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comfortless · 2 months

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Offering you a prompt because I know you could make it perfect! ( ๑‾̀◡‾́)✨ You know about Minoan Bull Leaping? What about that with a hybrid Köni?

content/warnings: 18+. minors do not interact. König is a man here!!: ears and a tail and a set of horns but that’s it!, fem (afab) reader, nondescript animal death, codependency and a little possessive behavior, reader gets injured, historical inaccuracies, one-sided worship, mentions of violence, reader is a virgin for three seconds, cunnilingus, smut.

word count: 11.5k.

You’ve practiced this, and still the tension and nervousness bleeds through you, courses like a steady river under skin and curves around bone. The bulls are so much larger than the fallen trees and heavy stones you’ve danced around and over for practice, and the nights spent tempting them with treats had never been enough to prepare. Twigs and jagged edges are nothing in comparison to the horns of very alive and breathing beasts; petting their heads is far simpler than prancing over their horns.

The bulls wait in the field, grazing, sturdy monoliths amidst a sea of green below the warm light of the sun. It kisses every inch of skin, highlights the determination and giddiness on the faces of others and lines your frown in shadow. Three feral bulls for two men and a woman far more practiced than you; a rugged, adolescent thing with his horns barely poking through waits just for you, misplaced from the herd and huffing indignantly some distance from the rest.

You watch the others go, one by one, as they skip and somersault toward their gruffer partners. Your hand rises up the expanse of your robe to brush over the jewels layered along your throat. Their movements are rushing water, fluid and perfect, so elaborate and pretty that you fear even blinking will cause you to miss the most important details.

And then they reach their bulls.

Some huff, one tilts his head in curiosity. An attempt to gore, perhaps, except… these things are not vicious, only happy creatures. They know the importance of the dance just as you do. When the curious one does accept the grasp of a man’s hands over his horns, you feel yourself beginning to walk, possessed by the need to claim your own bull and perform just as they do.

The show that you put on is less graceful, but does not lack heart. A trip on your first somersault that sends you into the grass, righted immediately when you hear your bull huff only paces away. You laugh, coo, and chirp as you approach with more balance. The sparkling jewels dance over your skin just as the others dance over their bulls, leap after leap, and the animals remain calm.

Yours is no different. He allows you to graze your fingertips over the soft fur of his back, does not so much as flinch when your press your palms flat over the sides of his face. The horns poking out of his skull are rounded at their tips, not yet properly grown in. You kiss the dip between his eyes and tell him how special this performance must be. To tame a wild animal is something divine in itself, but to tame a bull takes someone truly virtuous.

The grass tickles along your calves, the sun feels so warm and lovely against your face. You sigh in contentment as your steps lead you back, arms raised in preparation to jump. The others cheer you on, guide you with their voices as they wait next to their animals. The scent of nectar and pine lulls you to comfort, allows you the courage that you lacked initially; knees bend and arms raise, your eyes locked on the sprouting horns.

With your posture immaculate, you take your first leap.

The sun catches on something tar black and glimmering waiting in the trees just out past the pasture. Two tall horns springing from either side of a head, the stature of a man, just as your fingers curl over the calf before you’s much smaller horns.

The heart in your chest ceases its pounding for a moment, and your eyes must have widened the very same as a child’s would when encountering something sweet or shiny to treasure.

There’s a man attached to those horns in the tree line. Though you could not make out his face beneath all of the shade and foliage, you were so certain that it must have been a man.

A man larger than any man in Crete. Impossible and imposing.

The tumble that follows this reverie is what breaks away any hope of this being a lovely day.

Your concentration was broken the very second that the creature showed itself, and it was far too late to stop even when you were no longer a part of what was occurring between you and your sable-furred calf. The animal senses the not-right about the situation, takes it as a cue to move just as you were lifted over him and sends you sprawled out into the blooming wildflowers. The earth at your back, the sky to your front, and the pain takes its time to trickle in like winter chill and crawl up from your soles to the base of your neck.

The thin gold of your necklace must have snapped, because one of the jewels lies over your middle now, and several others have been left for dirt and birds to claim in the grass.

It’s your bull that comes to worry over you first, his wet nose nudges at your cheek when the scent of blood from broken skin taints the air with iron. It’s just a scrape along your palm, sullied by the peak of a jagged rock lying buried just below the soft soil of the pasture. The blood runs in small streams when you marvel at the wound, held up keeping sun from your eyes.

His coarse tongue finds its way to your hair, retrieves the flowers from it as if his stomachs could not wait for the consoling to be done to be fed. In your stupor, you almost want to call the poor thing stupid, but you only tell him that he’s done as well as you hoped.

You’ll dance with him again, you promise.

The injury takes time to recover from, even with the most patient of healers seated at your bedside. He reminds you that a woman of your standing is something special in herself. Proud, noble, and meant to be wed in the coming months each time he layers salve over the scrapes and the expanse of bruising along your back. Your linens are changed by the slaves of your household, new jewels provided in abundance and placed around your neck as though you even need to look presentable now, bruised and stuck in your bed.

No one knows what you saw, not really. You aren’t even certain what that vision was. They whisper of madness when you bring it up. The Minotaur remains in the labyrinth, far away from here and bedded down in the dark. Men don’t possess the horns of bulls, and you must have damaged your head too, because no one believes a word you speak about it, about him.

Your mistake, you learned, was probably what spurred your poor calf to be chosen for sacrifice. A bad omen forfeit, maybe. So young and gentle, and now gone. The soft fur off his ears and the quivering of his nose wouldn’t be felt again, and worse still…What if you were not meant to leap with them at all?

There is fruit and barley served up onto a plate made of bone as you’re ordered to eat by your healer. People can be crueler than bulls, you think to yourself; you haven’t even got the desire to eat after hearing such a thing. You’re bleeding from the heart when the first bite is forced into your mouth, gut twisting and fingernails digging into soft linen.

“I promised…” Your voice is muffled by a particularly fat portion of plum. It goes ignored by the withering old healer that tilts your head back and strokes your jaw with a soft palm to encourage you to swallow.

“Eat.”

And when you don’t, when you spit it back onto the plate, you’re rewarded with another bite and further encouragement as your sobs fill the room. It should be expected, not as hard as bone or as tough as the skin of the fruit when you’re finally offered sweet wine to swallow it down. You shouldn’t be a mess over an animal who served his purpose well and would be heralded as some savior for giving some clumsy woman trust and a chance.

It’s just that there’s so much more to it, for you. Patches of purple and swelling are much easier to spot than guilt and other turmoils.

Your first should have been beautiful, should have left those watching with stars dancing in their irises. You couldn’t even handle a calf, and you feel more pitiful and helpless the longer that you harp on those thoughts.

You rest and have dreamless bouts of slumber. You walk alongside the healer, leaning against the old man for support when you find the pain is still very much there, stinging and vile. The people about the city always smile to you, offer you flowers and sweet fruit and ask when you’ll be well enough to dance again.

Often, it even soothes the ache that they can’t see well enough. Provides some hope that, yes, you can return to what you’ve always hoped to do, display your grace and strength and find some place in a flowery pasture before the day of your wedding. You’ve heard of women tearing a place that makes them bleed on horseback, how getting the pain over and done with then has made consummation far easier when that day comes for them. Maybe that could happen for you too.

You ask to hear the story of the Minotaur more times than should be appropriate from the slaves of your household. Some of them are foreign, not entirely sure of just how it should be told. You find yourself especially fond of one of them who twists her words to make everything seem honey.

“…I like to think that he wasn’t alone down there,” she finishes on her second retelling of the night. The first had ended with a separate possibility altogether, one that saddened you to the core.

“Do you?”

“Yes,” she laughs, taking the comb of carved bone to your hair, gently running it through each tangle provided by your pillow from lying in bed for the entire day. “Maybe he had friends or…”

“A wife?,” you question in amusement. Bulls didn’t take wives, even if they were part manâ€¦

“He is a man. Surely he had a woman,” she laughs again, bright and giddy, and follows it with a shrug. “You said that you saw him. Maybe it’s a sign.”

“I didn’t say it was him,” you almost wail in embarrassment. It was true that you had endlessly questioned and pondered for the past few weeks, speculated on what may or may not have been there, beneath the trees when you took your fall. For some odd reason, your fascination with that creature had ignited a flame someplace in your chest, growing ever brighter with each day that passed. “He didn’t have a bull’s head. Only the horns.”

She plucks at your hair with the comb a little longer in silence before setting it aside and casting you an almost fretful glance. “That sounds scary…”

“Oh,” you sigh. She’s right, of course. There were plenty of terrible things described with those attributes. But… if bulls didn’t scare you, then surely bullmen could not be any worse. “He didn’t hurt anyone though.”

“But you did get hurt,” the girl reminds you sympathetically.

You swallow dryly, and at last decide to put these fantasies aside. Your injuries were almost healed in full, and the last thing that you needed was for everyone to think that you were not simply wounded, but crazy too. A mad woman wouldn’t find a husband, and you were not a cow meant to be fantasizing over bullmen. The place you were given since birth was that of noble standing, a woman worth her weight in pearls and gold, not meant for fields and horns.

When morning rises and the yellow-red glow of the sun pokes its way through your window, you find you’re able to stand properly without the old man’s help to keep you upright.

You wash your face with the water from the clay pot in the corner, smile to yourself when you dab carmine onto your cheeks and smear it with the palm of your hand to look the part of some blushing dove.

Your robe is clean and soft when its pulled over you and fastened, delightfully comfortable when there’s no more bruising to irritate. Incense is lit, and you immerse yourself in what is before you rather than in shadow.

There’s a clamoring in the street below your window as you finish preparing for the day, both cheers and shouts of fear that stir both confusion and trepidation in your belly. It takes some time before you can coax yourself into taking a peek, find the strength in your trembling legs to look upon what may very well be the final march for a man deemed worthy of execution or perhaps some other misfortune.

Everything is painted honey and gold over the chalked clay of the buildings and the smooth stones layered over the streets.

There are women fleeing, a few cowardly men accompanying them. Children walk backwards or affix themselves to high walls to stare back at what’s being led by soldiers clutching thick lines of woven rope.

The thing that follows behind them leaves your heart in your throat, because it… he, is no prisoner or omen.

The bullman from your endless daydreaming walks with his arms fastened behind him, thick tail flicking in irritation at his backside, soft auburn ears fold back against his head.

The face, closer now, intrigues you the most, because as you’ve claimed endlessly: he only looks the part of a man. Some rugged barbarian, for certain, but still he does not bare any resemblance to the Minotaur or any other beast from the tales and songs. Though his nose is crooked, and pale scarring layers in abundance over tanned flesh, he looks almost sweet. There’s a gentleness about him that betrays the strangeness of his silhouette from before.

And he bleeds crimson like any other man, from a wound dug out in his shoulder where a spear must have pierced him. The blood along his chest has not even had the time to dry.

The poor man is bleeding and naked, not a scrap of cloth to conceal him any place, not even where his hair curls above his loins.

You imagine what the healer and slave girl must think now, when the subject of your endless ramblings is out on display for the entire city. Whether monster or forgotten god, the bullman is here, and in your haze of thought you will yourself to storm out into the street. There are hisses of confusion and fear all filtered and feathering on the air, many voices, but what is worse are the screams.

He doesn’t even possess it within him to look afraid, only terribly annoyed or maybe even somber. It was difficult to tell by the lack of expression on his face. His eyes are sad, but his lips are pressed into the barest line. The only indication that he feels anything at all is the swishing of his tail, a tell of anger in bulls. Maybe in men baring their resemblance, too.

“Where are you taking him?,” you demand, a shrill cry from your doorstep.

No answer comes your way from the soldiers at his side.

“Please…”

The words fail you as you find yourself stepping in front of this march. Ten soldiers to keep one man in a hold, it was ridiculous. Though he towered over them and possessed horns sharp enough to gore, to see him like this… It all stirred so much emotion within you that you almost think you must have really injured something in your skull, because the city spins around you and your eyes sting fiercely.

Every step halts when you begin to sob right there in the street like a bereaved wife finding out her husband has been tortured or killed in some distant land. Even the bullman seems intrigued by your tears. The quiet blue of his eyes flits from what stands beyond you to your face, puffed and slick with tears. Why cry for a man you do not know?, he seems to ask wordlessly. Why throw yourself out in the midst of danger?

“… my bull is dead, so I would like to…” To dance with this one. To see past the abomination of what he was and maybe cherish him in the way he deserved without deserving.

His ears prick forward, and he huffs something whispering and foreign in his tongue. Just one word that you’re uncertain of the meaning of, probably demeaning considering that you had called him an animal, not man. But he speaks. He speaks and that is enough for the soldiers to exchange cautious glances from the titan they lead to the curious display of the crying woman in front of them.

“You want to dance with this bull?,” one asks, both amusement and disbelief painting each syllable.

You nod your head, weak but fiercely resolute in your wish.

Not “this bull”, but perhaps “this god”.

You’re both stripped bare of any defenses, fates left in the hands of men who only know to kill and fuck. Somehow luck shimmers through, because you’re presented with one of the ropes a soldier carries. It’s offered to you with a stiff, callused hand, dropped unceremoniously into the palm that rises up to wait.

You walk beside your bull, not where you would rather lead him but where the other men urge for you to go. People watch on with curious stares, and you know most assuredly that when your healer hears of this new derangement, you will suffer another fortnight in bed with herbs and prayers over your head.

The bull watches you the entire time with a stare that lacks any emotion. The beast could be grateful, humiliated, or considering ripping you apart the moment his binds were undone and you wouldn’t have the slightest idea of it until he was upon you. What’s stranger still is that you don’t fear him. He looks to you the entire time and your hand clutching the rope does not tremble. Your pulse races, but only with something beyond fear, something an ordinary man has never gifted to you.

The gated pasture is bears a cool breeze when you enter, you watch as one of the men ties your new bull to a post and tells you that he is wicked, but the only crime he’s being accused of is being what he is.

“You’re hurt,” you assess a little dumbly when everyone has paraded away. The grass stains the white linen you wear as you sink to your knees at the titan’s side.

You’ve nothing to tend to his wound with. Dirt is smudged into the divide in his flesh with gentle swipes of your thumb, a strip ripped from your robe when you try to stop the bleeding further. He hisses when you fasten it tight, shoots you a glare that both makes stars fall in your eyes and sets a stampede to rush in your heart. Your heart, you think, but really it’s something else. You feel hot all over and it’s the stupidest thing.

“I know, I know..,” you mumble as you tie the cloth, straighten yourself out and cover the expanse of your thigh that’s been revealed as you settle back into place. “Can you move it?”

“Yes.”

It hardly registers that he’s freed himself somewhat until a massive hand curls tightly around your wrist. The touch is not at all gentle, it’s probing, the tip of each digit leaving small curved indentations in your flesh, intent on keeping you thoroughly in place.

“Why aren’t you afraid?” His voice comes as an odd grumbling, seemingly unused for some time. It isn’t deep, either, which comes as the most jarring thing about all of this. It’s so pleasant, that even with his iron hold you find yourself smiling as a flurry of affection stirs between your breasts.

Because I was right, you yearn to say, but hold your tongue for fear of seeming too brazen and less subservient than you should be, catering to a god you’ve never even heard of. Both man and bull, something divine and strikingly handsome even with his soft features.

“Should I be? Will you curse me..?,” you ask, softening your grin to glance up at him through your lashes. Demure and flirtatious before you even think to catch yourself. A maiden should be more cautious dealing with ordinary men or things not yet known, but even when your expression reverts to one of mere curiosity, it seems too late.

