#this might be badly worded but i hope my point gets across

[im-all-out-of-ideas]

look i get it. oda tends to draw women Like That. it is NOT everyone's cup of tea and i understand. this includes efforts by other artists to redesign the ladies into something not so horny.

but sometimes there's an overcorrection into something that doesn't quite align with the characters. i think Oda has the right idea in making a lot of his women smoking fucking hot and any drawing made to capture, say, Nami or Robin shouldn't be afraid to make them beautiful!!!

this isn't to push against the idea of humanizing the designs, such as stretch marks, body hair, or god forbid normal human proportions. this is just a sign to any artists and fans of one piece to not feel bad about being artistically horny for the girls. they are for the lesbians and i for one love how even divorcing them from oda's designs you can still feel so much love for them through the frankly genius writing

[purinfelix]

winning is my trademark!! ˎˊ˗

──────── aka your 'strategy' to getting with enhypen boys || fluff, headcanons, ft: all members

a/n: had this idea rattling around in my brain recently since I've been listening to stragey by twice a lot (meghan thee stallion i would die for you) and i thought it was really cute to write !! so i hope you guys think the same <333

✶⋆.˚ lee heeseung : praise him

Heeseung is a pretty reserved guy - but especially when he's around someone he likes

He'll get so shy that he's hyper-aware of showing off because he doesn't want to come off as cocky!

Even normally, his talents go unacknowledged so whenever you get the choice be sure to point them out and compliment him!

"Heeseung, your singing voice is so nice, could I hear it again?"

"Wow, you're pretty much good at everything, huh?"

Do it in a way that shows that not only do you notice him, but you're also impressed by him

At first, it might fluster him because he isn't used to such straightforward praises but if you let him know you find it cool he'll definitely show off a little

And who knows, if you're lucky enough you might even get to see a little bit of his cocky side if he gets confident enough

✶⋆.˚ park jongseong : look after him

It's no surprise to pretty much anyone who knows Jay that he's a really observant person who likes to take care of other people a lot

So, a sure-fire way to his heart is to make sure he gets taken care of in return!

It doesn't happen a lot, so even something as small as buying him snacks you know he likes or asking him if he's eating regularly is sure to give him butterflies

He definitely won't outright acknowledge it - mostly because he's afraid of taking your kind acts as something they're not, but the more you do them the more he'll catch on

Once you get closer try out small caring touches like tucking his hair away from his face when he's eating, or gently moving him out of the way of things

It tells him that, even if you might not say it directly, you're looking out for him in the same way he does for others - it makes him feel appreciated !! :((

Oh and if he ever gets sick be sure to insist on sticking by his side (almost annoyingly so) and maybe even cook him up a meal or two to seal the deal

✶⋆.˚ sim jake : cling to him (or let him cling to you)

It's pretty obvious that Jake is a clingy person with anyone from his closest friends to people he's just me - but if he likes you he'll definitely feel the need to stick around you even more than usual

The only issue is that he'll become even more conscious of how this might annoy you or be too much if he's constantly trailing around you :((

So you need to let him know it's okay!

Invite him to do things with you, even if they're small errands like just getting your groceries because it tells him that you enjoy his company no matter what!

Pulling on his shirt to get his attention or holding onto his arm to keep him close works well too - physical touch is defs his love language

And don't ever try to stop him from following you around or sitting too close

✶⋆.˚ park sunghoon : depend on him

It's no secret that Sunghoon is a man of little words, especially when he likes someone and is a little too shy to say it

His love language is definitely acts of service, and he wants so badly to do things for you, but poor boy is afraid of seeming like too much or coming across as pushy

So call on him whenever you need help - even if its something as small as getting him to open snacks for you, or helping you out with a question

Even if it's something you could probably do faster yourself, letting him know that you're willing to accept his help regardless will melt his heart

It also tells him that you see him as someone reliable and trustworthy which definitely boosts his confidence to talk and get to know you

He likes feeling useful and showing his affection by doing things for you, so if you give him the opportunity to, he'll definitely take it happily

✶⋆.˚ kim sunoo : agree with him

Having conversations with Sunoo is something that probably comes easily to the two of you given how talkative he is

However, the way to step it up is to agree with him whenever possible and bond over things you guys have in common

He's pretty opinionated about things - even topics like your favourite kind of weather or ice cream flavour can actually mean a lot to him!

It isn't that you have to mindlessly go along with everything he says or agree with every tiny point he makes

It's more that understanding his point of view on things is really touching, and helps him feel seen and heard!

And if you disagree make it an effort to hear him out on his reasoning and maybe even promise to give his recommendations a go

✶⋆.˚ yang jungwon : tease him

Just like a cat, Jungwon's love can be a little hard to win over especially since it's difficult to walk the line between friendship and more with him

One way to make it clear how you feel though, is to tease him in a way that borders on flirtation just enough to make him question it

This will keep you in his thoughts, and keep him curious for more

Mock him lightly or disagree with him for the sake of light-hearted bickering

If you get the chance challenge him to silly competitions ("Bet I can finish my rice faster than you.")

It's this kind of competitive yet playful tension that tugs at his heartstrings in an intriguing way - and will make sure he doesn't think of you as just a friend

✶⋆.˚ nishimura riki: listen to him

Despite his attempts at seeming mysterious and nonchalant, Niki's really a big softie inside - but he isn't going to just let you in easily

You have to show him that you really want to get to know him

If you're in a group make it clear that you're listening to him, eye contact and body language is the key, plus he's really good at reading it too!

Lean towards him, raise your brows to urge him to continue

Remember things he mentions to ask him about again later, hear him out and ask him questions to keep him talking

Before either of you realise it he's had an entire conversation with you about something he didn't even realise was bothering him

But realising that you're someone he can really trust and finds easy to talk to is the way to Niki's heart!

[himasgod]

idk if you'll do this since it isn't rlly a "ship", but i've recently been thinking about a Player/Yuu and Reader friendship or even parental relationship!!! this is technically all inspired by an Ao3 fic where Reader is also in the ramshackle dorm because their cuz so cool and "powerful" the mirror couldn't assign them to a dorm heh, and the year after is when Yuu wakes up (game starts) making Reader a second year and House warden!!!

i think this is a rlly cool concept and wanted to see if there is anything you could add to it cuz i like ur writing ^^

preferably Male of Gn reader!! and Yuu's gender doesnt matter :))

YUU AND READER

Where Yuu arrives new to NRC, and you are in charge of protecting them

I DON'T KNOW IF I UNDERSTOOD THE CONCEPT YOU WERE REFERRING TO, but I really enjoyed writing this, I hope you like it!

The first time you meet Yuu, they’re covered in soot, half-conscious, and gripping a flaming broom like their life depends on it.

You blink. Then blink again.

“Crowley,” you say flatly, arms crossed, “you didn’t tell me you were dumping another stray into my dorm.”

The headmage laughs nervously.

“My dear, you know Ramshackle is practically made for wayward souls!”

You look down at the soot-streaked human. Their uniform is a size too big, and their eyes are wide with confusion. Grim is clinging to their leg like a plushie.

"...They’re not even from here, are they?"

“Technically, neither are you,” Crowley points out.

You don’t dignify that with a response.

That night, you patch Yuu up in the creaky lounge with what little your dorm budget allows: a med kit you bartered from Riddle, a blanket sewn by Deuce (badly), and some tea Trey taught you to brew with dandelion roots.

They keep blinking at you like you might vanish.

“So,” you say, settling onto the other dusty couch.

“You're stuck here. Got no magic. Crowley’s about as helpful as a broken cauldron.”

Yuu nods slowly.

“Then I guess you live here now.”

They blink again. “What?”

“I’m the Housewarden of Ramshackle,” you say simply. "You stick with me, follow my rules, and I’ll make sure you don’t get eaten alive.”

“Is that a figure of speech or a real threat?”

“…It’s NRC. You’ll figure it out.”

Over time, it becomes a routine.

Yuu nearly gets turned into a statue? You’re there before it happens, yanking them out of harm’s way by the back of their collar.

Grim eats too much? You carry his unconscious body bridal-style to the infirmary while threatening to gut Ace if he laughs.

Crowley forgets to give Yuu lunch money? You “borrow” some from Azul’s stash and promise to pay it back.

You’re not always warm. Not the nurturing type. But you are constant.

And when Yuu has nightmares about being stuck in a world that doesn’t want them, you're always sitting in the hallway outside their door—half-asleep, arms crossed, guarding the space like it’s sacred.

One day, after a particularly rough Spelldrive practice, Yuu brings you a flower crown they made out of wild clover.

“For your desk,” they say awkwardly. “Or... for your head. I dunno.”

You stare at it.

It’s lopsided. Messy. Falling apart a little at the end.

You kneel and let them place it on your head without a word.

Grim bursts out laughing.

“You look like a fairy princess!”

You don’t move. Don’t flinch.

“…You done?”

Grim’s wheezing.

You stand slowly. Loom over him.

Yuu smirks. “Run.”

Grim runs.

You chase him across the front lawn, crown still slipping down your head.

You never say it, but it’s obvious to anyone who visits Ramshackle:

The ghosts avoid Yuu now—not out of malice, but respect.

The dorm is cleaner, warmer, decorated with mismatched things you and Yuu both picked out.

And sometimes, when you think no one’s listening, you’ll knock on Yuu’s door before curfew just to say:

“Proud of you. Don’t let the chaos eat you. Sleep before midnight or I’m locking the windows.”

[mrsbarnesblog]

girls' night

masterlist ko-fi ao3

Soft!Rafe Cameron x Reader

Summary: your boyfriend is not really happy that you want to go to the club with your friends without him.

Word count: 1.2k

Warnings: kinda +18? mentions of sex, drinking, reader is slightly drunk, Rafe's being needy and horny

Author's note: sooo, i'm happy to introduce you my new crush (idk how did i live without him tbh). I haven't even finished watching obx, but Rafe/Drew holds me in a chokehold. I had no choice but to write something because the voices in my head became too loud lmao. so yeah, I hope you enjoy my version of him💘

“I won’t be there for too long, baby. Don’t be so dramatic.” You softly laughed while you applied your lip gloss in front of the mirror. Through reflection, you saw your not-so-happy boyfriend sitting at the edge of the bed, eyeing your outfit with a pout. 

“Do you have to wear that? Couldn’t you wear like sweatpants or something?” Rafe mumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. His eyes looked up and down your body from the back, stopping at the edge of your pretty dress that barely covered your ass. “And why can’t I at least go with you? Give me a reason.”

“Because it’s a girls’ night. Boys are not allowed. We just want to go somewhere, talk, drink cocktails and dance. What are you gonna do there anyway?” You took a last look at yourself before grabbing a purse and coming closer to Rafe. 

“Your point is weak as fuck, princess.” He rolled his eyes. “You know I hate it when you go somewhere alone. Especially looking like a fucking desert. Especially when there are tons of dumbasses who think they can hit on you.” Rafe’s voice was gruff but you knew that he wasn’t angry at you. 

Despite the rumors about Rafe being a total asshole, he had never treated you even remotely badly. Well, you were the only person who was blessed with his soft and caring side. Rafe was the best boyfriend you could’ve possibly asked for, even with his mood swings. He was so overprotective and he got really panicked just at the thought that something might happen to you. 

You stepped closer, now standing in between his legs, and put your hands on both sides of his face to make him look at you. Two large hands immediately flew to your hips as Rafe soothingly rubbed your skin through the material of the dress. 

“You trust me, right? You know I don’t care about them. I want only you.” You smiled at him, leaning lower and touching his nose with yours. Rafe exhaled, bringing your body closer to his and lowering his head into your neck. 

“Of course I trust you. I just don’t trust everyone else.” You smiled at his words, burying your right hand in his hair. “Fine, if you don’t wanna stay here tonight and ride my face for hours and then get fuc—“

“Rafe!” Your laughter filled the room as you pulled away and slightly slapped his shoulder. “You're disgusting, you know that, hm?” 

“You didn’t mind me saying it this morning.” He shrugged, half serious. 

“Fine, you big baby. I am going out with my girls right now, and you can do whatever you want with me afterwards. Deal?” You offered him a pinky. That man was ready to have sex 24/7 so you knew that you had no choice but to give him something, otherwise, he would bother you for hours. 

Rafe curiously looked from your eyes to your finger, but then finally gave up, wrapping his pinky with yours. 

“Deal. Just be safe, baby. Call me if something happens. Promise that you will.” 

“I will.” A smile stretched across your face as your heart flattered inside your chest with love and warmth. 

The night was amazing. You met with your friends who you hadn’t had a chance to hang out with for a few weeks and all of you were dancing and laughing for what felt like eternity. 

It took you forever to climb the stairs to your and Rafe’s bedroom in the big ass house that you were living in. You hoped that he was already sleeping, but even your drunk brain understood how ridiculous this thought was. Your boyfriend would never go to bed without you by his side. 

“You said that you wouldn’t be there for too long, Y/N.” Rafe said as soon as you stepped into the room, holding your heels in your hand. The clock showed that it was almost 1am, and you slightly shook your foggy head to figure out how long you spent in the bar. 

“I’m sorry, baby. But it was sooo fun! We had such a great time.” You laughed, tossing your shoes on the floor and slipping out of your dress, standing only in your underwear. 

As much as Rafe wanted to be mad or argue, he couldn’t. He felt ill just thinking about you alone in the club without him, but you were clearly happy. Drunk, with flushed cheeks and sparkly eyes. You looked so pretty, and now seeing you without that goddamn dress only in a blue lingerie set that he had bought you not so long ago made him hard within seconds. 

You went to your vanity to take off your makeup with wet wipes, barely having any more power to stand. Rafe stood up from his place on the bed, stepping behind you and wrapping his arms around your body. 

“You look so fucking hot, baby. I want you so bad.” You felt warm lips leaving light kisses on the side of your neck while hardness pressed against your lower back. 

“Noo, Rafe. I’m so tired and drunk right now. I want to go to sleep. Let’s do it tomorrow, please?” You whined, still moving your head to give him more free space on your neck. 

“My dick is going to explode. I haven’t touched you since morning.” He grumbled, brows furrowed, as you quickly slipped out of his arms and dove under the blanket on the abnormally large bed. 

Your eyes trailed back to your boyfriend, who was obviously annoyed and tired but still had a visible boner. This thought made you giggle again while Rafe muttered something under his nose, running a hand through his hair. If you weren’t in such a state of mind, you would’ve definitely found it hot. 

Yeah, annoyed Rafe was your guilty pleasure.

“Can you, like, do it while I’m sleeping? Just don’t wake me up.” You lazily asked, almost drifting to sleep. 

“Excuse me? Who do you think I am?” Rafe’s brows shot up, genuinely shocked that you really suggested that. “I’m not fucking you while you’re unconscious, babe! What the fuck?” 

“Then wait for tomorrow and come cuddle with me.” 

He looked at you for a few seconds in silence. You were almost asleep, snuggling into the pillow and Rafe had no power in him to not find you adorable. He threw his head back in defeat, then removed his clothes and winced as he realized how long it would take for his dick to calm down.

He slipped beside you into the bed, turning off the light. On instinct, you moved closer to him, your head on his naked chest and your hands wrapped around his torso. 

“‘m sorry, Rafey.” You mumbled against his skin. “I promise that tomorrow I'll be all yours.”

Rafe sighed, kissing the top of your head and hugging you back. A soft smile crept onto his face when he heard you almost purring under his touch. “Mhm, you’re lucky that I love you, princess. So, so much. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. I love you too. So, so much.”

[cxrrodedcoffin]

Nightvisions - Spencer Reid

Likes are always appreciated but reblogs and feedback keep artists going!

Summary: This is part 2 to Dead of Night, Reader and Spencer face the fallout of an intense first sexual encounter, which leads to a second one.

Word Count: 2.5k

A/N: i’m overjoyed by the positive response to ‘dead of night��� and i’m a woman of the people so despite my lack of plan to do a part 2, i wrote one anyway, and this is it! tbh i’m not too sure how i feel about this but i had fun writing it anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

TW: pervert!spencer, dom!spencer, angst, established relationships, confession of feelings, semi-public sex, noise control, hair pulling, spit, oral sex (reader receiving), unprotected sex (wrap it b4 you tap it), penetration, creampie, panty stealing, references to knifeplay, slight biting, hickey (kinda?) pet names (angel), fem + afab reader, happy ending

Rating: R, 18+

——

As the work day dragged on you could feel your initial shock and intrigue twist into an anger that burned in the pit of your stomach. Every glance Spencer took at you from his desk across the bullpen made your blood pressure spike, unable to properly focus on the paperwork you had been working through for the better half of the day. Your mind kept drifting, trying to rationalize his potential motives, but the more the thought stirred in your mind the less you could justify it to yourself. You had to hear it directly from him, as soon as possible.

“Spencer, can I get your input on something?” You called him over to your desk, masking the frustration in your voice. He scrambled to his feet, eager to be close to you again for the first time since this morning. He leaned over your desk, glancing at the paperwork in front of you.

“How can I help?”

You pointed to an insignificant line of text as you leaned forward, bringing your mouth inches from his ear.

“Meet me in the conference room in 5 minutes.” You whispered, watching as he gulped and nodded.

“That should be good.” He said as a cover, hoping not to draw suspicion to the two of you before returning to his desk.

You grabbed a file for show and walked to the conference room, checking that the blinds were pulled down over the windows overlooking the bullpen. The minutes ticked by agonizingly slow, starting to pace to keep yourself occupied as you waited for him.

Moments later there came a gentle knock at the door before Spencer slowly opened it, dipping quickly in and locking the door behind him. A short silence hung in the air until your emotions got the better of you, his soft expression causing tears to well up in your eyes.

“How? Why?” You blurted out, a mix of confusion, exhaustion, and desperation playing out in your features. He took a step toward you and you took a step back, keeping distance between you. If he touched you, you might break, shatter into a million pieces and never be put back together.

“Please just let me explain.” His tone held such strong desperation that you almost forgot how betrayed you felt. You wiped a tear from your cheek, crossing your arms over your chest as you leaned against the wall, waiting.

“You left your profile up on your computer one night and I couldn’t help myself, I wanted to give you everything you’ve ever wanted, I always have.” He took a deep breath, for once careful to articulate his words as he watched your expression carefully, searching for any sign of forgiveness.

“I know it was wrong, but I never thought I’d stand a chance with a woman like you if I went about it the traditional way. I never intended on hurting you, but I clearly have, and doing so is the biggest regret of my life.” You wanted to believe him, he seemed so earnest, but the doubt was eating you alive by the second. What if it was all an act? Was the connection you felt that night built on lies?

“Was everything you said in our chats a lie just to sleep with me?” You kept a straight face, fighting back more tears to keep your composure. You couldn’t let him know how badly you were hurt, not if he didn’t mean it.

“Oh god no, angel, everything I said was the truth.” He grew more frantic, nervously stretching his fingers as he fought the urge to step toward you again. He just wanted to hold you, to comfort you in the simplest way he knew how, but he couldn’t do anything that might make you more uncomfortable.

“Don’t call me that.” You snapped, still too frustrated with him at the moment to deal with your feelings for him. He nodded, keeping his mouth shut to resist the urge to ramble on and on about what he felt for you.

“I’m not sure I believe you Spencer, I just don’t know if I can trust you anymore.” Your voice cracked, biting the inside of your lip as you watched his face drop.

“You can.” He weighed the risk and took a step closer to you again, and you didn’t move away from him this time.

“How do I know that?”

“I’m in love with you.”

It was the most confident he’d been all day, his voice unwavering with every word.

“Don’t say that if you don’t mean it.” Tears threatened your waterline once more, hanging on his every movement as you tried to read him.

“I do mean it, I’ve known from the first time we spent 2 hours talking nonstop on the jet. No one has ever seen me the way that you do.” His eyes were glassy with tears and your heart began to melt, dropping your arms to your sides and finally closing the gap between you.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” You took his hand in yours, your thumb swiping over the veins on the back of his hand.

“I didn’t know if you felt the same.” He sighed, averting his gaze from yours.

“I do.” You confirmed, squeezing his hand. He looked at you once more, the tension between you practically suffocating.

He leaned into you, his face dangerously close to yours as he searched your eyes for any lingering apprehension, but there was none to be found. He took a leap of faith, hoping he was reading you right as his lips met yours, his hand cupping the side of your face. You melted into the kiss, allowing him to guide your mouth against his. Your skin grew hot, your hands gripping the front of his shirt as his actions grew more intense, his lips pushing almost bruisingly hard against yours.

His hands moved lower, ghosting down your sides, the slight pressure against your healing cuts from the night before making you shiver. He finally reached the hem of your skirt, slowly hiking the fabric up your thighs. You pulled your mouth away from his, panting for a moment in hopes of catching your breath once more.

“Spencer, we can’t.” You sighed, meeting his hungry gaze.

“We can if we’re careful.” He countered, pushing you gently back until your hips bumped against the large circular table in the center of the room.

“What if someone hears? If we get caught we could lose our jobs.” The rational part of your brain seemed to be dueling with your primal urges, your body betraying your mind as the thought of getting caught only made the wetness between your thighs grow more intense.

“Then you better be quiet.” He whispered, his large hands gripping your hips as he spun you around, bending you over the edge of the conference table. He dropped to his knees, pushing your skirt up the rest of the way to bunch around your hips, humming to himself as he admired your perfect ass. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of your panties, slowly sliding them over the curve of your hips and down your legs before pocketing the lacy fabric.

You whined, wiggling your hips back to urge him on.

“Be patient.” He laughed, his voice low. You didn’t have to wait long, his head dipping between your thighs to find your waiting pussy. His strong grip kept your thighs spread as his tongue delved between your folds, quickly giving ample attention to your swollen clit. He was hungry, plush lips drinking in your arousal with every extended lap of his tongue, practically suffocating himself as his nose brushed against your weeping entrance.

You brought your hand to your mouth, biting your wrist to stifle your whimpers as you rocked back against him, indulging in the way he devoured you. He moaned against you, muffled vibrations sending shockwaves through your body, your clit growing more and more sensitive by the second. You were starting to get desperate, riding his face until the table underneath you began to squeak with every rock of your hips. Spencer suddenly pulled away, sitting back on his calves.

“Your desperation is going to get us caught.” He brought his hand between your legs, fingers massaging your clit for a split second before rearing back and slapping against it, causing you to jolt forward. You yelped, a bit louder than you intended from the shock of it, and you swallowed nervously, anticipating his next move.

