#they found him in the woods abandoned

[kate-komics]

The current random brain worm is if Logan found an abandoned fawn in the woods and just raised it and named him Sue like the Johnny Cash song… i’ve been making it my warm ups.

And like what if I made a whole story about that instead of his man pain? Fucking what then??

[humanjarvis]

a closer look

synopsis: every time you try to take your relationship to the next level, you always shy away at the last second. lucky for you, dr. zayne has a solution!

tags: inexperienced reader & zayne, soft dom zayne, reader fears penetration at first, zayne sets up a surgical camera so she can watch him finger her, vaginal fingering (duh), “anatomy” “lesson,” praise, “good girl,” improper use of hospital assets  pairing: zayne x fem reader word count: 2.3k

a/n: this came to me in a dream. enjoy

“Have I given you reason to be afraid of me?” Zayne asks you softly, attentive gaze trailing down your stiff body.

“N-no!” you blurt, thrusting your hands out in mortification. “You haven’t, I swear you haven’t. This is just…new to me.”

“Me as well,” he retreats from above you, moving back on the sofa to give you breathing room.

Just moments ago, you’d been writhing under him needily, his tongue plunging into your eager mouth as you groped each other with abandon. Spurred on by your initial pleas, he’d dared to take it further this time—further than either of you had ever been. But as his hand had traveled down your body, dipping just the slightest bit inside your panties, you’d gone rigid. Zayne, ever aware of your reactions, had stopped his movements immediately, looking seekingly into your eyes for answers. Unfortunately for him, once that cautious hazel gaze had found yours, you’d squeezed your eyes shut in embarrassment. 

“It’s nothing that you did, Zayne,” you sigh as you sit up, running a hand through your hair in frustration. “I know you’d never hurt me. I’m just…scared.” 

“Of?” he asks softly, and the way his kind face is void of any judgment makes you want to extract your brain and beat it for denying you the chance to feel him. 

Another sigh escapes you as you gather your thoughts. “What if it hurts?” you wonder shyly, fiddling with your clammy hands. “I always imagined it’d hurt. And there’s never…been…anything there, outside of medical stuff. That’s the only thing I have to compare it to.”

Nodding along patiently, Zayne extends a hand to you, pulling you to him when you accept it gratefully. “I’m sorry that you’re frightened, but I understand your hesitation. I’m content to just hold you in my arms, if you’ll let me. As long as it takes, I’ll wait for you.”

“No, I-I want to. With you, soon. That’s the problem—I’ll think I’m ready, but then the second we get close, I freeze up. I just don’t know what to expect, and that scares me.” 

Humming contemplatively, Zayne laces your fingers together. “I think I can help with that.” 

The usually bustling corridors of Akso Hospital are eerily quiet at night. 

Hurrying through them as if a ghost will jump out at any second, you scour the door plaques for room 429. 

I’ll be finishing up early today. If you’re able, can you meet me at the hospital this evening? Room 429, Zayne had messaged you hours ago. And with no other plans and a lingering sense of guilt that you know he’d disapprove of, you’d agreed almost instantly.

Combating pangs of confusion—he never asked you here at night, outside of official events—you don’t realize you’ve scurried past the door until the room numbers grow too high. Backtracking briskly, you tap the wood with two soft knocks before a calm “Come in!” beckons you inside. 

Room 429 is a standard hospital room—a large examination table, a sink and cabinets, and two simple chairs. At the small table near the back of the room—much humbler than the sleek standing desk in his office, you note perplexedly—Zayne sits, pen in hand, leafing through an endless stack of paperwork. Why did he move his office here for the night? 

“Great, you’re here,” he says, setting his pen atop a thick packet. “Take a seat.” 

“Um, okay,” you mumble obediently, heading toward one of the navy guest chairs. 

“Not there,” he calls. 

Turning to face him, you catch the way his eyes shift to the examination table. “Is this some kind of impromptu appointment?” you ask, his secrecy filling you with stubbornness. 

Zayne rises from the rolling chair that’s too small for him, crossing the room in measured strides. “Not a sanctioned one.” 

Before you can ask what he means, his hands are wrapping around your waist, lifting you up to deposit you on the soft table padding. 

“Hey!” you squeak, surprised but not fighting him. “What is all this? I had my annual checkup a couple weeks ago, I’ll have you know. And I won’t be your guinea pig, either.”

Zayne tsks with amusement. As he presses a button, a large black mount lowers from the ceiling, its sturdy hooks securing a small silver device. Another button, and the device’s tiny red light flicks on. 

And suddenly, your reflection stares back at you from a monitor on the opposite wall. 

Anticipating your interrogation, Zayne speaks before you can. “This is a high-definition surgical instrument. It’s used to help us see the body during minor procedures.”

You blink at him quizzically. “So…a camera?” 

“Yes. A camera. Repurposed for…recreational matters,” he quips with a slight upturn of his lips.

“You should know your own body,” he continues gently. “Exploring yourself—whether with or without me—is your right. And after last night, I figured…perhaps being able to see my actions as they happen would assuage some of your fears.” 

“You…when did you have time to…?” you trail off, staring up at him in wonder. 

“I believe I told you I finished my work early today. This was the reason,” he reveals. Even with you perched on the examination table, Zayne’s imposing height exceeds yours. His assurance is a warm blanket as he stands beside you, resting a large palm on your bent knee. “I’d like to help you explore yourself now. Will you allow me to?”

With a heavy gulp—more from anticipation than nerves, you realize—you nod your consent meekly.

“I don’t know what that means, darling. Can you give me words?”

“Yes,” you exhale shakily. “Help me. Please.”

Smiling softly, pride flashing across his face, he leans in to kiss you sweetly. Then, reaching up to bring the camera closer, he angles it toward your lower body. On the far wall, the feed is dangerously close to revealing what lies beneath your skirt. 

“I’ll raise this,” he says, lifting the fabric with care. “And these…will need to come off,” he eyes you, gesturing to your thin cotton panties. 

For a moment, you debate removing them yourself. But if this was about overcoming fears….

“Can you do it, Dr. Zayne? I wouldn’t want to get in the way,” you whisper coyly. 

His eyes widen as he pauses. Then, collecting himself, he inches his hands forward to tug at the sides of your panties, sliding them down with precision. “Of course,” he says softly. “I’ll take care of you.” 

As he sets his eyes on your naked cunt for the first time, Zayne shows admirable restraint, looking away after only a few tense seconds. Some hypocritical, eager-to-please part of you would almost be offended, if not for his tells: his quickened blinks, heavy breaths, and fidgeting fingers. 

“I’ll get started now,” he exhales, voice husky with veiled desire. “You’re free to stop me at any time.”

And as you gaze at him with trust and only a little bit of fear, Zayne begins. 

“This is your pelvic bone,” he gestures slowly. “It supports your body weight.” 

The warmth of someone else’s hand on your bare hip is a foreign feeling. Foreign, but not bad, you decide, relaxing under his touch. 

“The mons pubis,” he continues, hands ghosting over the mound beneath your belly. 

“And this,” he murmurs, spreading your folds carefully, “is your pretty little pussy.” 

The word—in here, from him, in reference to you—is so scandalous it makes you gasp. You try desperately to avoid his gaze, eyes flitting across the room in panicked arousal, but you don’t find the reprieve you’re looking for. 

Because on that far wall, looking back at you tauntingly, is the velvety skin of your most private part, glistening with your growing desire. 

Snapping you out of your staring contest, Zayne taps the flesh of your thigh twice. “Open, please. Wider.” 

Swallowing thickly, you oblige.  

“Good,” he praises, tracing your exposed entrance with an elongated index finger. “This is where I’ll touch you. Is that alright?”

Through heavy drags of air, you forget his earlier instructions, nodding quickly as your answer. When all he does is lift a brow, a teasing smirk playing on his lips, you hazily remember his request. “Yes,” you whimper apologetically. “It’s alright.”

“Well, then. Suck,” he orders simply, holding his finger to your mouth. 

The command startles you at first. But as you look between the man beside you and the far wall, recalling how frustrated you’d been with your fears last night, you part your lips slightly. Just enough for him to enter. 

Timidly, you circle your tongue around him, coating his finger in your saliva. Once he deems it wet enough, he taps your thigh again, and you release him with a soft pop. 

With half-lidded eyes, Zayne hums his approval, pushing closer to you to angle the digit at your entrance. “Hold onto me if you need to,” he whispers, pressing a light kiss to your shoulder.

And then, his finger sinks inside you. 

It’s one thing to feel the tension. To clench as a light, unfamiliar pressure pushes firmly inside your heat, claiming the untraversed territory with every inch. 

But as the discomfort subsides and you open your eyes, seeing it unfold is something else entirely. 

On the large screen, Zayne’s slender finger pumps in and out of you slowly, impactfully. With every exit, your pulsing pink walls hug his retreating digit, begging him to stay. And when he grants their request, every thrust back inside has them clamping around his finger, as if barring him from leaving them lonely. 

Watching with rapt attention, Zayne splits his focus between the monitor and you, gauging your expression for signs of discomfort.

But as your body melts with newfound pleasure, you sigh softly along to the rhythm of his pumps, eyeing the way he breaches your wetness with wanton intrigue. 

The way he disappears inside you, giving his body to yours…you want to kiss him. You need to kiss him. But the moment you lift your gaze to his lips, licking your own as you lean in, Zayne moves his face just out of reach.

“No,” he murmurs his denial, stroking your walls with added vigor as he turns your face back toward the screen. “Don’t get distracted.”

Grumbling your disappointment, you allow his hypnotic movements to recapture your attention. But before long, you’re curling into his touch. “Can you…m-more?” you pant, risking a longing glance up at him. 

“More?” Zayne repeats, slowing his pace to a deep probe that makes you writhe in impatience. “Is that something you can handle?” 

“Yes,” you cry, clutching his pristine lab coat. “Can handle it, if it’s you.” 

He hums contentedly. And a split second later, another long finger joins the first. 

Eyes glued to the screen, you see the intrusion before you feel it: his thick, united digits headed straight for your core. As he prods at the small opening, advances met with quivering resistance, you almost think you’ve asked for more than you can take. But as slick dribbles out of your squelching hole to welcome him, the fluid dulls the stretching sensation, and your fluttering cunt sucks him in greedily.

A loud, lewd moan has you arching erratically, and Zayne wraps a strong arm around your lower back to support you. 

“How does it feel?” he murmurs between steady pumps. “Are you still frightened?” 

“No,” you mewl ardently. “It’s good. You’re good. But I…” you pause, racking your fuzzy brain for the right words. 

“You what, my love?” 

“I can’t…I don’t think I can…like this…” you trail off with an embarrassed whine, hoping he understands your babbling. 

“Mm,” he nods sympathetically. “It’s natural that you can’t come from this alone. What a good girl you are for telling me.” 

With his free hand, Zayne leans forward to adjust the camera, centering it over your glistening cunt. Once satisfied, he flexes his thumb to rest gently on the twitching bundle above your entrance. “You know what this is, don’t you, darling?”

“Clit,” you breathe, the word leaving you in a garbled gasp thanks to the shocks of his feather-light touch. 

“That’s right,” he praises, kissing your temple while his fingers scissor lazily inside you. “This is how you’ll finish.” 

As your voices fade, room filling with the wet sploshes of your tightening walls, the force of his thumb grows heavier on your clit. You almost squeal as the pressure increases, instinctively lifting your hips out of the camera frame—to which Zayne firmly pushes you back down. 

“Watch,” he commands sternly. “So you’ll know how to do the same when I’m away.” 

Curling his other fingers inside you, Zayne rolls his thumb in devastating circles, grinding so deeply against your nub that it greets you with spasmic, greedy twitches on the monitor. For a moment, his movements are mesmerizing, his thumb drawing patterns on your clit in time with his measured pumps. But as he slips out his index finger to pinch your aching bud, the gushing slick heralding your release is the last thing you see before your eyes screw shut from ecstasy. 

As you writhe against him with thankful sobs, Zayne’s movements slow before stopping altogether. “It’s alright,” he shushes you. “Let it take you. You look beautiful like this.” 

And in the comfort of his reassurance, those sobs turn into quiet, blissful moans. 

You’re not sure how he does it—the sink and paper towels are on the other side of the room—but when you open your eyes, Zayne’s hands are clean. 

“I’m very proud of you,” he says gently, wiping a stray tear from your eye. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” you mumble, nuzzling into his palm. “You were right. Seeing it, knowing what you were doing…it did help,” you finish shyly.

“I’m glad. And in that case,” he adds, tapping the camera appreciatively, “I’ll ask around about the cost of installation in my home office.”

[yeyinde]

shadow monsters on wooden church walls

SIMON RILEY X READER

an escaped convict finds shelter inside an abandoned chapel in rural New Mexico. and with it, a very obliging woman on the run from her fiancé.

(well. obliging, asleep. is there really much of a difference?)

18+ | HEAVY NONCON. COCK WARMING. SOMNOPHILIA. PUSSY SLAPPING. NONCON CUM EATING. UNSAFE SEX/BREEDING. MARKING. SIZE DIFFERENCE. IMPLIED KIDNAPPING. WILD WEST AU. SEXISM/MISOGYNY. BASTARDIZED RELIGIOUS MYTHOLOGY.

He finds you asleep on a pew.

A gloved hand shoved under your temple. The other curled into a loose fist, knuckles resting against the bench seat. Your elbow tucks itself nicely into the slope of your waist, forearm balanced on your belly as you slumber, fully relaxed and utterly unaware of who—or what—stumbled upon you.

Too relaxed, maybe.

There's a softness to the spill of you that makes his teeth ache—melting candy. Spun sugar. Something that makes him want to burrow his jaws into the marshmallow sweetness sitting pretty for him like a little treat. 

His belly grumbles. He can't remember the last time he ate. 

And lucky for him, there's no artifice to the steady rise and fall of your lace-covered chest. The swell is a lulling rock that disturbs the dust gathered along the wood in a thick, dense blanket of moulder and disuse.

He tucks the pistol he snatched on the way here into the pocket of his stolen jacket, cocking his head to the side as he considers this unexpected discovery.

The church was meant to be empty. A sequestered haven for him to hide inside until the lawmen chasing him passed by further in the north. This diverging path known only to the man who shared his wisdom of it in the prison. Locatable only by staggered markers left behind by the pilgrims who were plundered of their goods and left to die in the sprawling, untenable wilds of New Mexico.

(It's always been man eat man in the dust.)

He's not sure how you found it. The state of your boots and the bottom of your dresses make him believe you'd been on the run for some time. Coincidence, maybe. Or—

You don't stir at all, even as his boots clunk against the loose, dusty floorboards as he prowls closer to your prone form. His breath drawing ragged from his broad chest. Heart dropping down to his empty belly where it pulses thunderously in his guts. The reverberation thrumming in his groin—

It's been a long time since he's seen a woman.

Even longer since he had one.

It never seemed like much of a necessity when he was younger. His life split between survival and hunger. Ripped from his ramshackle home in Manchester and squeezed into an overcrowded boat headed to America.

Land o' opportunity, his old man promised, but much like all of his predictions (and schemes), America had little forethought to spare on a poor family with nothing to their name. Opportunity—but only inasmuch as the wealth carried with you provided. And being poorer than dirt, it only made sense that New York had little to offer except rubble—more dirt. More soot staining his fingers, blackening his father's teeth. 

He doesn't find it too surprising they were chased out west within a week. Trudging along the same dirt-covered road as everyone else in search of something to call home. 

The only place willing to take them was an aptly named town called Tombstone. A place where both his dad and brother rest.

Incarcerated at eighteen for enacting revenge on their murderers, and now a full-bodied man of some thirty-odd years, it's a jarring, encompassing thing to see you sleeping like this. So vulnerable. So soft.

Maybe it's the fragility of these curled parts making up the cluttered framework of your body that appeals to some aspect of himself that longs to break small, soft things between his fists. Crush bone like paper. Shatter it into pieces like fine china. Brittle porcelain.

Whatever it is, it itches in his guts. Makes his hands grow slick, dampening with sweat. Blooms a vicious fever in his head. This unquenchable thirst clawing at the back of his throat is only sated by the spill of your soft, cottonlike body tucked into the pew.

It's—

Precious, he thinks, cock stirring, thickening in his borrowed pants. Sweet lil' thing, he coos, tongue scraping over his teeth. All curled up inside a church. Alone.

Waiting for him.

He isn't one for religious zealotry. It held no appeal even as the priests visited the prison, beseeching him to repent. The idea of god, gods, never held much interest to him, but he learned the Bible they carried with them, this sacred object of divine wisdom. A fairytale, not too dissimilar to Chaucer, he found.

But he can't deny there's something a little poetic about this. Something divine.

Almost as if that mighty, tempestuous god they preached about was smiling down on him. An offering not at all dissimilar to the riches he bestowed on the men who caught his eye.

And don't all those men face trials and tribulations before being given grace, too? Lands, and honour, and sanctified, but most of all—

Wives.

And a sweet one, too. 

Folded up into yourself like a little bird who fell from the nest. Shivering on the cold, unfamiliar ground as it waits for its parents to come and bring it back. Unaware of the viper in the grass behind it. The hawk circling overhead.

Lucky for you, god thinks you'd fare quite nicely in his stomach instead.

And really—

You should know better, he thinks, hands dropping to the stolen buckle of his belt. Sleeping in a lonely building like this. Practically waiting for him to come along and take what he's owed, aren't you?

And who is he to pass up such a pretty little gift from God?

You come awake on a gasp.

Clawing against iron wrapped around you—tentacles, maybe; you were at sea seconds ago, lost to the whims of the ocean as something tried to pull you down, down—and choking on an inhale that gets stuck in the hollow of your throat, glueing to tissue. A bubble that won't pop. That you can't breathe around—

"Keep squirmin' like tha', birdie, an' I’ll be ready t’go again."

The voice, slinking slowly through the thick fog spooled densely over your mind, comes in a lazy drawl half-growled into your crown, warm breath tickling over your scalp. Unfamiliar, too. And much too close.

Pieces click in the back of your head. You remember running. Hiding in the church. Being moved. Dreaming of a turbulent sea that rocked you back and forth—

Seasick. But no—

This isn't the ocean. It isn't your fiancè. 

The thing behind you is bigger, broader. Where you would have expected to meet solid muscle, you instead sink into a thick, warm pelt. One that's all heat. A raging fever. Burning against your back, under your thighs. 

This laden heaviness in your limbs. Your belly—

A burn there, too. A pulsing, terrifying ache; this pressure you can't squirm away from, can't breathe around—

Panic pops the bubble stuck in your throat when it surges up your esophagus like a fist. The world slowly loses the haze, the thick cloud of confusion and sticky-eyed sleep clinging like molasses to your awareness, but what is left behind when the veil is ripped off is nothing short of abject horror.

There's a man behind you.

But that's only half-true. 

In the sluggish grapple of your cognizance flailing around for solid ground in the heavy drape of hypnagogia, you shove your fingers into the degree of separation between sight and dream, curling against awareness, and—

You're cradled in his lap like a child. Spine liquid against his chest, legs pulled taut over impossibly thick thighs, knees bent at an angle that makes your hips twinge in discomfort. Pulled too far apart, and done so to make room. 

Nausea claws up your throat when your bleary eyes drop down to the immodest, intrusive spread of your legs, feet dangling helplessly in the air, bouncing with some unfathomable motion. The position takes a second to unravel, to work out with the sleep-sticky tremble in your fingers. Mind still chasing the end of a dream even as the sudden spill of massive, bare thighs takes shape in the trembling ruins of your cognizance.

And God—

You wish it didn't.

With your skirts rucked up beneath your bared breasts, held in place with a big, heavily scarred forearm looped around your ribs, crushing your arms to your body, you can see the unmistakable rut of pale, mauled muscles flexing, tensing 

And then suddenly, lifting.

“Told y’to stop squirmin', birdie—”

But you're not moving—

The pressure from before sharpens into a blistering ache as this—thing—inside of you grows. Stretches. Presses against tender, sore muscles as it snatches the last wisp of air from your heaving lungs. 

There's a sting so deep, so wide, inside of you that you almost think you can see the soft curve of something moving against the skin of your belly. A trick of the mind, maybe. 

Nightmare on solid ground. 

You clamp down against the urge to scream when it shifts within you, pulling on soft, tight walls. 

It hurts. Feels like you might be impaled on a dagger, maybe. A knife. A writhing mass devouring you from the inside out. But no—

You know what this—what it—is even if your brain refuses to acknowledge it. To let it take shape. 

It keeps you cradled in the protective cup of its palms where the world is superlunary, your body incorporeal. Weightless. 

But with every hiccup, each gasp, this nebulous sanctity congeals a little more into the brutal reality of what you've woken up to.

A man. 

Unfamiliar. Unknown.

Rasping in your ear. His breath soured by the leftover communion wine you'd found tucked beneath the pulpit. Reeking of sweat and stale tobacco. Dust and dirt. Days on the road. Something wild. Primal. Animal, maybe. The musky scent of a horse, fur heated under the sun. Unwashed man. Masculine and potent. Dirty. Carrying the scent of loam, humus, with each harried breath he heaves against you. 

But it's not just the smell of him. His hands, his skin, is covered in a hazy watercolour of grime from days without washing. From the sands of the barren, empty plains soaking into his skin, and smearing across scarred, torn tissue as he sweats in the heat.

Maybe it's his own internal fire causing him to burn so hot. Pyretic. An inferno against your back, under your thighs. So scorching, you wonder, dazedly, if it isn't the devil himself rutting into you below like a bullish beast.

With his feet tucked into big, dusty leather boots, you can't tell, but the sight of hooves emerging from them instead of pale, dirty skin wouldn't surprise you in the slightest. 

Maybe it'll be easier to stomach if he was just that because what sort of man would do this to you in an abandoned house of worship. 

A beast—

His arm tightens. With a grunt, he shifts, grinding you down into that ineluctable pressure, maneuvering you on his lap like some oversized doll, a child's toy. A plaything for him to amuse himself with. To use—

In the pit of your belly, something blooms. A vicious, untenable feeling of fragility. Weakness. You can't move an inch in his ferric grip. Can't breathe without his assent. You're little more than an object cradled in his hands. Utterly powerless in a way you haven't really felt at all—not even when the man you were supposed to marry curled his hand around your wrist and told you that he'd enjoy chopping your independence down into bite-sized pieces. Gorge himself on your helplessness. 

This makes the frailty, that clawing, desperation feel like a boy's play at patriarchal ownership. Clumsy stumbling through the motions. A pantomime of sadistic cruelty. Revelry in power. 

That was a loss of control. 

This—

This is not. 

In order to lose something you need to have had it in your grasp to begin with. 

It was yours when you ran from the man, your fiance, when he clamped his hand around your wrist, eyes wild and feverish with delirium, and said he'd keep you forever. Life of imprisonment chained a man who scared you more than the gnarled scar on the side of his head.

And after, too. As you fled from the coach on a whim when it rattled over a small hill, tumbling down the embankment. Hiding in a small alcove, waiting for them to grow tired of searching for you.

Cradled when you found the church. A safe haven. A place to rest—

Only to wake up to a hand on your throat. A purr in your ear. 

Hands empty. 

Useless. 

Curling into the messy spill of your skirts, clinging to the fabric until your joints ache from the strain, and your nails bite through cloth to sink into skin, because that's all you can do. 

Clutch. Hold. Plead—

"Takin' me so well, ain't you, birdie?"

Even his voice sounds devilish. A robust, brassy rumble you've never heard from a man before. More akin to the growl of a tiger. Beastal and wrong. Drenched in a thick, unmistakable bliss as he seats himself deep inside of you like he's been bestowed the privilege. Allowed to claim what you denied even to your intended husband—

"P-please stop—"

Each steady pump of his hips fills your belly with more of that impossible, overfull feeling. The too-tight squeeze of you around something that wasn't ever meant to fit pulls at your flesh until it burns.

"Please—" your moan is a wretched, mournful thing, but it makes him grunt into your ear like a starved, taunted beast. The arm slung possessively around your ribs tightening into a painful squeeze that forces the air from your lungs in a huff.

The dizzying spill of hypoxia makes you almost thankful when it dulls the blunt, fat split of him bludgeoning into you in response. A sharp, full jerk that tears through you. Forcefully eking space where there is none left to give. Stretching, rearranging, until you can feel him in the very apex of your being.

But in that, a strange, horrifying trill brims, leaking from the pressure cracks of your bones. Spinal fluid dripping out. Thick, hot oil that steadily floods the mess between your thighs, eroding the bones, the muscles, in your pelvis until all that remains is an oozing, gooey pool he rocks into. Molten.

Sticky, wet sounds spill from the cradle between your thighs, each one burning through your chest until you choke, mortified. Blistering from shame.

It's difficult to catch your breath around the squeeze of his arm over your ribs, and the too-full stretch in your belly. Harder, too, to think. To make sense of the wall of solid, soft heat against your spine. The ache in your thighs as your legs are spread much too wide.

