#there’s actually science I can hide behind but I write too much smut to go into that on here 😬

[weirdgenetic-fuckup]

I need more people to be fucked up over body hair like beards sure fine whatever but BODY HAIR

Especially pits like I’m not crazy IM NOT CRAZY

Dave’s pretty clean but like 😩

I love body hair when it’s all sweaty and 🥺

[starlightkun]

❧ word count: 18.3k ❧ warnings: cursing, renjun gets CONSENSUALLY dosed with a magical aphrodisiac For Science ❧ genre: fluff, humor, one (1) heavy makeout scene but no actual smut, 0.1 seconds of angst if you can even call it that, academic rivals to lovers, modern magical creatures au, college au, siren reader, human renjun ft. siren ten, same universe as strawberry sunday ❧ extra info: in my lore, siren scales are visible when they’re in more human-like forms because of magic, and it’s not an indication of their skin tone at all. so when the reader’s scales are mentioned, please don’t take this as any sort of allusion to them being pale/light-skinned! i tried to take care and make sure i wasn’t implying that in how i wrote it, but please tell me if it reads like that this work is set in the same universe as strawberry sunday but can be read as a standalone! there is no continuing plotline between fics in this universe, they simply take place in the same world/magic system and may have overlapping characters (neos may pop up in more than one work!) ❧ author’s note: y’all. get ready for this one. no spoilers but renjun and reader r both crazy and nobody should be subjected to them except each other. like they both look at the other and think “i could fix them but whatever the fuck is wrong with them is infinitely funnier to me” but they’re both Wrong. they could not fix the other. i don't want what they have but good for them. anyway as always i had way too much fun writing this that it went over my projected word count and i hope y’all have a lot of fun reading it too

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ explore the strawberry sunday universe more here!

“Would you shut up?” You sat back up, grabbing him by the hair.

“Why?”

“I’m trying to kiss you again, idiot.”

2608, 2610, 2612…

The numbers of the study rooms you passed by went up, up, up, as you continued your hunt. You knew he’d be here. It was the day before the first test in your Linguistics in Magical Creatures Studies class, meaning he was going to be holed up in the library until closing time. Now it was just a matter of finding him. Somewhere quiet, obviously, which was why you’d completely skipped the first floor with its wide-open “collaboration areas.” The second floor was all bookshelves and private study rooms that would hold four or five students at most. You peered into the narrow window on each painted metal door as you walked down the hall. While the first floor was recently renovated with new technology and upgrades such as the “collaboration areas” and bright pops of your university’s school colors that made for great promotional photos to put on the website and pamphlets to hand out to new students, this floor hadn’t had seen anything more than a janitor in a good couple decades. The musty, stale smell of old, unused books was all around you, the air conditioning hummed and clicked irregularly, all the furniture had ugly, outdated patterns, and the exactly three desktop computers they did have in a far back corner were practically as old as you. Which, in the digital age, meant that they were artifacts belonging in a museum.

And of course, sitting at very last one, as if he had been hiding behind all of these bookshelves from you personally, was Huang Renjun.

Renjun was sat in the wooden chair facing the computer, clearly deep in thought. He had one foot propped up on the wide chair seat as both of his hands were on the archaic-looking keyboard, speedily typing something out. He wore a pair of jeans, yellow hoodie, and a red backwards baseball cap kept his hair out of his face. An open energy drink can and empty bag of chips on the desk next to him belied that he had already been there for some time.

Now that you had found your target, you put on a burst of speed, stalking up to him from the side and smacking your hand down on the tabletop beside him. “Renjun.”

The human jumped in his seat, looking up from his screen to you. Taking his hands from the keyboard, he made a couple quick clicks on the mouse as he used the other to take his headphones out of his ears. “Y/N. Fucking hell… is your new strategy this semester to give me a heart attack and kill me?”

“If murder was on the table as part of our little academic rivalry, don’t you think I would’ve just drowned you after our Intro course freshman year?” You asked, tilting your head innocently. After all, you were a siren, that would be much easier than scaring him into an early cardiac episode.

Huang Renjun was not your friend. Not necessarily an acquaintance either, you’d known him for going on four years now, since your first class on your first day of college. The two of you were in the same Introduction to Magical Creatures Studies class. He had sat in the very front row, you just behind him in the second row. When your professor had asked an open question to the class, both you and Renjun eagerly blurted out the answer, Renjun just a millisecond before you. Dr. Li gave him the credit, and also requested that you two raise your hands in the future. And from then on you hated Huang Renjun.

Well, hate may be a strong word. You overlapped in at least two classes every semester being in the same major, and were both chronic overachievers. The first to raise your hands when a question was asked, studying in the library until closing (separately), and visiting professors’ office hours just to discuss topics from class further. Your professors noticed this. Some would pit the two of you against each other, and others would try to pair you up, whether on projects, research, or just in general, as a meeting of the minds or whatever. And you two would get your project done, pocket your As, and part ways again. Academic rival slash frenemy was the best way you could describe who Huang Renjun was to you.

“Who knows, you might still, if they ask me to carry the banner,” he muttered, picking his pen up and spinning it between his fingers.

This was your last semester, both you and Renjun were graduating in just a few months. At commencement, each department picked one “outstanding student” to lead the progression, carrying a flag with the department’s name and seal on it. This semester it was Magical Creatures Studies’ turn to select a student for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and your program head had already heavily implied that they could choose either you or Renjun, but they hadn’t made their final decision yet.

This was actually a pretty good segue into what you were really here to talk to him about. Pulling your lips into an alluring smirk, you nodded, “You’re right. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that—”

“A fucking what?” He cut you off, his face scrunching up as he blinked at you in confusion.

“Obviously it’s going to be one of us two, since we’re the two best students in the program.”

“Well, yes.” He nodded, seeming to let go of what had presumably been another one of your jumbled human malaphors. You admittedly hadn’t been living among humans for terribly long, and for some reason their idioms just didn’t stick in your brain very well.

“I mean, we not only are dedicated to the field itself and the content we study in class, but the program too. We probably know everybody in it, professors and students, right? Between the two of us?”

Renjun considered this for a moment. “Yeah, probably. We’ve both taken on a lot of SI and tutor opportunities for lower-level classes.”

“Right. So, you know those forums the school has on the online class platform? The general message boards?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I’m going to need you to sit tight with me on this until I finish talking, okay?” You pointed at him sternly. He nodded slowly. “Good. Back in the fall, about the end of September, I was on the message boards, just browsing around killing time. I was in the Tips & Advice section and saw this post. It was a gryphon who was losing feathers on one specific spot on her wing, and she didn’t know why. The witch she went to didn’t know why, nobody could figure it out. I was about to reply asking if it was her left or right, when I saw that somebody else already had. It was her left, and she’s a lefty. The same person replied again, asking if she sleeps with her wings out or not. She sleeps with them out. It turns out she was stress-preening in her sleep. Username: dr_magic2303. A couple weeks later, same message board, Tips & Advice, a human is suddenly producing dark purple goop from his feet but it’s so slippery he can’t even leave to go see a doctor or a witch and he was typing the post from his bathroom. Within an hour, this Dr. Magic is back telling him someone’s put an aether ooze hex on him, and to sit down and scoot on his butt to the kitchen and gather up all these ingredients for a cleansing foot bath. And if he doesn’t have them, then he’ll have to butt-scoot his way to an apothecary or call one who does home deliveries. Now people are posting on there specifically asking Dr. Magic to come heal all their magical aches and pains.”

Renjun stared at you, unblinking. The pen had gone still in his hand.

You breathed in, continuing, “I tracked this Dr. Magic all the way back to their first post in the first week of fall semester of this year. Now, I’ve been trying to figure out who they are on my own, and I’ve made a lot of progress on who they aren’t. But I’m going to lose access to those message boards once we graduate at the end of the semester. I know Dr. Magic has to be an MCS major, there’s no way they would be able to have to breadth, depth, and flexibility of knowledge by just Googling this stuff. And you and me, Renjun, I know we can do this. Not only do we know MCS, but we know the department, the people in it. It has to be us.”

He was still staring at you, mouth slightly agape. Then, his whole demeanor shifted. He dropped his leg so that both his feet were on the ground, and he resumed spinning the pen.

“Okay. I’ll help you.” He nodded thoughtfully. “If you’ll do something for me.”

“Do what?” You straightened up.

“I’ll tell you after we find Dr. Magic.”

You crossed your arms. “No, tell me now or no deal.”

“I tell you after, but you can still say no then if you don’t want to do it.” He bargained.

“That just sounds even more concerning, Renjun. Tell me now or I’ll do it myself.”

“I’m hurt. What happened to ‘it has to be us?’”

“I’m a siren, I know how to sweet talk. Don’t take it personally.” You snorted. “Now, what do you want from me?”

“You’re a siren,” he echoed plainly, as if that were all the explanation you needed.

“And you’re a genius.” You retorted. “Tell me now or I walk out.”

“I... want to experience siren venom. For science.”

Oh, you could kiss him right now, no deal necessary. He was meeting your gaze head-on, a slightly unhinged glint in his eye. Not a hint of fear, just a craving for new experiences, unbridled curiosity. Yeah, he was a bit crazy, you were realizing four years on, and you wanted him.

“You’re insane.”

He leaned back in his seat, putting his hands up in front of him in an ‘I-don’t-care’ gesture, “If you don’t want to find Dr. Magic—”

“I didn’t say no, I said you’re insane,” you corrected him with a grin, dragging your eyes up and down his form as he sat so confidently, negotiating with a siren like it was any average Tuesday for him.

“So do we have a deal?” He set his pen down and held a hand out to you.

“You help me find Dr. Magic, then I’ll spit in your mouth.” You momentarily thought about the disparity in division of labor on that, but decided not to point it out aloud. Easiest handshake of your life. “Deal.”

You wanted to eat him alive.

“You’ve tried IP tracking?” Renjun asked, scrolling through your word document of notes that you’d accumulated on Dr. Magic.

“‘You’ve tried IP tracking?’” You mimicked him under your breath, making your voice so high-pitched to the point of mocking.

He rolled his eyes.

This was your first meet-up to try to hunt down Dr. Magic together. It was a couple weeks after he had agreed to help you in the first place. There was a test and some assignments in a few of your classes to get through first before either of you had enough spare time to dedicate to this. But now the two of you were back in the library, having taken a study room on the second floor and set up with your own laptops. You’d sent him your notes to look through on it while you perused the message board for any new posts from Dr. Magic.

“You do know that any geographical location an IP address can give you will just be the city, right? It’s not like the movies,” you snorted, dropping your voice back down to your normal intonation as you shook your head. “Anyway, I did do some extra legwork with the IPs, and matched most of them to desktop computers here in the library. I think the others are a personal device, their laptop or something.”

“They’re all different.”

You tutted at him, “Oh, you sweet Thursday’s child…”

“That’s not the say—”

“They’re all somehow on other continents. Now, I don’t think Dr. Magic teleporting abroad and cross-dimensionally to make forum posts.”

“VPN?”

“Definitely. They’re covering their tracks, they almost never use their own device, and when they have to, they use a VPN to cover up the IP address of it.”

He made a noise of acknowledgement, eyes still focused on his screen.

Then, something on the forum caught your eye. “Oh! Right here. Thirty-six minutes ago, a dryad posted that she can’t sprout daffodils from her body anymore. Every other plant and flower are fine, except daffodils. She posted it specifically asking Dr. Magic if they know what’s wrong with her.”

“Huh.” Renjun’s brow furrowed. “Just daffodils?”

“That’s what it says,” you confirmed, making a few clicks on your computer. “And… ‘notify me.’”

“You can turn on notifications for forum posts?”

“You can’t,” you informed him smugly. “But one of the sirens in my pod, he’s got a bunch of CompSci friends who I paid to write a browser extension for me that bookmarks forum posts and sends me email notifications when anybody replies to them. So I’ll know exactly when Dr. Magic responds.”

“You…”

“Have definitely spent too much time, energy, and money on this, I know. Sunken cost fallacy, look it up.”

“I was going to say ‘are insane,’” he breathed out, his voice a mixture of awe and disbelief.

When you looked up from your computer at him, you saw that he had a curious gaze fixated on you, eyes narrowed slightly, mouth parted, and head tilted ever so slightly to the side.

You leaned forward minutely, holding his eye contact. “Takes one to know one, Junnie.”

He looked down at his keyboard, shifting in his seat before he looked back up at you. “Why are you calling me that?”

“Do you not like it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So you do like it.” You smirked.

He frowned. “I didn’t say that either.”

“Well do you?”

“Answer my question.”

“Answer mine.”

“I asked first.”

“Ooh, how very primary school,” you teased, setting your chin in your hand.

“It’s only fair.” He pointed out.

“We could flip a coin.”

“Y/N.”

“Junnie.”

The human sighed, holding your eye contact wordlessly, looking entirely unamused.

You finally gave in with a casual shrug. “I just am.”

“Seriously? We’ve known each other for four years and you’ve never called me that—you’ve called me plenty of other things—but now suddenly you’ve got a nickname for me?”

“I’m not trying to be derogatory with it, if you’re worried about that,” you clarified. “Just sort of happened. I’m a siren, I flirt with cute people, sorry. Do you want me to stop calling you that?”

He ran his fingers through his hair, pushing some off his face as he turned his focus back down to his screen. “It’s fine.”

“Anyway, I bookmarked the new forum post, so it’ll go on the board.”

“The board?”

“I, uh, I may be using a spare wall in my apartment to host a conspiracy theory board with you know, the red string and thumbtacks and stuff…” You admitted quietly.

“Can I see it?”

“Ho-ly shit,” Renjun breathed out, staring up at the multiple time-stamped printouts of forum posts, pictures of classmates and faculty, sticky notes, and yards of red string that you had pinned to a blank wall in your apartment.

You stood next to him, gazing up at your creation with a strange mixture of pride and embarrassment. This was the first time you’d let someone see this, and you were kind of glad it was Renjun. He actually seemed impressed. You were sure that any of your friends and family would be weirded out at best, and very concerned at worst.

“Yeah, I’m adding color copies off the school printers to the invoice I’m sending Dr. Magic at the end of all this.”

“You’re sending them an invoice for your self-assigned mission to hunt them down?” He snorted.

“Yup. It’s their fault for not using their school-issued login.” You crossed your arms. “Makes them enigmatic.”

Your classmate pointed to one of the headshots. “Is that Dr. Li?”

“Did you think our scope was narrowed to just students? Faculty have access to the message boards, too. And we’ve learned everything we know from our professors, so they obviously have the knowledge and skill to be Dr. Magic.”

“And their names also start with Doctor.” He added dryly, which you took to be a joke.

You decided that it wasn’t at your expense, though, and after giving a short chuckle, continued on with your explanation of why you specifically had your program head up on the board. “When I was grilling Dr. Li for information in the fall, he was giving me very duplicitous answers. Pointed me towards a freshman who I swear didn’t even know the difference between Arctic sirens and glacial sirens.”

“You think it was a diversion.”

“Obviously.”

Renjun tapped his chin thoughtfully. “What sort of questions were you asking him?”

“I couldn’t straight up ask him if he was Dr. Magic. So I was asking him things like... other than you and me, who did he think was the best student in the program, that kind of stuff. Said that kid reminded him of you and me on that first day of Intro to MCS.” You couldn’t help but let out an indignant scoff at the idea. “Can you believe? Didn’t know the difference between Arctic and glacial sirens…”

“Who was it?”

“Some basilisk in one of his Intro classes last semester. Uh…” You snapped your fingers as you tried to remember his name. “Seunghan! Hong Seunghan!”

“Seriously?” The human turned to look at you incredulously, clearly offended at the comparison as well.

“Seriously!”

He clutched at his chest like he was about to have a heart attack. “That’s who he thinks is the next us? I was an SI for that class…”

“I know! He’s not the brightest tool in the shed, huh?”

“So close, Y/N. So close…” He sighed.

“It almost completely threw me off my search for Dr. Magic. I figured I needed to seriously step up my game in his undergrad research or something.” You shook your head at the horrible memory. “Then I realized he might have been trying to get me to do exactly that.”

“Huh.” Renjun folded his arms over his chest as he looked away, pretending not to seem interested. “You did research with Dr. Li last semester?”

“Don’t give me those kicked puppy dog eyes, you’re doing research with Dr. Kwon this semester and she’s like, my academic idol!” You pointed at him accusatorily.

“And Dr. Li is mine!”

You waved your arms in front of you, shaking yourself out of the academic envy-induced frenzy you’d gotten worked up into. “We’re getting off-topic. We’re here to catch Dr. Magic, remember?”

“Right…” He took a deep breath, turning back to the conspiracy wall.

As Renjun studied your work, you studied him. You had a strand of fairy lights clipped up above the conspiracy wall for light and ambiance (mostly ambiance), and they now lit his features from the front. He didn’t have a baseball cap on today, leaving his brown hair to fall over his forehead, down past his eyebrows and just into his eyes. He blinked and shook his head slightly. A piece had presumably been bothering him. The curving slope of the bridge of his nose, his lips, his chin that he still had one hand propped up to hold, a finger tapping against his cupid’s bow like a metronome. You listened closer, curious if it would be mimicking the beat of his heart. The tapping was just slightly slower than his heart, and would stop if he found something that he took particular interest in, then start back up when he moved on again.

Not that you were going to tell him, but you were double motivated to find Dr. Magic now. Seeing Renjun under your venom was going to be a reward all on its own. You understood full well why he felt like he needed to ask you as part of an exchange like this, but he seemed to greatly underestimate his own selling value. Which was good for you. This was a win-win-win in your eyes.

Thinking of the deal made you curious, though. He had that request ready to go almost like…

“So, do you want to be petrified by a basilisk, too?”

Renjun didn’t take his eyes off the wall. “Already have been.”

“Really?”

“My friend Mark is a basilisk. When he had just gotten his powers a couple years ago and couldn’t control them, he kept accidentally petrifying his human roommate. So I figured out when it was most likely to happen, invited myself over and hid his sunglasses. It was strange, being able to think but not speak, see but not blink, and telling my muscles to move and not having them obey.” He casually detailed what sounded like one of the most horrifying experiences ever to you, leaning in towards a specific post from November. “But it only lasted one minute and twenty-nine seconds.”

You stared at him with both admiration and alarm. “You manufactured an opportunity to get petrified.”

“I knew he wouldn’t do it if I asked. He’s a wimp. That, and he couldn’t do it on command at the time, even if he did agree.”

“Have you had your blood drank?”

“Yup.”

“Been flying?”

“How so?” His eyes flicked over to you for a second, and you were glad that you had relaxed again with the more casual conversation.

“With a gryphon, phoenix, take your pick.” You shrugged.

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you have a list for this stuff or something?”

“Written down, no. But I suppose I have a mental list.”

“Poisoned by a wyvern?”

“Would have to find one first.”

You felt your eyes bug out of your head. “You want to be poisoned by a wyvern? You know there’s no cure for that, right?”

“Yes, I took the same class that you did on them last spring.” He reminded you tersely. Your head jerked back minutely, surprised for a second that he had noticed, remembered, and brought it up. The two of you didn’t have a spat in that class, taking an ‘ignore and pretend the other doesn’t exist’ approach that semester when you could, and hadn’t mentioned it since. Seeming to realize what he’d done, Renjun rushed to move on, “So I also know that there’s no cure because they went extinct hundreds of years ago.”

“Supposedly.”

“You think they’re still out there?”

“Maybe.”

“Hm.” He stepped to the side to read over the next post from the first week of December.

You scoffed. “Okay, coming from the guy who believes in aliens.”

“We haven’t explored all of space. But we know what habitats wyverns lived in, and they’re not there anymore.”

“They could’ve adapted, gone somewhere else,” you tried to argue. “I’m not exactly splashing around the ocean right now, am I?”

“Where did they go, then?”

“I... I don’t know,” you admitted, holding yourself by your arms protectively.

“Hmph.”

You tightened your grip, swallowing hard against the lump threatening to grow in your throat. “I just don’t want to believe they’re gone, okay?”

“So this isn’t a scientific hypothesis, but some rosy daydream?” Renjun’s disapproval of the lack of academic rigor in your argument was clear in his tone as his eyes never left your wall, following a red string up to your next connection for Dr. Magic.

“I don’t want to believe that wyverns went extinct because that means that sirens could too! Alright?” You finally snapped, hands squeezing tightly around your biceps as your claws came out with the raw burst of emotion. “I know that Magical Conservation was just some class to you, but I had to sit there and take notes on how exactly the native habitats of sirens—me, my friends, my family—are shrinking, and could theoretically lead to our extinction, and then write a discussion post on it after like it was some intellectually stimulating bit of information. So yeah, maybe I like to imagine that there’s still wyverns out there somewhere, because it gives me a modicum of hope that after everything, there could still be sirens, too. Sorry that that’s not academic enough.”

The image of Renjun that you had been yelling at in front of you was wavering as tears swam in your vision. He’d turned around to listen, mouth parting as he seemed to immediately realize his mistake. The human nodded regretfully, running a hand through his hair before finally picking his words.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I didn’t mean to be so dismissive. I-I misread the tone of the discussion. Sirens aren’t wyverns, and you won’t meet the same fate they might have. Siren advocacy and conservation groups are making huge progress. The world now is a lot different than it was hundreds of years ago,” Renjun said, and you could hear both the remorse and firm belief in his tone. “And who knows, maybe there are still some wyverns out there. I could be wrong... it’s been known to happen before.”

You took a deep breath, your claws receding back into your fingers and just leaving your normal fingernails. As you looked down at your arms, though, you let out a sigh.

“Damn, I got myself.” You clicked your tongue in your throat regretfully, spotting a few drops of what looked like molten silver metal welling to the surface where you’d punctured your skin.

“Ooh,” Renjun winced sympathetically. “Do you have some… bandages?”

“Even better, I’ve got running water.” You started towards the door, then noted that there were no footsteps behind you. Turning back around, you looked at the human knowingly. “Do you want to watch, Renjun?”

He perked up. “Please?”

“Come on,” you jerked your head, holding your arms level as you shuffled towards your kitchen.

Thankfully, you hadn’t been nearly deep enough to get your scales, just the skin overtop. Turning the kitchen faucet on, you grabbed one of your sleeves, then looked at your classmate imploringly.

“A little help, Junnie?” You nodded towards your other arm, where the end of your sleeve was getting close to your blood.

“Oh, sure.” He surged forward to help you roll up the other one.

“I know you know this but be careful not to touch my blood,” you reminded him, finally pulling up the sleeve you’d started on well enough. Siren blood was a neurotoxin to humans—and not the fun kind like your venom, but a proper ‘kill you in an excruciatingly painful way’ kind.

“Uh-huh, got it.”

A couple drops on your left and a drop on your right had run down to your elbows, and you just managed to catch yourself so that they dripped into the sink and not onto your counter (or gods forbid, Renjun). Looking over to make sure he was watching, you stuck your left bicep under the stream of water first. The ocean blue scales that peeked through your skin shimmered in the kitchen lights directly above your head. Thankfully you hadn’t come anywhere close to nicking one of those. That would’ve actually hurt. Within a second of touching the water your skin had meshed itself back together. You turned your arm to rinse off the blood, then brought it back out to show that there was no scar left. Doing the same with the other, it healed just as quick, no mark left behind to indicate that anything had ever happened.

“Yep…” Renjun breathed out as you grabbed a hand towel and went to dry off your arms. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that.”

“How many does that make?” You giggled.

“What?”

“How many creatures have you seen magically heal themselves? What number am I?”

“You make me sound so…”

“Like a common MCS whore?”

“I was going to say clinical, but damn, tell me how you really feel, Y/N.”

Both of you laughed, and you put the hand towel back.

“You’re the first siren,” Renjun answered your question genuinely anyway.

You hummed as you mulled this over. “I’ll take it.”

He made a dramatic motion of wiping sweat off his forehead, and you reached forward to smack his forearm. You two laughed again.

After a bout of comfortable silence, your eyes settled on him again, still thinking about exactly how you’d accidentally stabbed yourself in the first place.

“I forgive you, by the way,” you said. “I don’t think I said that.”

“You didn’t.” He nodded. “Thank you.”

“You really mean all that? You think I’ll—we’ll be okay? Sirens?”

“Of course I mean it. Or I wouldn’t have said it. It’s the most scientifically plausible. I did take that Magical Conservation class seriously, you know. I know it couldn’t have meant the same thing for me as it means to you, but I did my final paper on siren conservation projects in the Arctic. The progress that’s being made there is incredible. I-I don’t want to tell you about your own species’ problems, obviously, but—”

“I did mine on siren conservation in the tropics.” You let out a dry chuckle at the flawless symbiosis. “You can tell me about your paper sometime, Renjun.”

“And I’d love to hear about siren conservation in the tropics.”

“Ah, ‘a meeting of the minds.’” You did your best impression of Dr. Li, thinning your voice out to sound like an elderly man, which garnered a smile from Renjun. “Isn’t this what our professors always wanted?”

“Uh-oh. We’re giving them exactly what they want.” He shook his head ruefully. “Quick, you need to start yelling at me about something.”

“Well you need to say something obnoxious first.”

Another gentle lull in the conversation, and you watched as Renjun looked around your apartment a lot more carefully than when you two had first entered. Your destination then had been solely the conspiracy wall, but now he seemed to be really taking it in.

“So why don’t you have like… a fish tank or something?” He asked.

“Because that would be cruel! Imagine if someone kept you in a 2-foot by 2-foot box!” You jabbed a finger into his chest accusatorily.

He held his hands up in surrender. “You’re right. That was a stupid question.”

“I’m glad you said it, because I was about to.”

“So why don’t you reply? To the posts.” Renjun asked curiously, back to trolling the message boards for new Dr. Magic posts. You two were holed up in your second floor study room again. “You’ve been tracking Dr. Magic so closely, you’re getting to these posts before they do, and you can help all these students, too. So why don’t you just reply instead?”

Yours and Renjun’s search for Dr. Magic had been going on for a month now, and he’d been proving himself useful. He’d finally convinced you to rule out Dr. Li as a suspect when he found a message board post made from a school computer while Dr. Li was away at a conference giving a presentation. Confirmed to be done at the exact same time. So you’d found another wrong person, but you still didn’t feel any closer to the right person. The remaining people felt like they were going to turn out to be dead ends, and there was nobody good to rule in either.

Spring break was coming up in a few weeks, which meant that commencement preparations would be starting, which meant that the colleges would be announcing who would be chosen to carry their banners, which meant the actual students who were going to be chosen would be told at least a week or two ahead of time. Every time you thought about that you wanted to bite something. Maybe there was some ancestral link between sirens and werewolves. Another paper waiting to be written.

“They don’t want me. They want Dr. Magic.” You told Renjun, hating the irritable edge in your voice when you addressed him. You weren’t upset with him, you were just anxious in general. He didn’t deserve to have you take it out on him.

“Right. Sorry…”

“No, Renjun, I’m sorry,” you sighed, taking the wood pencil out of your mouth that you had been gnawing on. “I just want to get this Dr. Magic stuff over with before midterms because you and I are both going to get super busy studying for midterms, and then no matter which one of us gets picked to carry the banner, that’s going to suck up a lot of time preparing for commencement too. I shouldn’t have snapped at you though, sorry.”

He offered you a small smile. “It’s okay, I get it. It’s another deadline. But it’s a group project, remember? We’ve got this, Y/N.”

You nodded. “Yeah, I know. Just feeling the pressure. I’m going to get something from the vending machine. You coming?”

“No, I’ll keep chugging along.”

“Okay. You want anything?”

“Nah. Thanks, though.”

“Alright,” you nodded, standing up and rolling your neck out. “I’m going to stretch my legs while I’m up, so I’ll be a few.”

“I won’t sound the alarm then.” He gave you a two-fingered salute as you headed to the door.

You meandered around the second floor, taking your sweet time to get to the stairs. There was a vending machine on the second floor, but it had a limited selection. The good snacks were all in the vending machines on the first floor, by the collaboration zones. Your back cracked all on its own as you plodded down the steps, and you let quiet groans with each one, until you finally landed on the first floor. There was a noticeable hum to the first floor, which only increased as you neared the two-thirds of the floor that was taken up by the collaboration zones. The vending machines were on the boundary of the bookshelves and the open spaces filled with tables and TV monitors and so many students.

Stopping in front of the drinks machine first, you mused over the options for a moment. Picking out your preferred seaweed-infused iced tea—an option you only saw sirens and the really hardcore human health-nuts drink—you then sidestepped to the snacks. It took you just a second to select a pack of mini peanut butter sandwich cookies. Neither peanut butter nor peanuts themselves were in the regular diet of a siren, but Renjun sometimes had the cookies on him for one of his werewolf friends and you’d picked up a taste for them. You would’ve never considered even trying them before hanging out with Renjun. Being an MCS major, you didn’t like to admit it, but your social circle wasn’t very diverse species-wise. You had your siren pod, and you were very happy sticking with them, thank you. Renjun, meanwhile, seemed to be best friends or friendly acquaintances with everything except a wyvern. You knew plenty about other species, after all, you excelled in class. But practical experience, you were finding you seemed to be lacking in. Maybe you should start your own Renjun-esque bucket list. Something to consider after finding Dr. Magic.

Taking a step back over to the drinks machine, you made the split-second decision to get Renjun’s favorite non-caffeinated, non-alcoholic drink. Honeydew melon soda. He had already said that you didn’t need to get him anything, but you wanted to.

“Hey, Y/N!” A cheerful voice greeted you, and you spun around, your two drinks and bag of sandwich cookies in hand.

You already knew who it was going to be, smiling at the familiar face of Ten. He was not only another siren, but specifically a siren from your pod, ocean blue scales and golden eyes matching your own. You threw your arms around his neck to give him a hug. “Ten! Ah, hey!”

“Are those… peanut butter?” He looked at the snack in your hand suspiciously.

“Uh, human study buddy,” you brushed off his concerns nonchalantly.

“Right, gotcha.”

The two of you usually hung out a lot—about as much as you and Renjun were together now, you figured—but since your spare time had been taken up with putting the search for Dr. Magic on full throttle, you were blanking on the last time you’d seen him. The beginning of the semester. Oh shit, you felt so guilty now.

The apology immediately started spilling out of your mouth, “Gods, I am so sorry we haven’t hung out, I wish I could say it was classes, or even research or something, but I’ve got this project. I can’t even really explain it without sounding crazy but—”

“Woah, Y/N, it’s okay,” Ten reassured you with a laugh, the same bright smile on his face as always. “I know how you get when you get really into one of your projects. Just let me know when you’ve finished it, and we can hang. Or if you ever need a break from it, too. It’s fine. If you weren’t a little crazy and obsessive, I wouldn’t be able to recognize you.”

He ruffled your hair with a snicker for good measure, and with your hands full of food, you couldn’t fight back, just huff and try to duck out of the way. But he was genuine about his sentiments, which really did make you feel better.

“Thanks, Ten. I’ll get in touch soon, I promise. I think I’m almost done!” You told him proudly.

“Soon in normal person time or soon in Y/N time?”

“Me time…”

“That’s what I thought. I’ll see you in six months then.”

“I’m not that bad!”

“Remember when I wondered aloud if sirens at the North and South poles were related, and you ended up spending our entire winter break researching that?”

“It only took four weeks!”

“You said it would be a quick search.”

“Exactly! People will dedicate their entire lives to that kind of research! I vastly condensed it!”

He shook his head fondly at the memory, elbowing you gently. “Get back to your project so you can finish early again and we can hang out soon, okay? And scoot, I’m trying to use the vending machine. You’re always in my way, I swear.”

You playfully pretended to block him, laughing as he nudged you out of the way with his shoulder. Starting back off towards the stairs, you turned around to give a cheery, “See you, Ten!”

“Bye, Y/N!” He waved to you with one hand, punching in the vending machine code with the other.

In better spirits having seen your friend, you traipsed up the stairs with extra pep in your step. Except Renjun wasn’t in your study room. Huh. Well, nothing in the rules saying a guy can’t take a bathroom break.

Setting his melon soda down next to his laptop, you plopped back down in your chair and kicked your feet up on the table. You ripped open your peanut butter sandwich cookies and cracked open your tea. The cookies were sweet, and while you didn’t have any oceanic reference for what peanut butter tasted like (you were told that “nutty” was a flavor profile unto itself, which wasn’t very helpful), you had decided that you liked it.

Waking your laptop back up, you saw that you had a new email, and shot up in your seat when you saw the subject.

dr_magic2303 replied to a post.

8 minutes ago.

Holy fucking shit, 8 minutes ago. While you were in the library? They could still be there. You looked around frantically. Where the fuck was Renjun when you needed him? Shooting to your feet, you snatched your phone from the table and rushed to throw the door open. Into Renjun’s face.

He stumbled back, holding his face as he let out a string of curses.

“Shit! Sorry, Junnie!” You didn’t sound all too sorry as you bounced on your feet, antsy to get a move on with your search. “No time for an ice pack though. Dr. Magic just replied to that dragon post we had bookmarked eight minutes ago. Which means that they’re probably still in the library! We need to go look for them right now!”

You took off in the direction of the desktop computers on this floor, keeping your voice at a fervent whisper-yell. The second floor computers were their favorite, according to the IPs.

“I know!” Renjun hurried after you, still clutching his nose. “I saw the email, and I tried to call you, but you left your phone in the study room.”

Checking your phone, you did in fact have a missed call from Renjun from 6 minutes ago. Well shit.

“So I went to go get you, but you weren’t at the vending machines, so I came back up to the study room and then nearly got my nose broken.”

You looked over your shoulder at him with wide eyes. “You went to get me? Not look for Dr. Magic on the freshest lead we’ve ever had? When they were quite possibly around the corner?”

The two of you had arrived at the desktops, and there was nobody in sight. One was awake, on the account login screen, the other two asleep on the ancient screensavers. You let out a heavy sigh, looking over at Renjun.

“I went to get you because this is your thing, not mine. I don’t know, I’d figured you’d want the satisfaction of taking the mask off them.”

You nodded. “Thanks, Junnie. Next time, though, just get them.”

“And how about you keep your phone on you?”

“So we both fucked it up.”

He gave you a one-shouldered shrug. “There’s still three more floors, Y/N.”

“Right, come on. You take the first, I’ll go up to the fourth since I smacked you with the door.”

The other floors were busts, and when you finally met back up with Renjun in your study room, you were glad to have your cold bottle of tea waiting for you. Knocking back a third of it in one go, you let out a noise of relief. Renjun had already opened the soda you’d gotten him.

“Thanks, by the way.” He held it up gratefully before taking a sip.

“You’re welcome.”

“And, I’m sorry. That I let Dr. Magic get away.”

“We don’t even know what floor they were posting from yet. They’ve could’ve been on the fourth floor and would’ve been gone by the time you got there anyway.” You brushed away his apologies. “Or they could’ve been on the second and been a psycho and you would’ve been a poor defenseless human all by yourself.”

“Oh, right, without my big strong siren to protect me.” He scoffed. “Woe is me.”

“Exactly,” you laughed, shutting your laptop. “Anyway, I’ll take a look at the IP later. Who knows, they might not have even been in the library. Might’ve been one of those rogue VPN posts.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He looked over you packing up your things. “You heading out?”

You nodded, zipping up your bag and tossing it onto your shoulder. “Prior arrangements. Sorry to cut this short, completely forgot about it when we agreed to meet up.”

“You’re so popular.”

“I know!” You mimicked his sarcastic tone, holding the door open with your foot as you stopped in the threshold. “Oh, hey— the midterm in MCS Linguistics. It’s my only one this semester, I’ve just got papers in all my other classes. Do you want to study together for that?”

“Yeah, sure, sure.”

“First session Saturday? My place for lunch?”

Renjun grimaced, presumably remembering your typical stock of pantry items tailored to a siren’s food preference. “I’ll pack a lunch.”

“Cool. See you in class, Junnie!” You waved to him cheerily as you took off for the faculty advisor meeting with Dr. Kwon that you were going to need to run across campus to be on time for.

“What is it?” Renjun set his book down where he was sat across your coffee table from you, an inquisitive eyebrow quirked up at you.

“What? Nothing.” You bit down on your lip, eyes boring holes into your computer screen.

“No, it’s not ‘nothing.’ You’ve been staring at me ever since I got here, while also refusing to make eye contact with me. What? Something in my teeth? My hair look bad?”

Normally that would’ve made you chuckle—he was wearing a backwards baseball cap again today—but you just bit down harder on your lip and shook your head.

“Now you’re refusing to talk?” He scoffed. “Did you get hexed or something? I can’t believe you’re refusing to talk.”

“No, I can talk,” you insisted. “What uh, what’d you get for number four? On the review packet?”

“Don’t tell me you’re still stuck on number four. Y/N, I’m almost done, and there’s twenty-five questions on this.”

“I’m not, I finished and went back, it was just one that I didn’t—”

But Renjun had grabbed your computer and turned the screen around, and you knew he could see that you had only done the first one. You buried your face in your hands, your skin prickling uncomfortably with shame. Your friend’s sigh was audible, but surprisingly, the next thing said wasn’t a string of derision. Instead, you heard the shuffle of clothes against your rug, and then he was sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and knee-to-knee with you.

“Y/N, what’s going on with you today? Or, not today, the past couple days? You weren’t all there in class yesterday either. I left it alone then because it was Dr. Hyun, and nobody is ever all there for her classes but— what’s wrong?”

You slowly shook your head.

“You can’t tell me?”

You nodded.

“Okay. Is it bad? Like, dangerous?”

You shook your head.

“Alright, that’s good.” The relief was audible in his voice. “Is it family? Or, pod?”

You shook your head.

“School?”

You nodded.

“Alright, yeah. A lot going on. Is it like burn out?”

You shook your head.

“So, new stuff?”

You nodded.

He put an arm around your shoulders. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I know you already had a lot. Getting this midterm over with will be one more thing off your checklist, right? That’ll open a spot for this new thing.”

With a sniffle, you nodded.

“Ah, but you’re not going to be any good studying like this.” He sighed again, dropping his arm from around your shoulders and his presence shifted away from your side. “Come on, quick field trip. Then we’ll come right back to the MCS Linguistics grind. Sound good?”

You finally took your hands from your face to look up. Renjun was standing right next to you, offering you a hand. You tentatively put yours in his, and he tightened his grip to pull you up to your feet.

The two of you ended up in a froyo shop down the street from your apartment. You gleefully picked a gummy shark off the top of your swirl, biting the head off first before tossing the rest in your mouth. Renjun lifted a meticulously curated spoonful of froyo and toppings to his mouth, satisfaction on his face as he tasted his perfect bite. You watched in amusement as he went to start creating his next scoop that had the precise ratio of yogurt and every single topping he had chosen—each partitioned to their own area atop the froyo. You decided to save your second big gummy shark for last, and took a big spoonful from the melting edge of your froyo.

“Why not me?” Renjun asked abruptly, his gaze still on the dessert in front of him.

“Huh?” Your jaw dropped. How could he have known what—

“You haven’t asked me if I’m Dr. Magic. Why not?”

Ah, Dr. Magic. Of course.

“You were my first guess, and the first person I ruled out back in like September,” you admitted with a shrug.

His head snapped up at that. “What? Why?”

“Because you’re such an arrogant, neurotic overachiever that you’d want credit if you did all this. You wouldn’t use an alias.”

“Oh. Huh.” Renjun looked between you and his froyo, a sheepish smile coming to his face. “Strangely, that makes me feel better.”

You watched a dollop of froyo fall off your spoon and plop back into your cup. “And I nabbed your IP address off your laptop the first time we hung out in January and double-checked it with every Dr. Magic post. Just in case.”

“When I was in the bathroom?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Of course you did.”

“Were you taking it as an insult to your intelligence that I had apparently not considered you as an option?”

“Maybe…”

You laughed, and laughed, and laughed. You laughed so hard your sides hurt, there were tears in your eyes, and you genuinely started wheezing. Renjun pretended to roll his eyes, but you saw the smile on his face and knew what he was thinking: success, no more mopey siren.

Once you had enough air back in your lungs to talk, you pointed your spoon at him firmly. “See? Just proving my point. You want people to know you’re smart.”

He crossed his arms. “As if you don’t.”

“Oh, I definitely do. But I know I’m like that.” You put a hand over your chest, looking him dead in the eye. “Do you?”

With your head screwed back on the normal amount, you and Renjun were able to dive back into your study session at your apartment. Several hours into it, though, you noticed Renjun blinking like way too much and constantly rubbing at his eyes. It was to the point where it was distracting for you.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” You asked bluntly.

That immediately burst the Renjun griping dam (which was really held together with tape and prayers anyway). “The screens hurt my eyes and human blue light glasses don’t do shit and no fairy has let me try theirs out. I know I should probably just take the plunge and buy them but I really can’t justify the price and—”

“Try mine.” You stood up, walking over to a display shelf on the other side of the living room.

“You have a pair? Why? Sirens don’t—”

“You collect magical experiences. I collect magical things.” You said nonchalantly, grabbing the pair of silver frames from where they sat between a phoenix feather (a gift) and a small wristwatch that would tell the correct time until it was put on, then it would be set on the time and date most significant to the wearer in that moment until it was removed. Walking back over to him, you held them out to him insistently, “Here, try them.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Renjun gingerly took them, sliding the arms over his ears and the frames onto the bridge of his nose. The pair you had was a little older, admittedly. You’d picked them up at a novelty shop, so they had some retro charm to them. An older style of frame, thicker lenses. But you thought it added a quaintness to their look. Especially on Renjun, he just looked downright adorable in them.

You sat back down to watch with your head in your hand as his brown eyes blinked from behind the thick lenses, and he looked around your living room like a newborn woodland animal. His face had already relaxed, and he turned his focus down to his laptop screen next, messing with the brightness up, then down. After that, he took out his phone, doing the same with that device.

“Well?” You prompted him, though you truly would’ve been content with watching him look around as if he’d been born colorblind and it were his first time seeing in color. Which, you had an enchanted pair for that too, but he wasn’t colorblind to your knowledge.

The human looked at you, a giddy smile stretching across his face. “They’re perfect! Thanks, Y/N!”

His hand reached up to take them off, but you stopped him.

“Keep them—”

“No, these had to be so expensive!” He protested immediately.

“Just for a week or so,” you finished your sentence pointedly. He was cute, but not that cute. “Make sure you really like them before you buy, okay? If you end up hating them, give them back. If you like them and buy your own pair, you can give them back whenever yours arrive in the mail.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’s not like I’m using them. Superior siren eyesight.” You tapped next to one of your eyes for emphasis.

“Thanks for not rubbing it in or anything.”

Scrambling to dial Renjun’s number, you put your phone on speaker as you fervently flicked through all of your Dr. Magic notes. You’d been laying in bed binging some mindless baking competition to numb your brain from all the studying you’d been doing when an email notification had popped up alerting you to a new Dr. Magic post.

“Y/N?” Renjun answered the phone, sounding utterly confused. “What’s—”

“New Dr. Magic post. I ran the IP and they’re in our city!” You blurted out.

“Okay… Well we already knew that, right?”

“Yeah, but this is an IP in our city that they posted from at midnight on a Saturday. Not any of the school computers.” You hit CTRL + F, typing in the string of numbers to quickly cross reference it with your extensive list. “This could be their IP. Like, their actual one, from a personal computer.”

“Oh, yeah. Could be.”

“Can you give me a little more enthusiasm here, Junnie? Did I wake you up or something? It’s only—” You stopped like you’d just walked face-first into a brick wall, eyes locked on the search result.

“Yeah, only quarter after midnight,” he scoffed.

You clicked the next arrow on the search bar, but that was the only match. 1/1 results.

“Y/N?” Renjun called for your attention. “You there?”

You hung up.

Not wanting to lose your nerve, you pressed the doorbell over and over insistently. You could hear the complaining tone of the occupant before his words were even audible.

“Christ, I have neighbors, you know?” Renjun swung open the door with a scowl. The human was in a big, slouching hoodie and pajama pants. His hair was stuck up in a couple different directions, making you think he might’ve just woken up. Except behind him, you could see that his kitchen light was on, and a couple books and his laptop were open on his kitchen table. Late night studying. And the fact that you’d just talked to him on the phone fifteen minutes ago.

“Can I come in?” You requested, fidgeting with the sleeve of your cardigan.

His face immediately softened. “Yeah, of course.”

“Sorry to just show up like this,” you said as you took off your shoes by the front door before following him further into his apartment.

“It’s okay.” He stopped you two in the kitchen, picking up a colorful, patterned cardboard box. “Uh, I was just about to make a midnight snack. Pizza bites, you want some?”

“I… don’t think I’ve ever had them.”

“Perfect, you can try one now then.”

“Mm,” you made a non-committal noise, leaning against his kitchen counter to watch him pour out the frozen food onto a baking sheet.

The oven beeped, and he put the tray in before pressing a couple more buttons.

“So, I was thinking about the Dr. Magic stuff. Not the IP stuff but like… What even is your plan for when you do find Dr. Magic?” Renjun asked as he put the remaining pizza bites in his freezer.

“What do you mean?”

He leaned against the countertop across from you, though in the narrow space of his kitchen, you were practically knee-to-knee. “Like, say we finally find out who they are, we run up to them in the library or on campus or something. Then what? What are you going to do? What are you going to say? You’ve done all this, and I know why you had to. I get it. But, do you know what you’re going to say to them?”

“Probably something along the lines of…” You trailed off, giving an exasperated sigh. Dropping your chin to your chest, you groaned, “Gods, I don’t know.”

“Hey, that’s why you got me. So you can bounce ideas off someone, do a dry run.”

“I thought the words would just come to me, and now that I’m trying, I can’t—”

“It’s fine, Y/N. Let’s think about why you did this. I know it’s really hard to put into words. I mean, I know why you did. I get it. It’s that need to know. Not because you can, but because you have to, right? It’s curiosity in its rawest form. So obviously it’s not going to be some schmaltzy ‘haha I caught you’ spiel or anything.”

Looking up from the kitchen tile to Renjun’s eager features, you shook your head in disbelief. “You’re still helping me… when I know it’s you, Junnie.”

He tilted his head to the side, a comical noise of confusion coming from his mouth, “Uh?”

“I know it’s you, and you know that I know that it’s you.”

“You already ruled me out, because I’m an arrogant—”

“Junnie, you made a post on the forums from your laptop. No VPN. When you knew I was still tracking Dr. Magic’s IP on every post they made, and that I had your IP. That’s not a whoopsie that you make unless you want to be caught.”

The human crossed his arms over his chest, but otherwise seemed entirely calm about being caught. “And you didn’t come in here guns blazing now that you’d caught me, either. Why?”

“I didn’t know how to say it. I mean, you’re right, I only did all this because I needed to know.”

“And now you know.”

“Why now? Why just give up now?” You asked with a shake of your head. “You started posting as Dr. Magic back in August, and I came to you in January. You knew everything I was doing; you could have cruised through the rest of the semester and I’d have never caught you.”

“You wanted to find out who it was by midterms. One less thing on your plate.”

“And now I know…”

“So how does it feel? Finally catching Dr. Magic?”

You wrinkled your nose and sighed, “Bit disappointing. I was right on my first guess.”

“And you immediately dismissed me out of hand for being an arrogant, neurotic overachiever on your first guess,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but I didn’t really know you then. If I’d known you then like I know you now, I would’ve known as soon as I saw the first post.”

Renjun batted his eyes teasingly. “Aww, Y/N…”

“Doctor underscore magic two, three, zero, three? Twenty-three, oh-three? That’s your birthday, Junnie,” you deadpanned.

“Right.”

Pushing off the counter to stand up straight again, you said, “Anyway, you did help me find Dr. Magic. So, my turn.”

“Oh, no, you seriously don’t have to do that. I rigged the deal—”

“Yeah, about that.” You took a step forward. “How did you think that was going to end up for you, anyway? Were you going to sell somebody else out as Dr. Magic and hope I wasn’t going to talk to them? Spit in your mouth first and ask questions later?”

“I was thinking on my feet.”

“Maybe think laying down next time, Junnie.”

“Ouch.”

“Anyway, come on, you’ll want to sit down for this.” You grabbed his wrist, pulling him towards the living room.

“You don’t need to feel like you have to do this,” he reassured you.

Stopping the two of you in front of the couch, you turned to face him with a smirk. “Believe me when I say that it is going to be a treat unto itself for me to see you under the effects of siren venom. M’kay?”

Renjun’s surprise was evident on his face. “Oh.”

You stepped closer to him, delicately placing a hand on his chest. “Now unless you want me to literally spit in your mouth, I’m going to have to kiss you, to administer the venom.”

His eyes flicked between the hand you had on his chest and your face as he replied. “I’m okay with that—the kissing—if you are.”

“Renjun, I’ve been ready to eat you alive since you said the words ‘I want to experience siren venom for science’ to me.”

“Really?”

“Mhm. So why don’t you sit?” You guided him with the hand against his chest to sit back against his couch. Swinging one leg over his hips, then the other, you lowered yourself onto his lap. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he nodded, tentatively settling his hands on your thighs. “Is this okay?”

“More than.” You smiled, looping your arms around his neck. “Now, a couple things, before we get started.”

“We haven’t started?”

“You’ll know it when we do.”

“Right.”

“I know you think you know what siren venom is like, but whatever scientific articles you’ve read, or documentaries you’ve watched, or slides you’ve studied under microscopes in lab, cannot actually prepare you for what it’s like. Which, I imagine is why you want to experience it for yourself.” You smirked down at him as you watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down with a gulp. “So before I actually dose you up with it, I need you to tell me what you’re actually okay with doing and what you’re not. Because once you get my venom in you, you’re going to want to let me do anything and everything to you, up to and including kill you, remember?”

“Well that’s off the table.”

“Good to know,” you snorted, running a fingernail down the nape of his neck. You felt a shudder go through him. “Is this okay?”

“Y-Yeah.” He seemed to be fighting to keep his eyes open. You halted your motions to let him think, and watched in amusement as he blinked his mind clear.

Once enough time had passed, you prompted him, “So?”

“I think just kissing,” Renjun answered. “Like, making out, or whatever. If you want…”

You snickered. “What part of ‘eat you alive’ was I unclear about?”

“The ‘eat’ part, actually. How literal is that?”

“Guess you’ll find out,” you teased. Then, you focused again as you sat back a little. “Okay, making out. Making out means different things to different people. So… we know kissing’s on the table. Tongue?”

