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pathologicalreid · 2 months ago
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what goes bump in the night | s.r.
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in which Spencer's struggling with violent nightmares after prison, and you find yourself on the receiving end of his tossing and turning
who? spencer reid x fem!reader category: angst content warnings: reader gets whapped in the face. don't like don't read, please. blood, prison arc, black eye, a lot of guilt. therapy. word count: 1.89k a/n: (this wasn't a request but shout out to the anon who told me i had to repost this after i deleted it) this is some dark shit but i have to admit i do think about the possibility a lot. take care while reading my loves.
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Several years in the BAU had inadvertently trained you to wake up at any slight movement or noise. While some might call it paranoia, you considered it to be a finely tuned skill.
Spencer didn’t sleep talk before prison, and even now, he only mumbled in his sleep when he was having a nightmare. Normally, he didn’t move, he just tossed his head around and begged for whoever he was seeing in his nightmare to just hold on. Tonight was different, he sounded like he was pleading for someone to leave him alone, and he was thrashing more than usual.
You knew there was a risk of waking him, but you reached out and gently shook his shoulder anyway. “Spence,” you whispered, not wanting to hurtle him out of his darkened dreamscape.
There was no response. No sign of him coming even close to waking up.
His thrashing became worse, and his mumbling became even less intelligible like something was covering his mouth in his dream. Reaching out from your side of the bed, you tried to grab his hand, hoping it would be something that he could use to ground himself. Gripping his hand, you said his name again, more forcefully this time.
The pain didn’t even register at first. The first thing you recognized was the sensation of having something stuck in your eye, a small twinge in the outer corner that sent your hands flying to the side of your face.
Oh.
With your uninjured eye, you looked up to see Spencer, awake. Breathing heavy, sure, but awake. Very slowly, his breathing slowed, but he had seemingly forgotten that he was sharing a bed with you until you felt liquid trickling from your nose and scrambled to the bathroom before you got blood all over the sheets.
His wide eyes followed your shadow through the bedroom, putting the convoluted puzzle pieces together as he came out from under his nightmare-induced fugue state only to find a different type of panic. You faintly heard him curse and rustle the sheets as you shut the bathroom door harder than you intended.
You looked at yourself in the mirror, your right eye was tearing up as a result of the impact, and your nose was trickling blood down your face. Grabbing a wad of tissues from the box on the counter, you pressed them to your nose, blinking the tears from your eyes to the sound of your heart beating through your chest.
Spencer knocked on the bathroom door, followed by a larger thud that you assumed was him leaning his head against the door. “Can I come in?”
You tried not to sniff, hating the sensation of your nose being covered, you responded, “It’s your bathroom.” Your tone was far too blasé, and Spencer was going to see through it immediately.
“That’s not what I asked,” he told you, a slight tone of desperation ringing through. You knew what he wanted to know; he was asking if you were comfortable with him being in the same room as you – if you’d feel safe with him in the same room as you.
Leaning your head back, you took as deep of a breath as your body would physically allow you before you answered, “Yeah, you can come in.”
Before you had even finished speaking, Spencer had opened the door to the bathroom, letting the light stream into the bedroom, “Fuck,” he murmured when he saw you, “Hey, don’t lean your head back. You don’t want the blood to run down your throat.”
“Okay,” your voice quavered, watching him lift his hands like he wanted to guide your head down until he realized he didn’t know what to do with his hands – he couldn’t bring himself to touch you. Leaning over the sink, you let coagulated blood fall from your mouth, watching it go down the drain before you looked up at Spencer, who watched on in horror at the mess he had created. “Can you grab more tissues?” You asked him, giving him a job to busy his idle hands.
Instantly, Spencer grabbed a handful of tissues and held them out for you, within your range of motion. Still leaning over the sink, you took the new tissues and held them to your nose, haphazardly dropping the soiled tissue in the basin beneath you. “I don’t… What-“
Cutting him off, you spoke, “Do you still have those ice packs? The first aid ones from last year,” you made a new request, giving him a job to perform so that he wouldn’t apologize to you. He’d apologize until he was blue in the face, but you still wouldn’t know how to respond.
He nodded, crouching in front of one of the cabinets and filtering through a first aid kit, hoping to produce a disposable ice pack for you to place near your eye. With the timidness of a newborn foal, Spencer set the plastic on the counter next to you.
Your boyfriend watched as you carefully peeled the tissues from your face, checking to see if the bleeding had stopped, only to quickly replace the tissue when you noticed a trickle of fresh blood making its way down your philtrum. “Aren’t you supposed to pinch it or something?”
“Yes, you can pinch the bridge of your nose to staunch the bleeding,” Spencer said, grabbing your discarded Kleenex and putting them in the garbage bin. He watched intently as you reached up your free hand to pinch your nose, “Does… does it hurt?”
Giving him a quick shake of the head, you met his eyes through the mirror, “I don’t think it’s broken,” you told him, avoiding answering most of his question.
He loosed a sigh of relief, “Thank god,” he murmured, keeping an eye on you as you wondered how terrified he must have been to invoke the name of a deity he didn’t believe in.
Once you were finally able to drop the last of the tissues in the sink, you were faced with an even worse reality. There was no way of escaping the black eye that you already had forming, the tender skin would be further marred with time. “I think it looks worse than it actually is,” you offered meekly, reaching to your side and grabbing the ice pack off of the counter. You popped the center of it before wrapping it in a towel that Spencer had set out for you.
Holding in a hiss as the towel touched your face, you allowed your eyes to wander across the rest of your body. Your shirt had drips of blood on it, but the larger issue was red encrusted all over your face. With the urgency of a sloth, Spencer took a different towel from the drawer and ran it under the tap, wringing it out before holding it up, “May I?”
“Yeah,” you breathed, thankful for your newly cleared airway as you extended your neck, giving him the access he needed to wipe the blood from your chin and neck. “Spence-“
“I’m so sorry,” he interjected, his movements faltering as he let his hand drop to your shoulder.
You shook your head, crinkling the icepack in your hand, you blinked rapidly, hoping to clear your vision. “It’s okay, I shouldn’t have grabbed you,” you told him, it was the truth. He had obviously been having a violent nightmare, and you grabbing him had likely triggered a fight or flight response.
Spencer sighed dejectedly, “I burst a blood vessel in your eye. I’m so…” his voice trailed off in the middle of his sentence, leaving you unsure whether he was going to apologize again or go off on a self-deprecating tirade. “I hit you,” he breathed, abruptly yanking his hands away from you, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched you.” Setting the washcloth on the counter, he put his hands up in surrender and stepped away from you.  
Leaning against the bathroom counter, you wished for an inkling – anything you could say to him that would prevent his auto-villainization. “I wish you wouldn’t say it like that. Saying you hit me sounds so…”
“Wrong? That’s because it is,” he said harshly, and you could almost see the storm of self-loathing that was brewing in his mind.
Shaking your head, you adjusted your grip on the icepack before looking up at him, “but it makes it sound like it was intentional. You didn’t hit me, you… thwapped me.”
Spencer loosed a shaky sigh, “I’m not so sure that’s better.”
“Would you prefer bonked?” You proposed, looking at him and hoping for a small smile, but being disappointed when you were met with the same haunted expression. “It was an accident,” you insisted, reaching out your unoccupied hand and taking his hand in yours, “I am fine.”
He scoffed dismissively, “I should have had a better handle on myself.”
You frowned, “You were asleep, Spence. You couldn’t have had a better handle on yourself. It wasn’t on purpose, and you’re taking care of me now,” you told him softly.
“But you’re scared of it happening again,” he challenged you.
When he had come home, you knew he had been changed. Not necessarily for the better or for worse, but he was most certainly changed. You had heard everything in bits and pieces, what had happened in Millburn, what had happened with Cat, but nothing had prepared you for the harshness of your new reality. He was capable of harming others, but that didn’t mean you thought he’d hurt you again. “You’re disappointed in yourself, but you don’t believe you get to feel that way. You’re projecting onto me,” you told him, taking your hand back.
Spencer flinched back, “Don’t profile me.”
“You, Spencer Reid, would never knowingly lay a hand on me,” you insisted, you believed it. You believed it even if he didn’t believe it himself.
The two of you sat in an angst-filled silence before he stood up straight, gently starting to usher you into the bedroom. Handing you a t-shirt from your drawer to change into, you could see his internal struggle as he grabbed a pillow from the bed and made his way toward the door.
Despondently, your shoulders slumped forward, “Where are you going?” You asked softly, hating to watch him leave your shared bedroom over this.
“I’m sleeping on the couch. I’m gonna… I’ll try to set up a meeting with my therapist in the morning. I just…” his voice trailed off as he looked at you with wide, sad eyes, “You’re okay?”
Your heart ached at his voice as you nodded, opening your arms for him and letting out a sigh of relief when he returned to you for a hug. Reaching your free hand behind him, you rubbed his back comfortingly, “We’re going to make it through this, mark my words.”
He nodded in affirmation as he pulled away, “For my own peace of mind, I’ll sleep on the couch for a while.”
You accepted it, knowing that he needed to deal with this in his own way, he closed the door behind him, effectively leaving you alone. Laying back on the pillows with your icepack still clutched to your face, you sighed, wondering how long it had been since your boyfriend felt any semblance of peace of mind.
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osarina · 3 months ago
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ᡣ𐭩 MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE NEVER BEFORE
FEATURING: dazai osamu
SUMMARY: your patience is thinning. despite having a conversation with dazai and being led to believe everything is okay, he's suddenly avoiding you again. luckily, or maybe unluckily, his hand is forced when he realizes that you're not waiting for him this time. whether he likes it or not, this confrontation is happening—except you slowly realize as it goes on that dazai's definition of intimacy is dreadfully different from yours.
{wordcount: 10.4k; ņsfw; fem!reader, pm!reader, i wouldn't say this is angst but it does deal with some references to heavy topics; jealous!dazai, depictions of dissociation (dazai), dazai's on the brink of a mental breakdown for a bit in the beginning, references to abuse (dazai. no actual depictions), references to dubcon (dazai. no actual depictions), dazai is wildly intelligent but not so much when it comes to sex & other forms of intimacy (he is quite uneducated in fact), slight oral (male rec), unprotected sex, sub!dazai, dazai and reader argue for a bit (he calls her a whore - doesn't mean it but still says it)}
AUTHOR'S NOTES: 😒i hope you guys know im sitting here glaring at my computer because i did not want to post this fic. it's been sitting in my google drive for like AGES and im literally having to physically force myself into formatting this post because i wanted to keep it hoarded forever. anyway, read the warnings for this one pretty pls, this fic is a bit loaded—not exactly angst, but it references some heavy topics. let me know if any warnings are missing as always!
“I’m so sick and tired of him.”
You listen as Chuuya lets out another heavy sigh next to you, pointedly taking a sip of his wine, but you don’t even bother to glance at him as you glare down at your phone. Left on read, again, Dazai ignores your message asking him to meet you and Chuuya at the bar. You slam your phone down on the dark wood of the bar top before reaching for your own glass, taking a large gulp of it before opening your mouth to continue complaining, much to Chuuya’s displeasure.
“I thought things would be different after we talked. He moved back into my apartment but he’s still avoiding me like the fucking plague. I mean Christ, I broke up with my boyfriend, came crawling back to him because I knew he was pissed even though he’d rather kill himself—literally—than admit he likes me. Why the fuck can’t he even given an inch? Meet me halfway?” 
“Because he’s Dazai,” Chuuya says dryly. “What did you expect from him, honestly? … And we all know you weren’t going to stick with that civilian.”
“Oh, shut up,” you tell him bitterly. “That’s not the point. The point is I did, and I went right to him, and we talked, and he acted like everything was fine, and now he’s pulling this shit. How is he going to live in my fucking apartment and avoid me at every corner? And whenever I do manage to catch him, he makes up some bullshit excuse about a mission I know he doesn’t have and disappears.”
You lean back in your chair, brows furrowed and fingers curled around your glass. By now, all of the people that had been sitting near the two of you at the bar have dispersed to the dancefloor—if your arrival with Chuuya hadn’t been enough to send them scattering, your foul mood was more than enough to make them give you a wide berth.
“I’m frustrated,” you finally hiss. “I’m just frustrated, am I allowed to be frustrated, Chuuya?”
Chuuya side-eyes you. “Stop fuckin’ complaining to me about it and do something about it, jeez,” he says, hand sliding into his pocket to pull out a cigarette, holding it between his lips as he fumbles for a lighter to light it.
“Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?” you ask, becoming increasingly more irritated as you pull out your own lighter to light it for him. “I tried talking to him, now he’s ignoring me.”
Chuuya has the audacity to roll his eyes, looking at you with an unimpressed expression that makes you want to pluck his cigarette out of his mouth and put it out on his skin. As if he can hear your thoughts, he leans back, giving you a suspicious look.
“I’m not talking about that shithead,” Chuuya drawls. “If you’re so frustrated, go find some sorry bastard to fuck it out of you. We both know that’s all it takes to get you to settle down.”
“Fuck you,” you say instantly, not appreciating how he acts like you’re a nympho. But already, your gaze is carding across the room, trying to see if someone catches your eye. When you find yourself disappointed, you look back at him and ask, “You offering yourself up?”
Chuuya barks out a laugh. “Fuck no,” he tells you instantly. “No way. Don’t even say that shit to me.”
You’re almost offended, squinting at him and leaning back in your seat. “Why not? Like old times. You know what I like, I know what you like, we can make a good night out of it,” you propose as you lean your elbow on the bartop and observe him.
“Because shitty Dazai will never let me hear the end of it if he finds out,” Chuuya says pointedly, taking a long drag of his cigarette. “Bastard is annoying as is, if he finds out I’ve slept with you? It’d be the end of the world.”
“You have slept with me though, Chuuya,” you taunt. “Who’s to say I won’t tell him anyway?”
You won’t, but you like the way Chuuya’s lip curls up in irritation around his cigarette.
“Go ahead,” he tells you. “I’ll tell him all about that time in Osaka.”
You gasp, scandalized. “Chuuya,” you hiss. “You would not. You swore.”
“Try me,” Chuuya says, raising his eyebrows at you, looking all too smug as you flounder for a response.
Humbled, and a bit mortified, you return to looking around the club, lowering your standards this time. You spot a blonde standing in the corner of the club, eyes flitting around curiously as he observes the people on the dancefloor, and a redhead laughing wildly as she spins with a drink in hand, teetering off to the edge of the floor. You purse your lips.
“No one is catching my attention,” you complain, sinking back down in your seat.
You decidedly don’t like the smirk that edges onto his lips as he looks at you, and it’s for good reason, because the next words out of his mouth have your eye twitching: “You’re that down bad for him already? Jesus.”
“I am not,” you spit out, glaring at him before pointedly returning to your hunt, looking around more intensely this time. 
But even as you do that, you start to wonder if that’s why no one is standing out to you tonight. How the fuck is anyone supposed to compare to Dazai Osamu? The thought is ridiculous—you don’t want to tug at blonde hair to pull someone down into a kiss, you don’t want a head of tousled red locks buried between your thighs, there’s only one person you actually want in your bed and he’s been avoiding you since you talked things out with him.
You let out a heavy sigh, considering just admitting defeat, but then your eyes drift to a tall, dark haired man entering the club, making his way over to the bar; his hair is a bit too long and a bit too straight, and his eyes aren’t the right shade, but they’re sharp enough and you’re tipsy enough to willfully confuse them for the familiar brown you desire.
“Nevermind,” you breathe out. Chuuya doesn’t even spare you a goodbye as you slip from your seat to make your way over to the man, lifting his hand in a lazy wave. “I found someone.”
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Chuuya was right.
You think maybe you should stop doubting him as much as you do. This is not the first time that you’ve fought him tooth and nail about something only for him to be proven right in the end. But you’re not going to tell him that because he has a big enough ego and you’re not going to feed into it.
Dealing with Dazai’s fickleness the past two weeks has been much easier now that you’re fucking out your frustrations with strangers as soon as he’s gone for the night on whatever mission Mori assigns him. You take his aloofness in stride, ignoring the way he blows you off and avoids you in your own home. You think it’s bothering him, actually, because now when you walk past him without a second glance, you can see the way he hesitates from the corner of your eye, an indecipherable expression crossing over his face.
Good, you think. You hope he feels like shit. 
You let out a soft breath as you tilt your head to the side, giving the man you’re with better access. From the corner of your eye, with the tousled brown hair, you can almost pretend it’s him, but you know it’s not. His hair isn’t as soft as Dazai’s, who all but hijacked your expensive shampoos and conditioners, and you can’t feel the bandages that should be tucked beneath the tufts of hair. Your mind starts to drift, comparing how you think Dazai’s touch would be to this man’s. When you first kissed him, he was unsure and hesitant, would he still be now? Or has he grown more confident? You think he must’ve, you’ve seen him with people during events, lips tilted up in a sensual smile, lashes fluttering as he leads them into one of the backrooms. 
Sick and unfair, you think to yourself bitterly.
You let out a heavy, disappointed sigh.
“You good?” the man asks—you don’t remember his name, you don’t even know if you cared to ask. His voice is distinctly different from Dazai’s low hum whenever he teases you, a total immersion-break from your desired reality.
You roll your eyes, irritated. “Don’t speak.”
The man lets out a noise of agreement, fingers biting a bit harder into your waist as he continues kissing down your neck. You don’t really mind, the sting is nice, just enough force to draw your mind away from Dazai. The sigh you let out is more pleased now, eyes slipping shut as his hands slide up your body, kisses trailing down your neck to your collarbone. His lips are too soft; Dazai’s are horribly chapped no matter how much chapstick you force on him.
Dazai is out on another “mission”. You don’t even know if it’s a real mission or if he’s just claiming it’s a mission so he doesn’t have to stick around the apartment while you’re there, lowering the chances of running into you. For all you know, he’s just going back to that shitty shipping container he spent a year in and hanging out there until you leave for one of your own missions or a meeting. He looked particularly sullen as he left earlier, casting looks back to where you’d disappeared into the kitchen, not realizing you could still see him before he finally left your apartment. 
He’s such a pain in the ass, you think, getting irate again as he drifts back into your thoughts. He makes everything so difficult, things would be so much easier he just admitted that he wanted to be with you. You really don’t know how much more of this back and forth, wishy-washy shit you can take from him. You care about Dazai. You do. Probably more than anyone else in your life and you’re sick of him taking it for granted. 
You hum in approval when the man lifts his hands to your button-up, hesitating as he waits for your consent, and your gaze flicks up to the ceiling as he continues kissing down the revealed skin; from the crook of your neck to your collarbone, between your breasts, he unbuttons all the way to your navel.
You find yourself a bit bored, counting the specks on the ceiling, taking note of the crack that you’re sure is somehow Dazai’s fault. You think there must only be two more buttons left for him to undo before you can slide the shirt off of your shoulders but you start to feel uncomfortable under his touch, you feel prickly and his lips trailing down your body makes your skin crawl.
“Off,” you finally say, voice sharp. You press your hand against his shoulder to push him off of you, sitting up straight to sit properly on the couch. You scowl as you fumble through your pants pockets to find a cigarette.
This is Dazai’s fault somehow.
“Did I do something wrong?” the man asks hesitantly, trying to shift closer to you again. “I-”
“No,” you say bluntly, lighting the cigarette and lifting it to your lips. “Get out of my apartment.”
The man hesitates, you can feel his eyes lingering on you and you’re becoming increasingly more irritated, shooting him a glare from the corner of your eye until he finally rises to his feet, buttoning his shirt as he makes his way over to the elevator. You slump back against the couch, sighing as you look up at the ceiling and take a long drag from your cigarette.
Dazai’s fault. As soon as he crossed your mind, your whole demeanor had changed and you try to convince yourself that it’s because you just don’t know what his issue is. You don’t know why he’s avoiding you, you don’t know what changed after you met with him at the bar; you thought things would be good between the two of you. You thought you’d be able to be with him now that nothing’s left in your way but evidently there still is something preventing the two of you from being together and it’s something that Dazai is not sharing with you.
Bastard, you think bitterly, about to pull out your phone to send Chuuya a very irritated and very foul message about Dazai but before you can, the elevator leading up to your floor bings and you look up to watch the man you’d invited over leave.
Except as the doors slide open, you realize that someone is already standing in there.
You sit up straight when you see Dazai standing in the elevator, black gaze trained right on the man leaving your apartment. His movements are almost robotic as he steps out of the elevator, his head twisting to follow the man as he steps in the elevator. He looks distinctly unnerved as Dazai’s soulless gaze tracking him until the elevator doors slide back shut.
It’s only then that Dazai only turns to look at you. His face is eerily void of emotion as he looks at you, gaze dipping down to your unbuttoned shirt and the light bruises blooming on your neck and collarbone. You tilt your head to the side as you observe him, wondering if he’s going to say something, but he only stands there staring at you.
“I thought you had a mission,” you finally say, leaning forward to put your cigarette out on the ashtray on the coffee table to button up your shirt half way so you’re not nearly undressed. When you finish, you pick up your glass of wine and take a sip. “You’re back early.” 
“I finished early,” Dazai replies, monotonic. 
He doesn’t budge from where he’s standing, limbs stiff and face blank. You glance down, noticing that he’s holding something in his right hand—a bag, takeout, maybe? Looks like it’s from that place in Hodogaya-ku that you like. 
“What’s that?” you ask, nodding toward the bag. Dazai follows your gaze down to it, staring at it as if he doesn’t even know what it is. You frown, becoming a bit concerned as you rise to your feet. “Dazai, you good?”
Dazai’s gaze doesn’t leave the bag for a second; after what feels like an eternity, he finally looks back up at you but he doesn’t even seem to be looking at you, rather it feels like he’s looking through you like you’re not even there.
“I got food,” he says blankly.
Your eyes widen a bit, wondering if this is meant to be his apology for being an asshole the past few weeks. Dazai never apologizes—he disappears until he can act like nothing happened or he does something to make up for what he did, but he doesn’t ever acknowledge what he did. It’s frustrating, but you’ve gotten used to his quirks over the years. You’d been wondering why he seemed so melancholic before he left.
You nod at the spot next to you on the couch, accepting the apology and sitting back down. “I’ll put on a movie.”
Dazai looks at the spot like it’s been poisoned, expression finally twisting from the emptiness into one of disgust.
“What?” you demand, offended.
Dazai doesn’t even respond to you; you can only stare in disbelief as he turns on his heel and walks in the direction of the kitchen. You don’t budge for a second, staring in shock to where he disappeared to, but after a few moments, you force yourself up to your feet and follow after him.
Your mind races as you make your way down the short hall into the kitchen, standing in the door frame as you watch him put the bag of takeout on the kitchen counter, pulling the different containers out of the bag and then opening the fridge. His movements are stiff and abrupt, almost robotic, and your irritation slips away when you see the expression on his face.
Closed-off. Withdrawn. Very reminiscent of the look on his face from that time he came back to your apartment after a mission that went wrong post-Dragon’s head Conflict, right before he had his first breakdown in front of you. He’d been trying to hold it all back, desperate to not lose control in front of you, but it was to no avail because it only made it worse.
“Dazai, what’s wrong?” you ask carefully as he stuffs another container into the fridge, so roughly that the plastic almost snaps. “Dazai-”
“Nothing,” Dazai responds sharply, voice cold and cutting but the way he takes in a sharp, shaky breath betrays him. “Nothing is wrong. Nothing.”
“Okay, that’s a lie,” you say flatly, sighing to yourself. “Can you just-”
“You’re the liar,” Dazai cuts you off, voice shrill and defensive in a way you’ve never heard from him before. Something crosses his face: a weird mixture of panic, anger and distress, like he knows he’s losing control of his emotions but he can’t stop himself. You don’t usually have such a hard time reading Dazai—it’s difficult, yes, but not as impossible as it currently is. It’s stressing you out because you don’t know what’s wrong and he’s clearly working himself up more over it. “You’re the liar. You’re the liar.”
Your eye twitches. Three breaths in and three breaths out. Now’s really not the time for you to lose your temper on him considering he’s on the brink of a mental breakdown for whatever reason. But you’re pissed, you don’t know why he’s calling you a liar and you don’t know what is going on, and you don’t want to deal with this especially after he just spent weeks ignoring and avoiding you.
“What did I lie about, Dazai?” you ask tightly, nails digging into your palms as you wait for a response. “Please, enlighten me.”
Dazai doesn’t respond, jaw tightening as he resumes tossing the food into the fridge.
“Dazai, stop,” you tell him, taking a step forward when he finally gets to the bottom of the takeout bag and slams the fridge shut so hard that it rattles. He grabs the empty bag and is about to storm over to the garbage can but before he can, you reach forward and grab his wrist, stopping him. “Will you fucking talk to me?”
“Let go,” Dazai hisses, trying to rip his arm from your hold but your fingers are too tight around his wrist, his bandages rough against the pads of your fingers—you don’t know why he’s still using those old scratchy ones when you stocked up with the softer ones but it only serves to irritate you more because why are you going out of your way to do nice things for him if he’s just going to toss it to the side? “Let go of me.”
“Tell me what your issue is,” you demand. “I’m done playing games with you, Dazai. Grow the fuck up and communicate.”
Dazai’s eye is wide and wild, looking far too much like a cornered animal as he bares his teeth at you and tries to yank out of your hold on him again. “My issue is that you’re a whore,” he spits out. “Let go of me. Now.”
You let go of him.
