#the aftermath of it would be brutal i think

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

yaz voice: i keep thinking,,, i keep thinking abt the.....future affecting the past of it all. the "if he runs out of time the hostile action would end and a time machine would know", "im fine because you fixed yourself", and "because it's not a grave"

like if it were me. if it were me. i still would have gone with the villa diodati conundrum. "save the poet, save the universe" what do we do when the poet IS the universe. "watch people burn now or tomorrow" like the distinction exists? like tomorrow isnt yesterday?

so we make them face the child. the doctor loses this one, right? too beholden to their rules. lost with shelley, will lose with the child. because there is no way to win it. not with the rules of the universe theyve clung to up to this point. not without play

so theres a child that needs to be saved but the doctor cant do it because it will take the foundation out from under the universe. she Can Not interfere. she fails to be the doctor when it comes to herself. but yaz is there. doctor's doctor. wont accept this. saves the child

the universe crumbles, but this or tecteun's revenge the outcome is similar except. the universe that crumbles if you save the child is the timelords' universe, their imposed histories, their laws, their logic. nothing makes sense anymore. it's terrifying. gotta let go gotta let go gotta let go. you HAVE to play. play or perish. please it's not that serious. it's just identity! funniest game there is. listen to the master; tag, youre it

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

did every hero really follow endeavor's plan during the jail break? I've never watched bnha, but I always figured there were more heros then Japan knew what do with. Was endeavor really just that worried about how the fight again AFO would go? and did AFO have the league with him? or other prison escapees? Given eraserhead was so entrenched?

As a preliminary matter--yes, it was way more than AfO. The League basically did what they did during the USJ arc and subcontracted their violent attacks. They needed a big force to first get AfO and everyone else out of Tartarus, and then they made it very clear (via loudspeaker and also fucking tweet) that they would all be very peacefully retreating while all those criminally insane and violent motherfuckers went that other direction. Ball's in your court as to how you want to tackle it.

AfO was the biggest threat, by fucking far, but it was far from isolated to him. It was the entire League of Villains + Their Very Special Friends. It was the kind of force that would be required to make the entirety of Tartarus fall for the first time in history. So the heroes had plenty to keep them busy.

And as to whether Endeavor was that scared about the next fight with AfO... Yeah.

I think bnha does a good job at establishing that All Might and AfO just exist at entirely different levels than every other person alive. Their fight leveled a decent chunk of Kamino. And I think that's kind of power and devastation is hard to conceptualize as like, people in a world where we don't have to worry about superhero fights. (as a side note--Sukuna's Big Fight in the Shibuya arc from JJK did better than any other fight in media to really capture the sheer cosmic horror of being caught as a bystander in one of those fights).

But endeavor saw it. He was there for AfO’s and All Might’s last fight. The gods were fighting. Everyone else was just an ant.

He is facing the villain that ultimately took down All Might. All Might won Kamino, sure. But he didn't get up again after. He was permanently and irreversibly taken out of play. And Endeavor has spent the last year feeling like he was struggling to be even half of what All Might was with two hours of productivity a day. He was so consistently voted to not be able to compare to All Might that he bought a wife and had four kids about it, all of whom hate him actively.

He does not think he is winning this fight. He is Japan's number one hero. The responsibility is going to fall to Midoriya Izuku to him. He is the best they have left, and the fight that would be coming was one that already nearly killed All Might, the one guy he has never ever been able to compare to. And when he really looked himself in the mirror and asked if he could stop AfO, the answer was no.

And it wouldn't just be AfO if he came back to power. It would be his followers--and he was liable to get more than just the current League of Villains roster. It would mean more Nomus. They could barely handle one Nomu--how could they possibly handle the Nomus, and the LoV, and AfO?

And the answer that he came to was that they couldn't. Not without All Might.

He thought he was sacrificing Yokohama for every single other city AfO was going to level if he had time to grow in strength again. He thought that if they threw absolutely everything they had at him while he was weak, then maybe they could contain him and the League before entire cities fell.

So. That's why he came to that decision. Why did every hero fall into line?

So what’s key to what happened here was it was this complete structural breakdown at exactly the wrong time.

Structural Flaw #1: Transportation

Was it every hero in Japan that responded to Endeavor’s order? No. But not every hero in Japan was available. Any heroes out of the immediate area were too far away to do shit.

But it's a massive crisis. Heroes would commute from all over if they could--but it's not about desire, it's about time and resources. With how imminently emergent the threat was, a lot of far-away heroes would need something like a jet to even conceivably get there in time.

Who is sending the jet?

Let's pin down what heroes could, conceivably, get there in time. Very few heroes are in walking distance. How do heroes typically get from Point A to Point B?

Hero society in bnha is an agency model. There is no communal pool of resources--you have what your agency has. You have a jet to transport you if your agency has the money for one, and I’m pretty sure only all might had that (he has since had it dismantled and the parts repurposed for the sake of the environment. He only had it to begin with so he could quickly respond to imminent threats. All Might thinks there's more than one way to save the world and saving the environment is part of it). Like. We even saw Endeavor flying fucking commercial.

But let's just assume, arguendo, that some agencies have jets. It would have to be the very top agencies to possibly afford it.

All of whom are shown in canon to mostly operate out of the same area. So they're going to have to send the jet somewhere else to get more heroes. Now any travel time is doubled. If they do send it out, how many people are they realistically getting? Are these heroes in multiple different cities? That's more travel time then. Maybe we just land the plane in Kyoto and whoever gets on in the twenty minute period while they're refueling is who is coming back. We'll hand them parachutes and kick them out the plane door over Yokohama. Okay. Good plan. Go team.

Who is sending the jet?

Like, who is physically making the call to send the jet? Who do they call? Do they just start ringing around their buddies and seeing if they have other plans? The city is on fucking fire and we need people fighting now, so the big name heroes don't have time to organize transport with other agencies. They’re not even thinking of that right now. Make it a sidekick's job.

They are all on fucking strike.

Fuck it. Fine. Make it an admin's job. There has to be some kind of office staff who can work a telephone who's available.

Who is thinking to send the jet?

Admins are not making strategic calls about where the company jets go. There would have to be some kind of protocol in place or someone with the authority to send the jet would have to think of it in the moment. And I guarantee you this would not be the case.

Because this is a society where they have canonically semi-privatized public safety and put people in direct competition with each other over it.

ASIDE: The Economic Structure of Heroics and Why It Sucks

I have an economic structure. You must listen to it. I promise it is relevant. This is why it takes me forever to do things it's because i get too deep into the weeds and have to explain the fucking economic structures underpinning the analysis for my nonsense to make sense.

How the fuck do heroes get paid?

I have no idea if canon ever tells us because to be so for real with you guys I have not watched this show in years. I haven’t cared about canon since the Shie Hassaikai arc. The fucking YouTuber arc broke me. I literally never watched it again. If they ever explain to us how heroes get paid I do not know and I do not care. I refuse to go back to canon. Everything I found out about canon after the Shie Hassaikai arc, I learned against my will. The ending to this story was so fucking stupid and I only have a scattered knowledge of the details but I’m still right. If canon ever tries to explain it then please do not tell me, I refuse to learn more things about this show.

But I still like poking around the potential economic structures based on the part of canon that doesn’t cause me psychic damage. So here’s the thought process for the economic underpinnings of hero society in the pez universe.

From canon, we know it can be an enormously lucrative profession, we know that it involves some degree of private interests (re: merch lines), and we know that there are some people who cannot have merch lines (Underground Heroes, e.g. Eraserhead), so there also must be some kind of public funding aspect to it as well. So. Who the fuck signs your paycheck?

Sources of Funding

a. Public Funding

There must be some kind of official governmental budget for heroics. Like. They are very much a public service. There would be no way to have a fully private heroics force without government funding. What else are you supposed to do, fucking Venmo heroes after they save you? Do they put your kitten back in the tree if you don’t have enough.

In my mind, there's public funds allocated to heroes as part of a city's budget. That funding is allotted based on the number of employees in a given entity balanced against the confirmed acts of heroics of that same given entity. There’s a base salary level and that can be increased based on how successful you are, but salary isn’t exclusively what this fund is for. The heroic entity (an individual hero or an Agency) is effectively receiving grant money from the government to run their agency. You put it into salaries, gear, office space, everything. The government is basically investing in heroes, and it’s investing more in heroes who are shown to have a greater positive impact on society.

It involves overly complex calculations regarding the scaled difficulty of a given bust/rescue/act and ranking of the villain (if there is one) and the overall public benefit for the service rendered. You get bonuses for having a lower average property damage, for contributing to community building projects, that kind of thing. It is Complex. There is a lot of paperwork that has to be submitted to strange and vaguely threatening government accountants. When Mirio and Izuku start their agency, they will burst into tears multiple times trying to figure it out once filing season rolls around, bundle all the paperwork in a Massive Tears And Shame Package, mail it off to the shadowy powers at be, and then get a perfunctory notice that they are getting a ludicrous amount of the city budget allotted to their dinky little agency for the upcoming fiscal year because they are Big Fucking Heroes and enormously good at what they do and it reflects in their stats. They will then lay on the ground of their haunted fucking office and stare at the ceiling for a very long period of time.

But this puts the heroes in competition with each other. Your public funding is chained to your stats under this model. There's only so many criminals out there--you've got to get the right numbers or it cuts into how much of a slush fund the agency is working with.

It's sort of an insane model for a public servant position, but I think it matches with what canon shows us. Imagine having firefighters pitted against each other. like, having a competitive model for public safety raises extreme concerns about how it incentivizes public servants to act.

But this isn't canon's model. It's my guess as to how canon works based on the hints i can remember and my own mental illness. So why do I think canon suggests a model like this?

It's because 1) canon does establish that heroes are in competition with one another and 2) this kind of model would likely be necessary due to the level of autonomy that heroes have.

The literal first fight we see involves heroes in competition with each other. Kamui Woods is doing a big Ultimate Move, and Mount Lady rushes in and steals the show. Like. that is crazy behavior if we are looking at this through the lens of a typical public servant. Imagine you're trying to get directions from a park ranger and a different park ranger kick flips in with a map and a desperate need for you to get your directions from them instead. You call poison control and they’re beating each other in the head over who gets to tell you you’re dying.

Still, on its own, the competition isn’t dispositive, because the private income streams (we'll get there) would incentivize competition even if public funding wasn't based on it. But the level of autonomy that hero offices exhibit also suggest some kind of competition model.

Heroics agencies are not run like a typical police force or fire station. With most entities that function as first responders, they respond to some kind of centralized force (like 911 call centers) and they have highly regulated resource distribution. Like, police forces are restricted to a specific jurisdiction. Within that jurisdiction they have multiple districts and officers typically stay in their district. They're not going to a different fucking city because they think the crime is cooler there.

But Endeavor does exactly that. He's like "hello, son who hates me. Let's go to Hosu because I want to fuck with the hero killer for street cred. won't you come along. It is non-optional" and todoroki says "i hate you father and will abandon you on our father son trip to set a serial killer on fire with my mind. it will be for mildly gay reasons."

These agencies aren't a centralized public service. They are all just off doing their own thing. They're not responding to specific areas as allotted to them by the city--they just fuck off and do whatever. Like, there's probably some coordination between agencies as to who is covering what patrol, but it likely would be more out of courtesy than formal requirement. People wouldn't step on each other's toes nearly as much if there was more of a structure to this.

Typical public agencies who receive funding in accordance with staffing and budgetary needs have more structure and formality than is exhibited in canon. Heroics Agencies act like they're all independent contractors. They probably function like grant money recipients, where they're all fighting for the same pool of funds. You have to write in and show why you deserve that money when that's the case. They're in competition with each other.

Like, is this definitively the structure in canon? No, of course not. I have no fucking idea what, if anything, canon has going on. But it definitely fits with canon.

b. Private Income Streams

We know from canon that it can't just be public funding. Izuku alone probably paid for the Mighty Agency private jet with how much fucking all might merch he bought. Canonically, heroes have merchandise lines, branding deals, commercials, everything. All Might had fucking movies made about him. Those are all extremely lucrative income streams--and likely where the richest heroes get the biggest brunt of their income.

In order to get this kind of income, you are necessarily in competition with your fellow hero.

Public attention, spending money, screen time, all of it--it's a limited resource. You have to be the person who gets to the fight first, who does the big move, who saves the day. If it's someone else? Then that's another kid buying their action figure instead of yours. Heroics is heavily commoditized in canon, and that inherently invites competition.

2. Distribution of Funds

So now that we have a theory as to where the money comes from, how does it get paid out? Based on canon, it comes down to a structure of (a) Independent/Underground Heroes and (b) Agencies.

a. Independent/Underground Heroes

I can't actually remember if the word "independent" is said in canon or if I came up with it, but I think canon implies its existence. It's basically the same thing as being an underground hero, but you're still a Spotlight hero. I also cannot remember if the underground/spotlight thing is canon or fanon or what I’m sorry I haven’t watched this show in years.

Independents are spotlight heroes without the backing of an agency. They just go out every day with the clothes on their back and a dream. They have no support staff, no back up, and no one to help them if things go sideways.

It is not a popular employment option.

Part of it is because it's that much harder to fund being an independent. Like. Say you're just out of high school and you decide to strike out on your own as independent. You're still spotlight, so you can have a merchandise line, and that'd be a nice income stream while you're just starting out.

How the fuck do you start your own t-shirt line?

How do you make contracts with the manufacturers? How do you make and copyright the design? how do you sell the stupid things? Do you try and get them in Walmart? Do you start an Etsy? Your own website? do you call your mom and cry when you have 500 ugly t-shirts with your face on them that no one wants to buy and they're taking up all the space in your studio apartment.

Agencies have preexisting structures in place to help launch these kinds of options, which is one of the reasons why they're so attractive for baby heroes just starting out. The only reason why Mirio has merchandise is because he decided that he didn't care and didn't need to make merch and Izuku came after him with feverish crack addict energy because he cared and he needed Lemillion merch like. yesterday. All Might ended up getting his agency to start a lemillion line. Mirio gets the profits with a reasonable fee to the Mighty Agency. To this day he suspects that Izuku is 70% of his sales but Izuku denies this fervently, like a liar (he actually has a small but very devoted fanbase who rabidly support him and buy all of his merch. he would cry if he knew this. Still. Izuku is his biggest fan and buys literally every single piece of new merch in triplicate.).

Underground heroes are in the same boat as independents but they don't even have the option of a merch line. They exclusively get public funding unless they're backed by an agency, which none of them are because agencies have a tendency to fuck them and their busts for the sake of the spotlight. All underground heroes are bitter and culturally opposed to agencies.

On that note:

b. Agencies.

This is where by far the most heroes would end up. But an agency is like thirty dudes with the same joint bank account. How does the money get there and get distributed out?

i. Public Funding in an Agency Context

Take the above model. How do you attribute public funds based on personal statistics if there's no single person? Does everyone get their own check? But that wouldn't make sense--this isn't just for salaries, it's for funding the actual heroics itself.

Everyone under the same agency would be counted together for the purposes of funding allotment. If Sidekick A managed 300 busts last year and Sidekick B man managed 350 busts, then congratulations, The Big Hero Hero Agency made 650 busts last year, here's a check made out to the agency, figure out what you want to do with it.

But what about incidents that involve multiple heroes from the same agency? Let's say that The Big Hero Hero Agency is involved in a big bust. It is Sidekick A's baby. They have spent months doing this. This has been blood, sweat, and tears. When the day comes, they are joined by Sidekick B, Sidekick C, and Big Hero himself. Sidekick B has been helping Sidekick A for the past three weeks on this case. Sidekick C got called in the day-of to help.

Big Hero showed up for the last twenty minutes of the fight when they were mostly done with everything.

So. You're filling out the post-arrest paperwork. For funding and for public statistics, you need to make sure to properly account for who gets credit for the bust. It has to be one person--if you had everyone individually credit themselves for the bust, then it looks like you've resolved four incidents instead of one under this financial model. it's artificially inflating your numbers for public funding. that's fraud. Who should get the credit: Sidekick A, Sidekick B, Sidekick C, or Big Hero?

Well, there's nothing stopping Big Hero from writing their own name. So let's go with Big Hero. He helped.

This was one of the big sources of the sidekick strikes: a lot of agencies had an absolute policy of attributing successes to the name hero if they touched the case at all, because there was no rule against it. It was better for the agency, after all--unrealistically high numbers on the biggest name meant the agency as a whole appeared more successful.

So there were a lot of heroes artificially inflating their stats with things that were more properly credited to their sidekicks. Which made it all the harder for sidekicks to leave because their stats were shit because their boss was taking credit for their work.

ii. Private Funding in an Agency Context

But that’s just public funding. How would agencies distribute private income streams?

Big Hero Agency is proud to announce its newest line of Big Hero Action Figures, featuring the Entire Big Hero Team, now retailing for $39.99. Get it now from a store near you.

So. An agency is selling an action figure line featuring Sidekicks A, B, and C, as well as Big Hero himself. We’ll round up to an even $40. How do we split up the cash?

You can’t give everyone each $10. You have to first pay the suppliers, the advertisers, the trucks that shipped the toys to the store, etc. Then you have to pay back into the agency to fund miscellaneous expenses—the stationary, the insurance, the coffee in the fucking break room. Everything. By the end, there’s only $4 of profit left over. Not great, but hey—they’re selling a lot of toys. So if they each get a $1, then it should add up quick.

Right. But. If you think about it, people are only really buying it for Big Hero. He’s the best hero of all of them—his name is on the agency, and just look at how much higher his stats are. So it’s only fair that he gets $3.70 a toy and the rest of them can get $.10 apiece. Don’t worry, it’ll add up quick.

Not all agencies would have been like this. But a lot of them would be. Money is a hell if an incentive to screw people.

END OF ASIDE.

With all that in mind—why would they feasibly have a structure to fly in help from other heroes far away? That’s their fucking competition. Sure, we have team ups, but they’re all either well in advance or in the heat of a moment. If they are in the heat of a moment, half the time the heroes resent it because they just stole their fight. They’re gonna what—pay the exorbitant jet fees to fly in someone who’s just going to steal their hard work in the eyes of the public?

Okay, but what about situations like this? Massive emergencies where you need more people?

Those haven’t ever happened before. They had All Might.

So. The heroes on the ground calling in help are out. What about the heroes who are close enough to make it there by ground transport? No one calls them, they just show up out of public need. How are they getting there?

Trains are out. All the trains into the area are shut the fuck down. We are not giving the freshly escaped villains a bullet train to the rest of the country. Same thing for buses. No fucking bus driver is making their regular route into a fucking battleground.

Private transportation it is. Anything more than a few hours out of the area is completely out of the question. Like, good ol’ Manuel from Hosu City and all his buddies? Not making it. The wild wild pussycats? Watched this on TV from their mountain home. Gran Torino? On FaceTime with All Might, who is watching the fight with Midoriya Inko’s hand gripped in his left and Bakugou Mitsuki’s hand gripped in his right. Gang Orca? Twelve hours away and on a fucking island so he needs a boat AND a car to get there. Or he just fucking swims.

But there has to be at least some hero that saw this happening and heroically climbed in their Mazda sedan to make the three hour car trip. Why didn’t they go to the fight in Yokohama instead of the one against AfO?

Frankly at that point those literal children were visibly doing way better than the actual heroes were faring and any heroes showing up went where they were most needed and uh. It wasn’t by the kids.

If we have the agency model as given to us by canon, then that means there is a decentralization of resources. If you want to utilize your public defense force in the case of emergencies, then you need a way to fucking get them to the emergency. Canon does not have that. This is a huge structural failing that only wasn’t a disaster sooner because most emergencies required one guy and he had his own private jet. So most heroes in the country never had to even consider if they would listen to Endeavor’s order because they were completely cut off and useless at the time.

So. Now the analysis has been narrowed from all of Japan’s heroes to just the ones in the immediate vicinity of the fight. That’s still a fuck ton of heroes. This is a heavily populated area with a bunch of heroes around. You can’t go outside without tripping over a hero.

Most of those guys were on fucking strike.

Structural Flaw #2: Over-Reliance on and Abuse of Sidekicks.

The vast majority of the workforce had to be sidekicks. Like, just from a business model perspective. Even the smallest agencies we saw had 2-3 sidekicks. Endeavor’s agency had at least double digits, and I think Idaten was at over a hundred or something. We were probably looking at, conservatively, a 1:10 ratio of heroes to sidekicks.

All those guys are on strike.

Okay. But not all of them, right? Idaten already settled and got their sidekicks back. That’s like a hundred guys.

Except the Strike was not isolated to the Tokyo/Mustufasa/Yokohama area. Idaten sent out a lot of their sidekicks to other regions to help alleviate some of the strains of the strike. (As a note, this was not the Idaten sidekicks crossing the picket line. Them picking up the slack for other sidekicks still striking would have helped minimize effects on the public. However, the agencies of the striking sidekicks would have reaped no benefit from this under the compensation structure outlined above. Idaten would have gotten the credit for everything their sidekicks did, so the other agencies would still be bleeding from this while risk to the public was slightly alleviated. Idaten’s entire function in this strike was to set an example for quick settlement and minimize public harm. There’s this entire sub-analysis on Idaten’s internal culture and how it intersects with broader heroics standards that I won’t get into now this is already way too long.)

Idaten is at 1/10 capacity. It has like, ten guys, all of whom have been working say, thirteen hour shifts (voluntarily—again, it was a decision made to try and minimize the public safety risks of the strike while still allowing their colleagues their best chance at improved conditions) daily for the past month.

All of those ten guys responded to Tartarus before Endeavor made the call.

To understand the exact nature of the breakdown, you really have to see the chaos of how exactly this unfolded.

The LoV and their merry band of criminals hit Tartarus. The heroes do not realize at this time that they intend to let everyone out, give them transportation, and point them straight towards the mainland. They think that they’re just there for AfO. That’s still a huge crisis that needs to be shut down immediately, so they call out all of their best. Endeavor responds. Hawks responds. Eraserhead responds. Mt. Lady, Kamui Woods, Miruko—everyone in the vicinity who could conceivably respond show up. For a second, it looks like it’s going to end here.

Once the LoV get AfO out of his cell, the entire tide of the battle turns against the heroes. Now everyone’s out. All of those horrible, terrible villains. Tartarus has fallen. They have to make hard decisions. The high ranking, very powerful heroes who are most likely to break the line on Endeavor’s decision? They’re already at the fight by the time he has to make it. It is chaos and something they cannot easily leave.

The LoV’s picked right now because they knew that the heroes were operating at less than a tenth of their regular capacity. They picked right now because they knew the system had structural faults, and if they hit them just right, it would all come down on the heroes’ heads.

But the sidekicks broke strike lines to respond, right? Why do they all go to endeavor’s side?

For one thing, it wasn’t all of them who showed up—maybe a third of them were not even in the area any more. It wasn’t malicious, or intentional, or anything like that—they were off visiting their families for the first time in a long time or taking vacation. All of them had spent the past few years being completely overworked and abused by their jobs. They just weren’t there.

So now we’re down to 2/3rds of them who can even try to show up.

A lot of it wasn’t actually made as a reasoned choice. For many of them, they ended up where they did because of all the chaos.

So you’re a sidekick. You’re on strike. The entire world has gone to shit. How do you normally find out about the world going to shit?

This is a competition model streamed through individual entities. There’s no central command structure. Your agency calls you.

Well, your agency either fucking fired you or they cut you off completely during strike negotiations. This time, you find out through the news when the story breaks. Now what?

You frantically try to get in touch with your (ex) agency. Who is picking up the phones?

No one. That was your fucking job before you went on strike.

I used to work at a government public-service type deal, and let me tell you, they abuse the fuck out of non-unionized workers. You are doing everyone’s job. No one ask why we don’t get more support staff because they have unions. Like. I had a law degree. I was hired to be a lawyer in that office. They had us all doing the jobs of four people, and by that I mean it would be the literal entire job description of another fucking position in that office and we were all expected to just do it too.

Unions incentivize treating workers right. The absence of them opens the door to the opposite.

Why the fuck would agencies hire more people to lighten the load on the sidekicks and let them focus on actual heroics? Just make the sidekicks do everything. What are they going do, complain? They’re a dime a dozen. Hire more of those fresh faced kids with no standards just out of school.

You know when you had a job where you’re like. This fucking place is going to fall apart without me. But they treat you as disposable and easily replaceable and you’re like “okay bet” and so you leave and you find out from the people left behind that it actually fucking fell apart without you and you’re just like :o

Yeah. So that happened.

There has been a massive break down in the function of heroics offices for the past month and change because the sidekicks were not there. They were the ones who actually did most of the day to day handling of the office. They were the ones coordinating transport and figuring out the actual mechanics of who would be deployed where in a crisis. All those things that would be super helpful now? Yeah, those guys aren’t there, and they’re locked out of the fucking offices and can’t get in to un-strike for the sake of societal crisis.

But they know where the fight is. It’s on the news. Why don’t they just show up?

Where’s their gear?

Who owns it?

Heroics support gear must be an enormously expensive thing. It would have to be provided by the agency itself. Literally the only reason why Mirio has gear is because 1) all might would NEVER let his pseudo step son run around without proper support so the man would have bankrolled it himself if needs must and 2) the UA support class has a stipend each year where they can make support gear for active heroes and those heroes get it for free in exchange for free advertising for the students trying to kick start their careers, so he is decked out in THE most experimental bullshit from Hatsume Mei Industries (I have this entire side plot where the support class this class year low key became a sort of religious cult haha not really it’s just a joke it’s not really a joke and power loader is afraid every single day when he comes to work he is afraid under the iron clad rule of Hatsume Mei’s weird girl energy and they all decided Mirio was the Tabula Rasa, a figure of prophecy, and I just cannot get into that right now it’s too long it’s too long already. But it’s so fun).

All those sidekicks on strike lost valuable time trying to get back into their agencies so they weren’t showing up to an S-class villain fight in their fucking jammies. Then, when some poor admins figured out what was going on and let some of them in, everyone was frantically gearing up and getting in whatever transport van they were pointed at. Some of them didn’t know they werent reporting to Yokohama until they were already at the other fight. There’s was so much chaos and confusion that very few people had a clear idea of what was happening.

With the sidekicks, some of them never made it, some of them just got in a van and went wherever it took them, and some of them chose to obey Endeavor’s orders. Some agreed with the decision. Some disagreed but deferred to his experience. With how the Sidekick Strike had left their infrastructure, very few sidekicks were able to respond fast enough to make any real difference.

Now for the last possible demographic: the heroes that weren’t on strike and weren’t initially deployed to the Tartarus Prison Break. Why didn’t any of them go to Yokohama?

Structural Flaw #3: All Might was that one kid doing the entire group project for like forty years and some of these people are having to be heroes for the very first time and realizing that they don’t actually want to risk their lives to save people they just sort of liked the idea of this job.

It may be a bit too specific to be a structural flaw but I’m counting it anyway.

So, just to give a bit of a recap: We consider every hero alive in Japan as a candidate for Endeavor’s order. The vast majority of them are too far away to do shit, and there’s no centralized transport network to get them there faster. Toss in those who are dealing with personal medical issues or are away on vacation or just can’t come for some reason or another, and you’ve lost most of the heroes in Japan as respondents. Probably ~80% of potential heroes are culled from this alone.

So we have, generously, 20% of Japan’s heroes left as potential people to respond. ~90% of those are sidekicks on strike. They’ve got hours before they make it to any fight, because of the aforementioned structural breakdowns.

Now we’re down to 2% of Japan’s total heroes.

Some of that 2% were first responders to the initial Tartarus prison break. All the big name heroes in the area. But there can’t be that many top heroes—so let’s say 0.2% of them were at the initial fight.

Now we only have the remaining 1.8% of heroes to analyze.

There have to be a percentage of those who agreed with Endeavor’s call as a tactical decision. If they show up to any fight, they’re going to be obeying his order.

So we only have the ones who disagreed with his call left to look at.

These are small-time heroes. All of the big names are already at the fight. So they are less likely to have flashy Quirks, be especially talented, or consider themselves to have an especially large effect in the grand scheme of things. They have likely spent their entire careers living in a world with All Might.

It has never actually been down to them.

Think of Uwabami. Momo did her work study with her.

Her hero outfit is a fucking evening gown. She spent the entire work study doing commercials and meeting with her fans. She explicitly invited the young heroes that she did because she thought they were cute enough to be in commercials with her.

Now, she’s had some good if minor moments helping rescue civilians. It’s not that she’s never saved anyone.

But all of the top heroes are already committed to the fight against AfO. The current Number One Hero just ordered all her colleagues to report there. And Yokohama has a lot of S-Class villains en route.

And what the fuck is she going to do to stop them? It’s just her. Half of those villains took All Might to stop the first time. She is not fucking all might.

Is this a hero likely to go to Yokohama completely on her own to fight *checks notes* literally the entire prison population minus one guy? The worst guy, albeit. But one guy.

These are all heroes who have never had to be the actual thing standing between society and destruction. There has always been someone more powerful or capable or heroic nearby. Until recently, there has always been all might.

This isn’t to malign them. A decent percentage of them are legitimately well meaning about being a hero. They do good. But when it came to the big, blowout fights, they have always, always, always been the heroes evacuating civilians in the background or performing rescue in the aftermath. It has never been them who had to stand up and do the fight itself.

Every single one of those villains represent a big, blowout fight. And this hero trying to decide if he’s going to obey Endeavor’s order? They are one guy. And they’re not sure if they could even beat one of those villains alone, let alone all.

The reason why no one disobeyed Endeavor’s order was because, frankly, at the end of the day, they did not want to die.

Endeavor’s order signaled to everyone that there was no guarantee anyone would show up to Yokohama. It actually put good odds to the opposite. If you decided “fuck that, I’m going to Yokohama” then you’d likely be doing it alone.

What Class 2-A did was considered a death sentence. People who didn’t know them and their bullshit were shocked that they all made it out alive. These were the worst villains their society had ever faced and it was all of them at once (minus that one guy).

The heroes who were in a position to disobey endeavor didn’t actually think it’d make a difference if they did. They’d just… lose.

