#that last one i think happens In The House the entire time

[justmeinadaze]

Bite To Break The Skin (Steddie X Plus Size Y/N)

A/N: The more the days past the angstier this got. Please enjoy <3.

Warnings: Vampire Toxic Steddie X Human Fem Plus Size Y/N, SMUT, dry humping, male masturbation, degrading (whore, slut, little brat, etc) loss of virginity, choking, light spanking, biting, mentions of blood, crying (due to pleasure) I think that's all. Oh and aftercare always.

ANGST, Both boys struggle with their change, Eddie is beaten up by jocks, Steve has a fight with someone in his store, Metalhead feeds from Y/N and puts her in the hospital (goes to visit, was an accident), Steve feeds from her after school in her car.

Main event is at her house, they scare her while she's home alone before they use her (their words), Y/N cuts Eddie's arm with a knife but it heals quickly, a bit of jealous steddie near the end. Lots of conflict through out the story within them about becoming "villains".

Word Count: 7808

Steddie Masterlist/ Donate to Me

Your pencil moved effortlessly along the sketchpad as you watched Eddie Munson sleep soundly on his desk after finally finishing his test. Students threw grumbled paper balls his way but he didn’t once stir. 

You, like everyone else, knew of Eddie and everything that had happened in March of 86. The people in Hawkins wouldn’t allow him to forget it as they whispered words like murderer and killer as he passed by in the halls. 

Before all that though, you were aware of him only as the metalhead who seemed to show no fear as he stood atop tables yelling or screamed about mythical fights during his club meetings. You never showed anyone but you had so many drawings of his smiling face especially when he was laughing with the younger boys at his table. 

When schools finally reopened after the earthquake that shook the town, everyone was surprised (and angered) that he was allowed to try and finish his last semester so he could get his diploma. 

He remained to himself which didn’t surprise you after everything he went through but what killed you was seeing that spark you enjoyed within him seem now totally absent. Eddie’s long hair would constantly block his face as his head hung while he stalked from class to class. His arms remained folded to his chest and he tried to stay as close to the shadows as possible. 

A BMW would pick him up after school that you soon learned belonged to Steve Harrington. The windows of his car that used to be rolled down constantly were closed tight and tinted as dark as they could go. You had some sketches of the former jock from his time at Hawkins high; the way his lips pouted out when he was trying to study in the library, him smiling with Nancy as he danced at a party you snuck into with your friends, and your personal favorite, Steve in his Scoops Ahoy uniform. 

Now adays, even his energy seemed to shift to a sad, darker tone that broke your heart. 

You couldn’t help but wonder why The King and The Freak of Hawkins were now spending so much time together but you ignored those internal questions as you continued to focus on your own boring life. 

The bell rung aggressively causing Eddie to shoot up and rub his eyes with his large, ring covered palms before absently pushing all the loose paper off his leather jacket. 

His beautiful brown eyes briefly met yours and you quickly looked away, grabbing all your books and backpack before scurrying out the door. 

***

“What movie should we get?”, your friend asked as her fingers lightly crazed the VHS tapes on the shelf of the Family Video. 

“Doesn’t matter.”, you shrug absently. “Whatever makes your heart happy.”

Your friend giggles as she picks up a box and begins absently telling you something you couldn’t care less about as the sound of gruff voices caught your attention. Gradually moving towards the noise, you paused to hide behind one of the racks as you watched Steve talking with a customer. His entire demeanor was rigid as he stood up tall seeming to tower over the man you recognized as a former student. 

“Get the fuck away from me, Harrington. We both know a pussy like you won’t do anything.”

“Talk about my friends again and I’ll show what I’m capable of.”

“Friends? What friends? That murderer who killed Chrissy or the whore who left you for that freak Byers?”

Grabbing the collar of his shirt, Steve pushes the boy into the wall so hard the VHSs in the case beside him fall loudly to the ground making you gasp in surprise. The pretty boy’s head tilts slightly in your direction but his eyes never leave the man in his grasp. 

“Ok, Steve, come on.”, a girl with an identical worker’s vest murmurs as she comes around to place her palm on his bicep. “Let him go.”

His chest rises and falls rapidly as his knuckles tighten before shoving the kid to the side where he falls to the floor by your feet. Your gaze shifts towards the wall and your eyes blink in surprise at the slight dent made within the concrete that wasn’t there prior. 

Steve glances in the same direction and as his eyes meet yours, you duck your head and back away to find your friend. 

#################

“Fuck… fuck, fuck, fuck!”

The sound of shouting and loud banging on the lockers down the hall from where you were sitting caused your head to snap to attention as your neck craned to find the source of the sound. 

Eddie’s forehead was leaning against the metal as his hand banged on it again before descending to the floor beneath him. 

“E-Excuse me? Are you alright?”

“Do I look fucking alright?”, he answered gruffly without opening his eyes to bother to see who he was speaking to. “I’m not in the mood to be spit on today so go the fuck away.”

“I…I’m not…I just wanted to make sure you’re ok. I can get you some water if you need it…”

When he finally bothers to look your way, every muscle within him freezes as he takes you in. You weren’t one of the popular kids and definitely didn’t seem to be a part of any clique he’d recognize judging from your exceptionally generic wardrobe. 

Your black jacket clung to your curvy form as if you were hoping it would shield you from everyone else around you. 

“I know you. We have a class together.”

“That’s right. I’m Y/N and you’re Eddie. Here, um, drink some of this. You look dehydrated.”

As you hand him your water bottle, his eyes never leave you as he absently chugs it back before coughing hard and throwing it down the hall. 

“Are you ok?! What happened?!”, you ask as you try to pat his back, pulling back abruptly when you feel how cold his skin is even through his shirt.

“Fuck! No…I’m…I’m—shit—I forget sometimes…I can’t…”, he coughs out as he gestures towards your bottle. 

“Munson! Where the fuck were you? I’ve been waiting—” Steve stops his rant when he realizes you’re standing next to his friend. “What are you doing here?”

“Huh?”

“You heard me. What the fuck are you doing here?! Are you following us?! Who are you?!”, he yells as he stomps forward, walking you backwards into the lockers behind you. 

“Steve she’s not…she goes to school here…”

Just as he had with the boy in the video store, his eyes remained on you but instead of doing the same, you searched his features realizing then that he seemed almost identical to Eddie in the since that he was shaking, sweating, and incredibly pale. 

“I’m sorry.”, you whimper. “He seemed sick and I was trying to help.”

Blinking, Steve took a step back as his head hung. 

“Stay away from us or else.”

Your jaw dropped at his threat, flabbergasted as you watched him grab his friend’s wrist and tug him out the door. 

***

Eddie wasn’t in class the following day and you couldn’t help but be worried. When you found him, he seemed incredibly ill and unlike everyone else in the town you wanted him to be ok. 

After school you thought maybe you could wait for him outside just to get visual confirmation he was ok without bothering him or being seen by Steve but as you took a step outside thunder banged loudly above you, barely covering the sound of laughter that echoed around the corner near the gym. 

“Yeah? Does it hurt, Munson?!”, someone shouted followed by the sound of a loud grunt in pain. “About as bad as you hurt Chrissy?!”

Rounding the corner, you found some of the kids you knew as basketball players for Hawkins High kicking and punching Eddie while he laid their bleeding on the gravel. 

Why wasn’t he fighting back?

“HEY!”, you screamed as another boy kicked him in the face right as the rain began to fall. “Stop that! You’ll kill him!”

Dropping your backpack, you ran forward surprised when the other kids ran off. 

“Eddie? Are you ok?!”

Just as you fell onto your knees, he pushed up onto his palms; his breathing heavy like Steve’s had been as you noticed his back rise and fall. The rain dampened his hair allowing it to hide his face from your view. 

“W-What can I do? Should I get Steve or—”

A loud growl cut you off as Eddie suddenly surged towards you knocking you onto your back and straddling your waist with his knees on either side as he held your arms down above you by the wrist. 

You still couldn’t see much of his face but you could swear you saw fangs as he flashed you a small smirk before lurching his lips towards your neck. Something sharp pierced your skin but your scream was muffled by the storm and his palm as you suddenly began to feel heavy. 

Feeling your body go limp, Eddie let you go but to his shock instead of fighting back, your fingers tangle in his hair as your other arm wrapped around his back to hug him tightly. 

All too quickly, he’s pulled off you and you vaguely see two figures through your hazy vision and hear deep grumbles of anger before the world goes black. 

*** 

Later that evening, you woke up in a hospital with your parents sobbing at your side. You told them and the doctor you couldn’t remember what happened which was partially true. You remembered protecting Eddie but then he pushed you down and…something stabbed your neck… it hurt at first but then…it didn’t…

The next couple of days were a blur as your body recuperated from whatever happened. You slept pretty much 24/7 with the doctors giving you some medicine to help. 

Your dreams were so vivid that you could swear they were real.

The first night, you thought you heard Steve Harrington beside your bed.

“I told you to stay away. Why didn’t you listen?” The hospital mattress beside you dipped and you felt a large palm pet your head. “Why did you help him? Why aren’t you like everyone else?”, he sighs. “He said your blood made him feel better. I…I don’t know if I can do that… I don’t know if I can…A part of me would rather die than hurt someone but…honey, I’m so…HUNGRY.”, Steve growled as he exhaled. 

The second evening, the smell of cigarette smoke had your eyes fluttering as you struggled to keep them open, vaguely seeing long hair and a leather jacket in the chair by your bed. 

“E-Eddie?”

“No, sweetheart. I’m not here. I need you to try and forget about me ok? I don’t…I don’t want to hurt you again.” After a while, you thought you had fully fallen back asleep but you still felt rough hands reach for yours to hold them in their grasp. “I’m so sorry, Y/N. You have no idea what this is like. We’ve been trying for so long not to give into that need but…it’s like I couldn’t control it…You have no idea how bad I wanted to kill them…and then my stomach felt like it was on fire…

Even now…I want to…I can feel that pulse in your neck…Fuuuuuck…it’s so overwhelming.”

 Fingers lightly brush the bandage against your skin before you whine as its roughly removed. 

“I know…I know it hurts. Can I…Can I kiss it and make it better?” A deep sigh leaves your lips as your head turns towards the feeling of a mouth gently pressed against your skin. “You tasted so sweet, Y/N… You don’t know how good it felt to have you hold me.” At his whispered words, his tongue lightly darted out to touch your wound as his palm tenderly cupped your face but everything in him paused as you listened to silence. “Holy shit…I didn’t know…I didn’t know I could do that…”

The heat of his humid breath warmed your face before the muscle between his teeth licked along your throat to your cheek.

“Wow.”

That morning when you woke up the doctors were baffled that the puncture wounds on your neck were suddenly gone. No scar or cut of any kind and even your pain had subsided as if nothing had ever happened. 

A couple of days later, you were finally able to go back to school but you felt eyes on you constantly. 

Entering your first class, within your usual seat, you found your backpack and your sketchbook waiting for you. Blinking in shock, you glanced towards the man who was normally sullen with his head hanging low doing anything to avoid eye contact but today his gorgeous chocolate hues locked with yours as a smile painted his lips. 

Eddie had a bit more color in his face than he normally did and he seemed a lot less agitated.

Choosing not to address him, you took your seat and flipped through your book. The pages were a bit worn due to the rain it had been out in but what gave you pause was some of the red stains along a few of the pages that looked like fingerprints near the corners. 

Once you got to the last sketch you drew of Eddie slumped over in his desk, a pink colored rose that had been smooshed between the pages fell into your lap. Next to the image of him someone had written lyrics to a heavy metal song you very much recognized. 

When you swiveled your head to look his way again, his smile had widened as he watched you go through your things, giving you a little shiver as he tossed a not-so-subtle wink your way. 

“Screams and nightmares

Of a life I want

Can't see living this lie, no

A world I haunt

You've lost all control of my

Heart and soul

Satan holds my future

Watch it unfold.”

***

“Y/N, seriously, your work is phenomenal.”, your teacher praises as he walks you to the long-abandoned parking lot and hands you the painting you had displayed for your art club after school. 

During your time in the hospital, you still sketched absently (or so you thought) and when you finally made it back home painted what you drew. Everyone was amazed and slightly horrified at the image of you asleep in your bed with an angel holding your hand. The angel’s face was distorted as his head rested on his arm but his halo above was tilted, almost being replaced by horns that were obscured by his wavy long hair. 

Beside him was another boy who didn’t have a halo or horns but wings with feathers that were shedding and being replaced with what appeared to be bat wings. His head hung as his palm touched the angel’s shoulder and the light colors that surrounded them were slowly being invaded by red. 

“Thank you, Mr. Fox. I, um, I’m not sure where it came from but I had some really weird dreams.”, you giggle. 

“I can imagine after what you went through. I want you to consider submitting that to the gallery I mentioned!”, he calls after you as you continue to walk to your car. 

“Yes, sir.”

 Smiling, you watch him drive away before a sudden swish sound above you has you looking towards the sky. The night was clear and honestly quite beautiful as the stars began to paint the darkness. When your eyes tilted back down to earth they were met with a tall broad figure who was panting heavily as his hair blocked his own. 

“S-Steve?”

You gasped at the abrupt feeling of someone else behind you as their chest pushes you forward towards the other boy. 

“It’s ok, Steve, trust me. You’ll feel so much better.”, Eddie murmured seductively. “Can’t you feel it? The pulse of that vein her neck…her shallow breathing…the way she smells…fuck…better than any other high I’ve had, man.”

The former jocks head tilts as your forehead presses against his. 

“I warned you…”, he whispered before rushing towards you and promptly biting into the flesh of your neck.

You squeaked at the sudden action as your fingers immediately clamped down on the back of his head but as that now familiar draining feeling overtook you, the metalhead’s lips tenderly kissing down the other side of your throat had your eyes fluttering closed as a small moan escaped at the feeling. 

With his friend unwilling to let you go, Eddie opened your car door and helped guide you both into the backseat. Your legs were bent at the knee on either side of his lap while his fingers bruised into your waist holding you to him while his free hand cradled your head. 

It felt almost involuntary when your hips began to grind against his. There was a heat coursing through your veins down to your core that desperately needed to be satisfied and when the bulge in his jeans pressed against your center, you knew he felt it to. 

Your movements were sloppy as your body weakened and you began to feel dizzy but the grunts mixed in with the slurping sounds coming from Steve’s lips were enough motivation to keep you going. 

“Atta girl. Fuck, I told you, Harrington, you’d feel better.”, Eddie murmured with a strain in his voice. 

Somehow managing to open your heavy eyes, you could vaguely make out his head lulled back as he watched you and his friend move while stroking his cock at a now rapid pace. 

“Please…”, you whimper and at the sound, Steve grabs your hair and yanks it back allowing him a good look at your face. 

His eyes seemed so much clearer and most if not all of the color had returned to his face. 

“You have to help her. Run your—fuck—tongue along the bite.” Steve turned to glance towards his friend before focusing on your weak form. “Lick her clean.”

Your eyes practically rolled out of skull when his large tongue swept from the exposed skin on your chest up to your neck. Your own pace hastened as your pressed down against him and fell against his shoulder when you felt your body tremble as the coil snapped. 

His limbs circled around you tightly as his own hips took over till his breathing stuttered and you felt the dampness moisten his jeans. Eddie grunted at the sight, leaning against you both as you felt him shudder and his pants warm your skin. 

That following morning you jolted upright in bed, trying to catch your breath as you try to figure out where you were. You were still in the same clothes you left school in minus your shoes and socks. 

Had it all been a dream?

Pushing up onto your palms, nothing seemed out of the ordinary except for your backpack that was placed by your bedroom door and your sketch book on your bedside table. 

Placed on top was another pink rose and when you flipped through the pages, you noticed more blood-stained fingerprints smeared along the pages. Touching your throat, you didn’t feel any wounds and for that you were thankful but when you changed out of your clothes, you noticed light purple bruising along your hips and upper back.

After running downstairs to grab some breakfast, you stopped when you noticed a note taped to the fridge. 

“Hey sweetie, 

Glad you got home alright. We were already in bed when you got in I guess so we weren’t able to tell you that your father and I will be out of town until Sunday. 

Food is in the white containers and if you need anything feel free to ask Mrs. Jenkins across the street. 

Love you,

Mom”

Noticing some imprints from a pen, you turned the paper over to find something written down in handwriting that definitely wasn’t your mothers. 

Fuck… if what happened yesterday wasn’t a dream…then they know I’m going to be alone this weekend…

“I am the Antichrist

It's what I was meant to be

Your God left me behind

And set my soul to be free.”

####################

Friday you skipped school entirely, staying up all night with a butcher knife in your hand, waiting for something that didn’t happen. Saturday you slept on and off throughout the day, jolting awake with every little sound within the house.

That night, you triple checked all the locks before deciding to take a bath to calm your nerves.

“I’m probably overreacting.”, you mumble as you climb into the warm water and allow your muscles to relax. 

As your eyes closed, you mind naturally wondered to the two men you had come into contract with more so within these couple of weeks than the past 4 years you had at school. Eddie and Steve were never mean or rude to you unlike the other student body could be on occasion. 

Steve’s reputation as a king followed him up until his senior year where he seemed much less…angry…than he had been before. You had many little random sketches here and there of the popular kids and looking back on one you did of him his junior year; he had been smiling but something seemed off about it. It wasn’t as natural as it seemed to be with Nancy Wheeler. 

The past four years, you had noticed so many bumps, bruises, and black eyes on his face making you fear for his safety at home but when you found out the Harringtons were never home, you didn’t know what to make of it. 

Eddie had always kept close to his Hellfire club which consisted of the people within his band so neither of you had any interactions if at all. You did see him play guitar once on stage and even had a drawing of it somewhere absolutely loving the way his face and body came to life. When everything with him happened, you never believed he did it. 

You heard through usual town gossip he had been found and was in the hospital for while with other kids including Steve. With the town now running a bit more smoothly you saw them more and more, always together and always dragging or sickly looking. 

Until last week when they…bit you…

Laughing to yourself, you rose to your feet and dried yourself off, wrapping the towel around your body as you ran to your bedroom to put on some shorts and a long sleeve shirt. 