Instantly, the anger in Dazai’s face fizzles away. His eye is just as wide but his expression is lax, lips parted as if he’s only now just registering what he said. And you know he regrets it, you know that Dazai lashes out when he feels cornered; he becomes cruel and vicious, desperate in his attempts to protect himself when he feels vulnerable and since Dazai is Dazai, he knows how to hurt people. Knows exactly where the chinks in your armor are, drives the dagger in deep and twists it.
But even knowing this, it still hurts hearing that from him of all people.
“Okay.”
Your voice is quiet, you don’t even waste a second before turning on your heel and leaving the kitchen.
“Wait,” Dazai calls after you, voice wavering. “Wait, I didn’t…”
He can’t even finish the sentence because Dazai is Dazai and he doesn’t apologize and he doesn’t admit his wrongs. Doesn’t admit that he lost control and said something he didn’t mean to say. Would rather preserve his false visage of control than do anything like that.
“Where are you going?” Dazai asks and you can hear him trailing after you, words drawn long and shaky. “Hey, wait-”
You don’t know where you’re going. Leaving your apartment, you think, considering your feet are moving right to the elevator, but once you leave the building? You’re not sure. Maybe you’ll head over to Chuuya’s and crash at his apartment for the night, maybe you’ll go get shit-faced at a bar. You don’t really care, you just don’t want to be anywhere near Dazai right now. He’s put you through enough the past few weeks for you to stand here and take this shit from him. 
“I don’t know, Dazai,” you say, voice cold and sharp. “Maybe I’ll go find that guy I kicked out and finish the job if I’m such a whore.”
Dazai inhales sharply from behind you. “What?” he breathes out. “No. No. I didn’t-”
“You didn’t what?” you scoff, not even looking back at him. “Didn’t mean it? You can’t even bring yourself to say it, Dazai. Clearly you did.”
That’s not true, you know it’s only Dazai’s pride that prevents him from forcing those words out, but you know it makes him flinch and you know it makes him hesitate. You also know how to target chinks in armor.
“No,” Dazai tries again, more insistent this time. You can hear him speeding up behind you when he realizes you’re going for the elevator. “No, you don’t need to do that. I don’t-I don’t get you. I don’t get this. I don’t get any of this.”
He sounds confused, borderline distressed—you don’t even know what he’s talking about, what he’s so confused and distressed about. How could you? He never explains anything to you, never communicates.
“You don’t get what?” you demand, reaching out for the button of the elevator but Dazai lunges forward to grab your wrist before you can. You finally turn to look at him, catching the way his jaw is tight and the strange emotion swimming in his eye. “You don’t get what, Dazai? Spit it out.”
“Why are you still sleeping with other people?” he asks, voice hitching. “You have me. You don’t need anyone else.”
You can’t help yourself—you laugh in Dazai’s face.
“No way,” you say immediately.
You don’t mean it in the way it comes out. You know it comes out as if you’re saying you’d never sleep with him, but you’re more so saying no way because you can’t believe he has the audacity to say this to you after he just spent weeks avoiding and ignoring you. 
Is this what his issue is? He doesn’t know how to cope with emotions so he evades and lashes out and just expects you to stick around waiting until he grows up? Fuck him. You deserve better than that, you waited long enough, you thought you were done with these games with him.
You don’t miss the way Dazai’s expression crumbles at your words, the way he stares at you, lips parted in disbelief. You don’t correct yourself, a part of you is happy that you can get your own knife in even if you do know you’ll regret it later. 
“What do you mean no?” Dazai’s voice wobbles a bit before he takes half a step back. His fingers are weak around your wrist but he doesn’t let go, feels a lot like a child clinging to their parent’s shirt. “What-I-I’m here. You want it, you were just going to-”
Not that that’s even the issue anymore, but you’re definitely not in the mood now. Honestly, you just want to go to bed. Your head hurts and Dazai is stressing you out and pissing you off all at the same time, plus you have no interest in fucking him when he seems like he’s on the verge of a mental break anyway.
“No, I don’t. I changed my mind,” you say, frustrated. “I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”
“No,” Dazai replies, voice pitched and tinged with something too close to desperation. “No. You want me and I’m here, so you should-”
God, what the fuck is your life? You’re so frustrated that you want to pull your hair out and scream at him.
“Enough, Dazai.” You raise your voice at him. “Enough. I don’t want you. I want to go to bed.”
“No,” Dazai insists and your eyes widen when you feel his grip tighten on your wrist.
“Daz-” You start to say but you can’t even finish his name, cut off by his other hand finding its way to your hip, pressing you back against the closed doors of the elevator as he dips his head down to capture your lips with his own, swallowing your protest before you can even get it out. 
You think absently that you were right earlier when you were letting your thoughts wander to what kissing Dazai would be like. He’s no longer unsure and hesitant with his touches, his lips slide against yours with the expertise of someone who’s spent a lifetime kissing. The hand on your hip slides up your body so that he can hold your jaw, tilting your head back to deepen the kiss. And you shouldn’t be indulging this, you know that—Dazai pissed you off, he has some nerve calling you a whore and then whoring himself out to you—but his lips are intoxicating, you can hardly think straight with them pressed against yours. 
He has your right hand pinned to the metal behind you, fingers curled tight around your wrist as he holds you in place. The way he kisses you is familiar, almost, and your brows furrow as you try to figure out why until feel his fingers brush through your hair, slow and lingering, dizzying, right before his tongue darts out to swipe across your bottom lip—a pattern of actions that you usually take to make your partners more malleable. 
Did he teach himself this just by observing the way you act with people at events?
You don’t fall for your own tricks though, so instead, your free hand drops to his waist, fingers slipping through his belt loops as you press into him, pushing off the elevator to walk him backwards down the hall to his bedroom. He lets out a surprised noise in the back of his throat, letting you walk him back; his fingers fall from where they’d been around your wrist and you take the opportunity to hook yours around his other belt loop, keeping his body flush to yours until you have his back pressed against his bedroom door.
You notice, a bit absently, that Dazai is a lot more pliant now with you in control. His hands are loose at his sides as if he doesn’t know what to do with them—much like when you shared his first kiss with him—and he still kisses you back, lips moving slowly against yours, but it’s not with the intensity he had when you were pinned to the elevator door.
Strange.
You think kissing Dazai is a lot like a drug, one that you got your first hit of two years ago when you offered to be his first kiss but then never had another chance to get another taste of. You were bitter when he first started following in yours and Chuuya’s footsteps in taking people to bed to unwittingly ease information out of them—you’d find yourself watching him like a hawk as he drew people into secluded corners, as he pressed his lips against theirs and let their hands explore his body. You’d hardly be able to draw your eyes away once, not until he eventually led them out of the area to a bedroom.
You hated it. Truly. You like to tell yourself that you’re not jealous but you know it’s a blatant lie. As much as people would sell their souls to spend a night with you, they’d be just as desperate for one with Dazai because Dazai is Dazai. He’s untouchable. The Demon Prodigy. The Port Mafia’s Black Wraith. The youngest executive in history. He can be smooth and charming, yes, and he’s undoubtedly handsome. But more than that, he’s dark and unfathomable in a way that piques peoples’ interest in a sick and perverted fashion—they want to know what he’s like behind closed doors, they’re terrified of him but they want him, be it because of morbid curiosity or sheer lust.
And you hated that other people got to be with him in ways you couldn’t. Your only consolation seems to be that he had his eyes on you as much as you had yours on him, seeing how he’s pretty much perfectly mimicking the way you kiss and touch people, but you don’t know if that’s just because he was trying to learn through observing you—as he does with everyone—or if he hated watching you with other people just as much-
Oh.
Oh, you’re so stupid.
“You were jealous,” you realize, understanding what had triggered Dazai’s meltdown with the takeout food and insults toward you. Dazai stiffens against the door and you take the opportunity to trail your lips from his down to his jaw. “You were jealous over the guy I had over.”
“No-”
“You were.” You don’t even let him finish the protest, nipping at the spot beneath his ear gently and watching how he shudders. “How cute.”
“It’s not cute.” Dazai bristles. “You-you weren’t supposed-you’re not supposed to keep seeing people. I thought you were done with that. I thought we were-”
“We were what?” you ask coolly. “You avoided me for weeks after we talked, Dazai. Whatever we may or may not have been after we talked at the bar, it’s nothing when you start actively ignoring me for weeks after that.”
“But-”
You’re getting irritated again. “Dazai, you ignored me for weeks. I was pissed off and frustrated. And when I’m pissed off and frustrated, if I don’t have some way to relieve my stress, I do something stupid. Something stupid like putting a bullet in you the next time you stepped into my apartment after actively going out of your way to avoid me.”
“I was going out to get food,” Dazai says sullenly as if you were supposed to know that. “So we could watch a movie.”
“Last I recall, telepathy isn’t exactly part of my ability, Dazai,” you say dryly, calming yourself down by leaning in to brush your lips against his again.
A drug, you think again as the anger melts away when you feel his breath hitch against your lips. You reach behind him to open his bedroom door, guiding him in as you kiss him slowly. He’s fumbling again, unsure what to do with his fingers, clumsily moving his lips against yours until the back of his knees hits the bed, and he goes flopping down back on it. 
You snort at the surprised look on his face, joining him on the bed as you straddle his hips. You hover over him for a second before leaning down to give him another chaste kiss, enjoying the way he tries to chase your lips when you pull away.
“Tell me why you were avoiding me,” you say quietly as you lift a hand to cup his cheek. 
A foul move, you know. Dazai is always weak to gentle touches as much as he tries to pretend otherwise. You’ve noticed it when you watch movies with him and when he curls into bed with you on nights he can’t sleep. Just as you expect, he leans into your touch, lashes fluttering.
“Dazai,” you urge, “tell me why. What did I do?”
You didn’t do anything, you think bitterly, but you figure taking responsibility will be the easiest way to get him talking. You’ll fight about it later.
Dazai, to your surprise, turns his face away from you and your touch, a faraway look in his eye as he stares at the wall.
“You didn’t do anything,” he says. “I just didn’t-”
He cuts himself as if he can’t even bring himself to say it, and you know you have to do something because he seems to be withdrawing even more into his own head, eyes growing more distant with each passing second. You turn his head so that he’s facing you again and you lean down to press your lips briefly against his.
“You didn’t what?” you ask him.
Dazai still looks like he doesn’t want to answer, conflict spreading across his face as he stares up at you before he sighs and averts his gaze. “I don’t understand any of this. I didn’t want to disappoint,” he says so quietly that you barely hear him.
Your brows furrow. 
“Disappoint?” you question, a bit baffled. Dazai has a complex about failure. You know that too, have known it since you were sixteen. He can’t handle it, nothing makes him spiral quite like the idea of failure—you and he are quite similar in that regard—but you don’t understand what he means in this context. “Disappoint with what?”
Dazai doesn’t answer, doesn’t meet your eyes either, and your mind races to figure out what he might be referring to. You recall how he became hesitant and unsure when you finally took control, fingers twitching at his sides, body pliant as you moved him around, almost like a doll for you to maneuver as you pleased.
“Disappoint with this?” you finally realize, watching as he grimaces, confirming your suspicions. Your chest drops. “You avoided me because… you didn’t want to have sex?”
That makes you feel a bit sick to your stomach because what does he think of you if he went to this length to avoid you just because… Dazai’s entire body jolts at your words as if realizing how they came across.
“No,” he pushes out instantly. His hands dart out to cling to your shirt as if he’s worried you’re going to leave. “No, no. I want to. I do. Not just this… just in general. Everything. Me… This is just one part of it… the easiest to make mistakes with. I don’t like making mistakes.”
It’s only mildly reassuring.
“Dazai…” You start to say, pulling away, but his hands dart up to grab your waist so he can hold you in place on top of him. You think maybe the two of you need to talk. Again. “I just, I don’t understand.”
“I want this,” he repeats again, hands sliding down from your waist to curl his fingers around the hem of your shirt. He sees that you’re not convinced by his words so he pushes out a “Please” that nearly stops you in your tracks because you don’t think Dazai Osamu has ever begged for anything in his life.
You lean down to press your lips against his again. You set the pace this time, lifting your hand to cup his cheek—you pull the same move that he tried with you, nails gently scraping his scalp as you brush your fingers through his hair. Dazai melts into it in a way that you didn’t, lashes fluttering and lips parting instinctively, letting you deepen the kiss. Dazai’s breath catches as you push your tongue into his mouth, shivering when you trace the back of his teeth. 
Too pliant. All of the confidence he had earlier when he had you pinned to the elevator is gone. His breath wavers against your lips, and his fingers tremble as he grips at the hem of your button-up. Not a firm grip like you’d have anticipated, with his fingers digging into the plush skin of your hips as he grinds you down on his cock; instead, his fingers are clinging to the fabric as if he’s too overwhelmed to even think of grabbing your body.
“Tell me what you like,” you say quietly, fingers still absently carding through his dark locks as you kiss down his neck. Your other hand slips beneath his dress shirt, smoothing out over the bandages wrapped around his torso. “I want to know, wanna make you feel good.”
Dazai’s lips part to respond to you, but the only thing that escapes them is a pitched gasp—high and cracking in desperation, grip on your shirt so tight that you think he might rip it. He’s already hard, can feel his cock straining against his black pants, pressed against your thigh.
“I don’t-” Dazai’s voice is ragged; he sounds overwhelmed, almost confused. “I don’t know.”
“Hm?” you prod, nipping his neck and relishing in the way his whole body shudders at the feeling. “C’mon, Dazai, you’ve done this before. Tell me what you like.”
His gasp is choked when your hand tightens on his slim waist, lashes fluttering as his eyes roll back. More pliant and more sensitive, you note curiously, kissing back up his neck to tug at his earlobe with your teeth, a shiver running down your spine at the broken moan Dazai lets out into your ear. He jolts, eyes widening and face flushing—he looks as if he’s startled himself by the noise that escaped his lips, and you start to become a bit suspicious.
“I don’t know,” he tells you, sounding confused and frustrated. “I don’t know. It’s never felt like this before. How are you doing that?”
You pause.
You make a soft noise in the back of your throat, pulling your face back from his ear to look at him carefully because why is he acting like he’s never done this before? You know he’s slept around a lot. He picked it up over half a year ago when he got tired of hearing you and Chuuya brag about how easy it is to get things out of people like this. Made a point of making sure you knew about it when you had your boyfriend.
It’s never felt like this before.
Your chest swirls, and you feel a bit disconcerted as his words finally process. It’s never felt like what? Dazai doesn’t know why you’ve stopped, you can feel him tugging at your shirt, hazy eyes trying to focus on you. You wonder if the gears in his head are turning, realizing something might be wrong but unable to pinpoint what.
You kiss him to distract him, deeper this time. You press his head back against the soft pillow, one hand sliding to cradle the back of it as you try to break all of the quick-moving cogs in his brain so you can think in peace, cursing the fact that his mind has always been quicker and sharper than yours.
Dazai is Dazai. He’s smooth, charming—when he wants to, he could seduce anyone into his bed. You’ve watched him do it at events, sidling up close and leaning in to speak to people, dark eye lidded and voice low, a slow smirk curling at his lip as he brushes his finger lightly against the target’s lower back before guiding them out of the room. Christ, he’s nearly flustered you on more than one account. You want to say that he’s not the same kid who was nervous to kiss you two years ago, but he clearly is with how he’s reacting to your kisses and touches right now. But he shouldn’t be—maybe it’s because it’s you he’s with, maybe he’s just nervous because it’s you and not some random person he’s seducing for information.
But that doesn't explain the comment. Doesn’t explain it’s never felt like this before. 
“Never felt like what?” you ask as you kiss the corner of his lips and down his jaw again, all the way to the line of bandages peeking out from his dress shirt. You undo the first few buttons, watching the way his chest rapidly rises and falls under your touch as you smooth your hands over his chest. “Hm?” 
“I-I don’t know,” Dazai says, voice cracking and another breathy sound spilling from his lips as you kiss the underside of his jaw. “It’s just-it’s usually just-it’s not this.”
That doesn’t help you at all, you think. You’re about to press, but your lips on his skin have evidently made Dazai’s lips looser than they typically are because you don’t even have to voice a clarifying question to get him talking again.
“The way you’re touching me. Kissing me. It’s not like this, doesn’t feel so good,” he continues and you can hear the whine building in the back of his throat as he speaks. “It’s just sex.”
You slide his button-up off of his shoulders, revealing his bandaged body to you. You don’t make any move to remove them, but now you stare down at him, a bit perplexed. “This is sex,” you say, voice a bit stunted because you didn’t expect him to say that.
“No,” Dazai says, seemingly equally perplexed by your words, drawn out of the haze of pleasure into a more confused state. “Sex is sex. It’s penetrative.” 
“... Sex isn’t just penetrative, Dazai,” you say, baffled. “This is sex. It’s foreplay.”
Dazai stares at you like he doesn’t even know what that word means.
Oh, you realize, heart sinking as you realize why Dazai is so thrown off by all of this. How has he had sex without foreplay? Sex without foreplay is… it’s boring, not enjoyable at all. More animalistic than anything, borderline painful half of the time. Is that what he’s been doing with all of the people he seduces for information? The thought is a bit jarring, but the more you think about it, the more you think it might make sense. 
Dazai is prodigious when he’s given something that he can study and mimic; can execute flawless imitations of the behaviors he’s trying to learn. He learned the art of leadership from observing Mori. The art of war from observing the Colonel’s operations before his death. Adaptability from observing Kouyou during missions. Business from observing Ace’s meetings and transactions. Seduction from observing you interacting with people during events. Dazai is as terrifying as he is because he’s a perfect amalgamation of the entire upper echelon’s best skill sets. He’s adopted Mori’s mannerisms, the Colonel's strategic capability, Kouyou’s ability to adapt to any situation, Ace’s shrewdness with yen, and your charisma. 
If there’s something he can observe, he can mirror it to near perfection.
So, is it really that surprising to you that the front he puts up during events is just an imitation of how you act with people? That it doesn’t translate behind closed doors? That he had nothing to study and nothing to mimic once seduction progressed to the bedroom, so he let whoever he was with take the lead to try to learn from them in the moment? 
That maybe someone would use his ignorance on the subject against him?
Dazai is Dazai, you think, for the fifth time tonight. He doesn’t watch porn, he doesn’t ask people for help, and this isn’t something Mori would have ever taught him—you know that better than anyone. Mori sheltered Dazai from everything, even tried to keep you away from him; he didn’t want anything or anyone to taint the control he had over his precious Demon Prodigy. While you and Chuuya have had the chance to live, experiencing life and the outside world, Dazai’s been stuck under the watchful eye of the boss, hardly ever out of arm’s reach, caged like a circus animal to be put on display whenever Mori sees fit.  
Of course, Dazai would only see it as another way to get the job done, disregarding his own comfort and pleasure—because when does Dazai Osamu ever care for his own comfort and pleasure? He lived in a fucking shipping container until you dragged him out of it. It’s not a thought that casually crosses his mind, and he wouldn’t think twice once he thinks he has an idea of what’s going on. He doesn’t see things the way you do, was never given the opportunity to understand, taught by Mori to see things as tools and means to an end, even himself.
Dazai can see your mind racing. You know he’s going to put together that something is wrong soon if you don’t move on from this. But it’s hard—it’s a bit fucking jarring to realize that Dazai’s so overwhelmed by your touch because every other time he’s had sex, he’s probably been uncomfortable or even in pain. 
You lean down to kiss him again, halting his thoughts. You place two chaste kisses on his lips, sucking his bottom lip gently before kissing his cheek down to his jaw.
“What all have you done with people?” you ask him, sitting back on his thighs, lacing your fingers with his as you look down at him.
Instantly, his face is on fire. “What does it matter?” he demands, but you can feel his fingers tightening around yours.
You roll your eyes at his obstinateness. “Humor me,” you say dryly. “Are you usually the one leading, or is your partner? Are you the one penetrating or-”
Dazai’s grip on your hands becomes almost painful, so you quiet down, giving him an amused look. Maybe it's an awkward subject, but you want to have a vague idea of what he’s been doing before you do anything.
“... partner is,” he finally tells you, hardly looking you in the eye. It’s kind of cute. “... and only when it’s a woman, but she still takes the lead.”
“Do you want to take the lead tonight?” you ask him, running your thumb over his knuckles to try to get him to loosen his grip. 
He does, but only barely.
“Not tonight,” he says after a few moments.
“Not tonight,” you agree. “Did you prefer topping or bottoming?” 
Dazai thinks for a moment and then says, “Topping. Bottoming was…”
You force yourself not to wince, suspicions confirmed by the way he trails off.
You hum, sliding your hands up and down his bandaged sides soothingly, enjoying the way he slowly relaxes beneath your touch. “That can feel good, too,” you tell him. “I can show you that one day if you’d like.”
Dazai’s brows furrow, pointedly looking down at your clothed lower half as if trying to see through them. Your lips quirk up as he says, “But you don’t have a-”
“There are ways to work around that,” you snort, hands finally resting at his hips, drawing circles over his protruding hip bones. 
“… Not tonight,” he finally repeats.
“Not tonight,” you agree again.
You lift your hands back to his cheeks, holding his face between them as you kiss him again. You kiss him deeper this time, rolling your hips against his to make his breath hitch. You drag the tip of your tongue against the roof of his mouth—he tastes like cigarettes and faintly of whiskey. Tastes familiar. Like home.
You think you could kiss Dazai forever and never find yourself sick of it. Kissing him is like a drug, you think again. Kissing him gives you butterflies in a way that you’ve only ever experienced with him when you were sixteen, and giving him his first kiss. 
Kissing him is like coming home after being away for years. 
He kisses you back clumsily, all of the finesse he had earlier in the night long gone. His teeth nearly knock against yours, it’s a bit too wet and a bit too messy, but you think it’s the best kiss you’ve ever had. You smile against his lips before pulling away to kiss the corner of his lips, nipping his skin when he lets out a shaky breath against your ear.
Your hands slide down his body to the waistband of his pants, fingers slipping beneath before you look up at him questioningly. “Can I?” you ask him, tilting your head to the side.
“How else are we going to do this?” Dazai counters petulantly.
Brat, you think to yourself, a bit fondly. Thoughts race through your mind but you push them away—maybe another night. You don’t respond to him, raising your eyebrows and waiting for a verbal response.
His cheeks dust pink as he says, “Yes.”
You work quickly to unbutton his pants, patting his thigh so he lifts his hips. You trail kisses down his bandaged chest as you slide off his pants. He’s very responsive to your touch, each kiss makes his breath stutter, you can feel it in the way his chest rises and falls and it only makes you want to watch him fall apart more.
“Are the bandages okay?” Dazai asks after a few moments when you kiss down to his navel. You look up at him, brows furrowed, catching the hesitant expression on his face, dark eye trained on you. “Do you want them off?”
“Do you want them off?” you throw back at him, squinting up at him.
Dazai stares at you for a moment before he shakes his head, a strange expression on his face—you wonder if he was worried you’d ask him to take them off, wonder if his other partners made comments about it, pushed him to remove them. 
You wonder if it’s part of the reason why he avoided you for so long: he wasn’t ready for you to see him without them but thought you would ask him to take them off.
You leave it at that though, returning to kissing down to his hip bone, nipping the skin there and watching how his body jerks a bit in surprise. You let out a puff of laughter against his skin before you ease his briefs off, freeing his cock from where it was straining against the cloth—the soft ones you’d bought him when you’d found his rough, tattered ones in your washing machine a few months after he first moved into your apartment. 
You don’t usually find cocks pretty—they all mostly look the same—but Dazai’s is. Long, not too thick, his tip is flushed a pretty pink color and a vein runs along the underside. He’s leaky too, precum drips down from his tip, right along that vein and you want to taste him, so you do.
You lean in to press your lips against his length, sucking gently on the vein before kissing up to his tip. A bit too salty for your taste, probably because of his shitty diet, but you don’t mind because the pitched moan that tumbles from his lips makes up for the taste entirely. You peek up, breath catching at the sight of his head tossed back against the pillow, swollen lips parted in a pretty moan and long lashes fluttering. He looks stunning, you wish you could take a picture—maybe another night.
You think all of his previous partners have severely missed out.
“Ah,” he gasps. “Shit, shit-”
Even with just your lips wrapped around his tip, you can feel Dazai’s cock twitching in your mouth—you wonder if he’s already on the edge. You can see the way his abdomen is spasming beneath the bandages, how his fingers are curling around the soft sheets beneath him. You don’t want him to finish yet, you want him inside you when he cums, so you only spare a few chaste kisses trailing up and down his length before sitting up straight again. 
Immediately, he tosses you an accusing look. Bottom lip pushed out, cheeks flushed the same pretty pink as his tip. “Why-”
You silence him by pressing your lips against his. This kiss is lewder than your last, you push the bit of precum you’d gathered on your tongue into his mouth as you unbutton your own slacks. He makes a noise into your mouth but you don’t pull away until you feel him swallow. You smile against his lips before you pull back to slip off your own pants, watching his face twist.
“Yuck,” he says, wrinkling his nose and sticking out his tongue. “Tastes bad.”
“Have been telling you to start eating more fruits and vegetables,” you tell him, flicking his thigh as you shimmy out of your slacks and toss them to the side. “You don’t listen.”
The smile he tosses up at you is familiar, a welcome change from the distress and confusion that’s been plaguing him most of the night. “You’ve been thinking about what my cum tastes like for that long? Pervert.”
“More like I’ve been thinking about how high your cholesterol must be with how much canned crab and buttered bread you eat,” you say dryly, returning to where you’d been straddling his waist.