Most if not all of these heroes made the decision to become heroes during all mights era of peace. Everything just had lower stakes. Crime was less frequent and less serious. The big fights always had someone there who could handle them, because All Might was there. They’d fight the odd mugger or purse snatcher and help put out fires and go home at the end of the night. They’re heroes. That doesn’t mean they’ve ever truly had to grapple with a life or death fight.

If they went to Yokohoma, they thought they’d die. So they might as well respond to a fight that has a chance. Even if they feel ashamed as they do it. Even if they think Endeavor made the wrong call and wanted to go to Yokohama instead. All Might wasn’t there anymore. And they were afraid.

But there is one thing that Class 2-A had going for them that gave them an advantage over these heroes. And that was the fact that they are all medically insane.

It’s that they were together.

It’s a decentralized heroics structure. If you have a large agency, you are necessarily a top hero because no one else would be able to get that many people to agree to work under them. So you’re already at Tartarus and this isn’t a decision you had to make.

Maybe you’re independent. Maybe you have a small agency with 2-3 people. There is no preexisting centralized line that you can use to try and gather more people to go to Yokohama with you. You’re stuck with your immediate colleagues and maybe a few other heroes you’re close enough with to have their number. You really don’t have time to try and ask around to see if anyone else wants to go to Yokohama instead—you need to pick a battle and get there yesterday.

What good is 2-3 people going to do in Yokohama? You’ll just get massacred and it won’t have made a difference. At least if you go to stop AfO, you’ll have a chance at doing something that mattered.

Maybe you disagree with Endeavor but you defer to his training and experience.

Maybe you don’t go at any fight at all. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe you became a hero in a time where you had a symbol of peace, and you realize you can’t keep doing it in a time without one.

I think there’s a small subsection of heroes that quit in the aftermath of Yokohama. Because they wanted to disobey endeavor’s order, and they thought they’d just die and it wouldn’t matter, and then dawn came and a bunch of school kids had managed what they were too big of a coward to do. I think the fact that they fell into line when their hearts told them they shouldn’t made them seriously doubt whether they were good enough to be a hero.

But they were alone when Endeavor made the call. And it felt like certain death. And—yeah, it sort of felt that way to Class 2-A when they made the decision to respond. But they weren’t alone when they did it.

They were together. And they always felt braver when they were together. Together, they could make miracles happen.

[em1i2a3]

Entombed

Pairing: Bob/Robert Reynolds/The Sentry/The Void x Thunderbolts!Fem!Reader

Summary: The aftermath of your night with The Void is weighing heavy on you and things start to change. (This is a continuation of ‘Test Drive’)

Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI! Semi-Spoilers for Thunderbolts as there is Bob in this…And The Void There is Angst, Smut, and Fluff in this. There are dark elements/themes in this that are explored. Bob and the reader are going through it, and it’s quite rough. There is a lot of emotions and tons of tension happening in this story and honestly it was a whole lotta fun writing it because jeez, there was so much that could happen in the aftermath of this! The Void is obsessed/bonded to the reader, and there are elements of the supernatural in this we lean into it just a bit but it’s not a huge part of the story (y’all will see, I kind of took a little bit of lore from the comics but nothing too crazy). Guilt and Regret kinda plays a role in this too.

Smut Warnings: Unprotected P in V Sex (wrap it up my peeps please), Body Worship/Praise Kink, Reader is in Control (not in a dominant way), Cockwarming, Grinding, Heavy Makeout (which involves a lot of heavy petting), Very Light Choking, Marking/Biting/Reclaiming, Oral Sex (Fem! Receiving), Super Intimate Sex, Aftercare Galore, Discussions/References to sex

Authors Note: Well, I hope this part 2 satisfies, I made some choices here that leave things open for a part 3 if people truly want it but hopefully y’all enjoy this one first :)) I was on the fence on where I wanted this to go but hopefully my creative decisions paid off.

Word Count: 16,464

Peeps Who Wanted To Be Tagged For Part 2: @millercontracting @avengersinitiative2012 @dark-silhouette @kurayamifairy @houseofaegon @vanguardlady @sentryluvs @simp-sentral @impoeticbeauty

Bob loved watching you train.

It wasn’t the flash of your skill set or the brutality you were capable of unleashing when pushed. It was your agility. The grace that was threaded into every step, every twist, and every perfectly executed takedown. You moved like you were born for the fight–but never to dominate. You weren’t the kind of person that demanded attention. You were the kind that earned it, silently, relentlessly, and over time.

That’s what had first drawn Bob to you. Not the danger, but the discipline. Not the strength, but the control…And the way you smiled, soft and easy, when you would push your hair back and look over your shoulder with a quiet little smirk that said ‘watch me’.

He could watch you for hours.

But today…Today you weren’t moving. You weren’t even training. You were sitting on the edge of the mat, sweater drawn tight around your shoulders, sleeves swallowing past your wrists, with your legs tucked up in a way that didn’t look relaxed. You looked…Small. Uncharacteristically withdrawn, and it worried him, because from the viewing deck all he could think about was how you were acting at breakfast.

You hadn’t smiled once this morning. Not when Ava made a dumb joke about the broken coffee machine. Not when Alexei spilled hot sauce on his shirt and cursed in Russian. Not even when Bob had caught your eye–or tried to–and offered you that quiet half-smile you usually returned without hesitation. It was like you were actively avoiding him, you didn’t sit beside him, and you didn’t even look at him.

It was like watching someone wearing your skin–your gestures, your face–but none of you was there. And now, down on the mat, wrapped up in your pool of clothes, you looked like you were trying to disappear.

The clang of a metal clasp echoed as Walker dropped his sparring gear. Ava stretched, rolled her shoulders, and tossed a half-empty water bottle across the room, nailing Alexei in the chest. Training was winding down with the usual noise and chaos, but none of it touched you–it looked like you had been released from prison.

You stood slowly, stretching out your back, and Bob caught the faint grimace that flickered across your face as your body resisted the motion. You winced–barely–but it was enough to make his chest tighten. He thought maybe you were injured, or that you pulled something yesterday during your high intensity training. That would explain the sitting out. Maybe even the outfit. But it didn’t explain the way you’d barely spoken to anyone that morning nor the way you looked through him at breakfast like he was a piece of glass. Like he did something…

You turned toward the hallway, and immediately he moved towards the exit.

He came down from the observation deck, taking the stairs two at a time. His hoodie sleeves were bunched at his elbows and he wiped his palms on the sides of his sweatpants, the nerves were pulsing through his skin. He wasn’t good at this–at confrontation, even soft ones–but the ache in his chest told him he wouldn’t sleep if he didn’t at least try to figure out what was wrong.

“H-Hey,” He called gently, catching up to you just as you reached the doorway to the locker rooms. You paused, and he could see the way your shoulders tensed at his voice before you turned to him. You wrapped your arms over yourself, almost like you were bracing for something.

”I, um…” He scratched the back of his neck, eyes darting between your face, then away, “C-Can I talk to you for a s-second.” Instantly you could feel your heart begin to race, the idea that he might have actually remembered last night almost made you ill, you could feel the bile begin to rise in the back of your throat, as you forced yourself to answer.

”O-Okay.” You were bracing yourself.

”I just–“ He fumbled for words, “I wanted t-to check in…You’ve been acting k-kind of…Distant t-today. At breakfast, d-during training…Even right n-now. I thought maybe s-something was wrong…Or I-I did something.” You swallowed hard, a little too hard to have it be unnoticed. The sound caught in your throat like a stone, and you could feel the weight of his worry pressing into the narrow space between you. Bob wasn’t loud. Wasn’t pushy. But the way his voice trembled, the way his hands fidgeted with the hem of his sleeve–it was enough to make your chest cave in.

You shook your head before he could finish his next sentence.

“No,” You said quickly, “You didn’t do anything.”

His mouth opened slightly, like he wanted to ask if you were sure, but he didn’t. He just nodded, brows still knit in concern.

“I…I just didn’t sleep well,” You added, hoping it would sound casual, feeling this dread slowly building up inside of you, because all you could think about was his hands, and his lips, and his mouth, or the scratch marks on your back that were burning as you spoke to him, almost like they were calling for your attention.

“O-Oh…” He replied, softly, “O-Okay…I just t-though maybe you were upset with m-me or something…But I-I know you would d-definitely tell m-me if that was the case…” You offered the smallest smile, feeling your throat tightening at the way he was speaking to you, like he knew what happened last night but he was waiting for you to say something.

“We’re okay…” Bob nodded at your weak reassurance–we’re okay–but he didn’t look convinced. He chewed at the inside of his cheek, like there was something else he wanted to say, something gnawing at him. But instead, he cleared his throat and forced a smile.

“R-Right,” He murmured. “I was also g-gonna ask if, uh…If we’re still doing our little b-bodega thing? I figured we could g-get your usual, sit by the fountain like always…” It was your routine. Quiet and private and safe. After training, just the two of you would head down the street to that tiny corner bodega with the cracked tile floor and the sleepy cat in the window. You always got the same thing–egg salad, extra pickles, Bob always forgot to ask for napkins–and then you’d walk a block over and sit by the fountain near the old courthouse. Sometimes you talked about training. Sometimes you talked about everything else, or you just watched people and mumbled about what they must be doing or where they must be going.

During these times it felt like he was yours.

And now?

You couldn’t even look him in the eye.

“I don’t think I can today…” You said quietly, your voice barely carrying over the hum of the hallway light. “I think I may just go to my room after I change... To lay down.”

His expression flickered–something between worry and disappointment, but not the selfish kind. The kind that hurt because he cared. Because he knew there was something wrong, or that you were hiding something from him at the very least. Because he didn’t understand why it suddenly felt like you were slipping out of his hands and he couldn’t stop it.

“Oh. Y-Yeah. Of course,” He replied quickly, tucking his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie to stop them from fidgeting. “That makes sense. You should rest. That’s good. Rest is–good.” You offered him a faint, aching smile–like something carved out of stone.

“Yeah…Should help a bit.” Your voice was so soft, and gentle he could barely hear it.

“Can I…D-Do anything for you? I could bring you some tea? O-Or I could just stay close, in case you–”

You shook your head before he could finish.

“No,” You murmured. “I just need to be alone.”

He nodded again. Slower this time. The corner of his mouth lifted in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Okay. I’ll, uh… I’ll see you later, then.”

You gave him a small nod of acknowledgement, and quickly slipped into the locker room without another word.

Once the door clicked softly behind you, it felt like you could finally let go of the breath you’d been holding since breakfast. But the exhale didn’t bring relief–it only left you emptier. The weight in your chest didn’t ease; it tightened. Pressed in. Like your ribs were folding inward. Like your lungs were trying to collapse around a scream you couldn’t afford to let out.

Tears gathered before you could stop them.

Hot. Stinging. Blurring your vision before they ever reached your lashes. You tried to blink them away. You clenched your jaw until it ached. But the pressure building behind your sternum was too sharp, too real, too loud. The ache had dug in sometime between last night and now, and it wasn’t going anywhere.

You weren’t sure if it was regret. Not in the traditional sense. Because it hadn’t felt like a mistake in the moment–it had felt like inevitability. Like gravity. Like a need that had grown too large to hold back. And the way he had touched you–reverently, ruinously–had shattered something you didn’t even know was intact.

But now?

Now it felt like you’d made a deal with the devil in the dark and woken up in someone else’s skin.

You wrapped your arms around yourself tightly, nails digging into the sleeves of your sweater.

The guilt crawled in like rot. Not loud. Just constant. Creeping through your bones. Worming into the cracks between your thoughts. Because the worst part wasn’t what he’d done.

It was that you let him.

You’d let the Void in.

You invited him.

And maybe that would’ve been survivable–maybe–if it had been just about you and him. But it wasn’t. Not even close.

Because now Bob…Sweet, trembling, gentle Bob–your Bob…Had no idea what had happened. He had no memory of what his own body had done. Of what you had allowed. Of what he’d whispered in your ear in that almost-voice that sounded so much like him your heart broke under it. And that was the part that was ripping you apart.

The betrayal wasn’t his.

It was yours.

Because it felt like you’d taken advantage of a piece of him he couldn’t control–used a part of him he’d been trying to suppress. And now you were walking around with the memory of him in your skin, in your bones, in the place where he’d left something behind–and he was walking around clueless. Still smiling at you like he would do anything to protect you. Still offering to bring you tea. You pressed your hand to your abdomen as the guilt twisted deeper, sharper.

Because even now, a part of you was aching for what happened. Craving the touch. The voice. The power. And that was the cruelest truth of all.

You hadn’t just said yes. You’d wanted it.

You sniffed and wiped at your eyes with the sleeves of your sweater, but it didn’t help. The tears had already left hot streaks along your cheeks, and your mouth tasted like metal–like the guilt had started seeping in from the inside out.

And then, suddenly, it burned.

It wasn’t sharp. Not like a cut or a bruise. It was deep. Molten. Like someone had sunk hot iron into your spine and lit a match inside your skin. Your whole body jolted. You reached for the edge of the bench to steady yourself, breath catching as the burn surged again–up your back, down your hips, around the sides of your ribs.

You grabbed at the hem of your sweater and yanked it over your head with a shaky, desperate motion, casting it aside onto the bench like it was soaked in gasoline.

And then you turned to the mirror.

Your stomach dropped.

The marks were worse.

So much worse.

What had once been faint purpling around your hips, vague red lines across your shoulder blades, were now vivid. Raised. Angry. Like they’d grown. They were more defined–claws, unmistakably. Four long, precise gouges across your back, etched in perfect arcs like someone had gripped you and dragged you down to hell.

The bruise on your collarbone had deepened into a bruise-black imprint of teeth. Not sharp like fangs. Just possessive.

There were fingerprints on your thighs, your waist. His fingerprints.

But worse–

They were pulsing. The skin around each mark glowed faintly. Subtle. Like an ember tucked just beneath your flesh, blinking with your pulse.

“What the fuck…” Was all you could manage to say, as your fingers traced over the marks.

The mirror flickered, and you froze.

The overhead lights stayed on, but the mirror–just for a second–shivered like a ripple passed through it. The color leached from your reflection, and the air shifted. Heavier. Sharper.

Then, that voice.

“You must be pretty confused right now, hm?” Your mouth parted and your throat went dry.

You didn’t turn around. You didn’t need to, because he was there.

In the mirror.

The Void stood in the glass like a phantom with substance, wearing Bob’s shape again like it was tailored for him, but darker–more real than anything had a right to be. His jaw was sharp. His shoulders held the same broadness as Bob's, only he stood confidently. His eyes…The ones you had looked into last night when you had called him by Bob’s name…The twin void stars. He looked like a dark hole in the middle of the room. Your lips parted.

“I…” You blinked. “Bob’s awake.” The words came out flat, panicked. A statement of fact–as if saying it aloud would force the universe to correct itself. “He’s awake. He’s walking around. He–He talked to me just a few minutes ago. He–he was right outside. You’re not supposed to be here…How the fuck are you here?”

He smiled at you through the glass, and you saw teeth.

Not sharp. Not jagged. Worse.

Perfect. Like the kind of teeth a man shows when he knows the whole room belongs to him. It looked almost the exact same as last night, only it was clearer now, more visible to your eye.

“Oh, sweetheart,” He purred, stepping forward–closer to the edge of the mirror. The room didn’t darken, but your reflection dimmed behind his, as though you were no longer the main inhabitant of your own body. “I don’t disappear that quickly.”

A chill bloomed across your shoulders.

You hadn’t moved. But your breath hitched.

Because you felt it.

The air shifted behind you. The warmth of your skin turning ice-cold–just behind the base of your neck. Like someone was standing inches from you. Like someone was breathing against your spine.

Your voice trembled. “You lied to me…”

The Void’s smile widened.

From the mirror, he watched you–head tilted, eyes glowing.

“Now, now, I didn’t lie,” He murmured.

And then–

His breath touched your skin, and your whole body locked.

You felt it–real, present, inside the room now. The cold exhale that brushed the nape of your neck like silk. Your shoulders flinched inward, but you couldn’t move away. Not from him. Not from the thing that had touched you from within the dark and now moved around you like a ghost in daylight.

“I just omitted information,” He finished softly, like it was the punchline of a private joke. Your heartbeat thundered in your ears. Your hands trembled at your sides.

“W-What did you do to me?” Your voice cracked.

The Void didn’t answer. Not directly.

Instead, he stepped closer in the mirror again, and your body moved–not of your own accord–tilting slightly toward the glass. Your reflection leaned forward. But you hadn’t moved. Your reflection wasn’t matching anymore. The air behind you felt too dense now, like you could reach behind yourself and grab a fistful of it–thick and chilled and humming faintly like static against your skin. Your knees nearly gave out when you felt it again.

A touch.

Not a full press of fingers. Just the brush of ice sliding along your spine–right over one of the claw marks, as though retracing his own work.

In the mirror, the Void tilted his head.

“Don’t assume I did something permanent,” He said softly. There was a mocking gentleness in his voice, like he was humoring your panic. “Please…I’m not that evil.” You watched your own mouth tremble in the glass. Your reflection was still not syncing to your movements–there was a subtle delay, like a puppet lagging behind its strings.

“Though,” He continued, dragging his fingers down your back again as if he was petting you, “I really could’ve done worse…” Your breath hitched when his nail grazed the base of your spine, and the marks pulsed, almost like he was slowly bringing something to the surface of your skin.

“But…Let’s just say,” He drawled, his smile deepening, “I’ll be around for a little while longer. Just until you…Recover from our little night together.”

You turned your head slightly–not fully, not enough to break eye contact with the mirror–but your voice came through hoarse. “It doesn’t make any sense…I still don’t understand h-how you’re even here?”

The Void gave an exasperated sigh, like you were being deliberately naive.

“I’m an entity, sweetheart. A force.” He stepped closer, and your reflection blurred again, feeling his chest gently pressing against your back. “Not a man. Not a ghost. Not a shadow. I tether to people. I’m tethered to Bob permanently…But…” His voice dipped, curling against your ear like a gust of wind, “You let me in. You let me finish inside you. Did you really think there wouldn’t be some sort of…Consequence?”

Your breath caught in your throat.

“Sperm,” He murmured, almost lazily, like the word itself was a spell. “Can live for…What is it… Three to five days inside a reproductive system, give or take?”

Your knees buckled, and you gripped the counter in front of you to stay upright. The burn across your back flared again, and your skin felt too tight, too hot, like it was struggling to contain something underneath.

“Give it time,” He whispered, dragging his fingernail over the topmost mark. “After that… I’ll be gone. Probably. Unless you invite me in again.”

He hummed, amused by your silence, and his fingers–impossibly cold and real–smoothed gently along the curve of your ribs, ghosting over bruised skin like it belonged to him.

“Only you can see me, by the way,” He added kindly. “So maybe keep your voice down a bit when you answer me…Hm?” You were just about to say something–anything–when the door behind you banged open.

The sound crashed through the room like a gunshot, and you flinched violently, heart seizing in your chest.

“–I’m telling you, it was the worst latte I’ve ever had,” Ava’s voice carried in before she even cleared the doorway, followed closely by Yelena’s sharp scoff of agreement. “It tasted like someone put chalk in a sock and let it steep for twenty minutes–”

They both froze.

The silence that followed was instant, sucked tight like vacuum-sealed air.

You turned toward them too slowly.

You could feel their eyes on you before you even lifted your head–feel them taking in the angry red claw marks that wrapped around your ribs, the bruises blooming like warpaint down your sides, the purple-black bite mark stark against your collarbone.

“Y/N?” Yelena’s voice was clipped. Low. Already shifting into something sharp and protective.

Ava blinked once. Then twice. “What the actual fuck?”

You tried to move–tried to step back or grab the sweater or explain something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come.

Because he was still there.

Still behind you.

Still breathing cold down your spine like a promise.

“Jesus Christ,” Yelena stepped in first, boots hitting the tile hard, like she was ready to start a fight with whoever did this. “Who did this to you? Are you okay? Are you bleeding?”

“I–I’m fine.” You said it too fast. Too flat. It didn’t sound like you.

“No, you’re not,” Ava said, her voice unusually steady as she followed behind, crouching slightly like she was trying to check your balance. “Y/N, that’s not a training injury. That’s…That’s not even human-looking. That’s…” Her eyes flicked to the claw marks, her brow creasing. “Were you attacked?” You could feel the nerves building up in your chest.

”N-No! I wasn’t attacked.”

“Gotta be a little better at lying to your friend's sweetheart.” The Void whispered mockingly, as you felt his fingers on your back again.

”Shut up!” You exclaimed out of nowhere, catching what you had just done the moment it happened. Yelena and Ava both froze in place at your sudden outburst.

The echo of your voice clapped back off the tile, too loud, too frantic–and too obviously directed at someone who wasn’t there.

You watched their eyes shift. Not just to the claw marks. Not just to the bruises. But to your face now–your wide, panicked eyes. Your trembling mouth. The sweat clinging to your hairline.

“Y/N…” Ava’s voice softened, like she was approaching a wild animal. “Tell us what’s going on.” Yelena didn’t say anything. Not yet. But she took another step forward, slow and steady, like she was preparing for you to bolt. Or break.

“Who did this to you?” Ava asked again, her eyes flicking back to the bite mark. “Was it someone on the team? Because if it was, I swear to God–”

“It wasn’t anyone on the team, I–I wasn’t attacked. Not like that.”

Yelena’s eyes narrowed. “Then what happened?” You stared at them both. Ava with her brows knit, hand twitching like she wanted to touch you but didn’t dare. Yelena looked like she might murder someone if you gave her a name.

”And start from the beginning.” Ava added.

–––––––––––––

The water ran hot.

Too hot.

It scalded down Bob’s back in long, blistering sheets, but he didn’t move. He just stood there, braced against the shower wall, head bowed under the stream, letting it burn. Letting it wash over the tension twisted through his spine like a knot of wire.

His hands twitched every now and then–restless, nervous, like they were searching for something they couldn’t find. Something they swore had been there before.

Something soft. Warm. Familiar.

He blinked slowly, eyes hazy beneath the steam.

After he spoke to you in front of the locker room images had begun to flicker in and out of his brain. Not memories exactly. But…Something. Echoes. Flashbulb imprints behind his eyes. A mouth. A sound. Nails biting across his shoulders. A voice–soft and breathless, gasping his name like it was a sin.

”Bob.” It was you–or your voice at least. He could feel his breath stop in his throat. It felt like a dream. But the kind that lingered. The kind that pressed fingerprints into your skin and refused to fade.

He exhaled and reached up to scrub at his face, hoping the pressure might clear his head. But then–

A sting.

Sharp and sudden. Low on his shoulders.

He winced.

His hand dropped to his shoulder, then curled around the top of his back. His fingers traced lightly–grazing over his skin until–

He froze.

Marks.

Four of them.

Long, raised lines carved into his shoulder blade. He twisted toward the mirror just outside the glass shower, blinking steam away as he leaned, trying to see over his own shoulder. It wasn’t easy, but when the fog cleared, he caught it.

Four scratches. They were faintly red, like someone had dragged their nails across the ridges of his shoulder blade. His stomach turned at the sight, and there was a cold weight that settled behind his ribs.

“What the hell…” He muttered, voice hoarse from the heat and whatever this was.

The scratches didn’t look accidental. They looked like grip marks. Like someone had clawed at him, held on tight, dug in as if riding out–

His stomach flipped violently.

He hadn’t had sex. He would remember that. Right?

Right?

The back of his neck prickled with cold, even as the water beat down on him, too hot.

And then–

That voice.

Slick. Amused. Familiar in a way that made his skin crawl.

“Wasn’t that a great dream you had last night?”

Bob’s entire body went rigid.

He didn’t respond at first–didn’t even breathe. Just stood there, eyes wide, steam curling around him like mist curling off a cliff, and that’s when things began to slowly fall into place.

The dream…The dream he had of you last night.

“…No,” He whispered eventually, shaking his head. “No, no, no…”

“Oh come on,” The Void drawled. “Don’t be shy. You liked it. That little fantasy with her chest against yours, riding you, moaning your name like a hymn. She looked so pretty when she came, didn’t she?”

Bob’s vision swam. He gripped the edge of the shower wall so hard his knuckles turned white.

“It wasn’t real,” He said through clenched teeth. “It was just a dream.”

A low, velvet chuckle unfurled in the base of his skull.

“Sure it was.”

The water suddenly felt too loud–like static screaming in his ears.

Memories weren’t supposed to feel like this. They weren’t supposed to echo in his skin, or pull on the muscle of his thighs like a ghost still touching him. He felt raw–stretched thin from the inside out. His breath came ragged now–short, sharp gasps that barely made it past his lips as flashes began to tear across his mind like lightning, split-second visions, and sensations.

Your thighs bracketing his hips, your voice breaking around his name, your tears streaming down your cheeks. The way your back arched towards him.

His eyes snapped shut and he stumbled backward, one palm flying to the wall like it could keep him upright. But the weight was inside him now. The wrongness. The knowing.

“No,” He gasped. “No, I didn’t–I wouldn’t–”

“You didn’t,” The Void answered smoothly, his voice curling inside Bob’s skull like smoke through a vent. “I did.”

The words hit like a physical blow. Bob staggered back against the shower wall, blinking against the sting of hot water and bile rising in his throat.

“She said yes, you know,” The Void continued. “Every time. She said your name while I was inside her. Cried for you. Pretended it was you.”

Bob’s stomach lurched. He pressed a hand over his mouth, like that could keep the nausea down. “Stop. Just shut up–”

“You think she didn’t know it wasn’t you?” The Void whispered. “She did. She just wanted you so badly, she was willing to close her eyes and let me wear your skin. And you know what, Bob?”

A pause.

A cruel silence.

“She loved it.”

Bob let out a broken, wounded sound. Something between a sob and a growl. His body was trembling violently now–his breath a stuttered panic trapped in his lungs.

“You’re lying,” He choked.

“You don’t feel it?” The Void murmured. “The tension in your shoulders? The ache in your hips? The ghost of her still gripping you? I don’t dream, Bob. But you do. And I left you the best parts.”

Bob staggered out of the shower, dripping and wild-eyed. He stumbled, half slipping across the wet tile, as he reached out and wrapped a towel around his hips while the other scrambled for the edge of the counter. His knees hit the floor hard, but the pain didn’t register–not over the white-hot coil twisting in his gut. He lurched forward.

The sound that came out of him was ugly–guttural and gasping–as he vomited into the basin. His body convulsed, throat straining, the acidic bile burning up his esophagus. His arms shook as he braced himself, knuckles whitening on the marble.

It felt endless.

Each heave dragged something deeper out of him–not just from his stomach but from somewhere more primal. Something soul-level. Shame. Horror. Guilt. The knowledge that something had been done to her. With his body. While he was unaware.

His chest heaved with dry sobs now, water still dripping off his hair and jaw, his face flushed red from the heat and the nausea. He clutched the edge of the basin and lifted his head slowly, eyelids fluttering.

And froze.

The steam on the mirror had cleared just enough to reflect two figures.

His own…

And him.

The Void stood to his left–closer than he should’ve been. Closer than Bob could feel, and yet, somehow his presence pressed into the room like a second atmosphere. His arms were folded loosely, one shoulder resting against the bathroom wall as if this were casual. As if he had every right to stand there, real and solid, in Bob’s space. In Bob’s skin.

“Don’t feel too bad,” The Void said lightly, tilting his head as if studying his twin in the mirror. “I was good to her. Tender, even. You should’ve heard the way she begged. So soft. So sweet.”

Bob’s fingers curled into fists on the edge of the sink.

“Stop talking,” He rasped. “Just fucking stop.”

“You really think I’m lying?” The Void arched a brow, a little smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “Then go talk to her.”

Bob’s breath hitched.

The Void pushed off the wall now, taking a step forward–not menacing, not fast, but slow and deliberate. His reflection moved with him. His voice softened with mock sympathy.

“I’m sure if you ask her gently, she’ll tell you the truth. What she felt. What she saw. What she said.”

Bob shook his head. “She didn’t know. She couldn’t have–”

“She did.” The Void’s tone sharpened just enough to cut. “And if you’re still not convinced…”

He paused in front of Bob–so close now Bob could see the way the light gleamed off his collarbone, the faint shimmer of something bruised beneath the skin–and slowly lifted his hand.

One long finger tapped just beneath his throat, where his jugular notch was–or is– supposed to be.

“Check right here on her…I left a little something there.” Bob didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Because the part that shattered him wasn’t the evidence. It wasn’t the dream, or the bite, or even the voice curling like poison through his mind.

It was the truth he already knew.

He had felt it.

In his skin. In his bones.

In the aching echo of a night he hadn’t lived–but now he had to carry with him anyway.

“She trusted me,” He whispered, barely audible. “She trusted me to protect her from you.”

The Void tilted his head, mockingly thoughtful. “Mmm. And you did such a good job, didn’t you? You didn’t warn her how convincing I would be, hmm?” The Void’s grin widened.

It wasn’t malicious in the way monsters grinned in stories–it was worse. It was familiar. Worn like skin. Like something Bob might’ve seen in the mirror if he were just a little colder, a little more broken, a little more hungry.

“You didn’t warn her,” He repeated softly. “Not about the way I move. The way I sound. The way I feel.”

Bob’s breath stuttered. His knuckles were white against the sink.

“You manipulated her…” The Void let out a soft laugh.

“How did I manipulate her?” The Void’s voice was velvet now. Soothed, indulgent. “She wanted you, Bob. So I gave her that. I gave her what you never had the courage to.”

“I would never–” Bob choked, eyes burning, voice cracking around the protest.

“You wouldn’t,” The Void agreed, stepping closer until he could look directly into Bob’s eyes through the mirror. “You’re too good. Too gentle. Too afraid. You keep saying she trusts you–but she was starving, Bob. And I knew exactly how to feed her.”

Bob swayed on his feet.

He didn’t know how he was still standing.

Didn’t know how the ground hadn’t already cracked open beneath him.