“Yeah.”

“Teeth?”

“Where?”

“Waist up. You got somewhere you don’t want them?”

He took a moment to think about this. Then shook his head. “No. You can use them. Anywhere.”

“Same goes for you. Hickies?”

“Giving or receiving?”

“Both. You first.”

“Both are okay. You?”

You were already zeroing in on his neck and a small part of his collarbone peeking out from under his hoodie. “Same. Touching over clothes?”

“Okay, as long as you don’t think it’ll be too much with the venom…”

“Oh, Junnie, everything is going to be too much.” You grinned down at him.

His breathing had picked up pace as the two of you were talking. “You? The touching?”

“Good. Great. Touching under clothes?”

Renjun squirmed underneath you, but maintained your eye contact. “Just under my shirt.”

“Smart boy,” you said approvingly. “Me too.”

“Is that it?” He asked quietly, eyes now flicking down to your lips.

“I think so…” You looked around the room to buy a couple extra seconds of thinking time. When you hadn’t come up with anything else, you looked down at the human below you once more. “Ready, Renjun?”

“Yes.”

You took one final look over him like this, how much he already wanted you before he’d even gotten any of your venom in him, and dragged the tip of your tongue over your bottom lip instinctually. His heartrate jumped, and you wondered if it was fear—if the motion had reminded him perhaps of a hungry predator—or need. Or maybe a bit of both.

But you couldn’t tease him nor yourself any longer, swooping down to connect your mouths. You started off with just a couple light, closed-mouth kisses, to ease him into it. You heard him inhale quickly through his nose, his grip on your thighs tightening minutely. Swiping your tongue across the seal of his lips, you were delighted when he immediately parted his mouth in response, his tongue seeking yours out. You hummed contentedly into his mouth as you started stroking a fingernail down the back of his neck again. At the same time, your venom was beginning to mix in with your saliva, being passed onto Renjun.

Once his jaw started going slack in the kiss, and his hands slowly slid off your legs entirely to rest lamely at his side, you deemed him plenty dosed up. Consciously, you blocked off your venom glands once more. When one particularly drawn-out scratch down the back of his neck finally elicited a noise from him, an involuntary whine, you felt something in you snap. You needed more of that.

“So this is what siren venom feels like…” He mumbled breathily, letting his head loll back against the couch cushion as you kissed a path down his jawline and neck. When you felt his breath hitch in his throat over one particular spot, you decided to take your time there, sucking and nipping a mark into his skin.

When humans were… locked in a lover’s embrace, they let off a certain perfume distinguishable only to sirens—which was what made them the favored prey of sirens for so long. A human under the influence of siren venom? Delectable. And every human’s was unique too, so Renjun under the influence of your venom? Absolutely addictive.

With each kiss you stole from his lips, every nip you left on his neck that you then soothed over with your tongue, you got another taste of it. A sweetness that came with a bite, like ginger candy.

Renjun was still talking, though, his vocal cords vibrating under your lips. ��My-My heart’s beating so fast, and I’m so warm—that’s so the ocean water doesn’t feel cold, of course—”

“Would you shut up?” You sat back up, grabbing him by the hair.

“Why?”

“I’m trying to kiss you again, idiot.”

“Oh. Right.” He closed his mouth, looking up at you with glassy eyes, waiting. Gods, he was so pretty like this.

You crashed your lips back on his, a mess of teeth and lips and tongue as he tried to keep up with you. But you knew that your venom was in full effect now, every single one of his nerve endings was approximately three and half times more sensitive. So you were sure it was all a little overwhelming. But he was definitely trying his best, kissing sloppily into your mouth with hungry, desperate whines.

Pulling him back off with your grip in his hair, you traced a thumb over his kiss-swollen bottom lip, cooing over how fucked-out he looked like this. “Oh, baby. Oh, poor Junnie. What’s wrong? Can’t even kiss me properly because it feels too good? Baby’s overwhelmed with just a little bit of kissing?”

He opened his mouth wider, darting the tip of his tongue out to brush against the pad of your thumb. You pushed the finger in his mouth, groaning as he immediately closed his lips around it. “Gods, you’re perfect, Junnie.”

Taking your thumb back out of his mouth just to grab his chin with the same wet digit, you attacked his lips with yours again. Ginger candy. His hands that had been lamely resting at his sides the entire time now fumbled at something in the area where your hips met.

“What? What are you trying to do, baby?” You asked, leaning back to look down. He was grabbing at the hem of his hoodie, unsuccessfully yanking it up towards his head as part of it was stuck under one of your thighs.

“‘m too hot. Please…” He panted, dropping it as he looked up at you pleadingly.

You nodded slowly in understanding, knowing that one of the effects of the siren venom was an increase in body temperature, not to mention what you two were just doing. The collar of another shirt was visible underneath the sweatshirt. “Okay, Junnie, we can take your hoodie off. But only the hoodie. Your other clothes are staying on, understood?”

He nodded quickly, hips bucking up against you. Sweat was beading up on his forehead, his hair getting stuck to the damp skin. You shifted back on his lap so that none of the sweatshirt was under you anymore, grabbing the hem and reaching behind him to yank up from underneath him as well.

“Sit forward for me, baby?” You requested in his ear sweetly.

Renjun obliged as best he could, leaning forward to get his back and shoulders off the couch. You pulled the hoodie up over his head, tossing it off to the side, leaving him in a black t-shirt that certainly couldn’t be helping much either. But having that heavy layer off seemed to provide some relief for him, as he let out a sigh, falling back against the furniture again.

You giggled as you settled back into the crux of his lap again, lacing your fingers together behind his neck. “Is that better now, Junnie?”

He shook his head, and you arched an eyebrow curiously.

“Oh? What’s wrong, then?”

Renjun tugged gently at your cardigan where it had shrugged down to show one of your shoulders. “Please?”

Pulling your bottom lip in between your teeth, you thought this over. You had a tank top on under the cardigan, and both of you were still wearing everything else. Not to mention that you were starting to get a bit warm too. Sirens ran naturally cooler than humans, so you were sure that to him, you felt practically refreshing right now, but you honestly were a bit hot for a siren’s tastes.

Giving a contemplative hum first, you finally relented, “Alright, Junnie. But just my sweater. Everything else stays on, because we didn’t talk about that before the venom, do you understand?”

He rushed to strip you of the knit cardigan, his mouth following his hands’ path down your skin. First on your shoulder, then down your arm. You let the garment drop on the floor behind you as he kissed back up along your shoulder, then over the fabric of your tank top until he got to your collarbone, and finally the hollow of your throat. Fondly stroking the back of his head, the pleased purr that had started in your chest turned into a surprised moan when he licked a long stripe up your throat.

Holding his face in your hands so that your noses brushed, and your lips barely ghosted over each other, you let your breaths mingle in the meager space afforded. Renjun ended your little anticipation game quickly, kissing you tongue-first, and you kissed him back just as eagerly, sucking on his tongue with lewd, wet noises. He moaned into your mouth, his hands grabbing at your waist for purchase first, then slipping and curling into the material of your shirt, bunching it in his fists.

Slowing the pace of your kisses, you eventually sat back, appraising the state he was in. You affectionately ran a hand through his hair as you took in his blown pupils, kiss-swollen lips, and pink cheeks. “Junnie? How are you feeling? Need a break?”

You hadn’t given him another dose of venom since the initial one, which wasn’t very large to begin with. But this was his first time experiencing it, so you wanted to check in. He should be just past the peak of it by now, starting to come down but for all intents and purposes still very much intoxicated. Siren venom wasn’t meant to last very long, after all, it took an adult human less than a minute to drown.

“Need you…” He insisted, arching up towards you.

Indulging him in one, two more feverish kisses, you pulled away once again. “I know, baby. And you’ve been doing so good for me. So I need you to tell me if you need a break. Okay?”

“’kay.” He agreed before you sealed your mouth over his again.

Kissing down from his mouth to just under his jaw, at the same time you trailed a finger down the center of his front until it got to the hem of his t-shirt.

He nodded fervently before you could say or do anything more. “Please… please…”

“Shh, shh, shh,” you quieted him down gently. “Doing so good for me, Junnie. The best.”

You slipped your hands under his shirt, just to stroke his waist. His muscles tensed under your touch, and he let out a sound of satisfaction. He grabbed at your thighs again, but you couldn’t tell if it was an attempt at reciprocity or to have something sturdier to ground himself to than your flimsy tank top. The corner of your lips quirked up as you pressed a couple more kisses down his neck to hover your lips over his pulse point, content to start a new mark there as your hands continued to explore under his shirt. It was when you gently raked your nails down over his pecs that you got the loudest moan out of him yet, and you groaned in response.

“Gods, you’re perfect,” you nuzzled your nose into Renjun’s neck, then pressed a couple relatively chaste pecks to his cheek. “Just perfect…”

Taking your hands back out from his shirt, you silenced his whine at the loss of contact by slotting your lips together once more. You cupped his face with one hand, using the other to take one of his hands off your leg and lace them together, palm to palm. This seemed to make him content once more, especially when you brought your connected hands up to the back of the couch, pinning his behind his head. He squirmed under you, letting out a familiar noise of pleasure into your mouth and squeezing your hand tightly.

You knew the venom was well and truly starting to wear off when Renjun began keeping pace with your slow, lazy kisses, his mouth not as sloppy but no less delightful as it moved in tandem with yours. The thumb of the remaining hand on your thigh started to stroke over your skin, and the hand that you were holding gave yours a gentle squeeze. You gave him one, two last lingering kisses, drinking in the dwindling taste of ginger candy while you could, Renjun matching you beat for beat.

Unlacing your fingers and dropping your hand from his face, you drew back from him. Before you could say anything, though, Renjun grabbed you by the back of the neck and pulled you in for one more kiss, sinking his teeth into your already tender, over-kissed bottom lip. You gasped into his mouth, which gave him the perfect opportunity to intertwine his tongue with yours again on his apparent mission to try to kiss the breath from you. A nigh impossible task for a human to do to a siren, but it definitely felt like he was succeeding. He was crushing his lips against yours so hard you were worried about him drawing blood—not because you would mind the pain, but for fear of his safety if he got a direct hit of your blood in his mouth.

In the back of your mind, you were desperately trying to remember if you had maybe accidentally opened your venom glands a second time later on, but just drew a blank. That wasn’t something you did unaware, it wasn’t automatic, it had to be done on purpose. Then, for a brief moment, you were worried about secondary wave syndrome—some humans break down siren venom in two phases instead of one, and the second one almost always kills them if they’re not brought to a human medical doctor for treatment—and you started running through the symptoms as well as the nearest human emergency rooms in your mind. Burst capillaries in the eyes, refusal of food and water, the hospital three blocks over should have an ER, right? But the kiss didn’t feel like when he’d been intoxicated on your venom before, this one felt deliberate, in control. He was in control. You let out a small moan at the thought, and Renjun’s lone hand on your thigh tightened in response.

Once he finally let you go, you both sat there in silence for a good few seconds, you still on his lap. You stared extra hard at the whites of his eyes. They looked normal. He seemed… normal.

It was rare for either of you to be speechless, much less the both of you.

“Well…” you broke the silence. “That was siren venom. You should drink some water. Stay right here, I’ll get it.”

You climbed off of him, heading into his kitchen. Looking at the oven, you were wondering how the timer hadn’t gone off in that entire time when you saw that it wasn’t on. The words ‘TIMER SET?’ were flashing on the screen at you, and the preheat hadn’t been started either. The pizza rolls had just been slowly defrosting on a pan in the cold oven. You couldn’t help but laugh, reaching into his fridge for his Brita filter then securing a couple cups from the cabinets.

Walking back into the living room, you handed the human his cup of water and remained standing as you took a sip of yours.

“You didn’t start the oven, for your pizza rolls,” you informed him quietly.

“Wh— oh, shit,” Renjun groaned, tipping his head back. “I guess I don’t get to give you your first pizza roll tonight.”

“That’s okay.” You dropped onto the couch next to him, shoulder to shoulder.

“So… that was siren venom,” he breathed out, then took a long gulp of his water. Definitely not second wave syndrome.

“That was siren venom,” you confirmed with a laugh, fondly brushing a piece of sweaty hair off his forehead.

“You were right… I was not prepared,” he admitted with a laugh, taking another drink.

“So do you think you would’ve let me kill you?”

“Yeah. I would’ve given you my credit card info, bank password, spilled all of my friends’ worst secrets, let you kill me, killed someone else if you asked me. God, that was…” He said with wide eyes, shaking his head. But there was a familiar glint in his eye as a smile cracked across his face, “Incredible.”

“Glad you think so,” you giggled, patting his chest. “Now don’t become a venom junkie, okay? I couldn’t live with myself if you did and it was my fault.”

“I won’t. Not really what I meant anyway.”

You grinned slyly at what he seemed to be implying, that it might not have just been the siren venom, but that it was you and your venom that made it so incredible. Like how every human had a slightly different essence, every siren had a unique chemical signature in their venom. It’s why using it non-consensually nowadays would be extremely stupid (as well as just an immoral thing to do and also a crime)—it can be matched to the siren in a lab like DNA. In addition, anecdotally, every siren’s venom was said to produce a slightly different high, but no mass studies had backed that up. You were inclined to believe the stories, though.

Renjun was still a bit hazy, though, still riding the high of the venom, so you decided to tuck a conversation like that away for another time.

“So why did you pick Magical Creatures Studies? Other than you’re insane?” You redirected the topic to a more neutral one.

Renjun didn’t seem put off at all about this jump. “When I was a kid, my family traveled around a bunch, for my dad’s job. I got to meet a lot of different kinds of beings, some of them became my best friends, and I never wanted to stop learning about it all.”

“What does your dad do?”

“Government job,” he answered, suddenly interested in picking at his nails.

You furrowed your brow thoughtfully. “Wait a minute… Huang Renjun. As in, your father is Ambassador Huang? That we’ve had to write papers on in class?”

Ambassador Huang was the first human ambassador sent on diplomacy trips to outside nations of magical creatures post-integration. His trips had largely been considered a monumental success, and credited as a big driver behind the huge uptick of immigration that your city has been seeing from outlying areas in the past couple decades. You’d hardly gotten through a single contemporary MCS class without directly learning about him or at least hearing his name. And you’d apparently been going to school with his son for four years and just pumped said son full of your venom and made out with him while he was high on your venom.

“Yeah…���

“Dude! What the hell? You didn’t think to mention that at some point?” You asked incredulously.

“And sound like some uppity nepo kid bragging about my dad? No thanks,” Renjun snorted.

“Yeah, maybe not like day one but like… I don’t know, before I used my venom on you!” You nudged his arm teasingly.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I just venom-ed Ambassador Huang’s son!”

“Oh my God, could you not call me that?” He snapped at you. “This is why I don’t tell people! Because now I don’t have a name anymore, I’m just Ambassador Huang’s son.”

You immediately realized your mistake, your stomach dropping as you heard the hurt in his words. “Renjun, I’m—”

“Just go.” He demanded, standing up from the couch and putting distance between you two again. “We both got what we wanted, right? You found out who Dr. Magic was, and I experienced siren venom. That’s all this was, so you can go. You don’t owe me anything else.”

You clenched your jaw, setting your cup on the end table beside the couch. Picking up your cardigan from the floor with as much dignity as you could, you pulled it back on. Neither of you said another word as he watched you stalk over to the front door, shove your shoes back on, throw the door open, and slam it closed behind you.

Drumming your fingertips along your keyboard, you squinted at the flashcards on your screen. You were in a sour mood, which had persisted ever since you’d left Renjun’s last night feeling used.

Ten was next to you at your picnic table outside the student union, finishing up a pencil portrait sketch of one of his other friends—one of the CompSci majors you’d paid to write your browser extension, actually. Dejun, a dragon, whose slit pupils, many bejeweled earrings, and a singular fang poking out from under his top lip featured prominently in the portrait. The sketch was part of Ten’s midterm portfolio check-in for one of his classes. Midterms were literally this week. Like, right now. You forced your sharp teeth further into the wooden pencil in your mouth.

“You’re going to ruin your cuspids like that, Y/N,” Ten chastised you calmly, rubbing at a line with the pad of his ring finger to smudge it before flipping his own non-mangled pencil around and continuing to sketch with the graphite.

“I’ll grow another set,” you grumbled, but took the writing utensil out of your mouth nevertheless.

“And have no teeth in the meantime. Real sexy siren stuff. Sure to lure all the hotties to their deaths looking like GamGam missing her dentures.”

“Shut up!” You shoved his head away, earning a loud peal of laughter from your friend. “As if you’ve been pulling anybody yourself. You’re literally a siren art major covered in tattoos that he designed himself, more piercings than a dragon, including nipple rings, and you haven’t been on a date in… what, almost a year?”

“So we’re both disappointments to the good siren name, huh?” He held up his hands in surrender, still grinning. “Just a couple of poor, celibate sirens doomed to be disgraces to their species forever…”

“Can you not yell that to the entire courtyard, dude?”

“What? Not announce very loudly that you haven’t been with anybody in exactly four—”

You lunged to cover his mouth before he could publicize precisely how long it’s been since you’d hooked up with someone. Ten immediately broke down into laughs behind your hand that was covering his mouth, his shoulders shaking even as you smacked him on the back of the head with your other hand.

“Gods, what is wrong with you?” You hissed at him. “You’re a menace to society. And me.”

When you’d finally let go of his face, he said through a couple more chuckles, “Hey, you could easily do it back to me.”

“Why would I want to do that? And the fact that you’re suggesting it makes me think that you want me to do that, which makes me want to do it even less. You freak.”

Before your podmate could respond, you caught sight of a figure approaching your table head-on. Setting your jaw, your body immediately tensed. There was no mistake, Huang Renjun was walking straight towards you. Ten seemed to have noticed the shift in your body language and mood, as he didn’t say anything further, quietly going back to his sketchbook as you watched Renjun get nearer and nearer.

“Y/N,” he said your name quietly, stopping not quite at the end of the table beside you, but next to the end of the bench across from you.

“What do you want from me now, Renjun?” You replied bitterly, pretending to return your hands to your keyboard as if you were going to refocus on your studies.

“Uhm, to talk, I guess?”

Ten interjected, “Do you guys need a second? I can go—”

You held him in place with a hand around his wrist, your voice curt, “No, Ten. Stay. This will be short.”

Your friend lowered himself back down into his seat.

You then set your hard gaze on Renjun. The marks you had left on his neck were still visible above the collar of his t-shirt. Moving your eyes from that to his face, you cocked your head to the side. “What’s in it for me? You established that our relationship is purely transactional, remember? We apparently just use each other. You scratch my back, I spit in your mouth, quid pro quo.”

“Okay, I’m going now,” Ten declared, wrenching his arm from your grasp to grab his sketchbook, pencils, and backpack before taking off.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I don’t see you like that at all, I just... I got defensive and snapped. It’s not an excuse, but still, I want you to know that I don’t mean anything I said. I’m sorry.” Renjun shifted uncomfortably on his feet, but you could see the genuine remorse on his features.

You breathed in, then out.

“I’m sorry too,” you sighed, letting your voice relax back to the natural softness that it held around Renjun. “You’re your own person, aside from just ‘Ambassador Huang’s son.’ I’m sorry for treating you like anything other than Renjun.”

“It’s not that I’m not super proud to be his son or anything, I think he’s really awesome. He was my hero growing up; still is. I mean, I’m going into the same field as him. Kind of. You know? It’s just because we’re going to be doing the same kind of thing, I want to be able to be looked at for what I do. Good or bad.”

“Bad? You plan on using your degree for evil, Renjun?” You teased, scooting over on the bench seat to take Ten’s previous spot and freeing up a place for Renjun to scoot in beside you.

“I could,” he played along, gladly taking the seat offered.

The two of you made eye contact, then burst into laughter at the same time.

“What?” He questioned in mock offense. “I think I’d make a great evil dictator, personally. You don’t think so?”

“Not at all, you’d be great at it.”

“Thank you. My friends don’t take my threats so seriously.”

“Which will ultimately be their downfall.”

Renjun looked back out at the campus in front of you two, his voice turning serious again, “But, seriously, I mean, I don’t want people having all these lofty expectations for me and then be disappointed when I don’t change the whole world, nor do I want them making things easy for me because they know my dad.”

“That’s fair. Unattainable, but fair to wish for,” you nodded in understanding.

“Ugh...” He slumped forward, dropping his head into his arms atop the table.

“Look, Renjun…” You rested one hand on his arm as the other rubbed up and down his back supportively. “You can’t change who your dad is, and you said it yourself, it’s not like you’re ashamed of him either. So don’t brag, and don’t be a dick when somebody brings him up either. Just do your best to show people who Huang Renjun is. And if they still don’t get it, that’s their loss. Because I already know him, and I think he’s pretty cool.”

Renjun sat back up to look you in the face with a skeptical eyebrow raised. “You’re such a cheeseball. Aren’t sirens supposed to be alluring and enchanting?”

“Shut up! I will drown you! See how alluring I am when you’re under a siren call,” you huffed, crossing your arms over your chest.

“I’m kidding.” He grinned at you, nudging your shoulder with his. “That really did make me feel better, thank you, Y/N.”

You smiled back. “You’re welcome, Renjun.”

The two of you kept smiling at each other for a moment before he broke the eye contact, looking down at his hands then shifting his gaze back to the courtyard.

“Uhm, while we’re airing stuff out about last night...” He cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Yeah, Junnie?” You tilted your head to the side, watching as his cheeks started flushing.

“I don’t think I ever said thank you. I kind of popped off on you right after... everything. But thank you, for taking care of me before, during, and after. It didn’t even occur to me to talk about what we could and couldn’t do beforehand. Thank you for that, and for getting me the water. And... all of it in between...” His ears were bright red too at this point, but he managed to look you in the eye as he gave you his genuine gratitude.

You nodded in understanding. “You’re welcome. I’m glad that you felt cared for during all of it. In addition to, you know, everything else you felt.”

“Mm, yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

Studying his face curiously, you said, “You look like you want to ask me something else.”

“Well, I feel like you still weren’t very clear on the ‘eat me alive’ thing.”

You rolled your eyes. “Gods, Junnie, I’m not going to actually eat you—”

“I mean...” Renjun took a deep breath. “I kind of always feel like I’ve got a little bit of siren venom in me when I’m around you, Y/N. My heart races, and my skin is warm, and everything is just better when I’m with you. I want to see you when you’re not around, and when things are hard for you, I want to make everything better. I like you, and between the Dr. Magic deal, and our stupid academic rivalry, and what we did last night, I don’t know what I am to you, but that’s how I feel.”

If someone had told freshman you that Huang Renjun would ever say words like that to you, you’d have laughed in their face to the point of tears— or slapped them. And yet, in that moment, you weren’t surprised in the slightest. It was the most natural, beautiful, delightful, perfect thing that could’ve happened. Just like you leaning over to give him a modest, near-demure kiss on the cheek, absolutely beaming at him as you pulled back.

“I like you too, Renjun,” you admitted.

His eyes went wide before a broad, tender smile spread across his features and he wrapped an arm around your shoulders. He let out a drawn-out sigh of relief, “Ohh, that’s one weight off my chest for this week.”

You laughed in agreement. “Me too. Actually makes everything feel lighter.”

“Yeah, it does,” he said, squeezing your shoulder. “So how much do I owe you?”

“What?”

“You said you were going to invoice Dr. Magic. For the browser extension, and the color copies, and whatever else. How much do I owe you?”

You tapped a finger against your chin, pretending to think before a smirk pulled across your lips. “Mm, should be exactly the price of one nice dinner and a movie.”

“Dinner and a movie? Just how many copies were you making?” He asked with a chuckle and a shake of his head.

“A nice dinner,” you reiterated. “I paid those CompSci majors fairly for their time.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Friday night after your last midterm, you were knocking on Huang Renjun’s door. The two of you had seen each other this week for your Linguistics in MCS class, but had been utterly locked into academic mode and hadn’t met up aside from that. So, per his invite, you were here in your “midterms best”— i.e., the pajamas you had been wearing at your own apartment since submitting your last mid-semester draft earlier today. You’d been told this wasn’t going to be a fancy affair.

Judging by the pajamas that Renjun had also answered the door wearing—giving you vivid déjà vu to the last time you were here—you were dressed appropriately for the occasion. He led you in by the hand, informing you there was something he wanted to show you in the kitchen.

You came to a stop in front of a plate piled high with small, pillow-shaped pieces of dough, some with bursts of red sauce leaking out of them. You couldn’t help but let out a sputtering laugh. “Pizza rolls? Did midterms scramble the egg on your face so bad that you missed the part where I said nice dinner?”

You might not have ever eaten pizza rolls, but you knew what section of the grocery store they came from.

“I can’t even tell what that was supposed to be… You’re so beautiful…” He was staring at you with a look of pure adoration, and surprised you by giving you a fleeting peck on the cheek, gone as soon as you’d realized what he was doing. Your hand instinctually came up to brush at your skin, almost in disbelief, as he went back to explaining his plans for tonight. “Anyway, I didn’t get to give you your first pizza roll the other night, and I figured that the last thing you actually wanted right after midterms week was to go out to some hoity toity place and be out at the movie theater really late, right? So, I’ve got pizza rolls, peanut butter cookies, your seaweed tea, and like way more snacks and candy and stuff. So we can chill and watch whatever movies you want tonight, unwind from midterms. And then next weekend, we’ll do your nice dinner and go to the movie theater. Think of it as an IOU.”

A fond smile tugged at the corner of your mouth as you nodded your approval. “Mmm… you’re right. This is great, Junnie. Thank you.”

Set up on Renjun’s couch with the assortment of snacks—pizza rolls included—and your first movie chosen, you settled in next to him, knee to knee, under the same blanket as the two of you ate. You decided that pizza rolls weren’t that bad (you still liked peanut butter sandwich cookies better), convinced Renjun to try some of your ocean flakes again—a favorite snack of sirens, which he’d already tasted on one occasion at a Dr. Magic hunting session and hated—to similar results, and finished off a bottle of seaweed-infused tea by the time the first movie was about a third of the way done. At this point, you were pretty satiated food-wise, and set your empty drink bottle on the coffee table to sit back on the couch.

Linking your arm with Renjun’s, you rested your head on his shoulder as he was still finishing up his plate of pizza rolls. “That was good, Renjun. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I call dibs on little spoon first, by the way.”

“Damn.”

Once he was done eating as well, you laid down to eagerly take your promised place as little spoon. Renjun stayed partially propped up against the arm of the couch so he could see the TV as you were nestled back against his chest, one of his arms slung over your waist. Your fingers played with his under the blanket absentmindedly as you got used to your new place, with him, in his arms.

“Renjun?” You said into the quiet. The only noises were coming from the TV. The movie was nearly done, just a couple little resolving scenes after the climax left. You’d seen it plenty of times before—both of you had, it was a favorite that you’d discovered you two shared earlier in the semester—which was why you’d picked it, an easy watch that you both liked. But nothing that required your full attention, so you could talk or miss scenes if you wanted.

“Yeah?” He responded just as softly.

“This is really nice. Hanging out, just us. No school, no Dr. Magic.”

“I know. Almost doesn’t feel real.”

“What? That we’re hanging out without trying to kill each other?”

He let out a couple laughs, catching your hand that had been playing with his under the blanket and lacing your fingers together. “I think there’s definitely some people that would be shocked to see us right now. But I meant more-so that we don’t have any schoolwork to do right now, and that the whole Dr. Magic thing is finally over. Other than the dinner that I owe you.”

“Oh… I owe you… I-O-U…” you sounded the words and letters out slowly. “I get it now.”

“God, you’re perfect,” he sighed dreamily, brushing your hair away from your face to press two kisses to your temple in quick succession.

You turned over to face him to properly protest, “Hey, I didn’t grow up around humans, you know that, right? I just came here to go to school! I moved here like, two weeks before our first day of freshman year—”

“I’m not making fun of you, Y/N!” He promised, sandwiching your hand between both of his and squeezing it tightly. “I respect how difficult it must have been for you to acclimate to the new culture and city when you moved, and so suddenly, on top of starting school. I just love y- love when you do that. Genuinely, I’m so charmed by it. Endeared. Bewitched. Whatever word you want to use. It’s something I never noticed until this semester, when we started doing the Dr. Magic stuff together. Despite knowing you for so long, in the department, in classes.”

“You know what I never knew about you before this semester, Junnie?”

“What?”

“That you were such a softie,” you snickered fondly. “I thought you were all textbooks and GPA and flashcards and whatever.”

The human ducked his head bashfully. “It’s something I’ve been working on this year.”

“Between this and Dr. Magic, I think you’ve been doing pretty well.”

“Thanks.”

“So, why did you do it, Junnie?” You asked curiously. “Not be a softie, I mean, but…”

“What? Be Dr. Magic?” He clarified, to which you nodded. “I didn’t mean to make a persona like that, really. I had to pick a screenname, and the guys had jokingly called me that a couple times when I helped them out with some problems. That’s all.”

“I know why you started the account. Knowledge. That’s also why you didn’t get the credit. You just needed to know. Though, the story behind the name is cute,” you pinched his cheek, and he tried to deter your hand with his shoulder half-heartedly. “I mean more like, why were you hiding your IP and using VPNs and stuff before you even knew that I was trying to track you down? In the fall.”

“I made the first couple posts from the school computers just because I like to do my work there, I wasn’t trying to cover anything up. Then I pictured what I’d do if I found someone posting like I was on the forums. And I would’ve tried to find out who they were. So I started covering my tracks a bit more intentionally after that. Didn’t want any groupies rolling up on me.” He pinched your side teasingly with the last sentence, and you slapped his hand away with an eye roll.

“Oh shut up!” You scoffed, ignoring his hands as he tried to pull you back towards him again.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m sorry,” he apologized through his chuckles. “If anything I’m your groupie, I swear. Your number one fan from the moment you showed me your conspiracy board.”

“Mm, fine.” You scooted closer to him, letting him wrap his arms around you once more. “Glad we got that cleared up.”

Renjun shifted to lay on his back, and you easily followed the move to snuggle in mostly on top of him, resting your head in the crook of his neck and your hand on his waist, fingers innocently smoothing over a patch of skin above his hipbone where his shirt had ridden up. It sounded like the credits were on by now, but you didn’t really care about picking another movie as Renjun hummed along to the familiar song that played over the scrolling names. You’d sing along too, if you were alone at your own place. But now you didn’t dare even hum like the human with you for fear of what it could do to him. Renjun’s voice was plenty lovely enough though, even just this casual little bit humming. You’d see if you could get him to sing for you properly one of these days. If an opportunity came before graduation. Who knew what your days would even look like before then.

Gods, graduation. You felt like you could shrivel up and die just thinking about it. Not to mention that you hadn’t even told Renjun that you’d—

“Hey. What are you thinking about?” He suddenly asked, his disapproving tone clear.

You gulped. “How could you tell I was thinking about something?”

“For one, you’ve got your bad thinking face on.” He pinched your bottom lip. “You pout. It’s very dramatic. You look very concerned.”

“I have different thinking faces?”

“Yeah, you look different when you’re studying. I’ve seen you do plenty of that to know the difference. And you’ve got a third face when you’re contemplating. Usually you do that one when you’re looking at menus.”

“I didn’t know I was apparently an open book.” You covered your face with your hands in embarrassment.

“It’s cute, Y/N. You’ve got a cute face, and you make cute facial expressions with it, don’t cover it up.” He gingerly grabbed your hands to encourage you to take them off. “Except I am worried about what’s making you make your bad thinking face right now. What’s wrong?”

With a sigh, you pushed up into a sitting position. Renjun followed your lead curiously, a thoughtful frown on his own features as he watched you pull your knees to your chest.

“Renjun, I need to tell you something.”

He regarded you with a skeptical eyebrow raised. “Okay… go for it.”

Nervously, you smoothed out some wrinkles in your pajama pants as you confessed, “Uhm, Dr. Kwon asked me to carry the banner at commencement. I said yes.”

“I knew that.”

“What?” You looked up at him in disbelief.

“Well, since it was midterms already, I figured that if they’d picked me, they would have asked me by now and since they hadn’t, then they must have picked you. I was just waiting for you to tell me so I could tell you… Congrats.” Renjun grinned brightly at you, reaching out to rest his hand on your arm.

“You’re not upset?” You asked trepidly.

“We’re not petty little freshmen anymore, Y/N. No, I’m not upset. I’m proud of you, you deserve it.”

“So did you.”

“Not any more than you did.” He shook his head firmly. “So would you just accept my congrats already?”

You gave a small, shaky smile. “Thank you…”

“There we go.”

“This is what I was so freaked about… when we went to get froyo.”

“You were afraid of me being mad at you for being picked to carry the banner?” Renjun asked incredulously.

“I didn’t know how to tell you!” You defended yourself. “And now I have to do the commencement practices, on top of senior capstone and my extracurriculars…”

He wrinkled his nose. “Ew, commencement practices. So glad I didn’t get picked now, actually.”

“And that was so convincing, Junnie.”

“You remember what you said to me when we got froyo?”

Scrunching your face up, you struggled to think back to the exact conversation you had that day—you’d been really stressed. “Uh, ‘exactly two gummy sharks on mine please?’”

“Well, yeah, your hyper-specific froyo order—”

“Throwing stones at black kettles much?” You teased.

“Excuse me?” Renjun’s eyes went wide.

“Is that not—? I really thought I got it that time.”

“Did you mean to say ‘throwing stones in glass houses’ and/or ‘the pot calling the kettle black?’”

“…Yes.”

He turned very serious as he went to tenderly cradle your face in his hands. “I’m going to kiss you in like two seconds after I finish what I was saying, okay?”

“Oh, okay,” you agreed weakly, wishing very much that he’d just do it now instead of making you wait. He then let your face go.

“When we were talking about wanting people to know that we’re smart,” Renjun clarified. “You said that we’re both like that, and you knew that you were like that. And then you asked me if I knew that I was like that. I had tried to swear up and down this entire time that I was doing all of this—the needing to be the best—for myself. But it wasn’t. I’m like that too. That’s kind of what Dr. Magic was, me taking a step back from needing everyone to know I was the smartest person in the room. A quasi-experiment, to see if I could do it.”

“I think that after graduation, maybe we both chill on being the smartest person in the room, and try to just spend a summer working on that magical bucket list of yours?” You suggested.

“Oh?” He perked up at this. “Really?”

“You ever seen a werewolf shift?”

“No…”

“That sounds like a ‘not yet’ to me.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He confirmed with a conspiratorial grin that mirrored the one that you could feel across your own face. “You know how sirens can’t get dosed up on their own venom?”

“Yeah…” You nodded, wondering where he could be going with this.

“Well, I know a witch with a proprietary love potion blend that I think we might be able to modify to produce similar effects.”

“Fascinating.” You thought on this for a second, very quickly running through your knowledge of potion properties to imagine what it could be. “Two-factor blood potion?”

“Yes. But we’d put your venom in it instead of your blood so it wouldn’t kill me.”

“That could work…” You mused. “Speaking of, I should really give you a full dose one of these days.”

He breathed in sharply. “That wasn’t a full dose?”

“Nope.”

“Holy shit…”

“Have you ever watched a phoenix reincarnation?” You added another suggestion to your joint summer bucket list.

“Have you? Wouldn’t that literally blind us?” Renjun questioned, something akin to genuine concern on his face now.

You shrugged. “Allegedly. It’s never been recorded in a lab setting, so who really knows.”

“I think we’re going to get each other killed before we can get our PhDs,” he declared with a fond smile and shake of his head.

“Hey, the betting pools said we’d kill each other by junior year, so I think we’re doing well for ourselves.”

“Do you think we can collect on those bets when we graduate and we’re both still alive and have all of our limbs?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get there.”

“Oh my god, come here,” Renjun groaned deliriously, kneeling to grab your face with two hands and crash his lips to yours. You curled your fingers in the front of his shirt, pulling him down with you as you fell back against the arm of his couch, still connected.

Yeah, you’d drive off that burning bridge when you got there.

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[shhh-secret-time]

hello ^^, i saw your secret soulmate au about craig, i don't have the words to explain how much i giggled, twirled my hair and everything XD! well, when you have the time, could you do a craig x clyde x reader smut? of course, if you feel comfortable with it! reader can be female or gn. it's practically normal smut but just craig fucking the reader from behind and clyde from the front, so that's it! tysm for reading, i love your writing too! <33 -✨️ Anon (I'm still new to tumblr so i might get confused on some things sometimes!)

Completely understandable, I too am confused with how tumblr works and I've been on this godless site since fucking Dash Con. I'm glad you liked the way I wrote those dorks! And thank you for fueling my Clyde agenda!

Warning: NSFW, Strong-Language, Dirty Talk, Slight Sub/Dom dynamics, blow jobs, orgasm denial, threesome

Pairing: Clyde x Fem!Reader x Craig

The sweet air of the votives swirls around the empty church. Empty except for the dim orange and red light that illuminates the book in the man's hand.

A woman at his feet, clothed in fine silks. A mix of reds and whites that twine together. Beautiful patterns of stars flow across the dress.

She dips her head in prayer alongside the man. The father of the church glides his fingers across her cheek as her mouth closes. Reciting scriptures of one's devotion for an unseen God. Everything in that moment was peaceful.

The warmth in the Father's eyes doesn't go unnoticed, the greens darken with a desire that he knows better than to have. It's difficult to hide the growing ache in his pants. More so when the woman's lips curl into a mischief smile, the warm glow of the candles makes them shine with an otherworldly glow. She looks up at him and her eyes fall deep into those pools of lust. Her hands break apart from that folded prayer and onto his black dress pants. They card up further against his thighs where they settle and clutch the material.

"Father, bless me...", a whisper that makes the Father groan.

Temptation never looked so sweet. This woman made his chest pound. Unholy thoughts flood his mind and go straight to his-

You let out a loud groan. Your forehead drops and hits the table beside your keyboard. The forgotten mug with now cold tea rattles.

Writer’s block, the very bane of any author’s existence. It's been haunting you for weeks now, making it impossible to get anything done. You've been stuck on this part of your romance novel the entire time. A part you were so excited to get to!

The buildup was perfect! You had calculated, plotted, and carefully crafted a budding romance between a witch and a holy man. A forbidden romance that took place within the walls of the church, the furthest outside the walls it went were the gardens that surrounded the area. The two fell in love after he saved her from the townsfolk claiming sanctuary.

Inspiration struck you like lightning after you fell in love with your partners. After publishing a sci-fi series, that honestly changed the name of how science fiction would be written forever, you met two fans at a book signing event. You had made a surprise appearance at a local library in some little town called South Park. Coming from the big city yourself, it was a huge surprise that anyone in the little town would actually be a fan of yours.

Apparently, you had quite a few. A man with bright red hair who had a black-haired man following alongside him. Both gushed about how the story inspired some kind of board game they played with their friends. A sweet blond woman who had the cutest southern accent you've ever heard. She gave you a piece of fan mail that had the most adorable sticker on it. Another black-haired man who dressed as Spock for some reason. He went on for a solid thirty minutes about a fanfic he wrote regarding the main character of your book and Star Trek's very own Captain Kirk.

Finally came the oddest duo you had ever met. The two were like day and night, a cat and a dog, fire and ice; the whole nine yards. A bright smile with baby brown eyes on one, and an ice-cold deadpan look with amber eyes to match on the other. At first you thought the brown-haired one was your fan and the man with the blue hat was just along for the ride.

"Haha! No way! I'm not into that..." He paused as if to stop himself from saying something he shouldn't, "...kinda stuff."

"That kind of stuff?" You repeat back at him, raising a brow.

"He means reading. He doesn't know how." The other spoke putting a hand on top of his head. With a little push he forced the brown-haired man's head down.

You giggled at that. The protests coming from the poor man was comical. You almost felt sorry for him, watching him struggle to move the taller man's hand off.

"Then I take it I'm signing this book out to you?" With a click of your pen, you look up at him.

The NASA jacket on the bright blue sleeves of his jacket should have given it away honestly. There's was a small tinge of a blush on his tan cheeks, almost hidden under the skin tone but you were able to make it out under the light. He looked away for a moment before nodding at you.

"Yeah."

"Name?"

"His name is Craig! He's a huge fan of yours by the way! So, if you could write something sweet for him that'd be awesome!" His friend chirped at you as he broke free from Craig's grip.

Craig's face twisted, those piercing eyes of his narrowed down. Before he could reach and grab him, the brown-haired man slid behind your chair. Putting his hand on your chair, he bent down to your level and tapped the blank white page.

"As you can see my big guy has a baaaaaad case of resting bitch face."

"Clyde..." the warning that slipped out of Craig's mouth made a shiver roll down your spine. It was even directed at you, and you felt threatened.

"So, you gotta imagine my surprise when he came home smiling! I was shocked! He didn't even smile when we started going out!" Clyde ignored him, an attest to his bravery. Or foolishness. Either way he continued, leaning down next to your ear. "Your book made him so happy, so it makes me happy. Think you could do that for me? Because he'll never ask you to do it for him."

You look up at him for a while, not even bothered that he had gotten closer to your face as he spoke. The browns in his eyes flickered with mischief but there were layers of love behind them. Chocolate that seemed to melt into tiny hearts when he spoke about Craig. It was honestly sweet, even if he was trying to tease his partner.

"How can I say no to that? I'd love to." You smiled at him and began writing on the empty page.

Yeah, who would have thought that fate would tie you to those two like that. Falling in love with Craig and Clyde was nothing like what they wrote in books or movies. It was a tornado of events that landed you in the eye of it all.

Despite their polar opposite personalities and looks, the two worked off each other well. Then when you got thrown in the middle, you filled in a little spot they desperately needed.

Clyde was social enough for the three of you. He was the one who reminded you and Craig that you needed to get out of the house. When you lock yourself away in your office, he would drag you out with a fun date idea. Movie nights, football games, arcade dates, and his favorite late-night walks. Doing the same to Craig who always seemed buried in work.

Craig gave off such scary dog privilege that you and Clyde never felt threatened. You could take those late-night walks with Clyde because you knew nothing would touch you with Craig following close behind.

That was nice sure, but under that scary looking shell was a soft teddy bear of a man. While he wasn't vocal with affection like Clyde, he was observant. Craig remembered everything, everything about you and Clyde's interests. If he saw something you mentioned in passing it was yours. Clyde needed new shoelaces because the ones on his favorite pair of red shoes were tearing? There was a new pack waiting for him on the table. You complained about the shift key on your keyboard sticking too much? An adorable keyboard that looked like a typewriter was found on your desk the next morning.

Then there was you. You have no idea how these two survived this long without you. Truth be told they don't either. Craig and Clyde couldn't cook to save their lives. Their diet consisted of diner food and Chinese takeout. While their house was clean enough, laundry was never put away or folded. Clyde was horrible at putting his dirty laundry in the bin and Craig was too tired most nights to even make it to bed. The final straw was when you took a shower, and their only soap was 3 in 1.

Absolutely not.

So, when you moved in things changed. When Craig was at work, you would take Clyde grocery shopping. Slowly you started him on simple dishes, working with him until he was comfortable in the kitchen. What was surprising was that he took to it quickly. He was a natural and before you knew it, he was cooking things you had never heard of. He had gone as far as looking up Peruvian dishes, practicing with spices and techniques that had your mouth watering. When you asked how he learned to do all of this, he gave you the biggest grin and told you it was YouTube.

When Craig came home that night to Chupe de Camarones it was the closest to crying you've ever seen from him.

Clyde really stepped up after that, feeling a sense of pride in taking care of you two. Seeing as you worked just as hard as Craig did. Clyde proclaimed something about being more than happy to be a malewife.

In return Craig started taking better care of himself, actually starting to care about his health. He stopped staying up so late and made use of the giant bed. Clean sheets and blankets that felt good on his skin. Even better that you and Clyde would be in it waiting for him. Clyde long passed out on your chest, a bit of drool sliding down the side of his face and onto your shirt. Not that you seemed to care as you just continued to read next to the little bedside lamp. Only pausing when you felt Craig's presence in the doorway.

Craig's smiles were rare, little treats from the universe to you. Ones like these where he smiles with love in his eyes. Where he kicks off his shoes and strips down to his boxers, crawling into bed next to you. Arms wrapping around Clyde and with a hand settling on your hips. A silent squeeze lets you know it's time to put the book down and join him.

How can you say no to a smile like that?

Of course, not every day was perfect. Your relationship took time to hash out. It was different being with two individuals at the same time, but you made it work. The three of you were committed to one another.

Now if only you could commit to this fucking scene.

Your head’s little meet and greet with the table must have been louder than you thought because whatever Clyde was yelling about in the living room stopped. It was one of the rare weekends where Craig was home and off work. Choosing to spend it watching some show with Clyde, listening to the man ramble on about something.

So wrapped up in your thoughts, you let out a scream when you finally lift your head and Clyde is right there beside you. His body bent over just like the day you met him. With his hand on the back of your chair and his face next to yours. Except instead of using, you as a shield from Craig, he's reading your computer screen.

While he doesn't understand what it takes to be an author, he sees the effect it has on you. Days like this where you take on the posture of a shrimp, forgetting to come out to eat.

His lips start pursed, but as he continues to scan over the screen they break out into a smirk. He covers his mouth in a fake surprise, a gasp with widened eyes.

"Babe! This is...scandalous! Spicy, naughty even! What are you doing writing something like this?" His dramatic act continues, forming some feign surprise.

"What are you doing using words with more than one syllable?" You shoot back with a little smirk.

It takes everything in your power not to laugh at the actual pout on his face. Try as you might, the giggles escape your lips, and it makes him smirk. He leans down and nuzzles his nose into your cheek.

"Maybe you're starting to rub off on me babe! I'm getting smarterer with you around!" You know he said that word wrong on purpose, just to get under your skin.

But he kisses you quiet before you can say anything. Holds your face in his hands so you can't pull away. You can taste the cherry chapstick on his lips, and the growing smile along with it.

"So, what's got you bashing your head into your desk baby? Craig and I heard a thump and got worried." He moves the kisses towards your forehead.

"Was it that loud?"

"Heard it over the tv." Craig's voice almost makes you leap out of your skin.

You bite your lip, looking down at the keyboard with a distant stare. The faded green and blue, spots where your fingers had smudged away the paint from typing so much.

"I'm just having trouble with this scene. I've been stuck on it for weeks now." You exhale softly.

Craig raises a brow and leans down on the other side of you. Both Clyde and Craig bent over to take a look at your screen. You're not sure why the fact both men reading your unfinished work makes you feel nervous, but it does. Or maybe it's the fact this is your first time writing a spicy scene like this.

"It's good. Never would have thought you'd go the Priest kink route." Craig says it so matter of fact, there's never hesitation in his voice. You can count on one hand the number of times you've seen him flustered, and even then, his tone is flat.

"I-I’m not into it! I just- you guys are only reading a snippet of my book! There's been a romance blossoming between the two the whole time!" You try to defend yourself, but it only makes Clyde's lips tug into a smirk.

The temptation to tease you was too great, it was being handed to him on a silver platter. Clyde leans up and walks next to Craig, leaning into his chest. The man wraps his arms around himself and lets out a dramatic sigh.

"A forbidden love! A tale as old as time! But what I wanna know babe-" Clyde stops and lets the tension build. It makes you glare at him as you turn in your office chair. "-is why the witch's descriptions are reaaaally close to mine."

"That's a woman Clyde! She's got short brown hair because it was cut off when she was running from the townsfolk! Brown eyes are common and beautiful! There's not enough representation for them!"

"Aaaaaand her dimples?" He points to his, the little spots in his cheeks that sink in when he smiles. "Plus, my eyes are totally beautiful."

"It's not you!"

"Oh, and the Father isn't Craig. Tan skin, black hair? You gave the Father green eyes but other than that, it fits Craig to a T." Craig actually nods along with what Clyde is saying. He's got his eyes closed as if this is some kind of philosophical debate.

"Are you serious right now Clyde?! This is why you two aren't allowed in my study!" Your face was burning now, hot and flushed from his teasing.

"What did I do?" Craig breaks the little fight with a simple question.

"Nodding your head along! You know what he's doing and you're encouraging it!"

"So, you took inspiration from your partners in your romance story. It's cute." He responds with a shrug. He looks down at Clyde who's still smugly leaning against his chest.

Your mouth falls open, you go to respond but nothing makes its way out. Your brows furrow. Arms crossed under your chest in a pout.

Had you unintentionally based your characters off your partners? Is that why the romance novel was easy to write up until this point?

Whatever the case may be here, you didn't like being called out. So, you do what you always do when they get like this, you turn in your chair and ignore them.

Usually this works, let's them know that you're not in the mood for their games. That you'd rather be left alone than entertain another minute of their shenanigans. But this time Clyde wasn't going to let you go. He grabs the back of your seat and wheels you back towards him and Craig.

"Baaaaabe don't pout. Look I'm sorry~." No, he's not. "But hey I've got an idea."

You let out a little huff, enough to where he knows you're not actually mad at him. If you were you would have picked your chair up and walked it back to your desk. Instead, you sit there and wait for him to continue.

"You're stuck on that scene, but I think you need a break. Sitting here and bashing your head against the table isn't going to fix that. Soooo..." He trails off, moving to stand in front of you.

His fingers glide across the side of your face, cupping your cheek so gently. Clyde guides your face up to look at him, behind that cocky smile of his he's got such love for you in his eyes. The way his thumb brushes across your cheek, making your heart flutter so slightly.

"What do you say Craig and I help you out a little babe?" Clyde guides your face up towards him. He presses his thumb against your lips just as his voice dips into that playful whisper.

You raise a brow at him in response. It's not until Craig puts his hand on your shoulders, that you piece together this wasn't just his idea. Thumbs pressed into your muscles working out the knots and tension. For such a hard worker, somehow Craig's hands always stay so soft. The worn-out oversized t-shirt you stole does little against his hands. The material is thin from how often it's been washed and worn.

His hands pull a soft moan from you, it feels too good to keep yourself silent. Clyde pushes his thumb past your lips and into your mouth, the digit presses down on your soft pink tongue. He all but purrs when watches you wrap your lips around it.

"See...let's work out some of that tension. We'll make you feel real good and give you a little inspiration." Clyde hums as he pulls his thumb out, smearing the saliva across your lips.