His nostrils flare as he regards you; then, his hand shifts upward to stroke at your bare shoulder, fingertips move to dance over your clavicle. The hand comes to rest beneath your jaw, a thumb carefully brushing over your chin. Then, he withdraws all at once, turns his head with a huff of breath. He doesn’t bellow as the other males in the pasture, does little to seem more cow than man in your presence. Perhaps it’s a practiced courtesy: to appear more human than the additions crowning his head suggest.

“Dummes mädchen.” He doesn’t tell you what that means, and his voice canters off to silence when you push and prod to ask.

He doesn’t budge when you ask where he’s come from, some distant land across the sea you even speculate. You ask him what he is in name, and in turn his ears seem to lower, flatten further, as though he were trying to hide them altogether. There wasn’t much he could do about the horns, though.

The bull barely even returns your shy glances, the only indication that he knows and rather likes that you’re still seated at his side is the flare of pink that rises from his throat to settle upon his cheeks, the way his jaw tightens and loosens when you speak.

“What is your name?,” you ask him when the silence grows too much. You’re starting to feel beads of sweat prick at your skin from the glow of the summer sun above, and more than anything you want some closeness, some proof that maybe your listless life is not a total loss. Earning a god’s favor would only be too lovely, the perfect cure for the unnamed thing that ails you. “So that I might worship you properly?”

That prompts a response.

He turns to you with a forced stoicism, one that does little to subdue the way his eyes widen and his face burns. Being jabbed at and held captive like an animal would make any man more than a little unhappy or wary, but your words dissolve that into smoke in an instant. He tells you his name in a keening sort of voice, one reserved for wolves or agitated horses.

“König.”

You repeat it, once, twice.

It sounds funny and foreign, too simple for what he appears to be. You tell him your own when he doesn’t ask, repeat it just the same so he remembers his only acolyte. Someone so cute for a god of beasts or maybe even good harvests.

You wanted to pry further, have every secret expelled from his tongue, unite in words and quell that horrid, demanding passion. It’s why men run way to brothels, you supposed. Excitement and the allure of something pretty to stake a claim into… but you’re a maiden rather than some feather-headed soldier.

“When you’re better, we will dance,” you declare with a hope that he might understand. “My first offering to you.”

König stirs, rumbles someplace in the expanse of chest. His hair curls there in the widest patch, you note, trails down right to thighs that make brick resemble only soft clay. You’ve never openly ogled a man like this, and it doesn’t feel shameful, not when you’re convinced you already have an understanding here.

You couldn’t imagine he would crawl on his knees for you to prance over him like a yearling deer, bellow like a proper animal when you took his horns in hand. The ugly, ivory prongs about his head looked too dangerous anyhow. One slip… you didn’t want to imagine what would happen then.

“… Richtig.” Then, “What do I give to you?”

His question confuses you fully, because the way he speaks it does not seem curious at all. As if there’s already a resolution in the words. No clothing, no weapons, not even a coin. The only thing present and available is what sits between his thighs, a daunting pillar. He asks only for a consent to what he does not bring out in words, only hinted at from the way his gaze drags up from your throat to your eyes.

The strangest mating rite from the strangest man of all…

You don’t ask him about that.

You let the words hang in the air for a stretch of time. Then, you fetch him some water from the creek just past the field. You untie the binds still shackling him to the fence post as he drinks from the shallow bowl. He laps at it like a dog, furrows his brow a little when you’re caught staring again.

There’s too much to look at to entirely separate yourself from him. And he speaks so oddly it’s difficult to distract him with conversation. So you settle to admire, and he does so in turn. When you find yourself watching the way his chest puffs with each intake of breath, his stare only maps you the same, mimicking or appraising.

He grunts, too; flicks an ear when he stares down at your lap and embarrassment immediately floods you when you realize that his senses are not entirely human, either.

You fold your hands into your lap and part your lips to speak again, to maybe ask him why he came here at all to serve as some distraction from the way he appraised your hips with that dreadful stare.

“When?,” he interrupts immediately, casting his dish aside and straightening up to look down upon you. Exacting some misplaced wrath, you assume. Let a woman leap over him and maybe have his freedom after. He just wants it over with, and you can’t blame him at all.

“I told you… when you’re better.”

That must not have been the right thing to say, because his injured arm is the one he gathers you with, brings you up and over him to press your chest to his and glare down at you. The glow of the setting sun seems dull by comparison to the ember in his eyes.

“I am fine.”

The calendars have been a blur since you fell. You huff and pout in thought, trying to think in spite of the way the closeness has you feeling dumb and dizzy.

“A few days..,” comes your answer, quiet and apologetic. “I’m nearly certain.”

König sighs and you feel it flutter your hair, the warmth on your neck. His arm drifts from around you, as if to signal that you could depart at any moment. Whatever had possessed you now leaves you in place, flustered and miserably infatuated. It pains you that he only seems exasperated by this entire ordeal rather than enthused, but he seems to soften somewhat when you don’t bolt away immediately. The tension leaves his shoulders slowly, and the summer sky of his eyes is placid instead of burning.

He could strike you down at any moment, leave you gored out here in the grass with common bulls, destroy the fence and maybe all of the people in the city too… but he seems intent on just keeping this silly oath and having you seated here.

“They caught me when I came to find you,” he says, blunt and careless, as if seeking out a woman he saw once from across a field is just a common thing to do. The very same as worshiping some creature driven out from the forest. “I saw you. Then you fell.”

“You were looking for me?” Your words are expressed with shaky intakes of breath, nerves alight with both love and caution. Led toward you by want, a thing you both seemed to feel.

He goes utterly stiff at that, but grits his teeth softly as his gaze casts down to where you’re seated in his lap.

A chance meeting… or maybe it was something as wonderful as fate after all.

You looked the part of lovers already, and perhaps that’s made him shy… but bulls don’t get shy, and König is no exception here, because his hand immediately rises to lift the robe covering you, drifts the linen up to reveal the soft fabric of your loincloth.

“Yes,” he grunts, staring down at the prize between your legs. A reward he’s already promised to himself, one you freely give when you don’t give him a smack or shove his hands away.

He smells of the forest: of wispy pine nettles, water from a spring, juniper. Of a man, whose closeness you had yet to have entirely. No bristling comes; you don’t close yourself off. He’s the loveliest thing you’ve ever seen— sad cow eyes and the bulk that only comes from a life rich with work and fighting, survival and instinct.

Had he ever even had a woman?, you wonder. Did he find you lovely, too?

König huffs appreciatively, lowers his head to your chest to bump his nose against your breasts. You release the breath that was caged unbeknownst to yourself, and your arms come around him naturally, cradle him there. Maybe he had never even been held… So, you pet him, trail your hand along the nape of his neck, up and through the messy strands of hair atop his head.

“You are injured too,” he hums into plushness, breath washing over thin fabric and causing your nipples to rise in answer. He must have felt the scab on your palm, healing, but still coarse and stiff. Even in what you perceive must be some sort of courtesy, worrying over your scrape, he doesn’t peel himself away from what entices him most here. His hands descend to stroke at your sides, trail down lower until both palms are fitted against your backside.

He squeezes, slow and intentional, weighs your flesh in hand. Explorative and further appreciative when another hiss leaves his lips to filter out along your clothed sternum. If he were not seated on his tail, you imagine it would have swayed fiercely, excited by the earlier fight and now the prospect of breeding some silly woman. You don’t have that indicator to read his thoughts, but the throb of the mighty weapon between his legs is enough to know. It’s warm and hard beneath you, gives a slight jump when your fingers dance over the base of his horns.

“I got hurt because of you.”

“Little maiden… I would never hurt you. Only please you,” he declares, sounding prideful. Just as a bull should, even in such a predicament. Like a god, proper and true. Surely this city would be cursed for what they’ve done to him. He will fuck their virgins and leave everything else scorched and ruined. And a part of you is almost giddy to know the very first would be you.

You’ve yet to touch men, but you knew well enough what the wetness down there meant, what his erection meant. Why men grope and fondle just as he does to you now, when a hand rises to tug down the top of your thin dress, when his head lifts just enough to lick at the side of your tit.

The air around you both thrums, pulses as though there are thunder strikes surrounding. And the sky is still clear when your head lolls back to face it in full as a nipple is enveloped by a hungry maw. He suckles at you, pushes his hips upward and strokes at your ass when you whine and pant. The cover of nightfall grants you some mercy, because no one is around to hear those cries or the way he grunts into your flesh, greed pouring from the both of you. No gods or stable hands, only a glassy moon and a blanket of star shine amidst murky sable like sea water.

When he lies you back, viciously lapping at your breasts, sucking your skin to grind between his blunt teeth, you take the horns into your hands again to tug him close. He groans, bellows like a man starved into your chest, drool and bruises layered over your skin. You should be in bed, waiting for some droning dullard to wed you first… not allowing a beast of a man to lower you into grass and dine upon you like this.

The gods would probably find this humorous… even if he might very well be one of them. How easily mortals could be swayed, even virtuous women, at the appeal of some miserable thing to save with an ugly, big cock.

But one or two bullmen was more than enough for this world, surely. No spawn of yours would be sent to a labyrinth deep below the earth, dark and desolate, and you’ve already bled this moon…

It pains you to push back against the face that sends pure fire through your belly with each swipe of his tongue, but you do. König seems both dumbfounded and frustrated when he separates from your flesh, the moon in his eyes eclipsed in full.

“I can’t..,” you try to explain, to tell without telling that you don’t want to push some horned infant from your cunt just because you like him a little. You wet your lips and stare up at him, hopeless and lost here.

“Why?” Your bull doesn’t understand, because of course he doesn’t. He’s trying to give you the only thing that he has to offer. Maybe he’s fucked other women before, women who took him gleefully and sang pretty beneath him, coated that raging thing between his muscular thighs in their essence and left lovely pictures in his memory. You don’t know why that thought alone is enough to make your head feel cloudy with wrath.

He asks again when you tug your bottom lip between your teeth. Bulls may be sacred, but no one’s ever said that they were not stupid.

König only pulls away enough to hover over your sex instead, panting gruffly like something starved and prepared to plunder an unsuspecting hen. Still, he waits for an answer, and you don’t think to spare yourself enough to close your parted thighs.

“I thought we would… after we danced,” you try, and maybe that would have worked if you didn’t have your softness and every treasure laid bare to him like a submissive vixen.

The beast only shakes his head and raises your legs to rest over each of his bare shoulders, corded in muscle and heat. He doesn’t nick you with his horns, careful even as he pushes his face right to your womanhood. The loincloth remains in place, but it’s the most fragile barrier. His breath makes your toes curl as it hits your sex, sends a wave of pure want swooping from your chest right to your cunt.

“You smell..,” he muses quietly, trails off as though drunk on just a whiff of you. When a thick finger tugs the cloth aside, you squirm from panting breath arcing over sensitive flesh. It’s the wettest you’ve ever been: little fantasies did nothing by comparison to the real thing, presented right before you and inspecting you down there.

He flattens his tongue over your entrance and relishes in the way that makes you squeal, draws back just to repeat the motion and watch you with pupils blown when your chest begins to rise and fall rapidly.

“You have not been touched.” His ears flick as he speaks, gaze dragging down, back to the pussy that calls for him.

“No… that’s why- ah-“

The ideas of children and expectations are long forgotten when his tongue presses to a spot that sends you shivering. It circles over it, too warm and heavy to bear. Your back arches, breasts heave, and he laughs into your cunt knowing he’s found the very spot that would make you forsake all but him.

The torture grows delicious and lovely, what he had done to your breasts is exactly what he does there. He suckles at the bud, scrawls his name over it with a wet, lapping tongue. You feel as though you truly have gone mad, fingers curling into the earth to keep you in place, because not even the gods could tear you away from this moment, not now…

It’s when your trembling thighs begin to tense and your voice grows further pitched that König decides to probe at you with a finger, too. It slips in with resistance, and the intrusion is strange… both horrible and ethereal at once. The titan finds a space inside of you, one to curl his finger against. It’s clumsy, uncertain until he finds that that is what makes you cry the loudest.

There’s a blinding white as though the sun has seared its way into your skull, sent the rays of its warmth into your very veins. It brings about a haze, leaves you quivering and panting as bliss rolls over you in steady waves. He gives you another lick, from your slit down to your ass before sitting up. Not an ounce of hesitation is weighed in his stare or his actions when he brushes the thick cockhead through your labia.

“I am going to fuck you,” he declares in a groan, already feeding you a fat inch of him. There’s still lingering resistance, but the honey that drips there now is in abundance, coats him with each shallow thrust.

You choke on the pain of such a sudden stretch, but find yourself only leaking more at the sight of him: a god laying claim to some mortal girl, you, above you, in you. The sounds he makes only ripen the elation. There’s desperation in each grunt, and his eyelids flutter as though he’s found something truly holy.

He drops over you, an arm to either side of your head when he sinks in fully. As if to dull the ache of your womanhood, at the loss of your title of maiden, he licks your cheek, the corner of your mouth, any place to soothe. When you capture him in a real kiss, your taste still lingers there upon his lips.

He seems even more delighted that you would show him affection than what’s occurring between you. The press of his hips comes to a halt, because he savors that display of what is or isn’t love. It’s almost shy, the way his mouth molds over yours, the way a hand drifts to your hair to pet at you. The other lowers to take your thigh and draw it up and keep you pinned in place.

You think to hold him now, too, when he breaks away from the kiss to gaze down at you with a shimmering stare, one that speaks more substance than anything he’s given you in your entire conversation. Your nails stay bedded down with the dirt, though, knowing with a fierce certainty that once he moved again it would be the only tether to dull the ache of a vicious fucking.

Except, he’s only gentle.

The cock inside of you takes a slow drag out, teasing and tentative as though trying to memorize every ridge inside.

It’s agony, because it feels like lovemaking.

Beasts don’t make love, they only have violent ruts and part ways entirely. König fucks like a man devoted. His eyes never stray from your face when he pushes back inside, all too careful. It must feel better than the being amongst his kind in the mountain he descended from, because the sounds he makes are fragile, barely contained whines that seem foreign from a man of his stature.

“I have been… watching you for so long, little..,” he huffs, burying his hand into your hair and dropping his head to press his forehead to your own. The words barely register, hardly make sense when the thick tip of him pushes right into the softest part of you again. It’s better than a finger… better than anything you’ve ever felt, and with everything so doughy and hot what you want to say only comes in a keening whine.

“Gods,” he continues when your sounds are smothered and blanketed by the filthy, sloppy sounds of your own wetness. You must be soaking the very earth you lie upon, dewy and warm. “Better than I dreamed.”

The slowness paves way for a heady, brutal thrust when he realizes that he isn’t hurting you. It only feels better the more that he moves, with each thick vein along his cock felt, with how he repeatedly spears against that spot that brings tears of rapture to the corners of your eyes. That new pace does not relent. You squeeze him the most like this, savoring in how he carves his way inside, molds you to take shape for him in what looks like pure violence but feels like love.

The sounds of impact and the scent of sweat and arousal surround you, the moon above and everything beneath it seem of so little importance now.

König does not silence himself even though you wished that he would. He pants against your face in his mother tongue, babbling endlessly as pleasure spikes for him. It wouldn’t be long until he filled you to the brim with thick spurts of seed, you could feel it in the way he throbbed against your walls, how each thrust was more prolonged and deep. Your mind swims, pleasure so intense its as if you’re drowning in the deepest depths of the sea itself.

