fingertips brushing against his warm skin. You swear the tips of his ears were pinker than usual too.

You finally step back, heart doing something inconvenient in your chest, you could only scowl at him.

Your kidnapping had been, by all accounts, a complete and utter failure. It had not been the most fearsome hostage situation either, your intimidation tactics quite lacklustre, no violence, no torturing, and no damn money.

Even your cat had gotten used to him by now, seemingly liking him, curling up often in his lap, purring contently and napping. And worst of all, You were getting used to him too.

The fire crackles softly in the hearth, casting a warm orange glow in your small cottage. The evening had settled in, quiet and still, except for the rhythmic, repetitive sound of your knife chopping into carrots on the cutting board for a stew.

“Well,” Beomgyu drawls from his usual spot, arms bound behind his back and chair, voice cutting through through the ambience. “you know. You’re not exactly what I expected.”

“Why, disappointed?” Your eyes don’t leave the cutting board, still chopping and unfazed.

His lips quirk into a lazy grin. “Hardly.”

That makes you pause mid-slicing the vegetables, turning around with an incredulous look, “Are you flirting with me?”

“Perhaps. You’re easy on the eyes.” The fire flickers and reflects in beomgyu’s deep brown as you as you stare at him and you catch mischievous glint in them too.

“I’ve quite literally kidnapped you.” You fold your arms.

He shrugs in his restraints, “I know you won’t hurt me. You haven’t tortured me once. Not even a little.”

A slow smile makes its way across your lips, brow raising at what you hear, amused. Instead, you reach for your dagger, making your way towards beomgyu and his gaze follows your every movement.

“Oh?” You slowly flick some of the locks of his soft hair out his face with the sharp tip of the dagger, his breath catching in his throat at that, eyes slightly widening. Then you trace the blade leisurely along his cheek, the prince shivering at the feeling of the steel on his skin. “How are you so sure?” Beomgyu swallows, breath hitching almost looking scared for a second, but then he smirks, thrilled, eyes never leaving yours and yours never leaving his. The two of you locked in a stare now, the eye contact, quite intense.

“You like me.” Beomgyu simply grins impossibly wider.

“Like you?” You echo, sceptically, scoffing at his words. With deliberate slowness, you trace the dagger across his jawline, advancing down his pretty neck, pressing the sharp edge down a little hard—not enough to cut but enough for him to feel it and dip into his soft flesh, his skin prickling up and chest rising and falling, all tensed in anticipation. “Are you sure you don’t like me?”

You point at the now growing tent in his pants that was too hard to ignore. A violent red flush creeps over his cheeks, embarrassed as you cast a deliberate, judging glance downwards with an arched brow. How incredibly absurd. You’re pointing a knife at him and he’s getting turned on.

He purses his lips together for a second, adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows but then he runs his mouth again, voice a little breathless, but he grins regardless, “What are you going to do about it?”

Where on earth does he gain this confidence from?

“Leave you. That’s disgusting.” You say, pulling your dagger away in theatrical repulse and moving away from him.

Beomgyu instantly splutters in panic, thrashing helplessly against his bonds, pathetically pleading, eyes wide. “B-but! Wait! Please. It hurts!”

You smile, satisfied, stepping closer to him once again. That’s more like it. “Why should I?”

He just looks up at you so severely desperate, so pitiful. Your eyes flicker down to his slightly wobbly lips and then back up at his panicked eyes. And as if drawn by some invisible force, definitely not of your own doing, you grab and tug at one of the ropes, impulsively leaning down to kiss him, he kisses back instantly, fervently, surging forward and leaning into the kiss as much as his bindings would allow, lips crashing together, all heated and messy, needy and sloppy, beomgyu whines softly into your mouth and gods help you, it does things to you. You bite down on his plump lower lip until he gasps, shoving your tongue down his, dominating the kiss and he just lets you.

You then pull away, he still tries to chase your mouth back even when you pull away but you move to his throat, trailing your lips down his neck, ghosting over, he tilts his head back obediently, warm breath sending him shivering before you bite and suck harshly.

