#when can i be reader when is it my turn

[lowlights]

Well shit that was just about the best thing in the whole world. OMG>

MOTHY. This is stunning. It's beautiful beyond words and so raw. It's so captivating to see how they get to know each other again- as adults, as survivors, as people still grappling with their pasts. Everything felt absolutely them and that every decision they made and word they said were true to who they were. I have many little bits that I loved, but here are a few!!

At night you lay in your bunk and wonder what life would be like if anybody gave a shit about you. Maybe you would have been with your parents when it all went down. You’d be a snarling monster but at least you wouldn’t be alone. 

Well, fuck. This had me immediately wanting to cry. My heart just ached.

Some days you wish you were with them. Others you wish they were all dead. 

I have to imagine that this would happen often, and perhaps in the same thought.

Too much of a coward to kill yourself, you wander around waiting for the cold or your hunger or a bear to do it for you. 

Oh, darling reader. I think that if she hadn't ended up in Jackson soon, this would have happened. She really felt like she was at the end of her rope.

“You remember this old son of a bitch?” Tommy asks with a chuckle when he stops at the table in a far corner.  And suddenly you’re face to face with Mr. Miller. 

Ok first of all, I could hear Tommy say this in my head and it made me giggle because it was SO HIM. Also - Mr. Miller. YES. He would still be Mr. Miller in her head. What a perfect detail.

“I hoped you were dead every day since you left me,” you say.  You can see on his face that Joel’s definitely wished the same thing. 

The cold, dark truth from them both. She needed to say it but also needed to see plainly that Joel also wished for the same. This moment of stark and painful honesty was such a turning point for them.

“Joel. I forgive you,” you tell him. 

Thank you for forgiving him. This really just made me fall apart.

“Sometimes I think I see her,” he chokes. 

I absolutely love how you integrated this into your story. What a moment.

He presses his lips into your forehead. It feels bittersweet. A kiss you longed for for twenty years came and went. 

I really love her in this story, and this moment summed it up. She didn't try to be something she wasn't, and said what she wanted to say to Joel, it felt. With this kiss also, it just made me almost proud that she was taking this moment to do what she's always wanted to do, even if it was the only time it would happen.

“It’s a dictionary,” you explain, “so you’ll quit cheating at Boggle.”

I fucking love that you went with Boggle for this scene!! I love their sweet dynamic and how Ellie was still present in their story.

He surrounds you with his massive arms and you fall asleep grateful that you don’t feel abandoned anymore.

Sobbing, brb.

“Pretty,” he says almost to himself. 

Birdee can tell you, I love nothing more than when a Pedro boy calls his girl pretty. We love making them down bad, don't we?

A safe haven in the chaos, a bit of respite at the end of long years. 

Get the fuck out of here this was SO GOOD. My heart is full and I ache for that old man. Job well done.

Unrequited (bfd! pre-outbreak!/Jackson!Joel Miller x f!reader)

Moth's Masterlist // follow @mothandpidgeon-updates and turn on notifications to stay updated with my fics!

pairing: bfd! pre-outbreak!/Jackson!Joel Miller x f!reader

rating: E 18+MDNI

summary: You arrive in Jackson 22 years after the outbreak only to be reunited with your best friend’s dad, the man that stole your heart and broke it when you were fourteen– Joel Miller.

contents: best friend's dad, age gap, outbreak night (nothing that isnt in ep 1), big angst, abandonment issues, brief suicidal ideation, daddy issues, grief, Joel guilt, unprotected p in v sex, reader doesn't know where Jakarta is, reader is not described physically but Joel picks (adult) reader up, moth never uses y/n.

wc: 9k

a/n: This has been a bitch to finish but I'm quite proud of where it ended up. It's the longest os I've written which makes me nervous nobody will want to read it but I hope you do.

Thank you a million times to @ezrasbirdie for making me finish this and betaing. Also thank you @lowlights for listening to me ramble on this! Dividers by @saradika-graphics

Old man, take a look at your life. I’m a lot like you. Neil Young

You’re waiting for Sarah on the front steps when she gets home. School ended nearly two hours ago and you’ve been sitting here a ball of nerves. The whole world seems to be uneasy this afternoon. You notice sirens, a team of fighter jets scrambling above. It's like your anxiety has spilled out of your chest and it’s taken life all around you. 

You finger the corner of your notebook. On the inside are doodles— hearts and bubble letters. Juvenile daydreams put to paper. Your first name and after it his last, testing out the sound of who you would be if only you’d been born in a different decade. Mrs. Miller. 

Sarah doesn’t look very happy to see you. It’s been two weeks since you’ve talked to her and you’ve never felt more lonely. 

Her words still ring in your ears. 

“It’s like you’re in love with my dad.”

“No I'm not!” you said, your whole body tingling with the heat of embarrassment. You’d never felt so exposed in your life. 

“Sometimes I think that’s the only reason you’re even friends with me,” she said. 

You've been ruminating on that accusation ever since. You pine for Mr. Miller the way only a fourteen year old can. It’s the kind of infatuation that makes you understand how Romeo and Juliet ended in tragedy. All-consuming, unrequited, so in love it hurts.

So maybe Sarah’s right. Your heart flutters every time Mr Miller appears in the kitchen, wearing a dark t-shirt that hugs his biceps. You try not to stare at his aquiline nose when he drives you home from Sarah’s soccer games. Sleep overs at the Miller’s house mean more opportunities to be around him, learn the little details that make him him. And there were plenty of sleep overs because your parents are always so busy fighting, they never bother to keep track of you. 

But you’ve been in agony without your friend. It’s a pain sharper and more present than the yearning you’ve felt for Mr. Miller. You’ve talked to her every day since you moved to Austin in fourth grade and since this fight, there’s been an empty space in your heart. 

“Hi.” You stand up, hoisting your backpack awkwardly over your shoulder. 

“I’m supposed to go next door,” Sarah says. 

“Can I just talk to you for a minute?” you ask. 

She sighs but opens the front door with her key and lets you follow her into the living room. 

“I’m sorry,” you say before you lose your nerve. “You’re right. I like your dad.”

It’s probably the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever owned up to. You wish you could explain to her that you know how silly it is to be in love with a full grown man, your best friend’s dad. It’s not like he’ll ever see you as anything other than a kid. 

You can’t put into words how he makes you feel. It’s not just his broad shoulders or chocolate eyes, though it’s undeniable that he’s gorgeous. He asks about school and comes to see you in the musical. Joel is an adult that actually gives a crap about you. 

You want to tell Sarah that one of the reasons you love her father so much is because of her. Because he’s such a good dad, because he raised such a cool, funny, smart daughter. That Sarah makes him better. 

It’ll take years for you to find words for all of that. So you just do your best right now. 

“I can’t help it. I wish I could,” you say. 

That’s true. And not just because your crush has made you lose your only friend. It’s exhausting to feel such a powerful longing, to want something you know you’ll never have. It’s torture. 

“But you’re my best friend. And that’s not why. I promise,” you say. 

Sarah sighs heavily, her pretty hazel eyes full of remorse. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have said that. I just get jealous sometimes.”

“I promise I won’t make you feel that way ever again. I could never like him more than you,” you tell her, sitting beside her on the couch and looking her in the eye so she knows you mean it. “He’s…old.”

You both laugh. 

“He’s so lame. This morning he said that Jakarta is in the Middle East,” she giggles. 

You don’t know where the hell Jakarta is but of course Sarah does. You throw your arms around her. You’ve missed her so damn much. The past two weeks have felt like two decades. 

“I’m sorry,” you tell her. 

“Me too.” She returns your embrace. “Do you have to go home? You can sleep over if you want. It’s my dad’s birthday but I don’t think he’s going to be home until late.”

Your heart twinges at the offer and not because it means you might see Mr. Miller at breakfast. You won’t even look at him again. Tonight is about your friend.

You end up watching some corny action movies and gorging yourselves on microwave popcorn. Everything feels right again. You don’t think about Mr. Miller. In fact, you’re grateful that his double has gone over into a late night so you don’t have to be in the same room. You’ve sworn to yourself that you’ll act normal around him but you’re not sure that sheer willpower can stop you from getting butterflies when he’s right there. 

At some point, you pass out in front of the tv, happier than you’ve been in a long time. 

Sarah nudges you awake sometime after midnight, concern all over her face. 

“Was I snoring?” you ask, groggy. 

She’s looking out the window. Helicopters fly so low overhead, the whole house rattles. It’s a wonder you slept through all of this noise— the choppers are joined by the wail of a car alarm, pops like fireworks. The TV is playing a high-pitched tone and when you peer at it, you see a test pattern on the screen. 

Dread settles in the pit of your stomach. 

“Something’s going on,” Sarah says almost to herself. 

A sudden thud against the back door makes you both jump. You swear, shaken out of your sleepy haze. 

“Mercy?” Sarah asks. 