Grabbing the brush by your stereo, you pressed play on the settings and waited for the radio to flow through. 

“Screams!

From a life I live

Torment

Is what I give”

You freeze, turning slowly to face the device as the song Eddie had been writing to you blares through. 

“Torture!

Is what I love

The downfall

Of heavens above.”

Rushing forward, you quickly turn it off with wide eyes before hearing a loud knock on your front door causing you to drop the brush in your hand. 

Hastily you grab the knife by your bed, holding it out for defense as you tiptoe down the stairs.

“W-Who is it?” 

No one answers.

“WHO IS IT!?”

The only response is another loud knock and shakily, you gather the strength to look through the peephole before an exasperated sigh leaves you and you open the barrier to find your neighbor on the other side. 

“Mrs. Jenkins, you scared me.”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. Did you ask who was there? You know how bad my hearing is. A downfall of getting older.”, she laughs. “I just wanted to make sure you were alright. I heard you were in the hospital last week and I told your mom I’d keep two eyes on you.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m fine. It was just…low blood sugar I think.”

“Oh? Your mom said you were cut or something.”

Flashing her your skin, you smile as you reply, “No…no cuts.”

“Well, good. Have you eaten?”

“Yes, ma’am and I just took a bath so I think I’m just going to relax.”

“Alright, sweetheart, if you need anything just give me a call.”

After reassuring her, you close and lock your front door, shaking your head at your own jittery nerves. 

The phone blares startling you and you scold yourself once more as you reach to answer it. 

“Hello?”

“Hey, pretty girl.”

“I’m sorry…who is this?”

“Oh, don’t break my heart and tell me you don’t know my voice. You’ve spent so much time drawing me I guess you never took the time to listen to me speak.”

Your eyes widen as you grab your knife and hold it out into the air while taking a quick scan around the room. 

“Eddie?”

“Good girl. I actually like your work. Last night Steve and I found some of your other books. Are you just like obsessed or what?”

“I-I-I draw what I see.”

“Hm…so…are you telling me while you were in the hospital you saw horns and a halo on my head?”

“I don’t know what I saw. When I paint…I paint what I feel…I dreamt about you a lot…”

“You and I both know that wasn’t a dream, sweetheart. I didn’t know if you were dead and we just needed to make sure you weren’t. Or that you didn’t become what we are.”

“What are you?”, you whisper as the tears begin to fall and you hear him chuckle. 

“I used to be a good man but then this town took that all away. I died for them and they didn’t fucking care!” Eddie growled loudly at his last word, sounding like an animal untamed. “Steve found that out later after everyone abandoned us. They kept insisting we could be good. ‘Don’t drink blood. Don’t hurt anyone. We’ll find a way.’. Well, IIIII found a way…through you…

Y/N, you have no clue how weak I was when those dicks were kicking my ass. I was losing blood and I was starving… and then there you were…”

“Please, Eddie, don’t do this.”, you beg but he continues as if he didn’t hear. 

“Jesus and then you held me…fuck, baby. To have someone nicely touch me again… When I found out I didn’t kill you or turn you, I knew. We forever have an untapped resource.”

“Haven’t you hurt me enough!? Just leave me alone!”

“Did we hurt you, honey?”, Steve replied with mocking taking over the call. “Your pussy grinding against my cock says otherwise.”

“I…I didn’t…I…”

“Are you a virgin, Y/N? Have you ever done that with anyone else? Dry humped them with your body so fucking close but not really touching?”

“Fuck you!!”

“That’s a yes on the virgin, Ed. Good…I like them better when they aren’t spoiled.”, he laughed. 

“Fuck you! I’m…I’m not…”

“Oh, yeah? You’ve had your cunt played with till you’re begging them to stop? Fingers so deep, reaching places inside you your little fingers could never hope to reach? A cock so far down your throat that you gag and choke cause you can’t handle the size but you don’t pull away because the little whore in you is desperate to make your partner feel good?”

While he spoke his husky, breath filled words, you continued to look from left to right prepared for one of them to pop out at any moment. 

“You’ve had a thick, hard dick stretch your pussy till you feel him in your stomach, fucking you so hard you’ll be sore in the morning?”

“I…I…”

“Didn’t think so.”

The line suddenly went dead and you screamed as the power went out. Tears streaked your cheeks as you exited the kitchen, searching everywhere for any sign of them but finding nothing. Something loud crashed in your parent’s room down the hall and you ran so fast up the stairs, slamming and locking the door for good measure. 

On your bed you noticed the phone was off the hook beside your sketch book that was open. 

They had been up here while talking to you…

How long had they been in the house??

Movement on the other side of the door stops you as you listen to footsteps bang loudly up each and every single step before ceasing just outside in the hallway. Covering your mouth, you silence the whimper that wants to escape as you watch the doorknob slowly turn left to right but fail to open the door. 

Quiet falls around you but as you take a couple of steps towards it, your door shakes as if any moment it will break off its hinges. Running towards the window, you open it with the goal of sneaking down the pipe and running to the neighbors. 

“Going somewhere?”, Steve replied casually as you scream and fall to the floor. 

While he hovers outside, you take in his large gray and black wings that allows him to suspend in the air as he smiles widely your way to showcase a set of fangs that had your mouth dropping in horror.

Entering your room, his bare feet touch the carpet and his wings make a sharp fluttering noise as they retract into his back. As you back out of his way, Steve saunters towards your bedroom door and opens it to allow Eddie entry. 

Both men seemed a bit paler than the last time you saw them with that hollow ring around the metalheads eyes that told you he was a lot more worse for wear than his friend. 

“I’m fucking starving.”, he growled, taking a step towards you before hissing loudly as he falls theatrically against your dresser. The knife in your hand had gashed a deep cut into his forearm, trailing blood as it dripped from the wound. “God fucking damn it! Ugh! Still fucking hurts!”

“Don’t be a baby.”, Steve laughs, holding up his friend’s arm to show it now fully healed. 

“Doesn’t make it not hurt, dick. How about a I let her slash you with the sharp ass knife next time! Come here, you fucking brat.”

You absently swing the knife but hit nothing as Eddie takes hold of your wrist and forces your fingers open to drop the weapon before pushing you down to your knees. With a firm grip on your hair, you watch as he unbuckles his pants and shimmies them down to free his cock from its confinement. 

You barely have time to comprehend what’s happening as he shoves his length into your open mouth. 

“Oh my God.”, he groans through clenched teeth as his palms clutch either side of your head while he thrusts his hips. “That’s it…keep your tongue flat…Y-You can take it.”

Falling to his knees beside you, Steve delicately moves some of your hair behind your ear. 

“Was that the first time you’d ever cum, Y/N? On my lap in your car?” Your eyes squeeze shut as you gag around Eddie’s cock before pulling your hair to yank you back and allowing you to breathe. “It’s ok, honey. You’re doing so good for us.”, he softly coos as his friend pushes you back onto him and grunts as he fucks your face. 

A large hand slides under the waistband of your shorts and you push your head back against a ringed palm when a long finger grazes your clit. 

“No panties? Naughty girl. It’s like you knew we were coming for you. Are you not wearing a bra either?”

Without waiting for an answer, Eddie roughly tugged off your shirt and both men mewled at the sight. 

“Jesus, baby. Why were you hiding in the shadows all this time?”, Steve whispers, pressing his forehead against your temple and your breathing stutters as his finger breaches your entrance squeezing tightly around him. “Don’t worry, Y/N. We are the shadow now.”

The metalhead smiles wickedly and shoves your mouth onto him again. Your senses were completely overwhelmed as Eddie’s cock continually hit the back of your throat and you gaged while feeling the heat rise along your body as the other curved his finger inside of you. 

Prepared, Steve wrapped his arm around you and tilted back slightly to watch your face as his ring finger joined his middle. Your back pushed against him but he was much stronger than you as he held you in place. 

“Don’t run from it. We got you. Fuck, Y/N, my favorite thing about virgins is how tight you are. We are going to ruin you, little girl. Who do you want to actually take you? You drew Eddie the most…”

The metalhead fully released you from his grasp and backed away as he began to tug off his clothes. 

“I may be a bit gentler than he is though.”, Steve laughs as his fingers thrust faster inside of you making you whine as you fully fall into his chest. “Doesn’t mean I’m not going to pound you into that fucking mattress. Oop…she liked that, Ed. Her pussy just clenched tighter around me.”

“Oh yeah? You like it rough to, sweetheart?”

The former jocks free hand pulled your hair as he gritted his teeth. 

“Answer him.”

“I…I can’t…I…”

“You better try!”

“I…I like…like it…mmm...rough.”

“Close enough.”, Steve scoffed as he abruptly removed his hand from between your legs and pushed you against the carpet. 

Without saying a word, Eddie lifts you off the floor, tossing you onto your bed as if you weighed nothing and effortlessly ripped your shorts in half before throwing them to the floor. 

“Oh my…God.”, you moan as his head dips between your thighs and his mouth envelopes your clit.

“Mmm…fuck! You taste so fucking good.”, the metalhead growls, leaning back to spit between your folds and uses his cock to stroke it everywhere he needs it to be. His fingers bruise your legs as he yanks you closer and brings one of them over his shoulder before he gradually begins to push into your core.

“Wait…ow…”

“It’s ok, baby, you can take it. I’m—fuck—you’re lucky I’m going as slow as I am right now. Goddamn, Steve, you were right…so fucking tight.”

You felt like you were being split in half as the sheer size of him overwhelmed you. He thrust his hips gradually, allowing every inch of him to carefully fill you but as he clung to your thigh and muttered obscenities, you could tell he was right… you were lucky he hadn’t lost all will and just snapped his hips to push himself deeper into you. 

Something wet poking your lips caused you to turn your head to find Steve’s leaking cock prodding at your mouth.

“No.”, Eddie growled making his friend freeze. “I’m not done watching her face.”

Steve made a small pfft sound as he continued forward, licking his lips when your tongue lightly grazed his tip but the metalhead’s palm pushing at his chest startled even you as you began to back away. 

“Don’t fucking move!”, he hissed, keeping a firm grip on your thighs and yanking you closer to him before glaring at the pretty boy. “I said…I’m not done…”

“She doesn’t just belong to you, Munson.”

“Fine.”, he spat. “But I want you out of the fucking way entirely when I eat.”

“Noted.”

Now amped with angry energy, Steve’s fingers tangled in your hair as he guided his cock between your lips, mewling loudly as you moaned at the feeling of Eddie no longer being gentle, thrusting his length so deep inside you, you knew you’d be sore for days. 

“God, your tits are perfect.”, the former jock panted as his large hand kneaded your breast. “I just want to slide my dick between them…play with them with my new teeth--Shit, Y/N—how does his cock feel now?”

“G-Good…”, you moan when he pulls out to allow you to answer. 

Steve growled prominently when Eddie pushed him backward, dropping your leg to the mattress so he could hover over you. 

“It’s about to get better.”, he announces before bearing you his fangs causing your eyes to widen in fear. “Right when you’re about to cum…I want to hear you moan my name. Do you understand?” When you only nod, his palm wraps around your throat as he presses his lips onto the shell of your ear. “Tell me you understand, you little whore, so I know I’m being heard.”

“I understand.”, you whimper tilting your head to kiss his cheek. 

The action startles him slightly as his eyes scan over your face. 

For just a moment, you see the boy you drew so many times before. The soft but loud kid that would walk on tables and spend time with the underclassmen…

But that was short lived as his pupils turned black and his teeth bit into your neck. 

“Ah…Eddie.”

That dizzy feeling you felt before began to overtake you but was immediately overpowered when his hips rolled hard into yours punching his cock deep into the soft spot inside you that had your eyes fluttering shut. It felt almost like a dream again when your arms lifted to drag your nails down his back and he growled softly at the feeling. 

“Eddie…”

Your legs wrapped around his waist as his pace quickened and the headboard began to slam into the wall at his intensity. 

“Edd—ie…”

The man’s muscular arm shot out to grab the wood above you, trying his best to hold it still and it was then that you realized he was doing that so he could hear you better. 

That feeling that had been building in the pit of your stomach shot down to your core and you practically screamed his name as your body trembled against his. His teeth retracted as his tongue ran along the soreness in your neck and you instantly felt better as he chased his own high. 

“Beg me, whore. Beg for my fucking cum.”

“I…I don’t…I’ve never talked that way…”

Eddie’s palm grips your throat as he growls like a feral animal in your ear. 

“It’s not that fucking complicated. BEG. ME. FOR. MY. CUM!” Between each word, he punctuated it with a rough slam of his hips and you whined at the feeling. 

“Please, E-Eddie, I want you…want you to cum. I-I want to feel you cum.”

“Fuck…where, baby? Where do you want me to cum?”

“O-On…On me…on my tits!”, you hurried when you could tell you weren’t answering correctly but when you finally did, he chuckled. 

“Bad girl. You chose that to make Harrington jealous, huh? Alright.” After a few more rough pumps, Eddie hastily pulled out and climbed up your body, stroking his cock till he painted your chest with his release. Smiling cheekily at his friend, he climbed off you and pat his shoulder. “Your turn.”

Steve growled but to you his always sounded different; deeper. As if it came from his stomach whereas Eddie’s came from his chest. It oddly sounded…angrier…more protective. 

“You wanted to make me jealous? Get a rise out of me?”

“No, Steve, no.”

His eyebrow raises sarcastically as if he doesn’t believe you and he firmly grabs your arms, manhandling you onto hands and knees. Swatting your thigh, he makes sure your legs are as far as they can go in your current position before one of his hands clings to your shoulder while the other guides his cock inside your entrance. 

Your mouth falls open as you push up onto your palms and he gradually thrusts his hips.

“Goddamn… look how wet you fucking are. Munson made you feel really good, huh? Fuck, your pussy is just making a mess all over my dick.”

One he found a good rhythm, your head hung as he aggressively slammed his body into yours. Feeling something wet land on his fingers, he pulled you to his chest and your head leaned against his shoulder as he slowly rolled his cock past all your sensitive areas into your stomach. 

“Why are you crying, little girl? Does it hurt…my cock ruining your cunt?”

“N-N-Noooo…Mmph… feels…feels good.”

You felt him smile against your cheek as his hand slid from your throat down to your collarbone. 

“I know, honey, I know.”

That now familiar pain of something sharp digging into your flesh had you screaming his name as one of your hands tangled in his hair. Steve’s fingers surprised you as he pushed them into your mouth and along your tongue before sliding them between your legs to play with your clit. 

“STEVE!”

The man grunted at the sound of his name as your body began to shake. That dizzying feeling swept through you and you couldn’t help it when through your own tears a little smile painted your lips. 

“Steve…please…”

Just as Eddie had done, his tongue licked along your pain and as soon as it disappeared, your cheek was pushed into the mattress as his massive palm remained against your head holding you down with your ass still in the air as he slammed into you. 

“That’s it…fucking whore…keep your pussy open for me till I’m…fucking done using it.”

With every ah that left you, his pace increased as if your pleasure was egging him on. Moaning his name, you cling to the sheets underneath your hands as you came. Grunting at the tight feeling, you felt his hips stutter and you would be lying if you said a part of you wasn’t giddy at the thought that he may cum inside you. The notion that you made him lose control enough that he couldn’t help but do it had your pussy continually quivering as if she were begging on your behalf. 

Just at the last second, Steve pulled out and you watched over your shoulder as he rapidly stroked his cock till his spend landed on your behind that he promptly spanked for good measure. 

You weren’t sure what happens now but all you knew was your brain and body felt incredibly heavy as if you had just run a marathon.

The lights in your room snapped on and you hissed as you blocked your eyes behind your hand before you were suddenly lifted by Eddie who carried you to your bathroom. He tried placing you on your feet but your eyes rolled as you tilted forward and he promptly caught you guiding you to the tile floor. 

“Is…is she ok?”

You knew that voice…it was soft and kind yet filled with worry. You hadn’t heard it since high school.

“Steve?”

“I think so. I think maybe we took too much?”, Eddie answered in a concerned and uncertain way that had you unsure this was even the same two people you were just with.

“Eddie?”

“I thought you said the licking helped?”

“I said it cures the bite. I’m not sure what it does when we feed.”

“Goddamn it, Ed.”, the man growled cause the metalhead to do the same.

Pushing at his chest, you crawled to the toilet and the sound of you vomiting echoed through. A ringed hand tenderly pet you head and as you leaned back against the wall, you notice Eddie’s eyes were no longer black but the brown you remembered. 

“I know you.”, you slurred, reaching out to touch his cheek. 

“Go get her some water and make sure there’s no blood on her sheets or floor.”

“You don’t tell me what to do, Munson.”

“You’re the one who said you didn’t want to kill anyone, Harrington. If you had let me kill those fuckers that beat the shit out of me then we maybe we wouldn’t be here.”

You jumped at the sound of something banging loudly and when you narrowed your eyes to try and see better, the bathroom door was open and Steve was gone. Silently, Eddie put together a bath and carefully placed you in the water. 

Your eyes remained closed as a rag was run across your body before being casually tossed to the side. You thought you were alone after a while, hearing nothing but your own breath until fingers lightly traced down your cheeks to your lips. 

“I wish we had met you before all this. I would have talked to you if you came up to me at lunch or in class. Maybe taken you out on a date…fallen in love… but then maybe that would mean you would be dead… like Chrissy. Then again, maybe if you had come home with me that night everything would have been different…”

Heavily sighing, Eddie takes you in his arms and sits you on the edge of the porcelain as he dries you off. 

“Eddie? Am I dreaming?”

The metalhead snorts out a laugh as he collects you once more and carries you to your bedroom. 

“Yeah, sweetheart, you’re dreaming.”

“Oh…”

When he places you down on your bed, a new set of warm hands pull a baggy shirt over your head before something cold is placed near your lips causing you to flinch away. 

“No, hey, this is just water, honey.”

Nodding, you sip the liquid back with loud chugging slurps that has Steve chuckle through his teeth. When your finished you try to hand it to him but it falls from your grasp. While you wait for the sound of glass to shatter you open your eyes to see he had extended out his arm to catch it.

Your glassy eyes scan along his face that has more color in it now than it did before but even you can feel the intense dark energy still radiating from them both. Your hands shake slightly as you reach out to touch the red indent along his neck and he sighs as his forehead leans against yours.

