#thought he must still be out there Not fucked up.....

[nonotnolan]

No Regrets

My roommate's body keeps looking at me like I'm supposed to be making the first move. It was weird enough when my roommate and his girlfriend swapped bodies for the weekend, but the unspoken tension was starting to become unbearable. "Seriously, Tiffany, you're starting to creep me out. Don't you and Daniel have plans for tonight?"

She just smiled at me. "No plans. I'm still deciding how I want to spend my evening. Daniel, though... he's taking my body out clubbing tonight. He wants to see how many free drinks he can score, and I think he's also planning to get laid." Gross. I knew better than to say anything out loud, but my face must have given me away. "Don't be such a prude, Jeff. You know we have an open relationship."

I tugged at my collar. "I know, Tiff, I'm sorry. I just... body swaps that cross the gender line still make me uncomfortable. It feels wrong, somehow. And, I mean, technically they are illegal."

"Oh please, get over yourself," she said, tossing herself onto his bed. "Swaps over 12 hours are also illegal, but that didn't stop you from hiring someone to take your Calc exam two weeks ago. You need to learn how to relax. Not everything you were told on Sundays is true, you know. Some things aren't actually all that bad. You're only clutching your pearls because society told you that swapping genders was bad. What harm is there, as long as both people consent?"

I wanted to argue, but I knew Tiffany was absolutely correct. There wasn't anything wrong with the two of them swapping bodies outside of society telling us that men and women could only swap with other men and other women. Which... given the way that their open relationship also defied societal expectations, I suppose it wasn't too much of a surprise that the two of them thought so little about swapping like this. "You're right, and I'm sorry. I... I'm trying, really. You've heard how conservative my childhood was. It's a lot to unlearn."

"Well, maybe it's time to start unlearning," she said, beckoning me closer. "You want to know the real reason I'm still here? It's because of you, stud. I'm here to see you." Did Tiffany just call me a stud? She had to be mocking me, but I could feel myself blushing all the same.

Tiffany started to unbutton my shirt, brushing her fingers along my exposed chest as she did so. I could feel myself growing erect. Were we... were we really doing this? They were in an open relationship, after all, it wasn't like he was helping Tiffany cheat on his roommate. With his roommate? God, Swappers made things confusing.

"I've seen the way you look at Daniel," she said, rubbing a hand across the stubble on my chin. "I love the man, but he's too straight and too clueless to pick up on those stares. And honestly, I can't help but think that you're too sheltered to realize you're even doing it half the time."

"I... thought I was hiding it better," I said, trying to steady my emotions. Her fingers started to tease my nipples, leaving me squirming with raw pleasure. "I still don't know if I'm bisexual, or gay, or just... Mormon. But I didn't think it mattered. He's already in a relationship with you. What I want isn't important."

"He's in an open relationship," she said, staring at me like I was a hunk of meat to be devoured. "He's also not here right now. I'm in control of this body right now, and I want to fuck you senseless. If that's what you want too, well..." Tiffany slipped her hand inside my waistband, giving my manhood a firm squeeze that had me gasping for breath. "Tonight's a perfect night to let loose. No regrets."

I couldn't hold back anymore. I leaned in for a quick kiss, which Tiffany returned with tongue. The two of us stripped down as fast as we could, though I made certain not to let her pull me onto the bed with her. "Not on Daniel's bed," I said, dragging her over to my part of the bedroom. "His sheets reek of frat boy sweat, and I doubt he has any lube."

"I, uhh... you're alright with being on top, right?" I asked, as I handed her the bottle of lube from my nightstand. It occurred to me that we hadn't actually talked through any plans, set boundaries, or anything like that. "The way you phrased it, I'm assuming that's what you meant, I just--"

"Stop. Thinking." Seeing Daniel's face looming over me, with a look of pure lust on his face, it was everything I never knew I needed. I started rolling over onto my knees before she yelled at me. "Not like that, stay on your back. I want to see your face as I fuck you senseless."

Tiffany spent the entire time telling me exactly what to do, and it was everything I could have ever wanted. She got me lubed, eased me onto her massive manhood, and railed me like there was no tomorrow. My chest was coated in strands of my own cum, while Daniel's cum slowly leaked out of my ass. I'd never had a no-hands orgasm before, but holy hell I could not believe how amazing that felt.

"I can't believe we just did that," I said, trying to catch my breath. She responded by scooping up some of the jizz off of my torso and putting it into her mouth. She was making an entire production out of licking it off of her finger, and I could feel myself getting hard again. "So, uhh... you... you'll be in Daniel's body for the entire evening?"

"If that's your way of asking me if I'd like to fuck you again? The answer is yes," she said, giving me a wink. "Even better, we might be able to make this a weekly thing," she added, standing up to grab some towels. "I don't think I'll have to fight too hard to convince Daniel to swap. What sort of straight man doesn't enjoy having boobs?"

God, I was falling for her so hard. What had I gotten myself into? Life was going to be a long, awkward hell once my roommate was back in his own body. And yet... I had to admit, I had no regrets.

[pythonmoth]

cw: anxiety. post-traumatic stress disorder (torture). reader is traumatized. reader is a bit unreliable. military inaccuracies. hurt/comfort (I guess?).

simon riley x f!reader. implied simon riley x soap. implied simon riley x f!reader x soap.

First | Last | Next

Being home is incredibly boring, especially if you can't move much.

Your brother's been taking care of you, making sure you're eating, that you let your injuries breathe, and soon enough, the cuts on your feet allow you to move around on your own. It takes a whole month for your brother to leave you alone for longer than a few hours. It's a good thing, really, because if you want to spend hours just laying in your bed and crying in silence as you stare at the ceiling, you can. He would only come whenever you needed a ride, anyway.

Despite being able to move around and now even managing to use your sensitive fingers, you dread the idea of going outside. You have to wear sandals and loose pants, because your toes cannot, by any means, be touched by any kind of fabric yet, or else you're grimacing in pain. Feeling defenseless hasn't been a thing ever since you became part of the team. Not even your skills could take down Simon, but you could put up a fight with them all, easily; never won, but you were confident with anyone else on the street.

No doubt you could still beat them up, your skills are still there, but the idea of someone somehow restricting your movements felt like torture all over again. The idea of anyone getting a hold of you makes you want to throw up. Your mind and body betray you, making you remember those awful moments, and you don't realize you're pulling a face.

"You're spacing out".

You look up at the therapist, giving her a little nod as an apology, getting comfortable on the seat. Restless, you can't help but look around for a moment again. The office is incredibly white, clean, filled with mirrors for whatever fucked up reason, and the only thing that isn't grey or white is one of the cushions on the couch on the other side of the room. It's deep purple. It looks awful.

Seemingly realizing you won't be of much help with the question she just asked you, she gives you a smile. "How are your nails? I can see you're using your hands a lot more".

"They're healing" you reply, looking down at your fingers instead of focusing on the cushion. "I can use my hands pretty normally now, but I can't use the stove for long".

"Because of the heat". An affirmation. You've already mention it before, and you're not surprised she remembers that. Probably read it on her notes.

"It hurts, yeah".

"And how are your feet?" she asks, looking down at the way you absentmindedly drag your hands on your pants from your thighs to your calves in slow movements. You only realize what you're doing because you can hear the way her pen drags across the paper, distracting you.

"Well... I can only wear sandals. Doctor said I should be okay to move around with real shoes in three months".

"And what do you think?"

"He's the doctor. I want to believe he knows what he's doing, so I can't really question it. I do hope it heals sooner, though".

The therapist writes down on her notebook. With an uncomfortable feeling, you desperately want to know what she's writing, your eyes drifting to the movement of the pen, but you can't make out a single letter.

"So you trust the doctor, right?" she questions, moving one of her erasers to the other side of her desk. Your eyes are fixed entirely on it, on the little thud the eraser makes when she sets it down.

"He knows best, that's for sure. If he's there, must be a reason" you answer, tilting your head as she keeps moving her things around, making them fit somewhere else on her desk. The pencil goes to the left, then to the right, the eraser from top to bottom of the notebook, as if she's as antsy as you are.

"Do you apply that thought somewhere else? Like... at work? Or if you need help at a store and find an employee, maybe?"

The therapist's eyes are on you all the time, your hands, your anxious feet; your little habits coming to light with a single look. The way you bite the inside of your lower lip, the little double blink you make when she moves something in her desk yet again, even if you don't say anything.

"Of course. If they know their way around, it's only right that I ask for help, and trust that" you answer, frowning. You don't think that question is relevant at all, but she keeps writing, and writing.

"I see. Thank you. Now, you mentioned you've been texting G- Simon. Can you tell me how it makes you feel?"

You go silent for a moment, your fingertips dragging across your arm, so softly you can barely feel it. "It's better now".

During the first three months of being home, Simon would text you nearly every single day. He didn't expect a text back and you knew that, because you told him you wouldn't promise to be responsive. Simon would send you pictures of their plain meals, of Gaz sleeping on your bed, Johnny posing next to Price with their thumbs up, or terrible selfies of himself. Always without a mask.

Tuesday

11:27

"Price scolded Johnny because he had crumbs on his uniform. It was hilarious"

Saturday

03:26

"Just got back. Everyone ok"

Even Johnny would text you from time to time. It was mostly memes, awful stickers or ridiculous, random photos of Gaz mid talking, his face weird, or Price smacking Simon's head, or the entire team posing for a picture, Gaz' arm hovering to the side as if to hug your shoulders. You didn't even need to wonder why Gaz hadn't texted you; that man hated technology with a passion.

Still, you never texted back.

You didn't really pay attention to the texts, or the little voice notes, or the selfies. You didn't feel like reading them properly, always leaving them on seen or just grunting to yourself whenever you heard their distinctive tone. Why you didn't change it in the past few months, you don't know. Maybe that's a question for your therapist.

But then, the texts stop.

Monday

16:49

"Tough job"

"We leave at midnight"

23:42

"Text you when we're back"

Only, Simon doesn't text back. For days. For weeks.

You can't pretend you're not worried. It's impossible, really. You're half-tempted to call him, but you can't, you don't know how it will feel to hear his voice again. He said he'd text you and he hasn't, so he isn't back yet, and you don't want to feel vulnerable by opening up. Yet.

You go through Simon's chat, actually paying attention to whatever he sent you. You realize he sometimes sent you long texts, apologizing, accepting what he did, and even a few voice notes that you didn't notice before. They made your heart race as you listened.

"I hurt you, and I'm sorry. I love you, and you don't have to forgive me"

"Garrick told me to tell you that if you aren't eating he'll go and— shut the hell up, Johnny, I'm talking!"

"Tell her we'll go visit her by the end of the month".

That's Price's voice, you realize.

Feeling incredibly choked up, you check Johnny's chat next. You're expecting to find nothing but memes, as you've seen in passing, but when you see he sent you long, long texts, you finally let yourself cry properly.

He's been apologizing since the day you left, too afraid to face you but his texts are so poorly written you know he was in a rush, or crying, or both. His voice notes, however... they just make you break.

"I'm so sorry. I can't undo what we did. You don't owe me anything, I just... really hope you can at least tolerate me. If not, please know I'll always care for you. I love you. Goodnight".

Something inside of your chest eases, maybe moved to the point of forgiveness, even if just a moment. Your therapist has been helping you unveil whatever you missed during that day— during the torture. It's been a tough process, and she insisted you visited twice a week instead of once, but it helped. You could now understand.

Still, understanding the situation only makes your worry grow.

"Text you when we're back"

For two long weeks, there's nothing, from nobody. Only silence and fear. For the first time since you left, you're scared for them. Scared you'll have to open the door one day and it'll be Price, or maybe not even him, telling you the team is dead.

On the second week, your therapist says you can give them a call, or text them if it's more comfortable. When you say you can't, she advices you to write them letters.

"Tell them whatever you wish to say. If you're angry, write it. If you're worried, write it. There's no good or bad feelings, and it's only right to feel them. Write them for yourself, and then you can choose to give them to your team, or not".

And you did.

A whole notebook of messy writing, some tears staining the paper, and your hate slowly turned to understanding. Real understanding. Not forgiveness, not yet, but it's progress.

By the third week with no news, you just can't handle it anymore. You press call without a second thought and your heart squeezes painfully in your chest when it rings, and rings, and rings.

Hopeless, you lay in your bed, your mind working overtime as you stare at the ceiling.

A muffled dinging sound startles you awake, shifting on the bed to find your phone because that's Simon's tone. Adjusting your vision, you realize it fell from your hands to the ground when you fell asleep. You dive for it, grimacing when your sensitive fingertips brush against the carpet, but to see his name there is enough for you to endure it.

Thursday

01:22

"Safe. Couldn't text you earlier"

01:22

"You called me. Are you hurt?"

01:22

"Safe. Call me"

"Now"

His name pops up not even a moment later, his ringtone filling your ears. When you pick up, he's barely breathing, and you wonder if you're about to be told bad news.

Simon explains they were on a very tough mission, and that that was why he couldn't text you, or communicate with you at all. You could hear him shift, move around. Restless.

They got caught in enemy territory, surviving the best they could for two weeks, Simon tells you. Johnny was shot in the leg and Gaz was the one who helped him out, since Simon was too busy dragging Price, who was bleeding out because someone decided it would be fun to put a bullet through his left shoulder.

"I wasn't any better. Dr. Wilson called me a dick, and then made me lay down because I was shaking. Ridiculous" he grunts, his voice hushed on the other side of the line. "Got shot on my side, I just didn't feel it, but I was better than the other two".

He doesn't seem to expect you to speak, huffing and shuffling. You can tell he's in the clinic room, the echo incredibly familiar by now.

Of course, he doesn't tell you that the reason why he didn't text you the whole past week, is because he's been asleep, drugged out of his mind because of the pain.

"Everyone's okay. No risk. Garrick's the only one who didn't get hurt. I think—"

"I was worried, Simon. I'm glad everyone is okay".

There's silence for a long moment. Simon takes a deep breath from the other side of the phone, sighing deeply. You could hear the smile in his tone. "I wouldn't let myself get killed, luv. I'm sorry I couldn't text you before. We're safe now".

You two spend the rest of the night on the call, with you mostly staying in silence and listening. You can't believe how scared you've been for all of them, for Simon. You know it's gonna be hard to fully forgive them, if at all, but you can't help the way your body relaxes as you hear him breathing against your ear. You can't help the way your arms curl around the pillow, seeking his warmth. As before.

The call goes on for long hours. When your soft hums as he speaks stop coming to his end, Simon goes quiet, realizing you've fallen asleep. He sighs and shifts to look at the ceiling, holding the phone against his ear. Focusing on your soft breathing, he let's himself fall asleep, the gunshot wound completely unimportant if he gets to listen to you sleeping again.

He just wishes you were there.

im so sick y'all, my head hurts, but I obviously couldn't resist! also, you guys like Marina? her new song is so good! mowgli's road's vibes.

the therapist's room I'm describing in the story is actually my therapist's old room. I hated it so BAD. the mirrors were a terrible decision. also, if you can't relate to this type of therapy, that's fine. it's just my experience.

again, styling is fully intentional. can y'all tell how our reader is feeling?~

taglist: @euphoricn @lilg101010 @enfppuff @carolchaotic @silas-fanfic-favs @nina-from-317 @an-ever-angry-bi @kittygonap @dorothy-rainbird-deactivated202 @adventurerabby @defronix @sheepispink @iambuttwodaysold @blackhawkfanatic @malevolentghoul @thriving-n-jiving @literallegendicon @echo9821 @angel-bugz @ssc7514 @clickbait-official @hades--baby @blackhawkfanatic @sirbonesly @saki---chan @skeletonsucker @nnsissys @kukavittu @tessakate @honestlymassivetrash @s-a-v-a-n-a-34

(we're so many now, wow! thank you all ♡)

[sexlapis]

*

A thud jolts Toji out of his sleep.

It was a quiet noise, barely audible to the average person.

But he heard it loud and clear.

He sits up immediately, blood already bubbling hot and pumping through his body. He reaches behind his pillow and pulls out his gun, then proceeds to slowly climb out of his cheap bed, wincing internally at every creak and squeak it makes.

Toji curses his past self for being so stingy.

This must be the day then. The day when somebody finally put a hit out on him and now some rando is out to finish the job and get their prize.

Toji wouldn’t make it that easy for them.

He didn’t make it this far, survive the brutalities of the Zenin’s, the loss of the love of his life and then, essentially, his child too, to be killed by some sucker who doesn’t even have the balls to face him properly.

Not a fucking chance.

Toji creeps out of his bedroom, inching towards the kitchen where the sound came from. It isn’t a long journey - it’s a small, shitty apartment he lives in and the rooms are barely even separated from one another.

As he gets closer, he hears it; shuffling sounds, like someone is looking through his things, through his cupboards and cabinets along with the occasional clank of a tin.

Is this just a thief? Maybe a homeless person? A cat?

He wasn’t going to wait and find out.

Quelling down the small itch of fear, he flings the door open. Gun raises, hairs standing up right. Ready to fight. Ready to kill.

There, rummaging through the cupboard is…you.

Definitely not a thief. Definitely not a hit man. Certainly not a curse user or a bounty hunter.

You stand there, frozen. Your eyes bulge out of your skull at the sight of the gun a few feet away from you. And at the tall, domineering man who holds it as easily as holding cutlery.

“Who the fuck are you?” Toji spits.

Your mouth falls open and no words come out.

You seem to be frozen in fear. For good reason.

The man in front of you is a tank - big, no doubt physically strong and could easily put you down without having to use the gun in his hand. And judging by the scar on his lips, you’d guess he is well versed in the world of fighting and brawling.

You’re screwed.

The guns clicks.

“I said, who the fuck are you?”

“I-I, I’m-“” You cut yourself off with quick, uneven breaths, “-please-“”

Toji looks you up and down, gun still raised and pointed right at you.

Then he realises he knows who you are.

You’re that person he sees everytime he goes out. He wishes he could be more specific, but it’s impossible because he really has no idea who on earth you are.

Sometimes you’re walking hurriedly down the street, eyes on the ground. Other times he catches sight of you in the alleyway, sitting on the grimey ground, asleep. One time, he even noticed you shoplifting from the shop of the nice old lady who gives him free hard candy, which he thought was a shitty thing to do, but it’s not like he can talk. He’s not the police.

Still. Toji knows you. Well, knows of you.

Other than your survivalist behaviours he knows not a damn thing about you, not even your name. Not your age. Nothing.

You’re elusive, hidden in plain sight, in the flashes of his peripheral vision, and right now, Toji has never been more confused in his whole life.

“What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?”

Still, you stare at him like a deer.

It’s getting harder for him to believe you’re a threat.

You gulp, hands raised in surrender. Your body trembles.

“I…I was…I was hungry.” You croak out. Your eyes quiver, going glassy. “I’m sorry.”

Toji blinks at you. He observes your old, worn clothes, your unwashed hair, the dark rings that paint your eyes, the tears that now streak down your face. The lines and dents in your face that are only carved by a life of hardship and pain. Then he sighs. He lowers his gun.

You’re no killer. You’re not a threat. You’re just hungry.

Whatever anger, fear, apprehension or hostility Toji felt towards you fades away with each slow breath of relief he exhales.

Now, as he looks at you in your ragged clothes and your wide, scared eyes all he feels for you is pity.

It wasn’t uncommon to see people like you in Toji’s line of work - the outcasts of society, the people who exist along the edges of civilisation, the ones who need just one more pill, the girls selling their bodies on the street to so-called upstanding men, the former soldiers who are payed for their service with a missing leg and a seat on the side of the street - people like you who walk along the cliff of society just waiting to be pushed off.

He sighs.

Toji could just tell you to fuck off, to get out and never come bask, to threaten you for real so you don’t do anything this stupid again.

Instead, he walks to his fridge.

You yelp at the movement, heart drumming in your chest. Your eyes squeeze shut. You wait for the impact of a smack, a punch, a bullet, a kick, anything, preparing for how you will get yourself out of this situation you walked right into.

You hear the fridge open and close. You can hear him walk towards you. Then he’s in front of you. His body heats wavers over you.

“Here.”

Your eyes flutter open.

He holds a package of tinfoil to you. It smells nice. Really nice. Saliva pools on your tongue.

You blink up at him, eyes wet and vision blurry.

Toji peers down at you. He looks bored.

Toji tuts. “Are you gonna take it or what?”

You alternate between glancing at the foil-wrapped food and at him, blinking wildly. It seems like you’re sizing him up a little. Trying to see whether this is some kind of trick, if he wants something from you in return.

Finally, which twitching hands, you clasp the food in your hands.

For a moment you both hold onto it. Toji’s big hands look almost comical next to yours.

He lets go. Toji almost thinks you’re going to drop it considering your weak grip, but you don’t.

You look at the foil-covered food for a second. You can’t believe this stranger who you only see in passing just…gave you food after breaking into his house. Now that you think of it, you should’ve been more careful, you aren’t usually so reckless. But you were so damn hungry, and you got caught shoplifting (though, you were let off with just a warning - they felt bad). So, you were desperate. And considering how things turned out, you got lucky. It could’ve turned out much worse for you if it was some other guy who wasn’t…whoever this guy is.

Toji goes back to looking through his fridge like you’re not even there. He’s probably looking to see if you took anything. You didn’t.

“Thank…Thank you.” You stammer out. Your teeth chatter.

Toji cuts his eye at you.

“Don’t break into people’s apartments. You’ll get shot one day.”

Your breath hitches. You give him a static nod.

Walking backwards, you look at the package in your hands again. The smile you give him is a genuine one, softening your tired eyes. You turn your back on him, running towards the open window in the kitchen and jumping out.

Then you’re gone.

“Fuck.” Tojj curses. “This neighbourhood is fucking crazy.”

*

masterlist

[sturnioz]

hiii! i love your fratboy!chris and shy!reader prompts and i have an idea for one!!!

okay so i was thinking, chris comes over to reader’s house to spend the night but while reader was in the shower, he was being a little nosey and looking at the different decorations and stuff on her side table and he opens the drawer to find a vape or something similar but its not buns vape its one of her friends and they just probably forgot to grab it or something but chris is so angry because he thinks its hers. and you can think of the rest!!!

changed this req up just a bit to fit the characters !! i hope you dont mind <3

you knew chris was coming over, so he doesn't make his presence known as he walks through the front door, barely sparing a glance at bee—who's sprawled lazily across the couch, scrolling on her phone—as he makes a straight beeline toward your room.

he hears the water running in the shower in the bathroom, but as always, he doesn't hesitate to make himself at home. he pushes the door to your room open and he lays across your bed, settling back against the headboard.

his nose wrinkles almost immediately when one of your jellycats brushes against his foot, and with a sharp kick, he sends the stuffed animal tumbling to the floor, hearing the soft thud as it hits the ground.

chris exhales sharply, adjusting the cap on his head and pulling the brim lower over his eyes before he lifts his hips, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans to pull out his phone, only to scoff with the screen refuses to light up.

he tongues the inside of his cheek in irritation as he leans over the edge of your bed, his eyes scanning the floor for your charger. when he fails to find what he needs, he sits back up, his gaze shifting to your beside table, pulling open the drawer and rummaging through it.

his fingers graze over something, and he pauses.

pulling it out, he stares at the object resting in the palm of his hand. a vape. his eyebrow arches as he turns it over between his fingers, inspecting it like it's some artifact he's never seen before—even though he owns a few himself.

utter confusion flashes across his face for a brief moment, but it's quickly replaced by his usual blunt scepticism. you don't smoke. he knows that, or at least he thought he did.

why the fuck would you have this tucked away? seemingly hidden in the back of your drawer? chris leans back against the headboard, the vape still in hand, his expression unreadable as his eyebrows pinch together.

when he hears the bathroom door creak open, his sharp eyes flit toward you, watching as you step into the room wrapped in a fluffy towel, water droplets trailing down your damp skin and onto the carpet.

"since when d'you vape?"

your eyebrows pull together in confusion as you glance at him, the corner of your lips tugging downward. "i don't.."

"riiiiight..." he drawls, dragging the word out as he lifts the vape into view, letting it dangle lazily between two fingers. "'cos uh, this was just randomly hidden in the back of your drawer for no reason, yeah? a'ight, kid. whatever you say."

"it's not mine," you say softly, shaking your head as you pad over to him.

his eyes track your movements, watching your every step and when you reach out for the vape, chris pulls his hand back, his fingers curling around it tightly.

"what flavour is it?"

chris blinks at you, his eyebrow raising in disbelief. "the fuck does that matter for?"

you try again, reaching for the vape, but chris is much quicker than you. he shifts back, extending his arm further away, and before you can get even closer, his other hand darts out, curling firmly around the front of your towel to keep you at bay.

you repeat your question, and chris huffs, rolling his eyes as if you're testing the last of his patience—which you are—and he turns the vape over in his hand, staring at the label.

"watermelon ice." he mutters flatly.

"oh, it's kittys!" you exclaim, your face lighting up with a smile as you explain. "she must've left it here when she stayed over the other night. oh—i should probably tell her. i don't want her to be worried..."

you trail off, already turning your head to look around for your phone. chris doesn't move, but his silence speaks volumes as his lips part slightly, and his eyebrows knit together as he watches you.

he doesn't say a word, just stares as you spot your phone sitting on your desk across the room. barely noticing the way his hand is still gripping the front of your towel, you give it a light tug to free yourself from his hold, and chris loosens his fingers, though his gaze lingers on you as you move across the room.

he shifts once again on the bed, slowly putting the vape back down in the drawer, only for his attention to turn back to you when you stumble, your foot catching against something on the floor.

"oh," he hears you mutter softly as you lean down to pick up the jellycat he'd kicked earlier off the bed. holding it in your hands, you frown slightly, brushing it off carefully. "what are you doing on the floor?"

dividers credits. @issysh3ll

[tossawary]

The fun thing about Luo Binghe potentially NOT being pushed into the Endless Abyss at the Immortal Alliance Conference, imo, is that he's still a forcibly outed heavenly demon stuck in the middle of the cultivation world after a deadly invasion. There are so many different fun ways to play it.

So, Shen Yuan groggily wakes up and the first thing he sees is that traitorous asshole Shang Qinghua's relieved face and disheveled appearance. Ugh. And then first thing that the An Ding Peak Lord says is: "Wow, and I thought the System hated my ass. It had it OUT for you, bro."

What the fuck.

At which point, Shen Yuan sits bolt upright because what the hell happened? The last thing he remembers is not moving, the weight of the sword in his hand, the thunder of his heart in his ears, not being able to go through with it, hoping against all reason that this was all some sort of sick test and that the System wouldn't really-

"Where's Binghe?" Shen Yuan demands.

Shang Qinghua winces. "About that..."

And Shen Yuan's heart falls because Binghe ended up in the Endless Abyss anyway, obviously. There were apparently two transmigrators all along and neither of them could truly change the story.

"He got arrested for your murder and the invasion of the conference," Shang Qinghua says, scratching the back of his neck. "It was ugly. So ugly. I probably would have died if Liu Qingge hadn't shown up to put him down. The Palace Master is saying that this is obviously revenge for Tianlang-Jun's sealing and Yue Qingyuan has pretty much stopped talking-"

"What."

"Oh, you were super dead, bro, and the protagonist freaked the fuck out. I was there, so he started yelling about why I hadn't done something, irrational with grief and all that, it was pretty scary."

And Shen Yuan can see how a surprise heavenly demon kid would get blamed for his shizun's death and the invasion of the conference. There was nothing a drama liked better than an innocent person somehow caught red-handed in the middle of an inexplicable disaster.

"Wait, the invasion IS your fault!" Shen Yuan says, pointing an accusatory finger. He feels like shit still, but his righteous, trembling anger is going mostly in the right direction. "Why didn't you speak up-?"

"What, and I was going to admit to that in front of all of those peak lords and sect leaders? Get off my dick, bro."

"I meant blame Mobei-Jun!"

"Oh, yeah. They'd made up their minds, though! And shit got really violent really quickly! Liu Qingge is still itching to kill someone here, you know. Ask yourself why you're not still dead first, huh?"

That's an annoyingly good question. And Shang Qinghua annoyingly answers himself without waiting for an input.

"You're so fucking lucky that I've been here for like forty years now and I have so many useless points. Enough to pay off YOUR debt! They can be transfered, apparently? Be grateful! Anyway, I don't want the vengeful protagonist thinking that I hold any blame whatsoever in you fainting to death there, even if he is locked up in the Water Prison right now, so don't say I did nothing for you, got it?"

"...He's WHERE?!"

"Water Prison. He's going to be put on bullshit trial for the Immortal Alliance Conference and also for existing as a heavenly demon. Keep up, bro. Also," Shang Qinghua says with an urgent look over his shoulder, "you have to back me up when I try to explain to Mu Qingfang and Huang Qingheng that you were only mostly dead, they must have missed something, and I was just hanging around paying my respects when you miraculously recovered. I don't know anything! Ready to go?"

"No."

"Well, that fucking sucks for you. Let's go!"

[ayumigotabittoolonely]

Gojo Satoru x older reader (7 age gap) headcanons

Synopsis - as a.normal adult that lived a stressful life , who thought she'll get a reason to live, pushing all the stress aside.

Warnings ⚠️ - f!reader , older reader. Reader is 28 and he is 21! A university student.

© not canon this is just a work of fiction, fuck off if you are pissed.

♡ Younger gojo - You first meet Satoru at a café near his university, where you often stop by after work. He’s loud, effortlessly charming, and annoyingly persistent when he notices you.

♡ Younger gojo - He overhears your conversation with a friend about work stress and, in typical Gojo fashion, inserts himself into the conversation with a teasing remark.

♡ Younger gojo- He starts showing up at the café more often, making playful comments about how it must be fate that you always run into each other.

♡ Younger gojo - He shamelessly flirts with you, dropping cheesy pick-up lines like, "So, how does it feel to be my ideal type?" or "You're a whole seven years older? Damn, you’re basically my cool, sexy senpai."

♡ Younger gojo - He teases you about your ‘serious adult job,’ acting mock-impressed whenever you talk about work responsibilities.

♡ Younger gojo-Despite his playful nature, you notice he actually listens when you vent about work. He remembers little details,your annoying coworker’s name, your favorite way to destress,and brings them up later in thoughtful ways.

♡ Younger gojo -You hesitate at first because of the age gap. Seven years may not be huge, but you still see him as a reckless, flirtatious university student.

♡ Younger gojo You remind him, "Aren't you too young for me?" only for him to smirk and reply, "Nah, you're just too perfect for me to ignore."

♡ Younger gojo - He works hard to prove he’s not just some immature kid. He’s persistent, but not in an overwhelming way he gives you space while making it clear he’s serious.