Everything below his arm feels like an open, pulsing wound—

But it changes when his hand, just as scarred, as ugly, as his thighs, the forearm clenched tight around your waist, slides down from its lazy perch on your neck, lowering to the gaping, throbbing wound between your thighs.

He curls it into a loose fist, scabbed, scarred knuckles sharpening into fattened peaks. His fingers bend inward, seeking.

It doesn't make sense until he touches you.

With your swollen folds spread over the thigh (impossibly thick; monstrously so—) girth of him, it opens you up to his wandering hand. He delves into the split seam of you, rubbing calloused, rough fingers over throbbing, stretched flesh. 

And for a moment, it's just a tickle. Pressure on your puffy, outer lips, but then he leans back, shifting the angle of your pelvis until he can slide his dirty fingers up, up—

"Fuck, lil' bird. Gonna strangle my cock if you get any tighter—"

You're howling. Thrashing in his hold as the ache pulses, squeezing like a vice around the unfathomable, fattened mass bullying itself desperately inside of you. Rutting bluntly against something just behind your navel that makes you nauseous with each stroke. Every muscle in your body seizes as he grunts, ugly and vicious, into your ear and starts moving you against him, lifting and jerking your body into his lap, meeting his own thrusts.

“Must want it bad, eh, birdie? Listen to you—” his fingers slide through the mess between your thighs, and the sound that spills makes you think of the shores of Asphaltites. The splash of brimstone—slick, wet. Wanting. Am-heh lapping at the waters. “Fuckin’ gagin’ for it.”

You're not. No. You want to scream but the air is snuffed from your lungs. Sickness writhes in the back of your throat, clawing desperately at the walls of the esophageal prison it's locked inside. Inescapable. You can't let it out—

He wouldn't like that, you think, and it splinters in the back of your head. Separating into fragmentary pieces. Their sharp, obsidian edges, still slick with those broken, polluted whims—be good, it drips; be good and take it—press into soft tissue, cutting open gyri. Stuffing the wound—

And he's speaking, too. Groaning in your ear as he rocks into you. Bein’ so good f’me, ain't you? Takin’ my cock like this—

Good. 

Against your will, you relax. Swallow down the sickness trapped in your throat. Good. The tension bleeds out of your muscles, and in the slippage, your softened thighs sink into his lap a little more, pushing him deeper than he was seconds ago. 

It rips a whine from the back of your throat when that too tight, stinging feeling spins into something else. Still overfull, but—spreading. Evolving. Shifting as spills into the gaps, flooding, and filling, and—

Good. It's good. 

The noises he makes change suddenly as your body eases, melting around him almost without thought, wholly against your will. Turns animalistic, feral, as you breathe into the heat swallowing you whole, chasing more of that overwhelming fullness, that hazy, ghosting pleasure that peppers delicate kisses over your nerves—gentling, distant; but growing closer with each shift—

“Tha’s it—” he snarls, shoving his face into your sweat-slicked nape. All teeth. The whitehot brush of a tongue. “Can feel your little cunt openin’ up f’me. Want more o’ my cock, birdie? Such a greedy thing, ain't you?”

The physical sting of jagged teeth scraping over your damp skin marries the burn scorching your chest in a brutally demeaning synchronicity. 

It's intentional, of course. 

You know what this mockery, this cruelty is, but they reave through the vestiges of propriety, unearthing your shame until it lays between those crooked teeth he keeps pressed into your skin. 

The etchings of a smirk tickle along the knob of your spine when his mangled mouth pulls upward at your harried whimper. 

“Bein’ such a good girl, ain't you?” He coos, digging those assailing fingers deeper into the soil of your mortification. “Takin’ my cock like this—” a groan trembles over his words, a clawing, helpless thing he can't seem to bite down on. “An’ in a ‘ouse o’ god, no less.”

His voice is airy. Thinner. Drenched in thick amusement as he cleaves into you with a growing desperation.

“Who knew I ‘ad such a sweet little cunt waitin’ for me?” 

You want to refute his words, but he just squeezes your ribs before you can shape them on your tongue. Renting your protestations until they fall in a choked gasp, a mewl, at his feet. 

“Been locked up a long time. Got a lot saved up f’you—”

This new dip in his abasement doesn't make sense until he shifts, shuffling forward on the pew. It brings your line of sight closer to the broken window on the wall to the right of the crooked pulpit. A candle burns on a worn, wooden stand beneath the shattered glass. In the flickering candlelight, and hazed against the unfathomable blackness of a moonless night in the desert, the image that forms in this swelling abyss is nothing short of horrifying. 

As the contours render slowly—spilling like liquid ignominy in midnight satin—the hulking shape behind you begins to fill out. 

The first thing you notice—

He's big. His broad chest nearly swallows you whole as he leans over you like a hellish beast readying itself to devour you alive. 

But it's not just his size that trips your pulse into a painful sprint, but the sight of him. 

He looks mauled. Decorated almost entirely in thickened scar tissue running in strange, jagged lines along his skin, coloured in swaths of soft pink and blotchy purple. Deep pocks. Slashes. The meat beneath the right side of his jaw, right beside his chin, is missing, leaving behind the indented slope of shiny pink tissue cratering deep down to bone. 

The baleen lines scraped into his wound look like the flat press of teeth and you wonder if someone took a bite out of him. 

He makes a strangled noise when you shudder, tensing at the cannibalistic nature of the wound—of the mosaic of brutality sliced into skin. 

“Go’ so fuckin' tight, birdie—” in the window, the blurred image of this beast draws closer to you, mouthing along the slope of your neck with a ruined mouth. A mockery of a lover's kiss as he shifts you in his lap, rasping: gonna make me fuckin' cum if you keep squeezin’ me like tha’

It rips out another shiver that tickles along your spine, making you tense up again with a choked sob as the thickened press of his cock grinds against something inside of you that makes your vision swim and your ears ring—

Cutting through the pulsing roar in your ears is a thunderous groan from deep inside of his chest. It's a savage, terrifying thing that claws over the haze, ripping it to pieces between it can spool over your head. 

Blinking through the tears in your eyes, you're met with a swell of cold, deadened fury. 

“Fuckin’ hell—” he spits on a biting snarl, tendons in his neck bunching together. A vein pops out from beneath his skin, throbbing in a dark, blue line—

“Ain’t givin’ it to you good enough, huh, birdie?”

You don't know what you did. Can't untangle the sudden anger in his voice as it sunders that thread of his derisive subjugation, ushering in an unfathomable anger slashing over his brow. 

With your arms trapped under his, you can't brace yourself when he pushes to the edge of the pew with a growl, and begins to shove himself inside of you with a terrifying speed. 

It's too much. You can't breathe around the punishing pace he sets. Forcing himself into you over and over again. Taking you. Making you take him.

There's no escape. His hold is like iron around you. You can barely cling on as he moves you up and down his cock, forcing the fat, blunt head into your sore, tender walls at a bruising pace. Each rock jarring your body as he makes you swallow him down to the root—look'it tha', he coos, ugly and biting and mean, his hand dropping to press tight against your belly; the pressure making you feel sick: go' my whole cock in there now, birdie—

"Tha's it," he rasps, rubbing his mauled, torn muzzle over your shoulder. Jagged teeth catching skin. "Squeeze my cock, birdie. Fuck, go' such a tight lil' cunt, don't you? 'nough t'make a man go half insane, ain't it?" He tilts his head suddenly, blowing warm, humid breath over your cheek when he exhales on a mean, callous scoff.

"S'what you do, birdie? D'you offer this sweet pussy up t'anyone who passes by?"

His words are uglier than the moulting scars on his skin, and they sink deep inside your head when he presses his foul mouth up against your ear, groaning the words out between rasping pants. Tha' what y'do, birdie? Spread these pretty thighs t'anyone? Don't even know who I am and y'pantin' for it. Gaggin' for m'cock—

You flinch away from the sting of them, twisting in his hold to escape. To run—

But he just huffs mockingly in your ear, deriding you about how you're tightening up like a pretty fuckin' bow around his cock.

"Made for it, weren't you?" He taunts, words rolling between jagged, fangled teeth. Sharpened to a brutal, devastating point.

You shake your head as much as you can with his face tucked inside the curve of your throat, mewling feebly in denial because that's all you can do. Whine. Sob. Wailing like an animal as he pistons his hips into you, each jarring thrust accompanying a sting on the back of your thighs as his hard, unyielding flesh slaps into yours.

It's humiliating. Shameful. His finger presses into something that makes your belly knot. Muscles tightening. Spasming. Your leg kicks out against the back of the pew when he smothers his thumb over that place again, drawing tight circles that make your navel throb, pulsing as if your heart dropped down to the pit of your belly. Beating like a drum behind your mound.

It's agony. Terrifying, awful agony—

But it isn't. It's not. Not really.

Not when he drapes himself over your back, lowering his stubbled, unevenly textured chin to your shoulder, and shoves you forward. The angle gives him more room to pull out, and the emptiness that follows each retreat has you sobbing. Fingers clawing at the tangled mess of your skirts to cling to something as the ugly, awful feeling inside of you tips on its axis. Shifts.

It's wrong. So, so wrong—

You don't want this.

But he doesn't give you much of a choice except taking it. Letting it happen.

"But tha's not true anymore, is it, birdie?"

His arm tightens around you. Squaring against the ground as he spreads his thighs further apart, rutting into you with a fit of anger that steals the scant air from your lungs. Drills real, tangible fear into your head that he's going to break you if he doesn't slow down, doesn't stop—

"...'cause you're mine," he snarls, lips tucked against your ear so you can hear him over the awful noise made as he hammers into you, the sickeningly lewd squelch. The stinging slap of soft skin of firm muscle. "Ain't you, birdie? An' this cunt—" his fingers trail down, grazing over the skin of your rim stretched too tight around the thick of him. Pressing until it hurts. "Belongs to me now, don't it?"

He mocks your pained whimper with a patronising coo of his own, but mercifully, the pressure shifts away. The respite, however, is brief. 

The arm locked around your ribs shifts as his fingers slide to the cradle of your mound, his thumb brushing over your tender, sensitive clit in slow circles. His other hand peels off of your forearm, reeling back slightly before shoving inside the loose gap of your unlaced dress, cupping your breast in a rough, scorching palm. 

He squeezes it tight in his hand until you whine, squirming against the discordant sensations dragging over your nerves. The pleasure of his thumb doing something magic between your thighs and the bruising ache in your breast—

It shifts again when he moves his hand, dragging it back until your pebbled nipple is trapped under the broad trap of his thumb. Just pressing. Holding. The touch is daunting. Possessive. 

You tense again. Waiting—

The pain doesn't come. 

It's just—strange. Ticklish. He rubs his finger over your nipple in slow, ghosting swipes. Barely a whisper of a touch. A mere graze. And as you slowly acclimate to these soft, small circles, the pleasure grows, pulsing between your thighs.

Every pass of his fingers feels like it's strumming against some taut line that coils behind your navel, tightening. Growing—

And then it's gone. Dissipating into frustration with a mean huff spilling out against your nape, quickly reshaping itself into a low, mocking taunt when you thrash, mewling pitifully at the loss of that heady feeling liquifying in your veins. 

“We're you about t’cum, birdie?” 

He tuts at that; making a low, mordant coo in the back of his throat when you whimper in response. 

“Didn’t know you were so greedy.” 

There's a strange undercurrent in his tone you can't make sense of. This loose, looping thread that weaves between the seams. Incomprehensible—

But you find the answer in his touch. 

It tightens almost in warning, but you know him better now than to let yourself trip into that fallacy. A notion that solidifies itself when the hand that was once pushing you to that heavy, all-encompassing brink steadies itself on your belly. Pushing. He anchors his hold against your breast, letting it fill the cup of his palm as he squeezes once more, another mocking warning, and then begins to move. 

The pace is rougher, faster, than before. With you tipped forward slightly in his lap, the angle makes it easier for him to unleash that thread of ire on you. Using the space to plant his feet solidly on the ground, knees spreading as he bucks his hips, pounding his cock deeper, harder, into you with a savagery that rips breathless whimpers and sobbing moans from the back of your throat with each jarring thrust. 

Your teeth clack painfully together when he pulls you down to meet each one, cock shoving so deep inside of you, you could swear it was lodging against your heart. Knocking everything inside of you askew to make room, to fit—

There's a sudden, stinging pain that blooms from between your thighs, and you thrash as it happens again, again—

His hand comes down over your clit, and you yowl at the burning sensation of him slapping you there—

"Please, please—!"

You can't recognise your voice anymore. It sounds wrecked. Raw. Each blow draws out a deafening wail as the heat reaches a blistering zenith. A devouring, ravenous heat—

His voice cuts through the shrill ring of it all. "Say it, birdie. Who does this cunt belong to?"

It tips off your lips in a desperate litany. A plea. You, you, you—

"S'not good enough, birdie. You gotta say it. Who does this cunt belong to?"

You say it because that's what he wants—you. it belongs to you. my cunt belongs to you. please, please, pleasepleaseplease stop—but he groans like you've gutted him. Slamming his palm down against your tender, swollen clit as he sloppily ruts into you, grunting in your ear about God and wives and fuck, buried, this sweet cunt was gonna drive him fuckin' mad—

Everything narrows down to raw sensation. Just the constant, feverish push of his cock dragging against your walls, bluntly pushing into that spot behind your navel that makes your ears ring, and your vision swim. The scorching press of rough skin against your stinging, throbbing clit; the abrasive stroke of each clumsy, pawing circle catching on swollen flesh. Blooming a vicious heat in your belly.

It draws tight. Coiling into a tense knot as a ruts into you, grunting about being close, so fuckin' close, birdie, so you better come on my cock; want this pussy coming all over me—

There's a sharp pain burrowing into your nape, his teeth sinking in deep, breaking skin with jagged teeth, and that knot snaps. Shattering into a series of intense, dizzying pulses that squeeze behind your navel, liquid bliss saturating through the cracks, and bubbling, molten, in your veins.

You're a twitching, shuddering mess. A sicky spill melting into his chest as he clamps down harder against you, grunting around the bite of flesh he lodged between his jowls as he swells inside of you, finding his release.

As he throbs inside of you, his teeth dig in deeper, biting down harder on your nape to smother the snarl ripped from his throat. His hips pump into you with staggered jerks bereft of all finesse; just a clumsy rut as he chases the aftermath of that same mind-numbing euphoria rippling through the honeyed mess of your body.

But it's this bliss that mutes the pain, hiding it under the deluge of endorphins that mushrooms inside of your head, blotting out the pain that you can feel lingering on the periphery. Looming on the edges of the syrupy spill of bliss still pounding in your veins.

Even with clots numbing the worst of it, you can feel the ache in your muscles each time you move. A prelude to the rest of the night, perhaps.

A thought that scraps against the film covering your fear. Panic an acrid burn in the back of your throat, a sting in the corners of your eyes—

Just as you open your mouth to rasp out the words let me go, he unhinges his jaw from your nape, and huffs.

There's a paralysing stab of fear cudgelling into you whenever he moves. It wells up from the wound, and you wait, teetering on a knife's edge as he slumps back against the pew, body unspooling from its tight coil as he lazes with you still sat on his lap, on his cock, purring like a satiated cat, ignorant of (or purposefully ignoring) the way you flinch at his touch when he drops his hand down between your thighs to cradle your sore, abused cunt. Even spent, softening, he still feels so big inside of you. A thickness you can't think around.

"Never came inside anyone before," he muses, catching the trickle of slick, of cum, that leaks out when he shifts back. "Ain't you lucky, birdie? Was savin’ it all up for you. An’ you go' the honour o' bein' my wife."

It cracks through the air like a whip. The echo resounds in the back of your head, smothering the whimper of panic that claws up your throat. Wife. Wife—

"I—I have a fiance," you stutter out, heaving through tattered lungs. "I can't—"

"How's I supposed to know? I don't see 'im, do I?"

"He's—he's looking for me. And he's a real, um, powerful man. I won't—I won't tell anyone if you let me go. You can just—just leave, and I'll never speak of this to anyone—"

His arm tightens around you, snuffing the words out on a pitiful gasp.

"Fucked you nice an' full o'my cum, birdie. You jus' gonna go back to 'nother man when I'm drippin’ down your thighs?”

Your lungs ache. "Please, you didn't—you can't—"

He swipes his fingers through the mess puddling under your thighs with a derisive snort, and brings his hand up to your face. Making you look at the thick, milky smear sticking to his skin. Slowly, he pries his index and middle finger apart, twisting his wrist to show you the web that glues between them.

It's a lot, you think, stomach churning. Too much.

"An' there's more o'tha' all nice an' plugged up inside you, birdie. Gonna sit here til it takes."

He draws his hand closer, thumb and ring finger closing around your cheeks, squeezing painfully until your mouth pops open on a whimper. His fingers bully between the gap of your lips. 

It's bitter. Salty. You try not to gag as he roughly shoves them in deeper, knuckles knocking into your teeth as he forces them in, petting his fingers over your tongue. Your gums. Your teeth. The soft skin of your cheeks. Smearing his spend all over your mouth. Making you taste it.

And it's as vile as it is demeaning, and you shudder at the chuff of amusement that rumbles out when you gag, choking when he shoves his fingers in too deep. Trying not to weep as he lowers his head to your nape, nipping the throbbing, torn skin around the bite mark, grunting out a callous demand of swallow it. All o' it. Every drop. If you don't, then I'll jus' make sure you get it from the source next time—

"Bet you'd look so fuckin' pretty on your knees f'me, wouldn't you? Gaggin' on my cock. Could barely take it all in your sweet cunt, an' tha' was made for me, wasn't it? Be a struggle to get it all down—"

"Please," you slur around his fingers, shaking your head pitifully as his cock stirs inside of you, twitching at the revolting image he draws. "I'll—"

He taps his fingers against the roof of your mouth and you clamp your lips shut to stem the nausea that surges. Swallowing reluctantly around the bitter taste of him on your tongue. A painful gulp that makes him groan.

"See, birdie? You're full o'me now."

His fingers tickle when they drag over the wet, sticky skin of your lips. A tease. 

He grunts when you shiver, cunt inadvertently clenching around him—

"Ain't ready for another round jus' yet," his voice drops, pitching low. You freeze instantly. Falling still on a shallow gasp. "But if you don't stop squirmin' on my cock like this, birdie, I reckon I'll 'ave you bent over the pulpit soon enough. What kinda husband would I be if I didn't give my wife what she was achin' for?"

Wife. There it is again. And nestled within the cruel word is the clink of a metal collar locking around the inflamed curve of your chewed up neck. Bound to a man you don't know. Don't want to know—

With you held in his grasp, tucked securely to his chest, he settles back into the pew with huff. A quiet admonishment when you try to stir, shushing you with a brief flex of his hand tightening around your neck. A warning. Be good. 

It's hard to think with him buried inside of you, still taking up so much space. 

And maybe that's the crux of it all. You can't breathe around the softening swell of him to let the thoughts form. Take shape. They flicker past in the moonless midnight of your mind; comets dying in the atmosphere. 

Or maybe you're too haunted by the pulse of his heartbeat somehow lodged inside of you, echoing in tandem with your own. A deafening rataplan you can feel in your belly. Your guts. 

You squirm—

“Birdie.” 

The cup of his palm flexes around your throat—a warning, maybe—and he's pulling you further back against the broad, thick swell of his chest. As easy as breathing. As easy as taking you apart in a church. Unmaking you in a pew. 

Turning a house of worship into a mausoleum. 

It's a little unfair, all things considered. You pay your dues on Sunday, head bowed over the back of a pew, hands demurely clasped in your lap as you mumble through the familiar beats of mild flagellation. Prettied up in penance. Handing out a fistful of coins and spare nickles when the offertory passes by. 

To be trussed up and tossed to the wolves twice over in a single night makes you tip your chin towards the angled, crumbling rafters in silent mutiny. But the bold, blasphemous display of fury doesn't cause the heavens to split, and some grand being to smite the demon sniffing the skin behind your ear. 

It only makes his hand settle more firmly around your throat, thumb sliding along the smooth curve from collarbone to jaw. The wide, unfathomable expanse of his hand is more than enough to bite at the vitriol brimming in the back of your throat. Don't be stupid. 

(At least—not yet, anyway.)

Without anywhere else to direct the smouldering embers of your anger—and not nearly stupid enough to break it on the jagged cut of his teeth—you slump against the steady rise and fall of his chest, letting it whisper out on an exhale. But even with self-preservation keeping the ugly words under a firm heel, you can deny that this tastes like defeat. 

A sour, bitter sting in the back of your throat—full o’me, birdie—that you struggle to swallow around. 

It feels like a tremendous weight you can't escape. Like everything is collapsing around like the raining ruins of a condemned house, leaving you half-buried in the rubble. Holding the roof overhead in your hands. This Atlassian task sinks your soles deeper into the dirt, dragging you down. 

His threat, his presence, is an anchor buried in the seabed—utterly immovable despite how hard you yank at the chain. 

Something has to give. 

You're not terribly surprised when that something is you. 

Riddled with holes, in tatters, the fight is quickly snuffed under the flood of water surging through. Filling space. 

It's fatigue. Exhaustion. You're drained, you think. Mentally, physically. Emotionally. Everything catches up all at once, and your heavy eyes start to blur around the edges, listing shut. 

For a second. Just a second. 

Through the sluggish putrefaction of mouldering grey matter, you try to promise yourself that you'll run, that you'll escape, after. You just need rest. Sleep. And once you have it—

He squeezes, choking the wayward thought out under the broad cradle of his palm almost as if he knew it was there. 

“Get some sleep, birdie,” he rumbles, low and brassy; the murmur of his voice purring through your ribs. “Go’ a long trip ahead o’ us yet. Gonna need it.”

It isn't the soft uttering of a man worried over your condition, but rather the rough, patronising drawl of a brute relishing the prize he caught. A plunderer preening over his loot. 

You don't spare much thought to where you're going, and let him pull your weak, battered body deeper into the broad spill of his warm chest, holding you against him as the residuum of your wounded survival instincts drown in the spill of exhaustion dripping out of each decisive cut trephined into your head. 

His muzzle is back on the side of your neck as your eyes slip shut, licking between the bracket of his fingers spreading possessively over your mauled skin with a rumble that trembles through your bones, shaking loose the last vestiges of your fight.

It's much too late to bemoan your lack of luck. Your lot in life. Even so—

Going from skirting around the grasping hands of a doglike man drooling on your toes, wagging his tail for just a taste—somethin’ tae take th’ edge off, doe, jus’ somethin’ tae quench this thirst; ah can't take it anymore—to waking up in the jaws of another beast, half-devoured, is such a devastating, almost Grecian sort of irony that had you any room to spare inside your belly (and if his hand not been so firmly clenched around your throat), you might have laughed until your knees gave out, and the world collapsed down on top of you. 

Instead, all you can do is try to get comfortable around the bellyaching fill of him, and pretend there's still a chance you can wiggle out of his grasp as easily as you did your fiance—

But as his molten tongue lashes over the wounds on your throat, digging the tip into the puncture mark he left behind, you can't help feeling the sharp sting of defeat hew through the lingering tendrils of hope, severing it at the root. Letting it bleed out in his hands. The same ones that shackle you to his chest, keeping you in his clutch like a stunned bird in the gaping maw of a wolf's jaws. 

Rather fitting, you suppose, as those artful fingers smear through the blood and sweat, pinching the stubborn remiges that remain until they're stuck firm between the tips. 

A tug, a pull—

They come loose, clutched his triumphant, bloody fist. 

And as the candle flickers, crawling down the wick, the flutter of them falling to the dirty floor casts shadows on the old church walls:

(crushed birds, burning dogs, and grasping hands surging from the depths—)

He stirs later, rousing you from a fitful sleep running from a burning dog by taking refuge in the gullet of a lake on fire. 

You blink, scrubbing your numb fingers over your sore, tired eyes. “What—?”

“Been thinkin’,” he says, and something about his tone prickles sharply at your paltry instincts, making them stir like lead in your guts. "What's the name of tha’ little fiance o'yours anyway?"

"Why?"

He shrugs. "Jus' think I should meet the man, is all. Considerin' I stole his little wife—"

A noise is wrenched out of you—some strange, strangled amalgamation of denial and dread. “Don't,” you whisper, a fever pitch; a plea. “Don't—”

He's unpredictable. His moods are as mercurial as the sea he crossed over to find you. Tempestuous: you think of his eyes, those burning pits. Much too wide. Wild. A frenzy. 

Like a fox—the one you saw when you were a child. Rabid, they said, tugging you away from those big, round eyes. Gone fuckin’ mad. 

With its lips peeling back, spitting up foam and sickness, it looked like it was smiling. 