His eyes close as your fingers trail down his hairy chest to his stomach but just as they begin to graze what appears to be a deep scar, the glass in his hand breaks on the floor as his palm aggressively reaches out to grab your wrist while that gruff growl escapes him. 

“I warned you, Y/N…”

“It doesn’t matter right? Because this is a dream…”

Again, he laughs as he releases his hold on you long enough to tilt you back into your bed and pull the covers over you. 

“Yeah, baby, it’s all a dream except for that soreness between your legs. That’s real. Do you know why?”

“Because you belong to us now.”, Eddie answers for you when you shake your head. “Steve was right, Y/N, we are the shadows…”, he whispers as he kneels down to pet your head and place a fresh smelling pink rose on your bedside table. “So don’t you dare dream of anyone else, pretty girl, or else we’ll make you both regret it.”

#################

@debkk16 @myherometalhead @veemoon @hardladyheart

[karikarasuno]

shouto's pov

"i think we should get a divorce." a chill like nothing shouto's ever felt before ran straight down his spine. it danced in his stomach. it curled violently in his gut.

"is that what you want?" his tone didn't show a single sign of the dread that was currently tearing its way through him. suddenly everything sounded as if he were in a fishbowl. his ears were full of water. he was about to drown.

"no." a moment of relief. "but i think its what we need." dread again.

"ok, then."

shouto didn't fight for you and he regretted it. he didn't argue. he didn't beg. he didn't even ask why. he knew why. but he should have asked anyway. maybe sleep would come easier to him if he had.

your side of the bed stopped smelling like you months ago. a sick part of him wanted to order your perfume. buy your shampoo. just so that every time he tossed and turned the pillow that your head used to rest on would carry your scent and lull him into a sleep he only ever had when he was with you.

he still searched for you in his sleep. which he found odd because the last few months of your marriage he was hardly ever home. he practically lived at the hero agency. shouto thought that everything he did he was doing for you. but evidently that wasn't the case.

he regretted not hugging you one last time. his arms felt impossibly empty without you in them. this was harder than he expected. mostly because he thought you would come back. that you would realize this was a mistake. that you would miss him just as devastatingly as he missed you. that your world was nothing but ashes just like his. ashes that were left behind by his own flames.

shouto wanted to give you the house. but you refused. you said you wouldn't know what to do with a house so big on your own. he offered to give you the vacation home instead, but you declined that as well. it seemed as though you didn't want anything to do with him anymore. it closed his airways. it suffocated him. each breath was like choking on his tongue.

how could he have been so stupid? but you said it wasn't entirely his fault. you said that these things happen. that people outgrow each other. that seasons ended. started again. that flowers didn't bloom forever.

but he forgot to water you. he forgot to tilt you towards the sun. the flower was dying and he didn't know until you presented him with the shriveled up petals of something that was once so beautiful.

"how do you survive this?" he met izuku for dinner. it was good to get out. that was what he said at least. so shouto agreed. even though he really didn't want to go anywhere these days.

"what?" izuku sounded startled. he couldn't blame him.

"i'm not sure where to go from here. feels like i'm dying. like i can never catch my breath."

"one day you wake up and you'll take a deep breath," izuku paused, his own eyes becoming distant. "and your lungs will fill with air and it'll feel natural again. easier."

"when?"

izuku laughed bitterly. it was unlike him. but shouto saw a reflection of his soul in that laugh. "i wish i knew."

that evening shouto got into bed. lungs still empty. heart still broken. your pillow smelling like him. and he cried.

---

your pov

[locksnrocks]

Secret Relationships Show vs. Manhwa - how the main four differ

Spoilers for both!

I made a grave error and decided to start the manhwa last night. binged it all straight to 4 am aaaaaaa

Daon: Show Daon- reserved, soft spoken but not a doormat. Obviously carrying internal trauma brought on by an irresponsible family (but sympathetic, at least Da-Suel was in the show) + his two obsessive "suitors" manipulating everything in his life. We see the breakdown and his "I don't deserve to love or be loved" mindset - but holy shirtballz is Manhwa Daon in his own league. That boy is deeply, deeply unwell (I say 80% Jaemin's fault 20% his family- his family is straight up pathetic in the source material. Like, that's their role, even his sister- just pathetic people and I really did not empathize with them). M!Daon just makes seemingly bad decisions one right after the other- and you catch yourself saying 'girl just run' multiple times, and 'didn't your mother ever teach you- oh that's right, your parents didn't teach you crap because your entire family is pathetic- the parents especially'. This dude just did not have a chance. That's a source of reader frustration from what I saw in other comments ('oh he just sleeps around, what an idiot, he causes all this himself, etc.' - which, alright, but guess who hates Daon the most? Daon. He straight up states these criticisms of himself plainly - he warned Seong exactly what was going down), but like, of course he is like that- do you not see what he has been dealing with because!!!! hot damn, Jaemin what the hell

Jaemin: Show Jaemin - great acting, unhinged, wow what an escalation, he's the real danger, what a manipulative person. BUT MANWHA JAEMIN???? Every single thing/action that happens to/about Daon can have the tagline "and then Jaemin ruined it." The Creep factor is up'd to 200% - like heavy breathing 'he's in your walls' levels. There's something so utterly... pathetic + legitimately dangerous about M!Jaemin. If Daon stayed at that vacation house with him any longer, we may have gotten the show's wedding themed murder/suicide and not a single soul who read the webcomic would be surprised. I kept waiting for it because Jaemin pulling that seemed like such a natural next step for him to take.

The line "I can't wait for you to grow up and be an adult" <- some variation of it, can't remember the exact quote - Jaemin to/about Daon during a flashback with exactly the negative connotation you can associate with this particular sentiment is used. Hggn. There's more to say about him but I can't organize it all

Soohyun: Show Soohyun - hair trigger temper (great acting), the frustration is boiling over, impulsive, uses fear to get his way (and if there's remorse later, the lack of emotional regulation ensures that it is forgotten), does have a form of redemption in the end, a genuinely incompetent Director. Manhwa Soohyun - the temper is there, but the character is waaaaay more calm with interactions, snarky rather than mean, calculating, no involvement with Daon's workplace, clocked what Jaemin was doing almost immediately, he and Daon I think hook up the most consistently (and yes, it happens when Soohyun and Jaemin are fake dating but good grief I just can't be a "wow Daon is trash see he knowingly slept with Soohyun while Soo is dating Jaemin" because girl, wut - they have a stage during college (?) where they are pretty much dating without ever verbalizing it (and then Jaemin ruined it) because no one verbalizes anything when it comes to honest to goodness feelings beyond a trembling confession that you know is going to be pummeled into the ground - which I recognize is a plot point since communication would cause every drama ever to go from multi episodes to about 5 min of content.

Honestly, since my moral compass is not built on the morality/ethics of bl series, I can comfortably say that I was rooting for both Soohyun and/or Seong simultaneously. Either of them over Jaemin. At least exactly why Soohyun agreed to the contrived 'fake date' plan is marginally better explored in the manhwa. He also legit strikes Daon (past) + chokes him (present)- again, his temper is a very real factor, it's just not as outwardly explosive as in the show. Daon has genuine fear of Soohyun hurting Seong/himself in present time. Both versions of Soohyun are royally screwed over by Jaemin's manipulations, but M!Soohyun had the attitude of "I'm going abroad now, so Jaemin better shoot his shot while I'm gone because once I'm back, I will go all in." By the end, his 'redemption arc' is legit "I have no regrets. You better erase me from your mind entirely." and he goes back abroad to be with his family (his mother's religious but his family is not 'point a gun at him' terrible from what I could tell - he actually wanted to introduce Daon to them at one point). That 'erase me' bit just convinced me that if Soohyun had not removed himself, he (and Daon) knew full well that they would slide right on back to each other eventually. Heck, Seong probably knew it, too.

Speaking of Seong and the many, many 'poly is the answer' lines the show spawned - the real throuple that could have been??? Soohyun x Daon x Seong. Right at the end of the manhwa - legit if Soohyun didn't back down, with how Seong was written and how Daon was written, if Soohyun pushed and Daon caved, I could see Seong eventually settling at 'if this is what it takes to have (a chance with) you, then I will accept this' to be with Daon. Because he already had nearly the exact same sentiment earlier.

Seonghyeon: Show Seong - so gosh darn earnest and charming, clingy in an endearing (but a bit boundary stomping) way, a flawed real human with flawed reactions but I can't hold it against him because this situation is not normal, not a lunatic but has a bit of emotional manipulation going on, but again, he's human. Manhwa Seong - yes to all that, but I propose that while Jaemin and Soohyun where displaying black/red flags consistently, Seong had his own brand of obsession going on. He's not clued in immediately, but he does get a picture of what is going down, especially once he meets Jaemin. And armed with this information + a Daon who is pretty transparent ("You say you like me and I like you. But I also like Jaemin, who I confessed to and he rejected me. But those feelings are still here. Also, Soohyun is here now and we are hooking up and probably will continue to do so as I don't have much agency in that matter. I am a terrible person. It would be better for you to not pursue me." - wildly paraphrased and condensed, but you get the gist). And Seong, armed with all this information, ultimately takes the approach of Patience. Like, he is going to outwait the other two lunatics - he will wait for Daon to sort through the absolute crapshoot that is his life, work through whatever that is with Jaemin, sprinkle in a tiny bit of cold-shouldering here and there, a drunken kiss or two. And even once Daon makes the definitive choice and goes to Seong over Jaemin, that whole "Don't turn around" scene!! If it was Jaemin in the background making whatever expression that Seong acknowledge would cause Daon to waver, Seong still may have come out on top. But if it was Soohyun? Seong might not. Again, the throuple that could have been...!

Reading the manhwa in it's entirety till 4 am really made me appreciate the show. They hit a lot of the narrative beats and did it with style. I can see why tweaks to the characters were made, particularly Soohyun, as having his temper so prominent rather than the 'hidden under the surface' approach of M!Soohyun would make it harder to move things along, especially since Jaemin already checks off the subtle background manipulation thing.

poly could have saved Show dudes and/or made the whole thing messier but we all would have enjoyed the ride lol

no amount of poly would have saved M!Jaemin, do you know why?? because he ruins things.

[anthurak]

So with Gundam The Witch From Mercury having just been announced to be in the upcoming Super Robot Wars Y, I thought it would be fun, as someone who has played a number of SRW games over the years, to do some theorizing about how the game might handle G-Witch.

To begin with the obvious big question we’re all wondering about: How will the game handle SuleMio?

Now to get one big thing out of the way that I know some people will be worried about; I highly, highly doubt that Sulemio will somehow end up being ‘downplayed’ due to any kind of ‘corporate mandate’ from Sunrise. Something that is important to remember is that the production SRW games almost never have much if any involvement from the owners of the various included series’, certainly not on the writing side of things.

The other important thing to remember is that Super Robot Wars games have pretty much always been FANFICTION in the purest sense of the word. Both in terms of the wilder changes they can make (more on that later…), and also that basically everyone making these games are themselves massive fans of the source material. With just how popular SuleMio has been both in Japan and abroad, I have no doubt the creative team will be including their content. Not to mention, SRW has not been squeamish about adapting WLW content in the past. Like when Cross Ange was introduced in SRW V, it absolutely included Hilda’s big love confession to Ange and Ange’s reciprocation.

The only way I can see SuleMio getting in any way ‘downplayed’ is due to simple logistical issues, ergo; SRW is a game focused on mech combat, and Miorine obviously isn’t a mech pilot herself.

This actually brings us to what I think makes the question of how SRW Y will handle SuleMio so interesting. Because yes, historically speaking, because SRW is a mech-combat focused game, characters and plot points that aren’t related to mech combat do tend to end up being downplayed to some degree.

At the same time though, Miorine happens to not just be the big main love interest of G-Witch, she’s also pretty much the other main character of the show. Meaning that the creative team will almost certainly be trying to make her, and her relationship with Suletta a prominent element.

Like at minimum, I have to imagine we’ll be seeing Miorine be included in the Supporter system that we’ve seen in the last few SRW games. For those unfamiliar, it’s basically a bunch of non-combatant characters who can be assigned to provide various active and passive support buffs during missions, which feels like a pretty straightforward gameplay role for Miorine. As an aside, I have to imagine this is how the other non-pilot members of Earth House like Nika, Aliya and... that other guy will be included in gameplay.

But then we come to more unorthodox options, particularly when we consider SRW’s penchant for including some rather wild Secret Unlocks for characters and mechs.

Consider the following: There is a good chance that we will see a VERY briefly playable Miorine as a PILOT when she steals Aerial for the duel against Guel. I wouldn’t be surprised if we as the player get to ‘experience’ just how inexperienced a pilot Miorine is for a few turns, or until Aerial takes a certain amount of damage, at which point Suletta makes her big entrance. This sort of thing is actually pretty common in SRW games. Like Miorine as a pilot probably has horrible stats, a Spirit Command pool consisting entirely of support abilities and can only use Aerial’s most basic beam rifle attack. But! That still leaves us with Miorine as a pilot.

So now just picture: Miorine as a later secret unlockable CO-PILOT for Suletta? XD

I can even just picture what the requirements might be; something like ‘keep Miorine alive for three turns against Guel until Suletta shows up’ or something more tricky like ‘avoid being hit by Guel for three turns’, or even something rather nutty like ‘actually land hits on Guel with Miorine’.

Which in turn leads to a narrative twist of Miorine becoming more emboldened and confident in her piloting ability, which later leads to her becoming available as a co-pilot for Suletta. Probably when Aerial receives her REBUILD upgrade. Though admittedly that also depends on how the whole ‘Slap’ incident is handled. Heck, maybe one of the requirements for getting Miorine as a sub-pilot for Aerial is to somehow AVERT the ‘Slap’ and allowing Suletta to save Miorine in such a way that she isn’t traumatized.

I mean, you want something really fun? Obviously, the whole ‘Aerial Tomato Paste Special’ is absolutely going to be referenced in one of the Aerial Rebuild’s attacks. Maybe just as a ‘Dynamic Kill’ animation, or even its own dedicated attack. But, what if one of the requirements for getting Miorine as a sub-pilot actually prevents you from unlocking that attack? Meaning that the player is effectively forced to choose between getting the ‘Slap Attack’ OR getting Miorine as a co-pilot for Suletta.

And really, this would be far from the first time an SRW game has done anything like this. Really, Miorine being a secret unlockable sub-pilot for the Aerial Gundam would actually be very reminiscent of Tifa Addil being a secret unlockable sub-pilot for the Double-X Gundam back in the first Super Robot Wars Z game.

So yeah, could be a lot of fun XD

Now speaking of Aerial Rebuild, that leads us to another interesting question of what G-Witch pilots and mechs might we expect to even be playable?

Because G-Witch, particularly in Season 1, is in an interesting position amongst Gundam and other ‘Real Robot’ series’ in SRW in that the heroes are pretty much a one-woman/mecha show. Outside of Suletta and Aerial, the only other ‘standard’ options for pilots and mechs would be Chuchu and her Custom Demi Trainer, and conceivably Lilique, Till, and/or whats-his-face using the generic Zowort suits we saw used in the team battle against Grassley house. Outside of that, the only other ‘standard’ option is maybe seeing Elan 5 and the Pharact become available towards the end of the game.

But then of course, this could be where SRW’s penchant for crazy rewrites and secret unlocks to once again come into play.

For example, I would not be surprised at Chuchu’s Demi Barding suit that she got in Season 2 is available as a Secret Unlock.

And of course I’d frankly be more surprised if Guel wasn’t a secret unlock along with his custom Dilanza and maybe even his Darilbalde.

And considering SRW’s mechanic of allowing certain pilots (generally ‘Real Robot’ pilots from shows like Gundam) to be swapped between certain mechs, I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘generic’ mobile suits like Beguir’s, Dilanza’s or Zoworts were made available as unlocks or purchase to be used by the other members of Earth House.

Finally, we come to what is probably the most wild and yet still entirely PLAUSIBLE option, given SRW’s history:

I have a pretty good feeling that it will be possible (albeit probably pretty difficult) to save Elan 4 and recruit him as a pilot, along with the Pharact.

You may find that crazy, but honestly SRW does shit like this ALL THE TIME. They’re actually kinda well known for it at this point. Like this is a series that has, among other things; completely rewritten the second half of Gundam SEED Destiny into something basically everyone agrees was a massive improvement, rewritten Code Geass so basically nobody dies, and has repeatedly adapted the End of Evangelion in the form of repeatedly punching Human Instrumentality in the face, and/or smacking it with a Jupiter-sized hammer until it KNOCKS THAT SHIT OFF.

And I have no doubt it’s going to do some fun stuff with the Witch From Mercury too XD

[encrucijada]

3 new possible additions to my aroace girls cinematic universe (that needs a better name) 🫶

[violetstrations]

[ID: two digital paintings of Nijisanji-EN'S Ver Vermillion and Cer Cerulean. The first takes place inside a forest during the day. They are both noticeably young. Cer sits on the left side of a log as he adjusts Ver's long hair, who is sitting on the ground in front of Cer, holding his knees to his chest. The artist's watermark is to the left of them. The second takes place long after the first one. The sun is setting. Ver curls into himself on the right side of the log, with a knife by his left. On the other end of the log is his red necklace, glowing. Surrounding him are chopped-off locks of his hair. The artist's watermark is by the necklace. End ID]

bundle up darling, you've made this bed, now

sleep in it soundly if you can

[coloursofaparadox]

i ✨️cannot sleep✨️ and vaguing about shit on the internet feels more cathartic than writing it out somewhere else. suffer.

[wandersee]

it's so absolutely torturous only having $650 left on my car loan but being entirely unable to pay ANYTHING towards it due to lack of day job like. me outright owning my little disaster of a car is RIGHT THERE ;0; not to mention not having to worry about the $300 monthly payments, so it'd free that non-existent money up, which would be sooooooo life changing :")

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

wait, Derin how did your leaving make the hospital shut down?

I used to work as a live-in nanny for a pediatrician.