♡ Younger gojo - He loves calling you "Ms. [Last Name]" just to see your reaction. You roll your eyes, but he sees the small smirk you try to hide.

♡ Younger gojo-He lives to fluster you, whispering teasing things in public just to see you struggle to keep your composure.

♡ Younger gojo-He insists on paying for dates even though you earn more than him. If you tease him about it, he pouts dramatically: "Let me be a gentleman, okay?"

♡ Younger gojo-He loves stealing your work shirts or sweaters, claiming they ‘smell like you.’ It’s his comfort when he’s drowning in university assignments.

♡ Younger gojo-You’re more level-headed, but he has a way of making life exciting. He drags you out of your routine, making you loosen up and have fun.

♡ Younger gojo-He’s surprisingly good at giving emotional support. If you ever feel overwhelmed by work, he makes you take breaks and does something stupid just to make you laugh.

♡ Younger gojo-But he’s still Gojoz,immature at times. He complains dramatically when you act too much like an ‘adult’ “Babe, stop being so responsible and come play with meee.”

♡ Younger gojo-You find yourself being the one reminding him to study, eat properly, and sleep on time. You joke about babysitting him, but deep down, you don’t really mind.

♡ Younger gojo - He casually talks about the future with you, dropping comments like "When I graduate, we should move somewhere nice."

♡ Younger gojo - You worry about how people might view your relationship, but he never lets it get to him. "Who cares what they think? I have the coolest girlfriend ever, i mean mommy-" you smacked him.

To the ones Asking me if gojo was my favourite NO he is not ☹️ my suguru bby is, why do I create so much fics about him then?

Alright so Cannonically I m similar to gojo YES I m , like seriously. When I first saw gojo , I was like , he is me , I m him. So it's like , i know myself better than anyone else, that's why I make gojo fics more often, some fics are based on real life incidents 🫦

[brummiereader]

@call-sign-shark I'm sorry I'm so late commenting on this chapter, Shark 😩!

Arghh, but what a chapter it was! This one has left me with so many mixed emotions when it comes to Tommy and Heavens relationship. I still remain on the non-ship HYE reader side 🙈. Even more so after this chapter! Their toxic relationship has evolved into something very, very dark.

I'm often wrong when it comes to my understanding of things 🤦🏼‍♀️, but a part of me think that Tommy sees the way Heaven has helped heal Arthur over the years, and he's selfishly seeking the same from her. Whether that's the case or not, what happened towards the end of this chapter left me in shock!

“Do you think Arthur would want you to risk your life? Do you think I’d let you go on a rampage with my niece or nephew in your belly?” after having read this chapter, I'd say he doesn't care about his future niece or nephew. This seems all a little to calculated and selfish on his part.

“Above everything. Untouchable. But here we are. Both haunted.” I think it must have been this line and the use of "haunted" that made me think that Tommy's twisted attentions towards Heaven is him seeking her out to give him peace.

“Tom… No.” You thought you had spoken with a stern tone but your voice had been nothing but a whisper that melted in a moan and, consequently, he didn’t stop - In a final scream of intense pleasure he came, stars waltzing behind the blackness of his eyelid and the mighty hands of God ripping all his suicidal thought from him just enough time to finally be at peace. Arghh, noooo....you didn't have to make this kinda hot, Shark 😩😂. This was what I was talking about when I said you left me with mixed emotions. I can't help but think that Heaven wasn't in her right mind when she this happened. And another part of me thinks, that neither was Tommy. I'm on the side that, canon Tommy would never do this to his brother. But in HYE, he's a lot darker and a lot more desperate. And it seems he's sought out Heaven as the only one that can give him peace of mind. My heart hurts for Heaven though. Not only did she think she was losing her husband, she also thought she was gonna lose her baby. Tommy may have been drunk, but a degree of manipulation on his part was used for him to get off 😬.

Only after a few minutes Tommy looked up at you, the eyes that once stared at you with disgust and burning rage now softened – though the remnant of something dark and fierce burnt inside his black pupils. That sounds like the start of love, if you ask me 😳. With a dark drive to have Heaven all to himself!

Your heart is as black… As mine. - “Each other’s death.” wow, what a way to end this chapter! This feels a little forbading. And at this point in time, I could definitely see it all ending in one of their deaths if Tommy doesn't back the fuck up!

Amazing chapter, Shark ❤️.

Heaven in Your Eyes || Tommy Shelby x You

Summary: For safety purpose and following Arthur's death, you are forced to live under your enemy and unforgiving brother-in-law's roof. It's only you and Tommy between the dreadful walls of Arrow house where grief, hatred, and attraction blend.

some musical background to read + the song that inspired it.

Words: 6.5k

TW: angst, rocky dynamic, pinning, sexual tension, graphic description of violence, strangulation, very very strong sexual innuendos, mention of blood, murder and grief, alteration of canon events + time.

Notes:

✞ Heaven in Your Eyes is an Arthur Shelby story but considering what happens to him in this part of S4, this chapter and the next one will be entirely focused on Reader/Heaven's relationship with Tommy.

✞ This is chapter 17 of the Arthur Shelby x You series Heaven in Your Eyes. Each chapter can be read as stand-alone.

PREVIOUS || Masterlist || NEXT PART

Your pale aquamarine eyes opened to an unfamiliar ceiling, far too different from the ceiling of your house in Watery Lane. The soft glow of morning light filtered through the dark and heavy curtains of the guest bedroom that was bathed in warm shadows. The bedding was too smooth, giving you the unpleasant impression that the mattress was slowly but surely swallowing you whole. As for the room itself, it was too silent, with no trace of the reassuring sounds or smells of your own home, like the floral fragrance of the lily of the valley perfume Arthur sprayed on your pillow each night before sleeping, fully aware that it reminded you of your mother.

A little cry escaped your lips when you turned your head towards the half-hidden window; its blinding light making your head throbbed painfully. You tried to move but your whole body ached, like a cruel and dull echo of the chaos that had ripped your world apart the night before. The chaos who took Arthur, your sweet Arthur, from you.

 Arthur.  With your heart pounding in your chest to the rhythm of invisible drums, you sat up – certainly a bit too violently. As the room spun around you, you clawed the fabric of the blanket not to fall back on the bed. Breathe, Hev. Just breathe, you told yourself. Exhaling slowly through your nostrils, you waited a bit until the dizziness and nausea became bearable and only then did you proceed to scan your surroundings. The place you had woken up in was a spacious bedroom, impeccably furnished yet so sparsely decorated that it ended up cold and impersonal. Just like a furniture store. But despite the unfamiliar setting, the peculiar smell of wood and faint traces of cigarette smoke that lingered in the air rung a bell. You recognized the man who owned it immediately.

Arrow House?

Tommy.

The memories violently surged back. The images of Arthur’s blood, the frenzied struggled to save him, the stabbing of a first Italian, then the murder of another, all of this leading to the moment you had lost consciousness. What the hell happened after? Why were you in Arrow House? Where was Arthur? Questions buzzed in your mind like a hive of furious hornets crashing against your skull. Through the fog, you thought you remembered Thomas’ low voice and arms wrapping you just before you fainted, but you weren’t sure – so came the necessity of finding out. Your sly hands shook as you scrambled out of the bed, even though the cold surface of the floor managed to ground you when your feet touched its polished wood.

You needed to find Tommy and ask for an explanation – or excavate that same explanation from him by using sheer strength and torture if you had to. Yes, you needed to know if Arthur made it. If he was safe, because he had to be safe after everything you did. He had to be safe, or else what would be left of you beside an empty shell? Wasting no time, you rushed out of the room like a fury without minding your poor state. In fact, your legs wobbled beneath your weight as you pushed the door open and made your way through the cool hallway, head spinning with disorientation. For sure, staying in bed would have been the best option but, as was the case that night you fled from your little town in the mountains, a combination of rage and panic controlled you. You braced yourself against the wall, your fingers curling into the wood and tapestry for balance. Each meters reached took a disproportionate amount of effort, each step felt unsteady. Your determination might be spotless, but your body betrayed as you swayed, to the extent that you careened into the wall with a dull thud from time to time. And when it weren’t the walls, it was the uneven carpet that made you almost trip. That damn corridor seemed endless, but the more you walked the sharper the scent of Tommy’s tobacco reached your senses and lifted the haze you were embedded in.

Little King Shelby was there.

That sole observation swept away the remnant of sickness you felt, your energy all regained as your steps, usually light and ethereal, echoed through the expensive house of Arrow house – a sumptuous mansion whose beauty only equaled its claustrophobic and maddening emptiness. The grand, austere décor loomed all around you in rich, dark wood paneling, chandeliers and old paintings staring from their frames. Ironically enough, it wasn’t the old and slightly obscure ones that made you feel uncomfortable, but rather Grace’s gigantic portrait. She was overhanging the house, her piercing blue eyes seemingly glistening in the sunlight and judging your every move.  Silently asking you what the hell you were doing in her home. A shiver ran down your spine, as if you could sense her presence, heavy and utterly sad, sipping through all the walls.  Arrow House might carry a distinct scent of polished wood and smoke, but beneath it lingered something as heavy as the Grace’s portrait – sorrow. It clung to the air like a haunting memory, subtle but inescapable, much like what Tommy himself hid under his expensive after-shave.

Finally, you reached the heavy double doors of Tommy’s office, your heart a relentless thud in your tight chest. Usually, little King Shelby despised being disturbed when he was in his study but you couldn’t care less considering the emergency of the situation – and you wouldn’t have cared in a more casual one. Without the slightest hesitation, you threw the doors open and your voice, already sharp, resounded in the room like a tigress’ roar.

“Where is he?” You demanded, as your pale iris, which were burning with Hell’s fire, surveyed the room until they found Tommy behind his desk.  His ice-cold stare met yours with a calm that only pushed you further to the edge of fury, “Where is Arthur?!”

The blue-eyed demon might have many flaws, but stupidity wasn’t one. He knew you would make a mess when you woke up so he had spent the last few hours patiently waiting for the chaos to storm, a glass of whiskey for sole companion to brace your thunder. He let out a sigh and reached for that same glass, which had remained untouched on his desk until now. After a sip, he leaned back on his chair, his eyes wandering on you as if he was calculating every possible outcome of your conversation.

Then only he spoke.

“Heaven, would you calm down ay?” He said with a smooth yet firm voice that carried an irking placidity. How could he be so serene after his brother got attacked and butchered? Was it the same Tommy who, overwhelmed with emotions you recalled, tried to help you last night? Or was he some kind of evil twin, who locked up his good brother somewhere in Arrow House most of the time?

“Don’t tell me to calm down!”  You snapped, walking toward him with your first clenched and stopping in front of his desk while he was still sitting, “After everything that happened last night, I wake up here and you think you can just sit there and act like this is normal? Tell me where Arthur is now.” You spat, your words like a winter blizzard.

Tommy stubbed his cigarette in the crystal ashtray that was on his deck before he stood, sky-blue eyes narrowed as he moved around slowly around the furniture. Your whole little body tense when he approached, his sole presence irking you.

“Arthur…” He started, his voice drawling, “Had to make a quick exit. We had to make him disappear for his own safety.”  His statement was heavy with the implications of danger and truth he didn’t wish to fully reveal. Tommy and his little secrets, you thought bitterly. Your jaw clenched, your icy eyes narrowing as you tried to swallow your burning fury in favor of a cold, quiet, anger.

“Disappear? Is he alive? Where is he?”

“I’m afraid I can’t give you any more information.”

The room fell silent, the weight of his words pressing on you. Was he serious? Momentarily stunned by the audacity of the Peaky Blinders’ boss, you blinked. He couldn’t be serious.

“And I’m just supposed to accept that dumb answer? After everything I went through trying to save him?”

Tommy moistened quickly his lips with the tip of his pink tongue, his face an unreadable mask. Still, you could see through it, and you knew he was searching for his words, “It’s not about accepting or not. We suggested the idea to him, and he agreed. Arthur made his choice – he’s lying low, and right now, that’s the best place for him.”

A slap across your face would have been less painful that what he was saying. Trembling with frustration, you shoved your fist into his chest. Tommy didn’t move nor show any hint of paint. If anything, he just let you lash out at him.

 “So what—you’re just hiding him? Keeping him locked away while I’m left in the dark?”

“I’m not hiding him. Not keeping him from you. He’s the one who decided to leave.”  

“You’re lying. That’s just another of your fucked up games.” You hissed, plump lips curling and revealing your sharp canine teeth you dreamt of sinking into your brother-in-law’s throat.

Arthur had left. Without saying anything. Without a fucking warning. Without a fucking 'hi, I'm alive love". You couldn't believe it.

Tommy shook his head, cold but resolute, “I’m not playing. There are people out there looking for him. And if they know you’re alone and vulnerable, those same people will come after you, too.”

Another blow to his chest. The charming gangster closed his eyes a few seconds and exhaled loudly through his nose to swallow the pain.

“Go fuck yourself! I’m going to find him and murder those bastards myself!”

When Tommy reopened his eyes, his large and warm hand grabbed your wrist suddenly in mid-action and kept you from punching his strong chest again.

“Do you think Arthur would want you to risk your life? Do you think I’d let you go on a rampage with my niece or nephew in your belly?”

Your breath suddenly caught, the mention of your pregnancy striking a far too sensitive nerve. With your eyes wide-opened in surprise, you studied Tommy with an expression of pure shock on your seraphic face. How could he possibly know about the baby?

“You nearly lost that kid,” Tommy’s intense gaze softened as he continued, his husky voice dropping lower and his grip loosening around your frail wrist.

“How?” You whispered, your lower lip trembling.

“Polly is not the only one who can sense things eh,” Apart from being gifted with animals, Tommy had a sensibility you had never expected. He had known about the baby the same day you had talked to him about keeping Arthur busy during their meeting. It was the way you touched your belly sometimes, the way you had acted more feral than usually – which he hadn’t thought possible, “But that’s not the point. If you leave, you’ll risk everything. Arthur wants you safe, and right now safe means staying here.”

The air between you grew thick with desperation and frustration. You gritted your teeth so harshly you wouldn’t have been surprised if they would all broken, but it was the only thing that helped you biting down the urge to scream.

“So, you’re telling me I have no other choice than stay?” Your voice wasn’t loud, but its defiance and hatred cut as deep as the razor blades he kept in his cap. To be fair, the fact he talked about the baby made you falter more than you’d wish to admit. Your shoulders slumped in reluctant defeat.

“Yes,” Tommy said simply, leaving no room for argument, “You stay here, under my roof, until this fucking mess is sorted out and until it’s safe for both you and the baby. I don’t expect you to like it, but you just have to accept that situation.”  He finally released your wrist in a surprisingly soft gesture – the fire of your fury had been so bright you had completely forgotten that Tommy had been holding you during your entire exchange. And now that he had stepped back, you realized that his touch had been grounding, and you found yourself missing it.

“It will be temporary, I promise.”  He added, heading back to his office to grab his whiskey and gulp it down. The glass chimed when he put it back on the wooden surface.

Your fruity lips pressed into a tight line, your gaze falling to the floor. That burning anger that had fueled you earlier felt dulled, swallowed by exhaustion and creeping darkness settling deep in within the marrow of your bones. As much as you wanted to fight, to demand answers and storm out of the cage Arrow House was, you knew deep down that Little King Shelby was right. The stakes were too high and your strength, for once, too fragile. This was with reluctance and resignation that you looked up to meet Tommy’s eyes.

“Fine,” You muttered, “But don’t think this means I trust you.”

“It wouldn’t have crossed my mind.”  Tommy made a little tilt with his head while raising one brow, “So you’ll stay ay?”

“Hm. But I’ll get the fuck out of here whenever it will be safer. ”

A little glint of something — approval? Satisfaction? — flickered briefly in his eyes, “As long as you respect the terms of this arrangement, that’s all that matters, Devil.”

With a final, deathly glance, you turned on your heels and left the room, feeling the burn of his scorching gaze on your back. Staying with him was an awful idea, but for now you had no choice but to play along.

To abide by the rules he would set.

The fire flickered low in Arrow House’s main yet darkened living room, the dancing flames casting their undulating shadows along the wooden walls. Wrapped in Arthur’s long coat, you sat curled up in the armchair closest to the fire in a vain attempt to warm your cold soul up. A glass of whiskey was in your small hands, barely tasted. There was exquisite alcohol here, at least. To be honest, you hadn’t planned on staying up this late but killing time here was better than tossing and turning in bed, feeling near suffocating at the sensation of the bedsheet around you. A little sigh escaped your plump lips, whose skin had been picked at until you had bled at the bottom right. Sleep had been quite elusive ever since Arthur’s death – or rather, absence. A deliberate absence that gnawed at you, leaving you restless and hollow the same way you did after the tragedy that took your family from you on a cold October night.  The same way it did when you had left your former fiancé.

Another chill ran down your spine as the events that brought you to Arthur and what followed played in your head like a broken record: you felt like only a few days had passed from your unexpected encounter in the church to the awful evening during which you had held your husband bloodied and limp body. And with the memories came an even more aching revelation: all the people around you always ended up dead or hurt in the end, whether you pulled the trigger or not.

At this moment you would have given everything just to switch your brain off and let someone handle the rest. Everything to be in Amos’ reassuring arms, his tender velvet voice whispering in your ear that everything was going to be fine.

A thought that occurred for the second time, the first appearing when you danced with Luca Changretta.

The door suddenly creaked, the darkness of Arrow House’s corridor subsiding as Tommy appeared in the orange light with an unlit cigarette between his fingers. His steps were heavy and his mesmerizing turquoise eyes slightly glazed. As was always the case when you breathed the same air as this asshole, your body tense entirely, every muscle ready to pounce on him and shred him to piece. However, you only raised your head, your pale eyes falling on his face. What you saw made you frown: he was well into a drink himself, judging by the loose expression he wore and the very faint flush on his salient cheekbones.

Despite being intoxicated, the sharpness in his gaze didn’t dull when he spotted you by the fire. If anything, it intensified.

Ah! It was still the same old and hateful Thomas Shelby you knew.

“Couldn’t stay in your room, could you?” You muttered, your tone soft but laced with a mix of sarcasm and intrigue as the man approached. Tommy didn’t answer though and sunk onto the couch opposite you.

“This is my house, remember?” He retorted, husky voice almost making the air rumble around him. A few days had passed since you argued in his office. A few days during which you mainly stayed locked up in the room, stubbornly sulking.

“And believe me, I’m counting down the hours until I can leave it,” He met his gaze when you finished speaking but, as surprising as it was, Tommy didn’t find defiance in your eyes. Only fatigue. For once, the insolent brat you usually were seemed too exhausted to bite. "I’d rather not be here, but we don’t always have the choice.” You had wanted to add that the choice was scarce when Tommy Shelby was around, but you didn’t. Not only would it be pointless, but you weren’t in the mood to fight.

A bitter laugh escaped his lips, “You’re right. Just like I didn’t have a choice when Arthur took you in, dragging all the trouble that followed,” He paused, attentively studying how your seraphic traits expressed your spitefulness at his words, then pointed at you with his finger “Thought you were above it all, didn’t you?”

“Above what?”

“Above everything. Untouchable. But here we are. Both haunted.”

Your grip tightened on your glass. So strongly you almost snapped it. “Don’t you dare blame me for what happened to him, Thomas. I know you’re used to do so but don’t fucking do it this time.” You warned.

Tommy’s blue eyes darkened as he looked away, shaking his head as if he had just remembered something awfully painful. The same thing that was plaguing your dreams: Arthur and his almost severed throat, “I don’t blame you for that – not for the attack nor for trying to save him.” He admitted. Wow, Tommy not blaming you for something was unexpected!

The gangster sighed and finally brought the cigarette to his mouth, rolling the filter onto his lower lip first before lighting it. Then, he threw the lighter on the small table near him and took a long drag. You carefully observed him all the while, afraid he would jump at your throat if you ought to lose your focus for one microsecond, “But it doesn’t change what came after, does it? You’ve done nothing but bring trouble to me. To all of us.”  He added with a hoarse voice, punctuating his sentence by blowing the smoke noisily. His voice didn’t carry the slightest aggressiveness though, only exhaustion. Yes, you were both drained by this fucking life.

Your jaw clenched, his word cutting deep. “I tried to save him with everything I had, Thomas. I’ve always tried to do my best for this family. Tried my best to make it work. But you –” You sneered, “You’re so determined to hate me that you won’t see it.”

Tommy snorted, the ghost of a desperate smile floated on his lips before it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. The look in his eyes was hard as steel, unyielding, but utterly melancholic. “Save him? Yes, it’s true, but you think that changes a thing? He was better off with you from the start.”

Things were always like this with Tommy. Even though you told yourself that you weren’t going to give in to your anger, the blue-eyed demon always knew which buttons to push to annihilate your self-control. And even if you didn’t want to play his twisted game, you always ended up getting pulled in. Your heart pounded in your tight chest, anger sparking beneath grief and the pain. Driven by a furious rage only he could fuel, you stood up from the armchair, Arthur’s black coat falling on the floor as you moved. “You don’t get to stand there and act like you know what is best for him. You only know what’s convenient for you. It’s always about you, innit?”

Following your movement, Tommy also got up from the couch to face you, cigarette hanging from his mouth and icy turquoise eyes burning fiercely. “What do you think you know about about me? Or about Arthur, for that matter?”

“About Arthur? Everything. About you? More than I needed to know.”  Your body moved instinctively, taking a step closer to him in utter defiance. “You really think you’re that unfathomable, do you? You think that no one except Thomas Shelby can understand what’s happening in this twisted and scheming mind of him, right?  No, let me correct my mistake, even you cannot understand yourself.”  Trying to calm down sheer anger and the acid you were made of, you took a quick gulp of whisky from your glass before putting it on the table.  Once the glass left your mouth, your lips curled in a mean smirk.

“I know the man you are because my former fiancé was cut from the same cloth. An egocentric criminal with bulging ambition, a far too high sense of self esteem and a greed beyond words. A man who dragged his loved ones down with him without even realizing it. But Tom, you are a poison. And even with good intentions and genuine love, everything you touch ends up rotting. Just like you.”

And just like him.

Your voice sounded like an angelic lilt as you spoke, but there was something horrifying in its softness: a belittling tenderness that was only aimed at mocking and hurting.

Tommy’s jaw clenched, dimples digging in his already sharp cheeks. Bitter, he stubbed his cigarette against the couch’s armrest and threw it right onto the carpet, not minding the damage he just did. For fuck’s sake, he had enough money to buy a new one. Even a new mansion had he wanted to.The tension that was floating in the room became thicker, intoxicating, as your cutting remarks threw sparks into the gasoline of his soul. One could even wonder if the crackling sound of the fire really came from the hearth or if they were made by the flames of your hatred. 

The gangster didn’t reply, yet his eyes were locked with yours, speaking a silent challenge none of you was willing to back down from. He might have remained mute, but his body didn’t. All of sudden, he walked closer to you, reducing the distance step by step until he stood in front of you only from a few inches, fierce and unafraid. He was so close that you could feel the warmth of his bare chest radiating off him, gently warming up your frozen skin without even touching it. The musky scent of his after shave, worn off by the shower but still strong enough for you to catch its fragrances, mixed with his whiskey breath.

“You think I’m scared of you?” You whispered only for him to hear, light tremor of defiance in your voice. “Be careful Thomas, you know I could kill you right here right now.”  You spat, the warm fire reflecting its dim light against the pearly white enamel of your sharp canine teeth and making your ivory mane shine like moonlight.

“It’s Tommy.” He corrected. The way you kept using his full name was starting to get on his nerves, especially after how delicate his nickname had sounded, melting on your tongue like sugar, the day you threw yourself in his arms, mourning John. Crying real tears and not staged ones.

“No, it’s Thomas. You said it yourself years ago.”  You cut him, the name as sharp as the shards of a broken mirror, whose cracked surface reflected Tommy on one side, and your own being on the other, like two perfectly intricated parts of the same puzzle.

A short silence hovered above the room, sharing the space with the electric air as you glared at each other, waiting for the next unpredictable move the other could make.

The blue-eyed demon didn’t bother picking up your little taunt, but rather went on with what you said just before, “Kill me…” He repeated, leaning over you. His void pupils relished every trait of your doll face, “That’s what you want ay?”  Tommy’s voice was dark and daring, but it held a flicker of something different. Something more dangerous. As he spoke, his husky and hushed tone feeding the electric tension, you both stood locked in that heated moment, your breaths mingling in the space between you. Why were you realizing how close you were, both invading each other’s private space, only now? 

This time, Tommy’s expression shifted again and before you could react, he reached for you, his strong calloused hands wrapped around your wrists with a firm yet tender grip and pulled you even closer. “Do it”, he urged in a low growl as he guided your hands around his neck. “Show me how strong you really are without that evil magic of yours...”

Your heart raced, missing a vertiginous beat, as your sly fingers curled instinctively around the hard line of his throat. There was a thrill in the danger, a rush of adrenaline coursing through your veins when you felt the steady thump of his pulse under the soft pulp of your thumb, a reminder that Tommy Shelby was indeed a mortal man. Without control of any sort, your eyes fell on his throat, which was a striking canvas of both strength and vulnerability, the sinewy muscles taut beneath his smooth, pale skin. The very, very thin layer of sweat which covered him glistened under the dim light, attracting your attention even more on the angular lines of his jaw. Your breath stopped for a few seconds when you noticed how the coolness of his complexions contrasted sharply with the heat that was radiating off him.  Tommy Shelby was a walking paradox, as cold as ice, as hot as fire. Just like you.

With a surge of anger, you tightened your hold and let your nails dig into his skin. “You think this is a game?”

“Life ain’t nothing but a cruel game, Devil” he replied with a hitching breath and a light smirk dancing on his seductive lips as he leaned more into your grip. The gangster exuded something primal you couldn’t really describe. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel it too—the tension, the way we keep pushing each other.”

Your faces were now inches apart, heat pooling in your body and overwhelming you.

 “You’re insane,” you hissed, a tremor of uncertainty creeping into your voice despite your bravado. You had tried to hide it but it was vain and you knew it didn’t go unnoticed.

“And yet here we are,” he murmured, his growling voice turning into a whisper that sent shivers down your spine. A raspy lilt that made all fibers of your being vibrate like a piano’s strings during a symphony of chaos and desire. Caught off guards by the intensity of his gaze, your grip faltered just a moment before your thumb pressed a bit more on his windpipe. The noise his breath made as well as the way he sharply sucked in for air left no doubt on the power of your grip – you were slowly but surely squeezing the air out of him and, this time, you didn’t need any kind of magic to do so. It made the whole act even more exciting. Suffocatingly intense. 

At this point, you were convinced that the black-haired gangster, with his intoxicating smell of whiskey, cigarettes, leather and expensive after shave, would back up but he did quite the opposite. Leaning forwards, his lips brushed against your ear with a tenderness you didn’t suspect he possessed. Another shiver ran through you, and you hated him even more for enabling this reaction. “Harder…” He breathed, voice already muffled, “ Y—You want this as much as I—I do.”

In that moment, the storm of your usually muffled emotions collided. Rage, desire, fear, hatred, loneliness, doubts, lust, all intertwined with the numbing effect of alcohol, blurred the line between Tommy and you even further.

“Harder, like your former fiancé loved, right?”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me your – yourself ay.”

Lost in the intensity of everything, you felt the control slipping from your fingertip along with the will of fighting him. Tommy Shelby was sliding under your skin and the undeniable urge to give in was too much for you to resist. And somehow, you didn’t want to. What he made you feel was too similar to what you had lost after slashing Amos’ face and running away the day of your wedding.

This was why your grip suddenly tightened around him, your slow choking turning into the verge of deadly strangulation. In reply, Tommy let out a muffled moan. His strong hands, scarred by murder, grabbed your frail hips. So frail he felt like he could crush them easily and break you in half.

Your eyes maybe whole, But the story I'm told is your heart is as black as night.

As the room started to dangerously spin around him, the lack of oxygen building up gradually, the necessity of words faded away. Giving in, you leaned too and gently rubbed your cheek against your brother-in-law’s while still strangling him. Your lashes fluttered at the silky sensation of his perfectly shaved skin, your nerves sparkling with sensations at the lines of his sharp facial bones. His fire skin against the frost that constituted yours was ecstatic. Another little husky yet muffled moan echoed in the living room, his touch feeling as good as a shot of heroin and as brutal as getting crushed by a train. 

“Hev—” Tommy’s muscular body suddenly dropped to its knees, unable to hold his weight anymore.  At first you thought he would finally give up and admit he couldn’t take it anymore but the black-haired gangster didn’t. His rough hands didn’t leave your waist but rather pulled you closer, as if he couldn’t bear a single inch standing between you. The two turquoise gems that he called eyes locked onto yours — unfaltering and desperate. Tommy exhaled a shaky breath and surrendered himself fully to your touch. You wanted to kill him? So be it, he thought.

You swallowed the lump in your throat, fascinated for he looked so weak, so… willingly at your mercy that everything around you blurred, your focus only on him. Him and his freckles. Him and the too-perfect traits of his face from his adorable nose to his slightly chapped lips. Him and the sight of what you could be together.

Your lips maybe sweet such that I can't compete, But your heart is as black as night.

A far away cry resounded in the back of your head, pleading you to put a stop to this folly, but you were far too embedded in a primal trance to mind it. 

 Tommy’s head lowered until his cheek pressed against your belly, his arms snaking around your waist in an intimate, blazing embrace. And just like that it wasn’t a fight anymore; it was something else. The same thing you were both desperately pushing away for years — what fueled the vitriol of his hatred. For him and his twisted and tired mind, your deadly hands around his throat weren’t hurting him anymore, they were granting him a momentary relief from his untamable demons. The dirt couldn’t touch him here, your seraphic yet murderous aura keeping it from burying him alive. You strangled him, but he felt like he had never breathed this freely for a long, very long time. 

Soon the static hug turned into a sensual one, with Tommy softly rocking you in a way so soothing that you couldn’t help but bit your juicy lower lip. For a moment you both stayed like that, your body petrified and your hands still squeezing the air out of him while his scorching breath fanned over your belly when he moaned, sipping through the thin fabric of your silk nightgown. It was only after a while that all of Tommy’s energy fled from him. Now he hed had reached his limits. You felt the gangster waver, then he fell back onto the living room floor, dragging you along in his fall. You simply followed, letting him pull you on top to make you straddle him. A firework exploded into you when your hips collided together, your beings only separated by the thin layer of your lace thong and the fabric of his trousers. 

I don't know why it came along at such a perfect time, But if I let you hang around I'm bound to lose my mind.