The Void tapped the mirror glass once–right where Bob’s reflection was trembling–and leaned in, his next words a breath against the shell of Bob’s mind:

“If you want answers, ask her what she saw when she looked at me. Ask her whose name she really used when I was fucking her to the point of tears, then ask if she liked it…Or better yet…Asked why she liked it…Then maybe you’ll realize…It really wasn’t me who she wanted…It was you the entire time.”

Bob’s stomach twisted so violently he thought he might be sick again.

But there was nothing left to throw up. Only the bile in his throat, and the grief coiling around his ribs like iron wire. He gripped the edge of the sink harder, shoulders hunched like he could fold in on himself, like he could collapse inward and disappear entirely.

The Void’s final words lingered in the air like smoke, choking, clinging, true in a way that made Bob feel like a thief in his own skin.

It really wasn’t me who she wanted…

It was you the entire time.

Bob let out a sound–broken, wet, somewhere between a gasp and a sob. His reflection looked ruined. Face pale, hair plastered to his forehead, eyes bloodshot and glassy. The marks on his shoulders stung like accusations. The steam around him had started to dissipate, but the chill that slid down his spine was internal now. Bone-deep. Then before he could say anything else…

The Void was gone.

Of course he was…Because he always left the mess behind for Bob to clean up. Bob stood there for a moment longer–motionless, towel clinging to his hips, breath hitching with the kind of silence that didn’t feel empty at all. It felt like the aftermath of something horrific.

Like an echo waiting to settle into bone.

Eventually, he moved.

Slow.

Mechanic.

He reached for the toothbrush on the counter, fumbling the cap of the toothpaste like his fingers didn’t belong to him anymore. He brushed his teeth with shaking hands, hard enough to make his gums sting–desperate to scrape away the taste of bile, the phantom flavor of everything that had just spilled out of him.

Bob spat into the sink. Rinsed. Again. And again.

He swiped at his mouth with the towel and turned away without looking at the mirror.

Back in his room, the air felt heavier. Dimmer. Like the walls were holding their breath.

He shed the damp towel, grabbed the first pair of sweatpants from his drawer–charcoal gray, worn thin at the cuffs–and pulled them on with sluggish hands. His skin still felt too hot in places and too cold in others, like his body couldn’t decide if it was sweating or shivering.

A navy sweater came next. One you’d once teased him about because the material was so soft and gentle. It smelled like detergent and memory. He yanked it over his head and stood there for a second, hands resting at his sides, eyes unfocused.

Then he moved out the door, making his way down the hall quickly.

The floor was cold under his bare feet, but he barely felt it. The lights overhead buzzed low, flickering once–barely noticeable–but it was enough to make his stomach clench.

He stopped in front of your room.

The door was closed, and he stared at it for a moment.

His knuckles hovered just shy of the surface. His breath trembled out of him. He didn’t know what he’d say. Didn’t know how to ask. Didn’t know what you would see in his face.

But he had to see you, and he had to know.

–––––––––––––-

Inside your room, the world was steeped in dusky gold.

Sunset spilled through the sheer curtains like liquid amber, casting soft lines across the ceiling and walls. The sky beyond was fading into a bruised gradient–lavender, orange, blue–and it painted your skin in light that didn’t feel like yours to hold. You were lying on your back, one arm draped limply across your stomach, the other resting palm-up beside you like you were waiting for something. Your eyes were locked on the ceiling, unblinking. Still.

The blankets were tangled around your ankles. Your shirt clung to your side, damp from sweat, collar askew. You hadn’t moved in hours. Couldn’t. Not since you, Ava and Yelena spoke about what happened last night, and you came back to your room with the weight of that discussion on your shoulders.

You’d told them everything, every detail about what happened, what he looked like, what he sounded like., what he felt like, what you let him do…And you told them why.

Because you wanted him so badly it hurt. Because The Void allowed you to picture Bob’s face and his voice and his gentleness for one night… Just so you could let yourself pretend.

You told them how he held your face when you came. How he kissed your chest like it meant something, how he promised that Bob would never find out…But now you were riddled with guilt and it was eating away at your mind. You also told them that The Void was there with all of them listening, but only you were able to see him.

Yelena hadn’t said much, not at first. She just listened, jaw tense, thumb tapping restlessly against her thigh, she thought the situation was unbelievable, she chalked it up to a vivid nightmare...But the more details you divulged, the harder it got to believe that assumption. Ava had crouched in front of you, brow furrowed, voice soft.

“You need to tell him,” She said. “You have to tell him.”

“I don’t want to hurt him.”

“You already did,” Yelena said bluntly. “Not telling him only makes it worse.”

Her words weren’t cruel. They were honest. Like a bone being set back in place. It stung. But it was necessary.

“You don’t have to confess to be punished,” Ava added gently. “You have to confess to be free. If you keep hiding this, The Void wins twice. Once for using you…And again for keeping you.”

You didn’t argue.

Because they were right.

You weren’t afraid of Bob hating you. That would’ve been easier.

You were afraid he’d understand. That he’d forgive you. That he’d still want you after everything–and that you wouldn’t be able to forgive yourself.

You rolled onto your side slowly now, breath shallow, as the golden haze across your bedroom began to fade deeper into blue.

Then there was a knock.

You didn’t need to ask who it was, because it was evident that it could only be one person.

“…Come in,” You said, and the door creaked open slowly.

Bob stood there–backlit by the hallway’s sterile overhead glow. Dressed in his usual getup of a sweater and sweatpants. His light brown hair was still damp and fluffed from a quick towel dry. His eyes were rimmed red. His posture was stiff, like he didn’t trust his legs to carry him if he stepped too fast, and he looked at you like he’d been walking through hell and finally found the fire’s source.

You sat up slowly, your mouth parting–but no words came.

Bob lingered in the doorway for a second longer, like stepping into your room might unmake him.

Then–quietly–he closed the door behind him.

The latch clicked with a finality that made your chest tighten.

His eyes swept across the room once, slow, heavy. And then–without meaning to–they landed on your legs. Bare. Tangled loosely in the sheets. Skin kissed by amber light and bruised shadow.

He blinked. Looked away.

“W-We need to talk,” He said softly. His voice cracked at the edges.

You swallowed. “Okay.”

His eyes found yours again–shining but unreadable–and then he asked, “Can I… S-Sit?”

You nodded.

And he crossed the room.

Every step felt measured. Like he was walking through something sacred or cursed, you weren’t sure which. His hand brushed the edge of the mattress as he sat, careful not to get too close, sinking onto the same spot where The Void had touched you last night.

The same place where you’d said yes, where your fingers had curled into that blanket, and his hair as your hips lifted off the bed in pure ecstasy. Where you had clung to The Void and screamed Bob’s name in pleasure as you pictured him instead of the vantablack shadow that was invading you and your senses.

Now, in a tragically poetic way, Bob sat there, in living colour. He rested his elbows on his knees, rubbing his palms slowly together like he was trying to warm himself from the inside out. He didn’t look at you yet.

“What happened last night?” He asked finally, turning his head towards your figure. When his eyes met yours everything in him stilled. There was something in your face that made the air in the room feel sharper. Like it had teeth. Like even breathing might cut too deep. Your eyes were glassy like you had been on the brink of tears for hours, and your lips were parted like you wanted to say something but couldn’t find the start of it. Your body was tense, and curled in on itself like you were bracing for impact…And right then and there…He knew.

Bob’s eyes searched your face for a long moment, but whatever he was hoping to find there–certainty, relief, understanding–wasn’t present. Just the quiet tremble of your shoulders. Just the way your fingers picked at the hem of your shirt like you were trying to feel something real beneath your nails.

He swallowed, voice barely above a whisper this time.

“Did he hurt you?”

You blinked, slow. Shallow.

Your throat moved like the word was caught halfway up.

“No,” You said finally, “He didn’t hurt me…” Bob’s gaze didn’t waver.

His whole body had stilled–like even the breath in his lungs was holding itself hostage, waiting for what you’d say next. And you could feel it–the trembling edge of his restraint, the desperate ache of a man trying not to crumble.

“Then…” He asked, quieter now, like the words hurt to push out. “Then w-why didn’t you tell me?”

You closed your eyes. Just for a second. Just long enough to stop the sting from spilling over your waterline. When you looked back at him, your voice came out raw. Truthful. Like it had been scraped up from the bottom of something buried deep.

“Because I wanted it,” You whispered.

Bob flinched.

Not because he misunderstood. But because he understood too well.

You kept going. Slow. Careful. Like the words were glass you were trying not to shatter between your teeth.

“He said…He said he could let me experience you. Just once. Without you knowing. Without consequences. Without ruining everything.”

Bob didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. His hands had gone still in his lap.

“And I…” Your throat closed up again, but you forced the words through it. “I took the deal. Because neither of us were brave enough to say anything. Because I didn’t want to cross the line and destroy what we had. Because I knew you were still healing. I knew you weren’t ready and I didn’t want to push you.”

Bob’s face twisted slightly, like something inside him was breaking not from anger–but from love.

You pressed your lips together hard before continuing, voice barely audible now.

“But I was selfish, and I wanted you so badly it made me stupid…And he…He made it so easy. He let me pretend, and when I closed my eyes all I could see and feel was you…” Bob swallowed thickly.

”Was that enough though…?” A tear slid down your cheek.

”No…Not even close.” You whispered. Another pause plagued the room. This one was longer. Bob didn’t reach for you yet, even though he was desperate to comfort you. He just watched you like you were saying the words he had been afraid to hear his entire life.

“I thought I could live with it,” you said. “But this morning…When I saw you walk out of your room… It was the real you. And I realized I didn’t have that last nightI had a shadow. A performance. And my imagination.” You shook your head, voice breaking, “And I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About what I did. About how it’ll never go away now, and the guilt is…It’s fucking crushing me Bob…And I’m so so fucking sorry…I’ve destroyed everything.”

The corners of his mouth trembled slightly like he was trying not to cry. Then slowly, he reached out and slid his hand across the bedspread. His fingers brushed against yours, then gently curled around them. It wasn’t a bold gesture. It was reverent. Anchoring. Like he wanted you to know he was still here.

“Hey,” He murmured, voice rough. “You didn’t destroy anything.”

You blinked at him, vision swimming again, and he gave your hand the faintest squeeze.

“I swear,” He said just above a whisper, “You haven’t ruined a single thing I feel for you.”

That was when the air in the room shifted.

A low, familiar voice rippled across the space like smoke.

“Well isn’t this tender…”

Your eyes snapped to the corner of the room. Bob flinched–he hadn’t said a word out loud, but you both reacted the same way.

“Shut up,” You and Bob snapped in unison, turning to each other immediately, startled–and then frozen–because the surprise in his eyes was a perfect mirror of your own.

”Did…D-Did you hear him?” He asked, his voice hoarse, you nodded.

”Since this morning in the locker room.” There was a long beat of silence between you, thick and charged, like the air had stretched tight between your bodies and dared either of you to move.

Bob’s eyes searched yours again, more carefully this time–like he was trying to read something between the lines. You didn’t flinch away from it. You didn’t have it in you anymore. Not after everything.

“He didn’t really give me a fine print to that deal he offered…” You said dryly despite the ache in your chest, “Apparently the aftereffects of sleeping with a dark entity include…Temporary tethers of the psychic kind…Or something like that. Whatever bullshit he told me I don’t know at this point.” You exhaled, rubbing your face with your free hand, “Point is…I can hear what you hear evidently.” Bob let out a slow, shaky breath–like he’d been holding it in all day. Maybe he had. Maybe this was the first time his lungs could even remember what air felt like.

”And you’re sure it’s temporary?” He asked, almost not believing it. Like he needed you to say it again just to be sure, as you gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.

”Yeah…Ava thinks it’ll fade in a few days…Maybe sooner. Once everything is passed, I won’t be able to hear him anymore, or feel anything else he left behind.” Bob’s jaw clenched, not in anger–just in quiet relief. Like something in his chest finally let go.

“I-I didn’t know he c-could do that,” He admitted softly. “Then again… I-I’ve never been around when he’s having s-sex…” He hesitated, then offered a sheepish, almost self-deprecating shrug. “M-More because I haven’t had sex in a long time…But I-I guess that doesn’t matter a-anymore somehow…” Your brows lifted, but only slightly. The tension between you had shifted–not gone, but thickened, warmer now, laced with something else. Something closer to awareness.

“Guess we both crossed new frontiers this week,” You murmured, a sad smirk tugging at the corner of your mouth.

Bob huffed out a dry breath that might’ve been the start of a laugh if it weren’t so exhausted.

“But seriously…Hearing him yap all day has definitely made me admire you more. I mean, you put up with that on a daily basis?” You gave your head a slight shake. “He’s quite the character to deal with constantly. And honestly? It’s really weird interacting with him when there’s actual light in the room. Just feels…Wrong.” That earned you a real smile. Small, but there. The kind that pulled one side of Bob’s mouth higher than the other. Bob leaned his weight more fully into the edge of the bed, his thumb brushed over your knuckles once–nervous, tender.

“Well,” He said, voice low, rough with the remains of grief and disbelief, “O-On the bright side… A-At least you got a preview of what it’s like if you w-wanted to date me. C-Comes with crippling guilt, a psychic parasite, a-and an eternal inner monologue that sounds like a B-Bond villain.”

You blinked, and then, somehow–despite everything–you laughed. Just a breath, just a flicker of sound, but it cracked through the tension like sunlight behind storm clouds. You shook your head, squeezing his hand a little tighter.

“That’s not what dating you would be like.”

“O-Oh no?” Bob asked softly, a ghost of amusement tugging at his lips. “What w-would it be like, then?” You held his gaze for a beat too long. Your voice dropped to a hush, vulnerable and real.

“It’d be kind,” You said. “It’d be quiet and steady. You’d make tea without asking, and hold my hand even when we weren’t talking. You’d fold your sweaters next to mine and leave post-it notes with dumb facts on my mirror just to see me smile.”

Bob’s breath hitched, and you could see the way his throat bobbed as he swallowed. The tips of his ears flushed, soft pink blooming beneath the collar of his sweater.

“You’d hold me like I wasn’t fragile but precious,” You added, voice thick now, “Like I was worth something. And when you kissed me, it wouldn’t feel like you wanted to own me–it would feel like you’d been waiting your whole life to give me that part of you.”

His eyes darted away, shy and overwhelmed, but they drifted back slowly–like gravity had pulled them to you. He let out a shaky breath, a soft huff through his nose that might’ve been a laugh if he weren’t so painfully stunned.

“S-Shit,” He murmured, almost under his breath, eyes dropping to your joined hands. “W-Why does that s-sound so much better than anything I-I ever thought I’d be worth?”

You leaned forward slightly, scooting yourself closer to him, almost getting into his space. You could feel his hand twitch in yours, like he wasn’t sure whether to hold tighter or let go for your sake. You made the decision for him, lacing your fingers together and tugging them gently into your lap.

“You’re worth every part of that and more.” You whispered, “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that…It could’ve saved us both a lot of trouble…”

Bob blinked rapidly, a quiet tremor in his chin before he exhaled and gave a small shake of his head–half in disbelief, half in surrender

“It’s m-my fault…I-I should’ve seen it coming,” He replied back. You opened your mouth to speak, but he shook his head before you could.

“No, I–I should’ve seen it. Felt it. I could tell he was…L-Lurking more than usual. I-I knew he was pushing, I could feel it in my bones, I just didn’t know why. D-Didn’t know he was waiting for the right moment to…To use me a-against you like that.” He swallowed hard, and his voice cracked on the next line. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. You trusted me to keep you safe. To protect you from him. And I–” He blinked fast, like he could flush the images from behind his eyes. “I keep seeing pieces of it. Bits. Flashes. Your voice. Your tears. Your legs around me. I didn’t even get to choose to look–I just saw. And I can’t even imagine what else I did.” You inhaled slowly, lips parting to soothe, to reassure–but your voice caught on a different thought. A softer one. An honest one.

“He said…” You began, hesitating for only a second, “He said it was a lot of stuff you’d fantasized about.”

That made Bob go still. Really still.

The kind of stillness that wasn’t absence, but weight.

His breath came slow and uneven, his lashes lowering just slightly before he whispered–

“Yeah…Well, that could mean a lot of things.”

You searched his face, but he didn’t lift his eyes yet. His hand stayed in yours. His thumb rubbed along the dip between your knuckles, slow and deliberate, like he could map out penance across your skin.

“What kinds of things?” You asked, gentle but deliberate. Not teasing–just present. Open. Wanting to hear the truth from him.

Bob let out a slow, shaky breath through his nose.

“I’ve thought about you,” He said, voice barely more than a breath. “I’ve thought about you on top of me more times than I care to admit. But it was never just about what you were doing–it was always about how you looked doing it. Like you were letting go for once. Like you were safe. Like you trusted me with that.”

You blinked.

He kept going, because now it was pouring out of him.

“And I used to think–if I ever got that close to you, if I ever had you like that, I’d earn it. I’d work for it. I’d deserve it. Not…” His voice hitched, his jaw tightening. “Not like this.”

You reached for him with your free hand, your palm resting against his cheek. He leaned into it instantly, like he hadn’t realized he’d been starving for touch until that very moment.

“You still deserve it,” You said quietly. “We just…Got lost along the way.”

Bob’s brow furrowed, his breath catching, and you felt the tremble run through his whole body. Your thumb brushed the edge of his jaw.

“I didn’t want him,” you whispered. “I wanted you. And I still do. All of you. Every version. Even the parts you think aren’t safe.”

He exhaled, and it sounded like a prayer. His hand came up to cover yours on his cheek, pressing it closer, grounding himself in your warmth. His eyes fluttered shut beneath your touch. For a second, it was just silence between you. That stretched, heavy kind–the kind that holds the breath of something inevitable.

Then he whispered–

“We shouldn’t do this…Not right now.”

The words stung more than they should have. You felt your hand hesitate slightly on his cheek, just a tremble of doubt. Your breath caught in your throat as your brows drew inward.

“…Why?” You asked, voice barely audible.

Bob opened his eyes again. They were glassy. Gentle. Fractured in that soft, self-protective way he always got when he thought he was saving someone else by denying himself.

“B-Because you went through e-enough last night,” He murmured. “And I don’t–I don’t want to be one more thing you have to recover from.”

You searched his face–every line of tension around his mouth, the delicate tremble in his voice, the way he still hadn’t pulled away from your hand.

“I don’t care,” You said, firm but aching. “I want the real thing. The real Bob.”

His breath stuttered. He looked at you like he wanted to believe you. Like he was afraid to.

“What about The Void…” he asked. Quiet. Uncertain. “He’s… H-he’s still in here with us. In me. What if–” You leaned in a bit, and he could feel your breath gently fanning over his face.

”He can watch for all I care.” Bob’s breath hitched hard. His whole body trembled like you’d cracked something open with just those words. Like the part of him that had been trying so hard to hold back finally didn’t know how to stay locked anymore.

You leaned in just a little more, tilting your head, your voice a murmur against his mouth now.

“I don’t want shadows anymore. I don’t want to pretend. I want you. All of you. Here. With me.” Bob’s eyes dropped to your lips like he couldn’t help it. Like gravity had shifted just enough to make every thought he’d tried to suppress pull straight toward your mouth. He didn’t even blink. Just stared–hungry and unsure and so visibly overwhelmed it made your chest ache.

His breath was shallow now. His thumb trembled just slightly over your skin. And then, softly, like the words were being dragged out of him from the depths of his chest:

“J-Jesus, Y/N…”

It came out like a prayer. Or a plea. Or maybe both. And then you closed the distance. His mouth met yours in an instant–desperate, shaking, unbearably real.

There was nothing slow about it. No tentative brushing or hesitant rhythm.

This kiss devoured both of you in lust and heat.

His hand slipped from your cheek into your hair as he pulled you in like he was afraid you’d vanish if he didn’t touch every inch of you at once. Your mouths moved against each other in frantic tandem–open, heated, relentless. Tongues brushing, breath tangling, his gasp lost against your teeth.

He kissed like a man unhinged by longing.

Like every second he’d spent holding back had become fuel for this very moment. You let out a soft moan against his lips as your fingers slipped from his hand and rose instead to his face, cupping both cheeks with trembling reverence, the heat of his skin branding your palms like something sacred. His lips parted around a gasp, and you kissed him again–rougher this time, dragging his mouth back to yours like it had always belonged there. Like you’d gone lifetimes starving for this one taste.

Then you broke the kiss–just barely–your breaths crashing into each other between parted mouths, lips grazing but not quite touching. Your hands slid up into his hair, tugging gently as you leaned back against the mattress, guiding him with you, eyes never leaving his.

“Come here,” You whispered.

And Bob followed.

He moved like he was surrendering–like gravity wasn’t just pulling him down but into you. His forearms braced on either side of your head, the stretch of his sweater pulled tight across his back, the heat of his body pressing into yours as he hovered above you, trembling. His knees sank into the mattress and you felt him–all of him–settle over you like a stormcloud full of thunder barely held at bay.

Your hands gripped his jaw again, thumbs brushing his cheeks, and you surged up to kiss him once more. Hard. Wet. Desperate. Your mouth opened for him completely, and he didn’t hesitate this time–he gave you everything. His tongue swept into your mouth, slow at first, then with more certainty, tasting, taking. You moaned into him as your teeth scraped his lower lip, and he groaned like the sound was ripped from his spine.

He kissed like he was burning. Like he didn’t know what part of you to worship first.

You sucked gently on his tongue, dragging it deeper into your mouth with a low, aching moan, and that was when his hips moved.

Just once at first.

A tentative, trembling roll of his pelvis down against yours. He gasped into your mouth, eyes flying open only to flutter shut again as your thighs spread more beneath him, welcoming the pressure. You were both fully clothed still, but that did nothing to dull the heat–the drag of his hardened length against your core through thin layers of your cotton shorts and his sweatpants sent a shock through your body like lightning cracking straight through your ribs.

Bob’s breath stuttered against your mouth as your hand slid down, skimming over the slope of his side, fingertips pressing into the warm cotton at his waist. You felt him twitch above you, his whole body tensing as your palm curved over his hip and guided him–gently, deliberately–down into you again. The grind was slower this time, dragged out and deep, and it ripped a soft, guttural moan from somewhere inside his throat.

“God…” he whispered, voice wrecked, barely holding shape between panting breaths. “Y-You feel so–” His hips rocked again, caught in the rhythm you’d started, “–you feel so good…”

Your hand tightened slightly at his waist, grounding him, coaxing more friction with each press. The fabric between you was damp and thin and completely useless against the heat pooling low in your stomach. His forehead dropped against yours, nose brushing yours, breath catching as he whispered again:

“I–I’ve wanted this for so long. I used to dream about this… Us. Just like this.”

You whined softly at his words, dragging your mouth back to his in a bruising kiss, your lips parting wide for him as your tongue licked into his mouth again, shameless, hungry. He met it with equal desperation–messy and wet and gasping. When he broke the kiss next, it was only to drag his mouth across your cheek to your jaw, then lower, toward your neck. His nose brushed your pulse point before he whispered, almost reverently:

“Y-You’re everything. You’re everything.”

Your eyes fluttered shut at that, hips lifting into his in time with the motion he was starting to lose control over. His rhythm was breaking apart. Unraveling. He was grinding into you now with barely concealed desperation, hips jerking in small, needy circles, chasing the friction with soft, strangled moans caught in his throat.

You arched up into him, letting your other hand slide from his cheek to thread through his hair again. His lips grazed your throat as you breathed:

“Keep going, Bob… Don’t stop…”

He groaned at that, the sound guttural and hoarse, as he pushed against you harder. The pressure, the heat, the way his breath shook as he rocked against your soaked shorts–it all blended into a high, aching tension that pulsed between your bodies like a heartbeat.

Then kissed you again, sloppier now. His lips were swollen, spit-slick, and desperate. Your tongues slid together in a wet, dizzying tangle, and you sucked on his again, drawing out a sound so obscene from him you swore you felt it echo in your chest.

His hips jerked against yours again and again, more erratic now, and his hands were clinging to you–one tangled in your hair, the other fisted in the bedsheets beside your head like if he let go he’d fly apart completely.

“You have–you have no idea what you do to me,” He gasped. “You have so much control over me. I’d give you anything. I’d let you ruin me.”

“I’d never ruin you,” You breathed, threading your fingers through his hair as you guided another slow, hard grind into your core. “You’re mine.” Bob let out a broken noise at that–a sound torn straight from the center of him–and buried his face in your neck as he rocked into you again, harder this time. The friction was sharp, overwhelming, a storm with no space to breathe between strikes. He wasn’t just grinding anymore–he was rutting, trembling, gasping, desperate.

His breath shuddered against your neck as he ground into you again, and then–like he couldn’t bear not touching more of you–his hand slipped beneath your shirt.

It was slow. Almost reverent. The backs of his fingers brushed up the curve of your stomach, over the warmth of your ribs, and then he flattened his palm over your sternum, splaying his fingers like he needed to feel every inch of your heartbeat to believe this was real.

At the same time, your hand slid beneath his sweater, fingers finding the warm skin of his back, and he let out a gasp at the contact, hips stuttering as he pushed into you harder, needier. You dragged your hand higher, feeling the dips and contours of his spine, the slight tremble in his muscles. And then he pulled back just enough to look at you–eyes dark, lips parted, chest heaving.

“We–We should…” He murmured breathlessly, fingers already curling around the hem of your shirt, “I wanna see you.”

You nodded, pupils blown wide, and reached for the hem of his sweater at the same time.

Clothes came off in a breathless tangle.

Your shirt peeled away with a soft rustle, and Bob’s sweater followed, pulled over his head in one quick motion. Both were discarded somewhere beside the bed, forgotten. But then–

Bob stilled.

Because he saw them.

The marks.

Long, thin bruises like fingerprints along your hips. A faint bite above your breastbone. The shadow of darkened skin on your ribs. Not violent… but unmistakable. The Void hadn’t marked you in rage. He’d marked you in possession. Claimed you like a canvas. A monument.

“Holy crap…” Bob whispered, his voice punched out of him like he’d taken a hit to the stomach.

His eyes moved over your skin slowly–no, not just your skin. The memory of what happened. The evidence of what he hadn’t done but had felt. And suddenly the weight of it was choking him.

You froze beneath him, heart lurching.

“Bob,” You said gently. Then again, a little firmer, fingers curling around his wrist, grounding him. “Bob…It’s okay.”

He blinked down at you, breath still stuttering, eyes wide with pain. You could see it–all the things he wanted to say but didn’t know how to shape. The guilt, the disbelief, the raw ache of seeing you marked by something like The Void.

“Come back down here and kiss me,” You whispered, running your free hand along his chest. Bob’s breath hitched. His hand–still trembling–hovered just above your ribs, as if afraid that touching the bruises might make them worse. But when your fingers ghosted along his chest, steady and warm, he finally exhaled. A long, shaking breath, like the guilt, was something living in his lungs.

He touched one of the marks gently, his fingertip grazing it like it might dissolve beneath too much pressure. His eyes stayed on the shape of it, lips parted, voice low and cracking as he whispered–

“O-Okay.”

Then he leaned down, kissed you again–softer this time.

There was no desperation in it now. Only reverence.

It felt like an apology. Like a promise.

His hand cupped your cheek as his mouth moved against yours, slow and wet and open. He kissed you like he was trying to speak through it, like every flick of his tongue and every shared breath was meant to say I’m here. I’m real. I’ll never hurt you.

Then he broke the kiss just long enough to murmur, lips brushing your jaw, “I’m gonna be more gentle than he ever was…”

His kisses trailed down to your throat. Slow. Patient. You felt them like electricity threading down your spine–each press of his mouth was careful, intentional. He kissed the hollow beneath your ear, your collarbone, the curve where your shoulder met your neck. And then–

“I want to take my time,” He whispered, voice thick. “I want to worship every inch of this body. I want you to feel safe with me, loved by me…And not used.”

Your breath caught.

His lips brushed over a fading mark near your sternum, and he paused there–kissed it once, twice, so softly it nearly undid you before returning to your lips.

“You’re in control,” He added. His thumb stroked along your cheekbone. “Everything is up to you. We go as far as you want. Nothing more. I just…” His throat worked as he swallowed. “I just want to be close to you. I just want to deserve you.” Tears pricked your lashes. Not out of sadness. But out of how much he meant every word. You nodded, reaching up to brush his hair back from his forehead.

“I want this,” You whispered. “With you. However slow, however soft… Just don’t stop touching me.” Bob nodded, a quiet, trembling breath slipping past his lips like he was grounding himself in the gravity of your words. He leaned in again, slower this time, and kissed you with a new kind of hunger–less desperate, more deliberate. You could feel it in the way his lips lingered, in the way he savored every brush, every breath, like he needed to memorize the shape of your mouth all over again.

Then he began to trail lower.

His lips ghosted along your collarbone–soft, reverent kisses that made your skin ache. His hand, warm and steady now, slid up from your ribs to the swell of your breast. He hesitated there only for a second, like he was asking wordlessly for permission, and when you arched into him, breath hitching, he exhaled like he’d been granted a miracle.

His mouth followed his hand.

He pressed a kiss to the top of your breast–slow and open-mouthed–and you swore you could feel it pulse all the way to your spine. Another kiss, lower now. Then his tongue flicked out to taste you, wet and soft, and your fingers curled in the sheets.

When he finally wrapped his lips around your nipple, you gasped.

It was tender at first–gentle suction, his mouth warm and soft as his tongue stroked slow circles over the sensitive peak. His hand cradled the underside of your breast, thumb stroking rhythmically across your skin. He moaned softly against you, the sound vibrating through his mouth and into your chest, making your back arch, hips lifting off the mattress in a slow, unconscious grind.

“Bob,” You breathed, the sound broken and aching.

He didn’t answer. Not with words. He just groaned low in his throat and sucked a little harder, a little deeper, and your hands flew to his hair, threading through the soft strands as you held him close to you. His other hand came up to cup your free breast now, kneading it gently, carefully, like you were something too precious to rush. His fingers brushed across your other nipple, teasing it to hardness before his mouth left its twin and moved over–wet and hot and aching for more.