“I came from the valley..,” he tells you in a feverish whisper, only now recalling that you didn’t know a thing about him before offering your cunt, maybe even your heart…

“Not a god… not anyone…”

It’s too much when his hips press in faster, when his cock reaches the end of you, over and over in frenzied repetition. Overwhelmed and stuffed to capacity, you sob and quiver, taking him into your arms and clawing at his broad back. The pain only seems to make him more feral, because his hands leave your thigh and your hair to grasp at your face instead, thumbs brushing your cheeks as he bares his teeth and spears into you relentlessly.

“Little one… I want this for the rest of my life,” he growls. “Promise me…”

The words sit on your tongue, fully prepared to surrender yourself to some beast of a faraway valley, chased and poked with spears or fire… Any hope of a cozy life would be forfeit here, already has been the moment you allowed him between your legs. It’s a horrible secret, one surely only Pasiphaë must have known of… how wonderful it felt to be bedded by a man like this. Not old enough to have fathered the Minotaur, but surely bred to be something akin to him.

“…I promise,” you whisper, perhaps desperate for this torturous copulation to end… or continue. Feeling so whole, full, right. Your offering is beating warm and overflowing in your chest, and König only looks as though he’s about to break at your words. The blue of his eyes grows glassy, translucent waves painting over each iris, but those tears don’t shed. They’re only dismissed with more needy rasps.

He growls, hooks his teeth into the sensitive flesh of your throat when his strokes begin to stutter. Your bull comes with a muffled howl, pumps pearly ropes of seed as deeply into you as he can manage. Your hiss of surprise is stifled with a blazing kiss where he moans into your open mouth, delves his tongue as deeply as his cock. He pumps several more times, intent on spilling every last drop inside, none wasted.

It seeps to earth when he parts from you, when he inspects the milk and honey of successful union between your legs. He looks surprised, confused almost when that stare is guided back up towards you as his chest continues to rise and fall swift with exertion.

You raise yourself up on your elbows, draw your legs shut. Not in shame, but… apparent embarrassment, your former courage is diminished when he looks at you as though you’re the most peculiar thing beneath the stars, when you’ve revealed yourself almost entirely and had him fuck and take apart all of it.

Maybe it’s the same for this beast, because his surprise and unshed tears are so evident here. He no longer looks the part of a god, but a lost man.

Not anyone, he had said. Is that what he felt? Or only what he had been told..?

“You’re not a monster,” you whisper. The chill of night settles over your skin, but there’s still warmth here, blooming like a flower in volcanic soil; the sun itself was incomparable to this peculiar thing that had taken root here.

He snorts at that and shakes his head. The ears there are cute and pluming with fluff, a reddish brown that suits him so remarkably. He’s kissed by the sun, even bathed in moonlight here. The prettiest of monsters, if he’s fooled himself into believing he is one.

“You should not have given yourself to me,” he tells you as his eyes narrow. The threat holds no weight, if it were one at all, because he grasps at you and pulls you in close; brings your cheek to his chest, right over his pounding heart. “I will not leave you alone.”

“Good.”

Maybe he’s speaking through the haze of a good fuck after being the cause for screams or raised weapons for so long, but you pray it comes from a truth. You’ve offered him a full meal of you, a treasure that none other has had, left yourself weak and aching all for one. His grip only tightens around you, refusing to let go as if to confirm your belief.

You’re brought back to the earth with your bull curled at your back, two powerful arms snaked around your middle with his nose pressed into your hair.

“After your dance, you will come with me.” There’s no longer a request, only an order. You’ve accepted him as both your man and mate, and it seems to please him greatly. His chest puffs against you, pride and contentment harbored there.

“To where?,” you ask him dreamily. The sea is what you’ve seen the most of, and the foothills and mountains seem a distant place. You imagine that maybe where he’s arrived from must have had others like him, maybe the women there were what he had had before… And maybe that makes you more precious somehow, different and coveted because you hadn’t run, only charmed him with questionable nursing and a request to prance over his back.

“Everywhere,” he answers immediately, stroking at the dip between your breasts. “I will never let you go.”

— — —

You’re separated from your bull come morning. It’s heart wrenching and terrible after a night of such passion, but you couldn’t allow for anyone to see you out there with your clothes in disarray and sperm slick and running down your legs. You had waited for him to sleep, for his dreaming to give way to raucous snoring before you slipped away, casting him a woeful glance. The giggling on the way from the pasture would have been terribly humiliating had anyone been awake to hear, but you were fortunate last night.

Come morning, there’s a pain between your legs and traces of blood in your loincloth. You hastily cast that from your body, hide it beneath your mattress before crawling back into bed with your thoughts a whirl. Candied fruit and precious stone, everything sap sticky and sad all the same… because as much as you would like to venture there, to see him, it was most rational to keep away.

If you were caught, you could only imagine the trial or lack thereof. The spears that would have come then wouldn’t miss their target. He would be deemed something far worse than a monster for daring to touch a lady such as yourself.

You bide your time tending to your duties and praying that your loss of virginity isn’t as apparent as it feels to you; when the thoughts drift back, the warmth upon your face only grows and your thighs immediately press together.

And you ponder his offer of leaving the temples and people behind to haunt someplace else with him, away from all else.

It's mad.

You barely knew him, of even what he was. He didn’t even have the sense to keep secret that he had been stalking you for some time, before you ever even noticed, with his fat cock buried inside of you. His ways of courtship lacked any shame, and maybe that’s why the passing thought of a normal man being in your future seems only lackluster. König could hunt, build, provide far better, you assumed, given his stature… And the gods gave him the knowledge of the most tempting tricks with his tongue.

The days leading up to what would call you back to him pass in a tortuous crawl. Even distracting yourself with thoughts of him in lonely silence with a hand between your thighs seems too little. You’ve even asked every slave woman here just how she gets the thoughts of men out of their heads. The advice is merely that sex does not always lead to marriage and children; they part ways like the animals in the forest and leave little room for love in their dens.

You hoped that he was thinking of you, too.

It would be ridiculous to say you’ve missed him, but seeing him in that field bound by rope again once you return is exactly what you want to shout. The birds call from the trees, singing beautifully and everything seems to glow, all except for König.

There are shadows beneath his eyes, cast long and dark from a lack of sleep. He does not even look your way when you take your place next to the others.

He’s forlorn. Maybe even pissed at having been gifted a warm meal only to have his face tugged away and a rope secured to hold him back from tasting or touching again. You should have warned him, about customs and etiquette, reassured him with your words that a little distance was fine because you’ve already made up your mind… but it seems too little and too late to peep your objections now.

The beast is led toward the other bulls by a man half his size, looking as though he’s on the brink of soiling himself from fear. The screams from before are not present now from onlookers, but König seems far less comfortable here than he did in the streets of your city.

Flowers are brought and tossed to both the hooves of bulls and the feet of dancers, yet none are presented to your partner at all. Even with green springing up below his feet, the area he waits in seems barren by comparison. It’s miserable and sad, all of it, and you once more long for being so winded against him that you two seemed to be the only things alive beneath a night sky.

You call to him when the man holding his lead gives it a sharp tug, and it’s dropped instantly as if you really hold some power over what becomes of him… You only hoped that whatever fate lay in wait for him would be coupled with your own. A passive life in a cave or something like that, where you could call him your husband, even… watch the sweat drip down the muscles of his back as he coaxed a fire to life.

Your bull tilts his head towards you, and though he tries to force the very same indifference from before his inner thoughts betray him. His brow remains furrowed, his expression grim, but his ears perk up and he immediately marches toward you. His gait is more of a charge, and had those horns been pointed to you, peril would await.

Punishment only comes in the form of a large man staring at you as though you’ve just wounded him terribly. You remind him there are no blades here with the gentlest touch of your hand along his bicep, swept down to curl at his wrist. It’s the most you could do here, and you could only pray to Aphrodite that your love would be understood regardless.

“You left,” he gruffs, raises a hand to tilt your chin up just enough to face him, though his gaze averts the second that you lock eyes. Shy, definitely not, but with so many watching, he seems entirely out of his element. The hand that graces beneath your chin even trembles, but it’s not fear you find when you search his eyes again.

Hurt.

It’s unmistakably hurt.

“I’m surprised that you did not,” your answer is a whispered one. He should have freed himself, whisked you away like an unsuspecting bride. You recall the other women’s ramblings from before, of men and how little what you experienced together may have meant.

“I do not wish to be apart from you.” He speaks as though it’s the most common knowledge of all, as though you’re a silly thing for ever believing that your want and his are one in the same. “Come with me.”

He doesn’t belong here, amidst people that cast their judgment yet herald the animals that he bears a small resemblance to.

Neither do you belong, you realize. You haven’t belonged since the day you spotted him amongst the trees.

The odd looks that follow König are cast upon you now, too. They see this peculiar beast with one of their women and think of her as sullied down to the marrow in her bones. You must smell of him, marked without a proper mark at all. He hasn’t branded you with any more than soft bruises from kissing your breasts and fitting the length of himself inside of you.

You take your risks and call them offerings, and he greedily accepts each and every one you bestow. You allow it when the hand cupping your jaw drifts lower, graces your breast with the softest touch before taking your fingers between his own.

“You have to be patient.”

He snorts at that.

Bulls are not patient creatures.

The ceremony has already begun. There are real animals here: beasts even larger than König that chew at the grass below them, flick their tails and ignore all that happens around them. There’s prancing and singing, elaborate acrobatics and leaps that must have taken years of practice.

And when you dance with your bull there is none of it.

He stands in place as you twirl around him, weaving around behind and before him as you bend to collect fallen blooms from the ground. Yellows, blues, flowers with no name or place, scavenged from fields further than the pasture. Your laughter pulls even a smile from his hardened face, a face you’ve found handsome since seeing, but must provoke terror in most men…

He’s so horribly endearing in his own ways. It’s the fastest you’ve ever fallen, or anyone in the whole world has, even… The legends and stories speak of love that shoots straight and strikes true like feathered arrows, singing on the wind until they prick their targets. You honor them just as he seems to, and you would tell them to him if only he asked.

Your head and heart are muddled and sick with love, melted down like precious metal within your body. He twists and brings you back together and whole when you’re taken up in his arms and lifted.

“I could touch the sky,” you laugh, clinging to an ivory horn. Pressing a kiss to the pointed tip of it, you swear you detect the heat from his face on your belly.

“Little one… I will take the sun for you, if you ask.”

“You would burn,” you warn.

He drops you then, cradles your body close to his chest instead and carries you as though you’re nothing more than a small dove with broken wings, something to be cared for.

“You make me burn already.”

“König…”

“No, not…” He shakes his head, smushes your cheeks between a thumb and the rest of his fingers as you’re forced to lock eyes again. The giant’s hand is careful with you, more gentle than his teeth or his…

“Call me something else. Something better.” There’s a keening to his voice, a fervent desperation there. A need to be not simply wanted. Wherever your titan has come from with his constellations of scars, the wound still there on his shoulder and all the pain he masks in behind a forced grimace… it has all led him here.

To the woman he watched practice taming bulls for weeks or months, to the only person he believed could accept what he is.

He only wanted to hear it, to have the most shattered wish answered with a tender chime. To bed you wasn’t enough: it could never be so simple. Your heart has been what he’s after all along; he reassures you in self just in voicing this.

“You’re lovely… my love,” you breathe. “You’re mine.”

His throat bobs as he swallows thickly, and the pools gathered in his eyes do seem to shed. Your face is released as he rubs away anything that may shed. The dark circles are coupled with red rings now, but still no part of him seems weak or broken. He hides that away with everything else, bottles perceived weakness and sets it out to sea and gives you the grin of a proper brute instead.

“Ja… you are mine too.”

You’re set down only as the bull leaping comes to a close, when the people retreat and König seems content in knowing that no one is left to whisk you away. It’s all that he’s waited for, to have you alone after this tradition he did not quite get. He played his part well enough, even if you hadn’t had the chance to climb onto his back as the others had with their bulls.

Only then does he begin to tell you of a life bought and sold without end, of the fighting pits you’ve only heard of and never seen. His tongue does not spare you details of chains and spears, what they do to men like him. There are hundreds of scars, each with a misery attached, some still carrying pain that never heals. Promises were always in abundance to keep him contained, weapons were smithed and placed into his hands since before he could remember…

The life you had imagined for him has never existed. There’s never been love there: he spares you the nature of the women he may have been fortunate enough to touch before, but he whispers that you’re the only one who has ever kissed him.

Your heart breaks for the wounded boy he’s buried inside, and you weep when he tells you he’s only ever prayed for a woman like you. Someone soft and cute, who didn’t run or wail… Who craved him just as terribly if not more, gashes and teeth, horns and all the rest.

And he comforts you when you cry, pulls you in so tightly that your breath catches and the tears do sob. You whisper apologies into the hair on his chest, for all the awful things you would never imagine doing to him, and he scoffs at the pity in your voice.

“Do not cry for me,” he whispers into your hair, leaves a trail of kisses along the crown of your head before dropping to his knees before you and pacifying the best he can by stroking along your back. “I have you now, hm? My little maiden, richtig?”

“Yes. Yes, always,” you promise. Another gift.

You’re led away from the pasture under the veil of nightfall, your arms curled around one of his own. There are men about carrying sharpened steel, thieves and drunkards hiding out in the dark as well, but not an ounce of fear trickles through you to diminish what’s already felt. The stars above are in abundance, brighter somehow on the night you forfeit all.

König speaks unguarded now, each question is met by a response. It’s the first time he’s ever been asked about himself, he tells you this when you express your satisfaction at finally hearing more than a few words at a time. He’s terribly cute when all of the praise and attention cause his face to ripen like summer fruit, red and shimmery with sweat rather than dew.

You’ve brought nothing for a journey, but he swears to you that there is pilfered honey, wine, fruit and furs in his den, some dark place he describes as special. It’s the only place he’s ever called home, so surely it must be.

König doesn’t warn you that the trek takes weeks, nor that the mountains are even more beautiful up close. The foliage is wild, the air fresher and free of the smell of cattle and people, and each climb seems steeper than the last. He doesn’t tell you of the wolves or bears, but you hear them at night when he pulls you even closer to him. The wild things won’t hurt you; the wildest of them all considers himself to be the king here, a ruler that they respect or dread rather than dare to cross.

It isn’t a cave that greets you when you come to rest after days and nights of exertion, but a hut built of cut wood and clay. Built as well and thoroughly as any builder from the city would have done. He tells you of where he learned such things, watching men work after sparring with animals and their own kin in pits; how they would promise to rear families in structures like this, how he hoped in crafting all of this that one day he might have the same.

“It’s wonderful,” you tell him, crossing the threshold to find just what he has already told you was waiting here, so far off from common roads that none of it has been pillaged.

The gifts come aplenty, too: a new comb make of bone for your neglected hair, jarred honey and trinkets from his travels or pulled away from a former captor’s corpse. There’s even a weapon for you here, a blade sleek and shimmering, some foreign sword that astonishingly reminds you of a part of him.

“I will find a prettier one for you,” he says as you examine the blade, heavy even when held in both of your hands. It’s only a mercy that you are not the provider here, because there would be no deer or even rabbits slain when even holding it makes your movements sluggish.

“… I like it. All of it.”

He plucks the blade from your hands with ease and casts it aside. The sound of it tapping, then clattering against the wooden boards rings out loudly before he’s upon you. The trek to the mattress seems an eternity, longer than even the venture here. Cloth and jewelry, the only lasting remnant of your former life follow suit, piling over the sharpened steel.