Beneath you, Tommy’s body was entirely tensed, his breath hitching in difficulty, mouth gasping for air and a vein on his forehead pumping blood furiously. Yet, his hypnotic turquoise eyes didn’t waver from you except occasionally when he rolled them back in pure ecstasy. You shut your eyes closed, squeezing them very tight, unable to hold his gaze anymore when his hips started to sensually roll under you, the feeling of his hard length making you gasp.

“Tom… No.” You thought you had spoken with a stern tone but your voice had been nothing but a whisper that melted in a moan and, consequently, he didn’t stop. Quite the opposite, he kept rubbing against you, your hips dancing together in perfect rhythm and intensifying when he felt the warmth pooling between your legs and the small, damp spot on your sinful undergarment. It was too much for him to bear — Tommy growled, a low and primal noise that came from the depths of his soul, and his hips bucked under you. In a final scream of intense pleasure he came, stars waltzing behind the blackness of his eyelid and the mighty hands of God ripping all his suicidal thought from him just enough time to finally be at peace.

Peace, at last. He thought.

Shocked, confused and caught in the haze of the moment, you finally released your grip and freed his throat before curling up in a ball in his arms, trembling. 

“I’m fine.” He stuttered, panting, as if he had read through your concerns.

As you lay entwined on the floor, both of you breathless and tangled in each other’s arms as if your life depended on it, the silence of the room grew thick with unspoken desire and barely bridled resentment.

Would life be easier if you’d give in for good? Would he be the one, strong and steady, guiding you and protecting you? Could he be the one able to finally heal that open wound your attachment to Amos was?

No.

Tommy could never be your solace.

You would never let him.

You’d never do this to Arthur. Never.

Your hand tenderly reached his face. They lingered on his perfectly carved jaw to trace faint lines across his skin as though you were discovering him for the very first time. Had he always been so pretty? The soft caress of your fingers almost made him purr, but he was still panting too much to say something more judging by how his chest rapidly fell with each shallow breath. Only after a few minutes Tommy looked up at you, the eyes that once stared at you with disgust and burning rage now softened – though the remnant of something dark and fierce burnt inside his black pupils. 

He finally broke the silence with a voice both rough and tender, “You feel it ay? The weight of it. The weight of us.” It wasn’t a question for he knew he was right, no matter how hard you would deny it. He pulled you closer to make your embrace even more intimate until your nose nuzzled in the crook of his neck — his perfume soothing you, lulling you.

'Cause your hands maybe strong but the feelings are all wrong, Your heart is as black as night.

“Tommy. This has to stop.” You said slowly, fingers still caressing his face with sheer tenderness, “You have to let it go.”  Fighting against the torpor the sweet comfort of his arms brought you, you raised your head to plunge your gaze into his.  In response, Tommy let out a sigh and one of his hands found yours, intertwining your fingers together.

“You think he loves you the way I could?” His other hand moved to your face to tilt your chin towards him, keeping you from fleeing his vulture eyes which were filled with longing he didn’t bother to hide anymore, “I’m not letting you go.” 

Your heart pounded painfully in your chest at the thought that Tommy would never stop haunting you. 

He was talking exactly like Amos. Using the exact same words and sickly-sweet tone.

“Don’t say dumb shit like this.” You retorted, the warmth you had granted him with turning to freezing arctic ice again. With that being said, you gathered all your remaining strength to overcame the comforting haze he instilled in you, and managed to snatch yourself from his arms. You needed to leave this fucking room now. Surprised, Tommy tried to hold you, to keep you from leaving him but you had been too quick. Defeated, the gangster hauled himself with his forearms against the carpet and frowned.

“You know we’re meant to be.”

“And what are we meant to be Thomas?” You sneered, glaring at him from above your bony shoulder, “Can you tell me?!”

Your heart is as black… As mine.

“Each other’s death.”

Taglist: @adaydreamaway08 @theshelbyclan @esposadomd @woofgocows @anathemasworld @anastasia0082 @kate654 @kxnnxy @babayaga67 @meowtastic @shelbyssins @sarai-ibn-la-ahad @bluevenus19 @kishie8 @zablife @alexandra-001 @alexizodd @helen06dreamer @kmc1989 @peakyswritings @peakyltd @chaosinkest1996@vanhelsingsbigtoe @cherubswhispers @lokigirlszendaya @justrainandcoffee @mischievouslittlecreature @jjovin3221 @randomcreator-09 @weepingdreammarvel @meadowshelby

[urmum-lovesme]

I need more toxic!dad!rafe!!

more Toxic!Rafe as a dad. . . say less baby

Y/n's pregnancy would have been really rough because let’s be real- Rafe wasn’t some supportive, doting boyfriend holding her hand through morning sickness and late-night cravings. The stress of it all made the pregnancy physically tough, too. Rafe wasn’t gentle with her- emotionally or physically. Sure, he liked the idea of her being pregnant, but that didn’t mean he stopped arguing, didn’t mean he stopped grabbing her too hard when he was pissed. He’d justify it, tell her she was hormonal when she got upset, that she was just overreacting.

But let's talk about the first few months.

At first when Y/N found out she was pregnant she hid it, at least for a little while. She obviously wasn't sure what she was going to do yet. Y/N had been so careful, she never ever slipped up about her little secret at home, but one morning she did.

Her mom had gone upstairs to leave a package she'd ordered in her room but she noticed something she wasn’t supposed to. Y/N had been so sure she closed her bedside drawer, but in her rush in the morning, she must have left it cracked open. And when her mom went to push it shut, something caught her eye.

Two little pink lines staring back at her.

Y/N wasn’t home when her mom found it. She’d gone to 'escape' for a bit, to pretend her life wasn’t completely falling apart at the seams. But when she came back, as soon as she opened the door, she felt the tension. Her mom was sitting at the kitchen table, the pregnancy test right there in front of her, like a bomb waiting to go off.

And then there was her dad.

He was standing by the counter, arms crossed, his jaw clenched so tightly she thought his teeth might crack. Her mom’s voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut through the silence like a knife.

"Is this your's Y/N?"

She froze at the question. She felt like she was sinking, the air being sucked out of her lungs.

"Mom—"

"Don’t" 

Her father's voice snapped out cutting her off. Her head jerked toward him at the stern tone, her heart hammering. He barked, slamming his hand down on the counter in irritation as he spoke.

"How the hell could you be so fucking stupid?" 

Y/N flinched at the sudden action, she knew they wouldn't be happy but she certainly wasn't expecting this.

"I- Dad, please—"

"No, don’t ‘Dad, please’ me!" His voice was booming, his face red with anger. "You’re still a kid, Y/N! And now you’re gonna have a baby? You've ruined your life!"

Y/N could feel the lump in her throat growing, so rapidly she felt as though she was going to throw up. Her mom let out a shaky breath, wiping at her eyes. 

"How far along are you?"

"I don’t know—maybe… two months?"

Y/N swallowed hard at the silence that came after. Her mom let out a choked sound, shaking her head as she covered her mouth with her hand.

"With Rafe? Sweetheart, please tell me you’re joking."

Y/N didn’t respond. But her silence was enough, and the tears pooling in her eye's proved to her parents all they needed to know. Her dad laughed. A dry, humorless sound.

"Of course, you couldn’t have picked someone worse, could you?"

"Dad, stop—"

"No, you stop! You think this is some fucking fairytale? That he’s gonna be some good little boyfriend and help raise this kid?"

He scoffed shaking his head at his daughter. She felt like a little kid again, being scolded on the playground for running away too far out of his sight. She bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from breaking out into sobs. Her father pointed an angry finger at her as he spoke.

"He’s a junkie, Y/N. A loser. A fucking Cameron. And you—” he shook his head, his voice full of disbelief, "You just threw your entire life away for him."

Tears welled in her eyes, her whole body trembling, "I didn’t plan for this!"

"Then why didn’t you get rid of it?"

Y/N’s breath caught at his harsh words, "Jesus, Dad!"

"You had options, Y/N," he pressed, tone sharp. "And instead, you’re keeping his fucking leash around your neck—"

"Enough," her mother whispered, her tone dissapointed, "Just… stop."

For a moment, everything was silent. And then, finally, her mom looked at her, her expression shattered. 

"You can’t stay here, Y/N."

Y/N’s stomach dropped. They were kicking her out? She's their only child and they're kicking her out? She felt so lightheaded she was surprised her legs didn't give out from underneath her.

"What?"

Her dad didn’t even hesitate as he spoke out, "You’re not staying under this roof if you’re keeping that baby."

Ironically right after that, I think she went straight to Tannyhill, where else was she meant to go? It would've been pretty late, and she probably sat in her car for twenty minutes before she calmed down enough to be able to walk up to the front door of the massive house looming over her. Rafe, for once, was not completely high or out partying, instead he’s stuck at home after an argument with Ward, who'd taken Rose, Wheezie and Sarah with him to some long weekend get away to the Bahamas.

I imagine him cracking the door open, groggy and half-asleep, only to find Y/N standing there, her face soaked in tears, her whole body trembling from trying to hold it together. For a second, he just stares and then she sniffs, trying to get words out, but she can’t. Her lips wobble, her breath shudders, and her shoulders shake as she breaks all over again.

"They kicked me out."

It takes him a second to process, but when he does, something shifts in his expression. He looks her up and down- her arms wrapped around herself like she’s trying to hold herself together, her red-rimmed eyes, the slight flinch when she breathes in too hard.

And something about it fucks with him.

The idea that someone else- her own family no less- mistreats her would really get to Rafe. It’s not just about her being upset, it’s about him being the only one allowed to do that to her. He’s always had a possessive side, but when someone else challenges his claim over her… it feels like a direct challenge to his control. He might not show it right away, but it disturbs him. It shakes him up because in his world, he is the one who’s allowed to hurt her.

"Come inside" 

He mutters, stepping back to let her in. She hesitates for half a second, but the cold night air is biting, and she has nothing left. So she steps inside. Y/N stands there in the hallway, her breath shallow, her body trembling like a leaf caught in a storm. Her hands clutch at her stomach, as if the life inside her is the only thing still holding her together. Her eyes are glassy, filled with unshed tears, the weight of her parents' rejection sinking deep into her chest. The house is quiet- too quiet and Rafe's presence is dark and heavy, stepping closer like a shadow that wraps itself around her.

"What happened?"

His voice is rough, low, cutting through the silence. He doesn’t need to ask more, because she knows that’s all it’ll take to break her again. Y/N’s breath hitches, the tears fall faster now, streaking down her cheeks, and her hands shake as she presses them to her face, trying to stop herself from falling apart completely.

"They found out. My mom- she- she saw the test, and my dad—" 

Her words falter as the sobs wrack her body, tearing through her chest like a hurricane. As she stands there, her whole body shaking, Rafe moves closer, pulling her into him with the force of his presence. His hands find her back, rubbing it softly, tenderly, as if he’s not the reason she's in this mess. Yet she leans into him either way, melting into his touch cause some sick part of her can't help but yearn for him. But this is Rafe of course, he had already gotten in her head about having this baby, and he had to make sure her mind didn't change.

"They don’t give a shit about you, Y/N. They’re embarrassed by you."

His sweet tone was a juxtaposition to his brutal words, a reality she certainly didn't want to face. the hands clinging onto his shirt loosened slightly as the sentence left his mouth, but his grip on her didn't waver.

"You think they’re gonna change their minds? You think they’re gonna help you raise this kid?"

She pulled her head away from his chest to look up at him, expression completely hopeless as her eyes met his intense gaze. His hand, previously rubbing soothing circles onto her lower back moved up, his fingers tightening slightly around the back of her neck, grip firm, enough to keep her from looking away. His eyes, cold and calculating, bore into hers, searching for any sign of weakness, any sign that she might still doubt what he’s saying. The silence between them feels thick, heavy with the weight of his words.

"Don’t you get it, Y/N?"

His voice drops lower, smoother, as if he’s explaining something painfully obvious. Rafe's thumb traces lightly along her skin, as if to remind her just how close he is, just how much control he has over her. He watches her closely, his gaze unwavering, as her breath comes in short, shaky bursts. The conflict in her eyes is obvious, but Rafe’s not letting her off the hook that easily. He leans in, his breath hot against her ear as he continues, his tone still deceptively sweet, coated with that sickening layer of care he knows she craves.

"Look at you," he mutters, his lips barely brushing the shell of her ear,

"You’re a mess. And no one’s gonna fix you but me."

Her chest tightens at the sound of his words, and for a moment, she almost feels trapped within the web he’s spun around her. Her head is spinning, as his hand slides from her neck to her cheek, cupping her face, forcing her to focus on him, his touch both tender and possessive.

"You don’t want to be alone in this, do you? I’m the only one you’ve got. The only one who cares enough to stick around."

Y/N blinks back tears, feeling a strange pull toward him even as her gut screams that this isn’t right. But his words… they get under her skin, wrap around her heart, making her feel like maybe, just maybe, he’s all she has left. Maybe he’s right, and there’s no one else who will be there for her... it's his baby after all. She opens her mouth to speak, her voice shaky.

"I-"

But Rafe cuts her off shushing her gently, his hand slides from her cheek to her jaw, tilting her head back slightly, forcing her to meet his gaze, voice low and smooth, a promise wrapped in poison.

"You’re mine, Y/N. You’re going to do this for me. For us."

In that moment, despite the rising nausea in her chest, she feels herself giving in. It's twisted and toxic, but a part of her is already slipping into his control. She knows it’s wrong, she knows it should scare her, but his words, his presence- it's like a drug. She needs it, needs him, even if it's all just another layer of manipulation wrapped in false affection. Her lips tremble as she finally speaks, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I… I don’t know what to do."

Rafe smirks, a glint of satisfaction in his eyes as he pulls her closer, his lips brushing her's gently.

"I’ve got it all figured out for you baby."

[cakerybakery]

Your post about the Exorcists hatching from Adam’s eggs got me thinking.

What if, years ago, Adam unexpectedly laid a clutch of eggs during an extermination? The eggs were broken, or otherwise deemed unviable, so Adam abandoned them in Hell. Afterwards, Sir Pentious found them, and that’s where the Egg Bois came from.

Ooh that would be neat. I know with some species of animals, the temperature determines the sex of the baby even by a few degrees.

So it be neat if Adam laid his clutch, but hell was warmer than heaven and they cracked a bit and Adam figured it was too hot for them to survive, plus he couldn’t figure out how to sneak them back into heaven, so given all those factors he figured that this clutch of girls wasn’t going to make it.

-

He did his best for them.

Found a clean and unbroken wooden crate. It even had clean straw to keep the original contents from breaking during delivery. Pulled off the shirt he worn under his clothing for just such an occasion, laying a clutch unexpectedly and needing to gather them up, and he tucked his girls into the crate. He shouldn’t, but he flapped his wings to jar loose a few of his feathers, and tucked them in too. He kissed each quickly heating up eggs, and apologized.

“If I’d known I was going to lay you today, I’d have stayed home.” Usually he knew a day ahead when he was about to lay. There must have been some great disaster on Earth if he laid so suddenly.

He prayed over his girls to say goodbye. They wouldn’t last long. He had been flying when his body suddenly started to lay. Adam had tried to squeeze his legs closed. The keep the egg inside him, but landing, he dropped one. Then the second came before he could get in a safe position. The last three looked okay, but in his heat? They’d never last. And couldn’t sneak this many home either.

Not even his girls knew he was their father. All of heaven thought his girls were babies that passed on Earth that he had taken in as they had no direct relatives in heaven. He named them, and raised them, taught them to fight. But only he and Sera knew he birthed them too.

Still, he didn’t want to leave them. He’d break the rules just this once. He’d tell Lucifer. Lucifer could bury them properly.

“I’ll give you names as well.” Adam touched the first one. “I’ve always wanted to name one of my girls Frank, for the virtue of honesty, but Sera says it’s a boys name. I suppose it doesn’t matter now. So I’ll name you Frank.”

There was a noise and Adam backed away from the box. One of his girls was having trouble killing a guy. Adam quickly leaned a piece of wood over the eggs to hide them. He’d finish up saying goodbye in a minute, Adam needed to kill a sinner.

Adam flew out of the alley and Sir Pentious ducked in. He figured he’d be safe, if an angel just left, then it wouldn’t be back.

He searched for a place to hide. Maybe the dumpster?

Sniffing it, Pentious recoiled. Maybe not.

As he searched, his tail hid a board and fell.

Pentious froze, when no one seemed to hear the noise, he slithered over to the board. Maybe he could hide under it and be camouflage feom angels overhead.

He paused when he saw a crate of eggs. They had been carefully hidden, so the mother must have been trying to hide them. Pentious couldn’t recall which hellborn species laid eggs. The fish ones? She was probably dead whatever the case.

Hellborns didn’t go out much during this time of year, lest an angel mistake them for a sinner and there’s an issue. No one put this love and care into hiding eggs and completely abandon them. Someone meant to come back. But given the lateness of the day, she never got a chance.

They were still warm and shook a little. They were alive!

“Get back here, asshole!”

It was the leader of the angels. He was coming. What if he destroyed the eggs?

Sir Pentious grabbed the crate and slithered away.

Huffing and bloody, Adam returned to the alley and found the spot he hid his babies empty. He’d been gone for like five fucking minutes! You can’t have anything in fucking hell!

Adam tried not to think about what some sinner wanted with his dead eggs, and rejoined the slaughter.

-

Lucifer fussed over the eggs.

“You’re more worried about my kids than I am.” Adam snorted.

“Sorry.” He muttered, realizing he overstepped.

Adam waved it off though. “Nah. It’s cool. They need to be kept at the right temperature though. So don’t mess with the blankets by taking them on or off, and don’t screw with the room temperature. I don’t want to lose these ones because they got to hot or too cold.”

Lucifer promised.

Adam had tried to think of a way to keep his latest clutch from being found, but Lucifer had stumbled upon them pretty easily. There really wasn’t a way either could think of that kept Adam’s kids hidden and he was forced to tell everyone. Although the look on Vaggie’s face when he got to say, “Vaggie, I am your father,” to her was priceless.

He shook out his feathers and added them to the nest box Lucifer built for the eggs. Adam never had to incubate the eggs himself, heaven was just always the nicest temperature. Hell was too warm though he kept his room a little cool and used a few blankets to keep them from knocking into each other. He didn’t want to crack anymore.

Most people dropped by the visit him, aka check out the eggs. Adam was rather proud people wanted to see his clutch. For eggs, they were cute.

The most common visitors were the egg boys. Which was okay, the little eggs guys were cute too. Adam thought it was rather adorable how they flocked to Lucifer. Now that their master was in heaven, the little guys had been looking for someone to follow around and found Lucifer. So when Lucifer visited, so did they.

The ooohed and aaahed over Adam’s still golden feathers.

“It’s just like ours.” One said, the others nodding.

Adam asked what they meant and they all joined in on telling about how they had been found in a crate during an extermination.

Tears sprung to his eyes. His babies! He gathered them up in his lap and kissed each one. Adam didn’t know how, but his stolen babies lived!

[xylatox]

with wings of wax and thread | hik

Another fic from Cam and a Kai fic no less, this interests me so much, unto the review!!

Before I even start, I've always been obsessed with angel and demon themes and the fact that Kai is mode or less fallen makes me more obsessed.

Feathers, soft and white, twisted in the golden glow from the slow-setting sun. Raining down like a thrown stone, sinking and littering the waiting ground. — god the beginning is so enrapturing.

His mouth had filled with blood, the ichor more sugar than iron, his stomach turning from the flavor, or maybe it was the feeling of falling. Flying had been something like this, the air rippling in his hair, every strand kissed with the soft hands of the north wind, a mother's touch. Flying had felt so close to life that even in falling he understood what it meant to have all your memories rush in front of you one last time. Because falling was like the memory of flying, the echo of it so close it was like a shout right in his ear. — this description is absolutely insane what the fuck.

They had come, found your hiding spot, and planned to finish you off, that laugh was only the start. It had not yet turned cruel as it was that day, the parroting of the group still ingrained right behind your ears, following you around no matter how you tried to shake the thoughts. And now they were coming down like a meteor into the only safe space you had ever known. The entrance was hard to maneuver with wings; it only made sense they would have a rough time with landing except there was a giant splash, the water in the moonpool lapping up, the crashing sound like the waves hitting the rocks only now echoing in the carved out cave. — I love this. I am absolutely geeking out over every word so far. It's all phrased so wonderfully. I'm also super interested in reader, she's so intruding. I also love that contrary to typical demon behavior, reader chooses to save Kai, that further makes her such an interesting character.

When they had ripped your wings off you had nothing left to attach, not that you haven't tried, but alone with no help there was no way to reattach wings with your hands. No way to reach behind yourself except to feel the spots they had once been, the jagged scars still there now, the ghost pain of that day still shooting down your back every time you dreamt of that day. — the fact that reader is on her own, it hurts to even think of what she went through.

You had not grown the horns that most of the demons possessed, you could feel the spot they must have wanted to sprout through if they had been given the chance, the area always colder than the rest of your scalp. It had been one of the things they had picked at when taking their dues. — it's so cool that reader is technically demon by birth(?) but lacks all the physical attributes to deem her one, it's makes her even cooler.

Reader's personality!! I love it, I love that there's already thus barrier between them as a result of it.

They had told him never to bite the hand that fed him but this was a forceful hand coming out to get him, twisting its fingers in his hair and pushing his face in the dirt until it was nothing but a given that he had to eat whatever it was that was handed to him. But he listened, taking in each word and trying to keep them as close as he could get them. — Cam...you have such a way with words.

I love that despite the hesitance from reader when they first interacted, it's really sweet now like —“That would be horrible and if you don't listen to me they will be gone, keep your hand away,” you left no room for argument in your tone and Kai listened. He curled his hand into a fist and sat it in his lap. “Today we will let the area breathe and while I’m out we can get whatever we need to make a salve to help the healing process,” Kai nodded knowing that you were right. He didn't even have the first thought of where to start to find out how to help himself. — her caring is super cute.

Also I just wanna say, candle wax is an interesting method to stick the feathers back??? like I wouldn't have thought about it.

He pictured you over and over again in his head. Imagined you with your wings of night in the air next to him, that laugh you had turned his way unlike the one he heard but one he wished you would give him so that he would know something in his dream would be real. This laugh was somewhere caught between a giggle and a sprinkle of light from his fingertips. He locked in on thinking of the laugh over the feeling of flying because it was impossible to not hurt when thinking of the air. But you, thinking of you, felt safe even if it was some kind of hope caught in a dream.  — im going to sob, how could something be so sweet yet so sad.

Kai could not feel the process, not when he was lost in his thoughts. He tried to separate the knowledge of you being a demon away from the proof he had of you being nothing more than someone who was lost. The two could be synonymous is what he reminds himself over again. — :((((

Also the way reader fights over her natural feelings as a demon?? my heart breaks. —But waking up to know he had been here the whole time, knowing that if he had been there he would have helped just the same, settled something inside you that had been overrun with worry. You unfurled your arms from around yourself, throwing them around Kai’s neck and pulling him into a hug. — poor baby.

You whimpered when he brushed over the scars on your back but did not pull away, letting him have a part of you that you would never give to anyone else because he knew what it was like, he knew what it meant, this level of trust rushing into you almost as fast as your coming orgasm. —HELLLLLLIIIIIOOOO??? This was actually so attractive good bye, like the trust, the intimacy behind this???

And then the feathers started to rain. A few white tumbled down along with you as you looked up at him, wax melting from being so close to the sun for only a short time. The edge of his right wing was still tipped in black as if your feathers had infected his mind and thoughts as if they had been the cause of the drop and not the sickening worry he had of losing everything that had just been returned to him. But you could not stop yourself from thinking again of the story you had been told as a child. That demons had been the same as angels, cast out for the bitterness lingering in their near-empty hearts. You two were the same, cast out, and only now did he truly see it. — oh my god. From Kai letting her go to this...it's insane. It reminds me of Icarus :(

If falling felt like flying you would welcome the feeling because anything was better than nothing at all. — oh my god.

I'm so glad I finally got to take my time and read this.

Cam, your writing is beautiful, the way you've described things has left me beyond words. I absolutely love the end where they were both able to relive falling but their emotions were so different at the time. I just love that they're the same ah, this was so amazing♡

with wings of wax and thread

angel!huening kai x demon!fem!reader

‧₊˚ ⋅ synopsis: In the kingdom of Aethera, an angel is pushed from the heavens. Wings torn and feathers spilling, he finds himself in the den of a demon who wishes to have never been found. Long having lived with your own fall from grace, wingless and bloody just as he is now, you help stitch back up what once was. Can nurtured understanding be crueler than nature? ⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝⸝ warnings: 🔞!!!demon fem!reader, angel!huening kai, angst, blood, depression, mentions of death and gore, reader talks about being violently attacked, cpr performed, slight open ending that could lead to mc/member death if interpreted that way, unprotected sex, no pull out mention, prob forgot some sorry

⊹₊ ݁ . wc: 19.6k . ݁₊ ⊹

𓅪 ⸝⸝⸝ now playing: I, carrion (icarian) - hozier an: im so in love with this event, the work that all these amzing writers put into this is so astonishing- it’s so wild to participate in something like this when I still feel like a baby writer with so much to learn but thats always the fun bit I guess lol im so happy we could all stretch our creative abilities to come together and make this work <333 thank you for reading!!

[m.list] [aethera!event m.list]

ONCE UPON A TIME… In a land far far away, where the treetops touched the soft clouds of the sky, and the water sparkled under the glowing sun. Where mountains rose high and in which long, deep caves ran. Where the sea met shore in a collision of tall waves. Where the undead walked among the living. Where the winged flew above the finned. In a land where things beyond any reason and rhyme existed. And amongst those very beings, within the veils of Aethera, there was… 

Feathers, soft and white, twisted in the golden glow from the slow-setting sun. Raining down like a thrown stone, sinking and littering the waiting ground. 

The fall from grace had been sickly sweet. The shock of that first second of flightlessness was frightening enough to cause Kai to sink his teeth into his tongue. Holding back the staggered scream he wanted to let out, still protecting the ones who wronged him. Who had sent a blistering pain down his back, the cracking of cartilage ringing in his ears as he screwed his mouth shut, pleading with glistening eyes, forgiving them the second that his foot had met nothing but air. 

His mouth had filled with blood, the ichor more sugar than iron, his stomach turning from the flavor, or maybe it was the feeling of falling. Flying had been something like this, the air rippling in his hair, every strand kissed with the soft hands of the north wind, a mother's touch. Flying had felt so close to life that even in falling he understood what it meant to have all your memories rush in front of you one last time. Because falling was like the memory of flying, the echo of it so close it was like a shout right in his ear. 

And he laughed, the sound a strangled choke, fighting its way out from between his lips, teeth stained and heart sinking. He had never felt heavy, not when lifting off the ground was second nature. Kai had imagined his bones had been hollow like a bird's, but plummeting only showed him how led he was lined. Heavy, too much for even the mother's air to carry him, slipping through fingers, through feathers. 

He didn't think that having a wing ripped right from his back would have made so many of his feathers come free, whirling around him, in a thick plume. Maybe it was his wing's way of bleeding. He had witnessed the damaged appendages before on others and they never bled, not unless wounded at the base, right at the shoulder blade. But even his feathers now were dotted with thick spots of blood, the droplets rising instead of falling with him, lighter than his lead bones. He reached out, trying to catch any feathers he could, trying to grasp them as if they would be the edge of a cliff he could pull himself back up from. But he came away with nothing but understanding. 

This was a brutal way to make a grave but it was the hand he had been dealt, the cards pushed into his waiting palms without question. He only hoped the ground wouldn’t damage his wings worse than they already were. Half hanging on by tender threads of pink life, he hoped to tuck whatever was left around him like he had when he was a child, creating a small cave for him and him alone. 

Kai was thinking in full circle thoughts, that crippling adult understanding washing away to childlike hope as he counted the seconds down to when someone would realize he wasn’t catching air, their rush to reach him deterred by the weight of him hurtling towards the waiting dirt. If his bones were not lead-lined they had been made of magnets, his ruined wings having kept him from the realization sooner; the grave always called the body. 

The carrion had made the decent look appealing. Kai had grown up seeing the demons sore up only to tuck their tar-colored wings close to their bodies, looking freer than when Kai stretched his out, the span of his shadow over the sea. If they could feel the thrill of descent he could find it in him to enjoy the last of his sorry life. 

The wind picked up, spinning him, round and round, dizzying and giggling. It was his twinkling laugh that made you look up. The jagged rocks circling his falling form, the ceiling of your cave the perfect opening for him to find himself invading. The sun was setting just enough so that the shadow of him cut deep into you, palms slick as you pushed up from where you sat at the edge of the moon pool, sand coating your fingers as you pressed a hand to your racing heart. Blood rushing in your ears, serpentine fear wrapping around your limbs running a chill down your spine. 

They had come, found your hiding spot, and planned to finish you off, that laugh was only the start. It had not yet turned cruel as it was that day, the parroting of the group still ingrained right behind your ears, following you around no matter how you tried to shake the thoughts. And now they were coming down like a meteor into the only safe space you had ever known. The entrance was hard to maneuver with wings; it only made sense they would have a rough time with landing except there was a giant splash, the water in the moonpool lapping up, the crashing sound like the waves hitting the rocks only now echoing in the carved out cave. 

Everything was getting wet, the water cold to your skin as it dotted your legs, feeling like a burn when you were so shocked. Because as the water settled, the churning sound still worked its way through your skull and it began to rain. The soft white feathers swung down billowing side to side, drifting as if they were a newborn butterfly, always knowing flying was in their bones but never knowing they could do it alone. Drifting to a final stop on water starting to calm. And there sinking to the bottom, face up and eyes closed, was an angel. 

His white wings torn and weighed him down lower and lower to the sandy floor of the pool, the plume of derby shadowing him as he hit the bottom. Hands out on either side of him like someone welcoming in the sun after a long winter, the look you saw before a much needed embrace, not as if you had ever seen it before. 

Stepping to the edge where sand turned to rock you looked back up at the sky, the fading light of the day slipping into hazy darkness, the blue hour working its way over the land before the moon fully made its appearance. But you could only see the slow falling feathers, catching wind and making way in other directions far from where you stood now. If he had been pushed by a demon they would have been on their kill without a second thought, they tracked them without mercy, like the hunters who aimed to play with their food instead of showing it the grace of kindness. If they had hit to watch him run they would have chased until it was over not let him sink in this water so far from home. They would have wanted the angels to see what they had done to such a pretty face. 

Because he was pretty, even in dying. The last bubbling breaths fluttered to the surface until they broke through the tension. You trembled, cold all over from the moment's rush of fear that was still coursing through you, hands clenching and unclenching as you thought over what to do with him. In the water he could rot without much worry to you, the fish would pick him over but it wasn't as if you got many swimming around anymore. The sea folk had warned of swimming too close to your pool, for the first couple months of you finding shelter in the hollow cave, the fish had been your only source of sustenance. But the sea folk kept to their own, even the lowest of the food chain, warning them about you had been easy enough. So his body would rise unless his wings found themselves lodged under a rock. 