You’ve spent enough time with Sarah to become acquainted with their neighbors The Adlers and their border collie Mercy. Mr Adler used to pay you each a dollar to walk him. Mercy’s frantically pawing at the glass. 

Sarah goes to the door and steps into the yard. You follow, unsure you want to leave the familiar safety of the house but unwilling to be alone with such an eerie feeling in the air. 

“What’re you doing out here, boy?” Sarah says, crouching down to pet the whimpering animal.  

“Where’s your dad?” you ask her. 

You hope the question doesn’t make Sarah think you’ve already forgotten your promise. Everything’s just so wrong. You’d feel a lot better with an adult around. 

“Don’t think he came home yet,” she says. You can hear the concern in her voice. “Let’s take Mercy back. The Alder’s will be home.” 

Mercy puts up a fight as Sarah pulls him across the lawn. It’s late and dark save the street lamp and a few porch lights that have been left on. You shiver despite the fact that it’s a warm southern night. 

The front door to the Adler’s house stands open and inside is black. No. Bad. You want to run back to the Miller’s house and lock the door behind you but the promise of Mr. And Mrs. Adler inside keeps you moving towards the darkened entrance. Maybe Mrs. Adler will give you some cookies while you wait for Mr. Miller. 

Sarah steps in first. The dog bucks and strains against her grip on his collar. Sarah fights to keep hold of him but Mercy’s thrashing makes him hard to pin down. He pulls free from Sarah’s grasp and darts away. 

You have half a mind to do the same but Sarah keeps going forward. She’s scared, too, her breaths shallow as she tip toes down the hall.  

“Mrs. Adler?” Sarah asks, her voice barely above a whisper. 

You reach for each other without even realizing it and you enter the kitchen holding hands. 

What you see there is beyond your wildest imaginings. There’s blood, a lot of it. Sarah’s shoe slides in the stuff and you grab her before she loses her balance. The room is cast in shadows but a street light streams through the window in the side door. Its beam falls over the form of Mr. Adler, limp on the floor. His back is against the door and a gush of dark blood sparkles in the sodium vapor. 

You’ve never seen so much blood, never seen anyone injured so brutally. It looks like he’s been attacked by some wild animal. Mercy was acting strange but the dog couldn’t do that.

“Help me,” he rasps. 

He’s speaking to you. You’re actually here. This is happening and you need to do something. 

But before you can form a coherent thought, your eyes travel deeper into the kitchen. Beside the island is more blood…and more bodies. 

As if seeing Sarah’s neighbor with his neck ripped open wasn’t enough of a horror, you’re now watching Nana hunched over Mrs. Adler’s corpse, her face buried in the younger woman’s neck. The scene before you makes no sense. Most of the time the old woman is barely conscious, hasn’t left her wheelchair in years and yet she’s on all fours before you looking feral. 

Sarah squeezes your hand so tight you’re afraid your knuckles will break. 

Nana slowly raises her face to you. Her eyes are pitch black and her mouth teems with twitching tendrils. You are staring at a living, breathing monster. 

When she leaps at you, you and Sarah bolt for the door. Your heart hammers against your ribs. Sarah makes it out first and races towards the sidewalk. 

Once you’ve gotten onto the front step, you slam the storm door shut behind you to trap whatever that thing is inside. SLAM. Nana collides with the door and it rattles violently. You hold it closed with every ounce of strength in you, listening to the creature behind it scratch and wail and willing yourself not to look through the glass to see its horrible face. Terror holds your muscles taught. You’re not sure how long you can stay like this, your sneakers skidding across the ground. 

With a roar, Uncle Tommy’s truck pulls up at that very moment and Mr. Miller hops out of the passenger seat before its even come to a full stop. He’s a fearsome sight, broad and rippling with untamed energy, his muscular arms outlined by the headlights of the car. You’ve never been more grateful for his presence. 

This nightmare is almost over. Joel’s come to save you. 

“Girls get in the car!” he bellows. His voice is raw and ragged. 

Just as you’re ready to make a run for it, The door flings out towards you, and you’re thrown aside as if you weigh nothing. You hit the driveway hard, your head connecting with concrete. 

For a moment, you can’t hear anything but the gush of blood pumping in your ears. You’re dizzy. Suffocating. There’s a warm trickle at your temple. Sarah calls your name. Your vision is blurred but you can make out the ghoulish form of the creature barreling towards her. 

“What’re we doing, Joel?” you hear Tommy ask.

There’s a thud and then quiet. 

You gasp again and again but your lungs won’t fill. 

Are you dying? Help. You need help. The monster lays lifeless at Joel’s feet and you pray that he’ll scoop you up and take you away from this. Your eyes finally come into focus to see Mr. Miller comforting Sarah, holding her face in his big palms, so fixated on her that he doesn’t notice that Mr. Adler has appeared in the doorway. 

Mr. Adler is still covered in so much blood and his gait has become twitchy as if his legs are on backwards. He moves towards them and you want to call out a warning but you’re still choking for air. Luckily he hasn’t noticed you but he soon stands between you and the Millers. 

“We’ve got to move,” Tommy says. 

“Get in the car,” Mr. Miller says to Sarah, throwing a protective arm in front of her. 

“But she’s hurt!”

She steps towards you. You’d cry her name but you’ve still got the wind knocked out of you and you’re too terrified to make a noise. Mr. Adler makes an inhuman sound as he advances, a croaking, growling gurgle. 

Mr. Miller pushes Sarah towards the truck. 

“Leave her!” he barks. “Get in the car!”

You sputter and choke as you watch Sarah, Joel, and Tommy drive away. 

You wait for a long time. 

As the truck pulls off of the curb, Mr. Adler is joined by his wife in the street, making chase. You’re finally able to draw breath and rouse your body off of the ground. You scramble back across the lawn to the Miller’s house and lock yourself inside. There’s enough adrenaline coursing through you that you’re able to push the sofa to barricade the front door. You draw all of the curtains and grab the biggest knife you can find in the kitchen. It’s ridiculous, something you’ve seen in scary movies, but you’re living in one right now. 

You hide yourself away. Sarah’s bedroom seems like the obvious place to do it. Familiar and safe. You curl yourself into a ball in the corner, clutching your knife and staring at the closed door with wild eyes. 

Sirens go through the night. Gunshots. At one point even the roar of a jet engine. 

For hours your body quivers as you try to make sense of what you’ve just witnessed. Flesh-eating mutants. Gore. Death. You keep waiting to wake up from a bad dream but you don’t. They left you. They abandoned you in a nightmare. 

No. That’s impossible. You can accept that a comatose elderly woman made supper out of her son in law but you refuse to believe that Joel would desert you. 

He’ll come back for you. Sarah will convince him. There’s always been room for you in their family. 

But as the sun begins to peek through the blinds and the noises outside fade away, you begin to lose hope. 

The muscles in your body go slack, exhausted from hours of uncontrollable shaking. Your instinct for survival and your need for sleep war with each other. Exhaustion is winning. 

You cautiously open the door to Sarah’s room. The house is still, more quiet than you’ve ever experienced. You creep into the room at the end of the hall. The olive green sheets on Joel’s bed are still messy from when he woke up here the day before. A normal morning. His birthday. 

You rest the knife on the night stand amongst the things he emptied from his pockets— coins, receipts, a stray nail. You slip into the bed and wrap yourself up. It smells like him— spicy deodorant and sweat, fresh cut lumber like the hardware store. The scent reminds you of all those times he was close, when your heart leapt. 

They’ll come back. Mr. Miller wouldn’t leave you. 

He left you to die but you just go on living.  

It takes some time before you’re brave enough to leave the Miller’s house and see what’s left of the world. Your parents are nowhere to be found. It’s safe to assume they were infected that first night. 

You’re on your own. 

A QZ is set up outside of San Antonio. They assign you to housing for separated minors. An orphanage. You never make friends, not really. Trust is too fickle.

At night you lay in your bunk and wonder what life would be like if anybody gave a shit about you. Maybe you would have been with your parents when it all went down. You’d be a snarling monster but at least you wouldn’t be alone. 

On the worst nights, when you like yourself the least, Mr. Miller’s words echo around your skull. “Leave her.” She's not worth it. Forget her. 

You don’t imagine yourself in his arms anymore. Instead you picture him and Sarah and Uncle Tommy, all happy and safe hiding out somewhere idyllic. A sweet little cabin with a stream nearby, surrounded by peaceful woods. You’ve heard some people live like that.

Some days you wish you were with them. Others you wish they were all dead. 

When you turn 18, you age out of your living situation. It couldn’t come soon enough. Things are changing and it seems like all the kids that stay in FEDRA school are being groomed to go straight into uniform. You dodged that bullet but life’s not easy. Now you’re well and truly alone, scraping by to keep food in your mouth and a roof over your head. 

It only lasts a few years, though. By the time you’re 21, there’s an emergency evacuation. Outbreaks are happening within the walls and with so many people living on top of each other, it’s only a matter of time before shit hits the fan. They send swaths of people to Dallas but word is, there’s no room for such numbers and they consider everyone from San Antonio an infection risk. 