He rose to his feet, his clothed hips pushing against your bare ass as he gripped your hair in his fist, firmly pulling you upright. You bit your lip to hide your moan, letting him guide your every step as he pulled you across the room, finally pressing your back against the wall.

“Spencer, please.” You sounded more pathetic than you intended but the way his mouth felt on you got you beyond worked up, and in that moment you felt like you needed him inside you more than you needed air.

“Are you going to be quiet?” He questioned, his hand resting on his belt buckle as he waited for an answer.

“Yes, I’ll be good, I promise.” You looked up at him, giving your best doe-eyed look as you began unbuttoning your blouse. He began to undo his belt, letting his pants and briefs fall to his ankles as he held out his hand in front of you.

“Spit.” He commanded, the dominant side of him coming out more with every sweet sound that left your lips. You did as you were told, spitting in his hand to provide a bit of lubricant for him to stroke his cock, fully preparing himself to enter you.

You were mesmerized, unable to look away from the way his shirt rode up his torso, toned but slender stomach flexing with each movement of his hand, his hair falling messily in his flushed face, a thin layer of sweat forming on his skin. You pulled the cups of your bra down, toying with your nipples as you enjoyed the show, feeling like you were watching the most intimate sex tape you’d ever seen.

“Are you ready?” His voice snapped you out of your trance, blood rushing to your cheeks in embarrassment over how desperate you were for him. You nodded frantically, draping your arms behind his neck, pulling him to you. You raised your leg, wrapping it around his waist, looking down between your chests to watch him lineup his cock with your cunt. He pushed the head in, cutting off the gasp that threatened to rip from your throat as he pulled you into another intense kiss.

He sank fully into your tight walls, the soreness you felt from the night before melting away with every stroke he laid into you. You moaned into his mouth, eyes fluttering shut as you allowed him to take the reins, his controlling grip digging soft bruises into the flesh of your breasts, then your hip, electricity flowing between the two of you. You pulled away from the kiss, coming up for air, so lost in the feeling that you couldn’t make out any coherent sounds, only gentle whimpers and whines.

“You feel so good.” He moaned quietly, quickening his pace, his hand sliding between your bodies to find your clit, the rough pad of his thumb pressing firm swipes up and down over the swollen bundle of nerves. Your whimpers grew louder, and despite your hazy state, you knew you had to quiet yourself quickly. You pulled him closer, burying your face in the side of his neck, your lips latching onto the soft skin behind his ear.

A groan rose from the back of his throat, your mouth sucking against his pressure point pulling him dangerously close to his release. You swore you were seeing stars, supernovas erupting between your thighs as you started to contract around him, your senses overwhelmed with his touch, crying out against his neck. Your knee began to buckle, your leg almost giving out if it wasn’t for his firm hold on your hip. He continued to pump in and out, helping you ride out your orgasm until you had gained a bit more of your composure, able to support yourself again despite how fucked out you felt.

Spencer felt himself falter and anchored his hips against yours, keeping himself seated within your warm walls as they coaxed him to completion. He quietly moaned your name, his head hung to observe the view of himself pulling out of you. You dropped your leg, still in a daze as you began righting your clothing. After you redid the last button of your top and yanked your skirt back down over your ass, you realized you couldn’t find your underwear.

“Looking for something?” He questioned, that familiar dorky smile plastered across his face. You turned to face him, seeing the lace dangling from his fingertip, but as you grabbed for it he pulled it out of reach.

“These are mine now.” He shoved the fabric back in his back pocket before you could attempt to steal them back again.

“Spencer, your cum is dripping down my leg, I kind of need those.” You took a stride toward him to close the gap between you, hoping to wrap your arm around his waist and take them out of his pocket. Your plan was quickly foiled as he grabbed your wrist, pinning it behind your back.

“You better keep your legs closed then, I’m not giving them back.” He whispered in your ear, his tone low but hinted with mischief.

“Whatever, pervert.” You pulled out of his grip, starting to walk toward the door. Your slight annoyance with his teasing quickly faded, unable to deny that walking back out into the bullpen full of Spencer’s cum was an incredibly hot concept.

“What does that make you, then?” He laughed, running his hand through his hair to make it somewhat presentable.

“An angel, according to you.” You turned back to him momentarily to wink in his direction, giving him a comfortable resolution to your slight outburst earlier.

“Can I see you again? Outside of work, I-I mean.” He slightly stumbled over his words, his dominant demeanor fading back into his signature awkward cadence, clearly a bit flustered by your tongue-in-cheek show of affection. You almost laughed, the question feeling a bit absurd given that you’d both just confessed your feelings for one another in more ways than one.

“Take me out to dinner tonight, I’ll be ready by 6. You have my address.” You smiled, watching a blush rise over his cheeks in response to your callback before unlocking the conference room door and returning to your desk to finish out the workday, eagerly awaiting your first real date with Spencer.

——

tag list: @pleasantwitchgarden @lover-of-books-and-tea @theoraekenslover @placidus

DM me or send me an ask if you’d like to be added to my spencer reid taglist :)

also tagging those who requested a part 2, thank you for the inspo!: @silver138 @espressoparis @futuremrsreid @charmedkim @lilcuutiee @cryxbabyxxx @c1rcus-baby

[illdowhatiwantthanks]

Hey could I get an Angsty fic with wife Olivia Benson/Emily Prentiss (which ever you want) where the reader is a detective/profiler and gets hurt badly and Emily/olivia are the ones to find them and they have to keep them awake until the paramedics get there?

You can pick the injury

Hey @yanginginthere! 😊 It's been a minute since I wrote for Olivia, so that's what I did here! Hope you enjoy! –illdowhatiwantthanks

Eyes Open

Olivia Benson x fem!reader Warnings: MAJOR BIG HUGE WARNINGS for gun violence/school shootings, blood, death, etc., medical emergencies, near-death situation, hospitals, explicit language (let me know if I've missed anything!) Word count: 2.0k

Summary: When the rest of the squad is hesitant to enter the scene of a school shooting, you make one of the rashest decisions of your life--one you might not come back from. Your wife, Olivia, races to get to you in time.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, you thought as you watched blood pour from your abdomen. You were on the ground before you knew what was happening, before you could evaluate the situation. You pressed your hands over the gunshot wound, trying not to think about how much blood was seeping between your fingers.

You glanced around the room, panicked, nearly sick to your stomach. The racetrack rug, the little cubbies, the bodies. You wretched and vomited before collapsing onto your back. Your partner, Mendoza, lay on the opposite side of the room, pale, wide-eyed, still. Dead. He was dead. You swallowed back tears. Now was not the time to cry.

The shooter’s blood had sprayed across the bookshelves when you shot him. You couldn’t get close enough to feel for a pulse, but he wasn’t moving. So he was at least incapacitated. What you needed was to call for backup, to get the rest of the cowards from the NYPD–the ones who sat outside to wait for backup while you could hear children screaming–to get their asses in here and help. You and Mendoza had gone in against orders, had ignored a direct command from a superior officer to wait for backup. And, god knows, you’d both paid for it, but if even one child made it out that wouldn’t have otherwise, it would be worth it.

You felt for your radio at your side and groaned when you realized it had been shot by the same bullet that was now lodged inside of you. Your vision was starting to grow fuzzy; it was only a matter of time until you passed out. And who knew how long until backup finally decided to enter the elementary school?

You heard movement and jerked your head to the side to see the very top of a small head poking out from the supply closet.

“Hey!” you shouted, crying out in relief. The child shrank back, and you called, “No, no, no, it’s okay! It’s okay. I know it’s scary. It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m a police officer. I’m here to help you. That man with the gun, he can’t hurt you anymore. But I need your help. Do you think you could come out here and help me?”

The boy poked his head out again, a little bit farther, and you could see that his face was tear-stained, covered in snot. Your heart broke for him. You wanted to cry. You hated to traumatize him further, but you also knew that if you didn’t get backup and EMTs in here as soon as possible, more people were going to lose their lives–including you.

“Hi, honey,” you said as he stared at you, wide-eyed. “My name’s Y/N. What’s yours?”

He sucked in a breath, then shakily replied, “Arturo.”

You nodded. “Arturo. That’s a nice name. You’re being really brave, sweetheart. Is there anyone else in there with you?”

He nodded his head.

“How many people?”

Arturo held up five fingers.

“Five?” you asked, trying to focus your eyes.

He nodded.

“Are there any grown-ups?”

His face screwed up, like he was about to cry, and he shook his head.

“Okay, honey. That’s okay. Listen. Arturo, we need to call for help so the other police officers and the ambulance drivers can get in here and help everybody. Okay?”

He didn’t respond. You pointed to your busted radio. “My walkie talkie broke, but my partner’s should still work. He’s right over there… just–” You shuddered. God, you were having a child grab a device from a dead body. This poor kid. All these poor kids. But you didn’t know what else to do. “Just don’t look at his face or anything,” you told him. “The walkie talkie on his belt, that’s what we need. Can you do that for me, Arturo?”

He shook as he stood, and you could tell he’d wet himself in fear. Tears sprang to your eyes as you watched him wobble toward Mendoza’s body. “You’ve already been so brave, buddy, I just need you to be brave a little bit longer.”

You closed your eyes briefly, trying to fight the dizziness that swam inside your head.

“It’s stuck,” Arturo whimpered, and you snapped your eyes open.

“Okay, buddy,” you said, wracking your brain for a solution. “That’s alright. Umm… there’s a little button on the side, do you see that?”

Arturo nodded, his fingers wet with Mendoza’s blood.

“Alright, just press the button and hold it down, and then repeat what I say. Okay, Arturo?”

“Okay,” he whimpered, holding his little hand against the radio.

You exhaled sharply, as the pain in your abdomen surged. “Say, This is Officer Y/L/N.”

He repeated it, looking at you with wide, scared eyes.

“Badge number 11227.”

You gulped as your vision blurred, trying to be as concise as possible.

“Shooter is down. Officers down. Requesting immediate backup and medical assistance.”

You could feel your body falling out of consciousness, could hear Arturo talking to the other officers through the radio, but it was far away, as if you were in a tunnel.

“Please help,” he cried, fresh tears running down his cheeks. “She’s not talking anymore.”

The last thought you had before blacking out was that your wife would kill you if you died.

“Clear!” Olivia shouted, moving from classroom to classroom at PS 717, gun at the ready. The rest of the officers stopped as needed to help evacuate children and school staff, to give first aid as needed, but she and Elliot were single-minded. They had one job, and she had insisted it be theirs as the NYPD prepared to enter the scene: find the shooter and confirm that he was down.

The last person they had heard from was you. Well, a little boy who had your name and badge number and said all the right things and, therefore, was presumably with you. She was furious with you, furious that you’d gone in without backup, furious that you were so goddamned good and brave, that you would be willing to sacrifice your life for these kids, even though it was one of the things she loved most about you. And, truthfully, underneath all that fury was just plain fear. Absolute terror. Where were you?! Obviously you were hurt if you couldn’t call in yourself. And, from the sound of it, it had been you who took down the shooter.

“Liv!” Elliot yelled from a classroom down, and she sprinted toward him, her heart in her throat. Elliot was already on the radio: “We need medical here stat! East wing of the school, fourth classroom on the right. We’ve got two officers down, shooter down, multiple civilian casualties.”

Olivia burst into the classroom, her eyes quickly taking in the damage: Mendoza down, shooter down, kids crying in the corner, civilians down, and you. Her heart was in her throat as she holstered her gun and dropped to your side.

“No, no, no, baby,” she cried, cradling your limp head and feeling for a pulse. “Stay with me, sweetheart. You are too damn stubborn to go out like this.” Your pulse was thready and weak, as was your breath. She brushed your hair out of your face, trying hard to keep herself breathing, to not fall apart, not yet. She smacked you lightly on the face until you coughed and blinked your eyes open.

Olivia let out a sob of relief and caressed your face, pressing her free hand on top of yours to stifle your bleeding.

“Liv?” you groaned. Then weakly pointed in the direction of the shooter. “Is he…”

“He’s down, baby, he’s dead. You got him.”

You coughed again and winced, your body shaking with cold or trauma or both. “Arturo?” you asked, glancing around for him.

“The little boy?” she clarified. You nodded. “He’s safe, he’s okay. He’s with Elliot.”

Your body started to shake more violently and it was if, finally, the terror of the day had caught up with you. Tears streamed down your face. Your skin was clammy and your breath came in short huffs. You weren’t stupid. You knew what they meant, all the signs in your body: hypovolemic shock. You’d lost too much blood. You were dying.

You’d like to say that, in what you assumed were your dying moments, your life flashed before your eyes, that you thought of everything you’d experienced and everything you’d not yet been able to. But, honestly, you were just scared. And sad to leave Olivia.

“I love you,” you choked out as your eyelids fluttered between open and shut.

“No, no,” Olivia protested, grasping your face in her hands. “Don’t you fucking say goodbye to me, Y/N. This is not fucking goodbye! You keep your eyes open, Officer. That’s a direct order!”

And you really did try. You really did fight to keep Olivia’s face in front of you, her terrified, tear-stained face. You just couldn’t bear to leave her, not like this.

When you finally lost consciousness, Olivia yelling your name was the last thing you heard.

You woke up god knows how much later in a hospital bed, with several wires attached to you and an ungodly amount of pain in your abdomen, not to mention a mouth so dry it felt like your tongue had been left to dehydrate.

Before you knew what was happening, Olivia’s lips were on yours, her hands grasping the side of your face so tightly you thought there was a good chance she might never let you go.

“You fucking asshole,” she cried, her tears wet against your skin. “You almost died!”

She kissed you a few more times for good measure, then leaned back to look at you, your own tears streaming now. She sniffled and wiped your eyes, smiling even as she cried. “Why do you have to be so goddamned brave, huh?”

You shrugged, then winced. “No, no, don’t move!” she exclaimed. “Just… let yourself rest, okay?” She shook her head. “You really scared me.”

“I’m sorry, love,” you croaked out. You blinked tears away and looked at the ceiling, trying hard to banish the mental images of Mendoza, of the blood, of the civilians. “I just… I couldn’t…”

“I know,” she said, taking your hand. “I would’ve done the same thing.”

You coughed and frowned at her. “You better fucking not.”

She pointed to the table next to your hospital bed, stacked with cards and flowers. “You’ve got quite a lot of fans now.”

You shook your head. You didn’t deserve fans. If anyone deserved the recognition, it was Mendoza. You tried not to think of him, knew you’d start crying if you did.

“Here,” Olivia said, holding out a folded sheet of paper. “Read this one. It’s good.”

There was a stick-figure drawing of you as a superhero and a messy, misspelled note:

Dear Ofiser Y/L/N, thak you so much for helpig me be brav and for gettig the bad gy. Yor my heero. Arturo Guerrero.

Your eyes were swimming by the time you finished reading it. You should be the one thanking him.

“The NYPD’s giving you a Medal of Honor, too, when you’re well enough. You’re a hero, honey,” Olivia said, tracing your cheekbone with her thumb. “A dumb, brave idiot of a hero. But my hero, all the same.”

You didn’t know how you felt about this hero business, didn’t feel like you deserved it. You’d just done your job. And your job required a bit more of you this time around.

“Liv,” you ventured, uncomfortable.

“Yeah, baby?”

“Please don’t call me that.”

She furrowed her eyebrows. “A hero?”

You nodded.

“What should we call you then?”

You smiled wryly. “Just Y/N.”

Olivia leaned forward to brush your hair out of your face, staring lovingly at you. “How about love of my life?”

You smiled and squeezed her hand. “Yeah. That’ll do.”

[gojoidyll]

what if it wasn't a burden (it never was to begin with) | sung jinwoo x disabled reader

You didn't hate the idea of soulmates, not at all. However, being wheelchair bound wasn't exactly something you considered ideal for your fated to be to see. Even as you push your wheels forward, you deeply hope you never run into them. Seeing as how you'll never walk again, you hated the fact that if you did meet your soulmate, you'll just end up being a burden to them. That's what you hated. Well, until your soulmate proved you wrong, but that wouldn't be till much much later.

You wondered what different colors actually looked like instead of the monochromatic world that you are so used to seeing. The black, white, and grey hues shining through different tints and shades being as dull as your thoughts.

Much like what you would see in those romance manga, soulmates existed here. Though, you honestly hoped you never met yours even if it would two things happening. One, you would finally meet your fated to be and live happily-ever-after and two, the world would burst into color.

However…, your fingers absently tapped away at at the armrest of your wheelchair. Your legs weren’t exactly working right now. They did, at one point, but an accident had happened, and, well, you hoped that you never met your soulmate. You loathed the fact that you might be a burden to them, and you definitely didn’t want to see the sympathetic look on their face or the look of disappointment either.

“OW!”

You winced as you rubbed your forehead, your eyes squinting at the culprit as you furrowed your brow at her, “what was that for?!”

Your friend who was sitting across from you grinned as stirred her straw into her drink, “you were having those self-deprecating thoughts again.”

You frowned as you stopped rubbing your forehead and grabbed your own drink. The small café you both were in was quiet, but it still had a little hustle and bustle as everyone moved around.

“How can you even tell?”

Your friend took a sip of her too sugary drink before answering, “it’s that look on your face.”

“My look?”

“Yeah, you just.. look so sad. I don’t know, it’s hard to describe your expression sometimes. Like it’s a sad emotion I never felt before so I can’t exactly put into words? Does that make sense?”

“I guess?”

The conversation went from there. You too talked about all sorts of things. But work was usually the main topic you both settled on at the end as she stood up to toss her empty cup and then went over to grab the handles of your wheelchair.

“H- hey, you don’t need to do that! I can push myself!”

You hated being a burden to others.

“Oh, shut up and let me do this.”

You grumbled to yourself as you both left the café.

“Anyway,” she started, “how’s the life of being a famous author? Got any new book ideas swirling in that head of yours?”

“Not really? I guess I am just in a writer’s block…, but how about you? You’re a hunter…, your work must be far more exciting than mine.”

“The only exciting thing is not getting hurt and winding up in the hospital like this one E-rank I know.”

You know who she’s talking about but can’t place his name.

“Well, I’m glad you don’t get badly hurt-,” you were cut off when her phone dinged. It was same sound for when she gets a notification for a job.

“Dang it,” she said as she checked it once we got to a crosswalk.

“Something wrong?”

“This one is immediate and… I kind of need the rent money.”

You smiled and shooed her away, “better get going then, we can hangout again tomorrow if you’re free.”

“You sure?”

“You need the rent money.”

“R- right,” she said sheepishly as you took control of your wheelchair, “I’ll see you around?”

You nodded, “see ya.”

She gave you a hug from behind before turning to jog down the street. Sighing to yourself, you turned back forward and waited for the crosswalk to turn green and by this point a lot of people started to form up at the line. And it wasn’t until it turned green and everyone started walking did you hear another notification, most likely for another hunter.

“Mann, it’s the other way-“

Your eyes widened as the man in front of you turned and accidentally bumped his foot against your leg and almost instantaneously did your world burst with color. Everything was so bright as you squinted. Your eyes were basically being assaulted by all the different hues affronting your eyeballs, “holy-“

“I’m so sorry-!”

You both stopped and looked at one another, it didn’t take a genius to know what just happened even as you both got your bearings.

“Come on! Move it brats!”

The man who hit your leg and made your world fill with color was pushed back the other way as you were forced forward, and once you both were on another sides of the streets both crowds seemed to move you two along. Neither of you being able to catch a full glimpse of the other before you found yourself alone and the man nowhere in sight.

“I wasn’t even able to open my mouth to ask his name…”

[roosterforme]

The Younger Kind Part 57 | Rooster x Reader

Summary: Bradley gets home in time to take care of you when you need him the most, and he's ready to push aside his own exhaustion to let Noah celebrate Halloween. Announcements and plans are made, including some that you're looking forward to a lot more than Bradley is.

Warnings: pregnancy topics, mentions of miscarriage, swearing, smutty blowjob, angst, fluff, and age gap (18+)

Length: 4100 words

Pairing: Single dad!Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x babysitter!female reader

Check out my masterlist for more! The Younger Kind masterlist.

When Noah woke up on Halloween, he made his way into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes as he went. Then he stopped short next to the table. "Daddy?"

Bradley spun around to see his son standing there in disbelief. "Hey, Bub," he said as a smile bloomed across his face. "I missed you." He knelt down, and Noah immediately trotted across the room and right into his open arms. "I made it back just in time to go trick-or-treating with you."

He kissed Noah's cheek and buried his nose in his son's soft curls, inhaling the scent of home. "We're all going to go," Noah said with conviction. "Even Skittles has a costume. And Aunt Natasha is going to get one, too. She promised."

"Then I guess it will be a party," Bradley told him, deciding now wasn't the best time to mention that you may rather spend the evening in bed. "Are you hungry?" he asked, standing up with his son in his arms, simply because he wasn't ready to stop holding him. "Do you want pancakes?"

Bradley knew it was bad when a four year old looked at you like he was convinced anything you tried to cook would be inedible. "Can Mommy make them?"

"Wow," Bradley said, trying not to laugh. He was pretty convinced five minutes ago that he'd be able to follow the directions on the box, but maybe not. "Do you really think Mommy is that much better at cooking than I am?"

"Yes. She is. Can she make the pancakes?"

Bradley laughed and kissed his cheek again. "How about I give it the old college try since Mommy is still sleeping, okay?" He held Noah while he measured out the water, but when it was time to crack an egg, he set him down at the table with a glass of milk and an activity book that you or Nat must have got for him. He looked at the egg, not quite trusting himself, and he cracked it into a bowl instead directly into the pancake mix. He ended up picking pieces of the shell out of the bowl, but once he started to stir everything together, it looked pretty damn good. 

"Okay," he muttered, wondering if you'd want to eat breakfast in bed if he managed to pull this off. He should order one of those tray tables for you to use. He dumped some of the batter into the hot pan and started to look online for a purple tray when he got a little distracted. 

"Daddy," Noah said, pointing to the stove as soon as Bradley smelled the pancake starting to burn.

"Shit," he muttered under his breath, setting his finally fully charged phone aside. "It's okay, I'll eat this one," he promised, flipping it over with a spatula to reveal a blackened, smoking mess. Now he paid close attention to what he was doing, and the next ones turned out pretty well, but it was too late.

"What did you burn?" you asked from the doorway with a smile. When Bradley tossed the spatula aside and rushed to your side, you said, "For a minute there, I thought it was all a dream, and that you weren't really home yet at all. But then I smelled something burning and knew you must be."