Now, the thing about hospitals in my country is that they are massively understaffed and massively underfunded. This is especially true outside the major cities. The staff are worked to the bone and receive little to no help in things like finding accommodation or childcare, making working in rural areas a very uninviting prospect; staff come out here, get lumped with the work of three people (because there's nobody else to do it), burn out under the workload and leave, meaning that those remaining have even more work because that person is gone. It's unsustainable and the medical staff are doing their best to sustain it, because people die if they don't, so to the higher-ups it looks like everything's getting done and therefore everything is fine.

My friend (and boss) worked one week on, one week off, swapping out with another pediatrician. This was necessary because it would not be physically possible for one person to handle the workload for longer periods of time. The one single pediatrician had to hold up the entire pediatrics ward, which was not only the only public hospital pediatrics ward in our town, but also the one that served all the towns around us for a few hours' drive in all directions. I regularly saw her go to work sick, aching, tired, or with a debilitating 'I can barely make words or see' level migraine, because if she took a day off, twenty children didn't get healthcare that day, and some of these kids' appointments were scheduled weeks in advance. She'd work long hours in the day and then be called in a couple of times overnight for an hour or two at a time (she was on-call at night too, because somebody had to be), and then go in the next day. Sometimes she would be forced to take a day off because she physically could not stay awake for longer than a few minutes at a time, meaning she couldn't drive to work.

Cue my niece's second birthday coming up in Melbourne. I'd been working for her for about 3 years, and she (and the hospital) had plenty of advance warning that I (and therefore she) needed one (1) Friday off. That's fine, we'll find someone to work that Friday, the hospital said. Right up until the last week where they're like "oh, we can't find a replacement; you can come in, can't you?"

No, she tells them; I don't have anyone to watch my kid that day.

Oh, surely you can hire a babysitter for this one day, they say. Think of the children! We really really need you to work that day. I know we said it'd be fine but we need you now, there's no one else to do it.

There are no other babysitters, she told them. Unless you can find one?

That's not our responsibility, they said.

But I'm not changing my plans, she's got plans by now as well, the hospital knew about this one day weeks in advance, and with absolutely no reserve staff they're forced to reschedule all pediatrics appointments for that Friday. Not a huge deal, it happens on the 'physically too overworked to get out of bed' days too. I go to Melbourne, she goes back to her home in Adelaide for her recovery week, all should be on track.

My niece gives me Covid.

This was way back in the first wave of the pandemic, and there were no Covid vaccines yet. The rules were isolate, mask up, hope. I had Covid in the house, and it would've been madness for my friend and her toddler to come back into the Covid house instead of staying in Adelaide. There was absolutely no way that a pediatrician could live with someone in quarantine due to Covid and go to work in the hospital with sick children every day. And no support existed for finding another babysitter, or temporary accommodation, so the hospital was down a pediatrician.

The other pediatrician wasn't available to do a three-week stint. They were also trapped in Adelaide on their well-earned week off.

Meaning that the only major pediatrics ward within a several-hour radius had no pediatricians. They had to shut down and send all urgent cases to Adelaide for the week. To the complete absence of surprise of any of the doctors or nurses; of course this would happen, this was bound to happen, it presumably keeps happening. But probably to the surprise of the higher-ups. After all, the hospital was doing fine, right? Of course all the staff were complaining of overwork and a lack of resources in every meeting, but they could always be fobbed off with the promise of more help sometime in the future; the work was mostly getting done, so the issue couldn't be too urgent.

It's not like some nanny who doesn't even work for the hospital could go out of town for a weekend for the first time in three years, and get the only public pediatrics ward in the area shut down for a week.

[transthatmasc]

I love the concept that Viktor ends up with Jayce’s last name through some originally non-romantic means so much that I have multiple versions.

Jayce accidentally gives Viktor his last name by being so insistent on putting Viktor’s name first in every circumstance. When he’s listing their names on anything he puts them down as “Viktor and Jayce Talis”. When he introduces them to people he says “Nice to meet you, this is Viktor and I’m Jayce Talis” with a pause before Talis because he always forgets that he should say his house name too. Viktor slowly starts to notice that they’re referred to in the tabloids as “the Talises” and that higher ups at the academy will introduce him to investors as “Viktor Talis” without Jayce even being there.

When they first start working together, they put their initials next to things in their shared notes to mark when they have questions or agree with something the other wrote, or to differentiate when someone is dictating while the other talks. In an effort to not have it confused with a variable, Viktor initials VT (VikTor) as a bit of a joke to look similar to Jayce’s JT. However, one day when Heimerdinger is looking over their notes, he marks out a question in the margin for Viktor with “Viktor Talis” written out next to it in full. Viktor and Jayce debate for a moment after he leaves if it was supposed to mean it was for both of them, but the contents of the question makes it entirely clear that Heimerdinger things VT stands for Viktor Talis and has accepted that Viktor has adopted Jayce’s last name with no questions.

At the beginning of Hextech, as they are trying to get investors, Viktor regularly gets identified as being from the undercity and harassed for it by wealthy Pilties when he tells them his name is “just Viktor” when asked what house he is from. So one day Jayce suggests just telling investors that his last name is also Talis, thinking that people will assume they are brothers. Viktor gets flustered and tries to politely decline, but Jayce seems to confident that he lets it happen. It takes him weeks to figure out that Jayce doesn’t realize that everyone thinks they’ve gotten married or plan to. Viktor doesn’t have the heart to tell him and won’t let Mel break the illusion.

Jayce takes Viktor on a tour of the forge and when he gets done takes a hammer to jokingly knight him and dub him “officially part of house Talis” Jayce thinks nothing of it until the next time they meet someone new together when he almost spits out his drink hearing Viktor introduce himself as “Viktor Talis”

Some investor that they fucking hate can’t keep their names straight for some reason but always sees Jayce wearing his house sigil so he says “ah, Viktor Talis” every time he sees Jayce. They find it so fucking funny that even just saying “Viktor Talis” sends them into uncontrollable laughter.

Ximena refers to them exclusively as “my boys” to the point that most people who met her after Hextech was founded assume that she has two sons, Jayce Talis and Viktor Talis. She doesn’t feel the need to correct them as she does truly love them both as her children and is also quietly hoping one day Jayce will get his head out of his ass and ask Viktor out on a date.

[hedgehog-moss]

I need to confess something—my last post presented a deceptively idyllic vision of my hike in the snow. I only posted photos from the tranquil walk home at dusk and neglected to mention that I (once again) got lost in a featureless expanse of snow and briefly became convinced I would never find the road again and would have to dig a little den like an Arctic fox to spend the night.

You see, there's this place where Pandolf really loves to go for a walk on snowy days—it's on top of this plateau here:

^ see the fence in the middle, that curves to the left? Nothing bad can happen as long as you follow it. There are lots of landmarks in this direction, like trees, more fences, and a couple of houses.

In the other direction, however, lies The Nothing.

Here's a photo of Pandolf (eagerly) standing near the edge of The Nothing:

Characteristics of The Nothing: it is vast, and white, and becomes more and more featureless the farther you go into it—

—and Pandolf really, really loves it.

Even when he falls into a surprise hole where the snow is suddenly three times as deep (another characteristic of The Nothing), he'll just push himself out in one great powerful jump and keep frolicking.

Or he'll remain in the spot where the snow is deeper and try his best to bury his entire self into it.

He sometimes gets crazy eyes in The Nothing.

We always start this walk with such good resolutions.

We're definitely staying close to the fence this time! With all the lovely landmarks on the left!

And then, inevitably,

Further notes from my studies: • The Nothing has some small plants and rocks, but using them as landmarks is foolish, as they will eventually disappear. • No matter how many foot-, paw-, and dog-headprints you leave and how deep they are, they will disappear before you are able to retrace your steps, probably because The Nothing is always so windy.

Pandolf thinks this is a great characteristic of The Nothing, as it means he never runs out of immaculate snow to dive into.

The wind and the resulting snow mist are the really treacherous things about this place. These photos were taken in roughly the same spot, a couple of hours apart. In the first one, the fence on the left is clearly visible; in the second one, it has started to melt into The Nothing.

There's always a moment when I end up standing in the middle of, well, nothing, with indistinguishable whiteness in every direction, under my feet, above my head, left, right, and I start thinking about writing poignant farewell messages in my Notes app for my family to find at some point in the future.

One last interesting thing about The Nothing is the way Pandolf reacts when I finally find my bearings again and start walking faster, determined to get back to the safety of the road before it gets dark.

Pandolf then just

It's very different than the playful, energetic way in which he normally buries his head in the snow. This second type of burying is clearly a form of protest—if I continue walking away Pan will reluctantly follow me for 20 or so metres, then flatten himself to the ground again, in the same despondent way.

Hypothesis #1: He is trying to play dead like a possum, hoping I will go "well, I can't lug a dead dog all the way home, I'd better leave him here." And then he'll stay with The Nothing forever.

Hypothesis #2: He is trying to lay as flat as possible so as to become all but invisible against the snow. It's unclear if he knows he is the wrong colour for this.

Hypothesis #3: He is trying to commune with The Nothing, burying words of devotion and friendship deep into the snow and promising to return soon.

Conclusion: I'm sorry, I know that's a very long post, but seeing as each of these photos depicts perfect felicity on Earth, I find it hard to delete any. I also like how I intended this post to be about my long disoriented trek through the snow, wondering if I was going to find the fence or the road again before dark—and then I got distracted by how happy Pandolf was. Which is exactly how I end up getting lost in The Nothing every single time!!

[mrspiastri]

✩ lights, camera, action! 📸

pairing: lando norris x reader

cw: fluff, annoying reporters, austria 2024

wc: 4.9k words

an: thanks for the req anon, hope u like it! pls excuse any spelling errors i could not be arsed enough to proofread this more than twice :p

“So, they’re just going to be in our house… recording us the entire day?”

“Mostly, yeah.”

“And this is happening for a month?”

“Maybe two, depending on how much footage they need.”

A beat of silence.

Lando turned to his girlfriend, watching as she set her Kindle down and looked at him with a sharp glare. All she had wanted was a quiet night in, some light reading before bed, not this conversation.

“So, what do you think?” he asked carefully.

“I think you’ve lost your fucking mind.”

Lando stifled a chuckle, scooting closer despite the warning in her eyes. “It’s not that bad, I promise. They’ll get all your good angles. And if there’s anything you don’t want in, I’ll make sure they cut it out.”

Y/N sighed, rubbing her temples. The idea of letting a camera crew into their home, her safe space, the one place where she could collapse onto the couch after work without a second thought, was unsettling.

“Look, I’m not going to force you,” Lando said, his voice softer now. “Just think about it. It’s like… our moments together being immortalized.”

She arched her brow, still unconvinced.

“We could even look back on them years later,” he continued, ever the optimist. “Show them to our kids!”

Y/N gave him a long, unimpressed stare.

“Just give me a day or two,” she muttered at last.

“Of course, love.” He leaned in, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek before letting the subject drop.

Three days later, Y/N found herself reluctantly agreeing, under strict conditions:

1. No cameras before 9 AM or after 10 PM.

2. No filming arguments or fights (if they happened).

3. No recording private conversations.

The production team had no issue following her rules, and soon enough, cameras and microphones became a regular sight in their living room and kitchen.

To her surprise, it wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. The Drive To Survive crew was respectful, and off-camera, they were actually lovely to talk to.

Not that she’d ever admit it to Lando. She had no interest in hearing an “ I told you so.”

Still, she had to admit, there was something oddly enjoyable about it. The cameras felt natural, capturing the effortless way she and Lando fit together. Their banter. Their energy.

Even the crew enjoyed filming them. Because if there was one thing about Y/N and Lando, it was that they were effortlessly entertaining.

The couple had an air of domesticity around them, which was visible during certain moments, like when Y/N announced she was going grocery shopping.

🪻🪻

She didn’t question it at first.

Lando had followed her around their apartment, slipping on his hoodie and sneakers, acting as if they were about to embark on some thrilling adventure rather than… well, a simple trip to the grocery store. But when he practically rushed out the door behind her, stuffing his hands into his pockets like he was trying to play it cool, she finally turned to him with a raised brow.

"Alright, what’s going on?"

Lando blinked at her, feigning innocence. "What do you mean?"

"You insisted on coming with me," she pointed out as she slid into the passenger seat of her car. "Since when are you so eager to go grocery shopping?"

Lando smirked, leaning back in his seat. "Maybe I just like spending time with you."

She rolled her eyes, shaking her head with a soft laugh. "It’s just shopping, Lando."

"Yes… and?"

She shot him a look, but he only grinned, reaching over to intertwine his fingers with hers as he started the car. She glanced down at their joined hands, warmth flickering in her chest.

Maybe it was just shopping. But to him, time with her, no matter how mundane, was worth tagging along for.

The grocery store was as uneventful as ever, aisles filled with tired parents, students grabbing last-minute essentials, and employees stacking shelves. Y/N navigated the space with practiced ease, mentally ticking off the list in her head.

Lando, on the other hand, was thoroughly entertained by everything.

"You know, people are going to think I’m useless because you’re the one actually shopping," Lando mused, walking beside you with a basket dangling from his arm. A small mic was clipped to his hoodie, and a camera trailed at a respectful distance, catching every moment.

"You are useless," you teased, grabbing a carton of eggs and placing them into the basket.

Lando let out a scandalized gasp, pressing a hand to his chest. "Excuse me? I am an excellent grocery shopper. Watch this."

Before you could stop him, he darted toward a display of snacks, dramatically grabbing a family-sized bag of chips and tossing it into the basket. The camera crew caught it all, no doubt enjoying his antics.

"Wow," you said dryly, watching him grin. "Such a valuable contribution."

"You’re welcome." He leaned in, brushing a kiss to your temple before whispering, "At least pretend I’m helpful, love. My reputation is at stake."

She shook her head, amused. He stayed close beside her, fingers occasionally brushing hers when he pointed out random things, a ridiculous cereal box, a weirdly shaped vegetable, an overpriced snack that made him nearly collapse in shock.

Then, as they rounded the next aisle, something caught her eye.

"No way," Y/N gasped, halting so suddenly that Lando bumped into her.

"What? What happened? Are we in danger?" he asked dramatically, clutching her arm.

She ignored him, grabbing a brightly colored package from the meat fridge. “It’s the spicy chorizo I was looking for! It’s been out of stock for months! Lando, do you know what this means?"

"Uh," he blinked, glancing at the box in her hands. "That some company is trying to get people to buy their products again?"

She huffed. "No, dummy. This means I can finally make those chorizo tapas you love so much."

Lando stared at her, as if processing her words. "Wait. You mean—?"

"Yeah," she said, waving the package at him. "You always say it’s one of your favorites, right? So I’ll make it the way it’s meant to be made, not with those other lame brands.”

For a second, he didn’t say anything. Just looked at her. And then, unexpectedly, he reached for her hand and squeezed it, his thumb running over her knuckles.

"You remembered that?" His voice was quieter now, softer.

She scoffed. "Of course, I did. You never shut up about it."

Lando let out a breathless chuckle, shaking his head, but there was something fond in his eyes, something almost touched.

"You’re the best," he murmured, leaning in to press a kiss to her forehead. Right there in the middle of the grocery aisle, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, with an old woman giving them a knowing smile as she passed.

Y/N felt warmth creep up her neck, but she just rolled her eyes. "I know."

Lando grinned, throwing an arm around her shoulder as they continued walking. "See? And you thought I was weird for wanting to tag along."

"You are weird."

"Yeah, but I’m your kind of weird."

She laughed, leaning into his side as they made their way to checkout.

Maybe it was just shopping.

But with Lando, even the ordinary felt like something special.

🪻🪻🪻

The morning sun cast a golden glow over their Monaco apartment, filling the space with soft warmth. The neatly packed bags by the door were a reminder of the plans they’d made, plans Y/N had initially thought were just a fleeting idea when Lando suggested them. But here they were, two years into their relationship, and he was still finding ways to make things special.

Lando stirred beside her, his arm tightening around her waist as he nuzzled his face into the crook of her neck, voice still thick with sleep.

“Happy anniversary, love.”

She smiled, tilting her head slightly to press a kiss to his forehead. “Happy anniversary, Lando.”

He hummed in contentment, pulling her closer. “Can we just stay in bed all day instead?”

Y/N laughed softly, tracing lazy patterns along his back. “As tempting as that sounds, weren’t you the one who planned this whole day trip?”

Lando groaned dramatically, burying his face deeper into the pillow. “Who let me make decisions?”

“You did.”

Another groan.

A small chuckle from the corner of the room made her glance over, where one of the film crew members was adjusting a camera, capturing the intimate yet domestic moment. Lando peeked an eye open and groaned even louder when he saw them.

“Great,” he mumbled. “Now the world gets to see me beg to stay in bed.”

Y/N grinned, pressing a quick kiss to his nose before slipping out from under the covers. “Come on, sleepyhead. We have a road trip to go on.”

By mid-morning, they were driving along the winding coastal roads of the French Riviera, two crew members filming them from the back seat, capturing snippets of their journey. Lando’s hand rested on Y/N’s thigh as he effortlessly steered with the other, the soft hum of music filling the space between them.

She glanced over at him, amusement dancing in her eyes. “So, are you ever going to tell me why you picked Èze?”

Lando smirked, keeping his eyes on the road. “Would you believe me if I said I just wanted to impress you with my impeccable taste?”

She rolled her eyes, but her smile betrayed her fondness.

The moment they arrived in Èze, Lando reached for her hand, intertwining their fingers as they wandered through the narrow, cobbled streets. The medieval village, perched high above the Côte d’Azur, was breathtaking, its stone walls adorned with climbing vines, small boutiques tucked into hidden corners, and the salty sea breeze carrying the scent of fresh flowers.

The crew trailed them subtly, capturing the way Lando would lean in every few minutes just to steal a quick kiss, or how his fingers absentmindedly traced patterns against her skin as they stopped to admire the view.

“You do realize people are going to say you’re way too clingy, right?” Y/N teased, nodding toward one of the cameras.

Lando shrugged, unbothered. “Let them.” He turned to the nearest cameraman, grinning. “I am clingy. Make sure you put that in the episode.”

The crew chuckled, but Y/N just shook her head, laughing as Lando pulled her into the nearest café.