You’ve heard enough stories to know what that means. There won’t be a warm welcome when you reach the next QZ. So you ditch the convoy and head north. 

You bounce around for years, sometimes with others, a lot of time solo. Doing what you have to. It’s not a life, just survival. 

By the time you reach the wilds of Wyoming, you’ve had enough. You break off from the group you’re traveling with. You leave them this time, just decide to walk into the forest and let the earth swallow you up. You’re exhausted, sick of hanging on by a thread. Too much of a coward to kill yourself, you wander around waiting for the cold or your hunger or a bear to do it for you. 

They find you. Some scouts that look mean and tough take pity on you and offer you a place with them in a commune where things are half normal. 

It’s the first time being alone has worked to your advantage.  

Jackson is a strange place. It has walls like the QZ but it’s quaint. There’s laughter and evergreen wreaths, happy children that build snowmen in the center of town. Some of these kids have no idea how fucked up the world has become. All they know is this charming little haven. 

You spend the first few days in the infirmary, getting patched up, regaining your strength. You feel like an animal compared to the people in your new community. It’s hard to accept that they’re willing to help you, no strings attached. 

Eventually you’re well enough to have your own place. They set you up with a little apartment over one of the stores in town. You’re invited to take your meals in the dining hall. 

It takes you back to those first days at your new middle school after you came to Austin. Unfortunately, this time Sarah’s not there to offer you a seat at her lunch table. 

You keep to yourself, overwhelmed by all of the strange new faces. Head down, you eat your breakfast. It’s the best food you’ve had in years. As your belly fills, you start to relax and try to get used to the idea of this being home. 

Then you hear a familiar voice say your name. You wonder if you’re hallucinating when you see him standing in front of you. 

He’s gained a few decades but he looks good. His hair is nearly shoulder length and there’s a mustache on his upper lip but that’s him alright. 

“Uncle Tommy?” you manage. 

“That really you?” he asks. 

Tommy puts a gentle hand on your shoulder. His smile wrinkles the corners of his eyes. You nod and you’re smiling too.  

You expect to be upset. Tommy was there when you were abandoned after all. But you’re flooded with relief and a small flame of hope. 

“Shit. What’re the chances?” he asks, studying your face. “C’mere.”

He pulls you through the lines of tables. Your head spins with questions. How did he end up in Wyoming of all places? How long has he been here? Did you actually die out there only to be sent to this strange afterlife? 

“You remember this old son of a bitch?” Tommy asks with a chuckle when he stops at the table in a far corner. 

And suddenly you’re face to face with Mr. Miller. 

He’s old. Grey hairs run through his stubble and curl from his temple. There are deep lines in his face. He’s still good looking despite how weathered his features have become, still broad, still with that wonderful silhouette.

It’s funny. In your mind’s eye, you’ve never imagined Joel aging. He stayed the same while you grew up. 

He looks at you for a long moment and then his thick bottom lip falls agape. His eyes glitter and his dimple appears as he recognizes the woman that you’ve become. 

“Kiddo,” he whispers as he stands up. 

He pulls you into a hug and his wide palm smooths down your back. He still smells just how you remember and without warning you’re sobbing into the front of his flannel. 

You spent hours upon hours imagining what you might say if you ever saw him again. Sometimes it was a speech biting with venom, others a confession, a question. Now, though, your mind is blank, overwhelmed that fate has brought you back together. A testament to your survival. 

“It’s alright, babygirl. You’re okay,” he says into your hair. Words you needed to hear all those years ago. 

You stay like this for a long time, surrounded by him. He holds you the way you wished he had as you cried into his pillow in that empty house. Eventually you pull yourself together with a shaking breath. 

“Where’s Sarah?” you ask, casting your eyes around the crowd in the mess hall. 

There’s a girl sitting beside Joel, her curly hair pulled back into a ponytail, watching this scene unfold. Everyone else is polite enough to pretend you’re not bawling in the middle of lunch. Can’t be the first time it’s happened. 

At your question, Tommy goes stone faced. The muscle in Joel’s jaw ticks. 

You shake your head in disbelief. “Infected?” you squeak out. 

“It wasn’t like that,” Joel chokes. 

“She didn’t make it through that first night,” Tommy says. 

It’s a punch in the gut, the air’s knocked out of your chest all over again. While it had crushed you to be abandoned, part of you understood. Joel had to choose and he picked his daughter. Even if he’d been in love with you the way you used to dream about, he always would have chosen Sarah. You couldn’t hold that against him, no matter how much it hurt. There just wasn’t anyone in the world that would have saved you. 

But knowing that he failed her, that he failed you both, makes you sick. All those years of bitterness come flooding back to you and your tears turn hot and furious. 

“You let her die?” you demand. “You told her to leave me behind and you didn’t even save her?” You push Joel, your hands against the wet spots you left on his shirt. It’s ineffectual. He barely moves against your pathetic shove but his face crumples. You know he hates himself as much as you do in that moment but that’s not enough. You hit him as hard as you can and he does nothing to defend himself. 

“Hey, hey,” Tommy says, trying a hand on your shoulder. 

“You should’ve saved her,” you bark. 

Heads have turned now as Tommy holds you back. 

“I hoped you were dead every day since you left me,” you say. 

You can see on his face that Joel’s definitely wished the same thing. 

You go on berating him, your tears mixing with spit as you snarl and shout, until Tommy’s able to wrestle you out of the dining hall. 

The summer comes. After a long, cold winter, everyone in Jackson welcomes the change of seasons with open arms. Everyone but Joel. 

Ellie was a salve for the deep wounds on his heart. They’ll never fully heal but at least they stopped overwhelming him for some time. Since your dramatic reunion, though, those scars have been torn open once more. Especially today. 

It’s warm and there’s barely a cloud in the sky. The July weather is mild compared to summers in Texas. Fresh air blows in through the open windows of the house, beckoning Joel outside but he has no desire to be in the sunshine. 

“You okay?” Ellie asks. 

She’s just come down the stairs. It’s early and Joel’s already at the kitchen table. Didn’t sleep much. 

He and Ellie have been together long enough that she understands the wordless shifts in his moods. They’ve gotten worse since you arrived in Jackson. He does his work and patrols, sometimes he nurses a whiskey alone at the bar. The rest of the time he keeps to himself. He’s sliding back towards the man she met back in Boston. Joel’s rebuilt the walls that surrounded him, brick by brick since that afternoon in the dining hall. 

“I was going to meet Dina at the mess. Want to come? Or I could stick around?” she offers. 

It’s going to be one of those dark days, the kind that makes him question why he’s been hanging on for so long, and Ellie knows it. She’s giving him a lifeline, offering to be with him so he doesn’t have to ask. He should accept it, but he doesn’t want to waste his energy putting on a brave face for her when he feels so broken. 

“That’s alright, Ellie. Go on,” he says. 

She doesn’t push him. She never does. She just gives a sympathetic smile before she slips out. 

Once seems gone, his heart begins to ache. 

Sometime later, there’s a knock at the door. The last person he expects to see on the porch is you. You look a little nervous, like if he’d taken longer to come to the door you might’ve bolted. 

He hasn’t spoken to you since that day that you came back into his life but the words you said play relentlessly on loop in his mind. He should have made amends by now. You were his daughter’s best friend and of all the places at the end of the world, you’ve ended up in the same town. He passes by the old pharmacy you live above just about every day, thinks about seeing if you’re in so you can have a conversation. He even knows what he’d say, but he can’t work up the courage. There aren’t any words that can make right what he did to you. 

The guilt metastasized deep in his gut. His failure compounded. 

So he doesn’t blame you for keeping your distance, avoiding him when your paths cross. He lets you be angry with him, as he deserves. 

“Want some company?” you ask. 

He recognizes the look on your face and it dawns on him that he might not be the only person struggling today. He steps aside to let you in. 

Joel sets a cup of tea down in front of you. It’s not the real thing. Dried herbs from the garden Maria keeps. You’ve taken a seat across from him at the table, glancing around the kitchen so you don’t have to look at him. 

“Surprised you remember,” he says. 

“My best friend’s birthday?”

He shrugs as he pulls up a chair across from you. “Was a long time ago.”

“I think you underestimate the power of female friendships.” 

You wear a soft smile that makes Joel’s heart ache a little harder. He takes a good look at you, seeing you up close for the first time. There are hints of the girl he knew back in Austin but she’s buried under years of hard living. 

You’re the same age Sarah would have been today. The same age he was when he lost everything. 

You sigh and scratch awkwardly at your neck. 

“Listen, I’m sorry about…all that shit I said. It’s…” you trail off and he’s sure you’re still mad at him, deep down. 

“I reckon I’m the one that owes an apology. I shouldn’t’ve left you back there. Sarah begged me not to,” he admits. “I was trying to keep her safe. But I fucked that up, too.” 