He wrapped one arm around your waist, tilted your chin up with his fingers and kissed you, hoping to convey just how badly he had missed you. He didn't stop until Noah asked, "Mommy, can you make the pancakes?"

"Let's let Mommy rest," Bradley replied, stroking your neck with his fingertips. "Do you want me to bring a plate of food into the bedroom?" he asked you.

You shook your head and whispered, "I'm okay. I might take a nap later, but I'm fine, Daddy." Then you took his hand gently in yours and brought it to rest on your belly. "So is this little one."

"I wouldn't have blamed you," he blurted out, and you tucked your face against his chest. As your arms snaked around his waist, he said, "I would have been sad, but only because I'm so excited for the baby. But I wouldn't have blamed you or been upset with you, Princess."

You nodded and whispered, "I know. It was so scary though. And I don't think I could have gone much longer without you here."

"I'm home. And I'm cooking and doing everything. You've got nothing to worry about."

"Mommy, please," came Noah's exasperated voice. "The pancakes."

You started laughing against Bradley. "Do you want dinosaur pancakes?" you asked, and Noah gasped in delight. "I'll take that as a yes. Step aside, Daddy. Watch and learn."

But he didn't step aside. He stood behind you with his chin resting on your shoulder and told you over and over again how much he loved you while you prepared the most adorable breakfast he'd ever seen in his life. You cut up a pancake to look like a stegosaurus body and added spikes made out of sliced strawberries. You used part of a banana as the neck, and added chocolate chips as eyes. 

"Damn," Bradley said. "That's almost as cute as you are. Can I have one, too?" Then you cut up the burned pancake and made a much less cute looking dinosaur while he laughed the whole time. "Thanks. That's exactly how I wanted it."

"You're welcome," you told him with a smirk as you took some of the good pancakes for yourself. He guided you over to the table with all of the plates of breakfast, and Noah abandoned his book while he clapped his hands.

"Thank you, Mommy," he said as he shoved some strawberries into his mouth.

Then Bradley guided you down onto his lap and held you while you ate. "It's good to be home. When you're done eating, I want you to get back in bed and wait for me," he whispered, tracing your side gently with his fingers while he stuck his fork into his burnt dinosaur pancake.

"Oh, I'm sorry," you said softly. "We can't do that. Not for a few more weeks. The doctors said my uterus has to thicken a bit more, and I-"

"Baby," Bradley said a little louder. "No. Don't apologize. I don't care about that. I want you to rest, but I also want to show you the books I bought in Tokyo."

You looked at him over your shoulder, and he kissed your cheek. "I want you to know that I did miss you that way, too."

"I missed you in every way imaginable, Princess."

-----------------------

Bradley ended up carefully carrying you to bed as you yawned, and he promised to clean up the kitchen and get things ready for Halloween.

"I want you to relax," he said for at least the tenth time as he dug around in his still unpacked duffle bag. "I'll take Noah out to buy some pumpkins in a little bit, and I'll leave you a sandwich in the fridge that you can eat when you want it. But in the meantime, look how cool these are."

He sat on the edge of the bed next to your thigh and handed you a stack of Japanese children's books. You smiled and looked at the covers. They ranged from some meant for a baby to ones that Noah would be interested in when he started school. "You were really thinking about your family the whole time, huh?"

"Every second I was gone," he promised, leaning down to kiss you. He would take care of everything, and Nat promised she'd come back later, and you really did almost feel like you could relax. But you still felt a little guilty even as he ran his lips and mustache along your cheek to your ear and whispered your name.

"You must be exhausted and jetlagged," you told him. "You're the one who should be resting."

He just shook his head, kissed you one more time and said, "I'll call Nat if I need her. Otherwise, I'm perfect because I'm with you. Rest."

Then he was gone, and you drifted off into the kind of beautiful sleep where you didn't have to worry about what time it was or when Noah needed to eat again. When you woke up after noon to a completely silent house, you ate your sandwich and then went right back to bed. Eventually Noah's laughter and the warm afternoon light that seemed impossible to sleep through had you out of bed again, but when you looked around the house, you didn't see anyone. The back door was open, and when you went into the kitchen, you saw Bradley and Noah carving pumpkins on the deck.

You walked outside in the random clothing you'd been sleeping in, and as soon as the sun hit your face, you didn't feel as exhausted anymore. "Mommy's up!" Noah cheered, jumping up to hug you with his slimy, orange hands. 

"Don't touch her until you wash your hands, Bub," Bradley called out with a grimace. "Too late."

"It's okay," you told him, kissing the top of Noah's head. "Are you happy Daddy made it home in time for Halloween?"

He looked up at you with a little crease along his brow. "I knew he would. That's why we bought him a costume."

"Speaking of which," Bradley said as he kissed your cheek without putting his messy hands on you, "it's almost time to get changed to go collect candy."

"And ride in the wagon!" Noah exclaimed.

"What wagon?" you asked.

"You'll see," Bradley replied with a little smirk. 

After a leisurely shower during which you didn't have to worry about anything except yourself, you dressed in your princess costume that you and Noah picked out from the Halloween warehouse and put on some makeup. Then you added your brand new crown, and you thought you looked pretty incredible. When you walked out to the living room and saw Noah dressed as a little prince, your heart melted. 

"Sweet Noah," you gushed as he held onto his treat bag, all ready to go. He was wearing his yellow paper crown that Bradley managed to procure from some unknown spot in the house, and he just looked precious. 

"I like your crown, Mommy," he said, pointing to the gold one you were wearing.

You smiled. "I like my purple paper crown better."

"Don't laugh." You turned to see Bradley standing behind you in his rather ill fitting knight costume. It kind of looked like he was wearing aluminum foil that was a size too small, but he had a smile on his face, and his costume crinkled when you hugged him. "Hey, Mav and Penny are planning to stop by to take some photos with Noah, but if you want me to call them back and tell them we just want a quiet evening, I can do that."

You shook your head against his crunchy costume as you laughed. "We should tell them about the baby when they get here."

"Yeah?" he asked excitedly. "You want to?"

"I mean, Nat and Javy know. Dr. Kelly knows. I think Mav and Penny should know now, too."

"I love this idea," he whispered, letting his fingers gently glide along the front of your dress. "You're feeling better now?"

You nodded, but Noah didn't really let you answer before he started clapping as he looked out the front door. "Aunt Natasha is back!" 

She walked in dressed as a jester and picked Noah up to give him a kiss. A minute later, Maverick, Penny and Amelia were all there as well, and phones were being passed around along with Noah, because everyone wanted their picture with the tiny prince. 

"Okay, let me take one of everyone in front of the pumpkins on the porch," Bradley said as he collected a few phones in his hands and headed outside. He smirked at you as he added, "Everyone needs to squeeze together a little bit more. Make sure both of my kids are in there."

"Both?" Penny asked before she gasped, and the first photo Bradley took was of her turning to look at you with wide eyes. "Both?!"

"I'm pregnant," you announced with a smile, and the second photo Bradley took was of everyone else with wide eyes, too. And he snapped a few more where Nat was holding Noah with a grin on her face while the others all hugged you.

----------------------------

After a brief argument on your end, Bradley managed to get you and Noah both settled into the oversized wagon he bought earlier this afternoon. Then he clipped Skittles' leash on before attaching her tiny crown to her head. "There we go. The royal family is now complete."

"Have fun!" Nat called out, waving from the front porch with the bowl of candy, already crowded with neighborhood kids looking for their treats. 

"I don't need to be pulled in a wagon all night," you protested as Bradley scoffed.

"What kind of knight would I be if I wasn't doting on the two of you." Skittles barked, so he added, "I meant the three of you."

"Four," you said, pointing to your belly as he pulled the wagon down the driveway. 

"My point is," he said loudly, "I will be doting on my entire family all night long, and there's nothing you can do about it. Please keep your arms and legs inside the royal carriage until we come to a complete stop."

He very dutifully pulled up to each house before lifting Noah out and taking him up to collect his piece of candy. Bradley got the chance to enjoy so many of his neighbors telling him how sweet his son looked, and he kept reminding Noah to say thank you. After about an hour, two treat bags had been filled up with candy, and you looked like you were having fun. You even started waving from the wagon at everyone you passed like a real princess would.

"This is really fun," you said, holding on to Noah as Bradley turned another corner. 

"I love Halloween!" his son shouted. 

Truthfully, it was a bit of a challenge for Bradley to pull the wagon, keep Skittles from barking at the other kids, and take Noah up to each house and back, but he wasn't about to complain. Not after everything you'd done and been through while he was in Japan. But he would sleep well tonight. That was a given. 

"I think this was the last house," Bradley said, stifling his own yawn. "Feel like chatting about our wedding on the way back home?" he asked as Noah yawned as well and settled down in the wagon with you.

It was hard to read your face in the darkness. "What do you want to chat about?" you asked softly.

"How soon will you let me marry you?"

You laughed and said, "How soon do you want to get married?"

"Tomorrow?"

"Hmm," you hummed. "Seems like that would be short notice for wedding guests."

"We don't need wedding guests," he said, and he meant it. "You still want to use our backyard?"

"Yes."

Bradley slowed down over a particularly uneven part of the sidewalk. "Are you still set on Valentine's Day?  Because I'm thinking Christmas."

"Christmas?" you repeated. "Like less than two months from now?"

Bradley pulled the wagon up the driveway past the Bronco, and of course Noah was sound asleep. As soon as he scooped his son off of your lap, Nat came rushing over from her seat on the porch. "I can get him changed and put him in bed."

He didn't argue with her, rather he handed Noah off and focused on helping you out of the wagon. "Yeah. Less than two months from now. I keep thinking about how you threw me a Christmas in July birthday party. We could have a Christmas wedding, too. And after that, we can start the adoption process."

You moaned his name as he took your hand and headed for the house. "You know the way to my heart is through Noah."

He straightened out your crown, still rather fond of your purple one which was sitting safely on his dresser. "Is that a yes?" he whispered, kissing you softly while a few remaining kids ran down the sidewalk laughing. "We can make it official? And I can take care of you forever?"

"Yes."

------------------------------

Bradley helped you out of your princess costume after he stripped out of his knight costume, and his lips met the bare skin of your shoulder immediately. "I love you," he murmured, taking you by the hand and leading you toward the bed. But it didn't feel sexual. You knew that wasn't why he was being exceptionally wonderful right now.

"I love you, too."

His forehead came to rest against yours, and his hands were so gentle on your hips. "I'm just relieved to be home. And I'm sorry I wasn't here last week. If something worse had happened to you while I was gone, when you really needed me, I don't know what I would have done."

"We're all okay," you whispered, pushing him until he was sitting down on the bed looking up at you. "And I feel a lot better since I've been resting more." Your skin felt warm and tingly as he kissed you. Six weeks was a long time, and you knew Bradley hadn't even had access to all of the photos and videos on his phone to keep him company. And you did want it to feel sexual, because you missed every bit of him.

"Lay back on your pillow and wait for me," you told Bradley with a smile, using his words against him. 

He did as he was told and patted the spot next to him as he said, "Does that mean you're ready to snuggle with me?"

"Something like that, Daddy."

As soon as you licked your lips and reached for the front of his sweatpants, his eyes went wider. "No, Baby. You don't have to do that."

"I want to," you promised, pulling the fabric down to reveal his soft length. He still looked delicious even like this. You desperately wanted him in your mouth. You met his eyes and whispered, "Please?"

He was panting softly, the rise and fall of his chest so alluring even through his undershirt. He moaned your name and made a strangled sound before he reached for your hand. When he sat up slowly and kissed you gently, he placed your hand on his cock, and he immediately throbbed for you. 

As you rubbed your thumb down his length and along his balls, he grew harder. "You missed me touching you like this," you sang in a quiet voice, watching him as he watched your hand. When his eyes flitted back to your face he nodded. "Tell me you did, Bradley."

He swallowed hard, and his voice was so raspy, your hand faltered. "I missed you like this. I thought about your body when I touched myself, but my hands aren't as soft and perfect as yours."

"Daddy," you whimpered, leaning down to kiss away his precum before taking him between your lips.

But he continued on as you sucked, driving you as wild as you were driving him. "I thought about you with a pregnant belly. I thought about how much I'm going to love fucking you when you're big and round. Big because of my baby."

You took him deep, letting him tap the back of your throat as you saw stars along your vision. "Fuck! Princess! I'm not even gonna last."

Slowly, you let your lips glide back up his length, sucking all the way to his tip. "Then just go ahead and come, Daddy. I want you to."

When he collapsed back against the pillow and tucked one arm beneath his head, you took him deep again. He wasn't kidding, because you could see the veins in his neck as his face grew pink, and you knew he was already close. You didn't rush him along, but you bobbed to a pace that left him grabbing at the bedding with his free hand.

"Baby!" he whined, rolling his hips up until you were starting to gag, and then he came. You were sputtering, swallowing him down as quickly as you could as your name fell from his lips over and over again. "Come up here," he demanded, and when you crawled toward him as you licked your lips clean, he gathered you carefully in his arms.

You never felt as loved as you did when you were with him. His body was perfectly warm and everything you had been missing. His voice calmed every part of you. "December," he whispered as he played with your engagement ring. It took you a moment to realize what he meant as he kissed at your lips. "December. We'll get married. We'll all be Bradshaws. Me and you and Noah and the baby. That's all I need."

"And Skittles."

"Please. She's my best non-human friend. It's unspoken."

--------------------------

When Bradley promised to meet you at your lunchtime appointment with your obstetrician on Wednesday, you were a little skeptical. 

"Even if I have to flip off Admiral Simpson and tell him to go fuck himself, I will be there."

You had laughed at the time, but you should have known he wouldn't miss a chance to interrogate your doctor in his flight suit. He stood next to you as you were told to lie back on the table for a pelvic exam, and he kept his eyes on you through the uncomfortable experience, looking down at you like you were the best thing in the world. 

"Does she need another progesterone shot today?" he asked softly as you reached for his hand. "And are you going to monitor her with more appointments? And will we get to see an ultrasound?"

"Yes, yes, and yes." Your doctor looked at you and said, "We'll monitor you more closely even after you're done with the injections. We are going to consider you high risk."

"High risk?" you gasped. "That sounds very bad."

"It's not!" he insisted as he guided you to sit up a little bit. "It just means you and the baby get extra attention."

Bradley looked the doctor in the eye and said, "She wants to go to Disneyland for a day or two. Is that even okay?"

You were ready to pout and tell both of them that you felt fine now. There had been no more blood. You were getting plenty of rest. Then he said the words you'd been hoping to hear. "Disneyland would be fine. Just don't overdo it."

"Yes!" you cheered. "Noah will be so excited! Let's go for Thanksgiving!"

Bradley opened his mouth, and you could tell he wanted to protest, but your doctor started to spread gel on your belly, and then the baby was visible on the screen on the wall when the ultrasound started up. "Oh damn," Bradley whispered, suddenly mesmerized by what he saw as he gripped your hand tighter. "Look at the heartbeat. Look at the baby."

"Does he or she look healthy?" you asked, mesmerized as well.

"Very healthy, but we will keep a close eye on things."

When Bradley walked you back to your car which was parked next to the Bronco, you pulled him to a stop. You wrapped your arms around his waist, and your scrubs rubbed gently against his flight suit. "Will you please let me plan a few days at Disneyland?"

"Two days," he replied immediately, clearly already resigned to his fate. "And you have to stay hydrated. And if you even start to look tired, I'm going to push you around in a wheelchair. And if you say anything hurts, we're leaving immediately."

"Disney!" you practically screamed as you bobbed up and down in his grasp and kissed his cheek. "I can't wait to tell Noah! I'll see you at home later, Daddy."

"I'll pick Noah up along with dinner. When I get home you better have your feet up and a glass of water in your hand."

"I will," you promised, matching his serious expression with one of your own. "I'll be very careful. And I'll plan our little vacation. And you'll take exceptional care of everything else."

"You know I will."

--------------------------

We should all have a Bradley in our lives to let us rest and heal when we need to. That man is going to take care of everything and probably plan a wedding, too. Is Nat also going to Disneyland? Thanks @mak-32 and @beyondthesefourwalls

PART 58

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[alluramiura]

hyunju x animal lover reader <3

word count: 535 words

warnings: fluff, g/n reader (edit: i actually think hyunju refers to reader as “sweet girl” once, sorry 🙏), intended lowercase, i did a mass amount of projection in this one

authors note: inspired to write this by this post. i hope i did it justice. i lost my headphones so i rawdogged the writing process of this. 🥲 enjoy

hyunju is an amazing girlfriend who loves every aspect of you. she especially loves how much you adore animals.

she loves the way your eyes light up when you see people walking their dogs, immediately asking politely if you can pet them.

she loves the way you keep cat food in the house ever since you came across a stray cat that was hungry but you didn’t have anything to feed it (you cried).

she loves the way you ramble about the “animal of the day”, spewing random facts about random animals she’d never even heard of.

(”did you know that female great spotted kiwis only lay one egg a year despite having two ovaries while most birds only have one?”

“no baby, i did not.”)

she loves the way you talk about all the pets you want, a new animal catching your interest each day.

(“have you seen fennec foxes?? they’re sooo tiny and adorable and they’re like balls of energy…i want one so badly! i don’t think it’s legal in korea though…”)

(“rabbits are so cute….did you know they stomp when they’re angry? it’s the cutest thing! we should get one some day.”)

she loves the way you have tons of stuffed animals in varying sizes, in varying species of animals, all them them having names of their own.

(“good night, baby…oh wait! how could i forget snowy? could you grab her for me, hyunnie?”

…

“that’s jett.”

…

“that’s angel.”

…

“that’s—actually, i’ll just get her. thanks though, love.”)

she loves the look on your face when she surprises you with a date at the zoo, walking around with you as you point to almost every animal and tell her facts about them. she loves how adorable you look in all the pictures she takes of you posing outside the containers of various animals.

she loves how when it’s late at night and you’re cuddling together, there’s youtube videos on the tv playing from your playlist of animal facts.

(“y’know, hyunju…i know i talk about animals a lot and that i can’t possibly have a favorite, but i think i do have a favorite.”

hyunju, who was half asleep, opens an eye as she raises an eyebrow. this was news to her. you had finally settled on an animal to call your favorite? she never thought that would happen.

she opens both eyes, propping herself up onto her elbow, resting her cheek in her palm.

“really? and what animal might that be, sweet girl?” she asks softly, absentmindedly reaching out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

“well, i’ve recently been looking into maned wolves. they remind me of you, in the way they look.” you say, smiling softly as you lean into her touch, wrapping an arm around her.

she lets out a small chuckle at that. you’re so adorable.

“is that so?” she asks, wrapping her own arms around you and running her fingers through your hair.

you nod softly in response, a yawn leaving your lips.

“well, i’ll look forward to hearing all about maned wolves when we wake up tomorrow.” she says, pressing a kiss to your forehead.)

yeah. she loves your adoration for animals.

[writingforstraykids]

Hello, how are you doing? ^^

I recently posted about wanting to find platonic felix x reader fics, and a lovely anon told me about you! I know your—wonderful—works are focused on romantic relationships, but would you be willing to write something platonic as well? I totally understand if you don't vibe with this idea, but if you would, I was thinking about fem reader and felix having a sleepover after an exhausting week, painting each other's nails, trying disastrous recipes, filming embarrassing tiktoks, y'know, the usual magic of being best friends ^3^

thanks in advance ✨

The Art of Doing Nothing

Pairing: Felix x fem!Reader

Word Count: 884

Warnings/Tags: fluff, platonic, besties

A/N: Thank you for the request, I hope you like it🫶🏻🖤☺️

do not repost, translate, or plagiarize my works in any way here or on other platforms. ©️writingforstraykids 2024 -

You don't knock: There's no need. Felix had sent you a picture of his living room earlier with a blanket fort halfway constructed, a bowl of popcorn on the floor, and the caption "Get here before I eat all of this." So you barge in with your duffel bag, pillow, and the weight of the week hanging heavy on your shoulders.

“Emergency,” you declare, dramatically collapsing on his couch.

Felix sticks his head out from the kitchen, face smeared with chocolate, spoon in hand. “Emergency as in you didn’t bring snacks?”

“Emergency as in I might actually lose my mind if we don’t do something mind-numbingly stupid in the next ten minutes.”

He grins. “Oh good. That’s my specialty.”

-

The first hour is spent on the floor with your heads poking out of the pillow fort, watching bad reality TV and yelling at the screen like you’re paid to do it.

“You would never survive this show,” you tell him, pointing at the overly manicured influencer sobbing in a jungle.

“Excuse me,” he scoffs, “I have emotional resilience and three whole skills. That’s more than half of them combined.”

“You cried when your slime melted.”

Felix gasps, clutching his heart. “That slime was a part of me.”

You throw a pillow at him. He throws two back.

-

By the time the sun dips low enough to send golden streaks across the carpet, you’re sprawled on your stomachs in the kitchen, trying to recreate a three-ingredient mochi recipe from a TikTok Felix had saved with a confident: “We got this.”

You absolutely did not have this.

The microwave beeps. The bowl inside looks like a war crime. “What,” you whisper, peering in, “what have we created?”

Felix lifts it out with oven mitts, poking it like it might fight back. “This… is glue. This is literal glue.”

“You said it was foolproof!”

“I didn’t know we were advanced fools!”

You’re both crying from laughter when the whole thing splats on the counter. Neither of you bother cleaning it up for a solid ten minutes.

-

You settle on air-fried dumplings and leftover cupcakes. Felix paints your nails next - badly. He's not even pretending to be good at it, humming some silly tune while dabbing color all over your cuticles.

“I’m making art,” he announces proudly, blowing on your fingers.

You squint at the mess. “You’re making something.”

He holds up your hand. “It’s abstract. It’s bold. It’s… probably gonna need three rounds of remover.”

“Cool,” you sigh, watching him reach for the glitter. “My nails look like a horse threw up on them.” Felix cackles.

You paint his nails with more focus, tongue sticking out as you try to make them look decent. Halfway through, you start telling him a story about a customer who tried to return a coffee because it was “too wet.”

“Too wet?”

“Too wet.”

“…Was it a sponge?”

“No. It was a latte.”

-

At some point, your cheeks hurt from smiling. It’s the kind of exhaustion that doesn’t sting - it just lingers in your bones, wrapping itself around your limbs like the weighted blanket you two are now sharing on the floor. The fort is complete. The fairy lights are blinking softly.