You were ready to turn, find company in him even if he was at the bottom of the water until a single lone feather caught your attention. Eyes tracing the swaying descent like a cat following the trail of a mouse. Bleached white like a bone, pearlescent once it landed on the now still water, cupped like a curved leaf or petal. And there, dotted like a heart, was a single spot of blood. You could remember the way your own feathers looked, black enough for the blood to seep in and disappear like it had never existed. 

It had felt like drowning the day you found yourself here. Falling from where they had dropped you had hurt, the salt water burning your open wounds like a quick scratch from a cat. Your mouth full of the ocean, choking and suffocating you as you claw for anything to grasp. They had left you, the rain of black feathers not unlike this angel's white ones now. Only you had been still fighting, ripping at the hold that death had on you because in death you would have to go back to some kind of hell and you wouldn't be able to survive an eternity with your worst moments, not when at that peak they felt that excruciating. 

The angel now had given up, his twitching hand slowing to a stop. If the day you had found yourself drowning in this very pool had been your worst you would not let the same death kill someone else when you knew that it had been survivable. You would not take the name of your brethren as a brand but only the burden as it was, this action a shoulder shake to lessen its hold. So you dove in. 

You had reached the bottom before, the sandy ground only six feet deep, a proper grave for when your arrow rang true on the rare fish that came in. They sank from how heavy the weight of their death hit them. But they had never been truly heavy and you still felt weak in comparison to the other demons you should have taken after. It wasn't until you reached him that you realized you would have to touch him to take him to the surface. 

Your hands slid around his wrist, trying to lift him just enough to get your arms under his. Legs kicked behind you as you struggled to keep yourself in the right position, lungs constricting. He was lighter than you imagined and it was mostly because of the water's help, but his wings, broken, bent, and barely hanging on, weighed him down, hanging behind him like a sheet torn to bits. 

Kicking and kicking you went, feet pushing against the rocky walls lined with coral, sharp enough to cut into your feet. Blood was darkening the small space, his and yours, mixing as you went. The need to breathe begged at your aching lungs, throat tight with the need. He was so limp, no help as you finally broke the surface, gasping air by the mouthful as you reached an arm out for the edge. 

It hasn't crossed your mind how you would pull him out only that it was better to have his head above the water than below it. But you tried, not caring if he got scratched up as you pushed him needing to get him halfway out of the water so he was easier to pull out. Your grunts turned into near cries, he was heavier and heavier the more you pushed him out of the water, sopping body, wings, and clothes adding on to the bricks piled up you felt you were pushing out. When he was halfway up when your arms weak, you pulled yourself out of the water. No time to take a breather as you wrapped both your hands around his wrists. You groaned, putting all your weight back, tugging and tugging until he was just feet resting in the bloody water. 

Your arms are trembling, half limp only held up with the adrenaline crossing through you from the fear that was still making its way through your veins. Pushing him onto his back his partially open mouth looked as if he had already gone and died, effort wasted if you gave up now. You had never been taught the art of saving anyone but you knew what you would want if someone had been kind enough to lift a hand to help you. Fingers locked together you press on his chest, shoulders burning with the effort. Dripping water fell from your chin as you went, the droplets sliding down his cheeks like tears as you cursed. “Don't,” it was all you could make out from your clenched teeth, a demand that he not die right here, right now. Sand digging into your legs, grains between each feather pressed under him, turning them golden as the fading light hit in just right. 

You pressed so hard you felt your arms out snap, elbows locked, chest heaving in the way you wanted him to and then he coughed. The strangled choke like a morning bell, that slim chance of promise of another day. His body jerked to life, shocked like lightning he bolted, turning to the side and vomiting a mess of sea. Your nose scrunching as you sat back,  joints electrified and shot, you fell back into the sand, watching the high mouth of the cave as you listened to him continue his fit. 

In the time you had spent in the Moolpools cave it was easy to only make small movements, you hardly went out unless you were truly hungry enough to risk it. This had been the most motion you had done in a long time, and now you knew exactly why it was easy for them to target you. You felt weak, you were weak, this was only proof enough. But you had saved him, if even for a second, and they would have thought you weak for that too. 

You could hear their laughs right behind your ears. You had not been facing the sky then, but you had hoped, their hands forcing your face into the dirt. Childish demon cruelty taken a step too far even in the eyes of the elders. It had taken you a long time to catch your breath then, your lungs never obeying you but it's another reason why they had believed you dead, the sudden stillness that had taken over your body as the pain made its way through you. You wondered if your angel felt that way now. Only you had been kind enough to let him see the sky before he slipped into unconsciousness. 

Because he had, as you regained your strength to look at him, eyes closed, breathing rapid and uneven. You had given him a chance and now you didn't know what to do with him. His wings were bent and broken. Hardly any feathers clinging to the frail bones they had been attached to. It would be hell to fix them, pain unimaginable to bind and snap them back into place, stitch them together, and pray for some way to make them better again. You stood over him, the white shirt that had once been billowing in the wind was now transparent and clinging to his skin, the thread strong and fine. 

When they had ripped your wings off you had nothing left to attach, not that you haven't tried, but alone with no help there was no way to reattach wings with your hands. No way to reach behind yourself except to feel the spots they had once been, the jagged scars still there now, the ghost pain of that day still shooting down your back every time you dreamt of that day. And on the worst days, you could imagine them still behind you, heavy and protective, enough to curl yourself into your personal space, alone in the dark velvet home you had been born with already built in. Wishing they were back was worse than knowing the pain of them being taken away. And even as a demon, you would not be so cruel as your brethren had been to leave you without so much as the one thing that should never be taken from a person, angel or not. 

You still had your embroidery kit, the soft bag had been tied to your finger the day they had ruined you. The thread was dark, dyed to match the rocky mountains you had been sewing into the fabric. You wonder if they had burned your work after you were gone. All the hard hours doing the thing that you had hoped would get you by in the underworld. People loved to be flashy, spend on extravagant things, and there had been nothing more extravagant than the garments you had embroidered. 

Tucked in the bottom of the small pouch was a thin sharp pair of scissors, the handle shaped like a bird, wings laid back with its beak glossed in gold. They had been a gift when you started to learn, your needles next to them clicking around, silver and all different sizes. Everything was so small, your only weapon that day as if it would hurt them. They Had been useless but they would be put to work now. He would need to be wiped of the sand before you went in and started to clean the wounds enough to see where you would have to help sew him back together. 

You had collected a fair amount of things having lived in the cave for so long, your stash that was similar to a magpies, pretty but never something you used. Sometimes you would find things and keep them just because you might want them because it was better having something over nothing. The crate of glass bottles filled with alcohol is one of those things. It had washed up on the beach after a ship had hit the rocks, too close during a storm to leave anyone alive in the mess. You had picked over the wreckage just as the carrion you were nicknamed after. Someone would have wanted it and so you had taken it just because of that fact, if the gold meant nothing to you but everything to another you would have it, as was your nature. Now you could use it, uncork the bottle, and pour it over his back if you could get him to roll over again. 

Kai did not see you move to the dark corner where your stash was hidden when he blinked himself awake. In his confusion his lungs still felt full, his throat constricting as if he was waking in the water and not beside it, choking because his mind was trying to catch up to his reality. He hurt all over, his chest and stomach scratched and burning, heavy with an ache of bruised ribs. His back was on fire, screaming at him, begging him to scratch and rip at the pain. It made him whimper, the only sound that could come out from his raw throat. 

He could not think past anything but the look of the sky above him and not behind him as he fell. And when you showed yourself, a bottle of clear liquor in one hand and a small pouch in the other, he believed you to be a human stumbling upon him on a lone beach. He had not seen many humans, accustomed to staying up in the heavens with his brethren. And how could he have known what you really were when you were wingless? You had not grown the horns that most of the demons possessed, you could feel the spot they must have wanted to sprout through if they had been given the chance, the area always colder than the rest of your scalp. It had been one of the things they had picked at when taking their dues. 

To them, you had been no demon without the markers they had been so used to seeing, your wings the only thing tying you down to their depths. Even your power had been faint, strong enough to only wave a candle's flame to life, no roaring forest fires and destruction.  To Kai, in that moment you were nothing more than a girl who looked like the saving grace he had been begging so fiercely for when falling. 

For an angel, his dark eyes cut through you like knives. You had not been looked at so intensely since the attack, people who caught a glance had known to keep going and turn away. This gaze was a line of glimmering hope that he had thrown around your shoulders tightening until it was nothing but a collar of expectations tugging you forward. You had been taught to crush looks that felt suffocating, praise broken bonds, and burnt bridges before ever letting someone take you for a helping hand and honest heart. “Do not look at me like I'm something to be thankful for,” 

It was not the first thing that he had expected you to say to him. Not when he was so close to thinking you to be some sort of angel like him without the matching wings. Your voice cut through him, sharp and demanding, nearly as painful as it had been to wake up like this. Everything was falling apart; his body, his grip, which he had believed to be tight, around his good faith in people. But you had pulled him out of the water and maybe he had come to expect too much from people. A package deal that had been wrapped up in the warped expectations of the angels. Not that most of them followed the rules, but it was better to hide behind the guise of kindness than the truth of wrongdoing and instinctual indifference. 

The fallen angel only blinked back at your words instead of taking them in, eyes softening at the realization that it had been you alone to pull him out, your chin still dripping with the saltwater that stung the open wounds on his back. He could not do anything but look at you thankfully because it was the only thing he could focus on feeling without turning back into a pit of despair that had let him give up the second he had hit the water. Thinking even about that second of thought that would have led to forever was nothing but crushing rocks landing on his back heavier than the wings still trying to hang on by nothing but thin ribbons of flesh. 

And in truth what the look did was make you nervous. Like some lone schoolgirl who couldn't be under the pressure of her class watching a presentation. It frustrated you to no end, twisting a bloody knuckled hand around your insides and tugging them down to your knees. He was in no way able to make a move to hurt you that you wouldn't see coming first. You knew the small cave better than anyone alive and he was weak, his hands opening and closing limply like the steady wings of a butterfly resting. And all his feeble voice could muster up in response was, “Thank you,” 

The words strung together felt like thrown stones hitting you one after the other. You had been kicked out of your home and told you were no more demon than the humans roaming the castles pretending to play ruler and kingdom. To be told thank you for saving anyone, or even more specifically an angel’s, life was the final nail in your coffin. Every last thing they had said to you as they ripped your wings from your shoulders buried deep enough to burn, those two words sprouting from the grave to show the fruits of your tormentor's labor. The final stamp to seal the truth of your wrongfulness. 

It would have been easier to kill him then, easier than having to hold him down as you tried to help him, and easier than pulling him up from the depths of the moon pool. But they had been right to call you a sympathizer, right in calling you weak because looking at him needing you it was impossible to turn him away. “I'm going to hurt you,” it was a warning bell, the echo of your voice mimicking the sound of some faint prophetic truth. It was not your intention to cause pain on him but the only way that you could help him. It was easier to confess to that than to say you would try and fix him. 

But Kai did not listen, he did not care if you hurt him so long as it made his mind stop working over his last thoughts. The blinking of tears the second he had been pushed had made him feel little again, a child wondering why bad things happened at all. Why would someone push him, why would someone rip his wings until they were nothing but dead weight trying and failing to hold on to their last breath, drowning him, pulling him under into nothing but darkness? He had been wronged more than he thought would ever happen to him and if those who claimed to be honest, kind people,were the ones who hurt him, what was there to believe when those claiming to hurt him had done nothing but pull him free from death? It was a mess of contradictions and his gut was not helping him pick sides. He was a mix of emotions that felt hollow like a long dead tree waiting for a victim to fall into and perish just the same. Being hurt meant nothing to a newly found desolate creature, betrayed, and seeking grace. 

And so he would let you hurt him because he had nothing to lose, no more to give but turn over and let you try whatever it was that you had planned to help fix him. It was like a mutual understanding had fallen over the two of you like a blanket. He saw the bottle in your hand and knew, watched your fingers as they pulled out the needle, watched the way the metal turned red and you started to heat it enough to sterilize it. It was then that he knew what you were. 

It did not make him cringe, not when he knew that to have a demon at his back was akin to death incarnate welcoming themselves to twist a knife right into his spine. He knew that there were hardly enough people on this island who would have helped him enough to the point that they wouldn’t have gotten ill at the sight of his blood. Demons had steady hands; they did not tremble and they did not cower away from gore. To have been stumbled upon by a demon as generous as you were was a blessing he could not fight back against. 

So he let you turn him over, your warm hands working to take off his shirt, cutting it away until it was nothing but scraps, his face pressed into the sand, the grains catching in his lashes. You were gentle with him, laying out his wings that had lost most of their feelings, numb all the way up until they hit the spots right where they were supposed to be connected. It was the only place he could feel the pain anymore, his lungs and throat secondary to the pain he was feeling right there at the root of him. If everyone else had worn their hearts on their sleeves angels had found a way to wear their hearts on their back, their life source, and now it was screaming at him. 

You picked over the scraps of his shirt, peeling away the thread in long stands, looping the thread around your fingers, and making a small ball for you to pull from as you worked. He kept his eyes closed, lashes laying so peacefully across his cheeks as if he was dreaming in the moonlight and not waiting for you to put him back together. There was no going back the second you started, not unless you picked him apart again just to see the way he looked again while hurt. The thought made you feel a bit sick. The intrusion of it is either your mind trying to work around the situation or your faint demon instinct kicking in, playing with the idea until you fall into the trap of it. 

But it was still enticing even if it was sickening. You were so alone and bored, with nothing to do and no one to see. You had been hurt and had not yet found the outlet for that pain even years later, this was the perfect opportunity and yet you could not bring yourself to do anything but cringe the second you straddled his back. Holding him down with the weight of you as you poured the liquor over his wounds and watched him writhe from the pain. There was little enjoyment to find here. 

Kai tried to keep his mouth shut nearly as tight as his eyes but the second the first wave of the anesthetic washed over him he could not help himself from screaming. It echoed around the cave, loud enough to find itself spilling from the cave's top entrance. If anyone had been walking around they would have run, believing some wolf had gotten too far from the woods and taken a victim. You did not try to shush him, just placed your warm palm in the center of his back and pushed him back down, trying to keep him still even if it was an impossible task at that point. 

Then the first stitch came. It was easier to hold back, easier to try and focus on anything else but the blinding pain he was feeling, it was something other than the emptiness settling over him. He could not think of anything good coming from this, could not see himself going home again, to see his friends, the ones who had pushed him, his mother, his sisters. There was nothing but shame and treachery. They would have welcomed him back even wingless but there was no way for him to ever feel at home again, not when he knew what it was like to be nothing but air and death. 

He did not care if he did not move from that spot, the sand the only thing grounding him as he sunk his fingers in curling them until he could feel nothing but his mind trying to work and count every grain he could imagine on his skin. It was nothing but a tactic to let the pain wash away for even a second. He didn't even realize he was crying until the wetness was making more sand stick to his cheek. The soft rumbling of his whimpers mixed in with the faint groans he would release after a particularly tender part of the stitching. 

“You are very lucky to have me, when they took my wings I had nothing to do but bury the one they had left hanging. I don't know what it had looked like but I do know that it felt like this,” you were muttering, talking to yourself and letting the words come out without a filter just as you did when he hadn't been here. “I would have wanted even the one to be stitched back but I remember the pain and I'm-” The word sorry was not one that came from you often or at all, there was little you could do but say it now but still your throat caught. “I would not wish it on anyone,” 

Your fingers worked fluently, picking up the memory of the old stitches you had perfected long ago in a life you did not care to remember. This was nothing but an old way of passing time that you had practiced over and over again. You had never stitched up flesh and blood but it was no different now than it had been then. In a way, it was a comfort you should not have found in the task but it was impossible not to. 

“I do not know how well this will work but I will try,” his wings, covered in sparse feathers, twitched every once in a while as you carefully threaded your needles, tightening the stitches and watching the way the wings came back to life like a marionette doll pulled at its strings. It was hope and nothing more. 

Kai couldn't grit out any more words, the sound of your voice washing over him like a balm but nothing more. He wanted to hate you but knew it was necessary to feel this way when it came to pain. They had told him never to bite the hand that fed him but this was a forceful hand coming out to get him, twisting its fingers in his hair and pushing his face in the dirt until it was nothing but a given that he had to eat whatever it was that was handed to him. But he listened, taking in each word and trying to keep them as close as he could get them. 

Tried to imagine you with dark wings at your back. The silky feathers always shined so nicely in comparison to his white ones. His wings had looked plush and downy, nothing like the oily temptation of the demons. But he could not get the image around his head, could not see what it looked like any more than what it would look like to go home again. It was with you in his mind that he passed out, eyes closing until there was nothing but peaceful darkness where he had no reason to think of hurtful homecomings and angels dressed as death. 

You noticed almost as soon as he fell into the pain. Body going slack underneath you, all of his muscles loosening before he was nothing but twitching nerve ends from each insertion of the needle. It was not delightful work but clean and concise, the expert precision of a fiber works artist long since skilled in their field. Every so often your fingers struggled to keep hold of the slipping needle, the tips of each digit dipped in crimson as you went on with your task. And even as he lay there you went on with your muttering. “We will have to look for more feathers, only a few fell in here, I still have a couple but I don't know how well you will feel looking spotted like a pigeon,” 

For a long time, you had been sick at the sight of the clutch of feathers that you had kept from your wings long gone. It had been nothing but pain to see them, the sight cutting into you like a knife just sharpened on a whetstone. You had wanted to bury them right along with the wing you had put to rest, ripped the rest of the way from your back from your own hands, and yet you couldn't part with them just as you couldn't let go of the needles from your past life. 

Helping him right now, pinching skin to pierce through and thread, felt like it was somehow stitching up a bit of yourself. You acted fast almost as soon as he was out of the water because it was the way you would have wanted someone to help you. Without discrimination, just understanding. They had given you no chance and if you could not give it to yourself you would give it to someone not far off from you. Because you knew what it was like to live here stuck wingless with nothing to do but try not to rot like some discarded apple. It had taken everything in you to help yourself once you had let go of your past life. The feeling was nothing like you had ever felt before. 

It was emptiness, no more and no less, just an expanse of nothingness that unraveled the farther and farther you went into the recesses of your mind. To pull yourself from that pit and find some kind of routine was nothing short of a miracle. But if someone had been waiting here, even if they didn't pull you out of the water but took the wing you had and gave you the hope to live with that once comfort would have been better than nothing. Even if he didn't have full control over his wings like before he would still have his childhood home still there right at his back protecting him when no one else had. If you could give him that it was enough. 

But then when the sewing was done there was nothing to do but let him rest. The work you had done was as neat as it could be, the prickling skin around the base of each wing would hold steady and let the skin heal. You stood looking over him, sleeping with his soft cheek on the sand, his hair once wet now dry and resting against his sleeping brow. Angelic was the only word that would surface and it felt silly to attach something so obvious to him. He was nothing but angelic down to the bone; to his blood. But even still freckled in dried blood and his half-feathered wings you could tell it was written all over him fallen or not. 

You had seen little of the angels when growing up but occasionally they made a pass over the moonpool's mouth. Their bell-like laughter twinkled like the stars in the night that they flew with. They had seemed so far off and distant. But what you had been told about them was that they were nothing but selfish and self-righteous. Underneath the beauty was callous arrogance, they helped others but only if they had already achieved more and found that they could take the last step without them. Take help but never give credit unless it is beneficial to them to say, drop everything to look good, or fend for themselves. 

They had said all demons had shared blood with the angels, until one was banished, the bitterness infecting their souls until their wings turned ebony with rage and the promise of revenge. The story had been on your mind the second they had picked on you for being weak, wondering if somehow your blood had run thin and showed assets of your long since dead ancestors who had seen the heavens and walked with wings of ivory at their backs. Because although you found yourself thinking cruel things you did not dream to be a cruel person. 

So you cleaned him up as best you could, cleaning the blood from your hands and his back, taking the time to take your wet cloth over his feathers to try and clean them as best as you could. You watched his wings twitch in response every so often but he did not stir, there was little you could do in terms of his pain, little more you could do if he found himself with an infection. You could hardly keep yourself alive in the space, you don't get many fish unless you make it out to the beach at night, or find a rabbit in the woods easy enough to catch with a trap. Two mouths to feed was a limit you would have to push yourself to reach. 

But it was something you would think about in the morning, not when the sun was gone and the cave was dark enough that the only thing you could see was the faint glow of the moonpool. The water reflected onto the walls of the cave, washing everything in an eerie blue hue that minced what it would have looked like if you plunged in and swam with the sea folk. It was one of the few beautiful things you could indulge in and yet now you could add to the list because you had him to look at. 

Without turning your back to him you found your usual spot against the wall, the perfect place so that it was just hidden in the dark with the view to see the ceiling's entrance. There was nowhere else to look with him blocking the water as you lay down, back pressed up against the smooth stone wall, washing your heated skin with the faint coolness it had been seeking. You traced the lines of his sleeping face, scared to fall asleep with him so close. Wishing that in that moment you had your own wings to wrap you up, block you from the fear of waking up with him so near with nothing but questions and demands. 

You curled up with your small blanket, tucking it under your chin keeping the angel in sight. It was only when your lashes were fluttering closed that you noticed his eyes start to peek open. He only blinked faintly, a tremble starting in his arms but he was unable to move them. Kai felt weak, drained of everything, vision blurry with the sight of you lying down in the blue darkness. 

Whatever fear you had before was slowly washing away with the look of pain written all over him. He had no way of hurting you when he could hardly breathe properly from the pain. “What is your name?” you could not keep calling him the angel in your head or out loud. 

Your whisper carried in the room and he closed his eyes at the sound, it had been what he had heard before he passed out and it only made his mind feel at ease, something to grab onto in the pain. “Huening kai,” it was low and the only thing in the whole room besides the two of you. 

“You need to rest Kai, tomorrow we have to look for any feathers that may have dropped around the beach or the woods,” but Kai didn't care about that, not when he was still trying to find more of you to hold onto. 

“What’s-” he couldn't think of the rest of the sentence, not until it was tumbling into him like the rocks off the side of a cliff. He wanted to know your name and hold onto it so he could attach it to the thoughts and memories he was building of you in his head. “What's your name?” He was looking through his lashes only able to keep his eyes open the smallest bit because even that had felt like it took too much energy, the small twitches of his fingers taking most of the rest of his will. 

For a second you could not remember what you had been called before you were just you, because in here, alone, no one asked and no one cared. But it came back to you like the moon had come back each night, there was no forgetting it even if it sounded foreign on your tongue after so many years. Saying it, Kai could hear how unsure you felt until you repeated it again for him. 

So that's how he said it in his head, the slight second between the two the repentance following the state of his mind, that question lingering at the last syllable, and the sigh of content following the tail end when he said it again. So he let it go over and over in his head, counted the letters like sheep jumping over him, letting the thought of you lull him back to sleep instead of the pain. And you followed right after him, sleeping fitfully because every time you heard a small hitch in his breathing you had to make sure he was still alive. Make sure that your effort has not gone to waste. 

And he did live through the night and with your aid you helped him sit up in the morning. Watching him ball his fist and rub at his cheek to rid it of the sand that had built up. He looked like a cherub fallen to the stone and looking up in the foreground of the painting waiting for someone to notice his absence. Because all he could think about was if anyone missed him, if they knew what had happened to him and how he had been pushed instead of just caught in some wind he could not find control in as if he was little and learning to use his wing again. They must have said something, maybe they had blamed a demon for what had happened. 

But now with your eyes on him, watching him as you made to clean his back again, checking if in the night there was no more redness or sign of illness, he could not think to see a demon the same again. Here you were being a complete contradiction to everything he had ever been told in his life. Demons were nothing but troublemakers who thought nothing about others. They kept to themselves and made fun by bringing people down. There was no room for him to think about how good a demon could be to anyone let alone an angel like him. 

Sitting up, letting your warm hands look over his back, he wanted to lean into the touch, let you care for him until he could find a way to fly right out of here. There was no way that he could repay you for something like this, nothing for him to do but sit in the silence you had built around you. But he wanted to break it, crack against the hold that the stillness had over him, and scream at the top of his lungs and curse the heavens even if he had forgiven them for so much already. 

He did not know if he deserved what had happened to him but he understood that it had happened and there was nothing for him to do but take it. Cursing and screaming would do nothing but make him bitter and bitterness took too much from the soul, it drained people and he needed all the energy he could get. “Thank you,” it was again the only thing that he could think to say. 

“I told you it would hurt,” because every brush of your fingers to check your work was making him suck in the air between his clenched teeth, the sound fast and snakelike. 

“Would there have been another way to do it without pain?” it was nothing but a question to poke fun. Kai wanted to lighten the mood but it did not help the situation. 

“Do you think my kind would have taken it if so?” you didn't care to look at his blinking reaction, because as much as he knew you were his only option he still held some kind of grudge against demons. It was written all over his face and you didn't even have to see it to know. It shut kai up in a slip second of shame for thinking the instant no. 

“You're helping me nonetheless,” his hand reached across his body to press at his shoulder, delicate fingers so close to the torn flesh. 

You waved his hand away, “don't touch it, the worst thing would be an infection,” 

“The worst thing would be to lose them all together,” he did not say it to be mean or pick at you, he was not like your kind in that way where they know the thing that would tear you down and pick that option every time. No, he was just stating his truth and he was not lying. Infection could be helped but losing them would be closer to death. It was nothing but words but it made your back burn. 

You had heard of ghost limbs, the feeling of a hand still being there after it had been cut clean off. People believed they could scratch the limb if they thought hard enough to get rid of the feeling. You didn't know how real the feeling would be until you were there with your wing buried in the woods, the other long lost and tossed in a fire if you knew how any of them would have cleaned up the mess they made. If anything was to tear into you it was that first night where everything ached. Your back where the scabs started to turn to scars began to itch and the feeling traveled down to where there was nothingness but the hope of where your wings would resprout if that was ever an option. You wanted to wrap them around you and wished if you felt the ghost of anything it would be the home they had helped you feel but all you had felt was pain. A pain you could not help because there was nothing to do but let it work its way through your system. The pain was not an itch; not so easily taken care of. 

“That would be horrible and if you don't listen to me they will be gone, keep your hand away,” you left no room for argument in your tone and Kai listened. He curled his hand into a fist and sat it in his lap. “Today we will let the area breathe and while I’m out we can get whatever we need to make a salve to help the healing process,” Kai nodded knowing that you were right. He didn't even have the first thought of where to start to find out how to help himself. 

“Can you try and pull your wing in,” you didn't want to push him so early but you needed to know if it was worth the trip to even go out and look for feathers if he could not use them. 

For Kai, it felt like an impossible question to answer. He felt distant from his heart back, like he was cut in half but then he felt your fingertips, the feeling of them dragging along the edge of his wings, tracing the span of them and following the curve. “Can you feel that?” This was easier because it was the only thing he could focus on. The heat of you was constant, radiating from your body onto his like a blanket he wished he could pull in closer. 

“Yes,” it was shallow as he followed the feeling in his mind. He had never been sensitive to touch on his wings, he knew others could feel any brush of their feathers but he felt nothing until now. If he had lost the ability to fly he had gained the ability to have sensation right along the spot he feared he would lose anyway. 

You curled your fingers around the top of his wings slowly following the natural way they folded into themselves and helped him push them close to his back. Kai groaned but it was not as horrible as he expected it to be. With your help, he found whatever connection he had lost because now he could keep them pulled in without your help. But you still helped to tuck the other one close just as neatly, checking around his stitches to make sure they could handle the movement without being impossibly stiff. 

The sight made you clench your jaw. Jealousy had not been a familiar feeling here but it was alive and well now. But it did not matter, you could be jealous and still help him. But you had to get up and turn away, busy yourself with finding your own feathers, the ones you kept at the bottom of your stash of things, making sure they didn't accidentally get seen by you when you didn't want the reminder. 

It had felt easy to say you would give them to him in the moment but the second you pushed aside the spare clothes you had and laid eyes on them it was like saying you would clip off your fingers and let him use them on his own hands. You let the stack of clothes fall right back into place, picking up the loose shirt you could find that would button over him. He would have to wear it backwards because it was not made with wings in mind but there was nothing else for you to do unless he wanted to walk around shirtless. 

But Kai was thankful pushing his arms through the sleeves and leaving the buttons for you to do up for him. You made sure to keep yourself from brushing him accidentally, no need to touch him more than you needed to as you secured the fabric around him. But Kai instantly missed your warmth the second you pulled away. 

“The only way out is up but it's nothing too bad, you only need to raise your arms about this high,” you demonstrated, “it's mostly leg work,” 

“You want me to leave?” he didn't know why it was the first thing he would think, you had just told him about collecting materials to help him but as soon as the words left your mouth all he could think was no don't kick me out don't push me like them, as if you could hear him you shook your head. 

“Do angels only sit around when faced with adversity or do they get up and work?” you slung your bag over your shoulder, slipping both arms in to have it securely against your back. When going out it was the only thing that felt comfortable enough to have at your back when you had little else. “If you want to stay, I say we work together to make sure that we can keep you here for a bit longer, but I cannot do everything and you cannot stay forever. Tonight we only need a few things,” 

“Okay,” Kai stumbled to stand, feeling unstable and wobbly enough to reach out for the walls to hold him up. 

“You can stay here for tonight, rest more if you're not up for it,” 

“No,” it was a slight snap back against the way he was feeling. It was not only because he was feeling weak but because he did not like to sit around doing nothing, he did not want to wait for you to come back or worse wait and think that you were never coming back for him. He's sure that is something a demon would do, leave him here without help just to see how long he would stay without the help. But he was thinking badly because he didn't want to face his own truth, “I need to do something,” anything would be better than sitting around and thinking up ways to hate you over nothing at all. Because there was nothing to hate you over, you had done nothing that would make him hate you but the longer he stayed up with his thoughts they seemed to poison the image of you slowly. And he could not do that to his savior. 

“Fine, you can go first so that I can make sure you don't fall back,” and you had been telling the truth about the way out, the grooves of the walls made perfect spaces for his feet to fit. Only after a few steps up did he have to raise his arms to try and hold himself steady as he kicked his feet out the top of the opening. It was only possible because the side you had set him to get out of was shorter than the rest of the jagged ring of rocks forming the entrance of the cave. And as soon as he was out it was easy to sit and rest with his legs dangling into the open mouth as if he would just jump right into the water he had nearly died in. 