When he doesn't continue, you realize he's waiting for your confirmation. Waiting for you to agree to their little plan. But that doesn't stop Craig from bending down and placing a kiss on your cheek. He trails the kisses down to your jawline, using his nose to nudge your head to the side. Lulling your head to the side, you gave into the feeling. Craig's lips move to capture the exposed skin. You can feel just how eager he is from the way the kisses turn to nips then to full on bites. His teeth sinking into the soft parts of your flesh pulling another sharp gasp from you.

"Come on honey. Let us take care of you." After he's done leaving small love bites on your neck, Craig moves to your ear nipping the shell.

"Y-yeah that sounds...that sounds good." You move your hands up towards Craig, running your fingers through his hair. One of the rare moments he's not sporting his blue hat. "I could use a little break..."

"That's our girl." Clyde's praise goes straight to your core. He lifts you up from your office chair, hands cupping the back of your thighs for support. They give your thighs a little squeeze, digging his fingertips into your flesh.

Craig moves out of his way and goes to push your office chair back towards your desk. Clyde chuckles softly seeing the confused look on your face. Instead of protesting you wrap your arms around the brunette lazily throwing your arms around his neck.

"We're supposed to be relaxing, we're gonna get nice and comfy on the couch." He drops you down on the couch, making you bounce a bit. He laughs when you let out a gasp of surprise.

"You ass." Your grumbles fall on deaf ears. Clyde just runs his fingers through your hair and gives it a harsh tug. It makes you cry out, craning your neck up towards him.

"Sweetheart, that's not very nice. You're being a brat right now." He tuts, feigning disappointment.

"You dropped me on the-" You suck in another cry when he tugs your head to the side, that firm grip on your roots sending a shiver down your spine.

"Hm? You were saying something? I did what?"

Clyde's smug little smirk made your blood boil. But his fingers in your hair felt too good to protest further. Especially when he switched between tugging and massaging his fingertips into your scalp. You watched his eyes flicker from yours to behind you. Before you could turn around to get a glimpse of what he was staring at, Craig's hands slid down your back.

Gently, much more than Clyde, he pushes you down towards Clyde. His other hand comes down to grab your ankle, pulling your leg back towards him. Once your knee is tucked against the couch, he does the same to the other leg.

If your face wasn't burning up before it certainly is now. Just as you go to hold yourself up with your hands, Clyde removes his hand from your hair and takes you by the wrist. Guiding you up towards him, he places them on the hems of his sweatpants. The grey university sweatpants do little to hide his hardening cock, you watch it twitch against the fabric.

"This is about where you left off right? She was about to take the Father's cock out of his pants?" Clyde says watching as you slowly pull his sweatpants down. He lets out a low chuckle that turns into a moan when you slip your fingers around his cock. "That's it, now keep your eyes on me baby."

There's a moment of hesitation as you bring the tip closer to your mouth. The bright red tip glides across your plump lips begging for you to open. His hand returns to your hair, smoothing down your locks from his earlier manhandling.

The gentle touch makes you look up towards him, just like he requested. There really was something so intimate about those chocolate brown eyes of his. Past that smirk and layers of darkened lust, there was devotion. The feeling of your hands on him alone made him weak in the knees. You put that to the test, pressing just a little kiss on the tip. Dabbing your tongue against his leaking member. Just from that alone he's letting out the prettiest moans.

"Sh-shit, c’mon don't tease me." That cocky attitude of his melts. You almost laugh at how easy it is to break him down. He was puddy in your hands.

With a little hum you move your hand up and down his shaft, creating enough friction to make him buck his hips towards you. He nudges his cock further into your mouth, pushing past your lips. The underside of his cock glides down against your tongue, smearing the pre-cum along with it.

So caught up in your little game, you almost forgot about Craig behind you. Almost. It's hard to forget him when he's got his hands all over you. Large palms cupping any exposed skin. Craig takes his time exploring every curve he can get ahold of. His nose nuzzled into the back of your head. His breath tickling the shell of your ear. Just the sight of your mouth around Clyde's member alone is enough to make him growl.

Neither men are patient when it comes to you. Craig shoves whatever is left of your pajamas down and off you, he doesn't bother with your shirt as it'll pull you away from your lover. Instead, he decides it'll make the perfect handle. He bunches it up until it collects at the collar. His hands grip the shirt and tug it backwards, making your hips rock back into him.

Somewhere along the way he stripped away his pants. The barrier between the both of you was the thin material of your underwear and his dark blue boxers. While Craig wasn't as vocal as Clyde was, with his teasing and little whimpers, he could be just as unfair if not more.

Grinding against your cunt slowly, grabbing and groping at your ass the entire time. He digs his nails into your skin, leaving little crescent moons. Craig rewards good behavior not with sweet words, but by giving you what you so desperately want.

He waits until you've got all of Clyde's cock in your mouth before he finally shoves your underwear down. It makes it to your knees before he just decides to leave them there. Too many times he got impatient and just ripped them off, and too many times you scolded him for it.

The hand in your hair pulls you back from his cock. Clyde moves your head back just enough to where only the tip remains, then slowly he brings you back down. Pushing you all the way down his length until your nose hits his stomach. You watch as his muscles flex under his skin like he's trying to resist letting his head lull back. He needs so badly to keep his eyes on yours, loving the attention you're giving him.

"Your mouth feels so good." He whines when he reaches the back of your throat. You gag around him, and it pulls another whimper from him.

Your hand slides down his thighs, using it to hold you up. The other hand is still being held by Clyde's grip. His hand wrapped around your wrist, holding it up near his shoulder. Craig waits until Clyde rocks you back again, using the momentum to slip inside your wet folds. A pleased hum rumbles from his chest. You can feel it from how he's pressing his entire body against yours.

Just as slowly as Clyde moves your head, Craig pushes further into your cunt. The two find a slow and steady rhythm with one another. When Craig snaps his hips against you, it pushes Clyde's cock further down your throat. Your moans vibrating around him causing him to moan loudly in return. Clyde's whimpers and whines get louder when you dig your nails into his thighs. In return the grip on your hair is tightened. Creating this delicious cycle of pleasure.

"Baby, please. I wanna fuck your throat. You gonna let me? I need it so bad, please." Clyde's begging spurs something in you. Gives you the feeling of control even if you’re physically stuck between the two. From the beads of sweat that trail down his body and the way his body is shaking, you know he's at his limit.

You're able to pull back just enough, his cock springs up with a little bounce. Craig slows down just enough to let you talk, but you can tell he's not happy about it. The way his grip on your shirt tightens, you're sure he'll rip it soon.

"If I snap my fingers, you stop, okay?" You say giving him the okay. He caresses your face and presses a kiss onto your face, letting you know he understands the boundaries you've set.

At first, he's careful when he pushes his cock back into your mouth. You reward him with a swirl of your tongue, rubbing against the veins that are popping out.

"He's so needy." Craig huffs as he leans back up. The assault on your neck stops, but he's left it covered in bright red and purple marks. No amount of makeup will cover up what he's done.

You don't need to see him to know that he's smirking at it. Taking pride in the fact that he's marked you up. Or the pride making Clyde blush from his comment.  Craig's hips snap back into you, the force much sharper than his previous lazy thrusts. They're calculated, each time he pushes deep inside you he hits that spot that has you seeing stars. Clyde's hips take up the same pace, shoving his cock into the back of your throat.

Tears begin to well up in your eyes, trickling down your cheeks. Moans turn to muffled cries, yet everything feels too good to stop. They're rough paced fucking brings your mind to a haze. All you can focus on is feeling good and making them feel good.

Craig's close, you can tell from the way he starts to lose rhythm. He's having a harder time controlling those grunts and growls. A hard time not leaving bruises on your skin from how rough he's holding onto you. He's long since let your shirt go, instead grabbing onto the back of the couch. But he waits until he feels that familiar clench around his cock. The way your walls clamp down around him as you cum. The only warning being the high-pitched muffled moan that gets swallowed by Clyde.

His hips slam into you one more time before he pulls out. Grabbing the base of his cock, he shoots that hot thick load onto your back. Heavy amounts of cum drip down your spine making you whine and shiver. Clyde can't take his eyes off the way his partner paints your backside. It makes a trail of drool slip down his chin.

The poor man can't do it anymore, he can't stop his eyes from rolling up to the back of his head. Not when your moans vibrate up him and your throat tightens from choking on him. He needs this release.

"I'm gonna cum baby. Please, let me cum. Let me cum in your mouth." Clyde all but cries in between panting. His begging dissolves into your name and the word please over and over again.

His flickering eyes catch yours again. It's when you give him a little wink and a hum, his cock violently twitches and cum spills from his tip. His cum is sweeter than normal, it makes it easier to swallow.

Slowly he pulls out of your mouth with one final whimper. It isn't until Craig swipes his thumb over his cheek that you realize he had tears streaming down them. Clyde presses his cheek into Craig's hand and lets out a pleased sigh. Once he knows Clyde is okay, Craig stands up and goes to get a towel to help clean your back. He does the same to your face, swiping away the left-over tears.

"Feeling better?" Clyde asks as he helps pull your underwear up. "Nice and relaxed?"

You nod and rest your head against his chest. "You've got good ideas sometimes."

"I've got wrinkles on my brain." He smirks to himself, taking your little praise miles.

Craig comes back after tossing the towel in the dirty laundry with a large blanket. He throws it over both of you before climbing in next to you. He lays his head down on Clyde's and grabs the tv remote.

"Kitchen Nightmare or Hell’s Kitchen?"

"Kitchen Nightmares! I need some petty British accents after my orgasm denial!"

You scrunch up your nose at Clyde’s comment. Almost wanting to pull back. "Smooth brain behavior."

"Smooth brain behavior." Craig chimes in.

The three of you relax into the couch, almost ready for the group nap that comes with the afterglow of love making. That is until inspiration strikes you again. Your eyes light up and you go to wiggle out of their hold. But Craig's arms are faster, they keep you firm against his chest. Clyde's hands come down a moment later, cupping your hips.

"Nope. You're staying right here."

"Guys! No! I just figured out how I'm gonna get that chapter finished! You gotta let me go! I gotta do it!" Your pleads are wasted, like they're not even heard.

"No. You're warm and I'm tired."

"That's not my fault or my problem."

"I'm making it your problem. Sit still."

"You know Tucker bear isn't going to let go. You're fighting a losing battle babe." Craig at least has the decency to let Clyde finish before pinching him. You know Clyde's nickname for him makes him grumpy. His little yelp makes you giggle.

"Fine....at least until you fall asleep."

"Look if you think you can get out of his hold, then be my guest. You earned it at that point." Clyde's smirk returns. He throws his leg over yours and tucks it in between Craig's knees.

"Fuck you." Your eyes narrow up at him. He's not as slick as he thinks he is, trying to cage you in with a sleepy Craig.

"Again? So soon. You're insatiable babe. Let us recover first." Clyde presses a kiss into the top of your head, pulling back before you can headbutt him.

His hand guides your head back down onto his chest and he just chuckles. It doesn't take long before Craig is passed out with his head nuzzled into the curve of your waist. Holding you like a teddy bear against his chest. Clyde's smile grows when he sees you trying to fight off sleep. But it eventually takes you and you lose the battle. He turns the tv down just a bit, deciding to join the both of you.

That chapter can wait another day.

[titan-fodder]

Pyroclastic (Mike Zacharias x Reader)

Summary: Some would argue that the park is dead, but you know better; it’s livelier than it has been in hundreds of thousands of years, a shuddering, breathing monster finally rising to its feet after an eternity of slumber. Soon, it will open its mouth in an earth-shattering scream, and then, everyone will see.

Not dead; just waking up.

Rating: E (explicit)

Word Count: ~19.5K

Warnings: slow burn, friends to lovers, Eruri, implied Mobuhan, spelling Miche ‘Mike’, swearing, fighting, lots of nerdy shit, explicit sexual content, breeding kink

A/N: This is my contribution to the Smut Pile’s Apocalypse collab. I urge everyone to check out all the pieces on the masterlist. A big thanks to @pleasantanathema​ and @whats-her-quirk​ for being about as excited about this as I was, to @shadowworks​ for always encouraging me when I take on projects too big for my own good, and to @mindninjax​ who volunteered her husband’s expertise on this. I’m pretty proud of this piece and had a blast writing and researching for it. This is by no means scientifically accurate, but I did my best to make it realistic (as in I watched Supervolcano again and spent a lot of time on the USGS website). Also, I have been to Yellowstone exactly one (1) time in my life and was terrified the entire time which is where my fixation with it comes from. 

Enjoy~

GLOSSARY

Caldera - large basin-shaped volcanic depression with a diameter many times larger than its included volcanic vents; commonly formed when magma is withdrawn or erupted from a shallow, underground magma reservoir.*

Pyroclastic flow - A hot (typically >800 °C), chaotic mixture of rock fragments, gas, and ash that travels rapidly (tens of meters per second) away from a volcanic vent or collapsing flow front.*

Tephra -  pieces of all fragments of rock ejected into the air by an erupting volcano.

VEI - The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) is a relative measure of the explosiveness of volcanic eruptions.*

*definitions taken from USGS website

4  Y E A R S  B E F O R E 

Levi looks pissed when he’s on screen. He looks pissed all the time, but he looks especially pissed when he’s made to stand in front of pointed cameras and outstretched microphones. 

You can’t blame him; it’s not actually his job to deal with the press, but some years ago, Erwin had twisted his arm this way and that and convinced Levi to take over conferences.

“They understand you better,” he’d said. “You enunciate better than me. We can’t have people misunderstanding me and panicking, can we?” The blond had purposely spoken with an accent thicker than usual, and Levi had called him every name under the sun, but in the end, he’d relented, and now…

“Dr. Ackermann! Dr. Ackermann! Is it true that this has been the largest earthquake in Yellowstone since Hebgen Lake?” 

Levi squints, actually cringes at the question, then waves one of his small, bony hands. “Hebgen Lake was a major quake—7.2 on the Richter scale. This was only a 5.3, and yeah, it’s been a while since the park has had a quake larger than a three, but that doesn’t mean—”

“So, should we be worried about a supereruption?” Another reporter asks, and you clamp a hand over your mouth to keep from laughing as the light leaves your colleague’s eyes. 

Levi’s jaw slides, and he pauses, no doubt to think about how to answer because this is a delicate question, one that the general public always reads extremely far into. He’s good at keeping his expression blank, at least, probably another reason Erwin requested he take over interviews. 

“Listen,” he starts off, slate eyes locking onto the largest camera in front of him. “Yellowstone is a hub of seismic energy. It wouldn’t be the park we know and love today if it wasn’t shaking and letting off steam like it usually does, right?” This gains a few relieved chuckles from the crowd of journalists. 

“Was this earthquake bigger than the ones we’re used to? Yes. Are we monitoring each and every tremor that we pick up? Also, yes. So, don’t make yourself sick worryin’ about sh—stuff you can’t control. We’ll let you know if it’s time to worry.” He sucks his teeth for a second, waiting for his advice to wash over everyone, then adds, “Keep a bug-out bag packed, though. Not because of the volcano or anything. Just because… The world is crazy and so are people, and it’s always good to be prepared.”

They take it as a joke, laugh a little louder as Levi steps down from the podium, but you’ve worked with him long enough to know he had made the comment with serious intent. It’s a lot easier to fly out of town at a moment’s notice when you already have the necessities packed, and though he won't tell them all the facts this early on, there’s a chance that they will eventually have to evacuate, yes. 

“I fucking hate that big, blond bastard,” is the first thing Levi tells you when he’s within earshot, much less well-spoken in casual situations than when his face is being broadcasted. “Voht iff they dunt understahnd me, Lebi?” He mimics your boss badly then pantomimes an uppercut with a dramatic grunt. 

“Why’d you make him sound Russian?”

“I was trying to make him sound stupid ‘cause that’s what he is.”

“I have four doctorates,” Erwin states as he falls into step with both of you, finally moving from his little hiding place behind one of the news trucks. “I’m not stupid. And, I do not sound like that.”

“That’s what you think,” Levi grumbles, doing his best to shrug away from the larger man when Erwin slings an arm around his shoulders. It doesn’t work, and Levi ends up stumbling to keep up with Erwin’s longer strides, which only serves to irritate him further. 

“You looked good up there. I mean, you sounded good. Sounded sure, comforting…” 

You shake your head at Erwin’s obvious struggle to just not be the big weirdo that he is, but it sure is painful to watch sometimes. 

Governor Zachary takes over the conference, leaving the three of you to make your way inside the lodge that the emergency broadcast was set up outside of. Levi and Erwin bicker through the lobby then through the back doors that lead you to the jeep that you all swing yourselves into. 

The sky is still a little dusty with shaken sediment, and some of the park rangers are setting up barricades at the mouths of a couple hiking trails leading to what is now a moderately large crevasse that’s opened up in the Biscuit Basin. 

Other than that, the park doesn’t feel much different as you ride through it on your way back to the lab. The Summer sun brings with it your favorite 70 degree days, and if it weren’t for Erwin’s questionable driving, you’d be tempted to hang half your body out the window just to feel the warmth better. The faint smell of sulfur in the air is soothing at this point—the smell of activity, the smell of science, the smell of home. Geysers are still shooting boiling water to the skies. The mud pots are still bubbling like ominous cauldrons. That earthquake couldn’t have shaken too much out of place if all the geothermal spots are still behaving as they normally do.

The tires kick up rocks and dust as Erwin brakes dramatically outside of the base, right behind another familiar jeep that makes Levi roll his eyes. 

“Great. The boy scout’s here.” 

“Oh, be nice, you little grump,” Erwin chastises him. “Mike’s been nothing but kind to us since he started working here.”

“Yeah, except for the time he misjudged the depth of that puddle and—”

“Splashed you with mud, yeah, yeah, we know, Levi,” you finish for him as you slide out of the vehicle. “You bring it up every time you see the guy. We know.”

“And, didn’t he apologize afterward?” Erwin prompts.

Levi doesn’t answer, but you respond for him: “Profusely. Drove him back to the lab, offered him his spare change of clothes—”

“Useless,” Levi hisses. “The dude’s a giant.”

“Not his fault he’s…” You try not to sound too giddy when you step through the door and see the man in question. “Enormous.” 

You don’t know Mike very well, one of the newer park rangers but with a background in geology which leads him to your neck of the woods very often. The few conversations you have had with him have all been pleasant. He’s soft-spoken but obviously intelligent with good instincts about both the park’s weather and wildlife. 

He’s also the only ranger you’ve seen actually pull off the dorky park uniform, but that could just be because the different shades of green look good against his tan skin and bring out his light eyes. Even taller than Erwin and a little broader too, M. Zacharias (as his little, metal name tag reads) is a slab of a man, and yet, when he grins, it’s almost boyish. 

“Hey, Mike, what’s up?” You greet.

He turns his head to look at you, flipping shaggy hair from his face, then offers one of the soft smiles you were hoping for. “Just came to drop off some samples for Hange.”

“Disgusting,” Levi mutters just for you to hear as he passes, and you shove him hard enough to make him stumble and flip you off. 

“How’d the press conference go?” Hange asks, tossing a small, corked flask of mud from hand to hand—what you assume to be the sample—while twirling in their computer chair. The last member of your team, Moblit Berner, glances away from the holographic model he’s studying to hear the answer. 

“I think it went well,” Erwin says. “Levi handled it like a champion, as always.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, old man,” the brunet bites out, joining Moblit next to the expensive projection table in the middle of the lab. “What’re we lookin’ at?”

“I’m just running the numbers from today’s quake. The possible effects it had underground.”

“And?”

Moblit is quiet for a beat too long.

“Mobs, what is it?” 

You, Erwin, and Hange make your way over to the table, staring at the laser-lit park model and the chamber underneath it. 

“Well, in most of the scenarios, it’s fine,” Moblit tries. “Nothing to worry about.”

“And, in the others?” 

He looks to Erwin, as everyone does in times of concern. Thick eyebrows pinched together, your boss motions to the hologram. “Show us.”

Moblit punches a few things in on the app he uses to control the model, then takes a deep breath and lets it play out for everyone to see, including Mike who slowly makes his way over, curiosity apparently getting the best of him. 

At first, nothing looks to change, just a living, breathing reenactment of what you were seeing today—every geyser, every fumarole, every little rumble, every minute rise and fall of the ground sped up to be detected with the human eye. 

And then, it stops. 

“Why did it…”

“Just watch,” Moblit shushes you. 

The outline of the ground fractures in several different places, statistics for different earthquakes blinking above. The known vents of the park—every geyser, mudpot, and fumarole—are rendered inactive, and under it all, that massive chamber everyone is always so worried about begins to bulge upward and outward, growing larger and larger until…

The map shorts out, flickering then disappearing entirely, leaving the six of you staring at the space where it was shining just seconds ago. 

“Was that…” 

Erwin inhales deeply through his nose before exhaling the word that will eventually bring the nation to its knees.

"Supereruption."

3  Y E A R S  B E F O R E

Even through the thick headset, the whir of the helicopter blades is loud, a rhythm pulsing through the air strong enough to be felt in your chest right alongside your beating heart. 

Thankfully, Mike’s deep voice is loud and clear when he speaks, nodding his head to the right, “Look down at about two o’clock.”

You follow his command, tilting your head and peering down at an empty field. 

“I don’t see anything,” you say.

The microphone hanging in front of his mouth picks up his chuckle, and the sound of it echoes in your ears, making you grin albeit a little confused. 

“Exactly. That’s a big spot for bison this time of year.”

“Then why aren’t they here?”

Mike lets the chopper hover for a while, both hands still on their respective control levers. 

“Ground’s been moving too much,” he says after a few seconds of silent staring. You’d known the answer already but hearing the wildlife expert confirm it fills you with a little more dread than you’d originally harbored. “They feel things we don’t, the tiny quakes, the tremors. Stuff you only think the seismograph picks up—they feel all of it.”

“They know what’s coming,” you say more to yourself than to him. 

Mike offers you one of those charming, close-lipped smiles. “When in doubt, trust the animals.” 

A line you’ve heard him say a few times now. Mike loves everything that lives in the park, from all the common lake trout and sand cranes to the endangered grizzly bears and gray wolves. 

Trust the animals, he says. Because he trusts them. Because he loves them. 

“You wanna fly over the Grand Prismatic?” Mike asks, pulling you from your thoughts, and when you look over, you find your reflection in his mirrored aviators as he stares at you. 

His mouth quirks up at the corners, causing yours to do the same, and you nod. “Yeah, always.”

It’s your favorite view in the park, the colorful spring from up above. Mike had learned that a few months ago, and now whenever you ride in the chopper with him, he makes sure to pass over the beautiful attraction just for you.

Nearly 200° Fahrenheit with a pH of 8.7, the pool, while still dangerous due to its temperature, is one of the more moderate dangers of the national park, tame in comparison to the Norris Geyser Basin with temperatures up to 459° (a thousand meters below the surface, anyway) and a pH of about two. It’s dissolved bones—human bones. And, would claim even more if given the chance. 

You suppose that’s expected for a basin that’s sitting over a chamber of 1,500° molten magma. 

The Grand Prismatic is just as stunning today as it is every other. Its outer orange and yellow rings darken to greens and blues the further inward you look, thick steam rising from all over but more condensed over the middle. 

It was one of the park's biggest attractions, tourists flocking to the spring with their cameras, too stricken by the vivid chromaticism to listen or read about the temperatures and microbials that are responsible for the colors in the first place. 

As you hover above now, just to the side of the steam, your heart aches. There are no ignorant tourists to take pictures of the pool, the boardwalks and trails to these hot spots now blocked off once it became apparent that the earthquake that took place last year was not the last of its kind. Your team as well as the park rangers went to the park board as a unit and suggested that tourists needed to be kept away from as many geothermal features as possible, all of you with the same fear in mind: someone (or many someones) falling in. 

It's always been a risk, but now, with weekly rumblings, that risk has multiplied exponentially. All it takes is someone losing their footing on the boardwalk over the Norris Geyser Basin for serene sightseeing to turn into tragedy, and that's on a good day. Throw a 5.7 earthquake into the mix, and the park could lose an entire tour group to the heat and acid. 

It's just not a risk any of you are willing to take anymore. 

Most of the park remains open. Old Faithful continues to draw people in by the thousands. They sit and watch boiling water shoot into the sky every hour or so, clapping happily at the sight, unaware of the way you and your team hold your breath in wait, hoping for the geyser to go off on its usual schedule. 

One day it will stop. One day they'll all stop. And, then… 

"I can't believe it's all gonna be gone one day," you muse, blinking down at the prismatic pool for as long as Mike will let you. 

"Nah," the man disagrees. "Not gone. Buried, yeah, but not gone."

You snort, turn back to him with a grin and roll your eyes. "Yeah, no big deal. Just miles of pyroclast and ash, probably snow when we get thrust into another ice age 'cause of the crazy climate swing..."

"Alright, alright, I get it. The sun dimeth and the land sinketh."

"Gusheth forth steam and gutting fire," you continue grimly.

Mike turns the helicopter back toward the landing zone, saying nothing else and leaving you to take in the sights below. You're grateful for the silence; it's good for processing, for preparation. 

And, you're grateful for Mike, one of your best friends at this point—soft and kind despite his intimidating stature, smart as a whip, and just as stunning, if not more so, than the Grand Prismatic. 

"Any idea what you'll do afterward?" He asks, holding a hand out to you to help you from your seat in the chopper. 

"Not really. Survive, I guess." 

You land just a little too close to him, your face nearly coming in direct contact with his broad chest, but Mike steps back just in time, making you extend your arm, still connected at the fingers, before he drops your hand. 

"A feat all on its own," he says flatly, but he perks up as you both begin walking to the park ranger base. "Maybe you'll find another team to work on."

"I don't want to find another team," you tell him honestly. "This is my team. This is my home."

Mike hums, an understanding little sound, body warm when he gently bumps into you on the gravel pathway to the lodge. "Yeah, I know."

A geophysics major at UCLA with a specific interest in volcanology, getting to intern with the Erwin Smith at the Yellowstone supervolcano had been a dream come true. You'd expected to gain knowledge and experience—nothing more and nothing less. You'd lived out here for one summer during your graduate program, clocking the field experience you needed to get your degree and taking in everything you could. 

Back then, it felt like all you did was ask questions and get in the way. By the end of that summer, you knew every variation of Levi Ackermann's irritated sighs, every different pitch of Hange Zoe's shouts and how they correlated with their experiments. Moblit had been the newest permanent addition and was even more nervous than he is now, trying and failing to keep up with Hange (which he's much better at doing these days). 

They were all fantastic, but it had been the lead researcher who'd reeled you in. You'd never met anyone as passionate as Dr. Erwin Smith, captivated by the monster underneath the park and thrilled to share his brain with anyone willing to hold their hands out for it. Hell, he'd even helped you with your Master's thesis—hydrothermally altered mineralized systems and their seismic reflections. 

When you graduated, the Yellowstone team was the first you reached out to and the first you heard back from. Erwin said you'd been a perfect fit even as a student (which you hadn't exactly believed but definitely blushed at anyway). Mobs, Hange, and even Levi seemed happy to have you back. It was like you were meant to be here. In this park. With all of them. 

Studying the volcano and all of its properties has always been like breathing to you—natural and necessary. You move when it moves, every shake and tremor a heartbeat in your own chest, every shooting geyser like blood in your veins. The mudpots are your bubbling emotions, the fumaroles, your sense of building pressure and release.

You feel at home in the park because you trust it. Because you love it. 

You don't have room for another team in your heart, but as you walk inside the lodge next to Mike, watching as he takes off his sunglasses and grins at one of the other rangers, you think you at least have room for one more person. 

2  Y E A R S  B E F O R E

The lab has two extra bodies in it—two extra unwelcome bodies who keep getting in your way and touching things as they ask questions that no one has the answers to yet.

“When did you say this was going to happen?” The rotund state governor, Dhalis Zachary, asks for the second time since arriving, picking up a sample test tube that Moblit immediately plucks from his hand with a nervous smile.

“As I said before, it’s difficult to place a concrete timeline on an event like this,” Erwin tells the white-haired man. “We don’t exactly have in depth records of the last three eruptions, so all we have to go off of is the earth itself and our simulations.”

At the edge of the projection table, Nile Dok, FEMA director, cautiously waves a hand through the holographic model displayed in front of him. He obviously doesn’t think anyone is watching him because the slender man jumps in surprise when you snort at your desk, and his angular cheekbones take on a pink tint of embarrassment from having been caught.

He clears his throat, straightens the knot that sits over it, then turns to face Erwin and prompts, “Three eruptions before. One was a lot bigger than the others, though, right?”

Erwin nods. “Huckleberry Ridge. Over two million years ago.”

“We’re hoping—if a supereruption is to occur—it’ll be closer to the size of Mesa Falls,” you pipe up.

“Which one was that?” Zachary asks.

“One-point-three million years ago, two-hundred-and-eighty cubic kilometers of erupted materials…” Levi lists off as he makes his way over to the table with a sanitary wipe in hand. He doesn’t like people in his space, doesn’t like strangers in the lab, even (especially) government officials (“They leave fingerprints, and they breathe on everything, and they waste our fucking time.”).

“Two-hundred-and-eighty cubic kilometers… That’s the best-case scenario?” Zachary looks to Erwin, eyebrows raised high over his wire glasses.

Erwin stares at him for a moment, contemplating the best and easiest way to explain this to someone who has no real experience in the field. Eventually, he settles on, “Moblit, can you run some simulations for me?”

“Of course, sir,” the mousy scientist agrees, phone in hand and pulling up the app before the boss can even finish speaking.

Everyone gathers around the table except for Levi who steps away from it, grumbling under his breath about coming back to clean it later. He at least hits the lights, making the model easier to see as Erwin starts listing off numbers and scenarios.

“The best case, actually, is only one vent opening, maybe two. It would be something comparable to Mount St. Helen’s, though probably a bit bigger, say point-five cubic kilometers of material. It would be necessary to evacuate the park and this region of the state at the very least.”

Zachary hums, “And, how likely is that?”

Erwin shrugs. “Hard to say right now. As the earthquakes increase, though, the likelihood of a small eruption like that, uh, dwindles.”

“Small,” Nile scoffs.

Zachary makes a similar noise, slightly louder, a little more offended, then rattles off, “Mount St. Helen’s killed almost sixty people. The blast, the ash, the lahars—” as if you don’t all already know.

“No one’s discounting the damage of the eruption,” Levi cuts him off. “But, if you’re sweatin’ at those numbers, all due respect, Governor, I don’t know if you’re ready to stomach the rest of this little light show.”

The older man cuts his eyes at Levi who squints right back at him, only turn and shuffle over to his desk when Erwin waves him further away, a silent way of saying ‘keep your smart mouth away from the authority figures’.

“Moving on,” you cough, twirling a finger to get both Erwin and Mobs to continue.

“Yes,” Erwin nods. “So, any eruption is dependent on how much magma in the chamber is eruptible magma. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean it will come out.”

Moblit punches in a few numbers to show what a small-scale eruption would look like, first with one vent then with two.

“With just that amount, even with two vents, it isn’t enough to completely destabilize the chamber.”

“And, destabilizing it would be… bad…” Nile states more than asks, brown eyes lit up by the model in front of him.

“No shit,” everyone hears Levi grumble from his desk, and Erwin huffs and looks at you, expression a little exasperated as he jerks a thumb back toward the grumpy man in yet another one of his silent motions— a plea in this case—'go take care of him’ which you do.

Levi is slumped in his computer chair, arms crossed over his chest as he peers over his desktop at the four men gathered around the hologram.

“Should’a just gone with Hange and the boy scout to collect samples when I had the chance,” he mutters.

“You hate collecting samples, especially sulfur samples. Which is what they’re getting now.”

“Yeah, well I hate these guys even more.” He says it quietly enough so that they won’t be able to hear, and even if they could, both Governor Zachary and Nile are too invested in the information that the scientists are giving them to pay attention to anything else.

“What’d they ever do to you?” You push, curious now because sure, Levi has always been the surliest of the team, but it’s rare that he’s surly and loud about it.

“Nothing. They have done nothing because they don’t belong here. They have no idea—no fucking idea—what’s about to happen.” You can hear his frustration even through his whispers. “Best case scenarios? Why are we even going over those? We know damn well that we’re not looking at one or two vents. And, we’re not lookin’ at Mesa Falls either.”

Letting out a long breath, you lean against Levi’s desk, ignoring the way he grunts in protest.

“I know. I’m sure Erwin and Moblit will prep them for the worst case.”

“There’s no prepping for it,” Levi hisses, gray eyes flashing. “We’re talking about—"

“…A nationwide cataclysmic event.” Both of you register Erwin’s voice at the same time and glance at the other group to find them staring at the lit-up simulation of the Huckleberry Ridge eruption.

“Which would pretty quickly turn into a worldwide problem,” Moblit adds quietly.

“Worldwide?” You hear Nile question in a low but very alarmed tone. “Because of the ash?”

“Well, yes, but, it’s not just ash,” Erwin clarifies, diving into his explanation of tephra and how dangerous it is. He reminds the men how far it traveled after the Mount St. Helen’s eruption since they’ve apparently latched onto that one, then challenges, “Now imagine an eruption about… six hundred times that size.”

“Six…” Nile swallows, turning his entire, slender frame toward Erwin and repeating, “Six hundred times bigger? That’s what we’re expecting?”

In his little rolling chair, Levi’s chest puffs a bit, finally satisfied that the gravity of the situation is beginning to set in. “Maybe they aren’t as dumb as they look.”

Erwin is about to say something, right hand lifted with his index finger extended in a very matter-of-fact way, but before he can manage to get anything out, the door to the lab swings open and Hange walks in, Mike just behind them carrying all the collected samples in what almost looks like a lunchbox.

“We’re back—” Hange stops, taking in their surroundings, the lack of lights, the bright projection, the grim energy, then shouts, “Hey, get some Pink Floyd playing! Like a planetarium in here! Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me…”

“Dr. Zoe,” Moblit clears his throat. “We were just going over the utter devastation a supereruption could wreak on the country.”

“Oh, were you?” Hange pauses, brow rising, lips puckering into a sour expression. “My bad.”

Raising a hand to your forehead, you laugh to yourself for a few seconds before shaking the untimely amusement off and making your way over to Mike to take the sample kit from him.

“Careful,” he warns jokingly as he passes it off. “Got some very fragile gas and mud in there.”

“Yeah?” You tease. “So, I shouldn’t, like, shake it or anything?”

“Definitely should not shake it. Here, here, just—” He takes it back, grinning broadly as he tells you, “I think it’s best if you let a professional handle such dangerous compounds.”

All the doom-and-gloom you had been feeling mere seconds ago evaporates entirely, and you let out a frankly embarrassing giggle as you watch Mike very carefully set the samples down on Hange’s lab table, making a show of securing them and whispering a final, “Stay,” so that you clamp a hand over your mouth.

Levi groans in disgust, and, at the same time, Erwin mutters an apology to Zachary and Nile for, “… employing a team of children.”

Your face heats in embarrassment, but it doesn’t keep you from smiling at Mike when he saunters back over, looking rather sheepish himself.

“Lunchtime soon, right?”

“Yeah, in a bit—”

“Please go now, for the love of God,” Erwin sighs. “And, take Levi and Hange with you.”

None of you need telling twice, quickly grabbing wallets and home-packed meals before rushing from the lab before your boss decides to murder one or all of you.

Levi steers Hange toward his car, leaving you alone with Mike which you don’t mind in the slightest. You take most of your lunches with him anyway, some of your breakfasts and dinners too, so this is simply part of your daily routine.

“I’ve got some sandwiches packed already. Wanna hit Mount Haynes?” He suggests, sliding into the driver’s seat of his jeep.

You point a fingergun at him and nod. “I like the way you think, sir.”

He takes a very specific route, avoiding any damaged areas, having to veer off of the actual road at a certain point to take a safer path he and other rangers have made. You watch the mountains of the park grow closer and closer, what you know to be the ridge of Yellowstone’s caldera looming nearer.

Mike parks at the base of your intended destination then reaches into the backseat to grab the aforementioned lunch. You have no intentions of actually hiking to the top of the mountain—don’t have the time or the will, honestly—but as soon as the two of you have worked up a sweat and are at a decent enough elevation to look out on the park underneath, you drop to the dusty ground and take it all in.

Even from this distance, you can see some of the gases and steam in the air. That’s the only movement there is, though, save for the occasional ranger vehicle zipping along. The land seems almost barren at this point. The grass is still green. The sun is still bright as it is every Summer.

But, there are no animals, no tourists, no real life. Instead, it’s been replaced with cracks and crevasses, with barricades and warning signs.

Trail Closed

Road Closed

Danger: Keep Out

It’s been almost six months since the park decided to shut down to the public, and if you’re being honest, it should have closed its doors long before. It took people dying to bring the board to their senses, an earthquake that shook the ground for minutes, the crust of the earth splitting right under the historical lodge that so many loved.

Fourteen casualties. Twenty-nine injured.

That’s what it took.

You barely recognize the park now, feel like the last endangered species left within its boundaries. It’s just the research team, some of the rangers, and the occasional outside visitor (board members, government officials, or press that gets waved away).

Some would argue that the park is dead, but you know better; it’s livelier than it has been in hundreds of thousands of years, a shuddering, breathing monster finally rising to its feet after an eternity of slumber. Soon, it will open its mouth in an earth-shattering scream, and then, everyone will see.

Not dead; just waking up.

“You look tired.” Mike’s voice may as well be carried by the breeze, light and low, refreshing as it passes over you, and you flash him a smile while nodding.

“Exhausted.”

He grabs a sandwich from the lunchbox, and you fish hand sanitizer from one of the many pockets on your pants, squirting it into your hand first then holding it out to the man beside you.

“Seems like you spend more time here than at your apartment.”

“Oh, most definitely.” You unwrap what looks to be turkey and pepper-jack and try to ignore the way your stomach flips at the fact that it’s your favorite simple-sandwich-combo and that Mike remembered. “Lot to do in the lab. Obviously.” You take a bite—no mustard, only mayo—and feel some of the tension between your shoulder blades begin to unwind.

“Figure you wouldn’t want it any other way, though,” Mike comments before chomping into his own sandwich.

“Right you are. I mean, end of the world, potentially. Scary stuff, but also…” You swallow, lick your lips and stare out at the landscape in front of you as you grapple with words. “It’s like… I’m terrified, but I feel like I’m exactly where I need to be. Like…”

This is how I’m supposed to go out, you almost say, but you’re smart to keep it to yourself. That’s a thought for you and you alone, one you haven’t shared with anyone because nobody else would understand except maybe Erwin.

“This is what you’re meant to do,” Mike supplies, and you look over at him. “This is what you love. I get that.”

And, he’s right. But, the park and volcanology—those aren’t the only things you love.

Mike sits there, legs crossed like an overgrown kindergartener, shaggy hair blowing in the wind, light green eyes so, incredibly warm and bright, and it feels like you can’t breathe anymore, like your lungs and throat are already full of ash that hasn’t fallen yet, tight with dying declarations you can’t bring yourself to make.

“Have you ever heard of Katia and Maurice Krafft?” You ask, and yes, your voice does feel somewhat strangled, the space behind your eyes burning just a little hotter than usual.

Mike shakes his head, takes another bite, and gives you his undivided attention.

“They were these French volcanologists who got really famous for the pictures and footage they took of erupting volcanoes. The recordings they got for the community were—I mean, they were pioneers. They changed the game. There’s photos and videos of them just—” you gesture nebulously with both your hands, nearly flinging your sandwich off the side of the mountain and making Mike reach out and catch your wrist before you can.

“Please, no feeding the park’s wildlife, ma’am,” he jokes easily, and you have to shove the sandwich into your mouth to keep from giggling like a schoolgirl. Mike shows the smallest of satisfied smiles, completely unaware of his own charm, and it’s maddening and intoxicating, and it’s all you can do to keep talking about the brave scientists.

“Anyway,” you continue. “Katia would get, like, within feet of lava flows. Just walkin’ right beside ‘em in her special heat suit. And, they’d wear protective helmets because of, you know—”

“Explosions. Falling rocks.”

 “Yeah, exactly. They were just there, documenting it all happening, nerves of fucking steel. Katia was usually the one gathering samples and stuff while Maurice recorded, but he was right in the thick of it too. This badass couple learning and adventuring together.”

Mike eventually questions, “What happened to them?” but you’re sure he knows the answer when you deflate a bit.

“Mount Unzen eruption—got caught in the pyroclastic flow. Died instantly.”

“At least they were doing what they loved,” he says, and you nod.

You’re silent for a while, neither of you eating but both of you staring. You think about the Kraffts often, especially now with Yellowstone’s imminent eruption. Doing what they loved… They died for their research, and though you never got the chance to meet them or even speak with anyone who has met them, you have a feeling they wouldn’t have wanted it to happen any other way.

“Just so you know,” Mike gets your attention, and when you look over at him, your heart swells.

The sun is reflected in his eyes, making light green glow with more than just warmth and sincerity, and god, you’re so in love with him, you can feel it in your bone marrow. You ache for him, you pine for him, and you want to live for him, but how…

“I’d film you walking next to a lava flow,” he tells you. Despite the little smile playing at his lips, you know he isn’t kidding.

Tears prick the corners of your eyes, and you have to look away before any actually fall, but your sniffle definitely gives you away. You swear internally, berating yourself for getting emotional in front of Mike, though you can’t say you’re too surprised. Your stress levels have been through the roof, working non-stop for months now, the government breathing down your neck. People have died and the park is literally fracturing before your eyes, and you’re not ready to see it end—to see everything as you know it come to an end.

“Pretty dusty up here,” Mike comments while nudging you. You find him holding out a handkerchief, letting you take it then turning his gaze forward again to allow you a little privacy to dab at your eyes.

Mike has senses beyond the normal human spectrum. He has a sense for weather unlike anyone you’ve ever seen before, from thunderstorms and tornadoes to record snowfall and, on a few occasions, earthquakes. You can still vividly remember being in the lab the day of the fatal quake that damaged the hotel, seeing Mike suddenly look at the seismogram seconds before it started picking up the first tremors. Levi had called it “freakish”, but you had called him “incredible”.

It’s not just the weather, though. Mike has a way with people and animals too, like he can gauge their emotions and act appropriately. It’s how he knows what days he can push Levi’s buttons and get away with it, how he knows when Hange is too busy and overwhelmed to gather samples themself, so he gathers some for them.

And, it’s how he knows exactly when he needs to pull you into a hug, like when the team realized the chances of a small to moderate eruption were next to nothing, like when he had told you how many of those hotel guests had gotten hurt and died and you’d stared at him with wide, watery eyes, and like right now, as you think about Katia and Maurice Krafft, the fate they met and how yours might not be any different.

Will you die doing what you love? Will you be able to welcome it as bravely as they did?

You rest your head on Mike’s shoulder, letting yourself melt into his side, his arm sturdy and grounding where it wraps around you, and as you look out over the sunlit grounds, one last question plagues your mind:

Does a pyroclastic flow burn as hot as the molten feelings inside of you?

You can’t imagine anything does.

1  Y E A R  B E F O R E

The message is broadcasted straight from the state capitol, Levi's expression grim as he reads off the paper hidden on the podium. 

"I know all of this sounds apocalyptic—the ash and blackouts and probable climate change, and it is scary, but we still have some time, so there's no reason to panic. We just urge that if you haven't already started preparing, now's the time. Please."

A couple steps behind him and a little to the right is Erwin, standing tall and nodding at everything Levi says as if he's providing some kind of credibility. 

"Considering we're looking at a VEI eight, the team of volcanologists at Yellowstone have recommended that all of Wyoming and its neighboring states evacuate, but I'll let Homeland Security go over all that."

As he turns to step back, the crowd of reporters and journalists begin shouting out questions, and Levi grimaces as he moves to stand next to Erwin who places a hand in his shoulder. 

You can't hear everything being asked from where you're watching at the lab, but you can't imagine it's anything good judging by the way Levi's frown just keeps growing. 

Fortunately, the vaguely familiar secretary of Homeland Security, Dot Pixis, takes the stand quickly, holding up wrinkled hands in an attempt to calm the crowd. 

"We have some more very important information to cover in this address, so if you'll allow me…" He clears his throat and straightens a stack of papers on the podium, no doubt a huge list of protocols that the public will only half listen to. 

You swivel back and forth in your chair as you watch the thin man on screen, his voice scratchy but strangely soothing as he outlines rationing, supply storage, and evacuation routes. 

"We're also negotiating with our neighboring countries about opening borders. Now, anyone seeking refuge would still be required to fill out an application for a temporary visa, but—"

"God, you know they gotta love that," you mumble to yourself. 

Hange, tinkering somewhere behind you, laughs and agrees, "Yeah, after decades of treating immigrants like trash, and now we're just knocking on their doors, asking for help. Ridiculous."

"Embarrassing, is what it is." 

It was for whichever government official had to make that call, anyway. You're positive that had been a hard pill to swallow. 

As far as you've heard, the foreign affairs part of this mess is actually going quite well. You'd accompanied Erwin to the big meeting with Canadian officials and watched him and Pixis plead a case for America, emphasizing just how bad the eruption will be "at home", then switched tactics at whiplash speed to go into how countries needed to work together since this wouldn't just be the US's problem in the long run. 

It turned into a rather inspiring speech, if you're being honest, prompted you to text Levi a short, how is E so damn charming all the time? to which he'd responded, Believe me, you're asking the wrong fuckin guy. 

With multiple government agencies now backing the states and setting plans in motion, the impending eruption seems even more real. You thought your stress levels were high before, that your sleep pattern left little to be desired, but oh, you had been wrong. 

Case in point being Mike walking into the lab with a brown paper bag and slightly unpleasant expression as he asks, "Have you eaten today?" 

Your glare has no real meaning as you grumble, "Had a granola bar this morning."

"It's nearly six," he groans, pushing you, chair and all, up to your desk and setting the bag in front of you. "Please eat something before you pass out."

"Okay, okay, Christ. You're more attentive than my mother."

"I met your mom last year, and you and I both know she would be hysterical if she knew how you've been treating yourself lately."

He has a point. In fact, you're glad Mike is naturally quiet and didn't bond too strongly with her, otherwise you have a feeling he would have called her by now to complain. 

The chicken salad sandwich you bite into must be imbued with some kind of magic, because you let out an honest to god moan when you swallow the first bite. 

"Oh my god, what did you put in this?" You ask as you blink up at your best friend. 

Mike snorts and rolls his eyes. "Uh, actual nutrients maybe? Weird how your body needs those."

Hands too busy shoving more food into your mouth, you headbutt him right at the hip, just hard enough to make him grunt and sway. He steadies himself, glances down at you like he's annoyed but ends up breaking into a grin when he catches what you assume to be a piece of chicken salad dotting the corner of your mouth. 

"What am I gonna do with you," he mumbles, wiping it with a gentle thumb. 

Your body warms with both embarrassment and affection, but you can't quite find a response even as your head clears for the first time in about two days. You really do need to start taking better care of yourself. 

The undeniable feeling of being watched makes your neck prickle, and you break Mike's gaze to find Hange staring at both of you, a not-so-subtle smile making their mouth curl mischievously. You have a pretty good idea of what they're thinking, and you're heart starts beating a little faster at the thought of them possibly speaking it out loud, but before they get a chance, Mike's phone rings. 

You catch a glimpse of the name displayed before he picks it up—Gelgar—recognize it and tease, "One of the doomsday preppers, right?" 

Because no matter how much Mike denies it, just like he does now— "They're not doomsday preppers—" you know that his friends are a little odd. Extremely well prepared, but odd. 

"Hey man, what's up?" He answers, stepping away from you. "Isn't it almost two there?" 

You don't try to listen in, just look back to Hange and shake your head when their smile grows. 

"Stop."

"What?" They giggle. "I'm not even doing anything!" 

"You're thinking things, though."

"Well yeah, I'm always thinking things. How else would I have gotten this smart?" They flip their ponytail for emphasis and toss a wink your way, but Hange's voice gets oddly sincere when they tell you, "Seriously, though. You guys should get while the getting's good. I don't know why you haven't jumped each other's bones yet."

You splutter, look around frantically to make sure Mike isn't within earshot, and thank god, he's in the next room over. 

"Hange!" 

"I'm just saying! It's like watching Erwin and Levi from a few years ago. God, that was a nightmare."

"How dare you. I am nothing like—"

"Yeah, yeah. When do they get back in anyway?" 

You both look to the TV that's still playing the live address, easily spotting your missing team members behind Secretary Pixis. 

"Probably not 'til later tonight. Levi's gonna try to talk Erwin into getting a hotel, I bet, but he's gonna wanna come back to the lab and check everything before he goes to bed."

"How do you know he wants to come back?" 

You show a sheepish grin, fishing the chips out of the paper sack Mike brought, then answer, "'Cause that’s what I’d wanna do."

*

It's late. Far too late to be at work, but being at home never feels right these days. It's too quiet, too still, too not the lab. The only time you genuinely enjoy being there is when friends are over for a movie or meal over the weekend. Other than that, you're not at all attached. 

Not the way you are here.

Almost midnight, you move from table to table, working, organizing, just keeping busy. You're very awake, still jittery from the quake that shook the park at around three that day. It lasted for almost three minutes, splitting the ground dangerously close to Old Faithful, and the geyser hasn't gone off since which is troubling. If too many of the geothermal spots stop releasing pressure, the eruption will take place sooner than anticipated. 

It's why you're here so late, pouring over the data, studying the numbers and possible effects. 

You're not alone, though. Erwin is also shuffling around the lab, but he's focused on something else, a project of sorts. 

"Can you come take a look at this?" He calls from the projection table, and you drop what you're doing to join him. 

The model isn't lit up as a hologram, surprisingly. Instead, Erwin has paper blueprints laid, curling at the edges from being rolled up. It takes you a second to realize what you're looking at, but when it comes together, you inhale sharply. 

It's a simple design, a square floorplan with a couple entrances. The only exit looks to lead upward, though, and it's easy to tell that means Erwin wants this to be underground. There are notes scribbled in the blank spaces, 4 meters down, bomb proof top, ventilation, generators, gasoline?, rations < 5yrs, medicine, vitamins, guns. The list goes on, handwriting sloppier and sloppier the more thoughts Erwin had at the time. 

"You think this would be ready in a year?"