You lift your hands up, beckoning him to take them. He does, reaching up to lace his fingers with yours. A smile curves at your lips as you lean over him, pinning his hands to the mattress on either side of his head as you kiss him again. 
Your chest feels light in a way that it hardly ever does when you’re fucking someone, fluttering in the same way it was when you first kissed him two years ago. Usually when you’re sleeping with someone, it’s all about keeping up appearances. Flirty, sensual, seductive, you’re always more focused on the task at hand than you are enjoying yourself, this is… different. You mean, it always feels good—you know how to make sure it feels good for you while getting the job done—but this…
Feels like home, you think again. Being with Dazai feels like home and it scares you a bit because he’s so flighty and unpredictable but you push away the fear to kiss him harder. You have him now, that’s what matters.
“I like canned crab and buttered bread.” Dazai pouts as he mumbles against your lips.
“Shut up,” you tell him.
You feel him smile and you know you’re not going to like what he’s about to say so you cut him off by reaching down to position his cock at your entrance. Instantly, he chokes over a moan and your lashes flutter, feeling him slide between your folds. 
Shit, you hadn’t even realized how wet you were, too caught up in trying to make sure Dazai was feeling good, but now with the feeling of the tip of his cock pressed against your clit and his length firm against your core, your abdomen feels all hot and tight, head fuzzy.
You keep your forehead pressed to his, noses nudging, sharing the same sliver of air as you roll your hips, letting out a soft moan against his lips when his tip presses against your hole. Each breath he lets out hitches into a soft whine at the end, a glassy look to his eye. You don’t sink down on him yet, feeling how his grip on your hands tightens, how his breath becomes shuddered and his gaze becomes lidded.
You wonder maybe if he can cum just from the feeling of his tip pushing inside you—maybe another night.
“Please,” he breathes out for the second time tonight and who are you to deny him?
You don’t kiss him as you sink down on his cock, eyes fluttering shut when you feel how his cock stretches your walls—you want to hear him, hear the way he gasps, the way his breath catches, you want to hear his moans and whimpers. He tries to chase your lips but you keep them just out of reach until he gives up, fingers tightening around yours and hips jerking up.
“‘s so tight,” Dazai gasps as you rock your hips slowly against his. “Feels s’good.”
“Yeah?” you press, breathless. 
You distract yourself from the rapidly spreading heat by kissing his neck, letting go of one of his hands to bring it to his cheek, watching as he instinctively leans into your touch, hardly able to hold his eye open. He presses a sloppy kiss to your palm, hand coming up to hold yours to his face.
“Yeah,” he says shakily, lashes drooping and lips parting in another silent moan. “Feels…”
“Feels what?” you ask him, kissing the other side of his neck before trailing wet kisses up to his opposite cheek, feeling him shudder as you tug his earlobe.
“Right,” Dazai tells you, dark eye glazed over as he looks at you, lips wet and swollen and so entirely kissable that you can’t help yourself from leaning down to steal another from him. “Feels right.”
You wonder if Dazai feels just as at home with you as you do with him and that thought is enough to make you rock your hips. 
The noise that Dazai lets out is obscene and pornographic, pitched and breathy. You can hardly appreciate the lewd expression on his face—his hair matted to his forehead, eyes half-rolled back and lips parted in a pretty ‘o’—because the feeling of his cock dragging against your walls nearly has you tumbling over the edge.
Shit, you think to yourself, desperately trying to rein in the rapidly building pleasure. Shit, what the fuck?
You never cum this quickly—usually you have to slip your hand between the sweat slicked bodies of you and your partner to rub circles around your clit so you can bring yourself over the edge at the same time as him. You don’t think you’ve ever come from penetration alone—but the stretch of Dazai’s cock, the feeling of his tip bullying deep into your cunt, the sound of skin on skin and his pretty moans, it all goes right to your head and to your pussy, the telltale signs of your thighs tensing and your abdomen tightening warning you that you’re close already.
“Fuck,” you breathe out, voice shaky. “You’re so…”
You don’t even know what you're trying to say, mind becoming increasingly more empty of thought as you rock your hips again, setting a steady pace. Dazai chokes over air beneath you, the hand still intertwined with yours squeezing hard while the other one drops from the hand you have on his face to claw the bed sheets.
You feel his cock twitch inside you, the way his moans are becoming louder and lewder, the way his head falls to the side, face half pressed into the pillow, eyes knocked back, body arched. Dazai’s already so gone that you think any second he’ll cum deep inside of you and that thought alone makes your body shudder. 
You grab the hand clawing at the bed sheets, guiding it between your bodies as you bounce on his cock. You can feel his hazy gaze trying to figure out what you’re doing but you’re more focused on guiding his finger to rub circles around your clit.
As soon as the pressure is placed on the sensitive nub, your hips are stuttering and a gasp is tearing from your lips. Dazai’s choking when he feels your walls spasm around him, hips thrusting up erratically to meet each of your rocks, but he’s just barely coherent enough to keep his finger rubbing circles on your clit.
Your breath becomes heavy and shaky, the pace of your hips quickening, fire spreads through you so rapidly that it’s impossible to control.
“I’m gonna-” you gasp when you feel yourself tipping over the edge, eyes trying to focus on Dazai’s face and the sight you’re met with is enough to push you over the edge.
Dazai’s jaw is slack, drool pooling at the corner of his lips, the white of his eye just barely visible, cheeks flushed a deep red. He's babbling out incoherent words: you can just barely make out your name, s’good, too tight, too much, and I’m gonna-
And then you’re choking over your own moan when you feel Dazai finish inside of you, cum warm and heavy as he fucks it deep in your cunt. His lithe body trembles beneath you, tense and arched, holding your hand so tight that you think he might break it, and your vision goes white as you cum on his cock, mind blank when the taut cord snaps within you, nails digging into Dazai’s skin.
Dazai’s cock is still twitching inside of you when you slump onto his chest, tremors still spreading through his body. You tilt your head up to ghost your lips against his jaw before sliding off of him, laying on the bed next to him. You feel empty without him inside you but you distract yourself by lifting your hand to his cheek again, tilting it to the side and forcing him to look at you.
More emotion swims in Dazai’s eye than you’ve seen him express in the entire two years you’ve known him, he looks at you so reverently that you can almost imagine three words spilling from his lips, breathy and adoring. You know he won’t say them, but it’s a nice thought, you think. You lean in to ghost your lips against his briefly, the tips of your fingers carding through his dark curls. You want to say something but you don’t know what.
Well. You do know what but you can’t say it.
“You wanted me soooooo bad,” Dazai finally says, a bit more clarity returning to his eye as his lips curl up. “I knew it, you wanted me so bad.”
“You’re so annoying,” you tell him but your voice is fond and you can’t help yourself from shifting forward to press your lips against his. You feel him smile against your lips and that warm, fluttery feeling returns.
Home. 
“You love it,” Dazai sings, nipping your cheek. 
A bit longingly, you think, I do.
Instead, you roll on top of him to straddle his hips, pressing your lips against his again. 
“You wish.”
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lovegalor333 · 8 days ago
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˖ ᡣ𐭩 ⊹ ࣪ ౨ৎ˚₊✧˚ · .
you’re gonna be ok (paige x reader)
summary: you’re going through a tough time and have pushed paige away but she finally realises something is wrong
content warnings: talks of depression and ed behaviours/language
requested by: @melpthatsme 💗
Your girlfriend was getting suspicious and rightly so. You had just given her another lame excuse as to why you couldn’t have dinner with her tonight. That was the third time this week.
At first it was ‘too much homework’, then a ‘headache’ and now it was your ‘period’. All lies.
As you lay curled up in your bed, all lights turned off, you sobbed silent tears until your pillow was saturated. You felt guilty lying to Paige but you couldn’t go out, especially not to eat.
You wasn’t entirely sure why Paige even wanted to be seen in public with you anyway, why she was with you at all actually. Paige was beautiful. Like the most beautifully perfect woman there ever was. Her eyes shone bright at all times and whether her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail or left natural and loose, framing her face, it looked immaculate. She was intelligent and athletic, maintaining an almost perfect GPA while simultaneously leading her team in back to back wins. Paige was everything and you, you were nothing.
You hated everything about yourself and you were usually good at hiding it. Painting on a fake smile and laughing when others laughed, mirroring your friends actions to make it seem like everything was just fine but it was getting harder to hide. You were drinking and smoking just to get respite from your thoughts. You were dragging yourself to gatherings just to count down the minutes until you could leave and be alone in your room where you could finally let your guard down.
You were proud at how long you had gone keeping this to yourself but it was almost impossible now. You didn’t want to talk. You didn’t want to leave the apartment. You didn’t want to eat. You didn’t want to see anyone. In fact, you didn’t want to see yourself. You had even gone as far to cover every mirror in your room just to avoid the reflection that made you sick to your stomach.
You felt like you had cried a river this past week but the tears wouldn’t stop, you thought there would be nothing left to give but you were a never ending pit of sadness.
You hear shuffling and muffled voices coming from your living room, your roommates must be home. You thanked yourself for keeping your lights off and closed your eyes so if they came into your room, they’d think you were sleeping.
A few seconds past before you heard a light knock at your door. You ignored it. Pressing yourself further into your mattress, wishing it would swallow you whole. Then came the click of the handle being turned and the door squeaking open.
You kept your body as still as possible, holding your breath in hopes that whoever was disturbing you would think twice but that doesn’t happen. Instead your bedroom light is flicked on and your door is closed with force, practically slammed.
“Why did you lie to me?” You recognise Paiges voice immediately and it’s a mixture of pissed off but also upset and you know it’s your fault.
“What?” You say, even though you heard her loud and clear.
“I know you’re not on your period. Our cycles are synced. They have been for months. Why did you lie?” Paige asks again and you feel so stupid for making such a rookie error.
Paige was right. Your cycles were synced, it happened often with women and girls that spent a lot of time together, so when you were on your period, she was too. She had caught you out in your lie.
“I don’t know.” You mummble into your duvet, still curled up tightly.
“You’ve blown me off three times this week. You barely answer my calls and texts, it’s like I have to force you to see me and now you’re lying to me and you can’t even be bothered to tell me why?” Paige rants and even though you still haven’t looked at her you can tell she’s pacing your room.
“I don’t understand what’s going on. I thought we were good but maybe not.” She says and you physically feel your heart brake at her words but you can’t bring yourself to say anything other than, “Maybe.”
“What?” She asks confused even though she was the one who said it first, “Y/N, can you at least fucking look at me?” She snapped and you know thats the least you owe her so you slowly roll yourself around so you’re no longer facing the wall and push yourself up into a sitting position but you can’t bring yourself to lift your eyes from your lap.
“I wanted to take you for dinner, spend some time with you. Just be with you and I thought you would have wanted the same but instead you’re in bed!” Paige continued and you just took her onslaught of words, you didn’t have the energy to argue or even defend yourself.
“I’m sorry.” You muttered, picking at the already raw skin around your nails.
“Will you just look at me? Do you want to break-” You finally look at Paige and she stops mid-sentence, “Have you been crying?”
You ignore her question because your heart is racing and more tears are threatening to fall at what she was about to ask, “Finish what you were about to say.” You whisper but she doesn’t need to, you knew what she was going to say. She was going to ask if you wanted to break up.
“What’s the matter? What happened? Why were you crying?” Paige asks all at once, any annoyance in her tone has been replaced with concern and her facial expression shifted from dark and frowning to soft and doe eyed.
“I wasn’t.” You lie, “Finish what you were about to say.”
“Yes you were. Your eyes are red and puffy, your skin is blotchy,” She walks towards you, “and your pillows wet. Why were you crying?”
“You want to break up.” You answer your own question.
“No. No, I don’t. But I don’t understand what’s going on with you, I thought maybe you did.” She says honestly sitting on the edge of your bed.
“I don’t.”
“Why were you crying baby? Tell me what’s on your mind.” She says placing a hand on your leg.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too much Paige. My mind is too much, it’s too dark. You don’t deserve that.” You begin to cry again and it quickly turns into sobs.
“Hey, baby, come here.” She whispered, pulling you into her chest and onto her lap, she wrapped her arms around your body and held you close, “You’re scaring me.” She admits, “Tell me what’s going on my love. I want to help you.”
“You deserve more than this Paige.” You choke out in between sobs, you’re hyperventilating now, your body shaking in your girlfriends arms but she continues to hold you tight and close.
“But I want you. I love you.” She pulls away from you slightly so she can look you in your eyes and she holds your face tenderly, a hand on each cheek, “You’re all I want, my beautiful girl.”
“Don’t say that.” You weep, jumping out of her lap.
“Don’t say what?”
“Don’t say I’m beautiful. Don’t say any of it. It’s not true.” You cross your arms over yourself wishing you could shrink down into the smallest dimensions and eventually disappear.
“Baby, what are you saying? What’s going on?” She reaches out for you but you pull away not wanting to be touched.
Paige properly looks around your room for the first time and you watch as she notices everything and you see the cogs turning in her head as her eyes fall to your mirror, covered by a sweater. She sees the paper taped to your wall with your weight written on it followed by the harshest of words that you thought about yourself. She sees the empty alcohol bottles on your dresser and the half smoked blunt on your bedside table. And when she finally looks at you, in your oversized clothes, arms wrapped tightly around yourself, her eyes were glossy and her forehead creased as she fought back tears of her own.
“I don’t know what’s going on in your head, but I do know that I do love you and you are beautiful and I’ll tell you that everyday until you believe it.” She says as a tear slips down her cheek.
Paige walks over to you, taking you by your hands first and kissing both of them. She pulls on the sleeves of your sweater and you reluctantly let her pull it over your head so your just standing there in your bra. You close your eyes not wanting to see her reaction to your body, the thought of it made you sick. You felt her lips press to your stomach and she peppered kisses up your torso, “My beautiful baby.” She mumbled against your skin as she continued to kiss over your chest and onto your neck.
She took you to your bed, laying you down and she hooked her fingers into the waistband of your joggers, pulling them off, exposing your legs. You wanted to grab the sheet and cover yourself up but her mouth met your thigh and she pecked it gently, moving over the the other, “So perfect.” She breathed, the tips of her fingers trailing down your legs.
You lay on your bed, eyes closed, tears streaming out and you feel Paige hover above you, “Look at me baby.” She says softly, wiping the tears that soaked your cheeks. You flutter your eyes open and look up at Paige who’s looking down at you, eyes filled with nothing but love and care. “Please don’t shut me out. I’m here for you. Anything you need me to do, I’ll do it. I just want you to be OK. I need you to be OK. You’re everything to me.” She says, blue eyes locked on yours.
“Can you just hold me tonight?” You sniffle. “Of course.”
Paige lays on your bed, pulling you into her arms, she presses her lips to your head before her fingers find your hair and she runs through it gently, “You’re gonna be OK.” She whispers comfortingly. “You promise?”
“I promise.”
˖ ᡣ𐭩 ⊹ ࣪ ౨ৎ˚₊✧˚ · .
a/n: i wrote this so tired so forgive any mistakes 😭 already want to write a part 2 🥺🥺
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fairyysoup · 9 months ago
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pairing(s): hairdresser!eddie munson x fem!reader
summary: How do you make getting a haircut an erotic experience? You have Eddie Munson as your hairdresser, of course.
cw: explicit, smut, unprotected piv sex, mirror sex, workplace sex, hand kink, choking, dumbification, dom!eddie, touch-starved!reader, semi-sort-of subspace happenings, referring to genitals with gendered pronouns, slight body worship, getting weirdly horny over a head massage, sexual tension, negative self talk, hair cut/style mentioned but no description of hair color/type, the aftercare is the haircut lol, implied 90s au, eddie's like 30, reader's age unspecified, eddie is employee of the month in my heart, not proofread, no beta we die like men
a/n: this is weird. and came from an interesting experience i had at the hair salon. and yes that is corpse's hand in that pic i didn't want to spend all day looking for a header pic shut up shut up shut up
ALL MY WORKS ARE 18+ MINORS DNI
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Your hands twitch on the copy of Elle magazine in your lap. The familiar waiting area of your local salon has new furniture, which still smells a bit like the cellophane it came wrapped in, and hasn’t been worn out by patrons just yet. You’d asked for your usual stylist, Melissa. Except, you haven’t been here in so long, and apparently Melissa doesn’t work here anymore. 
“We have a new stylist in her place,” the greeter at the front desk told you kindly. “I could fit you in if you’d like that same station?” 
The station doesn’t matter to you; they all look the same and have the same tools. Obviously, when it comes to getting your hair cut, the stylist makes the difference. But, since you’re a couple months too late to catch up with Melissa, a new stylist is who you’ll be working with. 
The PA still plays some sort of weird pop-rock fusion that mixes Nat King Cole with Billy Idol, but you just try to focus on it to keep your leg from bouncing. You always get anxious like this when you come in for an appointment, even though you always tell yourself the same thing. It’s just hair. If you don’t like it, it’ll grow back. Or, if worst comes to worst, you could always shave it.
You hear your name being called, and you look up to the person who’d just approached the waiting area around the partition that blocks off the styling area. You blink, your mind going fuzzy as you try to make sense of what you see.
“Looks like I’ll be cutting your hair today,” the man standing at the end of the row of chairs says, with a grin that puts boyish dimples on his cheeks. “I’m Eddie.”
Eddie the Hairdresser is a bit more than you can handle right now. Between his long, curly hair, and the shirt he wears that gives you a view of the tattoos crawling up his arms, you think your knees might already be made out of jelly as you try to stand. But then he sticks out his hand for you to shake, and he’s wearing big, chunky rings that glint in the light, and you think you might swoon like a Victorian damsel.
“I’m, uh–” you begin intelligently, as you fit your hand into his big one. He squeezes just the tiniest bit and smirks at you. “I– I’m trying to, uh–”
“First time?” Eddie asks you with a tilt of his head. His brown eyes crease at the edges with mirth.
“Oh, um, no,” you mutter, looking everywhere but at his dimples. He has a tattoo on his neck of a dragon. You stare at it for a moment too long. “I used to come and see Melissa, forever ago.” 
“Oh! Yeah, Melissa was great. She trained me,” Eddie starts jabbering as he tilts his head and leads you around the partition. You’re met with the smell of hairspray and the sound of blow dryers getting louder. “She’s a hard act to follow, but I hope I can do well enough. Let’s get you started with a wash, hm?” 
You smile as he winks at you conspiratorially. You always feel a little bit awkward as you sit in the chair for the wash sinks, but Eddie ushers you into it with a little wave of his hand and gently– more gently than you can remember even Melissa being– lifts the ends of your hair and places a soft towel around your shoulders.
“What kept you away all this time?” Eddie asks pleasantly as he tests the water temperature. “Melissa’s been gone for a while.”
“Yeah, I, uh, I was working a lot,” you stumble into an explanation, your cheeks heating up a bit. It’s hard not to feel like you need to repent for not coming in to get a trim every month. “Last time I came in, I got my hair cut really short, so it wasn’t like I needed to come in for a trim for a long time, and by the time I really needed one it was long enough that I could do it myself… so, I just kept doing that.”
“So, what are we doing today?” Eddie inquires as his fingertips brush along your temples to tuck your hair back behind your ears and into the wash basin. With gentle prompting, he tilts your head back into the bin and begins to wet the ends of your hair.
“I figured it’s time I go short again,” you tell him, more confident than you really feel about it. It was a split second decision, one that you made because the reflection in the mirror was looking back at you with such a dead expression that you decided you needed a change in a bad way. For a lighter note, you supplement, “I’m tired of brushing tangles out of my hair every morning, and the other day I had a whole bird’s nest at the back of my neck, y’know.”
“Pssh, I know all about tangles. You saw my hair,” Eddie chuckles as the lukewarm water touches your scalp. Goosebumps rise on your arms while he rambles on, “I have to comb my hair wet or else I look like I got electrocuted. I never used to care about that sort of thing before I went to school for this, but once you start learning about proper treatment it’s kind of hard to ignore. I used to wash my hair with bar soap. Dry as hell, no conditioner. I’m surprised I got it long to begin with.” 
You find yourself smiling just thinking about it. “Bar soap? With those curls?”
“Don’t tell anyone, my reputation will be ruined,” Eddie leans down and whispers to you while he reaches for a bottle of shampoo. You hear a crack of a bottle cap, and then his hands are in your hair again, working the sweet smelling soap into your roots. “I’m trying to get employee of the month, but they’re never gonna give it to me if they know I used to sabotage my own hair with Irish Spring.”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” you tell him sweetly, but you’re barely paying attention to his words anymore. His fingers are pressing into areas on your head that haven’t had a proper massage in forever, and months of tension headaches are being brought to the forefront of your mind. 
You never consider how oddly intimate having someone wash your hair is until you’re in the thick of it. Eddie’s thumbs massage circles into your occipitals with just a perfect amount of pressure, and the muscles down the back of your neck slowly melt and relax, moving with the swell of his fingertips. You suddenly feel very relaxed and very sleepy, and your eyelids drift closed as Eddie’s thumbs trace the line of your skull up to your hairline.
It even takes a moment for you to tune into the fact that he’s humming. Under his breath, he’s singing along to the notes of the song on the PA. He’s doing it in such a way that you’re sure he’s not even aware of it, himself, and you’d comment on it if you weren’t afraid that you’d embarrass him. His fingers are massaging circles around your temples now, and while you’re trying to focus on the sound of him harmonizing with the music, your mind is again trying to distract you with the feeling developing at the base of your spine. A ticklish, warm feeling spreads between your hips, disrupting the lull you find yourself in and forcing you to blink your eyes open. 
Oh, no. We’re not doing that right now.
You can’t say you’re surprised that this is your response. His hands are all over your head and you haven’t been touched by anyone in… well, a very long time, to say the least. You’re probably a little starved for it, all things considered. But this is really the wrong time and place to be getting turned on by a guy’s touch.
You shift in your seat, trying not to be too obvious about it when Eddie pulls his hands away and begins rinsing your hair again. Crossing your legs would be a dead giveaway, but the warm feeling is turning into a subtle throb between your legs, and Eddie’s hands are back on your head, now gently combing the conditioner through the length of your hair as though he’s petting you.
After a few torturous minutes of trying to ignore the blooming arousal deep in your gut, Eddie cuts the water and wraps your hair in the towel to secure it. 
“Now comes the hard part,” Eddie says, probably not meaning to make it sound so suggestive, but your mind seems to be taking its sweet time loitering in the gutter. 
You stare dazedly up at the ceiling. Now is the hard part?
Eddie leads you to what used to be Melissa’s station, and swings the swivel chair around for you with a flourish. “Step into my office, sweetheart. I’ll get you all dressed up in a sexy robe and everything.” 
You stifle a giggle as you slide into the seat. His “office” is one table in a row of other tables, and two feet away an older woman is getting her hair bleached by a girl with an undercut. As Eddie spins you around, the stylist shoots him a look. 
“He’s a shameless flirt,” she tells you, making eye contact with you in the mirror. Eddie lays a smock across your front and buttons it at the back of your neck.
“I’ll have you know, I’ve been minding my manners very well,” Eddie huffs with feigned indignation as he unwraps your hair and tosses the towel onto the table in front of you. He still winks at you in the mirror when he leans around you to pick up a comb. “So far.”
You can’t help the way that your jaw clenches. He’s really not going to make this easy on you. You wonder if he knows where your mind has been for the last ten minutes.
Eddie moves around to the back of your chair and presses on a lever to raise it up, but nothing happens. 
“Dammit,” Eddie curses under his breath, and turns to his coworker, who’s still loading tinfoil into the woman’s hair until she looks like something from Close Encounters. “I can’t believe you gave me the crap chair.”
“Early birds get the good chairs,” the stylist replies. 
Eddie sighs and turns back to you, and finds you looking at him curiously in the mirror. “This is the only broken chair in the whole salon, and everyone hates it, so it tends to move around. You never know if you’ll get the crap chair.”
“That’s sabotage,” you giggle.
“I know! So I have to bend down to style you, I’m sorry.”
“I think I can handle it.” You watch him give you a look in the mirror that makes you shift in your seat again. 
“So,” he begins, looking down at your head as he begins detangling your hair. “We’re going short?”
“That’s the plan,” you say with a puff of your chest. Please, god, don’t let it be horrible. 
“How short?” he prompts, eyeing you in the mirror. “Shoulder length? Close cropped?”
You reach up a slightly shaky hand and pinch the length that you want between two fingers. “Here’s good.”
Eddie nods, looking somewhat pleased. “Are we doing layers?”
“Yeah, I think layers would be good for the long term.” 
“Gives you more flexibility,” he agrees. He picks up a pair of scissors and begins measuring out the length that you want. “I’ll start with the length and then we’ll move to bangs, all right?” 
“That… sounds good.” You’re temporarily discombobulated by Eddie taking the sides of your head and tilting your head down just the slightest bit. 
“Stay just like that for me, okay?” he says quietly.
You blink down at the table in front of you, feeling your mouth go dry. “No problem.” Your hands nervously twitch beneath the cover of the smock across your body.
He goes back to humming along with the music on the PA, and you don’t have the heart to interrupt him. You’re trying to focus on anything but the nerves in your system and the way his touch keeps making you want to jump out of your seat.
After a moment, he stops humming and dusts a bit of hair off of your shoulder. “There we go. Good girl.” 
You blink up at Eddie in the mirror, and then see the transformation from long hair to short on your head. 
“How does it feel?” Eddie asks, leaning down to pinch the ends of the front and measure the evenness of the length. You stare at his fingers, and the tattoo of a bat just above his thumb on his left hand.