You had no trouble pulling yourself up and out, the rock smoothed down from the amount of time that you had made the trip up even if you avoided it most times. “There is no other way in or out?” Kai asked as you showed him the way down to the grassy underbrush. 

“You could swim in and out, it's not very practical but it's better that way if you want to make sure no one sees you coming in. But I don't think that would be good for you and you have to hold your breath for a long while,” Kai could not think about what it would be like to go back into the water after yesterday, he's sure he would instantly imagine himself drowning again. 

Instead, he focused on following you and your steps through the thick mess of trees surrounding the spot where you had made your home. Distantly he could hear the sea, the soft crashing of waves on the shore lightening as the two of you went until he saw the first blood-dotted feather. 

His wings twitched at the sight, the soft white tucked in between the branches and leaves of a tree. He was silent as he watched you pluck it between your fingers, reaching it like you were picking up a gold coin found on heads for luck. “You will tell me eventually why it is you fell from the heavens won't you?” he watched you twist the feather, examining the dark dried crimson stains. 

“There is little of a story there,” he was clenched all over, fists and jaw tight as you held the feather out for him to take, “you hold it,” he jutted his chin out, the only movement he could bring himself to make or else he would fall apart. 

Kai had gone through many feathers of different sizes growing up. Preening them and feeling grateful to have grown fully so that they did not fall out as often as they had when growing from downy softness to strong enough to let him fly. But it was different to see them like this. He knew they should not be in your hand, or even his. They should not be spread around the woods like bunches of snow that had not yet melted with the coming spring. But it was as if the longer he looked out over the expanse of woods in front of the two of you the more speckles of white he caught mixed in with all the green. 

He was frozen in his spot, stuck just looking out at all the pieces of himself spread out like nothing more than a chess board thrown to the ground, with no intention of being picked up after a soiled game. You could see in him the same kind of evil that was in you twisting itself around your brain the second you moved that stack of clothes and saw your own feathers. When you were young they meant nothing because they had always been there but once it started to go away, once it was nothing more than a pile in front of you it made you feel small and insignificant. 

“When they first ripped my wing it didn't hurt like I had imagined it would have,” you had been frozen, stuck like a kitten who had been picked up by the scruff of its neck. You had looked up with eyes that nearly rolled in your skull the second you realized what had happened. How could you not have felt something so huge? Maybe it was because you could not see it, your mind not catching up with your body until seconds later and it was all you could think to feel. There had been blood, slick down your back and on your fingers as you reached to try and hold onto anything that was left. “For a second you almost think you can fly away from the pain,” 

Kai watched your eyes go unfocused, lost in a thought that had been his reality just the day before. It was almost as if he could feel that foot pressed right into his back again. His ‘friend’ with the heel of his boot cutting into Kai’s spine. He had asked him to look out over the edge of the last cliff, claiming to have seen carrion flying around too close for comfort. It was only a second, looking over the edge so high up he knew that if he flew down and caught the wind that it would be a rush he could never replicate. 

The boot had been nothing but a second before his hands had been on his wings pulling them back until that sickening crunch and tear. It had happened so fast kai had felt nothing until it was all too late. 

“There is always a story and you don't have to tell me yours but know that if I could get revenge on the ones who took my ability to fly, I wouldn't hold back from repeating over and over the same pain they inflicted on me,” you tucked his feather into your bag, “they wouldn't think twice about you so don't give them the grace of never speaking up for what they did to you,” 

“You’d think that because you're a demon,” and for the first time Kai saw you crack a smile, a twisted tarnished thing. 

“We are not too different, the only thing that sets us apart is you thinking you are any better than me. You forget we both woke up in that cave only I was alone and you had me, and how lucky for you that I'm nice and don't just build you up to pull you right back down again,” you turned walking because you needed the distance, “go back if you can't see that we are the same,” 

“My first thought wouldn't have been to hurt someone I helped,” Kai kept pace with you, watching you pick up each one of his feathers as you went. 

“Just because I say I resist hurting you physically does not mean that what you say or think cannot hurt me. You want to freely throw your judgment around and stick a label onto me, reducing me to nothing but blood I did not ask to be born with and still you cannot see how we are exactly the same. We are only doing the same thing in different seasons, only one of us is plain as day and the other is hidden behind some thick smokescreen allowed in whatever game we have found ourselves,”  he could tell there was no room for argument with you. Set in some demon way that made you want to burn instead of heal. But even he knew he was just being bitter, proving you right even if he didn't say it out loud. 

He was grateful and he was upset, he had been a pot of water his whole life and it had never been set above a fire until right now and the bubbling was unwelcome and made him itch all over. He didn't see the reason for revenge when there was no way for him to get back up to the heavens without walking up the stairs and that would feel more shameful than coming back wingless. The only thing he could feel about the topic was that if it had been him or you he's not too sure that it would have been him you would have picked to help. But even he couldn't hide from the truth of wanting to pick himself every time. 

So he kept his mouth shut knowing there was nothing he could say that would make him look better and nothing he could say to make you look worse because faintly you were right about the both of you being so similar. He followed you like a lost puppy, watching you pick over the brush, collecting pieces of him until you found every part of the set to make enough of a picture. You were careful with them, fitting them all together in a neat stack and wrapping a loose string of thread around them to keep them from spilling all over again. 

By the time you two had combed most of the area, the sun was setting into nothing but stars. Two handfuls of feathers and a pit in Kai’s stomach made for little conversation. Keeping his eyes on his footfalls he did not see what it was that made you tense up until it was right there burning in the distance. 

A little ball of fire, dancing seemingly above nothing but the air. A Willo-the–wisp, bright enough to feel like a beacon one could not turn to look away from. But you hissed at the thing, reaching down to pick up a rock, smooth in your palm before you threw it. “Hey!” Kai's voice echoed in empty woods, previously the only sound heard was his crunching footsteps. Your years of walking down here had taught you how to keep yourself light as you made a journey this far out from your home. “See only proving my point, hurting things without reason, what did they ever do to you?” 

But you didn’t feel like explaining yourself to him, it felt silly to believe in rumors about the little creatures but it was impossible not to feel conflicted about bad signs when your life had been full of misfortune.  “Its bad luck to see them,” 

“Well it showed up there was no need to throw a rock at it, bad luck or not it was given the second it popped up,” his statement made you roll your eyes. What was there to do but watch the flame snuff out? It felt better to make the flame extinguish the second you saw it as if they were the thing that leached luck from you the longer they stayed around.  

“I'm not going to sit and let the death promiser dance around and curse me, or you for that matter, I don't know how I would pull your corpse from the cave if you were to die from the infection they wanted to warn you about,” you watched his face pale, your eyebrows lifting letting it known that you had seen that you had won written on him, “see, so let me throw stones, I'm doing it for both of us even if you don't believe it,” 

“It's only an omen, it doesn't mean anything real,” but he was trying to convince himself to fear the little flame, small and weak enough to be taken out by nothing but a pebble. 

“You know we have people who read the stars? Creatures deep in the sea, the woods, the kingdom, even your precious sky. They all have stories and folklore that came from some kind of truth,” you picked up another stone in case you saw another little flame lingering around not wanting to risk a sighting even if you could help it. 

“How are you planning on getting the feathers back on?” Kai wanted anything else but to talk about being the same or not, about folklore and truth. He was tired and didn't want to think about anything else besides what was supposed to come next. 

“Wax, I have lots of candles stored up that will do, if I get the layers thin enough it shouldn't weigh you down. It's also soft enough so that it won’t restrict any growth when they start to grow back,” it felt far away to think about having to go through the process of aging all over again, he had been through the phase of watching his feathers transition he did not want to wait again. The wax would give him an option, anything that would help to keep him from feeling as if he fell so far back from everything he had ever known. 

He wonders if you had thought through the same things with your wings before it was too late. If the idea for the wax had come before or after you buried your last option. He did not think it would be okay to ask that, not when you were helping him already. Demons being fickle was not uncommon; he wouldn't be surprised that you tossed him aside for something new to tinker with if given the option. Rather he gets as much information for you on how to help himself before you leave him with nothing at all. 

You showed him the way back up and down into the cave and for a sickening second, he thought you would push him while he looked for a way to make it down without landing in the water. Your hand had been on his back to steady him and yourself on the edge together. His flinching from your touch only registered as pain and not fear. You jumped down angeling yourself so that you landed right at the edge of the water and you looked up, stepping out of the way waiting for him to follow your lead. 

Kai pushed himself down feeling nothing but air for only a second but it was a second too long. He stumbled as soon as his legs hit the ground, leaning back and looking at you for a sickening moment before he was ready to accept falling back into the water, but you reached out making a fist in his shirt as his arms waved trying to find something to hold onto. The heels of his feet almost tipped him into the water, his wings shuddering and trying to pull in closer, hiding back away as if they could when this damaged. The buttons on the back started to pop with the strain of his weight and he had to reach out for you, hands wrapped around your forearm as you pulled him back to the safety of the sand. 

“You're very clumsy on your feet,” you muttered, pulling yourself away from him and his tight grasp. He was embarrassed but only because he was washed in fear and being caught for it on his face. 

“There was not one time you fell while jumping down?” he waved at the short distance that was available for him to land. 

“Once or twice but you get used to the angle and learn,” you don't put your bag down, not when you have to turn around to look for your candles, keeping your back covered even if now you knew he would do little to hurt you physically. Everything you had picked up from your conversations and just watching him walk around made you realize just how his label fits him so well. He had been more upset over the will-o-the-wisp than his own ruining. But it still didn't make you drop your guard. 

Finding your stack of candles you tucked them under your arm and turned to find Kai sitting in the sand all over again, looking out at the water and watching the way it swayed. He traced the dark outline of the opening leading out to the sea, hardly noticeable if you hadn't said there was a way out before. He would have believed there was only the two of you and not the world's ocean just a few feet away from him. So much just inches away from his tomb that he believed he would have been stuck in until someone found his heavy lead-lined bones. 

“We don't have to do it tonight if you don't want to,” your voice was soft as if you knew he was stuck in some darkness in his mind, struggling against the hold of some blanket of depression he had thrown over himself and couldn't find his way out of. “It would be better too because we need the light and I can hardly make a fire big enough to produce enough,” 

Light, once so easy to produce on the edge of his fingertips, wasted power on his childhood innocence trying to find ways to light up his bedroom when he was supposed to be sleeping. It had been easy back then and now sitting here wanting to get it all over with he couldn't get up enough energy to heat his skin. He was cold all over, blood leached, and hollow. Lifting his palm he focused in on his hands, the soft ridges tracing around the center supposed to be the lifeline or so he had been told. That was where he had always watched the light come from first, starting right at his wrist and working its way up curving between his thumb and pointer finger before it was nothing but light held in his hand like he had caught a star. 

Now it was nothing. Not a flicker of illumination nor a hum of warmth. He balled his fist clenching until he felt his nails digging into his supposed lifeline wishing that if he squeezed hard enough he could find a single drop of anything left in him. And still nothing. Not even enough to help him now when he wanted it, needed it most. “Tomorrow,” the word was a bitter thing, in his chest and making it sound rough with hatred. 

“It takes a bit to get back,” you tried not knowing why you didn't just curl up in your spot and wait for the rest of the sun to set so that you could sleep. Ignore him and his well-deserved mood. But you had done the same thing, sitting in the dark trying to make even the smallest flame and nothing would come, “I was never the best at lighting anything on fire, not even the blades of dry grass they let the little ones practice with,” 

Kai listened, watching you from the corner of his eye as you took a seat next to him, legs crossed just like his, your knee so close to hitting against him he could feel the heat from it. “I should have known then that I wasn't like the rest of them, tailless, hornless, powerless,” you gave a dry humorless laugh, fiddling with the candle sticks you had, letting them spill into your lap picking one only one up and examining the wick. He traced the side of your face, following the bridge of your nose right till the end and watching you blow so softly it wouldn't have taken down the light of a birthday candle. 

But a flame bloomed, catching on the wick, and dancing in the coming darkness. It lit up the features of your face, your eyes shining in the light as you watched the small reflection of your power. You had little to give, children had been playing with fire long since they were learning to crawl and you had only come to master a few tricks. “The only thing that had labeled me a demon were my wings, and they had been…” the edge of your lips wobbled, your jaw clenching closed at the itching in your throat as if this was even too much to say to him. “They had been beautiful,” it was said just as softly as the exhale you had done to light the candle, hardly there and weak. 

“I didn't even care about the fire, anyone can light a match or strike flint and create a spark. But…” 

“Not everyone can fly,” he could feel the way you struggled to say it as if it was traveling from his mind to yours. In the firelight he watched the tear fall, tacking down your cheek faster than you could wipe it away. But you caught it erasing it as if that would take your feelings away from you as if it would keep those intrusive memories from surfacing. Because no one would know how it felt to be that high, physically and mentally, unless they had been up there with you catching air with a laugh bubbling up from your chest like it was coming from a faucet that could never be turned off. 

You blew out the candle, sticking it in the sand and pushing yourself to stand, letting the rest of the candlesticks stay laid out for tomorrow. “Don't worry about what you don't have just yet and be thankful for what you're still holding onto. I'm going to bed.” No more was needed to be said when the two of you both knew it hurt too much to find yourself in the mix of confessions and shared sympathy. So you tossed your bag to the side, turning your back to the wall and closing your eyes so that you couldn't look at the blessing you had given him and hadn't received from anyone else. 

But it was incredibly hard, there was nowhere to look except him or the back of your eyelids and all you could see when you closed your eyes was the vision of you in the sky. It ached to remember and the pain was fresh looking at his new stitches that you had done even with his wings pulled in and sparse of feathers. Because he sat there at the edge of the water trying and failing to open his wings up again without your help this time. 

He could tell they were stiff and he was unfamiliar with the feeling. Before it had been second nature, his wings moving as his lungs did without the need for his mind but now that he focused on them it was like they couldn't work and wouldn't unless he focused on not paying any mind to them. But it was hard to do that when his healing stitches were itching and he was told over and over again by you not to touch them. So he sat there watching the water with his back to you as if that would keep him accountable for not messing up your hard work. 

All that was keeping him up was the promise of tomorrow when the sun would come out and you would help him put his feathers back even if he felt that it wouldn't work. In a way he worried it was too unnatural to work, that somehow it would just fail because it was not right, the wind would not agree and still, if it did work he had no intentions of going home. To go back with wings made of nothing but wax and thread felt like a lie of himself. Some imposter trying to pass as himself to fit back into the same life he had before. But with his wings stuck together like a forged abomination felt like he was never going to find himself comfortable there again. 

He didn't care if they took him in as he was, whispered behind his back, because he knew they would, and let him pretend that everything was the same when it so clearly was not. He knew little of the world below and even less of the world below that one from where you came from, leaving home would be an adjustment but necessary. He just needed his wings healed enough to hide them back inside of him wherever it was they unfurled from when he wanted them. It had been uncomfortable back in the heavens because there was no need to hide who you were. He would have to get used to the feeling but it would not be something as horrible as this ache was now. 

It wasn't until the morning, the sun just peeking over the edge of the cave's mouth that he realized he had not gotten any sleep at all. He listened to the water, the chitter of the animals in the distant woods, and the sound of your easy breathing while you dreamt. He wondered if you would have dreams of flying, if they hurt just as bad as the pain of knowing you never would fly again but he knew they must have been tethered feelings; unable to have one without the other. 

He pictured you over and over again in his head. Imagined you with your wings of night in the air next to him, that laugh you had turned his way unlike the one he heard but one he wished you would give him so that he would know something in his dream would be real. This laugh was somewhere caught between a giggle and a sprinkle of light from his fingertips. He locked in on thinking of the laugh over the feeling of flying because it was impossible to not hurt when thinking of the air. But you, thinking of you, felt safe even if it was some kind of hope caught in a dream. 

Because you would never fly again he knew that much because you were so certain of it. He had known of people who wanted to mimic the feeling of flight. Making things out of clockwork and magic as if it would help them but that felt worse than having to go home stitched up. To walk in with wings not even close to the ones you owned, or were born with, felt like the worst kind of death. You wouldn't have even known that you had died, that the only thing keeping your body animated and moving were the strings of your delusion tied so tight around your joints that you never got a chance to look down and realize this was not you at all. 

So he tried to grasp that laugh because it was the only thing that felt close to real; the only thing that felt close to happening at all even with all the distant hope he was supposed to be having. And when you woke you could see it all over him, the failure written on every inch of him. It fueled an anger you had not felt in years, the simmering pot inside you turned up to boiling over nothing more than an empty glance. 

You kept to yourself, let him stay seated by the water, and went about to find the two of you food. And it wasn't until the two of you had eaten that you set into getting yourself ready for the long days work waiting for you. Candle in hand you watched him look back out over the water and you couldn't take it anymore. Kicking at the sand you watched the grains puff up in a plume around his legs his hands waving away the dust, brows scrunched as he scowled at you, “Stop looking as if I'm a failure already,” 

“I didn't say anything,” but he knows what you're talking about, the thought had infected him and was spreading as rapidly as the infection you had warned him would happen if he touched his back. 

“You didn't have to say anything, trust me if saving your life meant little to me I wouldn't have done it in the first place, I wouldn't waste my time,” you grab the handfuls of feathers, his eyes locking in on them in hand. 

“You have nothing better to do,” he didn't mean to say it but it was true he felt it and it made him believe it was the only reason why you were helping him. Because you were bored here, sitting in a cave doing nothing that he could see because there was nothing to do but sit. He had made it so that you had something to do. In a moment you would turn him away and tell him not to come back, to find someone else willing to help him. But you wouldn't let him give up on you. 

“No, I don't but I could have done anything else besides this. Hell it might be more fun watching you fall again than it would be to watch you actually fly but I guess we won't know unless we try,” but Kai’s scowl was back and it was better than seeing him feel nothing at all. 

“Why would you say that? You know what it's like-” 

“Exactly why would I help you for nothing at all but boredom? I wouldn't help if I didn't want to see you succeed, I wouldn't be doing this at all I would have let you die. So stop wasting my limited kindness and accept my effort without believing it will lead to nothing but failure,” 

“You would do that, wouldn't you?” because it had caught on him, the idea of being watched as he fell again by someone who would enjoy it. Unlike the first time, it would be worse, he would never come back from that fall, because even if he had forgiven the person who had pushed him he had known the second he felt their foot on his spine that it had been out of pure evil, if it were you doing all this just to watch him fail again it would be worse and there would be no forgiveness. “Build me up only to prove I should never fly again,” 

“You are incredibly cynical,” you blow on your candle, watching the flame heat the ivory colored wax so close to matching the color of his feathers. “Did you ever think that maybe I want you to succeed? That it would help me see you make it out of here more yourself than I ever would have left this place?” you stand behind him, pushing back the first row of feathers as gently as you can before placing the feather over the node you knew a new one would find to grow. You tilt the candle just enough until the wax drips, translucent dots pattering around the area as you watch the way they dry the color blending in perfectly. You let the feather go watching the way it sticks and stayed in place, right where it looked like it had never been gone. 

Kai could not feel the process, not when he was lost in his thoughts. He tried to separate the knowledge of you being a demon away from the proof he had of you being nothing more than someone who was lost. The two could be synonymous is what he reminds himself over again. He had his back to you and was hoping you wouldn't shove a knife right through him but that didn't mean he wasn't worried. 

He did not bring up his thoughts again, he let you work and passed himself off as being hopeful when it was the last thing he felt he was. He was grateful that you cared enough to try even if he believed you had ulterior motives but he would not say out loud that he had any hope when it was not true and if it was it felt wrong to jinx it. 

And so you worked, the slow repetitive motions evening out your heartbeat. And even when the wax fell to your fingers you did not flinch, taking the slight burn and continuing. Even Kai did not back away from the fallen wax when the sparse drops landed on his back. Anything was better than the pain he had felt before and now this felt pleasant, trembling from the shock the first time and accepting any other spot that made itself known to him. 

Then the two of you began to talk, small things that felt so insignificant when you were alone. His first question filled up the silence, “What's your favorite color?” you had not been asked in years something so lighthearted, there was no need to have a favorite when you wouldn't seek it out. 

“I don't know,” you had shrugged, dripping the wax over the next feather in the lineup. By midday, you had done one whole wing. The way the feathers overlapped made it so that you never even saw the wax since most of the top feathers had stayed in place. 

“You don't know? How could you not know your favorite color?” It was hard to explain to him how it didn't matter because Kai would take nothing short of an answer he saw as being good enough. He asked again, asked what it had been like when you were a child, and he listened as you tried to explain.  Answering his own questions and trying to take everything off his mind besides you and who you were. 

He asked you everything and anything he could think of until it was too late and the only thing he could think about was the fact you had stopped and were looking over his stitches again. “Is it bad?” 

“No,” it was the opposite of bad, he healed exceedingly fast because of his angel blood, the once torn flesh already looking a day away from having the stitches removed. “It's doing well, but I ran out of feathers for your right wing,” 

“Oh,” he felt like he had been deflated, his shoulders already bent forward so that you could have the best access to his back and he did not think he could sag anymore, yet he did. Periodically as you added more feathers in you would tap your wax-coated fingertip against his spine asking him to stretch his wings out. In the length of a day, he felt stronger and more like himself as the time passed. He could hold the weight of his wings up fine even with the thread still pulling him together bit by bit. And now he couldn't even finish what had been started. 

You had not thought before you spoke up next, the words spilling out as easily as the continued answers to his constant questions, “I still have a few from my wings if you don't mind the color,” but once it was said it felt right. You had no need for the feathers anymore, the only thing they did was bring you pain. They should have been buried right along with the rest of your wing and now you knew that there was some reason out there why you had kept them besides the reminder of a painful past. If they could help it felt right just as it felt right the second you pulled him out of the moon pool. You could give them up because in some way healing him was healing you. What better than to let your feathers fly again when you could not? 

And Kai did not mind, not when now he was itching to fly again, the hope somehow filtering into him the second you had told him to stretch his wings out again, to try. He let you put the feathers on, looked at the glossy ink color, and had not turned away because now he was tying the strings of his delusion on and he could not bring himself to stop. 

You did not feel loss this time around when seeing your past spilled out in a heap in your lap as you took wax to each one, fastening it to the angel boy's wing to give him one last chance that you wish you could have had. It felt cathartic, watching the way the colors contrasted and blended so well together. Your fingers ran over the line of them the second you had finished. A soft sad smile on your lips as you told Kai to stretch one final time before trying to fly. 

It felt so sudden, so soon from the last time he had taken flight. He hadn't even realized it was his last time at least before the fall. He wondered if you remembered your last time, what it had been like, and if it felt just as insignificant to you as it had to him. Wondered what you would have preferred your last flight to have felt like, where you would have gone. But the thoughts were a distraction to him trying to fly now. 

Kai stretched his wings, the white expanse only broken up by the tip of black at the end of his right wing. He couldn't remember what it felt like to lift off the ground instead of hurtling towards it but then he felt it, his heels lifting first, and the soft beat of his wings echoing in the small space. You stood back watching with a blank expression, tingling all over because you couldn't believe you had done it. He was up, the tips of his shoes just hitting the stirring sand before he felt his wings give out.

Shouting he fell, the distance nothing but a foot but feeling like he had come crashing all the way back down the side of a mountain. His back ached but not from pain but the strain of weakness. “You can try again tomorrow, we just have to keep at it even if it's a little bit every day,” Kai had fallen to his knees, looking up at you with his slumped shoulders and puppy dog eyes. 

“Thank you,” the words still tumbled into you, but it was easier to accept when the fruits of your labor were still right at the forefront of your mind. He had flown even if it was just a foot, it had been more than what either of you had expected. You had worried of his stitches ripping, worried of the feathers falling with only a few beats of wind and they had not, both holding stronger than your conviction. 

Your smile could not be contained, the edges of your mouth trying to hold it back like a stranger at the door because it had been far too long since the last time you felt this happy about anything. “It worked,” disbelief made itself known in your tone but Kai was just as surprised. He did not care at that moment if he got any higher off the ground, only that he did not have to lose so much of himself. “It worked,” he mimicked his smile wobbling as he fought back his tears, “it worked,” 

It was the way he said it last that hit home. You did not think about it hurting so bad to see him succeed, jealousy thick and alive in your blood. You wanted that feeling, you wanted those words to come from you not just from being an aid but from being the project. The words were felt all throughout you as he whispered them, just enough to watch the stress of never again flying dissipate into nothing but happiness. He had been empty and you had tipped in a bucket of everything you had to give, he had gained so much and you lost more than you had to offer him. 

There was nothing more to call it besides envy; sickening jealousy. If you could rip the wings right off his back and give them to yourself in that split second you would have. It was not productive but it was the only thing you could see when you looked at him. But you shook your head as if you had been caught in the rain and needed to get the water from your hair, pushing the thoughts to the side. You would never have what he did, no way for you to have given yourself the chance in the way that you had given it to him. 

So you squashed the feeling, talked yourself out of the need to cry once the two of you had laid down. Your back to the wall again as you look at him with that faint smile on his lips because he was getting to sleep peacefully since the first time he had come here without the aid of his pain. The outline of his wings in the darkness made them look just like a shadow behind him. And it was so hard not to cry as soon as you knew he was asleep. Wanted to turn and face the wall to give yourself the illusion of privacy in your struggle to keep the burn in your throat from turning into a sob you had fallen into to fitful sleep. 

What had awoken Kai was the strain in your voice, the way you muttered, again and again, the word no, the noise of it getting louder and louder until it was impossible to ignore the sound as if it was nothing more than the hum of a mourning bird's song. He opened his eyes and there you were on your makeshift bed, your face pressed into the blanket, your back turned to the sky and you reached back trying to scratch at your shoulder blades. But even in sleep, he could see the way it pained you, hands only just brushing over your shoulders when you found yourself pinned down in sleep. You were whining, crying in your sleep, and it was full of pain. 

Because in your sleep you had dreamt of that first night without your wings. You could not lay on your side, could not lay any other way but with your face to the ground like they were pulling your wings from you all over again. Back facing the sky praying that they didn't come in because you had no strength to turn over, no strength in you except to try and restrain yourself from scratching at the healing wounds, unaided by careful stitches. 

It had been a long time since you had felt the dream so real that it made you believe there was something wrong with your back. Because you were somewhere on the edge of your dream telling yourself it was real, that the pain was right there at the surface and you didn't know it unless you woke up. If only you could just wake up instead of struggling as you had back then. And when you looked to your side there was no kai, just the outline of that wing, the one you had to pull off there dead and waiting for its burial. 

But Kai would not let you sleep through it, not let you scratch at your shoulders and wade through the dreamscape colored in nothing but the shade of a nightmare. He grasped your sleeping hand, the one fluttering at your back like a moth to a flame and curled his fingers between yours. Your hands fit neatly against his, locking in place as if you had been reaching out for him the whole time. His free hand was at your lower back, keeping away from the top where he knew you were trying to reach. And when your eyes opened your gasp followed the way you shot up, back pressed back to the wall and you tried to cure the burning. 

You knew this feeling, the momentary ghost wings pretending they still had feelings for which could be hurt. Everything about you felt as if it was shaking, like a rattling cabinet of glass in an earthquake because your world was shaking at your feet telling you something was wrong but you couldn't tell what it was. “It's okay it was only a nightmare,” Kai tried to sooth, thumb running over the back of your hand that he held in both of his. 

In your dream you had been alone, so much of it had been like it always was. Pain circling around everything you had come to know. But now there had been pain but the faint hurt that Kai had not been there to help you. As if he could go back in time and do what you had for him even if it was no use you had just wanted him to be there next to you. But he hadn't been and in the mix of the sobs you had found his name and prayed he would hear because if they were your dreams you should have been able to grab them by the neck and control them, not follow them down the dark hall that felt neverending. 

But waking up to know he had been here the whole time, knowing that if he had been there he would have helped just the same, settled something inside you that had been overrun with worry. You unfurled your arms from around yourself, throwing them around Kai’s neck and pulling him into a hug. 

He did not freeze up under your hold but melted into you, sliding his hands around your back and pulling you closer to him, your face pressed into the space between his throat and his collarbone. He hadn't known how much a hug would have helped him just as it was helping you. You were warm and clinging to him in a way no one had ever needed him. 

Kai could have sat like that with you in his arms until the sun came up and you would have let him because you needed to be closer and needed something that only he could give you. Your fingers ran through his hair, his hands sliding down your lower back pulling you to straddle his hips because he needed you chest to chest, needed to feel the weight of you against them to make sure that he knew it was real just the same as you did. “You're okay,” he whispered the words, a hammer against the dam you had walled up in place to keep you from ever getting close to anyone ever again. 

It was so quick you are unsure why it was your instant reaction. Your lips kissed over the mole he had right along the column of his throat. The feeling of his words pressed right to your mouth when he hummed your name. Everything was so much easier to do in the half dark, the room alight in that blue glow of the water, the moon still high in the sky as he slipped his hands under your shirt, cool against your heated skin and only making you arch further into him, hips sinking as you kissed up his neck. 

Neither of you stopped the other from the exploration, you curled your fingers in his hair right at the base of his neck and he found any expanse of skin that he could let his fingers touch. And when you finally made your kisses stop right at the edge of his lips he couldn't help but turn his head, chasing after your mouth with his desperate desire to get lost in you. Because once you started neither of you could pull yourself away from stopping. 

He tasted like nothing short of twinkling light filling the darkness that you had let wash over you for far too long. His soft moans caught in your mouth with each drag of your hips now perfectly placed over him and his wanting need. It was the only way to describe the way he was feeling, he did not just want you, he needed you, so hard from just a few devouring kisses that you couldn’t resist. 

You pulled away for only a second standing so that you could take the few clothes you had on off. Kai sitting there watching in awe as you peeled off your shirt, his hands itching to have you back on him with no layers between the two of you, chest to chest but closer now being skin to skin. He reached out for your hips pulling you closer to him so that he could rest his chin on your stomach, looking at you like the fallen angel he was, like you were the only savior he had written in his stars. 

He let his lips pepper over you, your hands brushing the hair from his brow, his fingers dipping into your waistband holding the fabric in a way that asked you for permission to tug them down and off. “Please,” he whispered check pressed to your hip, “I need you,” and you would give him everything he asked for if he continued looking at you in that way as if nothing in the world mattered but you at this moment, not your blood or cruel words, just a boy and a girl seeking out the pleasure of another. 

You let him take your pants off just as easily as he had let you tug him free from his. And when you sank onto him, took all of him in with a gasp at the stretch working its way through you, nothing had felt more right. Because he was curving into you, your lips were his only salvation as you slowly rocked your hips back and forth on him. His face washed in the pleasure of having you his hands growing warmer and warmer as they held your back. You did your best to avoid his stitches, ignoring his wings that twitched along with his body every time you found a new slow rhythm to move to. 