Erwin shrugs. "With the right construction team, yes. That one bunker designer…" Erwin snaps, trying to think of the name, but it doesn't come to him. "Whoever—He built ten shelters in two years." 

You stick your hands in your back pockets as you lean over to look closer. It could just be your overworked brain, but it looks like a good design, something someone actually has a chance of surviving in. 

Hearing your name makes you look up again. Erwin has you pinned with one of his serious blue gazes. "No one else will understand, so please keep this plan to yourself."

You nod but venture to ask, "You haven't told Levi?" 

"No," he answers, mouth pulling downward. "It's… Going to be a fight."

"Understandably so. You're basically married to the volcano, though, Erwin."

"So are you."

His eyes are shining as your lips twist into a grimace. He's gotten to know you well over the years. You've always shared a certain bond over Yellowstone, one the other team members just don't have. To them, it's just a job, just science. 

To you and Erwin, though, it's a religion. You're in love with the park, all its secrets and eccentricities. It's your home; it's where you belong. 

"Assuming this does get built," Erwin starts, lifting a thick eyebrow in curiosity. "You would want to stay, right?" 

"You mean, ride out a supereruption? Be the first to see the zone-one damage?" 

Erwin doesn't answer, but he does smile, excitement dancing just below the surface of his stare. 

You feel it too, the urge to throw caution to the wind, to take a chance that could very possibly get you both killed. The Kraffts flash through your mind again, their failed attempt at escape.

A breathless, "Fuck yeah," tumbles from your mouth before you can dwell on the consequences for too long. 

It's time to either live it up or go down in ash and flames. 

6  M O N T H S  B E F O R E 

Yellowstone is unrecognizable. The ground is mostly made up of large crevasses and smaller cracks, debris from fallen buildings left in piles with no one to clean them up. 

The geysers are all inactive at this point, but steam is still rising from the springs, and the mudpots are still bubbling. It's the only thing that's keeping the volcano from erupting. 

The ground shakes multiple times a day, the lab seismographs constantly picking up activity. The little ones don't faze you anymore. You and Mike secure the glass samples to make sure they don't break while Erwin and Levi basically hug their computers. Yours was damaged in the quake that prompted Hange and Moblit to leave—a 6.7 that caused Hange to fall into their desk, breaking their collarbone in the process. After getting Hange pain meds and a sling, the two of them were on a plane to D.C. that same night. 

Every day is another risk taken. Now, it's just you, Erwin, Levi, and Mike. 

The latter two spend most of their days dropping hints about leaving soon as well. Mike has already made plans to fly to Norway and join his not-doomsday prepper friends and brings it up often.

"You should come. See the tulip fields while they're still around."

"Gel and Nana have done a great job setting up the ranch. They wanna let as many people stay as they can." 

"You'd really like them. They bicker like an old married couple, but they're good people."

Levi takes a different approach with Erwin, appeals to the other man's desire to help and protect. 

"We really should head to the homeland security office. They don't know what they're dealing with."

"Dok is an idiot. They need a bigger brain over there for guidance or whatever."

"Your long-term plan will be better than anything those government fucks will come up with anyway."

Every time, you and Erwin gently wave them off with promises of "soon" and "just a little longer." Neither of you breathe a word about staying. Despite the fact that construction on the bunker has not started and you're running out of time, both of you are dead set on the plan: go down with the park. 

You're found out before it can come to fruition, however. 

The remaining team is sitting in the lab, busy with their own little projects, when Mike looks up suddenly, takes a deep breath, then says, "Earthquake," just as the seismogram starts going wild. 

He pulls you from your chair quickly, dropping to the ground and bringing you with him to crawl under your desk. On your knees, your body curls in on itself and you lock your hands over the back of your neck as the floor beneath you starts to rumble violently. 

You can hear Levi cursing from somewhere as the sound of glass shattering rings throughout the lab. You think another computer falls, models and books flying from shelves. 

Mike huddles over you, one hand gripping the leg of the desk while the other protects your ribs. You want to tell him to shield himself, but you know there's no use. Besides, the weight and warmth is comforting even in the face of danger—his chest hot against your back, the epitome of a knight in shining armor. 

It lasts for several minutes. The power cuts off, windows crack, doors swing open only to slam shut again. You know the lab is going to be an absolute wreck when it's over. 

When the shaking finally settles, everyone crawls out of their hiding places. Levi warns, "Be ready for aftershocks," as if you don't know, and Erwin fumbles in his desk until he finds a flashlight. 

The ray of light illuminates the damage. Just as you suspected, the place looks like a tornado blew through. Glass litters the floor along with the far-flung books and park models. Both Levi and Erwin's computers fell and disconnected, and your stomach drops as you think about all the potentially lost information. 

"You okay?" Mike asks, pulling you up to your knees so he can look at your face. 

"I'm fine," you tell him, his hands on your cheeks making you flush, so you distract yourself. "E, Levi, you guys okay?" 

"Yes," Erwin answers first. 

Levi shows his face, a deep frown making his brow furrow, as he looks at his desktop. "I'm pissed but uninjured."

The four of you spend the next couple of hours cleaning up what you can, pausing and taking cover when the aftershocks hit, then starting over as the lab sustains more and more damage. 

Mike sweeps up the glass. Erwin focuses on getting the computers back on the desks safely then goes and checks the projection table. You and Levi collect the bigger items, setting books back on shelves. 

You don't think about the mistake before it's too late, when Levi is already pulling out the blueprints that were hidden behind the stack of encyclopedias. 

As he stills completely, you turn to look at him and find him staring down at the large, uncurled papers. Your instinct is to snatch them from his hands, but it's no use. He's already seen enough. 

"What the fuck is this?" His voice comes out like poison as he immediately looks at Erwin. 

The larger man glances at Levi, eyes trailing to what he's holding, then pales. 

"Levi..."

"Is this a god damn bunker? Are you planning on staying in this hellscape?" 

Erwin strides over to him and reaches for the prints, but Levi tugs them out of reach. 

"Answer me," he spits. "Is that your plan?"

"I—" Erwin swallows thickly before answering, "Yes."

It's silent for a long time, and the more it drags on, the tighter Levi's lips get, gray eyes shiny with quiet rage. 

This is what Erwin was trying to avoid, why he insisted on keeping the bunker a secret. 

But while Levi is glaring at Erwin, you feel another gaze on you. Skin crawling, you chance a glance up at Mike, stomach churning when he looks away quickly and bites his lips. He knows. Somehow without anyone saying anything, Mike knows you’re planning to stay too.

Heavy breathing and the distant sound of rumbling earth is all that can be heard, followed by backup generators roaring to life and restoring the overhead lights. 

"You too?" Mike finally speaks. “You wanna stay too?”

You chew on the inside of your cheek, unable to answer. He sounds so disappointed—defeated—and it makes you feel sick. 

"Do you guys know," Levi growls, "How fucking insane that is? This is the dumbest, most reckless, selfish fucking thing you could do! And, I know it's all your thinking!" He drops the blueprints in favor of shoving Erwin roughly, making him stumble back. 

"Hey," you step toward him, but the small man just turns to you and accuses, "And, you egged him on, yeah? Did you even think of us? How we would feel? Staying here is suicide!"

"I have a plan, Levi," Erwin says, raising both hands to his head and effectively disheveling his own hair. "If you just look at the plans. I know what we need to survive. I've done the math, I've studied the—"

"Jesus Christ, we're talking about an eight hundred degree pyroclastic flow! Tephra that will suffocate you. You really think being a few meters down during the eruption will be enough?" Levi is screaming now, his voice cracking, and you think you see tears at his waterline. 

It makes the spaces behind your eyes burn, but it’s only partly out of guilt. The other emotion that’s welling up in you is anger, a betrayal you can barely wrap your head around, but it comes tumbling out anyway.

“Do you even know us? You think we can actually leave the park behind?” Your voice rises to match Levi’s, gains his acidic attention once again. “I don’t even understand how you can run away, after everything you’ve put into this place! How can you just—” You let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a cry as you raise your hands to your face and shove your palms to your eyes. “I get Mike because he doesn’t have anything fucking left here. He’s just been helping out—”

“You think I don’t have anything left here?” He asks quietly from beside you, and when you look at him with a watery stare, you find him wounded. His jaw slides forward as he sucks on his teeth, and fuck, his eyes are getting glossy too. 

“See, this is exactly what I mean,” Levi gestures wildly at the two of you. “Mike and I have stayed because you guys won’t fucking leave, and now it comes out that you were never planning to. When were you gonna tell us? Would you have even given us enough time to get out?”

“Of course!” Erwin takes him by the shoulders, and Levi snarls up at him. “I was working up to it. I wasn’t ready to—to deal with this.”

“I can’t believe this. You really think a whole team of workers is gonna come out here to help build this? You wanna put their lives in jeopardy too?”

“We—”

“You haven’t even thought this through all the way! When did you come up with this? When you hadn’t slept or eaten in forty-eight hours? When your brain wasn’t fucking functioning at full capacity?”

Erwin stays quiet, and so do you because Levi has a point. Taking care of yourselves physically has not been high on either of your lists of priorities, and you’re sure your mental state has suffered for it. All the nights spent at the projection table, mapping out ideas, growing giddy over the idea of staying for the eruption. Was that just two people high off passion, becoming more and more unhinged with each passing day?

Quite possibly. 

You expect the fury to be enough to push Levi away, that he’ll simply give up, drag Mike out with him, and leave you and Erwin to hunker down like you’d planned.

But, that is not the case. 

Instead, he shoves a thin finger into Erwin’s chest, gritting out, “Pack your fucking bags so we can go to D.C. where they need you.”

Erwin takes a breath then slumps in defeat. Now, when faced with the obstacle that is his boyfriend, you figure he’s weighed the pros and cons and made a decision. Between his love for the park and his love for Levi, he’d rather salvage the latter. 

Mike shifts next to you, grumbles out a low, “You too,” that makes the tears finally fall from your eyes. “I’ll take you on one last ride to the springs, but then we’re leaving.”

He stays true to his word, and you cry the entire time you’re in the chopper, headset smushed against one ear as you rest your head on the window and look down at the Grand Prismatic, the steam rising from it. It’s beginning to grow discolored with all the activity, but it’s more stunning now than it’s ever been. 

Soon, it’ll be completely covered. All of it will. And, you could have been too, stuck underground for a couple of years only to be the first to step out into the pure destruction. 

That’s not an option anymore, though, not with Mike looking as grave as he does, not with the way he shadows you in your apartment as you gather the necessities, like he thinks you’re going to bolt and run back to the lab, not when the two of you meet back up with a still-fuming Levi and a despondent Erwin to head to the airport.

The tickets are outrageously priced at such short notice, but that doesn’t stop Levi and Mike from passing their credit cards over.

“Two for Washington D.C.”

“And, two for Bergen, Norway.”

Boarding passes in hand, the four of you walk through the bustling airport together for as long as you can before you have to inevitably split up. Levi glares at you but still pulls you into a tight hug, grunts into your ear, “You’re so stupid,” before letting go and turning to Mike. “Keep her safe, boy scout. I’m trusting you.”

Mike nods, and both of them clasp hands as you turn to look at Erwin. Tears and pathetic sniffles return when you walk into his open arms, clinging to him and mumbling, “‘M sorry, ‘m sorry. I would’ve followed you.”

“I know.” He rubs your back and heaves a sigh. “I know you would have.”

He eventually disentangles you to hold you at arm’s length, wipes the moisture from your face with his thumbs, then shows a sad smile. “See you in a few years, yes?”

“Yeah.”

One more squeeze, and everyone turns away to walk to their respective gate. Mike’s hand splays across your back, warm, guiding you in the right direction, keeping you steady. He’s always kept your feet planted firmly on the ground. You figure, if there’s one person you’d like to experience the downfall of society with—above ground—it’s him. 

S I X  W E E K S  B E F O R E

Norway is kind of incredible. It has a natural beauty that takes your breath away just like Yellowstone used to, but it’s vastly different. Everything is green, including the lights in the sky at night. You’re surrounded by rolling hills and mountains, and you just know it’ll be beautiful under thick layers of snow. 

The once rustic ranch, now restored, is made up of several small houses and a farm full of cows and goats. It’s sad to think about the fate they will eventually meet (slaughter then stomachs), but you know it’s necessary to prepare for the coming years.

And, the owners have definitely prepared. 

Gelgar and Nanaba are everything Mike described and more. Between taking care of the farm and setting up energy sources, they do their best to make you and the other arrivals feel at home. They’ve designed the ranch to house up to about thirty people, a commune of sorts (minus any cult-like vibes). Naturally, everyone pitches in and helps around the place. You find yourself cleaning a lot, but you don’t mind. It’s a nice, mindless task that keeps you from thinking too hard about everything you’ve left behind. 

You also like to join Nana outside, help with the animals and enjoy the sunshine while you still can. Of course, this subjects you to endless teasing especially today when she catches you staring into the distance at Mike who's helping Gelgar fix a solar panel. 

His shirt is starting to stick to his back from sweating, muscles straining under the damp cloth, and good lord, when did he get that broad? Sure, he's always been tall and fit, but working on the homestead has definitely made him more built. That along with the fact that his hair has gotten long enough to tie up in a bun has your mouth going a little dry. 

"Like what you see?" Nanaba asks, accent thick, voice full of amusement. 

You shoot her a look, face all scrunched up when you mumble, "Don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh?" She sticks her tongue out. "Don't be coy. I see the way you both look at each other."

"Tch." 

"And, how both of you volunteer to cook with the other when it's your turn to. You move around each other like you know exactly where the other is. Two halves of a whole."

You roll your eyes. "We've just worked together for a while. We make a good team."

She's not wrong, though. Since coming to Norway, you and Mike have grown even closer. There was a period of time when you could hardly look at him, too guilty for trying to stay at the park, guilty for hurting him, but eventually the two of you fell back into your normal dynamic—joking, laughing, touching just a little too much, smiling when you think no one's looking. You even spent an afternoon together in a nearby field of flowers, just like he'd promised. With a picnic basket full of food, and a blanket to lay on, you'd admired the clouds overhead while enjoying the rustling grass surrounding you. 

It's been your favorite day since coming here, had reminded you of the lunches you used to share on the mountain. 

You're not brave enough to make any sort of move, though. Mike is just so good. There's a chance his affections are simply based in friendship, and that's something you're scared to ruin. He means too much to you. 

"How long did you work together?"

"Like, four years, give or take a few months."

"And, you're still acting like nothing is there?" Nanaba tsks. "Ridiculous."

"How long did it take you and Gel to get together?" You ask, then quickly backtrack, "Not that that's what I want with Mike necessarily."

"Mhm," she smirks. "Gel and I did it backwards. Got pissed at a bar and fell into bed together. Then we started to get to know each other and found out we just worked."

Sounds about right, you think. The couple has an interesting back-and-forth, half bickering, half innuendo. You can always, always see the love in their eyes, though. That's what you want in life. That’s what you want with Mike. Even if you won't admit it out loud. 

You turn your gaze back to the roof he and Gelgar are on just in time to see him making his way down the ladder. Once on the ground, he and the other man start striding over to you. Mike's face is red, sweat beading at his hairline, and Gelgar's pompadour is beginning to fall. 

"Think we got it fixed up," Mike announces, lifting the bottom hem of his shirt to wipe his forehead. 

You stare at his toned stomach for just a little too long, the lines of his hip bones leading into the waistband of his jeans. 

Nanaba's words ring in your head again—fell into bed, fell into bed, fell into bed—and you fixate on the idea of you and Mike doing the same. To have him hovering over you, or maybe you over him, thighs on either side of those hips as his hands trail up your body—

You shake the thought from your head, letting your glazed eyes refocus on the men in front of you. 

"Alright, I'm gonna grab a shower before dinner. Who's cooking tonight?"

“I believe it's Lynne and Henning," Nana answers. 

Mike nods then heads toward the little house he's been living in, right next to yours, of course. He reaches out to let his hand brush yours as he passes, and it takes conscious effort not to grip onto one or two of his large fingers and follow him. 

"God, that's painful to watch," Gelgar snorts. 

Nana laughs and agrees, "I was just telling her the same thing."

"Oh, shut up. Ya' couple of meddlers."

*

A line forms every evening outside of the main house, the one Gelgar and Nanaba share. You and Mike stand together at the back, watching everyone in front of you. Some are families, some are couples, some are here alone. You figure, no matter their status, the ranch is a nice place to be—peaceful, home-y despite its size. So far, everyone gets along. 

Only the kids complain about chores, about seven of them constantly running around together, but that’s to be expected, and honestly, you don’t mind picking up their slack. Life is about to get very difficult for them. They should get to be children for a little while longer. 

Potato soup is poured into your bowl with a ladle, topped with shredded beef and green onions, then you and Mike retire back to your little cottage home to eat and watch TV. It stays on the same channel, world news, and there’s always a long segment that covers Yellowstone and what it’s doing. 

It is not uncommon at all to look up from your food and see Erwin or Levi’s face on screen, speaking with experts, sometimes in interview-like settings.

Tonight, they’re covering a problem that’s been going on for some time, but everyone figured would resolve itself: some people will not leave the most dangerous zones, and it’s because they simply do not believe an eruption will take place. 

Even with the evidence, the science backing it—even with actual federal authorities knocking on their doors and telling them to leave—there are many people who just want to stay put. It’s insane to you, makes your blood boil. Children have been taken from their homes to be placed in safer areas, which only causes the disbelievers to get angrier. They want to say “I told you so”, but that’s not going to happen. 

What’s going to happen is getting burned alive in the flow that pours from the volcano. They will die a painful death, get buried under meters of fallout, ash, snow. There’ll be nothing to recover except for petrified, charred corpses. 

Of course, the irony is not lost on you; you and Erwin were both willing to chance similar fates, but you still think the two of you would have been more prepared than these regular-Joes who think their front door is enough to stop a volcanic eruption. 

“In the end, there’s no reasoning with people like this,” Erwin says on camera, a soft, sad smile playing at his lips. “When a person is so, uh… Dead set on staying, it will take an unstoppable force to move them.”

In your case, that unstoppable force had been Levi screaming at you while holding back tears. 

“Unfortunately for them, this force is the eruption, and they won’t be able to leave when that occurs.”

“Because they’ll be dead,” the reporter states more than asks.

Erwin nods and answers with a grim, “Yes. Yes, they will be.”

They’re not trying to be subtle, obviously hoping that this will get through to the stubborn masses, but you doubt it will. They’re living on borrowed time at this point. Any day could be their last.

Mike is quieter than usual as he eats, barely even looking at the television screen, and you have a feeling he’s thinking about how close you were to staying alongside those stupid assholes. It’s still a touchy subject, one both of you do your best to avoid. You’re mostly happy to be in Europe, spending your days with Mike and his friends and everyone else running around here. 

But, there’s also a part of you, deep down inside, that aches, that misses the park, that still wants to be right in the middle of the destruction. Watching it blow from so far away is going to hurt. This massive monster you’ve fallen in love with over the years will never be the same, and your last good look at it was that tearful helicopter ride. 

You’re not resentful toward Mike or Levi for dragging you out of the lab that day, but you are grieving in a sense. 

The program ends with Erwin giving one last warning— “If you insist on staying, I’d advise bomb-proofing your home, stocking up on several years-worth of rations, and installing one hell of a ventilation system. Good luck.”

Mike clears his throat and stands, grabbing his empty bowl as well as yours, then heads into the kitchen to rinse them off. 

Sighing, you follow him, lean against the counter a couple feet away as you think of something to say that won’t sound too forced.

“Hey,” you start.

Mike gives a low, “Hm?” as he holds the dishes under hot water, finally glancing over when you gently nudge him in the side.

“Thanks for…” You take a deep breath, pinned by light green eyes, then try again. “Thanks for bringing me here.” He blinks but doesn’t say anything, so you continue. “It’s really nice. And, I’ve bonded or whatever with Nana.”

“But, you miss the park,” he says.

You shrug. “I mean, yeah. That park was my life, but… Probably dying in it was not one of my brighter ideas.”

He snorts, shuts off the water, then turns to you. Craning your neck, you take in his face—really take it in—the few strands of hair that hang freely past his jawline, the way his beard, no longer stubble but not exactly thick, forms around his mouth and connects with his sideburns, his strong, slightly curved nose, how his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows. He’s so painfully handsome, especially all shaggy and rugged, and it makes your heart beat too hard and too fast in your chest. 

Mike dries his hands on a dish towel, looking down at them when he tells you, “I’m glad we were able to get you out of there. It’s not something I’ll ever feel bad about. Even if you hate me for it.”

“I don’t hate you,” you scoff. “Never could. You’re my best friend, Mike.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you smile, then think of Nanaba earlier that day and laugh quietly. 

“What?”

You wave a hand, shake your head. “Nothing, nothing, just… Nana has… Ideas, or something.”

There’s no need to elaborate. Mike understands what you’re trying to say. He inhales then breathes out it out in a chuckle as he posts up against the counter next to you. “Yeah, Gelgar does too.”

“Guess they don’t know us very well.”

A silence hangs between the two of you, one that would normally be comfortable but is now a little thick given the subject matter of your conversation.

You and Mike. Just earlier that day you had been thinking about how scared you are to ruin the friendship, but the more you imagine, the more you get lost in the fantasy…

“Or maybe…” You glance over to see Mike nibbling on his bottom lip, eyes fixed on the ground as he continues, “Maybe they know us better than we know ourselves.”

He raises his head, gaze locking with yours, and you stop breathing. Because that stare is so hesitant, searching for something inside of you as if you have the answer, but you’re just as scared and confused as he is. Over four years of friendship—of good, meaningful friendship—is that worth risking just because you’re both curious? 

Or has it all been leading to this since the start? Since those first, short conversations, since the meals shared with one another, the affectionate gestures. Mike has always kept your head on straight, looked after you with even more care than he had with the park’s wildlife. 

You thought it’d all been one-sided pining, that he was just glad to have someone who understood him a little better than everyone else because you do. You understand his passion for the planet, you understand all his little fixations. You appreciate every eccentricity like he appreciates all your neuroses. 

“Maybe so…” 

Two very large hands are on your face, tilting upward, and your lungs begin to burn as Mike strokes just under your eyes with the pads of his thumbs. He has to lean down quite a bit, pauses just over your lips to let out a tiny huff of surprise, disbelief, awe maybe, then closes the rest of the miniscule distance. 

He is very warm and very firm against you—feels good, all the comfort of someone familiar but still so new. Your lips fit together perfectly, and at last, you’re able to breathe again, mouths moving in an experimental back and forth, feeling each other out until he runs the tip of his tongue along the seam of your lips. Gripping strong shoulders, you let the kiss deepen, opening your mouth for him, and Mike groans when he’s finally able to taste you. 

Hands fall from your face, moving down, down, down, brushing your ribs, settling at your hips, but his fingers are long enough to curl and dig into the meat of your ass, making you gasp and press harder against him.

Rolling his pelvis into yours, you very quickly find yourself pinned between Mike’s body and the counter. Your grasp travels to the back of his neck, pulling him closer—you just need him closer—and he must feel it too because he hoists you up and sets you on the countertop, making room for himself between your legs.

You feel too hot and too desperate, but it’s good, a release that’s needed to happen for far too long. All manner of geothermal metaphors swim through your mind, spurting geysers and boiling mudpots, and it makes you giggle against him, biting down on his bottom lip and smiling around the flesh as he lets out another one of those rumbling, satisfied noises. 

“What’re you laughin’ at?” Mike mumbles, and for some reason, it’s strange to hear his voice so close, so quiet, as you’re pressed together, breathing each other’s air. It’s intimate and different, but it’s right. 

“I’m just…” Another little laugh, “Thinking about the volcano.”

“When are you not thinking about the volcano?” You have a feeling he’s rolling his eyes, but he still grins and kisses you again.

“It’s all dirty things if that helps.”

Mike nods slowly, lips trailing from your mouth toward your neck. “Helps some.”

You tilt your head to give him better access and let out a little whine when you feel him bite down on a patch of skin just beneath the notch of your jaw, wrap your legs around his waist and do your best to rock into him because good god, you want him. 

Fingers tangling under his loosening bun, you tug him back to your mouth, slotting your lips against his and sliding your tongue between his teeth. He presses you closer with a hand on the small of your back, squeezing the air from your lungs so all you can breathe is him. 

“Mm, Mike, Mike,” you pant, barely breaking away only for him to chase after. You laugh, push his chest at the same time you gently tug at his hair, and he backs away just enough for you to get a good look at his half-lidded eyes and spit-slicked lips. 

Honestly, staring at him now, you can’t believe you made so long without ever making a pass at him. He’s gorgeous, built like a roman statue only larger, with sun-kissed skin and a startlingly light gaze that threatens to leave you boneless. 

“D’you wanna, maybe…” You swallow and blink up at him, too many questions suddenly invading your mind—is it too early for sex? Will he think you’re easy? What if it doesn’t actually work out? But, you bite the bullet anyway and finish, “Go to the bedroom?” 

Mike is silent for a few beats, leaving you to second guess yourself and brace for disappointment and embarrassment, but then he clicks his tongue and answers, “Uh, yeah. Yes, let’s do that,” in a voice a little higher than usual, and scoops you from the counter.

Every little house on the ranch is laid out the same, so it does not take him long to find your room. He sets you down at the threshold, and from there, it’s a flurry of discarded clothing and stumbling to the bed.

“How have we never done this before?” He huffs, crawling over you, leaving wet kisses in his wake. 

You’ve still got an arm covering your bare chest, but Mike doesn’t seem self-conscious in the slightest which comes as a surprise considering how reserved he typically is. Not that he has anything worth hiding—not the thin layer of hair that dances over his barrel chest, not the ridiculously cut abdominals or sharp ‘V’ of his hips, and definitely not the thick cock bobbing against his stomach as he moves. You would be intimidated if you didn’t know him as well as you do, but you’re sure that he’ll be gentle with you. Mike may be many things, but careless is not one of them.

He reaches your mouth, kisses you so deeply it makes you dizzy, and as he does, he very slowly pulls your arm from your chest, leaving you vulnerable—free for the taking. 

His touch is soft enough to tickle as he brushes over one of your nipples, making you exhale against him and arch your back like a silent plea for more. He traces around the bud, makes it pebble before carefully rolling it between two fingers.

Warmth spills into your gut, makes you squirm on the bed, and a moan makes its way from your throat as Mike gently tugs at the sensitive flesh. He lowers his head again, lavishing the same kind of attention on your other nipple with his mouth. He nibbles and licks and sucks, and you wriggle and whimper beneath him, one hand trailing down his body until you’re able to close your fingers around the head of his cock. 

Mike grunts, thrusts into your hand a couple times, enough to make precum drool from his tip, but before he can get too carried away, he says just above a whisper, “Let me get you ready,” then moves to lay between your spread legs.

Sliding his arms under your thighs, he locks them into place, and you release a shaky breath, feeling his eyes taking you in for several seconds before licking up your slit once then pushing deeper.

“Oh, fu—”

Both your hands shoot downward, one gripping the messy bun at the back of his head as you shudder at the sensation of his beard against your pussy. You’re wet in seconds, core pulsing as Mike uses his tongue to slowly open you up, then pulls back to flick over your clit. 

“Mike—Mike—”

He hums into you, shaking his head slowly back and forth, no doubt making a mess of his face and you. You don’t have anything to say, just feel your throat tightening like there are unspoken words that need to come out, but you can’t think straight, not when he’s doing what he’s doing, not when you feel the tips of his fingers reaching out to spread your lips. 

He is thorough bordering on methodical, makes sure you’re at the point of full body shakes before he gives you a break, and then, when your breathing returns to a normal rate, he starts all over again. There is a tightness in your gut that builds and builds then dissipates every time he stops, and he must know because when you whine in frustration, Mike just grins and kisses the inside of your thighs. 

The same pattern is repeated with his fingers, just one at first, massaging your walls perfectly, then a second that makes your eyes roll into the back of your head. He rubs over the swelling tissue inside of you, seems to enjoy every little gasp and noise you make, including the unsatisfied one you let out when he pulls his fingers from you. 

You can feel how damp the bedspread is underneath you, can see the evidence of your arousal on Mike’s face, and it makes you flush but doesn’t stop you from tugging him down for another messy kiss. 

“You ready?” He asks, sounding just as breathless as you feel, and you nod furiously, bending your knees and planting your feet on the mattress so that you can lift your hips to his. 

Mike chuckles, reaches down between the two of you to take hold of his length and taps your clit with his cockhead a couple times—simultaneously the most infuriating and most erotic thing you’ve ever experienced. Slowly, he lines himself up, just barely pushing forward, and when you bite your lip and squeeze your eyes shut, Mike tells you to, “Breathe, baby, open up for me.”

He already sounds wrecked, like he’s fighting the urge to just sheathe himself entirely, but he waits, giving you one inch at a time with periods of adjustment in between. You always sort of figured he was big, but this burning stretch is something you hadn’t imagined even in your lewdest of fantasies. You’re incredibly full, feel him in your gut and throat and everywhere, but it isn’t bad; it’s just a lot. 

“Okay,” you stroke the forearm next to your head and nod. “Okay, you can start moving more.”

Mike’s brow creases. “You’re sure?”

“About as sure as I can be with a monster cock inside m-me—” Your laugh turns to a moan as Mike begins to pull out, eyes trained on your face for any sign of real discomfort, but your mouth just drops open, your own eyebrows raising at the feeling of his length hitting every one of your most sensitive spots. 

“Holy…”

He pushes back in quickly, still mindful of what your body can take, and when all you do is cry his name and scratch down his back, Mike starts up a steady rhythm that has you seeing god. 

That tightness is back, hotter than before, threatening to burn you up entirely as your cunt flutters and spasms and leaks around Mike’s length. 

The sound of a hoarse groan makes you open your eyes, and you follow Mike’s line of vision to where you’re connected, see his cock sliding in and out of you, dripping slick and ringed in white cream toward the base. The sight makes you clench around him, and Mike swears under his breath then leans forward to gather you in his arms. Your head lolls back as he lifts you, sitting on his knees for just a second before falling onto his back and letting you drop onto him. 

You choke, and Mike pants, but his hands are tight at your hips, moving you up and down his length like a sleeve. His pupils are blown wide when you look down at him, hair nearly entirely out of its tie, bottom row of teeth exposed as his jaw slides almost primally. 

He looks completely lost in you, possessed as he fucks up into your pussy rougher than before. You bounce in his lap, whimpering his name with every thrust, growing in volume when you feel a finger press against your clit. 

“You gonna come for me?” Mike grits out, rubbing a circle over the swollen bundle as his eyes flick from your chest to your face. 

You nod, ignoring the burning in your thighs in favor of the sensation between your hips. “Yeah, I—I—Fuck, Mike—”

“Come on, baby, come on—wanted to see this for years, come all over my cock…”

You snap, legs shaking as your climax crashes through you. Your cunt pulses around Mike, coating him in more of your juices and making him groan and fuck you through it. You whine at the stimulation, swollen walls so sensitive yet taking everything he has to give you.

Every thrust to your g-spot makes you gush a little more, come a little longer, until all you can do is fall onto his chest and let him use you as he needs to. You leave marks on his pecs, bites and scratches, and Mike grunts at every one of them until he sits up and flips you once again.

“Where do you want me?”

“Anywhere, I don’t care, I don’t care,” you babble.

Mike inhales sharply then lets out a long groan as he pulls out and shoots his load onto your stomach. It’s warm and thick, some pooling in your belly button as Mike makes a trail down to your clit where he smears the last few drops. You twitch at the contact, hole clenching around nothing now, but you can already feel soreness settling into your muscles. 

Mike gives you two little pecks on the mouth, then one last, longer kiss before rolling to lay on the mattress beside you, chest rising and falling with deep breaths.

This silence doesn’t bother you. It gives you time to come back to your senses, to reflect, to remember everything that was said which leads you to ask, “You meant that—about wanting this for years?”

Mike turns his head and smiles so sincerely it almost brings tears to your eyes. 

“Well, yeah. Been in love with you pretty much since I started at the park.”

He says it so casually, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and maybe it is, but it still makes your breath catch. 

“Seriously?” You turn to lay on your side, and Mike mimics the action, propping his head up with one hand while he lets the other settle on your waist. 

He lifts an eyebrow and questions, “Is that so hard to believe?” 

“No, I just… Thought it was one-sided on my end, I guess. Like, we were too good of friends.” Mike leans forward to gently headbutt you, and you snort to yourself, “Guess I was wrong.”

“We were both being stupid,” he mumbles. “But, we were also focused on other things, married to the job or whatever.”

Lifting your face makes him lift his, and you smile into another kiss, feeling happier and more balanced than you have in a very long time. 

Without much more discussion, you and Mike get up to rinse off, sharing more soft touches under the spray of the shower before crawling into bed together. Falling asleep feels like coming home.

You don’t even mind the smug grin on Nanaba’s face when she sees you and Mike leave your house together in the morning, nor the teasing jabs Gelgar throws your way over lunch. You don’t know if anything is capable of knocking you out of your perfect, peaceful little world on this perfect, peaceful little homestead.

Except maybe a supereruption, of course. 

E - D A Y 

It happens right in the middle of the morning news. You and Mike are sipping on coffee, expecting the same report you’ve gotten every day— “Nothing yet, closely monitoring, blah blah”—but as the English news anchor tries to introduce the meteorologist, he stops, holds a hand to the speaker in his ear, then looks at the camera with wide yes. 

“I’m—I’m getting news that the Yellowstone supervolcano has just begun to erupt, we’re cutting to the US address at Washington D.C. now—”

And just like that, Levi’s face is suddenly on screen, picking him up mid-sentence. 

“... One vent open at the present time, but more will open shortly. Stay indoors, ration your food. This is what we’ve been preparing for.” He looks tired, and when you do the math, you understand why: seven AM in Norway is one AM in D.C., meaning Levi was probably woken up to make the announcement. 

As always, you can make out Erwin’s figure behind him, hands clasped tight and shaking, and it isn’t until Mike puts a hand on your shoulder that you realize you are trembling right along with your old boss.

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay,” he reassures you. “We’re gonna be okay here.”

You nod and let him pull you closer to him as both of you look back to the screen and listen to what your old colleagues have to say.

The news stays on for the rest of the day. At around ten, the second vent opens up. Then another. Then another. Levi keeps track, expression never betraying the fear he must be feeling, even when he delivers the message that a full ring around the caldera has opened up. 

“Obviously, we can’t get in close enough to look, but we estimate at least two thousand four hundred and fifty cubic kilometers of eruptible magma will pour from the volcano. That’s the size of the eruption from around two million years ago, but it could be worse with the current number of vents…”

The journalists on site, usually so ready to ask questions and challenge Levi, are silent today, and you imagine they’re staring with eyes the size of saucers, not quite believing what they’re hearing because it’s happening. It’s finally happening. 

You eat a quiet, solemn lunch at Nanaba and Gelgar’s, no one knowing what to say. You feel nauseous, stunned, not unlike losing a loved one. You’re able to forget the absolute destruction taking place in the states for a few minutes at a time, but it always comes back to you, punching you in the gut with the same, brute force every time.

The park. The lab. The forests. The towns. Cities, states, homes, lives, all wiped off the map. 

Erwin takes Levi’s place as public speaker close to five, probably to let the other man get some sleep, and reports that the portable seismogram, still linked to the remaining seismographs located around the park, show that there are near continuous earthquakes taking place, “Which could either help should enough earth shift to block the magma chamber, or make things worse by disrupting it further.”

“E is not very good at keeping people’s hopes up,” you mutter, and Mike chuckles.

“Yeah, I see why he makes Levi do all the talking now.”

You both receive texts from the rest of the team, Levi’s coming at an appropriate time but the others reaching you at odd hours of the night when you’re nestled in Mike’s arms.

Neither of you sleep as reality sets in the rest of the way. That was it. The beginning of the end of everything you know. Everything is about to change.

You sniff, try to be as quiet as possible as the tears you’ve been holding back all day finally begin to fall, but Mike knows, feels your body stiffen as you curl into yourself. 

He hugs you close to him but doesn’t say anything, just rests his cheek against yours and holds your hand. 

There’s nothing anyone can say to make this better, no amount of optimism or determination that will make this any easier. Your home is covered in miles of pyroclastic flow, and as it hasn’t stopped yet, you know this is just the start. Soon, anything left alive will be suffocated by the tephra, people, animals, and vegetation alike. Though you won’t die where you are, everyone at the ranch will be feeling the effects soon enough.

Your mother calls from France where her and your dad decided to “vacation” for the next several years. She’s worked up about not being able to get through to you for almost an entire day, and even as you reassure her that you’re mostly fine, she hears the way your voice cracks and offers to fly to Norway.

“Mom, the airports are shut down by now,” you sigh. “We already talked about this. We can’t see each other for a while, but we’ll FaceTime until we can’t anymore.” Until the cell towers are knocked out, you don’t say.

“I just know my baby girl is hurting right now. I know how much you loved—”

“I know,” you cut her off, scared that hearing it from her mouth will just make you lose it again. “I know, but I’m okay here with Mike and everyone else.”

“You’re sure?” She sniffles, sounding a lot like you. “Cause your father and I will find a way to get to you if you need us.”

“I’m sure, Mom,” you tell her with a sad smile she can’t see. “Get some rest, okay?”

You share many calls like that, many ill-timed text messages until the eruption finally comes to an end six days later. The damage it’s done is incalculable—the entirety of the United states now covered in a cloud of ash that blocks out the sun. 

It doesn’t reach you for a few days, but every time you go outside, Mike sniffs the air and mumbles something like, “Smells like sulfur,” or “It’s getting closer”, but after another week, the entire globe is covered. 

1  M O N T H  A F T E R

Everything is an estimation. Everyone knows that a massive amount of magma erupted, but they don’t know how much. Everyone knows that a large number of people have died, but they don’t know how many. There are too many mysteries, and it’s nowhere near safe enough to send search crews out. 

Despite all the warnings, people are still trying to go outside—to see the ash, to review the damage, but even with cloth or medical grade masks, they’re breathing in the dangerous particles floating in the air, tiny minerals that turn to a cement-like substance in their lungs, and because of that, the death count is only rising. 

News reports cut in and out, as do phone calls. Some texts never get sent or received, so all you truly have is your little home and Mike. 

And, you cry, and you mourn, and you miss your friends and family—fuck, you don’t even know how you’ll survive so long without them—but you also revel in the fact that you’re safe. Not everyone can say that. The fact that you had almost willingly stayed in the most dangerous zone of the explosion is laughable now. There’s no way you and Erwin would have survived that, something he agrees with you on when you share a short phone call with him just to check how he and Levi are doing. 

They’ll be staying at the Homeland Security compound for the forseeable future, but he assures you they’re well-prepared to brave the years-long gray storm. 

Without any livestock to take care of, or mouths to feed other than yours and Mike’s, you find yourself with an abundance of free time. You still have power thanks to the solar panels and the couple of windmills set up around the ranch, but you don’t know how long that will last. 

You both read a lot, do puzzles together, fall into bed both out of desire and just because there’s not much better to do.

And, that part of your apocalyptic life is kind of great. Mike is great. He takes care of you both in and out of the bedroom, is gentle with you until you tell him not to be, and then he’s more than happy to succumb to your needs. He’d invested in a frankly absurd amount of condoms before the eruption so he wouldn’t have to worry about pulling out every time, but every once in a while you want him like you had him the first time—desperate and passionate and completely raw. 

That’s the feeling you’re experiencing tonight, staring at Mike from your place on the couch rather than at the book in your hands.

You see him smile before he actually looks at you, but when he does, he has a glint in his eyes you’ve gotten very familiar with over the last month. 

“Need something, baby?”

You bite your lip to keep from grinning too bashfully and glance back down at the open pages on your lap. “Nuh uh.”

“You sure?”

“Mhm,” you nod. 

“Really?” Mike puts down the wildlife magazine he’s perusing and leans closer to you. “’Cause it looks like you might want something.”

You cross your legs, flip a page you haven’t even read, and shake your head. 

It’s a dumb game you’ve both started to play, who can hold out the longest. Of course, the longest record is one you both hold—four years and some odd months—but other than that, you usually make it two or three days at most.

But it’s hard with him walking around looking like he does, and for someone so quiet, Mike is mischievous and handsy, knowing just how to rile you up only to walk away and leave you to whatever you were doing before. He whispers in your ear, he grabs your ass, sometimes he’ll just stand right behind you in the kitchen and inhale, trace his nose up your neck so that you shiver and break out in goosebumps, then mumble a shameless, “You smell nice.”

He’s troublingly good at driving you crazy, and you realize this is why it took you so long to actually get together. You can’t imagine being this wound up and wanton in the lab with everyone there to see. 

“You know,” Mike speaks again. You look at him from the corner of your eyes as he leans back against the cushions and nonchalantly kicks an ankle over his thigh. “A lot of people are dying. Like, thousands. Millions.”

Frowning, you nod. “Uh, yeah. Worldwide disaster taking place.”

“Yeah, it’s a shame,” he adds. His lips twitch upward for a second before he purses them, waiting for another couple seconds then stating, “Should probably start thinking about… Efforts to repopulate.”

Eyes widening, you tilt your head to the side in disbelief, a short, incredulous laugh bubbling from your throat.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, Mike Zacharias!” 

Reaching behind you, you grab a throw pillow and launch it at him. Mike shields himself easily, choking and chuckling as he tries to defend himself, “I’m just—saying! It’s something to keep in mind!”

“Trying to guilt me into sex—” You smack his forearms with the pillow again, “As if I’m not already easy for you—" smack, smack, “—by bringing up all the people dying out there. What is the matter with you?”

He gets a hold of the pillow and rips it from your hands then hugs it to his chest and stares at you with that uncharacteristically devious look. “Is it working?”

You scoff at him, gently kick at his thigh in one last act of defiance before responding, “I mean, kinda.”

And, that’s all he needs to hear before he’s throwing himself at you, pinning you to the couch even as you giggle and squirm, ridding you of the comfortable clothes you have on so that he can kiss and lick every part of you he can reach. He acts like he’s hungry for you, and you have to use all your strength to shove him off of you just so that you can work his pants off and return the favor. 

Mike is all grunts and curses as you work him over with your tongue, a hand on the back of your head heavy but not pressuring. He trembles as you take him deeper, his tip hitting the back of your throat and sliding just a little further. 

It always hurts your jaw, leaves it sore for a full twenty-four hours at least, but the way his jaw drops and his hands ball into fists make it worth it. 

You use one hand to stroke what your mouth can’t reach, the other settling between your own thighs to get you to where you need to be, and only when Mike is panting and you’re dripping slick into your curled palm do you pull off of him.

He helps you into his lap, lets you take your time sliding down his length, because even after as much practice as you’ve had, it hasn’t exactly gotten easier. He’s still massive, and you still have to will yourself to relax around him, but once your muscles have loosened enough, you begin to rock your hips. 

Mike lets you use him like that for a few minutes, knows he’s at the perfect angle to rub over your g-spot, so he just watches and leans forward to place teasing kisses around your open mouth. 

“Feel good, baby?” His voice drips like honey as he grips onto you to aid in your movement. 

Nodding, you dig your nails into his shoulders, then shift to start moving up and down his length. Mike takes it as his cue to take over completely, strong enough to lift and drop you as he pleases, and you both fall into a frenzy of motion, desperate to get off, to get each other off, to share that euphoria. 

“Do you actually want to?” You ask in a daze.

Mike cracks his eyes open to ask, “What?” and slows down enough to give you enough breathing room to speak. “Do I wanna what?”

Making lazy air quotes with your fingers, you mimic his deep voice, “Repopulate,” then elaborate, “Have kids. Do you want that?” 

Everything stops. Your hips still, as do Mike’s, and he stares at you, the lusty haze of his gaze clearing as he processes what you’re asking. 

Feeling completely exposed, you try to rationalize, “I know, I know, we’ve only been doing this for, like, a month, and it’s kind of a terrible time to actually bring new life into the world, but if I’m gonna do it with anyone—”

Mike fists both hands in the hair at the back of your head, pulls you to him to smash your lips together. When he starts bouncing you again, your muffled moan is still loud in the small living room, and Mike’s voice comes out somewhere between desperate and destroyed when he tells you, “Yeah, I want kids. Want you to have my kids.”

“Okay,” you breathe, matching his rhythm, then again, “Okay.”

A switch seems to flip in Mike’s head. You watch and experience him devolve into someone—something—primal. He fucks you like he never has before, long hair hanging in his face, lip caught between his teeth as he groans around it, pistoning into you quick and rough.

“You want it?” He growls, pausing to suck a mark at the swell of your breast. “You want me to come in this pussy?”

Your heart stutters, jaw dropping slightly because Mike isn’t a vulgar man, never has been, but now, the way he’s looking up at you with wild eyes, you know all he needs is the right push, and he’ll lose it completely. 

“Yeah, fuck, want you to fill me up, please,” you whine.

Your world tilts as he tosses you long ways on the couch, sliding back into you with ease and demanding, “Touch yourself.”

You grin slyly, “What, don’t have the focus?”

“Not really,” he admits, flicking sweaty hair from his eyes. 

Two of your fingers find your clit, massaging it the way you always do when you’re desperate for an orgasm. It makes you clamp tighter around Mike, and you tell him again—beg for him— “Please, baby, want you so bad.”

He comes quicker than usual, shooting line after line deep inside of you until it starts dripping out around his cock. 

He can’t stay inside you for long, unable to take the way you keep clenching and twitching from your own ministrations, so Mike pulls out and shimmies down your body so that his face is just above your cunt. At first, he just stares (like always), admiring your swollen folds and how messy you are, but soon he pushes a finger into you, attaching his mouth to your clit shortly after.

It doesn’t take you long. The thought of him fingerfucking his cum further into you paired with the actual sensation of it sends you over the edge within a few minutes, and the two of you are left sweaty and panting, too drunk off each other to really think about the gravity of what you’ve just done but enjoying it all the same. 

The feeling eventually returns to your legs, some of the fog in your brain dissipating as you run your hand through Mike’s hair, and when you find that you can, you voice, “Can we even handle a kid? Or like… Can a kid handle the world as it is?”

“Kids are weirdly resilient,” Mike speaks, face pressed against your stomach so that you can feel the vibrations. “And, maybe there’ll eventually be a race of super babies or something—have enhanced lungs to deal with ash. Darkvision and shit.”

You snort and shake your head. “Dummy.”

He retaliates by blowing a raspberry just above your belly-button, grins lopsidedly when you squeal. 

“But really, our kids’ll be fine. Volcanologist for a mom and an Eagle Scout for a dad? Doesn’t get much better than that.”

“Oh my god, you were actually in Boy Scouts? Does Levi know?”

Mike makes a little ‘pft’ sound and shoots you an unimpressed look. “Of course not. Like, I’d ever let that tiny, tiny man be right about anything.”

Your laugh is so deep and genuine, it makes your whole body shake. Mike raises his head to keep it from bouncing so much, but you can feel him staring for the duration of your giggle fit. Even through squinted, teary eyes, you can see his gaze is full of adoration, and you figure having two parents who love each other as much as the two of you do will at least make the hard life ahead of you a little easier for a child. 

4  Y E A R S  A F T E R

Heavy snow falls outside, adding to the thick layers on the ground and clouding the window you’re staring out of. The carrier is nicely heated, ensuring you and its other two occupants stay toasty as you keep eye out for incoming headlights. 

“Think that’s them,” Mike says, and you swivel to look out his driver’s side window to see two dull beams of light growing brighter and brighter. 

“Don’t know who else it would be,” you joke. “No one else is dumb enough to come back to this place.”

The only sign of your husband raising his eyebrows is the way his hat shifts slightly. “You’re right about that.”

Cinching fur-lined hoods tighter, you both slide out of the tram, boots crunching on ice and snow when you land on the ground. Mike circles to your side, opens the back door, then unbuckles and collects what looks to be a bundle of jackets in his arms. Two light eyes peer out between a beanie and a face mask, gloved hands reaching out and grabbing for you. 

“You want Mama?” Mike coos before passing your son to you.

You settle him on your hip, rub his shielded nose with yours, hoping your body heat will help keep him warm out here.

It’s been winter for… Years, now, the ash from the eruption having behaved exactly as you thought it would, blocking out the sun, and sending the planet hurtling into another ice age. It was something not everyone was prepared for—the intense cold, the food and water shortage, the isolation, but you were lucky. You had everything you needed.

The other snow vehicle stops a ways off, lights left on as two figures jump out, recognizable even when completely covered up. One is nearly as tall as Mike, the other considerably smaller even up close. 

Pulling his mask down, Erwin shows a brilliant smile as he stops in front of you and Mike, and Levi immediately protests— “Oi, cover your mouth, old man! You need it for more than just talking shit.”

Mike laughs, but still reprimands the other man with a pointed, “Levi,” and a nod toward the little boy you’re holding. 

“Fuck—I mean…” Levi takes in a deep breath then apologizes over the whistling wind and falling snow, “Sorry, Huck.”

Bouncing him on your hip, you peer at your son and prompt, “Huckleberry, you remember Levi and Erwin from the computer?” 

Though your team has seen him many times on Zoom and FaceTime, this is first time Huck is meeting any of them in the flesh.

Your son looks between them for a while, quiet as he sizes up both of the men, then he reaches out for Levi the same way he had for you just moments before. Levi makes a dissatisfied noise but still takes him from you, and once Huck is passed off, you shuffle to Erwin and wrap your arms around him, breathing into his chest and warming your face. 

Your boss squeezes you tightly, mutters a low, “I know, I missed you too.”

It isn’t enough to drown out Levi’s sing-song baby voice, and both you and Erwin glance over to find him with his forehead pressed to Huck’s as he teases, “Can’t believe your parents named you after a volcanic eruption. That was pretty dumb, right?”

Mike glides over, places one hand on Huck’s head and the other on Levi’s, then sighs. “Please don’t criticize my wife’s terrible taste in nam—”

“Hey! You agreed to it,” you shout, taking the little boy back from Levi and glaring at both the smiling men. “Better shut up before you give him a complex. He can understand things, you know. He’s three.”

“Huckleberry Pine Zacharias,” Levi scoffs. “I cannot stand you guys.”

“I think it’s a great name,” Erwin interjects, lightly tapping Huck’s nose under his mask. 

“Well, you have shit taste, too.”

