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dyaz-stories · 11 months ago

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put your arms around me and i'm home || Cha Hyun-Su x Reader

summary: In the dead of winter, you have to do a run to go get fuel for your generator. Things go wrong, but fortunately, Hyun-Su is here to save you.

word count: 3.7k

warnings & tags: canon-typical violence, gore, monsters, hyun-su and reader get injured, reader briefly thinks hyun-su is dead, monster!hyun-su makes a brief appearance, hyun-su needs a hug and he gets one!, angst, hurt/comfort, season 2 canon compliant.

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A/N: this can be read on its own, but there is another one-shot, if you're interested! for context, this takes place during season 2. reader and hyun-su know each other from high school and reader runs into hyun-su after the events of the first three episodes. reader also doesn't know that he is a monster/neohuman.

You’re not one to get caught off guard, not usually. You’ve always been cautious, measured, far-sighted. It had been an advantage back in high school, and you’re pretty sure it’s what kept you alive thus far.

Yet, in this new world that you never asked to be a part of, unforeseen complications were the norm. You could plan, and plan, and plan ahead, but here you were, freezing in your living room, because the biting cold of the lasting winter meant that you’d run out of fuel for your small generator, and everything else you used to generate electricity wasn’t functioning the way it should.

If you didn’t want to freeze to death, you had to act, and act quick.

You’d already held out a few more days than was reasonable, hoping that the weather would clear and your solar panels would be useful again, or — but you hadn’t dared to voice that thought — that Hyun-Su would come by, and you could ask for his help. He’d offered before, after all, even if he had always kept you at arm’s length whenever you’d returned the favor.

But things were dire now, and you couldn’t wait any longer, so you’re kneeling in your living-room, preparing yourself for a hazardous trip in the outside, shivering as you do. Things are dangerous enough on a good day, but the snow that’s been continuously falling only makes you dread it more. It swallows sounds, means you’ll leave tracks behind you, and you’ll consume twice as much energy just to move around.

The last thing you pack is a map, which you make sure to keep available, though you hope you won’t need it in between breaks.

You’re heading for a four-stories parking lot, where you hope you’ll find fuel in one of the cars, but that’s not the dangerous part. What’s risky is that monsters love these kinds of places, with all their nooks and crannies, all the dark places to hide, and fear already has your heart beating twice as fast as usual before you’ve even opened your door.

Still, you take a steadying breath, haul the backpack over on your shoulders, and exit the house without making a sound.

Everything is quiet outside. Snow is falling gently, and the sight would be heart-warming, if it wasn’t for all the overturned cars, the gaping hole torn into the building opposite from yours by one of those missiles a few months ago, and the worrying fresh footprints going towards the river. The snow also covers the decomposing bodies, and you can only hope that you don’t accidentally step on one as you start walking.

At least it fills your tracks behind you. By the time you’ve reached the other side of the street, which was one once an impossible task due to how bad traffic you used to be, nothing leads back to your door, and you leave with, at least, the reassurance that home will still be here waiting for you when you come back.

If you come back.

There’s comfort in knowing that you’d planned well, this time, to get to the parking lot. You get to your destination with only expected complications. You spot the monsters before they spot you. You have to reroute twice, but that had been accounted for, and you don’t even have to pull out your map. You reach the building right before noon, and after surveying it for a few minutes, you let yourself in before you can chicken out.

In the dark, you make your way to the first floor, where you will be able to have the greyish light of the day, instead of having to use precious batteries for your flashlight.

It’s not long before you’ve picked out the car, a familial minivan with an untouched baby seat in the back. You try not to think about the people it belonged to as you kneel by the side and prepare to siphon the tank. You make quick work of preparing it, with the tanks and hoses you’d brought for that purpose.

Maybe it’s your confidence that’s to blame for what happens next, or maybe it’s another one of these unforeseeable accidents. Either way, you catch movement from the corner of your eye and you jerk your head back as a reflex, but you’re not fast enough and unnaturally long claws dig into your cheek.

You manage not to scream despite the pain, scramble back and away from the van. There, standing on the roof, is a creature. Though it stands on two legs, there is nothing human about it anymore. The side of its face are sagging and drooping like it’s centuries old, covering where you assume its shoulders would be. It brings its claws to its lips, and your realize with horror that your blood is dripping from them.

Bleeding, in this world, might as well be a death sentence. You don’t bother wasting energy in stopping the tears from spilling from your eyes.

“Younnnnng,” the monster screeches. “Give— meeeeee…”

It at least snaps you out of the stupor, and you grab your bat, unwilling to go down without a fight.

But it’s not much of a fight, not when the scent and the noise are waking up all the other creatures hibernating around here.

You swing wildly as the thing, and manage to send it tumbling back. It’s only a short respite though, considering pain is only ever short lived for them, while blood is dripping down your chin and onto the concrete.

You throw your backpack on your shoulders with trembling hands and grab the first cannister that you’ve filled, abandoning the rest behind to start sprinting towards the exit.

You already know you won’t make it. You know you’ll have to run through the pitch dark ground floor, which is no doubt filled with more of those nightmares, and that the chances you’ll make it out on the other side are slim to none.

But you owe it to yourself fight until the very end.

As it stands, you don’t even make it to the downward slope that leads there. There’s the sound of something charging towards you, and then the— the head, it has to be, of a bull-like thing catches you in the ribs, and sends you flying into a car. Your breath is instantly knocked out of you, your vision goes blurry, your head starts reeling. You’re aware of the thing crashing into a concrete pillar. It at least stays there, struggling to pull itself out, but that’s barely any relief, because soon enough the first creature is calling out to you again, stretching out a skeletal arm towards you.

“Younnnnnng… Give meeeee…”

It kicks you in the ribs, and you roll onto your back, only to be met with the horrifying sight of its arm in the air, claws out and ready, preparing to cut your throat open.

You refuse to close your eyes.

And then, just as you think everything lost, someone steps in between you and the monster, blocking its arm with your very own baseball bat. You stare blankly at the large back, the unkept black hair, as the man forces it to step back and kicks it in the chest.

Then Hyun-Su turns around, and holds his hand out towards you.

He looks nothing like what you’re used to. He’s usually so lost, so hesitant, when he comes to you. Now he’s focused, purposeful, and in many ways, he reminds you of the boy you once knew, the captain of the football team who would without fail lead his team to victory.

“Let’s go,” he urges you, and when you weakly take his hand, he pulls you to your feet effortlessly.

You wheeze as the two of you run to hide behind a car. You press your free hand against your ribs, hoping to lessen the pain — it doesn’t work, of course.

“It’s going to find me,” you mumble to Hyun-Su as he keeps an eye on the thing. “It can— It can smell my blood.”

Hyun-Su’s head snaps towards you, and his expression darkens at the sight of the wound on your cheek. He lifts his hand halfway, as if to touch it, then lets it fall down again.

“You should—” Your voice breaks. “You should go. If it can find me… It’s not the only one.”

A strange expression that you can’t quite decipher passes on his face, before he shakes his head firmly.

“I’m not leaving you here.”

The relief you feel when he says those words is immediately overshadowed by embarrassment. You shouldn’t be happy. He needs to go, or he will die here with you, and what would the point be in that?

“What— What are you even doing here? How—”

You don’t know if he doesn’t answer on purpose, or if he hears a sound that takes his attention away from you.

“Can you run?” he asks you, glancing over the car.

Your body’s going to hurt like hell when the adrenaline wears out, but for now you give him a decided nod.

“Do you trust me?”

You should probably take your time to answer him, actually think about the question.

“Yes,” you answer instead, like it’s a reflex.

He exhales quietly, squeezes your hand in his.

“Then run.”

Then he’s pulling with him, running at full speed towards the open wall of the parking lot. Fear spikes through you. Even though you’re only on the first floor, it’s still too high to land comfortably. That fear is completely erased by the sight that greets you, briefly, of monsters stumbling and climbing all over each other to make their way up from the ground floor. There is a whole swarm of them teeming here already, and you can’t think of any other way to make it out alive — frankly, you have a hard time believing that this will work. But you cling to your faith in Hyun-Su like your life depends on it, because it does, and when he yells for you to jump, you do it without question.

While you’re flailing in the air, you feel him pulling you towards him. Strong arms wrap around you, and keep you caged and safe. You hit the ground brutally, rolling on the floor until you land on top of him.

“Fuck,” you mumble, painfully pushing you onto your elbows. “Hyun-Su, are— are you okay?”

The obvious answer to the question is ‘no’, and yet Hyun-Su doesn’t look worse for wear as he sits up, his eyes instead going over your body to make sure you weren’t too badly injured.

If you shiver when his hands run up and down your arms, it isn’t because of the cold.

“Let’s move,” he says, letting go of you all too quickly.

But, by the time you’re both on your feet, monsters attracted by the smell of your blood have started falling from the parking lot. The two of you sprint, but you’re no match for them and you know it. You regain the tiniest hope when you make it past a corner, thinking that maybe, just maybe, the snow will swallow your smell if you hide well enough — and then something wraps around your ankle.

In a second, you’re torn out of Hyun-Su’s grasp, and when you manage to roll onto your back to see who your assailant is, all you can do is let out an inhumane scream.

This particular monster has eight legs, like a spider, and its somewhat human torso and head is completed by two long mandibles instead of a jaw. You manage to grab a knife from your pocket, but by the time you can cut its— web, you suppose, it’s charging towards you at full speed, and it’s close, too close for you to even get on your feet before—

When it attacks you, the first thing you see is what you first identify as a black wing, before you realize that it’s made out of a complex mix of flesh, bone and other materials that you can’t quite recognize, instead of feathers.

The wing pushes the creature back, and then Hyun-Su’s back is in front of you once more.

It’s his, you realize, brain awfully slow all of sudden. The wing. It’s attached to his shoulder, and all you can do is stare in confusion and horror. It flutters as he turns around to look at you.

You’re not fully in control when you scramble back, whole body shaking — because of the second near-death experience in ten minutes or because you’re terrified, you don’t know. What you do know is how hurt he looks, and how he turns his head the other way to face the monsters that are still coming after the two of you.

“You should run,” he says, low enough that you could miss it. He sounds hollow again. “Don’t turn around.”

You shake your head quietly, try to form some words. They all fail you. You don’t— you have no clue what’s happening. All that you know is that Hyun-Su is a monster and that he’s just used that to save your life.

The wave of monsters reach him just a few seconds later, before you’ve managed to decide anything. He pushes them back with practiced ease, one by one. You hate that you’re just sitting here, unable to move, as he fights for your life, yet your body just refuses to answer to you, even if you’re begging it to react.

Soon, the spider is the last one standing — or rather, the last one who hasn’t yet decided that you’d make a fairly meager lunch, considering how hard it is to get to you. It keeps attacking, and Hyun-Su keeps pushing it back, again, and again, until the creature manages to ensnare him in its web. Hyun-Su writhes, manages to pull his wing free, but it’s clear that he’s now at a disadvantage, and the mandibles click threateningly as the monster gets closer and closer to him.

Finally, your body agrees to react.

You run.

You don’t go very far though. You find the cannister you’d dropped and then you’re rushing back to throw the gasoline at the creature, half emptying it. The monster wasn’t paying attention to you, too busy trying to bite Hyun-Su’s head off, but its head snaps towards you when the liquid reaches it. It lets out a threatening hiss, which you ignore.

Instead, you find the lighter in your pocket.

Aim.

And throw.

The screams start right away, but it drops Hyun-Su, at least, as it tries to escape the fire.

For a second, you think you’ve made it — you’ve both made it, that is. Hyun-Su pulls himself to his feet. The wing flutters again, slowly starts to retreat back into his body to go back to a human arm.

He looks at you, expression unreadable.

And then one of the spider’s limb pierces through his chest. It’s not even calculated this time — just a movement it’s making as it tries to free itself from the flames that are consuming it.

You hear yourself scream. You don’t remember asking your body to move, this time, but you know that a second later you’re reaching Hyun-Su as he falls to his knees, and your arms are around him while you cradle him, pulling his head into your lap. Tears fall down your cheeks and onto his, as one of your hands tries, and fails, to apply pressure to the gaping wound, even if you know there is no point.

“No,” you beg. “No, no, no, no… Please, please, someone, please…”

You don’t know how many times you say it, how long you stay there. Snow starts to cover both his body and yours, and you realize you have a decision to make, if you don’t want to freeze to death. You just can’t bring yourself to do it.

Until Hyun-Su’s lifeless body arches in your arms with a gasp.

When his eyes open, they’re a clear, cold, uncanny blue.

You don’t dare to do anything then — not to let go of him, not to move away, not to break eye contact. It makes no sense, but you’re afraid that the slightest movement would have him gone again.

Slowly, his lips curve into a smirk, an expression you’ve never seen on him before. You’ve seen him smile, bright and sincere, and more recently, soft and subdued. But this amused, flirtatious smirk, that is completely new.

“You’re still here,” he comments, casually getting up, like nothing happen, like he can’t feel pain, like there isn’t a hole in his chest.

Even his voice is different. There’s a drawl to it, light and lazy, like he has all the time in the world.

“Hyun-Su?” you say, unsure of what’s happening. He was dead a minute ago. Then again, now that he’s breathing again, your brain is able to form the thought that he is a monster. An abnormal one, sure, and you don’t know enough to draw any conclusion, but it could be an explanation.

The smirk widens.

“Close enough,” he answers. “Are you scared?”

You’re not sure. You think you’re too emotionally exhausted to be scared.

“Should I be?” you ask. Maybe you shouldn’t trust this version of him to tell you the truth, and yet— All your senses are telling you that this is still Hyun-Su. And you don’t think he’d do anything to hurt you. Ever.

“It would break him if you got hurt,” not-Hyun-Su says, tilting his head. He lifts his index finger to tilt your head up. “I don’t want him broken.”

“Is he—” You interrupt yourself, unsure of what even is happening right now. But before you can start asking for answers, there is something you need to know. “Is Hyun-Su okay right now?”

He scoffs.

“He’s taking a break,” he replies. “He’s worked hard.” A beat while he seems to think about it. “Also, he thinks you hate him now.”

“I could never hate him,” you say, too easily, because it’s just the truth.

“Well, he is a monster,” not-Hyun-Su says with a shrug. He doesn’t seem to mean it as an insult, just stating a fact. You suppose he’s not wrong, and yet…

“The people I loved all turned into monsters,” you whisper quietly. Your mother, before you even made it home. Your best friend, who begged for death so she wouldn’t hurt others. Your father, who disappeared to protect you. You miss them all so much it sometimes feel like your heart’s been ripped out of your chest, and you’d give anything to have them back. So, if there is any way that you can still have Hyun-Su… “As long— as long as he’s not trying to kill me, does it really matter?”

The man watches you with interest, tilting his head to the side. It’s interesting. You haven’t been hurt by this world the way others have. Monsters caused death and destruction, but you watched half-monsters doing their very best to avoid hurting others, not unlike what Hyun-Su is doing right now.

The monster in him wonders what it would take, to destroy that ill-placed trust in others around you. The rest of him… is far too intrigued to give in. He grabs your chin between his thumb and his index finger, pulls your face closer to his.

“Doesn’t it?” he echoes your words. “What if I do hurt you?”

You swallow, call back the images of Hyun-Su easily taking out these monsters earlier. But you can’t forget that he’d been doing it to protect you.

“Y–You won’t,” you reply, even if your stutter betrays your lack of confidence.

It’s a leap of faith, but it seems to amuse him.

“For now,” he says, before his eyes roll into his head and Hyun-Su collapses in your arms.

You stumble back, barely manage to keep him up, before he seems to regain some control over his limbs and starts coughing. Even then, you don’t let go of him. You wrap both of your arms around him, head resting against his shoulder, and keep him there, against you.

Hyun-Su remains still for a while, breathing pained and ragged. The snow is still falling, but his body is warm.

“Are you okay?” he whispers with a hoarse voice.

“I am,” you answer. “Thanks to you.”

He lets out a pained sigh.

“Did he— Did he hurt you?”

You shake your head, barely moving away so you can look at him. He doesn’t look at you, keeps his eyes — black again, you note — fixedly in the other direction.

Like he can’t bear to know which emotion is on your face right now.

“I’m so happy you’re alive,” you say quietly. “I thought— I thought I’d lost you forever.”

Silence.

“Don’t leave me,” you beg, voice so low and broken you don’t think he’d hear if he wasn’t inches from you.

Hyun-Su’s body starts shaking against yours. Finally, finally, he wraps an arm around your waist, burying his head in your neck, and wet tears roll down your collarbone. In the freezing cold weather, they feel burning hot.

“Don’t hate me,” he begs in response, crying in your arms, fingers digging to the fabric of your clothes in a desperate attempt to keep you there, against him — even if there is no need for that right now.

You wish you could tell him that he just saved your life, that he’s been a guiding light in your cold, dark life this past few months, that you love him more than words can say. But that would take too long, and the situation calls for something shorter, more direct, and just as meaningful.

“You’re the only good thing about this world,” you say instead, and he sucks in a sharp breath.

Under the snow, for long minutes, Hyun-Su holds you like he never wants to let go.

When the two of you eventually detach from each other, he keeps your hand in his the whole walk home.

i hope you liked this installment! i'm probably going to write something much softer next, still for this couple (but it's hyun-su so it's still going to be angsty). if you're enjoying this, please let me know your thoughts, reblog or send in an ask. hearing from readers is so motivating and makes me want to keep writing!

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#hyunsu x reader #cha hyun su x reader #sweet home #sweet home netflix #cha hyun su #sweet home x reader #sweet home season 2 #hyun su x reader #cha hyunsoo #cha hyunsoo x reader #hyunsoo x reader #my writing

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rip-quizilla · 8 months ago

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You Could Kill Me (and You Should)

Pairing: Vampire!Eddie Munson X Slayer!Reader

Word Count: 16k

Tags: SMUT🔥🔥🔥, dubious consent, memory alteration, reader's pronouns aren't specified, reader has a vagina, oral sex, p in v sex, blood drinking, blood kink, unprotected sex, squirting, dom/sub undertones, vampire sex, references to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (but you don't have to be familiar to understand this story)

A/N: please read the tags! This work contains depictions of blood and VERY adult content. Minors, do not interact!

Bat divider made by @saradika ❤️

Hunting on game nights was never ideal.

There were too many people around… the double-edged sword of vampire hunting. The great throngs of people made it easy for a poor soul to get lost in the fray, so it brought the baddies out into the open. On the flip side of that coin, what made an ideal hunting ground for vamps created a field of landmines for a Slayer. Throngs of people meant infinite chances to get caught in the open with a wooden stake in your hand, and that brought too many questions.

Still, you could deal with humans; you had been your whole life. Hawkins, Indiana was just like any other town- people would believe what they wanted to believe, and you knew exactly how to spin a story into something they’d find acceptable.

However, if you got caught out in the moonlight with the specific vamp you were hunting, you knew you’d attract the wrong kind of attention. You wanted to fly under the radar here; it was the only way you’d be able to live here long enough to stave off the influx of demons that liked to slip in time to time from the Upside Down- the hell that waited on the other side of this reality. Not every town was as connected to it as Hawkins was, but then again, not every town sat on top of a Hellmouth.

A sound from behind you perked up the hairs at the back of your neck. You turned, making sure the brick wall of Hawkins High protected your back as you surveyed the empty courtyard before you. Everyone within a mile radius who still had a beating heart was in the gym, cheering on the Hawkins Tigers in hopes that the subpar basketball team might actually take home a win tonight.

Well… everyone except for you, whose heart was beating alarmingly fast for someone who had slain so many bloodsuckers that you’d lost count. Why were you this nervous? Aw, who were you kidding, you knew why.

You weren’t hunting just any vampire this time. You were hunting Eddie Munson.

You steadied your turncoat heart with a slow, deep breath. “Stop kidding around, Munson,” you said, keeping your voice low and eerily calm. “You know why I’m out here and I know you’ll only hurt me if you have to, so let’s just cut the formalities and have a little chat.”

A rumbling chuckle sounded from above, and when your eyes flicked up to the sky they were met with the sight of the most elusive and cunning vamp you’d ever had the displeasure of hunting.

Eddie Munson. Or, as he was known amongst the town’s community of bloodsuckers, Kas the Bloody Handed.

“Little chat, huh?” Eddie’s smiling voice echoed from where he sat on the edge of the rooftop above you. “Put away the stake and we’ll talk, Slayer.”

You kept your eyes on him, narrowing your gaze but complying nonetheless. You pocketed the stake, shifting your brown leather jacket to the side and sliding the wooden spike into your waistband.

Were you dealing with any other vamp, you would have laughed in their face at the demand that you disarm yourself when vampires had nearly every advantage against you. You had Slayer strength, sure- but that was it. These demons had speed, strength, teeth, claws- the fact that sunlight would incinerate them was really their only weakness besides their need for blood.

Correction- sunlight should incinerate them. Sunlight didn’t affect Eddie Munson. That wasn’t the only thing that didn’t seem to affect him- bloodlust was apparently not an issue either, seeing how he was a student. At a high school. A building just teaming with sweaty, hormonal teens who were just itching to do something stupid- one would assume that a vampire in a place like that would be draining cheerleaders left and right, but not Eddie. In fact, you’d been watching him for months now since you moved to Hawkins, and you’d never even seen him hurt a fly. Hell, you’d seen kids try and beat him up and yet he hadn’t so much as made a fist since the first time you laid eyes on him.

That was why you’d sought him out tonight- this vampire wasn’t killing people, and it was making you suspicious.

Once your weapon had been safely tucked away, Eddie hopped down from his insane height at the top of the school building and landed swiftly and quietly on his feet in front of you. He smiled at you lazily, his eyes twinkling with the curiosity and glee that came with sharing a secret.

“Excuse my forwardness, but I’ve gotta know-” Eddie began, hands in his pockets as he slowly sauntered toward you. “-how long did I have you going before you figured me out?”

You pushed off the wall, casually placing your hands behind your back as you matched his stride in the opposite direction. You were circling each other, two predators locked in a deadly dance.

“You’re a pretty good actor, Munson.” you replied, voice lighter than air but balanced out by the unwavering rock-solid gaze that remained locked on him. “I might not have figured it out at all if your friend at the hospital hadn’t spilled the beans.”

That got his attention. “Annie ratted me out?” His eyebrows were practically synonymous with his hairline. “Impossible.”

You shrugged. “Apparently HIPAA laws don’t apply to secret bloodbag dealers and their demon customers. In her defense, she was pretty tight-lipped until I had convinced her I wasn’t trying to kill you.”

That stopped Eddie in his tracks. He peered at you through his curtain of moonlit curls, his gaze suspicious and unsure. “You’re not?”

You stood squarely before him at ease. “Nope.” you replied brightly. “And I don’t think you’re trying to kill anyone either… are you, Kas?”

His suspicion gave way to a blinding smile. “Well someone’s been doing their research!” You blinked and he was inches away, his enhanced speed catching you off guard; you instinctively took a step back before instantly regretting it. Eddie caught your momentary lapse in stature and his grin crept upwards in one corner. “Tell you what, killer, how ‘bout we put a pin in all your fun little Kas facts and cut to the chase, hm?”

In a flash his hand held your chin firmly. Your grip flew to the back of your waistband, fingertips already caressing the smooth wood of your stake. You mirrored each other, the two of you standing in a twin stance with one foot placed in front of the other a shoulder’s width apart, his hand at your jaw and yours ready to stake the bastard at the first sign of a threat.

“You’re here to protect people,” Eddie continued, “and I don’t plan on hurting anyone. We can coexist here, it isn’t that complicated.”

“I’m here to slay vampires.” You corrected, but Eddie only grinned and shook his head.

“See, that’s not true- you would have killed me already.” He leaned in, a smug smile only taking up more space on his countenance. “Ain’t that right, Slayer?”

You’d expected that the decision to let Eddie live would come back to bite you in the ass, but surprisingly enough, nothing changed.

You went to school. You hunted. You did normal teenager things. Not once did you witness Eddie Munson do a single thing out of the ordinary.

Well…out of his ordinary. For a bloodsucking demon hiding among human teenagers, he liked attention far more than you’d expected. The more you thought about it, however, the more you saw his reputation for being the town freak as a genius cover. He was hiding in plain sight; any weird behavior would simply be written off as a cry for attention from Hawkins’ resident eccentric. If he wanted to, Eddie could be getting away with a lot more than stolen blood bags.

So why wasn’t he?

You wanted answers, and surprisingly enough you had a feeling that it wouldn’t take too much for him to give them to you. You just needed to find a private place to ask him. Word travels like wildfire after a drought in Hawkins, and even if Eddie didn’t mind the attention, you on the other hand did. You couldn’t afford for people to start associating you with him, so you’d passed Eddie a note at lunch to meet you out in the woods at the old picnic table.

“Did you know I used to do drug deals in this exact place?”

His voice sounded wistful as his body weight caused the weakened wooden bench to creak when he sat down with you later that afternoon. “Those were the days, man.”

You snorted. “You mean the days when you were human? Or are you a bloodsucker and a pill pusher? That’s an intersectionality I can’t say I’ve encountered before-”

“Back when I was human, smartass.” He cut you off, rolling his eyes. “Now, why did Hawkins’ shiny new vampire slayer invite me to meet in the middle of the woods? All alone?” he pretended to think it over for a second, feigning epiphany when his eyes widened and his brows shot up his forehead. His voice quivered, apparently auditioning to play the role of the victim in a slasher film. “Are you g-g-gonna k-k-kill me?” He braced his hands against the edge of the picnic table, scrambling to the ground as he amped up the drama while you watched, forcing a smile at bay.

“P-p-please, don’t s-s-slay me, almighty S-Slayer!”

You snorted, shaking your head, unable to completely stop the ghost of a grin from sliding across your lips. “Having fun?” you snarked.

It took only a millisecond- in a blur of supernatural vampire speed, he was back up on his feet and sitting on the surface of the table. “Lots!” His smile was overwhelming- it was easygoing, unguarded, and above all things it was so human. It was disconcerting.

“The reason I asked you out here,” you said, getting down to business. “Is because I have some questions for you.”

The vampire’s eyes narrowed, that smile staying firmly planted on his lips. “I’m sure you do.”

“How can you be out in the sunlight without bursting into flames?” Every vampire you’d ever encountered would be reduced to ashes if they dared to step out the door in broad daylight, yet here was Eddie Munson- 100% bloodsucker, 100% sitting on a picnic bench and soaking up the rays that filtered in through the cover of tree branches.

“I know a witch.” Eddie replied, eyes following you as you paced around the picnic table. “She did a spell. Next question?”

You raised an eyebrow, “Who’s the witch?”

“Not telling.”

“I figured.” you lamented. “Do the blood bags satisfy you as much as fresh blood?”

Eddie was quiet for a moment, then replied with a curt “They’re enough.”

“Enough to stave off the urge to- I don’t know- murder?”

His head whipped sharply in your direction, expression souring. “Have you seen me kill anyone? In all the time you’ve been here, have you ever seen me so much as harm someone?”

You paused. “No.”

Jutting out his chin triumphantly, he straightened his posture a bit. “Then stick to relevant questions, alright killer?”

You narrowed your eyes on him. “Your bloodlust isn’t relevant?”

He scoffed, tightening his grip on the edge of the tabletop he still sat on, and you could have sworn you heard the wood creaking beneath his white knuckles. “You may not be from Hawkins, but with that self-righteous, bigoted attitude you could’ve fooled me.” His head was hanging down, Eddie’s dark eyes trained on his Reebocks which dangled from where he sat.