“That’s not true. I was just angry,” you tell him. 

“I was always so pissed at your parents for not caring enough about you. Turns out I was just as bad,” he says. 

He hadn’t given any thought to the choice he made all those years ago. His priority was his family and he had no room for the rest of humanity. Joel didn’t realize until he saw your face again just how selfish that had made him. The past months he’s been haunted by the thought of it, a young thing all alone in the chaos. If Sarah’s watching over him, which sometimes he hopes she is, she’d be ashamed. 

“I’ve had a lot of time to think since I got here and…I don’t blame you. I’m not your kid. It just—“ You laugh without humor. “God, it’s so stupid but I had a huge crush on you.”

Joel’s eyebrows shoot up. You fiddle with the chipped handle on your mug.

“I know. I was just a kid but I was head over heels for you,” you say.

Joel can feel himself blushing. It’s a sweet thought. He’s honored in a strange way. He remembers the gravity of Sarah’s crushes– Leonardo DiCaprio, Usher, some guy with a lip ring from one of those punk bands she listened to.

“So when you left me…I was a little heart broken.”

“Shit,” Joel says. 

“I didn’t say that to make you feel bad. I just wanted you to know why I was so hurt,” you tell him, leaning forward in your seat. “You didn’t know any of that. And it’s not fair to hang that over your head. It wasn’t your job to rescue me.”

“Course it was,” Joel responds. “You were just a kid. I let you down.”

You look at him gratefully and a tear slips down your cheek. It takes a minute for you to fully take that in and it seems like something you’ve needed to hear. 

“Joel. I forgive you,” you tell him. 

A thick knot forms in his throat. 

There’s a litany of names in his mind, so many people he’s failed. Henry and Sam. Tess. Sarah. He’s never expected to be absolved of any of his sins, he doesn't deserve to be forgiven. But those three words make him feel lighter, like he can stop beating himself up. At least for a moment. 

He tucks his chin into his chest trying to keep his own tears from spilling over. Your hand slips over his, a gentle, reassuring touch. 

The two of you stay like that for a little while, crying together, then becoming reacquainted. You talk for a long time. There’s a lot of catching up to do but the conversation keeps coming back to Sarah. It’s a gift to share memories of her, to hear stories that he’s never heard. You knew Sarah better than anyone in the world— her favorite store in the mall, what she wanted for her birthday. Her hopes, her dreams, her fears. No fourteen year old goes to her daddy with her problems. You were there for her, though. Right up until the end. 

“I, um, you should have this,” you say. “Well, it’s yours.”

You and Joel have migrated to the couch in the living room as the afternoon has crept on. You reach into your back pocket, a little reluctant, and pull something out. 

It’s a photograph, dog eared and creased from years of being carried with you. Joel recognizes the picture— you and him and Sarah, all three of you donning life jackets, smiling as you float on a calm river. He and Tommy took Sarah kayaking and she asked if you could tag along. It was a wonderful day. Blue, cloudless sky. 

The last time he saw the photo it was hanging under a magnet on the refrigerator in the kitchen. 

“How’d…”

“I stayed in your house for a while. After. Just kind of hoping you might come back. I took that when I left. And I ate all your food,” you say with a little chuckle. You wipe some snot from your nose. “I guess…well, you probably don’t have a lot of pictures of her.”

You’re right. There was an outdated school photograph in his wallet when they left that night and it had been too painful to look at for years. It still stings a little but it feels easier to share with someone, someone that knew her so well. 

“You sure?” he asks. 

You nod. “I know where to find it.”

He props the picture up on the coffee table so you can both look at it and meditate on that day when everything felt so perfect. 

“Remember we made you play “Crazy in Love” on on repeat the whole way there?” you ask. 

“I still get that goddamn song stuck in my head,” he complains. 

You laugh and rest your head on his shoulder. The familiar gesture cracks something open inside of him. He’s taken back to his favorite nights when he’d watch a movie with Sarah and she’d cuddle against him. Somehow the memory doesn’t hurt as much as he anticipates. 

You sit like that, looking at the picture, both quiet, your smiles fading as you remember what’s happened since. 

“Sometimes I think I see her,” he chokes. 

He’s never told anyone that. But it seems like you might understand, He trusts you won’t meet his admission with a pitying smile. 

“How’s she look?” you ask. 

He can’t help but chuckle. He nods. 

You don’t say anything, you just burrow your head a little deeper into him. Joel puts a gentle kiss in your hair. 

You’re a fixture in the Miller house once again, part of the family. You babysit for Maria and tell her embarrassing stories about Tommy. You and Ellie tease Joel relentlessly. You sit with him in the evenings, sometimes singing along when he pulls out his guitar, other nights neither of you speak at all.

Slowly, you find yourself falling in love with him all over again. It’s not the same infatuation you harbored when you were young. You’re both different people. And you hardly knew him back then. Not really. What did a fourteen year old know about grown men?

The two of you fall into an easy rhythm. After being alone for such a long time, it’s magical to have a companion. Joel seems grateful for the company, too. He’s there whenever you turn around, like a promise. He’s not leaving you behind even if you’re just going from the stables to the library. 

Neither of you acknowledge it, this easy rapport. A light squeeze on your shoulder, holding your hand when you get misty eyed. He probably doesn’t mean anything by it but you’re pretty sure you can’t live without it. You bask in the sweetness of these exchanges, trying not to think too hard about the fact that you used to spend Saturday nights giggling on his daughter’s bedroom floor. 

He’s still Mr. Miller, after all. 

Autumn comes and you’re inseparable. You realize just how much when you convince him to attend the children’s choir performance in town. You expect him to demure. Watching kids being kids must be painful. But he’s by your side in the dining hall as the little ones sing “Clementine” and “Oh Susanna”. 

He puts his arm around your shoulder so you can lean into him. It might just be a paternal gesture, maybe you’re still a little girl in his eyes. That’s ok with you if he keeps absentmindedly massaging your upper arm. You can’t remember the last time you felt so safe, so loved. 

Afterwards, he walks you home and you’re in such a good mood, you start singing to yourself.

“Johnny Cash,” he says approvingly. 

You laugh to yourself. “You know, I started listening to him ‘cause of you. You had his CD in your truck,” you admit.  

You wanted to like all of the things Joel liked. He would think you were so interesting and grown up because you knew all the words to “Riders in the Sky.”

“Least I was a good influence,” Joel says, shaking his head, his cheeks turning pink. 

He’s so handsome when he blushes, you feel a little giddy when you come to stop in front of the old pharmacy. 

“G’night, darlin’,” he says, giving your hand one last squeeze. 

He waits. He’ll stand here and watch you get inside like he always does. He doesn’t need to— it’s not like people even lock their doors in Jackson— but he’s insisted on it so fervently that you stopped arguing. 

You shouldn’t do it. It’s so silly. But there’s a softness in his eyes and his gentle touch still tingles on your arm. His salt and pepper hair is caught in the string lights that line the empty street. You can’t help yourself.  

You kiss him, smoothing your palms up the front of his flannel until you sink your fingers into the curls at the base of his neck. The tip of his nose is cold from the chill in the evening air but his lips are warm and sweet. 

You haven’t had a whole lot of experience kissing. You’d just started doing it when the outbreak happened and things haven’t been very romantic since. This is one of the better ones. Relatively chaste but unbearably tender. Certainly better than you could have imagined all those years ago. 

It lasts longer than you expect. Joel kisses you back. He rests his hand on your waist and the way it covers so much of your back makes you swoon. Soon, though, he’s pulling away, cradling your cheek. 

“We shouldn’t do that,” he says.

“I know,” you sigh. You’re reluctant to break away, savoring the brush of his nose against yours. 

It’s all wrong but you’re not ashamed for trying it. 

“Just once. I’ve always wanted to,” you say. 

He presses his lips into your forehead. It feels bittersweet. A kiss you longed for for twenty years came and went. 

You wave to him from the door before you go in for the night. 

That kiss confirms Joel’s fears.

He’s spent months convincing himself that this is completely platonic. He would never have feelings for his daughter’s best friend. Even if he always wants to be around you.   

He’s looking after you, comforting you, protecting you. He’s making up for those years that he made you suffer through. You forgave him but he’ll never stop atoning. 

And then you kissed him. 

Suddenly, he’s buried in an avalanche of thoughts he’s been disavowing. 

You’re pretty and soft. You're strong and you ease the pain of his memories. You make him feel a little less alone. 

The warmth of your lips, your body pressed to his. He was ready to lose himself in you. 

That’s when he heard it. 

It was Sarah’s voice chiding him with all the reasons why this is wrong. 

She’s been in his head, his inner critic since the day she died, pointing out every failure and weakness in him. He could picture her looking down on him with disgust. She’s the same age as your daughter. She was just a kid when you met her. She deserves better than you. 