The angle the two of you had was grinding against your pleasure point, your moans so sweet and rumbling against him. He traced up the line of your spine with one hand, keeping the other wrapped around your back to make sure you stayed in the circle of space the two of you had created. You whimpered when he brushed over the scars on your back but did not pull away, letting him have a part of you that you would never give to anyone else because he knew what it was like, he knew what it meant, this level of trust rushing into you almost as fast as your coming orgasm. And right behind him the soft blue light of a will-o-the-wisp on the water, gone as quickly as it had come into your field of vision but you would not have cared in that moment anyway. 

Both of you neared the end, and when you came, the feeling in your belly took all the space to think because it had been reduced to feeling only him and the pleasure he was giving you. His hands felt hot and alive with the power he had believed had been lost to him as you trembled in his hold, swallowing down each little noise you made. He guided you down to the blanket stretched out on the sand, rocking his hips now chasing after his own high watching the hazy look wash over your face as you held onto his shoulders. And behind him his wings spread covering the two of you in that safe space you had craved more than anything, his panting breaths pressed to your neck as he spilled all he had into you. 

You could only focus on him and the way he brought you the closest you had ever felt to being whole again. Wrapped up in nothing but him was close to being saved because you both knew how similar you were and to be seen like this, to be understood, was healing all on its own and you welcomed everything he had to offer. You would let him take you again and again because you felt linked, the jealousy washed away because being held like this was enough to sedate the torment you had found yourself subjected to being here alone for so long. 

And in the morning, when the sun came in on the new day you never felt as excited to see the light as you did in that moment. Because Kai was grinning looking over at you knowing what it meant. He would go out and try again and again until he knew that he could fly even if it took time but here starting today would be the beginning and he would be starting it all with you at his side. 

He did not need help out of the cave's mouth this time, pulling himself up as easily as if he had been doing it his whole life. And he stood, looking out over the water below him and knowing that if he fell he had you there willing to pull him out if he needed it. He looked to the sky the second you pulled yourself up next to him, his wings spreading out and beating softly enough to draw your attention. “We don't have to start so high up. I know it's a short distance to the ground and it won't hurt much if you fall but just in case it might be better to go to the beach,” 

He should have listened to you but he was too excited to think about where he was when all he wanted to do was fly. “Just this once and we can go to the beach and try again if not,” he reached his hand out at his side, low enough to find yours and your welcome squeeze in support. 

“It's okay if you don't get up too high so long as they can carry your weight that's the main issue at the moment because of the stitches,” Kai nodded along half listening as he focused in on the clouds. He pulled your hand to his mouth, kissing the back of it before letting it go once more before trying. 

Both of you held your breath, the seconds passing slowly as you waited for his heels to lift again only this time it was so much higher, Kai was rising, each beat of his wings only raising him and widening your smile. You had done it, you had made him fly again and it didn't hurt but made you elated. 

Kai could feel the wind welcoming him, pushing him up and up until he could see nothing but the expanse of blue and you were gone. It was that thought that had him going back. He could have spent all day up there if he could, if he knew that it wouldn't hurt him if he pushed himself so far but thinking of you watching him without being able to feel it tore into him. He flew back down landing right where he had started and laughed like it had caught him by surprise. 

And he looked at you, his arms open enough for you to run into them, that smile you wore was going to be tattooed along the insides of his eyelids because it was the only thing we wanted to see. Because you had done this for him, you had given him his flight back, his hope, and wrapped in nothing but sarcasm and truth because it was your way. So he hugged you tight, kissed you until your arms were locked around him just right and he took you with him. 

It had only been in dreams that you felt the faint feeling of being weightless. The wind hits your face as you let the laugh bask in the morning sun with you. It had been everything Kai had wanted, his dreams coming to reality as he caught the wind to carry the two of you higher and higher, until it felt as if you both would be made of nothing but clouds and happiness. He knew what it meant to be up in the sky like this again for you and knew that it would never be much of a thank you in return for what you have given back to him. 

And when he found a place to be steady, beating wings behind him, no pain in sight as the two of you looked out over the green and blue land and water below you. He held you close, arms keeping you up and in place even with your dangling feet picking up the memory of what it had been like before when you were a child with nothing to be scared of because you had not been wronged yet, you had only been a girl with wings happy to be in the air. 

Kai pressed his forehead to yours, nose dipping and bumping your cheek as he kissed the edge of your smile. And it didn't matter anymore if you felt weak, or had been told it was all that you had ever been because you had saved someone worthy of being saved, picking up yourself along the way and flying through him when flying was only a word thrown around to hurt you. You had put his wings back when they had been nothing but torn flesh and nothing made you feel this good, only the knowledge that you knew he would take you again if you asked. 

The trail of your fingers did not cross your mind when you felt this good, your subconscious working over the thoughts you were having and putting together the puzzle you had made by following the seam of his stitches. You could feel the knot you had tied to secure the wing in place, the spot you would have to cut away when pulling the thread free after you had checked again that his fast healing had done its job. 

But the ghosting of your touch on the closed wound was akin to you pushing him into a frozen lake, the ice breaking beneath him and reminding him just how heavy he had been when he had nothing behind him to support his body. It was the fear mixed with your words that you had said what felt like ages ago, as if when the two of you had shared then you had been different people. But here at his core, he felt it, that foreboding and gut-turning maggots wiggling into his skin and poisoning his already made-up mind. ‘Hell it might be more fun watching you fall again than it would be to watch you actually fly but I guess we won't know unless we try,’ you had said those words, he had rolled them over in his head over and over again because it had not sit right with him, but he could not remember the rest of the conversation, not when your fingers were messing with the stitches right on his back like you were fulfilling a promise. 

It had been quick, the intrusive thought taking over because all he could think again was that you two were similar. He would have helped you yes but if it had been him or you at the bottom of the water and both of you had to pick who got their wings back he would not hesitate to make sure he felt this feeling again. And having you here, threat alive in his mind he could not help himself from leaning into the cruelty if it meant saving this. 

And so he let you go. 

When in his arms it had been the illusion of flying, still grounded to him just by holding on but falling from this height was even closer to the feeling of flying. The wind rippled around you as you fell in slow motion, his sweet angelic face washed in shock at what he had done and all you could do was think about how you would forgive him because you knew that if it had been you in his place, demon or angel, you would have done the same. 

You did not feel heavy, you felt free and the laughter echoed around Kai as he realized his mistake. His fear had control over him in ways he had not expected it to and his shouting did nothing to make it any closer to you as he tried to catch up to your falling form hurtling closer to a waiting grave that had once had a tombstone with his name written on it. You had missed this feeling of freefall and descent, missed the open arms of the wing kissing your skin in the same way Kai’s hands had only the night before. 

And then the feathers started to rain. A few white tumbled down along with you as you looked up at him, wax melting from being so close to the sun for only a short time. The edge of his right wing was still tipped in black as if your feathers had infected his mind and thoughts as if they had been the cause of the drop and not the sickening worry he had of losing everything that had just been returned to him. But you could not stop yourself from thinking again of the story you had been told as a child. That demons had been the same as angels, cast out for the bitterness lingering in their near-empty hearts. You two were the same, cast out, and only now did he truly see it. 

The last of his feathers started to come free, his control over his wings lessening as the two of you fell, the sky a perfect image of just you and him with feathers all around as it had always been. The spotting of inky black feathers floating around you, finally ready to be buried alongside the body they had come from. You reached out, Kai’s hand already trying to find anything on you to grasp but was just far enough to miss by the brush of his fingertips. The expanse of blue widens around you and is impossible to tell if you were rising in the sky or sinking closer to the waiting ocean. 

If falling felt like flying you would welcome the feeling because anything was better than nothing at all. 

<333 thank you to @beomiracles who wrote the opening paragraph that is italicized for this event so that we could all start on the same page- taglist 🏷: @kissmekissykissme @bts-txt-ateez @apeachty @seungfl0wer @lunesdesire @no1likemybbgcharlie @chasingthatjjunie @taegyutomorrow @izzyy-stuff @yeoningz @filmnings @jellymochii @dawngyu @bamgyuuuri @lickingan0rchid @felixleftchickennugget @thetxtdevil @luvsicktyun @hyukascampfire @prince-jjae @liverspaghett want to be added to the taglist? check out my rules to see how to join!want to be taken off the taglist? send an ask!

[kiwriteswords]

Thank you for the tags, @dudeitiskarev and @solardrop! I love Tumblr games--I wish people would do them more often!

This is for a current WIP that I have yet to decide if I want to abandon it or not (the original date on the google doc is December 28th...so not feeling too confident here, lol). I keep coming back to it, which makes me feel like I should continue it, but I also feel like the overall premise of the story is repetitive to other stuff I have shared. So, we'll see!

Aaron Hotchner x shy!Fem!Reader flirtatious tension story I have been working on, where Hotch sees how much he can fluster shy!reader.

The first few times Aaron Hotchner caught you off guard, you convinced yourself it was a one-time thing.

A fluke. A slip of restraint.

A rare moment where he let himself say what he was thinking instead of keeping it locked behind the walls he’d built for years.

But now?

Now, sitting in the BAU bullpen, surrounded by agents, the hum of paperwork being shuffled and keyboards clicking filling the air--

You realized you had been very, very wrong.

The office was alive with the usual post-case exhaustion, a strange mix of relief and tension still lingering in the air.

The team had only gotten back this morning--after a case that ran for days, a case that left you exhausted but wired, adrenaline still flickering beneath your skin.

Most of the team was wrapping up reports, lingering in the bullpen with coffee cups and sighs of relief that they finally had a few days to breathe.

And you?

You were sitting at your desk, typing up the final notes, trying to focus but finding it impossible.

Because you could feel him. It was this magnetic pull. This energy shift. 

Hotch was in his office, his blinds half-drawn, his body partially turned toward the window.

And he was watching you.

You knew, because every time you glanced up, you found him already looking.

Not in a way that anyone else would notice.

Not in a way that said, “hey, something’s happening here!” 

But in a way that sent a warm, twisting pulse through your stomach, in a way that made your fingers hover just slightly over your keyboard, in a way that made you forget what you were even supposed to be typing in the first place.

Damn it.

You swallowed, forcing yourself to refocus, fingers moving mechanically across the keyboard, the words forming on the screen feeling far less important than the heat creeping up your neck.

And then--

"Agent, a word?"

Your stomach flipped.

Your brain must have shut off and lost track of time or the atmosphere because, for one moment, he was up at his desk looking at you with those eyes--now? Now, he was standing at his door, pulling you from your thoughts. Your scrambled, less than work-appropriate thoughts. 

Because fuck, that voice.

That low, even tone--just professional enough that no one else would think twice about it, but you?

You felt the weight of it.

You exhaled carefully, schooling your features before standing, aware of Morgan’s knowing smirk as you passed his desk.

"Getting called to the principal’s office?" he teased.

You shot him a pointed look, but it lacked any real bite, because truth be told, your brain was already spiraling.

Because Aaron Hotchner wanted to see you in his office.

That should not have been a big deal.

But God, it was.

You stepped inside, closing the door behind you, the usual scent of coffee and paper filling the space.

Hotch was behind his desk, one hand resting on a case file, the other rolling a pen slowly between his fingers. The faint sound of the air conditioning hummed in the background, a stark contrast to the palpable silence that fell between you.

"Close the blinds."

You blinked, confusion mingling with the sudden spike in your pulse. The blinds filtered the late afternoon light, casting long shadows across his stoic face, giving him an almost ethereal glow that didn't suit the gravity of the moment.

"What?" you managed to stutter out, your hands unconsciously tightening at your sides.

Hotch lifted his gaze slowly, and fuck, the weight of it knocked the breath from your lungs.

"The blinds," he repeated, calmly, smoothly, like he wasn’t already unraveling you from across the room. "You don’t want an audience, do you?"

Your pulse spiked.

Because Jesus Christ.

What did that mean?

What did that mean?

Your pulse spiked, adrenaline coursing through you as if you were on the edge of a precipice. The office felt smaller suddenly, the walls inching closer, filled with the scent of leather from his chair and the faintest hint of his cologne--a sharp, clean smell that was all too familiar.

You hesitated, your fingers tightening slightly against your side, your throat suddenly dry, because this was not the Hotch you were used to.

This wasn’t the man who delivered briefings with an unreadable expression.

This wasn’t the Unit Chief who kept his emotions locked down so tight that you sometimes wondered if he ever let himself feel anything at all.

This was someone else entirely.

Someone dangerous.

Someone who knew exactly what he was doing to you.

And fuck, you weren’t ready.

"I--" You exhaled sharply, trying to ignore the heat spreading through you, the fact that your hands were trembling slightly as you reached for the cord and tilted the blinds shut.

When you turned back, Hotch was still watching you.

But this time?

This time, his head was tilted slightly, his gaze slow, assessing, his fingers tapping against his desk in an almost lazy rhythm.

"You’re blushing." It was less of an observation and more of a fact. 

Your breath hitched.

"I am not." You moved to go sit at the chair in front of his desk, but your legs felt wobbly. Your palms sweaty. 

Hotch hummed--low, thoughtful, like he knew you were lying, like he was entirely too pleased with himself.

"I don’t know," he mused, leaning back slightly in his chair, fingers tapping slower against the wood. "I think you are."

Your stomach twisted.

Because what the hell was happening right now?

"Did you need something?" you asked, forcing your voice to stay steady, but fuck, it was so much more complicated than it should have been.

Hotch just watched you for a second longer, his expression unreadable--except, this time?

This time, you felt the shift before he even spoke.

"Yes." He exhaled, shaking his head slightly, like this was some mild inconvenience to him, and God, that only made it worse.

Then--

"Come here," he instructed, his voice not commanding but inviting, which was somehow more unnerving.

You blinked, startled, your fingers pausing against the back of the chair you had barely pulled out.

"What?"

Hotch didn’t repeat himself.

Didn’t clarify.

Didn’t explain.

He just sat there, calmly watching you, like he had all the time in the world, like this was nothing unusual at all.

And fuck, something about that made your pulse kick up.

"Aaron--"

"Come here," he repeated, smoother this time, his tone velvet over steel. Your stomach flipped, heat curling low in your spine at the way he said it--smooth, even, just a little too controlled.

Like he already knew you were going to listen.

You exhaled, cautious, unsure, but you stepped forward anyway, the room suddenly too quiet as you stopped just in front of his desk.

Hotch didn’t move right away.

Just sat there, assessing, his gaze dragging over you, the air between you thick with something you couldn’t name.

And then--

He reached out.

His fingers hooked into your belt loop, pulling you forward, slow, unhurried, until your thighs pressed against the edge of his desk. The touch was light, but it might as well have been a chain for all the escape it afforded you.

Your breath hitched.

"Aaron."

"I’ve been thinking about kissing you all morning." 

The words knocked the air from your lungs.

You stared at him, pulse hammering in your throat, because Jesus Christ, what?

"You--" You swallowed, brain short-circuiting, your fingers gripping the desk for support. "We’re at work."

Hotch hummed, unbothered, his thumb skimming lightly over your waistband, just the slightest touch, but God, it burned. "And?"

"And--" You exhaled shakily, completely thrown, because what the hell was happening right now? "And the door isn’t locked," you finally managed.

Hotch’s lips curved, his gaze flicking up to yours, something dark and knowing glinting behind his eyes. "Would you like me to lock it?"

Your stomach dropped.

Your breath came uneven, your fingers gripping the desk tighter, because fuck, you were losing this so fast.

"Aaron," you hissed, voice quieter now, because you could feel your face burning, and God, you could not afford to be flustered right now.

Hotch just watched you, so damn pleased with himself, his fingers still resting against your hip, his throat bobbing slightly as his gaze flickered to your lips. "See, you are blushing." 

Your heart nearly stopped. "I am not."

"You are." His voice dipped, smooth and devastatingly confident. "And it’s because you like it."

You gaped at him.

Because holy shit, when did he start talking to you like this?

Tagging anyone who wants to play! I would love to see what people are working on!

[buggs-and-beasts]

Images are not mine, I found them on Pinterest

No Stone Unturned (p2)

Summary: The last thing she needs is the Winter Soldier crashing on her couch. It’s only a matter of time before someone tracks him down to her apartment, the only place he visits more than once. All she can do is hope Hydra doesn’t get their first, or if they do, that they kill her before they recognize her.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female OC/Reader

Chapter Warnings: no use of y/n, mentions of canon typical violence and torture, descriptions of physical injuries, invasions of privacy, mind and memory reading reader, depictions of mental illness and flashbacks, cursing, recovery focused, Steve Rogers haunts the narrative, implied abuse, Brock Rumlow mentioned (ew)

Word Count: 2908

Guardian Angel

He’s in her shower, watching his diluted almost-pink blood swirl down the drain when his mind catches back up to his body.

He hadn’t even thought about it when she’d suggested he take a warm shower while she fixes up breakfast, he’d just blindly obeyed. And now he was alone and naked, surrounded by all sorts of mysterious bottles and containers, his weapons still abandoned on the armchair in the other room.

He cautiously picks up the bottles she’d pointed out to him when she’d started the water for him. She said they were ‘shampoo and conditioner’, whatever the fuck conditioner was he couldn’t be sure, but shampoo was familiar enough albeit a distant memory. Flicking open the cap the soft scent of wildflowers and honey wafts up to him. He sighs and settles a little as he rubs the relaxing smell into his hair, letting his eyes shut and his mind to wander into a field of flowers, marigolds like the ones on her counter.

He can hear her in the other room, she’s humming along to an upbeat song.

Next is the bodywash, another bottle she’d shown him. The bodywash is gentler, unscented. For the first time in nobody-knows-how-long he’s scrubbing layers of dirt and blood and sweat off his skin. There’s something indescribable about feeling clean, just scrubbing muck out from under his nails is like lifting an elephant off his chest.

His hands pause at the raised lines on his core, fingers softly running over the edges of the uneven stitches. He peaks down at them. They’re imperfect but not bad, add in his advanced healing factor and he’d be able to pull out the thread in a week, maybe week and a half.

He returns to scrubbing, cleaning off every inch of himself with relentless dedication as a realization gradually dawns on him. Being covered in blood, sweat and dirt, slowly bleeding out after collapsing wherever he’d managed to drag himself, it was normal to him but to anyone else….

Why hadn’t she called the police? Or an ambulance?

Questions are bubbling up inside him, cramming more and more into the already crowded space in his head.

Had she recognized him? He couldn’t decide if that made more sense or less. Sure, it might explain why she didn’t call for help, but it would make her dragging him into her apartment then crashing in the same room as him even more nuts. She hadn’t even bothered to hide his weapons, as if she was confident he was no threat to her. She had no reason to be so confident, so brave, and she didn’t seem stupid enough to not recognize the obvious risks he came with.

This girl must have a death wish.

That’s all he could land on as he turned off the water, stepping out into the steam filled bathroom and grabbing the soft towel she’d left for him. Beneath it is a small pile of clothes, left intentionally for him to pull onto his now softer, cleaner skin.

The sweatpants are barely wide enough for him to squeeze into and significantly too short, the cuffs at the end of each leg sitting stretched out halfway up his calves. The shirt fits better, although the printed ‘Plant Mom’ text pulls wider over his broad chest, and the still packaged fuzzy socks slip onto his feet perfectly, even if he cringes a little as he pulls off the cardboard.

The second he steps out of the bathroom he’s overwhelmed by the warm smell of baking, an upbeat song spilling out of the kitchen alongside soft humming. He takes a second to breathe it all in, the quiet domesticity of it all nearly knocking him off his feet.

When he turns the corner into the living space he’s struck by how her hair is pulled up into a messy bun at the top of her head and the warm yellows and oranges of the floral dress she’s changed into. She turns to great him, wiping her hands on her apron as she does so.

“You have perfect timing, I only just finished them,” he glances down to the plate she’s setting onto the island, catching a glimpse of her vase of marigolds, now moved over to the sink.

Pancakes. She’d made him pancakes.

“Juice, tea, or coffee?”

The breakfast on it’s own is disorienting enough, an authentic question combined with an invitation to want something is the final straw. He seizes up, body frozen just in front of her wooden barstools. She has to see it, has to notice his stiffness and the seconds ticking into minutes of silence, but she doesn’t react. She’s just standing there smiling, only moving to retrieve the kettle after it dings.

“Is it orange juice?” As if it was possible the smirk across her lips only widens, head nodding carefully as she pours hot water into her own mug. “I like orange juice,” the words weren’t meant to come out of his mouth, more a thought of his own as he grapples with a bizarre craving for something he can’t recall the taste of.

“Perfect!” The cup is in front of him, cool and refreshing, just waiting for him to drink it.

He’s somehow surprised at the familiar sweetness and the bright citrus in his throat. It tastes like Saturday mornings, listening to baseball games over the radio, watching a smaller blonde man draw buildings and people. It’s so overwhelmingly comfortable and easy it knocks the wind out of him.

“I should go.” The words surprise him just as much as it does her.

She sits down next to him, stirring her tea. “Look out the window.” He glances out, past the frozen fire escape, at the heavy snowfall. When he looks back she’s mindlessly massaging her hands in repetitive, practiced motions. “It’s freezing out there, won’t stop snowing until things warm up this afternoon.” She takes a sip, then pulls out the tea bag. “Your clothes are approaching threadbare with no layers of insulation, your shoes and socks have holes, you clearly haven’t eaten in days. If you go out there before the storm passes you’ll be lucky to only lose a couple fingers and toes.”

“You want me to stay?”

“I tried pretty hard to keep you from dying last night, I’d hope I bought you more than just one day.” She’s calmly eating a bite of pancake now. She knows he’s not going to leave.

Fuck it, he knows he won’t leave too, not right now. So instead he sits, and starts taking bites from his own plate.

“Are you an angel or something?”

“I think your real guardian angel is the cat,” she talks with her mouth still slightly full, a playful look in her eye, “I never would’ve seen you if she hadn’t led me down that alley.”

“Doctor or nurse?” She looks up at him, an eyebrow raised, “The stitches.”

She laughs, a bubbly but substantial sound, like the church bells by his childhood home. Bells he couldn’t recall just a moment ago. All he wants is to hear more of it.

“I used to sew.”

“Used to?”

“My hands aren’t as steady as they once were,” a heaviness creeps into her voice as she talks about it, the minute change cracking his heart just a tad. “I do mostly machine stuff now but it doesn’t scratch the itch like hand sewing did.” He wants to press, but he knows better, instead letting her pull the conversation to more comfortable waters. “How about I see what I can do in the way of mending your clothes?”

“That would great.”

—

She spent hours painstakingly mending his clothes with patches and thread in front of the crackling fire. She reinforced areas, closed holes, wove thread through the fabric like a new layer of cotton. Every once in a while she’d have him try them on again, telling him to check how they fit, to test his range of motion and see if any new seams bothered him.

She’d shown him how to use her laptop in the meantime, opening a ‘incognito’ window she said would hide what he looked at from her.

“My only request is if you’re gonna watch porn please do it in the bathroom.” That had made him laugh, he can’t remember ever doing that before.

Once he understood how the ‘Google’ worked, and what it could do, he got to work. He pulled the small, battered notebook from his bag, his memories in the palm of his hand. He started with the few names of Hydra agents he’d managed to write down, frantically scrawling down any information he could find on them. She’d moved on to adding extra insulation to his jacket when he finally gave in and and searched for the person he wanted to know the most.

Captain America. Steve.

He’d survived the airship. He’d survived.

And that was all that mattered.

—

He hadn’t noticed when the snow stopped falling, he was too entranced watching her slowly fix and alter his clothes with impossible care he couldn’t possibly deserve. He couldn’t stay, even if he wanted to, so he changed back into his tactical gear and attached layers upon layers of weapons to his body. He wanted to argue when she’d packed food and clothes into a sturdy bag for him, but one stern look from her soft features was enough to silence him.

Now she’s leading him out of her apartment and down the stairs. With every step down the thin, tall steps all he can picture is her pulling his entire weight up three fucking stories after dragging him from whatever alleyway he’d collapsed in.

She must be a lot stronger than she looks.

Every inch of him is filling with dread as they reach the bottom and leave the building, blinding reflections off fallen snow reminding him of the harshness of the real world. He’d been living inside a fantasy, and the stifling grasp of reality is crashing into him.

“Well,” she’s shifting uncomfortably on her feet, “It was nice meeting you, um,”

It hadn’t occurred to him before this second that she didn’t know his name. She seemed to know him so well, to understand him in a way someone he’d known less than 24 hours just couldn’t.

“James.”

“It was nice meeting you, James.”

He still has so many questions, things he didn’t have time to ask but has to know. Even if they had the time, could he ask them?

Has she done this before?

Would she do this again?

The idea of her carrying and patching up someone else has his chest tightening, red rising up his neck and face. It’s a strange feeling, an odd sort of burning, aching, discomfort that he can’t name but it has his muscles tensing up. He can’t help but turn back.

“Don’t do this again.” Anyone else could’ve killed her, hell, he could’ve killed her. “People can be dangerous.”

“You turned out fine.” She’s rubbing at her hands again, a hesitant smirk playing across her lips. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, but nothing comes up. Instead he swallows the lump in his throat, a lump that’s begging him to disagree.

“An exception, not the rule.” He clenches his jaw. “Stick to stray cats and dogs, not stray people.”

“Noted.”

He really needs to leave, at the very least he can’t risk being out in the open like this for so long.

“Hey,” he pauses again at the sound of her shaking, quiet voice, “if you’re ever in town again,”

“Careful Angel,” his voice is so smooth and effortless, a flirty air to it he can’t comprehend as he begins to turn and walk away, “your halo’s showing.”

—

She’s quick to close the apartment door behind her, locking it and leaning back into it. With a sigh, she slides down it, sitting on the floor at the door’s base and running her fingers through her hair. The cat is sniffing at her but she is barely aware of the whiskers tickling her knees as she pulls them into her chest.

Did she really just tell him he could come back?

One night with the world’s most wanted man in her tiny apartment was dangerous enough, if he returned the risk would only grow exponentially. Part of her knew he wouldn’t come back anyways, so what’s it even matter what she’d offered.

Ghosts like him don’t go anywhere twice, if he came back it could be bad for both of them.

Some deep, dark, lonely part of her wants to cry at the thought. It hates the idea that their first and last meeting would be one and the same, that the sparse comfort of someone who understands, even if he doesn’t know he does, would vanish just as suddenly as it appeared.

She could hate it all she wanted to, but it had to happen.

Soon he’ll be just a memory, and maybe it’s better that way, she’s good with memories. It would hurt less soon, once she readjusted to her self-enforced quarantine. At the end of the day, she knew for certain that complete isolation for the rest of forever would be infinitely better than Hydra, than Brock, finding her.

If only knowing that was enough to stop the tears gliding down her cheeks and the sobs building in her chest.

—

It had been one whole month since he’d woken up on her couch and every last token of his brief time in her apartment was gone. His hair didn’t smell like wildflowers and honey, the thread she’d sewn him up with was gone and the wound was healed. They had all been precious symbols, reminders that he’s welcome somewhere even if he couldn’t ever go back, but now they were gone.

Even worse, his damaged and confused brain could only produce fractured images of her apartment, of her. He had no choice but to grip onto the few pieces that remained, the unconscious way she massaged her hands, the bright smile and gentle voice, the deep knowing eyes, the vase of marigolds on her counter. His angel was fading away from him, slipping through his fingers and pulling any comfort he felt with her.

He knew he couldn’t go back. Every repeat visit could only make him easier to track down, and if they tracked him down to her place there’d be no telling what they’d do to her.

She may have a death wish but he wouldn’t risk granting it.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t question where he was going as his feet led him away from his latest mission, a Hydra facility burning to the ground behind him. He just let them take him, let instinct guide him through cleaning himself up. He was just pulling his hair back and up to keep it out of his face, not to look nicer. He needed new clothes, why not pick out a blue Henley for between missions. If it brought out the blue in his eyes that was only a coincidence, just a by product of getting a comfortable shirt in his favorite color.

When he stopped at a flower stand, drawn in by the golden ruffle of familiar flowers, he had to stop pretending he wasn’t wandering closer and closer to her apartment. Still, it was just to drop off the flowers, an anonymous thank you for everything she’d done for him a month ago. All he had to do was pick the lock to get into the building, set the flowers in front of her door, knock, and hide somewhere he could watch her receive them without being noticed. He’d even scouted out his hiding spot. Surely all he needed was one glance of her, just to refresh his memory of what an divinity on earth looked like.

Now he’s here, on her doorstep flowers in hand. He knocks, once, twice, three times.

He knows he should set the vase down and hide but he can’t. He can’t move at all. He’s frozen right in front of her apartment, unable to will himself to slip away when the one person he couldn’t get out of his head all month is so close.

The door swings open with a creak.

She’s gorgeous, flushed cheeks and plump lips and vibrant smile. Her hair is pulled into two braids, one behind her back and the other resting on her shoulder. She’s wearing a dress, a deep forest green dress that lands just above her knees with a little white collar peaking out of the neckline. She’s barefoot, the seam of her hazy white tights covering her black painted toenails.

He can’t help but notice she’s surprised to see him, maybe a little confused, a little worried but she shakes those off quickly.

“You’re back.” He feels impossibly vulnerable under her gentle gaze, exposed as if he was stark naked.

“I-” he pushes the vase closer to her. “I wanted to say thank you.”

“Marigolds,” her smile brightens, blinding and beautiful like staring into the sun. She pushes the door open a little further, moving to the side as if inviting him in. His body moves without him again, stepping back into the warm, bright apartment. Any tension left within him melts the moment he breaks through the threshold. One word comes to mind before he can stop it.

Home.

[frozenjokes]

just checking in: goodtimeswithscar is still the devil

ao3 link

There was a small branching bathroom off the master bedroom with a toilet and a small walk-in shower, but Mumbo hardly ever used it, and he’d really only been in here a handful of times. Even Grian didn’t shower in here, and Mumbo was discovering why; the tile was roughly cut and sharp against his feet, decidedly uncomfortable, but Mumbo was paying more attention to the blood running down his thin, knobby legs, disappearing through the grated drain.

He felt good. Was that terrible? Mumbo wasn’t certain if this feeling stemmed from the initial murder or what Scar had done to him; beyond that, he didn’t know which option should disturb him more.

Through the foggy glass, Mumbo glanced at Grian’s still form, curled up on the cool bathroom floor with a pillow and bundled up in a thick blanket from his bed. Even with his room being just outside, Mumbo hadn’t wanted him out of sight, and Grian didn’t argue, not that he would have if he’d had the strength. Grian didn’t even have the energy to deliver any sort of coherent explanation, not that Mumbo had demanded one. Not that Mumbo would demand one. Grian would explain on his own, of that Mumbo was sure, but right now they were both exhausted, and Grian was.. sick? Had Scar done that? Had Cub?