Oh, doe; the same eyes, the same grin. Sickness dripping down his chin as he stared, slack-jawed and hungry. Been waitin’ so long fer ye—

“C’mon, can't be s’bad as all o’tha’.”

You think of him, then—perhaps the lesser of two evils—and shudder at the ripple of desperation spilling like oil into your chest. 

“Johnny,” you mutter, wondering if he'd still take you like this—ruined as you are; a pittance of what your father promised—if you ran back to him, broken tail tucked between your legs. Back to that foaming mouth and those big, wild eyes. “Johnny MacTavish.”

If he hadn't been stroking your jugular as he asked, trailing the tips of his fingers around the aching curve of your thigh with the other, you might have missed the frisson that crackled across his implacable veneer at the name. 

So suffused to him are you that any idea of distance is only divisible between atoms, and your skin hums with this little hiccup. The tensing of his muscles under your thighs; hands stuttering along flesh—

Something about that name makes him pause. 

“Johnny,” he says it like he's testing the word, feeling the way it fits between his teeth. Shifting the weight of it around his tongue. Warm-up. Stretching a muscle. Familiarity thrums along the seam of his mouth; pregnant with a mordant, mocking delight. “Might ‘ave to pay ‘im a visit after all.”

In its the afterbirth breathed into the world on his name where you see the cosm split, unveiling a world between them marbled in blood and viscera. 

Home in the manner of a botfly. 

Something that takes. Makes fecund land from flesh and bone; a parasitic kinship that eats itself, and everything else hapless enough to stumble inside its gaping, wounded maw. 

You think of a foaming grin. A sickness that burns from the inside out. 

A burning dog—

And when his smouldering hands reach between your thighs to cup your cunt in the broad spill of his palm, you feel the flaming waters of a blazing lake lapping at your spine. 

“‘ow ‘bout tha’?” he muses, a needling thread of ice splitting through his tone. “Guess it's a small world after all.” 

(—and a rather bleak one for you when he decides that God's will is stronger than a still-wet signature on a piece of paper.

Finder's keepers an' all o' tha'.

Besides, if Johnny really wanted you, he wouldn't have let you go, would he?)

[on-the-clear-blue]

Down in the streets of Gotham, in the side alley next to Express Urgent Care run by one Leslie Thompkins and that was funded by the Martha Wayne Foundation was a soup kitchen.

Well...a soup kitchen of sorts. Not in any way official but if you were hungry in Crime alley you knew that the food would be safe and warm...and it was a place where *you* could be safe and warm.

Danny had left a week after his parents found out that he was Phantom, a week after he had seen their grief, the regret and pain in their eyes. The week had been spent in suspense, he knew that they needed to talk about what had happened but neither of his parents were ever able to even start bringing it up before they were sobbing.

Danny knew his parents loved him, thst his father felt soul crushing guilt, that his mother spent hours staring at herself in the mirror, as if she didn't even know who was looking back at her.

And to spare them both, Danny left.

It wasn't hard to do, not when he could turn invisible and phase through walls, a final text to Sam and Tucker to say his good byes (he knew that they would break and tell his parents where he would be going) and a particularly hard hug to leave from Jazz, Danny flew off with only a back pack.

He had traveled across the US for a few months, occasionally snagging a post card from a super store to send off home, paying only when he had the excess funds (Sam's rants about mega rich corporate billionaires let him know just which stores wouldn't miss the few bucks the cards sold for)

He had met up with Dani a few times, when she was in the country, handing him Vlads credit card and telling him to keep it (though he never did) only ever using it to book a room for a few nights at a hotel to clean himself up and sleep in a real bed.

He settled in Gotham after a while, he had briefly stayed in Faucett but that place didn't have nearly enough ecto for him to live comfortably.

Gotham on the other hand? It had everything, cops that don't question why a teen is on the streets, natural ecto up the wazoo and well...a crime rate that would dissuade his parents ever looking for him there.

He had set up a more permanent shelter in an abandoned apartment building (after chasing out the low level drug dealers that were using it) and found that he kinda liked the vibes of the place under the blatant crimes being committed in broad day light.

Sure people could see you getting mugged and look the other way, but if you were still alive and there 5 minutes later, they would come back, hand you something to clean up your now bloody nose and point out the bodega that had the best sandwiches.

It was a sense of community that Danny didn't know he had missed for the many months he traveled.

His first "cook out" wasn't even supposed to be a cook out, his apartment building was mostly wood and he didn't trust himself to not burn it down, so he came outside, setting up a portable stove and setting up a pot filled with some, water to boil up a soup mix.

As he waited for it to come to temp, he saw the group of homeless rubbing their hands together, watching him with curiosity, though that quickly turned to hunger as the smell of the soup spilled out into the alley.

Instead of turning the others away Danny only shrugged, pulled out his spare paper bowls and handed them out, taking a few bites first to show that it was safe to eat.

What followed was a sort of tradition, Danny would come out a few times a day, take out his hot plate and pot and set up a soup, others started asking if they could pitch in, and well...Danny would have loved to keep providing it freely but his food was quickly dwindling.

So his soup got add in, some jerky that Crazy Tom had got tossed in, a few herbs (re:weeds) were added in by Miss O'Connor, and Danny didn't even know where Lady Dimond pulled out some spices from, but he wasn't about to question the her, he had learned never to question where the working girls hid their things.

And it sort of grew from there, who ever was around came by, some came out of their way to share a meal, but it became a meeting place of sorts "Come by the Kitchen at noon, Tom got his hands on some steak! And it ain't even smells bad!"

Sure gangs tried to pull up on the meeting place, tried to intimidate the people there or coerce them into doing something...well that was until the host, some punk teen with hair darker than black and blue eyes that were so light they were white came up, and dished out a heavy handed fist into their jaws and sent them packing.

And so the Kitchen became a safe space, if you were hungry, if you were in danger, come by the little alley way, right next to the Express Urgent Care, the Host will take care of you there, if your willing to share, to stay peaceful with the rest of the gathered people, then you were welcome to grab a bite and relax, because the Kitchen was always safe.

---

It would be a few years since the Kitchen started, since people had brought chairs and tables, since an old grill of questionable origin was left out side it, since tarps with only a few holes were hung up to keep the place dry when it rained, since rugs covered the ground and the the alley it was in was swept clean of any needles or cigarette butts.

But for one boy it had only been a few short days since his Mama died, since he had found her cold and dead in the bathroom, a belt tied around her arm and a needle still in her hand.

Jason was miserable, he had stayed with her for the a single day before he knew he would have to leave, the body of his mother would start to decompose soon, so he did what he had too, calling the police with his mother's phone that didn't have a lot of minutes left on it, telling them the address before hanging up and leaving it there so he couldn't be tracked.

He couldn't be there when the cops showed up, foster care would do shit for him, and at least his Mama would be buried, and not left to rot in their bath tub.

So a young Jason Todd, scared, alone and hungry came to the Kitchen, as his mother had told him to many times before, had told him to seek out it's Host if anything ever happened to her...and well...at the very least he would get something to eat...

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Short Leash.

A continuation of Good Dog.

Pairing: Yandere!SatoSugu x Reader (JJK).

Word Count: 7.5k.

TW: Fem!Reader, Non/Con, Pet Play, Wildly Unbalanced Power Dynamics, Physical Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Semi-Public Humiliation, Blood, Controlling Behavior, and Dehumanization. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.

You woke up the next morning groggier than you’d ever been before, praying that you’d open your eyes and miraculously find yourself in your own apartment, piled into your own bed, with a hangover painful enough to block out the strange, hyper-realistic dream you’d endured the night before. Predictably, you didn’t.

Less predictably, you found yourself in Satoru’s villa, piled onto Suguru’s bed, and entirely alone.

They must’ve untied you at some point, most likely shorty after you’d passed out with Suguru’s cock lodged deeply enough down your throat to cut off your airflow. The black cord hung limp from its post, and the sharp pain in your wrists had dulled into a red, angry throbbing. The rest of your body wasn’t so quick to recover. Your legs felt like tree roots, too heavy to lift and connected to you only by calcified tendons too stubborn to break. Your back and sides were bruised where Satoru had pawed and bitten, and you could feel the indents of Suguru’s fingertips around your throat, the weight of his palm against the back of your head. Your muzzle hung limp around your neck, which you were thankful for. You were sure it wasn’t as uncomfortable as Satoru’s, but already, you knew you wouldn’t be able to wear it for more than a couple minutes at a time. Whether or not you’d be forced to was something you didn’t want to think about, right now.

With no small amount of effort, you picked yourself up and swung your legs over the side of the mattress. You’d only just started to test the sole of your foot against the carpeting when something clambered against the bedroom door, knocking against the wood clumsily before shouldering it open and stepping inside.

It was Satoru. That wasn’t surprising on its own, but the fact that he was wearing clothes – real, non-puppy themed clothes – was. Just a pair of grey sweatpants and an oversized white shirt, sure, but clothes.

That, and the absence of his muzzle. Come to think of it, this was probably the first time you’d seen anything below his eyes.

Even if you’d thought to, you never would’ve pictured him wearing the expression he currently was. A big, lopsided grin stretched across his lips, a toothbrush hanging haphazardly from one side. In the light of day, it was hard to tell he was the same person who’d done the unspeakable to you last night – his eyes not quite as prying, his posture less rigid, his demeanor more akin to a kid at a sleepover who’d been waiting the better part of a morning for their guest to wake up. You might’ve been able to convince yourself last night was some sort of mix-up, that he and Suguru would apologize and offer some neatly wrapped, bow-topped excuse to explain it all away, if he hadn’t chosen that moment to open his mouth.

“Mornin’, sleeping beauty,” he started, wiping foam off of his lips with the back of his hand. “Good thing Suguru’s already gone. He kept me locked up for days, the first time I took off my muzzle without permission.”

You blinked at him, a blank slate. Then, because the visual seemed to loop in your mind like some gruesome, prophetic vision, you asked, “…he’s going to lock me in a cage?”

Satoru’s smile turned sympathetic. The toothbrush was abandoned on the corner of a dresser as he closed the distance between you, hooking an arm around yours. “C’mon – we should get you cleaned up. See if we can wash off the shock.” He pulled you onto your feet, bracing you against his side. “Think you can walk on your own?”

You tried to take a step and crumpled immediately, collapsing into a heap of limbs and stupor and embarrassment. Satoru didn’t wait for you to push yourself up, looping an arm under your knees, another around back, and pulling you into his chest. The muzzle suddenly seemed like a mercy. Without it, his delight at your helplessness shone through clearly.

You could remember passing at least half a dozen bathrooms last night, but Satoru didn’t seem to be in a rush to put you down. With his fingertips burrowed into your skin and an ever-tightening grip, he wandered through the villa, taking you back to the first floor and into another wing entirely. Eventually, he seemed to find what he was looking for – a large, traditional bathing room almost entirely taken up by an in-ground stone basin. You were placed on a wooden stool while Satoru fussed with the facets, scalding-hot water slowly beginning to trickle into the tub.

As reluctant as you were to give Satoru credit, the heat and steam were sobering. Your eyes flickered from wall to wall, looking for weapons, escape routes, signs that you were supposed to be doing more than sitting here and letting this happen. You didn’t find any unattended razors, but there was a screen door near the basin – no lock visibly from where you currently sat. Dappled sunlight beat against the thin, yellowed paper, but knowing there was a way outside only raised more questions. Namely: If leaving was so easy, why was Satoru still here?

You turned to him. He was sitting on the tiled ledge, fingertips skimming the surface of the steadily rising water. More concerningly, he was already looking at you, blue eyes wide and aware. You wondered if you’d ever adjust to that – his eyes, the way he stared, how jarringly bright they seemed. It seemed impossible to imagine yourself getting used to having two twin floodlights constantly pointed in your direction.

“Afraid of a little water?” It took you a second to put together what he meant, that your lasting terror must’ve been apparently. You didn’t respond, but still, Satoru laughed. “That’s alright. That’s perfect. Just goes to show that you were always meant to be our little kitten.”

Sure. Whatever. The pet-talk was already turning into white noise – washing over you more ambivalently than it should’ve. You soldiered on, newly eager for a change of subject. “You keep trying to make it sound like you know me.”

Satoru hummed. “We do, baby. Wouldn’t have brought you home without doing our research.”

“How long?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”

You crossed your arms, suddenly aware of your own state of undress. “How long were you watching me?”

You weren’t sure you which you would’ve preferred – a quick answer, concise and telling in its reflexivity, or something more delayed, leaving room to doubt just how well they’d thought this through. He seemed to think, but not for very long, robbing you of the satisfaction of either. “Do you remember a few months ago, when your building got condemned?”

You nodded. You’d been told it was a maintenance issue; black mold, or faulty wiring, or something along those lines. It’d been sudden, but there were signs. You could still remember how tired you’d felt to the months leading up to your hasty eviction, the dark shroud of misery that’d seemed to spread itself over you and the other residents and, ironically, only start to lift the day you’d all been told to pack up and get out. That was over a year ago, now. Closer to two, really.

“Suguru stopped by with a few acolytes the night before, since places like that tend to be a breeding ground for cursed spirits. After a little fighting, he ended up in your apartment, and—” Satoru paused, grinning as he shook his head. “It was something about the way you looked, all pathetic and curled up. He says he thought about killing you for a while, but never got around to it. He told me about you a few weeks later.”

It might’ve been a kindness that you only understood half of what he said, your mind catching on words like acolyte and cursed spirit without the ability to assign a meaning to the phrase. But, even through your confusion, you could get to the bottom line. They’d been stalking you for years. Mostly Suguru, but Satoru had been in on it, too. And, to make it that much more nightmarish, you’d never noticed either one of them – not until they decided you were allowed to, at least. It was enough to leave you cold and unsteady, fighting not to shake where you sat. It was enough to leave you wondering why you’d ever thought a hot, normal guy would be interested in you, in the first place.

The water reached the basin’s rim, and without glancing down to check, Satoru cut it off. It took you a second to find your voice. The humidity in the air abruptly seemed overbearing, choking. “When do I get to go home?”

It was a deliberately pointed question – meant to counter his delusional affection with cold, jutting reality. Satoru only sighed, nodding to the screen door. “No one’s in your way.”

His tone was resigned, a little bored, but the sentiment gave you more hope than it should’ve. If there was hope— any hope at all – that Satoru was brought into this the same way you were, that he was on your side, then that increased your chances of getting out of here ten-fold. Suguru seemed to put a lot of trust in his lapdog, but there might’ve been a chance that you wouldn’t be bitten for stepping out of line.

Slowly, you staggered to your feet and struggled to the door, relying on anything within arm’s reach for support. It looked like someone had taken a knife to the barred handle, but you couldn’t make out what they might’ve been trying to carve – only a series of nonsensical kanji and outlandish symbols. You spared a glance back to Satoru, who nodded encouragingly. Like that helped.

Bracing yourself, you wrapped a fist around the handle a tried to pull.

…

You woke up minutes later, colder than you’d ever been before and cradled in Satoru’s arms. His lips were pressed into your temple, his nose buried in your hair. You could feel his breath fanning over your scalp. Absentmindedly, you realized he was smelling you.

~

They didn’t live in the villa. Suguru let that slip quickly, somewhere around the fourth time he found you hiding in one of the many unfurnished rooms. It’d been an anniversary present – although, from who and the anniversary of what, he never specified. They used it as a retreat, or in your case, a training facility. You’d be allowed to see their actual home once you’d proven you could be a good kitty.

You hated thinking about yourself in their terms – a captive, a kitten, a pet – but it would’ve been impossible not to. Satoru was capable of a sort of pseudo-normalcy when Suguru was out, wearing clothes and talking to you like something resembling a human being, but when Suguru was home, he conformed to his allotted role happily. The puppy gear was more of a uniform than your realized – the specific parts exchangeable, but each component necessary. He donned them pridefully, happily. You were expected to do the same.

You didn’t often meet Suguru’s expectations.

Satoru whined as you were pulled off of the living room floor (because animals weren’t allowed on the furniture without permission) and into Suguru’s lap. Your latest offense had been your most frequently repeated. The leather muzzle bit into the bridge of your nose and cut into the underside of your jaw, and your faux ears always seemed to be pricking at some part of your scalp, and yet, the collar always seemed to be what you gravitated towards, what you picked at, what your body wanted removed before anything else. Suguru clicked his tongue as he traced the jagged, red lines you’d raked into your throat, only dulled slightly by the fact that you’d been scratching through fabric. Trying to get it off would’ve been futile, with or without your hands trapped in paw-shaped mittens, but you couldn’t help it. There was something deep and primal inside of you that wanted it gone, and despite your better judgement, your conscious mind agreed.

“I’ve got half a mind to have you declawed.” The threat was dulled by an airy laugh, but his underlying agitation was clear. In his own, twisted way, you guessed that Suguru considered himself a good owner. Hence why evidence as to the contrary was usually so poorly received. “Care to explain yourself, princess?”

You swallowed back your nerves. “I honestly didn’t realize what I was doing, I’m just not used to—”

“Ah,” he cut in, hand falling to your thigh and squeezing. “That’s not right, either. Can you tell me the first thing pets aren’t supposed to do?”

You opened your mouth, but closed it just as quickly. Right. You were having time remembering that one.

Pets weren’t supposed to speak. Not without permission.

You hung your head silently, and Suguru took that as answer enough. “Good girl.” And then, his eyes falling back to your throat, “What do you think we should do with the poor thing, ‘toru?”

Satoru let out a keening bark, still on his knees at the foot of the couch. Suguru softened immediately. “Speak.”

“She’s been thinking too much, again. You should show her how to stop.”

Even behind the muzzle, you could hear his grin. Suguru mirrored the expression. “And how do you think I should make that happen?”

Another bark, shriller than the first, followed by the heady sounds of feigned panting. You sent Satoru a venomous look, and Suguru hummed. “You’re right.” He paused, lowering his voice, creating a pantomime of privacy between the two of you. “He thinks that, since you’re so intent on making yourself uncomfortable, we should do the same.”

Cold, sharp dread cut through your chest, accompanying a flood of memories of Satoru’s body on top of yours, the animal force of his hips against your ass as he did his best to make up for a natural canine breeding drive. They’d been surprisingly conservative with sex after that first night, limiting your exposure to a few minutes of unwanted touching during baths and having to hear the two of them go at it from halfway across the villa. You assumed it was a nicety, a means of letting you adjust. Suddenly, you were confronted with the idea that they’d only been waiting for a reason to blame you for your own violation.

It was almost a relief when Satoru didn’t pounce, when Suguru didn’t move to kiss you. Instead, he took you by the shoulder and forced you down, until your body was splayed awkwardly across his lap, your stomach pressed into his thighs. One hand rested on the small of your back whine the other fell to your ass, kneading shamelessly. Your face burnt with embarrassment and righteous anger. You couldn’t imagine how Satoru handled it – being treated less like a person, prideful and independent and deserving of respect, and more like an animal, happy to be touched in any ways its owner was willing to. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so terrible if, like Satoru, you’d never had any pride to begin with.

“We’ll start with twenty-five, since it’s your first real punishment. Count yourself lucky – Satoru’s first warning was a broken finger.” His tone was fond, distant, as if he was recalling a cherished memory. “I’ll need you to count for me. If you can’t, we’ll have to start over.”

You tempted to protest, to stiffen, to refuse to participate in your own degradation, but this was, admittedly, the preferred alternative to what you’d imagined. You could handle this. Even if it took every part of you not to react, you could handle this.

Or, that was what you thought, at least. Then, you heard metal clink against metal, felt leather crack against the unprotected skin of your ass, and immediately realized you’d been wrong. You couldn’t handle anything.

The noise that escaped you was wordless, base, instinctual; something between a scream and a gasp. The pain was surprisingly cutting, the blunt force of it relatively dull compared to the sharp, piercing sting. The belt came down again, deliberately angled towards space just below its previous target, and you managed to force something out. “Two!”

Suguru clicked his tongue. “Not just yet, sweetheart. Don’t you remember what I told you?”

You heard Satoru lumber closer, positioning himself below where your head laid. “You’re being too mean, Suguru.”

 “I’m being strict. There’s a difference. That’s why so many kittens end up so poorly behaved.” He sighed, rubbing a few small, shallow circles into the column of your spine. “You’re going to have to keep me honest. We’re still on one.”

You dug your teeth into your bottom lip. You hated him. More than anything else, more than anyone else, you hated Geto Suguru. It was all you could think, all you could feel, and yet, when his belt came down on your ass, you whimpered out an obedient “O—One.”

By the fifth, you were sniffling.

By the fifteenth, you sobbed unabashedly into the couch cushions, your mechanical counting barely audible.

By the last strike, you’d gone limp and still across Suguru’s lap. Every part of your ass ached. If the bruising wasn’t already visible, it would be within the hour, long before the next time you’d have a chance to dress yourself. You could only hope Suguru would have the mercy not to rub salt in the wound.

Already, you knew that he wouldn’t.

“Ah, there she is – my perfect little kitten.” Suguru hooked a hand under your arm, pulling you upright and letting you straddle his lap. Immediately, you collapsed into his chest, eager to hide your face. He didn’t seem to mind. “You were so good. Satoru called me such ugly names, the first time his behavior had to be corrected.”

Satoru whined in mock hurt, and Suguru chuckled fondly. “How ‘bout we get you somewhere nice and cozy? I think you’ve earned a little rest.”

You opened your mouth, but closed it just as quickly. Silently, you nodded into his shoulder, and Suguru rewarded you with a lingering kiss to the top of your head.

You were taken to Suguru’s room, but rather than his bed, you were placed in Satoru’s – low-walled and velvet-lined, more fit for a dog than a person. Satoru crawled in after you, curling around your crumpled form. The last thing you felt before you shut your eyes was the warm, slick sensation of a tongue running over your cheek, lapping up the last of your drying tears.

~

As it turned out, Suguru wasn’t an animal trainer. Admittedly, you’d figured that out pretty early on – as soon as you realized the only real animal in his life was Satoru.

Still, ‘cult leader’ probably wouldn’t have been your second guess.

You sat in the furthest corner of the sanctuary, a small crowd filling the limited space. Some were wearing street clothes, their expressions bored but unquestioning, as If Suguru’s sermon was only a prelude to something more engaging. Others, most, were more invested – positioned on their knees, hands at their sides, their eyes focused intently on Suguru where he was reclined on his dais. Both he and Satoru – sitting alert and watchful at his side – were dressed for their roles, drenched in tradition garb from an era long-dead. The only anachronism was Satoru’s mask. It was the same shape as his muzzle, but the metal frame was barred, the edges sloped downward into something sharper, something more defined. Even from the other side of the room, you could see the set of his jaw, the thin line of his scowl. The association had to be intentional. You doubted there was anyone in the world who could look at Satoru and see anything but a guard dog.

You were aware of the intentionality of your seating, too. Across the room, separated from the mass of bodies, placed so temptingly close to the sanctuary door and so directly in Suguru’s line of sight. Occasionally, you’d catch a piece of his lecture, make out something about ‘taking pity on lesser beings’ and ‘practicing divinity through extermination’ before tuning him back you. What little Satoru had told you about invisible monsters and hyper-specific supernatural abilities lingered in the back of your mind, but at a distance – information you knew to be true, but just couldn’t bring yourself genuinely believe. It made sense, in a twisted kind of way. You weren’t sure how you’d ever looked at Suguru and recognized him as fully human.

You drummed your fingers against your knee. Running was tempting, but a bad idea. Even if Suguru was miraculously distracted, Satoru would notice, and you wouldn’t get more than a few steps past the door before he caught you. Still, they’d dressed you for the occasion, and even a single silken layer of your too-complex-for-comfort get-up would be more than enough to pay for cab fare back to the city, back to your apartment, back to friends and resources and the police. That was, if you still had an apartment. You’d already missed at least three months’ worth of rent, and you doubted your landlord would have much sympathy for—

“He’s always been so fucking full of himself.”

You straightened and shot to the side, immediately pulled back into reality. You hadn’t heard him sit down, but suddenly, there was a man at your side – blonde hair slicked back, his black suit tailored immaculately, his posture confident in a careless sort of way. It was hard to tell if he was well-groomed early 40s or a particularly rough late 20s, but either way, the lines carved deep into the grooves of his scowl and the dark circles under his muted eyes spoke to an age-old exhaustion. One directed at Suguru, no less.

“Should’ve seen him in high school. The god complex is new, but the rest of it comes naturally.” You shifted slightly, unsure whether or not you should respond. He didn’t seem to care. You watched out of the corner of your eye as he reached for something in his front pocket – a pack of cigarettes, maybe, or another cheap vice – before thinking better of it and checking his watch. “I’d say Gojo’s a saint for putting up with it, but—”

“He’s worse,” you finished, under your breath. “At home, at least.”

The stranger glanced at you, wearily. As if he’d only expected to talk to himself. “You’re the new addition.”

It wasn’t a question, but after a beat, you nodded. He slumped against the wall. “And you’re here against your will.”