“Please.” He pants, delirious, so worked up already, eyes squeezed shut. “Touch me. Please.”

How could you refute? He squirms in his chair when you begin to palm him through his pants, already embarrassingly hard, gasping so loudly, jaw going slack just from that. Beomgyu bucks helplessly into your touch as you continue to teasingly grind your palm, kissing and sucking on his neck again, he’s all just needy whines and whimpers, pleas falling from his lips for a little more.

You love his reactions and the pathetic noises he makes, so worked up from a little friction on his clothed dick. You want more of it, you want to break the pretty little prince. You sit in his lap, unzipping his pants before him, cock just as pretty as every other part of him, leaky, wet and red, you brush your thumb over his cute tip, spreading the precum teasingly slow, watching his face.

“Oh…” Beomgyu looks down himself, brows knitting together, shuddering and groaning softly.

The sound when you wrap your hand around his cock and glide your hand up and down is impossibly loud over the crackling of the fire in your cottage, sticky and squelchy and the prince already seems far gone from the slow pumping, unraveling at the first stroke, pupils blown wide, glossy lips parted. How dirty.

“Did you seriously get hard from your captor threatening you with a dagger? You’re fucking sick, beomgyu.” You ridicule him in a faux saccharine tone, hand pumping his dick faster, twisting around the tip that he’s panting now, his head dropping forward, resting and falling on your shoulder, you bring your other hand to stroke at his hair. You can tell he’s close, moaning out prettily.

He still manages to bite back though like the brat he is so clearly he’s not that much of a mess you like you want him to be, he lifts his head back to look at you. “You’re the one who kidnapped me. You’re sick.”

“Fine then. If I’m so sick, I’ll stop.” You still your movements on his dick, pulling your hand away. He wails, loudly crying at that, trying so hard to move, pulling uselessly at the ropes to chase your hand but he can’t.

“No! Please. I’ll die.” There he goes being so dramatic again, tears brimming in his panicked doe brown eyes, hyperventilating. The fact that this is the most distressed he’s gotten being kidnapped is honestly concerning. “Please,” He rasps, wrecked, dazed “fuck me.”

You cruelly laugh at the sight, tutting. “Such crude words coming from a prince...”

He just whines frustratedly in response, exasperatedly frowning like he’s having a tantrum.

“Aw. What a poor little prince.” You mockingly coo at him, stroking his cheek but he leans into it anyway, yearning for more, wanting any sort of touch from you now, you drag your teeth against the lobe of his cute pink ear licking, goading him. He shivers at that, sucking in his breath.

“You’re torturing me!” Beomgyu comically pouts.

“I thought you said I wasn’t torturing you at all.”

“Well now you are. You’re killing me. I’m going to die.”

“This is what you call torturing?” You chuckle incredulously.

“Yeah. Fuck me now.” Beomgyu looks like he might combust if you so much as deny him another second, his cock twitching in the open air, painfully red and glistening. You haven’t touched him in what? Seconds? But it feels like an eternity to him. “Just…please—”

You don’t even wait to hear more of his insufferable begging, you lift your skirt and hips up, pushing your panties to the side and sinking down on his dick unceremoniously, it nearly knocks the wind out of him, gasping sharply, mouth hanging open.

“Holy shit.” He groans. “You’re, oh my god—”

Beomgyu throws his head back, practically going cross eyed at the feeling of your warm tight pussy around him. You start to bounce on his cock continuously, riding him and holding onto his shoulders roughly to stabilise yourself., beomgyu moaning shamelessly loud, high pitched and strangled like a girl, dumb and dazed, drooling onto you at the feeling of your pussy.

You bring your hand to his cheek, kissing beomgyu hard, hands tangling in his long hair, tugging, fucking him mercilessly as he sinfully and filthily moans into your mouth. Then he pulls away.

“Choke me.” Beomgyu licks his swollen lips, looking at you sexily, eyes half lidded.