When he looked up at you through his long, chestnut curls, the gaze he gave you was so disappointed, so intense, that you actually felt a pang of guilt even though you hadn’t done anything wrong. You’d accused a vampire of having bloodlust. What was there to feel guilty for?

“You’re a vampire, Munson. A demon.” you stated, matter of factly. “You need blood to survive, and you’re a killer by nature-”

“You’ve done more killing in this town than I have,” he laughed humorlessly, his voice tinged with exasperation. “-and I’ve lived here my entire life!” Eddie hopped off the tabletop, shaking his head. “I thought you wanted to have an actual conversation with me, but if you’re here to point out splinters and ignore the stakes, then I’m gone. Go interrogate some other vampire.”

You stood your ground, watching Eddie walk back towards Hawkins High as you felt that guilt crawl into your chest and start to burrow there.

You found it ironic that the Hideout was known for both being the bar in town that never carded, and being the bar that vampires frequented the most. It resulted in a clientele that was either immortal or too young to be there.

Your presence in town had slowed down vampire activity quite a bit, but apparently that hadn’t been enough of a deterrent to rid the dive bar of their undead customers for the night. After a few years of slaying, you’d learned how to distinguish between prey and predator- there weren’t too many people in the bar since it was a Tuesday night, but that only made it easier to single them out.

You knew what to look for: eyes that swept the room to sort out the hierarchy of those present. Skin that lacked the plumpness and healthy complexion that came with blood running freely through the veins beneath. Behaviors that reflected an intention to single out the weak and alone before isolating them, going in for the kill.

Unfortunately, they weren’t who you were here for. Tonight, your attendance wasn’t attributed to any run-of-the-mill vampires.

Funny enough, you were here to see the band.

You sipped on your glass of cranberry juice, watching warily as tonight’s headliner situated themselves on the small almost-stage in the corner of the tiny bar. Long dark curls shadowed eyes that followed you with equal wariness, unsure of why you were here but intrigued nonetheless.

Sitting stationary at the bar with your glass sweating in your hand, you took in the spectacle before you- four boys who looked fairly human, setting the crowd ablaze with songs about nonconformity, rebellion, and hellish imagery. Funnily enough, humans and vampires alike were all watching them, heads bobbing to the thrum of the baseline, all of them united in their quest to distract themselves from life- or afterlife- for the night.

You’d always loved how music did that- it brought together folks of all shapes and sizes, political ideals, religions, backgrounds… and it gave them something to agree on. Music made people feel something. Whether you were alive or undead didn’t seem to matter; people loved to feel things.

To your chagrin, you found yourself tapping out the melodies along with the crowd, bouncing your knee in time with Eddie’s band’s music. They were- surprisingly- not bad. The place was small enough that even though you were seated at the bar, you were able to get a good look at each of the band members over the course of their set. You recognized some of them from school- Grant was a nice guy, you had some classes with him. Gareth was… shy? Standoffish? Either way, he kept to himself and away from everyone who wasn’t Eddie- typical behavior for a vampire. Now, seeing the pallor of his skin compared to the lively flush of his bandmates, you were all but sure he was a vampire; one of Eddie’s underlings, no doubt.

You’d figured out as much information about Eddie Munson’s standing in Hawkins’ vampire community as you thought you’d be likely to get, being a vampire slayer in a town fraught with vampires. He was the first to become a vampire the Hawkins way, and that afforded him a certain level of respect among vampires here. Other than that, you were flying blind.

Vampires existed in many forms across the world- name a continent, and you could rattle off some fun facts about that region’s particular breed of bloodsucker. Some born, some made, some immortal, some not- and they all had their own particular set of characteristics that set them apart and made slaying even more complicated. Eddie Munson had been the first of a new breed of vampire, and that’s why your watcher had sent you here; not only to slay, but to collect data.

The audience’s applause for Corroded Coffin’s final song faded into a dull chatter and the clinking of bar glasses, and your attention snagged on Eddie as you watched him amble off the stage in your direction. The other band members stayed where they were, shifting around as they began packing up their instruments. Gareth’s eyes stayed on Eddie, narrowing when they crossed over his shoulder and landed on you.

“Didn’t take you for a metal fan, Slayer.” Eddie murmured just loud enough for you to hear him over the din of noisy patrons.

You shrugged, sipping from your glass. “I listen to a little bit of everything. You guys aren’t bad.” Eddie hopped up onto the stool beside you, nodding to the bartender in a silent exchange. A half second later, Eddie had a freshly opened can of PBR sweating in his hand.

“Thanks.” He was eyeing you warily, sipping slowly from his can. “So what are you doing here?”

He didn’t bullshit around when there was an elephant in the room… you guessed you appreciated that. “I wanted to see you in your element.”

He snorted into his silver can. “In my element, huh? Wouldn’t that be -I don’t know- catching me in the act of ripping someone’s throat out? Draining the blood from a litter of kittens or something?”

A pang of guilt threatened to nudge its way through to your eyes, but you didn’t let it get that far. “No,” You replied, “you said it yourself, I’ve never actually seen you hurt anyone. Or even try, actually.”

His gaze was measured, eyeing you up and down as if scanning you for some indication that you were planning on staking him right here and now. You waited for him to speak but surprisingly he didn’t, so you continued.

“I’d like to propose a truce.”

Eddie smirked slightly, the corner of his mouth tugging upwards enough to call into action the dimple hidden in his cheek. “Didn’t know we were fighting, I sure as hell haven’t been getting in your way, have I?”

You sighed, rolling your eyes. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? Is that what you’re getting at? You want an apology?” As Eddie’s smirk grew wider, your mouth moved in the opposite direction, lips forming a hard, tense line as you glared at the smug bloodsucking bastard before you.

“I’m a Slayer. I’ve traveled all over the world with the sole purpose of killing vampires just like you-”

“There are no vampires like me, sweetheart.”

You snorted. “Yeah yeah, you’re so unique, we’re all aware.” You downed the last swig of your drink. “Can I finish now?”

He nodded, that grin still growing along his lips.

“Every vampire I’ve ever met has wanted to kill people. Forgive me for having my defenses up when I came across one that didn’t.” Eddie’s eyes softened, as did the corners of his mouth. His smug grin now seemed a little more understanding, and maybe a little sympathetic. That last bit made you bristle.

“I’m not saying this for your sympathy, I just want you to know where I was coming from when I made assumptions about your…”

“I believe the term you used was ‘bloodlust’?” Eddie supplied, his tone accusatory but not altogether unfriendly.

You sighed heavily. “I made assumptions. I’m sorry about that.”

Eddie tilted his head to the side, digesting your apology. Finally, “Buy a round for me and my band and I’ll forgive you.”

The stipulations of your truce were laid out the next day at lunch. You were able to convince Eddie to leave his cronies’ lunch table in the cafeteria in favor of a more private place to discuss your terms- the picnic table out in the woods.

As per your side of the deal, Eddie would provide you a list of names of vampires that he knew followed the same lifestyle as him- purchase blood from his supplier at the hospital, go about their normal lives, and never harm a living soul. You would refrain from hunting any of them.

Eddie’s side of the deal: he promised not to interfere with the slaying of any vampires in town who didn’t subscribe to his way of life; in other words, if they tried to hurt a human or drink from any living animals in town, they were fair game for slaying. In addition, Eddie would provide you any information you needed about Hawkins Vampires, and you would relay that data to the Watchers’ Council for them to enter into their database.

Unsurprisingly, Gareth Emerson’s name was at the top of Eddie’s list of vampires under his protection. When you saw it, you chuckled.

Eddie raised an eyebrow. “Surprised?”

“Not in the slightest.” you laughed. “The guy clings to your side like a guard dog and barely talks to anyone else. And he always looks like he’s on the verge of ripping someone’s throat out.”

Eddie couldn’t help but laugh along with you. “Well, in my defense, he was like that back in his human days too, I didn’t do that to him.”

You peered over the list at the leather-clad vamp as he lit a cigarette. “But you did do the ‘vamparism’ thing to him?”

“Trust me, it wasn’t a premeditated decision.” Eddie may have sounded aloof, but you could tell that the words were strained. “I had only been…turned…for a couple of weeks at that point. I thought I could handle more human interaction than I really could.”

Your eyebrows jumped a fraction of an inch, but you tried to appear unphased. You hadn’t known too many vampires who could bite a human and manage to stop themselves before killing their victims at that phase of their afterlife. A vampire’s thirst could be nearly impossible to resist for the first few years after their transition, never mind the first matter of days. The fact that Eddie was able to bite Gareth without killing him was… impressive, to say the least.

Regardless of how impressive it was, however, Eddie’s facial expression spoke volumes to you about how unimpressed he was by his choices at this particular moment in his history. You decided to air on the side of casual empathy. “Could have been a lot worse.” you said, voice soft but matter of fact. “Plus he has you to protect him.”

Eddie looked at you, eyes guarded and yet bursting at the seams with unshed secrets. You could tell there was so much more he wanted to say, but he settled for a simple, solid “Yeah.”

You didn’t pry. If you needed to know more, you’d find it out in due time, but for now you would settle for ‘yeah’.

The two of you fell into a strange dynamic as your truce was put into effect. For one thing, he made an effort to seek you out in the hallways more; it was troubling, to say the least. You didn’t want people in this town paying attention to you. If they started taking notice of your unusual habits- never getting involved at school, lurking in graveyards and dive bars late into the night, keeping to yourself instead of falling into a friend group like normal teenagers were supposed to- they might start keeping a closer eye on you. A closer eye on you meant a closer eye on the vampires in this town, and the Watcher’s Council would have your head if you became the proverbial Pandora to open the vampire box in Hawkins.

The point was, Eddie was an attention magnet, and his incessant need to interact with you in front of an audience made it difficult to fly under the radar in a town where gossip traveled faster than the average speed limit.

“Slayer!”

His calling you that in the middle of the hallway just after the final bell didn’t help things in the slightest. He was half-jogging through the throng of teens, dodging and weaving between bodies as he made his way to where you stood at your locker with wide eyes trained on the most obnoxious vampire you’d ever had the pleasure of knowing.

“Can you not call me that in the middle of a crowded hallway?” you hissed at him once he’d reached your side. In reality, you knew the chances were slim that anyone within earshot knew what a Slayer was, but you weren’t about to test that theory.

“Sorry, killer.” Eddie quipped, shit-eating grin loud and proud on his beaming face. “Just wanted to catch you before you left without me.”

You quirked an eyebrow. “Without you? What, are we carpooling now?”

“Yeah, unless you want to get drenched in the tempest going on out there, sweetheart.”

Your mouth was open, poised to argue before Eddie wordlessly scooped up your backpack with effortless strength, shouldered it, and began marching down the crowded hallway. He didn’t even wait for you to close your locker, so you had to make quick work of grabbing your books and locking it shut before bumbling after him.

“Excuse me,” you huffed, power walking in an effort to keep up with his quick pace. “Is there something about me that screams ‘I need to carpool with Eddie Munson’? Because if there is, I will happily correct the issue.”

Eddie hop-skipped through the front doors of the school, threw a chuckling look over his shoulder at you, then took off running through the pouring rain in a straight shot to where his van was parked.

You had no choice but to run in the same direction; he had your backpack.

In a mad dash through the sky’s heavy onslaught, you shielded your head best you could until you made it to Eddie’s passenger door. The rolling percussion of raindrops on pavement was cut starkly short at the shut of your door, and you breathed a sigh of relief before swinging your head around to look at Eddie Smug-Faced Munson, scowling for all you were worth.

“There are quite a few ways I can answer your question, Slayer, all of which could get me staked…” He twisted slightly to toss your backpack into the backseat, where it landed on a discarded t-shirt and a mess of paper and spiraled wire that must have been a notebook at some point. When Eddie turned back to you, your faces were mere inches from each other, both of you trusting the center console with your weight. Eddie’s movements stilled, his eyes flitting ever so quickly down at your barely-parted lips.

You were close enough to hear his soft intake of breath. “Could be worth it, though.”

Your cheeks heated, and you briefly wondered if vampires felt the stolen blood in their cold bodies rush to places in times of tension. Breaking eye contact, you crossed your arms over your chest, brushing your biceps and shoulders with your hands in an effort to warm your rain-drenched skin.

“Just drive, Munson. I have a stake in my pocket with your name on it if you try anything.”

Eddie shook his head, smirking widely. “And here I thought you were just happy to see me.” Shifting the car into drive, he expertly navigated his way out of the parking lot and onto the main road that would take you to the small apartment you currently lived in, courtesy of the Watchers’ Council.

“You’re hunting tonight, right?” Eddie’s voice cut through the rain-spattered silence in the van, jerking your attention from the hypnotic sight of his struggling windshield wipers.

“Yes?” Unintentionally, the answer sounded like a question.

“Take me with you.”

You snorted. “You, a vampire, want to go vampire hunting?”

Eddie shrugged, keeping his umber eyes on the glassy road ahead. “Now that I know there won’t be any innocents on your hit list- yeah, sounds fun.”

You arched an eyebrow. “If I end up staking anyone tonight, you won’t stop me?”

“Good vampire, remember?” he reminded you, placing a hand over his heart before flashing you a reassuring grin. “If somebody’s out there hurting people, I want them off the streets as much as you do.”

And that was how you wound up with an undead hunting partner for your nightly patrol of Hawkins for malicious undead.

Despite being the unlikely duo that you two were, you actually looked like a pair of vampire slayers on a usual patrol- the two of you both wearing combat boots and leather jackets to match. The only tell that this wasn’t your normal routine was the stark silence occupying the space between you. You ended up being the one to finally break it after the first few minutes of patrolling as the two of you strolled through the Hawkins’ cemetery.

“So if we run into some unsavory vampires tonight… how are you gonna kill them?”

“What do you mean, ‘how’?”

“I’m not letting you use my stakes.”

Eddie angled his head toward you, a grin dancing on his lips. “Aw, scared I’ll stake myself on accident, sweetheart?”

“Oh I would consider that a happy accident.” you matched his grin in stride, teasing the tip of your tongue through your teeth.

“Aw, don’t say that! You know you’d miss me, baby.”

Baby?

You sped up your pace a fraction- just enough for him to leave your periphery. “I am not your baby.” You tried to laugh through your response, but it got caught in your throat, tangling with the words and straining them in a way that sounded less lighthearted than you’d intended.

“Well look at that, I found something that makes you nervous.” You could practically feel his smugness from your two steps ahead.

“Nothing makes me nervous.”

“I do.”

You scoffed, speeding up your pace. “You do not-”

In half a second he was in front of you, vampiric speed landing him directly in your way, forcing you to stop short. He was eyeing you down, arms crossed and lids squinted in concentration. “Why’s your heart rate getting faster, then?”

You huffed a breath into the cold air, sending wisps of heat to curl and dissipate as they hit Eddie’s solid form. “Annoyance. Rage. Could be a number of things along those lines.” You sidestepped him, marching forward purposefully. Eddie followed suit beside you.

“Along those lines, you say.” He mused. “Y’know, those lines in particular can get pretty blurry.”

Eddie paused, waiting for you to take the bait. He waited a long time before giving up on that, because under no circumstances did you plan on doing so.

“The lines,” he continued, “between rage and other feelings of… equal passion.”

“You saying you want me to more passionately say you annoy me, Munson?” You quipped, refusing to meet his eyes that were practically begging you to look his way. “I will, don’t tempt me.”

“I’m quite sure you’ll find I can be very good at tempting you, baby.”

You huffed, chin whipping to the side to give him a full view of your serious face. “Stop calling me baby.” You regretted looking his way immediately, because those dark eyes were staring you down with an intensity that caused the air to leave your lungs and your voice to falter.

“Yeah… y’know-” Eddie’s grin was shining in full force now, watching you like you were a puzzle he’d just made a breakthrough in solving. “I don’t think I’m going to do that. This is the first time I’ve seen you flustered.”

“Shut. Up.” You muttered, eyes focused on a newer-looking grave about ten feet from the two of you.

“Hm, sounds like something a flustered person would say-”

“Eddie,” you hissed, already reaching for the stake in your back pocket. “Shut. Up.”

It took him a second, but he followed your gaze and saw what had you shifting gears- the low, wet sound of something sucking, accompanied by the pat pat of excess blood as it dripped to the cold earth. Slightly obscured by the headstone you’d spotted, a vampire had found some unsuspecting soul to snack on.

You held your wooden stake aloft, ready to strike. “Ready to watch the master at work?” you whispered under your breath.

Eddie matched your volume, whispering back an encouraging “Hell yeah, go get ‘em, baby.”

You rolled your eyes and sighed, carefully advancing “Just shut up and watch my back, Munson.”

“Oh I will gladly do that.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“I’m adorable.”

You arrived home around dawn, just as the sun had begun to peek over the horizon and paint the morning in blushing shades of pinks and purples. Your apartment was a little efficiency located above a pawn shop downtown. The entrance was behind the building, which meant that there weren’t any snooping neighbors to watch you entering your home in the wee hours of the night. In a town like Hawkins, this kind of privacy was a valuable commodity.

Eddie had insisted on walking you home since it was so late- or early- which tickled you to no end since he’d just watched you take down a vampire pretty much single-handedly. He climbed the squeaking fire escape two steps behind you, stopping at the final landing as you began to unlock your door.

“You can go now.” You told him curtly.

“You’re not going to invite me in?” You almost laughed; he actually sounded hurt. He was a good actor.

“You act like I haven’t studied vampires every day since I became the Slayer.” You placed your hands on your hips, “As If I’m about to give you an all-access pass to my apartment.”

Eddie laughed, his chuckle a dark and musical thing. “Baby, if I was going to kill you, don’t you think I would have tried already?” His hand was resting on your doorway, blocking the light from the time-yellowed lamp that lit the left side of your doorway and caging you in with his shadow.

“For all I know, this is you trying.” You stood your ground, arms crossed solidly across your chest, refusing to cower even though he was looking at you like he wanted to wrap his teeth around you.

He leaned forward ever so slightly, eyes heavy and hungry. “Do you think that’s what I’m trying to do?” His gaze flicked to your closed door and back to you in half a second. “You think if you walk through that door and invite me inside, I’m going to try to kill you?”

You studied him for a moment. “No.” You hadn’t meant for the word to come out in a whisper, but that’s what happened anyway.

Eddie’s gaze remained unmoved. “So you’ll invite me in?”

“No.”

A chuckle escaped through the crooked smile that invaded his lips. “So fucking stubborn. You know I can smell you, right?”

You raised an eyebrow, confused. Smell what? Did you work up a sweat fighting that vampire? There’s no way you smelled that bad-

“I can smell you, baby.” His lips were moving against your ear, brushing the little silver rings that decorated your cartilage. “You’re right, you shouldn’t let me inside. But I can smell how curious you are about what might happen if you do.”

You were suddenly very aware of how wet you were- you felt a rush of heat as a fresh wave of slick rushed through you, undoubtedly moistening your panties. He could smell that? You were frozen, at a loss for words that could adequately respond to his insinuation.

Before you could react, Eddie’s hand was on your face, gripping your jaw just tight enough to slightly purse your lips. You felt the cold bite of his silver rings on your skin, sending goosebumps trickling down your spine. He looked you in the eyes, his gaze growing deeper and darker, and you began to relax into his grip as you realized that he truly did not intend to hurt you.

“You should invite me in.”

His eyes were so beautiful… how had you never noticed them before? They practically glowed… no, they actually glowed. They were like a neon fucking sign, bright and crimson and shining such a beautiful rose-hued glow that they looked more like rubies than irises.

Your lips moved to echo him. “I should invite you in.” Of course you should. He wasn’t going to hurt you- with every second you spent with his skin on yours and his eyes boring into your own, you became even more sure of that. He just wanted to make you feel good- so, so good…

“And are you going to?” Eddie’s voice was so beautiful- how had you never realized how gorgeous his voice was?

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s a good Slayer, unlock the door, baby.”

And you did. It was the easiest decision you’d ever made. You stepped inside, immediately shedding your coat and hanging it on the coat rack by the door. “Come inside, Eddie,” You smiled at him, letting down your defenses. You were so tired of putting them up around him. “It’s cold out there.”

He matched your smile, looking at you like you’d hung the moon. “Well aren’t you just the sweetest thing.” He crossed the threshold easily, following your lead and shrugging off his leather jacket and hanging it beside your own. He glanced around the little apartment, an appraising look in his gaze. It was just one room, a small studio with a modest kitchen and living space. Your modest bed frame sat nestled in the corner beneath a skylight, along with a small armchair and a closet with the few belongings you’d taken with you to Hawkins.

“Bed looks cozy.” Eddie mused.

“It is.”

He nodded towards it. “Go sit on the edge.”

And of course you did. You sat up straight, keeping your eyes on him and waiting for that beautiful voice to say something else. You so wanted him to keep talking; each word was like a warm shower after hours in the cold, relaxing you into a happy little puddle. Eddie watched as you perched yourself on the edge of the bed, slowly stalking across the room until your knees were almost touching his.

He stared at you, his gorgeous dark eyes glowing deep red. “Open your legs.” You did. Without breaking eye contact, Eddie commanded you again. “Tell me how wet you are for me.”

You opened your mouth to speak, but he raised a hand gesturing stop. “I’m sorry baby, I misspoke.” Placing both hands on either side of your hips, Eddie leaned forward until he was close enough for you to feel his cold breath on your face. “Stick your hand down your panties and feel how wet you are for me. Then tell me out loud.”

You nodded, happy to comply. Your hands were cold, but you didn’t care. You eagerly snaked your hand under the waistband of your pants, shivering as your icy fingers traced a line down your pelvis until they reached the heat beneath your panties. The moment they dipped over the hood of your clit, you were mildly surprised at just how soaked you were.

“Talk to me, baby,” Eddie’s voice washed over you, and you felt a fresh gush of heat pulse through your core.

“I’m soaked, Eddie.” It was the truth; you couldn’t imagine lying to him when he was so curious. Besides, you wanted him to know that he was reducing you to a deluge in his honor.

Slowly, Eddie sunk down to his knees on your floor. His head was level with your open knees, hands dragging down the skin of your outer thighs as he inhaled the air between your legs.

“Take your fingers out of your pussy, I want to taste them.”

You did as he asked, wide eyes rapt with attention as you watched him grab your wrist and shove your drenched fingers in his waiting mouth. His tongue made you want to melt; it lapped along the skin of your fingers and savored the tart, heady flavor of you. You whined when his lips popped off your hand, but eagerly changed your attitude when his fingers began tracing your waistband.

“Tell me you want me to taste that pretty pussy baby, I can smell how bad you want me already, you smell so fucking good.”

You did. You wanted him to taste your pussy very badly… you wanted it more than you could remember ever wanting anything before now. “I want you, Eddie.” you panted. “I want you to taste me, I’m so wet for you.”

Eddie’s eyes shone up at you, like light through a glass of dark red wine. “I know, baby, I know. Don’t worry, I’ll have my tongue on you again in a second.” He slid his hands into your pockets, gently yanking on the material and jolting your hips forward. “Take these off for me.”

Your hands flew to the button of your pants, making quick work of them as well as your panties while Eddie helped you remove your shirt. You wanted to bare yourself to him completely, let him devour you whole, even. When you looked into those beautiful eyes, letting him have you just made sense.

You now sat completely naked at the edge of your bed, Eddie kneeling before you taking in the sight and smell of you. His gaze was hungry, his hands tracing possessive lines into your outer thighs. “You’re going to lie back for me,” he said, voice low and commanding, “and I’m going to taste this pussy that’s been leaking for me since I first called you baby in the graveyard.” Your eyes were wide, desperate- stuck on his like a moth to a flame. He pressed his hands to your knees, opening you up as wide as you could go, and you felt his breath on your wet lips.

“Go ahead, Slayer.”

You laid back, staring up at the morning’s gradient of cerulean and lavender through your skylight as your heart began to race from the anticipation. When Eddie’s tongue licked a broad, wet stripe from your entrance to your clit, a reedy, wanting moan pulled from your chest, singing into the stillness of your apartment.

“That’s it, give me every noise you have, baby. I’ll know if you’re holding any back, and believe me when I say I’ll make you moan one way or another.”

And make you moan he did. Eddie’s tongue was masterful in its movements, licking and flicking in the perfect places as you listened to the symphony of noises that were coming from between your thighs. Between the sound of his wet tongue squelching in the juices that you eagerly supplied and the humming little moans that Eddie made as he feasted on all you had to give him, it was all you could do not to start sobbing from how badly you wanted to cum for him. You knew he’d get you there, but let’s be honest- you were not a patient person.

“More, Eddie- hngh- please, I need… aah!” Your pleas were cut short as you felt a sharp suck at your swollen clit. You moaned, high and pathetic under the careful ministrations of Eddie Munson. His two middle fingers plunged into you, not bothering to give you time to adjust because he knew you were already wet enough to take him. His fingers curled slightly, sharply jerking his hand up and in, over and over in a way that filled you like a water balloon. You were whining, loudly arching your back into your bed as you squeezed your eyes shut, sensing your climax was fast approaching-

“No,” Eddie lunged forward, his right hand never ceasing its assault as his left grabbed you by the neck, wrenching you forward into a crunch position. “Look me in the eyes while you cum, don’t you fucking close those fucking eyes, baby.”

Your mouth hung open, eyebrows drawn together desperate and needy as you felt yourself getting impossibly wet and impossibly tight. His hand kept going, ruthlessly pounding into you as you screamed his name. Curses tumbled from his lips as he watched you soak his hand, and all the while his other hand stayed curled possessively around your neck. Wetness sprayed from you, and his eyes were downright feral as you squirted all over his face. You watched his smile grow, stretching across his face in triumph and baring his fangs in all their unholy glory before turning his head to the side and opening even wider.

Then he sunk his teeth into your femoral artery, and sucked.

You moaned- loudly- and then you woke up.

Being a vampire slayer who’s had a sex dream about a vampire was pretty embarrassing.

Being a vampire slayer who’s had a sex dream about Eddie Munson was… inconvenient.

When you’d first woken up from… the dream… you’d spent your first waking moments frantically trying to figure out how much- if any- of it had even happened. Had Eddie even walked you to your door, or had you parted ways at the cemetery? Had he actually called you baby? Did he admit he could smell how much it affected you when he’d called you that? Most importantly, had you actually invited him into your apartment?

It took a few minutes, but eventually you sorted out reality from whatever your traitorous brain had concocted. You and Eddie had hunted last night. He did indeed call you baby at one point and teased you about how defensive you got about it. You’d slayed a vampire while Eddie assessed the victim, and afterward the two of you had taken her to Annie at the hospital and updated her on the situation. With Hawkins’ vampire population growing by the day, this wasn’t the first time she’d dealt with a newborn; she knew what to do.

After that, you’d gone your separate ways. As far as you knew, Eddie still didn’t know where you lived- though, you knew if he wanted to find out then it wouldn’t be difficult for him to follow you home undetected. The good news was that he still hadn’t been invited into your home, so you were probably safe as long as you were inside your apartment. Of course, the rules for Hawkins Vamps were still mostly unknown to you, so there was a possibility that he might be immune to the invitations-only rule that bound most types of vampires- but you weren’t about to take him home and test that theory.

Then there was the compulsion- the ability to control the minds of humans and turn them into subservient prey at the mercy of their vampiric predator. You had heard of some vampires having this ability, but had never actually come across it in your time as the Slayer. You hoped that this dream had just been the product of loneliness and sexual frustration taking over a sleep-deprived mind, but how could you be sure? Maybe everything in your dream had actually happened, and Eddie had simply compelled you to think it was all a dream. Maybe he had some sort of psychic powers specific to Hawkins Vampires, and he had planted the dream in your brain just to fuck with you.