There’s a bear’s pelt beneath you to soften the stiff straw, less wild and ferocious than it may have been in life, now smothered by the lingering scent of him. The lonely nights spent here must have been terrible and tragic. Did he allow the shield to fall and weep then? In the comfort of bear skin and the calling of night birds outside, tears and wasted seed.

The urgency is a looming beast on the air, prevalent and fierce when you’re pulled into König’s lap. Your bull lacks the patience to prepare you with his mouth or a curled finger now, only pivots your hips to take him with a prod as his head lowers for his mouth to latch onto your breast.

“I am in love with you,” he whispers against your flesh. You’re left at his mercy as he guides you with one large hand placed upon your thigh and an arm curled around your back. It’s slow, always slow when he begins, when he’s drunk on the feel of you surrounding him and every new feeling that floods his head.

The ears prick forward when you sing for him, whimpering as he buries himself further. As though it’s the most pleasant sound he’s ever heard in the span of his life. The only thing more beautiful is the acceptance and surrender you offer. There’s never been a shield in place, no guards to watch over you… he’s the only thing; he’s broken through every gate or wall to steal you away from those perceived defenses.

He knows, too, when your panting mouth repeats his own words.

He bucks into you with more haste, slips his tongue into your mouth and groans when you take it between your teeth. Skyward and earthly with each motion, the sea and the mountain tethered as one. And maybe you’ve never leapt with the cattle from your city, but you dance with this bull so naturally that it vanquishes any doubt of where you’re meant to be. What you’ve yearned for was not the taming of animals, but maybe a man…

Your orgasm comes sudden, a wave of wet heat that drools from your core, aids in the glide of the feverish pace he guides your hips into. König’s head tilts back, bliss painted upon his expression from how you close in around him.

You take your chances and press your face to the column of his throat, biting down on him just as he had you. The salty sweat on his skin leaves its taste on your tongue as you lick over the freshly painted mark. The sounds of his own pleasure are cast away; he goes silent and still, and you almost fear you’ve made some terrible mistake here… But König comes undone at that, desperately gathers you in his hold as he pulses within you, writhes beneath you.

He refuses to release his grip even when his cock grows soft, just rolls you onto your back and covers you like the thickest blanket.

“You didn’t fall this time,” he huffs into your hair.

Though your lips part to try and order him to be quiet, he grinds his hips against your own as if to make the obscenity of his comment even more apparent. It only heightens the warmth you feel sweep up into your cheeks.

“Little dancer…”

And finally he rises above you, another wild grin slowly gracing his scarred face. A thumb brushes against the pulse in your neck until his hand rests right over the heart tucked beneath your breast. It’s better than any promise of a lofty field or a mountaintop, even covered in sweat and come, to see the way that his eyes light up with pure mirth when he feels it’s beating.

“You feel it… you didn’t lie,” he mutters, and you try your best not to allow that comment to claw amongst the others he’s made that left wounds in your heart, gashes that bleed for him.

“Why would I?,” you ask, voice so thin and soft you would think it unheard if not for the flick of his ear.

“I did not think anyone would ever…” He rubs at his face as he falls to your side, only to pull you in close again. The defenses raise in those words, but lower as they do time and time again when you nestle into his chest, pet at the curls of hair there.

“They said no one could ever love me.”

The tears in his eyes finally are laid bare. They roll down his cheeks, and he does nothing to hide them this time. You accept his silent crying without comment, the only indication you share that you know, see, is in the way you press a kiss to his jaw where they gather and spill.

“Fools, they were..,” you whisper to him, just as quietly as before. The sanctity blooms further as his chest rumbles, a contented hum coupled with a squish to bring you even closer to him.

“Ja… just fools,” he answers you in a voice not broken, only softer than it has ever been. “Like you. For this… giving so much.”

“And you are greedy.”

He nods once before reaching for your hand; his own curls over it, still splayed out over his chest. He’s no cocky, rough brute now. He pets at it with a trembling thumb.

“I will never let you go.” He speaks it as though it is a curse, rather than the blessing you’re certain that it is. Most women would fear a lustful beast raised up to kill even gladiators, yet there’s only the sweetest consoling to be found with him for you. “You will suffer me until we both die.”

“I could not imagine a better fate.”

#könig x reader #konig x reader #i did not proofread this if you spot an error do not look at me #steadily going through my inbox i pray this was worth your century long wait lil wisp..!

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bigification · 2 months

Text

Careful What You Wish For

I lay the cheap looking lamp on my bathroom counter as I get ready for a bath. I can't believe I caved and bought it, it's obviously a scam. This stupid lamp isn't gonna grant any wishes, that old man just got some free cash out of me. It doesn't matter, I'll just take a relaxing bath and throw on some Netflix later.

I get undressed and run some hot water into the bath. Some scented candles set the mood for relaxation, and I throw on some music. I dip myself into the warm water, and lay back.

My relaxation doesn't last long however, as a rumbling catches my attention. It's the lamp. It's vibrating with enough force that I can feel it from across the bathroom. Suddenly a purple smoke emerges from the lamp.

"I may grant you one wish." A soft whisper echoes out of the smoke.

What the actual fuck. This isn't possible. Did that guy drug me? Maybe I should just say a wish to see if it's true.

"I wish to be a more mature looking guy who likes sports." I blurt out. I've always hated how much I look like a teenager despite being a full blown adult, so this could fix that. Also I wouldn't mind being a fit guy who likes sports, it wouldn't hurt.

The moment I say it, the smoke starts to travel towards me. All the smoke spirals into my mouth and nose. I should be scared, but it kinda feels nice. A warm feeling sprouts in the core of my body, making me feel relaxed again.

As the smoke fills my body, I feel my muscles twitching. It must be true, my body is changing. My twig like arms thicken, with bulging biceps and defined forearms. My soft hands grow twice as big and fill with rough callouses. My chest puffs out into two juicy pecs and my stomach flattens into a cut six pack. My thighs thicken as I feel my ass plump up. Even my feet look like they've grown a few sizes. I also have to start bending my legs, as Ive become too tall for the bath tub I'm sitting in.

I look at my reflection in the water and see a handsome man in his late twenties. Holy shit, I'm hot! I've got a chiselled jawline with a dark beard covering it. All my features seem more angular, more manly. As I'm observing my reflection, I notice a pelt of dark hair grow all over my body. My chest, my arms, my legs, everywhere is dusted in a coat of hair.

This is everything I wanted. Even the sports. Memories of playing sports all throughout school flood my mind. I especially liked soccer, though I also really liked weight lifting. More memories of my extensive sex life flood my mind, people are almost hypnotised by my good looks.

Just as I'm reminiscing about my past, I remember I should be working out right now. I can't skimp out on my workout routine. I go to get out of the bath and notice I've got my underwear on. Huh, I must have forgotten to take it off before getting in the bath.

As I'm stepping out of the bath, something feels wrong. A warm feeling once again fills my core. I look down and see my six pack fade under a belly of fat. It continues growing until it sags over my underwear. My pecs swell into a pair of man tits, though they still have a solid base of muscle. My arms double in size, though with a soft layer of fat now covering the muscles. My hands thicken until they look like stuffed sausages, as more rough features cover them.

I feel my underwear tighten around my waist as my ass fattens. My thighs thicken until there is no gap between them, and my feet grow many sizes. I even feel my perspective shift higher, as my height increases.

The dark hairs on my body fade to an almost white colour as the hair thickens around my body. As I'm looking down at my body, I notice hair on my head fall to the ground. I look in horror at my reflection in the mirror, I have to duck just to fully see my face. My hairline recedes all the way to the back of my head, leaving me practically bald. My once sharp facial features have softened under a layer of fat. And a double chin has formed under my beard. I look so old.

Though the more I stare at my body, the more familiar it becomes. Memories flood into my mind of my career in soccer. I was a high level player, and a popular one at that. But you age out of professional soccer in your late thirties. I started focusing more on the weight lifting and less on the cardio. There was only so long I could keep that six pack, and turning 50 certainly didn't help with that. I don't mind it though, it makes me feel more manly. And it makes the team I coach more afraid of me.

I snap out of my trance. I grab a towel and start to dry off. Damn I forgot to take off my underwear again, I should get rid of this one anyway, it doesn't fit me anymore. I duck and look at myself in the mirror.

"Lookin good coach." I say as I smile at myself.

I turn to the other side of the bathroom and step on my scale. It reads '350'.

"Damn, I've really let go of myself, huh." I say as I jiggle my gut.

I also measure my height, it reads 6"6. I should have gone into volleyball with the build I had.

I dry off and leave the bathroom. I grab a family sized bag of chips and lay my fat ass down on the couch. I open the tv and it's already on the world cup. I really wouldn't want it any other way.

#male tf #masculine #fat tf #hairy #reality change #male wg #muscle tf #male transformation #age progression

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kiddo-chi · 4 months

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Papa Branch AU

Little guy just wants his dads attention

Also his name is Selleck!! I loved the name Birch but I just loved the name Selleck from the deleted scenes in band together. Nicknames branch gives him are twig and sprout (2 people requested these as names but ultimately thought they would fit better as nicknames) thx for helping out tho!

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atlabeth · 6 months

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greener grass | luke castellan

i recommend reading bleedin me dry before this as this is the au to that!

summary: what if you left with luke that day in the woods?

a/n: would just like to give a HUGE thank you for the massive amount of support on my luke fic!! and another huge thank you to all you angst demons because why do you want more of it. i mean i get it but why. anyways here’s a different path of actually accepting luke’s offer like so many of you said you would instantly fold lmao i hope you enjoy

wc: 3.2k

warning(s): fem!daughter of demeter reader. luke is his own warning. kind of unhealthy relationship, weird vibes all around

The stars were brighter than ever tonight.

It was one of the first things that stuck out to you when you got to camp, and it was one of the first things that you noticed when you first got on the road with Luke.

You’d always loved the stars. They were a rare sight coming from the city, such a sign of nature and purity that it honestly shouldn’t have been a surprise when you were claimed. You still remembered the shock that went through you when you first saw what a night sky free of pollution could be, and you still remembered the first time you risked your life with the harpies just to spend the night star-gazing.

And you could never forget the first time you dragged Luke along with you, his wry protests falling on deaf ears though he grinned the entire way down to the beach, his hand laced in yours.

Gods.

Luke.

Even the thought of him these days was enough to make your heart clench, a slight shiver run down your spine, and you weren’t fully sure as to why.

You loved him. You ran away with him. Every path that led you here, you willingly chose to walk down.

But you still questioned every second of every godsdamned day if they were the right decisions. Especially now, as you sat alone in front of the fire, carefully stoking it with one of the few dry sticks you’d been able to find after taking shelter—in your own haphazard tent made of vines and tree trunks and any other bits of nature you’d managed to sprout from the ground with your powers—to wait out a rainstorm.

You decided to spend the night, deciding that traveling through the darkness was too risky after the last monster attack, but the minutes couldn’t have been creeping by slower. If being in nature didn’t quite literally fuel you, you knew you would be far more miserable than you already were.

You loved Luke with all your heart, and if he was willing to potentially throw off his entire plan just so he could bring you with him, then he had to love you the same. You owed him this, at least, to not abandon him.

You— you didn’t want to serve Kronos, but you didn’t want to serve the gods, either. Your mother abandoned you before you were old enough to know what the word meant, leaving you on your father’s doorstep swaddled in blankets and with a note that he still had to this day.

Demeter left your father to raise you on his own, left you to live the half-life of a half-blood, and hardly paid attention to you since. She didn’t help you when you were on the road to camp with your satyr, wondering if every bump in the night would be your end, and she let you feel worthless for an entire year before she finally decided you were deserving of her claim.

Or maybe she just finally remembered you existed.

You understood Luke’s anger—you felt it yourself more than you liked to admit—but the path he was on was a dangerous one. You doubted you could take him off of it, but you could keep him safe, and you could prevent more damage. That was all you cared about at this point.

How long you could walk this line was an entirely different question.

You sensed him before you heard him even lost in your thoughts, but the snapping of twigs still made your breath catch for a moment. You kept your gaze on the fire as you spoke.

“Anything?”

“These woods are surprisingly bare for the time of year,” Luke said as he set his backpack on the ground, kneeling down to rifle through it. “I feel like Artemis is punishing me.”

“Well, she doesn’t exactly have a reason to help you,” you said wryly. You gestured with your head towards the miniature orchard you’d been making at each one of your camps—one pro of your parentage was that you—hopefully—wouldn’t ever starve on the road. You’d been growing plants since you realized you could, so it was practically second nature at this point. “Fruit’s on the menu, if you’re interested.”

Luke chuckled as he walked over, and as he plucked a perfectly ripe strawberry, he glanced at you. “Feeling nostalgic?”

You shrugged. You wondered which of your siblings would be in charge of the strawberries with you gone. You hoped Mr. D wouldn’t give it to one of his kids. “Do you blame me?”

“Not at all.” He popped it into his mouth then took an apple from the smallest tree you’d been able to grow. “It was home for us both, for a while.”

You bit your lip. It still was your home—it had been for the past four years. You wanted to go back eventually, but you felt like you had sealed your coffin by going with Luke. Would they ever welcome you back, knowing you willingly followed him into the darkness?

“How long do you think we’ll be on the road?” you asked, finally looking over at him as he sat down across from you. “Not that I don’t enjoy being with you, but… it’s not exactly the safest.”

“At least another week or two,” Luke said. You tried your hardest to keep your expression even as he settled the full force of his gaze on you—you couldn’t deal with the scrutiny. “I need to make sure they’ve lost our trail. The last thing we need is a questing group on our asses.”

You huffed a laugh. “You think they’ll actually send anyone after us?”

Luke shrugged. “If all went well, camp is in total disarray. If it didn’t, they still know I’m with Kronos. I can’t imagine Chiron would take that lightly. And,” he inclined his head, “I did kidnap you.”

You scoffed. “You didn’t kidnap me.”

“They’ll probably think so,” he said, and there was something strange in his eyes. “Doesn’t make sense for you to come with me willingly.”

This again. “Luke—”

“I know,” he said, a slight smile on his lips. There wasn’t much heart in it. “You don’t have to explain yourself again.”

“I just don’t want you to think I’m not with you,” you said. “I— I am. I’m only here for you, Luke.”

His eyes softened. “You mean it?”

“I do,” you nodded. “I couldn’t just leave you.”

“I don’t take any of this lightly, you know.” His eyes never wavered from yours, the orange light flickering across his face and casting a devilish shadow. “You being here means the world. Nothing’s gonna happen to you—I’ll make sure of it.”

“I’m not just gonna lay you out to dry, either,” you said wryly. “We’ll protect each other. Like we always have.”

“Exactly,” Luke affirmed. He bit into the apple he’d seemingly forgot about, and you looked up at the sky in the resulting silence.

It felt like your mind always drifted back to camp, back to your siblings and friends and the victims of Luke’s crusade.

Your summer siblings who would come back next year and wonder where you went, your year-rounders waking up the next morning and all the mornings after with a discontented glance at your bed.

How long would it take for them to forget you? For you to just be another lost demigod in the camp files?

And poor Annabeth Chase. Luke practically raised her, and he walked out on her without a word—you considered yourself lucky he didn’t do the same to you, and you had no idea what awaited you on your path together.

The gods had never been one for listening, and certainly not to you, but you hoped at least one of them would look down on you. Maybe your mother could provide some of that wizened second child advice, shine her favor on you for the first time in your life.

Well. You doubted Demeter would very much appreciate your quasi-support of the titan that ate her. The thing you should have considered yourself lucky for was that your powers still worked.

Luke brought you back to Earth by saying your name, and your gaze snapped back down to meet his. His scar seemed especially grisly in the firelight, at odds with the softness of his expression—something that felt all too rare these days.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked.