“Ten pounds lighter,” you joke. It feels like you’ve swallowed a lump of hot coal, but he doesn’t need to know that. Eddie grins, and his dimples make a glorious reappearance. 
“I’m not done with you yet,” he murmurs, and again positions your head where he wants it, staring directly forward. “Honestly, even if you wanted to stop here, it would suit you. I don’t think there’s a way to make you look bad, sweetheart.”
“You’ve never seen me with a hangover,” you scoff, trying to ignore how your heart skips a beat. 
Eddie smirks at you in the mirror while he starts working on giving your hair layers. “My guess is that you still look just as cute, but with a bit more of a grumpy look around here.” He gestures to your brow with one finger, and reaches over to set aside the texturizing scissors. 
“So, what I’m hearing is, you think I’m cute?” you say, still trying to play up the confidence that you don’t really have. Your hand squeezes your thigh under the smock you wear, your nails digging in for purchase.
“No, I think you’re gorgeous,” Eddie says swiftly, like it’s just a matter of fact. “But, I think you’d also be cute when you’re hungover. Plus, with this hair, you’d probably look all unkempt and I love the mental image that’s creating.”
His hands fluff the layers that he’s put into your hair, ruffling them gently and carding his fingers through them to measure their length. You’re sure that he’s not aware of the moon-eyed look you’re giving him in the mirror. 
Except, then he moves around you to start working on your bangs, and the smirk that comes across his face when he looks down at yours is enough to make you lose your composure. He knows everything that’s going on in your head, you’re sure of it. 
Cocky bastard.  
“I like your tattoos,” you murmur, just loud enough for him to hear over the music and the sounds of blow dryers all around you. He’s face to face with you, so close that you can count the freckles on his pale face.
Eddie’s eyes light up. “Yeah? What about ‘em?” 
“Well,” you lick your lips, your eyes flicking down to the one on his neck, and the one peeking out of his collar. “They’re colorful, and they look like you put a lot of thought into picking out each one. They’re pretty.”
“Hmm. You flatter me,” he remarks, trying to hide his grin and failing. If you look closely, there’s just the slightest pink tint to his cheeks that wasn’t there before. He finishes trimming your bangs, and just before he stands up, he chucks you lightly under the chin. “Keep it up and you might get a freebie.”
A free what? You’re imagining he means some sort of a free hair wash or something, but you can’t keep your mind from going to unprecedented places. 
“All right. Bear with me, I’m gonna blow dry you now.” He turns your chair away from the mirror to get you a bit closer to the blow dryer, and for a few minutes, there’s a lull in the conversation. 
Then, all at once, the blow dryer shuts off, and Eddie leans down towards you. “Ready, sweetheart?”
“Eddie, you’re gonna make me nervous.”
“Well, we don’t want that.” You just barely turn your head to look at him; just enough that your noses barely brush. You steal a breath that comes from his mouth, and then, Eddie turns you to the mirror. “Like I said,” he murmurs, “There’s not a way to make you look bad.”
“Holy shit,” you breathe. And holy shit is right– he’s done a complete number on you. Your hair is voluminous, framing your face in a way that you haven’t seen it before.  
“What do you think?” he asks, and for a moment, you think it’s a rhetorical question.
“I think you’re way better than Melissa,” you tell him, once you realize that it’s not rhetorical and he’s really asking you what you think. You’re sure that he’d make adjustments if you needed, but you don’t need him to. He’s read you like a book. He’s made you look better than you could ever have hoped for. 
“I’m gonna need that in writing,” he tells you, with the most serious expression you’ve ever seen. “For employee of the month, and all.”
“Tell me where to sign.”
He jerks his head, and all at once the fog lifts. You follow him to the front desk like a lost puppy, feeling like you don’t actually want to leave. You want to sit in his chair while he cuts your hair until you have none left. You want to keep his attention on you and stare at his smile, his hair, his eyes, his tattoos, for the rest of time. 
“I look forward to next time, princess,” he tells you, but you’re hyperfocused on the touch of his hand to your lower back. 
You watch him telling something to the girl at the front desk, his hand wrapped around the edge of the table and distracting you for the umpteenth time. You watch his silver rings glint in the light, and you think about them weaving through your hair; you think about his fingers and how they’d feel on places besides your head.
“So, when did you want to schedule an appointment?” 
You blink a few times, and in a dazed glow you come back to where you are. At the front desk. Paying for your haircut. “Sorry, what?” 
“The… next appointment? For your trim?” The secretary tilts her head, smiling at you kindly. “When did you want to come in?”
“Oh,” you murmur, looking down at the keyboard that she’s typing on. Eddie has disappeared back around the partition with a sweet smile and a wave cast in your direction. You just want him to come back again. “What would you suggest? Y’know, for this kind of a cut?”
“Hmm,” the girl hums, and sizes you up. Not in a way that makes you doubt yourself, but in a way that tells you she’s taking your question seriously. “Probably about four weeks. See if the length is something you’re happy with?” 
“Great. Four weeks from now. With Eddie.” You peer down at the rack of business cards on the deck, and pick up the one farthest to the right. 
Eddie Munson, Stylist. Set an appointment today!
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By four weeks, your hair has already reached your shoulders, and the ease of maintenance is starting to wear off. When you get a call reminding you about your appointment with Eddie, your head reels with the knowledge that you’ll see him again.
You calmly assert to yourself that this time, there will be no mooning over him. He’s just your hairdresser. You figure he just has a job to do, tips to earn, and so on. You don’t know if he’s available, you don’t know if he’s single or if he even likes you the way that you like him. You don’t know anything about him, really.
False. You know that he used to wash his hair with bar soap.
You snicker to yourself as you sit in the waiting area yet again. The only available slot for him today was 6:30; pretty close to closing time, but for a Wednesday you figured it was best for you to come late, since you’d have time to get yourself together after work.
You’ve never been in the salon so late. It’s getting dark outside, and the overhead lights cast a semi-yellow glow around the waiting area. Business is dying down now. Not as many people love the idea of getting their hair cut so late, you suppose, but it was either this or wait another week to get an appointment with Eddie, and with the rate that your hair is growing, you’d probably be going insane by then.
“Hey, you,” Eddie says, popping his head around the partition with a grin that makes you nearly melt in your seat. His curly hair hangs in a curtain out in midair, and his long neck stretches out for you to take a gander at. “Just couldn’t stay away, huh?”
You smile at him. “Well, you’re the only person I trust with my head.”
What the fuck did you just say?
Eddie smirks, glowing pink around the ears. “I’ll keep that in mind, princess. Let me clean up my station real quick and I’ll getcha goin’, all right?”
You swallow back the lump in your throat. “Yeah, sure, no worries.”
When Eddie disappears again, you slide down in your seat and clap your hand across your eyes. You’re sort of glad that nobody was in the waiting room to see that ridiculous exchange, but you still have to sit with your embarrassment while Eddie cuts your hair. Again.
There will be no pining. There will be no getting weirdly turned on by him washing your hair. Nope, not happening this time.
This time, when Eddie ushers you back behind the partition, there’s only one two other stylists who are there cleaning their stations. The PA has been turned way down, so you can barely register what it’s playing at all.
“You actually came at a good time,” Eddie tells you as you trail after him toward the wash station. “You’re the last person for the night, so I can really take my time with you.”
“O-oh.. really?” You beat back your perverted thoughts with a stick. “To do what?”
“Oh, y’know,” Eddie shrugs as he lays a towel around your shoulders again, just as gentle as he was the last time. “We could do something totally crazy. Who knows what’ll happen?”
His voice is animated, pleasantly filling the empty space where your thoughts might become too much if you let them wander. 
Over the past month, after you’d recovered from your last meeting with Eddie, and as you were preparing for this one, you came up with a few things that you could ask him about– just to keep your mind from going to places you didn’t want them to. To save yourself the embarrassment and the ordeal of having to play whack-a-mole with your libido, and all. 
“Did you get employee of the month?” you begin with.
Eddie laughs, and then sighs. “No, our manicurist got it. I’ll get it this time, I just gotta stay on my A-game.” His blunt nails rake your hair away from your forehead and temples, and a lukewarm stream of water hits the crown of your skull.
You nearly want to jump out of your skin at the feeling. “Was it because they gave you the crap chair too many times?”
“Probably. But I got here early today, so the good news is you don’t have to sit in the crap chair this time.” 
“Aww, I kind of liked the crap chair. Kept me grounded.” You hear him huff a laugh as he starts lathering shampoo through your hair. Trying to keep your mind running so you don’t focus too hard on how good his rings feel scraping against your scalp, you ask, “How’d you get into this line of work?”
“Honestly, it’s kind of a weird story,” Eddie starts, beginning to massage his fingertips into your skull in a way that makes your toes curl in your shoes. You tighten your hands on the arms of your chair and take a deep breath. “So, it took me three tries to graduate high school, right? I was terrible at it. And, y’know, I figured I’d only end up working in a garage or something for the rest of my life. But I was cutting my mane all on my own, and eventually I started cutting my friends’ hair too, because they were all in college and it’s cheaper than going to a salon. I mean–” he chuckles, and begins rinsing your hair– “believe me. I know all about it. And it just came to me really easily, ‘cause I used to be great at drawing and crafting and stuff. And it’s kind of the same thing– once you learn the medium, it’s smooth sailing from there.”
The salon has gone eerily quiet, and by the time Eddie wraps your head and sits you up, you realize that the other stylists have gone, and you and Eddie are the last people in the building. You’d be a little nervous about it, but you got Eddie on a roll, and honestly, he makes it so easy to listen to him.
“Anyways, one day my friend Robin says to me, ‘You should totally get your credential for this,’ and I said, ‘You have to go to school for this shit?’” You blow a raspberry of a laugh, no longer feeling anxious as he sits you down on his not-crap styling chair. He drapes a smock over you, and cracks a grin at you in the mirror. “I know! So, I’ve never been great at school, and I can’t afford to pay for beauty school tuition on the pay I was making at the time, so my friends… they pooled together some money to at least pay for my first semester. And then– get this– I got on the fucking Dean’s list.”
“No way.”
“I did! Yours truly!” He does a little bow, and while you’re still giggling, he begins detangling your hair. “So, I got grants. And I finished top of my class, because as it turns out, when you don’t hate what you’re studying it’s really easy to do well. I got my certification framed and everything. Show that to my damn high school principal.” He shakes his head, but the smile is still on his face when he says, “But now I just have to get that fucking employee of the month.” 
“Anything I can do to help?” you offer, admiring his face in the mirror again without even realizing you’re doing it. You love seeing him grin, showing off his dimples and the smile lines around his eyes.
“Oh, you know,” he shrugs with a cute scrunch of his nose. “Just make sure you write my boss a letter saying how fantastic and amazing I am and how there’s no other hair stylist like me and how you’ll never find anyone as cool and sexy anywhere else. Something subtle like that oughta do it.” 
“Shouldn’t be difficult,” you tell him smoothly. “I already had that one drafted.”
He chuckles, his eyes sparkling when he reaches for his scissors, but you still notice the faint blush on his cheeks that he tries to hide behind his curtain of hair. “Flattery. You know what that gets you with me.”
A freebie. You hear his voice echoing in your head, and you swallow past the dryness in your throat. “Like… what? A mohawk?”
“Would you want a mohawk?” he asks you, pausing his movements to peer at you. “Because that’d be metal as hell, I’d be so down.” 
You laugh. “I appreciate it, but I think… probably not today.”
Eddie hums, and returns to smoothing your hair back away from your face. “So we’re just doing the same as last time?” 
“Yeah, not too flashy.” 
“Gotcha. It’s a shame, though. I’m always up for a challenge.” 
“Well, I think that short hair is just easier to maintain,” you tell him, at a loss for what else to say. He glances up at you in the mirror, and locks eyes with you. “And it doesn’t make my neck look as stumpy as it is.”
Eddie tilts his head with a confused pout, and then he reaches down and wraps his hands loosely around your throat. Your breath stalls in your chest, your eyes focused on the sight of his hands on you, his thumbs gently stroking the nape of your neck and his ring clad fingers pressed just below your chin. His fingers link and hold you, creating a necklace that you’ll never be able to find anywhere else.
Oh, shit. Oh, fucking hell. Everything below your waist draws up tight and hard, your thighs clamping together like that’s going to somehow will away the hold that Eddie has on you.
You lift your eyes and find his in the mirror, dark and focused in on you. You hold each others’ gaze for a prolonged moment, not saying anything, you barely even daring to breathe. You can’t imagine what the expression on your face looks like. You’re too busy staring at the one on his– like there are a million thoughts running through his head, and you’re desperate to know every single one of them.
“Nah, I think you’re perfect.” And just like that, Eddie moves on like nothing happened, picking up his scissors again. Like he didn’t just fry your brain. Like you’re not halfway to cardiac arrest.
You’re dumbstruck as he starts trimming the ends of your hair. You told yourself there would be no mooning over him. No pining. But here, you are, turned on beyond belief, and having to deal with the heartbeat pulsing between your legs, and not shift around, because you don’t want to fuck him up. 
When he pinches the ends of the front to see if they’re level, you’re staring directly at him in the mirror. Not even trying to hide it, either. If you did try, you’d most certainly fail. Eddie frowns in concentration, a bit of a crease to his brow as he peers at his hands.
Eddie tuts. “I’m trying to figure out– is it–?” He grabs the back of your chair, and suddenly you’re being swiveled around to face him. “Sometimes these mirrors don’t even help a guy out at the worst goddamn times…”
Your breathing is way heavier than it needs to be. Is it hot in here? Did they crank up the heat in this place specifically to spite you? Eddie’s face is so close to yours, and you’re not sure if the fact that you aren’t in the crap chair is helping. You’re higher up now, and he doesn’t have to bend down as far to get level with you, and his eyes are the color of dark chocolate, and you–
Eddie’s hand comes up and snips the tip off the right side. “There we go. One side was all fucked.”
“Well, we don’t want anything getting fucked, do we?” you mutter under your breath. What’s left of it.
Eddie pauses and his eyes flick up to yours. His eyelashes are long and flutter as he holds your gaze again, while you try hard not to look away. There’s that unreadable expression on his face from earlier, morphing slowly into something like amusement, but that could also just be your mind playing tricks on you. Don’t look at his lips. Don’t look at his lips. Don’t look at his li–
“Screw it.” Eddie tosses his scissors to the ground and his hands come up to grip your face, smoothing your hair back tenderly before he kisses you. 
You open your mouth and Eddie is in it, searching, feeling. His hands hold your head firm and you feel the metal of his rings digging into your cheeks, and you’re splitting apart at the seams from the way he’s completely invading your senses. He smells like warm, spicy cologne and hairspray. He tastes like cigarettes and cherry coke. He moans into you, and the sound is like heaven. 
You lift your legs and wrap them around his waist, and he grunts before he pulls away just the tiniest bit to give you breathing room. 
“This is highly unprofessional, Mr. Munson,” you whisper to him, as if you don’t have him caged in with your thighs.
“I don’t… actually fucking care,” Eddie admits, his nose just nudging against yours. “Got so fuckin’ hard the minute I saw you. What am I gonna do with you, huh?”
“Dunno,” you murmur against his mouth, “I’m waiting for you to tell me.” 
“C’mere.” He pulls you out of your seat, and you practically trip over the smock he clipped around your neck. 
“Get me out of this thing,” you giggle, letting your forehead fall onto his shoulder. You inhale a deep breath of his cologne, feeling his chest shake with his laugh. 
“Aww, but you look so cute,” Eddie coos, but his hands come up to undo the button at the back of your neck. The fabric slides to the ground, and Eddie kicks it aside as he crowds you back against the table. Your ass hits the edge of it and your hand falls onto a comb when you try to steady yourself. He pulls you flush to his body, his hands caging you in. Eddie’s tongue dances over your bottom lip and you moan, lifting your hands to tangle in the fabric of his shirt.
He ducks his head to help you pull his shirt off before he tosses it somewhere to the side. You’re distracted by his tattoos, each one of them beautiful and detailed, standing out against his pale skin.
Then, you remember something that he told you earlier, and you connect some dots that you hadn’t even realized were there. “Did you draw these?” 
Eddie’s grin could blind the sun. He blushes pink down his neck and shoulders. “Yeah, I did.” 
“They’re gorgeous. I meant what I said before– I really like them.” 
He sucks in a deep breath, and then his lips are on you, everywhere they can manage. On your face, your neck, trying to get at your collarbone but your shirt is in the way. He fists it in his hands, making a petulant noise in the back of his throat. “Help me out here, sweetheart.”
Your shirt lands somewhere near his. You don’t see exactly where, because he’s pulling the straps of your bra down your shoulders so that he can mouth kisses across your breasts, pulling down on the cups until he can graze his teeth over your nipple. It takes you so off guard that you bite back a squeal, tugging at his hair and rubbing your thighs together to stave off the incessant throbbing between them.
When you look down at him, his eyes are so dark that they’re almost black. Your heart thuds erratically in your chest, your breath not coming even though you gasp and pull at the air with everything you have. You can’t really fathom why he has you so worked up– just that it’s been so long since anyone touched you like this, and now that you have it it’s like every little point of contact is on fire.
Eddie grazes his teeth across your breast, and your knees nearly buckle out from under you. You grab his face, guiding him back up to you. 
“What were you thinking when you grabbed my throat?” you ask him, your voice hoarse in the back of your throat. 
His hands are on you now, grabbing at your waist and hips, squeezing like he’ll never let go. “I can show you, if you want,” Eddie answers, and he sounds just as wrecked as you. Maybe more. 
There’s absolutely no way you’re going to refuse that. Not with the way you’ve been lusting after him since meeting him. You nod. “Eddie, please–”
He kisses you hard again before mumbling against your lips, “Turn around and take off your pants.”
You do what he asks without a second’s hesitation. You watch him in the mirror as he follows your movements, undoing his own belt, and you kick your jeans and underwear off without thinking about why you’re here, without wondering about the repercussions. You figure you can probably do that later.
Right now, Eddie’s smoothing his hand up your spine, and the feeling of his fingers dancing along your skin sends shivers through your body. His fingers weave through the hair at the nape of your neck, and he pulls just slightly, until you bare your neck. 
Your breath hitches in your throat. Your heart hammers as you watch him, dark eyes and hair and rosy cheeks in the mirror, his carnation colored lips twisting into a wicked grin at you. He kisses your shoulder so gently it’s like the fluttering of a feather. 
“‘Stumpy neck,’” Eddie scoffs under his breath, and you tremble. “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”
He bends you forward until you’re face to face with yourself in the mirror– but you’re looking at him, gazing into your eyes while he teases himself at your entrance.
“Oh my god,” you groan, dropping your head almost immediately at the feeling. Your head is spinning, your body rigid with anticipation and breaking out in a cool sweat already. 
“Mm-mm,” Eddie hums condescendingly, and a hand clamps around your throat, hoisting your head up again. A gasp tears from your lips. In the mirror, his eyes are blazing. “You look at me while I fuck you. That’s the only way this is gonna happen. Got it?”
You nod. You want to shrink away from the heat in his gaze, but you want him to fuck you way more than that. You shudder as he leans forward, pressing in until his chin nearly rests on your shoulder.
“I need to hear you say it, baby.” His thumb strokes lightly along your pulse point, and you make a soft noise in the back of your throat without thinking. “Tell me you understand.” 
“I understand,” you tell him, barely a whisper, but he hears it all the same. 
“Good girl.” 
Eddie grins, kisses the nape of your neck, and pulls back. When he does, you’re barely able to take a breath before he pushes his hard cock into you, and the noise you make is almost embarrassing in its volume. 
“Ohhh, you’re absolutely soaked, baby. She’s practically dripping– is this just for me?” Eddie murmurs in your ear, grinding his hips up against your ass for emphasis. The lewd noise that it makes has your toes curling and the tips of your ears burning.
“Fuck,” you moan, ginding back against him to push him deeper. He’s so thick and you’re so sensitive that your mind is completely blanking at the feeling. 
Eddie notices, and he chuckles as grabs your waist with one hand as he thrusts his hips forward. “I’ve barely gotten my cock in you, princess. Don’t go getting all dumb on me already.” His voice goes straight between your legs and your cunt pulses around him, making him hiss through his teeth. The hand on your throat tightens just slightly. “I asked you a question.”
You keen, your mind reeling as you search for words. You manage to nod, babbling out, “Yes, it’s– it’s all for you, Eddie, been wanting you so bad, s’all I can think about–”
Eddie coos, grabbing your chin to shut you up while a particularly hard thrust of his hips knocks the wind out of you. He turns his head and grazes his lips against your cheek, eyeing you in the mirror as he says, “I knew it.” 
Your eyes are on him, on his hand around your neck, on his rings pressed into your skin. All that your fucked-out mind can think is that it’s hot, and you like him and his strong hands and his pretty eyes and the way his cock is reaching places inside you that make thoughts really difficult to come by.
Eddie whispers something against your skin, and you miss it because you’re hooked on the way his eyelashes flutter for just a moment while his lips are pressed against your cheek. You lift your hand, until it rests over his against your throat, his fingers just barely laced with yours. 
“Again,” you say– it comes out like a command, but you mean it like a question. You don’t know what the fuck he just said. 
“You’re so beautiful,” he repeats, and his voice nearly cracks with the desperation in it. His sweat slick chest is pressed against your back, his thrusts rocking your hips into the table and jostling it into the wall, but his voice is so tender. “So perfect for me.” 
Your mouth falls open, your hand tightening on his. You pull, until he loosens his grip and his hand comes away with yours. You kiss his palm, then his fingertips, holding his gaze in the mirror as you slowly, gently swirl your tongue around his middle and forefinger. 
Eddie’s eyes narrow coyly at you, while his thrusts make you mewl and clutch at the table with your free hand. You suck his two fingers deep into your mouth, earning a pleased groan from him in your ear– a sound which you want to hear again and again, no matter what it takes. 
“Look at you, sweet little thing, gettin’ my fingers all wet like that,” he whispers to you, biting his lip as you grind back against him. “Wanna do something with ‘em?”
You moan, letting his fingers slide from your mouth with a wet pop. You guide his hand down your chest, down your stomach, until his fingers slide between your legs. 
“There you go,” Eddie coos, taking over from your guidance as his fingers start rubbing small circles against your clit. “Atta girl, showin’ me what you want. Just needed me to fuck you stupid first, hm?”
Your cunt pulses, and you cum with a loud moan that echoes off of the mirror in front of you and around the empty space. Eddie cries out, and you feel his warmth fill you as he cums. He slows until he stills inside you, and then he holds you, panting against your cheek, his arm wrapped around your middle and his hand on your throat.
You haven’t moved your hand away from his, you realize, after a few moments of bliss in the aftershocks. You drop your hand to the table with a thud, earning a soft, breathless chuckle from him. 
“Can I take you out to dinner?” Eddie asks you, nuzzling into the crook of your neck.
“I think you can do whatever you want with me,” you murmur dazedly, just barely shifting and making him hiss. He’s still inside you, trying to hold you steady while he calms himself down. 
“Good.” There’s a kiss to your cheek, and Eddie grunts as he slowly eases out of you. “I still need to finish your goddamn haircut.”
“Eddie, we’re naked.” 
“And?” His hands are moving quicker than your mind is, yanking a kleenex from the table so that he can bend down and wipe the insides of your thighs. You jump at the sudden touch, but he clamps a hand around your hip to hold you still. “The sooner I finish your hair, the sooner I close up, and the sooner we go get dinner. You like Italian?”
“I didn’t think your pillow talk would involve finishing my haircut,” you grumble, but there’s a smile worming it’s way onto your face even as you say it. 
“That’s the name of the game, sweetheart,” Eddie says, tossing the tissue into the trash. He picks up your underwear, and the smock from the floor. “Now, sit your cute ass down. I’m not gonna get employee of the month by dishing out orgasms and not bangs, y’know.”
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codnriddlewhore · 1 month ago
Text
Don't do this | a Tom Riddle oneshot
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A/N: HII soo this is my first attempt at fics, dont hesitate to say anything, good or bad
k have fun :))
tags: professor tom riddle/professor reader, marriage, angst, horcruxes, sorry if i forget any
wc: 1,584
They've been together, inseparable for 3 years, married for 2 and a half. 
Tom saw her as an equal as much as someone like him could, she entranced his very being. They talked about subjects he was interested in, in a very objective and intelligent way and he was in awe when he realised he found a match, someone that could understand his fascinations and obsessions. She mostly didn't share them but she was open, he could ask her at 2 in the morning which one of the unforgivable 
curses she'd use to get information from someone and she'd genuinely give it some thought. 
Her fascinations lay more in the zoological department, muggle and magical. She spent hours in forests and jungles, the beings holding her attention for hours. Though, like Tom, she found it hard to open up to people and find like-minded individuals not just regarding creatures but life in general. When he asked to come with her on one of her shorter research-trips, she felt her body and sould levitate. Her greatest wish has always been to grow old with someone loving by her side, someone who she'd love back with her whole self.  Is it him? She hoped so and prayed every night.
He felt the same when she asked about his sketches and faveorite books. Tom Riddle, the usually selfish and greedy man, suddenly interested in the eccentric and always joyful zoology professor? He cursed himself for it, a good 5 months before talking to her for the first time. 
Now she is staying at his home in the country, a dark penthouse by the sea. To be specific, it is not as dark now, he found that she brought more light into it than any possible lamp. 
As dreamy as this may sound, but like in every married life, there's always small and petty arguments. Like now, her sitting in bed and reading, not giving him half an ounce of attention while he looked at her from the doorframe. 