You didn’t know what was real. On top of that, Eddie kept trying to get your attention at school the next day and it was getting more and more difficult to ignore him without being obvious about it. You successfully avoided him for the duration of the school day, but he finally caught up to you as you were walking home. Driving his van at a steady crawl, he rolled down his window next to where you walked on the grassy shoulder.

“You wanna tell me why you’ve been avoiding me all day?”

You sighed, too chicken to meet his eyes. “I haven’t been avoiding you.”

“Yes you have.”

You sped up your pace, which was stupid because Eddie was literally driving a motor vehicle.

“No, I haven’t.”

You were still refusing to look at him, but you could hear the eye roll in his sigh. “Quit being difficult, Slayer,” he said, still keeping equal speed with your barely increased pace. “Get in the van.”

“No.”

“Uugghhh.” Eddie groaned. “Please? I don’t know what I did wrong but I’ll make it up to you.”

You shook your head but still faced forward as you trudged along on the side of the road. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” You didn’t think he had, anyway. “I’m just… I’m in a weird funk today, don’t read too much into it.”

Eddie raised an eyebrow. “Okay, then get in the van.”

You felt your cheeks heat at the thought of being so close to him… just the idea was enough to get you wet. You felt the familiar gush of arousal as you walked even faster. “No.”

An echo from last night’s dream reverberated in your skull. So fucking stubborn. You know I can smell you, right?

You picked up your pace.

Eddie sighed, jerking the gear shift into park. In a moment, he was inches in front of you, his hand planted firmly on your shoulder.

“Stop,” he said, his tone much more all-business than before. You did what he said, begrudgingly, but you were glad you didn’t feel any real need to be obedient. No compulsion, then… you thought, at least not right now.

You slowly looked up at him, hoping he couldn’t smell the effect that his sudden touch had on you. “Eddie, it’s fine. Seriously.” you tried to smile at him reassuringly, but you could feel on your face that it came out looking more like a cringe.

Eddie was silent, looking you over with an unreadable expression. Finally, he spoke, “Please get in the van. I’ll take you out for food, whatever you want, my treat. If you aren’t going to tell me what I did to make you so mad at me, at least let me make it up to you somehow.”

You thought it over for a moment, eventually conceding and nodding your head. Eddie exhaled a sigh of relief before turning on his heel to open the door for you. When you were both seated in the car, Eddie looked over to you cautiously, questioningly.

“Milkshakes?”

You nodded, eyes still facing forward. “Milkshakes.”

Benny’s had everything.

They had the best burgers in town. They had the best fries, the best chicken fried steak, the best pancakes in the morning. But the milkshakes? They were the best you’d ever had- which was saying something, since you’d lived in twelve different small towns just like this one since your Slayer powers awakened four years ago.

You sipped your vanilla milkshake through a red-striped straw and let the sweet, dependable flavor ground you. It was like releasing a breath you’d been holding since you’d woken up that morning. Eddie’s powers of observation didn’t need to be above average for him to notice the relief washing over you.

He sipped his chocolate shake, raising an eyebrow as your shoulders relaxed into your first suck of the straw. “You don’t have to talk about it, sweetheart,” he murmured against the plastic held between his lips, “but if there’s something on your mind, you can talk to me.”

Yeah, but you are the thing on my mind, you thought, and therein lies the problem.

“I appreciate the concern, Munson, but I’m fine.” You shrugged. “Like I said, it’s just a weird funk. Normal. It happens.”

Eddie didn’t seem convinced, sipping from his straw as he studied you intently- it was making you uncomfortable.

“Stop staring at me.”

“Stop lying and saying you’re fine, I can tell something’s up.” Eddie reached up with one hand and tapped on one of his dormant fangs with a fingernail. “Vampire senses, remember?”

Your heart rate picked up at the thought of what his vampire senses might be sensing, and you could instantly tell that Eddie had heard it from the subtle tick of his eyebrow.

“Speaking of vampire senses,” you started, eagerly trying to turn the conversation away from your current state, “I have some questions about your, um… powers. Specifically, about Hawkins vamps in general.”

Eddie seemed surprised by the new line of questioning, but nodded cooperatively. Leaning back in his squeaky booth seat, he let go of his glass to stick his hands nonchalantly in his pockets. “What do you want to know, Slayer? I’m an open book.”

Pulling your legs up to rest on the seat of the booth, you made yourself comfortable, leaning against your backpack that sat between you and the wall. “Are you able to enter someone else’s place of residence without an invitation?”

“Yes.”

Your eyebrows jumped. “Really?”

Eddie was already nodding. “I already knew my fair share of vampire lore before my stint in the Upside Down… I tested the more popular vampire theories pretty quick after I figured out what I was.”

You smiled, your curiosity eclipsing the nagging worry in your chest regarding his answer to your first question. “Which theories?”

Eddie chuckled at himself, making a show of counting them out on his fingers. “Well, the first was running really fast- really, really fast, I mean you’ve seen me-” Your scoff and eye roll earned you a cheeky wink from the vampire. “-tested out how good my hunting skills were in the forest by hunting down some squirrels, and let me tell you, super speed and super hearing can only get you so far, because those motherfuckers are always on alert. Learned how quiet I can be now, which is weird because staying still and silent has never been my strong suit.”

“That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.” you snorted. “And you told me the sunlight thing doesn’t bother you because of your witch friend- what was her name, again?”

“Nice try, but I’m still not telling you.”

You smiled, throwing your hands up in mock surrender. “Worth a shot, I’ll find out eventually anyway.” Taking a sip of your milkshake, you kept your voice even as you asked your next question, which was arguably the most important to you at the moment. “So, uh, are there any other powers that you’ve noticed? Powers that don’t fit into the ‘popular vampire theories’ umbrella?”

He raised an eyebrow, “Such as?”

Ugh. “Well,” you began, focusing on a spot on the table where the vinyl coating had begun to peel off and using your fingernail to help it along. “In some regions, there are vampires who can read minds or compel humans to do whatever they say. Some can even bite humans without turning them.”

“Damn,” Eddie whistled, “lucky bastards.”

“So you’re saying you can’t do those things?” you prompted, to which Eddie shook his head and sighed.

“Nope. First and last time I bit someone, I turned my best friend into a monster. Didn’t feel like testing that theory anymore after that. Can’t read or control minds either, but honestly I’m fine with that. That kind of power doesn’t tend to end well for people.”

You nodded, sipping the final bit of milkshake down. “Wise words.”

Eddie did the same, fishing out his wallet and slapping a ten dollar bill on the table before standing. “They’re the words of someone who’s flown close enough to the sun to know himself pretty well by now.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and nodded towards the door. “You ready?”

“Yeah,” you stood and followed him, catching the door as he opened it for you. “Thanks for the milkshake.”

“Don’t worry about it, consider it an apology.”

“I told you, you didn’t do anything! I’m just in a funk-” but if Eddie could hear you, he didn’t show it as he jumped into his van and closed the door.

The drive to your apartment wasn’t long, only about five minutes. Approaching your front door with Eddie in tow gave you the strangest sense of deja vu even though the only time this had happened before was in your dream. You stood with him in the doorway, the warm light of your single-bulb lamp casting harsh shadows across his face as he watched you with eyes tinged with something imperceptible.

“Gonna invite me in?” Eddie asked, his voice husky and eerily quiet in the cold air.

You smirked, feeling slightly apprehensive knowing that he didn’t need an invitation, but was asking for one anyway. “Why, you trying to snoop through my things, Munson?”

Eddie snorted, “We both know that I could if I wanted to, sweetheart, and I wouldn’t need your permission.” He shrugged, leaning a shoulder against the chipping paint on your doorframe. “I’m just trying to be a gentleman.”

“Since when has that been your priority?” you bit back, but there was no venom in it. You were already jiggling your key into the brass lock and turning the knob. You weren’t sure why Eddie wanted to come in, but he was right- if he had malicious intent, he could barge into your home whether you wanted it or not. You made a mental note to request some demon-repellent poultices from a witch friend of yours to remedy that…

The door creaked open, and you tried to shake off that wild feeling of deja vu that kept washing over you with every similarity to your dream that kept occurring. Eddie’s boots thumped against the floorboards, heavy souls claiming the aging wood with every step they took. He surveyed your apartment, assessing what he saw with nods of his head and crossing of arms.

“Well I can tell you don’t plan on staying long.” he mused.

You raised an eyebrow, closing the door and locking it behind you. “What makes you say that?”

“The walls are empty. Nothing in here looks like you picked it out. I didn’t know better, I’d think I was in a hotel room. ”

You raised your eyebrows, nodding. “Perceptive. You’re not wrong, you know. I don’t usually stay in one place very long.”

“What’s the longest your wardens have let you stay in one place?” Eddie had hopped up on your tiny kitchen counter, his arms straining against the fabric of his leather jacket as he braced his hands on the ledge. You hoped he hadn’t noticed the way your eyes lingered on the way your dim lighting glinted off his bicep.

“Watchers. Not wardens.” you corrected, shedding your own leather and dropping the coffee-colored jacket over the edge of your bed. “And it’s never been more than a year. If you want to get technical, I think I was in Las Vegas for around 11 months.”

He quirked a curious smile. “Vegas, huh? Lot of vampires there?”

You shrugged. “Tons of tourists to munch on and nothing but nightlife. Believe me when I say that city is run by vampires.”

Eddie chuckled, “Guess that makes sense.” He looked down, as if he were debating whether or not to say whatever he was thinking at the moment. Then- “Any idea if… well, have they told you if you’ll be here long?”

You smiled; it was a small, tentative thing, but you allowed it to grace your lips. “I’ll probably just stay until the council is happy with the knowledge I’ve accumulated about Hawkins vamps. Once they feel I’m needed more elsewhere, I’ll be packed up and moved within days.” You averted your eyes from his, suddenly finding it difficult to voice the reality that any day, you might have to leave Hawkins. Leave the friendship you’d started to get the slightest bit attached to.

You heard Eddie scoff- it wasn’t bitter or laced with venom, but it was hollow. An empty, breathy laugh that didn’t do much to cover the vulnerability he had shown by simply bringing up the subject of how long you’d be staying. “Well, you know what they say- hate to see you go, love to watch you leave.”

It was an attempt at glossing over the mournful mood that’d begun lingering in the air. You looked up at him, brows pulling together in a hopeful, sweeping arch. “You really hate to see me go?”

The smile he’d plastered on was devious and smart-mouthed, but it softened at your question. “Yeah…” he said, his voice lower and rounded as he stroked his fingers along his jawline. “...I think I hate it.” His head stayed down while his slitted eyes looked up at you beneath bushy brown brows. “I was just getting you to like me.”

Now it was your turn to scoff. “Who said I liked you?”

“Your heart rate.”

Well, if it wasn’t true before, it was now. You felt all the blood in your body suddenly rushing through your veins with purpose. The room was feeling surprisingly hot, and you absently pondered whether you had left the heater on when you had left that morning.

Your voice matched his quiet timbre, “And what’s my heart rate saying?”

He slowly stepped down from his perch on the countertop, stalking toward you with care, as if he were approaching a wild animal.

Ironic.

“Well,” he started, “something in your brain obviously must have told your heart that you might have to run soon, because your blood’s been racing since I walked through that door.” He took a step closer, and now all you had to do was look up and your faces would be parallel, his eyes boring into yours. “Your body still knows I’m a predator, that’s good.”

He was right. Your blood was racing under his gaze, and he could undoubtedly feel the heat that was radiating off of you- but that didn’t mean you were ready to openly let that show. “What about you? Big and scary ‘Kas the Bloody Handed’?” you asked. “How does your body react around a vampire slayer?”

Now you looked up. He was glaring down at you, pensive and predatory as a cheshire grin slowly crept across his features. “That depends on how much blood I’ve got in me, sweetheart.” You were leaning against the edge of your tiny excuse for a kitchen island, but now that his hands were planted on both sides of your torso and braced along the tiled edge of the countertop, you felt caged in with nowhere to go and nothing to look at except his eyes as they glowered down at you. “If it’s been a while since I've fed… well, to be honest I get a little hungry.”

Breathe.

“And if you’ve had your fill?”

He chuckled. “Oh, baby, if a vampire ever tells you they’ve had their fill, they’re lying. There is always room for more.” You felt a chill, and the blood in your veins was screaming at you now to grab a fucking stake!! However, you couldn’t seem to tear yourself from this conversation. The way he made you feel- hot, ironically enough- was gluing you to the spot.

“But if I’ve got some blood in my system,” he continued, “I have to confess, Slayer, just seeing the way you look at me is enough to make all of that blood rush to all sorts of places.”

You were both silent, but the air was pregnant with the question he knew you wanted to ask. A few short breaths were all it took to make you give in. “And… how do I look at you?”

His thumbs ventured to brush over your hips through the material of your jeans, and you jumped at how much the contact affected you. You took in a sharp breath in surprise, and the strained sigh that rumbled through his chest in response nearly made you shudder.

“Like… a fox that knows it’s being hunted. Wants to be hunted…knows it could outsmart the hunter, but wants the chance to run simply for the thrill of it.”

Fucking. Breathe.

“Is this your way of saying you’re hunting me?” Your voice was barely above a whisper, like the tension between the two of you was so fragile that it could be shattered if you spoke loud enough.

Eddie’s lips were inches from yours, and you could feel his cold breath on your cheeks. “This is my way of saying that I don’t need to.” He nodded sharply in your direction, “Fox.” He squeezed your hips, tugging you gently closer to him, “Trap.”

You squirmed under his gaze but refused to look away from his smoldering eyes. “Bold of you to assume I’m the fox in that scenario.”

“Yeah, yeah…” his husky whisper rasped into your ear when the soft brush of his fingers along your hips became a firm grasp as he effortlessly lifted you up to sit on the counter behind you. He did it so swiftly, so easily… it wasn’t hard to forget about his vampire strength when he barely showed it. He gazed into your wide eyes with a grin that was playful but hungry. “Big bad Slayer is a hunter, not hunted. We’re all aware, sweetheart.”

His hands splayed atop your thighs, and you couldn’t remember a time before now that you had felt anything as acutely- or with as much anticipation- as you were feeling every inch of him touching you right now. Your inner calves touching the outer sides of his thighs. The knobby contact of his hip bones where they wedged between your knees. The way his fingertips pressed into the meat of your thighs ever so slightly, like he feared how hard he could squeeze before he hurt you.

You watched his hands, breathless as you studied the light that glinted off his silver rings. There were splotches of faded black shining on a few of his fingernails. It wasn’t nail polish; you’d seen how he colored on his nails with black Sharpie when he got bored in class. Those black nails shone reddish-purple when the light hit them just so, and you shivered as they traveled further up your thighs until he reached the part of your hips that had the most flesh for him to squeeze. A low growl danced in his throat when he heard the noise that escaped you at the sensation his hands were supplying.

He squeezed tighter, tentatively testing how much of his strength you could handle. Luckily for him, slayers are not delicate creatures.

Wordlessly, you lifted your hands to his shoulders, letting your fingers twist into his dark curls. They were beautifully brown, frozen in the perfect shade of chocolate until the end of time. Your nails gently met his scalp, raking through the roots until both of your hands were nested deep in his hair.

You made two fists and pulled.

It wasn’t a sharp tug, wasn’t meant to yank him away from you; it was a slow pull, meant to tease and tell him that you weren’t afraid of a little pain, given or received. He was testing the waters, and you were giving him the all-clear.

His eyes screwed shut when you pulled his hair, and it wasn’t from any sort of pain but simply from the fact that you were doing it in the first place. Eddie took a deep, shuddering breath as he opened his eyes once again to glare up at you with enough impassioned heat to give his bloodless body a temperature. He clenched his jaw until it ticked, then mumbled “alrighty then” so quickly and quietly that you didn’t even know if you were meant to hear it.

And then he was slamming you against the wall.

Your thighs straddled his waist, ass seated in Eddie’s stone-strong hands as you felt your back hit the drywall. His eyes were pitch black, hungry for so many things but settling for your lips as he captured them in his own. You kissed him back fervently, desperate now that you knew his touch and the sensations that came with it.

“God you smell so fucking good,” Eddie growled, pressing into you at the waist and pinning you to the wall where he held you tightly. His lips were insatiable, kissing you like your lips were dipped in sugar and he was a starving man. He panted against your mouth, breathless. “Always smell so fucking good… might be obsessed, I want…want…”

“Want what, Eddie?” you panted with him, eyes fluttering open, wanting to see the way he looked at you when he said things like I might be obsessed as he kissed you… who wouldn’t want to see that? You weren’t disappointed with the sight.

Framed by the backlit baby hairs that formed an evening halo around his head, you might have thought at first glance that Eddie looked angelic. Oh, how wrong that would be. His eyes held far too much gluttony for that.

He leaned in to scent the crook of your neck, causing you to shiver as the tip of his nose traced the base of your skull before whispering into your ear-

“Want to taste you- in every way-” You shivered. “-I want to feel you on my tongue, running down my throat, soaking my hands, falling apart…” Eddie’s lips traveled down your neck, mouthing over the veins that pumped your life force at top speed under sweet, pliant skin. “I want to break you just to know what you look like broken by me.”

The two of you were waltzing on the line of your collective self-control, and you knew all it took would be one little bite- one tiny prick of his fangs- and his venom would pour into your bloodstream. Then it would be goodbye, humanity.

Mustering up the slightest amount of dignity (with surprising difficulty), you took one hand out of his hair and braced it on his shoulder while the other stayed fisted in his curls. With a sharp tug, you used your Slayer strength to remind him he was evenly matched here, yanking him from your neck and bringing his bloodlust-glazed eyes parallel to yours.

“Fucking try it then.” you hissed, “See if you can break me.”

Eddie’s familiar roguish grin triumphantly returned then, and you barely registered his nasal scoff and a rush of wind before you were suddenly being flung onto your bed across the apartment. Eddie climbed on top of you, caging you in with solid arms and a scarlet guitar pick that dangled from his neck to dance on the skin of your collarbone.

He stared down at you expectantly, all-business. “Take your shirt off.”

“You take yours off.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Are you really in a position to be giving the orders, Slayer?”

In a split second, you grabbed his wrists and hooked a leg over his hip, rolling over in the blink of an eye. Now, you were seated firmly on his hips, back arched to splay over his torso and pin his wrists to the mattress. Eddie’s eyes widened, caught off guard by the sudden display of strength and dexterity that he had apparently forgotten you had.

You grinned, cocky. “I am now.”

Eddie glared, thrusting upward in hopes that he might throw you off balance, but to no avail. Rotating his hands in your grip, Eddie dexterously took hold of your wrists and gently pressed his nails into your skin. You winced; his nails were sharper than you’d thought they would be. Almost like…

Claws. Eddie’s nails had grown into catlike points, and now they were applying a little too much pressure. Any more than this and he would surely draw-

“-Blood.”

You whispered to yourself as you watched the bright bead pooling where Eddie’s thumb had pressed hard enough to puncture skin. Before you had time to react, Eddie was pulling your bleeding wrist to his face, inspecting his handiwork up close. He caught a whiff of your scent, inhaling deeply before exhaling so heavily that it rumbled low in his chest. Bringing your wrist to hover above his mouth, you felt your survival instincts kicking in as Eddie’s grip on your arm tightened, squeezing more of your blood to pool into the drop that now hung precariously from the cut in your skin.

Eddie’s finger on the top of your wrist raised, then firmly tapped down hard enough to shake the drop free and send it falling into his waiting mouth below.

You watched, transfixed as Eddie moaned at the taste of you on his tongue. He licked his lips, spreading your blood across them and letting your essence settle into the cracks in his skin. You wondered how long his lips would taste like you after tonight. Would it only take moments for the flavor of you to leave his skin? Or would he still taste you in the morning?

Eddie’s eyes rolled back in his head, his composure slipping under the influence of your blood in his mouth. He pulled your wrist to his mouth and licked greedily at the tiny puncture wound, gently sucking but still staying careful enough to keep his fangs far away from the opening. You were trusting him to be responsible here, as stupid as that was, but so far he seemed to be completely aware of where the line was, and he was careful not to cross it. Test it, maybe… but he wouldn’t cross it. At least you were hoping he wouldn’t.

His gaze settled on yours, and you found yourself at a loss for words. He smiled proudly, slowly sitting up until his face was even with yours. You’d long since let go of your grip on his other hand, and now that your bones were suddenly jelly, it was easy for Eddie to lift both hands to your neck and slot both of them so that his thumbs and pointers rested on either side of your ears. He pulled your lips to his, kissing you passionately and sharing the taste of your own blood from where it still lingered in his mouth.

“Tastes like fuckin’ honey.” He murmured against your lips, tongue snaking out to lick into you, and you couldn’t tell if he was referring to the taste of your lips or the taste of your blood. You recognized it in his kiss- the metallic flavor rolling over your taste buds and awakening something primal in you. Your hips bucked into his, and you felt the solid length that ached for you through his jeans.

Eddie chuckled darkly, rolling his hips into yours in response. “Careful, baby.” You felt his lips lowering, placing gentle wet kisses along your throat. Your heart raced to a bounding pulse as it dawned on you that were he to bite you here, he could kill you quite quickly. “Mmmmmm,” you shivered as his voice reverberated through your neck. “I can feel your blood rushing faster. That just for me?”

You forced yourself to breathe as you confirmed his suspicions with a small nod. Eddie sighed, hot breath pluming from his nostrils and across your skin. “Just for me… all for me…” His tongue emerged once again and licked a fat, wet stripe along the center of your neck, and you couldn’t stop the desperate moan he pulled from you at the sensation. His hand slid down for his thumb to make slippery caresses over the trail of spit he’d left behind.

“I’ve never tasted blood this good, sweetheart. It’s… I don’t know how to describe it, it’s like the way you smell, but better.” His thumb pressed ever so gently into your throat, and you felt the tip of his sharpened nail rake a promise against your skin. Eddie kept it there, pausing for a moment, and you realized with a pang of emotion that he was trying to stop himself from asking for more.

You allowed the slightest bit of tenderness to break through to your exterior, smiling gently at him as you leaned into his touch. “It’s okay,” you whispered, “I can trust you not to take too much, right?”

The lights were dim, but you could see enough of Eddie’s face to make out the glowing smile your trust had elicited. His hands curved gently along the back of your neck, cradling the base of your skull as he pulled your forehead to rest against his own. “You’re incredible, you know that?”

So much warmth flooded your chest at Eddie’s praise that it almost scared you. You knew this wasn’t compulsion- you felt complete control of your body and mind, and felt aware of your ability to tell him no. In fact, you knew in your heart that if you told him that you wanted to stop everything now, he would obey without a second thought, bid you goodnight, and walk right out that door.

But you definitely did not want that to happen.

That much was made clear by the pornographic moan that tumbled from your lips as Eddie’s claw drew a single, shallow gash down the center of your neck. His hand slotted under your jaw, applying enough pressure to hold off the blood flow above your neck for the fewest of seconds. Blood pooled in the cut, and Eddie admired his handiwork with hungry fascination.

“Gorgeous…” he muttered, leaning closer. Your heart was racing, undoubtedly causing the blood to rush even faster to your neck, and when you heard Eddie fucking inhale the scent of your blood like it was a perfectly aged Bordeaux? It started beating out a marathon.

The moment your scent hit his nostrils, you shivered as a guttural, primal rumbling rolled from Eddie’s chest. The growl grew into a moaning sigh as you felt his warmed wet lips envelop the base of the cut on your neck, and lick into the life that pooled there.

He sucked, pulling more into his mouth and you whimpered slightly from the sensation. As if to comfort you, his hands slid a little further down so that they cupped the vertebrae at the back of your neck, and it was strange how you could almost feel his touch getting warmer the more blood he took from you. He pulled your neck closer, hungry for all you had to give him.

For a moment you started to worry, fearing that you may have overestimated Eddie’s control over his bloodlust, but your worries were put to rest when he detached himself from his latch and licked up the minimal mess that he had made.

“Let’s get this off of you, Slayer.”

Eddie’s hands snuck underneath the hem of your shirt, causing you to shiver at the sensation of cold fingers on heated flesh. Before long, You were both stripped down to nothing and panting with need, a tangle of hands and lips and pulses as you melted into each other in the moonlight. He pushed you gently onto your back, climbing over you slowly and with purpose. You felt the hard length of his naked cock bounce against your thigh as he did, and the anticipation you began to feel between your legs was hot and wet, dripping from your lips as if it were salivating for him. You bucked up involuntarily, eliciting an amused chuckle from the vampire on top of you.

“Easy, baby,” Eddie cooed, “starting to think you only invited me in for one thing.”

“Oh blow it out your ass.” you rolled your eyes at him, “Don’t pretend you weren’t hoping for that one thing exactly.”

Eddie smiled, a twinkle in his eye launching your heartbeat into overdrive as he planted a quick peck to the cut on your neck and began to lower himself further south. “I may have had a hunch, yeah.” You watched with rapt attention as his face drew closer and closer to where you wanted him most, the echo of your dream still potent in your memory. What similar talents might the Eddie from your imagination have shared with the Eddie that currently studied your glistening pussy as if it were a delicacy to devour?

In your heart of hearts, you knew that every move you’d made tonight since Eddie walked through that door was absolutely insane. Masochistic, even. But your own idiocy was no match for the ecstasy that hit you when Eddie’s dextrous tongue dove into your folds, twisting and lapping up the essence that he craved in ways that sent waves of pleasure coursing through your arching form.

You moaned, writhing under his touch as his tongue glided over the dripping lips of your core, savoring the flavors of your arousal and the way they paired with the taste of your blood that still lingered in his senses.

“Taste so fucking good, sweetheart, goddamn.” Eddie’s voice was muffled, wet and hot in the way he spoke it into you and moved his lips along your pussy to speak the words. The sensation coupled with the commentary all but broke you, and you mewled a bewildered thank you as he continued his ministrations.

A sharp sting jolted you, ripping your eyelids open- you didn’t even remember closing your eyes- and it took a second to realize that Eddie had used his sharpened nails to create another gash at your inner thigh. It stung, but only slightly, so you assumed the cut must not be too deep.

“Sorry, sweetheart, did that hurt?” Eddie’s voice was soft and sympathetic as his fingers toyed with the small wound, gently pinching and pressing to undoubtedly coax more blood for him to enjoy.

“Little bit,” you whispered, and the voice that came out of your mouth was so high-pitched and airy that you hardly recognized it. “-but it’s not bad. It’s not too deep, right?”

“Nah, barely even a scratch.” Eddie assured you. “Besides, I’ll close it in a second anyway.”

Your head popped off the pillow. “You can do that?”

“Check your neck, sweetheart.”

You brought a hand to the place where Eddie’s cut had been, but were amazed to find that the cut was completely gone. You felt nothing but smooth, unscathed skin in its wake. Bemused, you checked the cut at your wrist and found it had healed as well.

“How did you do that?”

Eddie shrugged, the pads of his fingers beginning to draw idle shapes over your clit, mixing your blood with the wetness of your cunt. “Apparently, all I have to do is lick a scratch and it heals itself within minutes.” You jolted when you felt his lips close around your clit and suck, whining at the suction as he drew the mixture of your flavors into his mouth and hummed in satisfaction.

“Now if you don’t mind,” he murmured, “I was in the middle of something down here.”

You barely had time to nod before he was diving back between your legs, lapping up your essence with an urgency that lay somewhere between passionate purpose and reckless abandon. He alternated, going back and forth between the bloodied gash on your thigh and the shimmering lips of your dripping cunt.