“What else could possibly be on it?” you asked wryly, tossing the stick you’d been fiddling with into the fire. It crackled as the flames devoured it, something so out of its realm thrust into it anyways.

“Stupid question,” he admitted.

“We’re practically fugitives, Luke,” you said. “We have monsters after us, and possibly people from camp. We left everyone behind. I’m with you, trust me, but— but I can’t just get over it all as easily as you.”

“And I get that,” he said. “This—” he sighed and shook his head— “you really don’t know how much you being here means to me. I thought I was going to be out on my own on all this.”

Your throat bobbed. You’d never tell him, but you didn’t even know what your answer was going to be until the words left your mouth.

“And you’re telling me that you’d still choose them over me?”

“No,” you said. “I wouldn’t.”

Luke’s eyes softened and your throat felt like it was closing up.

“Then come with me,” he whispered. “We will change the world together.”

“I can’t,” you asserted. “I can’t just leave everyone behind— I’d be leaving my entire life behind, Luke!”

“You’ll help them more this way,” Luke insisted. “The gods aren’t on our side—we’re here so they don’t have to pay attention to us. If we want anything to change for the better, we’re gonna have to do it ourselves.”

You bit your lip, and he brushed a strand of hair out of your face.

“I wouldn’t ask you this if I didn’t think you were right for it,” he murmured, tilting his head as he gazed into your eyes. “Your mother’s never bothered to see you before. I’m gonna make her see you.”

“How?” you asked, hating the hints of desperation coloring your voice.

“You’ll see,” he said. “But we’re gonna do something so big that no one’s going to be able to ignore us.”

Memories of the past four years flashed through your mind, but the two at the forefront were ones with Luke and ones without your mother.

He’d always been there for you, even when Demeter—especially when she wasn’t.

You couldn’t just leave him on his own. Not when he was baring his soul to you—not when his quest for greatness included it for you too.

Not when he was the first boy you ever loved, the one who brought you back from the god-induced edge.

“…Okay,” you said, the word feeling like an ultimatum the moment it left your lips. “Okay. I’ll go with you.”

He stared at you for a second like he didn’t hear you, or rather like he didn’t actually believe it. And then he broke out into a grin.

“Really?”

“Yes, really,” you said. “Have I ever lied to you?”

“Go to your cabin and pack your bags,” Luke said, still unable to control his exuberant expression. We’ll meet each other at the top of the hill.”

“Right now?”

Luke nodded. “Only a couple hours until we’re harpy feed. Everyone’ll think we’re just leaving for the school year.”

“You’ve always been a year-rounder,” you said. “Won’t people—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “No one’ll think anything of it. We just have to get out before anyone asks any questions.”

“Luke,” you murmured, “are you—”

Luke cut you off with a blazing kiss, the same kind of fire in his eyes when he pulled away, a slight smile on his lips at leaving you breathless.

“I’m sure,” he whispered. “You’re not going to regret this. I promise.”

It was all you could do to stare up at him, his grip on your arms the only thing keeping you upright for a solid moment.

“Go,” he said. “Take your time—don’t draw any suspicion. I’ll meet you there.”

“You’re really sure?” you asked, finally able to form words. “Really really sure? About this, a— and me?”

He cupped your cheek, tracing his thumb along your jaw. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life than I am about you.”

Leaving camp was insane—when Luke told you of Kronos’s plans, it was even more insane—but it had always been you and Luke. He’d been such a huge part of your life, ever since you first came to camp, that you couldn’t imagine yourself without him.

And when you looked back at him, illuminated by the fire, you were sure of at least one thing.

You weren’t leaving any time soon. Not when you could still fix all of this.

A yawn got the better of you, and you felt Luke’s eyes on you as you covered your mouth with a fist.

“You should get to sleep,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”

“It’s been a long day for both of us,” you said. “We both had to get here—and you were the one who wandered around in the woods for two hours trying to hunt.”

“How do you know I wandered?” Luke asked, setting the apple core down on the ground next to him. “You weren’t there. Maybe I had a very respectable saunter and just came up with nothing.”

You chuckled. “The trees speak to me.”

“Really?” he asked, clearly amused. “And what did they say?”

“That you’re an awful hunter,” you mused, “and you should be very thankful that your girlfriend is good at everything.”

Luke smirked and got up to start walking towards you. “Your ever-knowledgeable trees should know that I already know.” He kneeled down in front of you, a slight smile curling on your lips. “And that I am very thankful.”

He pressed a heated kiss to your lips, and you reciprocated, looping an arm around him to keep him close before you pulled away.

“It’s always good to hear it,” you murmured.

“I’ll say it as many times as you need,” he assured. Luke stole another kiss then gestured towards your makeshift tent. “But you do need to get some sleep. We’re picking up at first light.”

Your smile wavered. “We’ve been moving break-neck for a week already. Are you sure we can’t ease up?”

“Soon,” Luke promised. “I told you, I just want to make sure we’ve lost any tails. We can’t afford that right now.”

He must have seen the change in your expression, because his eyes softened and he took your hand. “It won’t be like this forever, babe. You can handle it.”

“It doesn’t mean I want to,” you said dryly, but you sighed as you squeezed his hand. “I’ll turn in if you do too.”

“Anything for you,” Luke said with a smile. You chuckled and shook your head as you stood up, and Luke grabbed his backpack before he went over to the tent with you.

Your meager belongings weren’t much. You’d stuffed all the demigod essentials, some outfits, and a sleeping bag in your pack before hightailing it to Thalia’s tree, and Luke hadn’t packed much more—but at least it was light traveling.

Every night had been spent in the same way, sharing your sleeping bag as you got what precious sleep Luke allocated before you were back on the road again. You were sure the only thing that got you through each early rising was his soft touches and easy murmured words.

You laid down, staring up at the roof of brambles and bark, and you twisted your hand just so to make them twist away from each other for a small opening.

Luke raised an eyebrow at you as he zipped his bag up, still crouched on the ground. “What’s that for?”

You shrugged. “I’ve always liked sleeping under the stars.”

Again, that small smile. It could still make you melt, even now. “I remember. I just hope it doesn’t start raining again.”

“Like rain’ll be the worst thing we’ve dealt with,” you said wryly. “Besides, I can feel it in the air. We’re gonna be fine.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We are.”

You glanced over and he was looking at you. You patted the spot next to you.

“C’mon,” you said. “I’m cold.”

“Oh, we can’t have that,” he said, amused, and he huddled in next to you. You let out a contented sigh as his body heat sunk into you, and he draped an arm across you to pull you closer.

“That better?” he asked.

You hummed in response. “Thank you.”

“Always.”

You closed your eyes as you exhaled deeply, trying your best to unwind the tension in every part of your body. You weren’t used to trekking miles every day, eating rations you’d packed from camp or gas station food from whenever you ended up close to town, only having the woods and the sky and Luke for company. It was starting to wear on you, but you weren’t going to let Luke know.

“I love you,” Luke said suddenly, breaking the silence, his breath tickling your neck. Your eyes snapped open. “You know that, right?”

A moment passed before you murmured, “I know.”

You could feel some of the tension leave his body, and he adjusted his position to be closer to you.

“Good.”

His curls brushed against your skin as he rested his head in the crook of your neck. Luke was a comforting presence behind you, like an anchor in the choppy waters you’d thrown yourself into, but it… it just felt different than the countless other times.

But that was only natural. You were back on the road, living the way you did when you first made the trip to Camp Half-blood with your satyr. Of course it felt different than the crowded chaos of the Hermes cabin, or the beach underneath a tapestry of stars, or your own bed at the behest of your siblings. The only thing that stayed the same was the scent of nature, and the scent of Luke.

Things were different, yes, but you knew that would happen. Luke was different, but you knew that would happen—half the reason you came along with him was because you wanted to make sure he had a lifeline, a way to come back to shore when he decided his crusade was over.

Because it had to be over eventually. He would decide that there was no way you could beat the gods, that it wasn’t worth killing himself over some meaningless mission. The gods had never cared about you before—you didn’t know why they would care about some half-baked rebellion by two of their least favorite kids.

You loved Luke. He loved you. You told yourself that was all that mattered, because you were in this together now.

For better or for worse.

#damn girl you really are a demeter kid the way you're planting these seeds of distrust #also he hasn't told her what he did to percy so this is clearly a very stable and good situation for both of them #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan fic #luke castellan angst #pjo x reader #x reader #sadie writes

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leviathanleva · 2 months

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Daisy

Pairing: Cooper Howard/The Ghoul x Fem Reader [DARK FIC]

Description: Cooper Howard was not a kind man, he cared for nobody, but himself. Then he found you, a lost little dove, barefoot and crying, torn dress and big innocent eyes staring at him like he was a hero. He knew you’d be a burden, he knew you couldn’t survive in the wasteland, he was doing you a favor.

But he couldn’t pull the fucking trigger...

........................

[5.5k words]

🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼🌼

Chapter 6 "The Book"

Green.

Green spanning as far as the eye could see. A thick, overflowing forest accompanied by such humid air it made you nauseous and slightly out of breath. It did well to shield you from the sun and you no longer had to use your blazer as a substitute for a poncho and avoid a sunburn.

It took you nearly two days to stop gawking at the luscious flora once you’d set foot in it and the ghoul had found it necessary to bark a threat at you a couple of times when your feet had stilled to take in the scenery. You didn’t let his grumpy nature affect you though. You’d never seen such a view and you let your eyes feast with mouth ajar and hands fisted. Sticky mud, twigs, and leaves clung to the soles of your boots and the vapor you were sure was radioactive frizzed up your hair.

You’d expected the forest to be brimming with life, from animals to insects, birds, and critters, but there was nothing. When you took the time to recollect the past three weeks while silently following behind your bounty-hunter-turned-tour-guide, you hadn’t seen any birds. The bombs wiping them out was the obvious explanation, they were gentle creatures, they didn’t stand a chance and it was a melancholic realization. Bird songs were the symphony of nature and it was painful to know you’d never be able to hear it.

You adjusted the backpack strap away from your throat and rubbed at the sore spot before taking a few springy steps to catch up with the ghoul. His pace had quickened for reasons unknown and you had to jog to be able to keep up with him. It was tedious considering the slippery ground actively worked on slowing you down, but you’d take this over going a faceoff with the sun any day.

Humanity’s traces could be spotted scattered amidst the greenery, bits of metal sprouting from the dirt, tattered cloth at the bases of the trees, or hanging off low branches, a plane wreckage in the distance. It was comforting that other people had passed by your route and left a piece behind, an echo of their presence. You wanted to believe they were good because so far there hadn’t been a soul you had encountered that hadn’t tried to attack you.

WELCOME FOR TO TILLBURRY

A bright red billboard was risen high above the treeline, fastened to a multitude of wooden planks nailed together. The once pearl white paint was now a deep yellow with spangles of rusty brown, the words were peeling off, weathered down by time, you could tell even from where you stood.

You stand shoulder to shoulder, except the ghoul’s is more at level with your cheek. He kicks some buildup off his shoes and opens his canteen.

The settlement is right down the hill. Tillburry. You made it to Tillburry.

“We made it?” you release your lips from their toothy prison and your face lights up with an untamable grin. You beam up at him and shake his arm excitedly. “We made it, Mister.” your eyes dart back to the sign, you’re practically vibrating next to him. “I can’t believe it!”

He pauses between swigs and glances down to where you’ve taken hold of his wrist. His lack of reply stirs your attention and you follow his gaze, then let go and step away with a wary expression.

“Uh…Sorry. I just got a little – ” you’re tugging at the frilly edges of your dress anxiously, one foot readies on its toes if you spotted even a glimpse of a rope peaking from behind his back. “ – I didn’t – No tying up, please? My ankles are still sore from last time, Mister.”

You’re an eye-bat away from bolting, again, and it never works because he’s scarily good with a lasso, but you’re stupidly optimistic. Last time you’d gotten on his nerve he’d tied you up and hung you from the ceiling lamp of an old farmhouse, gagged as well, mind you, because you wouldn’t stop talking. At least, he’d been kind enough to take your shoes off so you could stretch your feet and keep the blood circulation going. The fact that he’d used you as a sentient coat hanger was less nice.

Then again, you’d gotten another dose of his scent while he’d had dinner by himself and ignored your existence for a good hour or two. It wasn’t all bad, or maybe it was but you were too dependent on him to protest against his unorthodox punishments.

“Ain’t no point.” he clicks his tongue and glosses over his canteen before tucking it away. “You don’ learn nothin’ cept how to complain harder.” he taps a gloved finger against the center of your forehead, forceful enough to have your neck tipping back and you scrambling for balance. “Thought you were supposed to be smart. How come nothin’ sticks in that lil skull o’ yours?”

“Mm, have you thought about maybe…” your eyes squint at his rough gesture and you pull away with a wince. “Maybe a nicer approach to your lessons, Mister?”

“Nice don’t keep you alive, Darlin’.” he doesn’t spare a breath before answering and after a moment you reluctantly nod.

His malignity and somber methods were a necessity both for your development and safety yet you wished it weren’t so. You wanted for a kinder world and less spilled blood and were likely one of many, but no one had the privilege of choosing what they were born into. Despite all ill circumstances, you were still lucky to be taken under the wing of an expert, taught how to survive by someone who’d lived so long and accumulated enough knowledge to fill a library.

It wasn’t peaches and marmalade up here, although you had a can of both stuffed somewhere in the depths of your backpack.

The hand which had been resting on his hip reaches for the hefty tato sack slumped next to his boot and he secures it over his shoulder before nudging his head towards the welcome sign.

“Les go.”

You’re hot on his heel, stomping down the mucky hill with acute prudence, your dress was already dirty, you didn’t need to add mud stains to the extensive collection.

The peaks and roofs of ramshackle buildings loom above the shabby fence surrounding the settlement, dyed in varieties of reds and yellows, some fully, others unfinished because there was no more paint to spare. The vegetation became sparse and the soil soon gave way to dusty gravel that crumbled delightfully under your boots. Once close enough for a better inspection, you notice the defensive walls are nothing more than plates and pieces of different scrap metal bolted together. A swirl of barbed wire is draped on the top and rotting pikes are sticking out from the base.

It wasn’t exactly the warm welcome you were expecting.

Anxiety and excitement kept you glued to the ghoul, mostly hidden behind his unfriendly frame. A meager excuse came up as a means to start up a conversation that might ease your quickening pulse and sweaty palms. You decided to keep the silence, though, opting to restrain your questions for a later time, when there was less tension built up on his shoulders and his fingers weren’t instinctively gliding over the handle of his pistol.

You heard the marketplace before you saw it. Your stomach flipped once you stepped beyond the open town gates, now being able to put faces to the buzzing chatter lingering in the air.

“Holy moly…” you gasp with brows raised high and your step falters.

It was busy.

After years of solitude and countless dreams of a normal pre-nuclear war life, after nearly a month in the company of a single man who preferred action over word, the reality of civilization crashed into you like a boiling wave. Hot prickles pinched at random places around your body, beads of sweat are already trickling from your armpits and your skin becomes clammy. With a heart lodged in your throat, you stumble forward, giving in to the ghoul’s rough tug on your wrist.

“Keep movin’.” his rasp fails this time, impossibly outmatched by the turbulence simmering inside you.

“Mm…sorry.” it’s an empty apology, insincere because he sees your eyes flitting and knees wobbling.

You never expected the settlement to be this…overwhelming.