He mentioned horcruxes and the sheer idea of immortality a few times, even on the day they met, but she simply laughed it off. Who would want to be soulles? It seemed absurd. 
But yesterday evening, when he explained that he wants to go through with his plan of doing so, she couldn't bare to give him more than a gulp and ignorance. He was being mean.
"Apologise, so we can spend at least the evening as a couple. It's cold to sleep without you in my arms." Tom meant it genuinely, but his tone was rough. He didn't understand her problem.
She simply kept on reading, like he didn't even exist. He groaned in annoyance and that did it. 
"I'm sorry, did my back damage your knife in any way? Do excuse me", he winced and didn't know if it was because of her closing her book shut loudly or her words. Probably the latter. 
"What do you mean?"
She exhaled in confusion. Did he actually not see the problem? 
"Tom. You outright told me that you want to split your soul from your body and divide it into 7 different parts. Oh and that you want to live forever. Do you not understand why I'm upset?"
"I'm going to be honest, no, I don't. I find you're being ridiculous, this is a marvelous discovery. "
"Well it is, which on the other hand doesn't mean you have to partake in it!" she says as she sits up straighter in the bed. 
He sees that and mirrors her reaction, standong up straight and putting his hands in the pockets of his pyjama pants. 
"Why not? It would help me be more focused on my work and goals and I wouldn't be occupied with unnecessary matters."
"Like me?" His wife didn't know if she regretted saying that, but it came out in the same second he ended his sentence.
Quiet.
"Don't do this. Of course not like you, you matter a huge deal. This would benefit me in every part of my life, I'd be the most powerful wozard that ever lived. There's been noone else more powerful than Death in the history of wizardry and it could be your husband, how are you not the least bit proud?"
"Proud!? You want me to be proud!? What else should I do, throw you a party and congratulate you on a life of pure damnation!?"
She was now standing approximately 1 horizontal man away from him, on a good way to become furious. 
"Damnation? I hope you mean admiration and being seen with respect, fear and devotion for the rest of time."
"Tommy?" She only called him that when she felt truly helpless or frustrated.
"Yes darling?"
Her voice went almost inaudible, "Where am I in that wonderful way of living you so dream of?"
"By my side." He was sure of that and knew he needed her in this. She'd be his queen in the whole thing.
She breaks into a series of scoffs, some distrustful and some humorous, she found the situation quite absurb. What were they even discussing? 
"I'll age! I'll age and be old and grey and wrinkly and youll still be thirty! It'll look ridiculous."
Was it embarrassing he hadn't thought of that? 
"There's plenty of spells to slow down aging." Stupid Riddle.
"Great Havens. If we put that aside, what about your soul? You'll be a shell of the man you truly are. How do you explain that?"
"What? Thats foolish, I'll be myself!"
"You'll be a soulless man! Only goal driven and shutting out everything else! We'll never again talk about life and the universe late at night, you'll never again appreciate me making you tea when you forget the time in your study and we'll never joke about the future and raising an army of baby wizards who we'll name after the imaginary friends we had as children. We'll never go to the city again and you'll never pick out a flower I adore and buy it behind my back to surprise me later although I'd always catch you and we'll never buy cheesy and ironic books for each other in that beautiful old book store we love. Now call me crazy and soft, but I happen to cherish these things."
It was hard to look him in the eyes during saying all that, but she needed to get her point across. She also despised herself for tearing up at this very moment, walking towards him with a pointed finger.
"Tommy, I swore to support and love you in everything you do, but- but taking the soul of the man I love from me-", she hesitated, wanting to stop her voice from breaking and breath from hitching.
He gulped. This was unfair.
"Don't do this."
"-taking that; now that's too much for me. I can't stand behind that."
"You're being cruel."
"I'm not the only one."
That stung, it stung them both at the same time. In the end, they were both just people. She was now standing very few inches infront of him, pointing at his chest, barely holding herself together. 
"You know what? Do it. I wont stop you or hold you back. That was never my goal."
"I don't understand. Forst you can't stand behind it then you say go ahead."
"If this makes you happy, what I truly doubt, you'll do it without me."
That made his dinner almost come up slightly, it was never an option. 
"You can't just leave now, you know I love you. Do you not love me anymore? Is that what you're trying to say?", he knew it spounded mean but he hoped to get the point across, he was genuinely wondering.
"Oh don't twist this. I'll always love you with every part of me, body, soul, mind and all, as long as I live, that's why I can't-
that's why I can't watch you do this..."
"So what are you going to do? Just leave? You know you can't do that." He didn't quite believe that she would. Was it cowardly to start a fight rather than comfort her or express his own feelings? He'd have to look into that.
She breathed in, deeper than ever before. It was important that she stays collected now.
"Fine. I'll leave when you do it. That way you wont miss me."
Tom Riddle never got dizzy, he was too aware of his surroundings for that. Yet, now he was holding  onto the doorframe next to him with such strength, that his knuckles turned paper white. He was also afraid to touch her, even breath in her direction, because she might fully disappear already.
"You can't...you can't be serious..." It was more of a whispered plea than a threat. 
She on the other hand, felt that she needed to touch him or else this stupid boat of too many emotions for both of them would sink to the bottom of the deepest point in the ocean. His cold cheeks warmed at the touch of her palms. In that very moment he also exhaled briefly, still finding deep-rooted comfort in her, even at this time. Her eyes filled with tears, to the brim this time and she ignored them, it was no time to sob now. Her right hand caressed his hair; like it was any other moment they shared before.
"I'm sorry Tommy. I really wanted us to get grey and wrinkly together."
to be continued...
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laurasimonsdaughter · 2 months ago
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The dragon – astonishingly – was a surprise. Even in his worst nightmares there hadn’t been a dragon. But the chains were too well fastened to fight and he supposed that getting eaten was at least quicker than starving to death on this damn mountain. He closed his eyes, but the thundering shake of the ground as the dragon landed was as bad as having seen the claws dig into the earth. He closed his eyes tighter.
“Are you the seventh son of the seventh son?” The voice was inhumanly low and it shook the fear in his bones loose.
“Yes!” he screamed. “Yes! Cursed, blighted, whatever you bloody want! Just get it over with.”
There was a short, tense silence.
“I have not come to kill you, human. I want to offer you a deal.”
His eyes opened in shock. “You what?”
The dragon was sitting a few paces away from him, its scaly claws crossed over one another and its massive, shimmering wings folded behind its hulking back. The look in its glittering eyes was intelligent and calculating, but not unkind, certainly not threatening. It waited.
“What—what kind of deal?” he stammered, heart racing with a wild, terrified hope.
“I understand that you have been left here to die by your fellow humans, because you are an extremely rare type of human, that they are afraid of. Is that correct?”
He studied the dragon’s interested expression for any trace of sarcasm, but there was none. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“Well then!” the dragon exclaimed. “I propose to you this: I will break your chains and save you from the humans, and in return you will join my hoard and live in my nest.”
“I’m sorry. Join your—what do you mean live in a nest. Humans don’t live in nests.”
The dragon gave a sideways movement of its massive head, scales glinting in the sun. “There is plenty of room. It used to be a cavern in a mountain, of very respectable depth and dimensions, but during one of my hibernation some humans built a castle on top of it, so it is very suitable for humans.”
He was almost baffled enough to no longer be scared. Almost. “What happened to the people who built it?”
The dragon, somehow, managed to arch a nonexistent eyebrow. “They live there,” it replied, slowly, as if it feared that he was rather slower on the uptake than expected. “That was the start of my hoard, you see.”
He hadn’t misheard it. It did say ‘hoard’. “But...dragons hoard gold, jewels, riches…”
“Uninspired amateurs,” the dragon sniffed. “All very well for one’s hatchling years, but honestly.” The glittering eyes squinted down at him. “Do you not want to join my hoard?”
“I…” Living in a castle with a dragon for a protector sure beat being chained to a rock by feral townsfolk, there was no doubt about that. And what other choice did he have? He swallowed. “I do.”
“Wonderful!” Joyful sparks snapped off the dragon’s jaw as it gracefully leapt upright. “I shall do away with those pesky chains.” And he came towards him with remarkably light steps.
“Do you live very far away?” he blurted out, nervously watching the dragon as it studied the iron rings hammered into the stone. “Will I be able to—I cannot just leave my brothers behind!”
The dragon, who had just crushed one end of the chain to warped bits of broken iron in its claw, looked up distractedly. “Whatever are you talking about? All your brothers are at my nest already. Who do you think told me where to find you?”
His heart leapt in his chest. He didn’t even notice the heavy weight of the chains fall away as they slid to the ground. “You...you’d want to keep my brothers too?”
The dragon made an indignant noise, bowing down low and motioning rather impatiently for him to climb on its back. “What kind of dragon do you take me for! I must have the whole set.”
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a-mint-bear · 3 months ago
Text
Courtship Rituals
Male Yandere x Reader
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So… that's definitely space outside the window. It's been a week since you woke up on this ship, and the weird alien who keeps checking in on you is… nice enough. But something about him seems off...
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"I see you're doing well, starlight."
He’d been checking up on you more often lately. At least you were pretty sure they were a "he". Since his voice started getting translated by the device on his temple, it was sounding decidedly masculine.
Since you’d woken up on this ship, he’d been keeping an eye on you. At first, you’d been terrified, and rightly so. Waking up to an eight-foot-tall, armored alien staring at you had been too much. After screaming and throwing things, and more screaming, he'd seemed unbothered by your reaction. He tried talking to you, but it just sounded like chirps and chuffs, like a big cat. He'd done his best to communicate, but nothing was coming across.
With a defeated hiss, he disappeared for a day or so. You’d attempted to get out of the massive, round bed but the sudden movement made your vision swim and a nauseous feeling crashed over you. With so many questions still bouncing around in your head, you were frustrated that all you could really do was wait.
You had a dreamless sleep, the night sky trailing on endlessly outside the massive floor-to ceiling window that made you feel all the more insignificant.
____________________________
When he came back the next day (maybe?), you finally got a good look at him. His face was the only vaguely human thing about him, save for large, dark eyes that glowed in the dark and odd scales on his cheeks and forehead. He had pointed ears that almost looked like they belonged to a bat. They swiveled and twitched, especially when you spoke. He was rarely expressive, though you did see him attempt a smile from time to time. You say "attempt" because it was way too wide and revealed far too many sharp teeth. It set off some ancient instinct in you to stay the hell away. You tried to ignore it but still kept your guard up just in case.
A keyboard-like light panel that projected from a device on his forearm chimed as he tapped away at it, and he approached you with a metal circle no bigger than your thumbnail, matching the one he wore. You backed away, hyper-aware of the stranger's touch. He… purred at you? And while you were distracted, he tapped it to your right temple.
There was a sharp pinch, the pain pulsing away with your heartbeat. When you cried out, he was quick to touch his long, clawed fingers to yours, maybe trying to comfort you.
You could hear the device whirring away against your skin, latching onto you and beeping intermittently. You’d never felt anything interacting with what felt like your brain before, and you could say without a doubt that it was NOT great.
The noises stopped, and a low, almost ghostly voice purred in your ear.
"Communication link established. The device should be fully functional now…"
“Hello there.” His clawed finger caressed yours, soothing your pain. It eventually faded, that purring of his actually seemed to help. “I hope your rest has helped you overcome your transfer sickness.”
From then on, any time he talked to you, it swung between intelligent, endless technical talk that one might expect from this extra sci-fi guy and…
Awkward small talk?
"Lovely weather we're having today." He smiled that horrifying smile of his, sitting on the end of the bed.
With an awkward glance out the window, you had the thought that there was, of course, no weather in space.
"Have you read any interesting publications as of late?"
You shook off the odd nature of the questions, cutting to the chase.
Why were you here?
"Of course, I've brought you onto my ship for the… hmm. It seems there is no exact translation for it." He seemed puzzled, tapping away at the device. "The closest term that I can find is… ah. The Courtship."
You froze.
Courtship?
He seriously abducted you to… woo you?
And here you thought that was a cliché for extraterrestrials…
That would explain the awkward small talk. But it was still too weird.
You tried to get to the bottom of all this. You took a deep breath, trying to calm the wave of anxiety that had yet to wash away.
You had no idea as to how he would react to you just saying “No, take me back to Earth.” So, you’d have to ease into it, gauge his reactions.
You told him your name. He mulled over it, mispronouncing it a few times before growling a little. It made you freeze, your brain was again screaming “Danger, get away from here NOW”, but you needed to keep your head.
“If I could, it sounds… very similar to the word my people have for… the closest translation I can come to is the… electromagnetic radiation from self-gravitational fixed plasma points that are visible to the naked eye. Starlight… yes, that will suffice.”
If he weren’t an actual, literal alien, you would swear he was upping his word count to sound smarter. But you had no clue how this translator worked, maybe it just pointed him to the closest words to what he wanted to say.
But it seemed you had a nickname. A very romantic-sounding one. Great.
You asked him for his name in return.
"Yes, my designation. My species has little use for such titles." He brushed off the notion with a shift of his dark eyes, staring into yours again. "We do not interact with one another to require such differentiation. I have heard of my people taking a title assigned to them by their mate, for their own assurance, as we mate for life."
He leaned to be closer to you, his face uncomfortably close to yours. You guessed he was kind of handsome, for a literal alien… But that wasn’t any of his business.
"Would you like to assign me a title, my starlight?"
He was thinking of you… as his mate? Already? Or was that just an example? You’d literally spent less than a full day actually talking with him and he was talking about mating for life? It was all too much.
You didn’t want him to assume you were okay with any of this, but it might help him see you in a better light. Make you a person in his eyes, and not just a (hopefully temporary) guest on his ship. Maybe even sympathize with you when you asked him about turning the thing around and taking you back home.
You combed your mind for anything that would fit, digging deep for your middle school astronomy/mythology phases.
You asked if he would be okay if you called him Cygnus, only telling him it was the name of a star back on Earth. But it stood out with his casual “mate for life” comment, even though he resembled a dragon/cat more than a swan. Not to mention the story of an otherworldly being making advances towards someone he really shouldn’t, as Zeus once did to Leda.
“Siig…nussss…” he hissed out the last syllable, his tongue flicking out over the strange word. “Cygnus… I will cherish this title, starlight.” he nuzzled your hand to his scaled cheek, purring again. Before you could say anything else, the panel on his arm went off with a sudden alarm.
“Apologies.” he stood, tapping at some of the keys. “I must attend to something.”
Before Cygnus could step away from the bed, you panicked, reaching out and grabbing his hand. He stared at you, a curious purr slipping out before he knelt by the bedside.
You held his large hand in yours, pleading with him that you couldn’t do this. You had a life, he took you from it and this was all too much. You just wanted to go home.
His expression never changed, but he touched your hair, seeming almost entranced by it. You wondered if this alien would take pity on you, if he could be persuaded to do the right thing.
“Ah, you seem to be misinterpreting something.” You could see the realization in his dark eyes. “The language barrier is beginning to become a hindrance.”
He held your hand in a placating way, patting it gently like he had seen someone do the same thing without knowing much context.
“The Courtship is… something my people have been doing for eons. They believe that genetic variation is the key to a long-standing civilization. No two of us are genetically similar to each other after a few generations. We have varying appearances and life expectancies. We visit a faraway star system and… take a viable mate from the populace. Some do this at random, some monitor their prospective mates to assess compatibility.”
“After searching for so long, I found myself interested in the humanoid species of Earth. The longer I observed, searching for my perfect mate, the more I became… intrigued by the courtship rituals I observed.”
“You engage in meaningless banter where neither party really cares for the answer. The lingering touches, the subtle glances. Small meaningful gifts or large shows of extravagance to display to the prospective mate that they can provide. And dancing… I was especially intrigued by how your species uses such a thing for showcasing sexual compatibility. The Courtship is such a… straightforward and dull undertaking by comparison.”
“I saw you, just walking alone…” His eyes were shining as he looked at you, that damn purring started back up whenever he paused. “I’ve heard from others of my kind that we just… know. And when I saw you I knew…I knew you were my mate.”
The way he said it, it felt like you stopped breathing. He was looking at you like… like a predator who’d finally cornered their prey. That’s what your brain had been warning you about.
“We take our mate aboard our ships and begin… this word isn’t coming across. I will do some research… Regardless, this is not traditionally a… harmonious process?” he tilted his head, still as emotionless as before. “No, perhaps… consensual is the better term.”
You didn’t dare to look away from his eyes, that horrible, terrified feeling clawing down your back. You suddenly wondered if you’d ever seen him blink.
“That particular element of The Courtship continues to be necessary.”
Cygnus caressed your cheek, you could feel his claws gently touch your skin, they were blunt and curved. You were suddenly reminded of how some claws like that weren’t meant to tear and slash, but rather pin and capture.
Words completely failed you, not that you knew what to say. He leaned forward and kissed your forehead.
“Get some rest, my starlight.” he touched his forehead to yours, nuzzling you as he purred. “I’ll court you as long as it takes.”
He stepped out of the room and left you to your own devices, and you went into the “flight” option of fight or flight. There was no obvious way to open the door to the room, no handle or lock, just a slab of metal that stood out from the surrounding wall. You tried to rattle it, push on it, kick it down. But it didn’t budge.
The little thing on your head beeped, and it seemed to communicate with a robot eye-looking thing above the door. It lit up in recognition of your device, but then blinked red with a quick negative-sounding chime. It was confirmation of something you already suspected, but didn’t want to accept.
You were locked in. You’d probably been locked in the entire time. Cygnus’ calm demeanor made you think he could be reasoned with, made to see you were your own person who deserved to live your own life.
You slid down the door, collapsing into panicked tears.
It was clear that he saw you as anything but.
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Affectionately nicknaming the alien yandere "Siggy" in my head. because Cyggy looks a little silly, but either are acceptable.
with his face it's possible that there was a human somewhere in his lineage, way way back when. it's mostly surface level, as he doesn't even recognize it in himself. to be fair, there's no one way his species is "supposed" to look.
His people do the whole "alien abduction" thing to reproduce, probably not in the old-fashioned way but more of a gene-splice-y way, but it's still a terrifying practice.
it's been a hot second since i posted anything, started my new job and i tend to get into a creative slump when i get into work mode. but sitting down at my actual computer to write this instead of editing it on my phone or old tablet did the trick.
now im sitting here thinking "does he have a tail?" and now im debating it lol. he probably definitely has those legs, you know the ones. google tells me it's called digitigrade.
and that "armor" is really just like... a scaley exoskeleton. but not really, more like a crab shell that would grow back if damaged or ripped off. it protects his soft, vulnerable body. he molts it every year and he gets super embarrassed being seen without his "armor" ha
until next time, i have to get some work done ✌️
edit: art of Cygnus
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imfinereallyy · 1 year ago
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hummingbirds
Steve’s crying on the porch of his parents' house, with a duffel bag and baseball bat, when Eddie pulls into the driveway.
“Jesus, Steve, what happened?” Eddie crouches down to get eye level with Steve. Despite being dark out, the sun set long ago, and the outdoor lights weren’t on. Steve turns to look at his parents' car in the driveway and thinks back to when the lock had distinctly turned shut on the front door. They were around to switch the lights on; they just didn’t care anymore to do so.
Steve is grateful for the moonlight, as he can see the pretty lines on Eddie’s face. Even if they currently curve into a frown.
“Hey Eds.” Steve’s voice cracks.
“Stevie…what happened?” Eddie asks again, this time it’s gently. It cradles Steve and holds him softly. He wishes Eddie’s hands would do the same.
“Did you know hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backward?” Steve sniffles.
Eddie’s face scrunches in confusion, “What? Birds? You lost me.”
Steve pushes past Eddie’s confused face. “They are the only birds to fly backward. Surprisingly, it wasn’t Dustin to teach me that out of the munchkins. It was actually El. She’s apparently going through a bird phase. And I don’t think the others are very interested. So I try to pay attention when she talks about it. And she taught me about hummingbirds.”
Eddie settles on his knees, “That’s great, man and those little shits should listen to her more, but I’m not sure what that has to do with what’s wrong. You called me to come pick you up and hung up before I could even answer.”
Steve bites his lip, “Sorry, my dad clicked the phone off.” Eddie’s face shows surprise, but Steve keeps talking before he can interrupt. “And well, I guess hummingbirds have nothing to do with anything. It’s stupid, really.”
“No, no. It’s not stupid. Tell me about the birds, Stevie.” Eddie’s hand finally reaches out to Steve. He brushes the fallen hair out of his face, and something in Steve just sets him off.
“You see, they can fly backward. And well, no, I’m getting ahead of myself. You see, my cousin Tucker is here to visit. And let me tell you, he is the worst. Like Eddie, you would hate him. Conservative, capitalist enthusiast, real bootlicker kind of guy.”
“Sounds like the worst. Especially if he made you use the big words.” Eddie’s hand falls away, and Steve mourns the loss. Normally, when people make jokes about his intelligence, it stings. It makes him feel small. But when Eddie does it, it isn’t mean or a poke at how stupid Steve is. With Eddie, it’s almost like he’s reminding Steve that he is smart. That maybe Steve is the one making himself small.
He is.
“Anyway, he’s visiting, right? So my parents come home. And I haven’t seen them in months, since before spring break. It’s nearly October, and I haven’t seen them, and I can’t tell if I’m excited or dreading their arrival. It’s always a fight when they are around, how I’m not good enough, how I should be more. Their visits always end up being cut short, and me feeling like shit. But this stupid, stupid part of me was hoping it would be different this time. They haven’t seen me since the “earthquakes.” Surely they’ll be happy to see I’m okay, right?”
Eddie stays silent, his face revealing nothing.
“Of course, it’s not. They only came home because my cousin Tucker was in town. All the way from Indy cause it’s so far. And my mom ‘made’ dinner, as in she ordered it and pretended she made it. It wasn’t even that good, but we all pretended it was the best thing ever made. Cause that’s what they do, pretend. And the dinner is fine, boring. Most of it is just me staying silent while my dad and Tucker talk about the business. Tucker runs the Indy office while my dad is in New York. Ya see, Tucker has been gunning to take over for my dad when he retires, which is another word for dies—“ Steve let’s put a bitter laugh; he wonders if his parents are listening. He doubts it.
“—and they are going on for the whole meal, and I’m almost through the home stretch when my dad brings up me, coming to work for him.”
Eddie reacts finally, “You’re going to New York?” His voice is strained, like he is trying very hard not to yell, not at Steve, but at anyone who will listen. Steve is quick to correct.
“No, no, I’m not. This was news to me to Eds. I have no interest in my dad's business, and as far as I was concerned, he didn’t want me a part of it either. Guess that has changed. Has? Had? I don’t know…” Steve trails off.
“Harrington.”
“Don’t call me that. It makes me think you’re mad at me. Besides, it doesn’t fit me anymore.” Steve bites.
“Sorry, Steve. I’m not mad. I promise. Just, what do you mean?” Eddie’s head tilts to the side, his curls cascading down his shoulder. It reminds Steve of a river, dark water rippling in the moonlight.
“I was so shocked, Eds. When he said that. That I was quiet, I should have corrected him, maybe. Maybe I could have fixed it. But Tucker was so quick to act. He was pissed. He knows my working for my dad means me being set up to take over. And Tucker, he’s worked too hard to make sure he does get the business. But instead of yelling, he just gets this concerned look on his face. And he…”
“He what?”
Steve wrenches his eyes shut as he recalls the rest. As he recalls the way Tucker’s face faked worry as he struck. Like he has been waiting for the right moment to ruin Steve. He manages to open his eyes eventually, only to see Eddie’s face once again. The honest look on his face is enough to push Steve on.
“In the summer, Robin was feeling sad. This was before you guys knew about each other, and I was the only one who knew about her. And she was sad cause nothing had happened with Vicky and she felt so alone. And I hated seeing her like that. And so, so I took her to Indy. And, and—“ Steve starts to hyperventilate.
Eddie takes him by the shoulders. “Breathe for me, Steve. Come on, baby, match my breaths. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Steve matches Eddie’s breath. Ignores how the word baby calms him down instantly. “Tucker told my dad that he saw me in Indy. That he saw me come out of a gay club, Eddie. And he went on about how they should focus more on getting me help, than putting me in a power position, again Eds, which I don’t even want! And how I would be a bad look for the company. How would it look if a company whose whole image is family values, only successor, turned out to be gay.”
Eddie flinches a bit, but doesn’t let go of him. Steve feels instant regret. “That isn’t what I meant, Eddie.”
Eddie shushes him, “I know, sweetheart. You’re just upset. I know. Did you tell him that you weren’t there for you? Or maybe that Rick was mistaken; it was a regular club?”
Steve rubs a hand down his face, “And what? Tell him that my two best friends in the entire world are gay? So that I can be shipped off to New York and never see them again? Yeah right. I’d rather face the bats again than be removed from you two. And I’m not going to out you guys like that.”
Something warm crosses Eddie’s face, “So, you lied then?”
“Before I could say anything my dad reacted.”
Eddie freezes, a darkness swims in his eyes. “He put his hands on you?”
“No, no!” Steve panics, and he purposely leaves out the ‘not this time.’ Eddie isn’t necessarily a violent person. But he does have a protective streak. As admirable as it is, Steve doesn’t want him to get hurt.
Eddie relaxes but only slightly.