“Oh my god,” you whimpered, arching into the mattress as he moaned into you at the intensity of your taste. “More, please… I need… inside-”

In a blur of movement, Eddie’s face was level with yours, and you were staring directly into his lust-blown eyes as his cock nudged its head between your folds. Eddie shuddered at the feeling, closing his eyes as ecstasy overtook him and he slowly sheathed himself completely into you.

“Hoooooly shit, sweetheart-” Eddie gritted out through clenched teeth. His arm reached behind your shoulders, pulling you flush against him and bringing his mouth to hover mere inches from your ear. “Fucking made for me, so fucking tight.”

When Eddie began to move, your hips bucked to meet him instinctively. In your current position, Eddie had you caged in and wrapped in his arms, held in place as he thrusted into you and grunted sweet, filthy nothings into your ear.

“Feel so good squeezing my cock, baby.”

“Wrap your legs around me, don’t let me leave.”

“God, you smell so fucking good, can still taste you on my lips.”

“Such a good little vampire slayer. Take it all, sweet thing.”

You were getting closer with every word; each whispered praise in your ear made you tighten more and more, but you weren’t quite there yet. As if he could read your mind, Eddie’s hand snaked down between your naked bodies until his middle finger came to rest on your throbbing clit. Careful to keep his claws from scratching the sensitive area, the soft pad of his finger slipped small circles over the wanting bud.

You mewled, eyes rolling back at the combined sensations. The stimulation was overtaking every sense, numbing you to everything but the climb of your orgasm that awaited you on the other side of the peak you were climbing.

“You know what’s crazy, Slayer?”

Eddie’s voice was husky in your ear, and you’d barely registered what he’d said before he continued.

“I didn’t even need the power to control your mind. Didn’t need to make you want me like this, you did that all yourself.”

You struggled to comprehend what he was getting at, but a particularly forceful thrust caused a sharp moan to leap from your lips. Eddie laughed, and it was somehow both musical and malicious all at once.

“Dreams are funny things… I showed up just to see what would happen, thinking ‘hey, there’s no way in hell she’d have me, right? But maybe in my dreams’...” Eddie chuckled ruefully, shifting slightly to angle his cock further into you and moaning at the way you gripped him tighter when your leg was tilted just so.

Your eyebrows knit together, confused. What did he mean he showed up? As in, showed up in your dream? Your mind was reeling, spinning in the midst of the jumbled logic of his words and the mounting pleasure his cock was driving into you.

“But it wasn’t even in my dreams that you wanted me, it was yours… in your dream you gave in to me so easily, practically begged me to tell you what to do…”

What? What was he… was Eddie saying what you thought he was saying? You squirmed, trying to lift him so you could look him in the eyes, but he held you in place- immobile and at his mercy. Your eyes widened as you stared up at the skylight in your ceiling. The moon was full tonight, and it stared down at you unwaveringly as Eddie continued to thrust into you and hit that spongy spot within your cunt over and over and over.

“The compulsion was a great touch, I hadn’t even thought of that until your delicious little brain took a turn for the kinky.” You could hear the smile on his panted words. “One dream told me all I needed to know… you wanted me just as bad, Slayer. Wanted- needed- permission to just let go and admit you wanted the bloodsucker’s cock, didn’t you?”

“Y-you….ah! Oh, fuck!”

You tried to respond, tried to tell him you needed a second to process what he was telling you, but before you could get more than a word out his finger began to work your clit at a pace so rapid, only a demon like him was capable. If you didn’t know better, you would think he’d pulled out a vibrator. That was how fast he was able to rip your orgasm from its precipice and make you spasm out of control around his cock.

“Shit!” You clenched at the sinful sound of Eddie’s voice in your ear as he unraveled inside of you. “Holy- I’m cumming, baby, fuck-” He continued to thrust into you as he rode out his orgasm, murmuring into your neck, “...mine. Fucking mine…”

Your eyes stared unblinking at the moon as you clenched around Eddie’s throbbing dick, mind beginning to flood with post-sex clarity as soon as your orgasm began to calm. Your chest felt like it was clawing at your heart, trying desperately to rip out the offending organ for overtaking the control that your brain was supposed to have had this entire time. Your instincts had tried- god, they’d fucking tried- to tell you not to trust the demon inside you, and yet here you were. Pinned to your own bed with his seed dripping from the most intimate parts of you, and you’d fucking invited him in.

How much of your attraction to him had been you, and how much had been him? You’d asked him so many questions this very night about his powers, what he was capable of- and he’d glossed over a very important piece of information by omitting the fact that he could make appearances in your fucking dreams.

Before you could even voice even one of the questions that swirled around in your head, Eddie’s eyes were hovering over yours, the moonlight dancing in a ghostly halo along his silhouette.

“Listen to me, Slayer.”

His eyes were pitch black, and you found yourself missing the brilliant ruby red they’d shone in your dream. Maybe that’s all tonight was? Just a horrible dream, and the one person you’d considered a friend in this godforsaken town was still someone you could trust.

“I’m going to get you cleaned up, you’re going to get under these covers, and then you’re going to go to sleep.” You heard him take a breath; felt his shaking exhale on your face. “When you wake up in the morning, you’ll forget everything that happened since I walked through that door.”

You blinked, listening intently. Obediently.

“I walked you home, said goodnight at the door, and left. Then you went inside, locked your door, and went to bed. Repeat it back to me.”

“You walked me home, said goodnight at the door, and left.” Your lips moved seamlessly of their own accord, parroting his own story back to him as you stared into those bottomless black eyes. “Then I went inside, locked the door, and went to bed.”

Eddie stared at you a moment, and there was something in his eyes that you couldn’t quite read. It suddenly dawned on you that his eyes weren’t normally black or red. They were brown. You missed how pretty those brown eyes were. They were sweet; honest. Trustworthy eyes.

Finally moving after a few seconds of watching you intently, searching your face for something he evidently couldn’t find, he leaned forward and tenderly kissed your forehead.

“Good.” he whispered, low and tired. “That’s good, sweetheart.”

The night played out exactly as Eddie said it would. He cleaned you up, taking the time to make sure he’d kissed every nick he’d made in your skin until there wasn’t a wound in sight. He watched silently as you cleaned your face, donned a soft shirt so large it reached mid-thigh, and slid under your covers. Eddie kissed you softly before wordlessly locking your doorknob from the inside and exited your apartment. You heard him double check the lock and leave once he was satisfied with your safety.

Then you fell asleep.

Eddie had only dreamwalked a few times before he’d realized that his newfound vampirism gave him the power to manipulate the dreams that he’d recently gained the ability to stumble into.

It had started when he’d heard Wayne sleeping restlessly in the living room of their trailer, tossing and turning on the couch with his forehead pinched with worry. Eddie had wanted so badly to ease his pain, and before he knew it he was watching his uncle’s nightmare playing out around him like he’d stepped onto the set of a film. He’d seen his own gravestone, seen Wayne tearing at the dirt until his fingers bled, and wanted nothing more than to alleviate his uncle’s pain- that yearning on his part had evidently been enough to cause the scene to shift in his favor. The grave had sunken into the ground, the sky changed from stormy gray to sunny blue, and the bed of dirt had become a gingham blanket, upon which sat a significantly happier Wayne and a sticky-fingered Eddie at age four holding a PB&J that was oozing out the sides.

It was at this moment that Eddie had started thinking that maybe these powers he’d gained might not be all bad.

He hadn’t realized he had the ability to manipulate memories until the first time Gareth had lost control and killed that girl from U.S. History.

She’d asked Gareth to meet her behind the bleachers after school, and Eddie had told him not to go, told him not to risk it, but Gareth was so fucking stubborn. The girl was cute, and the idiot had thought he could handle it. By the time Eddie had realized Gareth had ignored his warnings, it was too late.

Eddie had been so close to cleaning everything up seamlessly, and then some cheerleader had to go and stumble upon Gareth, Eddie, and the bloodless corpse of that poor girl. Eddie’s instincts had taken over, and before he knew it he’d grabbed the cheerleader by the shoulders and used every ounce of willpower he could muster to convince her that she hadn’t seen them at all, and in fact what she had actually seen was U.S. History girl walking into the woods behind the school.

It had been a desperate, kneejerk reaction, and Eddie had had next to no confidence it would work, but the next day he’d been amazed to hear that exact story being repeated through the rumor mill word for word. It gave Eddie and Gareth the cover they’d needed to take the girl’s body to the Upside Down and hide it where no one would think to look.

His abilities were handy tricks to have, sure… but it scared him. Eddie didn’t like that every new power he discovered within himself gave him a new way to get away with something awful. Eddie didn’t trust himself enough for that knowledge to sit well with him.

Now, he sat in the cafeteria at his usual table with Gareth, eyes sweeping the room for your face. He hadn’t seen you in the halls yet today, and even though he had every reason to be confident that you wouldn’t remember last night, he’d never tried to erase memories from a Slayer before. Maybe you had some sort of mental defenses against him? Maybe you were already waiting at his trailer, stake in hand? The unknown of it all was stressing Eddie out.

That’s what he was feeling- stress. Not guilt. Eddie had hardened his undead heart enough that he didn’t feel guilty for things like this anymore. If he had been completely honest about his powers at Benny’s, there’s no way you would have trusted him after that. After being an active player in your wet dream without your consent? He didn't know many people who wouldn’t hate his guts after that- hell, he hated his own guts after that. He was a horny creep who’d violated you in more ways than one, and there was no way anyone could forgive him for that. Why should you?

He could have been honest about his memory manipulating abilities, but the idea of giving that secret away had simply scared him too much. It was easier to keep that in his back pocket, and wasn’t that what you always had against him, after all? A wooden stake, always ready and waiting as a last resort. A failsafe.

No. Eddie didn’t feel guilty. For the sake of his own self-preservation, he couldn’t.

As if on cue, Eddie perked up when he saw you enter the cafeteria. Act casual, he reminded himself. He couldn’t act like anything was out of the ordinary, but at the same time he needed to be sure you remembered nothing. Then he could move on, not feel as… stressed.

He watched you discreetly, looking up from his crumpled bag of pretzels every twenty seconds or so to check if you were looking at him. You sat at your normal table on the opposite side of the room, pulling a sandwich from your bag and quietly began to eat your lunch. You didn’t seem to be the least bit concerned with where Eddie was, much less whether or not he was looking at you.

Suddenly, as if you could feel his gaze on you, your eyes flicked up and locked with his. For a split second, Eddie’s confidence in his powers faltered- maybe his powers were useless against you; maybe you remembered last night in all its shameful glory. The jig is up, he thought, I’m caught. Let justice be served.

But all you did was smile at him and give a little wave before turning back to your sandwich.

Eddie felt a nudge at his elbow from Gareth. “You good, man?” the floppy haired boy glanced in your direction, raising an eyebrow in question.

You didn’t remember. Eddie should be relieved… he’d successfully befriended, seduced, and fooled The Slayer. This was a good thing.

“Yeah,” he huffed, reassuring Gareth with a curt nod. “I’m good.”

Good. Such a relative term. So many definitions for the word good, and yet not a single one would make ‘I’m good’ anything but a lie when it came from Eddie’s mouth.

He ran his tongue over one of his sharpened canines, pressing it into the tip hard enough to break skin. The taste of your blood that still lingered in his veins flooded his mouth for a split second before the puncture healed itself, and he closed his eyes to savor you for a moment.

No; Eddie Munson wasn’t good. He hadn’t been good for a very long time.

Taglist (just some people I think will be interested, as well as those who I've spoken to about this story during the MONTHS it took to finally finish): @the-unforgivenn, @vintagehellfire, @munson-blurbs, @littlesubbyflower, @msgexymunson, @hellfire--cult, @word-wytch, @carolmunson, @bettyfrommars

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x you #eddie stranger things #eddie x reader #vampire eddie munson #vampire!eddie munson #slayer!reader #vampire slayer reader #buffy the vampire slayer #Spotify

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foone · 4 months ago

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The way it works is it's a surgery to make you immune to a bullet.

Note, that's not the same as being immune to bullets. You're only immune to a single shot: if someone shoots you twice, you're dead.

You can take the surgery again, though. The only real limitation is that you gotta wait 2-3 weeks between each time. But if you've got the money and the time, you can be as bulletproof as you want.

It doesn't "refill", by the way. Often when the surgery is explained people think it's like "a bullet a day" or "you can get shot once a year" or whatever. Nope! Once you've been shot it's just like you never had that surgery to begin with. If you want to "refill" that immunity? You have the surgery again.

No, there's no upper limit to how many times you can go, that we know of at least. There's one guy in Florida who has made it "his thing" to get the surgery as often as he can. He's currently up to about 50. Obviously there's some people online who've said they're gonna shoot this guy and lower his "record", just to be countrary.

Anyway I'm sure there'd be people who have even higher numbers (anyone who has "getting shot" as a major occupational risk, ie, politicians, soldiers, cops, and anyone doing any kind of residental survey in rural areas), but they only invented the surgery like three years ago, it's just simple math: you can't do much better than that guy.

The invention of the surgery hasn't done much to decrease gun sales, though. I mean, there's been a slight increase in people buying guns with larger capacity, for what I'd consider obvious reasons.

I did see an article suggesting that in the long run it might end up increasing the sale of guns. See their analysis is that two factors are going to drive up gun ownership:

1. People will be more willing to shoot at trespassers and thieves and such, because it'll be more like a warning shot: if they have some immunity, it won't be murder. So far that hasn't really happened as not that many people have the surgery yet. Although it's spreading fast, only major cities have surgeons trained in it, and often waits for surgery can be months long.

2. Conversely, people are going to be more likely to break in and rob and trespass if they know they can't be shot dead for it, because they got the surgery. There'll be a minor uptick in home invasions and such and this'll cause a big predictable panic among middle class homeowners who are now terrified some hooligan is gonna break into their house to steal their iPads. Thus they go throw money at security systems and cameras and guns.

So who knows at this point. If the cost (in both time and money) comes down, maybe it becomes super common for people to be so effectively invulnerable to guns that there's really no point in owning one?

I do agree with the common consensus that this is going to drive a big increase in crimes committed with knives and such. Why take a risk that your target might be immune?

Which reminds me of another thing to clarify because sometimes people online get this very wrong: it's only for bullets! You are not immune to getting hit by a car or poisoned or set on fire. Don't walk into traffic or anything, jesus.

Oh one last thing: there is a blood test that can tell if you have immunity, but it can't tell how many times you've had the surgery. You gotta figure that out yourself: so ask your doctor, search your emails, something. Every day I'm hearing from healthcare workers saying someone came in to get the blood test and it had to be explained to them that we can't tell how much protection you have: only if it's there or not. And I feel like a fool for having to say this, but REMEMBER to subtract any times you've got shot! (if you have been) Obviously!

EDIT: In light of recent events, people are sharing this post and arguing about it a lot, but let me be clear: grazes and small cuts do not count! The exact dividing line is too complicated to explain here (look up "circulatory shock" on Wikipedia), but basically if you don't end up with a big hole in you, the shot doesn't trigger the immunity.

That's how it works: you could have an ear blown clean off, and you'd still not trigger an immunity. So please stop spreading that idiotic conspiracy theory that a former president didn't have any immunity. You can barely run a high-school without being required to have immunity to hold the position, because what if someone shoots you? Come on! Of course he has immunity.

For all we know he's got some prototype experimental shit they use on president's that got him up to 200 in a couple days. There's endless rumors of the DoD funding billions in black budget items to that sort of thing, because of course. Who wouldn't want a way to make bulletproof soldiers? You don't think the soviets are pouring even more into it?

#cw firearms #cw guns #My writing #Counterfactual shitposting

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wndaswife · 2 years ago

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two slow dancers

wanda maximoff x fem!reader

tags: smut, fluff, angst, unspecified age gap, jealousy, strap-ons, cnc, manipulation, breast slapping, cunnilingus, hair pulling, slight spanking, belly bulges, degradation, praise, dumbification, mommy kink, breeding kink, piss kink, impact play, breast play, mentions of somnophilia, dom!wanda maximoff, sub!reader. MINORS DNI.

word count: 6996

summary: Your coworker invites you and a few others to celebrate New Year's Eve at her place, but all she wants to do is get you alone.

gif credit to creator.

Through your window, stray fireworks shoot up in the dusked horizon.

A week ago, your coworker, Wanda, invited you over for a New Year’s Eve gathering at her house. She started at the job no longer than a month ago, and you believe you’ve gotten relatively close with her since then.

Wanda Maximoff is thirty-four with an ex-husband and two twin boys you’ve never met. You’ve seen her ex once when he was dropping some things off for her at work. The exchange you observed could only be described as one between two vaguely similar creatures at best, interacting only out of necessity. They shared children and nothing more.

She took a liking to you in particular, and you were grateful for having her company for the last month.

She had a knack for offering comfort, and you often found yourself revealing to her some of your most intimate feelings and worries when you hadn’t even intended to. Wanda would always be so kindhearted, running a hand down your arm or squeezing your thigh gently while responding to you with supportive coos.

Now that the day of the party has come around, you’re standing in front of a mirror, holding up a pair of earrings to each side of your face. You survey the glistening faux emeralds, turning them around and observing them with great focus in the mirror before opting for a different pair.

“Are you ready?” a voice chimes from the hallway.

Looking into the mirror, you see Monica step into your bedroom in a pair of black jeans and a warm blue-green long sleeve.

“Just about…” you mutter, putting on a pair of pearl earrings. Turning around to face your friend, you ask, “Does it match?”

After a moment of deliberation, Monica nods. “Yeah, it matches,” she confirms and heads over to your bed to get your purse. “Who are you dressing up for, huh?” she inquires, a grin forming on her face as she looks over at you getting your jacket on. “Wanda?”

Your eyes snap over to her too quickly to hide your peaked interest at your coworker’s name. “What?” you chuckle out nervously. You lean down to pick up a pair of flats from your closet, thankful for the way your hair shrouded your suddenly-flushed face.

With crossed arms, Monica approaches your bedroom door as she looks down at you, amused.

“N-No,” you finally answer. “I just want to look good. It’s New Year’s Eve.”

“Sure,” Monica says simply, nodding. She hooks her arm around yours and leaves the bedroom with you.

You carpool to Wanda’s house together, as plans were to meet everyone there at a certain time. Despite having left early, Monica takes a wrong turn and you end up getting caught in traffic as the car takes the main roads to Wanda’s place.

Finally, you arrive at your destination about half an hour late.

With her homemade mango float and your bottle of champagne, Monica hopes the both of you can apologise to Wanda for the late arrival. She makes a joke that Wanda wouldn’t mind in the slightest if the two of you came even two hours late so long as you were arriving with her.

The front door to Wanda’s house opens, revealing your coworker with her brown hair let down, and you notice for the first time how long it is. Today, she is wearing a bit of blush and a darker red lip than she normally wears for work.

Her eyes flicker between you and Monica before Monica lifts up a covered dish of mango float, breaking the brief silence.

“We’re sorry for how late we are. Traffic,” she says, a sheepish smile forming on her face.

As if returning to the present, Wanda blinks and smiles. “It's quite alright,” she reassures.

Just then, Darcy pops up behind Wanda and reaches her arms out to take the mango float from Monica’s hands. “Thank you,” she says graciously, eyeing the tinfoiled dish as if she would take a whole bite out of it then and there, tinfoil and ceramic material included.

“Hey, Y/N. Happy New Year’s Eve,” she greets with a grin.

“Hi, Darcy,” you reply with a smile and a little wave.

Monica steps into the house and takes her boots and jacket off. Darcy leads her into the house.

Then, it’s only you and Wanda standing at the front door.

“Oh dear, how rude of me,” your coworker says. “Please, sweetheart, come in.” She ushers you into her house and tucks a hand under your jacket, making your back straighten. If she notices your sudden jerk of tension, she says nothing of it. Her hand loops around your waist to your furthest hip so her arm embraces you under your jacket.

Her hand reaches down below your eyeline while you’re looking up at her. You’re hugged against her side, swallowing your nerves but trembling all the same.

“Is this for me?” she whispers, grinning as if amused.

All you can manage in response is an idiotic, “Wh-What?”

A bottle of champagne is lifted up so you can see it and, with her eyes, Wanda gestures to it.

“Oh,” you say, then clear your throat. “Yeah, that’s for you. For everyone, kind of.”

Wanda hums and examines the bottle. Her eyes return to you and she smiles again. “We can say it’s for everyone to appease the guests,” she suggests and removes her arm from around your body. She begins to take off your jacket with her free hand and you slip your other arm out of the sleeve. She hangs your jacket up for you, and with her hand against your lower back, leads you out of the front foyer and into the living room.

Familiar happy faces greet you once you enter the living room with some women lounging on the couches and some standing around.

Jen, Darcy, Natasha and her younger sister Yelena, an unfamiliar girl who you would later find is named Kate, and Carol all exchange greetings with you.

Wanda’s hand leaves your lower back and you turn to watch her place your champagne on the kitchen counter with a few other bottles of wine and a cooler of what you suppose is filled with sparklers and beer.

Monica pulls you down onto the couch and you take a seat between her and Darcy.

You think you see a flash of Wanda eyeing you from across the living room from beyond the passthrough window that connects the living room and the kitchen, but when you look over to her, she’s already starting a conversation with Jennifer.

You tell yourself that you’ll talk with Wanda later.

A body suddenly sprawls itself out across the laps of you and the two other women on either side of you, thus taking your attention away from Wanda.

Carol stretches herself out in front of the three of you.

“Happy New Year’s Eve, Y/N,” she says with a grin that reminds you all too well of a golden retriever.

You respond with an equally large smile, “Happy New Year’s Eve, Carol.”

The afternoon passes swiftly, especially with Wanda hosting. Not a moment passes when there aren’t drinks nor fresh snacks and food available along the kitchen counter. She’s an extremely attentive host, engaging herself in conversation and ensuring everyone is well taken care of.

Wanda also gave everyone a tour of her house during which she got endless compliments on nearly every room she introduced.

Eventually, all of you gather around the dining room table playing a board game Kate brought and are divided into two teams. You have no idea how to play.

At the sight of your confused expression, Wanda places a hand dangerously close to your ass and pulls you close to her under the table.

“Do you know how to play, darling?” she inquires with a curious tip of her head.

When you tell her you don’t, she invites you to sit beside her and stay on her team. She tells you she’s played it with her twins and ex-husband a handful of times and that she’ll help you through it.

You settle in the chair beside Wanda and move yourself closer to the table.

“I’m here, I’m here, I’m here!” Monica announces and rushes over from the washroom. “What team should I join?”

“Join Y/N’s,” Wanda suggests. “I do believe couples should avoid all competition if possible.”

A few laughs and confused expressions are exchanged around the table.

“Cou…” you trail off and look up at Monica, who looks equally as confused as you. “What?”

“We’re not together,” Monica corrects with an awkward smile and a chuckle.

“Oh, you aren’t?” she repeats, looking between the two of you. You recall the way she looked at the two of you when you arrived together and when you took a seat beside Monica on the couch before. Though it was true that you and Monica were close, one would truly have to reach to come to the conclusion that you were dating each other.

Then, Wanda laughs. “I was under the impression that you were. My apologies,” she says.

The misunderstanding is easily forgotten because Wanda only started working with all of you about a month ago. Anyone could understand the mistake. But even so, your face remains flushed as you think back to the curious stares you got from her, and you were caught up in the momentary glint of envy behind each one.

Monica takes a seat beside Darcy, on the other team across the table.

Kate sets up the game and Wanda pours everyone a glass of the champagne you brought and leaves the bottle in the middle of the table for anyone to refill their glasses.

“Come closer, Y/N,” Wanda whispers once Yelena and Kate begin explaining the rules of the game. She wraps her fingers under your chair and moves your chair closer to her.

Wanda’s arm remains comfortably wrapped around your waist despite your occasional movements. You watch her concentrated face, her eyebrows slightly furrowed as she listens to the rest of the game instructions all while her hand is running up and down your side as if you were an idle pet.

A pressure forms between your thighs and you adjust your position on your chair.

The game becomes increasingly amusing the more all of you sip at glasses of champagne and some on their bottles of beer, steadily growing more tipsy.

At some point during the game, Wanda’s arm leaves from around your waist, after which her hand ends up finding your thigh instead. Absentmindedly, her hand moves up and down your thigh, her fingers sometimes rounding your leg and squeezing.

Now that you were tipsy, you’d become significantly sensitive, shuddering under her touch and having difficulty playing your part of the game. Your face feels warm, which doesn’t help the blush that you know is there.

After the other team gains an advantage of six points against yours, they’re deemed the winners and everyone helps clean up. They decide to watch a movie and Wanda leaves the dining room momentarily to show them how to work the remote and the television.

There are plans to play a different game afterwards and you hear Wanda say she has it upstairs and will fetch it so it’s ready once the movie starts.

“Come help me, Y/N,” she says as she passes through the dining room to the staircase. Wanda stops at the base of the stairs and lets you catch up with her before you ascend together.

You follow beside her quietly, looking around curiously at the second floor. You’d seen it before when Wanda gave the tour of the house, but it was different now that it was empty other than for you and her.

With the silence, you could envision Wanda living here on her own, heading upstairs in the evening and descending in the mornings. For the first time, you feel a sort of pity for Wanda’s living circumstances. It’s a quiet house, and rather large. It’s New Year’s Eve and you haven't seen Tommy, Billy, or even her ex-husband.

You follow behind Wanda when she unlocks her bedroom door and steps in.

“How are you enjoying the evening so far, sweet girl?” she asks. It’s only when Wanda looks over her shoulder at you that you redirect your attention from her bedroom.

“Oh,” you answer idly then clear your throat. “I’m enjoying myself. It’s been really fun.”

When Wanda reaches her closet, she opens it and leans down to dig through a pile of boxes. Your eyes instinctively move to the curve of her ass, but you force yourself to look away and at the dresses and coats hanging in the closet.

“What are you enjoying about it, sweetheart?” Wanda asks once she straightens and closes the closet with her free hand. In her other hand, a few stacked boxes of board games. She approaches you and you struggle to answer her.

It’s incredible what a fool you become around her.

Wanda smiles and sets the board games atop the corner of her bed. She raises her hand to your face and strokes your cheek with her knuckles. “You’re so young,” she whispers. The words themselves didn’t sound entirely like a compliment nor insult, but her eyes that are softened in gentle admiration tells you otherwise.

You swallow and make a noise that was supposed to sound like a ‘thank you,’ or at least an acknowledgement of her commendation.

“Come here,” Wanda says, her hand dropping to your own. She takes it and leads you towards her vanity. She lifts your arm and with her other hand on your hip, moves you forward to round the seat that’s in front of vanity. Then, two hands are placed on your hips from behind and Wanda guides you into sitting down.

In the mirror, you can see her looming above you from behind. But Wanda isn’t looking in the mirror. She’s looking down at you from above. Her hands move upwards, up your sides and up the sides of your breasts, then to your shoulders. Finally, her hands find each side of your head where Wanda finally does look up at the mirror.

Careful fingers brush your hair back behind your ears.

“These are pretty, Y/N,” she tells you. Her thumbs flick at your pearl earrings.

You blush and utter a quiet, “Thank you.”

Wanda smiles at your graciousness and runs the backs of her fingers down the sides of your face. She continues to do this for the next few moments, alternating between the tips of her fingers to her thumbs to the backs of her fingers, exploring your face gently. With a featherweight pressure, she runs her fingers across your bottom lip, your brow bone, your forehead and your temples.

You watch in silence as she does so.

Green eyes flicker up from your face and into your eyes through the mirror. They wrinkle at the edges when she smiles slightly.

“Turn to me,” she instructs and you do while she leans forward and digs through a box on top of her vanity.