Strangers are passing by and blending together in a jumbled blur of worn-out clothes and limbs. Carts are being rolled between the isles, restocking items as soon as they’re bought, and smoke lingers high above your head, amassed from chimneys, food booths, and cigarettes.

You find it difficult to breathe the more information your short-circuiting brain is forced to process.

“Get your RadAway right here good people! Three for the price of one – ”

“ – Cactus fruit for sale! Fresh out the – ”

“ – Bullets, guns and more bullets – ”

Stalls were huddled together, adorned with junk and trinkets, things you couldn’t even begin to comprehend. And even if the owners already had at least one customer looking over their products, they still hollered at the crowd bustling around them. There’s a heavy stench in the air, of car oil and lack of hygiene, sweat and musk blending in with roasting meats that smell like no animal you’ve eaten before.

Shopkeepers had the doors to their establishments open, waving over weary wanderers with promises of a good time and helpful products.

“Stimpaaaks! Rad-X and more! Whatever your heart desires! Save a life! Buy a stimpaaak!”

You avoided eye contact, keeping your sights low and only skimming over the intricacies of the stands. The flood of strangers was cordial enough not to bump into you, but when a roasted cricket was shoved in your face and behind it a pair of foggy blue orbs stared right into your soul you recoiled.

“Ah, no thank you, Sir!” you give the merchant a wide apologetic smile and lift a hand to your mouth.

You latch onto the ghoul’s forearm when the merchant’s face falters for a split second before he’s already trying the unfortunate person behind you. For a moment there you’d thought he’d pounce on you, there was no telling considering the man looked half-dead.

“Aww, was wrong, Sweetheart?” your bodyguard barks out a laugh, sneering down at you. “Don’ want a cricket on a stick?”

You don a thin-lipped, unimpressed expression and detach yourself from him.

“I’ll stick to crackers and canned beans, thanks.”

His teasing tone unwittingly shook off a part of your anxiety. The overstimulation eases to a broiling irritation and most of the smells and sounds fade behind a wall of ignorance. You still sweat more than you’d like, but your pulse nestles back into a steady rhythm. You take a breath and squeeze your palms a few times, working through an alien mental exertion as your face settles with neutrality.

“Suit yourself.” he snorts, guiding you towards a particular stand. “Dunno what you’re missin’ though.”

“Think I’d rather keep it that way.” you murmur under your breath and turn back for a more in-depth examination of the unappealing delicacy. “…Yeah.”

Bugs…Who eats fucking bugs?

There’s a steaming caldron propped up over a steady fire, but you can’t discern the scent and your upper lip is already twitching into a disgusted scowl. The owner has his elbows resting on the display counter, and the sleeves of his shirt are rolled to just below his meaty biceps. His thick mustache spreads into a delighted smile and he abandons his hunched-over posture when he notices your uncanny duo approaching.

“Welcome! Browse at your leisure.”

“One o’ those.” the ghoul motions towards the cauldron and you’re ready to fight back nausea, anticipating a monstrous fiend turned snack to emerge.

You were wrong.

The man sinks a ladle inside the lively water and fishes out a potato.

“Oh.” you blurt without a second thought.

“What d’you think it was?” he tosses a few caps on the counter and plucks the boiled potato from the merchant’s ladle and you can’t help but grimace.

“At this point, nothing would surprise me.” you answer honestly, then cock your head with a face scrunched at the unnerving sight. “Doesn’t that sting? He just…y’know…took it out of the water?”

Does this man honestly have no pain receptors or is he just high again? Either way, you were left stunted every time he took a blow without a flinch. From bullets to hot potatoes, nothing could scathe him.

“ ‘S fine.” he blows away the steam and unfastens his hunting knife to cut a sizable piece from the top, then tosses it at you.

You catch it with a precious glint in your eye, graced with a bittersweet smile. Him willingly splitting food was a new addition, but an act you cherished fervently. A display of custody so fleeting and illusive it was unclear how intentional it was.

Then the heat finally registers and you’re forced to juggle the mushy piece between your hands.

The ghoul dips his half in the disturbed salt pile next to the fresh vegetable crate, and you mimic him once the potato has cooled enough to hold. He’s already moving and you follow closely behind while giving your treat a few more needed puffs and tapping off the excess salt.

“So what are we looking for now, Mister?” you ask and dodge bumping shoulders with a dazed old woman while adopting a steady tempo by his side. You’re looking up at him with wonder while sinking your teeth into the potato and he’s very tempted to lick his thumb and try to wipe off that incessant glee from your face.

“Trader’s shop.”

“Oh, right! For the Pip – ” a hand is harshly smacked over your mouth. He shakes his head curtly and his mouth dips into a short-lived frown; you clear your throat and nod in understanding.

Right…Everything from the vaults was considered a rare treasure on the surface. People were ready to kill for a single one of the items each of you was carrying. Caps flowed whenever a mint-condition lint roller was involved, let alone more practical things. And Pip-boys were at the top of the pyramid. They were priceless. Some would sacrifice a limb to get their hands on one because it meant they were settled for life.

You scan over the current of wanderers for any prying eyes but find none. It was too noisy; your words had been drowned out the moment they’d escaped.

Maybe you should try not to forget you aren’t living in a vault anymore…

You hold onto a wrinkle at the back of his coat as he cuts through the busy market, then wipe away the remnants of potato bits with the back of your hand.

Everything seems to have the same coat of decomposition to it, from the persons to the buildings, but it has a charm to it, it’s lively and somewhat welcoming.

Familiarizing your surroundings presents you with a feeling of peace and the anxiety is finally washed away for good. Well, as long as you keep reminding your self-centered doubt that nobody’s gawking at you or paying you any mind. You’re just a nobody lost in a sea of nobodies and you like it that way, just you and the ghoul minding your business, not being threatened or attacked or anything that would coerce you into taking action.

A safe haven. Finally.

A gargled moo pierces through the din of chitchat and your head snaps. And there, amidst the stalls a cow is lazily sloshing at a bucket of water while simultaneously rearing its snout around and sniffing the air because it has two freaking heads. It looks skinned, reminds you of your grumpy gunslinger and you can’t help but titter. You make a turn towards it, handholding with your nosiness. Then you reassure the concerned squeal at the back of your head that you’ll find your way back by the distinguishable cowboy hat sticking out like a sore thumb in the crowd.

Just a closer look and then you’ll be right back by his side.

A two-headed cow. How fascinating!

Your escapade is short-lived. An iron grip takes hold of your backpack no more than five steps in and jerks you back. The strap digs into your throat and you gag with a backward blunder.

“Ehugh – ”

“ – The hell you think you’re goin’?”

The back of your head collides with a solid chest and you gaze up to meet an acquainted scolding face.

“The cow. It has two heads.” you answer candidly, blinking up at him, dumbfounded. “I – ” your lips purse as you briefly mull over your next sentence. “ – I wanted to see it up close?”

“ ‘S called a brahmin, Darlin’.” he’s unimpressed with your revelation, lets you go, and spares a brisk, disinterested glance at the mutated cow.

You dust off his crude gesture and smooth out your dress and backpack. His barbarian tactics are slowly losing their charm; he makes a mental note to up the ante in the future.

“How does it work though. With two heads?”

“Take one good look a’ me ‘n tell me if I’m a fuckin’ vet.” his arms are crossed over his chest, weight rested on one hip. You disregard his snappiness as your eyes roll from him back to the brahmin.

“Do they bite?” you know it’s probably a herbivore, but considering its disfigured state and the scarce vegetation along your journey, you have reason to consider other possibilities. With a palm placed on your waist, you tap a forefinger against your hipbone in thought. “Can I pet it?”

“No. Now move.” he grips your upper arm like a disgruntled father and drags you forward as you keep your neck craned to the side to stare at the cow over your shoulder. “Ain’t got all day.”

“But – ”

“ – You stray more than two feet away ‘n I’m puttin’ a leash on ya.” he hisses you into silence and presses onward, towards the last few remaining stands.

The thickness of the crowd lightens as you approach the end of the market. Once you manage to escape all the fuss and buzz you give a gentle pat to his wrist and he releases you with a warning grunt to keep close.

Given more room to note the architecture and structure of Tillburry, it reminds you of an old cowboy settlement rather than a pre-apocalypse town. The buildings are raised in such a peculiar array, all random and each one different. There are no traditional houses, per se, everything is turned into a business, from a shady hospital to a loud bar made guest house because even travelers need a bed sometimes. You see a few tire-ridden trailers, but even they have a makeshift sign plastered on the door offering services for caps.

A label scribbled with coal rests above the entrance to a two-story shack.

Trade & Barter – If it exists, we have them!

Mm…Maybe you could become the local English teacher, give the folk a few grammar lessons, put that multi-subject dossier in your head to the test. Make theory into reality and try your hand at machinery, build a lamp or do some testing and create a water purifier. From what you’ve read, it’s not that difficult, but the materials needed can range from tricky to impossible to scavenge.

You step onto the wooden porch of the trader’s shack, the bell above the door springs to life when the ghoul enters and you follow suit.

First things first, you had to figure out if you were going to continue travelling with him or if he was going to keep his word and let you settle here. There was a small chance he’d forgotten and if you didn’t mention it, he’d let you trudge along. Tillburry was a nice place, but you’d choose him over anything else if you had to pick.

“Evening good people!” a scrawny old man peaks from behind the counter accompanied by a symphony of metal clanks and a few curses. He dusts off his hands and plants them over the register with a crooked smile. “Mah name’s Hank. Now how can I help you lot?”

He eyes the ghoul in an odd manner, then you.

“Oh, it’s you…”

“Got another deposit t’ make, old man.” said ghoul slaps all five Pip-boys on the counter and rests on one of his elbows as he leans down. “Thousand caps up front, the rest every few months till you pay em in full.”

You have to squint when Hank’s eyes bulge out of his skull and he hastily stuffs the merchandise under his desk.

“You tryin’na get me robbed?!” he straightens to look over the windows then hunches down and continues with a hand cupped over the side of his mouth. “Where did you find so many?” he pauses then, a certain grimness to his face. “Never mind, don’t wanna know.”

Your vision is overflowing with all the junk strewn about, hanging off walls, stuffed in dusty display cases, over tables and windowsills, there’s items even on the floor. Most of it is weaponry and repair parts, a trinket here and there, a greasy comb, gold teeth, and a half-built robot of some sort. You lightly kick at a stray margarine cap abandoned on the floor, then stop when an elbow is roughly dug into your side.

You spare your assailant a bitter glare while tenderly massaging away the pain, then click your tongue but relent at the curt “behave” you’re tossed back.

The trader has the light strapped to his forehead shining down on the Pip-boys. He fiddles with each one briefly, turning the cog and testing the menus, then tries them all on his wrist to check the security of the straps. He’s humming, muttering something incoherent while evaluating the treasures from your vault.

“We doin’ business or not, Grandpa? They ain’t fucken’ fake.”

“I might be old, but I’m still a babe compared to you.” Hank spits back with surprising vigor and disappears under the counter. “Now have an ounce of patience you grumpy bastard. Gotta check em or else Imma be the one dealing with the consequences.”

“Sorry?” your attention darts back to the ghoul who’s suddenly avoiding eye contact. “How old did you say you were, Mister?”

“Ain’t you got junk t’ stare at?”

The remainder of his reply is cut short by a snort of a laugh erupting from behind the register.

“Oh, he’s ancient that one.” the trader resurfaces with an old plastic bag stuffed to the brim with caps, he ties it neatly and pushes it forward. “Been around since – ” he sputters, frozen solid as the edge of a hunting knife is pressed flush against the collar of his shirt. “Right…” he swallows once, then gently steers the blade away with the tips of his fingers. “Ain’t my story to tell, sorry Lil miss.”

“Sure ain’t.” the ghoul nods, lower lip slanted.

“Uhm…can I – ” you pipe in and set your backpack between the two before blood is spilled. “ – Can I trade too?”

“Sure you can.” Hank nudges towards you, hands clasped together and stubby fingers intertwined in silent anticipation for your upcoming offer. “Watchu trading?”

You’re rummaging through supplies, pushing away food cans and bottles of water until you reach the very bottom of the bag. You grip a thin, plastic wrapper and force it past the sea of provisions before showing your open palm to the trader.

“Is this worth anything?”

“Well, well.” he snatches the item and settles the glasses dangling from his neck on the bridge of his nose as he concentrates on the label. “Pristine condition too. You don’t see these around much anymore.”

“A toothbrush.” the gunslinger is scowling when you turn to look at him. “You brought a fuckin’ toothbrush?”

“Three actually. One for each of us and a spare in case I lost mine. Which reminds me!” you’re digging through the bag again briefly before plunging another packaged toothbrush into his face. “Here’s yours.”

He plucks the damn thing from your grasp while you keep up a sickly sweet smile, twirls it in his fingers and he would have been annoyed if he wasn’t already so thunderstruck.

“Why do you have to be like this…”

“Twenty-five caps.” the trader declares and stuffs the merchandise in his back pocket.

“Deal!” you exclaim and gather up the caps as soon as they’re set on the counter.

“Workin’ through your debt already, Sweetheart?”

You squint at the question and shuffle away from your interrogative companion. Your foot is already tapping incessantly against the floorboards, a dead giveaway.

“Yes?” you clear the lump in your throat and lift your nose towards a book hanging just above a display cabinet. “But also I wanted to buy – ”

“ – No.” short and stern, no wiggle room. “You ain’t wastin’ no caps on a damn book.”

“Why not? They’re my caps.” you ask, but are promptly ignored when he gives you a cold shoulder and turns back to Hank. You aren’t even graced with the courtesy of debate.

With a regretful look, you secure your backpack over your shoulder and give the tome a last, pained glance as you rub at your upper arm.

“Gimme five packs o’ Grey Tortoise too.”

Hank stacks the cigarette packs in the ghoul’s outstretched hand before leaning back with a nod, instigating the end of their trade.

“Good doing business, Cooper, now get the hell out before I go bankrupt.”

You snort before you realize it.

“Shit. Shit. Shit!”

Your body freezes and you’re looking straight ahead as your teeth clamp down on your lips. The laughter bubbles, pushing against your chest and throat and you barely manage to inhale a shaky breath.

“There somethin’ funny, Smooth-skin?” the ghoul, Cooper, tantalizingly engulfs you under his frame. Each hand is gripping the counter, on either side of you, as he forces his chest into your shoulder blades and leans down until his voice is right in your ears. “Hm?”

“No.” you rasp, and your jaw clenches immediately after as your vision blurs with tears and you’re fighting so hard not to fucking cackle. You’re suppressing yourself so violently that you’re shaking. “No, Sir.”

His name is fucking Cooper. The deadly gunslinger, the boogeyman, the ruthless killer, the zombie cowboy. Cooper…

You can’t breathe.

“I’m gonna…Gonna wait outside, Sir.” you proclaim with a strained voice and slip out of his dangerous embrace, ducking under his armpit and heading towards the exit with stiff footing.

After securing the caps and cigarettes in his bandolier, he’s ready to follow, but a curt whistle from Hank stops him and he turns back to see the man waving him over. Already lacking patience for the upcoming exchange, he sighs and spares you a once-over to make sure you’re out of ear reach, and then he’s back at the counter, glaring.

“Go on.”

You shift to the left of the door, leaning back against the windowsill and leaving your backpack to rest between your feet. The world is slowly dimming, crickets deftly chip in the distance and it would have been pleasant if you hadn’t known they can grow as big as your arm. A few people pass by, scuttling towards either their homes or the bar opposite of where you stand. Besides a muffled murmur, there’s nothing you can catch from the conversation and curiosity gnaws at your gut, but you don’t have the courage to peek inside the shop and risk getting caught. A steady whizz as the minutes pass by, you don’t care for being left out, there’s already too much you’ve witnessed and endured that you wished you never had.