Lunch was slow and easy, filled with stolen bites of food, quiet laughter, and the occasional “Look at him being soft” comment from Y/N to the film crew. Lando didn’t seem to care, not when she was there, looking at him like he was her favorite thing in the world.

When dessert arrived, two chocolate soufflés, Lando picked up a spoonful and held it out for her.

She raised an eyebrow. “Really? You’re going to feed me while they’re filming?”

He smirked. “It’s romantic.”

She rolled her eyes but leaned in anyway, letting him feed her. Lando grinned triumphantly, stealing a bite for himself.

“Put that in the episode, too,” he quipped.

As the afternoon stretched on, they hiked up to the Jardin Exotique, a stunning garden perched at the very top of Èze. The panoramic view of the coastline was nothing short of magical, the kind of scene that made everything else feel small in comparison.

Lando wrapped his arms around her from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder.

“This might be my favorite anniversary so far,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper.

She smiled, tilting her head to rest against his. “We’ve only had two.”

“Still. It’s hard to beat.”

A breeze drifted through, ruffling his curls as he held her, their hands fitting together so effortlessly.

Y/N turned in his arms, her gaze soft. “I love you, you know.”

Lando’s eyes searched hers for a moment before he cupped her face, pressing a slow, tender kiss to her lips, one that felt like a promise, like forever.

When they pulled away, he rested his forehead against hers, exhaling deeply. “I know,” he whispered. “And I love you more.”

A cough from behind them broke the moment, and one of the crew members hesitated before speaking.

“Uh… that was beautiful,” they admitted. “Can you do it again for a better angle?”

Lando groaned as Y/N burst into laughter.

“Fine,” he sighed dramatically, pulling her closer with a mischievous grin. “Guess we have to keep kissing.”

🪻🪻🪻

The second Y/N stepped into the apartment, she knew something was different. It wasn’t just the warmth of the space or the soft glow of the kitchen lights, there was something familiar in the air. A rich, buttery scent, layered with warm spices, the kind that immediately sent a comforting feeling straight to her soul.

She froze mid-step.

That was butter chicken.

Her favorite food.

And there was only one person in this house who would make that for her.

Her heart raced as she set her bag down and rounded the corner into the kitchen, where she found exactly what she hoped to see Lando, standing at the stove, stirring a pot with the kind of focus he usually reserved for a race car. His curls were still damp from a recent shower, his sleeves pushed up as he leaned against the counter, tasting the sauce with an expression of concentration.

He looked up just as she entered, and the slow smile that spread across his face made her stomach flip.

“Hey, love.”

She blinked, still processing. “You’re… home?”

He smirked. “Surprise.”

Her mouth fell open. “But… you weren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow night?”

“Got an earlier flight.” He turned back to the stove, giving the pot one last stir before lowering the heat. “Figured I’d come back and make your favorite.”

She couldn’t believe it. She had been fully prepared to spend the evening alone, eating something mediocre while scrolling through her phone, missing him. But instead, he was here. Cooking for her.

Y/N didn’t think, she just launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around his waist, pressing her face into his hoodie as she breathed him in.

Lando laughed as he caught her, arms circling her shoulders as he held her close. “I take it you missed me?”

“Obviously,” she mumbled against his chest. “You were gone for so long.”

“Babe, it was five days.”

“Exactly. Too long.”

He chuckled, pressing a lingering kiss to her hair. “Missed you too, love.”

A throat cleared from the corner of the kitchen, and Y/N stiffened slightly before peeking over Lando’s shoulder, only to find one of the crew members, clearly amused.

She groaned, burying her face back into Lando’s chest. “You let them film this?”

“I didn’t let them,” he said, amused. “They just… didn’t leave. Wanted to see you surprised and all.”

One of the crew members laughed. “In our defense, this is adorable.”

Lando grinned, tilting her chin up so she had to look at him. “Come on, love. You don’t want the world to see how obsessed you are with me?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I will shove your face into that butter chicken.”

His smirk widened. “Joke’s on you, I made extra.”

She rolled her eyes but let him pull her closer, letting herself bask in the warmth of his touch, the familiar scent of home.

Later, as they sat at the dining table, Lando watched her take her first bite, waiting for her reaction like a nervous contestant on a cooking show.

Y/N hummed in delight, eyes closing briefly as the flavors hit her tongue. “Oh my God.”

His lips twitched. “Good?”

She opened her eyes, pointing her spoon at him. “Suspiciously good. Since when can you cook like this?”

Lando leaned back in his chair, arms crossing over his chest. “What, you think I can’t learn things?”

“I just… didn’t know you wanted to.”

He shrugged, a teasing glint in his eyes. “Maybe I just wanted to impress my girlfriend.”

Y/N softened, her heart swelling. “You have impressed me. This is amazing.”

“Damn right it is.”

She giggled, shaking her head before taking another bite. “Okay, tell me about Shanghai. How was the race?”

Lando exhaled dramatically, shifting in his seat. “Ugh. Where do I even start? First of all, the strategy was so weird, like, I don’t know what they were thinking. And then, I had this fight with Max for like a hundred laps, and I swear, I thought we were gonna crash at least three times—”

As he continued, his hands animatedly reenacting the on-track battles, Y/N just sat there, watching him, a soft smile tugging at her lips.

She loved seeing him like this, completely in his element, passionate, excited. The way his eyes lit up when he talked about racing, the way his hands moved as if he were still behind the wheel.

“You’re staring,” Lando suddenly noted, smirking.

She blinked, cheeks warming. “No, I’m not.”

“You are.” He leaned in, resting his chin in his hand as he grinned. “You’re in love with me.”

She scoffed, trying (and failing) to hide her smile. “Don’t flatter yourself, Norris.”

“I mean, I did just fly home early and make your favorite food…” He reached across the table, running his fingers gently over her wrist. “Pretty sure that earns me some extra love points.”

Y/N laughed softly, flipping her hand to intertwine their fingers. “You already have all my love points, you idiot.”

He squeezed her hand, his thumb brushing over her knuckles. “Good. I plan on keeping them.”

She shook her head, taking another bite of the butter chicken. “Okay, but seriously, I want to hear the rest. So, you and Max—”

“Shh.” Lando reached over and gently placed a spoonful of rice on her plate, then another, before looking at her expectantly.

She raised an eyebrow. “Did you just—”

“Just shh and eat,” he said, his voice playfully firm. “I know you. If I let you talk too much, you’ll forget to eat, and then you’ll be grumpy later.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, but the corners of her lips twitched. “You’re so annoying.”

Lando laughed, leaning over the table to steal a quick kiss. “Yeah, yeah. Now eat up.”

Y/N rolled her eyes but obeyed, feeling impossibly warm inside.

There was something so simple about moments like this, the quiet, easy rhythm of their lives together. The way Lando cared for her in ways that weren’t always grand gestures but in the little things. The way he listened, the way he noticed, the way he just knew her.

Even with cameras in the background, even with the world watching, this was theirs.

And Y/N wouldn’t trade it for anything.

🪻🪻🪻

Las Vegas was supposed to be his night.

Lando sat in the dimly lit hospitality suite, still in his race suit, elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasped together so tightly his knuckles were white. The weight of the evening pressed down on him, Max had clinched the title, and he had been so close. The points gap wasn’t enormous. If things had gone just slightly differently, if the strategy had been sharper, if he had just pushed a little harder—

He exhaled sharply, jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the floor.

The suite was silent, except for the muffled sounds of celebration echoing from outside. His team was still proud, of course. McLaren had fought hard all season. He had fought hard. But second place wasn’t the dream. First was the dream.

And he had lost it.

The quiet creak of the door barely registered in his mind, but the soft footsteps that followed were unmistakable.

Y/N.

She didn’t say anything at first. She simply walked over, standing beside him for a moment, watching him.

Then, she crouched down in front of him, placing a gentle hand on his knee. “Lando.”

His eyes flickered up to hers. He knew the cameras were still rolling somewhere in the room, capturing all of this, his frustration, his exhaustion, the moment where his season had slipped away.

But right now, he didn’t care.

Y/N’s gaze was steady, her touch grounding. Slowly, she reached up, cupping his cheek, her thumb brushing lightly over the sharp line of his jaw.

“Talk to me,” she murmured.

Lando exhaled through his nose, his hand coming up to cover hers, pressing it against his skin as if he needed the contact to anchor him.

“I should’ve done more,” he finally muttered.

She frowned. “Lando—”

“No, really,” he cut in, shaking his head. “It was so close. We had the pace. We had the car. I just—” He exhaled roughly, eyes darting away. “I wasn’t good enough.”

Her heart ached at the way he said it, at the way his voice dipped into something raw and self-deprecating.

“Lando,” she said softly but firmly, tilting his face back toward her. “You were more than good enough.”

He let out a dry laugh, but there was no humor in it. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

She didn’t hesitate. “Because you expect perfection from yourself. But look at what you did this season. Look at how hard you fought. You challenged Max. You took it down to the wire when no one thought you could. You made them believe.”

His gaze softened, but she wasn’t finished.

“You think second place makes you less?” she whispered. “It doesn’t. You’re still you, Lando. And I’m so, so proud of you.”

His throat bobbed, his grip on her hand tightening.

“You’re just saying that,” he mumbled.

Y/N shook her head. “I never just say things. You know that.”

He let out a slow breath, his eyes searching hers like he was trying to hold onto her words, trying to let them sink in.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then, with a small sigh, he pulled her into his lap, burying his face into the crook of her neck.

She smiled faintly, running her fingers through his curls. He never did well with failure, not because he wasn’t used to it, but because he always carried it too much.

But he wasn’t alone in this.

And as she held him, rocking him slightly, she could feel the tension in his body slowly start to ease.

The crew was still there, capturing every second.

But all Lando cared about was her.

And somehow, for the first time all night, losing didn’t feel quite so devastating.

The press pen after the race was always exhausting, but tonight, it was unbearable.

Lando had lost the championship. He had done every interview with his usual composure, polite, measured, controlled. He had smiled when necessary, congratulated Max, and answered the same four questions in slightly different ways.

But this one?

This one was pushing it.

"Lando, do you think this was your only real shot at a title? Or do you worry you might just not have what it takes?"

The question landed like a slap.

Lando barely blinked. His PR training kicked in immediately, forcing a neutral expression as he nodded, exhaling through his nose.

"Look, we had a great season, and I’m proud of what we achieved. Obviously, it didn’t end the way we wanted, but I know we’ll come back stronger."

It was the kind of answer that was designed to deflect, to keep things from escalating.

The interviewer, however, seemed satisfied with their little dig, moving on to the next driver.

Lando barely had time to process it before he heard a very familiar voice from just beyond the camera crew.

"Are you actually kidding me right now?"

He turned just in time to see Y/N standing off to the side, arms crossed, glaring absolute murder at the interviewer’s back.

The Drive to Survive crew, who had been filming his interview, immediately turned their cameras to her.

"What kind of stupid question was that?" she ranted, clearly not caring that she was being recorded. "‘Do you think you don’t have what it takes?’ Seriously? What kind of journalism school did this guy go to? All he knows is how to rile people up!”

Lando pressed his lips together, trying very, very hard not to laugh.

She was fuming.

"He should be embarrassed," she continued, still glaring. "Lando literally fought for this title until the last possible second, and that’s the best he could come up with? I should go over there right now—"

Lando immediately stepped in, wrapping his arms around her from behind, pulling her into his chest before she could march into the press pen and make headlines. "Alright, alright," he murmured against her hair, biting back a grin. "That’s enough murder threats for one night."

"I wasn’t threatening murder," she huffed, but she didn’t resist when he turned her to face him. "I was just saying that guy deserves to step on fifty Legos barefoot."

"That’s fair," Lando admitted, his grip tightening slightly as he leaned down, pressing his forehead against hers. "But I promise, I’m okay."

She searched his face, still frowning slightly. "You shouldn’t have to deal with that."

"I know." He smiled, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "But I’d rather deal with bad interviews than have to bail my girlfriend out for punching a reporter."

"No promises," she muttered, but her lips twitched, betraying her frustration.

Lando chuckled, then, because he simply couldn’t help himself, tilted her chin up and kissed her, slow and soft, like he had all the time in the world.

He felt the presence of what seemed to be a thousand cameras on them, but he didn’t care.

Because right now, nothing else mattered.

🪻🪻🪻

The studio setup was familiar by now, the sleek black backdrop, the dramatic lighting, the Drive to Survive crew hovering around with their cameras and microphones. It was the same place where all the serious, intense driver interviews had been filmed throughout the season.

Except today, it wasn’t serious.

Because today, it was Lando and Y/N sitting on the interview couch together, and nothing about them being in the same room was ever serious.

Lando leaned back comfortably, one arm draped over the back of the couch behind Y/N, while she sat cross-legged beside him, her fingers lazily toying with the hem of her dress. The crew had barely started rolling when he shot the camera a mischievous grin.

“So,” he said, adjusting his mic, “are we finally getting our own spin-off? Because I think the world deserves to see the behind-the-scenes of my life with this one.” He nudged Y/N playfully.

She snorted. “Your life? Excuse me? I’m the normal one in this relationship.”

The interviewer chuckled. “Lando, would you agree with that?”

Lando turned to her, looking absolutely scandalized. “Absolutely not. This woman started a verbal fight with a group of fans and nearly went after a reporter on my behalf. The only reason she’s not banned from the paddock is because she’s cute.”

Y/N rolled her eyes. “The only reason you weren’t banned from my apartment after losing the title was because you’re cute.”

Lando grinned, nudging her shoulder. “So you admit it? I am cute?”

The crew laughed as Y/N let out a dramatic sigh, shaking her head. “Fine. You’re alright.”

“Alright?” He turned to the camera. “You see how she treats me?”

The interviewer, still chuckling, moved on. “Alright, let’s go back to the start of the season. You’ve had a whirlwind year Lando, you were a title contender, and Y/N, you were very vocal throughout. What’s been your favorite moment we’ve captured?”

Y/N hummed, tapping her chin. “Ooh, good question. Probably when Lando lost his mind after that crash with Max.”

The crew laughed knowingly.

Lando groaned, but he was smiling. “Of course that’s your favorite. Not like, I don’t know, any of my actual racing?”

“Oh, right,” she said, grinning. “The whole driving really fast thing. You’re decent at that.”

The interviewer raised a brow. “Just decent?”

Lando turned to Y/N, smirking. “I was in a title fight, you know.”

“Okay, okay, you were great,” she admitted, patting his knee. “There. Happy?”

Lando nodded smugly. “Very.”

The interviewer smiled. “And Lando, what about you? Favorite moment we’ve captured?”

He didn’t even hesitate. “Her reaction after my first win in Miami.”

Y/N blinked, surprised. “Wait, really?”

Lando looked at her, his expression softening slightly. “Yeah, I mean I’d never seen you that happy.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “And I like making you happy.”

Y/N bit her lip, warmth spreading in her chest. “Okay, that was kinda sweet.”

“I have my moments,” Lando said, leaning in closer. “You should kiss me now.”

The crew laughed, but Y/N just pushed his face away with a laugh. “We’re literally being filmed right now, Norris.”

“Yeah, and?”

The interviewer, still amused, decided to wrap things up. “Alright, last question. If you had to describe this season in one word, what would it be?”

Lando thought for a second, then smirked. “Chaotic.”

Y/N groaned. “Please don’t say—”

“Because of you,” Lando finished, grinning as he dodged the pillow she threw at him.

She sighed, shaking her head with a smile. “Fine. Then my word is entertaining, because watching Lando suffer through PR answers all season has been hilarious.”

Lando turned to the camera, deadpan. “She’s so lucky I love her.”

The crew laughed as Y/N leaned into him, stealing a quick peck on his cheek. “And you’re so lucky I put up with you.”

He smiled, lacing their fingers together. “Best kind of luck, isn’t it?”

And just like that, the season wrapped.

not so sure about this one, but then again when am i ever sure about anything! <3 also i am accepting requests, so feel free to send your prompts or ideas with any of the drivers xoxo

[militaryapple]

AINT NOBODY TAKIN' YOU AWAY FROM ME.

sypnosis. going to an event with caleb was supposed to be fun - but teasing him & making him upset is even more fun!

cw. fem!reader, degradation, fingering, pet names (usage of wife, husband, baby & honey), somewhat voyeurism, p in v stay protected babes. aw hes like really insane i love u babe  

add ons. for @rcvcgers #1 supporter and bestie i know ur reading this btw stupid says what? lol i got u LMAOOO

wc. 2k

"you aren't going - no." caleb scowled. he looked at you, his gaze looking you up and down, scoffing. "cmon pip-squeak, you really don’t believe in taking you to the fleet’s get together. you remember what happened last time - i can’t let it happen again. stupid mistake of me.” he waved you away and you couldn’t help but letting out a ‘hmph!’ noise. so what you could’ve died? you do that all the time - it’s literally your job.

“you’re doing it again” you nudged him. “you don’t need to protect me, i can handle myself just fine caleb. also, it was just an unfortunate event that happened. even if i don’t leave with you i’ll find a way in.” you chipped. you notice caleb clenching his fists and dating his eyes around his uniform. he was thinking.

caleb turned to you, sighing.

“you aren’t leaving my side.” his gaze shifting away from you.

“wasn’t planning on it.” you squeezed his shoulder before walking away.

it took you a while to find an outfit. black? god that was plain, green? too much. through all the tossing and 'eughs' you finally found the dress. it was gorgeous. a red dress, long and silky, how It seemed just so right for a day like this. honestly you were a bit proud of yourself for having something like this in your closet, you didn't expect it but it was a pleasant surprise.

when you walked out the door, caleb tensed. god how he wanted to ravish you in that moment. how pretty you looked and how the dress connected to every single curve in your fucking body. the way it made your face pop out more, your hair done and set. how couldn't help but think about how much he wanted to ruin you. that pretty face, that hair, and the dress that hanged perfectly over you.

his pants tightened, and he let out a shaky sigh.