When Wanda straightens, you’re looking right up at her. Your legs are dangling off the other side of the chair and your face is in front of her stomach. Her hand cups your cheek and she positions a mascara wand in front of your face.

“Look up,” she says. When you look up at the bedroom ceiling, Wanda moves the wand forward. She brushes your eyelashes gently, retouching your makeup, and you’re tempted to look down at her but do not lest you get mascara on your eyebrow.

Her thumb strokes at the corner of your mouth.

Then, suddenly, Wanda whispers, “My boys didn’t want to spend New Year’s with me.”

At her words, you look down at her immediately. She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth in forewarning and you look back up to the ceiling,

You question, “Why?”

“Perhaps… their father is more attuned to celebration and I am not,” she supposes.

“Why didn’t you celebrate together?” you ask and instantly bite your tongue for asking too much. But Wanda’s thumb continues to stroke the corner of your mouth and she shows no sign of irritation.

“They didn’t want to,” she answers. Wanda moves to your other eye. “Almost done.”

There’s a momentary silence between the two of you until you ask, “When will you see them next?”

“I presume the first week of January,” she thinks aloud. “Some time then.”

Wanda inhales softly but you hear the long drag of her breath.

“Are your parents together, Y/N?” she asks.

“No, they divorced when I was younger.”

With a nod, Wanda says, “I see.”

Then after a moment, she speaks again, “Was there ever any partiality?”

“It was hard sometimes, from what I remember,” you answer. Wanda nods. “But I really loved both of them the same. They were my parents. They did love me, I always knew that.”

Wanda’s hand leaves your cheek and she reaches back to twist it back into its bottle. “Finished,” she states and lifts a handheld mirror to your face. She tucks your hair back behind your ears. “Look how pretty you are.”

“Wanda,” you whisper.

She looks from the mirror and over to you, lips parted. “What is it?”

“There isn’t a moment your boys don’t know how much you love them. How could they?” you uttered quietly. “And they love you because of it. Loving them is, essentially, one of the greatest things you can do for a kid. Any child would be extremely lucky to have you as their mother. You mustn't think they don’t know that. They’ll come back to you. I promise you they will.”

Wanda only stares down at you, her eyebrows still slightly pushed together. Her lips twitch in a miniscule, hardly noticeable way, and you wouldn’t have noticed it had you not been staring at them- the soft curves and the full faded-red shade of them.

Her finger hooks under your chin and she sets the mirror down on the edge of the vanity seat. She tugs her finger up carefully and you stand from your seat, but Wanda leans down quick enough to kiss your lips and you stumble back down onto it. Her hands find your hips then round them to your ass, squeezing harshly and pulling you up.

Clumsily, you trip forward against her, but Wanda steadies you. She turns you and makes you walk backwards into her bed.

The back of your knees meet with the edge of her bed and you sit back. Her wrists escape your hold and she slips her cardigan off, then her shirt. You lean forward and kiss her stomach, peppering kisses upwards while you unbutton her jeans and pull them down to her ankles.

Wanda reaches down and unzips your dress. She pushes its sleeves from your shoulders and eagerly pulls it down to your waist. With a hand on your shoulder, she pushes you back onto the bed and you move backwards atop of it so Wanda can pull your dress from your hips. She tosses it onto the foot of her bed and runs her hands up your thighs as she straightens.

She delivers a spank to the side of your ass and with a swift wave of her hand, pushes the board games from her bed, sending them toppling down to the floor.

You move further backwards onto her bed and Wanda gets on. She starts at your knees, parting your thighs slowly as she moves up your body.

Wanda nips at your inner thighs, sucking at your skin and running her tongue up anywhere she could. Her hands find your ass again and she lifts you up from the bed momentarily so she could nudge her nose against your clothed clit. She grins at your muffled whimper and nips at your hip teasingly. She peppers wet kisses up your stomach and up to the valley of your breasts.

Her hands on your ass move up your body and find the clasp of your bra, taking it off and tossing it somewhere behind her. She gropes your breasts with both hands and moans appreciatively. She pinches your nipples between her thumbs and forefingers.

Her grin widens. “Look how cute you are, huh?” she muses and plays with your tits in her hands, massaging them thoroughly and tugging at your nipples.

Straddling your hips and rolling them forward slightly to rub her clothed pussy against your thigh, Wanda pushes your breasts together and leans down to flick her tongue across each of your nipples. She kisses your breasts and then your painfully erect nipples, making you shudder. Her lips wrap around one of your buds, suckling at you and raking her teeth against you.

Your back lifts from the bed, pushing your breasts further against Wanda’s face as you moan out. Her free hand gropes your tit, her thumb having a particularly enjoyable time playing with your nipple.

“Feels good, baby?” she asks, looking up at you.

You hum out in response because you can’t manage any real words.

Wanda grins at your incapacity and switches breasts. Her saliva cools your other nipple in her mouth’s wake. Her other hand takes hold of one of yours and brings it up to your breast, making you fondle yourself.

The speed of her hips quicken and Wanda’s lips release from your nipple to moan out, her exhale warm against your skin. She straightens herself and moves to sit on your lower stomach, detaching her cunt from your thigh. You can see a darkened patch of her slick against her red panties.

She reaches back and unclips her bra.

Your cheeks and ears become warm as her tits push against your face when Wanda leans down and kisses your forehead.

“Touch mommy’s breasts, puppy. Don’t be shy,” she utters against your forehead before sitting up and running her hands up your chest.

You reach up and press your hands to her breasts like she asked, fingers squeezing around them and making Wanda moan out. Her hips begin rolling forward against your stomach as she craves friction once more.

She squeezes your tits again, paying special attention to your hardened buds.

Then Wanda reaches forward, her breasts only mere inches from your face once again. You hear her dig through her nightstand while you hold onto her shoulders, looking up at her face. She smiles over at you appreciatively when you kiss the side of her breast.

When she closes the nightstand and sits up, she’s holding some type of harness and a rather large black dildo. She watches your expression closely, smiling at the shock that comes over you. “Interested, my sweet girl?” she asks you with a quirked eyebrow.

You swallow nervously and Wanda slips off the bed. You watch her slip her panties off and run a few fingers through her cunt. She leans forward and sticks them into your mouth. You wrap your lips around her fingers immediately.

She curls them in your mouth and you suck from them eagerly.

Wanda smiles and slips her fingers out once they’re cleaned of her juices. She strokes your cheek then pulls away to finish inserting the dildo and strapping the harness around her hips.

When Wanda mounts the bed again and straddles your hips, she lays her cock across your lower stomach. Her hand reaches down between the two of you and pulls your panties down your legs.

Cold fingers press against your bare cunt and a small smile forms on Wanda’s lips at the shudder that runs through your body at the contact. She draws wide circles against your clit, her middle finger slowly entering and exiting your hole. She traces your opening with the pad of her finger while her free hand plays with your hair.

“You’re so pretty, Y/N,” she says, looking down at your naked body. Her fingers release their hold on your hair and she runs her fingers through the valley of your breasts all while you squirm below her. “So perfect. These beautiful tits and your young body. Gods, even at your age, I never looked like this.”

“You’re…” you manage to say through your whimpers, “... beautiful too, Wanda.”

She smiles at that but her thoughts are indiscernible.

Now thoroughly saturated with your cum, Wanda wraps her hand around her cock, jerking it softly and coating it with your juices. Moving her hips back slightly, she positions herself against your opening.

She lowers herself to your face, your breasts pushed up against hers as she kisses the tip of your nose.

You feel her begin to enter you and a surge of panic quickens your heartbeat. “W-Wanda, no, it’s too big,” you plead, turning your head to look at her as she buries her nose against your cheek.

“It’ll fit,” she presses.

“No, it won-”

You’re cut off as Wanda’s hips advance forward. You feel yourself begin to stretch out for her and your eyes shut tightly. You’re wet enough for her to glide against you, but you can’t stretch enough for her- she’s too big. It won’t fit. She’ll break you in half.

“Wanda, please!” you cry against her.

“Mommy,” Wanda corrects, hissing against your temple, “will make it fit. Just be a good girl and stay still.”

Your face contorts into something tight and anguished.

Once Wanda fits her tip past your opening, her speed of entering you quickens and you cry out, reaching up and trying to push her off of you.

She raises her hand to your breast and slaps it harshly, making you pull away from her and withdraw your arms. She gropes it, fingernails digging into your skin.

“Do not move,” Wanda commands, each word thumping heavily against your ears as she speaks from beyond clenched teeth. She releases your breast and takes a hold of both of your wrists before holding them up above your head.

“I’m not above tying you down, Y/N,” she jests with a grin though you know her words are more than partially true. The words send a chill up your spine and you feel a shameful sense of warmth spread through you despite yourself.

She buries her face in your neck and kisses her way up to your ear. “Just relax, my beautiful girl. It’ll hurt less,” she hushes. “Mommy will take good care of you.”

Her lips wrap around your lobe and she sucks softly at the flaccid skin. Her warm saliva cools your skin in the wake of her lips when Wanda moves towards your face. Her nose rubs against your temple, then her cheek against your own as a mother would her young.

Her lips are pressed against your cheek and she continues to whisper soft praises and words of encouragement against your flushed skin, her warm breath cocooning you in a snug embrace.

Your hips finally come into contact with Wanda’s and you whimper. Every movement you make creates a pressure in the base of your spine, reminding you that you have the largest cock you’ve ever taken deep inside of you.

“Ah, do you see?” Wanda coos. “You took it all.”

With a shaky exhale, you nod. You open your eyes to see Wanda smiling down at you warmly and you suddenly feel extremely proud of yourself.

She kisses you tenderly and utters against your lips, “You’re such a smart girl. So bright,” she murmurs. “Mommy knows how to take care of you, doesn’t she?”

You nod with a happy smile and kiss her again.

Wanda laughs softly through her nose and kisses the space between your eyebrows when you part from the kiss. “Now, I don’t want to see you disobey me again. You ought to know how helpless and dumb you are without me. Good smart girls listen to their mommies,” she instructs.

“Yes, mommy. Wanna be a good girl,” you affirm, wiggling joyfully underneath her. The pressure of Wanda’s cock returns as you wiggle your hips so you stop immediately, though you feel an urge to buck your hips upwards to see what it would feel like.

“That’s what I like to hear,” she praises and pecks your lips, her tone suddenly maternal. She sits up again and takes hold of your hips with both hands, pulling you forward so the lower half of your body rests atop her lap.

She pulls your ass against her lower stomach, her hips moving forward and moving her cock deep inside you.

You squirm and only feel it deeper within you, her strap stretching you out as it moves either way while fitting snugly between your walls.

Then Wanda begins thrusting forward. With your thighs wrapped weakly around her waist, she thrusts her hips against your ass.

Your head falls back against the pillow and your eyes screw shut at the immense pressure that forms at the base of your spine.

“Fuck, malyshka,” Wanda grunts, “you’re tight.” She places her hand on your lower stomach, drawing soothing circles there with her palm. The act relaxes you slightly and Wanda quickens her thrusts.

You take your bottom lip between your teeth and restrain a cry. “Mama, too big…” you slur out, grasping at the bed sheets underneath you.

She responds, “You’ll take it, fucking slut.” Wanda pulls out of you suddenly and flips you onto your stomach. With her hands on your hips, she tugs you forward and sticks your ass into the air. She enters your cunt again and you cry out into a pillow. But Wanda does not take precautions she previously did. Her hips pick up speed and she slams forward into your ass repeatedly.

The slapping of skins mingle with the sounds of your muffled cries and Wanda’s grunts.

With the last fragments of capability you have to think independently, you hope desperately that none of the guests downstairs come through the door. You don’t realise how far ahead Wanda had planned when she first took you upstairs, nor the fact that she locked the door.

Your cries steadily turn into moans of pleasure if not fucked out of you with each thurst against your ass. Your hands unclench from the bed sheets but your face is still pressed into Wanda’s pillow.

Her front presses against your back and Wanda’s groans exhale against the side of your neck.

“Tell mommy you love her cock,” she instructs, then kisses your shoulder.

Your words are slurred against the pillow as you answer, “I love your cock, mama.” You move your head so your lips are exposed to the air and your repeated words can be heard more clearly, but what comes out is no more discernible than before.

Wanda kisses the side of your neck and straightens. This time, she takes you with her, pulling you up so you’re sitting on her lap, your back still pressed against her front. Your knees are on the outer sides of Wanda’s, your legs spread as you sit on her lap.

You can feel her nipples grazing against your back as Wanda thrusts upwards into you.

With this position, your moans are expelled into the room that already seems to you to be muggy with the scent of sex and the hot pants from the two of you.

She buries her face in your neck, wrapping her lips around your pulse and sucking. She bites down on another spot, causing you to cry out and jerk forward. But she wraps her hands around your waist, keeping you in place.

Her eyes dart down to your bouncing breasts, and with an amused and nearly sadistic smirk, she slaps one of your tits, and then the other. You hear her chuckle against your neck between your yelps. Both hands then grope your breasts, massaging harshly and twisting your nipples callously.

“Mama, no, that hurts,” you whimper pathetically, squirming on her lap.

Wanda hums, uninterested in your pleading. She kisses your shoulder. “Mommy hurts you because she loves you, puppy,” she says.

One of her hands moves down to your lower stomach. Her hand brushes over the bulge there, feeling the way it pushes against her hand with every one of her thrusts into your pussy. The heel of her hand presses down without warning. Immense pressure shoots through you and makes your clit throb.

You cry out and you feel your walls squeeze around Wanda’s cock. A different kind of pressure that you can’t quite discern forms in your lower stomach.

“My pretty brainless fucktoy,” Wanda coos into your ear.

You feel warm pride bloom within you, but you can only manage a garbled, “Thank you, mommy.”

“I want to fill you with my children,” she pants into your ear. Her hips quicken as she continues, evidently turned on by what she’s saying. Your body jerks on top of her lap helplessly, your breasts bouncing at each harsh thrust and making it impossible for Wanda not to continue playing with them.

“Come in your pussy and fill your tight hole full of my hot cream,” she says. “I want you to carry my children. I want to see your pretty belly full of my puppies, to see our babies as cute as you. I want to come home from work to fuck my adorable little housewife dumb, until you can only take more of my seed, filling you over and over like the willing little breeding bitch you are.”

Wanda reaches up and takes the lower half of your face into her hand harshly. She turns your head and kisses you. Despite her words and the harsh way she’s fucking you, despite the brusing handling of your breasts and the bites she delivered to your neck, her kiss is soft and possessive, her lips moving against yours in soft embraces as if worshiping them.

“You’ll be mommy’s precious cockwhore. I’ll fuck your pussy whenever it pleases me. If you’re angry with mama, if you’re sleeping, if we’re out together- I won’t spare any mercy in taking you for my own,” she grunts with the effort she’s putting into fucking you. “From now on, you’re mine.”

Her hand reaches down and she brushes three fingers side-to-side against your clit, sending you throttling forward and closer to your orgasm.

Wanda kisses up your neck adoringly, nipping where she can and sucking at your skin soothingly. “Come for mommy, moya lyubov,” she whispers against your cheek then kisses it. “Let me see my perfect little girl.” Her free hand rounds your waist. The heel of her hand presses into your tummy bulge and her fingers pick up speed.

The indiscernible pressure in your lower stomach from earlier suddenly flowers, and at the slightest taste of your orgasm, it comes into fruition. You wince and hide your face in the mess of Wanda’s sweet-smelling hair, and a warm burst of release streams out of you.

Wanda inhales sharply and her lips part from your neck so she can look down your body where you’re pissing all over her lap.

Your body is fatigued and now acting on its own without any conscious thought, leaving you to Wanda’s mercy as she takes your body for her own. In your complete abandonment of independence, it’s only Wanda who’s holding you up and keeping you warm.

“Oh, Y/N,” she whispers, in awe at your release. Her lips form into a grin and she kisses you. Her hand wraps around her dick, carefully pulling it out of your pathetically wet hole. She lets go of her cock and she slowly slides her hand up your cunt, allowing her hand and fingers to be soaked by your piss. “That’s a good, good girl. That’s right. Just let go, baby.”

Your cries release in short, trembling whimpers and Wanda kisses up your cheek. She presses a kiss to your soft lips.

While you quiver on her lap, your walls clenching hard around nothing and getting used to being empty after taking mommy’s thick cock, Wanda unfastens her strap from around her hips.

She lays you down carefully, onto your back. She kisses your breast, lips grazing your nipple and making you shudder. She watches you pant and squirm weakly with a smile as she slips the harness from her ankles and lays it on the edge of the bed.

The bed dips around you as you slip in and out of sleep. When the bed dips by your head, you open your eyes and find yourself looking up at Wanda. Even while dazed, you’re struck by the sight of her- her cascading hair and her breasts, the plain of her stomach and the creamy white porcelain shade of her soft skin.

Wanda caresses your cheek with her hand and when her knee brushes against your ear, you realise they’re on either side of your head.

“You’re so beautiful,” you say suddenly, looking up at the older woman with nothing but admiration in the glints of your eyes.

She smiles, though from the angle you’re laying at, you can’t see the soft blush that forms across her face at your words.

Unlike before, it seems that Wanda does believe in the genuinity of your words. It reaches her, embracing her in a way she hasn’t been in years.

“Thank you,” she answers, stroking her thumb across your cheekbone. Then she lowers herself, her cunt pressing up against the lower half of your face.

She throws her head back immediately, one hand going to grip at the headboard and the other grasping at your hair painfully. A long moan escapes her and Wanda begins rolling her hips forward and back.

You part your lips, immediately taken by the taste of her pussy. You dart your tongue out and allow Wanda to ride the stiff muscle. She jerks her hips to the side slightly, teasing her clit and making her clench around nothing.

When the tip of your nose nudges against her sensitive bud, Wanda shudders and chases the feeling quickly, rolling her hips further up and now riding your face steadily. You take your breaths in time with the rolling of Wanda’s hips when your nose is uncovered.

Your lips, chin, and nose are completely coated in her cum, and you feel it begin to glaze your cheeks over in its sticky coating too. Your lips make a circular shape against her cunt, allowing you to suck at her hole then at the rim of it, which Wanda finds particularly pleasurable, evident by the way her thighs tighten around your head.

“Fuck, puppy…” she moans. “So… good. You’re talented.”

With a jerking motion, you turn your head and create a certain friction against Wanda’s pussy that makes her screw her eyes shut and huff out.

The tip of your tongue raises and teases at her hole before delving into her. With her clit pressed down against your nose, Wanda reaches her hilt. Her fingers grip at your hair painfully, pulling you up against her pussy. Her thighs tremble and a melody of pleasured moans and pants mingle.

She climbs off from sitting on your face and sits beside your hip, one leg on the bed and the other dangling off of it. Her thumb runs across your cheek. “What a mess you’ve made of yourself, Y/N,” she states, her voice a low thrum. “Let me clean you up.”

While you doze off in her bed, an indefinite amount of time passing, Wanda soon returns in a red silk robe that only just covers her ass after having redone and retouched her own makeup. She takes a seat at the edge of the bed. She leans over you and with a cool soft cloth, wipes your smudged makeup off.

Her elbow is holding herself up while she pets your head with her free hand. She wipes your makeup and the beads of sweat from your face.

Once she finishes, she lays the cloth on her nightstand and looks down at you. She kisses your face, slowly, all over your forehead and cheeks, your closed eyes, your chin, and finally, your lips.

“There we go,” Wanda whispers. She touches your face with her fingers while watching you slowly awaken from your brief nap. “You’re very pretty, Y/N. You’re so young…” she says quietly, looking down at you with a small smile, “and your skin is so soft.”

You finally open your eyes and Wanda’s smile widens.

Subtle, muffled music plays downstairs.

“They must be getting close to the end of the movie,” Wanda says. She places her hand between your breasts and draws invisible shapes on your chest with the tips of her fingers. “It's one of my favourites. I won’t spoil it for you. I think we should watch it together, just the two of us.”

The soft hymn continues to play downstairs.

“I love this song too,” she adds. “Come dance with me. Then we can get ready to join the others again.” Wanda stands from the bed and, while you sit up, retrieves a soft fleece blanket from her closet. She returns to you and wraps it around your shoulders.

You stand from the bed and Wanda pulls you against her chest, her arms wrapped around your shoulders and back, keeping you cocooned by the warm blanket. She tucks your head under her chin.

“Thank you for what you said earlier, Y/N,” Wanda whispers. “Those were very kind words. I’ll treasure them eternally.”

You nuzzle your face against her chest. “I meant it,” you say.

“I know.”

Wanda cradles the back of your head with her hand, her fingers scratching gently at your scalp. She hums along with the barely-audible music downstairs while the two of you sway in the middle of her bedroom.

#wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff smut #wanda maximoff x you #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff x y/n #wanda x reader #wanda maximoff fanfiction #marvel fanfiction #marvel smut

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patchoulimademoiselle · 11 months ago

Text

Bat Shit Crazy. (Part 2)

Bucky Barnes x Reader Fic

Word count: 5.6k

Warnings: language, sub/dom dynamic, large age gap, smut, praise kink. Reader has bpd, and a personality switch takes place. Bucky cusses you out in Russian. All the good stuff.

Summary: Your first mission together in a while doesn't exactly go as you expected it to.

Notes: This fic is dark, and it only gets darker. This is more Winter Soldier Bucky in terms of behavioral traits and dynamics with other characters. This is not a soft lovey dovey style fic, and if that bothers you DO NOT READ.

Masterlist

You savor Bucky being home, home, as if you can call it that without a guilty conscience. Your trigger finger is itching by the time you’re assigned a new mission, but you’re disappointed to find that its only recon, and it’s in harsh winter terrain.

Your black tactical gear has been switched for white, a thick winter coat and light colored combat boots. The air is crisp, stinging the tip of your nose every time you inhale. You hate recon, and you hate whatever country this is, Russia maybe? You have a bad habit of not paying attention during mission briefings. You are not the brains in this equation. More like a secret weapon hidden in a small frame, so as you find a million ways to distract yourself, Bucky soaks up the details like a sponge.

Your short attention span does bother him, one day it can cost you your life if you aren’t careful. But the dynamic between you tends to work with it, he gives you a shorter version on the way to the drop sight, and you have signals assigned between each other as code. You can never ignore a signal. That’s the deal between you. It’s all fun and games until you take it too far, he has warned you so many times that it will cost you everything.

I will not let you kill me and yourself by being reckless, the warning replays in your head and it sends a shiver down your spine, you reach to grab his arm, struggling to keep up with his pace.

“Bucky,” You smile, a little breathless. “I’m dying here.”

“You’re fine.” He says, “Tighten up.”

This is who he is, traces of his training are hidden in everything he does, his life before this making him cold and rough around the edges. But here, stalking through the snow, like a predator searching for prey, you can sense how dangerous he really is. There are traces of the winter soldier still in him, and it concerns him to know that it excites you. Those rough edges will do more than cut you one day, but for now, he is no more dangerous to you than a guard dog to its owner, loyal, trusting. You know he will die before he lets you get hurt.

You trust him, so you tighten up, fighting through the burn in your thighs as you continue uphill for what feels like hours. The hike only takes about two before he’s signaling you to stop, his footsteps stopping abruptly.

You hear nothing, but as you look up at his face, you know he senses something. He starts to crouch, you follow his lead until you’re both belly down in the snow. He sets up the rifle that was hanging on his shoulder, using it to survey the area.

“What is it?” You’re close enough to talk into his ear, voice barely audible in the air around you.

“This is a high traffic area,” His voice is so low, the thickness of it making it hard to hear. You strain, faces touching, “Their camp must be close.” They, you weren’t sure who, that’s the whole point of this. “Mark these coordinates. We have to move soon.”

You reach into his coat pocket, slowly, pulling out the sat nav Tony had designed for the team, marking your coordinates, entering a note of high traffic, before returning it to his pocket.

Bucky must feel sure of himself, because he turns his head to you now, lips almost touching as he says, “Remember your training, what do you see?”

You want to kiss him, a few stray strands of hair fall over his forehead, the fur lining of his coat hood makes him look so much younger, normal, as if you weren’t on a recon mission in the snow. A young couple going on a camping trip, a winter hike in the woods to get away from your busy lives.

But then you look into his eyes, dark, cold, a trained soldier focused on the task at hand, and you know he would kill you himself if you tried to distract him.

So you turn your head, looking at the trees in front of you. He watches you as you say, “A disadvantage.” And you swear you see the corner of his lips twitch up in a smile.

“Good girl.” Then he’s sitting up, slowly. “We’ll have to go around, find higher ground.” He extends a hand to you, you take it, and he pulls you up out of the snow. “Keep your eyes moving.” You're shocked at his change in attitude, an unfamiliar gentleness in his tone.

You don’t remember the last time he seemed so carefree on a mission like this. It must be a lighter feeling compared to what he just went through with Steve, but he has never let his guard down so much with you. He is always on edge, expecting you to fuck up somehow.

But he seems to trust you here, or maybe he’s testing you. Either way, you’re grateful for it. You don’t feel like you’re walking on eggshells, he trusts you, and that means more than he can know.

You think he senses it, his eyes lighter when you stand.

He wants you, you recognize this stance, that stare, there are memories floating behind his eyes, his seemingly innocent touch isn’t so innocent, his hand lingering, hesitating to let you go.

But you’re too exposed here, the reality of your situation setting in and ruining the moment as flurries of snow fall between you. A smile breaks across your face, pulling your hand from his to catch a snowflake.

“We need to move.” He’s back, your window of opportunity has closed, shoving your shoulder to force you backwards, you turn, walking away from the spot you had just laid in the snow, away from the moment you just shared.

He lets you lead, you aren’t sure why, his eyes watching your every move. But it doesn’t feel invasive, doesn’t feel threatening at all. It feels protective, guiding. You embrace this dynamic.

It is hard for him to let you be yourself sometimes. Aloof, just a young girl still trying to navigate the world compared to his hardened persona. A part of him knows he is ruining you, exposing you to a darkness you would have never known if you hadn’t become so close. Your life was troubled before him, but he knows he is only fueling the fire, teaching you to dance along with the flames, teaching you to embrace the pain of the burn.

But you don’t seem to notice it yet, and he couldn’t ever find it in himself to let you be. So you stay this way, wild, careless, continuously dancing on the edge. Because he is there to catch you, even if he is the reason you fall.

But most of the time, you take yourself there, filled with an anger he hasn’t helped you control yet, a recklessness that comes from a hard life, not caring what happens, needing a thrill to make it all worth it.

Like right now, a lapse in judgment, a fallen log up ahead, you jump on it, trying to balance, but it collapses under your weight, the sound of wood cracking echoes into the air around you, no doubt traveling for miles.

You freeze, knowing you fucked up, knowing that if you get out of this alive, you will be tortured for this mistake. But you don’t really have time to think about the consequences, Bucky is grabbing you by the hood of your coat, pulling you into a run.

It’s choaking you, the zipper digging into your skin, but you don’t dare complain, letting him pull you as you run, stopping when you’ve reached a good distance. He pushes you against a tree, thick enough to cover you, then presses himself in front of you, shielding you both.

His jaw is clenched, breathing erratic as he tries to calm himself, there’s an anger in his eyes that you know will come with a harsh punishment later. You wait there, minutes go by, no one comes. And as soon as he knows it’s clear, his anger is directed at you.

“How stupid can you be?” His voice is strained, trying to control his volume.

“Oh please, we’re fine!”

He clamps your mouth with his hand, “Заткнись.” Shut the fuck up. He hardly ever speaks in Russian to you, he taught you in case of emergency, but you know this is only a display of anger, “Вам повезло, что вы живы.” You are lucky to be alive.