A longer delay, this time, a more hesitant nod. He let out a prolonged breath and directed his attention towards the dais.

“I’m sorry,” he said, finally. “That’s unfair.”

You felt something tighten in the back of your throat. Your collar, hidden well underneath the layers of your ensemble, seemed just a little heavier. “Yeah.” And then, when you could manage it, “I know.”

Suguru gave his final statement, and there was a muted ripple of activity through the crowd – some bowing, some muttering prayers, some wordlessly moving to the side to wait for an undetermined encore. Satoru made it to you first; dropping to his knees and hauling you into his chest. His face was buried in the crook of your neck in a matter of seconds, and you did your best not to care that the blonde stranger’s gaze was still very much boring into you.

Satoru held onto you until, moving at only his own pace, Suguru found his way across the sanctuary. He helped you to your feet and nodded to the stranger by way of greeting. “Bring the kids home in one piece, Kento?”

“Nanami,” he corrected. “Yuuji, Nobara and the twins are in the courtyard now. Megumi left a few minutes ago – his sister tends to worry.”

Suguru hummed. As they exchanged logistics, Satoru propped his chin on your shoulder. “Our latest batch of students,” he explained, keeping his voice low and airy. You wondered if he was allowed to speak in public, how firmly Suguru held onto his rules. You wondered if there’d ever be another time when you didn’t have to think before opening your mouth. “And Suguru’s daughters. You’ll meet them eventually. Kento’s on babysitting duty, in the meantime.”

You couldn’t say you were looking forward to the prospect.

As their conversation began to taper, Kento’s eyes skirted in your direction, and Suguru followed his gaze. Kento’s features were indecipherable, all but entirely blank, but Suguru wasn’t so difficult to read. Anger flashed hot and fast across his expression, quickly settling into something more restrained, something more amused. With a note of levity, he called to you. “Why don’t you join us, dear?”

Immediately, Satoru pulled away, and you were left completely and entirely alone. It took more time than it should’ve to remember how to move your legs, even longer to actually find the will to step forward, but Suguru waited patiently, keeping his hands tucked into his sleeves until you were close enough to take hold of. With an arm wrapped tightly around your waist, he slotted your back against his chest, forcing you to face Kento. “You were quite friendly with my acolytes during the sermon.” You tried to close your eyes, to bow your head, but he caught your chin – keeping you upright an on exhibition. “Kento, here, especially.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“You misunderstand - it’s a good thing. The last thing I’d want is for you to feel out of place among our little family.” He paused, humming as he tapped his thumb against the corner of your mouth. “In fact, you really ought to show Kento how happy you are to meet him.”

Suguru dug his fingers into your waist. Kento reset his jaw. Satoru smiled widely from behind the bars of his muzzle.

“You should purr for him, love.”

Heat rose to your cheeks – equal parts fury and embarrassment. Kento, for his part, kept his poker face in-tact, nonreactive save for the slightest possible quirk of his lips. His nonchalance provided little comfort, though. An unwilling audience was still an audience. At least, at home, you were given the mercy of a private dehumanization.

“I…” You swallowed, dryly. “I don’t know if I can do that. Like, physically.”

Suguru’s grin broadened. “Try for me.”

The ‘or else’ was left implied.

And the worst part was, you listened. You tried to find it in your throat, first, to flex a muscle you’d never thought to use, but the most you could manage was a low, droning hum – nothing close to a rumble. Kento looked away, humiliated on your behalf, and you opened your mouth, prepared to reiterate that even if you’d wanted to embarrass yourself in front of half his congregation, your body wouldn’t let you. Suguru’s thumb was in your mouth as soon as your lips parted, though, pressing into the flat of your tongue and pinning it to the bottom of your mouth. “You can do better than that, love. For my sake.”

You wouldn’t. You couldn’t. You didn’t want to, but Suguru’s hand curled tighter around your jaw and saliva pooled at the corners of your lips and you forced out a pitchy, half-strangled whine. It wasn’t anything like a purr, not really, but it seemed to satisfy Suguru. His hand had fallen to your hip in the blink of an eye, the edge in his voice softened back down to a cool, smooth timbre. “Ah, I suppose you do need more practice. We’ll have to work on it at home.” He looked to Kento. “Thank you for your unwavering dedication. I trust you’ll be in touch?”

Kento nodded, curtly. “Of course.”

And just like that, you were being ushered out of the sanctuary and into a more seclusive part of the temple, Satoru following close behind you. You tried to look over your shoulder, to see if Kento’s eyes were still following you, but Suguru’s hand found its way to the back of your neck, wordlessly warning you away from something so needlessly masochistic. You didn’t mind, though.

You could still feel his eyes burning into you, the sensation a touch warmer than it’d been a few minutes ago.

~

“Don’t you hate it?”

Satoru hummed, kneading absent-mindedly at your chest. Currently, the two of you were home alone, and he was engaging in his favorite leisure activity – laying on Suguru’s bed with you pinned to his chest, a human (or, human-ish, at least) body pillow to be squeezed at and cuddled as he faded in and out of sleep. His touch was probing, shifting constantly between your tits, stomach, and thighs, but not necessarily invasive. Despite everything, it was still difficult to see Satoru as anything more than an extension of Suguru, something only dangerous when ordered to be. It was hard to be wary of a weapon when not in the hands of the person who’d used it to hurt you, especially when that weapon was all you had in the way of company.

“What am I supposed to hate, now?”

“Having to share his attention. I mean, it was his idea to kidnap me, right? You don’t have to pretend you’re happy about it, if you’re not. I know you’re—” You recalled the sounds of stifled moaning through thin walls, the feeling of a mattress dipping under the weight of two bodies while you pretended to sleep, and swallowed down your nausea. “I know you two are pretty close.”

Satoru let out a breath of a laugh. “We love each other, princess, Like we both love you.”

“But you don’t.” Admittedly, your tactics were crude. Search until you found a sore spot. Skirt around the edges until it’d gone tender. Make him want to get rid of you. Satoru wouldn’t hurt you, not without Suguru’s permission, but you needed to make him want you gone. There had to be something you could say, something you could do, to give him a reason to carve you a way out and look the other way while you escaped. “Suguru just told you to put up with me. He gave you a new toy, and you’re not even really allowed to play with it – isn’t that unfair?”

“I promise, he didn’t have to tell me to do—”

“And aren’t you scared?”You cut in, feigning distress. “I don’t want to be here, Satoru. And, god forbid, he ever decides he likes me more—”

Satoru didn’t let you finish. His teeth dug into the crook of your neck, turning anything you might’ve gone on to say into an abrupt, high-pitched squeak. The bite was shallow, but it still stung as he pulled away, resting his forehead against the apex of your spine. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just—I know what you’re doing. And it hurts, y’know?”

“…it does?”

“Mhm.” He slotted himself against you, his hand falling from your chest to the hem of your borrowed shirt. “You’re nervous.” And then, his thumb slipping under the waistband of your panties, “You think we’ll get tired of you.”

A new fear, hot and visceral, struck through your chest, lodging itself somewhere between your lungs and your rib cage. While you fought for your ability to breathe, Satoru went on. “Suguru hasn’t told you about the day he let me meet you, has he? That figures. He always hated getting sentimental like that, ‘specially if it makes him look sappy.”

Your panties were tugged downward, to the plush of your thighs. Satoru nestled into your back as he traced over your slit with the pad of his thumb, his touch still heavy with that kind of lazy, pawing affection. You squirmed, and when that failed, did your best to speak through grit teeth. “I—I don’t think you’re supposed to be touching me without—”

“Suguru can find a way to live with it. He���s always liked having an excuse to punish me.” His thumb caught on your clit, pushing slow circles into the sensitive bud. “That’s what I thought he was trying to do, the first time he mentioned bringing you home. He’s always hated non-sorcerers, even after I got him to be a little nicer about it. Honey over vinegar n’ all.” Satoru paused, laughed. “Don’t take it personally, but it was a little like your boyfriend threatening to bring home one of those inflatable sex dolls. Just because of the whole ‘This is what I think you could be replaced with’ thing.”

His hand drew back, but only far enough to cup your sex properly. The heel of his palm ground against your clit as two of his fingers gathered the slick traitorously accumulating between your thighs. “He wouldn’t take me to your apartment, probably thought I’d try to suffocate you in your sleep. Wouldn’t stop bothering him about it, though, so we settled on something more public.”

It wouldn’t have been so agonizing if he’d just gone a little faster, moved with a little more urgency. Instead, he seemed to savor the way your restlessness slowly turned to blatant thrashing, how deeply you dug your nails into his forearm when you reflexively lashed out to try and pry his hand away. Suguru would’ve put you over his knee for that, if not worse. Satoru was different. In a way, Satoru was more sincere. Satoru knew that, even when a housecat bared its claws, the worst it could do was break the skin.

“Remember that florist gig you had, for a while? Just a couple of months – to give you a little extra funding for the sudden move. Not that you needed it. Suguru and I were always ready to take care of you.” He prodded two fingers inside of you and spread them apart. Miserably, you whined into the sheets. “He talked me into it – sitting at the café across the street, watching work for the better part of the day. I spent most of it imagining how to get rid of you without him noticing, but towards the end—”

Satoru cut himself off abruptly with a chiming laugh. You felt his fingers curl inside of you as he re-settled against you. “Suguru did this—this thing. He started touching me under the table, a little like how I’m touching you, and asked how I would feel about having something that couldn’t be taken away from me.”

There was another laugh, softer than the first, then a lingering kiss to the curve of you your shoulder. You made one last unabashed attempt to struggle, to kick, to get away from him, but Satoru only held you that much tighter, forcing another finger into your stuffed cunt.

“He probably meant it as a sex thing – thought I’d like bringing home someone I could be in-charge of. I don’t see it that way, though.”

He nuzzled into the nape of your neck. His breath was first, warm and stifling where it fanned over you, then his tongue – lapping over your back in short, slow swipes. If you’d been any less disgusted, you might’ve found it comforting.

“I think we were always supposed to share you,” he finished, his saliva still drying on your skin. “I think you made to be ours.”

His palm rocked against your clit, his fingers grinding against the sensitive walls of your pussy. It’d only take a few more seconds for you to cum, and a few more minutes for Suguru to come home and find Satoru with his head buried between your thighs and tears running down your cheeks. For your punishment, Satoru would have his arm broken (an injury that, as you’d learned quickly, he could walk off as quickly as the average person would a paper cut) and you’d have to spend bouncing on Suguru’s cock, thanking him for each climax he was generous enough to milk out of you.

~

Getting the collar off was trickier than you’d expected. The nail clippers, pilfered from a bathroom drawer while Satoru dragged you through his half-conscious morning routine, only dented the leather, and neither of them seemed to feel at-home enough in the villa to leave things as mundane as scissors or box-cutters laying around. In the end, you had to steal a knife from the block left unattended in well-stocked, but sparingly used kitchen – pressing the spine into your throat while sawing through your collar with the blade. It wasn’t the safest option, but it got the job done, and you managed to keep the damage limited to a small nick on the underside of your chin. You left the remains of your collar on the mat in front of the villa’s main door and waited.

Suguru wasn’t ecstatic, to say the least.

He found you in the living room, sprawled across the largest sofa you could find, wearing a hoodie that Satoru had made you promise to take off before he and Suguru got home. Satoru trailed behind him – a shadow with an inverted color palette. They must’ve come straight from the temple, or something to do with Suguru’s cult, at least. They were both still in their traditional get-ups, and Suguru was wearing the easy, narrow-eyed smile he only seemed to make use of during his sermons.

You had to hand it to him. Had it not been for how tightly his fist was curled around the strip of ruined leather in his hand, you wouldn’t have known he was angry at all.

“’toru,” he started, his tone light and melodic. “On the floor. Stomach-down. By the time I come back.”

He turned on his heel, slipping into another part of the villa, but Satoru lingered. He stared at you from the doorway for a second, then another, his eyes blank and his face unnaturally pale.

Then, you moved to stand, making a pitifully clumsy attempt to run, and he was on top of you.

It was strange – to see Satoru so quiet. He kept his lips sealed and his jaw locked as he pinned you to the floor, straddling your lower back and forcing your wrists against the tender spot between your shoulder blades. You could’ve tried to get away, but you didn’t. There was no world wherein you could overpower Satoru, and he knew that as well as you did.

Suguru took his time. Full minutes later, he returned, having replaced your collar with a pair of rusted-out pliers. It seemed wrong to see him carrying such a crude tool, like violist showing up to their recital with a sledgehammer rather than an instrument. You weren’t really in a place to comment, though.

“Princess.” He crouched in front of you, letting his head lull to the side. He cupped your chin, thumb running over the hairline scrape you’d inflicted onto yourself, before pulling away. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

You swallowed, thickly. “I didn’t want to, I just—I couldn’t wear it, anymore. It hurt my neck, and I couldn’t breathe, and—” Pausing, stiffening, digging your nails into your palms. “—and I’m not your fucking cat, you sociopath.”

Suguru sighed, his smile falling. He exchanged a glance with Satoru, expression unchanging, before looking back to you.

“I’ll be nice,” he said, finally. “Bad kittens can either get declawed, or defanged. Since you seem so unhappy with your current level of autonomy, I’ll let you choose.”

You balked. “I’m not playing your—”

“Satoru.” Apparently, you’d already run his patience thin. “Choose.”

You couldn’t decide whether it’d be better or worse, had his answer not been so deafeningly automatic. “Declawed. And just the index finger.”

“And why is that, puppy?”

“Because she doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’ll be more careful after she’s learned her lesson.”

Suguru hummed, his posture taking on a slacker note. After a beat, he nodded. “Give me a hand, then.”

This time, you did fight it – albeit, not very effectively. You did your best to wrench your arms from Satoru’s grip, and when that failed, to jerk away as he curled a hand around your left wrist and pressed it into the floor. Suguru moved to take your hand, but stopped barely a hair’s width short, his eyes flickering back to Satoru. “Sorry,” Satoru mumbled. There was a nearly imperceptible shift in the atmosphere – a change in the air pressure, a drop in the temperature – before he went on. “It’s a reflex.”

Suguru didn’t waste time. He spread his hand under yours, interlocking your fingers and holding you steady as he brought his pliers up to your fingertips. The nose of the lower hinge worked underneath your nail while the ribbed underside of its upper counterpart scratched against it, the texture alone enough to make you cringe. You shut your eyes and tried to distract yourself, but nothing you could’ve dredged up would’ve dulled the feeling of blunt metal digging into your nail-bed, of the jaws clenching around something so thin, something so suddenly fragile. There was a light pull, testing for grip, then the pain.

Burning, throbbing, blinding. The soreness of it was almost worse than the sting, your body protesting the jarring absence of something it hadn’t known to imagine life without. You’d expected the pain to be limited, isolated, but it spread quickly – infecting everything below your elbow with phantom pains and sympathy aches. You’d told yourself you’d stay quiet, that you couldn’t cry, but a scream tore past your lips involuntarily, the tears following shortly after. That was fine. That was good, actually. They should know that they’d hurt you. They should know why you’d never, ever be able to love them back.

Hot blood pooled in the space your nail had once filled, dripping down your finger and spilling onto Suguru’s skin. Rather than let you go, he pulled you closer, bringing your hand to his face and taking your mutilated finger into his mouth. His tongue ran over the empty nail-bed, enlightening you to a brand new type of agony. You were sobbing unabashedly by the time he pulled away, the crimson of your blood dotting the corner of his lips.

“Take her to the cellar.” He was talking to Satoru, not you. That was fair. You weren’t in a state to listen to much of anything, right now. “It seems like we all need a little time to think.”

There was no protest from Satoru, no resistance from you. It was all you could do to cradle your wounded hand against your chest as he gathered you up and held you against his chest. With no great sense of urgency, he navigated through empty rooms and endless hallways, up the natural incline of rustic architecture and down, down, down into a lightless, concrete abyss. Despite the size of the basement, it’d been left deliberately void, with only a bare mattress and a few thin sheets to fill the desolation. Two lengths of thick chain hung limp from the wall above it, each one punctuated by a metal shackle, but you didn’t have the strength to acknowledge them.

Satoru set you on the edge of the mattress. Rather than curl into yourself, you clung to him – refusing to let go even as he tried to pull away. “Please,” you begged, the sound of your own desperation catching you off-guard. “Please, I’ll be good, and I’ll wear my collar, and I’ll purr, and—”

His arms were wrapped around you, keeping you pressed against him. But, despite the gentle warmth of his embrace, his voice was cold as ice.

“Pets don’t talk.”

You’d wanted Suguru’s, but Satoru had been the one to hold you down, to carry you, to let you cling to him for just a few seconds longer than he should’ve. Calling the police was a non-option, a fantasy you’d been childish to indulge. You’d seen more than a few officers at Suguru’s sermons, and asking anyone you knew, anyone you trusted for help would just be inviting lambs to the slaughter. You didn’t want to be the reason Satoru had fresh meat to tear from the bone.

You let out a keening, miserable sob. Satoru didn’t crack, but he softened, sighing as he kissed the top of your head. The next time he drew back, you let him – falling onto your side and curling into the smallest possible ball. You stayed that way as you listened to him climb the cellar stairs, as the heaviest lock you’d ever heard slid into place. It was only when you were completely, entirely sure he was gone that you sat up and, after wiping away your tears as best you could, fished his phone out of your hoodie’s pocket – still warm from where it’d been trapped between your body and his. You’d clear the history and hide it underneath the staircase later, as if it’d fallen between the steps. So long as Satoru found it before Suguru, you shouldn’t get in trouble.

It took you three minutes to guess his passcode (your birthday) and four more to find the name you were looking for in his contacts. The phone only rang twice, but he offered no greeting, leaving you to break the silence, your voice more unsteady than you would’ve liked.

“…Kento?”

[riboism]

tear you apart

》 mob boss! p.sh x fem. ballerina! reader

》 wc: 3.3k

》 plot: a powerful mob boss becomes dangerously distracted by a captivating ballerina, leading him to abandon an important business deal because of his new obsession. Determined to regain his focus, he confronts her one night after a show, only to find himself even deeper entangled in his desire—and a conflict that could jeopardize everything.

》 content: swan lake ballet, ballerina!reader, mob boss! seonghwa, dom! seonghwa, gloved finger-fucking?? eventual smut

🎧 tear you apart- she wants revenge, sour switchblade- elita, into the woods- bragolin

It was now the final act of the show. Rothbart was defeated, his dark powers broken, and the swan maidens were free at last. In the soft glow of the stage, you and Siegfried danced together, your movements light and delicate, like drifting feathers. Each step felt weightless as you floated through the scene, surrounded by the gentle swell of the orchestra and the dreamy, pearlescent backdrop that bathed everything in a soft, otherworldly light. This was the most serene moment of the entire performance—yet your heart raced wildly in your chest.

Throughout the entire show, a sense of unease gripped you, following your every movement on stage. No matter where you turned or what role you played, you felt his eyes on you, that same piercing, unrelenting gaze that had been following you all season. 

Park Seonghwa always sat in the same seat, just a little off-center in the orchestra, ensuring he had the best view of you. Like clockwork, he was here every Saturday night, with his hair slicked back with precision, dressed in a long, black coat that skimmed the floor, and his leather-gloved hands resting motionless on his knees. His eyes followed you all over the stage, studying your every move, every tweak of your brow, his plump lips parted in fascination. His unblinking, stone-cold expression sent shivers down your spine, and yet, you couldn’t deny the intrigue it sparked in you. His observance of you, so focused and ceaseless, made you feel powerful—seen. As if, in his eyes, you were the only ballerina on that stage, the rest of the world fading into irrelevance. You almost looked forward to seeing him in the audience every night, that is, until some whisperings from the other ballerinas during dress rehearsal rattled you. 

"A mobster? Really? I thought those only existed in Scorsese movies," one ballerina laughed softly, her eyes darting nervously to the corner where he sometimes lingered after performances.

"It's true!" another whispered eagerly. "He's part of the Park crime family. Remember when they started cracking down on drug trafficking? Then they suddenly dropped all charges. I heard he paid off half the force. And now—well, I hear he’s eyeing the theater as a front for money laundering."

There was more truth to their rumors than they realized. After his father’s sudden departure, Seonghwa had inherited the mantle, becoming the head of the Park family business—a role he’d taken on with cold, unerring resolve. He was trusted to be the new, pragmatic decision-maker, one who wold keep the family business running smoothly. Everything had been going according to plan, right down to choosing an old, run-down theater on the outskirts of town as his next investment. 

It was a simple acquisition, one that should have been handled quickly. But one evening, he found himself sitting in the darkened theater, watching intently as you stepped onto the stage in your pearly white tutu, your sculpted legs covered in thick stockings, twirling on your experienced tippy toes, forcing him to wonder how you can move so gracefully while doing something that seemed so painful. 

Seonghwa never thought much of performance art; it simply wasn’t his world. His world was dark, brutal, and unforgiving. But from the first graceful movement, and the beautiful melody from the live orchestra, he was captivated with the world of the Swan Lake. You moved with such elegance and emotion that he couldn’t look away, each gesture leaving him more entranced than the last. From that night on, he returned every evening you performed, ignoring his obligations just to see you dance. He became infatuated with the beauty and artistry he hadn’t known could exist. 

The original plan was simple: aquire the theater, reshape it into something profitable, and then use the profits to conceal earnings. But now, the thought of disrupting your world was unbearable. Reluctantly, he abandoned the deal, his priorities now twisted by an enchantment he resented. 

From that very first performance, you unknowingly unraveled the careful fabric of his plans. Seonghwa found himself slipping away from his duties week after week, drawn back to that same old theater. His associates began to worry, questioning his judgement, but he couldn’t help it. He told himself it was just a curiosity or distraction—anything but the truth. You had enchanted him, woven yourself into his thoughts so deeply that he couldn’t bring himself to go through with the acquisition. Every time he saw you, he was reminded of what he stood to lose.

His associates were quick to notice his shift, whispering about his lack of judgment and uncharacteristic indecision. They urged him to reconsider, to stay grounded—but he felt himself slipping. Trouble was on the horizon; he could sense it. Part of him loathed you for the hold you had over him, for making him slack off from his responsibilities. Yet, night after night, he was drawn back, helpless against the spell you’d cast, unable to break free, and unwilling to let go.

Seonghwa knew he couldn’t keep living like this. His soul was burning hopelessly, and he needed to put out this fire fast. 

—

It was quiet now, the theater emptying as the final notes of the orchestra still seemed to hang faintly in the air. You slipped into your dressing room, exhausted yet exhilarated, the glow of the performance still warming you as you changed out of your costume. Carefully, you removed your stage makeup, wiping away the traces of the Swan Queen. The transformation always felt strange, trading feathers and grace for the ordinary routine of going home.

You packed your things slowly, placing each item into your bag with a practiced rhythm, already looking forward to the calm of your apartment. But as you reached for your coat, a prickle of unease returned. It was that lingering feeling, the sensation of being watched, that had haunted you all night.

The silence shattered with a sudden, firm knock on the door, catching you off guard. Your heart raced, and before you could even gather yourself to respond, the door creaked open, slow and deliberate. His face appeared in the dim light, and you caught your breath. It was him.

Seonghwa stepped in just enough for his figure to fill the doorway, his familiar dark coat draping around him like a shadow. His expression was unreadable, the same cold, composed look he always wore, yet his eyes held a strange intensity that made you feel hot.

Your heart pounded as he stood there, with his gaze fixed intently on you. You felt a flicker of fear—a quiet, instinctive warning. Everything about him radiated power, a kind of quiet danger that you couldn’t ignore. Yet, having him so close to you now felt exhilarating, almost like you were waiting for him to knock on your door. 

“I hope I’m not intruding,” He apologized, his sharp features now softening in your presence, hoping to disarm you. 

“I’m sorry, c-can I help you with something?”

He paced around your small dressing room, his eyes lingering on the little details—your stage makeup scattered across the vanity, the photo frames of other ballerinas lining the walls. Anxiety twisted in your stomach as you watched him, still unsure of why he was here. Then, he turned to you with an unreadable expression, extending his gloved hand. "I just wanted to introduce myself properly," he said, his voice smooth but distant, “Park Seonghwa. I’m from a private equity firm. I know the owner, Hongjoong.” Shakily, you reached out your hand, the leather of his glove feeling cold and unnatural against your skin. You suppressed a shiver as his grip lingered just a second longer than you expected.

“I’m Y/N.” 

"Y/N...Congratulations on being this season’s Swan Queen," he continued, his voice low and deliberate. "You’ve done very well. You must be very pleased with yourself."

You managed a quiet thank you, though the words felt strange on your lips, your usual confidence faltering under his watchful gaze. His praise should have flattered you, but instead, it left you feeling oddly exposed, like he saw more than you intended to show.

He released your hand, but the strange, lingering sensation stayed with you, leaving you both captivated and nervous.