“You’re perverted.” But your hands wrap around the column of his delicate, pretty neck, now marked and mauled. Beomgyu exhales a shaky breath like it was all he wanted.

“Ah…harder.” Beomgyu gulps, pretty Adam’s apple moving as he does so.

You squeeze harder around his neck and he hisses, furrowing his brows, face scrunching up gorgeously, a pretty vein in his neck popping out. His eyes roll to the back of his head, gasping for air, letting out breathy noises, face and neck flushed, you press down just a little more, still bouncing on his cock, deliberately clenching around him. You feel him twitching inside you and then he cums, whole body convulsing, spilling his load inside your pussy.

But you don’t stop, bringing your hand to his shoulders roughly again, digging your nails into him, fucking him through it. He whimpers painfully, straining against the ropes, but he can only helplessly take whatever you give him.

“stop!—ah! too much, too sensitive…” Beomgyu sniffles and sobs, gasping at the overstimulation, babbling incoherently.

“No it’s not. You were begging to be fucked, now it’s too much for you?” You tighten your grip on his shoulders.

He’s about to whine and complain but you take two of your fingers, stuffing them in his mouth to shut him up, he sorrowfully sucks on them like a slut instead, moaning around them whorishly, gazing up at you with teary watery eyes and his pretty wet swollen lips. Gods. Just looking at the state of him, pretty, writhing, helplessly tied up, it’s making you go insane. He still looks like a doll, face red and rosy, dolly lashes thick fluttering and clumped together with tears, soft hair now all messy, bangs damp and all sweaty. A wrecked, cracked porcelain doll, your doll, yours to ruin and play with. He looks divine. What a whore of a prince.

You bounce on his dick mercilessly, riding him faster and faster and faster to get yourself to reach your high too, bringing your finger to your clit, rubbing. One final look at beomgyu’s face, pitiful doe eyes and sucking on your fingers and that does it, cumming around his twitching dick. With a muffled scream and sob, beomgyu’s cumming again, looking like he’s going to pass out, spurting and shooting more of his warm and sticky white ropes of cum into you, cumming so much, it’s all creamy, completely milking him dry, his whole body shaking beneath you and his chest is heaving like a drowning man, gasping for air.

Only then do you reach for your dagger again, slicing the rope, slithering to the ground. Beomgyu falls forwards instantly, collapsing into your arms, gripping and clinging to you, trembling like a leaf, hands roaming all over you and hugging you tight, the first time he could actually touch you. And beomgyu kisses you so desperately over and over, like he’s starved, hands shaking, clutching your clothes, you keeping his cheeks feeling equally starved.

But your kissing is interrupted by a messenger bird throwing a scroll with an unmistakable royal crest through your window. You get up to read it:

An armed procession will arrive by nightfall to collect our Prince Beomgyu in exchange for the agreed ransom.

— His Majesty, the King.

“Are you…going to return me back then?” Beomgyu says quietly, like he already knows the answer and is fearing it, his shoulders are slumped, already looking miserable and like a devastated puppy, thinking about having to return back to living in the castle.

You think for a moment. You fold the scroll neatly, setting in on the table. “No.”

Beomgyu blinks, “No?”

You smirk. “I’m taking something far more valuable.”

Beomgyu’s eyes widen, and then stars. His eyes practically lighting up, sparkling, you could practically see his tail wagging if he had one.

You both start giggling like idiots.

By the time the army reaches your cottage that evening, it is already abandoned.

And somewhere, gods only knows where, you’re running hand in hand through the forest, longe gone, cat tucked under one arm, and just enough tea packed to last the journey.

Please actually reblog !!!!!! and leave comments !!!! guys if you like the fic. It’s really appreciated and so nice tysm !<3🙏💕🌷🌷! It’s incredibly discouraging and disappointing when fics have such little reblogs. At least send an anon in the inbox if you don’t want to rb, don’t just like. Feedback is always appreciated it makes writers want to actually write more :)

A/n: do not ask what this is 😭 I know it makes zero sense but thats kinda the point it was just supposed to be unhinged unserious crack smut 😍🫶

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