An abrupt rise in octaves catches your attention and your eyes flick to the side. Something in their exchange wasn’t going right, a topic was unraveled that was acrid for both parties and you curse at your limited hearing for being unable to catch any particular words.

A storm comes out the door that nearly knocks the bell off and startles you. You step back to avoid him in his blind fury, a distinct “oof” escaping you when the book is blindly thrust into your stomach. The sun has sunken, and an array of moths flutter around the swaying light bulb above the trader’s entrance and despite Cooper’s soured mood, you’re happy to have him back. Plus, he’d relented and gotten you the book, either he or the shopkeeper had pitied you enough to hand it over.

You’re dancing around him like a butterfly, the title “The Count of Monte Cristo” bouncing in and out of sight as you twirl the tome around.

The bar is well-lit, Christmas lights hang from the windows and roof, and he’s headed straight toward it. The atmosphere is unpleasant, whatever discussion he’d had with Hank had left a sour taste on his tongue, pinched some nerve that you could only guess.

“Thanks, Mister.” you try with a soft note and secure your present under your armpit for safekeeping, hoping a little sugarcoating might help ease his frustration. “I’ll cherish it forever.”

He pays you no mind, not even when you pinch the sleeve of his coat to keep in toon with his hasty stride.

“I like your name.” you peep through the mingling silence and glance up to find a strained expression and a sharp glare directed away from you. Your smile does nothing and falters quickly.

There’s a gap there, one that didn’t exist until you left him to converse in private with the old trader. The lingering question of whether you’re staying here or going with him is dismissed for the moment despite the time you have together ticking away. There’s malice building on his features the longer he stays locked away in his head and your words drift past him without effect.

“Mister?”

No response.

It’s when you wrap a hand around his wrist just as he’s about to burst into the bar that he stops.

You release a breath and ignore your skittish nature yanking at you to run, or apologize and hope for the best. There’s a clog in your throat and you feel the air becoming harder to intake, but that doesn’t stop you.

“Whatever he said isn’t true.” your eyes search the display of shells fitted over his chest, then flick up to find his. “You’re not a bad man, Cooper.”

It’s a shot in the dark because you don’t know what was said or done. But this is better than leaving him to sulk. He gets to know that you’ll stick by him no matter what happens. You’ll be there, even if the whole world turns against him, he’ll have someone who will stand by him.

“I’m a rotten man, Sweet pea.” his gaze is steady as he replies. He doesn’t believe you and not because you’re naively spewing words of comfort, but because he’s seen a lot more than you. He remembers the things he’s done and will keep doing and he knows himself well and you’re just plain wrong. “You jus’ don’ know it yet.”

“You’re a survivor.” you repost, chewing on the inside of your cheek. “And we’re all a little rotten inside.”

He rests a hand on your head, then moves to slump an arm around your shoulders and puffs out a breath. He’s not up for such a conversation, not now, not with you.

You don’t know him, not really. You don’t know that his vials are running dangerously low while your presence is turning into a solid option to get more. There’s a good reason he’s kept you safe and barely scathed and it’s not a measly three hundred caps.

And you hadn’t done anything to deserve such a fate, but his life came before yours, a rule of survival that you’d never learn.

Hank had had his suspicions the moment he’d laid eyes on you, but it wasn’t his business and despite having grown soft from decades living in a settlement, he had no right to dictate how others survived in the wasteland.

It might be cruel to keep you in the dark while your life is being weighed by a constantly shifting scale, but the ghoul would rather you enjoy the time you have left. Maybe they’d be kind and sedate you before harvesting your organs and you’d remember him as the hero he wasn’t, or maybe you’d grow a brain and stay in Tillburry. At least now he has the caps to buy off two large whiskey bottles and wash away the image of your face when struck with betrayal.

He was a survivor, you’d said so yourself, he did what he had to do, but that stupid conversation and Hank’s stupid expression wouldn’t budge from the back of his eyelids.

“What’re you gonna do if she doesn’t stay here though?”

“There’s always Super Duper Mart.”

“Oh, by the way.” your voice is a spark in the void of hopelessness, ripping him out of the maze of thoughts he’d unwittingly fallen into. He leads you through a haze of clinking tankards and lively, drunken chatter, a heavy smog of cigarette smoke that makes your nose wrinkle, and dim lighting to hide people’s identities. But you’re just happy to be with him and it’s visible by the perky smile on your lips. It’s painful to look at. “My name is – ”

“ – Don’t.”

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Chapter 7 >>>

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silkscream · 6 months

Text

CHAPTER 1: I'LL BE YOUR PLASTIC TOY

ੈ✩ gojo satoru x reader, geto suguru x reader

Satoru Gojo was a lot of things, but he would never be yours. Sleeping with him in his bed as a child didn’t grant you that kind of closeness anymore. Within these halls, you walk past each other like strangers.

ੈ✩ chapter cw/tags: angst, suggestiveness, making out, light bullying

ੈ✩ wc: 5.5k

ੈ✩ a/n: i am here to ruin everyone's lives. apologies in advance

playlist ✸ read on ao3 ✸ series masterlist

March, 2008

“Hey, Twigs. Wanna see something cool?”

His honeyed voice chills your spine, his breath warm right by your ear. You roll your eyes as you turn to face Satoru, grinning with all his teeth as he tugs at your wrist.

“What is it, Satoru?” you sigh.

“You have to follow meee,” he sings, pulling you away from the table you’re setting and towards the side of the porch. It’s secluded. Private. “Bring the spoon.”

With furrowed brows, you oblige. It isn’t like you have a choice. You had followed him around like a puppy ever since you’d met him as a child. You continue to, regardless of your determination to separate yourself from him.

His favorite shadow. His little pet.

The two of you aren’t as close as you were when you were children, but it’s still impossible to refuse him when he has a request. You blame it on your mother and her professionalism. You figure you had inherited it from her. That hyper-politeness. You find that you blame the ocean blue of his eyes more often. Always sparkling.

He walks a few feet away from you, still grinning. You blink at his tall figure. He's currently dressed in a baby blue dress shirt (sleeves rolled up, of course) and black slacks. His Sunday best for the fancy brunch at the Gojo Estate. Every April, your mother summons you to help set up, then rewards you with a plate and time to play with the other kids. She would continue her work, serving the family and their guests. You would pretend that you weren’t part of the staff.

There hadn’t been a point in you staying for the afternoon in years. Only if Satoru begged you to, and even then, he hadn’t bothered to do so since junior high.

“You’re going to get me in trouble,” you huff, crossing your arms. You wipe your sweaty hands on your smock.

“I’d never let you get in trouble, you know that,” he smirks. “Now, throw the spoon at me.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

“I want to throw way more than a spoon at you right now.”

“Relax, Twigs. Do this for me. Please?” he pouts. You can see his bright blue eyes peeking out of his black sunglasses, framed by snow-white lashes. It was unfair how pretty he was. How easily he could persuade you.

Sighing, you throw the spoon in his direction. It stops right in front of his face as if there’s an invisible wall. He laughs in victory when he sees your confused expression.

“What was that?”

“My Infinity. I’ve perfected it so that it’s automatic. Took me a lot of willpower before but now it’s as easy as breathing.”

“Congratulations,” you reply dryly.

It was typical of Satoru to be invincible. Untouchable. It had been a quality of his since birth, now manifested into a literal power to aid him against threats. You’d been on the outskirts of such threats when you were younger, but Satoru would always spare you the details.

Watching him grow in his adolescence had been like watching a sprout bloom. It shot toward the sky exponentially until it became a tree in record time. You, meanwhile, were still a sprout. A window, they’d called it. Able to see the horrors produced by human nature but unable to do anything about it.

Your head snaps up, alert when you hear your mother yelling your name from the porch. She points a hard gaze at you, then softens it when she sees Satoru.

“Satoru-kun, do you mind if I steal her for a minute? I need some extra hands for the tamagoyaki.”

Satoru nods, expressing his courtesy to your mother in his usual charming poise. It used to work on you before, but it often irks you now. The way he dazzles people to get what he wants. You would rather die than admit it was a characteristic of his that you envied.

He tugs at your braid before you walk away.

“See you later, Twigs,” he calls after you. A playful lilt to his voice.

“You won’t.”

Satoru has you memorized. Since the two of you were five years old, he considered you his mirror image, though you never believed him.

Often, when he sees you now, his heart leaps the tiniest bit in his chest the same way it did when he was thirteen. He’s gotten better at ignoring it. He’s perfected the art of ignoring you ever since high school started.

He likes to indulge during times when you’re not looking. At the moment, you’re concentrated on a flower arrangement, a blush painted on your cheeks from the heat. He’d watch you do this when you were kids, too. Your face would be in a concentrated frown, tongue peeking out. Nimble fingers perfecting an ikebana arrangement.

Sometimes he missed it. He decided long ago that it would be better if he didn’t.

You two had been inseparable since the day the Gojos' hired your mother as a maid. He remembered you hiding behind your mother’s legs, chewing on the end of one of your braids. You would stay in the guest house of the Gojo estate with your mother, and you would become Satoru’s best companion.

Both of your mothers would arrange playdates. Satoru’s mother wanted him out of her hair. Your mother wanted to work without your constant interruptions. You were needy, an only child, but Satoru would always please you with his company. It was why you adored him.

He’d show you all his toys and teach you all the games that his extended family would show him to make you feel included. He’d have you sleep in his bed, which would go under the radar until the two of you were fourteen. It would be innocent and wholesome. Satoru would show you the stars he’d learned about and you would look at him as if he’d hung them in the sky himself.

Satoru often reminisces about the shape of your body to this day. Sometimes, he misses it when he’s alone in his king-sized bed in the winter. Even with the heat on, there’s still something missing, and then he thinks of you.

When you were kids, you’d sleep together, legs and arms intertwined. Drool on the same pillow. Wake up to an abundance of pancakes from your mother.

You had been half a friend, half a plaything. Satoru’s counterpart. Feet kicking each other under the breakfast table.

At age five, you’d seen the same curse together. A harmless thing, chameleon-like, with eight legs on each side. It had a nasty face, one that you had recognized from your nightmares. It had been exciting at first, knowing that you shared the same ability as your best friend. You believed that you would grow with him and become as talented as him.

But that was an exaggeration. Satoru's parents knew how isolating it would be for their son to be the strongest. Your technique never came.

Satoru acted as your protector, then. Expelled the small, vicious curses in the corners of your room like they were bugs. You’d watch him train, his body overgrowing with knobby knees as you sat on the sidelines. And while you grew up with him, you only got smaller in his periphery. Always lesser. Always weaker.

It’s the reason you’d grown apart. At least that’s what he tells himself.

Satoru had grown into a tall, arrogant child. He treated school as a hobby and still made the highest marks, which angered you to no end. It didn’t matter to him, anyway, knowing that he’d become a company's CEO or the best jujutsu sorcerer in the world. He had his future in the palm of his hands. You were not a part of that. You weren’t even sure of a future of your own.

Sometimes he would have nightmares of you dying in his arms at the hands of a curse too big for him to control. During adolescence, he experienced many threats to his safety. He knew he couldn't live with himself. He couldn’t bear to see you endure the same.

So, without explanation, Satoru Gojo pretended you didn’t exist. He exchanged the necessary niceties in school and when you'd come over with your mother, though he'd never ask you to stay the same way he had when you were kids. He was often occupied with new friends, anyway. Often busy working on his technique. Nothing that was your business, of course.

You resented him for it.

Now, you’re enduring your last year of high school with him, and you are trying so badly to be good. You should aim to make good enough marks to attend a decent university on a decent scholarship. God knows you aren’t fit for the world of jujutsu sorcery.

In a way, you’re okay with the mundanity of your life. Satoru’s absence in your heart convinced you of that.

Satoru’s attendance at school is only an illusion of normalcy for his parents. His mother insists on it. Barely a sorcerer herself, she had wanted to give her son the option of living a normal life. With his grades and wit, she knew that he could easily be successful as a businessman or a doctor.

Despite this, Satoru knew he would enroll in Tokyo’s Jujutsu Technical College with Suguru. He had met Suguru when he was fifteen, trying to exorcise a curse that only got snatched by a dark-haired thief, one who would end up as his best friend.

Satoru saw Suguru as his only equal. He had no one else to relate to about jujutsu sorcery.

Certainly not you.

But still, he was closing another year of high school, his last. Then he could be free from his parents’ restraints. It was easy for him to be the best and make the most friends. It was a shame that he’d have to leave them all behind.

You’re a ghost in Satoru’s wake. Always near, never faltering yet never consuming too much space. As the school year progresses, he ignores you like a mosquito bite. Harmless but still itching his skin. Always reminded of your presence even when you do nothing to draw attention to yourself.

And then there are times that you do.

“I’m sorry, sensei,” you mumble, stunned in the doorway of the classroom.

It’s a nondescript weekday in May, one that’s wet with rain, which explains your damp hair and clothes. Your appearance conjures a succession of snickers. The sound of low laughter taunting you and whispers gossiping about you.

You’re too tired for it. You don’t want to be here at all.

“I’m disappointed,” your teacher relays. “You’re usually never tardy.”

“It won’t happen again,” you muster.

You hear more whispers. It hangs on your shoulders as you sit in your seat, still and heavy as you attempt to take notes.

Should’ve worn something more sheer, than she’d get the attention she wants, huh?

Nah, not like her tits are even good enough to be seen like that.

Bet she’s hiding something from all of us. Maybe we can get her to strip in the girls’ locker room and give us a show later.

“Shut the fuck up,” a voice growls. You hear it, turning your head, and your eyes fall on Satoru’s fiery blues.

You wonder if the feeling of his gaze searing into the back of your head is worth mentioning. It makes your face hotter, the flush of humiliation warming your neck as your peers snicker at you.

You manage to get through class without crying. Haru, a boy you were closer with in previous years, offers his sweatshirt to you as you collect your things.

“She’s good,” Satoru interrupts as you strip off your damp sweater. Within seconds, he has you under his arm. He ushers you out the classroom door. His oversized jacket drapes over your shoulders.

“Gojo,” you hiss. “He was just being nice.”

“Or he wanted to see you in a wet t-shirt. I don’t think white was the best move for today, by the way.”

Your face heats up when you look down. You realize the extent of skin that’s visible from the sheerness of your damp white shirt. It mortifies you more when you realize that Satoru had caught it first.

“Right. Thanks,” you mumble, hiking up your bookbag tighter on your shoulder.

“So helpless sometimes,” Satoru sighs. He shoots you a devilish smile that combats your scowling frown. “Why don’t you call me by my first name here?”

“Because we’re in school and it’s polite.”

"Twigs, are you scared of being associated with me?"

He blocks the door of your locker, leaning against it and towering over you. Satoru had always taken up as much space as possible without a care in the world. You were the opposite -– always compartmentalizing yourself to be smaller. Malleable. Amicable.

He’s too close for comfort, nearly breathing down your neck. He only moves when you kick him pathetically in the shin.

Satoru’s smile only grows bigger as you ignore him. He wonders if he could get your fuse to blow in front of him right now. This place is usually where you’re composed, regal, and expedient. One of the school’s top students.

He knew you had an edge to you, wild as you were when he had known you as a child. But you had only grown to be responsible and sensible. He thinks that his mother would be relieved if he acted more like you.

“Coming home with me or what?” Satoru quips. The way he says it makes your stomach stir. It's an almost salacious suggestion despite its innocence. Satoru always made everything sound more exciting than it was.