Feeling faint, you sat down on your vanity chair. "So, you know Hongjoong?" you asked, searching for some logic behind his sudden presence.

"I do," he replied smoothly, though there was a slight glint in his eye that betrayed him. "We’ve been discussing a potential business venture together."

The truth, however, was a little more complicated. Seonghwa had met Hongjoong only once, barely enough to call him an acquaintance. From the start, Hongjoong hadn’t seemed eager to hand over his only asset to a man of Seonghwa’s reputation, especially not when rumors swirled about his intention to repurpose the theater into something as mundane as a car wash to serve as a front for his family’s business. But Seonghwa knew how to persuade, and when he named his price, Hongjoong’s reluctance began to waver.

That first night, they’d arranged to negotiate the deal, and Seonghwa had come prepared to secure the theater with his usual finesse. But Hongjoong was running late. Growing tired from standing in the lobby all evening, Seonghwa decided to sit in an empty seat during the show only to rest his feet, but your elegant movements captivated him, and made him forget who he was and why he was there. 

He stepped closer, closing the distance between you in a way that made the small room feel even smaller. Your breath hitched as his intense gaze softened slightly, a hint of a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. The air between you felt charged, the warmth of his presence mingling with the lingering cold from his leather gloves.

“But I’m not here to talk about that,” He said, towering over you, “I could actually use your help in something.” 

There was something odd yet inticing about his request. What could he, a possible mob boss, want from someone like you?

“And what might that be?” You asked, your throat suddenly feeling dry. 

He was so close to you now that you could pick up the warming notes of his cologne— spices, sandalwood, and a hint of citrus. You’d seen his face a thousand times before, always shrouded in the dim lighting of the audience, his expression always stoic and muted. But now, with the light catching the sharp angles of his cheekbones and his plush and perfect lips just inches away from you, he was utterly captivating. You couldn’t look away. 

"You see, I have this problem," he said, pacing slowly around you, his voice steady but laced with something unspoken. The air shifted each time he moved, the chill of his absence replaced by an intoxicating warmth as he drew near again. 

"A problem?" you echoed, your voice a little breathless, trying to focus as his reflection loomed behind you in the mirror.

"Mm." He stopped directly behind you, lowering his head closer to the nape of your neck. His breath was warm against your skin, sending a shiver down your spine. "It’s you," he admitted, his tone dropping into something dangerously intimate.

Your heart skipped a beat. "Me?"

Seonghwa straightened himself, meeting your wide-eyed gaze in the mirror, his lips curving into a faint, knowing smirk. "You’re making it very hard for me to focus on my job," he said. His words were as smooth as they were direct. "And when a man like me gets distracted… it causes complications."

He moved again, standing to your side now, his hand resting lightly on the back of your chair. The closeness was almost unbearable, every nerve in your body hyper-aware of his presence.

"So," he continued, his eyes locking onto yours, "I thought perhaps you could help me resolve this little… issue of mine."

Your mind raced to comprehend the suggestion wrapped in his words. The way he looked at you left no room for misinterpretation, his meaning clear without being crass. You felt a sudden pulse between your legs, forcing you to squeeze your thighs tighter. 

"And how exactly would I… help?" you asked, your voice barely above a whisper.

Seonghwa tilted his head, a slow smile tugging at his lips. "You’re a clever woman," he said, his fingers brushing a strand of hair from your shoulder with deliberate care. "I think you already know."

—

You sat perched on your dressing table, forced to see yourself reflected in the mirror. There was a nervous flutter in your stomach as Seonghwa loomed behind you, his broad shoulders and low eyes making your breath hitch. You watched as he parted your thighs before eagerly ripping at the center seam of your stocking, revealing your glistening cunt to you both. Before you could react, he brought down his gloved hand, tapping on your pulsing clit a few times before pressing down in slow and small circles. 

The coldness of the leather made you gasp, your heartbeat spiraling in excitement. You could see your slick coating his fingers, bringing a faint shine to his black gloves. 

“Such a fat little pussy,” he breathed into your neck, the sudden warmth making a few hairs stand at your nape. He lightly slapped your cunt again, his mouth watering at your chubby, wet folds. “Didn’t think such a sweet little ballerina had something like this between her legs.” 

You couldn’t help but feel vulnerable as you took in your reflection, hardly recognizing the scantily clad woman before you. You pressed your eyes shut as he continued pulling a string of shaky, breathless moans from your lips.

“Let’s see how well this little pussy can take me, hm?” He challenged, refusing to wait for your response before inserting a leathered digit into your wet walls. You gasped at the sudden intrusion, struggling to wrap around the thickness of his glove. Seonghwa chuckled at your tightness.

“Please,” You begged, tightly holding onto his working arm. But the desperation in your voice only egged him on. He thrust in a merciless rhythm, the squelching sounds from your arousal sending blood down to his groin. 

“Please what dear? You want more?” Seonghwa grinned devilishly before stuffing in another finger, the sudden stretch sending a mix of pain and pleasure to your core. He worked you open at a brutal pace, soaking in your sweet moans as you gripped onto him tighter. 

You were slowly coming undone, your knees quivering and threatening to cave in. You felt his hand grip onto your inner thigh, holding you open as much as possible for him. It was then that you fluttered your eyes open, only to find his gaze already locked onto yours in the mirror. You felt a twist in your stomach like he’d caught you doing something you shouldn’t be doing. You quickly realized that Seonghwa had been watching you in the mirror, his gaze unwavering as he took in every tear tracing your scorned red cheek, the delicate furrow of your brow, and the way your plush, pouty lips let out the softest, most beautiful whines he’d ever heard. Just as enchanting as your expressions were on stage, they were even more alluring here as he ravished you at his will. 

His fingers were so much deeper now, hitting you in all the right places, until the tension inside of you snapped and you finally let go all over his gloved fingers. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” You sputtered, watching your wetness drip down his gloves. Exhaustion suddenly took over you, forcing your head to fall against his chest. 

“I hope you don’t think we’re finished here,” He whispered, his soft, full lips feathering over your ear lobe, “There’s still a lot of things I need you to do.”

—

You were sprawled out over the table now, your top completely discarded, leaving you in just your ripped stockings. Seonghwa liked the stockings you wore on stage. They were so pearly and smooth, and he almost felt bad for ruining them this way. He leaned down and peppered a trail of kisses under your ear, down to your collarbone, lingering over your hardened peaks briefly, before continuing down to your pelvis. 

You felt a wave of heat spread over you as he kissed around the outside of your cunt before spreading your lips with his fingers, reuniting you with the coldness of the leather. He dragged his long, warm tongue over your hot slit, groaning once your essence reached his tastebuds. 

“You taste just as sweet as you look,” He praised, before wrapping his lips over your swollen clit. He sucked and pulled, swallowing every bit of juice you offered him hungrily. 

Your back arched in bliss, your hips rolling as he gleefully lapped away at your cunt. He pressed his strong hands down your inner thighs to keep you still, your puffy pussy now spread completely open for him to devour. He savored every drop of you, like a predator that spent weeks catching its prey.

Seonghwa told himself he’d finally be rid of this infatuation after tonight and return to his duties with no more distractions, but how could he now after seeing you like this? With your body so willing, the sheer afterglow hitting your face and collarbones, the uneasy rise of your chest, and those lustful, messy moans? It all enticed him even further, and he worried he’d never be able to stay away. 

Seonghwa was at his peak now, and he couldn’t hold out any longer. He quickly sprang up at his feet, the sounds of his belt unbuckling making your core throb with anticipation. His angry, red tip pressed against your slit, making you gasp at how hot and hard he felt. 

Seonghwa pushed himself in slowly, inch by inch until his shaft was completely sucked in by you. He cursed at your tightness and moved his hips slowly, allowing you to adjust to his girth.

“Fuck!” You cried out, curling your toes as he plunged deeper into you. He fucked you hard and rough, determined to take all his anger and frustrations out on you so that he could return to his stoic self. He hated you for throwing him off his game, and he still held onto that hope that he’d finally let go of all his pent up emotions once he finishes fucking your brains out. He just needed to get it out of his system.

You winced at his tight grasp on your hips. His pace was brutal, the sounds of your dressing table rocking against the wall overpowering your desperate screams, yet you refused to open your eyes. You didn’t want to see his face while he thrusted into you with an unspoken vendetta. His gaze alone made you feel even more hot and frazzled. 

Suddenly, you felt his hand creep to the back of your head, pulling your head up by a fistful of strands. You took in a sharp breath, the pain of your pulled hair forcing you to open your eyes at last.

“Look at how good you fucking take me,” He grunted, pushing your head down farther to help you get a good look at his cock stretching out your swollen cunt. “ ‘Take me just like a good girl.” 

Your face grew hot as you watched yourself take him in, eyes bulging at his thick cock that was decorated with pulsing veins and twitched inside of you so deliciously. So drunk off his cock, you found yourself rambling nonsense as he fucked you into oblivion. “Yes, yes, yes, fuck me, fuck me so good!”

You felt you both were melting into each other, your breathing growing erratic and unsteady until you finally lost your composure.

Seonghwa pulled out of you, spilling himself over your wet cunt as he sucked in a breath, making sure to milk out every last drop of his seed. You couldn’t help but watch as he spread his thick, white cum over your swollen pussy lips, your body twitching from the sensitivity. 

When you looked up at him, you found his face flushed as red as yours, his mouth slightly agape, with an expression that caught you off guard. The moody, confident alpha male who had entered your room now seemed unsteady, his composure cracked, leaving him looking utterly broken and confused.

He leaned down, his breath mingling with yours for a fleeting moment before his lips finally pressed against yours. The kiss was seamless, as though the two of you had been meant to move together in this way all along. The warmth of his touch ignited something between you, a spark that quickly became a flame, and a flame that would soon become a raging fire that could never be put out.

Seonghwa's desire for you only intensified in that moment. Whatever his plans had been before tonight, they now felt irrelevant, tangled up in the web of feelings he could no longer suppress. He didn’t know what this meant for his current predicament—how this would complicate everything—but one thing was certain: he wouldn’t be letting you go anytime soon. He’s marked his destiny by letting himself be engulfed in the flames.

[fishsinsareacknowledged]

König who finds abandoned!Reader out in his woods. Just a few miles away from the comfy cabin he lived in, thrown away and broken. He could tell what happened in an instant, weak and fail bones that can't lie. Without a second thought, he takes you, carrying you on his back without stopping, speeding away on skis far and quickly.

He's sure you're dead the moment he picks you up, surprisingly you twitch when you enter his small home. Warmth filling your corpse yet again. He's quick to act, pulling clothes off your unconscious body and dragging you to a basin, filling it with water. He'll have to monitor you for the next few hours.

Abandoned!Reader who wakes up hours later. A giant behemoth watching over your every move, your body is frozen still. You can't move but you can see him. He gasps at the sight of your eyes, astonished that you're even awake.

You're warm. So damn warm. Anything would be warmer than before. It's so warm and you can't move even if you wanted to. Your wounds are all sealed, you can feel it. All the way from the slice of your legs to the bones in your wrists. You're alive and that's all that matters. Alive, and warm. He wipes your tears for you.

He's had you covered in a sleeping bag. Ropes around the damn thing to keep you still while he sleeps, back turned away from you. He doesn't trust you, but he talks. Gods does he talk, murmuring about things he's found.

Then one day he leaves. For hours. You're tied up, you don't know where you are still and you can't move. The dread that fills lasts for hours until he returns. Bitchy as always and in that outfit of his. Ski mask and all, bags of groceries on him. You're just glad he's back.

Bit by bit he starts to trust you. Starts to feed you with his hands instead of spoons and forks. Trusts you with going to the bathroom yourself instead of him just washing you. You still can't talk, that's fine. He knows by now you understand him.

One day he just starts calling you random things. Stuff like Schatz, Liebe, and even Biene. You can't tell him to stop, and you don't want him to either.

He tries to let you go one day. Giving you a map and your own ski gear. You look at him. He looks back at you, sad like he's letting a pet go. You don't leave though, you just rummage through his groceries again. He lets you live there now, freely.

[writeriguess]

Will you do Spencer Reid x reader who is shy really quiet and Keeps to herself but lives in a different state, they get sent to that state for a case and it turns out his secret girlfriend is the missing girl case they’re working, reader leaves clues behind for Spencer because she believes he will find her

Silent Signals

You weren’t supposed to be part of a case. You weren’t supposed to be missing. But here you were—alone, trapped, and terrified—but not helpless. Because if anyone could find you, it was Spencer.

And if they were looking, you were going to make sure he saw you.

“Local PD confirmed the latest victim disappeared two days ago,” Hotch said as he flipped through the case file. “Y/N L/N, twenty-six, lives alone, works remotely, no known close family in the area. She was last seen leaving her apartment late in the evening.”

Spencer’s entire body went cold.

He knew that name. He knew that person. He knew you.

He willed himself not to react, not to give anything away, but his grip on the case file tightened. You weren’t just the next victim. You were his secret. His girlfriend. The person he loved, the person he had planned to visit in just a few weeks.

“Reid?” Morgan’s voice pulled him back. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Spencer forced out, keeping his voice even. “Just… taking it in.”

Hotch kept moving, listing off the details, but Spencer could barely hear him over the pounding in his ears. This wasn’t random. It couldn’t be. The killer had you, and Spencer couldn’t let anyone know how much that mattered. Not yet.

You weren’t stupid. You knew your odds. But you also knew Spencer.

So you left clues. Small ones. Things only he would recognize.

The first was under the table in the basement where you were being held, scratched into the wood with a jagged piece of broken metal you’d found.

3.14159

Pi. A math constant. But more importantly, it was something you and Spencer always teased about, because you used to call him your "Pi Day Prince" since he was born on March 9th. It was stupid. But it was yours.

You just hoped he’d find it.

“Victimology doesn’t match,” Spencer muttered as he studied the notes. “The previous victims—single, yes, but they had strong local connections. Friends, family. Y/N… she works remotely. Stays to herself.”

JJ frowned. “You think she was taken for a different reason?”

Spencer swallowed hard. “It’s possible.”

It wasn’t just possible. It was certain. But he couldn’t say that. Instead, he focused on the crime scene photos. The last place you’d been seen was your car, left abandoned near a gas station.

His stomach clenched.

A gas station.

You never went to that gas station.

You once told him you hated the way it smelled. You always went to the one three blocks down.

It was deliberate.

Spencer’s heart pounded. You were trying to tell him something.

And he was going to find you.

The next clue came when they found the basement.

Morgan went first, sweeping the area with his gun drawn. Spencer was right behind him, breath held as he scanned the room.

Something caught his eye.

A small, barely visible carving under the table.

He leaned in, running his fingers over the numbers.

“Reid?” Morgan called.

Spencer swallowed. “Pi.”

Morgan frowned. “Pi?”

Spencer shook his head. “Not just pi. This… this was intentional.”

Morgan narrowed his eyes, but Spencer didn’t care. He could see it now—see you—in every carefully placed detail.

The metal scrap on the floor. The way the dust had been disturbed near the far wall. The fact that, despite everything, there wasn’t a single sign of a struggle.

You weren’t just waiting.

You were fighting.

“Where is she?” Spencer’s voice was sharper than usual.

The unsub smirked, sitting across from him in the interrogation room. “What makes you think she’s still alive?”

Spencer’s fingers curled into fists under the table.

Because you were too smart. Because you knew him too well. Because you believed he would find you.

“She’s alive,” Spencer said evenly. “And you know where she is.”

The unsub leaned in, his grin widening. “Too late, genius.”

Spencer stood so fast his chair scraped against the floor. “We need to go. Now.”

Hotch didn’t ask questions—he just moved.

And Spencer ran.

You could hear them.

Heavy boots. Voices.

Then—

“Y/N!”

Spencer’s voice.

Your chest tightened, relief crashing over you. “Spencer—”

He was there in an instant, pulling you into his arms, holding onto you so tightly you thought he might never let go.

“I knew you’d find me,” you whispered against his shoulder, your body shaking.

Spencer let out a choked laugh, pressing his forehead to yours. “Of course I did.”

And then, for the first time in days, you let yourself breathe.

[2tarbell]

i need some blue collar rafe pls. i love that man

can u pls do something with like sweetheart!reader !!

maybe like some slow soft passionate sex before he has to go to work at like 5am

and it’s jus so loving n aww ☺️

anyways i love u and ur mind mwah mwah

BLUECOLLAR!RAFE + SWEETHEART!READER ⋆.˚ ᡣ𐭩 .𖥔˚

it was no secret that rafe had a soft spot for you. the hardworking, calloused man melted into a puddle for those puppy eyes and that little pout.

he knew you hated when he left, but you’d hate it even more if he didn’t wake you up to say goodbye. what started as kisses on the way out turned into sliding his morning wood into your warmth — watching with sleep glazed eyes as the intrusion slowly woke you.

now he can’t even get out of bed without you pulling on his strong arm, dreamy voice begging for him to stay. you were half asleep, eyes still practically closed, but he couldn’t do anything other than indulge you.

it was how you found yourself being spilt in half at 3:45 am, an hour before he needed to be on the road ‘abandoning you’. rafe never laughed at that joke.

he was holding himself above you, forearms caging in your head. with your hair all disheveled and practically drooling — he couldn’t take his eyes off you.

“fuck, how’re you so tight?” he heaved.

his gravelly words raised goosebumps across your pleasure-fuzzy, warm body. you were always so pliant this early, letting him stretch your legs over his muscular shoulders. the deeper press of his cock to your g-spot left you unable to speak coherently.

your hands clutched at his head, holding him close and brushing your soft lips against his with every precise thrust. rafe loved you like this — hips canting and so desperate for release, for him to stay.

“please, daddy— please—“

his hips stayed slapping against yours, the creamy ring of your arousal creating a sopping sound. his pubic bone kept hitting your clit perfectly and pulled whines from you. swollen lips letting out a hiccup when he thrusts in to the hilt.

rafe hummed, a low sound in acknowledgment of your state. he lifts his hand to your mouth, your lips parting against the intrusion of his thumb, taking it in to the knuckle.

“god, you’re takin’ me so well,” he mutters, his hips rolling against yours, “bein’ so good… so perfect for me.”

you let out a garbled moan, eyes drooping from sleepiness and the pleasure he was providing. he just knew — knew how to make you unravel and turn dumb.

sucking on his thumb eagerly as you could manage, languid from sleep and the kiss of his mushroom head against your cervix. with a pop he pulled the digit from your mouth, sliding between your bodies and rolling it over your puffy clit. the gathered spit mixed with the sparkling sheen of your arousal, making the flicks of his thumb smooth and effortless.

“oh my god—!”

you choked out, head diving back into the pillow behind you as his slow, deep thrusts make that coil in your tummy feel almost too tight. the feeling all consuming and unfamiliar.

rafe takes the advantage to sit up on his knees, wrapping a large hand around your throat — tight enough to let you know he’s there, he’s got you.

“mmh, i know, shhh — oh, shit — look at that…”

his hand slides around to the back of your neck, tilting your head down to see what he sees. you watch dumbly as you squirt all over him, coating his abs and dick with your cum.

it’s like you’re out of your body, watching yourself come undone while your hearing goes fuzzy with the intensity of your orgasm.

suddenly flooded with warmth as his pants get more whiny, indicating his own imminent release. he leans down, pressing his forehead tightly to yours and giving a few more thrusts for good measure — squelch sounds punctuating each inward movement.

he shudders against you, feeling tingly from the overstimulation of your pussy still clenching around him. he huffs, trying to catch his breath and shifts your leg off shoulder. you whine lowly at the loss of his weight on you, eyes fluttering and struggling to focus on him.

with a ‘okay, shh, kid’, he reaches out, wrapping his arms tight around your waist, leaning down on you again.

your small voice, already halfway back to dreamland, reached his ears in a contented sigh, “looove you, daddy…”

“mmh, i love you, my messy girl,” his teasing voice made a lazy smile spread across your face, wrapping your limbs all around him. trying to keep him as close as possible.

kisses are peppered along your neck, trailing to your lips with a playful smack. your giggles filled the space, light and airy in the quiet of your shared bedroom.

rafe smirked and pressed his hips forward into yours, swallowing the heaving sound you let out as his cock rubs against your pulsing walls. he spoke lowly against your mouth, pushing in and out — skin sticking to yours.

“how ‘bout… you squirt f’me again and i’ll think ‘bout callin’ out...”

[multific]

A Silent Kind of Love

Jason Voorhees x Reader

Summary: Jason Voorhees has only ever known fear and cruelty, until you. You don’t run. You don’t scream. Instead, you leave flowers by the lake and whisper soft words into the wind. 

The world had never been kind to Jason.

He had known fear before he had even understood what it meant, seen it in the way people screamed at the sight of him, in the way they ran, in the way their eyes filled with horror as they gazed upon the monster they believed him to be. 

They never looked deeper, never saw beyond the mask, beyond the scars, beyond the silence and the mask.

And then, there was you.

You weren’t supposed to be here. 

Crystal Lake wasn’t a place for outsiders, not anymore. 

It belonged to the ghosts, to memories, to the vengeful force that kept its borders clear of the living. But you came anyway, drawn by something you couldn’t name.

At first, Jason watched from a distance. 

He had spent years in the shadows, becoming one with them, learning how to be unseen. He expected you to leave, to take one look at the abandoned cabins and whisper the same fearful stories that had kept others away. But you didn’t.

You stayed.

You walked along the lake. 

And then, one day, you left something behind, a single flower, carefully placed at the edge of the water. 

Jason didn’t understand at first. Was it an accident? A meaningless gesture? 

But when he found another the next day, and then another, something unfamiliar started inside him.

You weren’t afraid.

You should have been.

But you spoke to him, even when he didn’t answer.

“I know you’re there.”

The first time you said it, Jason almost left.

But you didn’t chase him. 

You didn’t try to find him. 

You simply sat by the lake and talked, your voice gentle as you spoke of things that didn’t matter.

No one had ever spoken to him like that. No one had ever spoken to him at all.

He told himself it was nothing, that you would leave like everyone else, that you were just another momentary presence in a world that had never been meant for him. 

But then, one evening, as you walked through the woods, you tripped on an exposed root, falling hard against the ground.

Jason moved before he could think.

He caught you, his hands large and unsteady, his body tense as if expecting you to recoil the moment you realized what had happened.

Your skin was warm beneath his fingers. 

Too warm. Too soft. 

It had been so long since he had touched another person since anyone had been this close. 

He waited for you to scream, to pull away, to look at him with that same wide-eyed horror.

But you didn’t.

Instead, you exhaled, your hands bracing against his chest as you steadied yourself. And then, so gently he almost didn’t believe it, your fingers brushed against his wrist.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

Jason flinched. 

Not because he was afraid, but because he didn’t know how to process something so foreign. 

Kindness.

He stepped back, disappearing into the trees before he could see the look in your eyes.

But you didn’t stop leaving flowers. You didn’t stop whispering soft words into the night.

And Jason didn’t stop watching.

Days passed. Then weeks.

You were determined, and patient in a way no one had ever been with him. 

Slowly, cautiously, Jason let himself be seen. 

First, just shadows at the edge of your vision. Then, his figure stood farther down the shore as you sat by the water. 

And then, one day, he let you approach.

He never spoke. You never asked him to.

Instead, you sat beside him, close enough that he could feel your warmth but not so close that he felt trapped.

"Do you want me to leave?" you asked one evening, your voice soft as you turned to him.

Jason knew he should nod. 

That would be the right thing, the safest thing. But he didn’t.

You smiled then, something small, and it was the first time Jason wondered if maybe, just maybe, the world hadn’t been entirely cruel.

The first time you touched his mask, he stopped breathing.

It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t anger. 

It was deeper, something raw.

Your fingers were careful, tracing the edges of it with curiosity, not force. And when your hand dropped away, you didn’t try to take it off. 

You simply looked at him, really looked at him, as if trying to see the man beneath the legend.

“You don’t have to hide from me,” you murmured.

Jason didn’t know how to answer, so he didn’t. 

But later that night, when he found himself standing by your cabin, watching the soft glow of your lantern flicker through the window, he realized something terrifying.

He didn’t want you to leave.

He didn’t want to be alone again.

And for the first time in his life, Jason Voorhees understood what it meant to love.

Not the kind of love found in whispered promises or gentle words, Jason had never known those things, never needed them. 

Love, to him, was something unspoken. 

It was the way he lingered near, ensuring you were safe. It was the way he stepped between you and danger without hesitation. It was the way he let you touch him, let you stay, let himself believe that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t doomed to be alone forever.

So when the day came that someone tried to take you from him—when they entered his woods with cruel laughter and careless threats—Jason didn’t hesitate.

They would not take you.

They could not.

And when it was over, when the threat was gone, Jason expected you to fear him.

Instead, you reached for his hand.

"You're not a monster," you whispered, squeezing his fingers in reassurance. "Not to me."