You’re both curled up with face masks on - his is green, yours is pink - and you're recording a TikTok where you each take turns reading dramatically from your old middle school journals.

“No, read that part again,” he wheezes, tears in his eyes. “‘And then he looked at me and I KNEW he was my soulmate because he let me borrow his ruler.’”

You throw a sock at him. “You said no judgment!”

“I’m not judging,” he hiccups, “I’m inspired.”

You record five more videos. None of them will ever see the light of day. That’s not the point.

Later, when you’re both lying side by side under a mountain of mismatched blankets, Felix is the one to break the silence.

“You okay?”

You blink at the ceiling. “Yeah. I think so.”

“You were quiet during the last TikTok. And that’s saying something. You’re usually narrating your own life like it’s a Netflix documentary.”

You snort. “That’s because my brain’s running on fumes. I think if I say one more word, it’ll be an accident.”

He nudges you with his foot. “You don’t have to talk. Just… y’know. I’m here.”

And you know he means it. Not in the obligatory way people say I’m here for you - but in that solid, dependable, Felix way. Like a pillow that always smells like vanilla. Like a cup of tea left waiting on the kitchen counter, just in case. Like someone who knows you don’t always need to be fixed, just heard.

You roll over to face him. “Thanks for this.”

“For what?”

“For being the person I can be this weird and tired with.”

Felix grins, sleepy and warm. “You’re welcome. But next time, you’re painting my nails first. I want sparkly little bats.”

“You got it.”

-

The clock ticks past 2AM.

Felix is half-asleep, one hand curled around a plushie, the other reaching for yours without really thinking. You lace your fingers through his, letting the silence stretch comfortably between you.

MASTERLISTS | PROMPT LIST | GUIDELINES

It’s not glamorous. It’s not loud. It’s not even exciting. But it’s safe. And sometimes, that’s everything you need.

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[gnohomotho]

Just a game (part 2) 𝄞⨾

════════════════════════════════════════════

Pairing: Hwang In-ho / The Frontman x fem!reader

Summary: We're getting there, folks. (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜) Mostly fluff, need, imagination, fantasy, slow burn. Focus on the f!reader, because you deserve nice things. She's home, receiving odd gifts, some sweet, some...quite the not sweet, the game and plot and trouser legs thicken (I'm so sorry, it's literally 2 a.m. here). In-ho definitely isn't obsessing over you, hatching elaborate plans, thinking of you so hard he'll break another turtleneck. Not saying the f!reader has any specific issues, but if you recognize any, I hope to be nothing but respectful. ♥ Oh, and we have a dream sequence, Freud would be proud.

(This was mainly meant as a "put your feet up and be cozy, read about yourself and feel good" read, the action will come later. Among other things. I'm so sorry, my thesis is driving me mad.)

Warnings: It's the god damn Front Man The usual Squid Game warnings, mdni, stalking, spying, voyeurism, touching, self-touching, sexual themes, sexual almost-intercourse, descriptions of anatomy and body parts, blood, yearning, some terrible references and Slavic folklore. Privacy? In my fic? It's less likely than you think.

Word count: 4.2k

Link to previous Link to next

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A cup of tea. A cup. You were watching the cup. Steam rises from it and folds into nothing. Your stomach is churning. Is it stress? You ponder. Seeing the liquid close in on itself as you stir it. Again and again.

"It'll get cold." You say, to no one. You try to breathe. Heart pounding. Head a bit spinny. You look around your room. Dimly lit, warm orange light from a salt lamp. You check your blinds - still closed, still safe. Noise from other people you try to filter out. Why do you jump at every single sound? Why does white noise blaring its head off make for the only atmosphere you can stand? You wonder. You get up. The world spins. The phone lies on your bed. As it has for the last three hours. Unchecked. Your sound is off. It always is. You turned off everything this time. It's just black. You try to think, ground yourself, poems float through your pounding head. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the tall mirrors of your wardrobe. An oddly shaped form stares back at you.

"Jesus Christ…I look…like shit." The mirrored lips curl around your words - but it might as well have been a stranger speaking back at you. You don't recognize yourself, and what you do, you dislike. Like a funhouse mirror. Without the fun. Your long hair falls across your shoulders, curling towards the ends. Your exposed skin is cold and giving a nice exposé of every vein under your neck, driving rivers of blue across your collarbones, your shoulders, your chest. You won't look further. They seem to be drawn to your middle, pooling across your skin. People often referred to you as pale, no matter your actual skin tone. When things got a tad too heavy, you became transparent. It was calming, sometimes. Calming that so much was trying to keep you alive to the point of exhausting itself and sending highways of signals through every vein to keep at it. Your head spins again. More poems. Try to drink the tea.

"Light your candle, one, two, there's a moth…" You know the rest. But the lips fail to speak. You pick up the phone. And almost knock over your tea. Then proceed to fight an urge to fling it into a wall and watch the stains roll down like fresh blood.

Seventeen missed calls from a blocked number - your now ex-companion. A worried message from your friend, no doubt spurred by said ex-companion with an entirely different story to reality. Frowning, you adjust your dressing gown and tie it down to hold everything in and hold you together.

"Hey, Y/N…I know you probably don't want to talk, but I'm sorry things went so badly. I'm here."

You hate yourself a little more. Clara has always been a darling, you…cared for her. A lot. You wish to say "loved", you squint your eyes and wish to say you love her. People are kind. People are always so very kind. And you can't drink a cup of tea. Nor reply. There's also an email. From a set of numbers, no name. You open it, against your better judgement. No subject, only a photograph. Of your door. Your door inside your flat. Which is locked. You didn't ring anyone in. You, of all people, didn't hear any steps on the stairs. You live at the very top floor. And still?! What is wrong with you lately, now of all times?

And still, there is a photograph of your door. With…things? Your shoes were gently placed beside your mat.

"Um…" You knock on your housemate's door - how grateful you are for the economic situation which doesn't permit you to live alone now, you think bitterly as his steps approach.

"Oh, Y/N, how are you? What can I do you for?" Ever the cheerful voice and visage stands before you, half dressed, always flooded with work and hobbies. The room behind him is full of papers and candles, manuals and scripts, and information that probably shouldn't be lying around covered in bird photography snaps. It calms you a tad. You breathe out and uncross your arms. In the back of your mind, you wonder what he's always so entranced with.

"I'm getting there, thank you, Lubo." Your chest falls a tad, you really do feel a bit better, but very on edge. You fidget with your fingers as you speak. "Would it be alright to ask if you could open the main door with me? Something is there and I've been listening to too many IRA anthems to trust it." Because making a joke out of a very serious situation never failed you yet.

"Sure!"

You notice one of the birds on the ground behind him. Gazing at one photograph a little longer, you smile at the birdie and its soft grey feathers, little black dash across its little eyes...you realise you're looking at a shrike. The universe really is sending her best.

════════════════════════════════════════════

You open the door as Lubo endeavours to rummage through the things on your doorstep. It seems to be a very neatly wrapped black box with a pink bow. With a little token of a crow embossed on its side. Heavy, by the looks of it. You half expect your ex-companion's limbs to be soaking its insides.

"I'll take it indoors and disinfect it, ok? Just so it doesn't feel like you've contaminated the flat." You nod, thank him over and over, and feel very grateful for him remembering your slight fights with obsessive cleanliness and parasites. But this looks…clean. You take a knife from your room, the knife that's been under your pillow for good reason. Kneeling, you gently unwrap the box altogether and distance yourself from the thing for a little bit. Breathe. It's just a box. Those never go wrong.

It's…full of…gifts?

Your…favourite flowers, perfectly preserved. No one knows your favourite flowers that well. Under them, resting under jewels of crimson poppies, lies a book of poems, the ones you use to calm yourself down; the ones that make you feel less alone. In the correct languge, even. Next to the poppies, hot water bottles, wrapped, fluffy, still warm. Under them yet, medication you couldn't get from your doctor for the entire month due to disagreements and never being heard, half of them aren't even sold in the country. Bath salts, dark chocolate, tea…there seems to be so much. Your face is caught in a mixture of attempting to frown, being swept off your feet, and deeply uncomfortable with what is basically an encyclopedia of you in a box. You carefully lay the items to the side and begin to notice things you truly need your housemate to not see. You lose your breath for a moment and blush so hard you almost forget both the kindness and terror of the rest of the package. It seems to be divided into care for you and…some other forms of urges. As if. As fucking if.

"Google, remind me to photograph this tomorrow in good light," you say to nothing, "to use as evidence either after this person manages to kill me or before, if the courts move faster than an asthmatic ant with heavy shopping."

Against your better judgement, you carry the box to your room and watch it for a while, as you do other things, but can never quite relax. Surely he can't be serious. Your name isn't Shirley.

There was also a note you now keep flinging on your table and crunching in your hands, neatly written, with no name.

"Dear Y/N,

should you wish to meet someone qualified to help with the attached records, it has been arranged. Be at the coordinates listed between the red and white gift and you will be taken care of. No harm will come to you. You are safe. As right as rain."

Right as rain…that's a part of a poem, that absolute…dear God, fuck, the thoughts in your head are tumbling down at you and you collapse onto the bed, staring at your knees. It's a good thing he somehow didn't include your most loved flowers, since they're all poisonous. One of them you like specifically because it is elegant, sharp, snowy, and beautiful - and all of her body, leaves, and seed pouches scream "don't fucking touch me, if you do, you will die and wish for death the entire time you are doing so". You would very much like to be the flower now. Make someone else hallucinate.

You search the box again and find the beautiful gown, in red, and the gentle white lace undergarments - as kind and gentle and revealing as they are elegant. A little QR code is nestled between the lace.

"Nope. Nope nope NOPE. Absolutely not," you say out loud. Fighting the fact that the nightgown under the two other garments is cozy and light and so very beautiful. And it smells…oddly familiar. With a hint of something else. As if someone knew you loved scents of sweetness, vanilla, caramel, honey, and skin combined with darker, heavier tones that don't usually mix with feminine perfumes. Something lovely and gentle to draw you in, with something far more potent, enveloping, and enthralling to drag you down the lake to drown. And yet. Still. Something else. Something more. You decide to put on the gown and stare into a little crow's eyes. Such a pretty little statue, you don't even remember where you got it from.

"I'm going to be alright. Water is fine. This is just water. We've been here, we've been in the mud up to our noses." You are whispering to yourself, trying to sooth your mind. Metaphores, poems, sooth sooth sooth. You close your eyes, think of beautiful women, barefoot, in the dark of a forest. Glistening lights in their long hair, lights in their gorgeous eyes. Light on their feet, as they dance upon the water and through the marsh. You cannot drown a forest spirit of a woman scorned. They will mesmerize you, dance you, dance you to the end of your love and tether, and pull you into the depths. Then kiss you as you gasp for air.

You undress, eyes still closed, holding the long white gown. You slowly slide into the fabric, which clings to your skin as a lover's touch at the first sign of morning light. Still trying to be as unbothered and confident as a forest Rusalka. You aren't. But the gown smells nice. And it's quite light. Long sleeves, fabric that reveals but doesn't scream. Lace around your chest and stomach, falling down your hips and thighs.

…Kiss you as you gasp for air.

════════════════════════════════════════════

In-ho was pleased with his gift. Not only the gift, but the message. Upon message. Upon message. He wondered, quite hopeful - yet reserved - if you understood them all. No matter.

You will. Oh, you will. Every word. Even if he has to cling them to your skin, one by one, with his own lips.

To the surprise of absolutely no one except you, perhaps, the small bird brought him all the feedback he could desire. Rather low quality feedback, he thought, as he watched you ponder, watched you crunch up the note, and watched you dress. Instinctively, he looked away as you began to slide your own clothes down. He glimpsed perhaps a strap, perhaps more skin than he first saw…light reflecting off you, sliding down, further down, caressing your tenderness…yet he looked away, calmly resolute to not look back. His gaze remained firmly in the corner of the room, he certainly wasn't fighting - or imagining himself being the photons of light resting on your supple skin. No. It would be unbecoming to watch a lady undress, so vulnerable, so unknowing. Never mind the rest. If you looked up the word "hypocrite" in the dictionary, In-ho's face wouldn't be next to it. It would be on the next page, because he would never be caught. As he looked back, you were dressed, not looking at yourself.

In-ho frowns for a moment, before he sees the rest of you. Even though it's just a phone screen and the picture quality truly isn't doing you justice, his breath is caught. He shifts and looks around instinctively, only a flicker of the eyes and a small movement of the neck. But he's nervous, nervous to be so exposed. He chuckles to himself just as unnoticeably - he's spying on you yet he's the one feeling exposed..was the chuckle to ease tension? This is just a game to him and you are nothing, after all. No one. He shifts once more and uncrosses his legs, one hand slowly combing his hair firmly away from of his forehead. Nothing. Just as it is nothing that is making the jacket around his neck feel tight. He sees you stand, further away now. He sees your entirety in the white flowing fabric, the lace, the…entirety…of you. His coat needs to come off, and is discarded to the side in haste. The remaining turtleneck isn't much help, but he goes in, now fully enthralled. Positioning himself, he endeavours to enjoy you. Slowly. From the tip of your head to the soles of your feet, remaining fully in control, admiring, never taking, never grabbing. Never…needing. But as he moves down your face, your cheeks, your chin, along your neck all the way to your hair resting on your now exposed shoulders, back to your mouth and lips - he leans into the screen - those supple yet reserved, tender lips whispering gently and curling around words as if speaking to a sleeping lover in the night who is caught in a bad dream, the eyes - damn the picture quality - the eyes that glint, yet resemble dark pools amid features that are…that mean…his heart is fast. His eyes pools of reckless abandon. They flicker to the movement of your hips and tick fast, fast back up top, stopping at the almond curve the nightgown begets your breasts - In-ho's hands twitch as his fingers yearn with a mind of their own, to hear you gasp and squirm and melt under their touch as he teases, cups, and caresses in the gown's place. Tender flowers, waiting to be kissed. As you move, for him, for his eyes only, his mind floods through its inhibitions and begins racing on instinct - yet does so wrapped in cotton; barely subdued. Algorithms, scenarios, plans - ten a second - gather in his mind - resting on nothing but your features, spurred into existence by you, your lips, your form, your movement. He's watching the last flame dance before him in a sea of suffocating darkness, and it is his. Tension grips The Frontman's trousers as he digs his fingers in to feel something, anything, as if to drag himself back, painfully if need be - all this…for a low quality moving picture of you.

You. Your self before him. No adjective does it justice to In-ho, no painter could stroke its surface, nobody could own this moment. Nobody but him. And he cannot reach, reach through the screen, for you, for you mean…you in your entirety, before him, vulnerable, bare, unknowing, both a deity to be worshipped and a form to be devoured and left pleading, barely breathing under him, his grasp, his hot breath, you, you mean…

…nothing to him. In-ho leans back again. He breathes a bit faster, containing himself. As his breath slows and features fall back into place, he straightens the trouser leg and exhales. Your name is on his lips as he does so; he whispers it to himself. A name that doesn't seem to leave his tongue, no matter how many times it wraps around every syllable.

"Y/N, Y/N, Y/N…you are nothing."

He turns off the screen with one click. "Nothing." He gets up, leaving the phone behind. He is back to his true self - unbothered, cold, empty. A statue of stone. It was fun while it lasted, but the shell he wears gets tired of the falsity imbued in it during these little sidesteps. Little adventures to ease the monotony. Your records lie on the table, next to his glass of dark liquer. He walks over slowly, cradles it, sipping with restraint, and puts it down just as slowly in the exact same place. He goes on with his evening, thinking, it must be said, of nothing. He continues his work, thinking of nothing. Nothing replaces the drabble of his underlings as they update him on the latest games. Nothing is on his mind as he showers, nothing is in the water that glides down his own body. Nothing is in the warmth that he doesn't imagine being replaced nor coming from a different source. The voice of nothing is in the hiss and humm of the shower, nothing sings to him sweetly as it envelops his form. Nothing is woven into his satin sheets, nothing still smells of the perfume he picked for you, nothing is in his bed and pillows and nothing is slowly, invariably, fatally invading his mind. The cologne he uses, the same cologne he rubbed upon certain parts of the gown you now rest in, isn't combining and wildly interweaving with your gentle, warm, sweet, yet heavy scent. Nothing is everywhere and nothing is driving him absolutely stark, staring mad as he lays there - naked, exposed, amid satin sheets, it is nothing that invades his dreams and wraps him in sensations he can still only dream of.

════════════════════════════════════════════

Barren lands and dusk. No flowers. No life. In-ho is alone. As far as the eye can see lies nothing. He cannot feel his mask. A shape is in front of him, laying there, incredulous. Unfitting its surroundings. As if guided by an unseen hand, he walks up to her slowly and kneels beside her. She is dressed in white fabric, falling across her skin, exposing more than is becoming of such a form. Her hand is resting next to her head, her other at her side. She is peacefully asleep. A gentle humm escapes her lips - she must be dreaming. In-ho glides the back of his hand everso carefully across her cheek, guiding it down her neck and stopping at her collarbones. Her chest lifts in a slow rhythm as her skin touches his. She is his. Is she not? He could...open his hand, and his hand opens. He could place it around her neck, and he does. As he feels her warmth and blood pumping into his hand, he thinks he could squeeze and hold down. He doesn't. The form reacts to his intentions, seemingly, her face frowning in the most unnoticeable way, lips falling from their previous peaceful expression to a worried frown. As if caught in a bad dream.

No, no, no.

In-ho releases the pressure and merely rests his hand on her neck, pushing errant strands of hair away from her skin. They fall around her shoulders and between the fingers of his other hand, which lifts instinctively to cradle her head. Her expression relaxes, and he smiles almost on instinct. Suddenly, her eyes flutter open and gaze into his own, almost unblinking and holding his gaze. The pools of comforting darkness set in an innocent visage drive electrical current through his entire body and In-ho almost has to steady himself against the ground where his hand is holding her head, still. She isn't scared, she only gazes and studies, lays, and rests in his own dark eyes. Her smile mirrors his. As if the two of them were already familiar, already far beyond anything novel. She whispers to him.

"Darling, this isn't your place."

In-ho doesn't think, he knows the voice. The gentle, slow, melodic whisper that he wishes to hear before he goes to sleep himself. Putting more strength into his grip, he places his dominant palm in hers as it still lays beside her head. He squeezes her down. Without thought, his body shifts to move above hers, holding her gaze, now directly on top of her, without touching her body with his. His hands no longer gentle, but firmly holding down. His thumb caresses her cheek as his other hand pushes her palm into the ground.

"It doesn't need to be."

As the sentence barely left his lips, he connects them with her neck, firmly kissing the skin and pulling her into his bite. The taste is intoxicating, and beckons for more. Sweet, tender, pure, intoxicating. Down her neck he plants kisses and barely restrained bites, gliding his touch, gripping her hand and moving his other to her neck once more. He hears gasps and timid moans, and he moves down, lips brushing against her chest and resting upon it. He lets go of her hand and finally grips her, under the small of her back, caressing and squeezing her waist, lifting her body into his. Now he feels her. Now he feels her being react and pressure and squirm, now he feels the pulse of her body directly under his and melting into him. Every movement, every gasp, every beat of her heart - in his control, under him, sinking into him. Her waist lifts against his and he eagerly helps it up, feeling his need against her body, finally, all he needs to do is tear off the gown, take her, make her fully his and hear her cries and moans as he takes what is his. Still in control of himself, he fully recognizes his itch, his need, his voracious hunger. He recognizes it and fully gives into it.

But the dream does not let him.

Something is wrong. The body is colder now, her breathing is slow, her voice no longer caressing him, her being no longer reacting to his touch. The current fizzled out. Pulling away, he sees the damage done - even as her eyes are wistful and her smile still there, it is sorrowful and soft, gazing down at him although broken under him. He sees her neck and chest, her breasts exposed, her skin red with bite marks, red with his signatures. Lines where his grip failed to falter rest on her tender flesh, her pallor a canvas for his need and depravity. For his destruction. He does not want this, he does not want her like this, his mind races and tries to get back in control but cannot. The canvas before him begins to soak through in crimson, blood pools into the white fabric where he lay and pushed and tried to take her. As he watches the gown cling to her stomach with blood, fear drives cold daggers through his back. He is no longer the Front Man, he is himself. Himself before a Front Man ever was. And he is...scared. Still her voice reaches him, doing nothing to alleviate his state, doing nothing to destroy the damn invisible barrier that keeps him from holding her close, holding her together, holding him together.

"Not like this darling, not like this again."

How is she still smiling? How does she seem so cold yet encompassing an utter lack of proximity? Holding her now seems like the most sacriligeous, repugnant thing he could do. His hands shiver lightly, how is he afraid to touch her now? After all that? She is his, his, this is all so incredibly wrong! He doesn't care, he doesn't have feelings for such frivolities, she is a dime a dozen, she is worth nothing, and she is nothing to him; nothing.

And she's still smiling, a little laugh escaping her lips as if she can hear his inner turmoil and has seen it thrice before.

"Taking what you want, never what you need."

In-ho looks down at his own body, which begins to feel cold and wrong. As if missing something vital. He smells copper, his hand feels hot as he touches his chest yet his body grows colder. The last thing he remembers before waking up in a freezing sweat is looking down at his own body, now filled with open chasms wherever it touched hers - gaping empty holes that can be filled with nothing, bleeding him into the ground as she watches on.

In-ho gasps, springs up into a seated position and touches his chest, his stomach - and breathes in relief. As he is composing himself, a new manner of play begins to form in his mind. Between hurried breaths and elevated pulse beats, he plans a new way to play this game and win.

[jayviksidehoe]

Hii, I just came across your masacrik x reader post, it was AMAZINGGG! It’s so hard to find a post on him😭

anyway, I was wondering if I could request a masacrik x playful and disobedient rabbit(ish?) reader smut? Where reader constantly annoys him, only to snicker when he gets angry. So one day he puts her in her place.

Ex: she messes with his tools while he’s experimenting or knocks over important things/Stuff.

(Sorry it’s long, feel free to ignore<3)

HAII THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE REQUEST. ILL DO MY BEST

Masacrik x Bunny!reader

Cw: kinky, choking, bottom masacrik later? Bunny!reader. Blood (only a bit). Mention of a dead body, smut with no plot

Msacarik calls reader Zaika as thats a russian term for bunny

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

You knew what this man was capable of but you just didn't care did you? There was no fear in you. Just now, you sat in his Lab. He told you thousands of times that you're not allowed in there but at this point he gave up. You were sitting on a little table with all the tools watching what he was doing. He seemed.. mad. No irritated. Which is not a good sign at all. But you? You decided to use that to break him.