"so how do I look?" you spun around happily. for him? you were beautiful. you couldn't compete with anyone in the world - no the entire fucking galaxy. his pretty little thing, how he hated the thought of other men looking at you. he knows them, he knows what vile nasty things lay in their mind. yet he was no better than them when it came to you. the only difference is that, he had you. they didn't.

when you both left the house caleb made sure you were well protected. he stood by you, never leaving your side. his eyes staying around pretty you. it made you feel somewhat excited. come on, you dressed down like some actress going to an award winning show! well.. the fleet gala and an award show were practically the same thing! pearls, jewels, and a personal bodyguard? you were living THE life.

by the time you and caleb arrived, the scene was beautiful. the building was glistening, while you could see people come in and out of the large doors. caleb stood at the door, helping you out before leaning down to your ear. "beautiful isn't it? I know. I need you to remember to stick with me." he tugged on you.

you latched your arm around his and in you went. it was loud, bustling and most of the things you didn't understand. caleb was in a conversation, looking over at you occasionally to make sure you were okay. god you were BORED. you knew it would be a little boring but not this bad.

after a while you had slipped away, getting a drink. Caleb followed loosely behind you just to keep you in eyesight. so when he saw some random guy walk up to you, he couldn't help but tense. fuck, but it was impolite to step away from a conversation.

at first, you weren't interested. you were happily with your date, yet you couldn't help the fact that caleb looked like he was going to tear the poor guy to shreds, or the fact that you loved making caleb angry.

you started sipping on your drink, turning to the man and talking to him. he complimented your dress and you were sooo flattered. your face smiley and happy - while caleb couldn't do anything but clench his fist. he hated how happy you seemed with some other man. how polite you could be with someone while he wasnt there.

god.

did you know what that man was thinking? how nasty and vile he wanted to get with you? you weren't fucking stupid, you knew. you fucking knew how badly that man wanted to take advantage of you, yet here you were. feeding right into it. the thought just making calebs blood boil.

the man had gotten closer to you, too close for caleb's liking. putting his hand around your arm, how he moved around your body. not touching you - but enough to know that he was trying to make a move on you. caleb scoffed, this was as much as he could take. he needed to shut this down.

caleb made his way towards you, grabbing your drink from your hands and coming between you and the filthy man. "I'm sorry honey, i got a little caught up." he smiled, towards you. turning back to the man. "i hope my wife didn't cause too much trouble for you." he looked down at the man in front of him. with that, he scattered away. leaving only you and caleb.

he was quick to grab your arm and bring you to his office. closing the door and locking it. you didn't know he had an office here - was this his building? you moved back, shaking him off. "what? we were having a friendly conversation." you pout out.

caleb scoffed at you little act, grabbing your arms and pushing you against the wall, his hand behind your head making sure you didn't hurt yourself. "don't you fucking do that. he wouldn't have let you go if I didn't introduce you as my wife." caleb scowled. he moved back, pressing his hands against his temples.

"we're going home, I cant trust you here." caleb turned, making his way back to the hallways. you rushed to him, grabbing his arm and tugging him back. "it'd be a bad look for the colonel to send his wife back home. you don't want them targeting me and thinking that I'm weak, right?" he stopped and stiffened. turning back to you. you didn't realize how tall caleb was until he was actually towering over you.

he let out a simple "ha", looking away then back at you. "target you? are they really stupid enough to target someone I call my wife? how about I show them who you belong to. so when you go home, people know exactly who you're with." caleb grabbed your arms and moved you to his desk, sitting you up on it before kissing you. he didn't waste time having his hands around your body.

"caleb," you whimpered, holding his back and digging into his uniform. "we shouldn't be doing this here" you wiggle under him, yet his hand keeps you seated on his desk. he moved back away from you, "so then tell me to stop, baby." is hands moved under your dress, feeling around your thigh before moving up to your panties rubbing small circles around your cunt.

he leaned down to your neck, biting and sucking on it while his fingers rubbed your nub. "no one can make you feel like this anyways, it was stupid of you to even try to provoke me." he whispered, moving up and kissing around your face. you whined and jolted at his touch, looking at him.

caleb looked back at you, his hand that was once on your hip now caressing your face. "oh baby," he coo's "what's the matter? is your husband making you feel good?" his face feigned uneasiness, while his fingers poked and rubbed your soaking heat. you nodded in response, grabbing on to his arm and clutching it tightly. "wait baby please 'm gonna," you begged out, eyes starting to tear up.

he wiped your face, coo'ing you. "go ahead, cum for me, let the whole building know how good your husband makes you feel." he hummed. he moved you up and flipped you over. your head pushed down on his desk while your legs dangled off it, pushing your panties to the side. "what? come on honey, you didn't think that was it right? what about me? and you're not even well prepared yet." he sighed.

his hands rubbed your slick, then he put one digit in your cunt, then another. his pace was agonizingly slow as he pumped in and out of you. it practically made you sob. you begged for him to go faster, to make you feel any better, yet your pleas were ignored. caleb laughed, holding your back down.

"after that little show? why should I make you feel good?" he scoffed, his fingers slipping out of your wet cunt. "no! please, please baby make me feel good - we'll have a little family, yeah? my husband."

it was like something in caleb had turned, he slid his fingers back inside your needy cunt, stretching you. you coated his digits with each slip. his hands moving faster making you shake and grab on to the desk. with that, caleb had slipped out his fingers and you could hear shuffling in the back.

he undid his belt, pulling out his cock. he lined himself up before planting a kiss on your neck. "need you to relax for me okay hon? just for a moment." with that, he slid himself in. his pace slow as he thrusted into you. oh fuck the feeling of you making him want to cum on the spot.

he couldn't help but think of you, with his kids and a ring on your finger, calling him your husband for real. fuck, he would love that. love a little family with just you and hi,. you couldn't need to go anywhere - you wouldn't need anyone else. just him and you.

calebs hands made their way to your hips, pulling you back on his cock. "fuck baby," he groaned. "cant wait to make you mine, show everyone who you fucking belong to - who you need." he whined. he leaned down, biting your shoulder and neck, kissing and licking over the spots.

"my pretty wife," he moaned, moving your hair away from your face while he picked up the pace. he didn't care who heard you both - fuck he didn't even care about the event. so what if people heard? you were his wife. he could touch you, make you feel good. no one could make you feel the way he does and you know it. he's made sure of it.

his hands slipped under your dress, he fondled your bra, then your tits. they were so soft, and just right for him. fuck he loved that about you. he loved everything about you.

he loved your scent, how you talked and stood for yourself, how you make sure he's okay daily and how fucking good you can make him feel - how he thinks about you every time he's in the office bathroom trying to make himself feel good. you were crucial to his life.

his pace quickened and you whined "baby - wait - cum gonna cum soon," you moaned, hearing this caleb moved a hand down to your sobbing cunt, rubbing your nub while his hips slammed into you.

you tensed around him, your eyes rolling back as your legs curled up. god did he make you feel good. "my husband - fuck fuck i love you." you groaned before twitching. caleb rolled his hips, smacking against you before slowing down and kissing your body all over. then fixing your dress.

"once you go home, wait for me honey, okay? i'll be home with some extra things for me and you." he said, kissing your cheeks then lips. he moved away getting some towels for you and water, fixing himself before leaving.

yeah - maybe you could get used to being a housewife.

[kashverse]

Do you think you could write about Sukuna x reader before baby kuna and there live before reader even gettin pregnant I really love your work 💗💗💗✨✨✨✨

some corporate boss mamakuna x employee sukuna lore! this is how they first met :)

back before babykuna, before the house full of labubus, cats, and stolen hoodies, there was corporate sukuna. and corporate sukuna? he was supposed to be a goddamn nightmare. you had heard horror stories.

"he’s impossible to work with."

"he made the last manager cry."

"he once told HR to 'suck his entire d—'"

okay, so maybe that last one was a little concerning. but you were young, fresh into a leadership role, and ready to face whatever demon of a man this company had somehow not yet fired. so naturally, when you finally met him, arms crossed, scowl carved into his face like a roman statue, you prepared for the worst. 

"ryomen sukuna, right?" you greeted, professional, poised, the picture of authority. his eyes flicked up to you, and you swear, for half a second, there was a spark of mischief, a flicker of something dangerous. but then, to your absolute shock, sukuna—the devil himself, the menace of the office, the man who had apparently made three secretaries quit in a single week—was nice. or, well, nice enough.

he nodded, grumbled out a respectful “yeah,” and got to work. no backtalk, no glaring, no slamming of desks or throwing office supplies at interns. just grumpy efficiency. you smiled. bright. cheerful. unshaken.

“great! looking forward to working with you.”

then, the moment you turned your back? he was a goddamn menace. “oi, dipshit,” sukuna barked across the office, and some poor intern visibly flinched. “why the fuck is my report missing page five?”

“um—”

“no, don’t ‘um’ me. are you illiterate? do you need me to read the assignment out loud for you like you’re in fuckin' kindergarten?”

“no, sir, i just—”

“fix it.”

when you turned back around, brows raised? sukuna was already back to his task, perfectly behaved, like an honor student trying not to get caught. you frowned, a little suspicious. he blinked at you. innocent. wide-eyed. docile.

…okay, maybe the HR rumors were exaggerated. maybe he was just misunderstood. but then you turned away again, and—

“hey, you, yeah, you—who the fuck made this spreadsheet? a blind goat?!” 

this cycle repeated daily. whenever you were around, sukuna was just a grumpy but functional employee. he answered your questions, finished his work on time, and—god forbid—was even kind of charming when he wasn’t glaring at people. but the moment you left the room? utter carnage.

by week two, everyone in the office knew.

one particularly brave soul even tried to test it. “hey, sukuna,” some junior exec chirped while you were grabbing coffee, “think you could help me review this client file?” sukuna barely spared them a glance. “sure.”

but then you left to take a phone call.

“are you incapable of using your own goddamn brain, or is it just decorative?”

you walked back in. “everything okay?”

sukuna, completely blank-faced: “yeah.”

everyone was traumatized. you? completely clueless. until one day, you walked into the office a little earlier than usual and caught him—midway through roasting some poor IT guy’s entire existence. you cleared your throat. sukuna froze.

then, he straightened his tie, rolled his shoulders back, and—without missing a beat—“ah, boss. g'morning.” like nothing happened. 

you blinked. he blinked back.

…this motherfucker.

[merlinmylove]

Arthur is cursed into eternal sleep

He is not waking up, and everyone is lost for answers on how to save their King.

Except no one knows Arthur is wandering around as a spirit, or a ghost, perhaps his soul is outside his body. The usual trope.

He can see and hear everything — but he cannot talk to anyone. He is completely helpless.

One night he sees his uncle enter his rooms with a blade in hand. It’s an ornate dagger carrying the House of Du Bois sigil. He leans over and holds it to his throat.

“Not so powerful now are you, My Lord” He sneers. Arthur feels dread wash over him like cold water down the back of his neck.

His uncle!

His own uncle, his last living relative and direct ties to his mother was about to slit his throat while he slept. Arthur was about to watch his own death and there was nothing he could do.

Agravaine is testing different angles. “How shall it be, huh? Quick and simple? A clean cut?” He paused. “No. My sister died a painful death, her blood spilling out as she lay dying, just so Uther could have an heir. You shall die a similar way.” Agravaine was entirely too pleased as he looked down on his sleeping nephew.

“No one can help you, no one can save you now, not even Emrys”

As the man begins to add pressure on his hand and aims for the neck to cut, Merlin enters from the servants door as if he had been summoned by the Gods.

Arthur has never been more elated and scared at the same time.

Agravaine is frozen in place. Merlin, moving quicker than Arthur has ever seen him move, is by Arthur’s side and holding his hand over Agravaines.

“Ah, Merlin” Lord Agravaine is cheerfully calm, as if he hadn’t just been caught attempting regicide. The blade was still pressing against Arthur’s throat.

“I was just helping my newphew shave. It’s so dreadful to see him like this” He tutted with a condescending tone.

“I shave His Majesty every other day” Merlin’s cold stone voice is like thunder from clear sky.

He grips the knife with his hand, and if the blade cuts into his skin, he shows no sign of it. In fact, Merlin’s face remains impressively blank throughout their silent conversation.

“I think you should leave now.”

Found out and frustrated, Agravaine drops the blade onto Arthur’s chest and moves towards the door. A few droplets of blood splatter against the white linen of his shirt.

Merlin stays still with his eyes focused on Arthur’s breathing chest. Only when the traitor reaches the door does he speak.

“Lord Agravaine” Merlin’s words stop him in his tracks.

“What?” He spits out, no longer able to conceal his true feelings. Disgust and hatred is clear in both in his voice and in his features. The older man turns and stares at the servant.

Arthur fears for both of their lives.

“I wonder what Queen Ygraine would think of your actions here tonight.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“I wonder what your sister would think if she knew that you were having an affair with her husband’s bastard daughter” Merlin elaborated. He looked entirely too comfortable taunting the man.

Arthur tried to move in front of Merlin, to save him from his uncles anger, but Agravaine moved through him as if he was nothing but smoke.

Agravaine reaches for his sword, but Merlin is quicker. “How dare you call her that! I will strike you where you stand”

“But it is true. You claim to love Ygraine, but instead of supporting your sisters son, you betray him for Uther’s bastard child”

Agravaine moves quickly with his sword raised. Merlin stops him with the hidden sword Arthur keeps beside his bed. Only Merlin knows of its existence.

He never knew Merlin was such a skilled swordsman.

Despite his age, Agravaine would easily win a sword fight against Merlin. Arthur tried shouting for help, but no one could hear him in his ghost state.

“I’m not the sort of man you wish to antagonise.” Merlin pointed his sword at his uncles chest. “And you certainly do not wish to make an enemy of me. Just ask Morgana what happened to her sister. Or to Nimhue. Or Cornelius Segan.”

“You think you can kill me?” Agravaine laughed at him and pushed the tip of the sword away.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Who says it will be me? Tell me, my lord. Do you know the name of the servant who dresses you each morning? Could you recognise him in a crowd? Do you even know the name of the cook that makes your food? I do”

Merlin was so calm and collected it was scary. Even Agravaine seemed to be unsettled by his tone.

“I know every knight, servant, and guard in the citadel. I know who dresses you, which servants prepare your wine and who makes your food…and maybe my hand might slip...”

“You threaten to poison me like you did Morgana” He hissed in realisation.

Poisoning Morgana? When on earth had Merlin done that?!

“Maybe. Who’s to say it would be poison. I could kill you any manner I wish. Either way, you’ve overstay your welcome and I must ask you to leave the Kings chambers.”

“I’m the Kings uncle and a high lord of the council, you cannot order me about!” He was sweating with anger now, and his condescension had turned righteous.

“Guards!” Merlin shouted. Half a second later the door opened and four men appeared, swords in hand, ready to defend their King.

Arthur let out a sigh of relief. Finally, Merlin was safe.

“Yes Merlin?” Sir Alfred asked while eying the two men with their swords drawn. It was quite the scene, Arthur admitted.

“Please escort Lord Agravaine out of the Kings chambers. He is not to enter again without my permission.” Merlin lowered his sword and walked back to the bed where Arthur’s still body lay.

Agravaine laughed at this, but quickly realised that he was the only one who saw any humour in it, when two knights strong-armed him. “Unhand me at once! How dare you take the word of a servant over the word of a Lord!” His fighting was easily combated by the expert knights. He had lost.

Sir Alfred looked him in the eyes. “By orders of the King, we are to treat every word from Merlin as if they were his own. If Merlin says you’re no longer welcomed in the Kings chambers, we will act accordingly.”

They dragged the lord out of the room in an undignified way.

Arthur watched as the door clicked shut and Merlin finally showed some emotion. Falling to his knees before Arthur’s bed, he grabbed his hand and kissed it.

Heaving with tears and shock he choked out “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry” He kissed his hand again. “I won’t ever let him come near you ever again, I promise.”

Arthur wanted to assure his friend that he knew Merlin would keep him safe, that he trusted him more than anyone else in the world! But no sounds came out of his mouth.

When Merlin got up he began touching Arthur’s chest and throat, seemingly feeling his heartbeat and pulse underneath his fingers. “You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe”

He reaches down and presses a kiss to his forhead mumbling words mostly to calm himself, rather than to address the sleeping man before him. “Arthur is alive. He’s alive”

[ceilidho]

sundog

prompt: Simon comes across a girl when she's recently been evicted and takes her back to his place, despite her reservations (nsfw, 8.5k) [based on this old post] [on ao3 here]

-

The circumstances of your life change so abruptly that you lose sight of it for a moment. 

Then, you’re out on the streets with the clothes on your back and a suitcase packed so full that a sweater sleeve sticks out where the zippers meet. The locks to your apartment have already been changed. You know because you tried them anyway, desperately hoping that the eviction notice taped to your door might have been misplaced.

Evidently not. The keys don’t work. You contemplate chucking them on the walk out, but instead you keep them close like a talisman of protection, though it’s failed to live up to its purpose so far. 

You’ve got it under control for a day. If by ‘under control’, you mean experiencing a full body panic attack in the locker room of the twenty-four hour gym down the street from your old apartment. The staff gives you uncomfortable looks when you come in on the verge of tears with your suitcase rolling behind you, but they let you in because your membership is up to date. If you can count on anything in life, it’s consumerism. 

That doesn’t last long though, mainly because a locker and a wood bench won’t cut it in the long term. You sleep in the back of the local library until a stern-faced, if pitying, librarian threatens to call the cops on you. Pity isn’t sympathy, evidently. 

Gym management threatens to cut the lock on the locker you’ve been using as temporary storage space. Matter of fact, they say, you can’t be using the locker room as your quasi apartment between the hours of nine P.M. and seven A.M. just because everything else in the city is closed. Go home, they say. 

What home, you don’t say, before packing up your things and heading out on your way. 

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s capitalism. 

You didn’t think this kind of thing could happen to someone like you. Someone like you being an ordinary person. Homelessness always felt like a far away concept. But the world is cruel and life is brutal. What you didn’t realize before was that, at any moment in time, you’ve been closer to poverty than wealth, and here you are now, sitting in the park with your suitcase between your legs, the sun rapidly setting behind you, your phone at ten percent battery, and nowhere to go because your family is, frankly, nonexistent, and your friends, for lack of a better word, have almost entirely washed their hands of you.

Sorry, they’d say, the frown emoji expressing something like pity at a distance. We don’t have a couch to spare. 