Mumbo did want answers. But more than that, he just wanted to make it through tonight unscathed. He’d gotten quite a few of his most pressing questions addressed already by Scar, in any case.

Mumbo wasn’t.. human. He literally wasn’t human, in all the most Actually Ways he could not be human, he fucking knew it, he knew this was more than mental illness or genetic abnormalities- there wasn’t anything wrong with him. Well. Besides all the things that were wrong with him. Semantics didn’t matter- everything just made so much more sense.

He couldn’t be human, because Scar definitely wasn’t human, and Scar said Mumbo was like him, which made a lot of sense if Mumbo didn’t think about it at all. He’d get back to that later. Knowing that intelligent human-looking people existed opened a host of others doors; for one, Cub was also not human and also like him, but just so happened to be allied with Scar. Working for Scar? Mumbo would’ve killed Scar if Cub hadn’t stopped him, clearly they were working together in some way. But then Grian had wanted Cub to stay, even after Scar (and assumedly Cub, right?) had tried to murder him.

Grian. What about Grian? What was Grian? Mumbo hadn’t needed the devil to crash his murder bath to know something was up with Grian, and Mumbo had kind of always known he wasn’t quite human to a point, but Grian created enough reasonable doubt that Mumbo could never be sure. Maybe symptoms of OCD included laying face down in the backyard for hours on end, demanding not to be interrupted under any circumstances. But NO ONE eats that many vegetables. They can’t be that good for you.

And no one bails random guys out of jail and invites them to live in their houses. Even children have more self preservation.

All these years, Mumbo had just thought Grian had gotten unlucky to randomly pick someone so repressedly violent. This really didn’t seem to be the case anymore.

Scar wanted him. Scar wanted- well, Mumbo couldn’t say it was entirely clear what Scar was after, but it certainly seemed like he was quite okay with murder, and would very much like to see Mumbo do a whole lot more of it.

What did Grian want? Grian knew, Grian must have always known, so why didn’t he say anything? Was he content just to let Mumbo fear him, constantly worried about being found out and kicked to the curb for the blood on his hands that was not his own? Did Grian even care about Mumbo’s constant inner turmoil, stuck in a world and body that was never going to suit him because he wasn’t actually human? Maybe Grian was a different kind of monster. One that benefitted from keeping him here, that fed on him in some way- now that the shackles of human wants and needs were destroyed, the only limit to what Grian could possibly want with him was Mumbo’s own imagination. Grian knew. Grian knew, he knew Mumbo was struggling, and he never said a word.

Mumbo did not want to think badly of him. He was scared, he was still scared on Grian’s behalf, and he did not want to think badly of him, but even in the best case scenario in which Grian’s intentions were totally pure, how could he have kept this secret?

When Mumbo had stood up and told him he wanted to be an assassin, Grian had only begged him to stay. That had never made any sense- was there not a line Mumbo couldn’t cross? Did Grian really think he could keep Mumbo here forever? All those little comments about Mumbo being allowed to take all the time he needed, urging him to stay, outright discouraging him from job searching in the beginning- it felt so sinister now.

These lines of thought were dizzying, and the longer Mumbo stayed under the steady stream of warm water, the more nauseated he felt.

Of course he’d stayed. He stayed because Grian asked him to, because Mumbo owed Grian everything. It had never occurred to Mumbo that Grian might be leveraging that power over him like this. He’d expected to be used, but everything he had looked for in the beginning had been explicit, obvious.

What did Grian think would happen if Mumbo knew? Would it be so bad for Mumbo to realize that whatever he was, his inner turmoil was normal, and he didn’t have to feel fucking crazy all the time. Grian could have told him. When Grian caught him in the backyard with those baby bunnies, dead in Mumbo’s hands, Grian could have told him, then or countless other times, that it was okay. That at the very least, Mumbo had nothing to be afraid of.

Everything hurt. The sting of cold air as Mumbo left the shower only accentuated the pain. He supposed he’d just have to wait and see what Grian had to say. In the meantime, Mumbo carried him to bed.

…

“Is Scar around?” Cub felt awkward in the common areas of the clownvent, he much preferred to keep to himself, but if he was going to run into anyone today, Scar’s roommates, Cleo and Bdubs, were his preferred choices. The two of them were playing cards at one end of the kitchen table, and it was difficult to tell who was losing when both of them looked so disgruntled, but the creases in their faces all but disappeared when they realized there was a ghost in the room with them.

“Oh yeah, he’s just resting up in our room,” Bdubs said, waving a lazy hand and rolling his head in a similar motion. Then his eyes narrowed, more conspiratorially, “He got jumped last night, did he tell you that? He’s allll sorts of messed up, I couldn’t honestly believe it! I mean, I would have believed it a couple years ago when we started to figure out he was all kinds of shady, but not a scratch after all this time? Have you been keeping him out of trouble ‘til now?”

“Oh, yeah I knew about that,” Cub rubbed the back of his neck, awkward. It felt so strange to be treated like a friend here when he did everything in his power to avoid talking to anyone ever. Except Scar. And Scar hadn’t come to see him at all today, so.. Cub processed Bdubs’ last question a little late, and shrugged sheepishly, “Not really..”

Cleo drew another card, looked displeased with it, then dropped her hand face down on the table like it didn’t matter at all. “Well if you’re worried about him, don’t be. He’s just as much of a rat bastard as ever; hardly missed a beat, even if he hasn’t been out of bed much today.”

“Scar’s as chipper as a beaver!” Bdubs added, to which Cleo threw him a baffled look.

“That’s not a real phrase. Beavers aren’t chipper.”

“Yes they are-!” Bdubs shot back with righteous insistence, lips curving into a smirk, “They go chipchipchipchipchip,” Bdubs imitated a beaver with his hands covering his mouth, as if chewing on a log, “Like a wood chipper.”

Cleo did not look any bit amused. “Guess there’s no arguing with that.”

“I’m going to go now,” Cub blurted, an old classic when he didn’t know how to exit a conversation he no longer wanted to be part of, “Goodbye.”

“Bye, Cub,” Cleo waved, sliding their cards back into their hand only to rediscover how poor they were, frowning once more. Bdubs said his own goodbye, but Cub was too busy hurrying away to acknowledge it.

“Cub!” Scar lit up as Cub poked his head into the room, a place similar to a college dorm, though large enough to comfortably accommodate the three adults that occupied it. Scar’s face was littered with dark purple bruises, and given what Cub had witnessed in Grian’s kitchen, he highly doubted those were the worst of his injuries “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here, see, I’m giving taking care of myself a try, and this sucks! How do you not get bored laying in bed all day, come sit, come sit!

Cub relaxed a little, his fear of Scar being angry with him somewhat eased, though not entirely. He was no stranger to Scar’s full-sized bed, often laying near the end and stealing all of Scar’s blankets. Today he just sat. Still took the blankets though.

“I was worried when I didn’t see you today,” he mumbled, feeling awkward, but Scar’s smile was kind, and it was easy to remember better days when Scar painted that picture.

“I’m sorry, Cub! You should have texted me, I really was just trying to take it easy today. I had a biiiiit of a rough night if you remember!”

Cub was silent. Scar’s smile grew a bit strained, though not unkind. Yet.

“I don’t like to get that way. I’m sorry if I scared you. I just wasn’t prepared to.. give myself away. I felt taken advantage of, truly. Buuuut, perhaps I misjudged. I won’t go rushing back in to right this, I can tell you that.” Scar leaned back into his pillow with a lofty sigh, “Those two certainly fought for that break, didn’t they. Fine. Let them have it. I can be patient. The finale will be all the better, trust me.”

Again, Cub did not know what to say. Scar inclined his head.

“Are you angry with me?”

“No.”

“Do you think I’m mad at you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Let’s put the thought to rest, then! I’m not.” Slowly, very slowly, Scar drew his sore arms up from under the sheets, gently placing his hands behind his head like a pillow. “Some scars don’t like their spawn to have this much free will for.. instances such as last night, but I am not ‘some scars!’ What’s life without a little surprise? Not one I want to live, no sir! Like- Walking into Grian’s miserable little house to see the both of you had conspired to kidnap someone?? For Mumbo to kill!? Incredible! I could never engineer a thrill like that, though I think I may have misinterpreted your intentions.. I can’t say I know. Do you pity him, Grian? Do you like him?”

Cub wrinkled his nose. “No.”

“It’s okay if you do.”

“I don’t. He’s a whiny pain in the ass.”

“He is whiny,” Scar rubbed his chin, only thoughtfully. “But you saved his life. I think you know that.”

“He had a bad night.”

“That all?”

“Really bad.”

“I believe you.”

“Stop fucking interrogating me about it then!”

Scar blinked, unmoved. “Will you be upset with me when I kill him?”

“No! For fuck’s sake, Scar, I don’t want anything to do with Grian, I don’t care about him, I don’t like him, I only care what happens to him because that changes what happens to Mumbo, and I don’t always like the way you treat me.” Cub huffed a hard breath, sharp in his throat, but after he stopped being able to take in enough air altogether, he couldn’t breathe, heart racing, fingers locked in the blankets like that was enough to keep him grounded, like anything could calm him down, make it easier.

When Scar touched his arm, he sobbed. He sobbed because Scar could make it better, Scar could always make it better, run his calloused hands over Cub’s anxiety and smooth it all away. Scar gave him everything, and Cub was so ungrateful.

“You’re alright.. You haven’t done anything wrong,” Scar soothed, and Cub let him, longed for him, threw himself into Scar’s bruised arms and silently begged him to take it all away. He could, couldn’t he? Cub could be a mindless slave, no thoughts, no emotions, no depression, he could be fixed, dead, and Cub would fucking thank Scar for it.

“I like you the way you are,” Scar spoke gently, responding directly to Cub’s spiral, “I like you just the way you are.” Scar paused, readjusting to pull Cub just a little closer, “And I’m not upset with you, either. I was only angry because I.. Well, of all the mistakes I could make, misjudging when to split myself is not a particularly.. good thing. Like losing a finger and being unable to sew it back on. Not the end of the world, but it’s still a little shocking to see it hanging there by a little thread of skin, then full on detach itself and punch you right in the face, like, ouch, no thanks, that didn’t feel good. Now, I’m used to chopping fingers off for all my dozens of spawn over the years, but most of them don’t leave gaping holes. Physical injuries are of little concern to me so long as my body can regenerate itself, but the.. not so physical. Those can be permanent. And I like having all my fingers. Not the mention the weakness, fuck, it’s been hundreds of years since something like this has happened to me, it’s like my life force has been sucked clean away. I hardly had the strength to pick up Mumbo’s kill, and god I would have hated to miss that.”

Scar sighed, long and wistful. “After I’m feeling better, I say we get away from here for a while- two weeks, maybe even a month! Just travel, do something fun, it’s been too long since I’ve taken a proper vacation. How does that sound?”

Right now, the only thing Cub cared about was staying buried in Scar’s warmth. As long as he could keep this, he’d be okay.

“Anything you want.”

…

Grian was not much better in the morning; in fact, he might’ve been worse. There was blood on his pillow.

“I think.. I need to spend the day outside. Alone. I need to recoup.” That stung, and Grian must have noticed, continuing quickly. “We’ll talk first. Just in case.. something happens to me.”

They talked for an hour and a half, every little reveal cutting like needles in Mumbo’s lungs. He felt like he’d never be satisfied, every word seeming to confirm all Mumbo’s deepest insecurities.

“So you were- killed. By one of the- the corruption,” at this point, Mumbo knew not to say Scar’s name; it was unclear if he’d arrive at Mumbo’s call since neither of them could remember if Scar had granted Mumbo that power, but much better safe than having him show up unwelcome. “And this is an act of revenge. I’m your revenge.” With each passing moment, Grian only looked more distressed.

“No, Mumbo it’s not- It’s not that simple, and it’s less about the corruption to me than it is about you, the lives it steals, the lives it wants you to steal in its name. I don’t remember who I was before this, but I know I had something taken from me. I feel- I just know my life was stolen, Mumbo, I know who- what is responsible, and I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

Mumbo could have cried. “That’s it, then. I’m just a product of an old evil, something to be stopped and caged. I know I was born wrong, Grian! I’ve always known, but I thought- I thought I meant more to you than that. You just wanted to keep me!”

Grian's expression twisted into something strained, but Mumbo just couldn’t see past this, himself, the things Grian had said to ensure Mumbo stayed under his control. “No- Of course not! I wake up every day, Mumbo, and I get to share my life with someone special, so much more than the circumstances of his birth. I see love. I see a world that’s better with you in it, and I can’t let that change. When I’m talking about stolen lives, I mean you too, especially you!”

“Is the world really so much better?” Mumbo’s head felt weighted, but he forced himself to raise his chin, look Grian in the eyes. “I take more than I could possibly give back. I killed someone last night.”

“You make me better. You make my life- better.” It was too honest. Nauseating, to be so loved and yet so- hurt.

“So you’re selfish.” The words left Mumbo’s throat numb.

Grian laughed, joyless, “Always.”

“And that’s why you kept me in the dark. You’re selfish. You thought I might leave. You let me just- live like that. Do you know how hopeless it feels? How lonely? Was it ever really about me, or was it just about you, preserving this- this charity case because you feel bad, because it makes you feel good, because you- you don’t care!” Mumbo slammed his fists against the kitchen table, he felt like a fucking child, but maybe after all these years he had earned the right for this one tantrum.

“Because you deserve a chance to live, Mumbo. Just like anyone else. That’s what I believe.”

It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, all this honesty was too late, and maybe it was worse that Grian was so meek, so calm. Mumbo didn’t want to talk, he wanted to hurt, enough to match the sawing ache in his chest.

“And what if I wanted it? To drop everything, and go right to the corruption, right now.”

That shut him up. It shut Grian up for a long fucking time. Mumbo waited with bated breath, but still he was not ready for the hammer to drop.

“Then I’d kill you.” Grian’s expression was stony. For a long moment, Mumbo forgot how to breathe.

“That simple, huh?”

“No. Not simple at all.”

“Been ‘round this track before, then?” Mumbo just wanted to hurt him, but Grian would not waver.

“Twice.” Grian did not blink. Mumbo was choked to silence. “And you know how many times I told the spawn under my care what they were? The truth of their fathers, the monsters that haunted their dreams?” Grian held up two, shaky fingers. “So I tried something new. And I hurt you. I’m scared. I’m sorry.”

Mumbo had no words left to throw. “I hate you.”

“That’s okay. I know.. there are certain values- human life- that don’t come naturally to you. I know it’s frustrating. It’s not fair. I wish I could take it all away, but I’m.. doing the best I can with what I’ve got. You deserve a chance to live. That’s all I want.”

“I hate you!”

“I’m gonna.. go outside now,” Grian paused between each word, either considering them carefully, or simply needing the extra breath. “I hope you stay home.” Grian started to shift to his feet, wavering in every movement. Mumbo’s window of opportunity to cut deep, to see it on Grian’s face felt equally fleeting.

“I hope Scar finds you. I hope he kills you out there.”

The world stopped.

Mumbo had gotten what he wanted, replaced all-consumingly with a new desire to take it back. They both knew what he’d done. No one moved. No one spoke.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty.

Unsteady, Grian hobbled to the back door. Mumbo spoke a weak word of distress, and regretted that too. Grian wouldn’t stop for him anymore.

The first few minutes, Mumbo watched him through a window near the back, getting comfortable in the grass, laying down, nose to the dirt. He didn’t have to lay that way anymore. Grian had told Mumbo what he did out there when Mumbo had asked. Grian trusted him. Grian told him everything.

Grian killed for him. Mumbo wondered if he regretted that now.

When Grian’s body stilled to limpness, Mumbo crept outside, firmly along the wall of the house until he reached the little rocking chair across the deck. He sat.

As long as it took, he’d stay.

…

Cub had made it a daily habit to nap in the cat room; he was growing to like it in there, especially after going nose-blind to the smell. He liked to think the foster kittens liked him too, and right now they had the sweetest mama cat in care as well, who’d very quickly figured out that Cub was too large a wall for her relentless kittens to climb. Sometimes she laid in the crook of his legs, sometimes on his chest, and only for her, Cub felt bad when he wanted to readjust. Kittens knew no pain, tossing them off when he wanted to turn on his side meant nothing. This mom was too human-friendly to be born a stray.

Cub was lying face down when someone knocked on the door, several kittens starting to meow as it opened, and mama cat hopping off Cub’s back to see who was there, and if she’d be getting fed.

“There he is,” that was Pearl’s voice, sounding more amused than she ought to be. “Have at ‘im then, you two have fun. Don’t let the cats out.” Cub heard the door shut, and if he was a cat, his back and tail would’ve puffed all the way out when he turned to see Mumbo in the entryway. How long had it been, a week? What the fuck was he doing here!? Instead of saying that aloud, Cub made a stupid, garbled noise that amounted to nothing of substance.

Mumbo rubbed the back of his neck. “This is cute. The cats. Hi.”

“Why are you here.”

“You told me your address. Well. Where you lived at least. I looked up your address.”

“That does not answer my question.”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you,” Mumbo huffed, more annoyed than he had any right to be barging into Cub’s- kind of Cub’s house- the clownvent. But Mumbo drew back, demeanor changing to something entirely more nervous. “Not.. anyone else. I didn’t want to come, but I didn’t know where else I could find you.” Like the boogeyman would appear if he stood in the doorway for another second, Mumbo scurried to the couch, practically forcing Cub to make space with how aggressively he sat down.

“Right.” Cub mumbled, unable to help the anxiety crawling up his spine. Every moment Mumbo spent here, the more likely Scar was to find him. Then again, Scar had been staying true to his commitment to bedrest.. Cub still didn’t want Mumbo here any longer than he had to be. “Get on with it then.”

Mumbo did not get on with it. At this point, the more adventurous kittens had grown curious about the newcomer, waking up from their naps and waddling over to investigate. Mumbo was stuck stiff as two sniffed his shoes, a third playing with the laces.

“What’s your fucking problem, man,” Cub spoke lamely, but Mumbo did not move.

“Make them stop?”

“They’re not doing anything.”

“Animals don’t like me. They make me nervous.”

“They’re literally babies.”

“I don’t like them!”

“Geez, man, okay, geez,” Cub leaned over to scoop up two in one hand, grabbing the third in the second go. Two more kittens took their place, like heads regrowing on a hydra. Cub put them in his lap as well, but more tiny ears were beginning to appear over the ledges of the numerous cat beds in the room, and Cub didn’t anticipate Mumbo was getting any peace today. At least for now, Mumbo relaxed.

“I’ve just been having a lot of trouble this past week, alright? I’m very- I’m very confused. This is all- It’s all old, but it’s also new, right, it’s very new, and I can’t- figure out what’s going on with me.”

Mumbo paused, seeming to be waiting for Cub’s input. Cub had nothing. They stared at each other for a little too long, but this was a matter of dominance now. Mumbo caved first, obviously.

“So I killed someone. Right. First time. Great? Yay? Been thinking about it all my life, finally did it, and it was kind of just as awesome as I thought it would be, right? But I also feel bad. I wasn’t expecting to feel bad. Maybe that’s healthy, like it’s probably a good thing, but I don’t understand how it’s possible to be so- conflicted.”

“Of course you feel bad. You killed someone.”

“This is unhelpful-“ Mumbo was cut off by kitten claws in his jeans, squeaking and flailing his hands like an idiot as the little one crawled up his leg. Its sister was close behind, chasing her sibling up Mumbo’s other leg and hopping up to his lap, lunging for her brother’s tail. The kitten squealed, but Mumbo squealed louder. Cub chuckled.

“Help me!”

“I don’t think I will.”

“I’m going to hurt them.”

“You wouldn’t hurt a baby, would you?”

“Yes I absolutely would do getthemthefuckoffme!”

Cub rolled his eyes, scooping the two kittens away and setting them down on the floor opposite Mumbo. “Freak.”

“You don’t want to hurt them?” Mumbo scoffed, disbelieving, but Cub only shrugged.

“Of course I do. I’m just normal about it. Not any different from people.”

“You think so?” Mumbo whipped to face him with wide, yearning eyes, and Cub couldn’t keep from wavering at the thick desperation in his voice, too familiar, even when the first time Cub had met others like him had been so long ago. That wasn’t what he’d meant, but..

“Sure,” he tried, suddenly far more awkward, “I mean. I don’t know. It’s different. Like, I know people aren’t the same as- I know it’s sacred-“ Cub huffed, giving up. He could never explain it. “Forget it.”

“The only real difference is I’m used to compartmentalizing for people. I take the violence and I just.. tuck it away. Because I can’t. I’m not allowed. Everything else has to be free game. How else can you survive?”

“I don’t know, man, I just kill people.”

“What did you do before?”

Cub pursed his lips into a hard frown. “Didn’t get out of bed. Forget the violence, I wasn’t having any single one of my needs met. Just another thing on the pile. Didn’t care.”

“Did the corruption make it better?” Cub stiffened. Mumbo sounded.. so sad.

“He made it different.”

“What does that mean?” Maybe Mumbo couldn’t help but be pushy, but Cub’s patience cracked all the same.

“It’s never better. It will never get better for me, it can only be different.”

Mumbo’s eyes were searching, but Cub could not continue. He could not give Mumbo what he was looking for. Neither of them had a future. Mumbo was quiet for a long time.

“I think the corruption did something terrible to me. I think I wanted him to. I think I still want him to. I feel like I should be angry, maybe even horrified, but I don’t even care- I might even want more. I don’t know why, and it scares me. Is he doing it? Influencing me?”

Cub’s heart shattered, or maybe his lungs collapsed, something broke in his chest, the whole of him sagging in on itself. It wasn’t fair to ask Cub questions he had never been able to answer for himself.”

Cub stared at his lap, only one kitten remaining after the other four had scattered. Gray and white spotted, small, but long haired, almost impossibly fluffy for something so little. It had tucked itself between Cub’s legs, dwarfed by his size. It trusted him. Unconditional. Could it even help itself? It could not fight Cub when he scooped it off the floor, could not stop itself from being drawn to figures bigger than it, seeking warmth and safety. If Cub decided to crush its skull under his hand, it would probably only mew. And then it would die. If Cub was the only one here, the only person who could care for the fosters, would the others even stray away? Would they crawl into his lap seeking that same comfort, knowing what might await them? Did they even care? Did they even know?

Did Mumbo know?

“All I can tell you is that he hasn’t been back since he took the corpse. He doesn’t know what you’ll do when you see him next, and you’ve shown him you’re a threat worth handling carefully. To actively influence your thoughts, he has to make contact. Passively.. who knows. Who knows if he even thinks he’s doing anything. I just can’t stop needing him. I don’t want to stop. And even if I didn’t owe him my life, my loyalty, even if he spit on me and treated me like the dirt beneath his shoe, I don’t know if that ‘needing’ would change. I hate him sometimes. More than sometimes. But I’ll never leave.”

Cub looked up when Mumbo was silent. There was a kitten in his lap, and Mumbo was staring at it like it could unhinge its jaw and swallow him whole. More likely, he just knew the power he had over the little creature, the trust it had in him all the same. Maybe Mumbo did understand.

Mumbo did not look up when he spoke. “I feel so helpless sometimes. Like I’ll never be in a place where I don’t owe someone else everything, no matter what I think of them. I love.. I want to be able to love someone without owing them my life.”

“You won’t get that here.”

“I know. I just.” Mumbo paused, uncertain. Gently, so gently, he laid two fingers over the back of the kitten in his lap. It purred, eyes closed. “I wish I could be angry at.. the corruption. Instead of Grian. With Grian, I just can’t seem to stop. It’s so easy. It’s like I want to be, like one of the little ways he’s done wrong by me will enter my head, and I just can’t stop focusing on it, going down all these dark paths, it feels as good as it does terrible, and I don’t even know if he’s done anything wrong.”

Cub couldn’t help the furrow of his brow. “What did he do?”

Mumbo shifted where he sat, jostling his kitten. If he heard its mew of displeasure, he did not acknowledge it. “I just- I spent all this time not-“

“Get over it.”

“What-“ Mumbo gaped, but Cub didn’t give him time to speak further.

“Grian gave you a fucking gift, you got a chance to- to be something, and you don’t have much time with him left before he’s gone and you end up here, so fucking get over it. Enjoy it. Maybe thank him.”

Mumbo grimaced, drawing away, “He said he’d rather kill me than let that happen.”

“No he fucking won’t. He’s weak.”

“He’s getting better.”

“He’s emotionally weak. He can’t kill you, even if that might be a kindness in itself.”

Mumbo sat up a little straighter, the kitten sensing his tension, standing up in order to hobble to a more comfortable bed. “He said he’s done it before, twice. He threatened me.”

“Well if Grian doesn’t do it, ‘tHe cOrRupTiOn’ will, so fucking get used to it. I doubt I have much longer than a year, so you two will have plenty of quality time for you to figure all this out by yourself.”

“Longer than a- what? Does he just put you down like an animal?”

“Might as well. This is a dog fighting ring, Mumbo, and you might have an alright time until you get hurt, and then you get hurt again, and then again until you’re so disabled you can’t go on any longer, but it’s all you know how to do, so you keep fighting, and then you die. And Scar will let you, happily. I’m at the end of my rope. I’m not going to recover from these concussions. I’ve broken so many bones that never healed quite right, I’ll never live painlessly again. And I know you still want it, I still want it, but maybe it’s kinder not to have the option at all.”

“I.. I don’t..”

“Get over it. And get out of here, before he sees you.”

“Fine.” Mumbo set his jaw, face stony. “Fine.”

…

It was a quiet month, quiet enough that Grian believed the rest of their lives might be quiet forever; beautiful, blissful quiet. It wasn’t perfect. No, it was far from perfect. But it was okay. He was okay. Mumbo was okay.

They still slept in the same bed, a new habit that had remained unaddressed by either of them, but Grian had a queen, and it was easy for them to stick to their separate sides. In truth, Grian didn’t want Mumbo to leave. He slept better knowing Mumbo was safe. He felt safer with Mumbo beside him. Maybe that was stupid. Maybe it was just another symptom of a quiet, uneventful month.

“Don’t wake up.”

Grian startled, eyes shooting open to a vast expanse of endless dark, lights like stars flickering in the distance. Scar, across from him, just a few meters away.

“Don’t wake up,” he said again, though the smirk Scar wore did nothing to comfort, “I’m here to negotiate. We won’t get a chance if your Eye finds out who’s paid a visit.”

Grian grit his teeth, choking down his own fear. He couldn’t face Scar this way. “I don’t think either of us have anything we’re willing to give up on.” Scar inclined his head as if considering him, but Grian could see it in those sly, green eyes, he was just pretending. Scar knew something.

“You might be right,” he conceded performatively, his smile never wavering, “But I have an offer you might be interested in.”

“Spit it out.”

Scar drew a hand to his heart in mock offense, but he did not dwell on the gesture, like he too wanted to get a move on. “You live a tortured existence, Grian. I know it to be true. You’re reborn of anger and stolen power, you don’t know what to do with yourself but get up, find a spawn to save, watch them kill themselves, die by your hand, or fall to a scar, over and over. You’ve encountered five in this lifetime, yes? Lost them, in one way or another. How many lifetimes have you lived, chasing this fruitless effort? Do you even know? Do you even want to keep going? I know you don’t have a choice. That anger doesn’t rest. No matter how much you lose, you have to push on. When Mumbo kills you, it’ll only start again. You can’t find peace, because you will never win.”

Grian breathed a hard sigh. “I don’t need to listen to you if you’re only going to prattle.”

“You should listen, because I know exactly what happened to you. I know who you used to be when you were alive, really alive. And I can make it stop. I can kill you, permanently. Or, if you so choose, I can let you live the rest of this life with Mumbo under my care, and then I can end it. Once you’ve had enough. Interested yet?”

Grian pursed his lips. Was the corruption a hive mind? Did it really know every name to the blood on its hands, could it remember that far back? Grian didn’t know how long he’d existed like this. He didn’t know how many times he’d reincarnated just to die. But he knew he was old. He was too.. practiced.. to be a novice.

“Get on with it.”

Scar’s face took on a pitying look. “We’re not all the same, you know. Not all of us are so cruel. Yours, though.. I can’t say to the extent you were mistreated, but for a spawn to take a scar’s gift to their grave, to be so vengeful as to maim the scar in the process, steal a chunk of its power.. Hate is not an apt enough word, friend. You were wronged, and you used your shared connection to mutilate your scar, permanently. Whatever was done to you.. I don’t even know if it’s possible for you to find peace. I’ve never met a reincarnated spawn who succeeded. Not that there’s very many of you around, even less that are vengeful enough to chase human forms. Most of you just stay slugs.” Scar shrugged, but he was not done.

“It shouldn’t surprise you that most of us don’t want our power to be destroyed. I’d argue most of us like our spawn, I certainly do! I’d set the world on fire for the spawn in my care, not that it would take much convincing..” Scar chuckled to himself. “I love them. Anything they want, I give them. I’m here to facilitate a fulfilling life, and I do everything in my power to keep them happy. It’s not a nice existence, Grian, being spawn. I think you know that, even if you don’t remember. Mumbo is being suffocated in your care. With me, you’d get to see him thrive- though if you don’t want to see him thriving, you can always enjoy the downtime. When he gets hurt, you can keep him company. I take care of the health of my spawn, y’know. I make sure they’re well off before they’re released back into the world. Out of all the scars where Mumbo could end up, I’m as good as they get! He’ll be happy. Actually happy.”

Grian wrinkled his nose at the thought, but Scar seemed to have said his peace, giving Grian a quiet moment to process what he’d said.

He had been spawn. That made perfect sense, didn’t it?

Grian’s anger ran deep, too deep not to be personal. He was not an offhand victim. This had been months, more likely years of abuse. Spawn were naturally drawn to the corruption of which they were born. How much mistreatment would it take for a spawn to not only reject their found scar, but maim them.

Did this baggage affect how he thought about the average scar? Was it really that bad for spawn to live under someone who could actually meet their needs? Grian blinked, remembering again what those ‘needs’ were. Scar had done a good job not saying it aloud, hadn’t he. Meeting him in a dream, too, where everything was a little.. foggy. Scar knew exactly what he was doing

“If you can kill me, get me out of the way permanently, then why not just do it? Why the monologue?” Grian huffed, but Scar did not seem to mind at all.

“Power like ours can’t be stolen, not unless under.. very specific circumstances, and even in your case, a connection was already established. You would have to give yourself to me, as I would to my spawn. I don’t doubt it would be vindicating for you to do so, as you’d get to rip me open however you pleased,” Scar narrowed his eyes, “Within reason. Though, since it is this power that fuels you, I don’t know if you would survive any sort of transfer. We would wait until you’re ready.”