And just like that, the good feeling is gone. The trust, the security, everything that made this feel easy, gone. You shove his hand away, trying your hardest to bite down your own anger. How silly of you to think that this would be different, that you could lighten up and enjoy his good mood.

You say nothing else, watching as he pulls out the sat nav, marking your location and making a note.

Your cheeks are hot, with mostly embarrassment, watching him struggle to control his anger.

You almost compromised the entire mission, taking it too far, searching for the wrong kind of thrills. The only excitement you are allowed here, with a man like him, is from squeezing a trigger.

His eyes burn into you as you hold your hand out, not asking, demanding to take his riffle. If there is anything he can trust in you, it is your anger, allowing your darkness to consume you and help you push through. He knows he doesn’t have to worry about anything else happening, allowing you to take it.

It feels cold, heavy, a physical translation of the burden that sits on your shoulders.

You are not just a girl anymore. You are a trained soldier, you are a weapon.

This is where you will find your purpose. This is where you will find all the thrill you will ever know. This is what he wants you to be.

Bucky leads you deeper into the woods, the trees becoming taller, thicker, the change in terrain tells you that you are closer to their base, the uphill hike turning into flat ground. Your disadvantage is lost, eyes scanning the trees for movement, for traces of life.

Before long, you hear it, voices, only a few meters ahead of you. A watch post no doubt. Bucky raises a closed fist, signaling you to stop. You freeze. Rifle raised to scope the area. You can not see them, but the fact that they are close enough to hear makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

He holds two fingers up, waving them in a circular motion, signaling you to go around. It’s a simple maneuver, one that you’ve done many times. It feels like muscle memory, you nod to him, side stepping through the snow to circle around the area. You’re light on your feet, securing the rifle to your back, footsteps silent as you follow the sound of their voices.

Three men, armed with assault rifles, military grade. They are camouflaged, it takes you a moment to spot them. And in the distance, beside a tree, you see Bucky, eyes locking. He marks your coordinates, then signals you to keep moving.

A few feet out, when their voices start to fade, you circle back, taking a moment to find cover behind a tree, making sure it is clear before you speak. “There will be more of them.”

“I know,” You can barely see his eyes from under your hood, but his voice tells you he is tense, “We need to find a vantage point to stake out.”

You take your rifle in hand, following him through the trees. The snow feels more compact here, walked on over and over, another heavy foot traffic area. You are close, too close. Your pace is slow, cautious as you search for any vantage point. A slight hill, no doubt used as a watch post, You watch as Bucky reaches down to pull a knife from his ankle, arming himself in case of an encounter.

But to your luck, no one is there to greet you when you reach the top of the hill.

You’re quick to set up a stake out post, unloading the pack you brought with you, setting up a scope on your riffle. Bucky pulls out and energy bar, opening the wrapper and handing it to you. You lay flat on your belly, taking an occasional bite, until you find a foot soldier, about a hundred yards out.

You follow him, you can feel Bucky watching as you shift to the right, he leads you right to their base, a small camp with two tents and a fire. There are two ATV’s parked to the far left of their camp, a group of foot soldiers guarding each tent.

“I’ve got them.” You scoot back, giving him room to take his spot so that he can see for himself.

You watch as he lays flat as a board, settling in to where you’ve positioned the rifle. You dig into your pack, pulling out the canteen you brought, taking a sip of water.

“Good girl.” The praise does nothing to excite you, not after earlier, you simply watch him in silence. “Let me take first watch, use the sat nav to make a map.”

You reach into his pocket, retrieving the device. Inside your pack, pen and paper, an old school style of marking your territory. But you realize you may need it on case you two are ever separated, in case you need a backup plan. You do your very best, marking your stake out post first, then a hundred yard out as you have just discovered, their base. You mark the exact coordinates of where you are, and of where you found the first watch post.

By the time you are done, your energy bar is done, the water a quarter gone. You tap his side, “What do you see?”

“There must be another watch post twenty-five yards out in the opposite direction,” He points with two fingers. “They switch out in groups of three, but it seems to be at alternating times from the other post we first saw.”

“You should go find out, I’ll stay here and keep watch.” He looks at you then, his face is expressionless, you can’t read him, but you know he’s thinking something. “I’ll be fine, we have a job to do.”

He sits up, letting you take back your post. He fills up on an energy bar and takes a few sips of water while he goes over the map you made for him. You burned a lot of energy hiking up hill, the first thing he ever taught you was to conserve your energy, always refuel as soon as you are safe.

His hand on your shoulder, crouching to look at you. “Don’t move from this spot.” That darkness in his eyes return, a promise to let the world burn if something happens to you. He rests his forehead against yours, a goodbye, a promise to return, and that if he doesn’t he died trying.

Nothing else matters in a moment like this. Every time you separate, it could easily be the last time you see each other.

And then he’s gone, footsteps silent as he leaves your post. You don’t dare leave, watching their camp with complete focus. You want to know what they are protecting, who they are protecting. Why so many guns for just two little tents in the fucking woods? You focus on the tent flaps, the soldiers that come in and out. You see nothing useful, deciding to focus on the soldiers themselves. Their commander has a com system, tech too advanced to be just an ex-military group like you originally thought. Their ATV’s are unregistered, fake plates that are no doubt a cover up, you memorize the plate numbers, logging them into the sat nav, along with identifications for their weaponry.

Every piece of information helps, the grade of uniform, the tents, anything that can be traced to something. You double check the area, no one in sight, and reach for the camera in your pack. You take as many photos as you can, their camp, the vehicles, their uniforms and weapons.

You get lost in it a bit, trying to focus on as many details as possible, when a hand clamps around your mouth, lips at your ear. “Персик.” Peach, a greeting. And then a kiss, soft, light, too quick to be savored, placed at your temple. He settles beside you, pulling the map from his coat pocket, he takes the camera from you, trading.

He has marked two other lookout posts on the map, measured twenty-five yards from each other, just like he estimated. His tracking skills are better than anyone else you have seen, you’ve only been able to pick up on some of it.

“Any activity here?” He asks, looking through the pictures you’ve taken.

“No, whoever they are protecting in that tent is to heavily guarded, I can’t see anything.”

“If we wait long enough, we will see something.” He says, “They have to rotate eventually, a fresh group will come to replace these soldiers.”

You don’t want to stay here over night. The temperature will drop to below freezing, you have nothing but insulated blankets to keep you warm. You can’t make a fire, and one of you will have to stay up to keep watch all night.

But he says nothing about packing up as the sun starts to set, nothing about how you will survive the night. He only taps your shoulder, offering to switch. He pulls his knife from his ankle, keeping it in hand as he settles behind the rifle.

“Bucky?”

“Stay next to me under the blanket, I’ll wake you up when it’s time to switch.” Is all he says.

So you do as you’re told. You scoot as close to him as you’re able, laying on your back to avoid any aches. The blanket does nothing at first, draped across both of you to shield you from the harsh air. But as time goes by, your breath filling the air trapped around you, the heat radiating from your body and his as you shiver, the cold snow beneath you doesn’t feel as cold anymore. With Bucky’s presence beside you, solid, safe, familiar, it doesn’t feel so bad as you close your eyes and let yourself relax.

He never wakes you to switch, he lets you sleep through the night, knife clenched in his hand, head continuously on a swivel. Looking down to you, checking for your breathing, back to the camp for any activity, in the directions of all marked lookout posts. He half expects something to go wrong, this is all playing out so well.

The snow stopped hour ago, the wind is soft enough to allow actual insulation under the blanket, you are sleeping peacefully, no nightmares, no movement.

But nothing happens. The crack of sunlight behind you is what wakes you up, you are resting too well, you fear something is wrong when you jump out of your sleep, a twitch more than anything else, too afraid of what is waiting for you.

But you feel Bucky still beside you, eyes on you when you poke your head out from under the blanket. He didn’t sleep at all, but nothing on his face tells you he is tired, or that his face feels frozen. It was an act of kindness, taking the full watch, and you will repay him for it later.

You sit up slowly, trying not to make too much noise as you gather the blanket, folding it up and packing it away. You crouch behind a tree, relieving yourself and burying your piss under the snow. With what little cover of darkness you have left, you quickly switch places with Bucky, watching the camp while he relieves himself, stretches his muscles after remaining still for so long.

You could never do it yourself, you know part of it is the super soldier serum in his veins, the training her has undergone in his past, to remain so disciplined, to withstand harsh conditions for so long with no effects on his body. You are thankful for it, even if it feels like nothing to him.

It is everything to you.

You let him eat, drink, have a moment of peace to figure out a plan. Until you finally see it, movement.

“Buck, the camera.”

You don’t have to say anything else, he’s quick to lay beside you, watching as another ATV arrives at the camp. You time stamp it in the sat nav, watching as the soldiers switch out, and finally, two men exit the tents. You don’t recognize them, you have no idea who you’ve just seen, but you know right away that Bucky does.

His body goes ridged, only for a second, before he returns to taking pictures.

Someone from his past? You can only wonder, you know he will never tell you, or anyone.

You wait until the shift change is finished, a fresh group of soldiers, and a new person to take position inside of the left tent. You hope this is enough, you hope these people can be identified and that this stake out wasn’t for nothing.

You know more now than you did walking in, which is the entire point. You try not to stress over it, Bucky’s voice pulling you out of your head as he tells you to pack up.

You’re done here.

He doesn’t have to explain to you what’s going on, you’ve had enough training on recon missions to know his tactics. You never pick up where you drop off. If you are ever compromised, the first thing they will do is track where you came from. Doubling back increases your chances of getting caught.

So you continue deeper into the woods, the complete opposite of the clearing you were dropped off at. The jets are quiet, cloaked, but not completely untraceable. If their tech is as advanced as it seems to be, they can find any incoming aircrafts if they know to look. If you have remained uncompromised, this will be easy.

But of course, you always have to expect the worst.

You walk for hours, so deep within the terrain that you start to worry you are lost until Bucky tells you to cut north to a clearing. Finally, he turns on the locator in the sat nav, and you do your best to hide out until the extraction team arrives.

You feel lighter, you can breathe again. The mission is finished, you aren’t out of the woods yet, literally and figuratively, but the hardest part is over.

And as you sit there, back against a tree, a bit of snow in your boots, cheeks rosy from the cold, you try to find the bright side of this. The peace and quiet, the fresh air, the time outside of HQ with the only person in the world you care about.

He watches you, a glint of something soft in his eyes, adoration, love maybe, and against his better judgement, he reaches out to grab your hand, pulling you to come closer, onto his lap.

“You stress me the fuck out.” He sighs, a gloved hand securing itself at your hip. “But you proved yourself.”

You can’t tell if he’s scolding you, or if this is a compliment. But you embrace it, whatever this is, because he would never allow it any other time. You are technically not out of danger yet, there is still a chance you can be discovered here. But it seems like he doesn’t care, his need to touch you is stronger than his instincts. Everything inside of you is telling you to take advantage of this moment of weakness, this crack in his armor.

You exploit it, leaning in to kiss him, lips cold and slightly chapped from your night spent outdoors. But you don’t care, neither does he, a deep moan vibrating through his chest as he pulls you even closer against him.

You scared him, he thought for a moment he might lose you, that you would be caught and killed in the middle of nowhere.

But you pulled through for him, understood his worry and corrected yourself. He was rewarding you, giving you the attention and the thrill you had been seeking from him before. The danger, the adrenalin.

He’s guiding you to grind against him, tongue in your mouth when you moan with pleasure, letting him encourage you, letting him set a pace for you.

It doesn’t take long, your moans becoming more desperate, he’s quick to discard of his gloves, cold hands finding their way inside your coat, under your shirt, gripping harshly at your breasts.

The contrast of warm and cold makes you gasp, pulling back to look at him, cheeks flushing when you see the look in his eyes. Primal desire, the only good thing to exist out of his darkness is his want for you, and you start to see the reality of this bond you share. This curse to be consumed by darkness, the inability to prevent it.

He’s working at your pants, admiring you, the life that comes to your face in the heat of the moment, the wildness in your eyes that is wanting and waiting for his next move.

You sit back, letting him slide your pants down to your ankles, exposing your bare ass to the cold elements. He frees himself from his own pants, pulling you to sit on him once again, moaning at how wet you are, grinding yourself against his cock, hard and twitching. He kisses you again, grabbing your hips and guiding you to grind yourself against his length, the feeling has your eyes rolling shut, cold and hot, soft and hard. Until finally, he guides himself inside of you, stretching ever so slightly, you moan, arms wrapping around his neck for support as he lowers you onto him.

He doesn’t stop until you bottom out, making you take all of him, giving you only a moment to adjust before he lifts you, slowly, his cock sliding out of you at a pace that makes you ache.

You moan, feeling him twitch inside of you. His jaw is clenched, a display of his restraint. It makes you smile, devilment twinkling in your eyes as you squeeze, clenching around him. A choked gasp escapes his throat, eyes shifting.

He pushes you back, air forced out of your lungs in a gasp as you fall against he cold ground, the snow creeping inside your coat. He follows you, slotting himself between your legs, positioning himself at your entrance before he slides in, quick, forceful, a second gasp escaping you except there is no air left. Breathless.

He grabs your hands forcing them above your head, lips finding yours as he begins to thrust in and out of you, holding nothing back as he fucks you in the snow.

It feels so wrong, the exposure, the risk of being found from how loud you’re being, desperately wrapping yourself around him, trying to force yourself even closer.

He forces his tongue into your mouth, your eyes fluttering shut as he bottoms out inside you, grinding his hips against yours. You can’t control the moan that escapes you, matched with a grunt that he can’t hold back. Your fingers squeeze his, fighting the overpowering feeling of pleasure, the way he is dominating you, the way he knows exactly how to please you.

He pulls back for air, letting you catch your breath, resuming a slow pace as he begins to pump in and out of you. “Fuck, look at what you do to me.” He talks you through it, eyes locked with yours. “Do you feel me inside of you?”

You’re breathless, unable to respond until he squeezes your hands, prompting you to say something, anything. “Fuck, yes.” You love how wrecked you sound, voice thick with lust for him, and you love how he melts at the sound of it. “I love when you fuck me like this.”

“I know you do, baby.” He lowers himself to embrace you, releasing one of your hands. He cradles your head, pulling you flush against him, letting you finally embrace him. “You always take it so well.”

You feel weightless, clinging to him as he fucks you nice and slow, his lips at your ear. “You like scaring me like that?” He asks, accompanied by a harsh thrust, “You like pissing me off so I’ll fuck you like this, don’t you?”

And there it is, the agony he promised to pay you back with, his hips snapping to meet yours as he picks up his pace, knocking the air out of you with every thrust. You’re speechless, mouth agape as you lose awareness, all you can feel is him and the intense pleasure he’s giving you.

“Answer me.” All you can do is moan, a strangled cry as you struggle with the pleasure, eyes starting to roll back. But that doesn’t satisfy him, his teeth sinking into your earlobe, pulling a cry of pleasurable pain from the back of your throat. “You love pissing me off, don’t you?”

“Yes!” You don’t care how desperate you sound, voice whiny and laced with pleasure, “Yes, daddy. I love it.”

He hums, teasing you, teeth replaced with soft kisses, but he maintains his pace, fucking into you until you feel your legs begin to shake. You can feel him smile against your skin, “There you go baby, you gonna come for me?”

You can feel an orgasm building, your body hot and your pussy pulsing with pleasure. All you can do is curl into him, mouth finding his skin, biting down as an orgasm overtakes you, he moans at the feeling, you clench around him as you come, teeth sinking into his neck. He doesn’t stop though, fucking you through it, chasing an orgasm of his own.

And as you come back to reality, your pleasure subsiding, you help him through his, just like he had done for you. “Come for me,” You whisper against his skin, clenching around him over and over, moaning at the pleasure it brings you. “Come inside me, baby.” Your voice is soft, gentle, placing soft kisses against his skin. “You’ve been so brave, so strong. Now relax for me.”

His voice is broken as he moans, “Oh god,” His grip around you tightens, he’s almost there, you can feel how desperate he is. “Keep talking.”

You’ve experienced this with him a few times, praise is so uncommon for him that his body doesn’t know how else to react except finding pleasure in it. You love making him so weak, so desperate, “You protect me so well, make me feel so safe.” A kiss to his throat, you hear him gasp softly, “But you fuck me even better.” You moan, this feels so wrong, so dirty, the way his cock is pumping inside of you, the way he is about to fall apart on top of you. “Come inside me, James.”

That does it, a harsh groan tearing from his throat as he stills on top of you, you can feel his warm cum spilling inside of you, but he continues to thrust, determined to release everything he has.

And then he’s kissing you, your eyes futtering closed as he finishes inside of you. Riding out his high, he continues to fuck you, his hands rough as they find your waste, pinning you against the ground. And for a second time, he comes inside of you, using you for his pleasure, fucking his frustration into you.

It isn’t until he’s fully spent that he finally stops, pulling out, his eyes locked on yours as he bends down to lick you clean. It turns you on again, his mouth is warm, your legs twitching to wrap around his head and trap you there. But he just kisses you instead, once, twice, lips lingering on your pussy just to torture you before he’s pulling away, a cocky smile on his face as he starts to pull your clothes back up your legs.

You’re suddenly cold now, watching as he fixes his clothes, he looks exhausted, and you want nothing more than to embrace him and lay back down in the snow.

But the jet is here, the sound of the engine getting closer and closer, you give him a teasing smile as you gather your things. The way he looks at you tells you this is far from over, he isn’t done with you, a silent promise as he takes your hand, guiding you over to the jet as it lands.

The extraction team boards you quickly, the medic examines you for frostbite and dehydration. For reasons unknown to them, you do seem dehydrated, slightly delirious. They radio HQ requesting the med bay be ready for your arrival. But for now, they give you water and a blanket, allowing you to sit and strap in for the ride home.

Bucky lays his head on your shoulder, and it isn’t long until he’s fast asleep.

Your heart aches, a longing to wrap him up and hide him away from the world overcomes you, you stretch your legs out and let him lay his head in your lap, the blanket hiding him from view.

You stroke his hair, letting him finally rest.

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#bucky barnes x reader #avengers fanfiction #reader insert #bucky x reader #bucky smut #praise k!nk #bpd relationships #winter solider x reader #bucky barnes series

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just-some-random-blogger · 1 year ago

Text

The Dreaming Estate

Dream of the Endless x Gadling!Reader + Corinthian x Gadling!Reader

Summary: You inherit the Dreaming Estate from your recently deceased mother. She instructs you to perform a ritual for the house every month. One month, you fail to do so and receive a call from... The Dreaming Estate.

Word Count: 3k+

Warnings: alternate universe, fem!reader, mystery/thriller?/horror? themes, protectiveness, fluff, typos, etc.

A/N: lmao if you like this thank @sloanexx for kinda pressuring me to finish this. cross-posted on ao3 Tagging: @pinksirensong @aralezinspace @deniixlovezelda @shadow-pancake9 @roguelov

12am. A full moon. The final day of the month. The phone begins to ring. Ring! Ring! Ring! No one answers. The ringing stops. It begins again. It rings until someone answers. You finally wake up. You roll over on the bed. Your lover clings onto you tighter. You grab your phone and answer the call from an unsaved contact, "hello?" His voice is deep and rich, "this is The Dreaming." It wakes you up, "w h a t ?" "This is The Dreaming." You pull your phone away. 12:05am. +1230XXXXX. "... who is this?" "The Dreaming." "The dreaming?" you sit up from the bed. "Yes." "What does that mea-" Goosebumps form when he calls your name, "Miss Gadling, you need to come home." "... who is this?" "The Dreaming." "As in the Dreaming Estate?" you sound panicked. "How are you calling me from the Dreaming? Who are you?" "I am The Dreaming." "..." "Come home."

"Baby, can you get me my coffee?" Cori points to the counter. I get his mug and the car keys, then hand him his drink.

"Thanks, sugar," he says, pulling his one earpod out as he turns from his laptop to me. He moves forward to give me a kiss and I knock the glasses off his face when I place my hand on his cheek.

I readjust his glasses as I pull away.

"Call me when you get there," Cori mutters as he turns back to his screen.

"I will," I head for the door and turn over my shoulder as I point, "make sure to take out the trash, okay?"

Cori puts the other earpod on and raises a thumb though he does not respond to me, "ah, yes, Mr. Takashi. We opened the branch in downtown New York about-"

The door closes.

I get to the parking and drive out of my apartment building, heading out of the city.

I grunt as I reach a red light, "fuck." This was going to be a long drive.

I can't fucking believe I was going to sacrifice my day off all because of that stupid prank call. I clench my jaw and turn to my bag in the passenger seat. I reach for the book in my bag, rubbing my finger on the browning pages.

It can't be because of this. And yet... I can't shake the feeling.

I drive when the light turns green.

"Relax," I mutter to myself, "the police didn't find anything," I take a left turn, "it was probably someone..." pulling a prank? But how did they get my number? How did they unlock the door? I swear I remember locking it when I left because my coat got stuck the last time.

"Fucking hell," I come to a halt when I am met with a bottle neck, "it's fucking Wednesday. Why is it so traffic?! Geez."

What if- I turn to the book in my bag again - it is because of this?

I take in a breath. Calm down. Forgetting to do the weird ritual last month has nothing to with this call.

And yet when I pull up to the Dreaming, parking just outside the gates, it's the first thing I want to do. I grip my handbag as I walk up the path to the front door. My phone was ringing Cori.

Though I knew the front door was open, I had the mansion's key in my hand. I turn the knob, finding it was, in fact, unlocked. I stuff my keys in my pocket.

Cori finally picks up, "hello?"

"I'm here at the estate," I retort as I step in. As nervous as I was to drive up here alone, I felt nothing while surveying the house. I didn't feel the creeps, didn't feel like an axe murderer was about to pop up. It just felt like home. After all, I grew up here. And although the land was large, it wasn't like I didn't have neighbors.

"Oh, that's good. Is everything okay?"

"Yeah," I walk into the grand foyer, looking at the large curved staircase that connected to the second floor landing. I look up at the high ceilings and the chandelier that cascaded down like shooting stars. I walk into the kitchen, "everything really just looks normal."

"Well, it better," Cori chuckles, "the police in the area better not play because all the residents there are rich fucking Karens."

I snort as I survey the marble counters and head for the fridge I knew was unplugged and empty. I open the door. Yep, still unplugged and empty. It would be funny had someone left a cake though... I think.

"I'm just gonna do the ritual and come back home."

"Okay, sugar. You still want to cook steak tonight? I can go to the supermarket to buy some stuff."

"Yeah," I place my bag on the counter, "can you buy some cake too?"

"The red velvet one from 15th?"

I look at the empty cake stand from across the room. Its glass was collecting dust, "no. Blueberry cheesecake. I'm feeling sentimental." My mom used to make the best blueberry cheesecake.

"Okay then. See you later, bunny."

"Mmm, bye. Love you."

"I love you too."

I huff as I place my phone down and pull out the book.

The voice of my mother rings in my head: We must love and protect the Dreaming because it loves and protects us. When a bunch of evil men tried to burn the house, Granny Lucy survived because the house saved her.

I clench my jaw as I flipped the pages. I huff as I get to the bookmarked page, "don't question it," I tell myself, "just- just- it's better not to be the one who breaks this weird generational chain-" I look around the room and find a chill run down my spine. I shake it off and look back at the page.

My thumb rubs the paper and my face tightens when I feel something wet on it. I smell my finger, "shit." My hand sanitizer got on the page.

"Fuck," I lean forward and try to wipe the paper. The ink smudges. "Fuuuuck."

I go through my bag but find no tissues. It's fine. It's fine. I kind of have the words memorized anyway. Let's just say this awful Latin hex-shit and be done with it. I take the book in my hand and read the words the way I always did.

For the most part, I don't need the book to know what to recite but then I reach the part where I smudged and, just my luck, I can't fucking remember what to say. I know I'm not supposed to stop- fuck- don't ask why, I'm just not- but a pit of dread bubbles in me over the idea of saying something wrong. I decide to omit the words that were smudged in the end.

I look around the kitchen when I finish.

I grab my bag and my book and check the other rooms.

I go to the living room, the washing room, the study, the library, the main bathroom, all five bedrooms, the garden backyard, the pool-- every place... but nothing. Nothing happened. The house was just the house. And, honestly, I felt nothing. Nothing felt out of the ordinary, so I go home.

Ring! Ring! Ring! Your eyes widen at the caller contact. "the dreaming guy". You instantly pick up, "hello?" "The incantation didn't work. I am still here." Your stomach drops, "what?" "Come home." You suck in a breath. He had to call during your lunch break. "I will wait for you in human form." Your heart drops. "What?" "I will wait for you to return to me in my human form." "..." "Unless the thought disturbs you." "..." "..." "..." "..." "... are you... Dream?" "I am." I shudder, "the Dreaming..." "I am also." Fuck.

I drive to the Dreaming Estate after work. I try calling Cori to tell him about it, but he didn't pick up. I don't blame him though. He was swamped at work. I mean I was too, which was why this was insane of me to do right now. I left him messages though. Hopefully, he'll call.

I pull up outside the gates again, but this time, I sit in the car, clenching the wheel. My body is unwilling to get out. Why? Because of him.

A dark figure walks over to me. He is tall, pale, and dark haired. My heart races as he nears. I check to see if my door is locked. It is.

As he gets closer and I can finally make out his face, I rack my brain, trying to think if I've seen him before. The longer I look, more I am convinced this is the first time I've seen him.

He stands in front of the gate; he opens it for me.

"Miss Gadling!" he calls, "would you like to drive inside?!""

That was definitely the caller.

I don't respond to him. I do nothing but stare at him.

"Will you stay in the car the whole time?!"

I stare at him for a moment. He stares right back at me. I undo my seatbelt and grab my bag. I peak my head out of the window. I don't know why, but I find myself asking, "what were the missing words in the ritual?!"

The man tilts his head. He leans on the metal grill. A wind blows his coat back, "in luce et tenebris!"

I pull out my book and look at the page. I examine the blotted area, "it does look like that."

"You cannot perform the incantation outside!" the man calls, "please, come in!"

My eyes dart up to him. I suck in a breath. This was probably the worst idea ever. I look at my phone. No calls or texts from Cori. I huff and step out of the car.

The man is pleased to see this.

I slowly walk over to him.

He smiles. It is warm. As I examine his expression, it feels free of malice. And though his aura did not feel eerie, I am skeptical of him.

He reaches a hand out to me, "would you like for me to carry your things?"

I clutch my bag to my chest as well as the book still in my hand, "I got it."

"Very well," he says, making way for me to enter.

I watch him as he closes the gate, I watch him as he motions to the front door, I watch him as he walks off first and leads me in, I watch as he opens the door to my home, I watch him as he peruses through like it was his.

"I apologize that was unable to prepare anything for you," he says.

I knit my brows, "what do you mean?"

"You have not stocked food in the kitchen. I was only able to gather some strawberries from the garden."

See, any sane person would have called the cops by now, if they had a moment of stupidity not to do it before arriving here. But the thing was, he took strawberries in the garden, which means he knew where the strawberries were. The strawberries were behind a hedge in the backyard; you would have to go over the hedge to see them.

"How do you know where the strawberries are?"

The man straightens, "I know where all things are in the estate."

"Pah. Everything?" I raise a brow.

"Everything," he nods.

I scoff, adjusting the straps of my bag on my shoulder, "then do you know where Grandpa Hob was buried?"

"He was not buried. His ashes were scattered in the garden."

My breath hitches. I take a step back.

The man merely looks at me.

He's- no... He must have... how could he have-

"Where is the garden gnome placed?" I find myself blurting.

"In the attic. Behind boxes."