He gave the same attention to the other side, lips parting to take you in, tongue swirling around your nipple with languid strokes, then sucking deep, like he couldn’t get enough. You gasped again, legs shifting restlessly beneath him as your thighs pressed together for friction. You could feel the wet heat of your arousal soaking through your shorts now, the friction maddening, but you didn’t ask him to stop. Couldn’t. His mouth on you felt too good. Too right.

Bob moaned again as your hips lifted, and his hand slid lower, fingers tracing the soft dip of your waist before gliding up again to cup the side of your breast, massaging it slowly as he kept his mouth latched to your nipple.

When he finally pulled back, lips slick and parted, his eyes lifted to meet yours.

“You’re so beautiful,” He whispered, voice wrecked, “So so beautiful…“ Your chest rose and fell under his praise, breath catching hard, and your voice trembled when it finally broke free.

“I need you,” you gasped, your hand sliding into his hair, tightening gently. “Bob–I’m so wet it hurts.”

His breath hitched. His eyes–already dark–dilated further, and you felt the shiver ripple down his spine.

But then he shook his head, slow and dazed, like he was in a trance.

“No,” He said, voice hoarse, almost reverent. “Not yet. I need to taste you first.”

You blinked down at him, heat coiling in your core so hard you thought you might come undone just from that alone.

“Please…Anything…” You whispered, barely able to say it.

He surged up to kiss you again–hungry, open-mouthed, the kind of kiss that made your legs tremble around his waist. And then he pulled back just enough to press his lips to your jaw, your neck, your chest–leaving a wet trail downward, his hands sliding reverently over your hips. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of your shorts and dragged them down slowly, kissing every inch of skin as it was revealed. When he reached the damp cotton of your panties, he paused–just long enough to press his mouth against the soaked fabric.

“O-Oh god,” He whispered, voice shaking. “You’re dripping for me.”

You moaned, hips twitching, fingers curled in the sheets.

Then–without hesitation–he dragged your panties down, kissing the inside of your thigh as they came off. He eased you open with steady hands, and the moment he saw you laid bare for him, his breath left him in a ragged exhale.

“G-God, you’re perfect,” He said, his voice thick with awe and hunger. “So p-perfect.” He kissed the soft skin there, just at the edge of where you ached, breathing in deep like the scent of you alone could ruin him.

Then he exhaled slowly, and leaned in.

The first touch of his tongue was gentle. A single, slow stripe from the base of your entrance to the swollen peak of your clit, wet and unhurried. You shivered violently beneath him, fingers already reaching for his hair. He groaned softly against you, the sound vibrating through his mouth and into your core. And then he did it again–slower this time. More deliberate. Tongue flat and warm, dragging through your folds with the kind of focus that made your toes curl.

He didn’t rush.

There was no frenzy in him.

Only patience. Devotion. Worship.

He circled your clit with the tip of his tongue, barely-there touches that made your thighs twitch around his head. Then he flicked softly–once, twice–and looked up at you.

His eyes were already half-lidded. Glassy. Like the taste of you had undone something deep inside him. And then he closed them again, like savoring the feel of you was a prayer.

You moaned when his nose nudged your clit, the angle forcing it against the sensitive bud as his tongue dipped lower, gently licking at your entrance. You were soaked. Bob groaned at the taste, tongue working you open with trembling reverence, and you gasped, your hips bucking up without meaning to.

He pressed his hands to your thighs, holding you down firmly but not forcefully, his fingers splayed wide like he needed the contact to keep himself grounded. His mouth moved slowly, methodically, lavishing every part of you. When he dragged the flat of his tongue up your slit again and wrapped his lips around your clit for the first time, you cried out, head thrown back against the pillow, fingers tightening in his hair.

Bob moaned again–deep and low–as he sucked, gentle at first, then firmer. His tongue circled, flicked, pressed. He moved with a rhythm that was impossibly focused, like he was studying you, learning every breath, every twitch, every gasp, and adjusting his pressure like a master of his craft.

You were panting now, whimpering, rolling your hips up into his mouth without shame. There was nothing detached or cruel in his touch. No domination. No edge of control. Just a man falling apart over the taste of you, letting himself be consumed by the act of giving.

He pulled back for a moment, lips glistening, breath ragged.

“C-Can I…?” he rasped, eyes blown wide. “Can I use my fingers too?”

You nodded frantically. “Yes, yes–God, please–”

Bob didn’t waste a second.

His mouth dropped back to your clit instantly, tongue circling it again as two fingers slipped into your entrance. The stretch was perfect. The angle just right. He moved them slowly, curling deep inside you with a tenderness that had you keening.

And when he moaned around your clit as your walls fluttered around his fingers, the vibration shot through your whole body like lightning.

You were unraveling. Quickly.

And all you could think was this is what The Void could never give me.

Warmth. Presence. Safety.

Bob groaned into you again, pressing soft kisses between strokes of his tongue. His nose nudged your clit with every stroke of his mouth against your folds. His fingers moved in perfect rhythm–slow, deep, patient–curling up and stroking the spot inside you that made stars flicker at the edges of your vision.

You looked down through the haze of your pleasure and saw him.

Face buried between your thighs.

Lashes fluttering.

Cheeks flushed.

His brow was furrowed in concentration, like this was sacred. Like pleasing you was the only thing in the world that mattered. He sucked your clit into his mouth again, softly but completely, and swirled his tongue as he fucked you deeper, harder with his fingers–and you cried out.

“Bob–Bob, I’m–” You couldn’t finish. Your voice cracked on a sob of pleasure as your body seized beneath him.

Your climax hit like a wave crashing into shore. Your thighs trembled around his head, your hands fisted in the sheets, and your back arched as you came with a broken, shuddering moan. He didn’t stop. He slowed, easing you through it, his tongue moving gently now, soothingly, like he was kissing the aftershocks from your body one by one.

You collapsed back onto the bed, panting, fingers slipping weakly from his hair. Your body was humming, oversensitive, but sated in a way it never had been before. When Bob finally pulled back, his lips were red and slick, chin glistening. His eyes were wide and awe-filled. And he looked…Wrecked.

But in the most beautiful way.

“Was that okay?” He asked, voice hoarse, shy again now, like he hadn’t just brought you to heaven and back.

You laughed, breathless, tears of overstimulation prickling at your eyes.

“It was perfect,” you whispered. “So much better than anything I ever imagined. So much better than him.”

His expression softened, and he leaned up to kiss you. You could taste yourself against his lips–hot, slick, faintly sweet and obscene. It hit you like a jolt. The knowledge that he’d been buried between your legs only moments ago, devouring you like a man starved, and now you were tasting the evidence of it on his tongue. He kissed you deeper, filthier, letting you feel the way his mouth was still soaked with you. His tongue pushed past your lips, slow and deliberate, and you moaned into him like the sensation alone was enough to make you spiral all over again.

Your fingers clawed at his shoulders, pulling him closer, and he groaned–long and low–as his hips bucked instinctively against you.

The thick press of his erection, still confined in those useless sweatpants, dragged against your bare, sensitive core. You gasped at the contact. He hissed between clenched teeth, rutting once, twice–shallow, desperate grinds that made you both tremble.

And then he broke the kiss.

Barely.

Foreheads pressed, his breath crashed against your lips as he whispered, voice hoarse, wrecked:

“I’m g-gonna take these off…”

He reached down with one hand, already tugging at the waistband of his sweats. The movement was slow, breathless. Then his voice dropped even lower–richer, rougher.

“…A-And you’re gonna get on top.”

Your breath caught.

His hand cupped the side of your face again, thumb brushing over your flushed cheek like he was grounding himself even now.

“I-I want you to do whatever you want to me,” He said, voice cracking with the weight of his need. “I just w-want you to be in control.”

You stilled.

Not because you doubted him–but because that sentence hit something primal. It was surrender in the truest sense of the word. The most powerful man you’d ever met–the man who could turn people into shadows and who held galaxies in his chest–was offering you everything. No fear. No condition. Just Bob. Letting you lead.

”I have to say…That’s so hot…” You whispered, your voice rough with awe and heat. A slow, shaky smile pulled at his lips, and his hands moved again—sliding his sweatpants down his hips and kicking them off. His cock was flushed, hard, thick where it curved up toward his stomach, tip already wet with precum. Your breath caught again.

Bob looked…Divine.

Raw. Unshielded. And still trembling under the weight of how badly he wanted this to be yours. Bob shifted back against the headboard, legs bent slightly, hands braced on the mattress at his sides. His chest was rising and falling like he’d just run a mile. He looked ruined already. Completely at your mercy. And he liked it.

He watched you with parted lips, throat bobbing as he swallowed hard. The flushed curve of his cock stood proud between his thighs, wet at the tip, twitching with every heartbeat. But he didn’t touch himself. Didn’t even dare. He just waited.

For you.

You rose onto your knees and crawled toward him slowly, deliberately. Each movement was precise. Controlled. Letting him feel the weight of your intent with every inch you claimed. When you reached him, you straddled his hips and felt him go still–completely, reverently still–beneath your thighs.

Your knees bracketed his hips, bare and hot, and you sat up fully. Spine long, hair falling around your shoulders, your hands resting lightly on his chest as you steadied yourself. Bob looked up at you like you were holy. Like you were something he’d dreamed of for years but never believed he’d get to worship this way.

And then–eyes locked with his–you reached down between your bodies.

Bob gasped as your fingers curled around the base of his cock, firm but slow, and you gave him one long, aching stroke. His hips twitched, a strangled sound caught in his throat. But he still didn’t move. He was giving you everything.

You dragged the head of his cock through your folds–once, twice, again–coating him in your slick, letting him feel how wet you were. How ready.

“Jesus Christ,” he rasped, head tipping back slightly against the wood. “Y-You’re gonna kill me…”

You smiled, breathless. Then, without breaking eye contact, you angled him perfectly beneath you–and slowly, so slowly, you began to sink down.

The stretch was…Devastating.

Thick. Full. Hot.

You let out a broken sound from deep in your throat as you took him inch by inch. Bob’s hands gripped the sheets at his sides like he was trying to anchor himself to reality. His head dropped forward to watch, pupils blown wide, chest heaving, a string of half-whispered praises tumbling from his lips.

“God, you’re–” His voice fractured, shaking, “–you feel so good, s-so perfect…”

You settled fully into his lap, and the moment you did, Bob let out a shuddering moan–quiet but guttural, like the sound had been lodged somewhere in his ribs.

He was buried deep inside you. All of him. The stretch still pulsed through your core like a heartbeat, throbbing and full, but you didn’t move. Not yet.

Instead, you reached for his hands.

“Hold me,” You whispered.

Bob obeyed instantly.

His hands slid from the bedsheets to your hips, then around your waist, arms wrapping tightly around you as if he could mold his body to yours. His palms splayed wide across your back, holding you so carefully, so reverently, like you might drift away if he didn’t anchor you down.

Your chest pressed against his. Skin to skin. Heart to heart.

You could feel the way he trembled. The tension in his thighs. The shallow rise and fall of his breath as he clung to you like salvation. His forehead dropped to your shoulder, and his mouth opened against your neck, breath searing hot.

But still–you didn’t move.

You stayed seated fully on him, body wrapped around his, and just…Let yourself exist like that. Connected. Claimed. In control.

Bob whimpered.

Not from pain, not from frustration—but from the sheer intensity of it. Of being inside you, of being held still, of having to surrender to your pace. His cock throbbed inside you, twitching helplessly with every pulse of your walls, and he moaned when he felt it.

“This…O-Oh Y/N….Y-You’re so perfect.” He whispered, leaning forward so his lips could find your neck. He dragged his mouth over your pulse point, breath warm and uneven. He nuzzled the skin there, pressing one long kiss just beneath your jaw before scraping his teeth gently across your flesh.

You gasped.

He moaned.

“I love the way you taste,” He whispered, voice low and wrecked. “I’d mark you if you let me… Kiss every inch of your skin ‘til you couldn’t tell where I ended and you started…”

You pulsed around him again.

Bob choked on a gasp, forehead falling to your shoulder.

“I’d let you ruin me if it meant I got to stay like this. Inside you. Wrapped up in you. Y-You don’t even have to move, I’ll still come like this if you keep squeezing me like that.”

Your fingers found his neck, the column of it slick with sweat, the pulse there fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings beneath your palm. You held him gently—not tight, not possessive, just enough to anchor him. To guide him.

“Bob,” you whispered, breath brushing the shell of his ear. “Look at me.”

He obeyed, slow and trembling. His forehead lifted from your shoulder, lashes fluttering as he met your gaze. His eyes were blown wide, the deepest shade of blue, glassy and brimming. There was so much there—longing, awe, fear, surrender—and you held it all with your hand on his throat and your body wrapped around his.

You moved first.

It was a subtle grind of your hips, a slow press down and forward that sent his cock dragging deliciously against your walls and his pelvis flush against your clit. Your breath caught in your throat at the friction, the heat, the closeness. Bob gasped—his mouth falling open in a broken moan, hands tightening slightly on your back.

“F-Fuck,” he whispered. “Oh my God…”

You did it again. A slow, rolling grind that pressed you right there, and he felt every trembling inch of it. His head dropped forward with a choked sound, mouth brushing your collarbone.

“No,” you whispered, your thumb brushing his jaw, lifting his chin. “Keep looking at me.”

His eyes opened again, wrecked and obedient, and you gave him another slow, deep grind–your slick walls pulling around him as your clit rubbed in firm circles against the ridge of his pelvis. Bob trembled under you, his chest heaving, arms holding you tighter like you were the only thing keeping him from coming apart.

“I need you to stay right here,” You said softly. “I need to feel all of you.”

“I-I’m right here,” he choked. “I swear–I’m not going anywhere.”

You kissed him.

God, you kissed him like it was your last chance. Your mouth was soft and open, your tongue slow and sweet, like you were trying to breathe life back into both of you. And Bob melted into it—completely, utterly. His hands curved up your spine, not to control but to cradle. To keep you close.

Your hips found a rhythm. A deep, rolling grind that pressed you into him again and again—smooth and slow and so fucking full. You weren’t riding him for speed. You weren’t chasing anything. You were claiming him. Letting him exist inside you like he belonged there. Like this was always how it was supposed to be.

Bob’s breath hitched, and then–barely a whisper–

“I-I can’t believe you want me like this…”

“I do,” you said, voice thick. “So much.”

Your clit rubbed in perfect friction against him now with each roll of your hips. The wet sound of it was quiet but present, the heat building low in your belly again as you rocked in smooth, delicious circles. His eyes fluttered shut for a second–just one–but you gave a warning squeeze around his cock and he gasped, eyes flying open.

“Eyes on me,” You murmured, voice like velvet and lightning all at once. “I need you to see me when I come.”

Bob’s breath broke. He whimpered–a sound you’d never thought you’d hear from a man like him–and it made your walls flutter around him again. You moved your hand from his throat to cup his jaw now, brushing your thumb over the tear that had slipped free onto his cheekbone.

“Oh, Bob,” You whispered. “Don’t cry.”

“I can’t—I can’t help it,” He choked, another tear slipping free. “I-It’s just… you’re so close, you’re right here, and I don’t deserve it, and I–”

“You do,” You said firmly, kissing the tears from his cheeks, one after the other. “You do. I promise you do.”

His arms tightened around you and he pressed his forehead to yours as your hips kept moving. Your clit rubbed harder against his pelvis now, your body slick and hot and trembling with the mounting tension. You could feel your orgasm coming–slow and powerful, cresting like a tide inside you–and Bob felt it too.

“You’re shaking,” He whispered, voice thick with awe. “You’re gonna come like this? F-From just…Grinding on me?”

“With you inside me,” You breathed. “With your arms around me. With you crying for me.”

Bob moaned, helpless and high. His fingers dug into your waist, but he didn’t speed you up. He let you keep control. And that was what made it so fucking perfect.

Your breath broke first.

A gasp. A cry. Your head tipped back as your orgasm swept through you, deep and slow and overwhelming. Your walls clenched hard around him and your clit rubbed perfectly against his skin as you rode it out, sobbing against his mouth as he held you tighter, kissing your cheeks, your jaw, whispering praise in a broken voice.

“So perfect, so perfect, oh my God, you feel like heaven–”

Then you felt him twitch inside you. His whole body locked, breath caught on a desperate moan.

“C-Can I–Y/N–please, I need–can I come?”

“Come inside me,” You whispered. “Let go, you’re safe.”

That broke him.

Bob cried out, shuddering, hips jerking once, twice, then grinding deep as he spilled inside you–warm and thick, pulsing against your walls as he sobbed into your neck. His arms held you tight, breath shaking like every part of him was unraveling in your hands.

And it was beautiful.

You stayed like that–wrapped around each other, trembling, kissed in sweat and tears and come–until the shaking slowed, until the only sound in the room was your breathing, synced.

Then Bob pulled back, barely, and looked at you.

His cheeks were flushed. His lips swollen. His eyes still wet.

“I love you,” He said hoarsely, like it was the only thing he had left. “I’ve loved you for so long.”

Your heart cracked wide open.

And you kissed him again.

Soft. Tender. Final.

“I know,” You whispered. “I love you too.” His arms wrapped tighter around your back, his hand curling protectively over your spine as if to shield the last remaining fragments of you from the world outside your shared warmth. His other hand cradled the back of your head, fingers tangled softly in your hair, holding you close to him.

”A-Are you okay?” He asked gently, and you nodded.

”Let’s just stay like this for a little while…Please.” Bob nodded, and buried his face into your shoulder, breathing you in heavily. His body trembled under yours. Not from exertion now, but from something gentler. Something raw. You could feel his heart hammering against your chest in steady, staggering bursts. His cock was still inside you, softening slowly, but neither of you cared. The sweat between your skin clung like sealant. Like gravity. Like home.

You tilted your head and pressed a kiss to his cheek–just beneath the smudge of drying tear salt.

He didn’t speak again until a long, quiet minute later.

“…I didn’t hear him.”

Your breath caught.

“What?”

Bob pulled back just slightly, just enough to look you in the eye. His fingers brushed over your jaw. His voice was softer now. More certain.

“The Void,” He whispered. “I didn’t hear him… Not once. Not when I kissed you. Not when I touched you. Not even when I came.” His brow furrowed gently, like the realization had just fully settled in his chest. “He wasn’t there. Not at all.”

Your heart thudded so hard it hurt.

“…Me neither,” You replied, blinking. “I didn’t hear him either.”

You both paused.

Then Bob cupped your cheek and leaned in, pressing a soft, reverent kiss to your mouth. This one wasn’t hungry. It wasn’t claiming. It was the kind of kiss that thanked you for every piece of what came before. The kind that whispered: we made it.

When you finally parted, your foreheads rested together again.

“I think he’s gone,” You said, voice shaking with disbelief. “I think–just for now–it’s quiet.”

Bob nodded slowly, eyes still closed.

“It’s just you in my head right now,” He said quietly. “You’re the only thing I hear.” You felt the tears prick your eyes again, but this time, they weren’t sharp. They didn’t ache. They flowed soft and steady as you pulled back slightly, looked him in the eyes, and brushed a lock of damp hair from his forehead.

“Let’s clean up,” You murmured. “Let me take care of you.”

Bob blinked slowly, then offered a dazed smile–half-exhausted, half-stunned.

“You just did.”

“I’m not done,” You said, gently shifting off his lap. He gasped quietly at the loss of contact, but didn’t resist as you helped him stretch out against the pillows.

You moved slowly.

Your body ached–in the best way–and you padded quietly across the room to retrieve a soft towel and the glass of water by your bedside. When you returned, Bob was watching you like he didn’t know how to stop.

You sat beside him and wiped him down with gentle strokes–starting at his chest, dabbing along the flushed trail of sweat down his sternum, then moving lower, cleaning his softening length with quiet care. His breath hitched when you did, but he didn’t flinch. He let you take your time.

When you finished tending to him, you leaned forward to press one last kiss to the center of his chest. His skin was still warm and flushed, the thudding of his heart echoing just beneath your lips. But before you could shift away, Bob’s hand gently wrapped around your wrist.

“Wait,” he murmured softly, eyes steady and shining. “M-My turn…”

You blinked at him, surprised. “Bob, you don’t have to—”

“I want to,” he whispered. “Please. Let me.”

There was a depth to his voice that left no room for refusal—soft, reverent, as if this was as important to him as any kiss or confession. You nodded slowly.

And Bob moved carefully.

He sat up with you, then gently coaxed you to lay back down, easing you onto the pillows with trembling hands. You watched him with quiet wonder as he reached for the towel you’d just used on him and dipped the clean edge into the water glass, wringing it out carefully. His movements were so tender, like touching you now required an entirely different kind of strength–one that didn’t come from the Sentry.

It came from love.

He knelt between your legs and brushed his fingers softly along the inside of your thigh, his eyes flicking up to yours. You gave a small nod, breath catching slightly, and let your legs fall open for him.

He swallowed hard.

The sight of you–still glistening from him, swollen and pink, your inner thighs kissed with the aftermath of pleasure–made him blink slowly like he was afraid he’d miss something if he looked away for even a second. You expected him to begin right away with the towel, but instead, Bob leaned in first.

And kissed the inside of your thigh.

Just once. Then again. And again.

Soft, open-mouthed kisses trailed up the curve of your leg, each one slower than the last, lips warm and gentle as he nuzzled and worshipped the skin just inches from your core. Your breath hitched as his mouth pressed a kiss just beside your entrance–like he was blessing the part of you that held him, loved him, trusted him.

“Thank y-you,” He whispered, voice hoarse. “F-For letting me have this. For… C-Choosing me…After what happened…”

You reached down, hand threading through his hair, and Bob looked up at you as he finally brought the towel to your center.

He was gentle. So incredibly gentle.

The cloth was warm, and the strokes were slow–he cleaned you with the care of someone handling sacred glass, careful not to press too hard, not to rush, not to do anything that might make you flinch. You didn’t. Not once. If anything, your body softened further under his touch.

When he was done, he set the towel aside and pressed another kiss–right above your mound this time, reverent and trembling. Then he looked up at you again. His eyes were still wet.

“You’re perfect,” You whispered. “I’ve never wanted anything the way I want you.”

Bob exhaled hard, like the words shook something loose inside his chest. Then he crawled back up beside you, pulling the comforter up and over your bodies with one hand as the other cupped the back of your head. He tucked you in against him slowly, protectively, until your cheek was resting over his heart.

You could hear it beating fast.

“I don’t know what comes next,” you murmured against his skin.

His fingers traced soft shapes along your spine. “Me neither.”

There was a silence that followed–but it wasn’t heavy.

It was full.

Full of something new. Something unspoken. Something earned.

Bob kissed the top of your head, lips lingering like a promise.

And you closed your eyes against his chest, listening to the rhythm of a heart that, for the first time in a long time, was quiet.

No voices.

No shadows.

[stylesispunk]

The days of you and I

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader

*new series coming*

series summary: After Abby's brutal attack, the aftermath leaves Joel, Ellie, and you forever changed. Joel wakes haunted by the man he used to be and the shadow he’s become. Wracked with guilt and convinced he no longer will be the same, he pushes you away, even as it breaks him to let you go.

warnings: Graphic violence, mentions of blood, emotional trauma, angst, self-loathing, guilt, depressive thoughts, isolation, mentions of death, nightmares, survivor's guilt, fluff. It contains spoilers from season 2 of The Last of Us.

Remember this series stands as a sequel to this one shot "what remains of us"

A/N: I don't know if this one is a proper fic about the sadness Joel Miller caused me. But I've been thinking about healing and the long process it takes to get back to what you were or how it is to embrace a new self, and in this one, I would like to imagine what the aftermath of the events that happened to him is. By the way, I'm also moving to AO3 soon :)

chapters:

chapter 1: The aftermath

chapter 2: The weight of what remains

chapter 3: What I used to be

chapter 4: The coldest morning

chapter 5: The ache of you

chapter 6: If you'll have me

chapter 7: The ghost between us

chapter 8: Blooming season

[adyophene]

Radiotrio day 6: Roleswap!

Alastor - Charlie

Husk - Vaggie

Niffty - Angeldust

Deets under cut!

"Alastor":

Alastor is actually Cain going under a pseudonym. He's trying to redeem sinners not out of the goodness of his heart, but as a fuck you towards Adam, his estranged deadbeat Father. He vaguely believes redemption is possible, but on the outside he gives off the vibe of thinking its nonsense. Eve, who is in hell, is the one payrolling the whole thing. As the first Sinner in hell she holds a bit of power. (Eve - Lucifer swap)

Al exclusively advertises the Hotel through radio commercials and jingles and doesn't really care that it is probably is why no one knows about it.

"Husk":

A fallen angel who always fucked off and drank and gambled during exterminations instead of killing sinners. When he caught his wings were chopped off and he was left for dead. Alastor found him and offered him a deal. Al would keep Husk's identity secret so long as Husk worked for him. Husk tried to refuse and goad Al into finishing him off, but was instead lured into a bet. He lost and became Al's right hand cat.

Husk doesn't believe in redemption at all. He is trapped in Heaven's mindset that once you fucked up you're done forever. He puts up with Al's antics with a heavy amount of booze.

Niffty:

Hell's favorite killing machine. Niffty is a weapons spokesperson working for Carmilla. She's recorded by a camera crew when she goes out to kill his rivals and its all pitched as a fun and brutal reality show with a star who revels in the thrill of the hunt. Niffty loves her craft and is extremely skilled, but is becoming burnt out. She suffers from an addiction to amphetamines to keep up her 'high energy camera persona'. (When exhausted she just ends up freezing out and staring into the camera ala the gag in the show.)

Niffty is ambivalent about redemption, but likes to stay at the hotel cause she likes Al and Husk, and because it gives her a break from work.

Charlie: A former human who made a deal with Lucifer so she could come down to hell and try to help the undeserving sinners there. She is absolutely ecstatic about the hotel and is all but overbearing in trying to help Alastor achieve his goal.

Vaggie: A sinner who went to hell for her 'extremely violent tendencies', despite the fact that all her actions were in the protection of herself and family/home. Charlie found her in the aftermath of a territory dispute, and after helping her/hearing about her backstory, all but glued Vaggie to her side. Vaggie doesn't believe in redemption, due to her guilt/shame over her violent past, but is dragged along by Charlie.

Angeldust:

Charlie's mysterious and excitable friend. Angel loves a good 'naughty boy' and doesn't so much as clean, but rather struts about posing in whatever meido costume he likes for the day. Charlie knows his past and is the reason he works at the hotel. She thinks he is a good candidate for redemption. Angel doesn't really care either way and is just happy for a shit easy job that he can dress up cute for and slack off all he likes!

I don't know when, but I might come back to this roleswap idea in the future and expand out other swaps!

[seongwars]

Absolutely Not, Your Highness!

Pairing: non-MC x Sylus, non-MC x Rafayel Word Count: 2K a/n: clearing out my drafts and this was something fun I wrote a while ago after watching too many of those facebook short chinese dramas. It was originally going to be the lads regency fic but swapped it out for Zayne instead. might turn this into a drabble series, idk. raf photo for the algorithm

Weddings were meant to be held on auspicious days—full of promise, celebration, love.

And yet, here you were.

Heartbroken and alone, fighting off a band of bandits in the middle of nowhere.

One moment, you and Charlie were halfway to your brother’s estate. The next, chaos. An arrow pierced through the carriage window and the world turned red. 

The battle had been brutal, but somehow, you managed to fend off the attackers. Your sword had kept them at bay, giving Charlie enough time to find help. But now, standing among the remains of your carriage, the aftermath of your fight was catching up with you.

Pain coursed through your body as you leaned against the wreckage. Blood stained your fingers, as it dripped from a gash in your side. Your breath came shallow and ragged. The trees around you blurred and tilted as your legs threatened to give way.

"Lady Y/N!" Charlie's frantic voice reached your ears, but it felt distant and muffled. He sounded desperate, but you couldn’t find the strength to respond. Your limbs were growing weaker, refusing to obey your commands.

“Y/N!” 

There was another voice too but you couldn’t make out who it was. Darkness was already creeping in, threatening to consume you. You knew deep down, that this was it. You had no more fight left.

As the cold settled into your bones, your thoughts drifted to the man who had been your whole world.

Sylus.

Your first love, your only love. The man who had promised to love you and only you. Yet here you were, alone and dying and Sylus was gone. He had taken another wife. A princess from the north who would solidify the crown’s hold on the northern territories. And what had that left you?

Heartbroken and abandoned.

Here you were, bleeding to death as he was enjoying the festivities with his new wife. 

To love and to cherish.

Lies.

The coward had been too afraid to face the consequences of his actions, too selfish to set you free. Instead, he’d kept you shackled by the legalities of a marriage that had long since lost its meaning.

Tears welled in your eyes, not from the pain of your injuries, but from the grief of loving someone who had stopped loving you long ago.

You closed your eyes. And with the last of your strength, you made a promise to the gods.

“In my next life… I won’t love again, Sylus Qin.”

⟡ ݁₊ .

The scent of incense and flowers fills your nose, and you blink. Once. Twice. The sun is far too bright and for a moment, you wonder if it’s just another dream. 

You glance down at yourself, hands trembling as they move to your side. No wound. No blood. You’re dressed in the embroidered silks your mother had chosen for you. Your hair is twisted into an elaborate updo, heavy with pins that tug uncomfortably at your scalp.

This isn’t real, you think. It can’t be.

“Y/N? Did you hear your aunt?”

“Hear what?” you ask, despite the rising panic in your chest.

Your mother glances at your aunt, then back at you, giddy with excitement. “Your aunt was just saying how fortunate you are. His Majesty has chosen you to be Prince Sylus’s bride.”

No. No, no, no. 

Your mouth goes dry. You’re not dreaming. You’re not dead. You’re back. Back in the palace gardens where, in another life, you would have accepted the proposal before your aunt could say another word. Where you followed Sylus with starry eyed devotion and blind faith.

And now, you can’t even stomach the thought of being anywhere near him. You had to change the course of your fate. 

You blink again. “That’s…unfortunate.”

Your aunt’s eyes narrow, the corner of her lip twitching. “Unfortunate?”