I can sleep on the floor, you’d texted back. They’d gotten cagey after that. People like to be wanted only to a certain extent.

You can feel the panic rise up in you, too big to contain. It comes out in the form of blubbering tears and snot running from your nose. Big, hiccuping sobs. It’s not pretty. Passersby avert their eyes for the most part, save for the ones that eye you with something bordering on perverse delight and that’s what finally makes you get up and speed walk away, lest they feel compelled to approach you. 

But even in the tailwinds of summer, it gets cold outside at night. Worst of all, as the evening grows dark, the streets empty out until you can’t help but feel like a beacon with your little rolling suitcase. It clatters against the sidewalk as you try to hoof it down the street, looking for any shop still open to loiter in. Most close after nine though. You’ve googled homeless shelters, but the sheer anxiety keeps you floundering around up and down the streets instead.

It feels beyond helpless. You’re in a state like you’ve never been before, crying under a streetlamp because you needed a moment just to get your bearings. 

What you know now is that this world is a house of false bottoms. You thought the circumstances of your life could never change. You were never well to do, but you were doing well. The sight of the unhoused sitting with their backs to the brick and mortar stores on your walk home or congregated in a park in the middle of the city with their tents and shopping carts used to fill you with immeasurable pity, maybe even a quiet moment’s reflection; now, you see them as kin. 

Easy, isn’t it? To slip between states. To go from solid to liquid to gaseous. Easier than you ever could have expected. 

When it starts to rain, you almost close your eyes in relief. Anyone could’ve predicted this. 

You almost don’t respond to him at first, keeping your eyes trained on the sidewalk to avoid any bumps. Also, it never pays to look up at a man barking at you, especially not when he’s barking something like, Girl or Bird, turn around. 

Then he says it again, closer this time, and you’re forced to look up, if only to see who’s approaching you. Your suspicion melts away to distrust at the sight of the man stalking towards you. Distrust with a touch of trepidation—maybe outright alarm. Surely no man his size wearing a balaclava tucked into a hoodie straining around his arms would have innocent designs on you. 

He’s one of the bigger men you’ve ever come across. You look across the street to see if there’s a bar missing its bouncer, but all the shop fronts are dark like the ones on your side. 

You don’t bolt at the sight of him, but it’s a near thing. He appears from nowhere, and yet there’s nowhere for him to hide. Not with the size and breadth of him damn near taking up the whole sidewalk. His demeanour and stride evoke such a sense of authority that at first you mistake him for a plainclothes man, and wouldn’t that be just the icing on the shit cake of a week you’ve been experiencing. But something about him says otherwise. 

“Plan on catchin’ your death out here?” he asks, and you shiver. Not from the cold, but from the sound of his voice. 

You’re not used to talking to strangers. A month ago, you would’ve ignored the man lambasting you for being out in the rain; maybe crossed the street and hailed a cab instead. You don’t have those kinds of options anymore. The only thing left in your repertoire is to shout back. 

“I’ve got mace!” you yell out, your voice a hoarse rattle carved out from hours spent crying. 

“That’ll do ya fuck all out here,” he says, a touch condescendingly. “You lost or somethin’?”

“I’m not lost,” you sniff, rubbing the snot away from your nose with the end of your sleeve.

“Then get home instead of roamin’ the streets. You’re askin’ to get snatched up, bird.”

The threat of that has been lingering in your head these past few days, even stretching back to the very first moment that you noticed the sign on your door, but now it has its intended effect. You shake. 

“I can’t,” you whisper.

“Bloody hell,” he sighs. “Why the fuck not? Need someone to call you a cab?”

“I got evicted. I don’t have a home,” you say, and sniffle when your nose leaks again. Saying it outloud brings tears to your eyes again, a pressure building behind your orbital sockets and down to the tip of your nose. 

You must look like the saddest thing in the world standing there in the rain under the dim light of the streetlamp, the pole looped with graffiti and old gum. When the man berating you for being out in it takes a step forward, coming into the light, you can finally make out the bored depths of his eyes. A deep brown. Entirely unimpressed with the picture in front of him, maybe even a bit peeved. 

Your socks are wet and your shoes squelch when you take a step back. You pull the sheer sweater tighter around your frame, but it does nothing to protect you from the damp, frigid air. 

“You been out here long?” he asks, taking another step closer. Not tentatively either. His gaze sweeps over you proprietarily, taking stock; his arrogance comes as an afterthought. He’s not rubbing it in your face that he can do whatever he likes—he just does. 

You wheel your suitcase around in front of you to put something between the two of you. “…Just today. The gym kicked me out.”

You sound petulant, words chewed between your lips and teeth; begrudgingly admitting to the various pitfalls of your existence. All the bad luck. It’s shameful to admit to losing complete control of your life. 

“Haven’t ya got any family, girl? Friends? What’re they letting a girl like you stay out on the streets for?”

You could be sick on the pavement. “…That’s none of your business.”

His eyes go flat at that, unimpressed. “You always this nasty to people tryin’ to help?”

And you’re not. That’s the part that grates the most. You’re all soft underbelly; no bark, no bite. It’s inconceivable that this could’ve happened to you—inconceivable because your head is filled with false promises and mythologies. The myth of exceptionalism. This happens to other people. Not good girls that go to college and get their degrees and find a stable job. 

They’ve pulled the rug out from under you so fast that you haven’t even toppled over yet. That’s how quick it all happened. 

“What help are you?” The bite comes out of nowhere, fueled by bitter humiliation and resentment for the predicament you’ve found yourself in. “Are you gonna put me up in a hotel?”

“Think I’m made of money, bird?” he asks rhetorically. 

“You’ve probably got more than I have.” 

Now you’re weepy again at the thought. Down to your last hundred dollars and you’re in between jobs at the moment. It might’ve been easier to haul yourself out of poverty if applying for jobs didn’t require a mailing address. That’ll be your first priority once you find a place to live. But conversely, how are you meant to find housing with no proof of income? Landlords laugh in your face before slamming the door shut. The conversations are circular, but they always come to a grinding halt; that’s the only thing you’ve learned to expect. 

The worst part of this whole conversation is that it doesn’t follow any of the scripts you’ve previously memorized. When have you ever had to deal with a man interrogating you about your place of residence? It makes no sense. 

It’s inconceivable to imagine that this is happening to you, but it is. Life comes at you hard, with a razor’s edge. Sharp enough to cut, to lacerate. 

“You need a place to stay,” he states bluntly. 

“It’s fine. I’ll—I’ll find something.” 

“You could come home with me.” He says it so bluntly that for a moment all you can do is blink. Surely you misheard him. Surely a man of his size and breadth, dark mask obscuring his face, wouldn’t be daft enough to ask a woman he found on the street to come home with him.

The offer, as well-intentioned as you hope it is, puts you on edge. “No, that’s…that’s alright. I don’t want to…put you out. I was going to look up nearby shelters.”

“Shelters’ll all be full this time of night,” he says. “Never been on the streets?”

You clenched your teeth, nerves starting to get the better of you. 

“I can go to a church,” you say, voice terse now, frayed with nerves. 

He snorts. “Haven’t been to one in a long time, but pretty sure those close too, pet. It’s late.”

You sway on your feet, the suitcase at your side the only thing keeping your knees from buckling. Dead ends everywhere you turn. You’ve always thought of yourself as resourceful; that if push came to shove, you’d figure your way out of any sticky situation. That smacks of arrogance now. All your suppositions are dissolving right in front of you, your own self-image along with it. 

A heavy foot stepping into a puddle brings you back to focus. The masked man is closer now, within arm’s reach. Your heart jumps into your throat. He towers over you, monolith man; big as a sequoia, or other deadland creatures that vanish out of sight when you catch a shadow out of the corner of your eye and whirl around to look it dead on. 

“I can’t go home with a stranger.”

You know you’re not supposed to put your faith in strange men. Bad things happen to girls that go around trusting any man that offers up their help. 

The fist in your chest loosens infinitesimally when the man reaches up to pull the mask off his head. He’s every inch the brute you imagined in your head—blunt chin and crooked nose, a nasty scar running up his lip. There are scars all over his face, in fact—bisecting his left eyebrow and down his cheek. The blond hair on his head is slightly grown out, like he’s used to keeping it neat and tight but it’s been awhile since his head has seen a razor. His beard grows in a bit patchy, the burnish gold of a five o’clock shadow.

You frown. “Is that supposed to make me trust you?”

“Well, now we’re not strangers, are we?”

“That doesn’t—that doesn’t change anything! I still don’t know you.”

He shrugs. Takes a step back. “Suit yourself then. No skin off my ass.”

Your stomach roils, anxiety coming back with a vengeance. You hadn’t noticed it recede since the man started talking to you, but you notice its return. When he makes a move to turn back around, you lurch forward, your hand extending out and fisting in the side of his shirt. He pauses, then looks down at you. 

“…Where else am I supposed to go?” you whisper.

He tilts his head. “Could sleep on a bench in the park.”

You glare at him through tear-soaked eyes. “That’s not funny.”

“Wasn’t meant to be. You’re shit out of other options at this time of night.”

“So, what? Now it’s-it’s my fault or something?”  

His eyes don’t exactly soften, but they lose their hard edge. 

“I’m not gonna ask twice,” he says. Not cautioning you, just stating a fact. “You coming or not?”

Disaster seems like a given at this point. At least you could pick your poison. 

Words are beyond you though, so you just bite your lip and nod, eyes downcast now. 

What else is there for you to do but follow him after that? You trail along after him like a sad, wet cat left out in the rain. 

He finds her wandering the streets with her pretty little suitcase rolling over every bump and crack in the sidewalk and there’s no fighting the urge to drag her home. 

She doesn’t look like a runaway. Just a poor thing down on her luck. Her cheeks practically glisten with her tears when she looks up at him with her big, pathetic eyes, and it makes his cock plump up against his thigh. 

That’s not what this is about though. Simon presses his hand against his dick to rub out some of the ache while she flutters around the bedroom and reminds himself of that again. He didn’t take her home to maul her like a dog. He dragged her back to his flat because she looked wounded and scared out of her wits. 

He can be good every now and then. 

“Sit down, will ya?” he grunts, tugging her down onto the couch when she flits across the room to grab more of her shit out of her suitcase, glancing down at him apprehensively on her way by. She yelps when he sends her sprawling onto the couch. 

His flat isn’t much. A one-bedroom above a laundromat; eggshell walls and torn up baseboards because he hasn’t gotten around to fixing the place up. It’s better than sleeping on the streets though, he knows that much. 

Simon’s no stranger to that; if being in the military taught him anything, it was how to survive regardless of circumstances. In the weeks after his medical discharge—his knees beyond busted, basically bone on bone, and even these days, though he works more to have something to do than to earn a living, they still scream at him when he puts too much weight on them—he wandered aimlessly for a bit, crashing on Gaz’s couch for a bit and sleeping on benches for a spell after that before finding his footing again. 

Simon ignores the way that she yaps at him though, used to tuning people out. He flicks on the television and flips to a show that looks vaguely entertaining before getting up and ambling over to the kitchen. 

“D-do you want me to help?” she asks from the kitchen, tripping over her words in her haste to get them out. 

She reeks of the need to please. Desperate; cloying, sickly sweet like flowering dracaena. It clings to her like a perfume, silk-wrapped and packaged just for him. It could give a man like him indecent thoughts. His thoughts already tend towards the impure. 

He must eye her like a ravenous animal because she flinches suddenly under his gaze, eyes flicking away nervously before meeting his again. Good girl, Simon wants to say. Eyes on me. 

“Sit down,” he barks instead, and relishes in the way she sits back down with her hands tucked under her thighs. 

She’s really a pretty little thing. A shame that he found her out wandering in the rain, out where any man with worse intentions could have stumbled across her. The thought alone could drive him to violence. Again he stares at the back of her head and the slope of her shoulders, evaluating. His bloodlust dulls to a simmer. It pounds in his ears like a dull drum, but at least now he can hear again. 

Anyone else could have found her first, but they didn’t. He did. That tempers the homicidal impulse thrumming in his blood. She’s in his flat now, freshly showered and skin still damp. When she looks over her shoulder, it’s him she sees. 

Poor bird with her clipped wings. She’s not in danger of flying off anytime soon. The thought placates him. Tucked away in his cage, he doesn’t have to rend anyone limb from limb.

It’s been years since he traded in his fatigues for a hi vis jumpsuit, but some days he misses it so acutely that his hands shake and his vision fades in and out. This is one of those days. He toys with the idea of reaching out to Price in the morning to learn more about her, but then discards the idea. Better if it comes straight from her.

Besides, he doesn’t like asking for favours anyway.

“Name’s Simon, by the way,” he grunts, nostrils flaring when he sees her flinch at the sound of his voice. “Riley.”

“Oh,” is all she says. He waits a beat.

“Gonna give me your name, bird?”

She does, voice squeaky like it’s said under duress. That pisses him off more. 

He's not much of a cook, but he can whip up something quick, so he tosses one of his frozen meals into the microwave and sits her in front of the TV while she shivers and shakes on the couch.

They eat in silence, the TV on in the background. It’s the only noise besides the soft sound of her chewing. Simon can tell she’s gone hungry in recent days by the voracious way she eats, unable to keep herself from shovelling the food into her mouth. She seems almost embarrassed by it after swallowing her last bite, looking over at him from the corner of her eye like a guilty dog. He ignores it, keeping his eyes on the TV instead.

He can tell she wants to say something. A shit childhood and two decades in the military have left him with the ability to sniff out tension, and it comes off her in waves. After putting her plate on the coffee table, she sits back against the couch and squeezes her fists over her lap. Gnaws her lip and casts furtive glances in his direction. When the tears build up on her waterline, his cock twitches. 

“What?” he barks after the umpteenth sniffle, twisting to face her. 

“I—um—I just wanted to say thank you,” she whispers, her head still tilted downward, trying to make herself small enough to go unnoticed. 

Simon stares down at her, unblinking. He half wishes she’d cry a little more, just a few tears to soothe the beast in his chest. It’s better for her that her eyes remain dry. He doesn’t think he could hold himself back if one slipped down her cheek right now. He’d have to grab her by the nape of her neck and twist her over the side of the couch, shove down both their drawers and feed his cock into the warm, wet slot between her legs. Pummel her little cunt until his spend leaks out in thick, viscous globs, until her thighs shake so violently that only his hands on her shoulders and his shaft shoved deep in her pussy keeps her upright. 

He can almost smell it from between her legs, throbbing with gratefulness. He stares down unabashedly at the spot between her legs. Let her say something about it. 

“Don’t mention it,” he says instead, tilting his head when her tongue peeks out to wet her lips. “‘Was nothing.”

“No, it was really nice of you,” she insists, speaking more forcefully after gathering up some of her courage. “What if I…—you took a stranger into your house.”

That gets the blood pumping. “Gonna gut me while I sleep, pet?”

It’s half deranged that his cock chubs up in his jeans at the thought of his little bird with a knife in her hands, hands dripping with wet, dark blood. He shifts, readjusting himself so the metal teeth of his zipper don’t bite into his dick. 

She frowns. Endearing. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Not really good at looking after yourself, are you?”

“I am—it’s just…” tears build up on her waterline again, “it was one thing after another. I couldn’t get it all together.”

Pity isn’t an emotion he’s accustomed to feeling. Simon’s not even sure if that’s what he’s feeling now. It’s more like the bastard child of pity. 

He lets her off to bed with a warning not to fuck with anything in his room. She skitters off quickly after that. Her cute little ass follows her into the room until she shuts the door behind her, hiding it from view. He huffs. Being good never gets him anywhere.

He lets her run away though because he can’t tarnish everything he touches. Some things deserve to stay polished. 

Instead, he brushes his teeth and washes the last of the dishes before turning in as well, getting a clean sheet out of the linen closet to drape over himself. The couch isn’t nearly long enough for him to stretch out on, not like the king sized bed in his room; there’s already a spring poking him right in the middle of his back.

Sleep won’t come easy tonight. 

Simon wakes up on the couch with a kink in his neck. He lays there for several minutes gritting his teeth until the worst of it passes. When he sits up, his back cracks and pops, joints loosening only reluctantly. His age is getting away from him again; the wear and tear on his body finally starting to catch up. There’s only so much abuse he can put himself through. 

The morning races on outside his front door and he has work to get to, but his body orients towards the closed door of his bedroom almost without his say. It creaks as it swings open. 

In the slowly dimming haze of sleep, he must have subconsciously thought he dreamt the night before because seeing the girl from yesterday curled up in his bed halts him in his tracks. Her suitcase is open on the floor beside the bed. She must have changed into her pyjamas after slinking away last night because he doesn’t recognize the little cotton shorts hugging the swell of her ass and the shirt riding up over her belly button. 

Despite the perfunctory morning jerk he gave himself just ten minutes prior, his cock twitches in his work pants, gaze locked on the underside of her ass, the flesh peeking out from beneath her sleep shorts. 

The hunger ebbs out of a deep, cavernous hole in him. A heavy, oppressive heat; lust so gnarled and twisted that he hardly recognizes it. He can see it play out in his mind—crawling over the bird’s prone form and turning her over onto her belly, his knees on either side of her legs, cloaking her. Tugging down the zipper of his pants and wrenching those slutty shorts down to mid-thigh before burying his shaft in her hole. Little bird that followed him home, sleeping in his bed. She should thank him for his help with a wet hole. 

Simon takes a step into the room and then stops. He won’t—can’t—

His teeth grind together from how hard he clenches his jaw. 

He stands in the doorway and watches her sleep in his bed for longer than he should. Only when he feels something ugly well up in his chest does he finally bark out her name, snorting softly when she jumps and nearly falls right off the side of the bed. 

“Get up,” Simon grunts. “And make yourself something to eat. I’ve gotta head out.”

He walks away before the befuddled look on her face makes him crack a smile. 

She tiptoes out a few minutes later, still in her PJs. Her wary glances tick him off. For the effort it’s taken him to keep his hands to himself, he deserves more than her shifty looks, scoring him like he split her little peach open in her sleep.  

Breakfast is an uncomfortable affair. It’s partly his fault, but he doesn’t apologize for it. They eat in tense silence until it’s time for him to head to work. 