He’s making the same mistake as before, letting his instinct get the better of him. The responsible part of him takes control. He can’t give you any more reasons to try and kiss him again. 

If Joel is good at one thing it’s denying himself. 

He backs off and you can sense it, he knows you do. Sometimes he catches you looking at him and there’s a longing in your eye. It fucking kills him but it’s just another reason why he’s no good for you. 

Despite whatever it does to you, you haven’t got anybody else in Jackson so you stick around. He can only imagine how much it hurts you. 

“Why did I go north?” you complain when Joel opens the front door. You’re holding a scarf tight around your neck, shivering against the cold. The sky is a dismal shade of gray, snowfall on the horizon. 

Joel gets you in the house with a chuckle. He starts a fire, a luxury you little apartment doesn’t afford. You shiver in front of the hearth. 

“Traded for this,” you say, pulling a thick book out of your coat and tossing it onto the coffee table. 

“Oh good. I was looking for some light reading material,” Ellie quips from her spot on the couch.  

“It’s a dictionary,” you explain, “so you’ll quit cheating at Boggle.”

“You're in trouble now,” Joel laughs. 

“I don’t cheat. I just know more words than you guys,” she says. 

“Dentment is not a word,” you reply. 

“Neither is thoard,” Joel says. 

“Sure it is. I’m about to thoard the two of you in this game,” she says.

This should be enough. A winter day by the fire. The simple joy of a board game. Laughter. This is practically a normal life. 

But each time Joel’s eyes fall on you, there’s a pang in his chest. You’re just close enough that he could reach out and touch you but he won’t. He can’t.  

When the sun sets, Ellie retreats to her room. Eventually, you fall asleep on the couch, wrapped up in a quilt as the fire dies down. You look even younger, curled up serenely. There’s no worry on your brow. Usually your face is in a perpetual frown even when you’re not in a mood.   

The snow is already knee deep with no signs of slowing. There’s no sense in sending you back out there. 

Joel scoops you up as gently as he can. He feels his age, back straining, but he doesn’t mind. He enjoys how you nestle your face into his chest as he mounts the stairs, warm and snug in his arms. A smile pulls at his lips. 

He sets you down carefully on his bed and you whimper groggily at the loss of his touch. Your eyes crack open. 

“Snowing pretty bad. Sleep here. I’ll be on the couch,” he whispers. 

“Stay,” you murmur. 

He hesitates. Carrying you to bed was already crossing a line. He’s not worried about keeping his hands to himself. He’s been able to control himself for this long. If he lays down next to you, feeling you warming his sheets, smelling the peppermint soap on your skin, he’ll be so far gone for you, there’ll be no coming back. 

But denying you this simple request feels cruel. He imagines you waking up here all alone. You’re half asleep but what if you remember asking him to remain only to be abandoned again?  

He gets into bed, still fully clothed and careful to stay on his side. His jaw is clenched so tightly his teeth hurt. You give a satisfied hum and sink back into sleep, your body melting into the mattress. 

Joel watches you for a moment, fights the urge to put a kiss on your forehead. He crosses his arms and stares at the ceiling, beginning to tangle with the web of emotions that accompany you. Once it gets too confusing, he drifts off as well. 

When you reach out for him in your sleep, he can’t deny you. Joel tries his hardest to pretend it doesn’t feel good, that this isn’t something he’s wanted to do. So he imagines the nightmares that come to you. Reminds himself that you wouldn’t have seen any of that shit if he hadn’t left you for dead. Now that you're in his arms, he’ll make sure nothing touches you ever again. The least he can do is hold you and make sure it goes no further. 

You both find reasons that you should stay the night. Neither of you acknowledge it. Joel just hands you one of his t-shirts and busies himself as you slip out of your clothes and get under the covers. It’s all rather innocent, Joel does more than rub your back even though you sometimes feel his morning wood through his sweatpants. If he wants you, he doesn’t let himself have you. And he could. 

It’s fine with you if cuddling is all this is. You don’t try to do anything more than that, unwilling to upset the unspoken agreement between you. You can be satisfied with a broad, firm chest to rest your back against. Sleep is better beside him, his heart beats guiding your own. The weight of his arm draped across you makes your body feel deliciously heavy.  

After a while, though, it happens. 

Joel’s having a nightmare. His murmurs and restless movements wake you. His mouth twitches and his brow is creased. You smooth circles into his shoulder until his eyes open. Even in the darkness you can see the despair in them. 

He blinks, coming back to reality, remembering he’s not wherever his dreams took him. You brush your fingers through his hair, gazing at one another as his breaths even out. Normally, his age is obvious– the lines in his forehead, the sun spots on his cheek– yet right now he looks young. Like a boy that needs to sleep with a night light. 

You’re not sure who initiates but you find each other in the dark. At first he’s not kissing you at all, his lips are just brushing your cheek or your nose. It’s sweet and gentle. You try to hold in a moan, worried that any noise might shatter this moment. 

The kisses are timid as if you’re both waiting for someone to stop this. Joel lets out a shuddering breath against you. This is a bad idea, you’re both thinking it. After you kissed him the last time, he held you at arms length. When this blows up, you’ll lose him entirely. But you need to be closer to him. 

You open your mouth to him, tangle your legs between his. His hand slides under your shirt, roaming your bare skin. You thought that snuggling under the blanket was enough but now you realize just how hungry you’ve been to be touched. Really touched. He needs it too. Joel leans into your hand on his jaw with a whimper. 

You don’t open your eyes. You might be the one dreaming and you don’t want to wake up. 

It’s quiet, just the sound of hot breaths and desperate kisses, the swish of the sheets as you shift your hips to meet his. You keep yourself from rocking against him, try to enjoy the feeling of him without crossing yet another line, but you’re aching. His shirt has ridden up so you feel the softness of his middle, the light hairs on his chest. Your fingers intertwine with his as his mouth trails down the column of your neck and. Joel buries his face there. 

“I’m sorry,” he breathes. 

You’re not sure what he’s apologizing for. This? Then? The years in between? None of it matters because you want to live in this moment forever. 

You shush him, pull him back to your mouth. You’re ready to lose yourself, to forget, to ignore the storm of thoughts constantly plaguing your mind. This is all you want. 

You peel off your clothing, helping him slide out of his sweatpants until there’s nothing between you. Joel’s skin is warm and soft against you and you realize you’ve never been this close to another soul. 

When Joel settles over you and you feel him throbbing between his legs, you shiver with nervous anticipation. You expect him to say something, to warn you that this is a bad idea, to promise this won’t change anything. But his brown eyes look as confused with need as you feel. There’s no room for thinking or it will crush this fragile moment like glass. 

You tilt your hips to allow him in, already slick from being so close to him. 

Slowly, he enters you, kissing you all the while. He makes a choked sound, wincing as his body stills. The noise makes you clench around him. 

Together you take a moment to get your bearings and you adjust to the fullness of him. Joel’s eyes are pressed shut, his teeth digging into his bottom lip. 

Before he begins to move, his thumb finds your clit, grazing it lightly. After years of solitude and now months being just out of reach of him, the sensation makes you gasp sharply. 

You’ve had sex a handful of times. They had been more about fulfilling a self destructive urge than a desire for pleasure. It’s never been like this. 

You start to lose sense of everything but the feelings of your body. Your core tenses and your breaths go short and you start to forget that it’s Joel whose hips are stuttering into you. It’s as if this euphoria can erase some of those awful memories. 

Soon you’re shattering beneath him, a crescendo that has you tugging on his hair and gasping for air. Joel grunts into your ear. He follows after you, hissing as he pulls out of you. He pulses into his hand, his release dripping from his fist onto your sweat damp skin. Then he collapses onto you. You run your fingers through his long curls and he kisses your forehead. There might be tears in your eyes– maybe his too. It’s too dark to be sure– but when his breath evens out, it still sounds ragged against you.

Eventually he gets out of bed and leaves the room and, in that moment, you can feel everything hanging over your head again– what you’ve just done, the horrors of the world. Perhaps even more intense than before. 

But Joel returns quickly. He flicks on the light on his bed side table and cleans you with a damp rag. His touch is gentle, reverent, and his dark eyes travel over your naked skin to yours. There’s a question in them, guilt, but you have no regrets. You smooth your hand out on the sheets beside you and he lays back on his pillow. He surrounds you with his massive arms and you fall asleep grateful that you don’t feel abandoned anymore.

You worry that it was just a one time thing, try to accept that it might never happen again. But the next time you share Joel’s bed, he’s pulling you into him, pressing kisses into your shoulder, nuzzling at the spot behind your ear. His hard length prods at the small of your back. 

It starts like that every time. Intimate, sensual, quiet. It’s never tearing his clothes off or pushing you up against a wall. You just stay close, breath each other in, trail fingertips across skin. Neither of you ever speak above a whisper.  

Joel barely talks at all except to ask, “That too much?” and “Feel good?” 

You live for the moments when his hand skates over your hip, his dark eyes soft. 