“Obviously, if I married a little gremlin like you,” Erwin drawls easily, leaning into the punch that Levi throws into his arm.

“Anyway, we’re here for a reason, right? Other than freezing our asses off?”

“Yeah,” Mike nods, kicking at the snow on the ground like it’ll make a difference. 

All of you know that buried beneath all the white is dried pyroclast, but under that… 

Is what remains of Yellowstone.

“How do we even go about rebuilding?” Mike is the first to ask.

Erwin stares at his own feet, face scrunched up in thought for a while before looking back up and stating, “From the bottom. Everything starts with a good foundation.”

Levi just scoffs, but you and Mike lock eyes and share a hidden grin. 

You take Huck back from Levi, leaning in for a side hug as you do, then suggest to everyone, “Well, then, now that we’ve seen a little of what we’re working with, we should head back to the shelter and start making a plan.”

“Yeah,” Levi agrees. “Gotta start getting ready for the next eruption due in seven hundred thousand years, right?”

“Right.”

After splitting back up into the two separate carriers, Mike follows closely behind the other in order to make it to their newly built bunker without getting lost. It’s perpetually dark from the never ending snow and cloud coverage, hazardous even with the vehicle’s tracks, but you can’t find it in yourself to be scared. Not now, not when life finally feels to be returning to something close to normal. 

[iridescentjin]

Hallway Run-In

Summary: Your friend Jimin gets a new roommate, and you can’t help yourself from looking at him. neighbors to lovers!au. college!au.

Pairing: namjoon x reader

Rating: Mature

Genre: smut and fluff

Warnings: vague mention of recreational alcohol use, protected sex

a/n: This is for the Secret Admirers collab with @heartsforbtsnet. I wrote this for @honeyj00ns​, the beautiful magical butterfly. I hope you like it! It’s not edited or anything...oopsie!

WC: 3260

You are in a hurry as you are leaving your apartment, throwing your bag over your shoulder with a wild swing before you grab your latte off the counter. You’d taken the time to go down to the cafe downstairs this morning, and you are now slightly regretting it because you didn’t factor in enough time to get ready and get off to class.

You fling open the door, fumble with your keys before finding the right one to lock the door. You whirl around to power walk down the hall when you are met with a solid wall of human.

“Oh fuck!” you exclaim as the warm liquid from your cup splashes into your face and down your blouse.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” you hear a deep voice say.

You aren’t looking up at the figure because you’re just staring down at your now soiled blouse. You didn’t factor in enough time to get a latte, let alone to change your entire outfit. You sigh heavily.

“Shit, shit. I’m sorry,” the voice says again.

You look up, mostly angry at yourself. “Just watch where you’re going,” you snap.

“Oh...yeah...okay.”

There’s a defiance in his voice, like he knows as well as you do that it was no less than half your fault, if not more so. You take in the figure in front of you, and your jaw immediately drops. It’s no wonder that it felt like you were walking into a wall. He stands at about six feet tall, his shirt straining over his pectoral muscles and his biceps. His honey skin is nearly flawless, and his eyes seem like they could look directly into your mind and see your thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” you sigh. “I’m just in a hurry.”

You pick up your keys off the floor and unlock your door. As you are slipping into it, you hear, “I was Namjoon” from behind you.

You change quickly into a clean t-shirt and run out the door. Once you sneak into the back of the lecture and plop down into a seat, you have a moment to reflect on the interaction you had with the man in the hallway. You feel the embarrassment starting to fill you again.

You hadn’t ever seen that man around the apartment building before, and you weren’t sure if he was just visiting or if he lived there. You hoped he was just visiting since you spilled coffee on him then snapped at him like it was his fault. You finally force yourself to focus on the lecture, but your mind keeps wandering to his perfect skin and the faint appearance of the dimples in his cheeks. You shake your head and start to write notes about the chemical compounds that the professor has put on the board. You curse yourself slightly for taking the Introductory course this far into your studies, but you needed a lab science to graduate.

After your classes are over for the day, you hurry home, the heels of your booties clacking on the sidewalk with each step. You secretly love the sound because it makes you feel powerful. You know that soon the biting wind will start to swirl around, knocking the leaves from the trees. Currently though, the sun is shining, illuminating the reds and yellows with spots of green still in the branches.

Back in the lobby of your building, you see your next door neighbor, Jimin, at the mailboxes, struggling to get his key out of the keyhole in the small metal door. He grunts slightly. You’ve always thought that Jimin was painfully attractive, like a fairy or an angel that you didn’t have permission to look at. It almost hurt your eyes. You decide to grab your mail and talk to him.

“Hey Jimin, do you need help?” you ask, as you faking casualness and sliding your key into the lock. 

He sighs and turns, and upon seeing your face, he smiles. “Oh hi, yn! No...I think I can get it.”

You giggle at the small grunt that comes out of his chest. You slide the envelopes out of your box and lock it back up. Jimin continues to struggle, and you decide that you can’t just leave him like that, with the key stuck in the lock.

“May I?” you ask

He steps aside and sighs. You close the box because he’d been fighting with it while the door was open. You wiggle the key slightly, then you hear the click of the tumblr. The door locks, and you can’t help but smile. You slide the key out with a gentle jiggle. You hand it over to Jimin with the smile still spread across your face.

“Of course,” he sighs again. “I had a new key made because I gave my new roommate the original, and the new key is just sticking so badly.”

“New roommate?”

“Oh yeah! You should come meet him sometime!”

The two of you walk to your apartment after making dinner plans for the following day. Jimin insists that you don’t have to bring anything but yourself, but you know that you’re going to bring a bottle of wine with you. You’d never arrive empty-handed to a dinner party.

The following evening, you knock on Jimin’s door just after 6:00. The beautiful man opens the door, and he looks so happy that you’re there. You can’t help but smile when you’re around Jimin because his cheeriness is contagious. He throws his arms around you, and the two of you have a slightly lingering hug. You inhale deeply, smelling his cologne, then realize what you’re doing and quickly release him.

“yn, this is my new roommate, Namjoon,” Jimin says, stepping aside.

Upon hearing the name, you feel a lightheadedness come upon you. Your brain replies the “I was Namjoon” that you heard yesterday as you’d disappeared into your apartment. You try to keep your composure as you walk over to shake his hand.

“Oh! Hi, it’s you!” he exclaims as he takes your hand. “Hi, I’m Namjoon.”

You stare for a moment before your mouth catches up. “yn,” you blurt out, “is me.”

He laughs slightly, and you want to slap your forehead from the incredible awkwardness that is pouring out of you in this moment. Usually you carry yourself with confidence, trying not to let too many people see how awkward and dorky you actually are. But something about Namjoon just makes it impossible to hide.

Jimin had ordered dinner for the three of you, saying that neither him nor Namjoon are very good cooks. It makes you laugh because you would have been fine cooking for the three of you, but Jimin had insisted on providing dinner. You eat the pasta while the three of you chat and laugh. Once you loosen up a bit, you’re a little less awkward with Namjoon. You realize that you’re leaning closer to Namjoon and try to correct, but it just keeps happening.

A few times you think to yourself “is he flirting with me?” but you decide that he’s just a friendly, charismatic guy.

After dinner, you feel happy, full, but also light from the wine. You hug Jimin goodbye, and, when you turn to Namjoon, he’s holding his arms out to invite you in. You embrace him too. It feels right and comfortable. It’s much different being intentionally pressed against his firm chest than when you ran into it the day before. It feels like you fit perfectly in his embrace. Finally, you pull away, heat burning in your cheeks.

That night in the shower, you can’t keep the image of him out of your head. He held you in intellectual conversation about life and philosophy while also looking like a god. You wonder if Jimin is part of a club for unearthly hot men where he met his roommate.

You lie in bed, trying to keep your hands from exploring your skin to the image of him pressed against you. Finally, you give in and let your brain wander, feeling the heat wash over you. Your skin feels delicate and sensitive as you imagine the muscular figure on top of you, touching every inch of you. The pressure within you releases to the image of his face. Afterward, you feel a little embarrassed and tell yourself that you can’t do that again. He’s your nextdoor neighbor for goodness sake.

The next few weeks fly by with classes being in full swing, requiring most of your time to complete the work. You feel like you spend all of your time either in class or on your computer doing homework. You hardly even have time to get groceries, just living off of take out and the odds and ends in your fridge.

The leaves fall from the trees, and the air becomes crisp and sharp. You love this time of year because it means that Halloween and Christmas. For Halloween, you go to a party with some friends, and you see Namjoon and Jimin there with more of their unreal-looking friends. He’s dressed as a detective, with the trench coat and everything. You try to keep your mind from picturing what’s underneath the tight fitting white button up that he’s wearing with a skinny black tie. 

Your friends catch you staring at him and tease you relentlessly for the rest of the night. You try to keep your back to him, so you don’t get caught looking again.

One night in November, you are lying in bed scrolling on your phone when you keep hearing what sounds like tapping at your. You check, but you don’t see anything. As soon as you climb back into bed, it starts again. You try not to think about it, but it keeps getting to you. Everytime you look, it stops. Then you go back to bed and it starts again. It gets into your head enough, that you start to panic slightly. You figure that you can go ask Jimin to just come hang out with you for a little while or something until you feel more comfortable. He’s done it before, and you know he’d do it again.

When you knock on the door, Namjoon pulls it open. He smiles at you immediately when he sees you. He looks as gorgeous as ever, with his glasses settled halfway down his nose and his hair swept back off of his forehead.

“Hi, yn!” he exclaims, and you are surprised by the enthusiasm.

“Hi, Namjoon. Is, uh, is Jimin here?” you ask, looking behind him into the apartment.

“No, he’s out tonight. A date. What’s up?”

“Oh. Okay. Nevermind.” You feel your shoulders fall slightly as you turn to walk away.

“Wait, yn, what’s up? You seem upset.”

“There’s just this sound I keep hearing. Sometimes Jimin will come sit in my apartment with me when I’m scared, since I live alone.” You shrug and try to turn away again.

“Well...I can come hang out with you. I’m just working on some stuff on my computer,” he says, an ingenuous quality to his voice that makes you feel comforted just upon hearing it.

“Oh! Well, yeah. If you wouldn’t mind just hanging out with me, that would be great.”

He agrees, disappearing for a moment into his room, then reappearing with a backpack slung over one shoulder. “Lead the way.”

You lead him into your apartment that is dimly lit with string lights in the living room. You realize that this is the first time that he’s probably ever seen the inside of your place. You tend to feel vulnerable when you let people into your home, so you don’t invite too many people that aren’t your close friends over.

You like to keep the lighting in your place soft, so you mostly use lamps and string lights. Your bedroom is a pink, pastel haven that people think is funny because you tend to dress in neutral colors, especially in the winter. You don’t think that Namjoon will be able to see your bedroom at any point. It’s not like you’re going to be inviting him in. But you still can’t help but think about the dirty clothes strewn across the floor.

You gesture for him to take any spot he wants on the couch, and he plops down.

“I like it in here. It’s so soft,” he says, turning to you with his dimples showing.

“Oh, thanks. I’m just kinda of a soft person, I guess.” 

Your breath catches in your chest slightly, but you can’t help the smile that spreads across your lips when you hear it. You are just a big softy, but you don’t always show it. It feels nice to let Namjoon in a little bit.

You take your spot on the couch next to him, leaving some space between the two of you. You grab your phone and start scrolling again. He pulls his computer from his backpack, and the gentle tapping of his keyboard feels like music. You jump when you hear the tap outside again. You turn and look at Namjoon. He places his hand on top of yours, so you know that your eyes must give away how terrified that you are.

“Let me go check,” he says.

He gets up from the couch and goes to the living room window. You hear him hmmm-ing to himself as he looks out there, then you hear a sound of understanding.

“I think I found our culprit!” he announces to you and waves you over.

You cross the room to the window and lean out next to Namjoon. He has the flashlight of his phone shining down on a small bird’s nest attached precariously to the side of the building. There is a bird inside that was probably just tapping on the wall just below your bedroom window. You sigh in relief then start to laugh. You retreat back into your apartment, and Namjoon stands up fully next to you. You can feel the heat from his body with how close you’re standing.

He pulls the window shut and laughs with you. “See, nothing to worry about except a bird who didn’t get the memo to migrate.”

The two of you don’t move, just giggling and standing near each other. You look up at his face, and you realize how much his smile makes your heart sing. You feel a twinge between your legs and try to ignore it. Namjoon looks down at you, and soon he isn’t laughing anymore. The two of you just stand there staring at each other for a few moments, until he slides his hand around your neck, pulling you toward him. His plush lips find yours, and you wrap both of your arms around his neck, pull yourself even closer. Your chest presses against his.

Your mouths move together, then he slips his tongue past your lips, exploring your mouth gingerly. You gasp at the bolt of arousal that shoots through your body. He pulls back from you, his eyes searching your face.

“Crap. I’m sorry, yn. That was impulsive. You’re just so gorgeous when you laugh,” he says, eyes cast just behind you, not making eye contact.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” you whisper as you move upward to his lips again.

The hesitation in his mouth dissipates, and he wraps his hands around your waste, gently rubbing the fabric of your shirt with his thumbs. You press yourself against him, letting your fingers lace into his hair, tugging at it slightly. You push your tongue into his mouth this time, and your tongues dance together, exploring. 

He slides his hand up inside your shirt, the soft skin of his palms exploring your back and sides. You moan slightly as your hair stands up on end from the contact. You pull a couple of soft pulls on his hair again, and he presses his groin against you. You can feel the bulge through his pants, and you can’t help the arousal that is now coursing through your body.

You pull away from him and ask hesitantly, “Would you want to...uh...go to the bedroom?”

He presses a soft kiss to your lips and nods. You lead him by the hand into your dimly lit bedroom, kick aside your discarded outfit from earlier. The two of you make your way to the bed. You push him down onto his back, and you straddle his hips. Your lips start to explore each other again, and you press your core against the hardness in his sweatpants. He grabs your shirt and tugs it over your head, so you do the same to him, eager to see what the bare muscles of his chest look like. You are not disappointed at the taut skin that covers the bulges on his chest and arms. You admire it for a moment before you return to kissing.

Things move quickly from there. All of your clothes are off, exploring how each part of your naked skin feels against his. and you feel like you don’t care if it’s too much too fast. He’s so attractive, he’s hard, and he’s kissing you. That’s all you could ask for. You lean over to the drawer in your bedside table and pull out a condom.

You hold it up and ask, “Do you want to?”

Once again, he smiles at you and nods.

You slide down between his legs, holding the tip of the condom and rolling it down to the shaft. You look up at him and smile a sly little grin before you lean over him and spit on his hard cock. You rub the spit in, making the whole thing slick, then repeat the same motion. He throws his head back as you stroke his cock. You do this a few more times before you crawl back up on top of him, positioning your entrance above his erection.

You slide down slowly, letting yourself take the time to adjust. Once you’re accustomed to the sensation and the stretch, you start to roll your hips, sliding up and down his length. You moan as his cock hits the most sensitive places inside you. You ride him until you can feel his cock twitching inside you.

“yn, I’m gonna…” he starts, his hands reaching up and grabbing your hips firmly.

His hips buck up against you, and you feel his cock twitch as he holds you down on his cock. You roll your hips in a small circle once he lets go, watching his abs tighten and relax as you do it. He falls back, panting slightly, and you giggle. You dismount from him. As he starts to soften, he slips the condom off and ties it. 

“Where should I…?” he asks.

You take it from him and put it in the trash can. You smile and snuggle into his chest.

“yn, next time, I promise to make you cum a bunch before I do since I didn’t get you there this time,” he says as his thumb rubs gentle little patterns on your cheek.

“Oh, so there will be a next time?” you ask, grinning up at him.

“I certainly hope so,” he says nervously. “I really like you, and that was a lot of fun.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” you say as you wrap your legs around his, getting comfortably snuggled in against his naked frame.

“So much,” he whispers as his lips press against your forehead.

[neoarchipelago]

Her teacher (Teacher!John Wick x reader part 2)

AN: Here's part two I still don't know what the fuck i'm doing just so you know...

Spotify playlist to listen while reading

Word count: 3 508

Warnings: SMUT 18+ SEXUAL CONTENT

------

You were staring at your finished essay. You had managed to finish it for the due date. It had been a few days since your encounter with Mr Wick and… that it happened. As you had told each other, no one but you two knew of it. You had however decided to avoid him entirely. Your mind was still obsessed with him and were pretty sure you were falling for him at this point. It had felt amazing when you two had sex, you'd do it all over again, but it hurt too much to know that it was just that. Sex. You sighed.

"Hey…(y/n)... You alright?" 

You looked up at the boy in front of you. Leia's brother, Tom, was slightly older than you both and was studying sciences here. You two were more or less friends but you saw him as a brother more than anything.  

"Tommy… yes I'm fine!" You let out while smiling up at him.

"You sure? You've been staring at those papers for the past five minutes…" he snickered.

"Oh yes… I was lost in thoughts" you simply said. 

"Yeah Leia's been worried about you… by the way… she in class?" He asked looking confused.

"Hum.. yes, yes she is." You answered.

"Don't you have the same class? Aren't you supposed to be in class?" He asked, a smirk on his lips. 

Yes. You were supposed to. But it was HIS class and you didn't want to see him. You blushed a bit and you heard Tom laugh. 

"Come on! Don't tell me you're skipping classes!" He spoke while sitting next to you.

"I-I just needed to finish this essay…" you bluntly lied. 

"Right… sure, whatever you want princess. You know if you need something you can talk to me." He said, winking at you. 

You smiled back letting your chin rest on your hand. 

"Thank you tommy. You're adorable" 

He pretended to brush his hair back and dust off his shoulders as you laughed at him.

"You know princess.. whatever you're hiding away from, it's gonna catch you love. You need to be braver…" his words ran through your head and you sighed. 

"Yeah.. i know tommy… but I don't know how to face hi-.. it." You caught yourself right on time, tommy seemed to not notice it.

"It's always hard, that's why we got to be brave! Ciao princess!" He spoke as he stood up and ran to exit the library.

You sighed again. You wanted to head home. Your phone buzzed and you checked it. Leia had texted you saying class was dismissed and she was going home. You quickly typed an answer before grabbing the few book you had picked up. You stood up and walked to the far end aisles of the library. It was almost empty at this hour and it was extremely quiet. You were trying to find out the place you had picked them from, trying to put them back in place. You were absent mindedly looking around and you didn't notice the shadow leaning over the shelf at the far end of it. You put the last book back in the aisles and turned to leave when you jumped and froze.

"Mr Wick…" you let out, staring at him wide eyed. 

Silence fell. You cursed at the situation you were in. You couldn't childishly run away like you wanted to because the aisle only had on exit, the other end was just a wall. Your breath was shaking and you honestly didn't know what to say. 

"Miss (y/l/n)." 

The sound of his voice made you swallow hard, glimpses of memory rushing back to your mind and you were feeling hot already. 

"I didn't see you in class today. I didn't really see you at the lesson before that neither." 

Right. That. 

"Hum.. yes, I'm sorry, I had a paper to finish and it was urgent.." you bluntly lied again. 

The look he gave you clearly meant he didn't believe any of it. He took a step forward and you took a step back. He froze and frowned before taking another step forward and you another back. Problem is… your back hit the wall and you were trapped. He was inches from you and you had to look up to look at him. 

"(Y/n).." he started. 

But you couldn't take it anymore. You couldn't have this conversation not here not now, you couldn't bare have him call your name.

"Don't. Please, don't." You simply let out, closing your eyes. 

You opened them again, falling into dark ones. You took a deep breath and escaped, walking passed him. But it couldn't be that easy. You felt his hand around your wrist and he pulled you back to him. You were against his chest, your hands on him. You were slammed against his body and your lips barely far away. You wanted to taste him again, the thought making your head spin. The dark gaze he gave you was promising and you moaned softly. But the moment was broken by the sound of someone walking closer and closer. 

You both harshly separated and stood away from each other, you clearly not looking at him. The sound passed and no one came but it both made you realize how dangerous this all was. He seemed very unbothered though as if he'd seen much more dangerous. 

You were ready to walk away when you heard him speak one last time. 

"Don't miss class because of me… please." 

You closed your eyes and nodded before running off to your table and gather your things. The library was empty, apart from the secretary. You ran out not wanting to stay in this tempting hell any longer.

----

You had thought this through. At least you hoped, because you were sitting next to Leia in his class. He was right. You couldn't keep missing classes like that. You were anxious, biting the end of your pencil. You had obviously asked Leia the last two lessons that you had learned by heart. But that wasn't what was making you anxious. Seeing him, spending a full hour in front of him, unable to touch him, that was driving you insane. Taking a deep breath you told yourself that as soon as class would start you'd feel much better. 

And then he walked in. He looked at you, and the way your heart raced, you knew you were damned. But you hid it. This wasn't the place. You shook your head and focused on the lesson that had already started. You could still feel his eyes on you but much less often than before. That hurt. You were torn between wanting to forget him and wanting to be the center of his full attention. But once again you tried to focus on his words not the way his hands moved around. The heat getting unbearable, you opened the two first buttons of your white shirt, without even thinking. You realized the true effect you had on him when you looked up at him and you noticed that lustful look once again. 

"For the end of class, I want you to grab a piece of paper and tell me in 10 sentences the importance of today's class." He had spoke without taking his eyes off of you. 

No one noticed, too busy groaning of annoyance. You looked away, you had to focus on the paper, not on him. It was weird however, he had never done this before. The way you could feel him stare at you the entire time of the test made you wonder if he did it, solemnly to look at you and the way your cleavage was showing a bit more. Like a good girl you had finished the test, and you wanted to check out your little theory. Without looking up you opened up another button, this time the cute lace of your white bra was showing. You pretended to be thinking of something to write, not wanting to look up at him immediately. Once you did however, you almost choked on air, he looked utterly furious. Your eyes glued to his lips as he mouthed a 'get.dressed.Now.'. You quickly buttoned up your shirt, and you were saved by the class finally being dismissed. 

You took advantage of the amount of people leaving to drop your paper on his desk and ran away, Leia following behind you.  

"Hey (y/n), want to go to the library with me?" 

You nodded away and followed her there, trying to keep your heart rate calm.

----

It was pretty dark outside already as the days were growing smaller and the weather colder. You'd have to stop wearing those skirts you enjoyed so much, but today you had chose to wear one with a white buttoned shirt. You had been studying for a while now and Leia was actually succeeding on making you forget about a certain man. 

"Ah! I'm exhausted! I think i'm going home (y/n)." You heard her complaint.

"Alright! I'm gonna stay a bit more though" you chuckled as you spoke. 

"Good luck there sweetie then !" She finally said planting a kiss on your cheek.

She stood up and left, leaving you almost alone in the empty library. You sighed and turned back to your book. You were reading carefully, trying to focus on the subject, when another voice made you look up. 

"Ah I'm sorry! I thought that was the last student! I have an emergency I can't keep the library open…" you watched the old woman and smiled.

"Oh It's alright Mrs Hawkins! " You replied, already gathering your things. 

"Wait, I'm going to see if there's a teacher who can close it in my stead." 

You nodded and sat back down, going back to your book. A few minutes after the sound of heels were heard and you looked up to see Mrs Hawkins smiling.

"There you go, I found a teacher who will close for me, don't worry you still have over an hour!" 

You smiled thanking her and she hurried out. You looked around at the now perfectly empty library. You sighed, feeling slightly uncomfortable. You still managed to go back to reading the history book in front of you. Time passed and the closing hour was getting nearer and you decided to start putting the books back on their shelves. Getting up you walked in between the aisles, swaying your hips, you were feeling in particularly good mood right now, you felt productive, like you haven't been in a while. You were humming a little song, dancing a bit as you put the books back into their shelves. Finally putting the last one into the shelf you closed your eyes spinning a bit on yourself and swaying your hips one last time. 

You let out a little scream however once you opened your eyes and saw him. You put your hand over your heart, trying to calm down your heart rate. You must be cursed, no other explanation. He HAD to be the teacher misses Hawkins asked for help, and obviously you had stayed longer, alone! The smirk on his lips was making you furious. How long had he been standing there looking at you?

"You scared me!" You let out in an angry tone.

"I noticed." He simply said.

You wanted to glare at him, but he was your teacher after all. You were standing there eyeing each other. The air was tensed again, suffocating. You were looking at him, the way he stood there, the t-shirt he was wearing letting you see his biceps and you were slightly daydreaming on the moment. 

"We need to talk." His voice rang, making you fall back to reality. 

You straighten yourself, trying to look unfazed by him, by this, by the way you wanted him to wrap his hand around your neck again. You didn't reply, simply waited for him to continue. He took a step forward and you tried to swallow properly. 

"What you did in class, was… inappropriate." He let out, making you frown a bit. 

"What… I did… sir?" You asked innocently. 

The glare you received made a soft shiver run down your spine and honestly you had just lost most part of your braveness.

"Yes. Undressing yourself like that. For everyone to see." 

You were growing furious now. What did he mean by that exactly?

"Excuse me? I wasn't undressing. I was simply feeling hot." You let out trying not to sound too angry. 

"Hot?" He repeated, but you ignored him, letting the last bit of braveness you had lead you.

"No one but you was looking. Perhaps you shouldn't stare and it won't be a problem." You spoke looking away. You felt brave but not that brave. 

The silence that fell afterwards was uncomfortable and you knew he was waiting for you to look up at him, what you eventually did as you felt pressured to do so. The dark gaze he was sending you made you step back, letting your back touch the book shelf behind you. You watched, focus on his every move as he stepped forward once. 

"You're right. It's a problem." 

Twice.

"Because I wanted to rip that shirt off of you."

Another one. 

"In. The. Fucking. Middle. Of. My. Class." He finished in very rough whispers. 

He was inches from you, his arms on both side of your body, keeping you exactly where you were. Your breathing had quicken and your eyes were glued to his face. You were trying to keep the last strings of control within you from breaking. He was driving you insane. You needed him. 

"Don't do that again." He commanded. "Other boys were looking as well." He finished in a groan. 

His grip on the shelves tighten and once more your brain couldn't catch up with your pretty little mouth. 

"So what? Don't tell me it bothers you that another one could fuck me?" You whispered. 

And there it was. That hand wrapped around your neck, the soft pressure to keep you in place but not enough for you to feel threatened. You let out a moan, closing your eyes as you felt his leg in between yours, and his mouth next to your ear. 

"It. Does. Young lady." He hissed in your ear.

You knew exactly what was to come, you were already getting wet from the thought of it. You knew that you should just push him away and leave but the heat your body was feeling was stronger than your will. He leaned back and stared at you, your doe eyes probably filled with need and you saw it, you saw his own control brake right before he roughly kissed you. He was furious, and you had pushed it too far. The taste of his tongue making you moan out loud. You had been needing this while fighting against it and giving up right now was pure bliss. It was a mistake. A huge mistake but fuck. You'd think about it later. 

He pulled you up against the shelf, his arms under your knees as you wrapped your arms around his neck. This was going to be quick, you had broke his patience and you felt it. The way he ripped open your white shirt and let his hand roam over your bra. The way he pulled it down to reach your nipples and play with them, teasing you as you moaned into his mouth. 

You felt him quickly reach down to your panties feeling your wetness through the fabric and that was all he needed. He pulled the fabric away, leaving your entrance naked. You clearly heard the sound of his belt unbuckling and felt the tip of his cock at your entrance. He pulled back to look at you in the eyes, both looking entirely broken by the moment yet entirely pleased with it. His eyes didn't leave yours as he entered you and you gasped. It felt amazing, and you had been craving it. He was big and he filled you up so good. He didn't let you adjust however before even pounding into you. You were trying your best to stay quiet, muffling your moans in his neck but he wasn't being gentle. You were sure to have bruises on your tights the next day but you weren't complaining. You had managed to slip your hands under his shirt on his back, wanting to feel more of his skin as you were both still entirely dressed. Your nails scratched on his back and you heard him groan against your neck. You were already edging being unable to keep up with the torturing pace he had settled. 

"A-ah...Fuck...I-I'm gonna…" the end of your sentence was lost as you suddenly gasped feeling your orgasm crush you. 

You held onto him tighter as your body shuddered in his arms, those powerful waves of pleasure rushing over all your senses. You heard him curse before pounding deeper into you a few times but you weren't exactly sure, still lost in the aftermath of your own pleasure. You both stayed there, catching your breaths, not fully getting back to reality yet. You could smell his cologne all over yourself, as if it had settled into your skin, melted away. He lowered you to the ground as you tried to stand on your legs but failed. He caught you up immediately, holding you against him until you could properly stand again. You still found it helpful to let yourself go against the bookshelf behind you. You both looked into each other's eyes, the same guiltiness showing, the same need, the same… affection? You watched his hand rise to your face but froze in the air as the sound of heels echoed through the library. 

You both quickly separated, you grabbing your things after fixing your hair. You watched as another teacher walked in. 

"Ah John! I was looking for you!" She said in a high pitched voice. 

You wanted to cringe badly, the blond woman smiling brightly at him. 

"Really? I was going to close the library, miss Hawkins had an emergency." He spoke in the most natural tone. 

You scanned the woman with your eyes for a second, noticing the effort she was making to flirt with… Him. You felt your own self growing jealous by the second, with the way he smiled back at her and you just wanted to run. 

"And you?" Your thoughts were interrupted by the obnoxious woman. 

"I was just leaving. Excuse me." You simply said grabbing your bag and running out of the library, not bothering to even look back. 

The fresh air of the outside hit your face and you felt yourself shatter once more. The tears stung in your eyes, your chest burnt and you wanted to cry out loud but you put you hand over your mouth. You had let it happen again. No one had to know obviously, but you had wanted to avoid him completely! It wasn't helping you forget him, it was just making you fall deeper. The wetness in between your legs was the rough reminder that your feelings had been stronger than your common sense once more. He was your teacher! This couldn't happen! Even if you were begging for it. 

You let yourself fall, sitting on the front stairs of the university's building, the fresh breeze making your hair flow a bit. You couldn't contain the tears anymore, you were breaking inside for something forbidden and probably felt only by you. You wanted to vanish in his arms but he probably didn't want you. You closed your eyes, letting one of your hands hold your head down as you cried into the night. 

"Hey! (Y/n)!" 

Your breath hitched and you looked up at the familiar voice. 

"Tommy…" you whispered "what are you doing here?...".

The worried look he sent you made you remember your awful state at the moment and you wiped your tears away. 

"Leia has been texting you for the past hour and you didn't answer, I came to check if you were still here…" he spoke kneeling in front of you. 

"I'm sorry… I didn't heard my phone" you tried to smile at him.

"Hey… what's going on?" He softly spoke out. 

"N-nothing.. just a small meltdown" you tried to chuckle.

He wasn't a buying a tiny bit of it and you knew it. So you added to your lie. 

"I've been pretty tired recently and maybe I took too much classes I don't know, I'm stressed out, I don't want to fail…" now that was a lie. But a perfect one. 

"I told you you could come to me you know?" He sighed. 

You still managed to smile at him, not heartfully though, all you wanted was to lay in bed and cry. 

"Come on. I'm taking you home." 

You nodded, agreeing. You were tired and heartbroken. Could it really be worse?

----

Tags: @thatbemyhouse @magdazwolska @faralasunita

[amandaoftherosemire]

... Only Happy Accidents

Fandom: Marvel AU

Pairing: Steve Rogers X Reader

Characters: Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanoff

Author: @amandarosemire

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 4,669

Format: Two-part One-Shot

Warnings: Smut, 18+ only, fluff, smuff, language, unprotected sex (Steve doesn’t have diseases, but Steve is fictional. Use a condom.)

Summary: After a lab accident leaves you under the influence of a chemical cocktail, you can no longer hide your deeper feelings for your dearest friend, Steve. You’ve never told him, convinced he would be kind, but uninterested. Now that you know that Steve is as attracted to you as you are to him, will the change to your relationship be a good one?

A/N: I’ve been fighting with my headache disorder, so I can write because I’m a touch typist, but I can’t look at a screen for very long. But because I’m feeling so bad in general, I’ve been counteracting that with nothing but fluff when I’m not ruining lives in my WIPs. Speaking of, I hope finishing out my Steve fluff with fluffy smut makes up for some of that. 😉

No Mistakes... here

Only Happy Accidents

Your back made contact with Steve’s bedroom door at almost the same moment his lips made contact with yours. You made a little 'oof' noise as the force of his body meeting yours pushed the air out of your lungs. "Sorry," he muttered against your mouth.

You giggled, then hummed, “‘S okay,” because you were not complaining. Steve's hands were gripping your ass firmly as his mouth fed greedily from yours. You had your hands in his hair and were considering climbing him like a tree until you were wrapped around him again. The way his fingers were digging into your flesh, you suspected he'd be all too happy to assist you.

Once Bruce had pronounced you recovered and rational once again, the energy between you and Steve had changed. There was nothing standing between you now.

That knowledge had settled beneath your skin, warming and charging it as you walked back to Steve's rooms to, ostensibly, talk about the change in your relationship now that you were no longer the mad science equivalent of three sheets to the wind.

You’d decided you didn’t really need to talk when Steve, blushing and stammering, had calmed the moment you took his hand in yours.

He had looked down at your fingers twining with his, then up to the soft smile on your face, and something inside him settled. He smiled sweetly in return, bringing your hand up to his mouth to brush his lips over the back.

Your heart kicked once, hard, then settled into a fluttering rhythm in response to Steve and his ridiculously pretty face. The expression there was one you'd seen a hundred times, but it never failed to make you melt a little. His mouth was quirked up in a sweet, crooked smile, his eyes crinkled adorably at the corners and warm with affection.

Now, however, you knew that warmth came from more than simple affection. You’d felt Steve’s arousal against you, had seen the shine of desire in his eyes when he’d leaned in to kiss you and his reluctance when he’d pulled away. That knowledge made it easy to reach out, to soothe his nerves with a soft touch and even softer eyes.

He breathed in the scent of your skin, then started moving faster towards his rooms. He wasn't certain what was going to happen next, though the laughing smile you shot him when he pulled you into a faster walk had his hopes soaring.

"Why didn't you ever say anything, sweetheart?" Steve couldn't help but ask. You had placed a polite but firm wall between the two you from the moment you and he had become friends. It was clear that had it not been for the lab accident, you would never had made your deeper feelings known. He was afraid that you didn't actually want what the kind of relationship he did, regardless of how you might desire him physically.

Your expression was infinitely tender as you squeezed his hand gently and hurried to keep up with him. "Why didn't you?"

"I didn't think you'd want me to," he murmured. Sadness settled around his eyes and made your heart hurt. The two of you had arrived at his rooms, but he paused before he walked through, turning with a guarded expression.

You could see the nerves and insecurity chase each other across his face and softened like butter in the sun. You stepped forward, certainty flowing through you. You lifted your hand to his cheek. "May I come in?"

Steve grinned, his heart lightening at the look in your eyes. "Always," he replied, drawing you by the hand through the door.

Once the door was closed behind you, you were moving into Steve's embrace with the same confidence you'd shown under the influence of the chemicals. The confidence came from understanding; you knew Steve needed both honesty and directness.

You wrapped your arms around his waist, nuzzling into his chest and throat with your nose and mouth. He hummed softly and closed his arms around you in return, snuggling you into the warmth of his body.

"Steve." You breathed his name, and the sound sent a shiver down his spine. It took him a moment to focus on what you were saying. "Your friendship is one of the most important relationships I have. I never told you how I felt because I never thought you'd want me back, and I couldn't risk something so crucial on a longshot."

Steve's arms tightened, both shock and indignation rocking through him. "A longshot!?" He sounded downright insulted on your behalf, making you laugh a little under your breath.

"Uh, yeah." You infused your tone with all the exasperation you could muster. "You're… you! You're so good and loyal and true, but funny and reckless and wild. To be your friend was…” You struggled for words for a moment, almost irritated to have to explain it. Was he blind to how fucking exceptional he was? “…like a miracle! I didn't want to be greedy.”

Steve’s eyes blazed as his head dipped to yours. His arms pressed you tightly against his chest and his mouth met yours with no shields, no guard. Your heart stumbled in your breast as your eyes fluttered closed in the rush of emotion.

You slid your arms around his neck and pressed even closer, meeting his kiss with the same passion he was pouring into you. You’d never felt needed like this, craved like this, like he was starved for the taste of you. You were delighted, happy to feed him, not to mention relieved and euphoric that you hadn’t destroyed everything you valued with a dumb mistake.

Steve broke the kiss to rest his forehead against yours, his breath fast and excited. “Be greedy,” he growled and took your mouth again.

You didn't really have an option. He was giving you everything he had. You didn't hesitate; you devoured him and gave back eagerly. When he lifted his mouth from yours only to bury it in your neck with a groan of need, you let out a shaky laugh and a quick, “Okay!”

"Mmm-hmm." Steve chuckled a little even as he hummed, testing the texture of the line of your jaw with his lips. He was enthralled by the scent of your skin, enchanted by the feel of your body pressed against his. He couldn't help it; his hands wandered down to close around your ass. The little happy sounds you were making in your throat were humming against his lips, making him smile against the satin of your throat.

“Steve," you murmured, and the throaty sound of your voice combined with your words had his cock twitching in his jeans, "take me to bed.”

Steve stooped, his hands sliding down to your thighs, and boosted you up, wrapping your legs around his waist as he supported your weight easily. He turned toward his bedroom with a happy grin on his sweet face. “Yes, ma’am.”

Which is how you found yourself breathless, with your back to Steve's bedroom door, giggling at his eager mouth on yours as he let your legs fall to support you. You'd suspected he'd be sweet, but he was seducing you with the soft, greedy kisses he pressed to your mouth. Your lips softened against his, your heart melting at his almost shy sweetness.

Gently, with all the affection you'd been holding back, you feathered kisses over his mouth, his cheeks, his nose, his eyes. You wanted to adore him, to drown him in warmth and softness to make up for all the hard and cold he'd had to face in his life. When you opened your eyes to see that gorgeous half-smile that lit up his face, your breath caught a little at how stupidly beautiful he was.

His arms came up to wrap around your waist and all of a sudden the room was spinning. You quickly realized Steve had turned and was carrying you to the bed. Fucking finally.

He set you down next to the bed, his hands sliding down immediately to cup and rub your ass cheeks. You were starting to suspect, by the amount of time you'd had your butt in his hands that day, that Captain America was an ass man. Considering how much attention he was paying to yours, you were going to assume he approved.

You slipped your hands under the hem of his too tight t-shirt. You didn't know how he always managed to wear t-shirts at least one size too small for him, but you thanked who or whatever was responsible with the fervency of the devout. You took a shaky breath at the velvet silk of his skin, your heart throbbing whenever your fingertips found a divot or stripe of scar tissue from a lifetime of fighting and war. Your hands caressed each scar with a tenderness borne of love, of the need to give him a haven, to help him forget.

Steve was starting to feel dizzy at the sensation of your fingertips traveling ever so gently over his skin. He hadn't felt this breathless since before the serum. If he didn't know better, he would swear he was about to have an asthma attack, so exciting was the feeling of your hands on him. He'd never been touched like this, like he was infinitely precious, with infinite tenderness. It took his breath away.

You took his breath away.

You slipped your hands further up inside his shirt until he took the hint and stripped it off. As soon as he did so, you were doing the same with your own, desperate to feel his skin against yours. Steve slid his hands up your bare spine and bent his head to yours with a low moan as soon as you slipped your arms back around him, sliding your skin against his with a purr.

Steve would have taken your lips again, but your mouth was busy kissing and sucking at his throat even as you shimmied out of the sweats he’d loaned you earlier. “I’d like to make love to you, Steve.” You paused to smile sweetly as you slid your hands up to his shoulders. When you pressed down, he didn’t resist, sitting on the edge of the bed with eyes bright with anticipation. You climbed onto his lap, one thigh on either side of his, slipping your arms around his neck. "If you don’t mind. 

“I don’t mind at all," he replied, his voice a little breathless as his hands came up to close around the cheeks of your ass again. Your mouth twitched as you took his lips again.

The anxiety that had been gripping the back of Steve's neck eased as soon as you guided him to the bed. He had been trying to figure out what to do, terrified he might make the wrong move and upset you, or even worse, scare you, when your hands, confident and firm, showed him what you wanted. The relief made him a little lightheaded, but that also might have been the feel of you climbing into his lap.

You combed your fingers through Steve's hair, reveling in the sensation of the thick silk running over your hands. You lifted your head and fisted your hands to gently pull his head back so you could scan his unbelievably beautiful face. His eyes fluttered open and you felt a brief moment of intense jealousy for the thick dark lashes that rimmed his bright blue eyes.

Your eyes were caught in his, adoring that gorgeous touch of green that took his eyes from beautiful to extraordinary. "How are you this fucking pretty?" you whispered, your voice an ache of desire that shuddered through him.

Steve smiled; his heart had been racing, a little scared by the intensity of your expression as your eyes had devoured his face. To hear that you were thinking similar thoughts to those he'd often had about you, his hands slid up the smooth skin of your back to press you closer. He didn't know how to respond, so he ducked his head, his cheeks flaming.

Your heart sighed, charmed and seduced by the sweetness of the big, gorgeous man you found yourself happily twined around. You giggled, an unusually bubbly laugh pouring out of you as you kissed him exuberantly all over his cherry red face. You threw your weight behind it, tumbling the two of you to the bed in a tangle of half-clothed limbs.

You found yourself on your back, Steve braced on one arm over you as the other hand slid up your thigh and over your hip. His touch was feather light even as his hand continued up over your waist and under your shoulder to pull you close as his head dipped to close his mouth around yours.

Steve had placed his knee between yours and was slowly sliding it up to part your thighs in a move so smooth you were hopeful that he'd gotten out of his head a little. The way he was pressing your breasts to his bare chest and his tongue was curling around yours, any nervousness was dissipating. You couldn't be nervous if you tried, the confidence from earlier lingering though the chemicals had worn off. You rubbed yourself against Steve like a cat, prompting a groan from him.

"I love the way you feel." Steve's voice was low and warm, pouring over you like honey and cream. You arched into his hands, shyness and shame washed away in the pure desire you could hear in his voice, see in his eyes, feel in his touch. "You're so soft," he continued as he dipped his head to brush his lips over the supple underside of your jaw. "It's like heaven."

You purred in response, beguiled by the tenderness with which he was making love to you, but becoming impatient in your rising passion. Steve's thigh was now riding against the core of your body and the slight stimulation was making you crazy. However, every touch was a tease, and you were about ready to move onto satisfaction.

You ran your hands over Steve's back and shoulders, testing the play of muscle and panting at the perfection of his skin. You hiked your thigh up over his hip, pulling him gently but inexorably on top of you. You wanted that big, sexy body over you, around you, inside you and you hoped Steve would be willing to fulfill that need.

Steve was only too delighted to fulfill any need, wish, want, or fantasy you might have. If you wanted him on top of you, in between the smooth columns of your thighs, his body finally pressed tight against yours, he would hardly refuse you. With a growl, he braced himself on his elbows, a hand on either side of your head as he kissed you again, both gentle and voracious. With soft lips and painless nips of his teeth, he drove you higher with just the caress of his body pressed from breast to knee against yours.

Now that you had Steve where you wanted him, rubbing against you and sucking tender kisses from your mouth, you arched to unsnap the clasp of your bra. Unconsciously sensual, you tossed the garment to the floor, under Steve's glittering eyes. "My god," he breathed as he sat back on his heels to take in the sight of you bare breasted and wiggling out of your underwear with impatient cheer.

As soon as you were nude, your busy hands were at Steve's waistband, unbuttoning his jeans and dragging them down. Steve laughed and rolled to get rid of the rest of his clothes. You stopped him for a moment when he stood next to the bed, completely naked to your gaze for the first time. Your eyes drank him in, amazed that anyone could come this close to Greek god status and not be an asshole, not to mention mesmerized by the proud erection you were more than ready to put to use. Your voice throbbing with emotion, you looked up at Steve and breathed, "You're almost as beautiful outside as you are inside, Steve."

The sadness around Steve's eyes cleared for a moment, and your heart lifted when, with a grin, he came down on top of you, this time nothing between you. When his cock slid through your already wet folds, thanks to your efforts to twine around him as thoroughly and tightly as possible, Steve murmured against the curve where your shoulder met your neck, his teeth testing the muscle there, "Are we in a hurry?"

"Nope," you whispered hotly back, your breath coiling into his ear where you had been putting your tongue to work on the skin behind his earlobe, something that had him inexplicably shaking in need. "We have all the time in the world," you continued as you rocked your hips slowly, sliding your clitoris against that tempting erection.

Steve rested his forehead against your shoulder, then realized that your tempting breasts were only inches from his lips. He dipped his head further and his hand came up to cup and knead your breast, lifting the nipple to his mouth.

Once his mouth closed over your breast, he began these long, slow sucking pulls that seemed to connect your breast to your cunt, making your core clench. You tilted your hips until the tip of his cock was resting at your entrance.

"Isn’t this out of order?" Steve asked with a moan and a shudder as he resisted the urge to plunge in and ride you like a madman. Your skin, your scent, your slick were all intoxicating him, going to his head and making him forget everything but his need to hear the slap of his flesh on yours.

Your hands were buried in his hair as you savored the anticipation of the moment he would slide inside you. "There is no order," the sex in your tone made Steve tremble in reaction, "I want you inside me. When is up to you.”

Without another word, Steve slid sleekly inside you, his eyes glittering with lust and fixed intensely on yours. Your eyes were fluttering with the effort of keeping them open and on his as you shuddered out a moan you'd never heard yourself make before, need and relief melded.

But you'd never had Steve gliding inside you like he was made for you, the perfect fit. He was rubbing deliciously against your walls, the friction both raw and smooth. When he was fully seated, he paused a moment to pant. It delighted you to know he was as affected by what was happening between you as you were.

"I couldn't wait another second," he murmured, and you melted at the sight of red tinging his cheeks even as he rested thrust to the hilt inside you.

You laughed tightly, your body drawn taut as a bow in anticipation. Though you were soaking wet, you were also stretched almost to the point of pain around him. You could feel him throbbing inside you and were grateful for the pause to catch your breath. "Thank god for that," you moaned in reply.

You gasped when he chuckled as the rumble of his laughter had him moving slightly, sending shockwaves of sensation through you. The tiny motion was exciting rather than painful, however, and had you softening around him. Once he felt you begin to relax, he flexed his hips experimentally to test your response.

He couldn't have been more delighted when you purred in your throat as your eyes fluttered closed and you tightened your thighs around his hips. Steve could hardly believe that this moment was real, that he wasn't dreaming for the hundredth time of making love to you. Part of him was terrified he'd wake up at any moment to discover that none of this astonishing day had been real and he was once again watching you from afar.

Then your eyes were opening to catch his as your lips curled in a sweet smile and he knew nothing in his imagination could compare with the reality of you. Your hands released their tight grip in his hair to slide down and cup his beautiful face. "I can't wait another second, either." You spoke throatily as you began rocking your hips gently up into him, even that small movement delicious enough to have you shuddering.

Steve laughed a little, with a shaky breath, utterly enchanted by you. Smiling at the happy sound, you used your hands on his cheeks to draw his mouth down to yours even as he began to match your rocking movements with gentle thrusts of his own.

Though this tender lovemaking was exquisite in its own right, soon neither of you could stand the restrained sensation. Your arms snaked around his back to hold him closer, your fingers sinking into muscle to grip tight. He shifted his weight so he could thrust harder and faster into you, tearing his mouth from yours to bury it in the curve of your throat with a low growl.

The sound had you arching and moaning in response, loving the sensation of his chest brushing yours as he stroked ever more quickly in and out of you. The feeling was driving you mad, but you never wanted it to stop; you felt like you could live like this, wrapped in and around Steve for all eternity.

You'd turned your face toward where Steve had his mouth pressed to your throat, sucking gentle kisses into your skin. The feeling was sending tremors through you, the sensation combined with those his cock was creating as he pounded ever harder into you. Your mouth wasn't too far from his ear as you breathed commands he was only too happy to obey.

You were climbing higher with every second and had no ability to form coherent sentences anymore. Only one or two words passed your lips at a time, but as they were in the vein of "faster," "harder," "right there," or "god, yes," he wasn't asking for anything more than that. In fact, the sound of your voice telling him how best to please you was the most erotic thing he'd ever heard.

Holding onto his control by his fingernails, it was taking everything Steve had to not let go. He was amazed he'd lasted this long in your tight grip, but he wanted to see you come more than he wanted anything.

With a growl, Steve pushed up until he was sitting on his heels, taking your hips in his hands to shove faster and harder into you. Moaning, you stared into his eyes, yours glittering with lust as your hand came up to rub circles into your clit. Steve's eyes flicked back and forth from your face to that busy hand, his frame quivering with the struggle to not come on the spot.

After watching your movements for a minute, Steve gently moved your hand to replace it with his own, mimicking your motion perfectly. In no time you were coming apart, melting tingles spreading outward from your core and through your body to your fingers and toes and up over your scalp. Steve never stopped moving, either his hand or the steady rocking of his hips and it kept you trembling at the peak of your climax far longer than you'd ever experienced before.

When your moans became desperate and your hands were clenched fists in the sheets, your body arched and taut in the aching pleasure, Steve snapped his tether. One hand hiked your thigh over his hip, his hand closing around your ass to knead the cheek. The other hand came down onto the mattress next to your head as he bent over you once more.

This time, however, Steve was shoving into you faster and harder than ever before and the sensation after the climax you'd just experienced had you nearly climbing the walls, over-sensitive, but somehow again climbing to peak.

"I ca-- I can't stop," he moaned, his forehead resting against yours, his eyes slits as they devoured your face.

"Don't stop!" you cried in a rasp, your body already rocking back into him, chasing the pleasure he could give you. "Who said stop!?"

Steve was smiling at you even as he came inside you with groan, his thrusts erratic but with enough force to push you over the edge into another shuddering orgasm. His smile only widened when you moaned out your pleasure while he bucked into you in ecstasy.

A little while later, Steve sat up from your embrace to drag the blankets over the two of you, concerned by the shivers he’d felt run over your skin. Once he had you covered, he lay back down to pull you close again. “Stay?” he whispered as you snuggled back into his warm embrace.