“He was actually pretty calm, which is even more terrifying. I expected him to yell, throw things. But instead he just turns and says, ‘Is this true, Steven?’. And what gets me is they didn’t even question why my cousin was anywhere near that club in the first place. Why did he see me there? Instead, he just asks me if it’s true. And it’s the first time in a long time, if ever, that my dad asks me this. He always just assumes I’ve fucked up. And this time, he really asked me about the truth. And I couldn’t, I couldn’t lie. I don’t know why, but it felt wrong to. So I didn’t. I just told him, ‘Yes. It’s true.’”
“Stevie…”
Steve throws out a bitter laugh, “And you know what? He still doesn’t freak out. He just tells me I have five minutes to get my shit and get out. That I needed to call a ride because the car was under the name Steve Harrington, and I was no longer a Harrington. And he was so calm. And my mom just sat there, and I just listened. I didn’t fight. I am so tired of fighting.”
“Steve, why not just tell them the truth? Tell them you were there for a friend?” Eddie’s tone isn’t scolding, only curious.
“See, that’s because I started thinking about hummingbirds, Eddie. I started thinking about how they fly forwards and backward and how they are the only ones that can do that. Isn’t that fascinating? These small birds are so strong and interesting, and can do something no one else can do. But no other birds understand; the rest of them just fly forwards Eds. And I—I feel like that sometimes. That I’m not flying in one direction, ya know?”
Steve feels like he isn’t making much sense, but then Eddie nods and looks at Steve. Like really looks at Steve, and sees him. And Steve feels raw, stripped of his skin, exposed, and it should hurt, but it feels so fucking good. And Eddie stares deep into Steve’s eyes and says, “Yea, I know.”
“I didn’t want to lie. Because even though Tucker was wrong, he was also right. I wasn’t there for me, but I think I needed to be there. To get it. And I think that I’m flying backward, Eds. And I’m worried it’s wrong of me, that it shouldn’t be allowed. And that there is no purpose to me flying backward if I can just go forwards. If I can just fly with the rest of them. But I don’t think, I don’t think I’ve ever really taken flight before. Not before I understood I could also go backward.”
It’s in this moment, where Steve is covered in tears and snot that Eddie finally takes his hands and cradles Steve’s face. Steve’s never felt safer.
“Listen to me, sweetheart; there is nothing wrong with you. Okay? Nothing wrong with you. Just because you can fly forwards doesn’t mean you have to, doesn’t mean you should. Sometimes you’re going to have to fly backward; you’re not going to have a choice. It’s just the direction you’re fast, huge, hummingbird heart takes you. And it might take you a bit to learn that. To understand that, but I will make sure that you do. Because you, Steve Harrington, are fucking fearless and fucking beautiful, and I am so goddamn proud of you.”
Steve finally reaches his breaking point and collapses in Eddie’s arms. Full body, ugly sobs wreck Steve. He is sure that he is soaking Eddie’s favorite Black Sabbath t-shirt to the bone, but he can’t find it himself to care. His fingers dig into Eddie’s back as he clutches tighter as his breathing picks up.
“Breathe, baby, breathe. Remember that. I got you. I got you.” Eddie whispers into Steve’s ear.
Steve picks his head up when he finally calms down, and looks at Eddie. “You.”
“What’s that?” Eddie says softly, rubbing circles through Steve’s polo.
“I called you. Because, I think—no, I know, that I’ve been flying backward, to you. For a while now. And I knew that, even if you weren’t too, you’d still show up. And I just—just need you to know that. I am so grateful you showed up.”
Steve knows he should feel nervous telling Eddie all this, but he isn’t. He strangely feels like his dad at this moment, calm and unmoving. Steve doesn’t understand many things in this world, but he understands that even if Eddie doesn’t love him like that, Eddie still loves Steve in plenty of other ways.
It’s still nice, though, when Eddie leans forward and kisses Steve’s forehead. Steve closes his eyes and releases a breath.
Eddie slides his head down slightly so their foreheads are pushed together affectionately. “Stevie, I’ll always fly backward to you.”
Although it’s awful how they got here, Steve can’t help but feel happy at this moment. He also can’t help the silly giggle that comes out of him, “I think we have just lost all meaning to this metaphor at this point.”
Eddie snorts, “Oh, have we? And here I thought we were having a nice moment, a poetic one at that, telling each other ‘I love you.’”
Steve blinks at him, “You love me?”
Eddie frown lines finally turn upwards, “Yea baby, I love you.”
“I—“
Eddie cuts Steve off. “Tell me in the morning. When your tears have dried, and I’ve woken up with you in my arms. I want to hear it in the daylight. Okay? Let’s go home.” Eddie stands, offering a hand to Steve.
“Home?”
“Yea home, got to fly back to our nest.”
Steve can’t help the snort he releases, “Dork.”
Eddie just smiles, “Thought I told you to save the ‘I love you’ til the morning.”
Steve smiles back as he takes Eddie’s hand, “I didn’t…”
Eddie squeezes Steve’s fingers, “Yea, ya did.”
****
I’m back, not dead, and in my feelings. Thinking about expanding on this one. I hope you guys like it. 🧡🧡
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trumpkinhotboy · 8 months ago
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Little critters
Pairing: paul lahote x fem!reader
Type: requested
Warnings: nothing, pure fluff!!
Word count: approx 800
Requests: open! for twilight wolfpack, narnia and heartstopper
A/n: loved loved this request it's so cute and I think the vibes are adorable hehe seeing sam being so soft for emily🥺 so thank you again for this nice request I always love writing for you guys
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"Aren't you the most adorable little creatures I have ever seen?" "You're so cute. I want to keep you forever!"
Passersby probably took Emily and you for some deranged ladies when they saw you crouched in an alley, apparently talking to the ground.
But they couldn't see the adorable little balls of fur meowing back at you with impressive intelligence lighting their eyes. You were leaving the grocery store when you had heard plaintiff meowing sounds and discovered kittens shivering in an old cardboard box.
There was two of them, a fiery black one, who hissed when you first came close, and a grey one who immediately approached you, looking for pets. It had been 10 minutes, and since then, you had dug in your bags to give them water and food. By the way they devoured the bit of ham you gave them, you knew they had been there for a while.
"We can't leave them here," sighed Emily as she petted the black cat on her thighs. The grumpy cat had seemed to take a liking to her incredibly quickly.
"But where can we bring them? I'm scared if we leave them at the pound, they'll be forgotten," you pondered while delicately petting the gray head of the little critter bundled up in your lap.
As if you had just communicated telepathically, you and Emily looked up with a knowing light in your eyes.
Without having a plan, you brought the kittens back to Emily's to give them proper shelter and a long-awaited bath.
The four of you were now on the couch, extenuated after this eventful day. Junior and Paulie, the names you had settled on because of their resemblances with your boyfriends, were sprawled before the fire.
You had just started preparing dinner when you heard familiar howls from the forest. Seconds later, the seven members of the pack entered the cabin. Distracted by the smell of food, they didn't seem to notice the new presence of the two fur balls. Sam immediately headed for Emily to hug her and kiss her cheek. You smiled at the happy couple as you felt a pair of warm hands grab your hips. You smiled and melted into the muscular arms wrapped around your figure.
"Hey, you." "Hey," you answered, a smile in your voice. "What have you been up to?" he sweetly asked.
You tensed at his question, your eyes immediately finding Emily's. Through all your excitement, you didn't have a plan on how to tell seven werewolves you were planning on keeping two kittens.
"Well, actually, it's pretty funny," you started as you turned to face your boyfriend's suspicious expression. You tried delaying your explanation when you heard Seth's excited scream.
"Oh my god! Where do those kittens come from?! They're so adorable!!" he cooed before dropping on his tummy to try and pet them.
"Kittens?!" exclaimed Sam with a questioning look at Emily.
The pack gathered in the living room, observing the two cats, unbothered as ever, lying in front of the fire.
"We found them across the grocery store. We couldn't leave them there to fend for themselves!" explained Emily as she walked to little Sam Junior. The antisocial cat lifted a heavy eyelid at the disruption of his nap, only to meow and lift his head in search of pets when he noticed who it was. She grabbed the kitten in her hands, bringing him close to her chest with an adoring smile. The little beast softly purred in her arms. It was impossible to deny the special bond they already shared.
You looked at Sam with a glimmer of hope. The look he gave Emily as he saw how happy she was told you everything you needed to know.
"What's his name?" he asked with a defeated sigh as he neared the pair. The little kitten carefully sniffed his hand before allowing him to scratch his head.
"Actually," Emily looked at you with a conniving smile. "With his black fur and protective instinct, he made me think of you, I thought we could call him Sam Junior."
Your little crowd chuckled at the name and the resemblance between the two.
"Junior, eh? Sounds about right." He smiled softly. Whenever Emily was concerned, Sam was as docile as the cat in her arms.
Suddenly, a soft nudge on your shins surprised you. You looked down to realize it was the gray kitten. You felt your heart melt at the display of affection and lifted him carefully from the floor.
"Oh, don't even think about it," uttered Paul as he noticed how you looked at each other.
You pouted your lower lip, bringing the little kitten next to your cheek. "Please, please, please, please," you pleaded. "His name's Paulie," you added with a cheeky smile.
Your boyfriend looked at you with incredulous eyes.
"I see it, Paul. He looks like you," added Sam with a teasing grin and a lift of his shoulders, as if to say 'You know they've already won bud'
He stayed silent, observing your pouty face and the sleepy kitten in your arms. Before finally saying, "Werewolves with kittens?"
You gave him a little nod. "Yeah, I guess that can work," he conceded with a grin.
972 notes · View notes
latanyalove · 5 months ago
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Portgas D Ace - How He Flirts
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Pairing: Ace x Y/N
Content: Jealousy, misunderstandings, light angst, hurt/comfort
A/n: I might have rushed this because I wanted this out before the year was over. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did writing this! <3
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
- Portgas D. Ace is known for his charming and flirtatious nature.
- He has a way of making women feel desired and captivated.
- Ace's flirting style is unique, characterized by his confident and playful nature.
- He often uses eye contact to establish a strong connection with his targets.
- Ace is known for his witty banter and clever pick-up lines.
- He knows how to tease and make women laugh, creating an intimate atmosphere.
- Ace is skilled at reading body language and uses it to gauge a woman's interest.
- He often compliments women on their beauty, intelligence, or accomplishments.
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You were in the club with the rest of the Whitebeard Pirates, enjoying the music and dancing the night away. They were all in high spirits, celebrating their recent victories and looking forward to the future.
You had been sitting with Marco, sipping on your drinks, as you watched the Fireboy move from one group of ladies to the next with ease. His smooth talking and charm had the entire club captivated.
Despite your best efforts, you couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy in your chest as you watched him. He had a way of making everyone feel special, but you wished he would have given you some of his attention instead.
You wanted to be the one he was talking to, the one he was giving his attention to.
"You know if you keep looking him like that, then he might actually notice,"
You jumped, looking over to where the voice came from to see Marco glancing at you with a mischievous smile on his face.
"What are you talking about?" you said, trying to hide the light blush that had started to spread across your cheeks.
Marco chuckled and took a sip from his drink. "You know what I'm talking about," he said. "Just don't be too obvious about it. If you play your cards right, he might take the hint."
"I'm not sure if I'm ready for that," I said, shaking my head. "I mean, I don't even know if he would be interested in me. I don't want to put myself out there and make a fool of myself."
Marco smiled and said, "You might be surprised. You never know until you try. And there's no harm in expressing your interest."
You nodded, glancing at Ace one more time before turning your gaze away, your heart fluttering nervously. You took a deep breath and made a silent wish that maybe, just maybe, he would notice you. . . .
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You were laughing and chatting with your new drinking buddies, enjoying the music and the atmosphere.
You felt free and at peace, and you couldn't help but smile as you watched everyone around you having the time of their lives.
You had forgotten all about Ace and were just living in the moment.
That was until you felt someone grab your hand.
"Excuse me, miss," the old man said with a lecherous grin. "You look like you could use some company. How about you and I have a little private dance?"
You quickly pulled your hand away, disgusted by his advances. "No thank you,"
"Why not?" He persisted.
"I have a boyfriend," you lied, hoping it would deter him.
But instead of backing off, the old man chuckled and replied, "Oh, is that so? Well, where is he then? I don't see him anywhere."
"I'm right here," he said, a voice filled with protectiveness. You turned around to see Ace standing there with a serious expression. The old man's grin faded as he realized he had crossed a line, and he quickly made his exit.
Ace, fully turned towards you, looked at you with concern and asked, "Are you okay?"
Ace's eyes softened as he gently touched the place where the man had grabbed you, his touch sending a wave of warmth through your body.
Y/N, don't fall for him even more. He does this to every woman in need of saving.
You're not special.
Without saying a word, you ran away from him, your heart pounding in your chest. You sprinted through the crowded streets, desperate to put as much distance between you and Ace as possible.
It wasn't until you stopped to catch your breath that you realized you had no idea where you had ended up.
As you stood there, panting and disoriented, you felt the first droplets of rain hit your face. Within seconds, the light drizzle turned into a heavy downpour, soaking you to the bone.
The rain poured down on you, mixing with your tears, you couldn't help but let out a sob. The combination of the physical and emotional pain became too overwhelming to bear, and you found yourself breaking down in the middle of the unfamiliar street.
"Y/N! Y/N!"
You jumped at the voice of Ace, shocked at how he had followed you all the way.
Dreading the look on his face, you still turned around to see Ace standing there, rain-soaked and concerned. His eyes searched yours, filled with worry and regret.
"Y/N?" he said softer, his voice filled with genuine concern and regret.
"Why did you follow me all the way here?" You asked.
"I couldn't just let you run off like that," Ace replied, his voice laced with sincerity. "I care about you, Y/N. I wanted to make sure you're okay."
"Is that what you say to every woman in need?" You blurted out, your voice filled with anger and hurt.
Ace's shocked expression quickly turned into one of remorse as he realized the impact of his actions.
"No, Y/N," he said earnestly, his voice filled with regret.
You couldn't help but feel a pang of disappointment and betrayal, even though you two weren't even dating. The realization that Ace's protective nature might be more of a habit than a genuine emotion made you question the authenticity of his actions towards you.
You decided that since you weren't going to have a chance with him, you might as well tell him.
"Ace, I've liked you for a while and I know-" You started, your eyes fixated on the muddy floor.
You didn't hear his footsteps, but suddenly your face was raised up by Ace's gentle touch. His hand cupped your chin, lifting your gaze to meet his eyes.
Your heart skipped a beat as you noticed the proximity between your faces, the warmth of his hand against your skin. Despite the closeness, there was still a hint of uncertainty lingering in the space between you, as if both of you were waiting for the other to make a move.
"Can I kiss you?"
You nodded, a mix of nervousness and anticipation flooding your senses. Without wasting any time, Ace closed the distance between you and pressed his lips against yours, the taste of rain and longing intertwining in the kiss.
It was a moment filled with both vulnerability and a glimmer of hope, as if the downpour had washed away the doubts and fears that had kept you apart for so long.
When the both of us broke away from each other, Ace started speaking.
"I like you too Y/N, I- I was just scared of how you would react if I confessed,"
"Scared?" You would never think the Fire Fist Ace was scared of anything.
"Yes, I mean who would Iike a monster like me in the first place?"
"Me," You interrupted, "I mean not the monster part because you're not a monster-"
A quick kiss shut you up immediately.
You started to pout, "You need to stop interrupting me when I'm talking,"
"But it's so nice to kiss you, I can't stop," He admitted shamelessly, his cheeks blushing immensely.
You laughed at his bad flirting skills.
"H- Hey! It's not funny!" He pouted.
At moment, you realised that you were special to him. He blushed when he flirted with you, he stuttered when he is with you and loves you more than those girls in the bar. . . .
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
"So you're telling me that you were jealous of the girls in the bar?" Ace teased you with his famous grin as he leaned against you.
"Well yeah," You mumbled, crossing your arms in embarrassment. Maybe you did slightly overreact.
Ace then hugged your side, winking. "I'm sorry for making you jealous, let me treat you tonight,"
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losing-it-lately · 6 months ago
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Would you consider a Remus Lupin x reader where reader is an animagi probably like a smaller animal maybe like a cat or something and Remus has them falling asleep on him and not realizing it’s reader until he’s openly talking about his feelings toward them and the reader in animagi form is like 👀👀👀
Remus Lupin with an Animagi!reader
wc: 0.7k
remus lupin x reader fluff
not exactly as per the request, but i hope you enjoy it :)
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Soft and warm and happy. You were everything that Remus Lupin felt like he didn't get in his life. And even when he didn't know it, you still brought an unfiltered joy into his life.
The Gryffindor common room had seen some recent changes, the biggest one being Remus’ new companion, a scrappy, furry little thing that hung on his shoulder or in his sweater. Cats had always been allowed in Gryffindor, but a small kitten was a new update.
He had found you lingering around the whomping willow; playing and dancing around the tree’s various attacks. With your soft wispy fur and your long whiskers, immediately he was enthralled. Not to mention, he had needed something to keep him going after his transformation the night before.
So you two became a pair, a loved pair. Little first years would surround Remus asking to pet you and James and Sirius would use you for pranks and Remus would let you sleep in his bed. He really loved you, even when you were gone, he would patiently wait.
But what he didn't know was that you were never actually gone.
You were intelligent, for sure. And you were loud, and fun, and crass, and all the things that made people laugh loudly and smile unabashedly. Remus saw something bright and spunky in you and the way you’d light the people around you. And whilst your otherwise silly jokes made people assume the least, your unrestrained time in the library and constant practice and yearning for your curiosity to be satisfied resulted in an early animagi status.
Though intensely illegal to practice that kind of magic underage and without recognition from the ministry, becoming an animagi fulfilled a part of yourself that otherwise you wouldn't have ever felt complete without. When you first transformed into that small tabby, the world around you went silent. You felt different and the same, you were content.
So you continued, spending time in your new form doing whatever random tasks you wanted to do. And eventually, you picked up a companion who unbeknownst to you, knew both sides of the coin.
Remus had started taking you into account on the sorting ceremony of that year. You had accidentally turned up late and took the first empty seat you saw, the one next to him. The both of you had never spoken one on one until that moment, and he swears that he didn't know what a proper laugh felt like until you uttered that first joke; even better, he didn't know what an angel sounded like until he heard your laugh.
Then, he would see you in the library, in his potions class, in the gryffindor common room, it was like you were everywhere, until you weren't.
He stopped seeing you as often and assumed that maybe, maybe he wasn't as down bad as he had been before, maybe he was getting over you. And then you sat next to him in potions and all of his feelings came tumbling back.
Remus rushed to his dorm room with his face blushing all different colours and his fingers picking at his scars. He was spiraling and didn't know what he could do, until he saw her: his little tabby rolling on his bed, waiting patiently.
He scooped her up, letting her eyes match his at eye level, and started confiding.
“I don't know what to do,” he stuttered, his hands engulfing her arms. “I need her so badly, she's perfect for me.”
You were confused to say the least, purring and distracting him from whatever ailed him. It was unbecoming, watching Remus ramble about his dream girl, until he mentioned your name. Your eyes widened, and you jumped out of his hands. Sometimes being smart isn't enough and in this case, you had no idea what to do. You scampered back out of his line of vision and into your room, transforming back and realising you had to do something, you had to make a move.
All week, Remus waited for his tabby to come back, and come Hogsmeade, he went out to buy her some treats. Mid his store run, you found him, looking between aisles for various different snacks.
“I want to talk to you,” you smiled and he felt his world turn a little faster.
Remus abandoned the snacks and you led him outside, to a bench. He felt something shift inside him as you stared into his eyes.
“I really like you,” he burst out, his normal composure almost disappearing now that he was this close to you. You softly laughed and he felt his heartbeat quicken.
“We should go and share a butterbeer.”
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rebelliousstories · 6 months ago
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Pretty as a Peach
Relationship: Cooper “The Ghoul” Howard x Reader
Fandom: Fallout
Request: No
Warnings: Fluff, Strong Language, Brief Angst
Word Count: 1,322
Main Masterlist: Here
Fallout Masterlist: Here
Part Two of: Peachy
Summary: There’s something odd about this girl that had started traveling with the duo. But it does give Lucy a peak behind the curtain on the Wasteland’s most notorious partners in crime.
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“Rise and shine babies!” Someone screamed right as the light started to filter into their shelter for the evening. Lucy groaned as she stretched, before rubbing her eyes and looking around. The same woman from last night, the one that The Ghoul called “Peach” was still there. She shook awake the man next to her, who merely grumbled.
“‘M tired, sweetie. Just go back to sleep.” He said, voice thick with accent and sleep. Cooper reached a hand up and removed his hat from his eyes to look at where the offending noise came from.
“You said we’d leave at the break of day. Don’t tell me you forgot already, old bones?” She teased, bending over to place her hands on her knees.
“I’ll show you old man.” Howard growled, and swiped for the woman. But she stepped back and giggled maniacally at his failed attempt.
“Come on. I wanna get this show on the road.” And she left without another word. Her two new companions were made to catch up to her as she left. Thankfully, neither one had bothered unpacking much which made the whole process easier. Lucy watched as Cooper marched forward and slowed his pace once he made it to the woman.
The vault dweller was fascinated by what she saw on their journey through the day. She saw a different side of The Ghoul that she was traveling with. Not going as far as to say sweet, but definitely caring. As they walked, Lucy saw the pair in front of her sharing food, water, and on occasion, words. It was not until a familiar four legged friend came up that their words became loud enough to be intelligible.
“Oh, who is this?” She knelt down to the dog with a dead iguana in her mouth. The pup’s tail was wagging at a hundred miles an hour at the attention, while the woman scratched behind her ears.
“That’s DogMeat. Ain’t mine, but stays with me I suppose.” Cooper drawled, looking disinterested in the animal, but his partner knew better. Yet, she said nothing about it.
“Well, hello DogMeat. I’ll let you have breakfast.” The woman stood back up and watched the dog for a moment more, before resuming her pace. DogMeat stayed behind for a bit, just long enough for her to tear into her meal, before she rejoined the trio. This time Lucy got an even different view of The Ghoul.
Occasionally, his hand dipped down to find the dog he claimed not to care about, delivered a passing pet, and then retracted it. Usually at the same time, his other hand would search out the peachy woman next to him before, also, retracting. Lucy could not hear the words spoken between the two, but she could see the gestures. When she complained about the sun, and shielded her eyes with her hand, Cooper reached up and placed her hat on her head. If she was fanning herself, he would reach into his pocket and give her his canteen.
But she also did things for him that made her have hope for civilization on the surface. Whenever he began to pat himself down, she would reach into her own bag and give him a readily available chem for his inhaler. If Cooper rubbed his stomach and reached for his canteen, she would hand him some jerky instead. They took care of themselves, as well as each other. Lucy knew that if she were to ask, they would both say that this was just a partnership born out of necessity. But if there is one thing she had learned on the surface it is that people just do not stick around other people unless there is a deeper reason.
She saw it in the way they sought each other out as they walked. If they moved through difficult terrain, he would always make sure that it was safe for her to move first. As the night grew closer, and the cold came in with the night, Cooper kept the woman closer and closer until they found shelter. The trio found themselves a little barn type structure to stay the night. It was open save for one set of door, but it was better than sleeping in the elements where you had no idea someone was sneaking up on you until it was too late.
Cooper looked around the area as he set down his saddle bag. Peach came over and set down the hat on top of the bag before setting out to explore. She made her way all over the dilapidated barn, careful not to break the barn or herself. It was not until she tried to climb to the hayloft that The Ghoul stepped in.
“Don’t you go climbin’ woman. You gonna get yourself hurt, Peach.” He groaned, watching her pause briefly in her efforts.
“I’ll be fine.” She shot back, already resuming her climb. Her journey was successful as she safely made her way into the loft, and poked her head out off of the side.
“See? I’m fine. You should come up, Coop. ‘S got a good view.” And she rolled out of sight. The man sighed heavily, but followed her request much to Lucy’s astonishment. She watched him climb the same rickety ladder that Peach had climbed just moments before. Staying down on the ground with DogMeat, the vault dweller began to gather things that they would need to start a fire for the evening. Light faded fast as she finished building the flames up to a point that they could enjoy it. A little bit later, the duo came down from their loft. Hay stuck to her hair and his duster, but no one had made a noise so Lucy was not sure what they were doing for the last hour.
“Come here, DogMeat.” She called,and the canine responded. Her head rested in the woman’s lap as she scratched her nails over her fur. The pup closed her eyes and eventually fell asleep in her lap, to which she gushed over.
“Oh this is just the cutest thing ever.” Peach cooed, careful not to raise her voice and wake the dog.
“Yeah, she’s pretty cute.” Lucy agreed, watching them in their moment. Both women turned to the man with them simultaneously and looked at him with hopeful faces.
“It’s a dog. Whatcha want me to say?” He grumbled, knees up to his chest and head bare from his hat.
“Oh, don’t give me that, Coop. You think she is adorable.” Peach leaned her body into the side of the ghoul next to her, who merely shot her a look, to which she ignored.
“Okey dokey. I’m going to go to sleep. Goodnight you two.” Lucy proclaimed, setting up a little palette a bit a ways from the fire. It was close enough that she could still feel the heat, but far enough away that she could give the couple their privacy.
“I kinda like that Vaultie, Coop.” The woman sighed, keeping her voice to a whisper as she gazed at the young woman that was now asleep.
“Ain’t nothn’ special ’bout her. ‘Cept her last name. Pain in my ass most of the time.” He replied, finding his eyes on the young woman as well.
“I was that ‘pain in the ass Vaultie’ once. Remember?” Her question made The Ghoul pause before he responded.