“Pretty,” he says almost to himself. 

He’s such a beautiful man. Your fingers trace the smooth plane of his chest, dusted lightly with hair and a few stray freckles. Age has only improved him. The greys in his stubble catch the glow from the lamp on the nightstand. You study him with the same attention to detail you used in your youth. The cleft in his bottom lip, the dimples on his lower back, the scar on his temple. You’ve memorized it all. 

Joel breaks open for you. He lets you see him vulnerable. He’ll fuck you with thrusts that shake loose deep emotions. Just as quickly, he’ll hold you together when it feels like you’re falling apart. 

You lay with him after, sticky with the shared heat of your bodies but reluctant to roll away and break the connection. 

Whatever this is, you don’t speak its name. There are too many questions and conflicts that it might not withstand. It exists only for you and him. A safe haven in the chaos, a bit of respite at the end of long years. 

In his arms, you’re not his dead daughter’s best friend. He’s not the man that left you when you needed him most. You’re just two people that need to not be alone. Each time, it’s the same. The overwhelming bliss of Joel making love to you is second only to the understanding that he’s finally come back for you. 

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear from you. Comments and reblogs always appreciated.

[theostrophywife]

le coup de foudre.

pairing: regulus black x reader.

song inspiration: my love mine all mine by mitski.

author's note: this was a result of me binging dune and call me by your name. whoever fancasted timothee chalamet as regulus deserves a forehead kith cause look at him. he's so boyfriend coded it makes me sick.

Regulus Black did not believe in love at first sight. 

It was a foolish notion. One that contradicted his pragmatic beliefs. At his core, Regulus was a realist. In his world, love was not a luxury one could afford. Regulus was raised with the expectation to marry according to class, wealth, and most importantly, blood status. The noble and most ancient house of Black only took the purest of the pure. 

After all, toujours pur, always pure, has been his family’s motto for centuries. There has never been any doubt in his mind that he’d marry another member of the sacred twenty eight. It wasn’t a matter of if, only a question of when. 

During his sixth year, his mother made her intentions very clear. Walburga Black was adamant that he begin his search for a suitable bride. Leave it to his mother to compose a list of ladies she deemed suitable to become the future Mrs. Black. Regulus was to adhere to the carefully curated roster. They were names that he’d seen a million times before. Greengrass, Prewett, Rosier. Girls he’d grown up with and inadvertently had absolutely no interest in. 

Still, his mother was insistent so Regulus complied. He took the girls out on dates. The formula was rather simple: dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town followed by a walk around the city square in which he offered to buy his date a dessert like the proper gentleman his mother raised him to be. Despite the fact that Regulus had the entire process down to a science, the dates were always unsatisfactory. 

He was polite, of course. Opened the door, pulled out their chair, asked the appropriate level of questions to get to know his counterpart, but by the time the appetizers arrived, Regulus was on the verge of stabbing himself with the butter knife just to rouse himself from boredom. 

Regulus placed no blame on the girls. They were only doing what their families had raised them to do. Sit pretty, chew gracefully, agree with his opinions. All while wearing breakneck heels and a smile to boot. It was all terribly fucked up, but this was the world they lived in. 

The more he went on these dates, the more he realized that he didn’t want some pretty, docile wife. What he truly needed was someone who was willing to challenge him, to call him out on his bullshit, to argue with him when his own stubbornness prevented him from seeing reason. Regulus came to the horrible, earth-shattering realization that he probably wouldn’t find a woman like that on his mother’s list. 

As he walked back from another mind numbing date, Regulus grappled with this newfound dilemma. He didn’t want to endure another one of these disastrous dates. He didn’t want to sit through an entire meal making small talk. He definitely didn’t want to disappoint another girl by not kissing them at the end of the night. 

It wasn’t like any of them liked him anyways. Though they loved the idea of Regulus Black, he was quite certain that they wouldn’t afford the same affections to Reggie—the real and true version of himself. The one that Sirius often said Regulus kept in a neatly locked cage.

He wished he could be more like his brother. Sirius had always been the brave one. It was that infamous Gryffindor boldness that prompted his older brother to rebel against his family’s expectations. Instead of heeding to their mother’s ridiculous list, Sirius chose to date Remus in open defiance to Walburga’s orders. It resulted in him getting kicked out of 12 Grimmauld Place and burned off the family portrait, but Sirius didn’t seem to mind one bit.  

In a lot of ways, Regulus envied his brother. Sirius had the guts to stand up for himself. He wasn’t burdened by the crippling pressure of pleasing their mother. In all honesty, Reggie wondered if such a thing was even achievable. As he brooded, Regulus found himself on the shores of the Black Lake. His body had taken him here on autopilot. It was his only place of refuge in the castle. 

Regulus paced the rickety wooden dock. His mind was working so fast, so many thoughts spinning in his head, that it felt like he might work himself up to a fit. This has always been his problem. Sirius often said that he lived in his head too much. He frowned, trying and failing to get ahold of himself. For once, he wished he could just shut his brain off entirely.

Just then, Regulus felt a drop of water hit his head. He looked up and found dark, gray clouds hovering over the horizon. The stormcloud broke open and unleashed torrential rain all around him. Fucking fantastic. The world truly couldn’t give him a bloody break, could it? 

With a sigh, Regulus began making his way back. The ground was sodden underneath his feet, his boots sinking into the sand and dragging behind his black coat. The waves lapped violently across the shore as the wind lashed against the murky waters. Regulus was almost at the edge of the beach when he spotted you. 

A flash of movement from the corner of his eye. Regulus stopped dead in his tracks. There, at the mouth of the Black Lake, in the middle of the pouring rain, stood a girl with the most breathtaking smile he had ever seen. 

Regulus was fairly certain that you had History of Magic together. He sat behind you in class, passed by you in the halls, even reached for the same book in the forbidden section of the library once, but Reggie had never once seen that smile. The gravity of it threatened to knock the very breath from his lungs. 

There was something carefree about you. The way you spread your arms, tilted your head back, and laughed in the midst of the rain and thunder. Almost like you were welcoming the storm. 

It was only when your eyes locked that Regulus realized he was staring. You cocked your head at him, trailing your gaze from the curls plastered against his cheek to the nice button down and freshly pressed trousers that were now soaked from the rain, down to the shiny leather boots that were now digging into the sand. You seemed amused at the sight of him.

Ever the perfect gentleman, Regulus snapped out of his daze and jogged over to you. Without hesitation, he raised his coat over your head to shield you from the rain even though you were already both drenched. 

“What are you doing out in the rain?” Regulus asked, his voice full of genuine concern. “You’ll catch a cold.” 

You stepped out of the refuge of his expensive looking coat and held your hand out, catching droplets in your palm. “I don’t mind. I just…I just needed to feel the rain on my skin, that’s all.”

You supposed it must’ve seemed strange to him, but the rain always made you feel better. Lately, life had been just a little too overwhelming. There was so much pressure to do well in classes, to hang out with friends while balancing your clubs and sports, as well as making time to write back to your parents. When it all became a bit too much, you tended to come to the Black Lake for some sort of refuge. The rain was just an added bonus. 

If Regulus found your behavior bizarre, he didn’t say. Instead, he just smiled softly. “Well, you got your wish. It’s soaked out here.” 

“I know,” you responded with an enthusiastic nod. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” 

“Standing out in the pouring rain? On a beach where lightning can strike me down at any second? Yes, it’s absolutely splendid.”

Your mouth quirked in amusement. “No one’s telling you to stay out here.” You nodded towards the castle. “You’re more than welcome to take your brooding inside where it’s warm and dry. Not to mention, free of the dangers of lightning strikes, which are extremely rare by the way.” 

“With my luck, I might be the poor one in a million git who gets torched while getting insulted by a pretty girl.” 

“Did I insult you?’ you quipped back. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“You accused me of brooding.” 

“I didn’t accuse, I stated. Even the Wizengamot would have to rule that you were, in fact, brooding.” 

Regulus raised a brow. “What happened to innocent before proven guilty?” 

“Unfortunately, the evidence is overwhelming and the verdict is set. You, Regulus Black, have been sentenced for glaring at the Black Lake so menacingly that even the giant squid refuses to come to shore. Off to Azkaban you go.” 

“Do you promise to write me letters? Update me of how the world’s progressed without my dazzling presence?” 

“It would be my genuine pleasure.” 

Regulus chuckled at your dry humor. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d bantered like this with anyone, much less with a strange not-so-stranger. You sat down on the wet sand and patted the spot beside you with a grin.

“Why don’t you take a seat and tell me all about your troubles.” 

Beyond the bleak horizon, the spires of the castle peeked through the gray clouds. Regulus thought of the common room where his housemates would no doubt be gathered around the ornate fireplace for warmth. Knowing his friends, they’d probably be indulging in spiked hot chocolate and playing some childish drinking game. A few minutes ago, nothing appealed to him more, but now Regulus found himself choosing the violent rain and soggy sand. All because of you, his mystery girl.