"As long as you like," you murmured back, happier than you'd been in a very long time. You and Steve hadn't discussed much about the changes to your relationship this day had wrought, but you weren't terribly worried about it. Between the way Steve had taken care of you and the way he'd made love to you, the future seemed incredibly bright.

Steve's arms tightened around you. "I won't be asking you to leave, sweetheart," he replied as he brushed his lips over your forehead, cheeks, and nose on the way to your lips.

You giggled, your heart soaring. "Then don't be surprised when you can't get rid of me."

"Promise?" he asked, smiling happily against your mouth even as his hand wandered back down to your ass. You could feel Steve hardening against you yet again and lifted an amused brow as you nuzzled at his mouth with your own.

Even in the dim light of Steve's bedroom, you could see his cheeks flame even as his smile twisted crookedly. You smiled sultrily and whispered back, "I promise," before taking his mouth in a long kiss designed to enflame. It wasn't long before Steve was pulling you on top of him this time.

Nearly a week later, you finally caught Natasha alone, sitting at the communal kitchen counter having a cup of coffee and reading the news on her phone.

"Natasha!" You spoke warmly, a genuine smile on your face. You had been trying to corner her for days. If Steve hadn't kept you so occupied, the two of you spending every spare moment together in the typical enchantment of a brand-new, highly anticipated romance, you may have succeeded before now. Still, you didn't have an idle need. "I'm glad I caught you. I had something important to talk to you about."

"How can I help?" she answered, looking up from her phone with an unusually warm smile, at least for her. Steve had been in the best of moods for days now. As long as you made him happy, she was your best friend.

"I discovered that my accident last week was no mistake; my workstation was sabotaged," you said seriously, but with a twinkle in your eye. You had a prime suspect; you were talking to her. "It's odd, though. It seems like it was done only to spray those specific chemicals in my face."

"That is odd," she replied with a slow half-smile. "What a happy accident to befall you. Why tell me, in particular?"

"Because if you didn't do it," you laughed, as you opened the cupboard over the coffee pot for a mug, "you'd be the best person to look into who did."

"And if I did?"

"Thank you." You threw a grin over your shoulder that fairly sparkled with all the love and joy you'd discovered this past week. Natasha could see you couldn't make Steve unhappy, not as long as you adored him just like this.

"You're very welcome."

Natasha smiled warmly at you; it was nice to be appreciated for once.

The End

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[honeypiehotchner]

Trust -- part thirty-four

For some context, this is roughly four days after the last chapter (so the reader has been home from hospital for four days now). And I don’t write smut, y’all, so you’re going to get a lot of the leading up to and morning after scenes because what happens in between is their business, in my opinion. Anywho, happy reading!

Warnings: deadly amount of fluff. And some arguing. I know I never do warnings, so I have no idea why I thought to do it this time, but just roll with it

John and Mary have decided on a spring wedding. Sometime in May.

The date has been set, and you’re supposed to work on invitations today. You say “supposed to” because it’s almost noon, and you and Sherlock are still in bed – although, to be fair, John and Mary haven’t arrived yet.

You’re curled up on his bare chest, his fingers lazily running through your hair. His heart beat is soft and soothing, effectively keeping your eyes closed shut.

But the bright sun shining through the window and the nagging voice in your brain — it sounds a lot like John’s voice — keeps your mind awake. 

“Sherlock,” you mumble.

“Hm…?”

“What time are John and Mary coming over?”

He sighs deeply. “Don’t know.”

“What time is it now?”

“Don’t know.”

“Sherlock,” you chuckle, sitting up, taking the sheet with you to cover your chest. You glance at the clock, gasping. “Sherlock! We need to get dressed!” 

You start to stand, dragging the sheet with you, but you’re quickly pulled back by Sherlock. 

“No we don’t,” he growls, laying back down with his mouth on your neck. “We can stay right here.”

You move to swat him away, but you both freeze when you hear movement in the flat. Followed by Mary calling out, “Hello? Anyone home?”

Sherlock lets you go so you can sit up, and you do, glaring at him as you hold onto the sheet. “Yes, we do,” you hiss.

He rolls his eyes like the child he is as you stand up, quietly locking the door. You spin around and catch Sherlock looking at you, causing you to blush furiously and give him a look. 

“We’ll be right out!” You yell, wrapping the sheet around your body as you search for your clothes. 

Sherlock sits up off the bed, grabbing his underwear from the floor and slipping them on — much to your disappointment, but you’re trying to focus, so you shake your eyes away from him.

“Here,” he grabs a shirt from his closet, his purple one. 

You stare at it, but then snicker, taking it off the hanger.

He gives you a strange look. “What? What are you laughing for?”

“The infamous purple shirt,” you tease, holding it up. “You know, some of your fans joke about this thing. It’s way too tight on you.”

You walk back to the bed, picking your bra up from the floor as you do. You finally drop the sheet, trying to ignore how self-conscious you feel as you slide your bra on. Feeling self-conscious is so stupid. This is the third night you’ve spent with Sherlock, and the two of you haven’t exactly kept your clothes on. It’s not like you should be embarrassed that he’ll see something at this point, even though you are. You’re not even sure what you’re embarrassed about him seeing. An imperfection, maybe? Regardless of the fact that he’s already told you that you have none.

You move to reach your arms around to fasten it, ignoring the protest your shoulder is putting up, but your hands are quickly stopped by Sherlock doing it for you. He smooths his arms over your shoulder blades, leaving a kiss on your cheek when he finishes the task.

And just like that, he goes back to getting himself dressed, letting you do the same.

You fasten the buttons on the purple shirt, amazed at how it actually fits you sort of well – which is telling of just how small it is on Sherlock – and you leave the top three buttons undone, a little bit of a tease both for yourself and for Sherlock. You wear your pants from yesterday, which are fake slacks. They have the appearance of being a bit formal, but they aren’t at all.

Sherlock is in his usual white dress shirt, black slacks, and black blazer. Nothing out of the ordinary, though you wish he would’ve worn the blue shirt, but anyway.

“I’m going to start some coffee,” you sigh, smoothing out your hair. You know you’re going to get hell from Mary and John no matter when you walk out, so best to get it over with now.

Sherlock nods. “Into battle.”

“Into battle for sure,” you mutter under your breath as you pull open his door.

You don’t immediately see John and Mary, and that’s because they’re sitting on the couch, but they see when you and Sherlock venture into the kitchen. John is nervously watching while Mary is grinning so wide, she thinks she might split her lips. She’s waited so long for this to happen and seeing the two of you as happy as you are has made her heart soar.

Watching the two of you dance around one another in the kitchen is a sight unto itself. Sherlock reaching above you to grab the mugs from the cabinet as you’re standing in front of/underneath him, putting the coffee on. His arms wrap around your waist, his chin resting on your shoulder.

John can’t take it anymore. He genuinely can’t take it.

He stands before Mary has a chance to scold him, and he’s in the kitchen before she has the chance to drag him away.

John clears his throat rather loudly. “Good morning.”

Both of your heads turn to find your older brother standing in the doorway of the kitchen with a rather disapproving look on his face. Sherlock peels himself away from you, busying his hands with tidying up an old forgotten science experiment as you pay extra close attention to the coffee.

You knew John wouldn’t be happy about this, but that doesn’t mean you want to deal with his attitude – whether you expect it or not. You decide to acknowledge him, though, by asking, “Would you like some coffee?”

“I’d like to have a word with the two of you.”

Mary nearly rolls her eyes. Here he goes.

“Uh, okay,” you chuckle awkwardly. “What’s up?”

“Come in here.”

You sigh, tugging on Sherlock’s sleeve to get him to follow you into the living room. Mary sits in John’s chair while John stands, motioning for you and Sherlock to take a seat on the couch. Hesitantly, you do, but you can tell Sherlock is still wary about doing anything at all, because he sits on the opposite end of the couch. But you’re not complaining. Anything to keep John’s comments at bay.

John turns and picks up a newspaper off the table, smacking it down on the coffee table in front of the couch.

There, you’re both confronted with a headline.

Sherlock Holmes and CONFIRMED girlfriend Y/N L/N leaving the Royal London Hospital hand-in-hand

You try to hide the smile that threatens to crawl on your face when you see the picture. Not because you’re covering your face, but because Sherlock’s hand is protectively wrapped around yours as he drags you along, his stare lethal to anyone who dare hurts you.

He’s possibly more protective of you than John, not that you’re complaining.

“So?” You ask. “I’m surprised it took them two days to put that on the front page. I expected twenty-four hours, tops.”

John levels his gaze.

You sigh, getting serious. “Fine. What’s wrong, John?”

“The two of you,” he gestures between you and Sherlock, “need to start being more careful.”

“More careful?” You ask incredulously. “What do you mean more careful? We haven’t left this flat for two days, how can we be more careful?”

Okay, so that isn’t the truth, but why does John need to know you and Sherlock went for chips last night at one in the morning?

He already knows, that’s the answer. How does he know, you might ask?

“Mycroft called me last night,” John crosses his arms over his chest. “He’s barely kept the papers from publishing pictures of the two of you on a park bench.”

Ah, the park bench. The reason the two of you got home a little quicker than you were planning.

Nothing illegal, unless you count public indecency in that category, but that didn’t actually happen – hence why the two of you came back to the flat.

But you didn’t know press had gotten pictures. For God’s sake.

“Okay, so maybe we went out last night,” you shrug, taking a quick glance at Sherlock to find him smirking, no doubt remembering the events of last night. If you weren’t in the middle of this with John, you’d smack Sherlock’s leg and tell him to behave. “But we didn’t know pictures would be taken. It was late, for Christ’s sake, what were they doing out?”

“Yes, exactly, what were you doing out?” John fires back, having no sympathy for your situation.

You sit back, nudging Sherlock’s leg this time. “Sherlock. Help me out here.”

“Oh, we went out for chips,” Sherlock offers. “Got hungry.”

“At one in the bloody morning? You couldn’t have just made something here? Who knows what could’ve happened when you were out that late? Anything could’ve happened!”

“What are you so riled up about?” You cry out. “It wasn’t like I went out on my own! He was with me!”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m so ‘riled’ up about!” John yells. “You are both this close to famous and with everything that’s happened—”

“What?” You ask after John stopped himself so abruptly. “After all that’s happened, I’m not allowed to go out with my b—With Sherlock and get chips at one in the morning? I’m not allowed to do that? Would you rather I go back to the crack den?”

“No,” John replies firmly. “Absolutely not. Don’t joke about that.”

“Then what?” You stand from the couch, coming eye level with your brother. “What is wrong with you?”

“Just—Try to keep a low profile. Keep yourselves inside for the week, okay? Just until all this blows over.”

“I’m not going on lockdown in this flat because you’re worried about what some papers say,” you scoff. “You can’t make me stay inside. You’ve learned that already.”

You see John clench his jaw, the anger inside of him barely staying behind closed doors. Sherlock and Mary both stand, both sharing a look of worry because the scene has escalated much farther than they thought it would. Neither of them have seen the two of you argue like this.

“What’s really wrong?” You ask, softer this time, just trying to get to the bottom of it. “What are you not telling me?”

“It’s dangerous,” is all John can say.

“What is?”

“You and Sherlock.”

You chuckle darkly. “John, me being alive is a hazard enough on its own. Do you have any idea how many people I’ve pissed off in my life?”

“Exactly,” he replies, taking a deep breath. “You’re not safe. There are people out there who want to—who might want to hurt you. And if you’ve got your face all over these papers, if one of them gets to you, then it’s just more attention for them.”

You nod, hanging your head a little as you think. And you think. You’ve got protection from just being around Sherlock. You swear, he hardly lets go of your hand if you go out, and he keeps little to no distance between your bodies. You have protection from Mycroft. There’s always a guard standing in the flat at the bottom of the stairs that you have to check in with before you leave – except last night; you two snuck out, but that’s irrelevant. Your point is: there is so much protection surrounding you.

So, why would John be worried, unless there was someone out there who has been known to be able to manipulate their way around these obstacles?

You lift your head, giving John a steady look. You look to Sherlock, too, wondering if he also knows something. But he isn’t giving much away besides a confused expression.

“John…” You pause. “Be honest with me here. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

You can see it in his face before he even answers you.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” you mutter, pinching the bridge of your nose. “There is. You’ve been letting me live in blissful ignorance, haven’t you? Letting me think everything was fine? What’s wrong?” You turn to Sherlock. “What happened?”

“Sherlock,” John clears his throat. “Do you want to tell her, or should I?”

The taller man stays quiet, his eyes refusing to look at yours as he shrugs his shoulders, indifferent to it all.

Standing behind John, Mary gives you an incredulous look. “One of you better explain what’s going on.”

You feel slightly better hearing her say that. At least you weren’t the only one in the dark, but you’re still in the dark, regardless of whether or not Mary is with you.

“Gidon is dead,” John explains, which you knew. “But he left a note behind.”

“Of course he did,” you scoff. “What was it?”

John pulls out his wallet, producing a folded-up paper a second later. He hands it to you, motioning for you to read it.

“I O U,” you read aloud, then look up with furrowed eyebrows. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Moriarty,” Sherlock finally speaks. “James Moriarty.”

“Moriarty?” Your eyes widen. “Moriarty as in shot himself in the head before you jumped off the hospital roof Moriarty?”

Sherlock, a little annoyed by your description, nods. “Yes.”

“But he’s dead,” you say. “Do you think Gidon was an accomplice?”

“We don’t know,” John replies, looking defeated. “We don’t know.”

“I don’t like not knowing,” Sherlock mutters under his breath, moving around everyone to venture into the kitchen, most likely to check on the coffee.

“So that’s why you’re worried?” You hand the note back to John. “You think Moriarty is going to come after us now?”

“I don’t know,” he repeats, tucking the note away. “I don’t know what could happen, and that’s what I’m worried about. Not knowing.”

“Okay,” you chuckle in relief. “Lead with that next time, okay? We didn’t need to scream at each other for the past five minutes if you’re just worried about not knowing.” You pause to shrug. “Because that worries me, too.”

Mary walks off into the kitchen to help Sherlock with fixing coffee – she also needs some herself – but she wants to give you and John a moment of privacy.

“But John, being around Sherlock…I’m not as worried.” You hate how it sounds. All romantic and sappy. “It sounds stupid and lovesick and gross, but I don’t care. I feel safe when I’m with him, like I’m protected. I’m still worried about not knowing what could happen, but I’ve at least got him right beside me.”

Sherlock freezes upon hearing this, his head turning to look into the living room at you and John, but you’re hugging now. Your eyes are closed as you give John a long hug, one you can tell he’s needed. Just one to let him know you’re good.

“If he hurts you, I’ll kill him,” John whispers.

“Yeah, I know you will,” you chuckle, pushing back from the hug. “And I appreciate it. But I don’t think he’ll hurt me.”

John gives you a look, because obviously it’s going to take a while before he really trusts Sherlock with you, but if you think you’re okay with him, then John can try to accept it.

Sherlock reenters the room with your coffee in hand, his cup in the other. He hands it to you with a kiss on the forehead, causing you to smile up at him.

John watches the interaction with a faint smile as he accepts a cup from Mary, her telling him to get his laptop set up so they can look at wedding invitations.

Sherlock waits until they’re both focused on the computer before he turns your body to look at him, his eyes studying yours. “I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

“I know you will,” you smile.

Your little shared moment is broken by John. “Alright, these are it.”

The four of you gather around the computer to look at the invitation they have laid out, as Mary is making a change.

“What, really?” John immediately begins to protest. “Does it have to be on the invitation?”

“Hamish,” you have to keep yourself from snickering. “John Hamish Watson, eh?”

“Shut up,” John glares, turning back to his soon-to-be wife. “Does it have to be on the invitation?”

“It’s your name!” Mary cries. “It’s traditional!”

Except, as she says that, Sherlock says, “It’s funny,” and that’s the moment you lose it, nearly choking on your coffee.

“I’m so sorry, but come on, Hamish?”

“Listen, I didn’t pick it!”

“Sorry, sorry,” you stutter, waving your hands in front of your face as you try to control your laughter. “I’m sorry, it’s just – Hamish.”

“Yes, we get it,” he sighs. “If it has to be on there—”

“It’s fine, John,” Mary soothes. “I like Hamish.”

“You’re being nice,” he murmurs. “But thank you.”

The rest of the afternoon is occupied by trying to compromise on the wedding invitation – the design, the wording, everything. Things are being set in motion rather quickly for the wedding, and you’re finding yourself in a strange place of excitement.

You’ve tried not to think a whole lot about the dreams you had about Sherlock and you being married, but of course, that is considerably hard when you’re talking about marriage frequently with John and Mary. Mary, especially, since she knows of the dreams. You see her give you a knowing look every once in a while, when something is mentioned that sends you reeling, even though you try not to.

It’s just something you’re going to have to push down, no matter how hard it is.

[howrry]

friendship bracelets, firecrackers, and far too much sunscreen

a/n: here it is! this was supposed to be a one shot but i got WAY too carried away with it so its a full blown fic now! i kept getting too immersed while writing it so if you’ve never been to summer camp... it’s gonna feel like you did after reading this. grab a snack kids cause this is a doozy

w/c: 13.1k holy sHIT

warnings: lotta smut, alcoholism

Your alarm jerked you awake at 7 am sharp, and when you shot up onto your elbows, the humidity of the morning air made your pillowcase stick to your cheek for a moment. Yuck. That's why you insisted on showering in the morning, since the sticky, hot air would make you sweat all night anyways. You popped your neck to release the tension that sleeping at a weird angle caused.

Mornings were so peaceful; if only you liked them. The air was a little thick, but the birds didn't seem to mind as they chirped and tweeted at the beautiful sun-shiny day.

"What craft are we doing this morning?" you grumbled to Kathia, another counselor who was getting up and stretching her arms. Of course you'd share a cabin with the biggest morning person you'd ever met.

"Leather crafts. Hammering designs into bracelets and luggage tags. Some of the older girls get to do belts since their hand eye coordination will help them finish quicker," Kathia explained, going into the sun salutation poses. The first morning you two had spent together, she claimed it's how she stayed flexible even after quitting cheer. You weren't sure how some yoga related to the strength to do flips, but she still impressed campers year after year with her refined tumbling skills.

"That doesn't seem too bad. You just have to make sure the little girls don't hammer their fingers into ground beef," you reasoned, getting out of bed and finding clothes to wear that day along with your shower caddy.

"Yeah, but it'll get boring after twenty minutes," Dani, your other cabinmate, complained. Dani hated mornings as much as Kathia loved them, and typically stayed in bed until the very last minute. It was quite common for her to show up to breakfast still in her pajamas, and sneak back into your cabin to change during the camp announcements.

"Not everything in life has to be wild and exciting, Dani," Kathia tsked while bent in half at the hips, with her head between her knees. "This camp is for the girls, not us."

"Kat is right," you agreed, pushing the screen door out to leave for the shower units. "Try to be in day clothes at breakfast, Dani, please?"

She barely made a noise before plopping back down into her pillow as the door swung behind you. You played some music on your phone, and the shuffle put on some old Arctic Monkeys. You tried to keep the volume low, since the camper cabins are not far from yours and you weren't exactly allowed to have phones around campers.

You hummed Knee Socks to yourself as you turned on the water, waiting for it to get warm. You'd gotten your shower routine down to a science, proving that the past few months of learning when to turn on the water and exactly which degree to turn the knob to for the ideal temperature had been worth it. Since you were the only person up and at 'em this morning you thought nothing of taking your musty t-shirt and shorts off, leaving you in your underwear in the shower units.

It wasn't the most exposed structure, since the whole thing was made of concrete. Concrete floor, concrete walls, concrete stalls between each shower and toilet. The only thing missing was a concrete ceiling, but it actually didn't have a ceiling at all; only a wire fence stretched over the top to keep out leaves and sticks from being blown into the showers. The toilets were covered by a tin roof, but if it rained during your shower, you were doubled soaked. And probably frozen.

Still waiting for the water heater to kick in, you danced along to the guitar solo in the song. You swayed your hips, banged your head, and spun around the concrete in your shower shoes until a big hand clasped over your mouth. You freaked the fuck out until the mystery person started shushing you and turned you around, revealing himself to be your boyfriend, Harry.

"Well, aren' you adorable. Dancin' around in your knickers to good ole Alex Turner. I quite like him m'self, but clearly not as much as you do," he teased, kissing your cheek and letting his hand fall off of your mouth.

"Shut up, you scared the hell out of me! What are you doing here anyways?" you asked, noticing how little he was actually dressed. He was only in red plaid boxers, looking honestly delicious with messy hair and still-tired puffy eyes.

His shoulders lifted to his cheeks and dropped. "Woke up a little earlier than my alarm and decided to surprise you."

You laughed hoarsely. "And surprise me you did. I nearly screamed."

"Well what 'm gonna do next is really gonna surprise you, then." Before you could ask when he meant by this, he grabbed you by the back of your head and yanked you into the shower you'd been warming up.

You gasped, choking on some shower water. "Harry! I'm in my underwear!" you sputtered stupidly, unsure of what to say.

"So what? Y'were gonna change into new ones anyways. We should make out," he decided, and frankly he was right. It was just water, and you should make out. It wasn't often that counselors had alone time, so you shrugged and tossed your arms around his neck and kissed his smiling mouth.

"Y/N? Are you up already?" a voice from outside the showers asked. You and Harry separated and you gasped softly when you realized the voice belonged to Cricket, the middle aged camp director who ruled with an iron fist.

"Uh, yeah!" you blurted, unsure of what to do. Harry awkwardly backed into the corner of the shower as you popped your head out of the curtain, trying to hide the fact that you still had a bra on. Cricket was brushing her teeth in the trough sink, orange hair pulled up out of her face into a bun.

"Morning, hon, I was heading back from getting the campers' mail and figured I'd brush my teeth real quick since I had my toiletries on me," she explained, wetting her toothbrush in the water.

You nodded and dove back into the shower to find Harry confusedly waving his arms around as if to ask what to do. There was no way to leave the shower units unnoticed until Cricket left, so Harry simply had to wait to make his escape.

You grinned. "Better finish this shower before I lose the hot water," you said aloud, as if you were talking to Cricket, but really you were playing a game with Harry. You popped the hooks on your bra open and shimmied your underwear down your legs, leaving you naked in front of your boyfriend.

"I know what you mean," Cricket responded around a toothbrush in her mouth. "You have to learn to love the cold water."

You seductively combed some shampoo through your hair before lathering yourself up with body wash, running your fingers over every square inch of your tanned body. Harry was watching in awe at this explicit dance you were performing for him, with the camp director not even fifteen feet away completely unaware of what was happening.

Soon you heard the sink shut off and Cricket spit out the toothpaste down the drain. "I'll see you at breakfast, Y/N dear!" she called before walking away.

When the crunch of the leaves under Cricket's footsteps subsided, Harry let out a breath. "You're a menace! How 'm I gonna walk back to m'cabin with a hard on like this?" he gestured to the obvious tent in his boxers.

You giggled, rinsing out the last of the shampoo in your hair and squeezing out the water. "Shame. You should've worn real pants. I think I can help you, though," you offered vaguely, making Harry perk up thinking about the possibility of a good morning handy. Instead, you twisted the shower knob all the way to the coldest setting and pointed it at the corner Harry was huddling into.

The shriek he unleashed when the freezing water touched his skin was unlike any other you had ever heard. You'd been a counselor at summer Camp Jalita for two years now and had heard the screams of girls who thought they were drowning, of girls who were actually drowning, girls who saw huge bugs and lizards and once an armadillo, girls who tripped and fell, and once a girl who thought her cabin was haunted because the wind was moving the canvas flaps that hung over the screens, but this one cry released by your grown ass boyfriend pierced your ears like a knife.

"Shhhh, quit it! We just avoided getting caught by Machiavelli herself and I don't want your sissy ass to get us busted now," you reprimanded, shutting off the water entirely so that the two of you could leave. You started to get dressed as he scampered away, with one less hard-on than he had five minutes ago.

Harry was one of two male counselors at your summer camp. The other male counselor was this nice, older gentleman named Paul, who was an expert at archery and taught classes to the campers. Harry was one of the lifeguards and taught swim lessons. The other counselors (all 15 or so), counselors-in-training, members of the general camp staff, and the director were women and had a certain responsibility, and it was expressly forbidden for a counselor to date other counselors, regardless of gender.

You were never clear on why this was a rule in the first place, but you couldn't have imagined it would be a problem when you applied to be a counselor a couple years ago. Until this summer, the camp had only hired Paul and female lifeguards, so the dating policy wasn't a problem for you. Then, one of the old lifeguards got engaged and then pregnant, they needed a replacement, and they hired Harry.

You met him at a meeting long before setting foot on the campgrounds that summer, in an air-conditioned office room in the city. It was almost as opposite from actual summer camp as one could get; the humidity controlled office, the hushed tones used, the blouses and slacks worn could never prepare a newcomer for what camp was like. Harry was the relaxed vibe in a building full of squares and you couldn't help but be attracted to him.

You were a little dazed the morning of that meeting, and accidentally followed Harry into a bathroom, not realizing that A) he wasn't a girl and B) that it was a solo bathroom that lacked stalls. When it dawned on you what you'd just done, you backed out of the room stammering out an apology, but Harry had thankfully found it much more amusing than embarrassing.

"I love the enthusiasm, darling, but I think I've got it from here m'self," he joked before closing the door. You were officially too mortified to pee and scampered back to the meeting room. Afterwards, he formally introduced himself as Harry and your relationship blossomed from there.

Except, again, dating was super duper not allowed. Cricket drilled it into your heads a million times during the meetings and during on-site orientation. But you and Harry persevered and had managed to sneak around the first five or six weeks of the summer without anyone catching on. It wasn't easy, but the two of you figured out ways to be subtly romantic and also found times to get busy.

As for being romantic, it was done in the fashion that anything you did for each other could be easily explained by normal events. Harry would leave you a beautiful wildflower on your pillow for you to find at the end of the day and you told your cabinmates you'd picked it yourself; you would slip a bag of his favorite kind of chip you'd swiped from the kitchen into his swim bag, and he acted like he'd known it was there the whole time. A few love letters here and there, some sneaking out at night to gaze at the beautiful stars, one too many joints shared at the riverbanks, and you had yourself a full-swinging summer romance.

As for getting it on... well, that took a bit more work. See, the cute little gifts and notes you leave for each other can be just in passing should one of you get caught. "Oh, did I drop that paper into Harry's bag? My mistake. No harm done, he's busy teaching little kids how to tread water." But sex, simply put, required both of you to be there. Two missing counselors to be accounted for rather than one.

Fortunately, there was one golden opportunity each week. New sets of campers and counselors-in-training cycled in week by week, arriving Sunday morning and departing the following Saturday evening, giving the counselors one night each week to themselves. The counselors were permitted to do whatever they wanted, so long as it wasn't dangerous or meant leaving the camp grounds.

So that gave you and Harry your time. You still weren't completely out of the woods, since the no-dating policy was still in effect even on counselor Saturdays, so the excuses for your locations basically got whackier and whackier throughout the summer. Once, you left the cabin at 10:30 pm, telling Dani and Kathia that you were going to find some glitter for an arts and crafts event you didn't have planned until Wednesday. By the time you got back with tangled hair and your underwear in your pocket, Kat was already asleep and Dani was too busy being high to even notice your return.

Harry was so passionate during sex. He was just naturally a really handsy guy and you chalked it up to him not being able to touch you at all during the day, but he was all over you when you were intimate. He kissed and bit and grabbed and stroked and pulled, anything to get a physical touch with you. It was always mind-blowing, and his giving-to-receiving ratio was unlike anyone else you'd met or had relations with.

He'd scampered out of your shower only minutes ago and you already missed him. You mozied your way back to your cabin where Kathia was also already dressed and Dani was practically dragging herself out of her bed.

"What was that scream from earlier? Did a camper see a snake or something?" Kat asked, sitting on her knees on your bed with two hair ties and a brush.

Dani plopped down on the bed in front of her, and you sat on the floor in front of Dani. The two girls behind you started braiding the hair of the girl in front of them, a system you three had been doing for weeks now. Kathia was too neurotic to wear her hair in any fashion other than a sleek ponytail and your fingers were too shaky and unskilled to properly French braid hair, thus the perfect set up was discovered.

You paused a little. Kat tended to be a bit of a rule-follower and you'd carefully kept the fact from even your cabin mates that you were dating Harry. "Nope, I just got in the shower a little too early and the cold water unlocked an ancestral scream from me." Not bad, you thought to yourself. You were never super great at holding a bluff... but you'd gotten better over the summer.

Kathia made a little noise. "Weird, you're usually pretty good at that." She breathed for a moment while braiding back Dani's wavy hair. "Oh, well. I guess it's a good way to wake up. What do you think they're gonna be serving for breakfast?"

***

After eating breakfast tacos, cleaning up the Great Hall where the camp eats every meal, and going over camp announcements, it was over to the art pavilion. You spent the day demonstrating wetting the leather, hammering in the designs, and chatting with your counselors-in-training about you were going to do later in the day.

Your group of girls this week consisted of ladies age 13-15, which was your personal favorite age group. They were too young to be edgy and mean, too old to be crybabies about everything that wasn't perfect or what they were used to, and they were really, really funny. And frankly, the more freedom you gave the girls, the more likely they were to listen to you. The camp understood this and gave the older girls the least strict schedule of all the campers. So long as you made it to each meal and were in bed at a godly hour, you were pretty much free to do whatever you wanted for the remaining time during the week.

"I was thinking of tubing," one of the CITs suggested. "When I put up the poles after fishing, I saw the storage unit was full of these industrial sized tubes. Wouldn't it be fun to float the river on our last day here?" she gushed.

"That's not a bad idea. I'd need to make sure no one is fishing today," you thought aloud, scratching your head and trying to avoid the braids becoming loose. It was finally Saturday and the campers were kind of bummed that they had to leave that evening anyways, so maybe this was just the thing to lift their spirits. "Oh, and I'd need a lifeguard." Your finger shot out towards the CIT who'd suggested it. "After crafts, you're excused to go find me a lifeguard to accompany us. We'll probably tube backwards since the river doesn't move super fast and we get less exercise if we just sit in a tube and float." The girls nodded together in agreement, excited that they now had an excuse to wear their cute bikinis they'd packed.

See, that's how you remained off the radar with Harry. If the CIT just happened to pick him for the tubing, that's nobody's fault except chance. If he'd been your first pick, some alarm bells were bound to go off in the heads of other counselors and CITs.

"Could we ask Kathia's group to join us?" another CIT asked. "They're the same age as us and I don't think they have any plans either."

"Great idea! Hand me the walkie so I can ring her up," you ordered, pointing to the walkie talkie on the table next to the first CIT. "Tubing party later today!" you announced to your campers, who also cheered at the fun final adventure.

When everyone was waiting down at the riverbanks later that day holding their big tubes, Harry strolled down wearing a tan fishing hat, bright orange swim trunks, and a ridiculous amount of white sunscreen slathered on his nose. Black sunglasses sat on the brim of his hat and a red whistle hung around his neck, resting daintily between his chest muscles. If the campers weren't so intimidated by his size and attractiveness, they probably would've laughed at him.

The group felt no need to waste time and immediately started their way up the river. Some girls sat in their tubes and paddled their way upstream, while some girls planned to drag another and switch off who got to sat in the tube. Kathia ran a timer on her watch to tell girls when to trade places. Harry carried one girl in his tube at a time and some campers were practically tripping over the river rocks to get to be the one H pulled. He played this game with some of the girls where he would yank the rope attached to the tube until it slipped out from under the camper and she dropped into the river. They would come up laughing and squealing until Kat reprimanded him.

"Aren't you supposed to be the lifeguard?" she prodded jokingly. "Some girl is gonna get a concussion from that."

Harry sighed. "All you do is nag, Kathia dear. That's why Y/N is my favorite counselor." He nodded his head over to the side where you were pulling a girl using a camp brochure as a fan. You stuck your tongue out.

Kat feigned being insulted. "Hey! You can't have a favorite counselor!"

"Relax," he waved a hand to deflect Kathia's words. "Watch this." Harry turned to the group of girls in tubes. "Raise your hand if Kathia is your favorite counselor." A majority of the hands shot up. "Raise your hand if Y/N is your favorite counselor." Another majority of hands lifted, and Harry winked to both of you. "Now... raise your hand if I'm your favorite counselor." Every single one of the hands raised, including yours, Kat's, and Harry's. He always was quite the narcissist. "See ladies? Favorite counselor isn't a person; it's a tier."

Your group finally reached the end of the tubing trip, since the point of the river furthest north was at the Great Hall and it was already in sight. Everyone started dragging their tubes out of the water to carry back to the storage unit. You put your tube in the unit last, and when you turned to go back to your group, Harry slapped your ass on the way out. He'd been holding the door and probably waited for the opportunity to do that. You tried to glare at him but he had such an excited grin you couldn't even pretend to stay mad at him.

By this point, the group was grouchy from either having to wash off the river water with a garden hose, excess sun exposure, or both, so Harry decided to cheer everyone up. "Hey, when everyone's changed and back from their cabins, how about we all have some ice cream?" he suggested when the group was huddled in their towels outside Great Hall, and their general mood instantly lifted. He leaned to you and whispered, "I bought a ton of weed from one of the cooks, so I get special food privileges. Gotta learn to network." He clicked his tongue and shot a finger gun at you, making you roll your eyes and laugh.

***

Saying goodbye to your campers each week was hard and didn't get easier no matter how long the summer went on. You got seven days of living with strangers and by the time they leave, they're like ten new sisters that you'll never see again. The campers would start to look up to you and they'd be just as bummed as you. If it weren't for their faces brightening when they saw their parents or older siblings arriving to pick them up, you'd think it wasn't worth it.

When the last girl was picked up, the sun was already setting. The lifeguards began slathering aloe vera on each other's shoulders, the cooks were lugging boxes of food for the week into the kitchen, and the remaining counselors were drawing broken toothpicks to see who got to use the washing machines first. You, however, were plotting your escape to Harry's cabin for that night.

When Dani and Kat weren't around to see, you kicked out a path leading up to your cabin so your feet wouldn't crunch the leaves. You sprayed a coat of sunscreen onto the spring that pulled the door shut so that it wouldn't creak. Some trial and error led you to learn that the humid air only allowed this to work for about 12 hours until the sunscreen melted off, so you did this as late as possible.

Harry also took some precautions. The frames that the mattresses sat on were super old and made a ton of noise when you two were, you know, on it, so he dragged it (with the sheets and blankets and pillows still on it) down to the ground. Concrete floors can't squeak when you're getting fucked into it. Fortunately, since he was a guy and the other lifeguards were girls, he got his own cabin to stay in, so cabin mates were one less factor to worry about on his end.

When you arrived at his cabin that night, you used your special knock that you two agreed on to eliminate Harry opening the door in his underwear when it was really Cricket or Paul or even worse, a lost camper. H opened the door wearing shorts that rode low on his hips and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt draped over his shoulders.

"Hey, princess," he murmured, pulling you into his cabin and kissing you.

"Morning, babe," you joked. "Has it been lonely waiting for me all by yourself?"

He took two steps backwards and sat back, landing with a thump on the mattress. His arms shot back and he balanced himself by leaning on his palms. "Terribly so. Almost thought you weren't comin'."

You followed him down onto the mattress. "As if I would skip out on this." Harry scooted back and you climbed over him, straddling his hips. You already could feel his semi pressing against your core-- only a few thin layers separated you two.

Even the slight pressure of him brushing up against your center had soft gasps slipping from your lips, and Harry's first two fingers slipped between them. "Haven't even done anything yet and 've already got you whimperin'. Don't think I'll ever get over how responsive yeh are."

You giggled, or at least as much as you could with two fingers in your mouth. Your eyes fluttered shut as your lips closed around him and you sucked gently, making him twitch beneath you.

"Oh, you're playing dirty tonigh'," he noted, pulling his hand from your lips and flipping you over so that you were below him. He pulled your shirt off and licked at your now-exposed nipples. A wandering hand of his discovered that you were soaking wet. "M'so glad you make it easy for me, pet." He flipped you onto your stomach and yanked your shorts down, giving him easy access to slip his cock into you.

Having sex only once a week made it difficult to stay accustomed to his size. He wasn't like, a monster or anything, but he was bigger than average and having cabin mates eliminated the option of touching yourself. So every week, when you and Harry got together, he had to re-fuck you open to handle his width.

Before the burn from the stretching had quite subsided, Harry let his carnal side out and started pounding into your mercilessly, assaulting your delicate and sensitive walls. His fingernails dug into the soft skin above your hips and his balls slapped your clit, stimulating you from the inside out.

"Someday, I'm gonna fuck yeh in private, and I won' have to cover y'mouth. I wanna hear every moan, whimper, and gasp I can get out of yeh," he punctuated his statement by bottoming out all the way, the head of his cock pressing against that spongy spot inside you, and your jaw dropped open. Harry, thankfully, was quick and had a hand smacked against your mouth before any noise slipped out. "Bet it sounds like heaven when you get fucked hard."

You were getting close to coming really fast. At this point, Harry had one arm snaked around the front of your body pulling you as close to his chest as he could, and the other hand was clasped around your mouth, forcing you to pant through your nose as he fucked you harder and faster. You clenched your walls around his pulsing cock and he moaned into your ear, and you finally hit your peak. Harry followed soon after, pulling out and painting your back with thick white ropes.

After you both came down from your highs, Harry got to work cleaning you off and helping you get redressed. As much as the two of you would love to spend the whole night talking and cuddling and, y'know, having more sex, it was imperative that you go back to your cabin before anyone could notice you were missing.

"Love the glow you've got," Harry mused, leaning against the cabin wall and looking down at you laying on the mattress. "You're the most beautiful woman I reckon 've ever seen."

You sat up, tucking your knees to your chest and covering your face with your fingers. "Making me blush. I love you, Harry, but I've gotta get back to my cabin." You checked your watch. "T minus eight hours until we get new campers, and I haven't slept a wink yet."

Harry smirked. "I'd apologize but I know yeh enjoyed it." You stood up to leave, leaving a fat smacking kiss on your boyfriend's cheek. "I love y'too, babe, get back t'bed safely."

And off into the night you went.

***

The departure of your campers was obviously immediately followed by a new set of bright young faces ready to have the most fun week of their summer. When new girls checked in, they were separated by which counselor would be responsible for them during the week, all of which waited on the courtyard right outside Great Hall. As each camper joined your group, they sat in a circle with you talking about themselves.

"Y/N? Do you mind speaking with me for a moment?" a voice behind you called. It was Sydney, a girl your age who was essentially Cricket's right hand man.

Sydney had blonde hair with a thick dark chunk of roots on her whole head. Her jaw was unnaturally square and nose turned up, looking like one of the wicked stepsisters. She stood with her arms crossed above her camp shirt, pinning her lanyard to her body.

You wobbled to stand up and bounced over to her. "What's up?"

Her eyes dropped to your shoes, a pair of light blue Chacos strapped over your feet. "You're not supposed to be wearing those. The camp rulebook says close-toed shoes only on campgrounds."

Your hands found your hips and you narrowed your eyes. "Really? You mean, the rulebook that pretty clearly states that only campers have to wear close-toed shoes." God, this was such a stupid thing to be arguing over. Didn't Sydney have better things to be worrying about?

"You should at least try to set a good example for your girls," Sydney seethed.

"Just like you're doing with that beer breath before it's even noon?" you bit, not in the mood for such a petty argument. If she wanted smoke, she'd get smoke. Her face contorted a little, but you shut her up before she could retaliate. "Yeah, I thought so. Let me deal with my girls as I see fit, and I'll leave you to yours. Oh wait! You were deemed not responsible enough so now you're a jealous lapdog. Mind your own, Syd."

You trudged away from her and rejoined your group where they were all chatting about new movies they were gonna see when camp ended. "Hey girls!" you started, sitting back down. "So, who would play you in a movie about your life?"

***

The week rolled along without making much of an impression until smack halfway in the middle of it, when the day was so violent it demanded it left an impact on you.

That Wednesday, the sun was over-the-top vicious. The members and attendees of your camp were no strangers to hot and humid weather, but when the first sunburn was reported at the modest hour of 10 am, nobody complained when Cricket ordered for minimal sun exposure and forbade swimming until the temperature cooled back down.

The lifeguards were bored silly since their number one purpose became obsolete. Two of the lifeguards opted out of taking up any new responsibility, and spent the day washing their laundry in the counselor's quarters, playing Super Smash Bros in the office building, and enjoying indoor weather wherever they could find it.

Harry was much too in love with the campers to shut himself in, however. He floated around the camp from group to group, joining in with the kids making crafts, cleaning up the campgrounds, and playing games. In fact, you didn't even see your wanderer boyfriend for most of the day anyways.

After lunch, everyone has a mandatory thirty minute "resting" time after eating. They claimed that it was to prevent campers getting stomach cramps while swimming or running around, but even as years went on and that myth was debunked, nobody really suggested the rule get thrown out since it was a half hour of just chilling and not having to work. (Plus today, one of the most sweltering of days, nobody was exactly itching to go run laps immediately after consuming tons of lasagna and garlic bread).

You were laying in bed during your rest hour, and most of your girls were in their cabins doing fuck-all. You chose to read, and picked one of your favorite books, The Duff.

Dani's girls were always really young, so she spent her rest hour getting her girls in bed for a nap. They were allowed a longer resting time since this was the time of day was the hottest (even on regular days when records weren't being broken), and them napping was better than them being out in the sun. Today, Kathia's group had the chore of cleaning up Great Hall after lunch, so you were in your cabin alone when someone knocked at the door.

"Come in," you called, and placed your book down holding your finger in the spot you left off at.

The door swung open to reveal one of your campers, a 13-year-old girl named Paige. "Hey, Y/N. I had a question." She stepped in and sat on one of the empty beds, pulling her Chaco-adorned feet up with her.

"Shoot."

"How mad would you be if we were out a little later than lights out tonight? We're older, so we're more responsible than the young girls, and we'll all be together so it's like ultra buddy system."

One of your eyebrows shot up. "Is that really what you're asking me?"

Suddenly the cabin door swung open, and Kathia entered. She yanked her ponytail out of its tie and immediately brushed it out with a comb, waving to Paige.

The camper sighed and dropped a dark piece of hair she'd been playing with. "Okay. I'll level with you. One of the girls in my cabin brought an iPad and never turned it in, and we wanna see if we can find the office's WiFi password to watch a music video that just came out."

You couldn't help but let out a laugh. "I have so much faith in the youth of today. When I was a camper here, I missed out on watching the music video for 5SOS's Amnesia."

Kathia chimed in. "I missed a Hoodie Allen concert with my friends. Not that I could've done anything about that."

"You liked Hoodie Allen?" you balked, making the blonde girl laugh and nod. "Anyways," you continued, turning back to Paige. "I'm proud of you guys solving problems together. What music video are you gonna watch, anyways?"

She looked down, almost embarrassedly. "Have you heard of Billie Eilish? It's one of hers."

"God, how old do you think I am?" you rolled your eyes. "But listen to me extremely carefully." Paige leaned in, gripping her ankle. "If you get caught, I'm 100% throwing you under the bus. Cricket will unleash hell upon you and your cabin, and I won't lose a blink of sleep over it. Am I clear? Do. Not. Get. Caught."

The camper nodded vigorously, jumped off the bed, saluted, and took off out of the cabin. Huh. You liked her style.

"I can't believe you let that slide," Kathia spoke up, plopping down onto her bed to enjoy what was left of her rest hour.

"Are you criticizing my parenting skills?" you asked, picking your book back up as Kat chuckled to herself and shook her head.

One problem with the camp was its lack of cell service. Even if you and Harry managed to check your phones without getting in trouble with camp staff, there isn't enough service for miles to communicate. So even now that you had an opportunity to see Harry tonight without disturbing your campers, the info would have to be relayed to him in person.

When your rest time finished up, you popped over to your girls' cabin and poked your head in.

"Hey ladies! I don't feel like planning out more stuff to do inside for the rest of the day. Does anyone object to just chilling in our cabins for an hour or so?" When this was met with silence, you continued, "Great! Will anyone back me up when I say one of my campers didn't feel well so we didn't plan any afternoon activities together?" Two girls raised their hands. "Our cup runneth over! Rock, paper, scissors for who gets to be my scapegoat and I'll catch y'all later!"

You practically skipped to Harry's cabin, but when you got close you slowed your roll to be conspicuous. You opened the door to find that he wasn't in there, so you made yourself at home on his bed, kicking your feet up on the bedpost and sniffing his pillow.

Your timing was golden, since H came back shortly after you got comfortable. "Well, I see you have no intention of moving," he noted, wiping sweat off his face with a white rag.

You sat up. "I'm not staying forever. Just wanted to let you know we should meet up tonight. Maybe... the abandoned cabins?"

Harry's head reared back a bit. The abandoned cabins were a grouping near the riverbanks that got destroyed in a flood. Fortunately, the flood happened when there were no camps in session, so no one was hurt. Some were rickety and damaged, some only had walls left, and some were nothing more than concrete slabs jutting out of the dirt. The bathroom structure was still standing but gutted, missing a roof and donning big padlocks on the toilet stall doors.

"Tha's a new spot. What made you think of it?" he questioned, grabbing a water bottle and taking a few drinks from it.

"Overheard a group at lunch talk about hiking near there and how eerie it was. I think sneaking around there would be exciting and... I don't know. Kind of sexy," you admitted, rolling your head to the side almost to hide your face.

"Now yeh're speaking my language," he chuckled, pointing a ringed finger at you. "I'll meet you tonight, then?"

"Yessir," you affirmed, jumping up to wrap your arms around his neck. "Did you have a fun day doing nothing?"

"Nothing?!" he cried, almost choking on his water. "I spent the whole day givin' girls piggy back rides. Being charming and fun and popular isn' always easy, Y/N." He kissed your forehead to show he was kidding, but you still rolled your eyes.

"You joke, but that kinda talk is in your nature, Styles," you poked, heading towards the door.

"'f tha's true, then you really can't be mad at me for it, huh?" A little dimple popped out at the corner of his smile and he held his arms out in a lazy shrug.

"Watch me," you winked, and shut the door behind you.

God, the rest of the day crawled on painfully. The indoor rule which stretched until just before dinner, and after dinner the whole rest of the day is automatically planned out through Taps, camp announcements, evening games, and lights-out. Your options when it came to activities were pretty limited, so you spent the remaining hours before the last meal letting the girls check out the library that was adjacent to the Great Hall. Of course, the books hadn't been updated since 1996 and the 14 inch TV didn't have any cables to plug into the walls, so that day honestly kinda sucked.

Your girls had good spirit, though, and honestly seemed kind of excited for their own risky night they planned ahead. You wondered which out of the set you got that week were going to sneak out and which ones were gonna stay back and hold down the fort. Paige seemed like exactly the type to stage this kind of rebellion. Whatever.

So that evening, you waited on your bed, wringing your hands in anticipation. Dani was exhausted from her long day wrangling kiddies, and Kathia was always in bed early anyways. Before you knew it, you were the only awake person left in your cabin and had to patiently wait to leave so that you wouldn't be waiting on Harry.

Even with your worrying, you still overshot your departure and were left to kill time before he got there. Which cabin would you two go in? Only two had a roof left, and one of them literally shifted in place when you pulled on the door handle. The alternative was totally missing screens over the windows, and they appeared to have been cut out with a knife. Weird.

You heard the crunch of the leaves Harry was stepping on before he had any opportunity to scare you, so you quietly called him over to your cabin of choice.

"Well, hello there, beautiful," H flirted when he got to you, pulling you into his arms and spinning the two of you around. "You come 'ere often?"

You squealed a little before he steadied you again. "No, actually, this is my first time. Care to show me around?"

"Nope," he responded. "Was a hike getting here. Let's sit." He plopped down to the concrete floor and pulled you onto his lap, lazily tossing an arm around your waist and pressing kisses to the spot where your neck met your shoulders.

That was a sensitive spot for you, and you let your head roll to expose more skin for Harry to kiss and your jaw hung open. His free hand snaked down into your shorts, petting around to get inside your underwear and feel your folds.

"Fuck," he groaned, "You're always ready for me. Are you always this ready to get fucked?" His fingers just barely dipped inside you, not even past the second knuckle.

You nodded, one hand flying back to grab his hair and pull on it. H always loved when you got a little rough with him despite your meek nature, and he moaned breathily as you tugged at his curls. He also shoved his fingers all the way inside you and hooked them to brush against your G spot. His calloused palm grinded against your clit and he bit at your jawline, ear, and neck.

The pumping motion of his fingers created this delicious wet noise, and that combined with the moans and gasps of you coming on his fingers did a great job of covering the footsteps of someone approaching the abandoned cabin.

Harry slipped his hand out of your shorts and brought his fingers up to your lips to suck them clean. You were just getting ready to hop off his lap and give him a quick blowie when you heard the unmistakeable crack of someone stepping on and breaking a branch.

You and Harry's heads snapped towards the outdoors and then back to each other, wordlessly deciding that it was time to get out of there and it was every man for himself.

Jumping up from the floor, you two simultaneously realize that the door was not an option and the only way out was through where the windows used to be. You scrambled over gracelessly (while Harry leaped, rolled on the ground, and took off like a bullet) due to your jelly legs and landed on your back in the leaves. Adrenaline made you shoot back standing, and you darted towards the faint sound of the running river.

In the dark, you struggled to find the path that ran alongside the river for the whole stretch of camp since you didn't have a phone or a flashlight to help you see. Eventually, the caliche-lined footway was under you and you slowly walked back to your cabin.

You were terrified, of course, but you didn't have any other choice. You'd never had a call that close before; how could this happen? Could someone else have known about your plan? If it were Cricket, she would've stopped the two of you, right?

Your legs were still pumping with adrenaline and carried you back to main camp in no time. You crept back into your cabin to find both of your roommates sleeping soundly.

Well. Guess there's nothing left to do but sleep and see what the next day would bring. You sure hoped Harry made it back safely as well.

The next morning, nobody acted weird. Kat did her stretches, Dani complained about having to teach elementary aged girls to tie-dye shirts later that day, the cooks barely paid attention to the girls they were giving food to, Harry merely shrugged to you when your eyes widened at him during breakfast, and the staff was just as boring and predictable as always. Nobody acted as if you or H were busted.