-What are you doing to that guy?-you asked, your hand landing on his head stroking his hair gently

-Zaika, stop distracting me. -he growled. At first when you started acting that way he wanted to scare you. But nothing worked so he just had to accept it. For now.

You on the other hand decided to mess with the already angry doctor more. Knocking off his tools from the table just as he wanted to reach for them. He just clicked his tounge loudly, grabbing you by your collar and slamming you onto the operating table as he kicked down the body off there first

-Ah.. masik...-

-Not a word from you. You are going to face your punishment now dear. -the smirk on his face made you shiver.

-Mmhm i hope it wont disappoint me..-you laughed.

That made Masacrik Snap one of his big hands landed on your neck, as the other one was ripping down the fabric of your skirt

You clawed at his hand for a moment but as he lets go he heard a big Yelp from you,

-You enjoyed that didn't you? Needy bitch. -he whispers unbuttoning his pants.

As he got rid of his clothes-and ripped yours apart- you got dragged by your hair to lay on your stomach with your face near his Dick as he was standing beside the operating table. You knew what to do already deepthroating the doctor which made him shiver and moan silently as he grasped your hair.

Mhm~ keep going, such a good girl for Daddy right..,? Oh fuck.. i might forgive you if this keeps up..~

The praise went straight to your crotch as you choked around his length.

Not long after he came down your throat and pulled out. You as the playful little bunny you are you pulled him by his lab coat and kissed him deeply with his cum still in your mouth. As you pulled away his eyes were wide open

-Zaika.. you're digging your own grave..

-Yeah.. but im the only one who can please you till you start crying doctor

Trying to hide the redness on his face He walked around the table to the side where your legs were hanging off grabbing you by them and switching your position so you were laying on your back. His hands keeping your legs open as he slides inside you

-A-ah~ what. Embarrassed..? -You giggled earning a harsh thrust from him

-awhh~ i love it when you're flustered..-you moaned out as his pace picked up.

The Man only scoffed digging his nails into your thighs drawing blood, but you were right. The lewdness of the whole situation. The way you were squeezing around him moaning like a bitch in heat he wanted to breed you so badly the thoughts got him red in the face and almost falling apart. His hands were shaking a bit. He was moaning- no whining as he was getting close

You bit your lip drawing blood from it. As it trickled down your chin you smiled at him

A-ah Masik.. d-dont- not insidee~

You teased him. You knew you had nothing to say but you wanted to get him going even more.

He furrowed his eyebrows as he grabbed you by the neck squeezing. His other hand played with your chest. The sudden lack of oxygen, the pleasure mixed with pain made you cum around him. But what would it be without you making it a big scene?

You moaned and whined his name scratching his hand.

He came right inside you making sure to stuff you good. After that he pulled away. With the intention the end this "session".

But just as he was about to turn away you sat up on the table and with all your might you grabbed him by his lab coat and slammed him onto the flat surface. He looked at you surprised as you sat on top of him hoovering against his crotch

-What its not like only you get to cum twice masik.. also i hope to see some tears from you-

You moaned the lust clouded over your vision you knew this wasn't gonna end well but the doctor seemed pretty...calm?

You unbuttoned his shirt and started kissing his chest. He covered his face. But he didn't push you away. So you kept going. Undoing his pants and rubbing yourself against his lenght. You made such a mess out of his clothes as the cum was dripping out. But the only thing you cared for was to see him overstimulated at this point

-Mnghh~ zaika~ you're going to regret thi- Haah~

He threw his head back as you slid him inside again. Picking up a harsh pace

Noo no-he sobbed- im still se-sensitive hngg!~

You laughed in his face. Seeing him like that made your whole fear of this man disappear.

-You cryiinn? You're acting like a whore,

He started gripping your waist to stop you from moving whining. Tears streaming down his face.

-S-shut up.. oh im bout to- fuuuck...,~

He moaned out as you stopped moving just as you felt him twitching inside you

Wha-why did you stoop...-He was trying to move his hips on his own but his legs were shaking too much

I dont know if you deserve it masik...

-Yes! Yes i do of course i do! I- please im begging you...

It was unusual of him pleading for anything so you granted his request and started moving again as he threw his head back and came crying out your name.

He was so easy to play with you found it amusing.

As you both calmed down you only heard your name. And looking at his face he seemed pretty mad about this whole situation.

Oh what have you done

/////////////////

Bro i would be shivering in my boots

[nyrandrea]

No because he is as well, I adore the way he was written!! I was the same gigglin n kickin my feet each n everytime 😭

But can I ask for a request then, so say reader n Astarion ( plus two others ) are in an fight and reader just gets badly injured n knocked out and he just loses it killing anyone in his path to get to reader caring about them agshdudisowowi

Thanks so much for the request! I had quite a bit of fun writing this prompt.

Few warnings for canon-typical violence, blood, injury and animal death. Yyyyeah it is quite the doozy.

Word Count - 1.9k

Hope you enjoy!

xxx

The moon hung low in the starlit sky, its pale light casting ghostly shadows upon a narrow, winding mountain path. You and your party had been travelling all day as you wanted to cover more considerable ground to make up for time lost due to camping. However, the physical toll it was taking on everyone was starting to show as you all moved cautiously through the rugged terrain. 

Lae’zel was understandably the most resilient of the group, her tough demeanor betrayed only by the beads of sweat that trailed down her knitted eyebrows as she focused on conquering the path ahead. Shadowheart seemed to be driven purely by spite just to keep up with the githyanki; you almost had to fight her a few times just to get her to stop and catch her breath before she keeled over.  

You were feeling pretty run down yourself, every step felt heavier as time dragged on and your muscles were screaming at you to stop, but if you made it to that rock, to that tree, just over the hill, across the river, only then could you rest. 

You said that about ten rocks and five rivers ago. 

“That’s it!” A familiar voice shouted out from behind you, and you instinctively rolled your eyes. “I can’t take this anymore.” 

Turning around, you were greeted with the sorry sight of Astarion collapsing onto his knees and huffing for breath, and it seemed as if he wasn’t going to get back up anytime soon.  

“Astarion-” 

“Don’t you ‘Astarion’ me with that... little disappointed pout of yours,” the vampire said. “I am literally on my knees begging here, darling. We need to stop for the night.” 

“As sad as your little theatrics are,” Shadowheart walked over to the two of you and smirked down at him before turning to you. “He does have a point. We’ve been walking all day; I think I lost all feeling in my feet about half an hour ago.”  

“And you say he is the dramatic one?” Lae’zel cut in, sneering down at you from a higher ledge. “Look at you all, complaining like children. This is nothing compared to-” 

“Yes, yes, you have endured a horrendous array of training throughout your arduous upbringing on the Astral Plane that has transformed you into the fearsome warrior you are today; we get it,” Astarion said sarcastically, earning a snort of laughter from Shadowheart and a scowl from yourself. “But I for one am not made of pure titanium and would like to rest.” 

“Fine,” Lae’zel growled. “But if the ghaik tadpole decides to turn your insides out because of your time wasting, then I shall be all too happy to end your life.” 

“It’s a deal, darling.” 

With everyone in agreement, you relieved yourself of your heavy backpack and quickly got to work on setting up a makeshift camp. Dinner was a small, cooked rabbit to share, while Astarion waited patiently for you to finish until you let him drink his fill. You didn’t miss the concerned glance shared between Shadowheart and Lae’zel but said nothing. 

As the darkness deepened and the others retired for the evening, you decided you didn’t quite want to go to sleep quite yet— a decision you were probably going to regret come morning. Regardless, the stars were out tonight, and you weren’t certain when you might next get to enjoy them during this treacherous journey, if ever. 

The tadpole behind your eye wriggled slightly, and you were worried it was going to waste your night with a migraine and unwanted whispers, but instead it settled down. You huff a sigh of relief; you were spared, for tonight anyway. 

Despite the sky above being a sight to behold, your eyes couldn’t help but keep wandering down. Astarion was sitting across from you, his eyes creased and lips in a tight line as he concentrated on the ghastly book spread across his lap. The Necromancy of Thay had been his focus of attention for these past few nights, and you were honestly starting to worry a little for him. Sure, it was you who had given it to him in the first place (after he practically begged you for it), but the way he hyper focused on it at times was... concerning, to say the least. 

You clear your throat, hoping to catch his attention. 

It doesn’t work; you try again. 

“Oh, do shut up...!” 

His sharp tone makes you recoil slightly, and the vampire mirrors you, glancing between you and the book with widened eyes. 

“O-Oh no, I didn’t mean you, my dear. It’s this blasted book,” Astarion says, frowning down at it like a disappointed parent. “I can’t make heads or tails of the damn thing.” 

“Do you... need some help?” You meekly offer, even though you didn’t know the first thing about necromancy; some things were just best left untouched in your opinion. 

“You’re a sweetheart,” he breathes out a little chuckle. “But no.” He allows the book to close with a heavy thump before his eyes trail back up, lingering on you for a moment. “But I could do with a... little distraction.” 

As the fire crackles and pops, your cheeks flare up as Astarion slowly crawls his way around, not stopping until he is only inches away from you. Not quite knowing what to do or where to look, your body goes stiff as he slowly leans in towards you.  

“What do you think, hm?” he purrs, his knuckle softly caressing your cheekbone as he brushes away a stray lock of hair behind your ear. “Shall we have a little fun?” 

You nod shyly and allow him to draw you in as he cups your face and brushes his lips against yours, only to suddenly stiffen and pull away. A surge of panic jabs up from under your ribs as you’re worried that, somehow, you’ve done something to hurt him or put him off. 

“I-I’m sorry!” You blurt out. “Are you okay?” 

He eases your fretting by smoothing down your arms with an almost amused expression. “No, it’s not you, never you, I can’t stress that enough but there’s... something-,” he frowns and sniffs the air.  

Oh Gods, did you stink? You knew it had been a while since you last washed but… 

No, his attention was away from you as he quickly got to his feet and focused on what appeared to be a large boulder of sorts, about ten feet away from where you lay. 

Astarion’s eyes widen, and for the first time in a long time, he looks terrified. 

“Shit, he’s found me again. We’ve got to leave, now!” 

Suddenly, like vipers striking from the shadows, a group of monster hunters descended upon you, the night erupting into chaos as they sprang into action with ruthless efficiency. Swords and daggers glinted ominously in the dim firelight as you and the others desperately tried to defend yourselves. 

Fear and confusion gripped the group as you fought back against your assailants, but the element of surprise was with the ambushers. They moved with a deadly grace; their tactics honed through countless skirmishes. The clash of steel and cries of anguish pierced the night air.  

Desperation fueled your resistance, but they outnumbered you five to one, and that was without including their attack dogs, who had taken to separating you from the rest of the group as their personal prey. You jab your sword at their snapping maws, shout and try to make yourself look big to fend them off or, at the very least, make them think twice about attacking you.  

However, none of it seems to work as one takes a lunge at you and sinks their jaws into your arm. The jolt of shock quickly wore off to the searing heat of pain as the dog tugged and shook you like a rag doll, the beast spurred on by the snarls and barks of the others before they joined in on the mauling. 

You tried to scream but it hurt to even breathe, reducing you to mere gasping as your limbs throbbed and your head pounded. You thought you heard screaming, but the chaos of the battle muffled your senses as if you were being held underwater. You fall flat on your back as you’re pinned down to the ground, your eyes fluttering as something hot, wet and slimy drips onto your cheeks. Your eyes are met with a row of fangs; you shut them quickly, unwilling to look your death in the face. 

In that moment, an anguished cry cuts through the noise, and your eyes snap open. 

The next few moments are a blurry, bloody mess; primal and violent as you can just make out different voices—the hunter’s voices— crying out in pain along with the sound of wet tearing, of fangs ripping into flesh and blood splattering across the ground. You can only stare ahead, eyes wide with fear and body numb as the heavy weight on your chest is suddenly lifted. There’s a pitiful whine and a crunching snap, and the carnage finally stops. 

After a few moments of unbearable silence, your jumbled thoughts immediately go to your teammates, and you try to push yourself up to go help them. They were probably hurt, or worse, dead. You had to get up. Just... get up! 

‘Get up!’ 

“Get up goddamn you!” 

Your blurred vision slowly cleared as you blinked away your tears, and a familiar, blood-splattered face came into view. Gods but Astarion looked so afraid; his red eyes were wet, and his bottom lip quivered ever so slightly as he gently slid his hands under your broken body to help you sit up. 

“Oh, thank the Gods,” he whispered. “He... he will not take you away from me. I won’t let him.” He looks over his shoulder and shouts, “Cleric, get over here now!” 

His lips curled into a snarl as Shadowheart dropped to her knees beside you, as if he was frustrated that she wasn’t healing you quick enough. As if to confirm, he snaps at her to hurry up. 

“Shouting at me isn’t going to make the process go any quicker, I need to concentrate,” Shadowheart bit back, before her gaze softened upon you as a golden light washed out from her hands and over your body. “Just hold on a little longer, okay?” 

“She is right, you must calm yourself,” Lae’zel softly ordered Astarion as she knelt by your other side. “You have already taken your rage out on the enemy, do not let it overtake you.” 

Astarion said nothing as he focused solely on you, whispering hushed promises and honeyed words that got jumbled through your dazed state, but you appreciated them all the same. You tried to show him this by curling your stiff fingers around his, the coolness of his skin bringing a brief respite to your burning hot hands. He breathes out a sad, broken chuckle and reciprocates your gesture with a soft kiss to your fingers. 

The moon bore witness to the tragedy, casting its cold, indifferent light upon the scene, but you thought it shone beautifully, all the same. 

xxx

[spookyrea]

face of gold, heart of coal (my cross to bear, baby!)

You and Loki have an agreement - just sex with absolutely no feelings. None. Nu-uh. Zero.

(Unfortunately you both signed that agreement with your fingers crossed)

Word count: ~2k

Warnings: fem reader - plot? what plot? p-i-v sex, oral (f receiving), hate sex (kind of. 'hate' if the definition of hate was 'longing so profound it makes you mad'.)

“If only our team could see you right now. Whoring yourself out to me. Your big, bad villain.”

“Not so bad,” you bit out. “You’re nothing but a lap dog.”

“Boo. Another lazy insult,” he snorted. “Big, though?”

He pulled your hand down to palm at the length of him, straining against the fabric of his trousers. You shrugged, even as your thighs clenched in anticipation. “Eh.”

Loki laughed, closing his mouth over yours in a wet kiss. “I seem to recall you singing a different song a few days ago.”

“Your memory is failing you. Dementia, maybe? That’s pretty common with men your age.”

His upper lip curled. He dropped your wrist to gather your skirt in his hands, hiking it up to your waist. “Hold this,” he commanded.

You bunched the fabric in one hand. With his hands now unoccupied, he traced the inside of your thighs slowly, tipping your hips upwards to get a better look at your clothed mound. Both of his thumbs slid over the cotton fabric of your underwear, reverently in comparison to the way he had demanded your submission. They pressed gingerly, barely pulling your folds apart before pressing them back, working in circular motions around your clit but not quite over it. His eyes were half-lidded, transfixed on the way his fingertips spread wide over your hips, on the twitch of your tense muscles, on how you gave yourself up to him angrily and willingly.

You stifled a whine, hoping he wouldn’t notice - but he did. Loki always noticed; every gasp, every lingering look, every shiver when his hand brushed over yours - he saw it all. He could read you like a book, something that both infuriated and secretly delighted you, to be seen and understood so completely. 

Loki mimicked you, scrunching his face up in a patronizing pout. One hand rose to pinch your cheeks, holding your head still while he pressed a sloppy kiss to your temple. “Oh boo hoo. Woe is me. Please, Loki, have mercy.”

You hissed, digging your knuckles into his abdomen. He laughed in response, dragging his nose across your jaw before sucking a mark under your ear. Your voice came out thready despite your best efforts, a casualty of the way his other hand was drawing figure-eights across your thigh. “You cocky bastard.”

“Careful. You speak to me like that again and I might just leave you wanting.”

“You won’t.”

He dipped his head, laving his tongue over the junction of your shoulder and throat. His thumb slid to the side, tracing the damp seat of your underwear with lazy intent. “I won’t?”

“Nope.” You swallowed another embarrassing sound when the meat of his palm ground against you with delicious friction.

“What makes you so certain?”

You tilted your head; distracted as he was by marking up your throat, his hold on your face had loosened enough for you to get your lips around the webbing between his thumb and pointer finger. You scraped your teeth over the delicate skin, delighting in how his body tensed against you. “Because you want me just as badly.”

“You’re finally right about something. Looks like you do have some coherent thoughts in that pretty little brain of yours.”

“Asshole.”

“Tsk. Try harder. I’ll make you a deal - if you call me something creative, I’ll let you come tonight.” He pulled away, his head tipped ever so slightly to the left to admire his handiwork. No doubt your lipstick was smeared across your face at this point, considering how it stained his pale skin from the tip of his nose to the sharp point at the corner of his jaw. “I warn you though, mortal, I’ve been alive for many centuries. I’ve heard it all.”

“Monster,” you tried.

“Old news.”

“Duplicitous snake.”

“Boring.”

“Evil, traitorous coward.”

“It’s starting to look like tonight will only be about me, little thing.” Loki grinned, sliding the tail of his belt through the buckle. It fell open with a clatter against his thigh as he worked the zipper of his slacks down and pushed on your free hand, urging you to take him in your fist and pump him slowly.

“Lover,” you spit.

He paused. “Excuse me?”

“I said ‘lover’.” Even without his hand guiding yours, you drew your hand back and forth in lazy tugs, arousal pooling, hot and wanting, at the way his stomach jumped, muscles visible through his open shirt. “What a pathetic god. To love a human.”

His eyes crawled down, then back up the length of your body. Slowly, achingly slowly, he slipped from your grasp and sank to his knees in front of you. “Truly debased.”

You ran your fingers through his damp curls, heavy with the humidity of want. “It’s sad, really.”

He tapped the back of your calf, shouldering your leg until you draped it over his back, and pressed a loud kiss to your lower belly. “Clever girl.”

Loki pulled your panties to the side; you would have been embarrassed by the threads of arousal clinging to them if it wasn’t for the way his expression darkened, a clear reverence rolling off of him while his thumb slid over you, pulling your folds apart to get a better look. His pretty eyes were awash with desire, burning a hot and syrupy trail as they traveled from the mess between your thighs to your face.

You smoothed a curl out of his eyes and watched him tip his head, pressing a loud kiss just beside your clit. He took his time teasing his mouth over you, alternating between licking long stripes and sliding sloppy kisses over slick, heated skin. The hand around your thigh clutched you in a bruising grip, holding you against his shoulder like you might slip away if he let go. His other hand slipped between his own legs and worked slowly up and down his cock.

You tipped your head back against the wall. “You’re enjoying this.”

His grip tightened. “Shut up.”

Loki squeezed his eyes tight, desperation clear in the way he tipped his head for a better angle. He closed his lips around your clit and sucked, pulling a thready gasp from your chest. You felt a familiar coil between your hips, winding and winding as he worked you more urgently; occasionally you felt his forearm bump against your shin while he pumped his cock in time with rolls of your hips.

You grew delirious. Your legs shook, struggling to hold you upright. You planted your hand on his shoulder for support, back bowing off the wall with the force of your impending orgasm. Loki laughed against you, the sound humming over your skin in the most delicious way. 

You found no relief in his mouth; he seemed only to wind you higher and higher but never to the edge. Your chest heaved, pleasure turning desperate and achy. You pushed on his forehead, tears welling in the corners of your eyes. “Stop. Loki, it’s not… I need…”

He paused, his mouth still pressed against you. His eyes scanned yours curiously, brimming with mischief, before he gave one final flick of his tongue. You clenched, hissing through your teeth, and squirmed away. His shoulders shook with laughter under your leg. Loki turned his cheek into your thigh and drew his wet chin across your skin, leaving an uncomfortable sticky path in his wake.

“Get -” Your order stuttered and died on your tongue when he bit down on your hip. “Get back up here.”

“So bossy.”

“You want me so bad, Laufeyson.”

“So, so badly,” he hummed mockingly.

You let him nudge his way between your legs, lining his hips up with yours to guide himself inside you. There was an initial pressure, that familiar press before your body yielded to him and he slid down to the hilt. 

He groaned once his hips met yours and, privately, you agreed. There was something electric about him, as if he had rewritten the polarity of your nerves so they yearned in his direction. He was an asshole - arrogant, stubborn, untrusting - but there was such an aching kindness in the way his fingers trailed over your skin that it left you feeling raw and oozy. 

A self-deprecating laugh hissed through his teeth when your fingers wound through the curls at the back of his skull. Very quietly, he murmured something against your skin.

“What was that?”

“I said I hate you.”

“Right.” His hips rolled against you slowly, testing you. “Come on, lover,” you goaded him on. “Fuck me like you hate me.”

He groaned. “One day you’ll let me make love to you.” 

You gasped when he thrust into you, jolting you up the wall. He set a brutal pace, tugging your body down onto him with every sharp jerk of his hips. You twined your arms around his neck for support and tried to leverage your weight against him, shifting so he was angled to bump against that soft spot inside you that made your knees buckle. The sob that ripped through you when he finally connected seemed to spur him on, working him into a frenzy.

“One day you’ll let me do this in a bed. In my bed. No, actually, in our bed. Now, tell me what you feel.” Loki punctuated the order with a kiss, though you were both moving too much to get any further than a brush of open, panting mouths.

You nodded dumbly. “It’s- it’s good. So- oh, right there. Please.”

“Yes. Beg for me.”

Annoyance turned over in your belly. You scraped your teeth along his jaw. “Asshole.”

Loki pulled your body to a sudden stop, his cock buried to the hilt deep inside of you. His head cocked menacingly to the side.

“Hmm.” He gave an experimental roll of his hips. “You’re lucky you make the most fantastic sounds when you come. And I do so very, very badly want to hear them. So sing. Praise, this time, little mortal.”

His thumb pressed meanly against your clit. Each jerk of his hips against you made you bump against the calloused skin, a delicious but not-quite satisfying pressure. 

“You want me so badly. I could have you eating out of the palm of my hand. But I’m merciful. I won’t make you do that.” Loki licked a hot stripe up the side of your throat. “I’ll just fuck you instead. Now come on.”