I give him a look. Nah... he could have looked there. "What about my diary?"

"Which one?"

"What?"

"You have one diary stuck in the gutter by the pool, and you have one hidden in the floorboards in the bedroom that used to be yours."

My skin pricks with goosebumps. My heart is racing. I take more steps back. I gasp and jolt when the floor creeks.

"Please," he raises a hand, "do not be frightened. I know you and you know me," he steps forward, "I am the Dreaming."

"Stop!" I bark, raising a finger, "don't come any closer."

He stops.

I breathe heavily and bring the book to my hands, opening it. I look at the page where the ritual is. I begin to read it.

"It will not work."

I ignore him and continue to read.

"You spoke it once before. It will work only at the end of the month now."

I ignore him still and continue reading, making sure to add the part I was unable to say last time.

"Those were not the words."

"SHUT UP!" I snap and turn to him.

He stiffens and looks down, "apologies."

I huff and lean against the wall. The man looks up at me as I do this. I bring one hand behind me and use my nail to pick at the wall, "when I asked if you were Dream and you agreed, what were you agreeing to?"

The man fidgets then rolls his shoulders back, "this. My human form is Dream."

He even knew that. My uncles used to tell me that the house was sometimes a man called Dream. I take in his features, the curve of his nose, the gleam of his eyes. To be honest, I didn't know what Dream should look like, save for the fact he was apparently very strong. This man looked like a he could barely lift things with how scrawny he was.

"What does the ritual do?" I clutch the book in one arm.

"It binds my spirit to the house."

I give him a look, "so you're a spirit?"

"I am," he nods.

"So you're a ghost?"

"I am not. I am the Dreaming."

"But you said you were a spirit."

"I am the spirit of the Dreaming."

I straighten up and release a breath. I go through my bag and pull out a pen, "so if I do this," I chuck the pen at him, "it'll go through you-"

It his him on the cheek and he grunts. He rubs his cheek and gives me a look, "that was most disrespectful."

"... ... ... sorry."

Dream sighs, "all is well."

I chew on my lip and begin to pace around. My eyes never leave him once. His don't either. He watches me walk around him. He places his hands behind his back. I raise a brow, "why did you call me here then if I can't... bind you back?"

"You are my master," he tilts his head back, "my function is to serve you. I will fade if I have no function."

I stop in my tracks and furrow my brows, "what does that mean?"

"It means if my spirit fades and someone breaks in, nothing will stand in their way."

"So you saying you're the protector of the estate?"

"Indeed."

"I thought you were the estate?"

"Is it not instinctive to protect oneself?"

We stare at each other for a moment.

I am meant to question him some more, but then Dream turns around and looks outside of the window. He mutters lowly, "someone is trying to open the gate."

"What?" I run to the other window.

"He is calling your name."

I look outside and see the man, "it's Cori!"

Dream turns to me, "who?"

I turn to him, "did you lock the gate?"

"I am barring him out."

"What?!" I shake my head and make a face, "let him in!"

Dream furrows his brows at this. I give him a look. He relaxes his expression and sighs. I turn to the window when I hear the telltale creak of the gate. I then run out the door and meet Cori halfway.

The moment I'm close enough, I hug and kiss him.

Cori embraces and kisses me back. When he pulls away, he looks at me with worry, "I saw your texts. What happened? Did you call the police? Is someone-" he stops himself when he looks up.

I turn around and look where he was. There was Dream, staring back at us.

"Who the fuck is that?" Cori mutters as he grabs and pulls me behind him.

And I don't know why, I really don't know, but I retort, "he's the butler."

Cori turns to me, "what?"

I look at him, "turns out... we have a family butler and he-" I turn to Dream back to Cori, "-he's the one who called."

Cori shifts in his spot, "you mean he's the guy posing to be the fucking house?"

I shake my head, "no. It was a misunderstanding. I-"

"Greetings, sir."

The both of us turn to the dark haired man who was now in front of us. Cori raises a brow at him while looking him once over. He bows, eyes not leaving Cori as he does so, "I am Dream," he straightens up, "keeper of the estate, in servitude of Miss Gadling."

Cori chuckles, "Dream, huh? Funny you should say that," he extends a hand, "Corinthian Dream," he tilts a head towards me, "Miss Gadling's beau."

Dream stares at Cori's hand for a moment. He looks up at him when takes it, shaking it once before pulling away.

"Shall I prepare bedrooms for the two of you?" Dream asks, turning to me with a softer expression.

"Nah," Cori answers, "I just need you to explain this mess of a prank call and we'll be on our way," he places his hands in his pockets.

A dread builds in my stomach as I watch the two stare at each other. Dream's expression darkens. Cori's face hardens as he adjusts his shades.

Knowing him, I was getting nervous. "Cori," I tug at his arm.

He ignores me as Dream gives a pinched smile, "of course," he motions to the house, "shall we talk inside?"

Cori tilts his head and smirks, "sure thing, butler."

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webslinger-holland · 9 months ago

Text

The Sergeant's Senator | Chapter 2

Summary: Upon arrival at Coruscant, the planet's senator gets to finally meet the infamous Clone Force 99 who are assigned to protect her.

Warning: threat to one's life, talks of assassination, beginning of anxiety attack, slight argument

Pairing: Hunter x Fem!Reader Senator

Type: Short Series

Word Count: 6.4k

Series Masterlist

The planet of Coruscant was one of the most active planets in the entire galaxy. The surface was riddled with various cities; skyscrapers that tried to reach the sky. The underground system, which often times wasn't the best location to be, was also incredibly active during all hours of the day. And in the skies, modes of transportation were always going from one place to another.

The Marauder entered the planet's atmosphere, having just come out of hyperspace. The descend took a little longer than usual given the air traffic. However, eventually, the Marauder was able to make its way to the capital city. They made sure to land on the correct landing platform.

As the ramp descended, the group of five climbed out of their ship. Not far away, Commander Cody stood at attention and was ready to greet the clone force upon arrival to Coruscant. He gave a single nod to them in acknowledgment.

"Commander," Hunter greeted.

"It's been a while, boys." Commander Cody commented. He looked at each of them carefully as if expecting to see some kind of change, but there really wasn't anything much different about their looks or behavior.

"Not long enough evidently," Crosshair grunted from the back of the group. He went to cross his arms over the stretch of his chest. He was most certainly the least happy one to be assigned this mission.

"You didn't give much details on the line," Hunter explained. "What are we working against here?"

Slowly, Commander Cody began to walk back towards the compound. The rest of them went to follow. Though Cody and Hunter were heading the group.

Now the commander made sure to survey his surroundings before bringing up the sensitive topic. "The senator has faced three assassination attempts within the last month alone. The last one claimed the lives of her guards," Cody told them.

"And that's where we come in?" Echo questioned.

"Our main priority is to keep the senator safe at all costs. Hopefully, if we play our cards right, we can catch whoever was sent by letting them come to us," Commander Cody expressed.

"So lay low, keep our eyes open, and protect the senator?" Hunter replied.

"At all costs," Cody added.

"Shouldn't be too hard," Wrecker said with a shrug of the shoulders.

"Don't be too sure," Cody warned. They approached the entrance of the building. The doors slid open for them to enter the lift.

The small group went to enter the lift, finding a spot before the doors closed in front of them. After clicking the button for their final destination, the lift began to move.

"The assailant...whoever it is...they are nothing like I've seen before. It's not like a bounty hunter; they're much too sloppy for a job like this. No...we are dealing with a professional here," Commander Cody almost sounded conflicted.

In the background, Hunter and Crosshair seemed to glance at each other through the corner of their eyes. They both knew the kinds of missions the commander had been on and the things he had seem. It didn't bring them much relief knowing that even the commander was worried about his mission.

The doors slowly opened to reveal a grand entry room. The marble flooring was shining against the soft glow of the golden lights. There were intricate golden patterns that looked like crown molding near the ceiling. And the handles on the door were made of pure gold.

"She should be just inside," Commander Cody insisted. He went to open the door doors, which allowed the rest of the group to enter the senator's office.

The most appealing part of the grand office was the massive window overlooking the busy city. There was plenty of comfortable seating, ranging from single seats to full couches. And a single desk was situated in the center of the room. Though the senator was nowhere to be found.

The Clone Force were a little cautious to step into such an impressive looking space. They felt a little out of place with their custom black plastoid armor and unique looking helmets. Not to mention the fact that they were all defective clones with varying appearances.

It could have just been the color of the lighting or the modern look of furniture in the room. However, everything looked so pristine and rather expensive. They honestly didn't think this office belonged to a senator, rather it belonged to a princess.

Each of them had gone their own ways throughout the room. While Tech instantly gravitated towards the small collection of books on a nearby shelf, Echo found himself standing in front of the window looking out at the city.

Without much thought, Wrecker went to touch a little glass figurine on the senator's desk. Though before his hand could make contact, Hunter's instincts kicked in and swatted his hand once as a warning.

"Don't touch anything," Hunter mumbled under his breath.

"I'm sure the senator is just running a little late from her last meeting," Commander Cody explained. "She shouldn't be too long."

Upon hearing this, Clone Force 99 made their way to stand in front of the desk. They wanted to make a good first impression on the senator whenever she arrived. As they waited, their eyes viewed the skyline in front of them.

All of the sudden, there was a slight shift in the atmosphere of the room. Naturally, as if it was a response, Hunter turned his head ever so slightly to his left. His ears perked up upon hearing an unfamiliar soft heartbeat coming from the room next door. He glanced at the door on his left through the corner of his eye.

As the heartbeat drew closer and louder, Hunter was able to make out the muffled conversation that followed from the other room. Despite the fact that Commander Cody was speaking with the rest of his brothers, Hunter seemed to ignore them and could only focus on the heartbeat. It was the softest thing he had ever heard.

"Do me a favor? Behave yourselves, boys." Commander Cody commanded them.

"No promises," Crosshair replied snakily.

Finally, Hunter went to turn his head to look directly at the door beside them. It was if he predicted the arrival because the doors began to open only a second later. The sound of the door opening caused the other members of the company to turn towards it.

The Senator of Coruscant came waltzing into the room with her assistant at her side. She wore this white flowy dress that cascaded over her feet and dragged on the floor behind her. The upper half of the dress was more sheer and showed the soft supple skin underneath it. Her hair was tidied back into a braid, which was heavily decorated in small white pearls.

For the first time ever, Hunter heard his own heart skip a beat upon laying eyes on her. His eyes trailed down the length of her form, taking it all in for his own pleasure. He was most certainly thankful to be wearing his helmet.

Though the senator didn't even acknowledge the clones upon her entrance, but this was probably because she was busy hearing what the rest of her schedule looked like for the day from her droid assistant. The clones seemed to watch her movements carefully as she circled around the room to the backside of her desk. Their eyes raked down her body shamelessly, losing themselves in thought for a brief second.

Just as she passed by them, a subtle hint of her scent had followed right behind her. Her scent naturally flowed through the filters of Hunter's helmet and invaded his senses. He closed his eyes to relish the scent of fresh lavender, which was not something you would expect from a senator who lived in a heavy populated city.

"Your final appointment is at three in the afternoon," the droid beeped. He held up the data pad for her, but she waved it off.

"That's fine," Senator Rayna agreed. She stood behind her desk and went to organize a few papers.

Upon hearing her voice, Hunter's ears perked up once more. He wasn't sure why he was so enamored with her. Whether is was the softness of her voice, her mesmerizing appearance, the intoxicating scent of her perfume, or the gentle heartbeat that followed her.

"Right," Senator Rayna sighed loudly. She placed the last stack of papers to the side before finally directing her attention to the clone force. "You must be my new escort," Senator Rayna figured.

"Senator," Commander Cody interjected from the sidelines. Her eyes scanned over each clone carefully. "I'd like to introduce you to the group of clones that's been assigned to you. This is Clone Force 99."

Each of the clones proceeded to remove their helmets. They stuffed their helmets into the underside of their arm. Now, the senator was able to get a good look at them. She realized how differently they looked from your regular ordinary clones. And she was intrigued by this.

"Well, you know who I am so there is no need for introductions there." The Senator rounded the side of her desk to stand in front of the clones. "State your name for me so I know what to call you," Senator Rayna ordered.

"Uh, my name?" Wrecker asked slowly, given that she was looking directly at him.

"You all have one, don't you? All clones are given numbers; although I gathered that most clones prefer to go by names. So what is yours?"

"I'm CT-9902. They call me Wrecker," the clone's deep voice boomed. He smirked down at her. She offered her hand for him to shake, which he did so very carefully because he was afraid to hurt her.

After this, the senator took a single step to the right. She was going to make her way down the line of clones. And she wanted to hear each of their names.

"My designated clone number is CT-9903," Tech replied as a matter-of-factly. He adjusted his glasses. "Otherwise, as known to my brothers, as Tech," he added at the end.

The Senator offered her hand to him as well, which meant he needed to move his data pad to the other hand in order to shake it. He gave her a single nod of approval before she moved down the line again.

The clone trooper didn't say anything. He maintained a defensive stance with his arms crossed across his chest. He also wore a nasty scowl on his face. He truly did not want to be there because he had no interest in politics.

"What is your name soldier?" She questioned him. She tried to figure out what was going behind those eyes if it was anger or distain.

Though Crosshair was far from intimidated by her antics. He felt a slight nudge in his side. He finally spoke. "CT-9904."

"And do you have a name?" She wondered.

"Crosshair," he said reluctantly.

Likewise, the senator chose to say nothing. She gave a single nod understandingly before extending her hand out to him. The only problem was that he didn't take it. So she awkwardly slipped her hand back down to her side and moved on.

"I am CT-1409. I'm Echo," he replied quickly.

"Oh," Senator Rayna perked up. "Not a 99, huh?"

"No ma'am," Echo responded.

"He was originally part of the 501st and served with them for many years. He's the newest addition to this squad," Commander Cody said from the sidelines.

"Pleasure to meet you," Senator Rayna smiled up at him.

The senator went to shake his hand, only to find a scomp link located where his right hand should have been. He had even raised his arm as if wanting to shake her hand as well; he was still getting used to not having a hand.

"Oh," Senator Rayna said defeated. She felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment. She cringed at her own actions, wishing she had caught that before she made a fool of herself. "My deepest apologies," she went on.

"Not to worry," Echo reassured her. He saluted her instead with his scomp link.

Now, reaching the end of the lineup, the senator was standing face to face with the leader of the group. She looked up at him with curious eyes. But before he could introduce himself to her, she spoke up first.

"And you must be the sergeant," Senator Rayna concluded. She also took the time to study him carefully.

"CT-9901," Hunter's deep voice sounded from the back of his throat.

The senator raised her eyebrows at him as if mentally requesting for his given name. He realized that he should have also mentioned his name, but he honestly was still lost in his thoughts.

"Hunter," he corrected himself.

"Hunter," Senator Rayna repeated with a small smile on her lips. Her heart started beating just a little faster than normal, which did not go unnoticed. He quirked his eyebrow at her. "I've heard a lot about you."

Upon hearing this, Hunter felt his breath catch in the back of his throat which caused his chest to heave out a little. He straightened his back in posture. He could only wonder what kinds of things she knew about him and his squad.

"Uh senator," the droid spoke up. He glanced between the two of them, expecting them to turn to address him. But they kept their gazes on one another. "I hate to interrupt, but you're going to be late," the droid reminded her.

In response, the senator squeezed her eyes shut. She cursed under her breath. "Blast! How could I forget?"

Without hesitation, Senator Rayna went to collect the stack of papers on her desk. She quickly rifled through them to make sure none of them were missing. She proceeded to spin around on the heels of her feet, walking away from the clones to scurry around the room.

The clones didn't tear their eyes away from her retreating figure, subconsciously peering around one another to keep their gaze on her backside. The commander needed to clear his throat to gather their attention once more. They quickly redirected their focus in front of them.

The droid went to hand her a cloak to put on. She slipped it over her shoulders. She began tying it around her neck. "Where are you heading next, commander?"

"Kiros," Commander Cody stepped forward. "There are talks of surrender. We'll see how it goes. I won't bore you with the details."

"Perhaps we can discuss them at a later time," Senator Rayna agreed. "When I am not running late."

"Senator," Cody saluted her. He excused himself from her presence.

The senator grabbed the last of her things, hastily hanging the pile of papers to her droid. She took the data pad out of the droids hand to check her schedule. She was running very late. Nevertheless, the senator tossed the data pad over to Tech.

"Might be a good idea to make yourself a copy of my schedule to have on hand," Senator Rayna explained to him. He quickly typed in a code which would transfer the information to his own data pad.

"Already on it," Tech confirmed.

"Might I remind you that this is the fifth time you have been late to a meeting this month?" The droid interrupted once more. It slowly moved around the room given it's lack of flexibility.

"I have been a bit preoccupied with other things," the senator waved off. Finally, Senator Rayna stopped what she was doing to address the small squad of clones. "Now, about this meeting..." her voice trailed off.

For a brief second, the Senator of Coruscant wondered how she could explain what she does as a career or what they could expect from this type of job. She felt a wave of anxiety begin to wash over her, being rudely reminded of the threats she faced every day now.

At that moment, Hunter noticed a change in her demeanor. He could hear her heart beating faster and her breathing quickened in pace. She began finding with her fingers nervously to contain her nerves, which did not go unnoticed by the others.

"I am a member of the Loyalist Committee which is headed by The Sepreme Chancellor. The other members are senators or representatives like me. This is an informal meeting; it takes place just upstairs in one of the conference rooms," she informed them.

The senator was talking so rapidly that the others could barely keep up with her. It almost sounded and looked like she was on the verge of having an anxiety attack. And Hunter noticed this immediately.

"Senator," Hunter interjected. She kept talking though.

"In the past, I haven't needed my guards to be present in the room. Things have changed since then. Now...I would feel better -- safer, if at least two of you accompanied me in the meeting. Like I said, it's more of an info--," but she was stopped.

"Senator Rayna," Hunter spoke over her to stop her ranting. His voice wasn't loud, more firm than anything.

Slowly, Hunter took a single step forward to stand an arm's length away from her. He looked down at her with soft eyes, which she found oddly comforting. He heard her heartbeat going back to a normal pace. He sent her a small reassuring smile.

"We are going to protect you," Hunter told her. "Don't worry. You're in good hands."

The ride in the lift felt like it was lasting ages. There was a slight sense of tension in the air given that there were six people basically crammed into the space. In their defense, no lift ride is ever comfortable for an average person.

Facing the door, Senator Rayna stood in the middle with Hunter and Echo standing on either side of her. The other three clones were standing behind them with their backs nearly touching the wall of the lift. The illuminated number continued to change as the lift passed another floor, drawing closer to the final destination. Just a few floors left.

Initially, the senator kept her hands clasped together in front of herself. Her hands mindlessly fell apart, which resulted in her hands shifting back to the respective sides of her body. In the process of this happening, the senator's hand brushed against the back of the sergeant's gloved hand on accident.

Upon contact, the both of them retracted their hands in a slightly awkward fashion. The sergeant shifted on his feet slightly, taking a small step away and mumbling a soft "sorry" through his modulated helmet. Though it was hardly his fault.

In response, the senator sent him a warm smile before directing her line of attention back towards the closed door in front of her. Her hands moved back into the original position in front of herself. She could feel some heat rising to her cheeks, but she figured it would go unnoticed.

Behind them, Tech had watched this slightly awkward encounter with a cocked eyebrow. He was quick to nudge Wrecker who stood beside him.

"Huh?" Wrecker looked down at Tech.

Tech gestured to the sergeant and the senator was a subtle nod of the head in their general direction. So Wrecker took a second to analyze them with his eyes switching back and forth between the two bodies. He didn't catch their encounter so he was rather confused.

"What? What happened?" Wrecker whispered to his brother. Though it wasn't really a whisper, because everyone in the lift heard him.

"Nevermind," Tech sighed with a roll of his eyes.

Finally, the lift had come to stop on the designated floor. The two doors slid open to reveal a vast long corridor. A few people were walking through the corridor which consisted of other members of the senate or personal guards.

It didn't take long for Hunter to sense the uncertainty radiating from the senator standing beside him. He glanced down at her briefly to see the worried expression on her face. For a little encouragement, Hunter placed one hand on her lower back to urge her forward and his other hand gestured to the corridor before her. She gathered her courage with a deep breath, taking the necessary step forward.

Exiting the lift, Hunter and Echo walked on either side of Coruscant's Senator. Right behind them, Wrecker went to follow them but was abruptly stopped when Crosshair placed a single hand on his chest. The much larger clone nearly toppled over his own feet and looked towards his brother for some form of explanation.

"Wouldn't want to step on the senator's dress, would we, Wrecker?" Crosshair teased him. He gestured to the white train that flowed behind her dress and trailed along the floor.

"Oh right," Wrecker agreed while scatching the back of his neck.

The three clones waited until the others had properly exited the lift before finally following them through the corridor. They made sure to be two steps behind so they wouldn't step on the senator's dress.

And Wrecker was relieved that his brother saved him the embarrassment because he couldn't imagine the look on the senator's face if she ever found a large footprint on her white dress.

Walking through the corridor, the escort found themselves quickly becoming the center of attention. It seemed like they continued to receive stares from passing senators or workers from the capital. This was something they were commonly used to, especially back on Kamino. But for some reason, it felt different this time around.

"Sorry about the unwanted attention," Echo said from beside her.

"Hmm? I hadn't noticed," Senator Rayna replied with a small smile on her face. The clones were a little relieved to hear that the senator did not mind in the slightest.

In the short distance, a few clones were striding down the long length of the corridor with blasters in hand. The clone armor that they wore was adorned with red accents, hinting to the fact that they were members of the Coruscant Guard. They were elite clone shock troopers whose main purpose was to protect the Galactic Republic Capital. They were some of the best clones the Republic had to offer.

In passing, the Coruscant Guard took a second to stare at the passing members of Clone Force 99. They nudged each other and gestured to the group of defective clones. Their unnatural appearances always caused them to garner more attention than they would have liked.

"Hey," one of the guards called attention to his buddy standing beside him. He tipped his head to gesture to them. "Get a load of these guys."

"Those guys are clones?" Another clone remarked from the sidelines. "They sure don't look like clones."

Once the Coruscant Guard was out of their line of sight, Crosshair seemed to glance over his shoulder. He seemed to grumble something under his breath, narrowing his eyes at the batch of regs behind them.

"Remind me again why you weren't assigned members from the Coruscant Guard?" Crosshair questioned. It seemed like an obvious choice for an escort given that they were already stationed on Coruscant.

"Because my last guards were part of the Coruscant Guard," Senator Rayna replied flatly. "And they didn't do a great job."

"Fair enough," Crosshair accepted. He almost wanted to chuckle at this because he knew the guard was not nearly as skilled as everyone gave them credit for.

Upon rounding a corner, Senator Rayna halted in her tracks to stand in front of a closed door. The other members of her escort seemed to stop beside her, waiting for her next step. She activated the panel on the right side which opened the door for them. She quickly stepped inside with Hunter and Echo following behind her.

As the door closed, Wrecker and Tech went to stand on either side of the door for the extra added protection. And Crosshair began walking down to corridor to secure the perimeter. Back inside the room, Hunter and Echo took their stops by standing beside one another in the back of the room. Their eyes never leaving the senator's moving figure.

"My apologies for being late," Senator Rayna announced. She went to sit at the head of the table, finding a small stack of papers in her place meant for her. She quickly looked them over.

"No worries, my dear. I'm sure you have plenty of other things on your mind," an older voice spoke from the far side of the table. Raising her head, Senator Rayna's eyes landed on the familiar form of Chancellor Palpatine who was sitting at the head on the other side.

"Right. Now what have I missed?" Senator Rayna questioned. Her eyes shifted between the various senators within the committee, half expecting one of them to catch her up to date since she arrived so late.

On the right side of the table, Bail Organa of Alderaan and Padmé Amidala of Naboo were sitting beside one another. On the left side of the table, Mon Mothma of Chandrilla and Orn Free Taa of Ryloth had also been apart of this committee. The senators looked to each other in order to see who would speak first.

"We were just discussing the details surrounding the upcoming Gala," Senator Amidala explained.

The Senator of Coruscant proceeded to rifle through the stack of papers in front of her, attempting to find the list of things that still needed to be completed in preparation for the gala.

For a moment, Hunter's gaze seemed to drift towards the window in the large conference room. He studied the buildings across the way carefully, spotting a few unoccupied rooftops. It was the senator's voice which brought him out of his train of thoughts.

"How far out are we again?" Senator Rayna asked.

"Three months," Chancellor Palpatine said rather calmly.

"Are things going accordingly with the planning?" Senator Rayna wondered. An uncomfortable silence fell over the room, which caused the senator to look up at them with a confused expression. "What's going on? You've all been acting weird."

The other senators continued to remain silent. However, they looked at each other as if they were all thinking the same thing and were choosing to stay quiet about it. Finally, Bail Organa gathered the courage to speak for the rest of them. He spoke softly and calmly with hopes that it would help soften the blow he was about to deliver.

"We think you should take a hiatus," Bail Organa replied.

"A hiatus? From what?" Senator Rayna asked in utter confusion.

"From your job -- your position as senator of this planet," Chancellor Palpatine added. "Law low for a little bit until things die down."

"I don't need to law low. What I need to do is my job and taking a hiatus will not help me do that," Senator Rayna argued. She rose out of her seat in a furry.

"Y/n," Mon Mmtha interjected. She spoke with a calm voice. "We are worried about you and your wellbeing."

"I have a new escort. They will protect me," Rayna would not drop her argument.

"And the hiatus will only add to that protection," The Supreme Chancellor claimed. He was trying to sound optimistic about the proposition, which only seemed to anger the senator more.

"I have to present a treaty at the end of the quarter. And we vote a week later. I can't miss that," Senator Rayna tried to reason with them.

"It can be pushed back," Chancellor Palpatine suggested. He shrugged his shoulders at the notion, seemingly unfazed by the option of pushing back her speech.

"Til when?" Rayna inquired angrily.

"Indefinitely."

Upon hearing this, Senator Rayna leaned forward to press her hands against the table. She looked the chancellor dead in the eyes from across the room. She wore a stern look on her face.

"I have been working on this treaty for months, changing the littlest of details to make sure it is nothing short of perfect. I applied for the notion to be brought to the senate at the end of the quarter and it was accepted. I am going to present this," Senator Rayna said sternly.

Look back out the window, Hunter saw a small perch on one of the rooftops. He almost wondered if that was a sniper's nest; it would have been a prime location if it had been. With that in mind, Hunter's eyes trailed along the length of the sniper's path. His gaze settled on the wood table in the room. And his stomach dropped.

"E-Echo?" Hunter whispered to his comrade standing beside him.

"What?" Echo said in the quietest voice.

The sergeant was staring directly at what looked like a small nick in the middle of the wooden table. It couldn't have been more than an inch in diameter. There was a small dark circle around it. It had to have been from a blaster shot.

The senator's hands were on either side of said hole. He quickly came to realize that if the sniper had raised his weapon just a little higher, it would have gone right into the senator's head.

"I think this is where it happened," Hunter concluded. Whoever had taken the shot knew what they were doing. They fired a warning shot. At least, that seemed to be the case before they proceeded to take out the guards.

The sergeant's mind was occupied elsewhere. He hadn't been fully listening to the conversation up until now. He tuned his ears into what the chancellor had to say about this. And sure enough, Hunter's suspicious was right.

"Who says you will even be around to present your treaty?" Chancellor Palpatine wondered. "The last time you were in this room -- it did not end well. You could have been killed if your guards had not been there."