“Don't think about leaving—any of my shit gets nicked and it's your ass.”

He leaves her with that warning, slamming the door behind him.

Your heart goes quiet at the dawning of your new life. 

Adjusting to your new reality takes a bit of effort. The first few days with Simon feel tenuous at best. You worry constantly about doing something wrong and finding yourself back out on the streets. You’re thankful to the point of pandering, apologizing for any sudden move or sound that you make. You can tell it annoys him. 

The real work is recontextualizing your perception of yourself. The world feels strange now that you’re outside of it; alien somehow. You used to think of yourself as somehow inextricably woven into the fabric of society. The thought of losing everything never even occurred to you. It never even presented itself as a possibility. You worried about homelessness the way people worry about quicksand—in some nebulous way touching on the real without being absorbed by it. 

And now you are cut from another cloth altogether; abruptly, without any warning. You used to feel like one with the rest of the world, a kind of kinship based less on parentage or ancestry and more on inner nature. Weren’t you the same as any of them? But now the drapery has been pulled down and you know—you are not the same. 

Your future used to shimmer under the surface like a bioluminescent fish, but now it’s just a ghost.

He tells you to stay put when he goes to work so you do, spending the days puttering around the apartment, watching TV, and cleaning. There’s not much else to do. It’s almost a relief, to be honest. You’ve spent so much time without a place to call home that the second someone offered you one, the outside world became anathema in your head. You couldn’t step foot out of the front door even if you wanted to. 

Tears well up at the smallest thing. You blubber over not being able to work the coffee machine in the kitchen. When the sound goes out on the TV, you cry so hard that it leaves you woozy. You’re lachrymose, downtrodden. Soul a startling verdigris; your waterlines might as well be white with encrustations of salt. 

He must notice the dark cloud following you from room to room, but he doesn’t bring it up. You’d find it tactful, but you know him a bit better than that. 

Then Simon brings home a cat after his shift one day and you don’t know what to say to that.

Thank you doesn’t seem to suffice. I love it doesn’t cut it close. The truth of the matter is that words only ever approximate the feeling; they can get close enough to give you a glimmer of what’s stashed inside, but you can’t pry them all the way open. So you take the off-white cat from him when he practically tosses the poor thing into your arms, and stare up at him wide-eyed, eyes already watering for reasons once again unbeknownst to you. 

“Thank you for taking him home,” you say, already on the verge of tears.

He stares down at you, unblinking. You’re learning to read into his silences though. 

“Don’t expect me to take care of it,” he says instead of accepting your thanks. “If you can’t handle it, it’s going back outside.” 

You hold the cat tight to your chest, staring up at him with horror until the little beast nearly scratches your eye out in an effort to squirm out of your arms. 

At first, you’re not sure what to make of it. It can’t be a peace offering because, apart from the rare occasions where you manage to get on his nerves (not wholly impossible, but you’re learning how to stay on his good side for the most part), you and Simon get along pretty well. You coexist, at least. He cooks, you clean. 

It’s likely a distraction, you finally realize, something to keep you from moping around the apartment all the time, listless and directionless. Despite the fact that you’re no longer in any immediate danger now that you have a roof over your head, misery still clings to you like a second skin. The relative safety of Simon’s flat has actually only given you a chance to really properly mourn the loss of your former life. 

Training the cat to wear a harness without tipping over (the little drama king) and taking him on his first walk outside (just a little turn around the block, though you half jump out of your skin whenever you cross paths with another person) gives you enough of a sense of purpose to propel you through the next week. 

You can tell that Simon thinks the cat is more trouble than it’s worth, especially when it decides to fixate on the one person in the flat that doesn’t pay it a lick of attention, but still it makes your heart melt to see it curled up by his side when you watch TV together at the end of the night. 

“Is this normal for you?” you ask, hands folded in your lap.

His gaze doesn’t move from the television screen. “Is what normal?”

“Taking in strays.”

He snorts, then takes a second to answer. “No.”

You wonder if he intends to sound as caustic as he comes across. The truth is self-evident though. Words only mask the real, and the real in this case is that Simon Riley is a man that feeds and takes home strays. He can grumble about it all he wants. It’s a bit demeaning to think of yourself that way, but once again, the truth is what it is. 

You study him from the corner of your eye until bedtime rolls around again. He’s become the most interesting thing in the world to you, through every fault of his own.

If he didn’t want you to fixate on him, he wouldn’t have left you home alone with nothing else to do. 

“Bird!” Simon roars from the other room. “The cat’s pissed on the floor again.”

You spring out of bed before Simon has a chance to toss it out onto the balcony. 

It feels temporary up until the first time you use Simon’s address on a job application. It stands out stark on your phone screen, black on glowing white. You’ve always preferred it to dark mode, though that preference has fluctuated in recent weeks as you’ve spent more and more time on your phone. 

This is the first time staring at the screen without blinking for a prolonged period of time that hasn’t left you with a throbbing migraine. 

He tells you to stop bothering him with stupid shit when you ask him if it’s alright to use his address. That answers that. Guilt lingers on the periphery of your mind the first time that you do, but then the application is submitted. An innocuous grey box that redefines your whole world in a way that [Thanks for applying!] doesn’t seem to encapsulate. 

Your old friends come next. They come back one by one, guilty, furtive looks aplenty. You Facetime the one who wouldn’t let you sleep on her couch while sitting on Simon’s bed. When she asks you about your living situation, all you tell her is that you found a roommate. It doesn’t feel right to give her more information than that. What has she done to deserve your honesty? 

You manage pleasantries and a half decent conversation, but truth again lingers at the back of your mind. The unspoken reality that this person—someone you trusted—could’ve been there for you in your time of need but chose to look the other way instead. Like taking you in would’ve been some big, terrible thing. 

The body forgets everything except what hurts it. The body remembers nothing except what helps it survive. 

Gratefulness lodges into your heart like an arrow shot from a castle’s ramparts intent on your demise. You could pull it out from the other side and succumb to blood loss, or you could push forward, lay siege to the man hidden inside its walls. 

And you do. You want to show him every grateful inch of you. Even when it only results in more upset. Simon comes home to the smoke alarm blaring and a small fire in the microwave before he bans you from the kitchen altogether. You only cry for an hour in the bedroom with the door shut before he drags you out to takeout on the table in the living room. It’s an improvement. 

“I’m sorry,” you sniffle into your veggie burger, on the verge of tears again when you glance into the kitchen to see most of the mess still there. 

“It’s fine.”

“I just want to—I wanted to make it up to you…for taking me in.”

“You don’t owe me shit,” he says brusquely, dismissing you. His tone tells you to drop it, but that seems as likely as you growing wings and flying away. 

“Yes, I do. You let me stay here when I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“If you want to make it up to me, take care of the cat and stop leaving your shit all over the bathroom. Found your knickers on the floor after you showered yesterday.”

Your face goes hot at that. You have nothing else to say. 

Your attraction is a banal consequence of living under the same roof as him. There are only so many times he can come up behind you while you’re making your morning cup of coffee and swipe your mug before taking a sip from over your shoulder, barricading you against the counter. Acutely aware of the size of him with the way he’s pressed up against you. 

You lose your train of thought whenever Simon wanders into a room. He lumbers in like a beast, steel-toed boots covered in mud and dust, ignoring the way you scold him for walking around the apartment in his shoes. Just cocks an eyebrow and stares down at you knowingly, like he can see right through you, knows that you’re only squawking and flitting around to hide the way your thighs rub together. 

“It’s my fuckin’ flat,” he says instead of pointing out that your pussy’s wet because she knows there’s a man in the house that could take care of her proper. You know it too. 

“I live here too, you know,” you huff. “I can’t wash the floors every time you come home.”

“Thought I was doing you a favour letting you live here.”

His words would fill you with righteous indignation, but they don’t because his actions don’t line up. You study him like a moth under glass, enthralled by the parts of him that used to frighten you. 

It’s more than that though. He’s wedged himself into the hurt place in your heart, holding it up like Atlas. 

You really do think that there’s something so special about him that you’ll never be able to articulate. Simon is everything you didn’t know you desperately wanted. The longer you live with him, the harder it is to deny how much you need him. 

You will show your gratitude though. Every tender, aching morsel of it. 

The little peach she grinds on his thigh is wet and ripe. Simon doesn’t tell her that he doesn’t need her gratitude; if he wanted it, he would’ve taken it already. But he doesn’t shove her out of his lap either. It’s not his problem if she thinks it’s necessary or not.

Maybe it’s not solely for his benefit, he concedes when she winds both arms around his neck and pushes her supple tits into his chest, climbing over his lap until her pussy is pressed right up against the cock fattening up in his jeans. She whimpers like she’s in pain. 

Must not come a lot; he knows she at least hasn’t in recent days. Simon’s always been a light sleeper—he’s sure he would’ve heard any desperate attempts to get herself off in his bed, the springs creaking under her weight, her hushed, bitten off moans leaking out from under the doorframe. The thought riles him up more than he thought it would. 

Still, Simon doesn’t lift a hand to help the poor bird in his lap as she grinds down on his length. His arms stay stretched across the back of the couch, hips canted just enough to give her a perch and nothing more. 

She gasps every word into his ear, voice all pitched and breathy. “Ah, ah, ah—thank you, thank you, I…—can I please have it? Please, please let me, Simon, pleasepleaseplease—”

It feels like everything they’ve been through so far has been leading to this. He’d smelt it coming like blood in the water. 

All week, his bird has been sitting on her hands and trying not to give herself away. Cloaked in a nervous, frenetic energy. Anticipatory. She’d doe-eyed him the night before and begged him to sleep in the bed with her instead of wrecking his back on the couch, but he’d ignored her in favour of watching Argentina decimate Croatia in the semi-finals. It must have not sat right with her though because she’d been broody from the moment he left for work until he got home, steering him into the kitchen and practically hand feeding him before coaxing him into the living room to watch a movie while she cuddled up beside him.

That hadn’t lasted long. 

“What’s gotten into you, pet?” Simon asks, hardly dissuading her when she presses petal soft lips to his jaw and nuzzles, breathing heavily. His heart swells. Desperate little slut. 

“Took care of me,” she mumbles, almost slurring her words. “Always taking care of me, Simon.”

There’s no denying how hard it makes him to think about being her protector. The littlest things make her smile. Even the bloody cat had her trailing after him for a week straight after the fact, eternally underfoot. Always trying to curry favour. Eager to please. 

Her worship leaves him unbalanced. Unstable even. A train careening off its track, the massive weight of catastrophe right behind it. The sense that life will never be the same after this. His surface level indifference is underscored by steeled self-control. He keeps his arms on the couch because he knows the second he puts them on her, it’s over. There’ll be no holding him back anymore, no possibility of him ever letting her go back out into the real world. Lock jawed, teeth sunk into her tender underbelly. 

“Told you, you don’t owe me nothing,” Simon murmurs, curling his hands under her ass. 

“Then—then…—I don’t know, pretend it’s just for me.” It’s a joke because they both know it’s not just for her. When her eyes sparkle with amusement, his cock throbs.

He lets her ruck the shirt over his head and struggle with his belt until she manages to unbuckle it like he has no say in the matter. She’s far less considerate with her own clothes, shucking them off and nearly ripping her knickers in the process, which almost prompts him to take her by the wrists and slow her down. He likes the lace and frills. 

It’s a fight to fit his cock into her hole, as slick as she is. Coin slot tight; he almost breaks and tells her to take it easy when she reaches behind her to line his shaft up with her entrance and sits down, just barely stretching around the mushroomed head of his dick before wincing, tears springing into her eyes. 

Simon does break when she tries to sink down another inch, thighs shaking violently. “Right, get off—you ain’t ready for this.”

“I am!” she insists, face screwed up in a scowl and a bead of sweat dripping down her temple. “Just—I can do it, Simon—”

“No, you can’t. You’re rushing and hurting yourself—”

“Wait, okay, wait, I can…just give me a minute, okay?” she begs, and he doesn’t tell her that he’d give her all the time in the world. Stay on this couch until the flesh fell off his bones. He’s waited so long; what’s a little longer? 

Besides, the sight of her stretching herself out with her fingers is reward enough. She whines into his shoulder and shudders when she has to force another finger in before she’s ready. Too eager. It could give a man a complex. His blood is already scorching him from the inside out, too hot for his veins.  

He considers helping her out, but watching her writhe and struggle in his lap is far more enjoyable. 

He stopped paying attention awhile back, too focused on cupping her tits and running his tongue around the budded areola, sucking her pert nipple into his mouth, but she couldn’t have gotten to more than three fingers before running out of patience and lining him up again. This time, she sinks a bit deeper on the first stroke, still choking on her breath but forcing herself to take a bit more. 

“You’re alright—you’re alright,” Simon murmurs, stroking a hand up and down her back while she impales herself on his length. She’s still too tight to take him comfortably, sweats and shakes over him. He pinches her nipple to distract her from the pain and smiles when she yelps. 

She melts all over him, slick drenching his shaft and lap, her tongue lapping at the sweaty skin of his neck. Honeysuckle fragrant; the sweetest thing he’s ever known. Silken, tight. Fits like a glove around him. 

He could lose himself in her. Piston into her until the thought of where he begins and where he ends dissolves into the tight warmth between her legs.

His bird is a greedy girl. She uses him like a toy to get herself off, bouncing in his lap and mewling into his ear everytime his cockhead nudges against her cervix. Too big to fit all the way in. 

“You do this a lot, pet? Fuck every man that lends you a hand?” he pants, taunting her.

“No!” she snarls in his ear, feisty and sharp-toothed. Her nails dig into his back, scoring white lines into his skin. The shiver that wracks him is so violent that his arms tighten around her waist reflexively, making her gasp. 

It doesn’t matter whether she does this often or not; the only thing that matters is that he’s the only man that gets to fuck her from here on out. Still, winding her up is half the fun. 

“Perfect girl,” Simon chuckles, breathless. “Made for me. Got m’self a pet right off the street.”

And he did, didn’t he? Went wandering out into the night and came home with a bird fluttering her wet little wings. 

His conscience is clean. He could’ve tied her down, kept her right where he wanted her (in his bed, his flat, the yawning cavity of his chest—) but his self-control remains unparalleled. Tough as nails. Strong as steel. And now look at what he has as a reward for his patience—a fever-hot cunt around his cock and delicate fingernails scratching the base of his skull. 

A pretty bird that’s made his chest a cage. 

The world goes vertical, horizontal. Fluid; sliding away from him. Something crashes in the background, so far off in the distance that he can hardly make out the sound. 

He opens his eyes to find the ceiling staring back down at him, and then her face, hovering over him on the carpeted floor, her hands kneading the muscle of his chest. Her brows are drawn tight now, pinched. She stares down at him, past him, gaze like a transparent veil. 

“Gi’me…gi’me…” she pants, barely able to pull herself off his cock. 

He has to dig his fingers into her ass and pull her off, ignoring the way she whines and begs him to fill her back up. Ignores it because he knows what’s best for her; knows how to take care of what he owns. 

When he bucks up into her, she chokes, fingers nearly yanking his chest hair out. 

“Fuckin’ hell, that’s pretty,” he breathes. Snaps his hips up into hers again, relishing in the way she squeezes tight around him, almost to the point of pain. 

His pleasure always comes jagged though. Whether the ache of his joints or nails tearing up the skin of his back and chest. Vicious and messy—how he likes it. She gives him everything he could want and more. The hand dug into his chest right above his heart could pierce right through the flesh and tear it out.

He pulls her all the way off his cock just for the pleasure of hearing her beg him again, then pulls her up his chest and eats her out until the beast in his belly calms down. 

He yields to her whining only after a good few minutes. Soft bastard. Drags her back down until her soaked hole mouths at the head of his cock and he thrusts back up inside. Home. It’s his now, whether she likes it or not. Simon guesses he’s lucky that she wants it too; if he had to convince her, he would, but her desperation is just another gift for him to savour. 

“Squeeze me good, bird. Say thank you—” thank you for taking me home, thank you for keeping me– almost spills off his tongue, but he reigns it in. She knows what to be thankful for. 

“Nngh, Simon,” she sings, fucking herself on his cock. The sweetest sound he’s ever heard. 

Simon’s never felt bigger than under his sweet bird. Thighs spread so wide around him that he knows she’ll ache in the morning. Brutish hands groping her thighs and waist and tits, rough against the softness of her skin. Stuffed full of a big cock, not even to the root; she bites right through her bottom lip when Simon pets at the thin skin stretched around his cock, her gaze wounded, overwhelmed. 

Nearly blacks out at the thought of cramming a finger up there too. Only faint concern for her well-being tamps down the urge. 

“Come on, fuck—that good, pet?”

“R-right there, oh god, ohgodohgod—”

He lets her ride him until she comes, until he comes, until his spend is blistering hot in her cunt, drooling down the length of his cock, frothy white with her cream and his come. 

It’s a sight to look at. Gets him right in the chest. Nothing like times of yore; this is something with meaning, with feeling. When he lifts her off, his seed trickles out of her soft hole in white globs and makes his chest ache. It doesn’t matter whether it takes root or not. All that he needs is already here. 

Beautiful and rare as a sundog; haloed by light. All this time, he dared not think this could be it. 

He thinks he’ll love her with the same ferocity Icarus had on his descent.

She shivers when he traces his fingers up her spine. “N’more. M’tired.”

“Wasn’t gonna, pet.”

The bedroom then. She twitches in his arms when Simon carries her to bed and pats his chest approvingly when he slides in beside her. 

He could’ve told her that it’d end up this way. He smiles indulgently when she shifts and splays over his chest, her nose nudging his nipple. Already fast asleep. 

In the morning, you sit across from him, half a grapefruit in a bowl in front of you and a mug of coffee, black. 

“I think I want to go back to school,” you say, apropos of nothing. The spoon clinks against the inside of the bowl. 

“Yeah?” he says, only half-listening. 

“I can always get a part time job on the days when I don’t have class. I never liked my old job anyway.”

“Do whatever you want,” Simon grunts. “Not my problem.”

Under the table, your cat’s tail curls around your ankle while he waits for you to sneak him the scraps. 

You smile.