“Y/N Shen, what are you talking about?” your mother asks sharply.

You straighten your spine, folding your hands neatly in front of you. “It is unfortunate that His Highness will have to continue his search for a bride.”

“You’re…declining to marry the crown prince?” your aunt echoed slowly.

“Yes,” you reply, smoothing the skirt of your dress. “I’m flattered, Your Grace. I’m sure he’s charming. Ambitious. A master tactician. But I must politely decline.”

Your mother looks like she might faint. “Have you lost your mind? Do you know how many families would sacrifice for this opportunity?”

“Yes, well, they’re more than welcome to it. I hear regicide is all the rage these days.”

“Y/N,” your aunt begins, her voice unnervingly sweet as she resists the urge to throw her cup at your head. “You are being offered the highest match in the empire. This is not a favor, it’s a privilege.”

“One which I would like to politely, yet firmly, decline. Your Grace.”

Her eye twitches. Just slightly. But you catch it.

She might not have birthed Sylus, but she had raised him, stepping into the Empress’s role after her illness left a void. While the emperor ensured that his son was ruthless on the battlefield, your aunt took pride in teaching the crown prince how to outmaneuver the court, turning manipulation into an art form.  

Now, she was trying to add you, her dutiful niece, as another piece on the board. 

Unfortunately for her, you weren’t feeling very dutiful today.

“Y/N,” she said softly, though there was an edge to it, “I understand you’re nervous—”

“Oh, no. Not nervous. Just not interested,” you beam. “But thank you, ever so much for the offer.”

The flicker of irritation in her eyes is almost imperceptible, but it delights you. With a graceful bow, you add, “Please tell His Highness I wish him the very best… particularly with someone who can tolerate extended proximity to him without the urge to jump out of a window.”

You don’t wait for her reply. Instead, you spin on your heel, strolling away with your head held high.

“Y/N!” your mother snaps, scandalized. “Come back here this instant!”

You don’t stop. You don’t look back. You’re halfway down the garden path when you hear your aunt sigh. With one single look to the captain of the guard, you suddenly hear the sound of boots pounding against stone. 

You whirl around and spot the palace guards moving towards you. Gritting your teeth, you grab your skirts in both hands and mutter something distinctly unladylike under your breath before breaking into a sprint.  

There’s shouting behind you, but you’re already halfway down the garden path, tripping in these ridiculous slippers. You curse their existence, kicking them off mid run as you round the corner only to find yourself colliding face first into a broad chest. 

The impact sends you reeling. Strong hands catch your arms before you can stumble, and for a moment, you’re too disoriented to process what just happened.

Your heart sinks as you look up and meet the piercing gaze of none other than the crown prince himself. With a startled shriek, you rear back and throw a punch, connecting your fist with his throat. 

Sylus doubles over with a wheeze, one hand braced on his knee, the other still at his throat. 

Using this opportunity to escape, you make a break for the wisteria covered wall at the edge of the garden. 

“Fuck,” you mutter, grabbing fistfuls of fabric and tying your skirt above your knees. You leap, fingers scrambling for purchase on the stone, muttering curses underneath your breath as you make your ascent. 

“Going somewhere?”

Twisting to look down, legs still awkwardly hooked over the wall, you spot Sylus approaching with his guards. His white hair drifts in the breeze, a sharp contrast to the deep crimson of his robes and that infuriating smirk you’re so tempted to slap off his face.

“My lady,” Luke, steps forward, looking genuinely concerned, “what has His Highness done to offend you?”

“Aside from existing?” you deadpan.

Sylus tilts his head slightly, clearly enjoying this far too much.

“Any woman in the empire would be honored to be chosen as his bride,” Kieran pipes up. “He’s strong, intelligent, not entirely unpleasant to look at—”

You shoot a glare down at them, your arms still flailing desperately for leverage. 

“I’m not marrying him,” you announce, dragging yourself higher up the stone. 

“I don’t want the palace. I don’t want the title. I don’t want the responsibilities. And I especially don’t want the prince.”

Luke opens his mouth, then promptly closes it, clearly unsure how to respond while Kieran looks personally offended on Sylus’ behalf.

“You wound me, my lady,” Sylus chuckles, stepping forward. You roll your eyes. 

“Wounded?” you scoff, pausing just long enough to glance over your shoulder and mumble, Should’ve hit him harder.

“You’ll live. Unfortunately.”

With a defiant glint in your eye, you grip the top of the wall even tighter, steadying yourself for what comes next. You vault over the side with the most dramatic thump, leaving behind a stunned prince, a group of confused guards, and one slightly trampled stranger.

⟡ ݁₊ .

Rafayel adjusted the angle of his straw hat, the brim casting a shadow over his eyes as he squinted up at the sun. With a satchel full of brushes and rolled canvases slung over one shoulder, he looked every bit the eccentric young artist he was pretending to be.

Which, of course, was the point.

Thomas trailed two paces behind, fanning himself with a folded map and muttering under his breath.

“Remember, if we’re going to pass as unknowns, we have to commit to the act. You're my loyal steward, I’m a reclusive painter with a tragic backstory, searching for inspiration.”

“I’m your advisor, not your cover story,” Thomas sighed. 

It had been Rafayel’s idea to leave the palace. He was growing tired of court politics, endless state dinners, and the never ending debates about marriage alliances that his family insisted on having every waking moment of his life. So, one morning, without a word to anyone, he slipped out of the palace with his brushes, a wide-brimmed hat, and a half-assed plan.

And, naturally, he’d dragged Thomas into it.

Truthfully, it wasn’t just about freedom. It was about curiosity—about living a little, about finding out who he might be outside of his title and crown. 

So far, it was going splendidly. Aside from the blisters. And the food. And the part where Thomas kept insisting they were going to be arrested for impersonating peasants.

“Oh, I hope Solana is okay with the baby,” the advisor muttered, mopping his brow with the edge of the map. 

“She’s going to kill me when she finds out I’ve vanished across the border into Linkon.”

“She’ll be fine,” Rafayel said with a dismissive wave. “Besides, it’s not like—”

“I don’t want the palace. I don’t want the title. I don’t want the responsibilities. I especially don’t want the prince!”

Both men froze. Slowly, they turned their heads toward the sound of the voice echoing from somewhere overhead. 

There you were, perched on the edge of the high wall, dress torn at the hem and hair wild from running. For the briefest moment, your gaze locked with Rafayel’s. Then, without a flicker of hesitation, you braced your hands against the ledge as you vaulted over.

“Wait, no no no—” 

Thump.

“Oof!” 

His breath left him as you landed squarely on him, knocking the wind out of the Lemurian prince entirely. Both of you hit the ground in a tangle of limbs, your skirt in his face and his foot jabbing into your ribs. 

“Your highness—I mean, R-Rafayel!” Thomas exclaimed, scurrying over. 

You rolled off the stranger as quickly as you could, cheeks flushed, and body sore in the aftermath of your leap. Rafayel groaned dramatically, propping himself on his knees as Thomas helped him up.

“You!” he wheezed, clutching his chest. “Who do you think you are? Do you know who I am!?”

“Apologies,” you panted, brushing yourself off and already backing away. “Truly. But I really must be going.”

You reached into your hair, pulling free an ornate hairpin and holding it out to him. “My brother, Xavier, the young master of House Shen, will compensate you.”

Rafayel blinked up at you, still clearly baffled. He stared at the hairpin in your hand before meeting your gaze. “Wait, going? Going where?”

Without waiting for an answer, you thrust the pin toward him, then turned on your heel and bolted. “My brother will handle it!” you shouted over your shoulder as you sprinted into the crowded market.

Rafayel gaped, looking deeply offended, his voice rising in frustration. “Compensate? I don’t need money! I need an explanation!” he shouted, raising a fist into the air.

The sounds of the market swallowed the last of Rafayel's protests as you disappeared into the crowd. The rush of the escape was a reminder that for the first time in a long while, you were making your own choices. No palace politics, no strings of duty, and certainly no prince with a crown of empty promises. Just freedom. 

For now.

[springismss]

ᱬ⛧ jealousy, jealousy ~ i. midoriya

sum: just some jealous! izuku thoughts

pairing: villain! izuku midoriya x girlfriend! reader

content: 18+ - mdni. jealousy p in v, language, dirty talk, possessive talk, implied/suggested multiple rounds, slight quirk use, marking, reader gets called doll/princess/baby/good girl, general NSFW content.

a/n: another request from my wattpad days that came from insta. fresh look and feels so much better, not feeling this but I've been unwell so i'll take the hit. feels like this may turn into a series soon. as always likes, comments and re-blogs are deeply appreciated!

word count: 1.7k

links: bnha/mha masterlist | jealousy, jealousy masterlist | masterlist

jealous! izuku who would look at the person trying their hardest to swoon you and wish he had a quirk that would kill them right on the spot. who wishes he could make anyone who would so much as dare breathe in your direction be six feet under.

jealous! izuku who taps his foot in annoyance when the person reaches forward to touch you, much to your disgust. who pushes himself off the wall and makes his way over to where you stood, how dare they touch his sweetheart?

jealous! izuku who reaches you just in time to hear the lowlife say something to you. "why don't you leave that pathetic wannabe, join a real villain like me?".

jealous! izuku who was close to pulling out a hidden knife and letting loose on this idiot until he heard you laugh, retorting back a quick "you're joking right? you're missing a brain cell or two". who smirked widely at your words - that's his good girl.

jealous! izuku who's had enough as the man still tried to convince you with words of "i can show you a good time" and "he's just a little boy, not a real villain". who watches as he moves closer to you, hand brushing your cheek as he tries to force a kiss on your lips.

jealous! izuku who's always been a quick mover, that you didn't have time to register what happened until it was too late. who savours the sound of heavy thudding on the concrete before turning to face you.

jealous! izuku who watches the way your eyes widen as you take in his blood-soaked state, his chest heaving as he calms himself down. who turns his whole body around when you mutter out a quick "izu", watching you press your legs together.

jealous! izuku who knows for a fact you're not only scared of what he's just done but painfully turned on. who, as disgusting as it sounds, loves fucking you in the aftermath of his brutality.

jealous! izuku who walks forward slowly, eyes dragging over you as he laughs. who makes sure there's blood on his hands as he reaches you, muttering out "be quiet for a moment, princess". who pins you against the wall as he cages you between his arms.

jealous! izuku who attaches his lips to your neck, tugging on the flesh as you gasp. who presses himself against you, loving the way you push yourself further against him. who finds himself losing his sanity at the way you moan out his name.

jealous! izuku who pulls away from your neck, dragging his eyes over your state as he mutters out a quick "i think i need to remind you of who you belong to". who runs his hands down your sides and grips your hips, hoisting you up as lips crash in a hungry kiss.

jealous! izuku who frees not only his cock from its confines but your cunt from yours. who wastes no time lining up his mushroom tip before sheathing himself fully inside you. who moans out at the feeling of your walls pulsating around him as he enjoys that tightness, the way you try to suck him in closer.

jealous! izuku who loves that moan of both pain and pleasure that sounds from your throat. who snaps his hips striking up a fast rythem that has you bouncing roughly against the wall, jaggered pieces no doubt digging in and leaving marks. "you feel so good around my cock baby girl" and "like it was made just for me" are just some of the things that fall from his lips.

jealous! izuku who drags you down on his cock at inhume speed. who loves the way you claw at his arms and shoulders in a bid to get him to slow down, the way your legs struggle to wrap around his waist.

jealous! izuku who groans out loudly as he thusts hard a few more times before he cums, painting your insides white. who laughs as he feels your walls pulsate around him but your beautiful euphoria never coming for you. "you're wrong if you think this is over, princess".

jealous! izuku who may or may not have learnt a thing or two from jealous! dabi when it comes to you. who pulls out of you and fixes himself up before bending down, throwing you over his shoulder. who likes to play with your dripping cunt as he walks back to his hideout, threating anyone who looks at or tries to help you.

jealous! izuku who's grip tightens when you giggle, fingers digging into the flesh on your side. "did i say you could laugh doll?". who pushes his fingers though your already sopping cunt, fingers curling up to press against that one spot that has you seeing metaphorical stars when you dare utter back "do i fucking care?".

jealous! izuku who tells you to "watch your mouth", for you to retort back "make me midoriya". who presses his thumb against your clit as he rubs it in circles, smirking at the way you grip onto his shirt.

jealous! izuku who, once he steps foot back in his hideout, takes you to the bedroom and throws you onto the bed. who quickly removes every single item of clothing from you both, he didn't need any more barriers. "you won't be able to walk after this".

jealous! izuku who wastes no time in flipping you over, one hand pushing your head into the mattress as the other gripped your hip. who leans over and places soft kisses on your shoulder before pushing into you hard, stretching you open once more.

jealous! izuku who groans at the way your walls clench around him again, who loves to drag the most sinful noises out of your throat as he uses his quirk to strengthen his thrusts. who hits against that spongy spot deep inside easier than before, thanks to the new angle.

jealous! izuku who feels his cock practically kissing your cervix, smirking as he moves a hand to your throat and picks you up, pinning you against his chest. who chuckles at your gasps as he threads his fingers into your hair and pulls, forcing you to look up at the ceiling as he restricts your movements, much to your delight.

jealous! izuku who moves the hand from your side to between your legs, pad of his thumb swiping against your clit as his fingers sink into your already full cunt. who moves his fingers in the opposite direction of his cock, never letting you catch a break as he circles your clit more. who can feel your walls pulsate around him, your body begging him to let you feel that beautiful high.

jealous! izuku who, after a few more thrusts, hears his name falling from your lips in a broken cry, walls trying desperately to milk him closer to his own high. who gives you no time to rest as he quickly pulls out of you, laying down as he encourages you to sit on top of him. who groans out when you sink yourself down onto his cock again, legs shaking as you pant. who thrusts up into you before you have a chance to move.

jealous! izuku who uses his quirk again, this time using blackwhip to restrain your arms behind your back, pulling you into a beautiful arch. who chuckles darkly as you try to move without being able to steady yourself. "oh sweetheart, you know better than to let another man look at you, let alone touch you".

jealous! izuku who leans up and warps an arm around your waist, hips thrusting harshly against you once more. who can feel that you're close to your euphoria once more. who places rough kisses and bites over your glistening skin, being sure to mark you for everyone to see. "i'm going to make you forget about everyone who ever came before me".

jealous! izuku who, after a few more moments, pulls your head closer to him, who crashes his lips onto yours in a messy and desperate kiss. whose breath fans against your swollen appendages as he mutters out to you. "come undone for me doll, i want to feel you soak my cock before i fill you up".

jealous! izuku who likes to help you along by offering words of "that's my good girl", "that pretty pussy was made just for me", "i'm going to stuff you so full of my cum, everyone will see it drip and know who you belong to".

jealous! izuku who moans out as he feels you clamp around him, the squelching noises growing in loudness before you cry out again. who feels small droplets as you squirt on his thighs. who throws his head back with a groan as he cums hard, shooting out thicker ropes of his seed deep within you.

jealous! izuku who only needs a moment to recover before he changes what he likes to pin you beneath him on, going as far as to use every surface he can find to his advantage, even ones you wouldn't think would be good. who makes sure to fuck you until you can't feel your legs, struggling to stand without falling down.

jealous! izuku who promises to do this every time you dare make him jealous. sure he likes to fuck you, take his time with you on most days but on the days when things like earlier happened, you'll not be able to walk for a good day or two, if you did manage to walk, you would be with with a slight limp.

jealous! izuku who touches you at every opportunity, glares at anyone who dares look your way. he doesn't like to share at the best of times. who'll always make sure you know who holds your heart.

jealous! izuku who is really insecure! izuku. who knows that there are better guys out there for you, guys who would be able to give you a life of ease, not a life of having to hide in the shadows.

insecure! izuku who slowly accepts that regardless of his status, you'll love him regardless. it wasn't who he was in society you fell in love with, but who he was deep inside - that same timid boy who stole your heart years ago.

© springismss 2025 - don’t repost, copy, translate, steal or modify.

[pankesitopank]

req for a ten reaction/headcanon/fic where his lady is a virgin but he didn’t realize because she doesn’t seem shy or anything.

and so he ends up fucking her super rough for the first time because she never told him (she thought he could tell + she just trusts him to do whatever) and then like the aftermath of that?? how would he react, and if you want to write out the smut

cw: rough sex (accidental), virgin!reader, trust kink, unintentional pain, guilt, soft!Ten, emotional smut, healing, worship... idk lmk if i missed something

wc: 3k aprox

note: God, it took me a while to finish this!! I hope it's what you had in mind. I actually ended up liking it a lot! I hope you do too.

☆ First, he thought you were experienced

The way you kissed him wasn’t timid. It was hungry. Hands on his chest, your mouth open and eager, tongue teasing like it knew what it was doing. Ten didn’t second-guess it for a second. You climbed onto his lap like you’d done it a hundred times, straddling him with thighs that squeezed, hips that rolled slow and suggestive against his growing erection.

He groaned into your mouth, his hands sliding beneath your shirt, thumbs brushing the underside of your breasts with practiced grace. You moaned—soft but sure—and arched into his palms. Confident. Responsive.

“God, you’re so fucking sexy,” he mumbled, kissing along your jaw. “I’ve been dying to get you under me.”

And you only laughed, breathless and flushed. “Then do it.”

That was it. That’s all it took. You said it like someone who knew. Someone who’d had this before, maybe not with him—but with someone. He didn’t think to ask. You seemed ready. Bold. Unafraid. So Ten pushed you down onto the mattress and peeled off your clothes like they were wrapping paper.

☆ Then, he fucked you like he meant it.

Ten doesn’t do anything halfway. Not in the studio. Not on stage. Definitely not in bed.

So when you welcomed him in with no hesitation—pulling him down between your legs, your thighs spread wide and gaze locked with his—he gave you everything.

Not slow.

Not tentative.

Just pure, blistering want.

He kissed you like he was starving. Bit at your neck until you whimpered. Gripped your hips like he was trying to mold them to his own. His voice was low and raspy, filthy compliments slipping from his lips as he pushed his cock against your entrance, teasing you with the thick head.

“You’re so wet already,” he breathed, brushing the tip through your folds. “You want it rough, don’t you, baby?”

You nodded—honest. Naive, maybe. But you didn’t flinch. You didn’t stop him.

And Ten groaned, “Fuck yes,” before sinking into you in one deep, unforgiving stroke.

He didn’t notice the way your breath hitched—or maybe he did, and mistook it for pleasure. Because when you gasped, he groaned, “God, you’re so fucking tight—shit.” He thought it was a compliment to your pussy, not a red flag.

His hips set a brutal pace from the start. Fast, hard, deep. The kind of fucking meant to leave you shaking for hours. The kind that came with his teeth on your shoulder and his hand pressed flat over your stomach to feel the bulge every time he bottomed out.

“Can’t believe you’re taking me like this,” he growled. “Such a good girl—fuck, I love the way you moan for me.”

You moaned because you had to. Because it was too much and not enough, overwhelming and raw, and you didn’t want him to stop because despite everything, you wanted this. Even as your body cried out, your mind was quiet. Safe.

You trusted him to break you. Even if it hurt.

☆ And you didn’t stop him.

Even when your eyes blurred.

Even when your throat tightened.

Even when the stretch burned more than it pleased.

You didn’t stop him.

Because it was Ten.

Because you wanted him.

Because the way he touched you—kissed you—looked at you like you were the only thing in the world that mattered… it made you feel safe enough to let go. To surrender.

And more than that? You just… didn’t think you had to say it. You assumed he could tell. Surely a man like Ten—someone so worldly, so sexually attuned, so in sync—he had to know, right?

He had to notice how tightly your walls clung to him.

How your breath stuttered every time his hips slammed into yours.

How your nails left crescent moons in his back because it was so much, too much, too soon—but you didn’t want him to stop.

It felt like being cracked open and rearranged.

Not just physically—but emotionally, spiritually. The kind of thing you can only give someone once, and you were giving it to him. Silently. Trustingly. Letting him claim you in a way no one else ever had.

You didn’t say “slow down.”

You didn’t say “it’s my first time.”

You just held him tighter. Opened your legs wider. Whimpered when it got too intense—and kissed him even harder to keep him close.

And he kept going. Because to him, it wasn’t pain—it was passion. Your tears were overwhelmed bliss. Your trembling thighs? Just part of the high.

You trusted him to handle you however he wanted.

And he trusted you to tell him if he went too far.

Neither of you realized you were both wrong.

☆ Afterwards, he saw it.

It hit him all at once. Like cold water down his spine.

He was still panting, still basking in the post-orgasm haze, the sweat cooling on his skin and his arms cradling your trembling frame when he shifted to pull out—and then he saw it.

Red.

A smear on the inside of your thigh. A little streak where your bodies had been pressed together. Tiny speckles on the bedsheets below your hips.

Ten froze.

He blinked, thinking maybe it was just friction. Maybe his nails had scratched you. Maybe—

But you looked so calm. So soft, boneless in his arms, blinking up at him like he’d given you the world.

And that made it worse.

“Wait…” he murmured, voice a dry crackle in his throat. “Baby—are you okay?”

You smiled lazily, almost shy. “Mmhm… just a little sore.”

His chest tightened.

“A little sore?” he echoed. “What do you mean—? Did I hurt you?”

You hesitated.

Then—gently, like it was nothing—you said, “It was my first time.”

Everything stopped.

Ten sat back like you’d just slapped him. Eyes wide. Mouth parted, stunned. “Your what?”

“My first time,” you repeated, a bit slower. “I thought… I mean, you didn’t ask. I figured you knew. I wanted it like that.”

Like it was no big deal. Like giving him your virginity was just something you gave. So easily. So trustingly. No fear. No conditions.

And Ten’s heart shattered.

“Baby…” he whispered, almost sick with guilt. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

You touched his arm, trying to soothe. “Because I trust you. And I wanted you to have me the way you wanted.”

And that? That undid him.

You hadn’t said anything because you trusted him to take care of you. To know. To see you. And instead, he’d fucked you like he was chasing a high—not making love to someone who’d never been touched like that before.

And now, all he could think was: She trusted me something special … and I didn’t treat it like it mattered.

☆ He felt like the floor dropped out from under him.

“Your first time?” His voice was quieter now, barely above a whisper—but laced with disbelief, and guilt, and something far too raw to name. His eyes swept over your body, all flushed and marked and open beneath him. The red blooming on the sheets. The slight tremble in your thighs. The little wince you gave when you shifted.

Ten’s breath caught in his throat.

He’d done this to you.

And he didn’t even know.

He brought a shaking hand to your cheek, cupping it gently—too gently now, like you might shatter. “I thought—fuck. You didn’t seem nervous. You were so confident. I didn’t even think…”

You smiled again, soft and sleepy. Still trusting. Still safe. “I wasn’t scared,” you said. “Not with you.”

And that wrecked him.

He didn’t even realize how tightly he was holding your hand until you squeezed back, trying to ground him. “I wanted you,” you added, voice laced with honesty. “Even if it hurt. It was you.”

But Ten shook his head. “No, baby. That’s not how it should’ve happened.” His thumb traced your cheek. “Your first time should’ve been slow. Gentle. Something you remember like a dream, not a storm.”

You blinked at him, surprised by how emotional he sounded. It wasn’t just regret. It was ache. Like he’d been given something priceless and only now realized he’d broken it in his hands.

“You deserved to be worshipped,” he said, kissing your knuckles. “Not wrecked.”

And you whispered, “You did worship me.” But Ten wasn’t convinced.

He was already spiraling. Already cataloging every rough thrust, every bruising grip, every filthy word he whispered in your ear like you weren’t someone’s first. He thought about how you moaned and arched and gasped—and how he hadn’t once stopped to wonder if that was pleasure or pain. He just assumed you were used to this. That someone like you, so bold and stunning and confident, couldn’t possibly be untouched.

But you had been.

And now he’d touched you in every way wrong for a first time.

☆ He took care of you like you were glass.

Ten couldn’t undo it.

Couldn’t rewind time and give you softness before the stretch, kisses before the ache, words of devotion before the sharp slide of his cock into a body that had never known it.

But he could do this.

He could hold you closer.

He could wipe your thighs clean with trembling hands and whisper “I’m so sorry, baby” again and again against your skin, even when you swore it was okay. He could press his forehead to your hip and breathe deep until his own tears stopped threatening to fall.

“Let me make it better,” he said. “Please. Just… let me take care of you.”

And you nodded—because of course you did. Because you trusted him. Even after everything.

So he wrapped you in his shirt and held you against his chest like a heartbeat. He kissed your temple and your shoulders, whispered praises into your hair like a prayer: “You’re perfect.” “So brave.” “So fucking beautiful.” “I’m going to do this right.”

He ran a warm bath. Not too hot. He tested it three times.

He carried you there, cradled like something sacred.

He sat you between his legs, chest to your back, and washed your skin with the slowest, softest touch.

“You should’ve told me,” he whispered against the shell of your ear. “I would’ve treated you like gold.”

“You still did,” you whispered back.

But Ten wasn’t convinced. Not until you sighed and leaned into him. Not until he saw your eyes flutter shut in comfort, not pain.

He dried you with a towel that smelled like him.

He lay you back on clean sheets and pulled the covers to your chin.

He kissed your fingertips. Your knees. The inside of your wrist.

And then—voice low, but steadier now—he asked, “Can I… show you how it should’ve been?”

You blinked. “Now?”

He nodded slowly. “Not to fix it. Just… to give you the real first time. The one you should’ve had. With kisses and slowness and me telling you how fucking lucky I am to be the one you chose.”

Your throat tightened. “Okay,” you said softly. “Yes. Please.”

☆ Then he made love to you—like a first time should be.

No rushing.

No roughness.

Just Ten, moving like every part of him was designed to honor every part of you.

He started with a kiss—slow, tender, the kind that made your toes curl and your heart ache. His hands didn’t roam. Not yet. They stayed on your face, cradling your jaw like something precious, like he was memorizing your shape with just his palms and mouth.

“I’m going to take my time,” he whispered, lips brushing yours. “You tell me if you need anything. You lead. I follow. Yeah?”

You nodded. You were already breathless—and he hadn’t even touched you properly yet.

But oh, he would.

Ten’s mouth moved down your neck in soft, lingering passes. Gentle sucks, warm licks—nothing rushed. Nothing demanding. He kissed your collarbones like they held secrets. Your breasts like he was grateful they were bared for him. His tongue circled your nipples, slow and reverent, while his hand cupped the weight of you with care, like you were made of silk.

He took his time between your thighs, too.

Not just spreading them, but admiring them—his thumbs stroking your skin, his eyes worshipful.

“So beautiful,” he whispered, voice warm and low. “You’re unreal.”

And then his mouth was there, licking gently through your folds.

Not fast. Not messy. Just… focused. Precise. Loving.

He tasted you like you were art. Like you were the first thing he’d ever wanted, and now that he had you, he’d never waste a second of it.

When he slipped one finger inside, it was slow. Careful. Watching your face the whole time.

“You okay, baby?”

“Yes,” you breathed. “It’s so good…”

And he smiled against your skin.

He added another—still gentle, still patient—and worked you open in slow waves, curling and stretching and kissing your clit in tender pulses until you were clinging to him, moaning softly, trembling for all the right reasons this time.

By the time he moved back up, your body was already floating. Lit from the inside. Warm and weightless and ready.

“I’ll go slow,” he said again, kissing your forehead. “I’ll take care of you this time.”

You wrapped your legs around his waist.

“You always do.”

☆ His body slid into yours like a vow.

No thrusting.

No rough grip.

No dirty words.

Just a slow, aching press of hips to hips—his cock nudging into you with a deliberate gentleness, like he was asking your body for permission even now. His forehead rested on yours. His breath shook. His eyes didn’t leave your face, not even for a second.

And you felt it.

All of it.

The stretch, yes—but sweet now, fuller than before, softer. Your muscles had already been tender from before, but now he was giving you time. Letting your body unfold around him inch by inch. Letting you gasp. Letting your hands clutch his back. Letting you feel how deeply he filled you—and how much care he carried in every second.

“You’re doing so good,” he whispered, brushing your hair from your face. “You feel so fucking perfect.”

Your eyes fluttered. “So do you…”

He sank deeper—slow, smooth, and reverent.

You gasped and tightened your legs around him, drawing him close, anchoring him inside.

And he just held you there.

Deep. Still. Chest to chest, heart to heart.

“You okay?” he murmured, kissing your cheek, then your temple, then your eyelids. “You want me to move, baby?”

“Please,” you whispered. “Just don’t stop touching me.”

He smiled. “Never.”

And then he moved.

So slow.

Like ocean waves.

Like worship.

Each roll of his hips came with a kiss. A praise. A whisper of your name like it was sacred.

“You’re mine.”

“You’re perfect.”

“You were made for me.”

It didn’t feel like sex.

It felt like healing. Like a rewrite. Like he was kissing every place he’d been too rough before—and making it right now, one loving thrust at a time.

He didn’t fuck you. He loved you.

And it was more overwhelming than anything rough could ever be.

☆ And when you came, it wasn’t from pressure—it was from love.

It started in your chest.

A warmth that spread slowly—like a tide coming in.

No sharp drop. No sudden grip. Just… fullness.

Emotion swelling inside you like your body was made to hold him. Like you were finally, finally being given what you deserved.

Ten’s lips were on your throat, his hand holding yours tight, his voice a soft stream of praise against your skin.

“So good, baby. You’re taking me so well.”

“You’re perfect like this—so soft around me, so mine.”

“You feel that? How deep I am? That’s how much I love you.”

And then—

That slow, heavy pressure in your belly crested.

Your thighs trembled.

Your nails sank into his shoulders.

And the orgasm bloomed.

It wasn’t sharp—it was deep.

A slow-motion rush, like falling into something warm and endless. Your walls fluttered around him, clenching and milking him in gentle waves, and Ten felt it—his breath catching, his hips pausing, his hand flying to cradle your face as you moaned out his name like a song you’d waited your whole life to sing.

“That’s it,” he gasped. “That’s it. Let go for me.”

And then he was coming too.

Not with a growl this time. Not with a brutal thrust.