“Why would I?” you raise a brow.

“My mother would like to see you. She told me she had some hand-me-downs for you to try on." You know I’d love nothing more than to see you parade around my house dressed like my mother in the 70s.” He grins in amusement.

“Okay, sure, whatever.”

“Yo, Satoru!”

His head whips around to see one of his buddies, crowded around other jocks. Satoru is quick to leave you without so much as a goodbye.

July, 2008

After your semester, you end up second to Satoru. It’s no surprise to you despite how much it infuriates you. You are never anything more or less.

"Congratulations, Twigs," Satoru murmurs to you. He startles you from your thoughts. You slam your locker closed.

“Why are you still calling me that?”

“Because you’re my Twigs,” he pouts.

Yours. It’s a funny lie. Satoru Gojo was a lot of things, but he would never be yours. Sleeping with him in his bed as a child didn’t grant you that kind of closeness anymore. Within these halls, you walk past each other like strangers.

He pouts childishly like he always does. There’s a devilish spark in his blue eyes underneath his sunglasses, though you can barely make out his irises from his height. Satoru’s growth spurt had him at over six feet tall by the time he was sixteen. It was obvious that he’d only grow taller.

You scoff, rolling your eyes at the nickname. If you were in middle school again, the notion would warm your heart. It had been a stupid nickname he’d tease you with ever since you were both ten. You had been angry at him for reasons that escaped you, climbing up the tree in the backyard of his estate as high as you could until he begged you to come down.

You wouldn’t, of course. You were always stubborn like that, and Satoru loved it.

You were also much clumsier when you were ten, slipping your foot as you attempted to climb a different branch and falling into Satoru’s arms. It had been a miracle you didn’t break any bones, but thanks to Satoru’s freakish strength, you were unharmed. Only disheveled with leaves and twigs stuck in your frizzy hair. He had called you Twigs ever since.

“I’m not your anything. Even if my mother is still your fucking maid.”

“Aren’t you my maid, too? My little servant?” he teases.

You wonder if he knows how cruel it is, even if it’s a little joke.

“I’m nothing to you,” you mumble. You attempt to hold a faster stride on your walk home. Maybe you’d advance enough to leave him in the dust. You could be the best runner on the track team if you managed that.

But you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t leave him, couldn’t. Not a chance.

“What was that?” Satoru calls after you.

“Nothing!”

“Slow down,” he whines, running fast enough to follow your stride, much to your annoyance. Him and his stupid, long legs. His taunting smile. “Don’t you wanna come over?”

“Why would I?”

“Your mom’s probably there. And we can celebrate the end of exams.”

“I have… stuff to do,” you stammer.

“No, you don’t,” Satoru chuckles. “The semester’s over. Summer’s here, baby.”

“Don’t call me that!”

He laughs again, the sound twinkling in your ears like a beloved song. It makes your cheeks warm. You don’t want him to see it.

Yet, he wraps his arms around you, chin nestled to your collarbone as if you were joined together. In a blink, the two of you are in his kitchen, with whiplash only an after-effect. You still hadn’t gotten used to his ability to warp.

“I hate when you do that.”

“You like it, I know you do,” Satoru taunts. “It excites you. I can tell because your cheeks get all flushed.”

“They do not!”

“Sure, they don’t, Twigs.”

“You’re annoying,” you huff, dropping your school bag on a chair.

Satoru greets your mother with a kiss on the cheek as you follow behind him. She has tea prepared in the sitting room for you and him, along with dorayaki and matcha Swiss rolls.

“Your mom’s the fucking best,” he muses as he gobbles down a third roll. You watch him in feigned disgust. Sipping your tea, you mumble something unintelligible in agreement.

“What, you aren’t hungry?”

“No.”

“Try this.”

“I have. She’s my mom.”

“C’mon, Twigs, open up.”

Satoru leans over the table with a Swiss roll between his fingers, waving it in front of your face. There’s no point in protesting -– he’d probably knock something over from his eagerness to annoy you. You part your lips to take a bite, and at the same time, he shoves it into your mouth.

“Satoru!” you groan.

“Stay still.”

You swallow your bite and he wipes his fingertips on the corner of your mouth. He’s close enough to feel your breath on his face, licking up the frosting on his thumb nonchalantly. He chuckles at the flustered look painting your face into a scowl.

“I’m done. I’m going to do the dishes.”

You excuse yourself to retreat to the kitchen before you can so much as make eye contact with Satoru again. He has to be teasing you with his small touches. It’s something he would’ve done when you were twelve, yet the notion now would be different.

The two of you were in completely different social spheres. He had separated himself from you years prior. It would be a rare sight for him to be so touchy with you in public, acting as if you were like him.

Someone who had a big kitchen. Someone who didn’t have to think about expenses.

It’s a miracle that he leaves you alone as you clean the kitchen, washing dishes to keep your mind occupied. After you’re done, you decide to cut up a bowl of strawberries. You knew they were Satoru’s favorite. Knowing him, he’d still crave something sweet after demolishing all the desserts.

You nick yourself. A careless act — you aren’t paying attention, mistaking the sharp side of the knife for the dull one. It slices the inside of your thumb. Cursing under your breath, you hover your hand over the wound. You heal it within milliseconds without so much as a second thought.

This is when Satoru kicks at something. The wall or a potted plant, you don’t know. But it’s a plea for attention and it brings your focus to him, your head snapping up to meet his gaze and his childish pout.

“I saw that,” he says, lowly.

You freeze under his scrutiny. You don’t say anything.

“So you’ve been lying to me.” It’s a seething accusation instead of a question.

He gets so close to you without you even noticing. He towers over you again, swallowed by the whole of his shadow, and his betrayed frown is petulant like a child’s.

“Satoru—”

“You said you didn’t have a cursed technique.”

“I—I didn’t. Not until later—”

“When?”

Your eyes are wide as you look up at him, hands trembling. He takes a step forward, taking up more space. It reminds you of your worth. The mere fact of him belittles you in that way.

“When I was thirteen. My kitten, Aki. The stray. You remember him, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“He got hit by a car one day, and I couldn’t stop sobbing. And I was holding him in my hands all bloody. And then, I brought him back to life. It just happened.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

You search Satoru’s face. There’s a bit of betrayal in it, mostly surprise. It boils your blood in the slightest bit — because why is it so shocking that you ended up with a cursed technique? You may have hidden it from him for a few years, but was it something so unimagined for you?

You assumed that you would always be a plaything in Satoru’s eyes. Something so easy, so useless.

“It wasn’t enough,” you exasperate.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It doesn’t matter. None of it does, Satoru. It’s so—”

Insignificant. Small compared to you.

He waits, swallowing the lump in his throat. Eyes flaring like comets.

“It doesn’t matter,” you repeat. “I don’t even want to be a sorcerer, and even if I wanted to be, I could never keep up with you. I don’t see the point in pursuing this if I’m better off just studying at a normal university—”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Your technique is amazing. It’s like Shoko’s! You could’ve —”

“Satoru,” you emphasize. Your tone shuts him up, your hardened gaze, the lightning in your eyes bright and sharp. Menacing, even. You can sense the sound of him swallowing, a lump lodged in his throat loud enough for you to hear.

White lashes flutter. A frown is still displayed on his face. It’s now that he notices the slight bags under your eyes. Evidence of burden, of nights spent awake under the unforgiving moonlight.

You look at him in a way that feels damning — like you’re coaxing something from him. He knows better — knows that his anger is misplaced, that you’re right.

You having a healing technique is nothing compared to him. Even then, he knows that you probably aren’t interested in combat or the world of jujutsu sorcery in general. It doesn’t affect him so negatively. So what is he so angry about?

The question is in your eyes, pleading. He already knows the answer despite not admitting it to himself. He knows that the prospect of you having a cursed technique doesn’t mean you’re stronger than him. He assumes you wouldn’t surpass him, and wouldn’t think you to be someone who would even think about it.

Satoru knows he’s angry because he feels very close to you. He had at least thought he was close enough with you to know about your cursed technique. It was finding out that you were hiding it from him that made him angry. Learning that you had it manifest in front of you and didn’t bother to fucking tell him about it.

He can’t voice any of these frustrations. He knows you’d yell at him, and criticize him for thinking he’s entitled to you. It’s inappropriate and unfair, but in his younger years, he often felt that he was entitled to you. He’d known you since you were so very little, so vulnerable. He had protected you from all those curses, hadn’t he? He held you in his arms in his bed for years. That had to have meant something to you. It certainly meant something to him.

“Sorry. I just wish you told me earlier,” he says softly.

You apologize. Meek beneath him, eyes avoiding him.

“I know,” you sigh. “I have to go. I’ll see you later, Satoru.”

You don’t see him for a week and a half. It should be typical to you. It’s not like him to reach out or go out of his way to see you. He’d always been like that, giving you no expectations. And yet, his radio silence had crawled under your skin.

It’s stupid to expect him, anyway. There’s no reason for him to show up at yours, much more of a reason for you to show up at his, but you don’t need to. Your mother does that for her job and it has nothing to do with you.

There’s a Tuesday that’s so quiet, so plain that even the rain falters after two hours to only grant the town wet pavement. You’re curled up with a book in your living room when you hear a succession of knocks on your door. An erratic rhythm, the same as the special knock you would use with Satoru.

It’s him, of course. He smirks at you, an oversized t-shirt loose off of his lanky figure. You try not to fixate on the sweat of his exposed collarbone. You look him straight in the eyes through his pitch-black sunglasses.

He has a large bouquet in his hands. He grins at you. For the first time in a little while, you feel brave.

“Confessing your love to me this afternoon, are you?” you pester, a brow raised.

Something like that, Satoru thinks.

“You wish.”

He walks past you, brushing your shoulders much to your annoyance. He sets the bouquet on your kitchen table in its little jar, peonies drooping despite how hard he tries to fix them.

“It’s from my mom to yours. As a thank you and a birthday wish and stuff.”

“Thanks,” you murmur. “That’s very sweet of her.”

He hums in agreement, rocking his heels back and forth as his eyes roam your house. It isn’t his first time here, but he acts the part, hands buried in his pockets as he observes you like a wild animal.

“Will that be all?”

“Dunno,” Satoru shrugs. “What were you up to before I showed up?”

You shrug, too, attempting to mirror his nonchalance. You had long ago buried your paperback in a drawer, promising to return to it by the time Satoru left. But still, he lingers, in front of you, taking up unnecessary space in your childhood home. Too tall and too pretty.

“Just cleaning my room,” you lie.

“Can I see it?”

“Why?”

“Been a while,” he shrugs. “I’m just curious.”

“Well, it’s a mess right now. I didn’t get very far.”

“Like I care,” Satoru chuckles.

He stares at you for a bit, heartbeats passing the time in your head. Fuck, he’s serious. He’s already leaning towards the staircase.

“Okay.”

You’re hyper-aware of him behind you, eyes exploring the length of your body. If you had known that he would show up unannounced, you would’ve changed into one of your long dresses or a pair of jeans. At the moment, you feel too bare in your tank top and corduroy shorts. You feel like a child outgrown.

Satoru takes up as much space as usual, long limbs splayed over your tiny twin bed. You don’t permit him to sit on your bed, but he does it anyway. He looks at the pictures on your wall, takes in the sweet smell of your sheets. It’s similar to your clothes, your flesh. Your hair. He’d live in it if he could.

“How cute.” He gestures to a cat plushie by the head of your bed.

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not!” Satoru laughs. “It is cute. It’s so you.”

A certain fervor blossoms in your gut at that. The image of him stretched out on your little bed. Despite your closeness with him when you were younger, he had never spent much time at your house. It took you a few years to understand why.

“You should invite me over more often.”

“I don’t invite you over ever.”

“Well, you could start.”

“Why?” You stand by the wall, shifting your weight towards it as you lean backward. You cross your arms in defense, even though he hasn’t said anything to provoke you yet.

“It’s comfy here. I like it.”

“Thanks?”

He sings your name, beckoning you to him. You take three steps at most, holding your breath. Standing in front of his knees.

“Come sit, Twigs.”

“Told you not to call me that,” you breathe.

“Don’t care,” he grins.

He reaches out to you, pulling you between his knees with a hand on your waist. He smirks at the sound of your gasp as he tugs at your wrist.

“In my lap. C’mere.”

It’s difficult to refuse Satoru Gojo. His eyes drink you in, ocean blues glimmering and reflecting the afternoon sunlight. You’re still between his thighs. He tugs you without much effort, making you stumble into him. Your hands hold onto his shoulders as you settle into his lap. He holds the small of your back as you straddle him.

“Wanna try something.”

You say nothing. Your eyes flutter closed when you feel his fingertips grazing your jaw.

There’s a softness against your mouth. You don’t dare open your eyes.

You sense a sharp inhale behind the lips that kiss you, but they stay. Wetting between your mouth with the slight of a tongue. Tasting sweet like honeysuckle.

You whine, opening your mouth a bit more. You swallow down divinity. It's misguided affection that you had wished for when you were so much smaller. It might mean something bigger to you now if you thought about it for longer. You don’t want to. You refuse to.

But Satoru kisses you hard, excited and eager. His tongue peeks into your mouth and you taste strawberries. Lips soft and supple and melting against yours.

He groans, fisting your hair in his hand as he deepens the kiss, falling more and more into you. He smiles against your mouth as he coaxes a small sound out of you. It crawls out of your throat for him to taste with satisfaction. He’s always dreamed of you in his lap, but he could never tell you that.

You’re breathless, weak, and melting into him as he wraps his arms around you. Caging you in so that you can’t escape. So fucking warm in his embrace.

It takes a second for you to notice the hardness growing underneath you. It prods your center as you mindlessly grind into Satoru’s lap. When you realize, you squeak in embarrassment, and he clutches you harder.

You sigh into each other, eating the other up. Heat surges through you, from your forehead down to your core, to your weak, sensitive legs. Hot from the feeling of him in your mouth. Hot from the proximity of your core to his.

You pull away, exhaling unevenly as you try to catch your breath. You’re shy under his gaze, unwrapping yourself and covering your body as if you’re naked.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re so cute,” he chuckles. “Acting like that was your first kiss.”

“What if it was?”

He raises a brow as you look away with flushed cheeks. You’re still on his lap and he takes the opportunity to remind you of this, shifting you in his lap and causing friction. Your eyes are wide as you quickly attempt to untangle your limbs with his.

“That was your first kiss?”

“Yeah.”

You roll your eyes at the sight of his leering smile. God, you knew this would happen. Satoru would never let you live it down.

“I’m going to kick you out—”

“No.”

He grasps your wrist in his hand. It’s small compared to his palm, engulfing you. His other hand grips your hip firmly but softly. He only moves it to cup your cheek, his thumb stroking your skin.

“How was it? Tell me.”

“Good,” you breathe. “Felt good.”

For the first time in a long time, he looks at you like you have invented something new. There’s a bit of astonishment. Wonder and admiration. Maybe you were getting ahead of yourself. You were easily deluding yourself with the expression of his sapphire blue eyes.

“Felt good for me, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you do that?” you ask, giggling nervously.

“Just wanted to.”

“I want you to kiss me again,” you whisper.

“I want to do more than that,” Satoru mumbles. But he knows better. It’s the best decision for him to get you off his lap right now before he loses composure.

You both hear the sound of your front door opening as if it’s timed -- your mother.

“I’ll kiss you later, okay?” Satoru murmurs.

“You will?”

“My parents will be gone this weekend. To Okinawa. You should come over on Saturday.”

“Okay. I will.”

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