It suddenly made sense. The senator was feeling nervous about leaving her office to come here because of what happened the last time she was there. She was still feeling the affects of the incident. And whether she chose to deny it, it was affecting her mental health now.

"We cannot force you to take a hiatus, but we strongly advice it."

"Please Y/n," Senator Amidala said softly from the sidelines. "We don't want you to get hurt."

"I appreciate your concern -- truly I do," Senator Rayna began. She looked over the faces sitting around the table. "But I have to be there for my planet and for my people. You should all understand that."

"We do," Senator Organa nodded his head in agreement.

"Then let me do my job," Senator Rayna pleaded her case one final time. Her eyes shown with sympathy.

With great hesitation, the other senators looked towards one another in a form of silent communication. A few of them seemed to nod their heads gently as if to say they will allow the senator to operate as she always had been. Finally, The Supreme Chancellor reluctantly gave her his approval in the form of a short and curt nod of the head.

"Very well," Chancellor Palpatine agreed. He sent her a smile. "Continue as you were, senator."

By the end of the meeting, a majority of the members had gone their separate ways since their schedules differed. Now, it seemed like only Senator Organa, Senator Amidala, and Senator Rayna remained in the room. While the Senator of Alderaan went to speak with the newest escort, Senator Amidala went to stand beside her best friend and greeted her with a warm smile. The two young women began talking amongst themselves.

On the other side of the room, Senator Organa went to talk to Hunter and Echo. He took the time to shake both of their hands in greeting and introduced himself to them.

"You must be Clone Force 99," Bail Organa noted.

"We are two fifths of them," Echo claimed. "The others are right outside."

"I was the one to reach out to General Kenobi and Commander Cody about finding Senator Rayna a new escort. I've heard a lot of things about your squad," Senator Organa replied with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"All good things, I hope." Hunter wondered.

"You know your own reputation better than anyone. You tell me," Senator Organa stated. He quirked his eyebrow at the two clone troopers in front of him. They remained silent because he did bring up a good point.

Looking over his shoulder, Bail Organa looked towards the two senators talking to each other. His eyes softened upon seeing how the two of them interacted with each other. While they were best friends, he always thought they acted more like sisters (though they actually got along with each other). He felt a weak smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

"She's a handful, that one. Once she sets her mind on something, she won't back down easily. One of the most stubborn people I know," Bail chuckled to himself.

Neither Hunter or Echo doubted that. They had just witnessed how stubborn she could be in their meeting and how she refused to take a hiatus despite the fact that her life was on the line. However, was it stubbornness or selflessness?

For a brief moment, Hunter found himself following his line of sight until it landed on the senator. She seemed so carefree; her face was radiating with beams of happiness. Her lips turned upwards into a smile and her laugh echoed over to them.

"I won't tell you how to do your job," Bail Organa returned to their conversation. He looked between the two clones. "But can I give you a piece of advice?"

"Of course, senator." Hunter nodded his head.

"Be mindful of her. She's gone through a lot recently and she's grown more sensitive to her surroundings. She doesn't sleep most nights in fear of what may happen when she closes her eyes," Senator Organa claimed.

Slowly, Hunter's eyes drifted back to the senator standing in front of him. He saw the gentlest and kindness in his eyes. He could tell by the tone of his voice that he cared deeply for his fellow senator. But then things turned more solemn.

"She's like the daughter I never had," Bail's voice was laced with a heavy sense of sadness. "If anything should happen to her--"

"We know, senator." Hunter interjected. He placed a hand on the senator's shoulder. "We'll try our hardest to take care of her for you."

"Thank you," Bail gave a nod of appreciation.

Across the length of the room, Senator Amidala and Senator Rayna caught up with each other. They had spent some time apart. While one was traveling the galaxy, the other was strictly confined to the planet for her safety. It truly felt like eternity since they had last seen one another.

"I heard Senator Organa reached out to General Kenobi for assistance," Senator Amidala began. "Did he travel alone or--"

"He was accompanied by Commander Cody," Senator Rayna explained. The corners of her lips tugged into a mischievous all-knowing smirk. "His Padawan was not with him if that's what you're wondering," Senator Rayna added.

"I-I don't know what you're talking about," Senator Amidala scoffed awkwardly. She shook her head at her friend's ridiculous comment.

"Oh please," Senator Rayna sighed. She rolled her eyes. "You think I don't notice how you are constantly asking about him and pining over him."

"I do not!" Padmé scolded her.

"You do know that it is forbidden for the jedi to form attachments," Senator Rayna tried to talk some reason into her friend. She knew that there was some unspoken thing going on between them, but she didn't know the details of it.

"Enough about me," Padmé quickly dismissed the conversation with a wave of her hand. "What about you?"

"Me? What about me?" Y/n scoffed slightly.

"Isn't there someone you are pining over yourself?" Senator Amidala wondered. She cocked an eyebrow at her in a suggestive manner.

"No, I am not pining over someone." Senator Rayna shook her head in denial. "I'm a little bit occupied with other matters at the moment."

From across the room, Hunter's highly sensitive ears had picked up their conversation unbeknownst to them. He turned his head ever so slightly to be more in tune. He felt his heart flutter once again in his chest.

Finally, Senator Amidala and Senator Rayna went to leave the room by walking beside one another. The others made sure to follow behind them. They entered into the corridor to be met by the rest of the squad.

"Perimeter is secure," Tech relayed to his sergeant. Hunter gave a curt nod of acceptance. "The shuttle is ready for departure whenever the senator sees fit."

Now Hunter and Echo had shifted to stand beside their brothers in the corridor. The senators had directed their line of attention to view the small squad of soldiers. They certainly did not look like your regular batch of clones. Their armor didn't even match the traditional white with hinted colored accents. It was more of a dark grey color and was accompanied with hinted red accents.

Not only did each of their helmets mismatch, but so did their physical appearance. The one near the back was a literally giant, two of the others were tall and lanky, the other one looked more like a droid, and the last one had broad shoulders and a strong built. Just by looking at them, one could tell that there was something off and that they were genetically enhanced.

"Ma'am," Hunter drew the senator's attention. "Whenever you are ready."

The Senator of Coruscant nodded her head understandingly. She quickly gave a brief farewell to her fellow senators. The clones saluted the other senators as a form of respect. The senator proceeded to walk back down the long length of the corridor with her new clone escort following right behind her.

Meanwhile, Senator Organa and Senator Amidala watched their retreating figures with keen eyes. They saw how their associate interacted with this new batch of rogue clones. She didn't seem to mind or question their abnormalities. At first, Senator Rayna had been hesitant to ask for help from the jedi and was uncertain about having a clone escort. But now, things seemed to have changed her mind. And the senators wanted to know why.

CHAPTER THREE HERE

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ch4singchase · 10 months ago

Text

The Ballad of Moths | LUKE CASTELLAN

Summary: The group of demigods face Thalia's injury, should they continue their journey or look for a way to remedy the girl's condition?

Word count: 4.3K

Warnings: Mentions of blood and Injury, mention to violence, description of emotional distress and description of medical situations (treating injuries with antibiotics and bandages etc)

chapter one, chapter two, chapter three | series masterlist

chapter 03: Sometimes, People Are Just People

When I opened my eyes, I found myself in the backseat of my mom's car—an old black Impala that carried the lingering aroma of spilled coffee. The rhythmic hum of the engine and the steady motion of the vehicle hinted at our journey.

Before fully waking up, I stole a glance at the front seat, where my mother navigated the route with a map by her side. The details of our destination eluded my groggy mind, another day unfolding in the tapestry of our lives.

"Is everything okay, ma?" I asked, rubbing my eyes to dispel the remnants of sleep.

Caught off guard by my voice, my mom turned to look at me through the rearview mirror, weariness etched across her face.

"Yes, mausi," she attempted a smile, though it failed to reach her eyes. "Sorry if I woke you up; you can go back to sleep."

"No, no, I'm good," I stretched my arms, shaking off the fatigue. "I woke up on my own."

"Good to hear that," my mother nodded, redirecting her gaze to the road while stifling a yawn. "We still have a fair distance to the hotel—probably another hour or so."

Surveying the quiet highway, devoid of much traffic except for the occasional weary traveler, I suggested, "If you want, I can take over for a while, and you can rest."

My mother cast a puzzled look at me through the rearview mirror. "This isn't a parking lot."

"I know," I pressed my lips together, "But you're tired, and the road is nearly empty. I can follow the map until you feel more rested. I've been observing you drive, you know…"

Mrs. Gaumont sighed audibly, as if seeking approval from the powers above for her impending decision. Whatever doubts she harbored, she decided to proceed.

"Okay," she relented, pulling the car over to the side of the highway. "But if anything goes wrong…"

"You come back to the driver's seat, got it!" I grinned, hopping out of the car, prepared to switch places.

Mrs. Gaumont wore a frown as she settled into the backseat, where I had been. Observing me carefully, she watched as I adjusted the rearview mirror to keep an eye on her and the road behind, and positioned the map in a way that allowed me to glance at it without distraction. All the little rituals she followed before hitting the road—she noticed that I wasn't kidding when I mentioned I had been watching her.

Her smile this time was genuine, reaching her eyes. It might have hinted at the wish that someday, I could navigate life on my own. I'll never be sure, but I like to think that's what her smile meant.

"You can rest now, ma!" I called out, meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror as I merged back onto the highway. "I've got this."

And deep down, she knew I would. My mom always knew that I was capable of taking care of myself without her constant guidance. Perhaps, that's why she let go so willingly.

So peacefully.

“You’re really good at this,” Luke finally commented after a while, snapping me out of the reverie.

Glancing at the backseats through the rearview mirror, I noticed Thalia trying to stay awake by gazing out the window, while Annabeth observed my actions with keen interest—from the way I alternated my gaze between the road and the map Luke held for me or shifted gears in the car.

Swallowing hard, I met Annabeth's eyes for the umpteenth time. Unlike before, I wasn't frightened; instead, I was taken aback by her genuine interest in my presence.

But who could blame her? According to Thalia's explanations, they had been traveling together for a considerable time.

“Let me see if I understand,” I furrowed my brows, recalling everything the trio had shared with me. “You’re also connected to these Greek gods…”

“Yes,” Thalia muttered from behind, narrowing her eyes at me, mirroring the curiosity of her smaller companion.

“You're the daughter of the thunder god, one of the Big Three, and because of that, you're pursued by a plethora of monsters,” I reiterated their explanation word for word.

The three of them nodded, awaiting my next words.

“You’re the daughter of Athena…” I turned my gaze to Annabeth. I chose not to delve into the more peculiar aspects of her origins—born from an idea of her mother as a gift; the more I tried to comprehend, the stranger it sounded.

“And you,” I looked at Luke, who raised a brow at me, “You're the son of Hermes, which makes all of you like me, as I'm also the daughter of a god. Everyone inside this car is a half-blood.”

My last statement carried a hint of uncertainty.

“Or demigods,” Luke shrugged, brushing a black curl out of his eyes. “More commonly, we're called demigods.”

“Got it…” I squinted my eyes, doing my best to concentrate on the road rather than the knot forming in my head from all this information.

Once again during that journey, I caught the gaze of the boy with black curls alternating between my face and the leather wristband I wore. I couldn't discern if he was equally intrigued by my magical weapon or if he still found amusement or confusion in the fact that it took me more than a minute to transform the sword back into the wristband.

Honestly, I hoped it was the former. Yet, given the number of times he repeated the same eye movements and subtly moved his lips, it seemed to be the latter.

“Where are you from?” Thalia inquired, her voice betraying a hint of weakness that she tried to conceal.

“Hmm,” I frowned, glancing at the map again, “I'm not sure, maybe Missouri?”

“You're American?” the girl with two electric blue eyes asked, her surprise leaving me bewildered.

“As far as I know… Yes? I’m American.” Seeking an explanation for the sudden question, I looked into the eyes of the others, but each of them appeared surprised by my responses.

Here we were, children of Greek gods, fleeing from monsters that sought to harm beings like us, yet what surprised them was that I identified as American?

Noticing my confusion, Luke snorted, shaking his head.

"You have a different accent, that's all," he answered simply.

But that only deepened the crease in my forehead.

“Well, most states have different accents,” I tried to explain. Since when did I have such a strong accent?

“Yes, but we had been to most of the states,” Thalia reasoned, raising her brows. “Yours doesn’t sound like any accent from here.”

I remained silent, trying to remember if my mother had already commented on anything. When I asked her about my father for the first time, she had told me that she had met him in Missouri, so I ended up deducing that both she and I were also born in Missouri.

But if she met my father here, then I was born here. Which meant that maybe my mother wasn't American. Maybe that explained why I had never met or seen my grandparents. They might not even be here in the United States.

It also explained the many times that my mother had to show her passport to a guard or police officer in addition to her ID. There were also some curious looks that I had recently noticed every time I opened my mouth.

Did my mother have an accent? Probably, because I grew up with her presence always present, hardly talking to other people, I never found it strange. For me, it was normal.

In fact, everything in my life before, at the time, seemed normal to me.

This was just another detail at the tip of the iceberg.

"I didn't ask badly, I was just curious." Thalia commented due my silence, "Sorry"

“No, it’s alright” I shook my head, “I just hadn’t-”

Noticed. But I was interrupted before I could say that.

Thalia squeaked in pain, her face retracting into a grimace and her hand instinctively went to her leg.

“Hey, Thalia,” Luke shouted, looking back from his seat, “Stay strong, we’re almost there. Take the next turn.”

I followed his order, watching Thalia quickly, she was way paler than before. I had no idea what I could say or do to help them, so I just continued to drive.

Viola’s pale skin tainted with her own blood jumped into my mind.

“She’s having a fever,” Annabeth bit her cheeks after resting her hand on the forehead of the daughter of Zeus, “I can try to make it better but it won't bring down the fever completely.”

Annabeth retrieved a cloth and a bottle of water from her bag, carefully dampening the cloth before placing it on Thalia's forehead. The gesture was a stark reminder of the mystical and perilous world they lived in, where even a fever could have otherworldly implications.

Just as dangerous as a monster.

"My backpack in the back has some water bottles. You can offer them to Thalia, Annabeth." I suggested, looking toward the two girls in the backseats. The daughter of Athena promptly followed my instructions, but Thalia declined, her voice weak, conveying, "If it's truly an infection, you need to stay hydrated."

Luke glanced at me, surprise evident that I was offering all my water to their friend. If he had suspicions, I was aware he wouldn't be unjustified. Until now, my association with them was mainly due to being a demigod and the sole driver among them, and I was fine with it.

To reinforce or challenge his surprise, the boy with dark curls turned to me. "You don't need to do that. After the next city, it'll be ten minutes until we reach my mother's house."

His mother's house—his designated resource and medical help hub. I mentally noted that, sensing I wasn't the only one doing so.

"But I'm going to," I asserted, meeting the boy's gaze with determination.

While I didn't know them well, and it might not be wise to offer all my water without knowledge of our future path after Thalia's recovery, I knew I couldn't bear witness to someone else dying on my watch.

I wouldn't let that happen.

"And also," I took a glance at the map for confirmation, "maybe it's best if we try to stop at a pharmacy. We can get some inexpensive medicine to take care of the infection and try to prevent it from worsening or recurring soon."

"That's not a good idea," Luke shook his head, reclaiming the map to identify which nearby pharmacies gave me that nonsense ‘enlightening’. "We don't know if it would actually help, and it could delay us getting to my mother in time to get Thalia's real help."

"The pharmacy closer to us is on the way to your mother's house," I pointed out. "Some medicine could at least buy your friend some time before we get there."

“But we don’t have any money,” Annabeth interjected, unsure for whom she should side. She knew Luke for a longer time, but she was also worried about Thalia and wanted to take any chance they had to help her.

And, well… She had a point. I didn't have enough money, especially for antibiotics or antiseptics.

My eyes shifted between Luke and Annabeth, but Luke simply shook his head in refusal. Resigned, I returned my gaze to the road, sighing. There wasn't much for us to do but hope—always hope.

Luke kept his eyes on me, puffing and huffing as he pondered something to himself. Finally, he puffed one last time and retrieved a leather wallet from his pocket.

"Actually," he admitted, holding up the wallet, "we have."

I furrowed my brows, contemplating the oddity of a teenage boy carrying a leather wallet. Such accessories were typically associated with adults.

“Weren’t you against the idea?” I chose to veer away from the wallet's origin, delving into another question from my growing list. This list, I suspected, was only at its inception.

Luke avoided eye contact, placing the map back in my view. "Don't make me change my mind. I'll only agree if I'm the one at the pharmacy. You two stay with Thalia and keep an eye on her."

The unexpected response left both Annabeth and me speechless.

Luke emphasized, "Don't let anything happen to her”.

"Of course," I assured him, stealing a glance in his direction.

"Always," The little girl agreed, fiercely.

Heading towards the pharmacy pinpointed on the map marked a brief pause in our hour-long journey. Already navigating through an extended route to avoid law enforcement and bustling streets, sacrificing a bit of time seemed a worthwhile trade-off to secure additional aid for Thalia to withstand the remainder of the trip.

The pharmacy sign was discreet, sunlight still reflecting off the windows that morning. I wondered about the time—was it around 9 or 10 in the morning?

Luke directed me to park on a nearby street, concealing the car within the shadow of an alley. As I parked, Luke swiftly exited the car, sporting a less-than-pleased expression with narrow eyes and pursed lips, reminiscent of someone who had tasted something sour.

I stifled a snort, speculating if it was his ego at play. He fit the mold of Olympic heroes perfectly.

"I'll be right back," he informed us, tucking the leather wallet back into his pocket before closing the car door.

My gaze trailed after him until he reached the pharmacy entrance. Sensing my watchful eyes, Luke turned towards the car, flashing a smile. Although it was hard to confirm from our distance, the sunlight glinting off his teeth and the sparkle in his dark eyes hinted at its being a showoff move.

Sighing in dissatisfaction, instead of vocalizing my frustration or offering an obscene gesture, I unfastened my seatbelt and turned towards the back seat.

Annabeth stared at me with wide eyes, assisting her friend, who was in a cold sweat, in drinking more water.

"How many days since she was attacked?" I inquired, recognizing that for an infection to manifest, the wound couldn't have been inflicted today.

"Two days ago," Annabeth replied, swallowing nervously. "We've been pursued by Furies; they're the ones responsible for her leg injury, but we managed to escape them."

Escape, not eliminate. There was a clear implication in those words.

"Okay, so it's definitely an infection," I affirmed, a realization I had harbored before, now underscored by the urgency imposed by our limited time. "Raise her leg; we need to help with her blood circulation."

Annabeth furrowed her brows but complied with my instructions, despite Thalia's groans. "How do you know that?"

"Ah, my mother," I admitted, mindful about the way words sounded out of my mouth, "She taught me a thing or two about what to do in emergencies."

Reaching for my bag between Annabeth's feet and my seat, I positioned it under Thalia's elevated leg. "Now you can let it down; my bag will assist with improving her circulation."

The little girl nodded, taking this moment to water Thalia’s cloth again before returning it to her forehead. All we had to do was wait for Luke to return from the pharmacy.

The tension in the car lingered, and I didn’t dare to turn my back to the two girls, my eyes fixed at Thalia’s state. She was still awake, just too tired to say anything. When she noticed my eyes upon her, she gave me a short smile and a quick thumbs up.

Noticing that, Annabeth smiled at me and Thalia, gripping her friend’s hand as she whispered something to her. Slowly, my eyes drifted back to the pharmacy.

Thinking back at our little discussion, I couldn’t help but think if Luke had resented me. We have been in this car for less than forty minutes together, the longest I have been knowing them so far, it wouldn’t be great if I had already managed to have someone I wished to befriend resent me instead.

I stopped my thoughts in their tracks, befriend? I flinched at myself once I realized my own words, how long since I had the opportunity to make friends?

I knew the answer to that question.

It had been a long time since I knew people around my age that I felt click so fast, at least, on my side. A longer time since I wished I could make friends that were like me.

However, that had been the first time I was doing everything on my own, even friends. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had already screwed this over.

I sighed, biting my lips. Perhaps, it was for the best; I needed to head to Long Island once I could be sure that Thalia was alright and not at risk of dying.

Annabeth's demeanor changed once she put her eyes on me, uncertainty running through her eyes, but she locked eyes with me and began to speak.

“Look,” she started, “Don’t mind Luke, he doesn’t hate you or anything, he just… It isn’t used to it.”

My eyes widened before turning to the small figure, my thoughts were as plain as the noise in my face?

"How long have you known Luke?" I asked, attempting to avoid any uneasy silence.

"I've known them for quite a while.” Annabeth sighed, “We've been through a lot together."

That, I could figure. I was on my second day as a demigod, everything continued to feel new and surreal. As if I was trapped in my childhood dreams.

But no, that was reality, I just needed to adjust. Even if it meant that my life would be complicated from now on.

I nodded to Annabeth’s words, noticing the guarded tone in her voice. “I don’t mean to get in your way, when Thalia gets better, we can say our goodbyes”

I knew too well how it felt to be tolerated, even if most of the time it was a feeling my mind created from no evidence. But, either way, I didn’t wish to go through it again.

“What? No,” This time, Thalia was the one to exclaim, her voice low and rough. Annabeth had to move the water bottle away from her face, “Who said we don’t want you on the team?”

“You’re also a demigod, we have to stick together,” Annabeth stated, her determination slipping at every word.

I shook my head, “We met less than an hour ago.”

“Everything becomes more dangerous when you’re a demigod alone in the world,” Annabeth told me, her voice turning to a careful tone, “Luke told me that once, we can’t leave any of us behind.”

I felt a mix of surprise and gratitude. It warmed a part of me that had been cold and isolated for a long time to know that someone wanted me to stay.

They were strangers at the time, but for a bunch of strangers, I had never felt so welcome.

"Thanks," I mumbled, my voice carrying a subtle sincerity that even surprised me.

“And if you’re worried about Luke,” Annabeth shrugged, “I’m sure he likes you, he is… Protective, it’s hard for him to let people in. It's a survival instinct, I suppose."

Survival instinct. The words hung in the air, resonating with the inherent dangers of our existence. Demigods, pursued by monsters, bound by the whims of gods—we lived in a constant state of vigilance.

Luke wouldn’t be wrong for holding on to it.

“I get it," I replied, empathizing with the complexities of their reality. "It must be tough."

Annabeth nodded, her expression softening. "We all have our struggles. Luke just… carries his differently."

As our conversation reached a natural pause, the car door creaked open, revealing Luke’s silhouette.

Luke returned from the pharmacy with a small bag in hand, his expression more neutral than before. As he slid back into the car, he handed the bag to Annabeth.

"Here, this should help for now," he said, his voice carrying a mix of concern and urgency. Annabeth took the bag, and I couldn't help but notice the worry etched on her face.

"What did you get?" I asked, glancing at the bag.

"Antibiotics and some bandages," Luke replied, his gaze shifting between Annabeth and me. "It's not much, but it's all we could manage for now. Thalia needs proper medical attention, and we're not far from my mother's place. We'll get her the help she needs there."

As Annabeth carefully assessed the medications, she turned to us, "Can you give me a couple of minutes before going back on the road? I need to manage it without worrying about speed bumps."

There was a collective understanding of the gravity of the situation. Thalia's condition required more than a quick pharmacy stop, but the interim measures were necessary. Luke and I exchanged glances, both realizing the priority at hand.

"Take your time," Luke reassured Annabeth. The car fell into a temporary stillness as we awaited the next steps.

Then, with a subtle shift, Luke turned his attention back to me. His eyes held a different intensity, as if he had something important to convey.

“Everything alright?” he asked, taking the leather wallet from his pocket and storing it in the glove compartment of the car.

“Yes,” I answered, “nobody bothered us while you were out and Thalia didn’t get worse.”

“Good, good,” Luke darted his eyes to the outside before looking at me again, “How did you know about the infection or the antibiotics?”

He might as well have noticed how Thalia’s leg was resting above my bag, but he didn’t address that point.

I gulped, scratching the nape of my neck, “My mother taught me a lot of things, how to treat injuries, name of medicines, how to get money… I think she knew that I would have to survive by myself one day”

That twinkle was back to Luke’s dark eyes, his lips twisted in a way as if repressing something.

“You can ask, you know,” I tried to encourage him, “A lot of strangers and the police had already asked me before, I’m used to”

“What happened to her?” finally, Luke asked, the known curiosity waltzing in his eyes.

“A cyclops found us,” I worried my bottom lip, forcing a smile on my face as I explained, “We were shopping for resources until I lost her from sight and heard her voice from afar, I could swear it was her…”

I didn’t need to continue, Luke understood where that story ended. Perhaps, being a demigod for a longer time than me, made him understand exactly how things would run in our lives.

“You must miss her,” that wasn’t a question.

In fact, the boy's tone of voice made me believe he understood the feeling very well.

“I do,” I agreed, rubbing my eyes before tears could show up again, “A lot.”

Luke fidgeted with his fingers, nodding again, but it felt more like a gesture to himself than to me.

"I'm sorry about earlier,” he managed to spill the words out, the thing he really wanted to say since he had sat down, “I just… Your idea helped a lot, I knew your idea would actually work.”

I raised my brow at that. I was still shocked by the fact he had apologized in the first place.

“It's just…” he sighed, shaking his head, “I don't know how to explain it. I'm usually the one who gives the ideas, and in less than half an hour, this awesome person came up with a plan to help my friend. It is complicated."

The sincerity in his words caught me off guard, definitely. I hadn't expected my suggestion would have that impact on him. I almost felt bad for doing so.

A hint of vulnerability surfaced beneath the layers of his guarded demeanor.

"Wait…” I stopped for a second, thinking back to his apology, “Do you think I am awesome?"

"Of course I do," Luke furrowed his brow, “What person who has just learned that he is a demigod goes face to face with a monster without knowing how to use a sword?”

Someone who isn’t afraid of death, but mad at it—I guessed.

“A pretty stupid one,” I said instead.

He simply shook his head, almost laughing at my answer, “I think a brave one would, and you did.”

I pressed my lips into a thin line, uncertain about what to say to that. Rarely, I was shy, and at the time I was stubborn enough to admit to myself that I was, in fact, shy.

“Ahm, you’re brave too,” I stared back at him, “You know, hitting monsters with that golf club.”

“I try my best,” he shrugged, darting his eyes to the golf club that rested next to his feet, “I kinda lost my sword, so now all I have is that thing.”

"You still do fine, hero," I smiled, fastening my seatbelt.

Caught off guard, Luke mirrored my movements. "Do you think so?"

"Of course I do," I echoed his earlier sentiment, and a genuine smile tugged at his lips.

As Annabeth seamlessly reentered the road after completing her task, a warmth settled within me. The connection forged in adversity lingered, leaving a scar on my heart—a good kind of scar.

The road stretched ahead, and in the comforting hum of the car, Luke's voice cut through the air, altering the course of our shared journey.

"You're part of this team now," Luke stated, a reassuring smile playing on his lips. "We stick together, demigods looking out for each other.”

Surprise registered on my face, and I searched his eyes for any hint of insincerity. Instead, I found a genuine invitation—an offer of companionship in a world that often felt isolating.

“What do you say?" he asked a final question.

The weight of the decision hung in the air, and for the first time in a long while, the prospect of not facing the world alone felt like a genuine possibility.

Taglist: @2hiigh2cry

(if you wish to be add to the taglist, let me know in the comments!)

#percy jackson fanfiction #pjo fanfic #pjo tv show #pjo series #dionysus pjo #chiron #percy jackson #annabeth chase #grover underwood #clarisse la rue #thalia grace #luke castellan #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan x you #the ballad of moths #theballadofmoths #female original character

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