But with a whimper.

His face buried in your neck. His hands gripping your sides like he couldn’t believe you were real. His whole body tensing as he spilled inside you in slow, rhythmic pulses—still moving, still careful, still kissing your skin through it.

“God,” he whispered. “God, I love you.”

☆ The afterglow was soft, sacred.

He didn’t pull out right away. He stayed buried inside you, hips flush, arms tight around you. One hand stroking your spine. The other brushing your hair back from your damp forehead.

You were dazed. Drowsy. Drifting on the high.

And he looked at you like you were everything.

“You okay?” he asked gently.

You nodded, cheeks flushed, smiling dreamily. “Better than okay.”

His eyes glistened. He kissed your knuckles. “You sure?”

You tugged him close, nuzzling into his chest. “I’ve never felt so… loved.”

Ten exhaled shakily, pressing a kiss to your temple. “I’ll never stop making it up to you,” he promised. “You trusted me, and I’ll spend the rest of our time showing you how much that means.”

You smiled. “Then start by staying here. Don’t move. Just hold me.”

He tightened his grip. “I’m not going anywhere.”

And he meant it.

Because this time, he didn’t just take your body.

He held your heart.

And he’d never let it fall again

[jkg2197]

Do you ever wonder how low level villain and thieves and goons or just general population of Gotham felt when they saw #3robin pulling batman away from them than calm the victim while still lecturing batman about the fuck he is doing traumatizing other or shit!!!! Like just last month so many thieves/pickpocketer were left in urgent care(which Tim was paying for) and then suddenly this new robin comes and he is pulling batman getting in his way before he gets too far and then helping the victim as well as villain in the process. All of Gotham would have collectively took a breath of relief and thank the god for the kid who saved them. Like just imagine after learning that robin beat the shit out of Joker that one time, and just knew that this one will be safe as he can be. I just imagine that Gotham would love 3rd robin so much for keeping them safe and their protector from breaking after the aftermath of previous robin.

I imagine when robin was alone fighting someone like crane or something the goons would be like 'yeah we don't want to fight him man' 'he saved us from permanent injuries' 'do you want to step in his way he is really good with that bo staff and if he doesn't have that than he verbally demolishes us man, last time someone got a hit on him he made him question his whole life. And don't you remember jake he read his whole life to him while beating him it was brutal.' 'hey!!! If anything happens to him we don't know what we will be facing with. It could be anyone from a civilian to batman to villains(I saw him eating chilli dogs with red hood so many times/ he was helping Harley with her thing once/ saw him with Ivy she was telling him about something I did not understand but sounded really educational/ oh cat Catwoman loves that kid so much you should see when they meet up(one time I heard him call her mom) and we don't want to see what happens man one time was enough. Last time Nightwing almost killed Joker and Superman had to stop Batman from kill him and then this Robin I don't think anyone will stop them this time and I don't want to know.'/ even Riddler likes him man!!'

Like Robin (Tim) is the perfect robin for not just batman but for Gotham as well. this is the Robin that Gotham needed at its darkest moment and he stepped up for that role. Tim already knew what was needed to be Robin he was there from the very beginning, from the fall of flying Grayson's to the death of Robin. He saw what robin as a figure did for people of Gotham he saw how Jason's robin helped the people in Gotham he saw what kind of fear Dick's robin put in the villain's of Gotham. He saw all of it. He was there for everything that Robin brought to Gotham. And he knew the streets of Gotham like the back of his hand. He saw the people when he was stalking batman and robin. He saw what the people needed as well. He was out there on the streets of Gotham from a very young age. No one can say that he wouldn't help the street kids with foods or cold, he had the means and the heart for it. Tim would have always become something that the city needed even if in someway it wasn't robin he would have done still be something to help other. That's who he really is someone who wanted to help most like Bruce but still very different. Where Bruce didn't want what happened to him to happen to anyone. Tim just did what he thinks is right and what he should do and just does it. If Bruce's parents weren't murdered he could have been what Tim is. He is the hope for Gotham.

Gotham would love the Red Robin too. When they see him come back after a year gap from being Robin to Red Robin. They would have been so worried about him when they saw a new robin but didn't see any new heros name for a whole year and then he is back..... Like it would possibly be like -

Goon1- hey! Hey! Hey! I saw a new hero.

Other goons all groans

Goon2- agh!! Another one. Man I hate this!!!

Goon3- great 🙄😒

Goon4- aaawwwwww man!!

Goon1- no no no. This is good news.

Goon3- how can this be good news this is a disaster!!! Now we need to see what this one can do.

Goon2- seriously. So many heroes. Why can't we do crimes in peace???

Goon4- you know what I think that job offer for WE sounds so good right now.

Goon1- no no listen. This one has a bo staff!!!!✨✨✨✨

Goons- WHAT!!!!!!!!!

Goons- ROBIN'S BACK !!!!!!!!!!!! *They jumped with hands in the air*

Goon1- YES!!!!!! He bruised my ribs while he took down the scarecrow. It was beautiful. 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

Goon4- oh man I refuse to go today and he comes back.

Goon3- man I was fighting with the new robin.

Goon2- oh man I missed all the fun. Nightwing knocked me out before anything even happened.

Goon3- tell us more what's his new name. His costume and was he ok!!!!!!!🫣

Goon1- he came out of nowhere. Scared the scarecrow into tripping over himself before scarecrow even had time to react and knocked him out. No one was ready for it I didn't even realise this was the previous robin until the other start attacking him. He invaded all of our attacks and when he took out his bo staff I froze and he kicked me out. But other didn't really have that much time either half of us were down because we froze other that were new one still tried to attach got knocked unconscious. He told us to get out because police was just 3 minutes away and then he disappeared just like he did before. So we just ran but we couldn't take the one who were unconscious but the rest of us ran away.

I don't know his name but he is in red costume now.

Goons hanging one goon1's words like they were stars.

Goon4- I'll ask around about the name and spread the news the 3rd Robin is back with new name and everything. Everyone would be so relieved.

Goon3- yeah he had us worried man what the hell. Last year was a different kind of disaster.

Goon2- yeah there was this tension in the air but I couldn't put a finger on it. But it's good to know the kid's ok. Hey isn't this the first time we saw Nightwing after such a long time. Wonder if they had gone together somewhere again like the space or something.

Goon1- yeah I was also surprised when I heard them saying Nightwing before 3rd Robin got the drop on us. I thought I heard it wrong.

Goon4- did he make a bad pun while he knocked you out.

Goon2- yeah!! Man he is cringe. Like com'on man. He has been doing this for years now one would this he'll run out of ideas.

Goon3- at least his laugh has changed from his Robin days. *Shudders*

Other goons shudders as well.

[morchilluv]

Ghosts From the Past - Cho Hyun-Ju x Kim Young-Mi

Warnings: Angst, hints of drug use, smut!!! pre full transition, blow-job, throat-fucking hehe, cunnilingus

Synopsis: Cho Hyun-Ju and Kim Young-Mi met during the games. After getting out, they both lost touch with each other. But soon found each other once again through a support group for the survivors.

A/N: This was a request that I genuinely enjoyed writing. I wasn’t sure whether to do a pre or post full transition, so I might do both;) but it’s not for sure. Let me know if you would like that!

P.S: Sorry if the beginning seems like a lot.. I got too into it. But I added a line where things start to heat up if you would like to just jump right into it! I tried to make the smut equally as long:)

ੈ✩‧₊˚

Cho Hyun-Ju and Kim Young-Mi hadn’t known the other existed until the games. In the midst of that brutal, unforgiving world, they’d formed a bond—stronger than either of them had expected. But once the chaos was over, they lost touch. It wasn’t because they wanted to, but because they needed to, for their own sanity. In the aftermath, each had chosen to think with their heads instead of their hearts.

Hyun-Ju buried the memories of the games, and above all, she pushed Young-Mi to the back of her mind. There were too many things left unsaid between them, too many words and actions she regretted. Every time the urge to reach out flickered, the weight of their shared past held her back—the lies, the betrayals, the moments they’d never been able to confront. How could she face Young-Mi, knowing everything they had been through, without it all coming crashing down?

Young-Mi had waited. And waited. Weeks passed, but Hyun-Ju’s silence never broke. In the stillness, she began to wonder if maybe she had just been a ghost in Hyun-Ju’s life. Perhaps the other woman had found a way to move on without her, had found peace in leaving the past behind. After all, wasn’t Hyun-Ju always the stronger one? The one who had it together, the one who didn’t need anyone else to survive?

The circle of chairs was small but comforting. Hyun-Ju settled into her seat, forcing herself to focus on the facilitator. She tried to avoid looking around, though she could feel her heart pounding in her chest. The others were speaking—some sharing their feelings, others recounting their daily struggles since they’d escaped the games. But her mind was elsewhere.

The door opened softly, and the quiet shuffle of footsteps cut through her concentration. Hyun-Ju froze, instinctively turning her head. And there, standing in the doorway, was Kim Young-Mi.

Their eyes met for a split second. It was as if time stopped—an overwhelming mixture of surprise, confusion, and the faintest hint of relief washed over Hyun-Ju. Young-Mi looked just as startled, her gaze flicking briefly to the floor before she took a seat across from Hyun-Ju. Neither of them spoke. The room felt smaller.

The facilitator, a woman in her forties with soft eyes and a soothing voice, smiled warmly, her expression not unlike that of a mother. "I know it's hard, but welcome. This is a safe space. We’re all here to listen and support one another. Who would like to share first today?"

Hyun-Ju tried to focus on the group—on the faces of strangers who, like her, had lived through the hell of the games. But her mind kept drifting back to Young-Mi. Back to when she had tried—tried so hard—to help her, only to be pushed away.

After a moment, the facilitator turned to Hyun-Ju, her eyes gentle. "How about you, Cho Hyun-Ju? Would you like to share anything today?"

Hyun-Ju’s throat tightened. It had been so long since she had let herself speak about what had happened. She looked at Young-Mi for a moment, but quickly turned her gaze back down to her lap.

"I’m… I’m still trying to figure out what to say," she said, her voice low and hoarse. "Some days, I feel like I’m drowning in the past. I know I shouldn’t, but I keep thinking about what happened… What we went through. And I feel like I failed. Like I failed to help someone who needed me." She paused, swallowing back the bitterness that surged in her throat. "I tried, you know? I tried so hard to help someone I thought I could save. But they didn’t want my help. And maybe… maybe I should have seen that sooner."

Her eyes flicked briefly toward Young-Mi, who was staring down at the floor, her fingers clenched tightly around the edge of her chair. The silence that followed was deafening.

The facilitator nodded gently, recognizing the unspoken pain. “Sometimes, when we try to help someone, it feels like they don’t want us, or like they’re pushing us away. But the truth is, sometimes it’s not about us. It’s about them, and what they’re going through. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”

Finally, it was Young-Mi’s turn. Her voice was calm when she spoke, but there was a tremor beneath it, like she was struggling to keep it together.

"I’m… Kim Young-Mi," she began, her gaze flickering to Hyun-Ju for just a moment, before looking down. "I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say. It’s hard for me to talk about the things I’ve done. The choices I made just to stay alive… and the people I left behind. I thought about reaching out after we got out, but I was afraid I’d just make things worse. And I guess… I guess I didn’t want to admit that I still needed help."

The vulnerability in Young-Mi’s voice made Hyun-Ju’s heart ache. She wanted to reach out, to say something—anything—to make her feel less alone. But her throat closed up again, the words stuck inside. The facilitator offered a soft nod. "Thank you, Young-Mi. That’s a powerful admission. It’s not easy to acknowledge how much we need help, even when we think we’re doing okay."

As the meeting came to a close, the facilitator asked everyone to stay if they wanted to talk more, or just to hang around for support. Hyun-Ju stayed seated for a long moment, unsure of whether she was ready to face the ghosts of the past—especially the ones standing so close.

Young-Mi was motionless near the door, her posture stiff as though she were fighting some internal battle of her own. Hyun-Ju could tell she was waiting for something—for Hyun-Ju to leave, for her to approach, or maybe for the world to give them both some space. But whatever it was, Hyun-Ju wasn’t sure she was ready for it.

Hyun-Ju looked up, finding Young-Mi’s gaze for the briefest of moments. That look, that flicker of recognition, was enough to make her blood run cold. But something in it stopped her from leaving. Neither of them were walking away this time.

For a long moment, Hyun-Ju hesitated, torn between walking out and facing what had always been left unsaid. Then, almost reluctantly, she rose to her feet, her movements stiff and careful as if she were preparing for a battle she wasn’t sure she’d win.

The air felt different now, charged and thick with old wounds.

“You wanted to talk?” Hyun-Ju’s voice was raw, quieter than she intended, her breath catching as she spoke. She couldn’t quite look her in the eye just yet, but she knew Young-Mi heard her. There was no hiding anymore.

Young-Mi didn’t answer immediately, but after a long moment of hesitation, she stepped forward, closing the gap between them. “I—" Her voice faltered, the words catching in her throat. She shifted uncomfortably, her eyes flitting nervously around the room as if she could find some escape.

Hyun-Ju's patience was wearing thin. I’m not running from this, she thought, trying to steady herself. “What’s the point of standing here if you don’t even have the words?” she asked, her tone harder now.

Young-Mi flinched at the bite in Hyun-Ju’s voice but didn’t back away. She looked up, meeting Hyun-Ju’s gaze this time, though her eyes were filled with something she couldn’t quite place—regret? Guilt? Fear? It made Young Mi’s chest ache all over again.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Young-Mi whispered, her voice small, vulnerable in a way that felt unfamiliar. “I didn’t think you’d want to talk to me.”

The words stung, and Hyun-Ju clenched her jaw. Of course she didn’t want to talk to her. She hadn’t wanted to. But she couldn’t pretend it didn’t matter. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t still hurting.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Hyun-Ju shot back, her voice trembling despite herself. “Because you couldn’t even be honest with me?” The sharpness of her words felt almost like a relief, like the anger and hurt had finally found an outlet. “You pushed me away. Every time I tried to reach out, you were gone. And I—" Her voice cracked, and for a second, she couldn’t continue. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the old pain or because of the truth she hadn’t dared to speak before.

Young-Mi stepped closer, her expression softening slightly. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, she reached out, her hand trembling as if she wasn’t sure if she had the right to touch. The gap between them was barely an inch now, but the silence felt like an ocean.

“Hyun-Ju…” Her voice was broken, as though the walls she had built around herself were starting to crumble, piece by piece. “I didn’t… I didn’t know how to let you in. I was too scared of… of everything I was and everything I wasn’t. After we lost touch, I got sober. I didn't want to lose anyone how I lost you. I didn’t deserve you,” Young-Mi whispered, her words so soft it felt like a confession.

Hyun-Ju closed her eyes for a moment, the flood of emotions too much to bear. She wanted to scream, to push her away, but a deeper part of her, one that was still fighting for something she couldn’t quite name, kept her still. “And I didn’t deserve to be lied to, Young-Mi,” she whispered back, her voice cracking. “I wanted to help you. I tried to. But you wouldn’t let me.”

The words hung in the air between them, a bridge to everything unsaid. Hyun-Ju’s heart was racing. There was no going back now.

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

As the room cleared out, the silence between them stretched, like they were caught in some invisible web. Hyun-Ju didn't know if it was the vulnerability in Young-Mi's eyes or the depth of the silence between them, but suddenly, she wasn't sure she could stand back anymore.

Without thinking, her hands reached for Young-Mi, pulling her into a kiss—slow at first, hesitant, as they were both afraid that the other might pull away. But it didn't last. Young-Mi's lips moved against hers, deepening the kiss, and at that exact moment, the world around them disappeared.

Hyun-Ju pulled back for a split second, her chest rising and falling as she tried to catch her breath. Hyun-Ju didn’t want to freak her out or make her uncomfortable. "Are you sure?"

Young-Mi's eyes were wild with desire. She nodded, her voice barely above a whisper, "I'm sure."

The kiss grew harder, fiercer, as Hyun-Ju slid her hands up to grip the back of Young-Mi's neck, pulling her deeper.

"God..." Hyun-Ju muttered, her voice thick with desire. "I've missed you."

Young-Mi didn't reply. Instead, she kissed her with more fierceness that left no room for doubt. She needed her. Young-Mi pulled away for a split second to remove both her and Hyun-Ju's shirt. Quickly pulling back to kiss her once again.

Hyun-Ju's hand wasted no time in unclasping Young-Mi's bra. Her hands massaged Young-Mi's breasts. Pinching and playing with her nipples. Young-Mi's soft moans could be heard throughout the small room.

Young-Mi started trailing kisses down Hyun-Ju's neck. Unclasping her bra as well. Making sure to pay attention to both her breasts as she started trailing down further. Softly leaving kisses all over Hyun-Ju's stomach and stopping right above her pubic bone. Young-Mi looked up at her, silently asking for permission. Hyun-Ju—entranced by the girl kneeling before her—immediately nodded.

Young-Mi quickly unbuttoned Hyun-Ju's jeans and pulled them down along with her undergarments. Her hand flew to the base of her cock, while the other played with her balls. Young-Mi licked a long stripe of Hyun-Ju's cock. Leaving Hyun-Ju with goosebumps and even more desire. Young-Mi sucked on her tip and slowly made her way lower, taking all of Hyun-Ju's dick in her mouth. As she started bobbing her head, Hyun-Ju tangled her hands in Young-Mi's hair and started thrusting into her mouth.

She tried her hardest not to gag as she let Hyun-Ju fuck her throat.

"You look so pretty taking my dick, Yeobo." Hyun-Ju's moans bounced off the walls. She was close to her climax but swiftly pulled Young-Mi away from her and stood her up.

"What are y—," Hyun-Ju cut Young-Mi off with a kiss. Switching roles, Hyun-Ju left trails of small kisses on Young-Mi's body. The only difference was that Hyun-Ju seemed more desperate and was faster to get to the area where Young-Mi wanted her most.

"Can I?" Hyun-Ju questioned. Though she had known the answer by now, she still needed the consent. Young-Mi nodded softly. "Use your words, Young-Mi. Or did I fuck your throat too hard?" Her voice had a darker, cockier tone.

Young-Mi couldn't help but feel nervous at her sudden change in tone. "Yeah," She breathed. "I mean— yeah, you can."

Hyun-Ju smirked as she undressed Young-Mi. After getting her completely naked, Hyun-Ju lifted Young-Mi’s right leg and rested it on her left shoulder, getting a perfect view of her cunt. Young-Min looked down at her, mesmerized.

None of them ever thought they’d be in this position. They’d unquestionably daydreamed about it before, but never truly expected their fantasies to become real. Frankly, it was a dream come true.

Hyun-Ju’s hands gripped Young-Mi’s thighs tightly as she looked at her with an intense, hungry gaze. Without a word, she buried her face between her legs, her tongue delving deep into her pussy, eating her out with a fervor that leaves her gasping and trembling. She continued to devour her pussy. Hyun-Ju’s tongue swirled around her clit as she sucked and licked, driving Young-Mi wild with pleasure.

She pulled her closer to her face as she ate her out even more aggressively. She can feel Young-Mi getting close, so she stops briefly, looking up at her with her face dripping with Young-Mi’s juices.

She lifted Young-Mi up and laid her on a random table, spreading her legs wide as Hyun-Ju stands between them. Her face delved back in between Young-Mi’s legs. Her tongue thrusted deep inside Young-Mi as she sucked hard on her clit. She continued eating her out mercilessly, not stopping until she screamed in ecstasy, her whole body shaking as she came hard on Hyun-Ju’s face.

Hyun Ju stands up. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked down at Young-Mi with a smug grin. Hyun-Ju takes ahold of her red throbbing cock and strokes it a few times before rubbing it up and down her pussy.

“Are you sure?” Hyun-Ju asked one last time. The question didn’t linger in the air for too long before Young-Mi consented.

“I’m sure. But… Can you be gentle at first? Please?” Young-Mi’s soft voice warmed Hyun-Ju’s heart.

Hyun-Ju slowly lowered herself onto Young-Mi, filling her up inch by inch as she looked into her eyes. She started to move gently, her hips rolling into Young-Mi’s as she kissed her softly. "Like this?" she whispered, her voice hoarse. "Am I being gentle enough?"

Young-Mi only being able to hum and softly moan Hyun-Ju’s name.

Hyun-Ju continued to kiss her softly as she started to pick up pace, her gentle thrusts turning into a slow and sensual rhythm. She pulled out almost completely before pushing back in, stretching Young-Mi and filling her up in the most delicious way.

"Your pussy feels so good wrapped around my cock.”

Young-Mi was never exactly good at dirty talk. Though she always loved it, she was never able to say the right things. So at this moment, all she was able to do was whimper, moan and squirm beneath Hyun-Ju.

Hyun-Ju’s hands moved to Young-Mi’s breasts, squeezing them gently as she continued her slow pace.

"Your tits feel amazing in my hands...” She kissed her neck softly. "Can you feel how deep I am inside you?” Hyun-Ju whispered against her ear "Your pussy is gripping me so perfectly..."

She started to play with her nipples, rolling them between her fingers as she thrusts into her. "I love how responsive your body is...” She kissed Young-Mi’s collarbone. "The way your tits bounce with each gentle thrust, the way your pussy squeezes my cock... it's all so fucking perfect.” Hyun Ju couldn’t help but let out quiet moans. A sound that was like music to Young-Mi’s ear.

“Your dick feels so good, Hyun-Ju.” Young-Mi said lowly. “Harder. Please, Hyun-Ju. Harder.”

“Goddamn...” Hyun-Ju began moving in controlled, powerful strokes, the desk creaking slightly underneath them.

“Oh fuck.” Young-Mi moaned. “Oh my God.” She gasped. Hyun-Ju’s cock felt so good inside her. Is this what they’ve been missing the whole time?

Hyun-Ju’s eyes rolled back in her head as she fucked her mercilessly, her balls slapping against Young-Mi’s ass with each powerful thrust. She reached between Young-Mi’s legs, her fingers finding her clit once more, rubbing it in fast, rough circles.

Young-Mi’s body arched as the pleasure was starting to become too much for her. Her head was spinning and she was suddenly very desperate for her release.

Feeling her walls tighten around her cock, Hyun-Ju knows Young-Mi’s close. She bites down on her shoulder, sucking hard to leave a mark as she fucked her even harder, her movements becoming erratic and desperate. “Come on, baby. Squeeze my fucking cock.”

Both of them were now a hot moaning mess, desperately chasing the high that had become a long, distant friend.

With one final, brutal thrust, Hyun-Ju buries herself inside Young-Mi, her cock pulsing as she unloads a massive load deep within her pussy.

As soon as Hyun-Ju cums, Young-Mi does as well. Whimpering loudly, she sat up to lean her body against Hyun Ju’s. Hyun-Ju held her in place, her arms wrapped around Young-Mi’s waist as she rode out her orgasm, filling Young-Mi to the brim with her hot seed.

Young-Mi breathed loudly. Her body solemnly rested on Hyun-Ju’s body, as if it completely relied on her for support.

Hyun-Ju stayed buried inside her, her cock twitching with the last few spurts of cum. She peppers soft kisses along Young-Mi’s neck and shoulder, a stark contrast to the rough fucking mere moments ago. Pulling back slightly, she meets Young-Mi’s gaze, her eyes still dark with lingering desire.

Hyun-Ju pulls out slowly, her cum dripping out of Young-Mi’s well-fucked pussy.

“You’re so beautiful. You’re everything to me. I don’t want to lose you again, Hyun-Ju. Please promise me you’ll never leave,” Young-Mi rested her hands on Hyun-Ju’s cheeks, tears starting to form in her eyes.

“I promise, Young-Mi. I’ll never leave you. I wouldn’t want to lose you all over again,” Hyun-Ju’s voice was soft and delicate. It comforted Young-Mi. It made her feel safe. “Let’s get cleaned up,” She smiled.

ੈ✩‧₊˚

[multi-fandom-imagine]

➤ [ 𝙿𝙸𝙽 ] 𝙰𝚛𝚊𝚐𝚘𝚛𝚗

A/n: He's so fine

[ PIN ] ; the sender pins the receiver against the wall.

Warnings: p in v, cream pie , wall sex , public sex , quickie.

Ara lath:My love

‘Ma’sal’shiral:My life

The battle was over. Helm’s Deep stood, bloodied but unbroken. Yet in Aragorn’s heart, there was only one thing that mattered.

you.

He found you in the stone corridors of the fortress, your hair damp from rain and battle, armor scratched but your ethereal beauty undimmed. The moment your eyes locked with his, everything else fell away—the corpses, the cries, even the dawn’s cold wind.

“Ara lath…” you whispered, voice trembling from exhaustion and emotion.

He didn’t answer.

He ran

He took you.

Your back hit the cold stone wall with a gasp, his body pressed to yours, armor clinking as his hands tore off his gloves. His mouth crashed into yours, rough, desperate, starved. You responded in kind, fingers threading through his tangled hair as your lips molded together, teeth clashing in a kiss that said I thought I’d lost you.

His body was trembling against yours, hands shaking as if he was grounding himself to hold you.

“Never—” he growled against your neck, voice hoarse and low as he shoved up your tunic, fingers sliding along your bare thighs. “—leave my sight again.”

“I didn’t,” you breathed, helping him tug aside your underclothes, hips arching toward his rough touch. “You just ran too fast.” Your voice holding a teasing edge as Aragon looked up at you.

His teeth grazed your pointed ear, and a low, dark chuckle rumbled from his chest. “Then I’ll make sure you stay close.”

In one swift motion, he undid his belt and freed himself, hissing as the head of his cock rubbed against your soaked folds. “You’re already ready for me…”

You sunk your lip into your lip, hands clutching his shoulder as a small whimper left your lips.“For you, always,” you panted, wrapping your legs around his waist as your head rested against the stone.

He drove into you with one deep, punishing thrust.

The air rushed from your lungs, your nails biting into leather as he buried himself fully, the stretch brutal and perfect. He didn’t give you time to adjust, he couldn’t, the need to feel you, to claim you after nearly losing you, was too great.

Because after that battle, he realized losing you became all too real.

Your body shook with each thrust and part of you swore that the wall would crumble if he was not holding you. Your moans bounced off the stone, swallowed by the fortress, his name spilling from your lips like a prayer. “Aragorn—Ara lath—harder—”

He growled and obeyed, pounding into you with wild need, one hand gripping your thigh, the other fisting in your hair to keep you locked to him.

“I thought I’d die without telling you I loved you,” he rasped. “I won’t let that happen again.”

You gasped, head falling back. “Then make me yours again… make me feel it…”

He captured your lips once more, brutal and searing, his cock plunging deep and fast, filling you with every thrust. You shattered around him with a cry, your body clenching tight. He grunted, slammed in once, twice more—and then came with a low, broken moan against your throat, spilling inside you, burying himself as deep as he could.

You clung to each other in the aftermath, your sweat mingling, foreheads pressed together.

“I will never leave your side again,” he swore, voice shaking.

You smiled weakly. “Good. Because I don’t think I can walk.”

He laughed against your lips, breathless and full of love, before kissing you once more—softly this time.

“Then I’ll carry you, Ma’sal’shiral. Always.”

[dadsbongos]

do u think u could write some of ur own personal headcanons for laios? i love the way u write him, it seems almost canon!

anon you dont know what fire youre messing with

also thank yew hehe :>

general headcanons:

Laios likes babysitting but does NOT want to be a real papa, he adores the idea of being the Cool And Strange Uncle but just imagining having to raise a whole person from scratch terrifies him

Usually conks out as soon as his head hits the pillow and he’s a damn heavy sleeper, he strikes me as someone that gets the dad snore when he’s a bit older

Likes doing physical activity in the moment, maintaining his stamina/strength n whatnot. But HAAATES the aftermath, he will not stop bitching about how gross he feels when sweaty

People scare him but I think men specifically scare him more than women because he mainly associates “men” with his old boarding school and military peers and his dad. Meanwhile the most callous woman he’s personally dealt with is like. his mom… who wasn’t particularly menacing and he doesn’t seem to resent her as much as he does his father

Most definitely called Chilchuck “chil” in their early days together and got his nuts sacked for the unintentional disrespect

Doesn’t drink often because the taste bugs him but when he does decide to, he drinks to get drunk. So it has to be a special occasion

The type of older brother to tell Falin food fills up your body from your feet to your head and when you’re full to your head you die

modern headcanons:

Definitely the type to unironically use little emoticons like :) or :] but his favorites are the cute ones like :3 , ^.^ , and :0

Would’ve played barbies with Falin as a kid and enjoyed it more than Falin did lol

If he were out with the group (marcille would have to threaten his life though, he would HATE “going out”) and Marcille or Falin deferred to him to deal with creepy men he’d feel like a superhero about it

Borderline mandated to have a high impact phone case by Falin because he’s GOT to be dropping that shit all the time. I just know it (projecting)

Would probably dislike resident evil as a series but thinks the premises are cool

Bouncing off that: he’s a big Undertale and Deltarune fan (definitely had a thing for Toriel at some point and probably thought sans was kind of overrated). Has ambivalent feelings towards fear & hunger, likes the atmosphere and item preservation and monsters but the assault scenes and overt brutalism ick him out from recommending it

Would go his whole life without an autism diagnosis until eventually held at metaphorical gunpoint by his friends, just for his parents to go “oh yeah we had you tested as a kid but didn’t want you using it as a crutch”

If monsters weren’t real he’d be cryptid autistic just so everyone’s on the same page

Cryptids major and ocean creatures minor type autism

I don’t think he’s straight by any measure but before he has the Realization, he’s the epitome of the girls gays and coleman meme

Segue omg: he has no desire to think more about his sexuality or gender than “i feel x” or “i choose y”. I think he identifies as Man(TM) but in a “its harder to explain i want to be a bog” way. If you referred to him with feminine pronouns or called him “girl” he seriously wouldn’t give a shit 

nsfw(?) headcanons:

Could never do casual, you would have to be committed or only know each other VERY distantly and only do it once. His ass wouldn’t know how to read your relationship if you were trying to do friends with benefits (he’s also very concerned with hurting people’s feelings so just the notion of accidentally doing that to someone he’s intimate with would kill him)

May seem strange coming from a bitch always talkin about fucking him, but I think Laios would actually have kind of a lower sex drive. Like he maybe doesn’t get needy very often but also isn’t NOT in the mood, so if you proposition him and he’s into you he’ll be like “okie :3”

That being said, when he does feel needy he’s NEEDY. It’s debilitating, he genuinely can’t do or think of anything else until his poor wee is taken care of :( poor guy aww

I can see him being a virgin until his early-mid 20s and having no shame about it (good for him go king, virginity is nothing to be ashamed of it literally doesn’t matter)

Also by virgin i mean rice purity test score of like 97

Swears he doesn’t like having his cock worshipped (says its weird and embarrassing) but he’s so flustered n drooly and babbles the whole time

Biter 

[bedlam-barbie]

Flesh

Or Attention part 8

Pairing: In-ho x recruiter!reader; The Salesman x recruiter!reader

Warnings: Graphic violence / physical assault (punching, facial injuries); psychopath!Salesman; obsessive!Salesman; possessiveness; jealousy; voyeuristic obsession; self-stitching

Word count: 4.3k

Summary: After In-ho walks in on them mid-act, the fallout is brutal—blood, silence, and something none of them can take back. The next morning, the boardroom turns into a battlefield of stolen glances and sharp words. She stays composed. In-ho seethes. And Gong Yoo? He bleeds, smiles, and watches her start to pull away—because now, the real game begins.