“So that’s it.” Grian could have laughed, “For the price of everything I’ve worked for here, I get to die.”

“I think you’re underselling my offer here, Grian! You get to die either way, but one of those ways ends your eternal suffering! Is that really not so appealing? I mean, come on, Mumbo’s fate is all but sealed, here. I’ve already hooked him, and killing you is the easy part. If it’s any consolation, either way you go, it will be in style. I plan to exhaust myself for the show, it will be breathtaking.”

“So you know my answer, then.”

Scar’s preformative smirk dropped to a simple smile, “Well, I have a feeling. Hard to negotiate with a brick wall.”

“Your offer fucking sucks.”

“Don’t be mean.”

It was sudden when Grian felt himself more distinctly, felt himself breathe cool air. He opened his eyes, jolted upward, but the dark shape in the shadows of his room was already retreating. Fuck.

Grian forced himself to breathe. Relax.

He looked to Mumbo beside him, still sleeping soundly. Should.. Was it time? Was it over?

Grian should end it all, end it before Mumbo caught wind of Scar’s presence, before he grew suspicious of what Grian might do. Mumbo should get to die happy, clueless. If Grian acted now, Mumbo might be able to die without worrying about Scar at all. (Was Mumbo even worrying? Did he even care? It was hard sometimes, to know what was happening in the brain of a spawn. He doubted it made sense to them, either.)

Grian watched Mumbo sleep for a long time. He wanted to move, get out of bed, go for his gun. He should have done it. This had already gone too far, Grian had been seconds from death too many times- he’d never have allowed this in the past. But he’d never kept someone alive this long either, never put in this much effort, never liked them so much. Grian hated to be human sometimes. How horrible it was to be so attached.

He couldn’t do it. Not tonight. He just couldn’t fight the hope that maybe he’d done enough this time. For Mumbo to stay, even when he was furious. For Mumbo to stay, even when he knew what else was out there.

Maybe it was enough. Maybe everything would be okay.

[moon07sthings]

Robin and Nancy should come together to set up Steve and Eddie

robin starts to get really sick off Steve saying he's found "the one" and it turns out to just be another airhead hook-up. Eventually Steve stops going on dates, starts spending all of his time with Eddie or Dustin (when he's not with robin that is)

So Robin decides that Steve needs a pick me up. They go on a girls day. Paint nails, go shopping, go for lunch, and gossip. Robin tries to set him up with a couple of girls that they walk past but every time he refuses, saying something like "if you find them so cute she should go date them" which is always followed by "unless you've got someone else in mind". Robin has no clue what he means by that.

whenever she tries to ask Steve what his type is, he just says he doesn't have one (which makes sense why he used to date pretty much anyone). Robin decides that she's gunna need help if she wants her hopeless romantic to get any actual , romance.

And just about the only other person who knows Steve as well as Robin, happens to be Nancy, I mean who else could figure out who would be a good pic for Steve better than his ex girlfriend, right?

After a little bit of discussing they come to the conclusion that Steve must be into nerds, I mean Nancy and Robin are both nerds, and Nancy says that one time she was sure that he had a thing for Jonathon (who is also a nerd) which brings robin back the time that she thought Steve was checking some dude out (when she confronted him he denied the hell out of it) which would make sense off why he hasn't been going on dates recently. Its extremely hard to find another fellow queer in Hawkins. (Robin would know)

Eventually they decide that Eddie would be perfect for Steve, he's queer, a nerd, they already hang out, like, a fuck-ton, and now that they think about it Eddie has defiantly been giving Steve the eyes. Maybe all that play full flirting was actual flirting.

They attempt to set them up, but they're kind of doing all the work themselves. they are always together, always sitting next to each other, giving each other lifts, pairing up whenever the group gets split up. But its not working. They still aren't dating, they aren't getting any closer than they were before, they aren't even flirting any more than usual. So Robin and Nancy spend the group split up's mostly planning on what more they could do.(they always ended up paired together)

They decide to rope in Jonathan and Argyle, maybe if they get them drunk or high enough then one of them would let a confession slip. but that doesn't work either. Argyle suggests playing some games. They play never have I ever, with some rather 'personal' questions to set the mood (they end up with a very drunk Argyle). They play truth or dare, they try to get Steve to kiss Eddie, he does, just on the hand (Eddie gets very red). robin gets dared to sit in Nancys lap, and well Robin has had enough alcohol for a lifetime so (with Nancys consent) she does it. It goes on like this for a while nothing happens, so they go to bed, they all stay at Steve's for the night.

robin wakes up in the morning to Eddie and Steve cuddling, she wakes everyone up and tells Steve that their plan finally worked. They final got Steve and Eddie to get together. They both just break out in laughter, they tell robin that they've been dating for a month, and have been trying to set up Robin and Nancy the entire time.

[pupslimes]

don't let me in with no intention to keep me... part 4!

okay. listen. listen listen listen. i'm sorry. there's gonna be at least five parts i'm SORRY. but its all pure porn still so enjoy. if you're mean to me i'll cum or whatever

..........................................................................

If you’d been asked a few hours ago what you thought you’d be doing tonight, one of the last answers would have been fingering yourself open in front of the guy you’d been seeing after already cumming twice at his command too. You would have giggled and blushed at the thought, perhaps let yourself imagine it, but you never would have considered things would have turned out this way. Not in a million years.

It was, however, exactly where you were now. Charlie still lounges on the couch across from you, an arm slung over the back. His cock lays neglected, flush against his stomach, leaking the same fluid you were so interested in tasting just a little while ago. Your cheeks flush with heat, but you can’t help but look at it again, wondering what it would feel like inside you.

“Ah, ah,” Charlie chastises you gently, reaching over to press a finger beneath your jaw. He tilts your chin up until you have no choice but to look him in the eyes. “Be a good puppy, yeah? You can have my cock later if you still want it,” A whine escapes your throat, and the look in his eyes flashes predatory for just a second, until he grins at you. You’re suddenly wishing he’d sink his teeth into you. Your hips buck uncontrollably into the hand between your thighs. You remember what he said at the beginning of your… encounter. “Like if I touched you I wouldn’t be able to stop.” He’s been holding himself back still, and the realization sends a shiver through you as you press into your bent knuckles still resting on your cock

“Fuck,”

“Feel good, baby boy?” Right. He’s still watching.

You nod at him, gently rutting your overstimulated cock against the heel of your hand as your fingers unfold, slipping down to spread yourself open.. 

‘Keep going then, yeah?”

Another slow nod, and you start to circle your entrance with a single finger. You poke and prod gently, softening up the muscles that have tensed up since your earlier ministrations. As you relax, you can’t stop the moans that start slipping out. Charlie’s ears seem to perk up at them, and his hand returns to his cock, slowly slipping up and down, staving off the pressure he's undoubtedly feeling right now. How hasn’t he cum yet? He must be unbelievably pent up. The thought of him practically edging himself to watch you make yourself cum, mixing with hearing the sounds of your soaking wet pussy mingling with Charlie’s precum working its way down his shaft has your head spinning, and you can’t help yourself but to slip a finger inside. Of course, this results in even more whining, a whimper that was trapped in the back of your throat finally slipping out. “Char…”

He smiles again, that same lazy half smirk, half excited grin, and his eyes flick down to your hand. “Whatcha doin’ there, puppy?”

An indignant whine works its way out of you. His head tilts back as he chuckles, and his cock twitches under his hand. “Baby, baby, shhhhhh,” he coos at you. “Can’t I tease my boy a little? Thought you liked that,”

Your eyelashes flutter at his words, and he hums happily at the sight. “That’s what I thought. Whatever you’re doing, you should keep going,” He’s still teasing you, but now you can’t help yourself.

You nod, dazedly, sliding your finger further into yourself, until you’ve passed the second knuckle. A crook of it inside you has you shuddering, and you can hear Charlie’s hand speed up on his dick. “Hope you know I’m taking notes, puppy. Love figuring out what’s going to make you scream,”

You can barely blink at him, but a rush of heat rises to your cheeks, darkening the shade of red already upon them. The heat is almost unbearable by now. Charlie seems only somewhat affected, besides his ability to speak remaining. His cheeks are flushed too, but only lightly, and he's barely broken a sweat by now. On the other hand, you’re pretty sure you’ve sweat through the fabric of your couch and stained it forever. Worth it for him. He quirks an eyebrow at you, and you nearly have to shove a hand into your mouth as well to muffle the noises that are slipping out of you. You can’t imagine he’d take too kindly to that. Images of him muffling the sounds with his cock instead send a second finger inside you, aborted thrusts of your hips sending sticky slapping sounds through the room. Your head falls back again as your eyes close again

“Tell me how good it feels,”

The command has you stilling, flicking open your eyes at him. A sound both confused and extremely turned on is worming its way out of you as he bares his teeth in what is slowly seeming less and less like a smile, and more and more like the gaping maw of a predator that is about to swallow you whole.

“Use your words, puppy. Want to hear you tell me about how good it feels. Maybe you’ll get a reward if you do,”

Your mouth gapes open at him slightly, jaw working open and closed several times before you can find it in yourself to speak. “You want me to…what?”

Charlie cocks his head, his tone matching the condescension of his body language. “I thought it was pretty obvious. I want you to tell me how good you feel with your fingers stuffed into your cunt. I know my good boy can do that for me,” What the fuck?

“I… ah…” 

Charlie does nothing but wait expectantly, an eyebrow raising at you once more as his neck straightens back up. The hand on his cock is still working infuriatingly slow, and you can’t help but pout at it slightly, forgetting your original embarrassment briefly. Charlie snorts at you, actually snorts, and you’re immediately drawn back into your current situation. Oops.

“You seemed pretty interested when I mentioned a reward a few seconds ago. What happened to that?”

“What’s my reward?” You somehow manage to pull words out of yourself, although you’re not sure what depths they come from, your teasing tone shocking even you as Charlie’s eyes widen at it. His eyes sparkle again, smile never leaving his face as he croons at you. 

“I’ll cum all over you, pet,”

Your heart is pounding in your ears. You have never wanted anything more than for this man to work his cock above you and spill all over you. You imagine how good it would feel to be dripping in his cum… face, chest, stomach… your own cock. Another noise flies past your lips, somewhere between a startled “Oh, fuck” and a brazen moan, and you can see Charlie’s chest puff up slightly at the reaction, almost as if he wasn’t quite sure his suggestion would be taken so well.

“Yeah? Like that, puppy?”

“Yes, sir,” you choke out, the title slipping past your lips like a prayer to a merciful god.

“Oh… sir, huh? I like that one. I’m sure we can take it further than that, but for right now we can work with that. You’re such a good boy for me, you know that? Now keep talking,”

You grit your teeth with the effort of not cumming right then and there, clenching around your fingers. Of course, Charlie notices your reaction. 

“That good, huh? You like being my good boy that much?” All you can manage is a nod.

“Speak,”

Oh fuck. Yeah.. that’s going to do it for you again. You’re seeing white. You’re not sure if you’ve ever cum so hard in your fucking life at this point. You can’t hear anything except the rushing of blood in your head, and you’re sure that your eyes are screwed up tight, mouth open in a silent scream. You feel fingers grazing your thighs, Charlie’s fingers, and you press up into the touch, hips lifting completely off the couch as your breath catches in your throat. He digs them in, and you writhe at the sensation of his nails scraping your tender skin. Eventually, you come to enough to hear him working you through it, muttering above you. “Good boy, good boy, there’s my good puppy, come on honey… let go…”

You manage to squint open your eyes, the hulking form of Charlie looming over you as he now pets your face, the back of his hand running gently over your cheek. His nails pass over your skin and you shudder at the sensation, a reminder of where they just were coursing through your veins. Tears run freely down your face now, and oh that’s why Charlie’s hand is there and oh…when did you start crying?

“Felt that good, huh puppy?” You drink in the sight of him now that you can see again, gaze drifting down to where his hand is white knuckled at the base of his shaft. Is he… getting off to this? To you crying? Something stirs in your gut. Fuck.

“Look at me,” Your eyes shoot up to meet his.

“Good boy. You’re so pretty when you cry, you know that?” The grin returns again. “But don’t think that got you out of the woods. You’re still talking me through how you make yourself cum. Call it returning the favor,”

You think you’re going to pass out.

[bigmpregnm]

Wrestling the Changes - Part 4

[Story Collection] | [Part 3] [●] [Part 5🔴]

The morning after his one-on-one practice with Tyler, Hayden woke up feeling exhausted. His body ached from head to toe; the physical exertion was taking its toll on his body, which was already under immense strain from the pregnancy. Despite his fatigue, he knew he had to attend a scheduled check-up with his doctor. He dragged himself out of bed, glancing at his reflection in the mirror while he thought about the fantastic sex with Tyler.

At sixteen weeks pregnant, Hayden’s naked body looked evidently pregnant, even though everybody thought he was only getting fat. His belly had grown considerably, a firm, round bump that stretched his skin taut and protruded about 6 inches from its former flatness. The weight gain was most noticeable around his midsection and ass, giving his frame a fuller, more pronounced look. His pecs also looked fuller and softer, adding to the overall bulk. He rubbed his belly as he thought about Tyler, Marcus, and James.

“I guess being pregnant has its benefits when guys like thicker shapes,” he said, smiling as he realized that he could still have fun in his condition. He carefully caressed his pregnant belly before heading to the bathroom to shower.

His usual clothes no longer fit comfortably, so he opted for a loose, oversized hoodie and a pair of sweatpants. The fabric of the sweatpants clung to his thicker thighs and hips, the hoodie providing some concealment for his burgeoning belly, stretching the fabric taut over his abdomen. He wondered for a few seconds if he should’ve informed James about the appointment but decided it was better not to take James to the clinic yet. He didn’t feel ready for that.

Arriving at the doctor’s office, Hayden checked in and sat in the waiting room, his mind racing with thoughts and memories. He couldn’t help but smile as he remembered Tyler’s touch and the way his dick felt so good. Hayden ran his hand over his belly, feeling its firmness and realizing that Tyler’s cum was still inside him. He grinned as he thought about his time with Marcus when not even a single drop of cum escaped his body after the fucking. The same had happened with James when Hayden’s body turned all the cum into six babies, not wasting a single drop.

Hayden followed a nurse into the examination room when his name was called a few minutes later. The doctor was already there waiting for him, warmly greeting Hayden with a smile. “Good morning, Hayden. How are you feeling today?”

“Pretty tired, to be honest,” Hayden replied, settling onto the examination table. “But I’ll survive.”

The doctor nodded, making notes in Hayden’s chart. “That’s understandable, considering you’re carrying sextuplets, and fatigue is one of the most common symptoms during this stage. I see you’ve gained 38 pounds so far, which is healthy, I guess,” the doctor smiled at Hayden, visibly excited but concerned. “How have you been managing your activities? Are you still active in the wrestling team?”

Hayden sighed. “I am, and it’s been tough. I don’t want to fall behind. Wrestling is important for me, and I don’t want to let my team down,” Hayden said, looking sad as he caressed his belly. “But I’m telling the couch in a few days. I don’t want to hurt the babies.”

“I understand. You must be careful. Carrying multiple fetuses puts extra strain on your body, and you need to prioritize your health and the babies’ well-being,” the doctor said, his tone gentle but firm. “Any symptoms or changes that you’d like to talk about? Remember, we’re both learning here because your pregnancy is literally one of a kind.”

“Well, my belly is really noticeable, and my legs and butt have gotten bigger. I can barely fit into my clothes, and I’m not even halfway through the pregnancy,” Hayden said, looking down at his round abdomen.

The doctor nodded, chuckling. “That’s normal for a multiple pregnancy. Your body is storing extra fat to support the babies’ growth. You’re carrying six babies, and you’re a large man; I can tell they will be big,” he said, offering Hayden a kind smile. “But how about a sonogram to check on the babies’ progress?”

Hayden nodded and lay back on the examination table, lifting his hoodie to expose his belly. The doctor applied the gel and began the sonogram, moving the transducer across Hayden’s lower abdomen.

“Everything looks good,” the doctor said, smiling. “The babies are growing well, and their heartbeats are strong. Perfect for 16 weeks pregnant.”

Hayden took a deep breath, smiling. “That’s great to hear.”

The doctor continued moving the transducer, carefully checking on each of the sextuplets, but his expression suddenly changed. “But, wait a moment, there’s something odd.”

Hayden’s heart skipped a beat. “What is it? Are the babies okay?”

The doctor adjusted the screen, zooming in on a small area. “The sextuplets are fine. However, it appears two additional fetuses are developing here. They are much smaller, and considering their size, I’d say they seem to be around eight weeks along, which is significantly behind the others.”

“WHAT? Two more babies? Smaller? Wha–What are you talking about?” Hayden asked.

“It’s a rare phenomenon called superfetation,” the doctor explained. “It’s when a second, separate pregnancy occurs after an initial one. It’s extremely uncommon, but it can happen. This means you had sexual intercourse with your partner 8 weeks ago, and another egg or eggs were fertilized.”

Hayden’s breath caught in his throat. The realization hit him like a tsunami. The additional fetuses must have been conceived after his practice with Marcus in early December. Now he was pregnant with James’ sextuplets and with Marcus’ twins. He immediately thought about his recent fuck with Tyler, and he felt his breathing shortening as the world spin around him. The news was overwhelming. Six babies was a lot, and now he had two more babies on the way.

The doctor gave Hayden some instructions on how to manage his pregnancy moving forward, including more frequent check-ups and a stricter rest regimen, assuring him that everything would be okay. Hayden could barely register the doctor’s words as he placed a hand on his belly and thought about the eight babies growing inside him. Eight. The number felt surreal, but he couldn’t help but feel somewhat excited about also having Marcus’ babies.

Hayden left the office overwhelmed by emotions, carefully placing a hand on his belly, feeling the firm swell beneath his fingers, realizing it was time to tell the truth to the coach, so he went straight to his office. Hayden approached the coach’s office door a while later, pausing to take a deep breath, his hand subconsciously resting on his rounded belly. He had to tell Coach Smith about the pregnancy. The thought made his stomach churn—a mix of nerves and the physical toll of his condition. He knocked softly, closing his eyes to gather the courage to enter.

“Come in.” Coach Smith’s gruff voice called from inside.

Hayden pushed the door open and stepped inside. “Hey, Coach. Do you have some time?” He sat down in the chair opposite the coach, his hands trembling slightly. “I need to talk to you about something important.”

Coach Smith was seated behind his desk, going through some paperwork. He looked up, his expression slightly softening when he saw Hayden. “Klein, sure. What can I do for you?” Coach Smith leaned back in his chair, curiosity piqued.

Hayden took another deep breath, trying to steady himself. “This will sound crazy, and please don’t tell anyone, but I need you to listen. I’m... I’m pregnant.”

There was complete silence for a moment. Then Coach Smith burst into laughter, shaking his head. “Come on, Klein. Men don’t get pregnant. Listen, I know I’ve been pointing at your weight gain too much, but you don’t have to come up with a crazy story to justify that you might be having too many desserts.”

Hayden’s heart sank, but he took a deep breath and continued. “I’m not making this up. I’ve been seeing a doctor, and he confirmed it. Back in December, I discovered I was pregnant with sextuplets. The doctor ran an ultrasound on me, and, well, I really don’t know how to explain it, but I’m pregnant.”

The laughter died down as Coach Smith saw the serious look on Hayden’s face. His amusement turned to confusion, then to anger. “Are you telling me you’re actually pregnant? Knocked up? Having babies? Six of them?”

Hayden nodded, his voice barely above a whisper. “Yes, sir.”

Coach Smith’s face turned red with anger, though he kept his tone polite. “Klein, I made an exception to allow you onto this team. Now you’re telling me you can’t wrestle because you’re pregnant?”

“I know, Coach,” Hayden said, his voice breaking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t plan for this to happen, but I can’t hide it anymore.”

Coach Smith took a deep breath, trying to control his temper. “This is ridiculous. I can’t have a pregnant wrestler on the team. You understand I have no other option than to remove you from the team, right?”

Hayden felt tears sting his eyes, but he nodded. “I understand, Coach.”

Coach Smith sighed heavily, rubbing his temples. “I’m sorry, Hayden. But there’s nothing else I can do. You need to take care of yourself and those… babies.”

Hayden stood up, his heart heavy with shame and disappointment. “Thank you, Coach. I’m sorry for everything.”

As he left the office, Hayden felt a profound sense of loss. Wrestling had been his passion, his life, and now it was slipping away.

He started hiding from his teammates, not answering their calls or texts. He couldn’t face them, not with the secret he was carrying and the shame of being kicked off the team. He couldn’t even face James, who frequently texted him, called him, and knocked at his door. He knew he needed to tell Marcus about the babies they had created but he couldn’t. He didn’t know what to do.

****

There was a knock on Hayden’s dorm room door a week after discovering the two additional babies. He ignored it at first, but the persistent knocking wouldn’t stop. Finally, he got up, shirtless, clutching a bag of cheeseburgers and tenderly cradling his growing belly. He opened the door to find James standing there, concern etched on his face.

“Where have you been?” James said softly, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation. “I’ve been calling you, texting you, and coming here every half an hour.”

Hayden sighed, dropping back onto his bed and taking a bite of a cheeseburger, his other hand resting on his abdomen. “Sorry, I needed some time.”

James sat down next to him, reaching for the round belly to lovingly caress it. “I heard the coach removed you from the team. I guess you told him about our babies.”

“I did. But didn’t mention you were involved in this,” Hayde said, chewing slowly. “I understand why he had to remove me. I couldn’t risk the babies anymore.”

James smiled and leaned forward to kiss Hayden’s belly while lovingly caressing his thighs. “Well, I should’ve been there. I’m the father of these babies. Half of this is my fault, so you didn’t have to go there alone,” he said, turning more passionate with each kiss.

“James, James, stop. Don’t…” Hayden said, feeling a lump in his throat, tears threatening to spill. “Listen. There’s something else I need to tell you, and I don’t know how you will react.”

“What is it?” James asked, looking at Hayden with concern.

“I had an appointment with the doctor a week ago, and he found something,” Hayden said, not knowing how to tell James about Marcus’ baby. “He found two additional babies. They’re smaller than the others, about eight weeks along last week. That means they were conceived later, after the first six.”

James’ eyes widened in shock, also raising an eyebrow. “What? Is that even possible? But you and I…? That’s nine weeks ago.”

“It’s rare, but it can happen,” Hayden said, his voice trembling. “But I know what you’re thinking. Nine weeks ago we didn’t have sex, James. These two babies, I think they’re Marcus’. It happened one night when we practiced together in early December. I didn’t know I was pregnant with your babies yet, and since we’re not... boyfriends… I…”

“You let Marcus fuck you,” James said, processing the information. His expression shifted from shock to sad acceptance. “This is a lot to take. Does Marcus know?”

“No. I don’t know how to tell him,” Hayden said, looking worried. “I’m scared of his reaction.”

“I think you should tell him. I can tell it’s good to know when you’re going to have children,” James said, softly smiling at Hayden and leaning to kiss his belly again. “I gotta go. I… I’ll see you around? Take care, okay?” James was evidently hurt, but deep inside him, he knew he had no rights over Hayden.

Hayden nodded as he saw James leaving, aware their not-exclusive relationship was probably over. He sighed, his hand resting on his belly. Hayden had to focus on school and his health, even while feeling lost and overwhelmed. Over the next week, he struggled to get back on his feet. The weight of being removed from the wrestling team pressed heavily on his mind, making it difficult for him to focus on anything else. He continued avoiding his other teammates, not answering calls or texts, and spent most of his time alone.

His mind often wandered during class, not paying attention to lectures or assignments. His thoughts were constantly elsewhere, primarily revolving around his situation and the growing life inside him. His appetite increased significantly, and he often ate more than usual. However, despite his sadness and anxiety, he couldn’t help but smile when he rubbed his firm belly. He would sit for hours, gently caressing the roundness. The touch of his hands on his taut skin provided a comfort he couldn’t describe.

Then, on the day he reached 18 weeks pregnant, Hayden was in class staring out the window. The lecture was a blur, his mind too preoccupied to grasp any of the material being taught. His hand rested on his swollen belly, gently rubbing it. At 251 pounds, his belly had grown larger and rounder over the weeks, straining the fabric of his clothes. He wore an oversized hoodie and sweatpants again, the only comfortable clothing he had left. His belly was growing so much that sitting in his chair was also a challenge; he had to lean slightly to accommodate the bulk of his abdomen, which was pressed against the desk in front of him.

As he rubbed his belly, Hayden felt a sudden, fluttering sensation inside him. He gasped softly, his hand instinctively pressing against the spot. It was a kick—the first kick. His heart beat faster as he felt another kick, followed by more. His belly seemed to come alive, a sensation like a rollercoaster inside him as the babies moved and kicked. He couldn’t contain his excitement, and tears welled up in his eyes. The feeling was strange, cute, and overwhelming all at once. The movements grew stronger, and Hayden could barely focus on anything else.

“Mr. Klein, is everything alright?” The professor asked, looking puzzled at Hayden’s actions.

“Uh, yes, sorry,” Hayden mumbled. “Actually, may I go to the bathroom?” he asked, his voice shaky.

The teacher nodded, and Hayde quickly gathered his bag and hurried out of the classroom, feeling the curious eyes of his classmates on him. They all thought he was fat, and Hayden preferred them to keep it that way. Hayden walked to the bathroom, moving one of his hands to his lower back to support the weight of his belly. His mind raced with thoughts, but he couldn’t stop smiling and looking down at his belly while the babies continued moving.

Once he reached the bathroom, Hayden quickly pulled up his hoodie, revealing his swollen belly. His skin stretched taut over the firm, rounded shape, and small bumps formed where the babies were kicking and rolling. He gently moved his hands to his belly, feeling the movements more clearly. Tears of joy streamed down his face, overwhelmed by the joy of impending parenthood.

Then, the bathroom door opened, and Connor walked in, stopping dead in his tracks when he saw Hayden. “Whoa,” he said, his eyes wide with surprise. “You look... thick. Where have you been?”

Hayden quickly pulled the hoodie down, trying to hide his belly. “Uh, hey, Connor. I’ve been in class. And this is nothing, really. I had some serious gas issues, but I’m fine.”

Connor raised an eyebrow, clearly not buying the explanation but deciding not to press the issue. “Alright, if you say so. It’s nice to see you. We’ve been worried.”

“Oh, I’m fine. No reason to worry about me,” Hayden said, grabbing his bag and heading for the door, feeling Connor’s curious gaze following him. As he passed by, he noticed Connor’s dick stirring in his pants, making him gasp.

As Hayden lay in his bed that evening, his hands gently resting on his belly, he couldn’t stop thinking about Connor’s dick hardening in his pants. The kicks had slowed down, only an occasional flutter, but something else was rising deep inside him. He remembered Connor’s imposing presence in the bathroom and how he looked in the singlet during practices. He couldn’t help but sneak his hands inside his underwear to stroke his dick and rub his balls, getting aroused by his memories of Connor’s body.

This became a recurrent thought as the days passed, helping Hayden feel better about his situation. His spirits began to lift. He found solace in focusing on himself and the life growing within him. The constant kicking and movement of the babies brought immense joy.

Hayden’s belly continued growing as February progressed, reaching 262 pounds by the end of the month. His belly looked huge on him already. The rest of his body thickened as well—his pecs grew fuller, his arms and legs gained more mass, and his ass expanded, giving him a solid, maternal appearance. Hayden sighed whenever he looked at his reflection, still surprised by the changes. He struggled to find ways to adapt his daily routine to accommodate his growing body, but he managed.

He had to upgrade the size of his clothes and pay more attention to how he moved because his belly was always on his way. His new size made everyday activities more challenging, but Hayden took it all in stride. Simple tasks like getting out of bed or tying his shoes required extra effort, but he found ways to manage. He often took breaks to rest, lying on his bed and caressing his belly, feeling the kicks and movements of his babies.

Despite his happiness, Hayden couldn’t help but think about Connor, Tyler, Marcus, James, and even Jake. He hadn’t heard from James in a few weeks, and Connor’s unexpected presence in the bathroom had left a lasting impression on him. Hayden was somewhat confused even though he felt better. However, a new symptom related to the pregnancy was raising constant arousal.

On the day Hayden reached 20 weeks pregnant, he was naked in his dorm room, lying on his bed, caressing his belly with one hand while the other slowly stroked his dick. The room was dimly lit, creating a cozy, intimate atmosphere. He could feel the babies moving inside, their kicks and rolls making his belly ripple and bulge, but his mind was busy thinking about Connor. He smiled, feeling his arousal rise as he remembered Connor’s strong body in the red shiny singlet. Hayden’s breathing was unsteady, and his mind was getting lost in pleasure.

He moved his hand to his chest, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his breathing. His pecs were fuller, and his nipples were tender, his own touch making him shiver. He moved his other hand below to caress his big balls, which also felt fuller due to the hormones. Hayden felt incredible, even though he would’ve preferred if James, Marcus, Tyler, or Connor, or Jake touched him like that. However, before he could reach climax, a knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.

Hayden sighed, reluctantly sitting. Standing up, he quickly grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his middle to cover his belly and lower body. Hayden walked to the door, his belly leading the way. He opened the door cautiously, marveling at Connor’s handsome face staring back at him.

The scene was almost surreal. Hayden’s belly was a large, round dome that protruded significantly in front of him. The towel was wrapped tightly around his middle, but it couldn’t hide the full extent of his pregnancy. His pecs were fuller, his arms and legs had thickened, and it was evident his lower body had grown the most. Also, Hayden’s massive dick was clearly pushing against the towel. Connor seemed taken aback at the sight before him.

“Uh, hey, Hayden,” Connor said, his voice soft and hesitant. “I hope I’m not bothering you.”

Hayden managed a smile, his hand instinctively moving to rest on his belly, accidentally dropping the towel to the ground and making Connor’s jaw drop. “Come in, come in, crap!” He said as he pulled Connor inside and struggled to bend forward to pick up the towel, something almost impossible to quickly achieve with his big belly on the way.

Connor froze for a few seconds while Hayden struggled to reach the towel to cover his body again, putting on a show that made Connor’s dick get hard. He approached Hayden and quickly picked up the towel. As they looked into each other’s eyes, Connor slowly moved his hands to caress Hayden’s belly, lovingly rubbing it. Hayden shivered as Connor got closer, pushing his chiseled abdomen against Hayden’s big belly while the babies continued kicking. Connor immediately figured out what was happening, but instead of freaking out, he kissed Hayden’s lips. Hayden embraced the kiss and wrapped his arms around Connor’s strong neck, pulling him to the bed while the big man removed his clothes.

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