Jason had no words. He never did. But when he pulled you close, when he let himself feel the warmth of your body against his, when he let you hold him like he was something more than a nightmare, he knew.

You were his.

And he was yours.

No one would ever take you from him again.

~Masterlist~

ˇAO3ˇ

Wattpad

/DO NOT TRANSLATE, STEAL OR REPOST ANY OF MY WORKS TO THIS OR OTHER PLATFORMS/

[inside-lees-mind]

Hii. Any Dr. Stone requests still hanging?

What about a ranking of how easy it is to make them laugh? (I know it's pure innocent fluff, but why the heck not)

Or, for any spicy folks: how easy it is to turn them on?

Dr. Stone Most to Least Rankings

Dr. Stone is coming back: I must come back.

I’m bored so I’m doing the spicy one. With that comes:

WARNINGS: NSFW, Hyoga being a sadist (canon)

And character list so I know who to bring up while I write this (not in order): Senku, Ryusui, Ukyo, Gen, Kinro, Ginro, Hyoga, Tsukasa

Most Easy to Turn On

Ginro: well this goes without saying. Ginro thinks with his dick. He’s always drooling over girls, abandoning all common sense to impress them, etc. Hell, you’re probably not the only one he gets turned on by… sorry.

Kinro: he tried so hard to act better than that, to be better. And he’s no pervert or anything… but it’s you! Unlike his brother, this is just because he’s so enamored with you. He is not looking at anybody else.

Gen: Most likely to turn you on. Gen is a bit of a pervert… if we’re being real. Amazing self control, but he’s been secretly thinking about getting you alone since this morning, but Senku found him first and so… it was hard labor instead! Much to his dismay. He’s not struggling to contain himself or anything though. Just frustrated…

Ukyo: He’s not perverted nor does he really think about you sexually a shit ton. He doesn’t have a high sex drive, but if you’re in the mood and go tease him… he really wishes you wouldn’t. Now the two of you have to sneak off because he’s either red in the face or teasing you right back and you’re dragging him into the woods for it.

Tsukasa: We have a bit of a jump, and this is where ranking them gets difficult for me. Tsukasa has great self control and is not likely to have trouble in public. If you try to tease him, he’ll just sternly shut you down. Maybe a little flustered, but he’s fine. In private? …you’re gonna get it.

Senku: likes to think he’s above it all things like this. He’s too focused on science and rebuilding the world… right??? He can ignore you for a while, but… rub up on him once and you’ll end up being told to ride him since you need it so bad… he needs it

Ryusui: you might be shocked he’s low… but let me explain! Ryusui loves everybody, has been surrounding himself with hot women since he was a kid (as odd as that sounds having to say it, but it’s true), and so he’s just not all that affected by anybody PHYSICALLY. I think he’d happily oblige if you wanted to get physical, but he’s not staring at your body with a hard on when you walk by or even are nude…

Hyoga: okay an odd choice for the bottom, but also a good choice. I’ll explain. He’s got excellent self control and torture skills. He’s likely to control himself well and he’s not all that affected by your attempts to get his attention. The most likely to make you wait and ALSO not let you help yourself at all. He can wait this out (while purposely riling you up) until you’re crying if need be. He’s lowkey-highkey evil bro.

[rafesangelita]

cowboy!rafe who wakes up to farmer’s!daughter!reader making him breakfast in one of his shirts 🥞 fluff with a little bit of spice please! thank you so much, i love all of your works!

warnings: suggestive language, fluff, suggestive ending

a/n: lol i made breakfast this morning and listened to this song, so that’s what i imagined lol

rafe was a heavy sleeper, but when he smelt crispy bacon in the air and heard ‘foreigner’ playing on the radio downstairs, he figured he’d go check on what woke him up so pleasantly this morning. wearing nothing but his flannel, there you were making a full table of breakfast. fried eggs, pancakes, bacon and hashbrowns.. all of rafe’s favorites. deciding he wasn’t going to make his presence known just yet, he leaned against the doorframe of the kitchen, watching as you swayed your hips to the music.

“i’ve been waiting for a girl like you to come into my life..” rafe whispered the lyrics to himself, his eyes traveling down to your bare legs. you were really in for it if he found out you weren’t wearing anything underneath the worn out fabric. rafe could see you pop a finger in your mouth to try the strawberry jam, the tip of his tongue running across his bottom lip. there was something about a beautiful woman, his woman, making breakfast after a long night of love making that just made him want to propose to you right then and there.

deciding he couldn’t keep his hands to himself any longer, he snuck up behind you, lifting you off of the floor by your hips. “ray!” you yelped, laughing hysterically as he showered you in kisses. “what are you doing up so early?” his arms were wrapped around your waist, holding you tightly against his chest as your head rested in the curve of his neck. “making my favorite man one helluva’ breakfast. ‘figured you’d wake up hungry after last night..” he hummed. “oh, i woke up hungry all right.” you shivered when you felt his fingers trailing themselves down your stomach.

it wasn’t long before he had you sitting on top of the counter, his stature standing firmly between your thighs as he kissed you sloppily. with your nails digging into his skin, a silent plea for him to take you upstairs, you and rafe groaned when he leaned an arm against the cabinet, the old wood creaking under his weight. “you ‘turn that stovetop off?” he picked you up, your legs wrapping around his waist as he took two handfuls of your ass. you nodded your head, both of you abandoning the feast downstairs for something much more.. filling.

[darkmatilda]

𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐤𝐞 | 𝐬.𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: two years ago, completely by accident, you helped catch a serial killer. now, as mysterious events start to pile up around you, you begin to suspect that someone is after you, seeking revenge. terrified, you're willing to do anything to save yourself—even if it means reaching out to your ex, who wants nothing more to do with you.

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬/𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐰: [these warnings only apply to part 1!] spencer reid x criminal(thief)female!reader, stalking, mention of dismembered bodies, serial killer targeting women, mention of abduction, mention of mental issues and addiction of the victim, reader is kinda morally grey

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬: 6k

𝐚/𝐧: HUGE THANKS to my beloveds from the server who have been listening to me yap about this fic for the past few days!!! a few of my dear girls show up here as characters, in this part it’s @esote-rika i hope you like the role i chose for you <33

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐎𝐍𝐄

You hadn’t dreamt about it for almost a year now.

Before, that image had returned to your dreams regularly. A small, wooden vacation cabin in the woods—far enough from the bustle of the city to feel like a retreat, but close enough to avoid the unease that comes with complete isolation. An operation that had required you and your then-partners to meticulously study the owner’s weekly routine, gathering as much information about him as possible. There was no pressure of time—it was a place for vacations or lazy weekends, not for everyday living.

You had no trouble breaking in without even damaging the lock. You had your methods. The owner was due to arrive soon and discover that the painting in the small living room was gone. You wondered if he even understood its historical value. Wealthy people often liked to fill their properties with expensive works of art to catch the eyes of their guests and dazzle them with their price tags. But they rarely cared about the context or the circumstances of their creation. Often, if the artist was foreign, they could barely pronounce their name.

You liked labeling every person you robbed as ignorant. It gave you more motivation.

Your partners had immediately located the painting, while you started looking around the interior yourself. There could be more valuable items—jewelry or antique furniture. Once, during a robbery, you had been about to retreat when you found a hidden door leading to a basement, which turned out to be practically a vault. That year, you booked your dream vacation.

This time, you were heading down the stairs again, shining your flashlight ahead. The beam of light didn’t fall on a bust, a leaning painting, or an Art Deco dresser. It illuminated the battered face of a woman, bound as though she weren’t a living being, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.

The waitress set a plate of pancakes in front of you, but you suddenly regretted ordering them. Your stomach was still in knots after seeing that image again in your dreams. You’d gone out for breakfast because you had no plans for the day and didn’t want to spend it entirely cooped up in your apartment. You adjusted yourself in the leather booth. The place had a 90s vibe, with its black-and-white checkered floor, red seating, and curly straws poking out of milkshakes topped with double whipped cream.

A cop slid into the booth next to yours with a sigh, ordering waffles with bacon. Out of habit, you tensed up slightly. As a member of the criminal underworld—a thief and active dealer of antique goods—you weren’t a fan of even fleeting interactions with people who carried handcuffs on their belts. You much preferred gold bracelets.

"...abandoned body parts of an unidentified woman were found along the shore of Neabsco Creek in Prince William County. This exceptionally brutal crime immediately sparked panic within the local community, following a series of murders that had occurred here just two years earlier. It was right on this riverbank that the limbs of the last victim of the killer were found before his capture…”

“The Waterside Butcher,” the cop to your left muttered, mouth full of waffles. “I don’t know if you heard, but that guy’s a real piece of work. Fuckin' psycho. But it ain’t him now—they got him locked up good.”

Thank you for sharing that unsolicited nugget of information I didn’t ask for, officer, you thought, as you remained silent. You didn’t want to engage in any confrontational interactions with the police. In fact, you couldn’t physically speak—you had a chunk of pancake stuck in your mouth, swelling up like a soaked sponge, and you had to spit it out onto your plate.

The cop shot you a look of disgust before turning his attention back to the waitress, bragging about his knowledge of the crime details. He even mispronounced the killer’s name. Robert Miller, not Roger. The man whose vacation cabin you broke into two years ago. The one whose basement you found a woman imprisoned in. The one you reported to the police, even though that meant exposing what you’d been doing in his house. Your case quickly ended up in the hands of the BAU profilers, who used your testimony and connected it to a serial killer they had been hunting for a long time, one who always dumped his female victims along the banks of water sources.

They even offered you a deal. Your testimony, and in exchange, you were only charged with one burglary, one attempted theft. They completely ignored the dozens of others that had happened before.

So, it could be said that you helped them catch The Waterside Butcher.

The cop was right about one thing. Thirteen murders, and he was locked up for the next few lifetimes. So, it had to be either a copycat or...

But if someone like that escaped from prison, would the public even know about it?

Your nightmare hit again. Right on that night. A bad feeling?

Your phone rang.

"Hey, Mrs. Hemingway," you greeted your older neighbor from the floor below, the one you’d swapped numbers with when you were helping her settle in after her hip surgery and taking care of her poodle. You were surprised she was calling you. "Everything okay?"

"Sweetheart, I told you to just call me Erika," she said gently on the other end, her voice carrying a note of tension. "I’m just calling to let you know you're flooding my floor again. Haven’t you fixed that sink yet?"

"Shit," you muttered under your breath. "I’ll be there in a sec. Sorry, Mrs...Erika, that this happened again."

You left the almost untouched pancakes on the plate and walked out of the restaurant, heading toward your building. You’d been moving around a lot because of your line of work, and this place had been home for maybe three months now. For about two weeks, something strange had been happening with the sink in your kitchen. You’d return late at night to find the floor completely flooded, leaking down to the apartment below, where Mrs…Erika lived. It happened every few days, almost regularly. After the second time, you hired someone to fix it, but he said everything was fine with the faucet. Either you kept forgetting to turn it off, or…you just couldn’t come up with a better explanation.

Oddly enough, that wasn’t what occupied your mind on your way back to the apartment.

Your thoughts were consumed by the murder case. You couldn’t help it; everything related to it made you uneasy. During the trial, you’d heard all the details of the crimes he’d committed. You’d seen photos of torsos of women, abandoned in various places, along with their legs and arms. You’d listened as the handsome profiler explained the psychology behind it all. How he lowered his voice with a comforting care, assuring you there was no chance he would ever get out of prison. You nodded, having no reason not to believe him. It was him who proposed the deal you took – keeping your earlier crimes under wraps in exchange for your testimony.

You made a mental note to check in on how Rebekah was doing later. You were the one who saved her, though you didn’t particularly like using that word—after all, you’d ended up there by accident. You kept in touch, but it was hard to call it friendship. You were bound by the situation in which she almost became just another limbless victim. You didn’t have much in common, but she had struggled a lot after that event, and you wanted to make sure she was okay. It was kind of like womanhood. 

The first thing you did when you got back to your small but quite stylishly furnished apartment in a nondescript neighborhood was to turn off that damn sink. And then, you offered a heartfelt apology to Erika. In return, you promised to walk her poodle for a week.

“No need, darling,” she assured you, standing in the doorway of her apartment. She was an elegant woman, a fashion enthusiast. Dressed in a gray plaid skirt and a cleverly cut blouse with a tie at the neckline, large black earrings dangled from her ears. Sometimes when she went out, she wore a matching black bowler hat. Behind her, the poodle was frantically wagging its tail, excited to see you. “The doctor recommended I get plenty of walking. I take Coco out every day at eight for an hour. Just the cost for the flooded ceiling is fine.”

You agreed, silently promising yourself that you’d order her a massive bouquet of flowers in the coming days. But for now, you headed back to your apartment, walking straight to the bedroom where you kept a locked chest of drawers… and inside, an album of photos. And within those photos, a substantial amount of cash. Since your income didn’t come from legitimate sources, you steered clear of banks like the plague. You counted out the sum you planned to give Erika—more than she probably expected. But before you could lock the chest again, your fingers automatically grabbed the album. It wasn’t just money in there; you liked to capture moments in photos, and you had plenty of them. You always took them with you when you moved.

The first page showed several pictures from your early childhood, chubby cheeks, dreamy eyes. You quickly turned the page, then another…

Your fingers clenched tightly, even though your mind hadn’t fully processed what you’d just seen. You shook your head, thinking it was just your imagination playing tricks on you.

A photo of a little girl on her first bike. Her face should have been expressing joy, a toothless smile. Instead, all that was there was white, emptiness. A cut-out section.

With furrowed brows, you continued flipping through the album, almost in a trance. If every photo had missing pieces like that, it would’ve been easier to understand. But this was just one photo out of hundreds, one little girl without a face…

A graduation photo. You should have been smiling, hugging your friends. But your face was missing. Your breath caught in your chest. A trip with friends—your face cut out. A beach day, devoid of your face. Not every photo had been altered, but almost every stage of your life captured in that album had at least one case like this. It was as if someone was trying to erase you completely.

You stopped at the point where you had stopped taking as many photos. The last few were from your previous relationship. It hadn’t lasted long, but you had particularly enjoyed taking pictures of Spencer Reid, the profiler who had worked on your case. His brown hair, wide eyes in surprise because he hadn’t known you were sneaking up on him with the camera, the dimple in his cheek when he smiled, filled several good pages. There weren’t many good photos. He looked amazing in spontaneous shots, but in posed ones, his smile was always awkward, stiff.

That photo wasn’t one of your favorites. It had been taken by some stranger during your little vacation in Rome. Spencer had been wearing a light linen shirt, his arm wrapped around your waist. You remembered exactly how you’d stood on your tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek, only to cringe a moment later—having just slathered him with sunscreen, you tasted that bitter aftertaste in your mouth. A smile flashed across his face at that, and he adjusted his arm around you, smoothing your heat-fluffed hair behind your ear. So many perfect angles for a picture you could have stared at for hours, but that stranger had only snapped one. You both looked like an engaged couple who had never spoken to each other before, and to make matters worse, it looked like the family expected six kids from you both.

Your face had been cut out of it.

You slammed the album shut and tossed it into the drawer. A gust of wind blew the money meant for Erika onto the floor, but you didn’t care. What did you care about? There was nothing in your mind. A temporary, filling emptiness, growing with every beat of your heart.

Your body moved toward the window on its own, discreetly peering behind the curtain. A black car pulled away from the driveway, followed by a red one, and then a gray one. Could it be…?

No, you hadn’t looked at that album for several days. At least not to review the pictures. They might have been damaged before, and you only noticed it now. You didn’t know which version of events scared you more.

The voice of the news anchor played in your head like a true-crime podcast, describing a recently discovered body with far more gruesome details than in reality. The return of The Waterside Butcher, the one you helped catch. A break-in at your apartment (you hadn’t done it yourself, had you, in your sleep?) almost at the same time?

A twist of fate? A stupid coincidence?

For a moment, you paced around the apartment, thinking. Robert Miller was a serial killer of women, whose capture had been made possible by a woman who broke into his home. If—purely hypothetically—he escaped prison, wouldn’t he be driven by a certain kind of hatred directed specifically at her? A desire to destroy her, more important than anything else?

But that was absurd. You hadn’t cut ties with the case, but surely someone would have informed you if he had escaped. Though…Spencer had been your source of information, and you hadn’t spoken to him since your breakup, over a year ago. You hadn’t been in touch at all since then. So maybe…?

You realized you were standing in something wet. The floor was still flooded from a tap that had been left running.

For the second time this week.

The self-turning sink, this tension, this dream, the cut-out faces, the next murder.

Another brutally killed woman left on the riverbank.

The thought was improbable, yet it refused to leave you alone. It was far more likely that you were dealing with some deranged copycat—after all, it wasn’t uncommon for serial killers to have their admirers. However, that prospect didn’t fill you with nearly as much dread as the idea of being in the crosshairs of this particular man. 

You had to find out if there was even the slightest chance that he was out there, free.

*

“Hands up and turn around, slowly.”

Quick disclaimer—you and Spencer Reid didn’t break up on the most peaceful terms.

Aiming at your head was a bit much, though.

Without a hint of fear, you calmly closed the cabinet in his kitchen, from which you had just taken out a package of brown sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts. You immediately shoved one into your mouth, chewing the sweet bite while staring into the eyes of your ex, who was pointing a gun at you from about four steps away. His hair was longer than you remembered, and there was a trace of stubble around his mouth that caught you off guard. Or rather, how good he looked with it.

“I preferred your old place,” you declared, leaning back against one of the kitchen cabinets. Another bite of Pop Tarts, and a crumb fell onto your clothes. Oops. “Do you even have a microwave here? I could warm this up.”

“How did you get in here?” he asked, clearly irritated.

He still hadn’t lowered the gun, and you were starting to suspect he wasn’t exactly thrilled to see you.

“It’s always how did you get in here?” you sighed, rolling your eyes. “Never what’s up? how are you? your hair looks amazing, did you know that? and that outfit?”

"You wouldn’t be yourself without all that pretentious talk, huh?" he scoffed, finally easing up a bit. His stiff posture, caused by holding the gun, relaxed, and after a beat, he lowered it and tucked it into his waistband. He accidentally pulled back part of his black blazer, revealing a dark purple shirt underneath.

You shoved the rest of the snack into your mouth, wiped your hands off, and swallowed.

"I’d be boring without it. And you wouldn’t be yourself without this overdramatization, right? Aiming at my head like I’m some criminal..."

"You broke into my apartment," he interrupted, folding his arms. It was evening, and if you hadn’t turned on the light before coming in, the place would have been drowning in cold darkness. A little of it slipped through the window that wasn’t fully covered. "I think that’s a pretty good reason to point a gun at someone. So what are you doing here?"

"You were right," you said softly, helplessly spreading your arms. "The path of crime doesn't lead to anything good. I should have listened to you, thrown it all away, and become a model citizen."

Spencer gently nodded, listening to your words. Then, he let out a laugh.

"And seriously?"

"Was I not convincing enough?"

"Did you get yourself into something again and need someone to cover your back? Because there's no better alibi than the words of an FBI agent?"

"Stop acting like I ever forced you into it. You did it on your own."

"Because I didn't want my girlfriend ending up in prison."

A tired sigh escaped you, not expecting it to take just three minutes from the start of your reunion to begin bringing up things from your relationship. Well, the fact that you even got together two years ago still seemed incredibly absurd and enigmatic, especially to outsiders. Let's be honest. An FBI agent and a criminal caught during a break-in for theft. Then, still a criminal, though with good intentions.

You couldn’t help that you didn’t see an end to that career, and you were pretty sure Spencer secretly hoped you'd give it up. During the less than six months of your relationship, you felt as though you were constantly on the police radar, even though he’d never turn you in. What’s more, once or twice, he vouched that you were somewhere else when you weren’t. To put it simply, he gave you a fake alibi.

That was roughly when everything started falling apart, as it slowly dawned on him that he couldn’t change you. Things got even stormier, and one day, after one of the many unpleasant exchanges of words at that stage, you just walked out, slamming the door behind you, and you hadn’t seen each other until now.

 End of the story.

"Listen," Spencer began after a moment of silence. "You broke in here for a reason, and I highly doubt it’s to reminisce. I should just tell you to leave, but out of some remnants of respect for you, I’ll let you say what this is really about."

"Oh, look at you, how gracious," you scoffed bitterly. Remnants of respect. He was right, though. You hadn't come there to reminisce; you were only interested in getting an answer to one specific question. You cleared your throat. "I’m assuming you’ve heard about the discovery on the shore of Neabsco Creek?"

Spencer took a step forward, furrowing his brows slightly. He still kept more than a necessary distance, as if you were the one pointing a gun at him.

"Your assumption is correct," he replied slowly, cautiously. "I just don’t understand the purpose. Do you have any information related to the case?"

Although it didn’t quite fit the topic, the corner of your mouth twitched.

"Are you hoping I’ll help you catch another serial killer?" you asked, immediately shaking your head. "No, I don’t know anything that could be useful to you. But I do have some bad feelings about it."

You saw him gently press his lips together in thought. Almost immediately, he understood where you were going with this and gave a slight nod. His eyes were still analyzing you carefully and distrustfully. You also noticed how carefully he chose his words, as he always did in the presence of someone who could mean trouble.

"Spencer," you said his name for the first time during this conversation, pausing for a moment to think about how it felt on your tongue. You’d almost forgotten. "Is Robert Miller still in prison?"

 "He murdered thirteen women, of course he’s still in prison," he replied with conviction. "And he’ll stay there forever. The body we found... the modus operandi is the same, but only because we’re probably dealing with a copycat."

 "Copycat," you repeated. "And not an accomplice?"

"He didn’t have an accomplice. We figured that out during the investigation."

 "Are you sure?"

 "What exactly are you getting at?" he asked, his voice tinged with genuine confusion, his brow furrowed deeply.

You set the Pop Tarts box down on the counter. You’d thought about it a lot. Few knew about your involvement in the investigation, it hadn’t been made public, just like the exact circumstances surrounding the capture of the suspect. He, however, knew. He’d seen your face in court, heard your name. The entire previous day you had been obsessed with the fact that he probably had the right to correspondence in prison. He might have found a way to inform his potential accomplice about your identity, convincing him to take revenge on his behalf.

"Someone's stalking me," you said casually, as if you were telling him about what you had for lunch that day. "It started right when that murder happened. Just before the body was found on the shore. Someone...cut my face out of photos in my album."

Spencer stood still for a long moment. A look of concern briefly flashed across his face, but it was quickly replaced by something else—skepticism.

"No offense," he began, with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, "but are you sure it’s not just someone from your circles?"

"Even if it is, so what? I'm still being stalked."

"Then, that’s not my problem”

Okay, that was cold.

“If someone from my circles wanted to kill me, they’d just do it. They wouldn’t be sneaking into my apartment, cutting my face out of photos, and turning the water on in my sink. The Waterside Butcher, as the media's calling him,” you tried to sound calm and logical, but your heart began to race as the memory from the dream you’d had two days ago—and the one that came to you last night—hit you. This time, however, you hadn’t found Rebekah in the basement of the house, but yourself. “Something’s not right. I can feel it. You guys should look into this. I mean, BAU. But not as a copycat. As someone connected to Miller."

You could see Spencer mulling over your words. His jaw tightened slightly as he processed what you said.

“Are you getting any real threats?” he asked. “Or is it just a busted sink and…”

“It’s not busted! Someone’s turning it on!” you cut him off, irritation creeping into your voice. “And not just someone—a serial killer I put in prison.”

“And who’s still there.”

You could feel yourself losing track of your own thoughts. Well, you’d barely slept the night before, and your brain wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.

“Or his accomplice,” you corrected yourself.

“Or?” Spencer picked up on it, raising an eyebrow.

You shrugged, frustrated by his calmness.

"Well, sometimes you catch the wrong person," you said uncertainly.

Spencer exhaled deeply, briefly staring at the ceiling. You didn’t see the seriousness, the readiness to act, that you’d expected when you showed up at his apartment. There was no declaration that they would take another look at the case, maybe reach out to Miller again and try to get more information from him. The thought crossed your mind—if something like this had happened two years ago, would he have reacted with more urgency?

“I interrogated him two years ago,” he began. “Personally, for many hours, even days. He confessed to everything, nothing in his behavior suggested he was trying to manipulate us. He had a motive—he selected his victims based on their resemblance to his mother, whom he also murdered by pushing her off a boat during a family trip. At the time, it was considered an accident.”

As he spoke, memories of the courtroom and the police station resurfaced, when everything was just starting to come to light. And as he slowly moved closer to you, probably unknowingly, you also recalled the first time you really interacted, when he drove you home. You weren’t innocent, but that day, you had heard some truly horrifying details of the crime, and you felt a distinct unease. For the first time, you talked about something other than the investigation. I’m like Robin, but not like Hood. I rob the rich, but I don’t give to the poor you said, making him laugh.