Author’s note: Hello hello, I apologize for this chapter being posted so late, I planned to have it done Friday, but I had a lot of Easter preparations to do and I also got violently drunk with my friends so I spent Saturday in pain. Anyway, I hope everyone who celebrates had a good Easter. And now let’s get on with the debauchery. This chapter is more a filler, it’s written from Gong Yoo perspective because I wanted to write the aftermath for the last chapter from the lens of a psychopath. I hope this was interesting for you! 

Masterlist

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Headquarters; 02:45 AM; the training center showers

The pain didn’t come right away.

She had screamed—sharp and high, a jagged sound that barely pierced the haze thick around him. He remembered it only in flashes. Her voice was like a storm, shouting something he couldn’t hear through the rush of blood in his ears. And then footsteps—In-ho’s, heavy, furious—thundering out of the room just as fast as he’d come in.

And then silence.

That was the thing about adrenaline—it softened the edges. It dulled the bruises, blurred the blood, numbed the way his jaw now clicked every time he moved it. It wasn’t until that silence wrapped itself around him like smoke, after the slam of the door and the echo of chaos faded, that he really felt it.

The ache. The heat. The triumph.

And then Gong Yoo laughed.

Head tipped back against the tile, he let it pour from him—full-bodied, cold, ecstatic. It vibrated through his ribs, sharp enough to make him wince, but he didn’t stop. Water was still cascading over him, pooling beneath his hips, washing diluted blood across the white floor. The metallic tang of it coated his tongue. His knuckles were split open, stinging. He hadn’t lifted them once.

That rage hadn’t been his. Not this time. That rage had belonged to the man who used to pretend he didn’t feel. And now? Now he’d broken the mask wide open.

Unmasked.Unhinged.Unraveling.

A shadow shifted in the corner of his vision.

“Leave it to you to laugh in a situation like this, psycho killer,” her voice muttered, low and rough—still breathless from everything they hadn’t finished.

She dropped to her knees beside him, bare and soaked, steam rising off her skin. Her hair clung to her shoulders, droplets trailing down the curve of her collarbone. She didn’t look afraid. Just lit—eyes still wide, chest still heaving, wildness dancing behind the worry in her expression.

Her fingers touched his chin, tilting his face up gently to assess the damage. Her brows drew together, the little crease between them deepening as she took in the busted lip, the swelling jaw, the blood.

Gong Yoo didn’t flinch. He just watched her.

Watched her worry.

Watched her touch him like he hadn’t just been torn from her body minutes ago.

“You’re cute when you worry, princess,” he rasped, voice rougher than he meant it to be. “Almost makes me think you care.”

His hand moved, slow and deliberate, reaching up to tuck a wet strand of hair behind her ear. His knuckles brushed her cheek, still damp with water and something else neither of them would talk about.

She didn’t pull away.

Not even when his fingertips lingered. Because whatever this was—this thing between them—it wasn’t about winning anymore.

“I think you’ll need stitches.”

Her voice was low, flat. The adrenaline had burned off, and what was left behind was cold water, flickering lights, and reality sinking its teeth in.

Gong Yoo exhaled through his nose, a short, sharp puff of breath that passed for a laugh. “No shit.”

It wasn’t funny. Not really. But the laugh came anyway—dry, cracked, almost bitter. The ache in his jaw bloomed fresh, hot and sharp, and still, he didn't mind.Pain didn’t register in the usual way. It was just data. An inconvenience. If anything, this kind of pain grounded him. It clarified things. This—all of this—felt like it had been a long time coming. Karmic, maybe. Deserved. And he wasn’t one to fight fate.

He’d been hit harder before. Bled more.But none of those wounds had come while he was still inside her heat, his hands on her skin, his breath tangled in her throat.

Gong Yoo leaned back against the slick tile, letting the hot water spill down his chest, mingling blood with steam. The sting sharpened the edges of his thoughts. He could still feel the echo of her wrapped around him—her breath in his ear, the tremble in her thighs, the way she hadn’t let go.

He could’ve focused on the fracture in his jaw or the ache in his ribs.

Instead, he watched her.

The water kissed its way down her chest, running over her skin like it had every right to. Her mascara was smudged into smoky bruises beneath her eyes, hair plastered to her cheeks in wet, tangled waves. She looked feral. Half-fucked. Bare.

And he couldn’t stop staring.

Gong Yoo tilted his head slightly, a slow drag of his gaze up her body, across her face. She wasn’t soft. She wasn’t perfect. But in that moment—wet and wild and burning beneath the surface—she was breathtaking.

It should’ve unnerved him, how much he liked looking at her like this.

But it didn’t. It thrilled him. It made something deep and dormant curl inside his chest like smoke through a locked door.

“I guess we made your boyfriend mad,” he muttered, the words half-muffled through a cracked grin. It stung to smile, but he did it anyway, because he didn’t get to look wounded. Not in front of her.

She let out a laugh—a single, bitter note. Then silence again.

She rose slowly, and something in her shifted as she did. Like whatever had cracked open between them in that shower was already hardening again. She offered him a hand.

He took it.

Her grip was steady, and she didn’t flinch as she helped him to his feet, her body brushing his as he leaned against the wall for support. Together, they moved through the steam and back into the locker room, dripping and wordless.

They walked back toward the lockers in silence. The echo of their steps bounced off tile and metal, the aftermath lingering in the spaces between. Gong Yoo wrapped a towel around his waist, grabbed another for his jaw, but he didn’t stop watching her—covert, careful, fascinated.

She didn’t speak. Just pulled her button up shirt over her damp skin, slow, methodical, as if layering on armor.

And still he watched. He always watched.

“You look good like that,” he said, voice low. “All ruined and pretending not to be.”

She paused, just slightly. Not enough to answer. Just enough to confirm she’d heard.

Gong Yoo smirked faintly, the expression dulling into something colder. He pressed the towel harder to his jaw. Blood bloomed into the cotton like ink in water.

It wasn’t the sex that haunted him. That had never been the problem. He’d fucked her before. In locker rooms, in hotels, against glass and mirrors and desks. Fast. Hard. Cruel. Gentle. Drunk. Sober. It didn’t matter.

But this?

The way she had looked at him just before In-ho walked in?

That wasn’t fucking.That was connection.And that was dangerous.

He didn’t feel fear. Not in the normal sense. But he understood risk. And she was becoming one. She was a liability he couldn’t stop touching.And for a man like him, that meant only one of two things.

Keep her closer.

Or burn her out before she got beneath his skin.

“You speak too much for someone who just got punched in the face and slammed his head into a wall.”

Her voice cut through the steam like a scalpel—sharp, sterile, emotionless. Mechanical, almost. Like she wasn’t talking to a man she’d just had wrapped around her body, but to some fractured, inconvenient machine that needed repair.

Gong Yoo’s eyes tracked her as she pulled her trousers over wet skin, her movements efficient, unbothered. But he saw it. The tiny falter in her fingers. The way her jaw clenched just a little too tightly. She was masking. Just like he was.

She didn't look at him.

She never did when she was putting herself back together.

“You might have a concussion,” she added, tugging at the waistband and zipping up with a sharp motion. Still not looking.

Gong Yoo leaned his shoulder against the cold lockers, one arm across his ribs, towel now stained red in his other hand. His lip throbbed. His jaw ached. He could feel blood trickling down his side from where In-ho’s knuckles had landed with surgical precision.

He watched as she pulled on her shirt next, wet fabric clinging to her body in a way that made it hard to focus on anything but the heat he hadn’t burned off yet. She smoothed it down like she could erase what had happened. Like putting herself back in black cotton and control would overwrite the taste of her name on his tongue, the feel of her nails down his back.

And then, under her breath—quiet but cold enough to frost glass:

“Or maybe that’s just your personality.”

He let the silence hang.

She was baiting him. Testing how far he’d snap before losing control again. She wanted him to rise to it, to throw something sharp and cruel back at her like he always did.

But he didn’t.

He just smiled. Slow. Bloody. Crooked.

“Now that’s the voice I missed.”

She finally looked at him.

That was her mistake.

Because the moment their eyes met, his smile darkened—turned into something more feral, more personal. His pupils were blown wide, eyes glinting under the harsh lighting, raw and unreadable.

“You act like you’re stitched together better than me,” he said, voice low and even, “but you were shaking just as much as I was.”

She didn’t answer. But she didn’t deny it either.

He stepped forward—barefoot, towel low on his hips, chest streaked with blood and water. Every muscle in his body burned, but none of it stopped him. He didn’t limp. Didn’t stagger.

Predators don’t show damage. Not even when they’re leaking red down to their knees.

He stopped just short of her, close enough that the heat between them rose again—less lust now, more warpath.

“You’re terrified of what this is,” Gong Yoo murmured, tilting his head. He leaned closer, his breath ghosting her ear, voice barely a whisper now.

Her exhale was sharp, like a slap. But she didn’t move away. Not yet.

He reached out, fingers brushing the hem of her shirt, not enough to grab—just enough to remind her.

“You don’t run from things you regret,” he said. “You run from things you want too much.”

Then he pulled back, slow and deliberate, letting the distance grow like smoke rising between them. He turned toward his locker without another word, tossing the bloodied towel aside like it meant nothing.

But his mind didn’t drift. His thoughts didn’t fade.

They stayed anchored—tied to the memory of her body, the tremble in her voice, the way she tried to leave without flinching and still looked back.He’d bled for her. Now he’d wait.

Because obsession wasn't something Gong Yoo fought.

It was something he fed.

Headquarters next morning; 09:00 AM ; boardroom number 013

The room smelled like control—polished steel, burnt coffee, and tension no one dared acknowledge.

Gong Yoo stepped inside without hesitation, a coffee in his right hand, steam curling lazily into the sterile air. His hair was perfect, not a strand out of place. Coral-grey suit, crisp white shirt, black tie knotted with military precision. He looked immaculate.

Except for his face.

The bruising along his jaw bloomed like watercolors beneath the skin—deep, violet, fresh. The stitches across his lower lip and brow were clean but unmistakable. Hand-stitched. Unmedicated. Personal.

No one said a word about it.

When he entered, the others were already seated. Il-nam sat at the head of the obsidian table, fingers steepled, eyes gleaming with unreadable amusement. To his right: the Frontman, silent and stone-faced, arms crossed over a charcoal suit. To Il-nam’s left, the Masked Officer—a presence more than a person.

Gong Yoo offered them a polite nod, smile, lazy, undisturbed. Then, without waiting, he slid into the seat next to her.

Her perfume hit him first, warm amber and vanilla with that unmistakable cigarette smoke. She didn’t look at him. Didn’t flinch. But her posture shifted, just slightly. Enough for him to notice. 

“Salesman. Nice of you to join us,” Il-nam’s voice broke the silence like a grin with teeth. “I trust you had a… restful evening?”

Amusement dripped from every syllable. The Host didn’t even bother to hide the gleam in his eyes, watching Gong Yoo like a king indulging his favorite jester—dangerous, but entertaining enough to keep around.

Keep laughing, old man, Gong Yoo thought coolly, taking his seat without a glance at anyone but her. I’m not the one circling the grave.

He didn’t say it, of course. He had no need. Not yet. The room was already pulsing with unspoken aggression. Everyone could feel it—the crackling fuse of succession anxiety, made worse by Il-nam’s looming death and the blood still fresh under Gong Yoo’s fingernails.

Instead, he let out a perfectly-timed laugh. Smooth. Unbothered. Dangerous in its charm.

A lazy smirk curved his lips, though it tugged hard at the split in his mouth. The pain was a sharp reminder—but he didn’t flinch. He liked pain. It was honest.

“You know me, Host,” he said casually, like they were discussing the weather and not last night’s near-homicide. “Trouble always seems to find me.”

That earned a twitch from In-ho.

“Alright,” the Frontman cut in, voice like steel. “Let’s get started. We can save the gossip for after business is handled.”

There it was. Tension, coiled and sharp, slicing through the table like a wire pulled too tight. Even behind the mask, Gong Yoo could feel In-ho’s stare drilling into him like a threat.

Good.

He didn't bother to look away. Instead, he leaned back, spreading himself in the chair like he owned it. One arm draped lazily across the backrest. His body language was a study in studied arrogance—bored, amused, inviting war.

He took a slow sip of coffee. Then, casually, as if a thought had just occurred to him:

“Say, Host—do you remember the 2015 winner? The one with the dying wife I recruited?” His tone was curious, even wistful. But his words were acid.

In-ho didn’t move. But the shift in atmosphere was immediate. There were only four people in the room who knew exactly who he was talking about. Only four who knew the Frontman’s name.

Il-nam’s smile widened. The bastard lived for this.

“Ah yes,” he replied, leaning back with a hum. “What was it about him that made you bring him in?”

A beat.Then: tap. In-ho’s fingers hit the table. Once.

A warning. Measured. Sharp.But Gong Yoo had never cared for rules, and he despised warnings. He paused, drawing out the silence, letting it fill the room like smoke. From the corner of his eye, he felt movement. Her.

She turned slightly in her seat—no words, no glare. Just a subtle shift. Under the table, her foot found his ankle, nudging—not hard enough to hurt. Just enough to interrupt. To pull. A leash, maybe. Or a lifeline.

He ignored it. Instead, he smiled wider—stitches straining against his skin.

“I could see the rot,” he said, voice silken and cold. “So thick you could smell it. Hiding under the badge. I think I recruited him the day he was fired, actually. Poor bastard. Broken down. Wife dying. Hands shaking. Just waiting for someone to hand him a knife and call it mercy.”

Il-nam laughed quietly, but Gong Yoo wasn’t finished.

“Cops have always been my favorite,” he continued, turning slightly toward In-ho without looking directly at him. “There’s something poetic about it. A man meant to protect the rules, reduced to breaking them just to survive. They fall the hardest. And the loudest.”

Another sip of coffee. Still smiling.

“In the end, he wasn’t hard to flip. Men like him never are. Give them a reason and they’ll burn down everything they swore to protect.”

He didn’t say In-ho’s name.He didn’t have to. Because the only thing louder than the words spoken… was the silence that followed.

Another sip of coffee. Still smiling. The words hung in the air, heavy and pointed. And though Gong Yoo didn’t look directly at In-ho, he felt the reaction before he saw it.

A flex of the jaw beneath the mask. A subtle shift in posture—shoulders squaring, spine rigid. The kind of micro-expression only someone studying him would notice. The kind Gong Yoo lived for. A flicker of movement at In-ho’s fingers—tapping once more. This time slower. Not a warning. A promise. He wouldn’t retaliate here. Not in this room. Not in front of Il-nam. But the Frontman didn’t forget slights.

And Gong Yoo had just carved a fresh one across his throat. But before the tension could fully calcify, a voice broke through. Cool. Measured. Feminine.

“Perhaps we should refocus.” Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t cut. It didn’t need to.It slid through the room like a scalpel—precise, cool, deliberately measured.

Gong Yoo didn’t look at her immediately. He didn’t need to. He’d felt the shift the moment she spoke. The way the room stilled. The breathlessness that only came when a predator stepped into a cage full of other predators and still dared to take control. He turned his head slowly.

She still hadn’t looked at him once—until now. And when she did, it wasn’t fury he saw. It was something far more dangerous.Composure. Her face was a mask. All poise and professionalism, not a crack in sight. But her eyes—her eyes were sharp enough to draw blood. There was steel in them. The kind that cut quietly. The kind that never missed.

Beneath the polished black table, her foot found his ankle again.

Not flirtatious.

Not playful.

A push.

A command.

Enough.

And still, the corner of Gong Yoo’s mouth twitched upward. The pain from the stitched lip was immediate, but he welcomed it. A reminder that restraint was never his strong suit. Especially when it came to her.

“Much as I love this trip down memory lane,” she continued, her gaze fixed on him with unwavering control, “we need to begin monitoring the shortlisted players for the next cycle.”

There was no tremble in her voice. But there was something else. Something he recognized—resistance. She was trying not to show how deeply last night had rooted itself under her skin. That made it better. Sweeter. She didn’t want him to know he still lived in her blood. That’s what made it fun.

Gong Yoo took another sip of his coffee, slow and unbothered, letting the silence draw out just long enough to make it feel deliberate.

“Of course, princess,” he said, voice soaked in false sweetness. “Some of us have been particularly distracted these days.”

It was a shot across the bow, and they both knew it. She didn’t flinch. Just blinked once. But her hand—resting perfectly still against the cool surface of her tablet—tightened ever so slightly.

Barely noticeable. But he noticed. He always noticed.That’s what made him good at his job. And devastatingly good at this.

Across the table, Il-nam chuckled lightly, breaking the stillness like a blade dulled by time.

“She’s right,” the old man said. “Let’s not dwell on the past. Not when the present is proving to be so much more... interesting.”

Gong Yoo tilted his head slightly, giving the Host a smile that was all teeth and elegance. No warmth. Just shape.

“Apologies, Host,” he said smoothly, reclining back in his seat. “I got nostalgic.”

It wasn’t nostalgia. It was dissection. It was control.

He finally allowed his eyes to drift away from her, though his mind didn’t follow. Not fully. He was still watching her—the way her shoulders stayed squared, how she didn’t meet In-ho’s gaze either, how her chin tilted just a fraction higher than usual. He could almost hear her heartbeat. The rhythm had changed. She was masking it well, but he knew her tells.

And In-ho? Still hadn’t moved. The Frontman was a monolith of silence. The kind of stillness that made most people think he was calm. But Gong Yoo knew better. Stillness like that wasn’t calm. It was concentration.Waiting for the moment to strike.

Gong Yoo’s eyes flicked briefly to the hand In-ho had tapped against the table. No motion now. Just the faintest tension in the knuckles, as if he were resisting the urge to carve a hole through the wood.

Good. Let it fester.

The room exhaled around them, but the tension didn’t dissolve—it coiled. Tighter. Quieter. A noose slipping unnoticed around every neck. Let them breathe. He’d tighten it later. Sure, In-ho had landed a few hits last night—impressive, if predictable. But bruises faded. Stitches healed. And the game?

The game was nowhere near over.

Not when the prize was sitting just inches from him, composed in sleek black and silence, looking like sin draped in professionalism. Her. Gong Yoo didn’t bother pretending to care about the meeting. Numbers. Projections. Logistics. He’d read the files already. Memorized them, actually. He always did. But paper didn’t interest him the way people did. And the room today was buzzing with people pretending not to come undone.

So instead, he watched. The Frontman sat stiff and silent, flanked by authority and tension, his mask unreadable but his energy loud. Controlled. Compressed. One spark away from combustion. And her—the dancer. His dancer. Not in claim. But in the way she moved through the room like she owned the floor and didn’t care who bled on it.

She addressed the table, spoke to Il-nam, reported data in that honey-dipped, glass-shard tone of hers. But when it came time to acknowledge In-ho? She didn’t look at him. Not once. Not when he clarified her points. Not when he gave direct orders. Not even when he said her name.

She nodded. She smiled. She performed.

But never for him. It was brilliant.It was brutal.

And Gong Yoo watched it all like a man admiring a well-placed blade in someone else’s back. That was the first crack.Small. Almost invisible. But he saw it. No anger. No bite. Just neutrality. Indifference. A polite mask drawn over something that used to burn hotter.

And that?

That was so much better than rage. Rage meant she still felt. Neutrality meant she was starting to let go. And he knew what that looked like—he’d cultivated it in countless others. That slow withdrawal. That deliberate unhooking of emotion from obligation. A woman peeling herself out of a bond that had once meant something.

She was unraveling. And not because of Gong Yoo. Because of In-ho.

He didn’t need to do anything. Not today. Not yet. The Frontman was digging his own grave with every command, every stiff glance, every silent expectation she no longer cared to meet.

So for now, he was content to watch.

Not listen—Il-nam’s voice was just white noise now, a dull drone swallowed by the hum of the overhead lights and the faint tick of the polished clock. Gong Yoo’s coffee sat forgotten, cooling untouched beside his hand. He had no need for caffeine. What stimulated him was seated to his left, exquisitely unaware—or pretending to be.

Her.

His eyes traced her like a map he’d already memorized but still found himself redrawing—over and over, each line deeper than the last.

The way her hair framed her face like a halo. An illusion, of course. There was nothing angelic about her. She wore ruin like perfume and carried danger in the press of her lips. But still—he watched as a lock slipped free, and she tucked it behind her ear with that same absentminded grace she always did, exposing the soft line of her neck.

Delicate. Vulnerable. Designed, almost, to tempt a blade.

Her blouse clung just right—tailored to accentuate without revealing, framing her body in soft lines and sharp edges. Beneath the table, her legs crossed. Fabric shifted. Her skirt rode up just slightly.

Not enough to be indecent. Just enough to invite imagination.

And Gong Yoo, despite the restraint he wore like armor, was not without imagination.

But his wasn’t the kind that lived in fantasies. No, his was darker. Hungrier. Focused not on possession, but on the slow unraveling of control. On what it looked like when something perfect cracked.

He didn’t think about touching her.Not here. Not now. This was better. Watching was better.

Because here, in this glass prison of power and silence, she didn’t know he was studying her every movement. Or maybe she did. Maybe that was part of the performance too. Either way, he was in no rush. He had learned long ago that the most beautiful things were always the slowest to bleed.

And Gong Yoo? He would wait.

Because he knew her well enough to understand that once she detached? She wouldn’t run into In-ho’s arms. She’d fall.

And he’d be the one waiting to catch her. Not with safety. But with fire.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

To add to the bit about Chrom and his "one sword and a world of troubles line": that's EXACTLY what his own father left him. He was left Falchion and the aftermath of his father's brutal attempted genocide, one that nearly destroyed his own kingdom in the process. Chrom was exposed to his people's hatred from his earliest memories, and if you pay attention he doesn't even really LIKE his people and kinda thinks of them as fickle. He doesn't understand how Emm forgives them for their actions toward her.

But he tries, anyway. He leads his halidom anyway. He shepherds his people ANYWAY. Because it's the opposite of what his father would do and he clearly dislikes his father more than we see, and he wanted to DO BETTER by his own child--to leave them a world where their only inheritance was Falchion and the problems he caused or failed to address.

Basically Chrom is one of the big reasons I like Awakening because that's such a nuanced and flawed but generally good person right there.

.

[lanalace]

Our Last Hunt - Part 4

Yandere Caleb x Reader

[Chapter 3]

Summary: Y/n made a mistake that changed her life forever. Once a fearless hunter of blood-sucking fiends, she is now becoming the very thing she once swore to kill. How can she live with herself? And how will her immortal brother—the one who raised her, trained her, and protected her react when he discovers she’s turning into a creature of the night?

Warning: Manipulation & Pseudo Incest

Word count: 5.8k 🍎🍏

@mcdepressed290

Y/n woke tangled in his limbs, the crushing weight of him pinning her to the mattress. A wall of bare chest rose and fell against her cheek, too steady, too calm, utterly unyielding. Caleb’s arm was slung around her waist like a shackle wrapped in silk, deceptively soft. His fingers twitched slightly where they curled at her hipbone, possessive even in sleep. For one disorienting moment, Y/n didn’t move, didn’t even breathe, too afraid that the slightest shift would break whatever fragile spell had lulled them into this quiet, horrifying aftermath.

Then it hit her, a suffocating wave. The unbearable weight of everything he’d taken, the raw, brutal memory of the night before. Last night was supposed to be the breaking point, the moment she shattered free. Instead, it was the breaking point, but in a way that had utterly consumed her. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her heart to stop its frantic, stuttering ache, willing away the sick taste of regret in her mouth. 

Her body ached, too. But with pain, but a deep, aching tenderness that felt like a brand. The bond hummed low in her chest like a drugged pulse, slow and syrupy, still feeding her the insidious memory of his touch. His mouth. His blood in her veins. ‘He could’ve killed me.’ she thought, the realization a chilling echo of every fear she’d ever harbored about him. ‘And I let him do everything but.’ The true horror wasn’t the surrender itself, but the insidious, undeniable truth….. it was how much she craved to surrender again.

She shifted slightly, just enough to feel his warmth bleed back into her skin, a comforting blanket that felt like a suffocating trap. She hated how safe it made her feel, how easy it would be to simply nestle closer and pretend they weren’t a disaster, two broken things entwined in a lie.

A flicker of movement—Caleb stirred. His grip tightened almost imperceptibly as he exhaled softly through his nose, the kind of sound that hinted at deep contentment. Like he was dreaming of her. Like this was what he wanted. A life where she stayed beside him, bound and compliant, her will subsumed by his. 

Her stomach twisted, a nauseous lurch. She turned her face against his chest, biting back a bitter, hysterical laugh. ‘You really think you won, don’t you?’

Slowly, deliberately, she lifted her hand, her fingertips brushing the warm skin of his collarbone. He didn’t wake, but the muscle beneath her touch twitched. That was all she needed—proof that his body still responded to hers without question, a primal, undeniable connection. The bond shackled her but she was coming to understand that it enslaved him. It had turned obsession into a relentless, burning need. 

He was obsessed. He always had been, but now she understood the depths of it.

She remembered the way he’d looked at her in the dark hours before dawn, like she wasn’t a person at all, but some sacred, forbidden relic he’d spilled blood to worship. Her blood had never been enough for him. She had never been enough. He needed it all, her mind, her body, her very will.

But what he didn’t understand, what she was just now realizing herself with terrifying clarity, was that he had needs, too. Weaknesses. And she, in her new, unwilling power, was the biggest one.

Her fingers drifted lower, feather-light, barely grazing the hollow of his throat, just where his pulse beat strongest, a frantic rhythm beneath her touch. He shifted again, a low groan rumbling in his chest, and this time, his breathing hitched.

‘Good. Wake up needy. Start the day already wanting more of me, already desperate.’ A cold, steel resolve began to solidify in her core, pushing back the lingering shame. ‘I’ll play your game, Caleb.’ she thought, her touch still impossibly soft, a whisper against his skin. ‘But I’m not playing to lose. I’m playing to win everything back.’

She pulled back just enough, her body aching with the effort to resist the magnetic pull, to meet his eyes as they opened, dark and slow and heavy with sleep, like pools of liquid obsidian.

“Morning.” she whispered, her voice soft as a secret, a dangerous invitation.

A slow blink. A lazy, pleased curl of his lips. “You stayed.” He murmured, his voice rough from sleep, disbelief and relief warring in the single word.

She gave him a small, close-lipped smile, utterly unreadable. A mask. Then she leaned in, her lips brushing his jaw, a fleeting caress, before she whispered. “Where could I go that you wouldn’t find?”

And just like that, she saw it. The flicker in his gaze. Surprise. Hunger, sharp and immediate. And then, a terrifying, vulnerable flicker of hope. ‘Hooked.’ she thought, withdrawing slightly, the subtle movement a calculated retreat. 

Her traitorous body still responded to him, aching for his closeness, a physical pull she fought against with every ounce of her will. But she had her role now, a part to play. She’d be the drug he couldn’t get enough of, the tantalizing whisper he chased into madness. She'd become his perfect addiction. And like any good dealer, she'd make sure his hunger outlasted her supply

Then, when he was soft and open and desperate for her like a helpless addict, she’d rip it all out from under him. ‘Let’s see how it feels to be the one on your knees. Let’s see what happens when the one who owns you is the one who breaks you.’

The smile he gave her was soft and disbelieving, like a man waking into a dream he didn’t think he deserved. She let him have it—just for a moment, a fleeting illusion. Caleb reached for her, his fingers brushing her jaw, tentative, hesitant despite everything he’d done to her body the night before. 

That alone told her how off-balance he was, how deeply her facade was working. The man who had broken her down piece by piece now searched her eyes as if afraid she might vanish, as if her presence was a fragile mirage. ‘He doesn’t trust this.’ she thought, studying the minute furrow in his brow, the slight tension around his eyes. ‘Good. The more uncertain he is, the more control I gain.’

“I can feel you, you know?” he murmured, his hand sliding around to the back of her neck, his thumb tracing the line of her spine. Her heart stopped and she stiffened, not believing she was caught before she even started. “Even when you sleep. Like you’ve soaked into me, become part of my blood.”

He didn’t further elaborate so she figured she was in the clear… for now. She offered no answer, just let her lashes drop, as though she were overwhelmed by his words, by his presence. He liked when she was vulnerable, small, wounded but forgiving. She could be that for now, a compliant doll.

His thumb traced her lower lip, a possessive, intimate gesture. “You’re hungry.” It wasn’t a question. Her body betrayed her too easily now, a constant traitor. The ache in her throat had bloomed steadily since waking, a dull, dragging throb that demanded attention. She hadn’t fed since he’d drained himself for her last night.