You leaned back on your elbows and cocked your head at him. “What ails you, Mr. Black?” 

“That depends. How much do you bill per hour?” 

“Fortunately for you, I’m in a generous mood so I’ll throw in a free session. Consider it my pro-bono work.” 

“How kind of you,” Regulus said with a serious expression. “My brother’s been nagging me to see a mind healer for years. All that childhood trauma, you know.” 

A small smile tugged at your lips, revealing a set of dimples that he found rather charming. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.” 

“My brother is Sirius. I’m Regulus, remember?” 

You snorted in a very unladylike manner, which only made Regulus grin. There was something so unapologetically you in your laugh that was absolutely endearing to him. Regulus smiled and knocked his shoulder against yours. 

You mimicked the action and smiled back at him. “All sarcasm aside, I was being genuine. If you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen.” 

"Do you often offer therapy sessions to complete strangers?"

"Only to surly Slytherins with sad eyes and pretty curls," you quipped back. "And we're not strangers. I sit behind you in potions. We're practically best mates."

"You think my curls are pretty?"

"Like a little cherub's. Are you quite sure you haven't escaped from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? You look like one of Michelangelo's angels. Except with way more scowling." Regulus grinned. He got the feeling that you always said whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. It was refreshing. "There's a smile. See? Our session is already progressing."

"I think you might get more than you bargained for with me, I'm afraid."

You met the challenge in his words head on. "Try me."

“You were right. I’m definitely guilty of brooding.” 

“What happened?” 

Regulus hesitated for a moment. He had never been the type of person to be candid with his feelings, especially not with someone he barely knew. Usually, he just kept his thoughts to himself and ruminated on them in the privacy of his dorm until he drove himself mad by overthinking, but your presence brought him an unexplainable ease. For once in his life, Regulus chose not to question it. 

“I’ve had a long night,” he said, tucking his knees up to his chest. “I just got back from a date.” 

“It didn’t go well?” 

“It was…fine. It’s always fine. But it’s the same thing over and over again, just with a different girl.” 

“I wouldn’t have taken you for a playboy, Regulus Black.”

Regulus chuckled. “I’m not some unscrupulous rake, I assure you.” 

“Yes, that much is obvious from your use of the word unscrupulous.” You tucked your legs underneath you. “So why go on all of these dates if you find them so tedious?” 

“It’s my mother,” Regulus explained. “She has this list.” 

“A list?” 

“Yes, a list of girls that I’m to court. Noble, pureblooded, proper ladies of society that my mother has deemed worthy of marriage.” 

“You’re seventeen years old. Shouldn’t you be worrying about quidditch games and potions exams?” 

Regulus nodded. “Yes, one would think. But my family has always been different. Since my brother left, my parents have been obsessed with grooming me into becoming the perfect heir.” 

“How do you feel about that?” 

He sighed. “Stifled. Exhausted. Smothered. I can feel the weight of their expectations weighing me down every second of every day.” 

“I’m sorry, Regulus. That’s a terrible burden to carry.” 

Regulus shrugged. “Others have it worse.” 

“It doesn’t mean that your problem is any less heavy.” 

To Regulus, the acknowledgement felt oddly validating. Even though you knew nothing of his circumstance, there was wisdom in your words and you delivered it delicately, like you actually cared to hear his troubles. You were devoid of the judgment he'd grown accustomed to and he found that rather freeing.

“It’s just…sometimes I think that I’ll never be the perfect son. My brother, he’s always been the brave one. Classic Gryffindor,” he said with an eye roll. You chuckled, but stayed silent. It was obvious that Regulus had a myriad of thoughts to unpack tonight and you were more than happy to just listen. “Sirius has never cared what anyone thought about him, least of all our parents. I admire that about him, but I just don’t think I’m wired that way. I care too much.” 

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” you said softly. “Apathy is so common nowadays, finding someone who can admit that they care is refreshing. Though, I think it’s not without limits. You can’t please everyone. No matter what you do, someone is going to have something to complain about. You might as well be yourself.” 

“That’s exactly the problem,” Regulus pondered. “All of these girls on my mother's list, I think they like the idea of Regulus Black, but he’s an illusion. It isn’t the real me.” 

“Then who is the real you?” 

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’m just Reggie. I like playing quidditch and reading depressing literature and memorizing obscure history facts. I hate messy rooms and orange juice and anything that crawls.”  

You smiled. “And what kind of girl does Reggie like?” 

“Someone witty. Someone funny. Someone who’ll argue with me. Someone who doesn’t just nod and agree with everything I say."

"So what you're saying is that you don't want a nice girl?"

Regulus shook his head. "No, I think I need someone who challenges me. Who sees me for who I am rather than what I represent. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the girls on my mother’s list are lovely, but I don’t think they’d actually like me if they knew who I really am.” 

“I don’t know, Reggie seems like a great guy. That Regulus bloke, on the other hand…” you scrunched your nose in disapproval. 

“Hey!” Regulus chided, “I’m pouring my heart out to you. That took a lot of courage, you know.” 

“You’re very brave, Reggie,” you said with a grin. “But you know what would be even braver?” 

Regulus squinted in the rain as you stood to your feet. Lightning crackled over the horizon, illuminating you with an ethereal silver glow. You held out your hand to him. “Come dance with me.” 

“Deathly afraid of being struck by lightning, remember?” 

“Sorry, what?” You asked as you shimmied around him. It wasn’t graceful by any means. It was the goofiest thing he’d ever seen and yet he’d never been so enthralled. You danced without a care in the world and it made him genuinely laugh. “I can’t hear you over all the fun I’m having.” 

"This is ridiculous," he said over the roaring thunder.

You shrugged. "Perhaps. But everyone's allowed to be a little ridiculous sometimes. Besides, I was asking Reggie not Regulus."

“Are you really trying to peer pressure me into dancing with you?” 

“That depends,” you replied with a cheeky smile. “Is it working?” 

Regulus conceded with a sigh and leapt to his feet. The youngest Black brother bowed like a proper gentleman. “May I have this dance, my lady?"

“You may, good sir.” 

You grinned up at him as he took you by the waist and waltzed with you across the sand. Surprisingly, Regulus let you take the lead. He chuckled when you stepped on his toes and laughed even harder when you tried to twirl him. Towering a good foot over you, Regulus had to fully crouch for the maneuver to work. 

Finally, you gave up the formality and just spun around in dizzying circles. There was absolutely no rhyme or rhythm to it. Just two idiots dancing in the rain with the biggest smiles on their faces. 

Your coordination, or lack thereof, caused you to almost faceplant into the sand. Regulus yelped as you took him down with you. By the time you recovered from the laughing fit, the two of you were red-faced, out of breath, and laying side by side along the shore. He turned over to you and brushed a stray strand of hair behind your ear. 

“That was the most fun I’ve had in years.” 

“See? There’s more to life than just being moody and melancholic.” 

“So this mystery girl of mine keeps reminding me,” Regulus said with a smile. “You never told me your name, by the way.” 

“Wow, you don’t even know my name? I’m offended, Reggie. We’ve only been in classes together since fifth year.” 

“I—we’ve never been introduced—” 

You broke out into a smile and giggled. You thought it was cute that Reggie was so easily flustered. “I’m just kidding, Reggie.” 

He sighed in relief as you stuck out your hand. “Y/N. My name is Y/N.” 

Regulus slipped his hand into yours. He cocked his head, studying your eyes and your smile and those cute little dimples. 

Y/N. The last name on his mother’s list. The one he saved for last because he didn’t know who she was. 

The French had a saying—le coup de foudre. The infamous phrase translated to a bolt of lightning or love at first sight. Regulus had long dismissed it as flowery prose, but thanks to his mystery girl, he started to think that maybe the Parisians were onto something because meeting you tonight felt preordained. A date with fate. Like a bolt of lightning streaking through his dark, endless skies.

“It’s nice to meet you, Y/N.” 

You grinned. “It’s nice to meet you, Reggie.” 

Regulus smiled and laced your fingers together. He was frozen, it was raining, and he was fairly certain that you were both probably going to catch a cold, but he didn’t care. In that moment, as he stared up at the sky, blinking back the rain, and intertwining his fingers with yours, Regulus had never felt more content. 

So no, Regulus did not believe in love at first sight, but love at second, third, and even fourth glance? He smiled a little as he gazed back at you, letting his gaze linger as he drank in that infectious laugh and sunny grin. 

You made him think that maybe, just maybe, a girl like you could convert a skeptic like him into a devout believer.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Danse Macabre

[Commission]

[just-null]

im so mad at u omg

how dare u make my noritoshi obsession 10 times worse

Noritoshi spews his true feelings when you're upset with him. Similar to a very eager puppy trying to regain your favor by any means...... but realizes what he says and blames you for turning him into a fool. Another downside for him is that he won't take his words back in fear of you getting the wrong idea.

you're just a bully that he hopes will forget about the embarrassing words he blurted out.

hes simultaneously reeling and embarrassed. is this what happens when you make your love upset? does that imply he's your love?!