“Yeah I do. But now, you’re my little peach girl. Pretty as one too.” Cooper dropped a kiss to her hair and slung an arm around her while she settled in to sleep. They laid together, with her tucking herself in closer underneath Howard’s duster. As they drifted off to sleep, Lucy laid awake. She could barely make out what was being said but it was interesting to her enough that she would have to ask about it. The Ghoul’s Peachy Girl was a former vault dweller.
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drunk-person · 2 months ago
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Study Session
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Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x classmate!reader
Summary: Aemond is assigned to a college work with Y/n, an absent-minded art student who doesn't give a damn about philosophy. Things don't go well since she doesn't help him at all, until the two come to an unorthodox agreement that ends the impasse.
WARNING: 18+ mdni! secret crush, semi-nudity, voyeurism, breast fetish, exchange of academic favors for "sex", modern au, no description for reader.
Word cont: 3.200k
Author's note: This just came to my mind while doing some really boring work and I ended up writing it. The Rosby house is close to Kings Landing so I chose this surname for the reader, I hope you like it.
Dedicated to the poor readers of The Gossip who read chapter 7 and are in need of some comfort for their souls after all that mess hahaha I love you all! English is not my first language 💕💕🥰
Y/n was so frustrated. That class was absolutely hellish and if it wasn't mandatory in her schedule she would certainly never even pass in front of the door. The only reasonable side to all of this was the fact that Aemond Targaryen sat in front of her during this unbearable class. He could be as arrogant as he wanted if he continued to be so hot.
The girl bit her lip as she stared at the back of his pale neck that was exposed to her eyes since his long silver hair was tied in a bun due to the heat wave. The two had never exchanged more than a few words, but Y/n couldn't help it, he was too handsome and intelligent for his own good.
She didn't know how he could understand that subject and answer all the questions the teacher asked as if they were obvious to him. Y/n did her best to hide her crush, but whenever no one was looking she couldn't help but sigh lightly as she looked at him.
She was barely in the same reality as the rest of the class when she heard her name being called harshly by the professor, pulling her out of her deep thoughts and back to real life.
-I'm sorry, professor, I was distracted. - She looked down, blushing when she realized that the whole class was looking at her while letting out light giggles.
-Which seems to be a very common occurrence with you, doesn't it? - The man spoke in an irritated voice and Y/n felt her face heat up even more.
-If you're interested in knowing, Miss Rosby, we're holding a draw for pairs of work for the semester. - The professor was still looking at Y/n as he spoke and reaching into the jar, he pulled out a new piece of paper.
-Aemond Targaryen.
Y/n felt her heart stop momentarily when she heard that name. Would her semester partner be Aemond Targaryen? The gods must have wanted to play with her.
-Good luck, Mr Targaryen, you will need it. - The man said, making the whole class laugh, except for Aemond, who, without Y/n noticing, glared at the teacher when he heard the mean joke.
After the class ended, the room gradually emptied, while the few remaining students put their books and notebooks in their backpacks. Aemond finished writing some notes in his notebook under the watchful eye of Y/n, who was anxiously waiting to talk to him.
And when he turned towards her with that serious look and that sculpted face, Y/n smiled and pretended to be disinterested.
-I don't understand half of what that man says. - She shrugged, staring at him while Aemond frowned. - I hope it won't be a problem for you to be my partner.
-Maybe you would understand if you spent more time paying attention in class and less time drawing. - Aemond rolled his good eye, putting away his own books while Y/n felt her belly heat up.
How did he know she was drawing in class if he had his back to her the whole time?
-I don't like studying boring things that guys who died centuries ago said and that don't make any sense.
-But do you like studying works that boring guys who died centuries ago painted and that don't make any sense? - He raised his eyebrows ironically, looking at her and Y/n's mouth slightly opened, not knowing what to say.
-That… That's not the point.
-Mmmm… if you say so. - The irony was poignant in his voice and expression and Y/n slightly narrowed her eyes, feeling the urge to argue more without knowing what to answer.
-They… They're not meaningless! - She snorted in annoyance and Aemond just let out a nasal laugh while raising his eyebrows.
-Most of them are just a bunch of meaningless scribbles. - He rolled his eyes, putting his backpack on his back.
-The name is surrealism, and perhaps underdeveloped minds don't understand it very well! - Y/n lifted her chin, pulled her own bag onto her shoulder and pressed the sketchbook against her chest, leaving before Aemond, leaving him with a mischievous smile on his lips as he watched her leave.
Y/n rolled her eyes, irritated with herself as she walked towards the open courtyard of the college, sitting at a stone table and throwing her bag on it, seriously considering diverting her idiotic crush on Aemond Targaryen to another guy.
Unfortunately for her, at the same moment the thought crossed her mind, his soft voice called her from behind and the hairs on the back of the girl's neck stood on end at the same moment, making her snort.
-We need to decide where and when we're going to meet to start the work. - He murmured and Y/n turned to look at him, snorting when she saw that he looked even more attractive with the sunlight shining through his silver hair.
In the natural light, the prosthetic eye was more visible than indoors, as was the thin scar that ran from the eye to the forehead and cheek. Y/n didn't give a shit, she just thought he looked even hotter if that was possible.
-Rosby? - Aemond called her, his voice miles away from taking her out of her self-imposed trance.
-I'm sorry, I got a bit distracted. - She shook her head, trying to focus on the conversation, and Aemond turned his face to the side, smiling discreetly at the action. - What did you say?
-We'll meet to start work.
-Oh, yes, yes. - She nodded thoughtfully. - How about the library?
-I don't study in the library, there are always idiots who go there to make a mess and interfere with concentration. - Aemond rolled his eyes with a frown, making her rack her brain to remember if she had ever messed up in the library.
-Yeah. They're all idiots! - She agreed, rolling her eyes when she came to the conclusion that she hadn't done anything wrong in the college library.
-We can go to my dorm. - Y/n shrugged, trying to be casual. - But my roommate is always there and never turns off the TV.
-Don't you have your own room? - He looked at her confused and Y/n laughed.
-Not all of us can own the campus. - She grimaced and Aemond rolled his eyes.
-Your family has money too.
-Having money is different from being a filthy rich Targaryen. - She grumbled as she gestured lightly with her hands, arching her eyebrows, and Aemond didn't contest her.
-Whatever, let's meet in my dorm, it's empty there and no one will disturb us.
Y/n nodded, subtly biting her lower lip at the idea that she would go to Aemond's room.
-Where is it? - She came back to reality, remembering to ask, and asking her for a pen, Aemond wrote down the number and the floor on the last page of the sketchbook that was on the table.
-See you on Friday. - He murmured, turning around and leaving her as soon as he finished writing, making her sigh once more at hearing that voice so close to her.
♤♡
Y/n did her best to look beautiful in the most disinterested way possible. Just a gray blouse with black denim shorts and a thin black coat on top, her hair tied with a simple clip and just a bit of lipstick. It was almost how she looked every day, except for the fact that she wasn't wearing a bra, but with the coat on top he probably wouldn't even notice that fact.
Apart from the fact that when she got there she discovered that they were fixing the cooling system in Aemond's building and now she was without the coat and wearing only the thin blouse, attracting Aemond's discreet glance at her from time to time.
The two spread their materials across the table in the living room connected to the bedroom and sat on the floor to study. Unfortunately, Aemond was having more trouble concentrating in his own room than in the library, with the sight of Y/n in that blouse in front of him, scribbling drawings on her philosophy book while pretending to read something.
When he finally managed to read a few words, he could hear her melodious laughter from the other side of the table.
-What is it? - He murmured almost in a growl making her become serious.
-It's just that I'm watching and I think my shared dorm room would fit inside yours.- She shrugged and Aemond rolled his eyes without giving a verbal response.
Minutes later, when he went back to reading focused and taking some important notes, her voice rang out once again, distracting him.
-I'm so lazy. - Y/n threw herself onto the philosophy books open on the coffee table in Aemond's dorm room, and he slightly arched his eyebrows.
-You haven't done anything so far. - He grumbled as he took note of an important quote that he would probably use in the future during the work.
-Because this subject is totally boring. - The girl mumbled with her head still lying on the books but now with her face turned towards Aemond looking at him while slowly blinking her eyes feeling a little sleepy. Until now, nothing interesting had happened outside of her imagination.
-Boredom or not, I think it's better to start working on your part, because there's no way I'm going to give you credit for something you didn't do. - Aemond looked at her very seriously while Y/n sulked, crossing her arms under her breasts, slightly drawing the older man's attention there again.
-Are you always this boring, Targaryen? - Y/n snorted, making one of the loose strands of hair fly out of her pretty face.
-This isn't boring, this is justice. - His eyes were still discreetly fixed on the subtle neckline of the gray blouse that Y/n was wearing, except that now she noticed it, feeling her stomach tingle with the idea that Aemond Targaryen was looking at her.
-Talking about justice and being a total pervert. - She slightly pressed her eyes to him while tightening her arms under her breasts, making them more prominent, making Aemond cough with a subtle choke, looking away.
-Mmmm, I wasn't looking at your breasts. - He grunted looking in another direction.
-Ah, you certainly were. - She arched her eyebrows laughing. - If you want to know, women always know when you're looking.
-What's that? A weird sixth sense? - Aemond raised his eyebrows in disbelief, still a little embarrassed for having been caught.
-Something like that. - Y/n shrugged with a slight grimace, but then an idea popped into her head making her subtly bite her lower lip, staring at him as she gathered her courage.
-How about we make a deal? - Y/n was still biting her lower lip without believing she was actually going to say that to him.
-What kind of deal? - Aemond tilted his forehead, confused but interested, while his eyes inadvertently fell once again on her breasts.
-I'll let you be a perv and look at my boobs, and you do my part in this stupid job. - She suggested, slowly poking the hem of her own thin blouse under the attentive gaze of Aemond, who felt his own mouth drying up.
-Mmmm. - He mocked her with an ironic smile. - No deal. This work is almost 30 pages long, I want to at least be able to touch them.
-What? - She narrowed her eyes slightly while arching her right eyebrow now, not believing what he was saying.
-That's right, and you'll be topless while i writing the work. It's that or nothing. - He smiled maliciously as he arched his eyebrows, waiting for her answer, being almost certain that she would give up on the idea.
-Gods, you're more perv than I thought. - She grumbled, staring at him with a frown as she tried to process the fact that Aemond Targaryen really had asked to touch her boobs.
-Do we have a deal? - Aemond asked, still with a dirty smile on his face, and Y/n rolled her eyes at him, mumbling something to herself, unable to call him an idiot since she had given him the idea.
-We have a deal. - She spoke firmly, feeling soft shivers down her thighs as she said this, making Aemond subtly widen his eyes in shock at her accepting. - But… I don't want to read a single sentence about this subject, I don't want to know about these idiot philosophers and much less about their silly theories.
-These aren't silly theories… - Aemond rolled his eyes condescendingly at the girl's lack of understanding on such an important subject, it almost affected the crush he had on her… almost.
-Ah. - She cut him off instantly. - I don't want to know. Deal?
-Deal. - He grimaced in slight disgust, if she weren't so hot it wouldn't be worth all the effort, Aemond thought rolling his eyes.
With a sigh Y/n pulled the gray blouse of thin fabric over her head leaving her bare breasts exposed to Aemond's hungry and raw gaze that made her skin crawl almost instantly.
The moment she took off her blouse, Aemond took away his previous thought. She was certainly worth the effort and he would definitely do a thousand jobs like that just to take a look at those breasts.
Feeling confident under his gaze Y/n sat on the two-seater sofa and once again crossed her arms under her now bare breasts while looking at him with one of her eyebrows raised.
Taking a deep breath, Aemond sat down next to her, staring at that beautiful pair of breasts that he could say for sure were the most beautiful he had ever laid eyes on in his life.
-Can I? - He reached out his hands to her breasts, but stopped just before touching them, wanting her to be one hundred percent sure of what she was doing. And when the girl nodded positively while biting her lower lip and subtly pressing her legs together, he touched his palms, feeling her soft breasts and almost moaning at the soft sensation.
Little by little he moved his hands while looking at her with a very serious look, and with the tips of his thin fingers he began to massage her erect nipples with increasing dedication, observing the responses her body gave him. Every soft tremor, every subtle gasp, every press and rub of her thighs against each other.
-They're perfect. - He praised softly as he stimulated them, eliciting a soft moan from Y/n who bent down even more offering her own breasts to Aemond.
She was lost in his touches, so gentle yet so demanding. No one had ever given her so much pleasure just by touching her breasts, and Y/n wanted to moan with pleasure but was holding herself back so as not to seem so given. She pressed her eyes tightly, feeling the shocks of pleasure running through her body and going straight down to her completely soaked pussy.
Suddenly, with her eyes still closed, Y/n felt Aemond's warm breath close to her skin, and opened her eyes at the same moment, looking at him.
-What are you doing? - She gasped, looking directly into that blue eye that had left her fascinated since the first time she saw it and that now looking so closely she thought it contained some violet reflections.
-I said I wanted to touch, you didn't specify just using of hands. - He murmured dirtyly, lowering his mouth over Y/n's breasts and sucking deeply on her excited nipple, which curved her back against the couch, finally moaning loudly in pure contentment.
-Oh Aemond please more. - She whimpered, writhing and pressing her thighs together. - So good... so good.
From that moment on, it was impossible for her to contain her own moans, his mouth felt so incredible against her already sensitive nipples. With each suction she trembled and tightened her thighs while gripping the sofa tightly, almost digging her nails into the upholstery.
-By the gods, you have the tastiest tits I've ever tasted in my life. - Aemond moaned between the hungry sucks and firm, desperate caresses, sending a new wave of pleasure over her as she heard those words. And without control over her own body, Y/n put her hands in Aemond's hair, tangling her fingers there and holding her head against herself as she moaned his name in despair.
Her pulling on his hair did something almost wild to Aemond, he usually didn't like it when people pulled his hair, but at that moment… Fuck, it really felt good. And when she started moaning his name in a completely lacking way while rubbing her pussy on the couch like a desperate bitch in heat, he felt himself on the edge.
While he sucked and licked her left nipple, caressing the right one with his hand, drawing waves and waves of pleasure from her, he guided his vacant hand inside the gray sweatpants he was wearing and finally paid attention to his cock, which was leaking and making a mess against the fabric of his boxers.
He violently fucked his cock against the left hand while still inside his pants while inevitably moaning against Y/n's nipple, making her rub even harder against the sofa.
-Aemond. - Came Y/n's broken voice in a moan that was almost a whimper as she shuddered without control over her own body, writhing on the couch, feeling the unbridled pleasure of the orgasm taking over her.
And hearing her beg for his name as she writhed in the midst of orgasm, Aemond reached his own peak of pleasure, spurting against his own hand in thick, strong jets, moaning with contentment against Y/n's sensitive, reddened nipples.
The two remained motionless for a few moments, just trying to regain their senses completely taken over by the debilitating pleasure. Y/n's mind went completely blank as she laid her head on the back of the sofa, still panting, completely shocked since she had never cum just by stimulating her nipples. And Aemond, in turn, tried to regain his composure with his head still buried between his classmate's delicious breasts.
And when he finally raised his head, he couldn't resist the temptation to suck her nipple once more, making her gasp with overstimulation.
-Oh, Aemond. - She sighed complainingly, lightly pushing his head away with the palm of her right hand. - They're sensitive.
-Mmmm. - He murmured caressing her naked waist. -I could suck your tits for hours if you let me.
-I could let you. - She gasped, pretending to be uncertain about the subject even though she was still sensitive to his touch, feeling the inside of her thighs tingling amid the scandalous moisture in her panties.
-Well, it's 30 pages. - He shrugged, moving his caresses up and down her waist. - And as far as I know, the pairs that Hayford assigned are until the end of the semester.
-We'll have plenty of time. - He kissed her nipple once more, making her sigh.
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kyu-piddy · 1 month ago
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Hello! Can I ask for a part 2 of the mother-in-law hcs exept it's with Azul, Trey and Idia this time?
The Mother in Law II
Thank you for your request. Apologies for taking so long, but life has been quite hectic these past few months. I hope you enjoy this drabble collection.
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Gn reader x Azul, Trey, Idia
Tw: None
1.8k words
Mama Shroud
Mama Shroud is an extremely intelligent woman and an affectionate mother, a genius in both her work and her affectionate ways.
You had only heard about her through her feats, her son sometimes commenting that the “head engineer” had made something, who you later realized was his mother.
You always had been curious about meeting his parents, but Idia always seemed reticent about it, quickly changing subjects.
One day, you went to visit him in his dorm after class.
The door to his room was opened slightly, letting you in through the small crack.
“Hi, ___! Did you come to play games with us?” asked Ortho, the one that had opened the door.
Idia was sitting in front of his pc, concentrated in a gaming session.
“I just came by to check on you both. How is it going?”
You chatted with Ortho for a bit, the angry clacking of Idia’s keyboard almost like white noise.
Suddenly, the light on Idia’s screen became brighter, the voice of a woman echoing through the room and startling all its occupants.
“Idy, pick up! It’s mamma!” repeated the voice over and over again.
The tip of Idia’s hair turned pink, as he muttered under his breath how he was sure he had blocked the voice features.
Ortho's eyes glimmered.
“___, you can meet our mom!”
He sprung from his spot on Idia’s bed, and before his brother could stop him, accepted the video call.
“Oru! How are you doing, dear?”
“I’m doing fine!”
“That’s great! And where’s Idy?”
Idia (with a little shove from Ortho) rolled his gaming chair into view of his mother.
“Hi, mom.”
His face was stuck in a strange expression, like he had sucked on a particularly sour lemon.
“Oh Idy, mamas so happy to see you. My little boy is all grown, getting himself a partner. It’s almost like it was yesterday that you were still in diapers.”
The blue in Idia’s hair was gone, replaced by a bright pink, mirrored in his cheeks.
“Mom! How do you know that?!”
“A mothers intuition never fails, sweetie.”
Ortho giggled, giving you a gentle push forward.
You stood at Idia’s side, and put your hand on his shoulder.
“Hello, Mrs. Shroud. I’m ___, Idia’s partner. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“You can call me mama, sweetheart. My, you’re quite lovely! Don’t you think so too, Idy?”
Mrs Shroud seemed oblivious to her son’s embarrassment, his face disappearing from the image as he sank into his chair, his hands hiding his face.
“…yeah.”
Mama Shroud kept the conversation going, asking you and Idia about every detail in your relationship, but seeing as her son couldn’t even look at the camera straight, you ended up answering most of them as he wallowed in shame.
“It has been lovely talking to you, my dears. But mama has to leave now. I’ll call again later. Bye bye!”
You and Ortho both waved goodbye as she ended the call.
Idia was still on the spot at the bottom of the chair, curled into himself.
“Your mom is quite lovely. I really liked her!” you assured him.
He peeked at you from the space in between his fingers.
“And Idy is quite a cute nickname.”
Idia groaned, and went back to hiding his face, as you and Ortho giggled.
Mrs Clover
Mrs Clover is a simple woman. She wears her pastry chef uniform most of the time, a hard worker who never seems to quite leave the kitchen, flour and sugar always decorating her garments and sometimes even face and nose.
Trey’s family is his pride and joy, and so is the bakery they own. As such, he wanted to take you there so you could meet them and have a taste of their recipes.
Entering through the door of Patisserie Clover made a little jingling noise echo in the pastel shop, cakes and tarts and biscuits and anything and everything sweet laying on platers, the aroma of even more sweets being made entering your nostrils and sticking to your body.
The shop was open, with many patrons lining up to purchase goodies or seating on the plush chairs while snacking and chatting.
One of Trey’s little sisters immediately spotted you, a tray of freshly made biscuits in her hand and a shocked look on her face.
She dropped the tray on the counter and turned tail, running towards the back while whisper-yelling “MOOOOOOOOM!”.
Trey chuckled under his breath.
“Let us follow her, before she gets into trouble.”
On your way to the back of the bakery, Trey hastily greeted several customers, many seemingly knowing him for many years, probably regulars that had seen him in the spot that his sister now was in.
The closer you got to the back, the warmer it got, and the stronger the smell of sugar and flour was.
“Hattie, you can’t scream like that while we have customers.” said a warm but stern voice from behind a door to what you assumed was the kitchen.
“But mooooom, Trey is here! And he was holding hands with someone!”
Trey kept on chuckling, opening the door to greet the people inside.
“Hi, mom. Hi, Hattie. Do you need some help?”
Both Hattie and his mom turned to him, bright smiles on their faces.
Hattie threw herself at her brother, giving him (at least trying to) a crushing hug.
Mrs Clover wiped her hands on her apron, giving her son a quick hug before turning to you.
“It’s very nice to meet you. You must be __, right? Trey has told us a lot about you.”
Heat crept up to your cheeks, and you mentally blamed it on the oven.
“Trey, you should have told us you were bringing your special friend over. We would have made time for them!”
She lightly scolded her son, but it was obvious she wasn’t actually mad, smearing some flour on his nose as a punishment.
“I didn’t want to disturb you too much. I know this time of the year is rather busy, so we aren’t staying for long.”
That got him a pair of saddened faces, both his sisters and mothers face dropping like melted chocolate.
“Oh…”
They didn't protest or object, but their sad faces made you feel like you had just committed a horrible act, akin to kicking a puppy.
You exchanged a look with Trey, who merely sighed.
“Maybe we can stay a little longer? If that is okay with you, of course.” you asked tentatively.
Their faces perked right up, and Hattie started dragging her brother out of the kitchen, saying how she had “the best spot for love-birds!”
Mrs Clover smiled maternally, wiping her hands on her apron even though they were already clean.
“Thank you for coming,__. Our Trey has been so happy lately, we thought you might even steal him away from us!” she chuckled at her own joke, moving forward to hold your hands in her calloused ones.
“I hope you enjoy our sweets.”
Smiling back at her, you answered.
“I already do.”
Mrs Ashengrotto
Mrs Ashengrotto is a plump and beautiful woman, exuding confidence and charm everywhere she goes, always the perfect picture of composure.
Her son respects her, even modeling himself in part to her image, but even so he seemed to be quite apprehensive of you meeting her.
She had been the one to request to meet you, curious about the one that had captured her son's heart.
Initially Azul had tried to expertly change topics, discouraging such a meeting, but his mother was not one to be outsmarted, and kept insisting.
Eventually he relented to a meeting at the Mostro lounge, but Mrs Ahengrotto insisted on a meeting in “neutral ground.”
And that’s how you ended up in a quaint hole in a wall near NRC, sitting side by side with your boyfriend.
Azul didn’t explicitly say it, always keeping his composure and a suave smile, but you could see it in his eyes, apprehension building up. He was truly out of his depth.
Mrs Ashengrotto waltzed to your table as soon as she got in, her presence captivating just by the way she walked and smiled.
She wore confidence and charm like one wears a precious piece of real jewelry, flaunting with taste and not an inch of malice.
She sat across from you, and gave you both a delicate smile.
It was nearly identical to Azul’s business smile, but while his felt too perfect to be sincere, hers felt genuine, and if it weren’t for your nerves gnawing at your stomach, you would be sure to have fallen for her charms immediately.
“Good afternoon. I hope you didn’t have to wait long for me. The traffic in the mirror was rather cumbersome today.”
“Not at all, mother. Waiting for you is never a strenuous activity.”
They gave each other their trademark polite smile, one you weren’t keen enough to understand if it was mere practice or a natural born talent, at least to the woman in front of you.
She turned to you, her smile just as bright.
“And who might you be?”
“Good afternoon, Mrs Ashengrotto. I’m your son's significant other. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
You gave your best attempt at a polite speech, having practiced it beforehand, but it sounded stiff and soulless.
Mrs Ashengrotto didn’t seem to mind, a knowing glint in her eye.
Azul gave your thigh a quick squeeze under the table.
Eventually the server came to get your orders and the meal went on without a hitch.
Azul’s mother was a skilled conversationalist, there never seemingly being a stop in interesting conversation topics.
By the end of the meal, you were completely relaxed, as if you had known this woman your whole life.
When it came time to pay for the meal, she pulled out her wallet.
“Do not worry, mother. I will pay.”
“Oh dear, I was the one that invited you both. It would be inconsiderate of me to not pay.”
Their eyes locked, a battle of minds, until the mother eventually bowed to her son.
“My, you have grown so much, Zuzu. I’m so proud of your initiative.”
Azul’s face turned a light shade of pink, immediately getting up.
“Then I shall go get the bill.”
Alone with his mother at the table, she watched her son walk away before returning to you.
“My dear, it has been a pleasure meeting you. Please take care of my son. He can be rather excessive with his work, and I'd like for him to enjoy his youth.”
You smiled at her.
“Of course. I won’t let him be swept away by the current.”
She smiled at your use of a Coral Sea expression.
“I apologize if my return brought an end to an enjoyable conversation.” said Azul, returning with fast steps, but not quick enough to be improper.
“It was a delightful conversation indeed. But we have more pressing matters.”
She gave you a conspiratory look.
“Such as, when will you visit our restaurant in the coral sea? I’d say someone with a refined palate as yours would much prefer our establishment over this one .”
You smiled at her, Azul’s eyes widening at your words.
“I’d love it if Zuzu took me there.”
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urlocaldesertdweller · 2 months ago
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His Ego (Stanford x Reader, PART 2)
(PART 1)
(Suggestive/borderline smut)
By request of an anon for a hate sex continuation of the link above! Also, this is a different ending from the first part!!!