The memory flashed too vividly in her mind. Her lips pressed to his neck, his blood, thick and burning, sliding down her throat as his voice coaxed her through it, a dark symphony of surrender. ‘I should’ve bitten his throat instead.’ she thought, her pulse stuttering at the memory, a sudden surge of cold, ruthless power. ‘But not yet. Not like this. Not for mercy.’

She tilted her head into his hand, a seemingly yielding gesture, and whispered, “Are you offering?”

Caleb’s eyes lit up, not just with desire, but with something deeper, more profound. Worship. Adoration that bordered on terrifying. “I’m always offering.” he said, his voice quiet, rough with unbridled longing. “You don’t even have to ask. My blood is yours.”

She rose onto her elbows, the blanket sliding away from her, exposing her naked form, pale in the dim light. She hesitated for a moment, contemplating if she could be a bit bolder, if she could push him further, before sliding her leg over him, straddling his hips with slow, deliberate movements. 

His hands instantly found her waist, his touch reverent again, almost careful, as if afraid to spook her and she’d bolt, a wild thing. ‘I could tear his throat open right now. Drain him dry. He’d let me. He’d welcome it.’ The thought was cold, sharp, a seductive whisper. ‘But that wouldn’t be enough. He needs to suffer.’

She looked into his eyes, her favorite part about him, the universe she’d once lost herself in. She always saw something so vast and sparkling there, something that had never failed to captivate her. Even now, as she stared at him, they hadn't changed, still holding that hypnotic depth. A small, cold smile graced her face before she deliberately turned her gaze to his neck, to the pulsating vein beneath the skin. 

She flicked her eyes up to his once more, silently asking for permission. Caleb chuckled, a low, pleased sound, turning his head slightly, still watching her from the corners of his eyes as he offered himself to her. 

Y/n leaned down, her lips brushing the side of his neck, letting her breath ghost over the warm skin before she pressed a soft, gentle kiss there. The way she’d seen him do to her, over and over, a tender predator. Her fangs itched, a sharp, insistent craving. 

The scent of him was thicker here, intoxicating. Warm and dark and brimming with the bond’s addictive pull. “Don’t be sweet.” he whispered, his voice rough with restraint, a desperate plea. “You’ll ruin me.” 

‘I want to.’ she thought, a cold, fierce joy blooming in her chest. ‘I want to ruin every inch of you, piece by agonizing piece.’

She bit down before she could hesitate. Not too hard, not too deep, but just enough to pierce. Enough to remind him. Enough to assert control. Caleb gasped, his hands tightening on her hips, his body arching instinctively as her mouth sealed around the small, precise mark. 

His blood rushed in, familiar and rich, a flood of power and heat that curled through her insides like wildfire, exhilarating and terrifying. She drank, slow and measured, letting him feel her intention, her deliberate control, every drop a defiance. She didn’t lose herself like she had on previous nights, didn't drown in the dizzying rapture. 

‘Maybe because I’m not starving like before, or maybe it’s because he completed the bond, sealing this connection.’ It didn’t matter. She was elated that she wasn’t trying to force herself onto his cock again, wasn’t consumed by that desperate, physical need. Though she could feel herself growing wet for him, the devious pull of the bond and his blood was there, still egging her on to take pleasure in this moment, but now she was of sound mind. She could enjoy it in measured intervals.

She couldn’t help the low moan that slipped past her lips. Drinking from him was always so intense, the taste of him perfect, intoxicating. She knew, with absolute certainty, she’d never get tired of it. But she’d never give in again either; she owned this moment now. Not him. Even as she felt her pussy clench around nothing, even as she felt his hard member twitch underneath her, she would control it. 

The bond flared, a hot, desperate throb. She felt him shudder beneath her as he rolled his hips against her slick cunt, a raw, unconscious plea to sheath himself within her. He could feel her desire for him, mentally and physically. The way she soaked him as she fed was almost too much for him to bear.

His hands slid down, grabbing the fat of her ass and squeezing her, keeping her still, keeping her close as he rolled his hips into her again. Slow and hard, making sure she felt every inch of his length, every desperate inch. He wanted to be inside of her again, to feel her, to connect, to own. He craved the contact like an addict, a desperate, undeniable hunger. His fingers skimmed up her back, desperate for proof she was still there, still his, still within his grasp.

She pulled away, licking the bite clean with slow, deliberate precision as he blinked up at her, dazed and unblinking, lost in the afterglow. “You taste really good.” she murmured, watching the reaction bloom in his face, a slow, dawning realization.

A twitch at the corner of his mouth. Jaw clenched tight, a struggle for control. Eyes too soft. Too open. Too pleased. He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. She shifted her weight to lie against him once more, settling into the illusion. 

She rested her head against his chest again, a small knowing smirk evident on her lips as she feels how much he wants her. His heart beat just a little too fast, a frantic drum against her ear. “Thank you.” she whispered, quieter now, her voice a deceptive note of tenderness. 

Caleb sighed, realizing that she wasn’t as needy as he was, that her hunger was sated, and instead ran his fingers threaded through her hair comfortingly, possessively, using the other to pull the sheet over them, drawing them into a cocoon of false intimacy. 

“You never have to thank me, little one.” He meant it. He didn’t feed her for her gratitude. He enjoyed it even more than she did, the ultimate act of possession.

They lay together in silence, his fingers trailing over her back like he couldn’t stop touching her even if he tried. Y/n let him. Let herself breathe in his scent, let the weight of his arm drape across her waist like it belonged there. But the ache in her chest didn’t dull. It sharpened with every minute that passed, a steel thorn beneath her breastbone, a reminder of the price of this fragile peace.

As she laid there, she pondered on how to broach the subject, the pink elephant in the room. Praying her acting skills would suffice, she shifted slightly, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes. There was no trace of a smile on her face now. Her gaze was direct, unwavering. “We need to talk, Caleb. Really talk.”

Caleb stilled, instantly alert, every muscle tensing. “What is it?” His voice was low, wary. 

She propped herself up on his chest, the sheet falling away from her shoulder, exposing her bare skin again. She didn’t bother to cover herself. Vulnerability, real or not, had its uses; it disarmed him. “This…” She said softly, motioning between them, a sweeping gesture that encompassed their tangled limbs, the bond, the night. “Can’t keep happening the way it’s been. Not anymore.”

His brow furrowed, a shadow passing over his face. “Y/n—”

“I’m not saying no.” She paused, biting at the corner of her lip, deliberately slowing her words, letting them sink in. 

“Not entirely. But last night… I made that choice. I wanted it. I wanted you. But you need to understand something, Caleb.” She sat up completely now, pulling away from his warmth, letting the cool air tighten across her skin. Her still wet, still warm cunt spread around his cock at this change of position and he couldn’t help the way his hard on twitched. Caleb let out a shaken breath, eyes dropping to her perfect breasts for a second before focusing a little too hard on her face. 

She enjoyed flash of torment that crossed his features, welcomed it. It was proof she was getting to him. “You made me what I am. You marked me. You tied me to you in a way that I didn’t ask for. And I’ve been drowning in it, Caleb. Every time I try to breathe, you’re already there. Inside me. Pulling. Demanding. Consuming me.”

He narrowed his eyes, just barely, a flicker of something dangerous. His hand clenched against the sheets, his knuckles white. She didn’t let up, looking away from him, she continued. “I’m angry, Caleb.” she said, her voice low and even. 

“I’m confused. I hate everything you’ve done. But I also feel so desperate just to be near you, a craving that scares me more than anything. I don’t know if it’s love, Caleb. It might just be the bond. That power… And you’ve been using it. Using it to keep me soft. To keep me pliant. To keep me yours without my consent.”

His mouth opened, a protest forming, but she raised a hand, stopping him cold. “Let me finish.” She turned to face him fully now, her eyes clear, unwavering, stripping away all pretense.

“I’m not saying I’m leaving. I’m not even saying I want to. I just…” she sighed, running her hand through her hair. She needed to laced her frustration with the truth perfectly. “If we’re going to survive this— if I’m going to survive you— things have to change. Drastically.”

He swallowed hard, his gaze fixed on hers, searching. “What are you asking from me?”

“Control.” she said simply, the word a blade of steel. “Over myself. Over my choices. I want you to listen to me. I want you to trust that I’m yours, not just because you made me this way, not just because you’ve forced this connection upon me.” 

Caleb stared at her, something stormy and unreadable flickering across his face, a battle waging in his dark eyes. 

“I want agency,” she said, softer now, yet with an unbreakable conviction. “In whatever this is becoming. I want to know that if I stay, it’s because I choose to. Not because the bond makes it easier. I want us to go back— to before you ever changed me. When you spoiled me, when you were still… just my brother. Back then, you actually listened to me. My voice mattered to you.”

“I can give this a chance.” she whispered, the words a chilling promise. “But only if you stop treating me like I’m breakable. Or like you own me. I’m a person in this… relationship too. So from now on, we talk. We decide things together. And if I want space, you have to give it to me. No questions asked.”

He nodded so quickly it almost startled her, a desperate agreement. “Ok.” he breathed, the word torn from him. 

“You’re right to want that. I’ll do whatever you need to make this work. Let’s start over and build from the beginning.” He said so genuinely that she almost held real hope for a real relationship.

Her smile was faint. Pleased but calculated. She gave him a playful angry look, one she was prone to giving before all of this bloodshed. “You promise?” she said,  as her finger pointed to his chest. “You can’t push yourself on me anymore, got it?”

“Ok, ok.” He chuckled at her antics, raising his hands in defeat. “I promise.” he whispered, his sparkled with something almost only her image within them, utterly consumed. “I swear it.” He spoke as he took her hand within his and places a gentle kiss upon the tips.

To his surprise, she leaned forward and kissed him. Deep, slow, like she meant it. Like she was sealing a pact, a binding agreement. And when she pulled away, she let her touch linger for a moment. Let him think she was easing into him again, inch by inch. Trusting. Settling.

But inside, cold and determined, she was already preparing for the game ahead. She would give him just enough. Feed the bond with softness and warmth, lull him into a false sense of security. And then, without warning, she’d pull away. Let him feel the stinging, unbearable agony of her absence. Let him wonder what it meant, every time she turned her back or held his gaze too long without speaking. Because if he wanted to tie his existence to hers, he’d have to suffer for it. One pull, one strategic retreat at a time.

Satisfied, she slipped from the bed like a shadow, her bare feet silent against the cold floor. The sheet slid off her hips, forgotten, a discarded skin, as she disappeared into the adjoining room, leaving nothing but an impression of cool air in her wake.

🍎🍏

Caleb didn’t move. Not at first. He lay there, staring at the space she’d left behind, feeling cold without the warm weight of her body pressed against him. It frustrated him, a raw, demanding ache, but he ignored it.

‘This is progress.’ He let the weight of her words settle into the hollow of his ribs, dissecting them, finding the subtle truths. She was still his. Not entirely. Not in the way he wanted, not yet. 

But she hadn’t left. She hadn’t run. She’d chosen him. Or at least, said she would. On her terms. A bitter, self-deprecating laugh caught in his throat. ‘She wants agency. Control. A say in what this was between us. And she’d asked for it like it cost her something. As if I haven’t already given her everything.’ As if he wouldn’t tear the world apart if she asked him to, lay it bleeding at her feet.

Caleb exhaled slowly and pressed a hand to his face, dragging his fingers through his hair. She’d looked at him like she meant every word. Fierce. Steady. Honest. Like her old self. But he’d felt it… beneath the steel in her voice, the brewing distance. 

He’d felt the bond thrumming in her blood, a frantic, desperate rhythm. Felt her heart stumble when he kissed her back, a physical acknowledgment of her true feelings. She was still tangled in him, even if she wants she to keep herself separate, even if she didn’t want to be his. She was lying to herself. Maybe even to him.

And yet, he didn’t care. If this was how she wanted to play it then so be it. If giving her the illusion of power meant keeping her willing, letting her believe she was the one with leverage, he’d do it. He’d give her the illusion of freedom, the intoxicating taste of control, just to keep her soft when she came back, just to keep her close.  

Because she would come back. She always did. 

That was the exquisite cruelty of the bond. Not just its power over her, but his own unraveling beneath it. She didn’t understand, not fully, not yet. She couldn’t understand how much of himself he’d buried, how much of his monstrous nature he’d restrained, just to hold her without breaking her. How much agonizing effort it took to let her walk away from him, even for a moment.

His hand dropped to the mattress. Gripped the sheets where her body had lain, fingers curling into the cooling heat she’d left behind, still clinging to her memory. He would behave. 

For now.

He would listen, give her choices, let her believe in the shape of the boundaries she’d created. But the moment she truly began to genuinely pull away… the moment she tried to make good on that subtle threat of distance, to starve him of her scent, her voice, her blood— he wouldn’t be able to stop. 

‘You think I’m dangerous when it comes to you, meimei.’ he thought, breathing deep, savoring the chilling truth. ‘You have no idea how dangerous I can be. You haven’t seen what I become when I’m desperate. When I’m truly afraid of losing you.’ He closed his eyes and listened to her moving about in the bathroom, the soft sounds a constant reminder of her presence. Her essence still rippled against his chest like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to him, yet was intrinsically tied to his own.

She was still his. He’d play along. He’d give her this elaborate game. But he’d never let her win.

🍎🍏

Y/n sat cross-legged at the kitchen table, freshly showered and donning one of Caleb’s shirts. The navy blue one, soft and worn, the fabric clinging faintly to her wet skin like memory. He moved around the kitchen shirtless, barefoot, his back lit in gold by the low sun slanting through the UV-protected window. She could see the ripple of muscles under his skin as he sliced vegetables—silent, focused, too casual.

It felt dangerous. This peace. Like a hush before something cracks.

Y/n leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed under the hem of the oversized shirt. Her damp hair clung to her neck. He hadn’t said a word since they left the bedroom. Neither had she.

“Caleb.”

He paused, not looking up. “Hm?”

She swallowed, tongue running over the back of her teeth. “What am I supposed to do now?” she asked. “I can’t go outside. I’m dead to everyone who ever knew me. What happens now? Do I just haunt this house until it starts to feel like a coffin?”

His knife stilled. Slowly, he set it down.

“I know.” he said. “But you can’t be seen. Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“Exactly. You made that decision for me,” she said, her hands coming up to grip her bicep, a familiar gesture of defiance. “So now you’re going to help me figure out how to live with it.”

Something in him tensed. Guilt. Dull, hot, familiar. But underneath it—something more frayed. Remorse. And quiet frustration—at himself, at the world, at whatever corner he’d backed them both into.

“I can take you out after dark,” he offered. “The woods go deep. There’s a creek. Old trails. We’re far from the city—no one will see you unless you want them to.”

“And if I want more than just a few acres of isolated woods?”

His jaw flexed. She felt the internal grinding of his thoughts through the bond like gears trying to catch.

“I’ll build something.” he said at last. “A space with high walls, mirrored glass. You’ll have privacy, daylight, whatever you want. It’ll be yours.”

She watched him. Let the silence build pressure between them. For once, she let herself believe him—not because she trusted him, but because she wanted to know how far he’d go now that she wasn’t giving herself freely.

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said.

“But I’m cooped up now.” She whined.

She rose from the chair and crossed the kitchen, bare feet soundless on the tile. The shirt clung to her hips when she moved, twisting with her stride. Caleb’s eyes flicked to her, then back to the cutting board, as if it took effort not to watch her too long.

“I could help.” she said. “If I’m going to be your ghost roommate, I might as well pull my weight.”

He snorted under his breath, slicing through a red bell pepper. “You don’t cook.”

“You don’t know that.” She shot back, feigning offense.

“I’ve known you long enough to know you don’t cook, meimei.”

“Well, maybe I want to learn.” she muttered, brushing past him toward the sink. She reached to grab a towel from the counter and caught the sharp edge of a paring knife someone had left turned the wrong way.

“Shit.” She hissed, pulling her hand back fast. Blood welled to the surface, bright and immediate.

The air changed.

Behind her, Caleb went very still. The sound of the knife hitting the cutting board again didn’t come. She turned, slowly, and saw him standing there, motionless, his eyes locked on the thin line of red dripping from her palm.

His lips parted. The color in his eyes deepened. No words came from him. Just breath. Hunger. Reverence.

“Caleb.” Her voice was a quiet warning, eyeing him warily.

But he didn’t blink.

He moved a step closer.

She could feel it through the bond before he made a sound—his desire. It wasn’t just need. It was worship. Her blood called to him like nothing else in the world. A sacrament in skin.

She backed away instinctively. “No.”

That stopped him.

The look that crossed his face wasn’t anger. Not at first. It was confusion. Hurt. Deep and immediate. Then frustration—sharp, strangled, too fast to fully contain.

“I wasn’t going to hurt you.” he said hoarsely.

‘Yeah right.’ She scoffed internally.

“I know that.” She closed her fist. The blood seeped slower now. “But I don’t want you feeding from me.”

His eyes narrowed, and he stepped forward again, slower this time. “You don’t trust me.”

‘Absolutely the fuck not. Wonder what gave it away?!’ She mentally rolled her eyes at the obvious question.

“I don’t trust myself.” she said. “We’ve made it this far. I’m not ready to ruin that.” He knew what she was hinting at but it still irked him.

That was only half the truth, though.

The other half pulsed in her chest like a secret. Because she had felt it in him, the relentless ache for her. And… it thrilled her. She liked denying him. Liked the devastation that flickered behind his restraint.

Caleb’s jaw clenched. He could also feel her pure delight in this situation. His gaze dropped to her hand, then back to her face. Something like desperation clawed behind his eyes, but he kept it buried under the surface of his voice.

“You’re mine. You said so yourself.” he said quietly. “You don’t get to dangle your blood in front of me and then—”

“I didn’t dangle anything!” she snapped. “I got cut. You lost control.”

His nostrils flared. But she saw it—he knew she was right. And that only made it worse.

“I’m not a goddamn beast.” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t treat me like one.”

She held his gaze. “Then don’t act like one.”

The room trembled in silence. The bond between them stretched, pulled taut like wire. Still humming with that forbidden want.

She huffed and turned from him, rinsing her hand under cold water. The blood thinned, then ran clear. She didn’t look at him again until she felt his presence beside her, closer now, quiet. The wound on her hand had already begun to close.

“You’re not a beast.” she whispered.

“But my blood isn’t yours, Caleb. Not unless I give it to you.”

That hit him harder than a slap.

And yet, he didn’t argue. He wanted her willingness to stay by his side, he’d have to earn it. He knew that but it still sting being rejected.

Caleb didn’t move. Not for a long time.

Y/n dried her hand, slowly, with the cloth. The tension between them had curdled into something denser, more volatile. She could feel it bleeding off his skin, saturating the air around them. The bond throbbed in her spine, alive, reactive, hungry.

She didn’t know what she expected him to say. But when he did speak, it worried her. 

“You think I wanted this?” he said, voice low, teeth barely unclenched. “You think I wanted to need you like this?” Honesty. She felt the raw candidness of those words.

She turned to face him, towel still in hand. “You made me like this. Should I think differently?”

“No. I saved you.” His eyes flared as he stepped closer. “You would’ve died in that alley if that mission were real and disappeared from the world. No justice. No peace. Nothing but rot. Even if I didn’t intervene, it would have been another mission that you recklessly took on. I gave you a second life. And you drip it from your veins like it means nothing.”

Y/n scoffed but she held his gaze. “Don’t you dare make this about gratitude. Should I thank you for actually killing me?”

His laugh was bitter, hollow. “It’s not. It’s about what I am now that you exist. Do you have any idea what it does to me, smelling your blood and being told no like I’m some starving dog?”

She let the towel fall. ‘So damn selfish. Again, it’s about you and your needs.’

“Then don’t look at me like I’m a gift you’re owed.” she said. “You’re not entitled to my blood just because it calls to you. I didn’t ask to be turned!”

Caleb stared at her. Then, without warning, he shoved the cutting board off the counter. It hit the floor with a loud crack, vegetables scattering across the tile.

She didn’t flinch. But on the inside, a cold knot tightened, bracing against his fury.

He dragged a hand through his hair, his breath ragged. “I’m trying to keep you safe. I’m trying to give you space to process everything. But all you want to do is punish me.”

Y/n stepped forward. Just one step, but it cut the distance like a blade.

“You think this is punishment?” she said, soft and sharp all at once. Oh how she wanted to laugh in his face. ‘What a big baby.’

“You should be thanking me.”

“For what?” he growled.

“For not letting you drink. For making you feel it. All of it. The hunger. The ache. The want.it hasn’t even been a full 24 hours and you’re like this over a few drops of blood.”

The silence between them shifted. He looked at her differently now, like she’d taken a weapon from his hands and turned it inward.

“You‘re enjoying this.” he whispered.

Her smile didn’t reach her eyes but she chose to ignore his accusation. “I need something that’s still mine. It’s my blood.”

He moved fast.

In an instant, his hand was at her waist, fingers pressing in, slow and deliberate, like he was staking a claim. Then he pulled her forward until their bodies met, chest to chest, heat to heat. She could feel the hardness of his muscles, the tremble running under his skin, as if every cell in his body was fighting instinct.

“I could make you beg.” he said, voice low and lethal in its intimacy. “One taste and you’d forget every reason you ever hated me.”

Her breath stilled, spine going taut. His thumb brushed just under the hem of his shirt—her shirt now, on her skin and it felt like a brand.

She didn’t pull away. No, she sized him up, completely unimpressed.

“Maybe.” she said. “But I’m not begging. And you’re not feeding.”

For a beat, he didn’t move. His hand remained at her waist, his breath ghosting over her lips. He waited for her to change her mind. Searching her pretty eyes that sparkled with challenge for the smallest hint of backing down but found nothing.

Then slowly, heartbreakingly, he released her.

“All right.” he murmured. “But when you finally crack, I want you to remember this moment. When you thought you had the upper hand.”

She turned from him before he could see the tremble in her fingers. Before he could see how close she’d come to leaning in. To letting him have his way.

She closed the cabinet too hard. Let it echo in the room like punctuation.

The bond buzzed with her annoyance.

And Caleb?

He stood in the center of the kitchen, hand still tingling with the shape of her waist, and breathed in the lingering scent of her blood like it was the only thing tethering him to the earth.

A/N: Look at me go! I said it would be out in 2 days but you guys got it in one! 😎

[wlwnovak]

What We Carry

After a brutal attack leaves ADA Casey Novak physically and emotionally vulnerable, young SVU detective (y/n) steps in to care for her—revealing long-buried feelings neither of them have dared to admit. As Casey confronts painful memories of a violent past relationship and struggles with guilt and recovery, both women must face the truth: sometimes love doesn’t come with a grand confession, but in the quiet act of staying.

You’d seen plenty of victims in your time as a detective, but nothing could’ve prepared you for seeing her like that.

Casey Novak—brilliant, relentless, whip-smart ADA—wheeled out of the hospital in a baggy sweatshirt, pale and bruised, her arm in a sling, crutches tucked awkwardly beside her. The nurses gave you the rundown, but you didn’t hear most of it. Your eyes were only on her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\\\\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Olivia had only stepped out for coffee.

They were mid-conversation, going over the case that had kept them both at the precinct long past midnight—Casey pacing with legal pads in hand, Olivia leaning on the edge of the desk, both running on caffeine and adrenaline. When Casey offered to keep digging while Liv ran across the street for drinks, it seemed harmless. Routine.

But when Olivia returned just minutes later, two cups in hand. The office was dark and the door was just slightly open.

"Casey I left for 5 minutes, I swear to god if you went home I'll-"

Olivia stepped in and found Casey on the floor. Her body twisted unnaturally, blood staining the carpet beneath her. The sight froze her. 

She dropped to her knees beside Casey, pressing her jacket to the wound, calling her name over and over.

By the time the paramedics arrived, Olivia was inside the ambulance, refusing to leave her side. Her hands were shaking as she dialed her phone. There was only one number she thought to call—not Cragen, not Fin, not even Elliot.

You.

Because Olivia knew: if there was one person Casey would want in that moment—one person who could hold her through the aftermath—it was you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\\\\\\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When you told Captain Cragen you wanted to be the one to look after her, no one argued. Everyone knew you were closest to Casey. You were the one who lingered in her office after hours, taking naps on her couch, teasing her with inside jokes, quietly catching the way she smiled when she thought you weren’t looking. You were the one who always stayed just a little too long.

You helped her into her apartment, one slow, painful step at a time. She winced when she sat, tried to brush it off.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” she muttered.

You ignored that. “You don’t need one. You’ve got me.”

She didn’t argue again.

The days that followed were quiet, awkward, painful in a way you hadn’t expected. Not because of her injuries, but because of the intimacy of it all—helping her to the bathroom in the middle of the night, supporting her in the shower while she avoided your eyes, watching her struggle with rage and shame over things she used to do without thinking.

She hated the crutches. Hated the way they announced her fragility to the world. Hated the way they made every small task feel impossible.

The first night was the worst. Casey barely spoke, eyes glazed, movements stiff and full of effort. You helped her into bed, gently guiding her injured leg and keeping your hands steady even when she hissed in pain.

At 3 a.m., you found her sitting on the edge of the bed, panting in frustration.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said, voice flat.

“Okay, let me help you—”

“I can do it.”

You didn’t argue. You just stayed close enough to catch her if she fell. She didn’t look at you as she slowly, agonizingly shuffled toward the bathroom, gripping the crutches like they’d betray her.

The door stayed open a crack. You heard a muffled sob halfway through. Not from pain—at least, not the physical kind.

Later that morning, she let you help her shower. She kept her eyes closed the entire time while you held her steady and washed her bruised back carefully.

“I hate this,” she whispered. “I hate needing help.”

“I know,” you replied. "...Nice ass though".

Casey chuckled, the sound rough but real—the first time she’d laughed since the attack.

“Please don’t make me laugh,” she winced, pressing a hand to her side. “My ribs hurt.”

You smiled, but the moment hung strangely in the air, too intimate. The sound of the shower filled the room, louder than it should’ve been, covering the silence like a clumsy curtain neither of you knew how to pull back.

On the third day, she broke.

One night, you found her sitting on her bed, holding at a brown coat.

“Charlie gave me this,” she said. “I should’ve thrown it away a long time ago.”

You didn’t move. Just waited.

“I keep thinking maybe this was supposed to happen,” she whispered. “Like... I escaped it when I left him. And this was karma finally showing up.”

“Casey—” You approached her, sitting by her side.

“I left him,” she said. “When he got sick, when he started getting violent. He hit walls, hit me. I got out. And then years later, he’s dead. Homeless. Alone. And I lived.”

Her voice cracked. “Maybe that wasn’t fair.”

You grabbed her hand. “You don’t believe that.”

She turned toward you then, her eyes shining, vulnerable in a way she never let herself be. “Maybe I deserved it. Maybe I was meant to get hurt, and I just… delayed it.”

You gently cupped her face. “You left because you had to. Because you deserved to survive. This wasn’t karma. This wasn’t Charlie's payback or something. This was some asshole who hurt you, and I swear to God, Casey, he is the one who deserves to rot—not you.”

She stared at you, like she wanted to believe you.

You wanted to kiss her. Instead, you whispered, “You didn’t deserve what happened to you. Not then. Not now.”

And for the first time since the attack, she let you hold her. She trembled in your arms. The kind of trembling that only comes from finally letting go.

Later, as you helped her into bed, she looked up at you and said softly, “You know what’s funny? Everyone thinks I’m strong. But I don’t feel strong with you. I feel…”

“Safe?” you offered.

She nodded.

You swallowed. “You are strong, Casey. But you don’t have to be with me. You just have to be real.”

There was a pause. A long one.

“Could you um...maybe stay here?” she whispered, barely audible.

You nodded "of course".

You kissed her forehead, tucked her back to bed and held her until she fell asleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\\\\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You were halfway through your paperwork when Olivia slid into the chair across from you, coffee in hand, watching you over the rim of her cup.

“You’ve been quiet,” she said casually. “Quieter than usual.”

“I’m tired,” you replied, not looking up.

“Mm-hmm.” She leaned in slightly. “You’re still staying with Casey?”

You nodded. “She needs help.”

Olivia tilted her head. “Is that all it is?”

You looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Olivia said, voice soft but knowing, “you’re sleeping on her bed. You drive home just to change. You haven’t gone out once in almost two weeks. And every time her name comes up in a case file, you look like you want to kill someone.”

You stared at her.

“She’s important to you,” she added gently. 

You exhaled slowly, chest tight. “She got hurt. I couldn’t stop it.”

“No one could,” Olivia said. “But you’ve been carrying it like it was your job.”

You looked down at your hands. “Because she’s… she’s Casey. And I’m—”

“You’re in love with her.”

You said nothing.

“You know,” Olivia said, standing, “I used to think you two were just stubborn. But now I think maybe you’re scared.”

You didn’t deny it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\\\\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Casey didn’t expect anyone. She hated unexpected visits now. But when she opened the door and saw Elliot Stabler standing there, takeout bag in hand, she stepped back wordlessly to let him in.

“You look better,” he said, setting the bag on the counter. “Less murder in your eyes.”

“I’m on painkillers,” she deadpanned.

He grinned. “Fair.”

They sat in silence for a while. Casey poked at her food. Stabler almost finishing his plate.

“You know,” he finally said, “I used to think you and our young detective were just work friends.”

Casey froze.

“I’m not blind,” he added. “Neither is Liv.”

Casey tried to stay neutral. “She’s just been helping me out.”

Stabler leaned forward. “You flinch when anyone else touches you—but not her. She practically carries you to the bathroom and you don’t complain.”

Casey didn’t respond.

“She loves you,” Stabler said bluntly. “And you love her. But you’re both so damn afraid to say it, I’m starting to think we should lock you in the interrogation room until one of you cracks.”

Casey’s breath caught.

“I don’t deserve her,” she whispered. "She’s new to this job, still believes in things. I’m—”

“Casey.” He met her eyes. “Don’t push her away because you think you’re broken. She knows what she’s walking into. Let her love you anyway.”

//////////////////////////

End of part 1 ✨️ Lmk if you enjoyed it! Part 2 coming soon (comment if you wanna be tagged when it comes out)