Your face scrunched up, hands fisting in the back of his shirt. You’d given up on stifling any sounds you made, letting broken, wanton sounds tumble from your mouth with each nudge of his thumb against your clit. Your chest ached, your breaths thready and gasping, barely sucking in air before it escaped you as a squeal or a sigh. Your thighs shook with the force of it all, body gone taut and boneless all at once.

You pulled him in as tightly as you could as you came, burying your nose in his throat, seeking some tether to ground yourself by. It was all too much - too hot, too sweaty, too bright, too good. You needed him to come. You needed him to stay. You needed, needed, needed.

Loki stumbled into his climax and stilled after a few more sloppy thrusts, winding his arms around your back to properly ensnare you. His breath licked over your skin and left goosebumps to rise in its wake.

You stayed tangled like that for an eternity, slowly winding down back to Earth in the other’s arms. Your fingers traced a shy path down his nape while his hands slid up and down your sides placatingly.

Eventually, he set you down on your feet. His hands smoothed down your skirt before tucking himself away in his slacks. Your voice was small as you watched him loop his belt back through the buckle. “I get closer and closer every day.”

“To what? First-degree murder?” He turned his face up to yours, a joking tilt to his brows. Something in your expression gave him pause, the smile melting off of him. He smoothed out the front of his slacks and then put his hand on your shoulders, leveling you with an unreadable look. “Really?”

You nodded mutely, turning your eyes to the floor. He tipped your face up to keep them trained on him.

“Ask me,” you murmured.

“Make love to me, darling.”

You paused, drawing the moment out. “Maybe. If you’re a good boy.”

He sighed, a long-suffering sound. “You vex me.”

[love-archer]

More Than Meets the Eye

♡ what to do when your human is all blue? ♡

♡.Obey me! ♡♡.SFW! Fluff! ♡♡♡. @nalamyc00l I understand. Sometimes the world feels like it's got its magnifying glass pointed at all the wrong places, and you just need to feel seen for who you truly are, not just... what you look like, right? And here you go, babes <3 apologizes for the late post…

. . . M A M M O N !

♡ Standing slightly off to the side in the House of Lamentation, fiddling with the hem of your shirt. Memories of your time in the human world before devildom were whirling and spinning around what happened at the mall this evening.

♡ A shirt that caught your eyes didn’t make it into your purchase, the saleslady shaking her head and not so subtly saying your frame was ‘distracting’, ‘loud’ for the shirt style, herding you, like a child, to a different isle of clothes.

♡ It wasn’t a first that you were talked to like that but this time, the words landed a little too wrong and too strong to just brush off.

♡ Mammon, pacing back and forth, counting Grimm in his hands, almost bumps into you. "Oi! Watch it, Human! You're gonna make me drop my—" He stops mid-sentence, glancing at your expression. His own expression falters just a touch. He sees the way your shoulders are hunched, the way your eyes avoiding looking up. Something in your downcast posture stops him short of making any jokes or teasings.

♡ He might clear his throat, shifting his weight awkwardly. "Uh, hey. You alright? You lookin' kinda… wilted." He scratches the back of his neck, suddenly less sure of himself.

♡ Before you can finish telling him everything what happened before you pushed into the dressing room, Mammon would actually frown. "Who said somethin' to ya?  Who? Lemme at 'em!" His impulsive instincts, ones you surprisingly tamed down some time ago, would flare up. “Ya know more than damn well I can take anybody on! Tell me!” He wouldn't understand the nuance of body image and insecurities right away (he is perfect) but he would understand someone being unnecessarily ugly to his human.

♡ All his grumbling and huffing would cease when he sees how badly you just want to fade away. Stepping to you, his arms would pull you closer, shielding you from sight of other eyes. "Look, uh… don't listen to 'em, alright? Demons are just… demons."

♡ "You’re… you’re fine. More than fine. You’re… uh… you’re useful. Yeah, useful! And… and freaking…” He breathes in, mustering up the words he wanted to say for a stupid long while. “And… and you look good. Alright?” The whorls would fall softly onto your hair, his lips hovering there as if he wants to kiss you but he pulls back. “Now come on, let’s go get somethin’ to eat. My treat. Anything you want. Except my credit card. That’s still off-limits.”

. . . L E V I A T H A N !

♡ Leviathan’s room was dimly lit, the glow of multiple screens casting an eerie blue light across the floor filled with pillows, snacks and the such. You had sought him out, hoping that the familiar chaos of his space might distract you from the turmoil in your head. You slump onto his beanbag chair, trying to appear casual as you watch him intensely focused on a new MMORPG on his main screen. His fingers danced across the keyboard, commands firing off in rapid succession, his brow furrowed in concentration.

♡ Leviathan’s senses were sharper than they seemed. He might be socially awkward in the real world, but he was surprisingly attuned to shifts in mood, especially amongst those he considered his comrades – and you were definitely in his ‘party’.

♡ “Oi,” he grunts, without taking his eyes off the screen, “ I can hear you sighing over the music and it's making it hard to enjoy the screams of these newbies. You’re… radiating gloom. Like a… a debuff aura. Is it…" He repeatedly hit the spacebar, "is it Diavolo again? Did he make you participate in some… cringe human tradition again?”

♡ You shake your head, managing a weak smile. “No, nothing like that. Just… stuff.” You try to brush it off, but Leviathan, surprisingly, presses a bit further, though still glued to his game.

♡ “’Stuff’ is vague. Vague is… inefficient.” He pauses, fingers still flying. "Someone bothered you?"

♡ You sigh. "Yeah… kind of. Someone… someone at the mall said some really rude things about… well, about my…” you gesture vaguely at your chest, his eyes staring at you from the reflection of the PC screens.

♡ Leviathan finally pauses his game, his avatar momentarily frozen mid-battle, much to the potential dismay of his online teammates. He swivels his chair to face you, eyes widened.

♡ Once everything was ranted out, Leviathan stares blankly for a moment, then his face scrunches up in confusion, and then, indignation. “Distracting? Distracting how?" He gets up abruptly, pacing in his small space, “It's a SHIRT!" He scoffs, "Distracting?!"

♡ "Distracting is-is when a poorly designed UI element obscures vital information on the screen. THAT would make sense. And even then, just that’s bad game design, AND still… not your fault!”

♡ “Listen,” he says, turning back to you, his voice earnest, “Don’t listen to those… those low-level losers. They’re just jealous because your… your character is clearly a… a unique, high-stat build. Everyone else is just… generic.”

♡ He fumbles around his desk, pushing aside stacks of manga, finally retrieving a slightly dusty, but clearly treasured, limited edition anime figurine. He holds it out to you. "Aha!"

♡ “See?” He points at the exaggerated curves of the figure. “This… this is art! Designed with… with emphasis! It’s… it’s beautiful! Like… like you! In a… in a non-dull, totally meta way!"

♡ "She's cool, you're cooler." He propped her on your knee, patting your leg in what he hopes is comfort.

. . . B E E L Z E B U B !

♡ Beelzebub was happily munching on a mountain of spiced chicken wings, his movements focused and economical. You watched him, a small smile playing on your lips. It was… endearing, in a strange way, to see him so utterly absorbed in his food.

♡ You were in the kitchen with him because… well, you just enjoyed being around him. Even if most of his attention was usually on whatever edible item was nearest. Today, though, you felt more awkward than usual. You’d deliberately chosen the baggiest sweater you could find this morning, hoping to minimize… everything.

♡ Beel glanced up from his wings, noticing you properly for the first time. He blinked slowly, his usual calm gaze settling on you. “Hey?” he rumbled, his voice slightly muffled by food. “You’re… wearing a big sweater.” You look down, fidgeting with the loose fabric. “Yeah, um, just… comfortable.”

♡ He tilted his head, his brow furrowing slightly. “Comfortable? It’s… warm in here.” He gestured around the kitchen, which, granted, was warmer than usual thanks to the earlier active stove. “Right, well, extra… comfortable,” you inhale, feeling increasingly foolish.

♡ Beel watched you for a moment longer, then shrugged. He was more than happy to be returning to his wings. “If you’re comfortable.” He paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, “Are you… cold?” “No!” you said quickly, perhaps too quickly. “I’m… perfectly fine.”

♡ He seemed to sense something was off. He put down his wing, wiping his hands on a napkin with a slightly more deliberate motion than usual. He turned fully to face you, “Is something… on your mind?”

♡ You looked down, avoiding his gaze. “It’s nothing, Beel. Really.” He took a step closer, his presence filling the space, in a grounding manner. “You’re… hiding.” He stated it simply, matter-of-factly.

♡ His steady gaze made the denial die in your throat. Brewing tea and scooting his stool closer to your frame, he listened to all the worries that bloomed in the back of your head since you woke up that morning.

♡ A look of understanding took over in his eyes, slowly, like the sunrise. He looked down at your chest, then back up at your face, his gaze softening. He still didn’t quite get it, not in the way someone who’d experienced that kind of insecurity would, but he was trying. “People… don’t like… your body?” he asked, his voice incredulous. "But nothing is wrong with you."

♡ “Your body… is… good. It’s… soft. Warm. It… smells nice.” He leaned in slightly, "It keeps you warm...and And… I like… all of you," He lowered his head slightly, his forehead resting against yours. “Don’t… hide from me, alright?” he murmured. “I… like to see you. All of you.”

Number 3 is served!

[wintrwinchestr]

bite the hand

the killer & the sound - chapter 3

summary: you hadn't expected joel to put such an abrupt end to... whatever it is you two had. or, what you thought you had, anyway. you write and perform a new song on the second night of the tour about it, and the consequences aren't quite what you expected them to be. how could something that seemed so simple at first have become so complicated?

warnings: 18+, smut, no outbreak au, no use of y/n, rockstar!joel, aspiring rockstar!reader, d/s dynamics, pretty major daddy kink, age gap (reader is early-mid 20’s, joel is early-mid 50’s), pet names (sweetheart, darlin', baby, babygirl, songbird(!!), etc), big time angst, daddy/mommy issues, religious shame, degradation (joel calls you a whore), spanking, fingering, oral (f receiving), unprotected piv sex, manhandling, one (1) kiss, spitting, smoking (reader & other characters), drinking (reader & other characters), getting walked in on, characters who need therapy sooooo badly, lots of internal monologue, let me know if i missed any!!

word count: 13.2k

a/n: as always, thank you so much for your patience and sticking around to see what i put our pookies through this time. these chapters just keep getting longer and longer but it's not my fault they have a lot to say!!!!! if you'd like an idea of what reader's lil diss track sounds like, i very much imagined gibson girl by ethel cain when i wrote it. thank you as always to my best babygirl kiers i love u to death. i hope you like this one, nice comments/reblogs appreciated if you enjoyed!!

series masterlist

read this chapter on ao3

divider by @saradika-graphics

Jesus Christ, what the hell is he doing?

Joel has been in the shower for at least thirty minutes now, and he’s spent more than half of that time just letting the scalding water pound against his back as his vision goes blurry from the steam. He finished his “rinse off” within five minutes of stepping inside the bathroom, and now he’s just stalling, wondering how the fuck he’s supposed to go back out there and get in bed with you.

If it weren’t for the decades�� worth of tattoos that he can see when he looks down at his bare body, he wouldn’t be able to recognize himself right now. He’s always been one to hit it and quit it, love ‘em and leave ‘em, or whatever little figure of speech you want to use for just being a fucking playboy. Since when has he ever cleaned a girl up, given her his clothes to wear, let her sleep over after he fucks her? Though, he has to give himself some credit, it’s not like he was planning on letting you stay. He was just trying to preserve some of your dignity, but then, when did he even decide to start caring about shit like that? 

Fuck.

When the tour bus jerks to life as the driver begins the trip to the next city, the loss of balance is enough to finally snap Joel out of the uncharacteristic morality spiral he’s now found himself in. He rubs his hands across his face, pinching the bridge of his nose and cursing under his breath, knowing that he can’t hide in here and avoid you forever. Besides, he’s getting old, and he has to sleep at some point if he wants to be at least a little functional tomorrow. And what is he so fucking scared of, anyway? 

Joel turns off the water, and the knob screeches in protest as the dull roar of the shower fades into silence. He steps out of the stall and hardly makes any effort to dry himself off, solely focused on getting out of there before the fog evaporates from the mirror and he’s forced to confront his own reflection. He shakes out his hair and pulls on a clean pair of briefs, then sends out a silent prayer to whoever the fuck might be listening, begging for help in making it through the night without having to address whatever it is that’s gnawing at his conscience. He didn’t even think he had one of those anymore.

Joel enters the bedroom quietly, hoping that you’d be exhausted enough to have fallen asleep by the time he returned. When you don’t even twitch as he shuts the door behind him and climbs under the covers, he lets out the breath he’d been holding, and lays himself down as close to the edge of the mattress as he can without falling off the damn thing. If he can put as much distance between the two of you as possible tonight, maybe he can make it out the other side unscathed.

Just when he thinks he’s in the clear, having settled himself down with his back to you and situated his silk sheets and pillows to his liking, he feels you roll over in your sleep as you let out some dreamy little whine. Joel likes to keep it cold on the bus, and your shivering form must feel the heat still radiating off of him from his shower, because then you’re wrapping your little arms around his bicep and pulling him close. He wants to shake you loose, to put some extra pillows in between your bodies just for good measure, but he can’t be so cruel. Not when you look like such a goddamn angel, sleeping so peacefully with your hair spread out around you like a halo, long lashes fluttering against your cheeks. He wonders what you’re dreaming about. 

Joel isn’t sure when exactly it happened, but somewhere in between that very first rehearsal and right now, the lines started to blur between a fun little fling he wasn’t going to think twice about letting go of once the tour ended, and something that he wants to sink his claws into and claim as his own. He has to face it now, whether he wants to or not—he can’t get himself to push you away, to growl at you not to touch him and to stay on your own side of the bed, because he doesn’t want to. What he wants is to tattoo his fucking name right underneath that shitty moth on your upper thigh, and therein lies the problem.

He has a history of breaking things, of being too controlling and rough and mean when he plays with his toys, until they fight back and tear themselves apart as they escape his clutches. But you seem like something that can’t be broken, that would glue itself back together just to get played with again the next day, and that sets off some alarms he didn’t know he was capable of hearing. Maybe he does still have a conscience, after all.

At first, Joel had liked how eager and willing and naive you were, how easily he could push and pull you this way and that because you didn’t seem to realize what this was. Or at least, what it was intended to be. Whether you were smart to his intentions or not was never really his concern before, but now… You’re nuzzling your face into his arm, breathing in his scent and letting it soothe you as it coats your senses, and it’s awakening something protective, possessive, in him. Joel has never been good at romance or love or relationships, and he had resigned himself a long time ago to the fact that he’d never be able to settle down. The life he lives can’t sustain something steady or healthy like that anyway, what with the touring and the groupies and the sex and the alcohol. 

But now here you are, this fragile and yet unbreakable thing in his bed who he worries wouldn’t run away no matter how much he growled and bared his teeth. And god dammit, that scares him. Joel had thought he was done being scared, that he had left that feeling behind before you were even born, probably. And yet, here it is creeping up on him again, grabbing him by the throat and suffocating him. You’ve got real talent and beauty, with a promising future and blossoming career ahead of you, and you’d probably give it all up and follow him into the darkness if he promised to call you a good girl once you did.

Joel has never been a very good man, but something about you makes him really have to stare down the barrel of it now. He can’t do this to you, he can’t let you in, and he knows that. He’d poison you, if he hasn’t already. And he can’t give to you what you seem to think this is, what it could be, if he wasn’t so fucking damaged. So he decides it then, as he doesn’t stop his hand from brushing a stray strand of your halo out of your delicate face, that he has to put a stop to this first thing in the morning. And he has to be cold and concise about it, so that you’re perfectly clear on what the two of you are going to be from now on, even if it hurts you. You’re a big girl, and he trusts that you’ll get over it somehow, because letting this continue would hurt you a hell of a lot worse, in the end.

And you seemed to have taken it well, all things considered. He didn’t tell you the whole truth, the real reason why he decided to yank the arrow out of your heart when he was the one who shot it in there in the first place. Because then you’d know that he’s a broken man who also breaks things, and he can only shatter so many of your illusions about him in one morning. He knows this is his fault, and he was at least man enough to take the blame, he can give himself that. He had decided to paint himself as an actually respectable person who knows when he’s taken something too far, who definitely does have a conscience. Maybe you’re the one who lured it out of the dark cave it was hiding in, but he still can’t risk anything, on the off chance that he still is the same mangled man he always was and the one he will continue to be. So he lies to you, just a little bit, because what you don’t know won’t hurt you, and he can’t let you come any closer for fear of causing even more pain than he already has. 

Joel watched as your bare legs carried you out of the living area and off of his bus, the tops of your thighs just barely concealed by his shirt he had lent you the night before. He didn’t react when you slammed the door on your way out, he had expected you to do as much. But he did half-expect you to turn around and spit a fuck you, Joel at him the way he would have deserved. It might have hurt less if you did, that way you would have left a sour taste in his mouth to replace the still-lingering flavor of your pussy mixed with the cum he had spilled inside you last night. 

God, he is so fucked.

—

You had made sure to thank the audio technicians before you disappeared from the venue after your sound check, but otherwise avoided looking at or speaking to anyone on your way out. Especially him. You had held Angel close as you swiftly made your way back to your bus before Death’s Head had a chance to take the stage for their turn, not wanting to hear any more of Joel’s voice than you’ve had to today. Besides, it’s already been looping like a skipping record in your mind since this morning, refusing to let up no matter how hard you try to drown it out. 

Mistake, respect, and professional are the choice words that are chanting themselves over and over again, so many times that they almost don’t sound real anymore, just a random sequence of letters and noises that you can’t make sense of. What happened last night didn’t feel like a mistake to you, especially not when he was so gentle in cleaning you up afterwards, when he brought you a glass of water, when he let you curl up against him in his bed, wearing his clothes. He sure as hell had plenty of time to decide that you were worthy of respect before he had you act like a whore on stage in front of tens of thousands of people for his own sick pleasure. (And apparently yours, but that’s not the point.) And now you’re supposed to believe that he suddenly had a change of heart overnight, that splitting you open on his cock and using your body to get what he wanted made him finally develop a moral compass and decide that he wants to start acting like a professional? Damn, maybe you are more powerful than you thought. 

You just can’t believe you were stupid enough to let yourself feel something for him. He was just playing you like his guitar this entire fucking time, a pretty instrument that he can pluck and strum and draw pretty noises from, then put away without a second thought. He’s a celebrity, a rockstar, for fuck’s sake. Half of his songs are about sex, and if the rumors are true, he recorded the original intro to Kiss it Better while he was hooking up with some groupie in a bathroom. Just like you, he had probably used her to get what he wanted, then dropped her like it was nothing. Of course he never fucking cared about you. 

You should burn the clothes that he sent you scurrying back to your bus wearing this morning. They’re currently shoved into the bottom of your plain-looking laundry bag in the corner of your room, though you’re half tempted to just toss the whole thing into the dumpster behind the venue and set it ablaze. But you know he doesn’t care about material things as much as he does his ego, and it’s going to be much more satisfying to set that on fire than some worn-out pieces of clothing, anyway. Destroying them also wouldn’t do anything about the way you keep catching an inhale of his cologne every once in a while, the masculine smell of it wafting from his t-shirt and carving out an undesired space for itself in your brain. You try to ignore the way your cunt flutters against your will at the scent, at the memories it conjures, and hope that she doesn’t develop a habit of betraying you like this when it comes to him. She almost gets the better of you, tempting you to second guess your plan to perform your scathing new song at the end of your set tonight.

Almost.

You’re feeling good about what you wrote, and you’d be even more upset with yourself if you backed out now, if you gave in to Joel once again, without him even knowing it this time. He seems to think that he knows you better than you know yourself, that he can make decisions for you and that he always knows just what to say to get you to do as he asks. For once, you want him to be fucking wrong about you.

The show starts in just under an hour, and you’re dedicating your last bit of quiet solitude to solidifying the new words and the motions of your fingers in your memory. While you were scribbling in your notepad earlier today, you had tried to ride the fine line between calling him out so blatantly and using descriptions that were too clichéd, and you’re happy with the in-between that you landed on. The song could be about anyone, but it isn’t, and if the shoe fits when he tries it on, oh fucking well. Plenty of men wear the same size, and if he wants to make yet another thing about himself, that’s not your problem.

Ideally, you had wanted to include the song in your sound check so that your band would be prepared for tonight, until you had let your eyes drift to the side of the stage and saw Joel observing in the darkness, just like he had done while you were performing the night before. You suppose it wouldn’t be very professional of him to avoid you like the plague the way you’re trying to do with him, but still. You had averted your eyes as quickly as you had spotted him, and decided that the song was just going to have to be a surprise for everyone, not just Joel. Your band members are smart enough guys, you’re sure they’ll be able to catch on and back you up when it’s time to unveil what you had been working on all day. But if they don’t, you’re prepared for it to just be you and Angel up there, the same way it has been for as long as you’ve been making music. Until recently, at least.

You’ve opted to get yourself dressed and ready in the safety of your bus, attempting to avoid a repeat of last night’s pre-show interactions with Joel by minimizing the amount of time you actually have to spend inside the venue. You doubt he’ll try anything, but considering how unafraid he was to volunteer himself as a witness to your sound check, you’d rather not risk it. So, you do your best to keep your distance as you make your way off the bus and to the side of the stage with Angel in tow, hoping that your viscous aura alone will be enough to keep him away. 

Your band members are already waiting for you in the wings when you get there, and you tuck yourself safely behind the group of them as you wait for the lights to go down. You ghost your fingers along Angel’s strings one last time, just to make sure that your muscle memory is securely locked into place—it is, because you’re fucking good at this. You don’t need Joel’s whispered praises and soothing touches to know that you’re a star, and you don’t want them. You don’t. You fucking killed it last night, and you knew it before he told you so, because your ears were still ringing long after the audience had finished applauding and screaming for you. For your own performance, not for the on-stage degradation you endured because of a dumb teenage crush you couldn’t seem to shake off.

If your timing is right, you should’ve gone on a few minutes ago now. Each passing minute has you gnawing at your bottom lip and picking at your nails with increasing intensity as you and the audience both become more restless. You aren’t sure what the hold up is, but you just want to get out there and safely away from the possibility of Joel before you make one of your goddamn fingers bleed. You’re so consumed in your destructive self-soothing that you don’t hear the sound of jingling chains and creaking leather approaching you where you stand, followed by a clearing throat and the last voice you want to fucking hear right now.