(I tried rlly hard to make it something close to hate sex so I hope you can enjoy it either way)
You only can take so much from an egotistical asshole who thinks so highly of themselves. It frustrated you all the more that Stanford seemingly deemed you unworthy of his time from the say he came out of the portal.
You always had your own ways of fighting back, though, from "evidently" disturbing his private studies in the basement to inviting yourself to his outside adventures. You did this for many reasons, one to annoy him and two to discover why he hates you.
So, of course, when Dipper and Mabel told you that he was planning to return to the buried UFO behind town for further investigations. An idea of yours had struck your mind.
Self-invites were already a common thing between Ford and you. He would only tolerate you because the rest of the family would never let go of this odd, one-sided rivalry. He would mainly avoid you at all costs, even his own life, just to keep away from his own research.
But this time, you thought confidently to yourself on the hike. Things were going to be different, and that was a promise.
He handed you an extra magnet gun without making eye contact, so you'll live on the way down. He knew how much the twins and Stanley loved you. He knew that they would never forgive him if he let you die on purpose.
By the time you both finally landed in the large and dark hallways of the ship. You quickly followed behind him since he didn't care to bring a second light source for you. He had his limits, and you were, for some reason, at the top of the list (next to Bill).
A thick tension sticks between you as he stops in the room with the control room, setting his equipment, and starts to get to work. You watch him for a moment sucking a breath and gaining the courage.
As you step up next to him, you open your mouth to speak. But the moment catches up to you, and you make an awful mix of quiet screech and squeal, which makes Ford glare at you and sidestep away, still staring at you. You cover your mouth, close your eyes, cough, and gather your thoughts. You open your eyes as they harden on Ford.
Before he steps away, you grab his wrist. He is clearly confused, as you now have his full attention, and he turns his body towards you instead of the console.
"If you don't mind, can you let go of my wrist? Surely you have your own reasons for being here than to bother me."
Ford snarkily comments on your odd behavior. He looks at your hand, almost disgusted, and attempts to wiggle his lim away. But your surprising strength keeps him there. You finally speak up quickly, hushing Ford before he can comment on you again.
"Ford. You are nearing your 60s."
You grit your teeth as you think about how such an intelligent man like Ford can act bitterly to someone like yourself for some petty reason.
"What's the point of keeping up with this whole... Hate thing for me? Like, I'm actually confused about you! Why spend so much time and effort to hate on one person and have it be me?"
You are trying hard to shout as you break into a rant about all of the times he has treated you differently and how much it has affected you negatively. Your grip on his wrist goes into both of your hands on the lapels of his coat, nearly shaking him.
Ford is growing irritated not only by you putting your hands on him but also by you asking why he hates you so much. He roughly grabs your arms.
"Get a hold of yourself! You will activate something hazardous; it will all be your fault because you can't bear the fact that I strongly dislike you!"
He steps close, pushing a finger into your chest, and makes you step into the console. You chuckle as his response feels more like an excuse than anything. Your face hardens as you laugh, even in between the console and Ford. You push closer to Ford in an attempt to at least win by making him uncomfortable.
"Oh, it's going to be my fault? Of course, to you, everything is my fault when a small inconvenience happens to you!"
You are chest to chest, having to look up at Ford with his height. A finger raises to push to the tip of his nose mockingly.
"Because you think nothing bad ever comes from you, doesn't it? Isn't that right, little Mister Perfect?"
He pulls back as your finger lingers on his nose, his cheeks dust a warm pink.
"You always make assumptions about me. It's insane!"
Perhaps it's something in the aged air, but it only brings you more confidence. You stomp on his foot, and before you let him react, you take fistfuls of his coat, sweeping him to the console. He groans in pain and gasps at the suddenness of everything.
"What is it, Ford? Do you think that you are too good to even give me an answer to my question?"
He coughs as you push yourself against him. A determined look paints your expression, and he stares into your eyes, unsure of what to do. He does the occasional shift and shuffle, but your iron grip keeps him pinned and leaning comfortably on the console.
"It's anything but that! God forbid I can't be unrealistically nice to everyone on this doomed planet!"
He moves enough to leave him heaving. Eventually, it seems that the tension churns between you as you stare into each other eyes with an odd passion. You smirk until you peek at his lips; if force doesn't get the answer out, maybe being unpredictable could.
The silence speaks for itself as you roughly mash your lips into his. He gasps into the rough kiss, and he keeps his eyes open. You know how little experience Ford has in kissing and other spicy stuff, but you are more than willing to let him take on the challenge.
After a long minute or three, you tempt them to pry his soft lips with your warm tongue, and he resists, but with a hand to push his jawline, he becomes putty.
He can't help but gasp and feel his hips naturally move into yours as he steps into new foreign territory, making out. His reactions make you smirk; it encourages you to push him more as a hand rubs tenderly into the fat of his hip through his pants.
He pulls away, desperate for air; you chuckle, watching his turtleneck stretch and shift with his heaving chest. You don't wait for him; a sneaky finger finds its way to drag the turtle's neck down to reveal his delicious neck. You peck his skin from his shivering lips and strong jaw to, finally, his pale neck.
He mutters through his breath, asking you to be careful. You start with soft kisses to rough bites, making him yelp, which you shoot up, covering his mouth; you lean in close to his ear in a ticklish whisper to his ear.
"Who's going to activate something now, hm? Better hang on, Know it All, because I'm just starting."
He hums in slight confusion into your hand as he isn't prepared for your hand going from his hip to his growing bulge. You message it, pressing, twisting, poking it. His cock quickly wets the fabric making a notable stain.
He gasps and bites down on your hand. You keep it there for him; his reaction is worth every tooth mark on your hand.
He wriths under you, spitting out your hand. You expected a more suitable expression, but you were pleasantly surprised when he glared at you; he leaned to you in a raspy growl.
"I hate you... So much."
You giggle with evident delight enjoying him being pissed off. That is until you feel a hand snake around your back and push you into his hips. Catching you off guard and yelp.
Now, he is the one to smirk, and he starts to fall into an addicting rhythm between you and him. You are not happy to be caught, so off guard, your eyes twitch, and you feel your pride falter just a little.
"Don't make an old man like me all riled up and expect me to finish the job all by myself."
You sit up in one more attempt to roughly kiss him, hands, tongue, and all. He isn't surprised this time. He is a quick learner, after all. And a mix of tounges and saliva as Ford fights against you again, even during the long kiss.
He lasts longer, leaving you to pull away. You catch your breath, and listening to his comment makes you click in your brain.
"I thought you hated me. But don't you hate me nearly enough to keep me from being pushed away during intimacy?"
He stays quiet and stares at you unamused; his silence is up to you whether he truly feels about you.
Nevertheless, this is progress between you and Ford. Besides, you had a long "investigation" session with Ford in the UFO.
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1d1195 · 5 months ago
Text
Strong
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~3.9k words
From Me: Requested by @thechaoticjoy I'm sorry it took so long, I hope I did it justice. I'll post the corresponding ask a little bit after the story has been out so long as it's okay with you 💕 I'll message you to chat!
Warnings: parental death long-term illness, hospitals, angst, tragic backstory, really sad stuff in this one. But there's some really comforting notions in it, I think. A lot of strong MC attributes and I think there's a lot to be celebrated in this kind of strength
Summary: Harry's best friend is sweet, kind, beautiful, and intelligent. He wishes she would open up to him more. Only because he doesn't want her to have to be so strong for herself. He would love to be strong for her every now and again.
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“She’s the best,” Gemma said knowingly. “Sweet, calm...she’s perfect for you.”
Harry smiled. “Yeah,” he shrugged.
“Come on Harry, you can’t possibly ignore it. It’s...nice. Different. She’s perfect.” Her smile reflected the same one as Harry. Something they both inherited from their mother. Something that Harry loved to point to when looking at the relationship between them. He liked to believe the kindness he had came from the words his mum and sister spoke. A trait that was passed down to him since he didn’t get hand-me-downs from Gemma.
The sweet girl was quietly putting things in Anne’s car after having filled Gemma’s. “You sit with your sister,” she squeezed Harry’s shoulder and left no room for argument. Within seconds, she was grabbing keys from Michal and Harry’s mum. The lovely couple had been showered with gifts for the arriving baby girl. Michal and Anne were chatting at one table, Harry and Gemma at another.
“Who does this kind of thing?” Gemma asked rhetorically. “You cannot let her get away. There is no better sister-in-law I could imagine. No better aunt,” she said pointedly.
Harry smirked, his cheeks turning red at the compliments. But it wasn’t his place to blush or accept the compliments. She was perfect. Truly. But he didn’t do anything but find her by practically stumbling into her. They worked for the same company, Harry was a research assistant and she worked in IT. One day his computer was glitching out and Harry headed down a quiet hallway.
The room was dark, just a couple strings of Christmas lights around the walls. Music played quietly from a speaker while she organized paperwork and read over her computer screen. A pair of glasses (that turned out to be just for blue light and not for seeing) perched on her nose.
She was beautiful. That was the first thing Harry noticed because he couldn’t help but notice.
“Hi,” he said in greeting. “M’laptop froze.”
She was intelligent. That was the second thing. Because she worked magic within moments to get his computer back up and running.
The rest was history. She worked on it quickly and diligently. Tapping buttons, pressing keys that Harry never touched because he wasn’t convinced his laptop wouldn’t spontaneously gain a conscience. They chatted while she worked. Nothing of major importance. How long they worked there, where they went to school, and if she had tried the new sushi restaurant down the road for lunch.
“Thanks for coming to my dungeon,” she giggled when he was leaving. “Come back any time,” her smile was his favorite thing about her.
Lunchtime from then on meant heading to the dungeon decorated with Christmas lights and pictures of her family on the desk. There was no ring on her finger and only a picture of herself and her dog that she joked about as the longest relationship she had. It meant Harry sharing the sushi from the new place and her telling him that she had a chickpea Caesar salad recipe that he would love.
Harry dated several girls over the years, and each were lovely in their own way, but Gemma wasn’t exaggerating. There was something about the lovely girl he had known for the past few years that Harry didn’t know he was missing. Dates became far and few between. But Harry wasn’t brave enough to wreck their friendship. He didn’t want to be one of those statistics that attempted to date and not have it work out. He didn’t want to lose her by any stretch of the word.
If that meant being best friends, then that was what he would do.
So, she came to family events and confused the hell out of his friends. They didn’t touch (much to Harry’s chagrin) other than a hug or an arm squeeze like she gave him earlier. Neither said anything about the trill of something more bubbling below the surface. The electricity that pulsed from her fingertips and through his entire circulatory system. Harry was content to have her in his life in any form she existed because she was lovely and wonderful.
He only wished she opened up to him the slightest bit more.
*
Harry knew her favorite color and that her mom had passed away when she was eight. But there was this element of their friendship that she seemed to hold back. It felt like Harry would drink wine while they watched movies and dump all the things he felt from a young age on her. He told her things he didn’t tell anyone—not even Gemma or Niall or Mitch. He told her the inadequacies he felt, the impostor syndrome he felt at work, all of it. The anxiety he felt for the future and whether life would be what he wanted from it. She held each of his worries and fears in her hands like they were crystal glasses needing to be moved. She consoled him even though he was really over it. Assuaged him of all his worries and assured him that his life would be amazing simply because he was him. “Y’should have been a therapist, kitten,” he winked at her.
She smiled. “I’ve heard that before.”
She never reciprocated. There was a strength to her that waved off her. It was warm and everyone around her felt it. Her friends adored her, that much was obvious. But it was as if they were all so close to saying “we don’t need to worry about her.” She didn’t just console Harry. Everyone came to her for advice. The quiet lovely lady that worked in a dungeon and hid all of her thoughts and feelings. When they needed to vent, she was their phone call. Advice was her specialty. There was never judgment in her voice. No frustration or the feeling of pushing their worries aside. Every emotion her friends felt was valid and she would process and work through them as much as she possibly could.
When Harry was upset about a breakup—one that in hindsight he didn’t know why he even bothered—she didn’t make him feel bad that it had only been a short relationship. “Five months is a big deal,” she reminded him, placing a plate of his favorite tacos in front of him. It was her specialty. He wondered what came first, if she made tacos because she liked them or because he liked them. “You liked her a lot and five months is a big deal...it’s like a turning point. It was out of nowhere too. Anyone in their right mind would be upset,” she promised returning to the coffee table with her own plate. She sat on the floor across from him. He watched her eat a few bites wondering why on earth she was single for the umpteenth time.
“What’s your longest relationship?” He asked.
She snorted. “Um...a year, I think.”
“You think?”
She shrugged. “I don’t really date.”
The fact his heart cracked more at her words than the breakup he experienced the day before should have been his biggest clue that he was hopeless for the sweet girl.
“I noticed,” he smirked. “You’re too good for anyone, kitten,” he promised.
Her lips curled up in a half smile and she shook her head. “I don’t know about that.”
“S’okay, m’sure for you,” he winked making her laugh.
Harry didn’t date much after that either. Nothing serious; no more than a couple dates and setups from friends. Instead, he continued inviting her to family birthday parties and holidays where, naturally, everyone fell in love with her.
How could he blame his family and friends, really?
He was in the very same boat as them.
*
Gemma was having some minor trouble after delivering Harry’s sweet niece. The anxiety he felt was so overwhelming. His hands shook as his mum relayed the message. He stammered as he answered, dropped his keys. When he bent to retrieve them, her hand appeared in his vision, snatching them from the ground.
“No, I’ll drive,” she said firmly. Even if Harry wanted to argue he couldn’t.
She held Harry’s hand tightly on the middle console as she drove. Without any fanfare, she dropped him off in front of the main entrance and went off to find a parking spot. When he arrived in the waiting room, Anne was smiling as if there was no issue at all. “Wanna meet your niece?”
He did. Very badly. But his sister was his best friend. “What ‘bout Gemma?”
“She’s fine, Harry. Truly,” Anne assured him and rubbed his back.
They discussed the complications Gemma faced and all the worries Harry had for both her, Michal, and the sweet, adorable baby that was perfectly healthy and sleeping peacefully in the window alongside five or so other newborns.
They returned to the waiting room after Michal went back to the baby’s side. Anne squeezed Harry’s hand reassuringly once more and within moments, she was there. “I left my welcome gift at home in the rush to get here,” she appeared with overpriced objects from the giftshop. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes a bit dazed, and Harry sensed she was overwhelmed but assumed it was because of the surprise arrival of Harry’s niece and nothing more.
His heart rate slowed at her appearance. Like she was physical assurance that things really would be okay. She smiled at him, sighed, and gave Anne a hug. “Congrats Grandma,” her voice was proud and excited.
Harry couldn’t have asked for a better day.
*
Harry was a natural with babies. He was so at ease holding the newborn in his arms. “Think she’ll have our smile?” Gemma asked, showing off the very expression. He could hardly tear his eyes away from the baby but nodded at his sister’s question.
“Yeah,” he sighed smiling gratefully at the little one in his arms. He didn’t want to put her down. If he ever had children of his own, he had no idea how he was going to share. He had no idea how Gemma managed to fork her over to him in the first place—when all he wanted was to hold her anyway.
“Where did she go?”
“M’not sure,” he admitted. “Add money to the car meter, I think,” he shrugged. “I was told not t’worry about her.”
“Naturally.”
Harry frowned, brushing his finger along the baby’s soft cheek. “S’that supposed t’mean?”
“She doesn’t let anyone worry about her,” Gemma shrugged. “It’s probably pretty traumatic for her to be here,” Gemma’s tone had an air that she was reminding Harry of something he was supposed to remember, some event that he didn’t know. But he didn’t know what she was talking about.
“What do y’mean?”
Gemma tilted her head and shifted slightly in her bed. Michal and Anne were getting food from the cafeteria. “Harry, her mom died here,” she rolled her eyes.
Harry’s stomach rolled and he thought about the anxiety he felt coming to the hospital on behalf of his sister. It was nothing in comparison to the anxiety she must have felt.
Harry finally looked up from the sweet little baby and gazed at his sister. “She’s never told me that.”
Gemma frowned and relayed the story. Told her something about last Christmas. She thought that Harry knew because they were best friends. But Harry didn’t. It was one of those things she kept to herself. Gemma found her in the kitchen while everyone else was drinking and chatting in the family room. She told Gemma she was grateful to be part of a big Christmas like this. It had been a long time. But it made her miss her mom more than ever.
Then Gemma relayed the time she watched her excuse herself at a family wedding while the groom and mother dance. “Her family doesn’t do big celebrations like us,” Gemma told her. “That girl carries a ton of grief on her back and she acts like it weighs as much as a feather. She never worries about herself only others but in a way that makes you feel that nothing bad will ever happen to you. I swear just thinking about her in the delivery room and how calm she would have been was enough to keep me relaxed,” Gemma laughed and shook her head. “I told her I didn’t expect her to come to the hospital when the time came if she didn’t want to. I would never blame her. She said it wouldn’t be a problem because you wouldn’t bring her—it was a family thing. Do you have any idea how wonderful she is or are we just going to sit here and pretend the love of your life isn’t your best friend?”
Harry opened his mouth to respond. His eyes no longer on the baby, but his sister. Unable to believe the words she said. The outline to what he already knew and felt but couldn’t believe any more if he tried because it seemed so unattainable. The girl who didn’t tell him anything. Or didn’t want to be worried over.
But he was interrupted. “Look how cute this is,” she burst into the room holding a onesie that said “if my mom says no, my uncle will say yes.”
It gave the three of them a pause as Gemma laughed and Harry snorted. “S’true,” he murmured quietly to the tiny being in his arms.
Their giggles were interrupted by an intercom announcement. A code purple and it asked that all visitors and personnel stay on their current floors. The smile slowly faded from her lips, and she glanced at the baby in Harry’s arms. “You look good with a baby,” she winked the smile gently returned. She gave his shoulder a squeeze, laid the onesie on the cot Michal would be sleeping in later. “M’gonna run to the bathroom,” she said.
Harry watched her leave, the first time he had looked at anyone other than the baby for longer than thirty seconds since he met the little one.
“Harry,” Gemma said gently. “You should follow her.”
“What? Why?”
“Do you know what a code purple is?” Harry shook his head. “Missing child.”
Harry looked at the baby again and sighed. “Well, if anyone will find her...”
“It would probably be Miss Wonder Woman herself, yeah?” Gemma finished Harry’s thought.
*
She couldn’t have gotten far if the stairwells and elevators were blocked off. He searched as much as the rest of the staff on the floor, sending his mum a text that everyone in their little family was fine. Fortunately (for Harry), there was a commotion with one of the patients on the floor and the person standing guard at the stairwell stepped away long enough for Harry to sneak to the next floor. Because he may have felt that she hid a lot from him at times, but he was certain if anyone was going to find a lost little girl, it was going to be her—even if he didn’t know why she wanted to find her.
The enormity of the steps muffled most of the sound, but Harry crept around the back of the stairwell, and found a little storage closet.
“It’s not fair!” It was a small, sad voice that Harry didn’t recognize.
“It’s not,” she agreed. Her voice even, sad in a different way, was one that Harry did recognize.
“Mommy says I have to be brave for my siblings and I’m trying but it’s not fair! I don’t even get to be sad,” she cried.
“I know,” she agreed again. Composed, like she was talking someone off a ledge. Maybe she was, Harry didn’t really know what was happening. But her understanding was tangible. Her soft voice made Harry feel so safe.
But it broke his heart right in half.
“It’s because I’m oldest. Mommy tells me that I’m being a big girl and being brave and helping Daddy get better but I’m not. I don’t want to be here, it’s not fair.”
“I know,” she repeated. “My mommy died when I was your age too. She was really sick. I had to take care of my little brothers and my daddy,” she explained. “It was really hard. I didn’t think I was allowed to cry because I was good at being brave.”
The answer was a sniffle, not words. Harry felt terrible for not knowing this. For never pressing. For finding out in a stairwell with a little girl that neither of them knew. “But do you know who is most worried about you right now while everyone else is worried about your daddy?”
“Who?” There was a big breath of silence. Something that Harry didn’t understand passed between them. Some sort of recognition of the situation they were both privy to and Harry was not. “Daddy doesn’t know I’m there.”
“He does, sweetie, I promise,” she assured her. “Let’s get you back to him.”
“I just want to cry,” she whispered.
“I know. You will. It’s good to cry. Brave even.”
“Mommy says I’m brave for not crying.”
There was a pause for a moment that Harry couldn’t describe. He couldn’t see his best friend nor the little girl that the entire hospital was searching for. But the grief and weight he felt in that little space was immense.
“Mommy will tell you you’re brave for crying too,” she promised. But it was filled with an emotion that Harry couldn’t quite name; but he was sure he sensed a bit of longing in her tone.
He watched her grab the little one’s hand. Like she was grabbing the hand of her younger self. Harry hoped it healed whatever that sense of longing was and whatever she remembered in that quiet pause.
When she turned and saw Harry waiting, her cheeks reddened. She looked away briefly. “Look who I found,” she smiled sweetly. Not a trace of sadness on her face, not even a tear.
Harry hoped she would cry later. Hoped she would tell him everything. He was aching for it. Aching to carry the metric ton of grief she held for so long.
“Made another friend?” Harry asked instead.
She squeezed the girl’s hand. “I think so.”
“You okay, love?” Truthfully, Harry wasn’t sure who he was asking.
The little girl sniffled, her eyes blotchy red and glassy. She looked up at Harry shyly but also with awe. “Are you a prince?”
Harry chuckled and she smiled—the exact reprieve anyone could have hoped for in that moment. “He is,” she smiled kindly. “You’ll find a best friend just like him too,” she promised.
*
Fortunately, Miss Wonder Woman coaxed the little one back onto the floor and with the commotion of her return, she and Harry snuck right back in. No one questioned them. He wondered if the little girl would even mention her to her mom or the staff. But she was unconcerned—glad the little girl was okay and safe.
“How did you know where she was?” He asked.
She didn’t say anything. Watched the reunion of her mom and her brothers. The sadness flowing through a whole family like a virus.
“Love,” he tried to gather her attention but was unsuccessful. They stood in the waiting room watching from afar. The whole hospital began its routine again.
She wasn’t recognized for finding the little girl.
“Kitten,” he cooed. “Talk to me.”
She sniffled, wiped below her eyes.
“Love,” he touched her arm. It broke something in her. Her lower lip wiggled as she fought back the emotions and tears that she felt bubbling up from somewhere deep inside her.
“Uh...sorry. I just couldn’t—” she cleared her throat and wiped below her eyes again.
“Love, you don’t—”
“Does Gemma need anything? I bet a code purple probably scared a first time—”
“Kitten.” Her shoulders heaved and she tried to continue talking, something about helping or understanding. Something about Gemma and Anne and Michal. “Angel, y’need t’stop,” he whispered quietly, as her sobs took over. Her hands covered her face and she turned toward him. Her body shaking and Harry wrapped her up in his arms. Held cupped the back of her head as she cried and he wanted it to stop. It hurt him so much to feel that pain through her. It wasn’t even his pain. He imagined all those moments in the last few years where she hid her own pain to take care of others.
“I couldn’t cry,” she croaked.
Harry didn’t want her to cry now but he was glad she was.
“I know, angel,” he didn’t. But he would pretend. Because she was there for every emotion that he had felt since he met her, and it never stopped her. She never made him feel bad for feeling any type of way. He would do anything to make her feel the same. “I know,” he sighed and squeezed her as tightly as he could worried he might hurt her but worried she would fully break apart if she didn’t.
*
Harry’s bed was her new favorite place. “I owe you some new pillowcases,” she whispered.
“Kitten, jus’ worry ‘bout yourself for a change,” he kissed her forehead, almost directly between her eyebrows. It made her feel like she was made of putty.
“I am, if I’m going to be sleeping here, I can’t get dirty from all my tears and snot.”
He chuckled. “I’ll get new pillowcases if y’sleep here.”
“You don’t mind?”
Did he mind her sleeping there? Or getting new pillowcases? “Neither, love,” his fingers trailed up and down her spine. “S’nice, yeah?”
She nodded. “Been thinking about it a while,” she whispered.
“Shoulda said something,” he hummed quietly. “Anything that’s mine, s’yours.”
“Anything?”
“Mhmm.”
“Even the secret chocolate stash you have in the oatmeal box?”
He chuckled. “All yours.”
“What about that candle in your kitchen that you light after you finish cleaning?”
“I’ll put your name on it.”
She was quiet for a minute. She inhaled the warm scent of his cologne poking at the freckles that dotted his collarbones and neck at sporadic intervals. Once the tears started, she couldn’t stop. Hence the need for new pillowcases. Her skin felt raw, blotchy, her head hurt a bit from the lack of water.
But Harry was there the whole time. He didn’t shy away once. Simply let her cry for all the times she didn’t because she needed to be brave and all the times she wanted to anyway. Eventually she whispered all the things she kept from him. From everyone. Even herself.
“Harry?” She whispered.
“Yes, kitten?”
“I know this is lame, but I didn’t date a whole lot growing up because I never felt like good things could happen to me. I always worried it would be taken away and... anyway... I don’t know how to ask this, because it sounds so lame but you’re my best friend so maybe you’ll know what I’m saying and—”
“I told y’anything that’s mine is yours, angel,” his smile was lazy but beautiful. Like this was the most normal thing he’d ever done with her. Everything about him was beautiful. From the surface of his skin to the depths of his soul.
So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that her best friend already knew what she wanted to say.
His lips brushed against her temple. Her heart finally felt at ease. “Course I want t’be your boyfriend. You have my whole heart.”
--
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