"Our profile didn't include a partner. Trust me, we've handled plenty of cases where there were two or more perpetrators, but this isn't one of them. One person is responsible for this," he continued, trying to catch your eye, making his words more direct, wanting to make sure they reached you. "If someone's stalking you, it's probably not even connected to this case. And normally, I'd recommend you report it to the police... but I get the feeling that's not really an option."

You scoffed, because he was right.

"Highly unlikely they'd do anything about it. You know, the faucet could always be broken, and the photos...that can be explained away," you said, sitting up suddenly.

"Are you calling me paranoid?" you asked sharply.

"You always have to label things so harshly," he muttered, shaking his head. "No, I’m not saying that. I’m just suggesting that the previous murder and the media panic could have influenced how you're perceiving things, making you more susceptible to suggestion. Your mind has connected it with past traumatic events and added..."

"So, you're saying I'm paranoid. Just in scientific terms," you shot back.

Spencer sighed in frustration.

"Call it whatever you want."

For a moment, you just stared at him in silence, a rush of angry words pushing at the back of your throat, but you realized they didn’t make any sense. Why had you even assumed from the start that he would believe you? Leaving aside the fact that your argument was admittedly a bit stretched, the truth was, you weren’t the person he chose to trust anymore.

You briefly lowered your gaze, letting out a sigh, then lifted it back up as you got closer. Spencer tensed, almost moved to pull away, but quickly realized you weren’t threatening him. You simply reached for his purple shirt, slipping something into the tiny pocket on his chest.

"My current phone number," you explained, tapping that spot on his chest. "In case you find out anything. Oh, and one last thing. Do you remember what shape my birthmark is?"

He tilted his head, surprised by the question, the sudden shift in topic. Without waiting for an answer, you pulled at your shirt slightly, exposing a patch of skin just below your collarbone.

"It’s in the shape of pi, like you once pointed out." It hadn't reminded you of that at all before, just a vague shape, but ever since he'd mentioned it, you'd seen it only that way. And from then on, every time he kissed you, he'd always lingered at that spot for a moment longer—it was his personal, favorite point. You let go of your shirt, and Spencer immediately locked eyes with you.

"I just wanted to make sure you remembered," you added, before turning to leave. "In case I end up dismembered on some shoreline and they need to identify my body."

Spencer’s mouth fell open, unable to say a word.

"You knew it very well," you added casually as you made your way out.

You didn’t need him to escort you. You had gotten there on your own, too. 

*

Three days later, when poor Erika was flooded once again, you decided to take action. You contacted the right people to have the locks in your apartment changed and to secure the place in a way that would make breaking in nearly impossible—at least for an average burglar. You knew, however, that someone with the right skills, like you, could still get in. With difficulty, but it was possible.

You also made sure to refresh your knowledge of handling a gun. 

And you called Rebekah.

You didn’t like scaring her, but you preferred her to stay vigilant. If someone was targeting you, they might just as well try to go after her too. The problem was, she wasn’t answering your calls, despite you trying every hour throughout the day. Shortly after being freed from the murderer’s grasp, she hadn’t taken up any work, and since you were doing relatively well, you had been supporting her financially. Recently, however, she had managed to find a steady job, and that could explain why she wasn’t responding.

Spencer was right about one thing—you were slowly becoming paranoid. That’s exactly why, later that evening, you decided to head over to her address to make sure everything was okay. It wasn’t just about outside threats anymore. It was simply that… Two years was a long time, but not when it came to rebuilding a life after being abducted by a serial killer. Those years had been especially hard for her—there was the added struggle of addiction—and you just wanted the reassurance that she hadn’t done anything to herself. At least then, you’d be able to sleep more soundly—as much as the circumstances would allow.

Her apartment was located in a truly awful neighborhood, on the second floor of a stairwell covered in graffiti. You knocked on the door several times, pausing between knocks, trying not to panic or come across as aggressive—you didn’t want to scare her.

"Rebekah, are you there?" you called out when no one answered.

You spent a moment leaning against a spray-painted cock on the wall, letting out a sigh as you reached into the pocket of your jacket. The lock on her door was a simple one, requiring only the most basic tools—tools you carried out of habit. You made a mental note to send someone over to replace it.

Even if she wasn’t home, you wanted to take a look around and gauge how she was doing based on the state of the apartment. It wasn’t exactly ethical, but sometimes our surroundings say more about us than words ever could. Besides, there was a good chance she’d never even know you were there.

You stepped inside, calling her name again. The light was already on. Her jacket was hanging on the coat rack, suggesting she was home—but it was also possible she’d just worn a different one. You slipped a wad of cash into the pocket of her jacket. She’d find it later and probably think she’d just forgotten it was there.

The interior had dark green walls, and the apartment consisted of three rooms: a modest living room, a tiny bedroom with just a bed and wardrobe, and a bathroom you’d never been inside before. When you glanced into it, your face reflected in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. You looked really sleep-deprived.

Finally, you headed to the bedroom, clinging to the faint hope of finding her asleep in bed. The fact that all the lights were on worried you—if she’d gone to work, she would have turned them off. Anyone mindful of their wallet would’ve turned them off!

The bedroom door creaked softly as it closed behind you, leaving just a narrow gap that provided a sliver of a view into the living room, specifically the apartment entrance. That was when you saw it swing wide open.

At first, you wanted to leave the bedroom, assuming it was Rebekah and that you could greet her. But it wasn’t the petite, feminine figure of your short friend—it was a tall man, or so you guessed from his stature, despite the hood obscuring his face. Instinctively, you leapt back from the partially open door, making sure you were out of sight.

Heavy footsteps cut across the apartment, heading, by the sound of it, toward the kitchen area. There, they paused for a moment.

You didn’t even try to convince yourself it was some friend of hers dropping by for a visit. Deep down, you already knew—instinctively felt—who it was. And that thought paralyzed you so completely that, despite the gun tucked under your jacket, you quietly slid open the wardrobe door and squeezed yourself inside.

The door creaked as it moved, and you cursed silently.

Whoever it was, you hoped they were too focused on whatever they were searching for to have heard it.

You listened closely to the footsteps in the room next door, your mind spinning with one relentless question: Where was Rebekah in all this? Was she at work, completely unaware that someone was in her apartment during her absence? You tried to recall the last time the two of you had spoken. Certainly not in the past few days—perhaps not even in the past week.

You squeezed your eyes shut, forcing your breathing to quiet, to steady.

Theoretically, her apartment could’ve been empty for days now.

But who was this man?

The footsteps suddenly grew louder. The bedroom door creaked open. You drew in a sharp breath and froze, halting your breathing altogether. You had no idea how much the tight, dark confines of the wardrobe muffled sound.

The footsteps stopped.

You could only imagine the figure standing in the doorway, his sharp gaze sweeping the room, taking in every detail. Did he sense someone else might be here? He couldn’t know for certain. But it was possible—likely even—that he subconsciously felt another presence, much like you did in your own home every single day.

Fragments of the nightmare that had haunted you over the past few days came rushing back. It felt as if you were descending those stairs into the basement again.

And then a smell wafted through the air—faint but distinct.

It was the same scent you’d inhaled back then.

Two years had passed, but you still remembered that mixture of dust, decay, and sweat.

Were you really smelling it now? Or was it just a cruel projection of your terrified mind?

The footsteps began to retreat.

You listened with your eyes closed, straining every nerve to track the sound. Your legs felt weak, and it took everything in you not to slide down the back wall of the wardrobe.

The sound of the apartment door slamming shut echoed through the silence. Even then, you couldn’t bring yourself to move.

And then your phone rang.

The sudden, sharp sound shattered the fragile quiet, making you choke on a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

Your fingers acted on their own, quickly answering just to silence the noise.

“Hello?” someone said hesitantly, your name hanging in the air like a question. “...It’s Spencer. I’m calling because... something’s happened. And you need to know.”

No.

You tilted your head back, squeezing your eyes shut as if that could block out the reality creeping in.

The silence on your end must have encouraged him to keep talking. You heard the faint sound of him swallowing, the nervous gesture twisting your stomach into knots.

“Robert Miller escaped from prison”

You pressed the phone to your face, even though it was already on speaker. Words tangled in your mind, refusing to form. Spencer said your name twice more, his voice edged with concern, before you finally forced yourself to speak.

“You need to come here,” you croaked, your voice barely recognizable. “Please.”

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐓𝐖𝐎

taglist: @she-wont-miss @mggslover @nyeddleblog @dylanobrienswife0420 @wmoony

@heddgie @khxna @marauder-exe-old @yujyujj @charleyreid @kitty-kai @sp3ncelle @pleasantwitchgarden @beesin03 @misserabella @re1dsb1xch @trulymadlydarling @cynbx @penelopegarciaismygf @nachrosas @angellic4l @awordsmith

[swordgrace]

𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐋 𝐌𝐄𝐄𝐓𝐒 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐋 𝐎𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒’ 𝐋𝐈𝐏𝐒.

⠀ཾ༵ 𑁍┆ jacaerys velaryon x female betrothed reader.

SYNOPSIS: jacaerys is reminded of his betrothed’s unwavering loyalty, and her affections. he is more than desperate to indulge.

note: jacaerys is nineteen, reader is eighteen.

format: one-shot — not requested.

word count: 5.8K.

warnings: SMUTTY SMUT (mdni), porn with little plot, risk of getting caught (dragonstone library), talk of insecurities, jacaerys is needy and sweet in this, oral sex (fem!rec), cunnilingus, handjob, lots of jace moans in this fic, brief dry humping, wet/rain jacaerys, table sex, making out, hair-pulling kink, unprotected sex, p in v sex, jace & reader have only been with one another, soft ending + aftercare

author’s note: I know that this isn’t What Honor Demands (please don’t be mad) but I did want to put a sprinkle of Jace content out there for you all! please be kind to one another, and thank you for reading & supporting my work! I love you all dearly! :))

𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐭 𝐬𝐨 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐬, 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐛𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧. 𝐓𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐬, 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞, 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐭.

Dragonstone’s hallowed hallways and winding corridors were scattered with the occasional Kingsguard, watchful gaze hovering about as you went on your way. Sleep eluded you, reclusive as ever, leaving you with nothing but a mind full of ceaseless thoughts.

Groggy footfalls fell across ancient stone as you carried yourself toward the library within the labyrinth of Dragonstone, in-search of your betrothed.

Pensive and frustrated as of-late, Jacaerys spent much of his evenings surrounded by endless piles of literature to preoccupy his mind, or nights spent on the back of Vermax beneath the open air. You did not begrudge him of his desire for space, but you sorely missed his presence — your bed felt exceedingly empty.

A silent yawn wrought your lips as you slipped between massive slabs of dark wood, the groaning of the doors reverberating throughout the cavernous alcove. Thunder shook the skies around Dragonstone, and with it, a torrent of rainfall that smacked against the dark stone surrounding the island.

It was there in the library that you saw Jacaerys, tousled curls slicked by the deluge, framing his face in such a princely manner that it stole your breath away. Your humble beginnings as a mere young maiden sworn to wed the heir to the Iron Throne had blossomed, flourishing into a loving relationship between yourself and the Prince.

All men that you had glanced upon paled in comparison to Jacaerys Velaryon, whose features were framed in such a regal light. The illumination of the hearth set his flesh ablaze with a burnished gold, brows creased in concentration as he leaned over a thick, dilapidated volume.

Prying his gaze away from dust-laden parchment, his eyes found you, his betrothed, captivating in your silken slip and woolen robe. His throat bobbed as he swallowed the sudden onslaught of nerves in your presence, an involuntary yet consistent response.

You treated him to a kindly smile, warm enough to soothe his shivering bones, doublet soaked from riding in the deluge. Part of him was stung with guilt for abandoning you each night to sulk in sullen silence, but he did not want to burden you with his feelings of inferiority.

Amber hues seemed transfixed upon you, taking in your ethereal sight, silks the color of Lady’s Lace, robe embossed with cerulean stitching. Your tresses were somewhat disheveled from rest, disagreeing with the pillows.

Abandoning his mindless studies, he sat straighter, shoulders squared as if to fill in the fullness of his height. You approached, aura gentle and thoughtful, as if you could pinpoint the source of his misfortune. “Is everything alright?” Jacaerys inquired, perplexed as to why you were out of bed so dreadfully late.

“It is,” A dismal yawn slipped through your teeth as you came to stand near him, circling around the stone table, noticeably lower in stature. “I fear that the raging weather has left me unable to find sleep.” You were from a place where such furious storms were uncommon.

As if he were to blame for this happenstance, Jacaerys appeared apologetic, fingers clenching together. “You have my apologies, my Lady. I hadn’t expected this deluge to carry on this late into the night.” With a begrudging sigh, he peered toward the stained glass windows littered throughout the library.

An amiable burst of laughter tore forth from your lips, head canting to one side as you rounded the table, gaze picking apart the various texts and heaps of parchment that lined the stone. “You’ve nothing to apologize for, Jacaerys. It seems you’ve taken advantage of the opportunity.” You gestured to his state of dishevel.

“Like yourself, sleep evaded me. I needed to find some reprieve; a thunderstorm seemed better than nothing.” His reply seemed strained with underlying frustration, as if the chord would snap within him at any given moment.

Your velveteen digits graced his shoulder, caressing circles into the muscle there, even if it were concealed by the thick wool of his doublet. Even if he did not speak it into existence, your comforting embrace brought him a semblance of warmth that little else could provide.

Drowning himself in reading now seemed incomprehensible, paling in comparison to the mere grace of your presence. “You seem very hard at work,” You chimed, lowering yourself into the high-backed chair to his left. “The subject of your studies?”

Jacaerys didn’t smile, yet the tension in his shoulders began to unfurl, as if your very presence willed him to do so. Nimble digits flipped through a page or two, the parchment worn and thin from many decades of dormancy and little use. “Targaryen bloodlines.”

There was some discomforting twinge within his tone, as if the very notion brought about complex feelings. It was his idea to invite Dragonseeds into their home, yet he hadn’t fully realized what harm it had caused to his claim. This vexation had developed into a thorn in his side, tearing open a wound that he thought he’d healed from.

He had dealt with the uncomfortable truth of his bastard heritage all his life — and now, he was made to confront it, see it in its unpleasantness. Even the unconditional love of his mother could not shield him from the vile insults, from the crass tongues of those who saw him for what he was — the bastard.

Your countenance wavered, empathy sinking into your gaze, brows softening as you folded your hands within your lap. Jacaerys had never fully confided in you the plain truth of his bloodline, but you had an inkling of his heritage — that hadn’t changed how you felt.

Wordlessly, you reached for his hand, and it was Jacaerys that brought your interwoven fingers to rest atop your knee. He did not need to vocalize it — he knew that you knew. Part of him was grateful that you never questioned it, or him.

“Understand that I will fight with you — fight for you. No amount of blood or worthiness shall change that.” You assured, collected and tender as you traced your thumb across his knuckles. They were disarmingly soft, pad of your finger brushing over the veins in his hand.

Jacaerys exhaled, sinking backward into the bite of the wooden chair, dark brows furrowing together. “It seems as if you are the only one that will.” His confession was a heavy-handed one, filled with an immeasurable melancholy that you wished you could rip away.

It was all that consumed him as of-late — his claim to the Iron Throne, the lack of reassurance from his mother, who seemed to drown herself in prophecy and history instead of his defense. Jacaerys felt as if he were adrift, alone in the black sea, threatened to be pulled beneath the tempestuous tides.

The touch of your hand was what kept him anchored, still bound to this reality, to the inevitability of war. Soon, he would face the Greens in the battlefield — and what then, if the war was won? His mother would sit the Iron Throne, and who would succeed her?

His half-brothers had all the hallmarks of a true Targaryen — violet irises, pale tresses, dragon eggs placed in their cradles. Who would follow him? Plain-featured, dark hair, amber-flecked hues that bore a striking resemblance to the former Commander of the City Watch.

With a sullen heart, Jacaerys glanced at you, his beloved, your countenance bathed in the waning glow of the firelight. An ardent fondness reached your stare, keeping his hand rooted against your knee. He idly plucked at the ivory silk of your shift, chest blossoming with a trembling exhale.

“You must forgive me for my absence as of-late,” Jacaerys felt as if he owed you an apology. For nearly a fortnight, he had kept you at arm’s length, for fear that he would tarnish your bond with his intrepid mind and distressed musings. “I haven’t intended to distance myself from you.”

“Jacaerys,” With a gentle hum, you brought your other palm beneath his, cradling his hand between your own, his flesh icy compared to your magnetizing warmth. “I know what burden you bear, and I know how distraught you’ve been. I cannot fault you for wanting space.” Even then, he felt as if that wouldn’t suffice.

“My misfortune is not an excuse to leave my betrothed unattended,” Resolute, he looked at you with such arduous devotion, one reserved only for a paramour. “Whatever burden I bear, I wish to endure it by your side, or not at all.” Whatever he did to deserve you, he was quite uncertain.

Betrothals were not easy to navigate — when he first found himself speaking to you, he feared the crushing weight of disappointment or a loveless match, something only formed from duty. He was pleasantly surprised by your willingness to discover the soul that rested beneath titles and propriety.

Another smile crossed your features, and it stayed this time, his heart galloping within his chest at your resplendent beauty.

There was a kindness that touched your gaze, one that he was unaccustomed to. He was often looked upon by strangers with indifference or contempt, and those who questioned his bloodline only glowered with vitriol and a thinly-veiled bitterness.

“Allow me to share in your sorrows with you,” At your insistence, Jacaerys did not make any attempt to protest the subject of your words — he knew that you wouldn’t allow it. “Whatever obstacles come hurling your way, know that we can brave it together, not apart.”

A lighter sentiment touched his features, then. He was no longer marred by frustration and helplessness, but newfound confidence. It was subtle, but you could see it reach his eyes, amber hues that danced with such an intense affection for you.

“As long as you permit me to assist in whatever tribulations you might face yourself,” It wouldn’t have been justified to make you wade through his obstacles without fighting your own hand-in-hand. “You are my betrothed. I should hope you will always rely upon me.” With a reassuring squeeze, you smiled at him.

“Rely upon one another, and let out hearts beat as one,” A tenderness gripped the tone of your resonance, as silky as the very gown you wore. “Until our last days or the end of our story.” The finality of your words filled him with an indescribable sense of optimism and hope.

Jacaerys adjusted his hand, but only to lift yours to his lips, gracing your velvet knuckles with his plush lips, eyelashes fluttering in your direction. Youthful eagerness and crackling ardor took over — he stared at you with a renewed compassion.

The sight of you in your evening slip made his heart pound against his ribcage, as if it had dropped right into his stomach. Sometimes he behaved as if he hadn’t touched you before — as if this were the first time all over again. “You continue to bewitch me,” Jacaerys murmured, canting his head to one side. “I love you for it.”

A smattering of heat blossomed across your features, the familiar warmth crawling down the length of your spine, resulting in a subtle shiver. “I wasn’t aware,” You mused, a certain flair within your voice that subtly invoked more than just romanticism and sweet words. “Is that a constant feeling?”

Swallowing the lump of boyish nerves that gathered within his throat, Jacaerys regarded you with a rather incendiary warmth, his gaze that of an unrestrained lover. “It is rather persistent,” Excitement began to stir within the pit of his stomach. “Especially now.”

Seven Hells, you deserved to be put to the lash for the lascivious thoughts you had.

It was as if the atmosphere had shifted entirely, from one of two youths navigating their troubles, to the first inklings of shared desire and appreciation. You hadn’t expected the suddenness of this shift, but you welcomed it regardless, belly stirring with butterflies.

Digits tightened into your silken skirts, in a valiant attempt to relieve some of the anticipation you were experiencing. Your intimate relationship with Jacaerys had always been in the sanctity of your bedchambers — achingly sweet and exploratory, but now, it had some element of thrill to it, especially if you opted to act.

Admittedly, the sight of him disheveled and dampened from the raging deluge had roused a familiar fire within your loins, producing a hint of slick between your thighs. Acting on impulse here, in the library of all places, broke all bonds of propriety — but neither of you paid it any mind.

Leaning forward within his seat, Jacaerys wordlessly beseeched you for a kiss, soft mouth inviting as ever, lips flushed and rosy. Without hesitation, you moved to meet him halfway, lost within the throes of your gentle entanglement. He was always gentle — that would never change, no matter his demeanor.

With all the tenderness of a gallant lover, Jacaerys ensured that he savored your kiss, eyelids fluttering shut as he reached to smooth his palm across your thigh. He shivered at the sensation, able to feel the outline of your pliant curves through the obscenely-thin silks.

He smelled of damp petrichor and old books, laden with dust, as if he’d spent all of his days rotting away within the depths of rain-soaked parchment. Your conjoined hands wove together, and you guided him until both of his palms planted themselves atop your thighs, sinking into their plushness.

Once the fire was stoked, it was difficult to smother it.

“Here?” Your shrewd voice interrupted his string of salacious fantasies, none of them pious enough to confess to. Jacaerys felt embarrassed for what he thought, for what he intended to do — perhaps he would seek absolution on the morrow.

“It is an ungodly hour,” Jacaerys reassured you, but in your defense, part of him feared the potentiality of being caught. “I don’t suspect anyone would come searching.” His suggestion was open-ended, but he did offer you an out, soothingly caressing along your legs. “Would you prefer if we retired to our chambers?”

Some sharp pang of exhilaration stoked the fire within your belly — coupling here filled you with the unfamiliar thrill of trying something daring. Instead of answering verbally, you resorted to action, rising from your rickety chair to toss one leg over his hips, sinking yourself down into the firmness of his lap.

Jacaerys’s expression was one of complete and utter bewilderment, but of the best sort — he was ensnared, simply put. A scarlet flush rose to his features, painting his visage with a bright-red shade. His breath audibly hitched within his throat, palms settling against the swell of your hips.

“It is the hour of the bat,” You agreed, heart hammering erratically beneath your breast, until you could bear it no longer. “Let that be our shield.” Once the words had escaped you in a breathy exhale, Jacaerys captured your mouth in an explosive kiss.

His passion would never be mistaken for roughness — your betrothed was as kindly and spirited as they came; you collapsed beneath his tender hand. Those dexterous fingers of his kneaded into your waist, traveling along your curves, longing to feel your naked flesh without obstruction.

A low groan blossomed within his chest when your digits flew to the nape of his neck, threading themselves into his soaked tresses. He was painfully handsome like this, damp from the rain, gaze full of ardor and silently pleading for your touch, hands wandering anywhere and everywhere.

Gathering your skirts as politely as he could, Jacaerys inched the fabric up along your legs, shivering in delight at the sight of your exposed skin. One would think he’d never glimpsed a woman before, the way he reacted whenever he saw you.

The soft pads of his fingertips glided along your bare thigh, allowing the silk of your shift to gather around your hips. His growing erection helplessly strained at the front of his breeches, and the desperate ache was only furthered when you ground yourself into him.

A gasp was shared between you both, skin becoming unbearably warm as you rocked your hips into him, finding your unholy friction. It only became increasingly heated, knowing that you wore nothing beneath your nightgown, and Jacaerys let out a wanton groan when you moved against him.

“Jacaerys,” Breathless and drunk upon desire, you felt his mouth seek yours again, coaxing you in for another kiss. There was desperation laced within his actions, finding his solace in the endless map of your lips, committing every detail to memory. “Touch me.”

Bringing his palm to your chest, Jacaerys needed no instruction when it came to caressing your breast, thumb rolling over your peaking nipple through thin silk. You were the first girl he’d laid with — if the Gods were kind, you would be the last.

Unexpectedly, your satiny lips found the column of his throat, pressing a string of appreciative kisses there as he kneaded your chest. A sweet, keening groan escaped him, abashed at your embrace. Between the ministrations of your fingers in his tresses and mouth on his neck, he feared oblivion.

A sharp clap of thunder shook the skies, yet it did not perturb either of you, ceaselessly carrying on in your needy coupling. One of your palms drifted to his chest, gripping at the embroidered velvet, pushing his collar aside to kiss his neck.

His digits tightened at the material bunched around your hips, eyes fluttering shut in a state of bliss, toying with your nipple as it pebbled beneath his touch. Jacaerys’s mouth watered involuntarily at the thought of tasting you, which he hoped would come soon, if you permitted him to do so.

You enjoyed his softness, his throat quivering beneath your lips, offering his subservience to you freely. A breathy grunt of your name cascaded from his mouth, prompting you to shiver within his embrace. Gods, that sound — it would be emblazoned in your mind for days to come.

With a gentle shrug of your shoulders, you let the woolen robe glide from your body, pooling on the cool stone below. Another downward brush of your hips sent the both of you reeling, clothed bulge grinding against your needy core, prompting you to shudder.

Jacaerys turned, bringing his soft lips back to yours, seizing your mouth in a blazing kiss. He continued to palm at your breast, cupping the pliant mound within his hand, evoking another whimper from you. Neediness took root, firmly planting itself within his stomach.