“Tommy told me they’re jus’ tryin’ to fix a light or somethin’. Shouldn’t be too much longer now,” Joel says, and you stiffen as he speaks. He sounds earnest in the way he addresses the group of you, but the feeling of his gaze lingering on your skin tells you his true intentions.

Your bandmates hum in acknowledgement as they maintain their casual demeanors, while you shift your jaw and remain steadfast in your stoicism. Your face is calm and concentrated, but your fidgeting hands tell a different story, and the telltale habit is most of what prompted Joel to come over here against his better judgment. He so badly wants to take your hands in his so that you’ll stop tearing at your skin, to massage the worry right out of your palms and tell you there’s nothing to be nervous about, just like he did last night. Though, you’d probably bite his goddamn fingers clean off if he even so much as reached out a hand in your direction, and he wouldn’t entirely blame you if you did, considering that he’s more than likely the reason for your agitation.

Instead, he settles for asking, in as neutral of a tone as possible, “You okay, darlin’?”

Your gaze remains focused on the stage, on the mic you should be standing behind right now, if it weren’t for some stupid fucking light. After a pointed beat, you answer him with a short, “I’m fine.”

You can see in your peripheral vision that Joel nods and shifts his weight, moving a little further behind your band and closer to you. He lets a matching bit of silence pass, for some reason not using the opportunity to just turn around and walk away, before speaking again. “Quit messin’ with your fingers.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” you snap, whipping your head to finally face him. You peer up at Joel from under your eyebrows, putting on a stony face and doing your best to look intimidating even as he towers over you. Despite your efforts, your heart still flutters for just a second when your eyes meet, before he drops his own gaze to the floor and takes a step back from you.

“That how this is gonna be?” Joel asks, and you could swear he sounds a little defeated.

“Yeah, it is.”

You turn yourself back to the stage again, and he takes a deep breath, like he’s trying to steady himself and suppress a reaction to your attitude that he might regret.

“Look, can we–” he starts, but a sudden burst of screams and hollers cuts him off as the venue lights finally dim. You push past your bandmates and stomp your way towards the stage, feeling volatile and as determined as you’ve ever fucking been to give a killer performance tonight. You could’ve spit some real fire at him, told him to leave you the fuck alone like you had been so tempted to, but you didn’t want to scare him off. You don’t even need to check to know that he’s still standing exactly where you left him, and that he’ll probably stay there and watch you the whole time because he doesn’t know what the fuck he wants, apparently. Maybe you should bring him onstage for his public humiliation the same way he did to you, see how he likes it. But you have a little more humanity than he does, and if it all works out, he’ll have to watch you tear him down surrounded by his own bandmates and brother, and that’s gratifying enough for you.

When you and your band have all taken your places, you introduce yourself to tonight’s crowd with a newfound vigor, and begin your set with a chord so resonant it vibrates your bones. The sound surrounds you, grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking loose the wallflower version of you who performed these same songs just last night. It feels like a metamorphosis, like the moths that adorn the strap slung around your body and the one etched into your skin finally belong to you instead of him.

—

You sail through your set, never stumbling over a chord or missing a lyric, even in your anticipation to reach the end. While you thank the crowd and wait for their roaring cheers to die down, you finally chance a look at the side of the stage. Just as you had predicted before you went on, Joel’s silver-tipped boots are still planted in the same place they were thirty minutes ago. Perfect.

“Y’all have been amazing tonight, this was so much fun,” you pant into the mic. “I, uh… I actually have one more song before I go, if that’s alright. Just wrote it this morning.”

Another wave of whistles and applause engulfs you as you turn to check on your bandmates, who all wear confused expressions as expected. You step back from the mic to tell each of the guys the key and tempo of what you wrote, and ask if they can maintain something steady and follow along while you carry the melody. When they’ve all gotten the plan, they look at each other and wordlessly communicate a final decision, seeming to be up to the challenge. 

You resume your place at the front of the stage, taking one last look at your victim before beginning to strum the song’s now-familiar echoing intro. The tone is a little Western, and you wrote it that way on purpose, just as an extra hidden jab toward the obnoxious midnight cowboy persona Joel had first lured you in with. Your haunting voice comes in a few measures later, singing lyrics that are unlike anything you’ve written before. They’re darker, more graphic, and they tell the story of a girl and a cold-blooded man covered in leather and tattoos, who got her alone one night and ripped her clothes off and whispered things he didn’t mean while he fucked her. And after everything was said and done, the girl had lied to herself, replaying everything that had happened between her and the cold-blooded man that night, convincing herself that because it felt good, because he was good to her, that it had meant something. She had bared her body and soul to him, only to find out that he had also been lying to her that night, playing with her like a doll who didn’t know any better, who was just happy to get looked at and touched and praised by someone she had once held on such a high pedestal. You let the lights embrace you and warm your skin as you bare yourself once again, trusting this time that it won’t end in shame or hurt or tears. 

When the buildup of your lyrics and chords finally culminate in the song’s cathartic crash, the first thing you feel is relief, like a crushing weight has been lifted off your heart. The crowd’s enthusiastic response to your creation surrounds you, filling your ears and infiltrating your soul, and you can’t help but laugh at the overwhelming feeling. You gesture behind you for your band to meet you at the front of the stage, and you all bow together to another round of raucous cheering before making your way offstage. This time, you do remember to leave Angel behind, satisfied in what the two of you accomplished tonight.

You’re still reveling in the rush of your performance by the time you’re shrouded in the backstage darkness once again, so caught up in the feeling that you nearly forget what your moment of spontaneity was for in the first place. Or rather, who it was for. You didn’t have enough wherewithal to check if Joel would still be lying in wait once you exited the stage, mostly assuming that his ego would get the best of him and he’d just huff his way out to the buses for a smoke once he realized what you were doing.

You assumed wrong.

Before your eyes even have a chance to adjust to the change in lighting, a calloused hand is gripped tight onto your upper arm, dragging you deeper backstage as you exclaim in protest and try to snatch your arm out of the iron hold that traps it.

“What the—Joel?! Get the fuck off me! What are you–”

“Will you fuckin’ quiet down?” Joel hisses next to your ear. “Quit makin’ a goddamn scene, already made enough of one as it is.”

Despite your struggle against him, his size and strength overpower you, and before you know it you’re being shoved into a dressing room, the door getting slammed shut and locked behind you in a second.

“What the fuck, Joel?” you shout up at him as he backs you into the door, finally letting go of your arm to loom over you and brace one of his hands next to your head.

“I can ask you the same goddamn thing. What the fuck was that out there, hm?” He spits back at you.

You massage the aching finger-shaped marks on your skin where he had gripped you, eyeing him with an annoyed expression. “It was just a song, what is your fucking problem?”

He scoffs, rolling his neck as his brows twitch in disbelief. “Just a song, right. Everybody knew that shit was about me.”

Your heart hammers in your chest, both from the anxiety of being confronted like this and the aggravation caused by his egomaniacal tendencies. “You are so fucking self-centered, it’s insane. It could’ve been about anyone—”

“But it wasn’t, huh?” Joel interrupts. “Who else do they know that has a filthy title inked into his hand, as you put it. Gimme a break, sweetheart. As if that same title didn’t have you soakin’ your fuckin’ panties for me last night.”

You hate that you can feel your cunt flutter in response to his words. “Whatever, will you just let me go? This isn’t very professional of you, locking me in your goddamn dressing room just so you can throw a fit,” you retort.

Realization flashes across his face as he steps back from you, breathing a heavy sigh. “Professional…” he speaks quietly, testing out the word, searching for the meaning behind why you had used it so pointedly. “Jesus Christ, is that what this is about? You are such a goddamn child, you know that?”

Now it’s your turn to laugh, crossing your arms now that he’s given you the room to do so. “Didn’t seem to think of me that way last night. I’m a big girl, I can do what I want, why do you care so much if I wrote a stupid song about you?”

Joel shuts his eyes, scrunching up his face like he’s fighting against what he wants to say next. “Because, fuck—This ain’t what I wanted, okay? Said I wanted to keep it professional between us, not that I wanted you to make a goddamn fool outta me in front’a God and everybody.”

“Well, what do you want?” You push, stepping into his space as your blood begins to boil over. “Because I thought you fucking cared about me, and then you just told me to get lost this morning, like none of it meant anything to you—”

“Of course it fuckin’ meant somethin’ to me, Jesus Christ.” Joel says, so breathlessly it’s like the words escape his mouth before he can catch them. “Did this for your own goddamn good—”

“Oh, for my own good?”

“Yes, for your own good. Because I know what you want this to be, and I can’t give that to you, I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Joel doesn’t answer, but he shifts his jaw like he considers it, and lets your angered breathing fill the silence.

“Huh?” You provoke, hitting your palms against his broad chest once. Your push hardly does anything to knock him off his balance, but you swear it makes his eyes darken. “Why not?” You demand a second time.

You can tell he wants to bite back, but he suppresses the instinct, instead backing away from you as he shakes his head in disbelief. “Y’ know what, I ain’t gonna do this with you right now. We can talk about this later.”

Joel makes for the exit, but you dart in front of the door handle, feet planted firmly on the ground as you block his only way out. You grit your teeth as you stare up at him, daring him to either do something about it or finish what he started.

He takes another steadying breath. “Really ain’t helpin’ your case much right about now. I suggest you move, sweetheart.” His voice registers a somewhat eerie calm, the kind that a storm usually follows.

“You don’t get to back out of this.”

“Ain’t backin’ out. Said we’re gonna talk about it later. Move.”

You stare at each other in strained silence for a few moments, neither of you in the mood to give in to the other. You doubt that you’re about to bear witness to the first time Joel has ever submitted to someone else, so you slide away from the door, making a vow to yourself to find him after the show and force him to make good on his word.

“‘S what I thought,” he huffs, unlocking the door and slinking out into the hallway. He holds his head a little too high for someone too scared to tell you how he feels, like it’ll eat him alive if he admits to anyone that he really does have a heart.

You step out of the room and watch him walk, waiting until he gets a few paces away from you to grumble under your breath, “Self-centered and a fucking coward.”

Either Joel wasn’t as far out of earshot as you had thought, or the angry thudding of your pulse inside your head had made it difficult to tell just how loud you had said your little dig. He stops in his tracks, giving you a second to sweat before turning around to face you. “What was that?” he asks, but you already know he had heard you loud and clear. He begins to stalk towards you, and that predatory sway of his shoulders has you suddenly feeling meek.

“N-nothing,” you lie, backing into the dressing room as he continues his prowl.

“Nah, go ahead. You wanna do this right now, we’ll do it right now. What’d you say, baby? C’mon.” Joel’s movement forces you backward until the base of your spine hits the edge of the vanity table in the room. You wince at the impact and the sound of the door slamming shut again, and then he’s bracing both of his hands on either side of your hips, caging you in. Joel’s hot breath ghosts against your face as his eyes seem to glow a fiery shade you’ve never seen before. “Say it again.”

You swallow hard, nervous eyes flitting around his face, unsure of the safest place to land, or if there even is one. “Called you a coward…” you admit softly, voice trembling.

“Yeah? I’m a fuckin’ coward? What else, hm? Why don’t you use your big girl words and say to my face what you really wanted to say about me out there instead o’ that bullshit lil’ poem you wrote.” He’s just being mean now, lashing out because you hit him where it hurts. But god fucking dammit, there’s something about the way he’s standing over you, how he’s using his size to intimidate you and how the smell of his cologne mingles with the fading aroma of his last cigarette, that begins to cloud your judgment. You can’t help the way a dampness begins to bloom between your thighs as a result of his demeaning words and close proximity.

You figure you don’t have much of a reason to hold anything back anymore, already having pissed him off by threatening his ego twice in one night. “I hate you,” you rasp, which is pretty much what the lyrics of your song boil down to. You do hate him, for saying all the right things and touching you all the right ways to make you think he wanted the two of you to be something, only to throw your naivety in your face, tell you that you’re acting like a child when he’s the one who tried to give up and walk out when something became more complicated than he could handle.

“Yeah, I bet you do. Think you can do better than that, though, huh? Sure had plenty to say earlier, don’t get all shy on me now, sweetheart.” He spits the pet name at you like it’s an insult, coated in the venom dripping from his sharp canines.

“Fuck you,” you snap, eyes welling up and threatening to spill over despite yourself.

Joel spins you around as soon as the words leave your lips, pinning your wrists behind your back with just one of his hands, using the other one to grip your jaw and make you face your own reflection in the vanity mirror. You shut your eyes tightly, not wanting to confront what he’s reduced you to, and he allows you to keep them that way for now.

“You want me to? That why you’re all fired up, ‘cause you need Daddy to fuck this bratty ass attitude outta you?” Joel rumbles next to your ear.

You struggle to shake your head in his hold, mumbling, “No, I don’t.”

“No? So if I reach my hand under this lil’ dress, I ain’t gonna feel that pretty pussy drippin’ for me?”

You aren’t sure why you bother lying to him again, humming an mm-mm that sounds more like a whimper.

“Hmm, let’s see about that, then,” Joel muses, releasing your face from his hold to bend you forward and flip up the skirt of your dress. “Would you look at that… panties are ‘bout fuckin’ soaked through, ain’t they?” You whine as he begins to rub your folds over your underwear, pulling back the crotch of them and letting it go so that you can feel the damp snap of the fabric against your sensitive skin. “Thought you were such a good girl… you like it a lil’ mean, hm? ‘S that why you pulled that stunt tonight, to get Daddy all worked up so he’d treat you the way you really been wantin’?”

You feel a stinging smack on your ass before you’ve even finished muttering a complete No. Joel’s rough hand does nothing to soothe the burn as he rubs it around your smarted flesh, squeezing at the plush of your ass with a possessive grip. “Had just about enough of you lyin’ to me tonight. Why don’t you tell me the goddamn truth and I’ll give you what you want, hm? Gonna ask one more time. You want Daddy to beat up this lil’ brat pussy?” He asks, moving his hand back to the wet fabric of your panties, circling your clit over the material with the pad of his finger.

You can’t help but moan at his crude language, releasing another pulse of wetness in response. “Mmh, yes, please—” you mewl.

“Open your fuckin’ eyes,” Joel barks, and it startles you into obedience. “Yes, who?” he challenges, making eye contact with your reflection in the mirror.

He continues his ministrations over your covered clit, and you force your brain to work through the distraction, to give him what he wants and not earn yourself another spank.

“Y-yes, Daddy, I want it,” you admit, your voice drenched in a pathetic need. 

Joel swiftly yanks your panties to the side, practically tearing them clean off your body with one hand in an effort to expose your swollen core to him, not daring to release your aching wrists from the other one’s hold. He circles your dripping entrance with the rough tips of two of his fingers, not pushing all the way inside just yet.

“Think you owe me a goddamn apology first, hm?” he taunts, using his fingers to smear your ashamed slick around your entrance.

“Sorry, ‘m sorry–” you whine, pushing back into him impatiently.

Smack. “For what, baby? What’re you sorry for?” Joel presses, his harsh spank telling you to stay fuckin’ still. 

“For… for writing that song… for calling you a c-coward… ‘m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry–” you cry. He shoves both of his thick fingers inside you as your reward, carving out space for them inside your little hole as he starts up a bruising pace, the obscene wet sounds of his movements filling the room and mingling with your broken little wails. It shouldn’t feel as good as it does, getting ordered around and talked down to and used like this by someone you said you hated only a few minutes ago, but you don’t really care to unpack that right now. Or ever. Maybe you were naive and immature in thinking that this thing you’ve gotten yourself into could ever pan out like what you’ve seen in the movies, but you think you could learn to be content with what he is willing to offer you—praise doled out as easily as he deprives you of it, a firm hand and fingers that can strum along your clit as expertly as he does the strings of his guitar, and a cock that makes you feel like someone else entirely, that can send you somewhere far away and bring you back down to earth at the same time. You let him use his fingers to pound all that angst and fire and attitude out of you as your eyelids flutter shut again, losing yourself in the feeling of him.

“How many times I gotta tell you, huh? Keep ‘em open, look, baby,” Joel commands, letting go of your wrists to deliver a light smack to the side of your face. You fall forward at the sudden release of his hold, catching yourself on the vanity table and digging your nails into the hard surface to ground yourself. His punishing hand forces your gaze straight ahead with a claw-like grip on your jaw, and your eyelids still feel so heavy, everything moving slowly as you look at yourself in the mirror. Your parted lips, smeared mascara, and unfocused gaze paint a debauched version of yourself that you don’t recognize, blurred by the sleepy submissive state he seems to be able to plunge you into so easily. “Take a good goddamn look in the mirror, at what I’m doin’ to you, and you tell me if you really want this.”

Every sharp thrust of his hand against your cunt knocks loose more and more of your ability to think, let alone speak. But you know by now that if Joel demands a response from you, he’ll get one, coherent or not. He seems to like it when your words come out a ruined mess of whines and slurred syllables, anyway, getting off on how hard and fast he can knock down those walls you attempt to put up and turn you into something so servile and saccharine.

“Want it, please, Daddy,” you beg, struggling to hold yourself up as his fingers get you closer and closer to your release.

“You sure about that? ‘Cause this is what you’re gonna get, sweetheart,” Joel grunts, the exaggerated word punctuated by the stretch of a third finger joining the other two inside your already fucked-out cunt.

“D-don’t care, just want you—ah—” you’re cut off by the sudden stroking of Joel’s curled fingers against a particularly tender and unfamiliar spot inside you. You begin to unravel at the overwhelming feeling, letting out little wanton pleases and Daddys as you continue to soak his tattooed hand.

“Fuck, gonna be the goddamn death o’ me, lil’ songbird, you know that? Tried to stop this shit before it could get started, tried to keep you away from me, but I just can’t seem to fuckin’ help myself, can I? We’d be nothin’ but bad for each other, but—shit—been thinkin’ ‘bout this tight cunt all goddamn day, couldn’t get the taste o’ you outta my mouth. Reckon I never will… In fact—” Joel pulls his fingers out of you in an instant, and you cry out from the sudden loss as you watch him suck them clean in the mirror. You feel dizzy, letting him manhandle you as he spins you around to face him and hoists you on top of the vanity table with little effort. He groans as he crouches, pulling your drenched panties down your legs and tossing them somewhere behind him. With your raw-looking cunt now fully exposed to him, he spreads your legs wide and curses under his breath, “Should’a done this shit last night, fuck—” before diving in between your thighs and licking a long stripe from your entrance to your swollen clit. He latches onto the sensitive nub, closing his eyes and sucking hard as his large hands force your legs to stay open. You let your upper back rest against the mirror as he works you over, and the cool glass sends a shiver down your spine as your hips tilt upward, allowing him better access.

He drinks from you as if you taste like his favorite top-shelf whiskey, growling into your flesh as he’s surely leaving fingertip-shaped bruises on the softness of your thighs. He alternates between swirling his tongue around your clit and fucking it in and out of your hole, beckoning you to spill yourself into his mouth. He savors every wave of slick that pours from you, each of your little cries and whimpers making his cock strain harder against the confines of his jeans. 

You can’t help but let one of your hands drift to his hair, and he doesn’t stop you from grabbing onto his messy curls as you buck pathetically against his tongue. 

“Such a sweet lil’ cunt, got me fuckin’ addicted to it, I swear…” Joel half-whispers, rubbing his thumb in circles around your clit to make up for the absence of his tongue as he speaks, your hips still desperately chasing after his movements. He spits onto your folds once, watching it drip between the curves of them for a moment before lapping up your combined juices and picking up where he left off. Your eyes are shut tight, brows peaked with need as you beg him to keep going, please, Daddy, gonna come.

Joel pulls away again just enough to tease, “Always come for me so easily, don’t you? Sing for me, songbird, c’mon.” A few more rough strums of his thumb and pulses of his tongue have you crying out, shaking where you sit on the table as you gush into his waiting mouth. Joel works you through it as you practically ride his face, your hips twitching with each overstimulating flick of his tongue over your sensitive clit.

He doesn’t wait very long for you to come back into yourself, the impatient bastard that he is, before he’s commanding you to open and using his strong fingers to yank your jaw downward. Your eyes blink open just in time to watch him spit a mouthful of your own release onto your waiting tongue, and then he’s pressing his lips to yours in a sloppy kiss, tongues twisting around each other as he forces you to taste yourself. So immersed in the distraction of finally feeling his lips against your own, you don’t notice when he loosens his grip on your face to grab one of your hands instead, placing it on his still-clothed bulge and growling into your mouth as you massage the hard shape of him.

“Feel what you do to me, babygirl?” Joel breaks the kiss to ask, voice low and eyes dark. “Even if I kept you away from me, wouldn’t fuckin’ matter. Still have to take care o’ myself one way or another, would just be pretendin’ it was your perfect cunt squeezin’ me instead o’ my hand, anyway. Might as well stick to the real thing, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you agree, lashes fluttering at his filthy words.

“Yeah? You want it? Want Daddy to split you open again?”

Your skin is burning hot, every one of your nerve endings on fire with need, and you don’t care how pitiful you sound when you answer with, “Please, Daddy.”

“Good girl,” Joel praises. He makes quick work of ridding himself of his belt, tossing it aside to join your discarded panties on the floor with a metallic thud before freeing his leaking cock from his jeans. He prods the thick head at your entrance, still so wet and stretched out from the earlier efforts of his fingers and tongue that he slides inside with hardly any resistance. “Greedy thing…” he hisses, holding onto your hips as he watches his thick length begin to slide in and out of you. A flash of silver catches his attention from the edge of his vision, and he focuses there instead, on the cross shaped charm dangling from your neck and resting between your breasts. He picks it up between his large thumb and forefinger, rubbing the pads of them along the smooth metal. “Probably shouldn’t be wearin’ such a thing anymore, hm? Now that I know how much of a whore you really are.”

“Not… ‘m not a whore,” you counter, but it’s so futile, meaning nothing at all when you really take a look at where you are now, how it all began, and how your voice cracks in your poor attempt to prove him wrong.

“Y’ are, though, songbird. ‘S okay that you are. Only for me though, huh? Jus’ Daddy’s whore? All mine?” Joel drops the cross in favor of cradling your cheek, hurrying his pace as he taunts you. There’s no use in denying it, not when his degrading words prompt your cunt to squeeze around him and provide more slick aid for his quickening thrusts, an involuntary whine escaping your throat. You’re seeing such a different side to him now than the one he showed you the night before, and you begin to wonder which one is the real Joel, or if either of them are, or if both of them are, somehow. Or if he even knows. You’re willing to take whichever one he decides to let you have, you think.