You decided to let yourself relax. Maybe it was one of the campers who went hiking near there the day before. Maybe they were looking for something and got lost. No harm, no foul. To ease your stressed mind, you told your group they were going to weave friendship bracelets that day. You hoped the repetitive and soothing motion would loosen the knot in your stomach.

Things were actually going quite great, until your walkie-talkie hissed alive. "Cricket to Y/N. Please come to my office A-S-A-P." Fuuuck.

You simply nodded to your CIT, who understood you had to go. The walk to the office was like heading to a slaughterhouse and you could barely even feel your legs. You imagined how badly this meeting could possibly go (which really wasn't a great idea. You were practically sweating buckets) and pushed the door to go inside.

The office building was a modest shack, with loud air conditioning and painted concrete floors and doors with that arm that shuts them behind you to keep the cool air from escaping. One half of the building was individual offices, while the other half was an open area with chairs, tables, and spare storage for decorations. Sydney sat at one of these tables and her nose wrinkled when she saw you.

Syd gestured to the hallway leading to the offices and you quietly opened the door to Cricket's office. The older redheaded woman glanced up from her computer and nodded at a chair, not saying anything for several moments after you sat down.

She finally took off her glasses and folded her hands on the desk. "Y/N, I needed to talk to you about something quite important that's come to my attention," Cricket began. Here it goes. Your stomach was already twisted up in fear.

Be cool, you thought to yourself. "Uh, what's going on?" you asked, just barely avoiding your voice cracking. You were sure your hands were still trembling, so you sat on them.

"We, at Jalita, greatly value our rules and regulations we've set in place for our counselors, as they directly reflect on the safety of our campers. A direct violation of these rules shows you just don't care about that safety." Man, Cricket was really laying into you. "This is, however, your first time breaking the rules..."

You couldn't keep it in anymore. "And I promise it'll be the last!" You weren't sure if saying that would do you any good at this point, but it had to be worth something to get that across.

"... I should hope so. I mean, letting your campers run around the grounds after lights out and take twenty-so cartons of orange juice?! Were they raised by wolves?" Wait. What? This is about the stupid orange juice cartons? You and Harry hadn't been caught? "You're quite lucky we accidentally over-ordered juice this month, and now our numbers even out, or you'd have some thirsty campers by the end of the summer."

So... Cricket was mad because your campers had stolen a bunch of OJ for their Billie Eilish watch party. You couldn't help but feel like Paige was behind this tomfoolery and were again intrigued by her style. You sucked a big breath in through your nose before speaking again. "I'm so sorry, Cricket. You're right. I-I should've kept a better eye on my campers and I won't let this happen again." Your hands folded in your lap, suddenly not shaking anymore.

"I'm very glad to hear that. And since, like I said, this is your first time getting in trouble, all's well that ends well. You're free to go, Miss Y/N. Don't let me see you in here again, but I will see you at the fireworks show tonight." Oh fuck, right, it was the Fourth of July and time for the annual fireworks show. Cricket slid her glasses back on her nose, pushed the sleeves of her cardigan up her forearms, and turned back to her laptop.

Thankful for your easy out and the opportunity to leave, you nodded curtly and bolted out the door and down the hallway, back in the office's main room. Sydney sat at a big table sorting sparklers into cups that would go on the tables during dinner before the fireworks show, and merely turned her nose up at you. The blast of the A/C unit felt like it was getting louder so you ran out the doors to the familiar heat and humidity.

The pressure was starting to crush you. Sneaking around, making out in closets, flirty notes, brief touches that left you wanting more, wanting more in general and not being able to have it, it was maddening! You wanted Harry, and you wanted all of him, and the summer wasn't over yet.

You knew that you probably should've gone back to your campers, but your CIT could handle them and you needed to see H. Where could he be? It was just before three o'clock, his last class of the day was the advanced class at 1:30, and it lasted an hour. Knowing Harry, he'd probably left immediately after to go take a shower and would be out by now, probably getting dressed in his room, so you went there first.

You threw open the door to his cabin without thinking to knock or otherwise announce yourself. Harry was in the middle of the room facing away from the door, one towel wrapped around his body riding dangerously low on his hips and another on his head to dry his hair. He spun around, shocked at the sudden intruder but quickly relaxed when he realized it was just you. "Hey, pet. I heard the radio, what did Cricket w--" he was cut off by you marching up and pulling him down to you for a kiss.

The chlorine smell lingered on his skin even after the shower, creeping up and burning your nose a little bit. The towel on his head fell to the floor as he grabbed your waist with damp hands. You popped off his mouth as quickly as you'd started, creating a juicy noise when you separated.

"We didn't get caught. Yet. She was chewing me out for something else I'd done." You plopped down onto his bed as he dropped the towel on his waist to put on boxers and shorts.

"Tha's good," he mumbled to himself as he pulled up his black shorts and tossed a hole-y t-shirt on. His hair was still dripping wet, but he just pushed it back out of his face before joining you on the bed.

"Yeah," you said emotionlessly and began picking at the threads of your white braided anklet.

Harry's eyebrows furrowed. "Wha's wrong? Figured yeh'd be leaping for joy at th'news." He grabbed the hand doing the picking and lifted it, softly kissing the knuckles.

"The pressure is killing me," you blurted all at once. "I'm so scared of getting in trouble, and I don't want to get kicked out of camp for this, but I really like you and I want to keep seeing you but holy shit I'm not used to this whole forbidden romance thing."

There was a moment of silence between the two of you before Harry let out an adorable giggle. "Oh, my God, tha' had to have been the cutest thing 've ever seen. You're such a doll." He leaned back on the palms of his hands amusedly, dimples popping out of his tanned cheeks.

"Not even you will take me seriously!" you cried, jumping up and heading to the door. Harry quickly followed you and grabbed your arm before you could leave his cabin.

"Whoa, there, kitten. Yeh can't leave right now, Paul's going back to his room after his 2:30 class. Can't have 'im seeing you leave m'cabin. " Sure enough, through a sliver of the window not covered by the canvas flaps, you saw Paul trudging back to his room with a bow strapped to his back. "N'I'm sorry I laughed. What would make you feel better about this? A second opinion? Just telling someone here what's going on? Have yeh even told anyone else about us?"

"No!" Your eyes narrowed to slits. "Why? Have you?"

He snorted. "Yeah, the only male counselor under 25 is dating another counselor, it'd be a great idea to tell a girl counselor, 'cause she certainly won't tell anyone el--"

"Okay, okay, damn, you've made your point," you interrupted, holding a hand to his chest. "What should I do then?"

He shrugged. "Do yeh think telling a trusted friend counselor about us would make yeh feel better?" His big hands rubbed up and down the sides of your arms, oddly enough calming you down. You nodded gently, looking up at him. He responded by kissing you again. "'m sorry we can't be more open, baby, yeh know I want t'be."

You rolled your shoulders back, making his hands drop back down to his sides. "I know, love. We gotta do what we can. I'll see you at the fireworks show." He could barely even wave to you before you fluttered out of his room back into campgrounds.

Who to talk to? You honestly couldn't even think of someone really worthy to tell this big secret to. Your mind went at a million miles an hour, but fortunately your legs did the thinking for you and took you in the direction of the art pavilion.

It had a giant sign over the main entrance with the words Dabbler's Den in yellow paint. As a camper, you once asked why it was named that, and allegedly it was to reference how many art forms you would dabble in while there. Today, apparently, was tie-dye t-shirts, since you found Kathia and a CIT demonstrating to her campers how to squeeze the bottles of runny dye onto their twisted-up and rubber banded t-shirts. While you were lucky enough to snag another older set of girls this week, this time Kat was stuck with 10-year-olds.

"Remember ladies," Kathia cheerfully announced to the group, not noticing your arrival. "When it comes to tie-dye, more is more when it comes to pigmentation, but be realistic about our dye budget!" The campers giggled at her joke and immediately started lunging for ketchup and mustard bottles filled with various colors.

"Kat? Can I talk to you in private for a sec?" you tapped the bubbly girl on the shoulder, making her whip around to face you.

"Sure," she agreed, taking the paint-smeared apron off and hanging it on a brass hook on the wall. "Sierra, make sure no one tries to drink the dye while I'm gone!"

Her CIT flashed a thumbs up, but one of the campers yelled, "We're not four years old, Miss Kathia!"

The Dabbler's Den was divided in half by a craft room in the middle, with a hallway leading to the back of the pavilion. There were steps to this section, and it was only used when the Den was double booked. It looked off into the river and was considerably more quiet than the other half.

"What's going on? What did Crick say?" Kat asked, already hopping onto the battered craft table with wide eyes.

"She got on my ass about letting my campers steal orange juice from the Great Hall. But... there's something else I have to tell you." Your lower belly suddenly filled with nervous energy, and your hands fiddled with each other.

Kathia's head lulled to one side. "What's up?"

"Harry and I are dating. We have been for months now, and I know it's not allowed, but I'm so scared of getting caught and keeping it to myself is absolutely killing me. I've never kept a secret of this magnitude before. I'm so scared Cricket is gonna find out, is my hair going gray? I think I'm barely twenty and already getting gray hairs." You punctuated your wild ramble with your fingers threading through your hair and tilting your whole head forward so Kat could see the strands and check for actual graying hairs.

"Y/N, calm down!" Kathia reassured, grabbing your shoulders and standing you back up. "I already knew."

"And I've been sneaking around for weeks trying to keep it on the down low but it's stressful! I've-- wait." You stopped for a good few seconds, reading Kat's face. It was like she was holding back a laugh. "You already knew," you deadpanned, unsure if it was a question or not.

"Yes, I did!" she affirmed, finally letting out that laugh. "I've been onto you for like two and a half weeks now. Do you think you're secretive? You always get the right shower temperature, Y/N." Kat shrugged and dropped her eyes to the ground for a moment. "When you just let Paige go off at night, I kinda got the idea that it was so you could have some fun of your own but I wasn't sure who with. I severely doubted it being Paul so unless you were gay this whole time, it had to be Harry. Before you snuck out, I pretended to be asleep and followed you to see if I was right and I may have seen something I shouldn't have."

Your eyes widened. "You were the one who caught us?!" Your hands flew up to cover your mouth before you could even stop them.

"Yes! I was as embarrassed as you were afraid, so I bolted to get back to the cabin before you did, but I think I woke up Cricket. I couldn't see super well so I knocked over a box that was by her window. Tell your campers I'm sorry about getting them busted."

You sighed in relief, placing a hand over your heart. "Wow. That's a huge weight off my chest. You're not gonna tell anyone, right? About Harry and me?"

Kathia shook her head. "I don't necessarily approve of it, but I like you. I won't rat you out to Cricket or anyone else here. That doesn't mean someone else won't find out though," she warned, wagging a finger at you. "So be careful. Speaking of your campers, what did you do about them sneaking out and getting caught by Crick?"

You picked at a cuticle. "I kinda... took the fall for it. Promised not to let it happen again."

Kathia shook her head, walking towards the stairs back up to the other side of Dabbler's. "You said you weren't gonna do that. Stand by your own word. Take control of your life, Y/N!" she called after you, grabbing her apron and tossing it back on. You wouldn't have admitted it then, but she was right. You remained speechless for a few moments before turning and going back to your bracelet-weaving campers.

As the evening approached, the weather cooled down, and the sky went a bright pink before darkening altogether, camp went into a frenzy to prepare for the show. Counselors wrangled up their girls and ensured they had towels to sit on and Cricket was occupying all walkie talkie traffic getting staff to move their cars off the field where the fireworks would be launched.

You were minding your own business once you got your more competent girls settled in, and just so happened to be caught in Crick's line of sight when you were looking for Harry just before the show was due to start.

"Y/N!" Cricket snapped, pointing at you.

"Ma'am?" you replied, halting in your tracks and turning to her.

"The show is supposed to begin soon and I haven't seen Sydney anywhere. She's the one who's in charge of the fireworks. Can you go find her? If you need me I'll be in my usual fireworks spot," she tapped the folding chair slung over her shoulder for good measure and went on her way.

Part of you wanted to let Sydney fail, to pretend to have looked for her and just let her be late and take the blame for herself, but you couldn't. Syd had never done anything specifically bad to you other than get on your ass about rules, so you went looking for her.

The first place you thought to try was her cabin, which was empty. Then you went to the office building where Cricket had reprimanded you just hours before. Thanks to the evening weather, when you opened the door, the air inside was actually cool enough to give you shivers and goosebumps.

There was a clattering from one of the storage closets (one you and H hadn't consummated in yet, for the record) and you terrifiedly approached the door. It could be a raccoon, or a small deer, or a huge conglomeration of evolved rats, or a sexual predator. Or... maybe not.

You turned the knob before jumping back, and Sydney bursted out from the closet, dropping to the ground and catching herself on her hands. The infectious reek that followed her out of the room and the clinking of obvious bottles behind her revealed that she was off-her-ass drunk. Sydney looked up through fluttered lashes, clearly amused at herself.

"Oops! How did I end up in the closet, I'm not even gay!" she slurred, giggling and hiccuping around her words.

"Sydney... what the fuck?" you blurted, unsure of what to do in this situation. Sure, you and Harry smoked a little on weekends. And maybe you weren't even supposed to be together in the first place... but you didn't get blackout drunk when you're supposed to be around campers! "You're supposed to be on firework duty in five minutes!" Yeah, as if that's still a viable option at this point. Real Mensa member over here.

"S'no big deal," Sydney countered, wobbling back up onto her feet, only to casually lean on a table. "Just point the lighter, put your right hand in, keep your shoulders straight, HEY MACARENA!" she yelled, echoing in the office building.

"Sydney! Pipe down! I've got to get you to bed, now," you decided while reaching for her, but she jerked away, suddenly angry.

"Don't *hic* touch me!" she coughed. "I don't have to *hic* do what you *hic* say! What are you gonna do? Tell on me? I'm sure once you do that, Cricket will love to know you've been fucking the lifeguard the whole time." She stamped her feet and crossed her arms like a child... like a child with a detrimental secret.

Your breath almost caught. "I don't know what you're talking about." You continued to try to sorta carry Sydney back to her cabin, and she was too drunk and angry to stop you this time.

You managed to guide the intoxicated girl back to her cabin and get her set up in her own bed. You placed a trashcan next to where her head was, poured a glass of water for her to drink when she woke up, and settled her body into the "recovery" position you'd learned in high school. Push them on their side, pull the top knee over to support the position, extend the bottom arm to keep from rolling over, and place the top arm under the chin to prevent choking on vomit. Before you knew it, Sydney was snoozing peacefully. You double checked that she was still breathing through at least one of her orifices (she was, all of them actually) and flipped off the light to her cabin.

What were you going to do about Sydney? She clearly knew about you and Harry and probably had been waiting for a good enough reason to let you know she was onto you. Was she just talking out of her ass, or would she really be willing to take you down with her unless you kept quiet about her drinking problem? You'd never been blackmailed before and frankly you thought that those gray hairs were starting to come in full swing.

No time to worry about that. You, obviously, were going to be late to the fireworks show, but then again, the girl who was in charge of it wasn't even going to be attending. All you had to do was find someone willing to cover for Sydney who wouldn't ask a bunch of questions about her whereabouts.

Paul was the obvious first choice-- you searched around for him and found him smoking a cigarette behind the nurse's office. He saw no problem in working the fireworks stand and didn't really care much about why Syd wasn't available anymore, so all you had to do now was find H and enjoy the light show.

When you finally found him, he was standing on the edge of the field between the campers and the pool holding what appeared to be a quilt. He was scanning around for you, and when he saw you his face lit up and you jogged over.

"What's with the blanket?" you asked breathlessly, pointing at the big red quilt folded up into his arms.

"Was thinkin' we could share it." Harry's hands weren't free to gesture, but he motioned with his chin towards the ground.

You smiled a tiny bit. "Okay. That's cute." You helped Harry unfold the blanket until it was fully opened and laid on the ground to his left.

The fireworks show was now officially overdue, but fortunately nobody had a watch or a phone that could tell them the difference between eight and eight oh five. The camp had a murmur of mild conversation and excited whispers draped over everyone, and it was completely silenced when the first rocket shot into the air.

As soon as the first firework popped and every head of every camper, counselor, and director was pointed up at the sky, Harry reached over to his right and grabbed the edge of the blanket, pulling it over both of your bodies, making a small cocoon of just the two of you. You were out in the open, and nobody was looking.

He gazed down at you like you were the most beautiful artwork he had ever seen, like you were the moon, like you were a fireworks show. He fluttered his eyes shut and so did you, and his lips were on yours.

Sparks were flying through your whole being at this intimate yet critically risky move. Making no noise was the hardest part, because even though the explosions and crowd were loud, there were moments of silence as the fireworks shot up... Silence that would shamelessly reveal the gasps and moans and kissing noises the two of you elicited from the other.

Finally, when the oxygen level got just low enough under the blanket that both of you tapped out, he lifted the quilt up and the two of you sat up and enjoyed the rest of the show, breathless and a little sweatier than everyone else there.

Harry looked at you instead of the sky. He was smiling at you, and when you looked down from the show to meet his gaze, his smile did that subtle change when a normal, closed-mouth smile gets bigger, as if he was too happy to keep his teeth hidden. It was like when you were around, there wasn't a face he could physically make to show how happy he was with you.

After the show, when all the campers were tucked away in their cabins, the counselors (except for Sydney, of course) gathered around the massive fire pit by the riverbanks. Harry brought his guitar and some of the cooks brought s'mores ingredients. The fire was lit up and some of y'all roasted marshmallows while the rest enjoyed the music.

One of the girls suggested singing Country Roads and at first everyone laughed, but when Harry started strumming it out softly, nobody could bring themselves to not sing along. Everyone swayed with full hearts as the fire danced up into the night sky.

"I wanna make a toast," Dani announced, standing up from the log she'd been sitting on. "I've been dealing with seemingly infinite young children for almost two months now in addition to one of the most uptight bosses I've ever had, and I once worked for someone who make you clock out to pee." The counselors laughed a little but died down as she continued. "But you know what keeps me going, week after week? You guys. Getting to have moments like this is what really makes summer memorable. That, and the really good garlic bread the kitchen has. Shoutout to Hannah." More laughter erupted as one of the cooks flipped her hair pridefully. "So yeah. I toast to my fellow counselors. May we all make it out without hurting a fellow counselor, a CIT, camper, or Cricket!"

Not everyone had a whole s'more or a water bottle, so the rest of us had to toast with a dry graham cracker. The resources were lackluster, but it was the words that counted and Dani nailed them.

The next day, when you were walking back from Dabbler's with your group, you got an unfortunate message from your hip.

Your walkie talkie crackled to life. "Cricket to Sydney and Y/N. My office, now."

You froze in place. "Ten-four," you muttered to yourself, not even reaching for the talkie. You barely nodded to your CIT before taking off in the direction of the office.

Sydney was already in Crick's office by the time you got there. The three of you stood in the room together in a triangle formation, and the air in the room was palpably tense with the sound of blood rushing in your ears getting louder and louder. Finally, Cricket spoke up with a simple question.

"Can someone explain to my why Paul was in charge of the fireworks yesterday?"

It was silent, and neither you nor Sydney were quite sure what to say. Not only did either of you want to tell the truth, but you also hated each other too much to construct a safe backup story to cover your asses.

Cricket continued. "Yesterday, I gave Sydney the job of setting off the fireworks, and Y/N the job of finding her before the show started. So... pray tell. Why did Paul ask me this morning where the leftover matches and sparklers go? I would've assumed that since I gave Sydney that job that she would've been the one asking me that." Her tone was condescending and drawn out, as if you were stupid.

"I guess I fell asleep," Sydney finally cooed. Oh my God. She was trying to pin this on you! "When I woke up it wasn't until after the show had ended! I must not have been woken up in time." Her eyes drifted over to you, as if you should be ashamed for letting this happen.

"What?!" you shrieked. "You were piss drunk when I found you! You couldn't open a door let alone handle fireworks! You're lucky I didn't leave your ass in the closet to puke all over yourself, and now you're turning me in as if I got you wasted and I didn't cover for you?!" By now you'd reached the breaking point and decided to really seal Sydney's fate. You marched over to the closet you'd discovered Sydney in and yanked the door open. Sure enough, the smell hadn't gone away and neither had the bottles that noisily rolled out. "How do you explain that? 'Cause I don't drink and I don't think Cricket's sauce of choice is a fucking Four Loko! Are you still drunk now? Can you even defend yourself?" you hissed. Earlier in the summer you probably would’ve let Sydney make whatever accusation she wanted and taken it in stride, but you were done. No more making excuses for other people and being a doormat.

Sydney's face flickered, devastated over her blown cover, but pushed on anyways. "At least I'm not a slut! You've been fooling around with Harry this whole summer!"

It's a pretty good thing your anger totally overwhelmed how bad you were at acting. "You fucking liar! You're making that up so you won't get busted even though you already have been. I don't even like Harry! He's loud and arrogant and narcissistic and irrespon--"

"Y/N, that's enough." Cricket finally chimed in, overwhelmed by what was going on. "Nobody likes being accused of things they didn't do, but it's not an excuse to insult Harry. If you have such a problem with him, take it up with him some other time," Cricket reprimanded, and it took so much in you not to burst out laughing. "And you, Sydney, should be embarrassed. Creating a rumor to deflect off your own alcoholism? At least use something believable next time." Crick rolled her eyes as she talked and Syd's jaw was practically on the floor. "I believe your time at Camp Jalita is over. Get your things packed by tonight or the camp board will hear about this and charges will be pressed."

Unable to do anything else, Sydney complied. When she'd left the room and slammed the door behind her, Cricket stepped forward and placed a hand on your shoulder. "I'm sorry I had to call you in here for that. I figured something was up with Sydney and I knew she would lie to me. But you... you're the most trustworthy counselor here, and I thought you'd give me the truth. So thank you. You're free to go back to your girls and enjoy the rest of your week."

"Any time, Cricket," you replied with a smile. So maybe you were lying to her the whole summer and everything she knew about you was a swindle, but Crick's words still made your heart swell.

"Oh, and Y/N?" she called just before you made it outside. "You should really give Harry a chance. He's actually quite a nice boy if you get to know him!" Cricket offered, sitting down at her desk and slipping her glasses on.

You giggled. "Of course, ma'am, I'll try."

Since your campers were busy getting ready to go swimming, the only place you could think to go was back to your cabin. Dani and Kat were on the brunette's bed, poring over a tabloid Dani's mom sent to her through camp mail.

"Y/N? What's wrong? Why are you out of breath?" the girls asked, concerned over your distraught appearance.

You sat on your bed and sighed. "I just got Sydney fired."

Your cabin mates gasped, demanding to know the whole story. You went over every detail, from her chastising you since the beginning of the summer, to her drinking problem, to her blackmailing you, to the meeting you had only moments before.

"Wait, wait, what was she blackmailing you over?" Dani asked, brows furrowed. Oh, right-- she didn't know about you and H. You explained you and Harry's story including any detail you could remember, and by the end of it Dani was practically squealing in delight. "Oh my God! Y'all are so cute together! I should've known. You always get the right temperature in the shower, there had to have been someone else!" You and the other girls laughed together, and you finally felt something that you hadn't felt since before the summer started. You couldn't quite pin what it was, but it was the feeling of not having to hide anymore.

Acceptance? Safety? Freedom? Whatever it was, you wanted to bathe in that feeling forever.

***

With Sydney out of the picture and your two friends offering to cover up for you whenever they could, the remainder of your summer with Harry blew by without you even realizing it. Something else that happened without you realizing it was the two of you falling deeper and deeper in love than either could have fathomed.

Every year, at the end of the summer, the camp staff makes a huge banner to hang up in the Great Hall that every counselor that worked that year signed. There are banners dating back to the 80's, and every year had a certain theme. One was fall-themed and all the felt pieces signed by the counselors were orange and yellow and red leaves. One was rain-themed and the signed pieces were raindrops.

This summer it was art-themed. Each counselor was given a splat-shaped piece of felt to sign their name on. You, of course, demanded your favorite color, annoying the girl passing them out.

You took your time to write your name, carefully writing it in pencil first. You poured yourself a second cup of coffee that day in secret and painstakingly traced it out with a Sharpie. That evening, with caffeine still in your veins, you proudly showed it to Harry at the end of the day before Taps.

"'S beautiful, Y/N," he beamed. "Yeh've got magic hands."

You could feel your cheeks heat up even in the slightly chilly dusk weather. "Thanks, love."

"I was wondering if yeh'd want to... I don' know. Add something small? To commemorate our summer together?" he suggested, voice low.

Your eyes flickered up from the felt piece. "What did you have in mind?" you asked warily, not wanting to be completely obvious.

"A small seashell in one of the arms goin' off th'splat. It's an ancient symbol of love, and also was the symbol of Venus, the Roman goddess of love," he explained, his voice still low.

Your heart swelled at this sweet side of Harry. "Oh, my God, H," you said, matching his volume.

"Let's begin Taps, ladies and Harry and Paul!" Rachel, the camper leader, called. Everyone crossed their arms right over left and clasped hands with the person next to them, creating a giant intimate chain while everyone sung.

"I would love that," you whispered to Harry, dropping your head into the crook of his shoulder before singing, "Day is done..."

"Gone the sun..."

"From the lake, from the hills, from the sky..."

[tummyteeth]

“Can I stroke your shaft?”

Devil May Cry 5 fanfic (maybe spoiler??) Characters: Nico, V, (Nico x V??? Nicovita???????????) rating: Mature Warnings: mentions of phone sex, dumb euphemisms, no actual smut, how many bad names can you use for one phallic object Synopses: Nico and V talk about his stick AO3 link: here it be

----------------

Nico extinguished the cigarette stub on the dashboard ashtray, her arms stretched high over her head, yawning, waiting. 

Nero had been on the phone with Kirye for over thirty minutes now, and he’d taken to hiding not-so-subtly behind the phone booth. Their conversation looked like it was about to get longer and a heck of a lot more private. 

Deciding she didn’t want front-row seats to her friend’s phone sex, Nico rolled out of the driver’s seat and sauntered down the single step to the seating area, where one emaciated goth languished on the worn leather couch. He looked like a marionette with no strings, all limbs and fabric strewn haphazardly into a pile of something resembling a person.

This was the first time she’d seen him sleep all week, his little chicken friend was nowhere to be found. Finally the mystery of where his demonic pets went when he was unconscious was finally solved: they were hiding in his mystifying tattoos, exactly like he said when she asked twenty days ago and then didn’t believe him!

She considered getting her notebook from the workstation and writing this science down, as daddy always told her to do, but that would mean stepping over the long legs and waking him, or worse: tripping face first into the pile of busted devil breakers Nero discarded on the floor all over the van.

The only other mystery she wanted to study, other than entire man himself, was his demonic cane.

It was caught between his slack knees, held in place by a subconscious pinky. The grooves and ridges on it begged to be touched, studied; she wanted to get a chip of it under the magnifying glass. Maybe dip it in a vat of vinegar, too, just to see how it reacts. And maybe stick it in some dead Empusa slime as a control experiment. 

His eyes were on her when she looked up, heavy with fatigue but sharp with accusation at being observed at his most vulnerable.

“Did I wake you?” 

“I wasn’t sleeping,” He lied, “Simply resting my eyes.”

“Sure... Hey so... You mind if I touch that?” She gestured to his crotch with elaborately painted nails, “The uhhh rod. Stick? The pole between yer legs right there?”

His eyebrows curved up, the glaze over his eyes began to clear. “Wuh?”

“Your club?” She tried again, not at all hiding the grin, “Or is it a knob?”  

V’s lips stretched in a tired smirk, he couldn't believe his hard-earned nap was being interrupted for this. “It’s a walking cane, Nico.” His spine popped as he shifted in the squeaky leather seat. 

It was a relief to drop all pretenses now that he decided they were on a first-name basis. “I knew that! Nero tells me you deliver the finishing blow on them demons, big and small, through that. Gotta be something special about it, right?” 

“Perhaps.” He yawned.

“Perhaps?” She grabbed a half-empty bottle of pop off the pizza station and dropped into the vacant spot next to him, drawing a long swig of it and then grimacing at the stale taste. “You don’t know how it works?” 

V shifted in his seat to allow her more room, as if his lithe body was taking up too much space. His gloved hand followed the familiar slope of the handle and gripped. “I wasn’t much aware of my surroundings when I came upon it, one day it was just… There.” He offered it to her handle-first. “If you’re that curious, here.” 

“Aww, you givin me consent to touch your wood?” she snort laughed at her own poorly veiled euphemism.  

The tired draw of his brows relaxed, his attempt at holding back a laugh descended into fighting a coughing fit. A swig of artificially flavored pop relieved the dryness in his throat enough for him to speak again, even if the flavor put the wrinkles back in his brow. “It’s not made of actual wood, sadly.” 

“Oh yeah? Then what’s it made of?” 

“I hardly know. Some kind of Metal.”

“Mind if i take a piece of it to put it under the microscope?” Her hand shot up in the air to defend the question before he even started to respond. “Just a teeensy bit! Nothin to compromise the hardness of the shaft!” She could see the hesitation in his eyes, but he wasn’t saying no. “For science!”

He sighed. “Is that what you call your road trip album?” He motioned with the bottle to the work-in-progress photo album under the empty pizza box.

“There’s actual science reports that go with it, i’m just not done with those yet!” Nico huffed, mock-offended. “Keep questioning my integrity as a researcher and the report on you will be nothing but dick jokes!”

“You’d think with a name like V you’d be associating me with jokes of another kind.” His eyes twinkled at her scandalized silence, as if she hadn’t considered it until now. “You’re writing a report on me?”

“Yeah, I’m writing a report for everyone, and you’re a fascinating guy, V.”

The liquid at the bottom of the bottle sloshed with a flick of his wrist. Words escaped him for the longest moment. “Do you have anything stronger than this?” 

Nico clucked her tongue and resumed her experiments on the cane, aiming it like a gun to see if anything shoots out. “You think I’d be drinking this piss water if i had a jack danials?”

A lull in the conversation draped over them like a silky veil, the silence of the night a pleasant respite from the constant howling of tormented demon souls. “The bottles all broke while you did cartwheels with the van, didn’t they?” His focus was on the broken karaoke machine but her flustered indignation was practically telepathic. “Where is Nero?”

“Jackin’ off to phone sex with his girlfriend.” She rubbed a back and forth motion on the stiff length in her hands, the disapproving look she received in return made her snap back to scientist mode.

If V was confused about the logistics of sex over the phone, he didn’t show it. He watched the curious artisan scratch and flick at the cane, she set it on the floor, looked at it this way and that, even licked it when she thought he wasn’t looking.

It was still nothing but a simple walking cane.

Her hand landed on his arm and rolled it over to inspect the sprawl of tattoos. “The grain and the tattoo have the same pattern.” her mumbled discoveries seemed more to herself than the audience. “Maybe they work like an extension of each other...?” There were more words coming out of her mouth, all intangible and complicated.

The temporary safety of companionship was sucking him back into the worn leather, V found himself sinking into the bolted-down couch with a pleasant warmth against his arm and a comforting voice explaining to him the intricate details of a cursed inanimate object.

Nico turned to him when he didn’t answer a question, the man breathed deep and slow into his own cleavage with a ghost of a smirk on his face. With an impish smile, she reached over to her camera to snap a rare picture of a sleeping V. 

She scribbled on it with white marker and slipped it into the album with the rest.

“Fell asleep with his rod in my hands!”

[doomedandstoned]

Closer To The End (part II)

~By Billy Goate~

Art by Ruso Tsig

Everyone has bouts of sadness, loneliness, heartache. For better or worse, it's a part of the human condition. There was some discussion after my last article about whether depression is something we can choose to walk into or away from -- like a bad attitude -- or whether in some people it may be more deeply ingrained in the psychological makeup, whether by nature or nurture. I thought it would be helpful to give you a window into my own background so you can understand when depression first made itself manifest and the different strategies taken to deal with it over the years.

Banished from this world, and from its toil I can only watch, grieve and pity Stare at stupid likes, wonder at people's smiles

I get more and more stress Nothing anyone can offer, more or less Done grieving, closer to the end

DON'T KNOW WHY

I vaguely recall spells of melancholy in childhood. The return from summer camp to a boring home with mom vacuuming and dad at work had me feeling quite empty and blue. It was a strange, bewildering state of mind to be in. Mom told me to snap out of it or else. There were a few moments that shattered my reality as a child. Realizing, for instance, that mom and dad were having marital problems. Hearing my pastor of a father say a swear word. Often, I would be startled awake in the dead of night to my mom shrieking at my dad, throwing dishes, insisting that he was against her. My dad was a patient man and knew that all was not right in her world. These things jolted me into new layers of reality, each accompanied by periods of moodiness and anxiety.

By the time I was in the 4th grade, I started having trouble in school. I was placed in one of those "talented and gifted" programs, though I never really understood why. I knew I couldn't see what my teachers were writing on the chalkboard. Panicked, I would ask students nearby what the hell the teacher was writing, only to be scolded for distracting the class. One particular teacher was downright mean to me, until she found out that I was having vision problems and needed glasses. Once she realized I was also the son of a preacher man, she tripped all over herself to be kind. Maybe she felt guilty?

Something else odd happened around this time. I came home with division homework one day and just decided not to do it. I don't remember if it was because my parents were too busy to help or I was just too stubborn to ask. There was no rational reason for it. The next day, I was shamed in front of the entire class by an Admiral Ackbar looking mother fucker named Mr. Davis. "Billy Joe, why didn't you do your homework?" he demanded. "Why?" His hand lifted my chin, forcing me to stare up into his beady little eyes peering menacingly behind his spectacles. Mr. Davis' rosy complexion turned beat red when I answered: "I...don't know."

I don't know anything I don't know anything I don't know anything I don't know who I am

I don't know anything I don't know anything I don't know anything I don't know who to be

SATANIC PANIC

My parents were tethered to a particularly pernicious strain of fundamentalist Christianity that got caught up in the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s. That meant no D&D for me! Urban legends were shared in Sunday school and from the pulpit about young people who had necked because their character "died" in this forbidden game. It was the most sinister proxy for evil that I could envision at that time.

The Satanic Panic put everything else under the microscope: toys, comic books, and popular music were all suspect. A copy of Phil Phillip's 1986 "expose" Turmoil In The Toybox lay on the coffee table, pages well-worn and highlighted. He-Man, G.I. Joe, even Star Wars were viewed as tools of the Devil to recruit a desensitized generation of youth into his heathen horde. I'd wake up from one day to learn about something else I couldn't have, play, watch, or do. Video games would not be far behind.

One day, my mother caught me rocking out to the Scorpions in my room and immediately confiscated my radio, outlawing metal from the house (and basically anything with a rock 'n' roll beat). MTV lasted only long enough for me to be exposed to Metallica's visceral "One" and Guns 'n' Roses' "Welcome To The Jungle." While the classic days of rock's infancy were viewed as a time of innocence (I don't think my folks really got what "Blueberry Hill" by Fats Domino was about), anything stemming from the late '60s counterculture forward was viewed as dangerously corrupting.

Various factions within the church began playing games of connect-the-dots with the songs of Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath, tying them into a subservice plot by Luciferian cults and the shadowy elite (at that time Communists -- a favorite boogeyman of the era) who were trying to undermine undermining of God, family, and country by subverting its youth. All of popular culture was roped in with the conspiracy, too. Though the house was cleansed of its ungodly influence, the worst was still ahead.

Soon, my mother started cutting me off from neighborhood friends and finally pulled me out of public school altogether around middle of 5th grade. She had learned about this radical new response to America's failing education system through friends from another church who had just taken their own children out of school. Emboldened, she began homeschooling us in West Texas in the mid '80s, during a time when it wasn't a clearly legal practice. Every time the doorbell rang my siblings and I would run and hide, thinking the truant officer had come to take us away to foster care. I didn't understand at the time what I do now: my mother was mentally ill. Furthermore, she was in over her head. This became apparent when she tried to take on the role of teacher.

While I am extraordinarily grateful for the year or two of solid education she gave me (particularly in the writing and public speaking departments, two areas she and my father were naturally gifted in and which have been the buttress of my career), it wasn't long until she became frustrated with the Abeka and Bob Jones University curriculum we were using. One day, when I was struggling with algebra, she declared that we wouldn't have to learn it. "After all, who actually uses algebra in daily life?" she wondered. We were now self-directed learners, a radical new idea that was controversial even in the homeschooling movement ("un-schooling," they called it). Of course, I wasn't allowed to just sit around and watch TV. Consequently, I shifted my focus to the things that were more interesting to me: music, art, history. Math and science? Not so much.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

For years, I remained blithely unaware of what was happening in the world around me in the world of music. I lived in Arlington during the rise of Pantera, Topeka during one of Guns ‘n’ Roses most controversial shows, and Oregon during the height of the grunge era and the sunsetting of the Grateful Dead -- all of it veiled from notice. My life was devoted to church and, if anything, I tried to convince fellow Christians to separate themselves from the tainted allure of the fool’s gold of popular music, television, and video games. For a while, I was a true believer. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, if you like. Infractions of the moral code -- and the slightest temperament of rebellion -- were met with a freshly cut switch, which would leave stinging welts up and down my calves, tights, arms, and back. Thus my conscience was conditioned.

I remember happening upon the pornographic scene in George Orwell’s 1984 and afterwards feeling that the only right and proper thing to assuage my guilt was to burn the everlasting shit out of this smut. Even then I loved the novel, but I couldn't reconcile my faith with this section of it, so I purged it in the flame of backyard trash barrels. At my most fervent, I also lit the match to a stack of MAD Magazines and comic books. As harmless as they might have seemed to the average Joe blinded to the wiles of the Devil, these were gateways into realms of the flesh. “Walk in the spirit, not the flesh,” I recited to myself as fire brandished the yellowed pages of print, slowly turning them black until they were embers caught up by the wind and scattered into the sky. True story: I once threw away a perfectly good copy of Downward Spiral after one hearing the demonic screams of "Becoming" (not to mention the brash blasphemy of "Heretic").

The me that you know doesn't come around much That part of me isn't here anymore

The me that you know is now made up of wires And even when I'm right with you I'm so far away

This kind of extreme separation from the world really fucked me up socially. For years, I couldn't hold on a conversation with another person my age. What would we talk about? I was clueless about anything happening in the world of sports, music, television, or the culture at large. Even though conversation is no longer a problem for me, I still feel odd about friendships. I have an irrational fear that they're going to be taken away from me at any moment, so I keep everyone at a comfortable arm's length. At times, intimacy feels painfully awkward.

Maybe this is why I'm so notorious for leaving shows immediately following the last song. I’ll give my smiles, shake hands, and say goodbye, but avoid sticking around long enough to really get to know people. I’ve been invited to crash on couches to avoid the long drive home, but I always politely decline. Certainly, I don’t want to come across as rude, I just feel like an outsider to the world -- someone who just doesn’t fit in, doesn't belong. Not now, not ever.

TEENAGE ANGST HAS PAID OFF WELL

As I reached my adolescent years, I began going through prolonged spells of melancholy. The prospect of sharing this with others was extraordinarily embarrassing, so I kept it all bottled up inside. Mostly, I tried walking it out on long excursions through the open field next to our house. I worked through a lot of issues during that time and credit those walks with helping me to keep my sanity. As a matter of fact, I recommend daily constitutionals to everyone as a general principle of good mental health. It would be a mistake not to mention that my belief in an omnipresent God at this time played a medicinal role in helping me to cope with my depression, though my views on religion would one day reverse course.

By 18, symptoms of major depression surfaced like a noxious weed and even God could not get me through it. I prayed, too. God, how I prayed, sometimes hours on end. That year, I fell into a downcast mood that refused to dissipate and remained there for months -- four of them straight. I sought refuge in the music of Tchaikovsky, working my way from the fateful Symphony No. 4 to his Symphony No. 6, the Pathétique. The sounds I was hearing tapped into a new emotional alphabet, impossible to transcribe into any tongue. It was remarkable: somehow the music knew precisely what I was feeling. I finally had a soundtrack to my depression.

One day, a buddy and I joined the military on a whim, though he'd later get disqualified for asthma. I felt the Army would provide a much needed "Be All You Can Be" boost to my confidence and a crash course in normie life. I shipped down range to my duty station, Fort Benning, Georgia, for infantry training. My new home would be with Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 58th Infantry Regiment -- the infamous "House of Pain." In the space of 14 weeks, I was exposed to every aspect of humanity imaginable. From the "shark attack" welcome of the drill sergeants on Sand Hill to the rude middle of the night awakenings for physical training, I was in shock most of the time. Slowly, though, I eased into this strange new world and got my bearings.

Almost a full month into this prison world, we were allowed to visit one of the on-base shopping exchanges. I immediately looked for a CD player and began checking out the music section, trying to see if there were names I recognized. "Guns 'n' Roses? Sure they're cool," shrugged my buddy Bradley, a floppy-eared Gomer Pyle looking dude. "But you really need to check out some Soundgarden, dude." I did, picking up their latest, Down On The Upside, and it was like salve to my soul. The music spoke of being trapped ("...and I don't like what you've got me hanging from") and being eternally at odds with the world ("Born without a friend and bound to die alone"). There was even a song about "Boot Camp," the short album closer. The nihilistic despair was strangely comforting.

I must obey the rules I must be tame and cool No staring at the clouds I must stay on the ground In clusters of the mice The smoke is in our eyes Like babies on display Like Angels in a cage I must be pure and true I must contain my views There must be something else There must be something good far away Far away from here And I'll be there for good For good

The song did not resolve happily, and I feared my life wouldn't either. After a serious injury left me permanently wounded, I began to feel my life wasn't being guided by the Hand of God of all, but the random throes of Fate. Maybe they were the same thing. I resigned myself to the misery of a long recovery, during which time I had to learn to walk again. It's a three beer kind of story, maybe I'll share it sometime. Probably not. Returning to civilian life proved to be even more of an adjustment than the military had been, and my shadows of depression lingered with me even as I tried to remain one step ahead of them.

MELANCHOLIA

I have long held a theory that human beings are not built for the world that we have constructed for ourselves. Whether we're talking Seattle traffic or the constant buzz of social media, the frantic pace of our rapidly evolving technocracy has left us a worried, frazzled mess. The studies are conclusive: almost one in five have experienced depression and one in four struggle with anxiety, with PTSD being a household acronym.

A counselor once asked if I enjoyed being depressed. I found it a bit of a repulsive question. I can tell you that there is nothing glamorous about depression. There's no reason to idolize the angst of those sad Kurt Cobain eyes. Everyone has experienced feelings of being bummed out, and for most folks it is a transitory feeling. It comes when one of life's storms arises and leaves when the situation resolves itself. There's a whole section of us, however, for whom the dark clouds never leaves. It just hovers around our heads, like the oppressive, low-hanging specter of an Oregon winter.

Depression isn't always about feeling sad, either. Often it manifests in a general malaise -- you can't bring yourself to care about the things you used to. Other times, it works in tandem with anxiety, seizing your heart at the thought of all the day holds in store, then punishing you with the feeling of dread. We may feel sad, anxious, or fearful and not be able to give a rational explanation for it. In those moments, I cannot imagine a more miserable place to be. With that said, I hasten to add that my description of depression may not align with your own, as it is an intensely personal experience.

Release your head from the world Keep yourself underground No one understands your mind

Humans programmed like robots Making sure you don't belong No one understands your mind

I suspected I had depression in the clinical sense, when I realized that though I wanted to feel better, all I could do was subsist in the misery. Those of you who've been able to talk yourself out of such states will scoff. My mother, who suffers from a host of afflictions that have never been properly diagnosed, was notorious for telling us kids to "snap out of it." I do understand that kind of no-nonsense perspective. Her father and mother were staunchly independent homesteaders of the WWII generation who braved the untamed wilderness of Alaska and the exotic dangers of Australia. The '60s and '70s generation grew up fearful of losing such independence to mental institutions that locked up people, merely because they acted in ways society didn’t understand. The stigma of psychiatric care was every bit as real as the stigma of mental illness. Thus, her approach was quite practical: take Saint John's Wort, get on a good diet of vegetables and fruits, drink plenty of water, get fresh air and exercise. If that doesn’t work, there’s always Jesus.

Despite plenty of prayer and a multitude of home remedies, depression continued plaguing my mind. People frustrated by what they viewed as an easy fix would imply that depressed folk like me just wanted to be depressed, maybe because it got them attention or they were just spoiled rotten. Soon I stopped sharing altogether. As one friend of mine, a real no-nonsense type, told me: “No one cares. You have to get on with your life.” “How do you manage that?” I asked. “What's your secret?” “You just have to shrug it off,” she concluded. I envied the cold, pragmatic stoicism and wished that I could just shrug my shoulders and let everything slide off. At one point, my depression was so acute, I looked into electroconvulsive therapy, memory loss be damned. During my consultation with a specialist, I learned the procedure had advanced since Jack Nicholson’s unfortunate end as a mental patient in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Ultimately, I decided against it.

SEARCH FOR ANSWERS

As with most human situations, our problems stem from a complex mixture of nature and nurture. I posed a question to my psychology professor one day: "Does depression cause us to think depressing thoughts or do depressing thoughts cause us to be in a state of depression?" His answer surprised and relieved me. "Both," he said.

In Psychology 202, we were in the midst of a chapter on depression and other mental disorders. Having recently experienced the loss of my grandmother, I was feeling especially hopeless and decided to ask my prof another burning question at the end of class. "If a person were to see a therapist, does it go on his record?" In my mind, counseling was for the weak and hideously broken. "Not at all," he responded with a smile. "Even psychologists seek help from other psychologists for their depression and anxiety." Then he really blew my mind: "I have a therapist myself. See her once a month. Sort through a lot of life decisions that way." He also assured me that there was no master file of such visits. While a therapist might keep her own notes, it's certainly not something shared with employers and as a rule is kept strictly confidential, as are all medical records.

My first visit to a counselor was nothing like I'd imagined. I wasn't given pills, invited to lay on a couch and look at ink blots, or even asked questions about my parents. Instead, the counselor initiated an open-ended conversation that encouraged me to articulate the tangled mess of thoughts and feelings I'd been bottling up inside. It was the first time I'd ever talked about my experiences in the military or about the emotional upheaval of my childhood. I felt liberated after just a few weeks of these sessions. For a time, I felt very much on top of my problems. Maybe this counseling thing wasn't so bad after all. I even began to recommend it to my friends and stood up for psychologists when mom would bash the profession in one of her trademark rants.

Promises abound You rarely find it to begin Maybe I'm afraid To let you all the way in

I excuse myself I'm used to my little cell I amuse myself In my very own private hell

I noticed a pattern to my depression: it seemed to be triggered by situations in which I felt helplessly incapable of controlling my environment, decisions, and destiny. You know, other people taking advantage of me, a nightmare roommate, an overbearing boss, unrequited love -- that sort of thing. It was like a switch flipped and all of the sudden the feelings flooded in and surrounded me for days, even weeks.

Feelings of loneliness and disquiet were often compounded by negative thinking about the situation. "What's wrong with me that I can't find someone to be with? Am I that unattractive or uninteresting?" The negative self-talk wasn't helping my situation. In some ways, it even turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'd walk around with a scowl on my face, prompting friends and family to constantly ask, "What's wrong? Is everything ok?" That's why I realized it may take more muscles to frown than to smile, but that undersmile sure is a lot more comfortable. No wonder people kept themselves at bay.

I actually started practicing my smile in the rearview mirror on the way to school every day, just so I remembered what that felt like. Fake it 'til you make it, the saying goes. Even if I was feeling like a miserable wretch inside, I certainly didn't want to betray those feelings to the world outside. So I got good at being a fake. When people asked, "How's it going?" I'd say, "Fine, just fine, thanks. And you?" (One of my counselors would later call me on that every session: "How are things really?").

When I got married, depression reached peak levels, only now that oppressive, low-hanging cold front wouldn't burn off with the sunshine. The mood never lifted. It was with me 24-7. It wasn't unusual for me to be severely depressed during the normally halcyon days of summer. I knew something had to be done, so I confronted another long-time stigma of mine: medication.

To be continued...

This whole house of cards crumbling slow If I disappear would you even know? The trap is time and no one gets off of this ride alive

So far under Too much pain to tell And now I'm ripped asunder So far under

[lethesomething]

Hanamiya... ABO... thing?

So. The good news is, my creativity has somewhat come back, in the form of me spending the entire first half of the day furiously writing. The bad news is, it came back in the form of, uh, this. Which is a Hanamiya x reader weird short set in an omegaverse au. It’s not technically smut, but I wouldn’t call it SFW, either. I suppose it’s more on the angst/comfort scale, with a lot of sexual tension. I know I’m not selling this well, but I’m still trying to get over the fact that my brain handed me an omegaverse story and that I just went and wrote it.

Word count: 2320 !alpha Hanamiya x !omega reader Heat dynamics, Angst, Fear, Comfort, Sexual Tension, Thinly Veiled Rape Threats (no actual violence, sexual or otherwise)

You sit in the back of the tiny uni classroom, trying your best to hide. "Please just come and get me," you whisper into your phone.

Your boyfriend grunts, barely audible over the sound of people talking and some beat playing in the background. "Babe, I'm busy."

Frustration settles into hurt, but you try to keep your voice level. "Listen, I'm about to go in heat and I need you. I locked myself in a friggin classroom and I don't know if I'll make it to my apartment alive if you don't come over."

"Then why the hell did you go out?" he sighs, and his words cut like steel. "You should have just stayed home."

"I had classes," you say, voice going high with a mixture of anger and pain. "It came up a lot faster than I expected."

"It always happens faster than you expected," your boyfriend grumbles, "you always do this. You don't think it's gonna happen, because you don't fucking think. You're always trying to do things you shouldn't be doing."

"Well excuse me for trying to lead an actual life," you growl. Before you can say anything else, however, the call clicks off. You call back. No answer.  Panic rises in your throat and you're left to stare at your phone, numbly watching the animation of a call failing to be connected. You realise that he's left you hanging, but it takes a few seconds before it fully sinks in. You're alone. He left you to deal with this by yourself.

You shift and focus on your breathing as you feel a first wave of heat hit you. It runs a shiver down your skin, electricity racing from the top of your head all the way to the ends of your fingers and toes. You clench your abdominal muscles, stifling a low moan.