“Might I taste you?” He breathed against your lips, giving you pause as you regarded him with a simmering adoration. Jacaerys had done it once before, and he often thought of it in private moments, or sometimes recklessly at supper or during small council meetings.

Sheepishly, your head bobbed up and down in a lackadaisical nod, unable to mask your excitement at such a proposal. Wordlessly, he coaxed you up from his lap, nearly groaning at the loss of friction, though he suspected there would be ample opportunities for more later that night.

Using the table as a brace, you watched as your betrothed knelt before you, like a sinner coming to confess within the boughs of a sept; his confession whispered between your legs. Your woolen robe served as a suitable cushion beneath his knees, and he happened to unclasp his own cloak.

Peering at you through thick eyelashes, Jacaerys gingerly guided the silken slip up along your legs, watching with rapturous interest as you let it gather at your hips. He kissed his way up the length of your leg, letting them drape on either side of his shoulders.

Your hand came to rest against his crown of dampened curls, a shudder rolling down his spine at the sensation of your fingers gripping his tresses. Inhaling a gust of your saccharine scent, Jacaerys kissed his way to the gathering slick between your thighs, palms smoothing themselves against your legs.

A heat so feverish that it nearly destroyed you, his tongue raked hot embers over your cunt, tracing along the length of your slit before dipping between your folds. A gasp tore past your mouth; ecstasy beyond comprehension, gnawing away at your bones.

Jacaerys dutifully lapped at your core, nose brushing against your mound, tongue dancing from the pearl of your cunt to your entrance, his movements repetitive. A sigh of delight floated into the air, your pleasure made known as you lightly tugged on his tresses.

Soft, pleading moans reverberated throughout the library, and you were lost within the labyrinth of his affections. Your hips involuntarily jerked and jolted forward, rocking down into his mouth, evoking a throaty groan from your betrothed.

His name floated from your mouth like a prayer, reverent and gasping, as if it were the only word you knew. Your mind was foggy with the haze of desire, one that you found yourself caught within. A string of crass sounds emanated from below; soft, needy lips hungrily kissing along your cunt.

Steeped within your slit, the taste of you ambrosial, Jacaerys continued his ministrations, tongue flicking along your core, making a sluggish ascent toward your clit. Soft palms caressed your thighs, thumbs drawing patterns into your satiny flesh.

Even the finest of stouts could not contest your sweetness, arousal thick upon his tongue, like the nectar of an unfurling flower. Jacaerys’s mouth lapped along your cunt, until he found the clutch of nerves at the hood of your slit.

His eagerness was palpable through each flick of his tongue, lost within the oasis between your legs. A myriad of soft whimpers and whines escaped you, hand gingerly tugging on Jace’s hair as he showered your cunt in an alternation of steady licks to lingering ones.

Deliberately, he stoked the fire churning within your belly, teasing your pearl with feather-light kisses and circles of his tongue. A strained moan escaped you, prompting you to fist at his tresses, burying your digits within rain-slicked curls, involuntarily bringing him closer into the warm apex of your thighs.

Bathed in the sienna embers that crackled from the hearth, Jace appeared more handsome than ever, completely and utterly captivating. If it were up to him, he would’ve been content to stay here forever, pleasure you over and over again until you collapsed.

The short, dizzying gasp that tore past your mouth spurred him on, as he pressed another string of kisses against your slit. The continued sensation of your digits carding through his curls made him sigh with elation.

Again, he traveled to your pearl again, gently suckling upon the bundle of fiery nerves. Your poor thighs rattled on either side of his head, twitching with throes of ecstasy as he toyed with your clit.

“Jace,” Seven Hells, you sounded so divine. Through parted lips and wanton moans, you sighed his name, wanting him to continue exactly as he was. He could feel the pleading resonance within your sweet tone, bringing him to heel. “Gods, don’t stop!”

Jacaerys felt another groan stir within his chest, one that seemed caught within the bottom of his throat. He allowed himself a brief respite to catch his breath, peering at you from between your legs. “There?” He’d asked, watching your head ecstatically bob up and down.

A short, sporadic huff left you, followed by a string of incoherent pleas. “Y—Yes!” Your whine was somewhat shy, the vibrato of it quieting down, as if you suddenly feared becoming caught in the act. “Jacaerys, please!” You begged, and who was he to deny you?

Pursing his lips around your pearl, he gingerly suckled on the sensitive bud, drawing forth an unholy myriad of moans and whines from your mouth. Such sounds left their brand upon him, a shiver cascading down his spine as he pleasured you.

The incessant throbbing of his cock within his breeches made his yearning grow tenfold, feeling it strain against the woolen cloth. He continued to suck at your clit with a palpable gentleness, noticing the way in which your body quivered and writhed from pleasure.

Jacaerys alternated between the greedy suckling of your pearl and broad laps of his tongue, lulled into submission by the crescendo of your moans. You brazenly tugged at his damp curls, other hand snug against the wet fabric of his doublet.

Bliss and pleasure wracked themselves across your body, bringing with it a fire so great that it demanded to be extinguished. Jacaerys’s mouth was wonderful in every way imaginable, his pouty lips dancing wherever they pleased across your aching cunt.

Your hand skirted backwards, accidentally knocking over a stack of books, rolls of parchment fluttering to the stone floor below. With a needy desire to chase after your release, you rocked your hips forward, evoking a strangled groan from your betrothed.

He could feel the arousal mounting within his own body, and the constant quivering of your legs as he brought you closer to your release. Jacaerys continued to caress along your legs, from thigh to calf, mouth happily buried within the warm apex between your legs.

That sensation of your digits brushing across his scalp made him shiver, tongue delicately flicking from your entrance to swollen pearl before he began to suck on it again. Such noises would make a septa flush from their crassness, causing his belly to swirl with fire.

“Jace — Oh! Jace, Jace!” Abandoning the use of his true name, you sang his moniker to the high Heavens, feeling your release come swiftly, an incendiary wave of heat that threatened to consume you completely. You moaned, hips stuttering as you let bliss take over you.

Jacaerys caught the onslaught of your nectar, consuming every drop that you gave him with a neediness, cock twitching within his trousers. He cleaned you up with soft, short laps of his tongue, feeling you everywhere — burned into his mind, permeating his lips.

With a shaky exhale, you felt his head leave your legs, and your grip fell away, watching as he stood to find his place against you. “Such sweet torment,” Jacaerys murmured, nudging his forehead against yours. “You bring me to ruin.” He sighed, feeling your fingers move to the front of his doublet.

“I should be the one saying that,” Your laughter was brief and fleeting, a smitten smile tugging at either corner of your mouth. “Gods, you are so wonderful — so handsome, so perfect.” The sound of your resplendent praise made Jacaerys flush, wide-eyed and wanton.

His newfound closeness, standing in between your legs, allowed for your palms to cup his face, thumbs stroking along his cheekbones. “I need you,” Jacaerys confessed, his timbre husky, throaty with desire as he nearly pleaded with you. “If you’ll let me — please.”

Wordlessly, your hands flew to the front of his breeches, brushing against his clothed erection. Jacaerys groaned, countenance one of desperation as you untied the laces, freeing his cock from its confines.

You stroked along his length, causing him to shiver, cock warm and aching within your delicate grasp. Jace buried his face near your shoulder, brows furrowing together as you treated him to the soft embrace of your hand.

Dragging your palm along his cock, his hips involuntarily rocked forward, galloping after the friction. You felt his mouth plant strings of hasty kisses all along your shoulder, toward the dip of your neck, and then against your throat.

Gently guiding yourself backwards, various objects clattered against the stone table, a book being pushed off of the edge as Jacaerys moved forward. The tip of his flushed cock glided through your slick folds, prompting the both of you to sigh together.

“May I?” Jacaerys huffed, wide-eyed and completely and utterly flustered, so trapped within his own desire that it nearly rendered him speechless. With a quick bob of your head, he rocked forward, groaning in delight as your tight cunt throbbed around his aching member.

Using one palm to brace yourself against the table, your other arm flew to drape around his neck, mouths breathlessly clamoring together, seeking one another. You kissed him, doing little to mask your rapturous hunger as he sank forward, cock nearly kissing your womb.

A tempestuous clap of thunder made you jump, goosebumps cascading down your spine as an onslaught of rain ripped against the stone surrounding the library. The sight of his disheveled tresses and unbuttoned tunic made you unbearably hot, lips torn apart as soft, pleading whines escaped you.

One arm caged itself around you, his palm stroking at the curve near your ribcage, the other lifting your leg to hitch it around his hips. Jacaerys had not an ounce of desire to become rough with you — invigorated, perhaps, but he fully intended on savoring you.

His initial thrusts were somewhat sporadic and awkward, the follies of inexperienced youth, but he soon found his pace, cock gently gliding in and out of your cunt. Wanton sighs escaped his plump lips, brows creased in concentration as his head neared yours.

A soft groan resonated beside your ear as Jace adopted a sluggish rhythm, not wanting to intensify things too quickly. Your eyes fluttered shut, body content to bend to his thrusts, grow accustomed to his pace. He reciprocated your kiss, black curls falling in front of his temples.

There was something endearing about his slight clumsiness, the way in which his hand occasionally fumbled around your body. With time, he suspected that he would know you quite well — physique included. His digits kneaded into your leg, tracing from knee to haunch, holding you close.

The intermingled sounds of your desperate lovemaking soon floated into the air, a myriad of moans and sharp exhales; sighs of a deeply devoted passion. Your fingers raked across the nape of his neck, finding their purchase within his tousled curls.

He groaned your name, the sound only a lover could make, his eyes fluttering shut for a brief moment. Gods, he wouldn’t last long like this. Jacaerys felt your knee squeeze his waist, your other leg draped off of the table, legs spread apart for him.

The silk of your nightgown pushed toward your stomach, loins exposed to the brush of cooler air. “Jace,” You moaned, pressing a string of quick, rushed kisses all along his jaw, evoking another groan from between his lips. Your cunt clenched around his cock, drowning in the pleasure. “Jace!”

His pace was leisurely, yet twinged with desperation, as if he were burning with a longing to be close to you. His cock pulsed inside of you, throat blossoming with another throaty groan. Before you could whimper, he involuntarily smothered it with a kiss.

Each rock of his hips was intended to be disarmingly gentle, ensuring that every inch of his length bottomed out inside of you. Your stomach swirled with molten heat, coagulating as slick arousal as you felt it collect between your legs.

Every worry that had permeated his careworn mind was pushed to the recesses, something to be abandoned in the wake of your presence. His need for you, his love — it outweighed everything else. Whenever you kissed him, he could feel your ardor seep into his bones, consuming him to his very core.

Jacaerys’s breath became labored, another groan threatening to burst from his chest as his cock throbbed with an incessant pleasure. His muscles tightened, feeling your other leg move up to wrap around his hips altogether, drawing him into the warmth of your embrace.

Your arm lowered, and your back finally flattered entirely against the stone table, amidst parchment and tomes, dust-laden volumes that framed your head. The lick of firelight bathed you in an ethereal glow, stealing away Jace’s resolve.

He rocked into you, thrusts becoming a touch quicker in-spite of his encroaching release. Jacaerys covered you with his body, dark curls framing his countenance; a curtain of concentration. He moved to grab your hands, fingers twining together as he kissed you.

Gods, you were perfect — it was all he could think about, your grace and poise, your captivating beauty as he thrust his cock in and out of you, visage rosy and flushed. With another rock of his hips, length buried deep within you like a sword within a sheath, he shuddered.

His release felt overwhelming, a hot tidal wave that caused the tension in his stomach to unfurl completely. Hot ropes of his spend found its place within your womb, causing you to groan. Jacaerys rocked forward, gentle as could be, filling you with his seed.

With his composure in dire need of repair, he took a moment to catch his breath, lips curling into a smile. He could not mask his happiness in the wake of your tryst, moving off of you with a brief exhale.

“Are you alright?” Jacaerys’s warm timbre blanketed you immediately, and he went about correcting his trousers before attending to you. He adjusted your slip, assisting you in tugging it back into place until you seemed somewhat less disheveled.

“Of course,” Your own smile was demure, sheepish as you smoothed your palms across your silken sleeves. “And you?” With a gentle hum, you stepped forward to fasten the many silvery clasps of his doublet, noticing the flush of scarlet that had settled into his cheeks.

“Perfect,” Through thick eyelashes, Jacaerys gazed down at you with such adoration that you could drown in it. He held your waist, thumb drawing circles into your ribcage. “I wanted to thank you for ensuring my wellbeing. It is I that should be attending to you.”

With a brief shake of your head, you brought your palms to his chest, brows knitting together. “We are betrothed, Jacaerys. We can attend to one another,” You insisted, leaning up upon your toes to plant a kiss against his jaw. “We will do plenty of that once we are wed.”

Jacaerys’s countenance softened, and his muscles still burned from the exhilaration of your coupling. He looked toward the state of the table — parchment on the floor, scrolls scattered everywhere. “I love you.” He said through a thin smile, gracing the crown of your head with a kiss.

“I love you,” You assured, following the line of his gaze towards the disarrayed table. “Though, we should clean all of this up. What will Maester Gerardys say if he finds the library in this state?” You mused, a twinkling of mirth settling within your gaze.

“We could say that we were hard at work,” Jacaerys crooned, playful as could be as he retrieved your robe, bringing it over your shoulders before he scooped you up within his arms. “Studying.”

“Oh,” A gasp of surprise left you, but joy and happiness were soon to follow as he held you, forehead pressing against yours. “Are you saying that we should study more often?” You mumbled, and that caused Jacaerys to blush again, features unbelievably heated.

“At your earliest convenience.”

[quarterlifekitty]

I think Simon was the kind of child who got dropped off at arcades as a form of childcare. He wasn’t given any money or anything, so he hardly played any of the games— if he was lucky, he pick up something the some kid had to abandon when they were called to go home, or he’d find a stray token on the floor, or one of the older kids would buy him a round on something.

Simon’s childhood was a perfect Petri dish. Ripe for the development of all kinds of life-long fixations. When you have so little to look at with joy, you latch onto things. And like any unsupervised boy approaching adolescence in the arcade, he became transfixed by certain characters in a way he’d never been before.

He fell in love with Princess Daphne from Dragon’s Lair. He’d stare at the machine and wait to watch people play it, waiting to hear her voice saying “please, save me!” In that sparkly black leotard. It was like nothing he’d ever seen in his life. (He hadn’t yet cracked into seeing the Spice channel on black-box cable or found any stray magazines in the woods).

As an adult man, he forgot all about her. It wasn’t until he’d been dragged around by Soap for a drunken Halloween pub crawl that he remembered.

There you were, dressed to catch your death, black leotard, heels, gossamer cover, and a crown. Matching red lips and nails, too. He’d recognize that outfit anywhere. And suddenly he’s transfixed again. Like he’s back in the arcade looking for tokens on the sticky carpet in the dark, the bright cathode monitor with your image being the only illumination. And when he sees someone try to run a hand up your body in a way that makes your face twist, he can hear it in his head even if you don’t say it.

“Please, save me!”

[ilium-ilia]

kiss the skin that crawls

john price x fem!reader | the surrogate au | masterlist

Part Three: signatory response required

tw: none

Good morning, love. I’ll be over in an hour. 

You’re bent over your clawfooted bathtub when John’s text vibrates on the countertop, sending a shockwave through your morning like the way the earth ripples beneath tremors. The palm of your foot is pressed into the ledge, desperately clinging for support as you grip your razor with frustrated, twitching fingers, but you don’t have to wander far to read his message. Sighing, you set the razor down and swap it out for your phone, bottom lip caught between your teeth. 

The better half of your morning has been spent preparing for today—whatever today is supposed to be called. Fresh sheets lay spread across your bed with fluffed pillows and a scented candle burning to fill the room with what you’re hoping is a comforting aroma. Jasmine and vanilla—nature and homebaked goods coalescing into one. Everything is too tight within you to properly experience it. Muscles taut, brain pulsing with racing thoughts. 

Now, here you are, in the bathroom, preparing the most important part—you. Shaved legs, exfoliated skin, moisturizer glistening in the dim lighting; now, you’ve turned your attention to the mess between your legs. Wild and untamed hair. Coarse curls. You’ve spent so much time and energy fixing your home these last few months that you’ve rarely turned the same care and attention to yourself, and you’re not sure how a man like John Price would react to a full bush. 

Better to trim and whack it back. 

Morning! Drive safe!

Though you aren’t wholly satisfied with your appearance, you slap a band-aid over it in the form of a matching set of bra and panties and a creamy yellow sundress. Cotton, yet silky to the touch as it hugs your breasts and thighs. A cool breeze drifts through the kitchen windows, drifting up beneath your skirt as you slice up an array of finger foods—tomatoes, salami, cheese, and more. You’ve invited John to your house under the guise of having a simple lunch together, but you know very well where this rendezvous will end up. 

Sweat melting into your mattress, body heat drifting into the warm June air, womb stuffed full until you give the Laswells what they’re paying you for. 

Gravel crunches beneath fat tires just as you’ve finished preparing lunch. Rinsing your hands off in the sink, you quickly approach the door and peek through the window just in time to see him duck out of his car, shoulders rolling as he straightens himself out. You can’t help but think he looks perfectly in place here. Broad biceps flexing in the midst of the woods, coarse hair along his forearms blending in with the shade of the trees—all he’s missing is an axe. 

John greets you with a smile and saccharine words, leaving you no choice but to wipe the sweat on your palms off on the skirt of your dress. He smells nice—earthy. Something that blends in well with the foliage of the aspens and pines that line your property, like fresh grass between your toes, or algid stream water cupped in your hands. Once he’s crossed through the threshold, he’s rolling his shoulders back and inspecting every inch of your home with keen eyes. 

Suddenly, your spine tingles. It hardens—solidifies until you’re as stiff as a board while you watch his gaze trace the old moulding that connects the wall and ceiling, and the original hardwood floors at his feet. This house is far from perfect—having sat long abandoned and dormant, waiting to be loved again—but it’s yours, and therefore, an extension of you. For it to be found unsightly would shatter you, though you doubt John would ever have the heart to say so out loud. 

“Wow,” he breathes, neck craning back, throat on display, Adam’s apple protruding through the delicate skin. 

“I know,” you say with a giggle. It’s more gauche than you intend for it to be, and you quickly cover it with a cough. “It’s a little dated, but I’m still working on fixing it up.” 

“It’s amazing,” John insists, eyes flickering back to you. “You’ve kept most of the original housework. Don’t see that much in old cottages like these. Most people are much too happy to gut them and fill the damn thing back up with lifeless rubbish.” 

John’s ardor for your home has your stomach twisting in knots as your lips trip on the words thank you. You’re much too relieved when his attention shifts to the food you have laid out on the countertop. His fingers brush against the cutting board where juice from the strawberries soaks into the wood, and you find your hands intertwining with one another. Nails scraping against skin, body swaying as you rock onto your heels. 

You’re utterly stunned when John suggests eating outside. Azure eyes peering through your old window panes, yearning for the soft swathes of grass that swaddles your backyard. Knowing you can’t deny his arguably brilliant idea, you gather a blanket from the storage chest that sits at the foot of your bed—an old quilt your grandmother made you when you were a child. The royal purples and vibrant greens have faded into lilac and mint now, but you don’t complain when you seat yourself upon it next to John as the sun warms your skin. 

The talk is small between you and John. Quaint. Not at all something to be expected between people who are about to become indirect parents. A mother and a father. Creators of a child bearing both of your DNA. You speak of everything but. What you do for work and the office you just painted. The cheese you bought for this afternoon—smoked applewood cheddar, something that’s rustic, something that painfully reminds you of John. 

You can’t stop fiddling with the hem of your sundress when the conversation turns to the cottage and the work you’ve been doing. Small indigo dots now stain the cream—a blueberry custard of your own creation—as the lingering juice on your fingertips soaks into the cloth. You stiffly admit the disaster that was the broken pipes in your bathroom, and how the chimney has been clogged since you moved in. Old birds nests shoved between the brick had nearly suffocated you your first winter here, and now you make do with electric heaters that you pray won’t set the foot of your bed on fire. 

“You know, at first I thought it would be an easy feat to just… stick something up there. Figured I could knock it down and just sweep out the hearth when I was finished,” you explain as you roll a piece of bread between your forefinger and thumb. “I quit that as soon as I got dust and soot in my face. Oh, I was sneezing for hours.” 

John laughs at your story, though you’re not sure if it’s out of pity or not. He’s resting his elbow on his bent knee, head tilting to the side as he listens to you. The corners of his mouth crease as you speak, and it makes your tongue go dry. Arid. Nothing but sandpaper on the roof of your mouth. 

“Then I thought it would be a bright idea to climb up there myself. Learned very quickly why you usually pay chimney sweepers rather than do it yourself,” you say, shaking your head. “I hardly lasted a total of five seconds before I was climbing back down the ladder. I think I laid on solid ground for a good half hour before I could get myself back on my feet.” 

John’s gaze turns to the cottage where he sizes the height of the home for himself. Cogs and gears visibly turn in his head as he surveys the old shingles and what was probably once a thatched roof, eyes counting each layer of brick that spans the walls from top to bottom. 

“I could do it for you, if you’d like,” he suddenly offers. 

Stunned by his offer, you’re left floundering for words as his attention returns to you. His fingers are already twitching like his hands are anticipating the work. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’d feel terrible if you fell.” 

“Don’t worry about me, darling, I’ve taken worse falls than that.” 

His reassurance enervates your resolve—this carefully crafted facade of a confident woman who knows what she’s doing—and your only saving grace is the breeze that suddenly picks up. It pulls at the foliage overhead, casting dancing shadows along the quilt and the remnants of your lunch with John. Airy clouds move with the wind along a pale blue sky and you attempt to breathe in the loamy aroma. Let it fill your lungs until your anxiety is stunted. 

Afterall, John isn’t here to fix your chimney. 

Smoothing a hand over the skirt of your dress, you clear your throat. “Well, I suppose we ought to get this mess cleaned up so we can get to work.” You attempt a tone of humor, but it falls awkwardly from your tongue. Stiff like calcified bones that won’t unhinge. 

“Right,” John agrees. He’s pushing himself to his feet, taking care to avoid your grandmother’s handiwork. You pretend not to hear the creaking of his knees. “I’m guessing the ladder is in your shed?” 

“Ladder?” you repeat. You’re convinced John is pulling on your leg until you stare up at him and note the complete lack of mischief in his eyes. Sighing, you stand, anxious hands palming at your clothes. “No, I mean… well, you know. The job Kate and Lottie hired us for?” 

Everything sounds louder when John looks at you like this—whatever this is. An unnamable emotion that swells in his eyes, filling out his pupils until they spill into the blue of his iris. “Oh darling, I’m not here for that. Not today.” 

Once more, John Price has managed to confuse you—has tossed you into the deep end and is watching you flail your arms to keep yourself above water. You feel stupid. A school girl left alone with too many eyes focusing on you. Too many people to witness your failure. 

“I don’t understand,” you say with a tense laugh. 

Quelling the discontent brewing in your chest, John reaches for you. Gentle fingertips brush against your shoulder, then travel down, tracing along your arm until he’s holding your hand in his. He tilts his chin down, shoulders squaring back as if he’s making an oath—a promise. 

“I’m not here for a simple fuck,” he says bluntly, digging straight to the point and smothering any doubt that’s left in the folds of your brain. “This doesn’t have to be anything more than what it’s supposed to be, but I can’t in good conscience do that to you. Knock you up and leave you on your own like you’re some human incubator. I want to be with you through this. For the appointments, for all the changes, for anything you’ll struggle with, for the birth. All of it. If you’ll let me.” 

John’s request has knocked all the air from your lungs. For a moment, all you can do is stare at him—every inch of him. The freckles on his skin, the faint stress lines that wander along his forehead, every strand of hair in his beard and the quiet grey peeking through the black. You’d be lost in the sight of him forever if it isn’t for his thumb rubbing over your knuckles, tugging you back down to earth. 

“You’re quite the gentleman,” you humor, breathless and grasping for straws. 

Chuckling, he steps forward, further closing the gap that rests between the two of you. His smile blooms like fine wine in a barrel—dark and plum against stained wood. “Let’s do dinner this weekend. My treat. Then… we can get to work.” 

Everything melts. All tension fades to black until there’s nothing but the chirping of the sparrows in the pine trees and the playful hum of bees feeding on a patch of clovers. The sky fades into John’s eyes, and the earth opens up at your feet, ensnaring you. Stuck, yet your beating heart yearns for no other place than here. No other comfort than him. 

“Okay,” you agree. “Where at?” 

John squeezes your hand before he pulls it toward him, slowly raising you to his lips where he kisses the delicate skin that lines your metacarpals. The buzz that it sends through your brain nearly drowns out his smirk. 

“I think you’ll forgive me if I let you leave a little to the imagination, hm?”

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