“Y-your whore, Daddy… wanna be yours, please,” you babble, his cock hitting you deep and hard as you let him fuck you so dumb you allow yourself to just give in and agree to whatever he says you are, whatever he wants you to be, just the way he likes.

“Fuck,” Joel curses through gritted teeth, removing his hand from your face and to grip onto the plush of your hip again. Your pliant state and filthy admission combined with that sinful symbol around your neck spur him on, and he uses his hold on your skin to fuck into you with abandon. “Really would just let me ruin you, huh? Tried to be a decent man for once in my goddamn life, but you just had to be a fuckin’ brat about it and start some shit, didn’t you? If you don’t want me decent, tha’s fine by me, baby. But lemme make somethin’ real goddamn clear to you,” he rambles, each slam of his hips into yours getting you closer to release for the second time. He delivers another sharp slap to your cheek with a You listenin’? and you nod to the best of your ability, finding it impossible to focus your eyes on him as that knot in your stomach begins to tighten.

“You want this, you wanna be mine, you can be mine, babygirl. Lord knows I’d find my way right back inside this sinful lil’ cunt, anyway. But this ain’t gonna be a fuckin’ relationship, you understand? Take it or leave it, songbird.” He slows his thrusts as he spells out his ultimatum, but they still make you ache, all the same. His fiery gaze bores a hole straight through your skull as he awaits your response.

“Take it, w-wanna take it, Daddy.” The desperation in your voice and painted across your expression have him returning to his punitive pace, grunting and swearing into the warm skin of your neck as your hands scramble across his back, pulling yourself into him and burying your face into his shoulder. His thick leather jacket helps to muffle your cries as he loses all control, using your body to chase after his own high.

“Course you’re gonna take it, filthy thing. Made to fuckin’ take it, Christ,” Joel rambles, your vocalizations increasing in pitch as you squeeze around him, whole body tensing as your sore pussy prepares to drench him one more time. “So goddamn desperate… Just take whatever I give you, however I wanna give it to you, always have you comin’ on my cock just the same, huh? Go on, babygirl, come for Daddy again, tha’s right…”

With his permission, and a few more just-right strokes of his tip against that sweet spot deep inside your walls, you’re spasming in his hold, whining that filthy title you had just used against him less than an hour ago. He spills his release into you at the same time, and despite the way he’s treated you and the words he’s spat at you tonight, it makes you feel whole again.

You breathe heavily against each other for a few minutes, neither of you wanting to let go as you both struggle to process what the hell just happened, what it will mean for the remainder of the tour. 

A sudden knock at the door quickly yanks you out of your thoughts, offering a taste of what the future may hold much earlier than you were expecting.

“Joel? You in there?” a voice asks from outside the dressing room.

“Huh…? Yeah, just gimme a–”

The door opens before Joel can finish answering, and you can see clear as day over his shoulder that it’s Jesse.

He claps his hand over his eyes when he notices you, but you can still see how his cheeks burn red under his fingers as he shifts where he stands, undoubtedly trying to come up with the least mortifying way to get himself out of this situation.

“Jesus, kid–” Joel grumbles, finally pulling out of you and shoving his still-slick cock back into his briefs. He zips himself up as you tug the skirt of your dress back down to cover yourself, still feeling much more exposed than you’d like as you eye your forgotten panties laying just a few feet from where Jesse stands.

“Sorry! Sorry, Joel. It’s just, uh—”

Joel turns to face him as he finishes adjusting himself, and you’re thankful that he doesn’t walk away from you completely, using his broad form to provide you with what little modesty he can afford under the circumstances. “What, Jess?” he barks, exasperated.

“Um… The guys asked me to come find you, we’re on in like a minute—” 

“Well, tell ‘em to hold their fuckin’ horses. I’m comin,” Joel orders.

“A-alright, I will, man. I’ll, uh… I’ll see you out there.” 

Jesse leaves the room as hurriedly as he had entered, nervously fumbling with the handle as he shuts the door on his way out. “That kid ever learn how to fuckin’ knock?” Joel mutters to himself, picking his belt up off the floor and looping it back around his waist. He retrieves your ruined panties when he’s done and casually tosses them over to you, a stark contrast from the attentive aftercare he had provided last night. You slide off the vanity table and tug them back on over your legs, shivering at the feeling of the cool, damp fabric against where you’re so sensitive and sore, still leaking Joel’s spend. You fidget with the hem of your dress and try to ignore the way your heart sinks into your stomach, wondering what Jesse must think of you now. You haven’t really spoken to him at all since this whole thing started, and you doubt you ever will after what happened tonight. Of course, he’d had a front row seat to your obscene little performance during Kiss it Better, but it was all just an act, as far as he knew. But he has more than enough confirmation now to know that it very much wasn’t, and the humiliation of it all makes your anxious imagination begin to run wild. Your bottom lip quivers at the thought of Jesse running straight back to the guys with a shit-eating look on his face, eager to tell them all about how he just saw their opening act with her legs spread for Joel in his dressing room. Images flash through your mind of the band you’ve looked up to for so long now shooting you dirty looks backstage and whispering about you amongst themselves, sharing their doubts about if you really deserve to be touring with them at all. Maybe they’d call you easy, say that you’re just another dumb slut who gave it up for the first rockstar who asked, that your career will be doomed unless you grow up and learn to respect yourself a little more. And maybe they’d be right.

You can’t stop a few hot tears from rolling down your cheek at your catastrophizing, but you wipe them away quickly. This is what you asked for, isn’t it? Joel had given you an opportunity to leave this where he had ended it, and you were the one who had begged to be his, even after he showed you what it would look like, and told you explicitly what it would never be. You pull your shoulders back and make an effort to stand up a little straighter as he addresses you again, not wanting to look like some pathetic, defeated thing.

“You good? Need anythin’?” Joel asks, and it would be kind of sweet if he weren’t halfway out the door already. 

You sniffle a little, but try to feign nonchalance as you shake your head and reply, “No, ‘m fine.”

You must not do a very good job of it, because he’s craning his neck to look down the hallway as soon as you finish your sentence, like he knows exactly what’s on your mind. “Don’t worry ‘bout him,” Joel says to you, giving an annoyed shake of his head. “If he knows what’s good for him he’ll go to his grave swearin’ he didn’t see anything. Kid knows better,” he reassures, and it does help to slow the unspooling of your thoughts some. 

“Okay,” is all you offer, along with a small smile.

Joel nods curtly, “Okay.” And after another beat and a rake of his eyes along your form, “I’ll see ya, songbird.”

He’s gone before you can reply, and you let the sound of the door closing ring out in your ears until you’re left in total silence, save for the sound of your own unsteady breathing. More than anything else, you just want to head back to your bus and scrub yourself clean of him, to put on unstained clothes and remove your ruined makeup so that you have a better chance of recognizing yourself in the mirror if you’re unfortunate enough to catch a glimpse of your reflection. Maybe if you hurry the pace of your walk of shame, you can outrun the feeling altogether, you think, swinging the dressing room door open and letting it slam behind you as you make a swift exit, heading straight for the one place that even slightly resembles a home to you right now. You keep your head low as you wander the unfamiliar backstage halls, and hold the skirt of your dress down against the breeze that threatens to expose you yet again when you push open the venue’s back door. More tears begin to fall as your boots carry you up the steps of your bus and lead you to your private little room in the back, and you don’t wipe them away this time, although you can’t put your finger on why they stream down your skin so impatiently, one stinging droplet after another.

You sit down heavily on the edge of your bed, although you have a strange urge to kneel at the foot of it instead. Your fingers find their way to your crucifix as you contemplate the idea, and it hits you all at once how very lost you feel. You miss… something. Your mother? Perhaps not, but maybe the idea of having a caregiver, someone to turn to when you feel the way you do now, to help you sort through the tangled knot of emotions unraveling itself in your heart and attempt to make some kind of sense of it. She wasn’t the perfect mother, by any means, but she tried, and it was her first time being a woman too, after all. You are following in her footsteps, as many daughters aspire to do with their mothers, but you don’t think she would be very proud of the particular path of hers you’ve begun to find yourself stumbling down—the one that leads you to a man who won’t change himself, who can’t, but who you’ve somehow convinced yourself that you deserve, because you’ve never known a man who’s told you otherwise. 

And now here you sit, alone, in the dark cave of your too-big bus on the second night of a career-changing national tour, crying girlish tears and missing something you can’t place but that you know you can’t go back to, wishing someone could just wipe your mind clean and tell you that you’re good and that you’re not a disappointment to your mother and God even though you don’t really care what they think of you anymore, anyway. You need someone to tell you who you are, and Joel seems to know the answer—a good girl, a whore, his songbird. You shift at the memories of when those names for you have spilled from his mouth, and you’re reminded of the wet fabric still pressed against your core. It feels good when he tells you who you are, after all, when he slots himself inside of you and makes you feel like something he owns, when he makes you feel perfect and floaty and beautiful and like he knows you better than you’ve ever known yourself.

And how could something that feels so good ever be bad for you?

—

The whiskey burns as it slides down the back of Joel’s throat, but it still isn’t strong enough. All it does is remind him of the igniting spark that led to the blaze now engulfing him—when you’d both had a few glasses of the stuff swimming around in your blood streams in the green room of last night’s venue, when he’d lured you onto his lap and teased the wet spot on your panties and asked if you’d let him touch you. He knew you were going to say yes, but it was still the respectable thing to do, and he had liked hearing you beg for it all pretty and polite. He fears that’s the last he may have seen of that version of you, that what he did this morning had stomped out the little delicate, glimmering light that had drawn him to you in the first place. And if it wasn’t snuffed out then, it’s surely nothing but a wisp of smoke now.

Joel had recognized when everything had started to become too real too fast, in the dark of his bus last night when even in your sleep, you had seemed to consider him as something warm and comforting and safe, instead of the beast that he knows himself to be, with too sharp of claws and too loud of a roar. He had tried to do the right thing for once in his goddamn life by finally thinking about someone other than himself, so why didn’t you take the opportunity to get out of this while you had the chance? What is it that you see in him that he knows for a fact isn’t there, has never been there? You had retaliated because you had wanted this to work, because he had hurt you when he shoved you away, but he can’t possibly fathom why you’ve chosen to fight so hard for this. And he’d only gone and proved himself right when he responded to your reprisal the only way he knows how, especially when you’d used that word against him that he’s always been avoidant to admit about himself—coward.

And you were right, weren’t you? Joel is a fucking coward. He does everything in his power to pretend otherwise, to show his fans and the world a version of himself who’s never for a second thought of himself as anything less than God incarnate. And maybe except for Tommy, no one has ever been the wiser to his ruse, until you. And it scares him, to be seen so clearly. Because then he might actually have to try to understand where all these defense mechanisms came from in the first place, and he can’t have that. 

Coward.

Joel tosses back the last of the amber liquid in his glass, releasing his white-knuckled grip on it and slamming it back down onto the green room’s bar cart. He knows that his band and about twenty thousand people are waiting for him to buck up and emerge from yet another hiding place, and he realizes that this is becoming a pattern with you—you awaken some long-dormant feeling from deep inside of him, it makes him feel threatened, and he retreats until it goes away and he remembers how to paint his mask back on. And the one time you didn’t allow him to run away, he lashed out like a caged animal and undoubtedly gave you a pretty solid idea of what he meant by “for your own good”. And yet, you were so desperate to be allowed any part of him at all that even in his most volatile and beastly state, with his talons out and his teeth bared, you didn’t run away. You didn’t even try. You didn’t want to. You took everything he had given you like it was a privilege to do so, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever understand why. 

Joel shakes himself out, hitting a solid hand against his cheek once in order to bring himself back from the depths of another unwanted episode of introspection and self-loathing, and lets the burn of the whiskey dissipate as he makes his way to where the rest of Death’s Head is waiting for him. He can feel their eyes on him without even needing to look, and snaps out a defensive I don’t wanna hear it before any of the guys get a chance to say anything. 

Tommy shrugs, stepping up to Joel with his arms crossed. “Wasn’t gonna say nothin’.” 

Joel finally turns to face the group, giving each member a scrutinizing once-over in an attempt to read their body language, to suss out if they’re just pissed because he left them waiting, or if Jesse ran his mouth while he was gone. When Joel’s examining eyes land on the dark-haired guitarist, Jesse’s quick to shake his head, mouthing the words they don’t know. Satisfied, Joel nods once in understanding, adjusting his jacket and cracking his neck before turning toward the stage again.

“Y’all ready, or what?” he mutters rhetorically, not bothering to wait for an answer before he marches his way into the spotlights and allows them to enshroud him, burning up what remains of that cowardly version of him, if only for the remainder of the night. Joel picks up his guitar, swinging the strap around his chest before fiddling with his mic stand as the deafening sound of the crowd reminds him of who the fuck he is, or at least, who they think he is. Who he pretends to be. And he gets to believe it for the next two hours. If he plays the part well enough, maybe he can lose himself in it entirely. But then, hasn’t he been trying to do that for the past couple of decades? It hasn’t seemed to work yet, but it doesn’t hurt to keep trying. 

Or maybe it does.

—

You feel a little better now, more at ease, now that you’ve had some time to focus on taking care of yourself. It’s easy to forget the wonders that a hot shower can do for a girl, especially when you have to fight against your own brain just to get up and take the ten or so steps towards the bathroom, when you’d much rather stay curled up in the same position on your bed until your skin adheres to the sheets. Now having scrubbed away the tears and the sweat and the tacky dampness between your thighs, you emerge from a cloud of rose-scented humidity as someone you think you understand a little better now, who deserves to be taken care of instead of reprimanded for only doing her best with what she’s been given.

With clean hair and skin and a comfortable change of sleep-ready attire, you decide to finally make some efforts to unpack your suitcase and make your little room feel more like a home. You hang your dresses up on the rack, set your shoes into a somewhat orderly line on the carpet below them, and place your jewelry neatly onto the antique tray you had carefully packed away to bring along with you. You had found it in a little thrift store downtown, when you had first left home and decided you needed something that was only yours, something pretty and special that you could look at everyday and know that it was the very first step in building the life that you had always wanted for yourself. The brass needs a little polishing, but it’s still one of the most beautiful objects you’ve ever seen, and the way the ceiling lights glint off the metal brightens up your space just enough that it feels a little more familiar to you now. 

Your earrings and other necklaces fill the blank space in the center of the neatly carved filigree, and you make the decision to add your crucifix to the pile of silver studs and chains. It’s strange how such a simple charm can make things feel so complicated. You haven’t taken it off in so long that you fear the guilt that might come with removing it, but you figure it will still be there for you if you ever feel like clipping it around your neck again. And if that feeling never comes, then you’ll deal with that then, too.

For now, you breathe a little deeper without the weight of the thing resting against your chest, and smile to yourself when you hear a small group of excitable-sounding male voices approaching your bus. Your bandmates file through the door a second later, though you’re suddenly shy to greet them as you emerge from your bedroom, worried that they might be pissed at you for what you sprung on them earlier in the night. You lean against the doorframe as they each collapse onto the living area couches, cracking open beers from the minifridge and passing them around to each other.

“Hey, you,” greets your floppy-haired drummer, Max, patting the cushion next to him. If any of the guys were to be easy going about what you put them through tonight, it would be him. You’re happy to see that he doesn’t seem to hold any animosity towards you. “You want me to crack one open for you?” he offers.

“Um… sure,” you agree, approaching the group and relaxing into the open seat next to him as he hands you a bottle. You take a few swigs while the guys begin to talk amongst themselves, waiting for an opportune lull in their conversation for you to chime in.

It comes about halfway through your beer. “So, listen,” you start, setting the sweating bottle on the table in front of you as you feel their gazes shift in your direction. “I’m sorry for pulling that on you guys tonight. This whole thing is just as big for y’all as it is for me and… I guess I forgot about that, for a second,” you say, although the end of your sentence kind of sounds like a question. “I really appreciate how you backed me up out there, that’s all.”

It’s rare that the four of you get sincere with each other like this, and your apology lingers in the air for a moment before someone else speaks up. 

“It’s alright, kid.” The comforting voice comes from Scott, your quiet and kind-eyed bassist. “We’re all professionals here, yeah? We’d be some sad fuckin’ musicians if we couldn’t improvise every once in a while.” You laugh at that, and his lopsided smile warms you when you meet his soft expression.

“I mean, I kinda fucked up a little bit,” says Joey, your rhythm guitarist, ever-reliable for lightening the mood. “You sounded badass though, so whatever. Nothin’ you need to apologize for.” When you turn your head to look at him, he looks slightly uncomfortable with the way Max has him pressed up against the wall, but his gaze is sincere. “You wanna talk about it, though? Some pretty heavy shit you wrote.”

You do consider it, but shake your head, having reflected on it quite enough for one night. “Not right now,” you reply, and he gives you a sympathetic smile in return. “One of you have a smoke, though? Think I’m just gonna get some air and call it a night.” 

“Now, how are you gonna ‘get some air’ with all that smoke in your lungs?” Scott jests, and you give him a look before standing up and holding your palm out flat to him, making a hand it over gesture with your fingers. 

“Don’t give me shit, dude, I know you have one. That’s why I asked.”

Despite his protest, he digs the pack out of his pocket and slides one out, playfully holding it hostage against his chest. “Still shouldn’t smoke ‘em, though. Gonna ruin your voice one of these days.”

You roll your eyes at him, but laugh, anyway. “Fine, tonight’s my last one, I promise. Just gimme.”

Scott extends his hand out to you, and you snatch the cigarette out of his hold. “Light, too?” he asks, and you nod, leaning down to him with it in your mouth already.

You make a quick exit when the tobacco begins to burn, trying to fill the bus with as little smoke as possible, but not before making your appreciation known to the guys one last time. When you step out into the chilly night air, you wish you’d brought a sweater to wrap around you, but figure the flame between your lips will warm you up soon enough. 

The Death’s Head bus is parked just up ahead, and you can make out Jesse’s silhouette in the moonlight, his back leaned against the idling vehicle as he puffs his own cloud into the sky. The sound of your bus’s door shutting behind you draws his attention your way, and you give each other a friendly nod as you each burn through your cigarettes.

“Can I join you?” he asks, having to shout in order for his voice to reach you over the rumbling engines.

The fears you were ruminating on a few hours ago all come rushing back to you in an instant, but his inquiry seems casual enough for you to let your guard back down a little. It would be rude of you to decline, and it might be nice to get to know him a bit more if he’s offering, you suppose.

“Yeah, okay,” you reply, nodding for good measure in case your voice didn’t come out loud enough. His long legs close the short distance between you in just a few seconds, and you shove your unoccupied hand into your pocket in an effort to come across more relaxed than you feel. You’ve never been great at small talk, or meeting new people, especially ones who’ve walked in on you after having just been fucked by the lead singer of his band. 

You’re grateful that Jesse decides to break the silence first. “So, uh… you two, huh?”

“Mhm,” is all you offer, kicking a rock around the asphalt with the toe of your shoe.

“Yeah… Well, I don’t want you to feel weird around me, or anything. We can just forget it ever happened.”

You can’t help but release a puff of smoke through an awkward giggle. “Sounds good to me.”

“And I didn’t tell the other two, just so you know.”

His admission makes you pause, trapping the rock underneath your shoe as you peer up at him. “You didn’t? So… they don’t know?”

Jesse shakes his head. “Don’t think so. Well, Tommy might, just ‘cause he knows Joel better than anybody, but Eugene’s probably clueless. They’re all good guys, they won’t give you shit for it even if they do find out… I might, though, just for fun.” He nudges your shoulder with his as he jokes, and it makes you laugh a little more earnestly this time. “Just… be careful, that’s all. And I want you to know you have a friend in me, if you ever feel like you need one.”

His kindness is nearly enough to bring you to tears. You feel so relieved that everything the worst parts of your brain had conjured up had all been a lie, that Jesse isn’t who you feared he’d be, and that he’s offering you his friendship, even after he’d seen you in such an embarrassing and compromising state tonight. 

“Jess!” Joel yells from the doorway of his bus, and the harsh gravel voice startles both of you out of the moment you’d been sharing. “Finish up, kid. Takin’ off in a few.”

Jesse nods, raising the end of his cigarette in acknowledgement before stomping it out on the pavement. “It was nice talking to you. Remember what I said, okay?” 

“Okay,” you nod, and he’s handsome and boyish when he smiles back at you before following his orders and jogging back to his own bus, sliding through the door past Joel’s broad form.

Joel’s expression is hard, but otherwise unreadable as he juts his chin at you, wordlessly suggesting the same direction he’d just barked at Jesse. He shuts the door behind him as he steps inside, and you think on Jesse’s words as you finish puffing your smoke down to a nub. Be careful, he’d cautioned, and it’s like he had been waiting outside for you to make sure he had a chance to tell you that. Remember what I said, like it was important to him that you took his words to heart. You finally toss the end of your own cigarette onto the ground, letting it sizzle out before heading back inside and carefully passing the now-occupied bunks as you make your way to your own little sanctuary. 

You’re still buzzing from the tobacco as you close yourself into your room and crawl into bed, and you can’t decide if the emptiness of it makes you feel comforted or afraid. You don’t necessarily wish you had Joel’s heavy, lumbering form tucked in beside you, but you hadn’t anticipated how having a bed to yourself would leave you with only the company of your own thoughts. You try not to dwell too much on Jesse’s warning, instead trying to snuff it out like the smoldering end of your cigarette so that it doesn’t prevent you from getting some much needed rest.

Even for being a bed inside of a tour bus, you have to admit that it’s one of the most comfortable, luxurious things you’ve ever slept on, especially compared to the lumpy double bed from back in your apartment. You don’t fight it when sleep begins to pull heavily on your eyelids, the incoming wave of it washing away any lingering anxieties as you allow yourself to relax into the plush mattress.

You hardly rouse even as the bus heaves forward on its trip out of the parking lot, leaving everything that happened tonight exactly where you left it, the ghost of it now left to wander the halls of the venue instead of haunting you as you travel to the next one. And there’s something comforting in that, you think, in the idea that nothing on this tour is permanent, that your life begins anew every 24 hours in a city you’ve never been to that doesn’t know your name yet. 

And maybe that’s how you’ll figure this whole thing out, by taking it one day at a time, fluttering as close to the flame as possible without touching it, because you kind of like feeling the heat on your wings. As long as you’re careful when you dance around the fire, then there’s really nothing to be afraid of.

But only time will tell.

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