It is pure, unfiltered desire coursing through you and it is an absolute bitch right now. You're pretty sure you can sense a group of people gathering, just outside the door. You're hoping it's just your fevered imagination but experience, science even, says otherwise.  Your body, treacherous thing it is, is giving off a sweet, wanton sort of scent, a desperate plea for attention that makes people around you stand to attention. It speaks of untapped potential, of willingness, submissiveness and in any alpha near you it leads to a hunger that's hard to fight against. Whoever came up with this biological marvel was an asshole, you think. You take a breath to compose yourself and spray deodorant in front of you in an effort to at least mask some of your scent it. It's useless, probably, but what else can you do. You already know it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better, and unless you can find release, you're basically stuck here all night.

"You alright in there?" Someone tries the door handle. Thank god for locks. "Go away, I'm fine!" "You sure about that?" It's a second voice, and it sounds leery. "Get the fuck away!" You briefly ponder calling your parents. Never mind that they're in Osaka and you're studying in Tokyo. How long would it take them to get here? A few hours? Do you even have that long? Clicking around your phone, you search for something like a help line for desperate omegas. An intervention team for people in heat. Surely something like that exists.

The sounds of a disturbance by the door take your attention away from googling. You hear a shuffle, and a curse, the kind of aggression that doesn't bode well. And then, in the silence that follows: a click. Someone picked the god damn lock. You look around for an escape, a closet to hide in, a window to jump out of, even if it's three stories down. But your body is far from done betraying you. You freeze, left to sit on a table near the back wall, as the door slowly opens.

You can smell him, long before you see him. A cloud of scent that proclaims, without hesitance, that he owns the place. It smells of power, of danger, of arrogance. It smells like trouble and your body responds by aching for it. A thrill sparks through your veins and you clench once more, biting your lip. Then the last person you want to see walks through the door, sporting a dark smirk and trailing a cloud of dominance.

"Hanamiya?"

You're lost in a maelstrom of hormones, flitting between desire and fear. You know, you are almost certain, that he'll hurt you if he comes close, and still part of you yearns for it, every back-stabbing hormone in your body screaming to be fucked, no matter the cost. The more lucid part of you grips the hard wood of the table and scoots back against the cool wall. If you could only lose some of the heat radiating off you, you might be able to think.

With an icy calm Hanamiya closes the door behind him and locks it again, pushing back anyone who still dares linger in the hallway, in that stifling cloud of authority.

You swallow hard, sweat gathering in the dip of your sternum, a drop racing down the middle of your chest.

He crosses the room like a villain boarding a conquered ship, long strides taking him right in front of the table, where he stops. Eyes the colour of milk coffee look down at you, taking in the flush of your cheeks, the twitch in your legs, the sheer desperation in your scent. His lips curl into a dangerous smile. "Well, well, __-san. Aren't you in trouble?"

You try to speak but the words die in your throat as he bends down, one hand resting on table next to you.

"They say it's dangerous for little omega's to go out when they're in heat. Makes people crazy, you see."

You press yourself against the wall, lips involuntarily parting.

"And that deadbeat boyfriend of yours? I saw him maybe half an hour ago. Going off to some party."

A knot forms in your chest. It feels like a lie. The kind of cruel thing Hanamiya would say to get a rise out of you. But you're fairly certain it's true, and that hurts all the more.

"Your alpha's not coming to help you, is he?" Hanamiya says, voice deep with mock pity. "He abandoned you."

You shake your head, desperate to protest.

"Pathetic," he says, looking down his nose at you. He stills for a moment, apparently savouring the way you squirm and struggle to hold yourself together before him. "It's a pity, isn't it," he finally murmurs. "Such a sweet smell too. There's a group of people outside just bucking to take care of you."

You grip the desk harder, shaking your head vehemently as a cold dread grips you.

  Hanamiya's face folds into something akin to amusement and he reaches out a hand. Slowly, he brushes a stray lock of hair from your cheek, a touch that, despite the fear, despite the panic, runs a shiver of pleasure through you. His eyes twinkle with mischievous joy as he continues, his finger tracking the edge of your jaw from your ear down to your chin.

It takes everything in you to stifle a mewl, your eyelashes fluttering as you grip the desk harder. You want to wrap your legs around him. You want to cling on and beg him to fuck you, devour you whole if he needs to. Much as you hate the thought, your skin crackles with a need to be touched and he knows. God, does he know. You can see it in the burning of his eyes, the darkness of his smile.

"If only there was some other way," he coos, pinching your chin between his fingers. "Shall I do you a favour, __? Shall I relieve you of this little problem of yours, hmmm? If you beg, I just might." He pushes your chin up, eyes boring into yours as he leans closer.

You force yourself to look away, focussing instead on the way his hair falls off his shoulders when he leans forward, black silk draping down, and you try to find your voice. When it finally comes, it's in the form of a desiccated whimper. "Please," you whisper, and your throat contracts around the word, impossibly dry.

 "Oh?" he hums, lowering his eyes to look at you almost fondly. "Could you repeat that? I didn't quite catch it."

 You swallow and try again. "Please don't," you croak.

  His eyebrows knit together and his tongue clicks, any semblance of warmth gone from his face in an instant. With a sigh, he pushes off of the table and rights himself, hands casually shoved in his pockets. "Stubborn little thing." He turns his back and starts to walk out while you gulp air like a shipwrecked sailor washing up on the shore.

"Hanamiya, wait!" You're not sure what compels you to ask him, of all people, to help you. Perhaps it's because in the two years since you started university , you have come to admire his intelligence, if not his attitude. Perhaps you are desperate, in that moment, to believe that he could at least be bargained with or perhaps it's simply because he isn't actively trying to rape you and you're at the point where you consider that a good sign.  Whatever it is, you can only try, and hope. "Please, Hanamiya, I…"

He turns around, curious. "You what?"

You slump. "I don't know what to do," you mutter. The sheer amount of emotions and chemicals fighting inside of you are taking their toll, and the energy it took to keep yourself together is running dry. "I don't know what to do," you repeat, and the way he looks at you makes any hope you had pack up and flee. "My heat just keeps coming," you say, pushing through your distress. "For normal people it's every three months, just a few days, but with me it's non-stop."

Cold clay eyes regard you, and Hanamiya's face folds into something like disgust.

It's not enough to silence you, however, the words that have taken so long to get through your throat are turning into a stream, a geyser laid dormant too long. "No matter how many suppressors I take, no matter what my boyfriend does," you babble, unhindered by the fact that Hanamiya could probably not care less. "I know I'm supposed to just stay home but I don't want to live my entire life indoors like some caged bird, so you can call me stupid for coming out here when it's dangerous but apparently that's a risk I'm willing to take. I've been fighting this shit for so long, and I'm so tired and if I can just make it home, I could..." You don't know when the tears started, but they're very definitely here now, stinging your eyes and adding to the humiliation of whatever spectacle you're already making of yourself. Frustrated, you wipe at them with clammy fingers. "I just

…"

"God, stop whining already." Hanamiya folds his arms and rolls his eyes. "You're a mess, I get it." He takes a step closer and, without warning, slides his fingers in your hair. You gasp at the rough treatment, but he pays it no mind, pulling your head to the side without a word. Then he licks his thumb and dabs it on your pressure point.

"W-what are you doing?" you squeak, startled. The air around you has changed, a musky scent overpowering everything else in the room. It's not unpleasant, but it's confusing, adding to the whirlwind of smells and emotions already raging around you until it mixes and turns into something else, something almost soothing.

"I'm claiming you," Hanamiya says, simply, pushing your head up again. "Putting a big old 'property of Hanamiya Makoto' sign on you that no one in their right mind is going to ignore." He grins at your shocked face, his voice dropping a tone as he brings his face closer to yours. "You're mine."

Pure adrenaline courses through your veins and you blink up, trying to make sense of it. His hand in your hair causes static electricity all over your scalp, making it hard to think. You're a whirling sea, battered by storms but you manage, somehow, to speak. "I'm not."

  He lets go of your head with a dark chuckle. "My, you're high maintenance. No wonder your boyfriend gave up on you." You give him a hurt look, but he ignores it, instead reaching into his jacket pocket. "Make no mistake, __-chan. I don't do favours without cashing them in. You will be required to pay me back." He pulls out a small spray can and hands it to you. "That scent mark will last for about half an hour. You'd better start running."

Blatantly confused now, you look at the can in your hand. Pepper spray. "And this?" you ask.

 "That's for if you don't run fast enough." He grins and turns again. Walking toward the door.

"Uh… thanks," you say.

"Just remember that you owe me." And with that, he opens the door and strides out, not looking back. In the open doorway, you can see the dark figures of a few stragglers, still lingering in the hallway.

  With a deep breath, you slide off the table and onto wobbly feet. You take a moment to find your balance, and then you grab your bag and secure it around your shoulder, trying your best to stay upright and exude confidence. You clutch the pepper spray in your hand and mentally brace yourself before you finally take a step toward the door. The alpha’s outside lean back as you approach, and you rigidly pass by them, feeling like a deer surrounded by wolves. Swallowing hard, you keep walking, slowly, deliberately, down the hallway, until you round a corner.

Then you break into a run.

[withlovekth]

Darkroom (Part Two)

Part One

Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Genre: artist! taehyung, best friend! jimin, college au, fluff, smut, light angst Contains: swearing, self-toxicity Word Count: 2.3k

English? Do I major in English? All I really want to do is write for fun. Maybe get a book published or something. I’m not trying to be a teacher. And I don’t want to write more essays than I already need to. I guess English is off the list.

“Y/N...”

Nursing? Do I want to be a nurse? Blood doesn’t make me squeamish. I think I can stick a needle into someone. But can I take care of people? I can’t really take care of myself. And I’m bad at science anyway.

“Hey Y/N.”

Psychology? That’s a big field. But what would I do with it? I don’t want to be a school counselor or anything. Maybe I should talk to a counselor to figure out what I should major in.

“Y/N!”

Is someone calling me? I don’t think so. No one ever needs me anyway. Just let me fade away.

“Hey!”

I feel someone grab me by the shoulder. I sit up in my seat, yanking out the earbud from my right ear.

“Were you asleep with that loud ass music blaring in your ears?” Taehyung looks down at me.

“Oh, Taehyung.” I take the left earbud out and pause my music.

“Kim Taehyung, the one and only.” He smiles.

“I wasn’t sleeping.” I frown. “I was thinking.”

“About?” He places his messenger bag on the table and takes the seat next to me.

We were alone in the classroom. Everyone was developing pictures in the darkroom and our professor was in his office.

“Stuff.” I lie my head back onto the table.

Taehyung rummages through his bag. “Were you thinking about me?” He quickly looks at me to see how I’d react.

“I’d rather be thinking about you.” I grin at him.

He gasps. “Wah, thanks!”

I roll my eyes at him. “Anyways. What are you looking for?”

He pulls out a folder and slides it to me. “These.”

I open it up. It was filled with photos of Jimin.

“Taehyung, these look great! When did you take them?” I cycle through the black and white photos of Jimin in different poses and places.

“The earliest photos are from like two weeks ago.”

“Are these for the storytelling assignment?”

“Yes and no. I need to choose which ones to use for the project and find an order for them to see if they even tell a story. And some of them are just for my own personal portfolio.”

“These are so good.” I’m legitimately amazed. The camera work plus the way he chose to develop everything works so well for each photo.

“Ah. Thanks.” He bows his head in embarrassment.

I silently continue to flip through the photos. My favourite one is probably the one of Jimin chilling outside of his balcony with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, most likely shot from Taehyung’s balcony. The cigarette was probably Taehyung’s too, but with sitting this close to him, it doesn’t smell like Taehyung smokes. He actually smells pretty good.

There was a photo of Jimin standing outside his house. It doesn’t seem like he actually knows his picture is being taken. He’s laughing while talking to a girl whose back is turned to the camera.

“Is that...” I flip to the next photo. It’s me. “When did you take this?” I look good in the photo, so it doesn’t bother me too much that he took my picture without my knowledge. But I have to admit it was a bit creepy.

“I don’t really remember. Maybe sometime last week?”

“Mm.”

There weren’t anymore photos of me until I reach the end. The last photo is the one from the day I met him. The one where I’m holding Jimin’s hand to my face.

“You guys look good together,” he leans closer to me to get a better look at the picture.

“You think so?” I laugh.

“Are you guys more than just best friend?” We make eye contact. There was something so loaded about that question.

“No, no.” I wave him off. “We’ve been best friends since like middle school. We tried to date once. When we first met. But we decided we’d be better off as friends. We were like thirteen anyway. Young and dumb.”

“Ah,” he nods his head. “I see.”

I nod my head. “Mhm.”

There was an awkward silence.

He coughs. “Were you going to go into the darkroom later?”

“Nah. Not today. I was just going to chill here then leave.”

“I wasn’t planning on to either. I just peaked into the room to see who was here and I found you.”

“Wanna go do something? I’m done with class for the day.” I ask him out before remembering Jimin’s warning.

“Yeah sure.” His stomach growls. “I’m starving. I didn’t get to eat breakfast.” He gathers his things.

“I never eat breakfast. It’s either eat breakfast or always be late to my morning classes.”

We get up and leave the room.

“I think it’d be better if you just stop taking morning classes. I can’t believe our professor never calls you out for being asleep.”

“He said himself he’s not a morning person and doesn’t get why the school schedules him for morning classes. I think he understands.”

We make our way to Taehyung’s car.

“Do you drive?” He asks as we get into his car.

“Yeah, but I didn’t drive today. I didn’t want to lose my street parking. My neighbors are assholes.”

Taehyung backs out of the spot and begins to drive.

“I feel it.” He nods his head.

“What. Are you referring to Jimin?” I giggle.

He chuckles. “Chim Chim can be so mean sometimes.”

“I totally feel that.” I lean against the window.

“I wonder why he kept you away from me for so long.”

I watch him as he nonchalantly drives with his left hand on the wheel and the right on the stick, despite driving an automatic car. Something about that made him look kinda cool.

“Maybe he wants me all for himself,” I joke.

His lips form a small smile. “Funny. That’s what I was thinking.”

Just what else are you thinking, Taehyung?

I can hear it now, Jimin scolding me for hanging out alone with Taehyung. I just want to see for myself how bad this guy Jimin says he can be.

“How long have you known about me?” I question, looking out the window.

I can feel him looking at me. “I guess since you guys ended up in the same classes in seventh grade. He told me about that time in P.E. where the guys in your class were making fun of him for being a dancer and you defended him. I thought you were so cool and he did too.”

“It was nothing. Kids can be so cruel.” I laugh.

“I heard one of the kids called him the f-slur and you pulled him by the collar and decked him in the face so fast, he really didn’t know what was coming to him. Was it worth getting suspended the first week of school?”

“I got a few bruises but it totally worth it.” I put up an ok-hand sign. “Jimin put in a good word for me anyway so I was only suspended for the rest of the week. The other kids were suspended longer for bullying.”

“I really wanted to meet you after hearing that story. I never got the chance to. It felt like coincidence that we kept missing each other. Well, until high school happened and it felt like Jimin was purposely timing it so that we don’t ever meet.” His stomach growls again. “Do you want to eat anywhere specifically? I think we still have leftovers from dinner last night that I can make into an omelette if you wanna come over,” he changes the subject.

“Yeah we can go to your place. I’m always down to save money.”

The second awkward silence of the day rolls in.

“So,” I start. “What makes you think Jimin doesn’t want us seeing each other?”

“We’re good friends. But sometimes I get the feeling that he thinks I’m a bad person.”

Looks like you’re not dumb, Kim Taehyung.

“I don’t think you’re a bad person.”

“Of course you don’t Y/N. We just met,” he puts it out there so flatly.

“Are you saying you are a bad person?” I raise an eyebrow at him.

“I don’t mean it that way.” He pulls up into his driveway.

It’s strange to see Jimin’s house from this perspective, through Taehyung’s yard. This weird guilt forms over me. I try my best to calm down when I realize Jimin’s car isn’t in the driveway. What he doesn’t know, won’t get him upset with me.

We walk through the front door.

“My family isn’t home by the way. I hope that’s okay with you?”

We take off our shoes at the doorway and walk into the house. Taehyung’s place looks likes a mirrored version of Jimin’s house except for the different furniture. I strangely feel right at home.

We walk through a short hallway towards the kitchen. On the wall was a familiar framed photo. Jimin was smiling next to a shy boy, partially hiding behind a bouquet of flowers.

“Oh my God. Jimin has the same exact photo hanging in his house.” I point at him. “You? You’re the kid in the photo?”

“Yeah? Why do you sound so excited?”

I feel my face get warm from embarrassment. “The first time I visited Jimin was in the eighth grade. I asked about the kid in the photo. Jimin questioned why I was asking and I told him I thought he was cute. Jimin just brushed it off and said it was just a friend and the conversation ended there.”

Taehyung looks at the photo. “That was in seventh grade after one of Jimin’s dance performances. Me and my parents surprised him after and that’s when we took the picture. Then our families went to get some dinner to celebrate.”

“Maybe that’s why...”

“He didn’t want us to meet,” he finishes my sentence. His jaw drops. “You called me cute back then and maybe he got jealous.”

I let out a genuine surprised gasp. “That’s exactly what I was thinking! But is Jimin isn’t like that. He doesn’t really get jealous... Does he?”

“I mean he’d always argue with his brother because he wanted something his brother had. But I mean, they’re brothers and siblings fight all the time. Does that count?”

We go into the kitchen and he prepares to make us breakfast. I sit at the dining table.

“I don’t think so... That sounds kind of a dumb thing to be jealous about though. I mean I call him cute all the time.”

“Yeah, you’re right. That is kinda dumb. There’s probably more to it.” I watch him cut up some leftover steak from the fridge. He cracks a couple eggs into a bowl and scrambles them, adding some salt, pepper, and cheese. He pours the mixture into a preheated pan. “Maybe we should confront him about it.”

“Maybe...”

Maybe. But I know Jimin. He should have a good reason to not trust Taehyung around me. Was he lying about the art thing? Would Taehyung really use me and throw me away when he’s done with me? Jimin would never lie about anything like that.

“Hey, what are you thinking about now, daydreamer?” Taehyung places a plated omelette in front of me.

“Can we go to your room?”

“Woah. Let me dine you first.” He takes a bite of his food. “Moving a little too fast there, aren’t we?”

I feel my face get hot after realizing what I just said. “I-I didn’t mean it like that—”

“I know,” he chuckles. “I know you’re not like that. Jimin really has told me a lot about you.”

“That’s comforting that he talks so highly of me.” I take a fork full of food. “Okay, what the fuck Kim Taehyung. An a amazing photographer? And a great cook? That’s not fair, you can’t have multiple good traits.”

He covers his smile behind his hand. “Thanks. I try.”

We finish up our breakfast. I help him with the dishes.

“Has Jimin really not mention anything about me?” He asks while drying a plate.

I pause to think. “He has mentioned you a couple times, never by name but by ‘my neighbor.’ I don’t really remember what he said, but don’t worry, they were all good things... Unless he was talking about another neighbor.”

“I’m the only one he talks to in this neighborhood. I guess it kinda makes me glad he talks about me. We’ve been friends for so long. He wasn’t always so cold towards me. We used to have sleepovers all the time as kids. We’d stay up way past our bedtime to talk about everything.”

We walk up stairs to his room.

“Make yourself at home, since it seems like you already know my home.” He sits down at his desk. “You can take a seat on my bed.”

With his permission, I do as he says. “Of course I do, it’s exactly like Jimin’s house.”

I look around his room. It looks nothing like Jimin’s. Different works of art hang all over the painted grey walls. None of them look too personal, unlike Jimin’s walls which are full of polaroids of and art made by friends, and posters of his interests accompanied by clear stringed lights that go all around his room. Jimin’s room feels cozy while Taehyung’s room feels more like an art studio.

“So why did you want to come up here?” He swivels around in his chair.

“I just wanted to see how different your room was compared to Jimin’s.” I’m mostly honest. I wanted to see for myself these art pieces Jimin was talking about.

“Speaking of which, it looks like he’s home.” He smiles and waves.

I turn my head towards the balcony to lock eyes with Jimin. He walks over to his window and shuts the curtains.

Side Note: I never know when is the right time to update but I finally posted this even if I literally had this written out after posting part one. Leave me any feedback so I can be inspired to keep updating!

[darlingpetao3]

Good Vibrations (Harry Wells x Reader)

Rating: M (NSFW, smut)

Summary: After an escaped meta accidentally gives Harry incredible speed, you are both sure to put these newly acquired powers to the test. In the best way possible.

If it wasn't such a serious situation, onlookers might laugh at this total wild goose chase taking place at S.T.A.R. Labs. Team Flash's latest captured meta had just broken free from his binds and managed to escape Barry’s grasp in the process. The meta tears it up around the labyrinth-like halls of the building at super speed.

Barry's super speed.

The scarlet speedster is left powerless from the ability-stealing meta, yet still tries to run at a normal human pace after the criminal. Barry's hollers echo down the halls.

“He's getting away! Someone grab him!”

You are frantic, not exactly sure an ability-free technician can be of much help. But you notice Cisco and Harry having a quick exchange of words in their own secret language. Cisco grabs his Vibe gloves and specs while Harry brings his pulse rifle to life. They have a plan.

“On three,” Cisco says. “Ready?”

“Do it,” Harry tells him.

“One, two, three.” Cisco opens a breach and Harry runs and jumps into it.

“Where'd you Vibe him?” you ask.

“East wing of the Labs. He should have come out right as this guy was rounding the corner.” Sure enough, when you and the rest of the team (and an out of breath Barry) reach the meta, he's unconscious on the ground. Harry stands over him with his pulse rifle resting on his shoulder facing up.

“Nice shot, Harry,” Cisco congratulates him.

“Impressive timing, Ramon.” Harry props his weapon up against the wall and lifts the meta up and carries him back to the pipeline where he belongs.

“Great work, guys,” Barry says, sounding a little drained. “Couldn't have done it without you. Really.”

A little later following the giant mishap, you peek your head into Harry's room located on the other side of the Labs.

“Hey,” you say, making your presence known.

“Hi.” Harry stops what he's doing and focuses his full attention on you (one of the many things you love about him).

“You were very brave today.”

“It was nothing,” he says humbly.

“I think that's what heroes say after they heroically save the day,” you say, smiling up at him like a smitten schoolgirl. Harry laughs and as he pulls you into him, he gives off an electric shock.

“Ooh!” you yelp. Damn his black long sleeve shirts, you think. Sure, they outline his arms like a fucking masterpiece, but if they were going to start inducing shocks every time you touched, they'll just have to go. Harry apologizes and envelops his arms around you, needing to feel you against him. You love it when Harry gets like this. For a man who hides his public displays of affection around the team, he makes up for it when you're alone. You rub your thumb against his cheek and he leans into your touch.

“Ow!” He shocked you again. “What's going on with you?”

“I- I don't know,” Harry says, confused as you are.

“Okay, here's the plan. I'll meet you here after I take care of the metas. When I get back, your electric shirt better be off your body.” You give him a quick peck before leaving.

“Yes, ma’am.”

After you tend to feeding the metas for the night, you return to find Harry still in his room, but now clad in his black undershirt, pacing the cement floor. When he spots you, he says, “Hey, come here for a second.”

“What is it?”

“Just come here. I want to try something.” You wonder what this could be about and approach him with a questioning raised eyebrow.

“Is this science related?”

“Potentially.” Next thing you know, Harry takes your face in his hands and kisses you.

Actually, he kisses you like you've never been kissed before. Holy shit. His kiss is like a vibrating massage and whatever he's doing with his tongue is out of this world. Harry's lips leave yours and you're left breathless, with a funny lingering sensation on your own.

“Whoa. What was that?”

“I think when I came in contact with the meta after I shot him, he transferred Barry's powers to me, as Barry was the last person to handle him.” You didn't know the meta could do that. You thought he could only steal powers for his own.

“Incredible. Do it again.” He obeys and the feeling is back, except stronger somehow. It drives you wild, causing your body to shudder in the best way.

I wonder what else he can do with these lovely powers.

“Hey, Hare, if Barry's powers transferred over to you, does that make you a speedster?”

“Apparently so.”

“For how long do you think?”

“It's hard to say. It could be a few hours to a few days? Permanent is highly unlikely.”

“Shall we see what other neat tricks you can do?”

“Already ahead of you.” Harry seems to be picking up what you're laying down because, with a gust of wind and yellow lighting trails, he already has you on your back on his bed, with your and his outer layers already shed. This is all so wonderfully strange and new.

Harry showers your body with kisses, giving certain places more special care than others. You hum happily and can feel his smile grow bigger each time his mouth graces your skin. But as much as you are loving this, your desire to have him buried inside you now is overwhelming. All you need to say is “Harry,” in the tone that tells him exactly what you need.

He wastes no time.

You feel your very core quiver with overpowering need each time his pulsing length burrows into you. The sensation is almost too much to handle and yet you find yourself begging for more. Of course your Harry obliges, snapping his hips up to meet yours at a speed not known to the average man. The funny thing? You have a feeling he's holding back some. The noises that leave you are positively impure and you think Harry may be worried he's hurting you.

“Are you, are you okay? S-should I stop?”

“God, no!” you insist. “Please keep going Harry, pleasekeepgoing!”

In a series of perfectly hard and extra-speedy thrusts, Harry makes his final play by adding a vibrating hand to your most sensitive spot...

You've never seen so many stars behind your eyes in your entire life.

You're not exactly sure how much time has passed, or how long you were temporarily out of it because Harry's magnificent arms have snaked up and around your body to hold you close to his own as you come down from your high. You can't form words, so you hold your head as if to show your mind has been blown. Harry looks pretty smug with himself.

“Is it horrible of me to be glad the meta broke free today?”

“Yes...” You give Harry a little slap on the arm. “But then we can be horrible together.”

“I wonder if Barry uses his powers this way,” you wonder aloud.

“Can we maybe not mention Allen-”

“Or Wally, or-”

“Don't you dare finish that thought,” he warns. You cannot suppress your giggles from looking at his face right now. “Oh, I'll give you something to laugh about.” Harry wiggles his fingers in your direction and you try to fight him off.

“No, no, I'm sorry, I’m sorry, no ahahahaha!” He tickles you and laughs at your expense as you squirm with delightful squees.

The next morning, waking up in Harry's bed, you both discover the unfortunate: his speed is gone. So it would seem the development from the transferring process to the effects wearing off would add up to about twelve hours. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

“I'll have to write that down in the database later,” Harry says as he stretches beside you. You turn to face him in bed.

“You won't be too detailed in your report will you?”

“No. Won't want to scar the rest of the team. Then again...”

Swinging your legs over the bed to stand up, you make it approximately two steps before collapsing to the ground. A string of volatile curses brings Harry to sit up and stare at you on the floor.

“Fuck, that hurts!”

“What happened?” You get up, but another couple steps and you're reacquainted with the cold cement.

“Goddammit, Harry. I can't walk thanks to you!”

He throws the covers off of himself and comes to help you up again. You expect him to say something comforting but really should know better by now.

“That'll be embarrassing to explain to everyone. Have fun with that, Bambi.”

Today is going to suck.

~

A/N: Maybe EoWells’ old chair is kicking around for the Reader to use? HA! :P

Requested by @kittylayman11: Can you do a smut with dr. Wells from E2 where There was a mix up and somehow (You can choose how) he got speed and choose to have sex with his girlfriend aka the reader with him going really fast and the reader can't walk the day after

[sincerlyyme-blog]

Someone (Jared Kleinman x Reader)

TW: a lil bit of smut, angst, offensive humor, and swearing

Words: 2,428

Requested: yes! 

Disclaimer: THIS IS HARDLY EDITED AND IT JUMPS AROUND A LOT IM SORRY BUT ENJOY <3

           Biology was a subject made by the devil. Learning about cells and other useless things was never the first thing on your mind. You wanted to be a writer, a poet, anything that didn’t relate to science. Sitting in your biology class made time go by at the pace of molasses. The class consisted of you, barely listening, scratching down lines of poems in the back of your notebook.

           There was only one kid in your class who liked the work. Jared fucking Kleinman. The kid was a dork. You could practically see the imprints of his computer screen monitor in his glasses. All he ever did was answer questions without trying. When he would complete his work, he bothered the rest of his friends with dark memes that he either made or found on the internet; you could never tell which one it was.

           It was end of May or early June, the time of year where teachers were handing out final assignments. The only thing you hated more than this class was the people in it. When you sat in your seat, you never looked up from your hands. You sneakily avoided all group work, by having the optional choice of doing it solo. It was this faithful afternoon that your teacher, Mrs.Price, broke that lonely streak.

           She introduced the project with examples of previous work. The project was to look up sicknesses and how they affected the human body. A research paper and visual component were what made up of the project. Mrs.Price announced that it was a group project; rather pairs of twos. You sat up in your seat, getting ready to face the music that was playing against your favour. Glancing around the room, you played a game of platonic Tinder: who you wouldn’t mind being your partner, and who you would despise. Everyone in the class seemed pretty chill. They were either druggies or the popular kids who had too much of a social life to put in a lot of effort. The only person that you wouldn’t want to be paired up with would be-

           “Jared Kleinman. Your partnered with Y/N L/N.”

           Jared’s eyes darted up from his rubix cube and straight into your eyes. You groaned, laying your head back on your desk.

           You didn’t know if you were annoyed by Jared, or scared of his witty intelligence. All that you knew is that you did not want to do this. Especially with mr-know-it-all.

           Jared made his way over to the table, pushing his glasses further up his nose. “So, I was thinking that we could do thoriac squeeze for our project?” he spoke in a nasally tone.

           You glanced up at the clock, marking down the five minutes you had left in this class. “Yeah, sure, whatever,” you huffed.

           “Okay, so uh, come to my house some time tomorrow?” he mumbled, scratching his address and phone number on a piece of paper.

           The bell rang.

-

           Tomorrow came sooner than you had hoped. Saturday’s were your days off. But today you had to spend it with Kleinman. His house was a ten minute walk from yours. Sure, it wasn’t too close, but it was a nice walk in the warm weather. The spring air cleansed your lungs, and your skin bathed in the sunlight.

           Jared lived in a nice house, one that you would see on TV. It was dark blue with white picket fences, leading up to the front door. On the sides of the house, yellow flowers were planted. There was a swing on the front porch and another walkway to, what you assumed was, a backyard.

           Walking up the steps to the front door, you rang the doorbell. Whilst waiting for an answer, you took a look at the doormat underneath your feet. The doormat read, ‘Jew Makin’ Me Crazy’. You cringed in the slightest, continuing to stare at the article in disbelief.

           The door swung open, revealing a small woman dressed in a blue pantsuit.

           “Jared, your friend is here!” she yelled up towards the stair case. She opened the door even wider and stepped aside.

           “Come on in, dear. It’s so nice to meet you!” she gave you a toothy grin.

           “Honey, have you seen my- oh hello,” a older, balding man entered the room, removing some garden gloves off his hand. “Jared invited you over?” he asked with wide eyes.

           This is entire experience was already so surreal, that you just nodded silently.

           Jared padded his way downstairs. “Oh hey, you, uh, met my parents. Y/N, this is my mom and dad.” He introduced awkwardly.

           You and Jared decided to start your project on his back porch. He had wanted to do it in the dining room, but you insisted otherwise, wanting to enjoy the nice weather.

           Collectively, you two had finished the thesis and plan of development for your paper. You had started brain storming for your visual aspect until he interrupted you.

           “So, what’s wrong with you?” he asked nonchantly.

           “Excuse me?” you raised an eyebrow.

           “Oh come, on, you know,” he sat up to look at you. “The whole bitch faced act to try and have a hard shell. So what is it? Daddy issues? Rebellious boyfriend?”

           “I don’t have a boyfriend,” you reverted your attention back to the paper sitting in front of you.

           “Then what’s with this whole mysterious act? You know, you can’t hide behind that for forever,” he spoke, without breaking his glance.

           You whipped your head towards his direction, “What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you know how incredibly rude that is?”

           “Now we’re getting somewhere!” he clapped his hands with a grin.

           “You’re actually the rudest, most insensitive person I know,” you grumbled, marking down on the piece of paper roughly.

           “I can live with that,” he spoke clearly. His eyes traveled down to the belongings that laid beside your leg. “What’s this?” he mumbled, picking up a small leather bound notebook.

           You jumped after him, grasping the notebook in one of your hands, only to fail when he snatched it back.            “Give that back,” you spoke lowly.

           “Why? What is it? Your diary?” he began to open a page.

           You slapped it out of his hands, tears brimming in your eyes. Scrambling, you picked it back up, shoving it in your backpack and zipping it closed.

           “Don’t touch my fucking stuff,” you spat, beginning to collect your things to leave.

             Jared climbed onto his feet, resting a hand on your shoulder.

           “Hey, wait, I-I was just kidding around… I didn’t mean to make you upset,” he spoke softly.

           You spun around, pushing his hand off of your shoulder. “Well, congratulations, I guess you really are a try-hard.”

           Jared caught your arm in his hand once more, pulling you closer. “Listen, I’m fucking sorry, okay? I just- I didn’t know how to talk to you. You don’t have to accept my apology. Just… Just help me with the rest of his project and you never have to talk to me again. Deal?”

           You looked up into his eyes, searching for any sort of ridicule. You couldn’t find any. Only endearment.

             -

             “It’s not my diary,” you spoke softly, looking up at Jared. You two had been working silently on your project for the last two hours.

           “What the hell is it, then?” he looked at you, above the lenses of his glasses.

           “I write poetry in it,” you mumbled softly, refusing to share eye contact. “Some of it is really dark. I just didn’t want you to think that I was a freak.”

           “What? Why? Is it about killing babies or something?”

           That made you giggle, shaking your head.

           “Is it about making a sandwich entirely out of the remains of the Titanic survivors?” he spoke once again.

           You laughed a little more this time, shaking your head. You raised your head, finally holding his stare. He was smiling too.

           “Is it about you wanting to have sex with the Queen’s corgis?”

           “Jared!” you scolded in between laughs. “That is too far!”

           The two of your continued to giggle until you had slowly moved closer together, looking at each other.

           “So what is in it that’s so secret?” he practically whispered.

           “I get really depressed sometimes,” you mumbled softly, looking down at your hands.

           Jared nodded, looking at you. He took in everything you said. You continued to tell him everything. After a certain event in your life, everything just seemed to go downhill. You told him that you always felt alone. You told him that you never got close to people, because you always pushed yourself away. You told him that you were scared of living in a state of mind that was so terrible.

           The two of you had moved from the floor of his porch to the hammock in his backyard. You both lied there, together, staring up at the sky. You had your head rested on his chest. He continued to ask about how you were feeling and how all of these things came to be. Jared had never dabbled in this area of emotion. He was curious how it worked. And even more curious as to how he could make it better.

           You and Jared had finished your project. But you and him became closer than ever. He always checked up on you, making sure that you went to bed in a good state of mind. Whenever you were having an off-day, he became oddly protective of you. Almost as if he was carrying your grief on his shoulders.

           On the really bad nights, you would walk to his house. He would be up, of course, playing video games in his room. You would knock on his window and climb in. You would snuggle with him in bed, or lie in the hammock in his backyard – falling asleep to the sound of his heart beating and the crickets chirping from fences away.

             One night, you and Jared were at your house: playing a game of Mario Cart and two in the morning. Bags of candy and empty milkshake cups were spread around you. It was the 50th tournament that you guys had played that night. You groaned loudly as Jared sped across the finish line.

           “I fucking hate you,” you mumbled, throwing your controller down.

           He looked over at you with a wicked grin, “Nooo, you love me. If you hated me, why would you stick around me for this long?”

           Your cheeks grew a blush, and you nodded, agreeing to his statement. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess you’re okay.” You shoved his shoulder playfully.

           When looking at Jared, you saw something that you had never seen before. His skin was glowing, his hair was disheveled, and the collar of his shirt was crinkled. You stared at his hands, wanting to hold them in your own.  Looking back up at him, you didn’t see the annoying kid from your biology class. You saw Jared Kleinman: the guy who listened to you weep for hours. You saw the most amazing man in your life. And you loved him.

           Jared saw your stare. He looked into your eyes, with a soft smile.

           “What’s wrong?” he whispered.

           “Nothing,” your eyes flickered between his gaze and his lips.

           Jared didn’t move a muscle. He looked at your lips, taking in the sight. They were the prettiest shade of pink, and all he wanted in that moment was to touch them with his own.

           Your hand moved up to his neck cautiously, slowly hooking your fingers to the bottom of his head. He leaned into your touch. Nodding his lips forward, they hovered – wanting to initiate something beyond words.

           You took the plunge, connecting your lips. His hands quickly grabbed onto your waist, pulling you closer to him. He tasted like the strawberry candies that you two had consumed earlier. He deepened the kiss, moaning against your lips.

             Jared was beautiful, caring, and kind. And he showed this to you in private. He thought the world of you. If anyone were to treat you like royalty, it would be him.

           Your hands grabbed onto his collar, edging for him to take the graphic tshirt off. He was reluctant at first, shaking his head.

           “I’m not ripped, or anything. You might be disappointed,” he laughed breathily against your lips.

           You giggled shaking your head, continuing to remove the article of clothing. “No… You’re beautiful, Jared.”

           Connecting your lips again, you climbed into his lap. His hands went directly down to your bum, giving it a soft squeeze. You let out a soft gasp, causing Jared to chuckle obnoxiously. You kissed down his neck. His eyes rolled back, and he tilted his head to the side. You left bruises down his neck, slowly laying him down on the carpeted floor. You kissed down his body. You watched as he stared at you with wide eyes and flushed cheeks.

           “Jesus, you really know what you’re doing,” he breathed out.

           You laughed softly, climbing back up. You took off your shirt then pressed a sweet kiss to his lips. His hands fondled you, continuing to love you with every touch and graze. After a few moments of experimenting, Jared continued to undress you. His eyes wandered over every new inch of skin.

           When you were fully bare, Jared took a step back, admiring everything. His eyes followed every dip of your hip. His hands tracing down your neck, to your nipples, to your knees. You shuddered under his touch.

           You pulled him closer to your naked form by the loops of his belt. You popped open his shorts, pulling them down along with his boxers. His member slapped his stomach, and you looked up at him with wide eyes.

           “I’ve never done this before,” you whispered.

           “Neither have I,” he spoke back, softly.

           “I really want this.”

           “I do too.”

           Jared lost his virginity to you. He had heard from his friends what an orgasm with a girl was like, but no simile could ever compare. It was like experiencing a thousand mini deaths. He shook in your embrace, losing his breath. When he was at his brimming point, his vocabulary narrowed down to only your name. He had heard from his elders what pure beauty was, but never could imagine what it was, until he saw you reached your peak. He always heard what love felt like, but didn’t feel it until his lips had touched yours.

             Jared didn’t believe in anything. Except for you.

[solastia]

My Woman

Pairing: Yoongi x Reader

Genre: Smutty smutty smut smut (But still sweet and fluffyish?)

Note: This is my first time writing smut. I’m sure it shows. I’ve read plenty of romance novels in my day, so I’m hoping that payed off a little bit lol. Fun fact: This is actually a dream I had. I know, aren’t I lucky? One of the few times I remembered every detail of my dream and I’m forever grateful. 

You and Yoongi had been secretly seeing each other for a couple weeks, without much progress.You had recently been hired as an assistant stylist, your main jobs being repairs and cleaning rather than much styling. He’d asked you to fix a zipper on his jeans but insisted he was too lazy to take them off. You ended up repairing the zipper on your knees, a blushing, mumbling mess. He didn’t say a thing, but you saw him grin when he left. Then that grin turned into a smirk whenever he saw you, and he’d come up with fifty of the dumbest tasks for you to do. Seriously, why would a grown man need help to put on socks? Why does it have to be your hand that goes up his shirt to see if it’s see through? You ran from the room when he’d asked you if his boxers were supposed to have a hole in the front, not even wanting to know how he expected you to respond to THAT, and you heard him chuckle. 

He’d somehow talked your boss into letting you join him on his coffee runs, saying he felt safer with a staff member with him. How having little you joining him to feel safe sounded plausible to your boss, you’ll never know, but it worked, because you’d been going with him daily. No one seemed to question that it took you guys two hours to get coffee a block away. Sometimes Yoongi would actually talk and ask questions, seeming to want to know more about you. Other times the two of you would sit in a booth in the back of the shop and just relax. You’d let him play with your hair or fingers while he chilled out with his head back and closed his eyes. Those were your favorite times. You were happy knowing he was getting some much-needed rest, and it gave you a chance to stare at him without feeling creepy. 

And now here you are, two weeks later, and all you’ve managed to sneak in was a single peck on his cheek before the rest of the staff came in. It didn’t seem to bother him. He hadn’t said a thing. You wondered if he even liked you as much as you thought, or if you’re just seeing what you want to see. You, however, were a mess. At least every other night you were waking up, sweaty, clothes torn off during the night, hands between your legs. Little things he’d do would remind you of the dreams throughout the day, and that didn’t help. He’d slide his tongue across his lips slowly (A LOT), your eyes following its movements. The constant smirks. The elegant fingers that were always moving. You hadn’t felt this damn crazy over a guy since you were a teenager. 

Like a coward, you’d been avoiding him all day. It was just getting harder for you to hide how you felt in front of everyone because you were so damn frustrated. You knew if he asked you to do something stupid, like ask you to help put his pants on (again), you were going to jump him and then WOOPS, secrets out. That’s how you found yourself here, in a backroom filled with props. No one came in here except when the boys were filming a music video, so you knew you’d be left alone. Your boss knew you’d come back here sometimes and didn’t mind because you’d always finish ten times more stuff when left alone. You had a huge pile of mending to catch up on anyways, 90% of it belonging to Namjoon. 

A couple of hours later you glance at your phone to check the time, pleased to note that your usual coffee time with Yoongi passed. You hate to miss out on it, but you just need a break to get your emotions in check. You hear a tone from your phone and freeze. You know exactly who it’s from. Steeling yourself, you pick it up with a sigh. It’s from Yoongi. 

Yoongi: Where are you?

To the point, as usual. You wonder if you can get away with not answering, and go back to work. Five minutes later, another message tone.

Yoongi: ㅡㅡ

Did he really just try to give you a dirty look through the phone? Spoiled brat. Now you were determined to ignore him just for the fun of it. 

Another hour goes by, and you haven’t gotten another message from Yoongi. Most of the other staff have already left, but you wanted to finish the mending up before you went since you’d been ignoring it for two weeks and it piled up so much. You decide to use the couch that’s sitting in here and relax a bit since no one is around to yell if they catch you. You move the boxes to the floor, pick up the shirt you are working on, and recline on the couch. It doesn’t take five minutes before you’re fast asleep.

You’re having another one of those dreams. It starts out fairly tame. Yoongi coming up from behind and pulling you towards him. Burying his face in your neck and nipping. Suddenly, he swings you around and bites your lip before kneeling, looking up at you with that smirk you both love and hate. Just as he’s getting his mouth close to where you want it to be most, you feel yourself being pulled out of sleep. 

“Yoongiiii…” You moan, breathlessly, desperate to return to the dream.

“Fuck, don’t say my name like that.”

You shoot up, glancing first to make sure your hands weren’t up your skirt, before glaring at him. Or more specifically, at his hand on your knee. 

“What are you doing in here?” You ask sharply, trying to hide the fact that just his fingers on your damn knee were turning you into putty. 

He shrugs and plops down into the space next to you on the couch. For a moment, he looks at you like he knows perfectly well what you were just dreaming about before his face goes blank.

“I couldn’t find you and I needed my coffee, so I asked around. The stylist told me you come back here. I’ll have to remember this place. Perfect to hide and take a nap.” He looks around, completely poker-faced, meanwhile his hand is still on your knee. 

You stare at the hand, hoping and praying that he’ll just hold still like that. If he moves his fingers just a little more to the right…

You squeak and his eyes shoot to you. 

“What was that?” He drawls, his eyebrow raised. 

You jerk your knee and clear your throat. 

“I’m ticklish there, OK?” you mumble, not looking at him because you know, YOU JUST KNOW, he’s going to use this against you. 

“Who the hell has a ticklish knee?” He laughs. 

“I’m ticklish in a lot of weird places. It’s the way I was made. Don’t judge me.” you joke. 

On second thought, you probably shouldn’t have said that. That fucking smirk is back, and he’s looking at you like he never has before. 

“Did you tell me that for a reason? Because that sounds like a challenge to me,” he growls, leaning closer until he has both hands on your knees and you’ve backed up so much you’re almost lying down again. 

“I’m going to have to figure out these weird places. For science,” he whispers softly, before leaning back again and pulling your legs into his lap. 

“So, we’ve established the weird knee thing,” he says as he gives the offending knee a little brush of his finger, making you squirm and try to hold in the giggle. 

He trails his finger down your legs, glancing up on occasion to see your reaction. You were fine until he reached your feet, and he tickled the toes. You let out a little snort. 

“Well, that one isn’t weird. A lot of people have ticklish feet. Not me though.” He warns you with a quick look, before laying the foot back down into his lap. Yoongi grabs both of your shins and pulls you closer, your butt now against his hip and your legs draped over the armrest. 

You’ve been waiting for him to make a move for so long it seems, that you’re already getting excited and short of breath. You thank the clothing Gods that you thought to wear a skirt today. 

His fingers are back at it, trying to find your ticklish spots. He trails them up from your feet to your thighs, right where the skirt stops. Fully expecting him to put them under, you let out a little huff of disappointment when he instead goes over the skirt and up to the hip. He shoots you a grin, knowing full well what you expected. He digs into the skin of your hips a little bit, earning a squeak since that was one of your spots, before moving to the stomach. He lifts up your shirt a little bit (not enough), and flutters his fingers, turning your giggles into outright laughter since he wouldn’t stop. 

“So cute.” he smiles, stopping the torture and kissing your stomach. You gasp and moan, not even caring anymore that he can hear. 

He’s back to trailing his fingers up, moving them up your sides, down your arms, around your neck, finding all the silly little ticklish spots you had. You were starting to get frustrated. Right as you’ve gathered the courage to say something, he suddenly leans in, staring at your mouth. 

“Well, damn. It looks like I missed a few spots.” 

And finally, FINALLY, his lips were on yours. It was light at first. Testing and teasing. You wrap your legs around him, trying to draw him in and deepen the kiss. With a little growl, he complies, tracing the seal of your lips with his tongue and demanding entrance. The kiss goes on for what seems forever, wet and hot, teeth nipping at each other's lips. Meanwhile, his hand starts sliding up your shirt, and he finally tears his lips away. You both sit up and tear off your shirts, throwing them on the ground. He stares at you while you work your bra clasp, and you are thrilled that you actually wore a pretty black lace bra today, instead of the comfy wireless one you almost went with. As you throw that onto the growing clothes pile, you hear a hiss, and look up to see Yoongi staring. He lays you back down and caresses your breasts. He flicks the nipples, grinning while you squirm, then brushes them with his tongue. He stays there for a while, licking, sucking, and nipping until your not sure you’re ever going to breathe right again. 

“Yoongi…please…” you moan, trying to hint at this damn boy to stop playing.

“What do you want? This?” He whispers while sliding his hand up your skirt. He teases your mound outside the panties, and you sigh. It’s not quite what you want, but he’s oh so close. 

Yoongi pulls your panties to the side, slipping a finger through your folds. 

“Fuck, you are so wet,” he growls, before sliding a finger inside. 

You gasp and buck onto the finger, wanting more, but he is still in tease mode. He pumps his finger a couple times before he pulls it out and sucks it clean, never breaking eye contact. 

Yoongi pulls off your skirt and panties, then stands up to tear off the rest of his clothes, eyeing your naked body the whole time. He walks back over to the couch, his cock bobbing and dripping with precum. He picks you up before lying down in your former position and places you on top of him. 

“Sit on my face.” He commands, looking at you hungrily. And you almost came right then and there. 

You crawl up the couch as gracefully as you can and drape your dripping pussy over his mouth. He latches on quickly, licking you like he’s starving, nibbling your clit and fucking you with his tongue. It doesn’t take long before your muscles tighten and you cum, riding his face with your hands latched in his hair. 

You climb off and collapse into the couch, sitting there for a moment while you watch him catch his breath and lick his lips. He crawls over and kisses you deeply, holding your head in his hands, and you taste yourself on him. 

Yoongi gets off the couch to stand in front of you, his cock so hard it looked painful. He sends you a grin before grabbing both of your legs and propping your ankles on his shoulders. He grabs his cock and pushes it into you slowly, watching your face intently. You throw back your head and moan as he finally is in all the way, and he pumps slowly, letting you get used to him. 

“Yoongi, faster please.” You plead breathlessly. He groans and pounds furiously into you, He leans down capturing your lips in a sloppy kiss before burying his face into your neck, biting and sucking as he fucks you harder. He slides a hand down between you and rubs your clit and you cum fast and hard, screaming his name. 

When you finally come back to yourself a bit, you look up and see that Yoongi is so close. You wrap your legs around his waist and pull him in further. You kiss the side of his neck and make your way to his ear.

“Cum in me.” You whisper, and that sends him off the edge. His pounding gets sloppy and with a growl, you feel him filling you. He collapses on top of you, breathing heavily into the crook of your neck, occasionally giving it a small kiss. 

“Damn.” He groans, grabbing you and positioning the two of you so you’re lying on the couch together, with his arm around you and your head on his chest. 

You giggle, knowing that was the understatement of the century. 

Suddenly his eyes shoot up and he looks scared as hell. 

“Shit, I fucking came in you. I’m sorry. Shit.” He runs his hand through his hair and you laugh. 

“Don’t worry, I started birth control the day after I met you.” He raises an eyebrow at you and his damn smirk makes a return.

“Sure of yourself, huh?” he chuckles, rubbing his hand up and down your arm. 

“More like wishful thinking.” You murmur, throwing your leg over his and burrowing in. 

“Mmm, we are going to have to make this room comfier. You think anyone will notice the prop room suddenly has a bed, mini fridge and ten locks on the door?” 

“Doubt it. We’ll just say they’re props if they do. Why, do you have plans to come here often?” You joke, trailing your finger down his chest. 

“Hell yes. Until I can tell everyone you’re my woman, this will make a nice love nest.” He murmurs as he grabs your hand and caresses your fingers with is. 

“Your woman?” You squeaked. 

“Fuck yes. Now, is my woman ready for round two yet? I think I missed some weird ticklish spots.”