[whorrorfix]

he’s just so,, boyfriend. yk?

[theloveinc]

Togame Jo’s greeting kisses to you are always way too long.

The kind of affection that’s usually savored in private, instead displayed wherever, whenever, and every single time you see each other—he always takes two to three minutes just to kiss you hello, abandoning the task at hand (dozing off, attending to Choji, managing the Shishitoren) to mosey your way and pull your lips to his in something just a little too sloppy to be sweet, but a little too sweet to be… too distasteful.

Everyone’s used to it by now, even Sakura, knowing that when you arrive, there’s always a going to be a pause in action just for the sappy display of Togame drooping over you and announcing you to the crowd physically.

(What’s not readily exposed, however, and especially not in a room full of men, is that it’s not just a kiss Togame’s giving you, not just a hello that he hides behind his long bangs and your cheeks between his warm hands, but the kindest stare and sweetest little whisper, “missed you, baby,” as he wraps you up in his arms.)

[imsilay]

you absolutely have NO idea HOW MUCH I LOVE OBSESSIVE AND DESPERATE MAN

(╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻

i hate pinterest for always bringing these pics on my page T-T

especially this fucking painting:

if he aint like this i don’t want him.

my delusions (cus i’m a delulu bitch):

He buried his head between your thighs. The fabric of your skirt is covering his face as his hands found their place on your ankles. He knew it was ridiculous to see a man like him, a huge, grown man with board shoulders and potential to kill a bear with his bare hands, kneeling infrond of you and pleading love from you. Just a little affection from you was all he was asking for. Even if you did it with pity or by delaying he would accept it. His head brushed against your skirt as he looked up to you and inched closer to your stomach. You narrowed your eyes and raised an eyebrow. He immediately stopped and sunk back down. “Darling…” he mumbled as his thumbs caressed your ankles. “No.” you answered sternly and leaned back onto couch. “Please?” he tried again. His hands moved up to your calfs with the wanting to feel me of you. “You don’t think you can get whatever you want when you act like that, right?” you crossed your legs causing him to lift his head and then put his chin on your knee stubbornly. He refused to leave you alone. “Can’t i?” you felt a pout in his voice. You rolled your eyes and bounced your legs to push his head off. “Get up. You make yourself look pitiful.” you spat.

He clenched his jaw and sit straight on his knees. Then grabbed your wrists and pulled you foward to him, making your cleavage his view. “Do you think i care?” he hissed and nuzzled his face into your neck. Savoring your scent. “You know i will make you my wife. Whether you like it or not.” his voice stained with lust and determination. “And when i do…” he trailed off and his fingers brushed against your waist and up to your breasts. His palm covered the skin under your breasts and squeezed lightly. You felt blood rushing to your cheeks and your face burned. “You can’t escape your fate. Don’t worry, my love. You will enjoy it. A lot.” he whispered against your skin making you feel tingly with the vibration of his voice.

You swallowed and tried to straighten your posture but he didn’t let go before pushing your hair of your neck and pressing a delicate kiss. He already knew he had you in the palm of his hand. Your protests did nothing to stop him. “Get out.” you mumbled and crossed your arms. He chuckled dryly and get up, his frame towering over you as you refused to look into his eyes. “I promise.” he mumbled before leaving your room.

now do whatever you want with this information.

[telleroftime]

Takuma strikes me as a man that would break if you call him "pretty boy."

He had called you something similar amongst the swarm of other compliments praising your appearance because he wants you to know just how beautiful you are to him. "Beauty", "sunshine", or in general "my pretty", not expecting anything in return. He just hopes it would tease you a little, make you all flustered. But nope, you retaliate with "you're one to talk, pretty boy."

And he's just there like "huh?" Not a single thought behind his eyes as his smile morphs into an awkward grin. You're worried until you notice that giveaway red of his ears. Before you can say anything he speaks a louder "huh??!!", trying to hide behind his beanie as if that would ever stop what was about to come.

Because ain't no way you are letting this slide. It is "pretty boy" after "pretty boy" with every opportunity you get. And when you call him "my pretty boy" in front of Nanami? He melts. He is melting, face as red as a beet, unable to form even a word as he just whines from how flustered he feels.

[glitchven]

Hnnngghh......

Heres a ver without text and the borders

[nappingmoon]

suguru x reader - nsfw

wc: 3.6k

suguru coming to see you after he defected from jujutsu tech. 🎀

a/n: i actually forgot that jjk is highschool and not college before writing this so with the power bestowed upon me on tumblr dot com i declare that this is an au where everything is the same except suguru defects when he's like 22 and not 17 okay thank you stay blessed

you're on the porch of your little apartment-- a luxury in this market. between your fingers hangs a little cigarette, a bad habit that you picked up after one too many nights spent in shoko's presence. regardless, the headrush that each drag brings is a welcome feeling. you hadn't seen suguru since before he defected, and he hadn't deigned to reach out. in the weeks leading up to the incident -a detached term, as if calling it 'the massacre' would be too real of a reminder- you had spent nearly every night with him. you were often sent on separate missions during the day and on the occasion that you did see one another in public, not much more than a simple greeting or casual chat was exchanged between the two of you.

at night, however, he always found a way into your sheets. before the fateful mission, what you had was fun. it was sexy and sneaky and exciting and your heart always raced at the thought of what he was going to surprise you with that night. after the mission, the moments turned slower, needier, more intimate. suguru started talking less, instead craving your moans and becoming more insistent on ensuring your pleasure. he wouldn't let you touch him as much, and he grew increasingly frustrated when you would try to push his head away from between your thighs before he made you cum at least twice. his mannerisms became less cocky and assured and turned frantic and anxious, like an animal who just barely managed to escape a predator and still can't figure out if he's safe or not. you tried to work your way in to his brain, his heart, but he only opened up in vague sentences or deflected to a different topic. teetering the line between concerned questioning and prying was difficult and you could tell that if you overstepped, it was likely that he'd withdraw completely. when you heard the news, heard about the incident, your heart dropped, but you can't say you were completely surprised. there's just been radio silence then.

when you feel a presence approach from behind you, you don't jump. there's no need. you know who it is and you've been expecting him. in honest, it took him longer to seek you out than you thought it would. suguru's form comes into your field of vision, body obscuring most of your view of the right side of the street. neither of you speak as he plucks the cigarette from your fingers. pinched between his forefinger and thumb, suguru brings the butt to his lips. you watch as he inhales, the burning red end of the cig sparkling as it works its way up towards his fingers. his lungs expand and it is enough to finish what you had left. he tilts his head up as he releases the smoke, taking a peek at the sky. though the city lights dimmed much of the sky's vibrancy, a few scattered stars still burned bright enough to hold an audience. he's gorgeous.

the last of the smoke is still wisping out of his mouth when he finally speaks, his voice gravelly. "you've got to stop hanging out with shoko. this shit will kill you." you huff an amused exhale and lean your head onto your propped arm, watching as suguru rubs the end of the dying cigarette into your railing and dropping the ashed remnants into your little strawberry themed ashtray.

"a bit late to start worrying about things that could kill me, isn't it, suguru?" you raise your eyebrow and look him up and down. he's skinnier and the bags under his eyes are ever present, but he holds himself a little higher than he has in the past weeks. tormented, but assured of his decisions. he's dressed in casual clothes, likely to keep a low profile and avoid run ins with any sorcerers on his way to you. "I heard you had a run in with satoru the other day, how are you?" what the two of you had was special, sure, but you knew that no one came above satoru in his eyes. they were an inseparable pair, heads and tails, yin and yang. the split can't have been easy at all.

"I made a choice," suguru starts, eyes blankly roaming over your street. he still hasn't looked you in the eyes. "and he made his. that's all there is to it."

you hum, unconvinced but also not willing to put up a fight you clearly had no shot at winning. "and so now you've come to see little old me? are you gonna try to convince me to join the official suguru geto fanclub? become a loyal member and kneel at your feet until the day i die?"

finally turning to you, he scoffs and a small smile graces his lips at your antics. "while you on your knees is one of my favorite sights, I know you. your morals would never let you join me." he says, and the word 'morals' comes out like an insult. even still, at his first words your head fills with images of the past and you adjust your position on the railing, legs crossing lightly. the movement doesn't escape his notice.

"if you didn't come to convince me to join you, then what did you come for? i could turn ya in right now. should do it to if only for the fact that you left without telling me." you turn away from him, annoyance rising at the memory of sitting in your empty room, feeling so heavily the lack of his pretty face and cat-like form splayed on your bed asking questions about your skin care routine and teasing you for the trinkets you still have as remnants of the phases you went through at fifteen.

suguru doesn't answer and instead goes inside, the duck under the door frame a habitual motion. you follow him inside, sliding your glass door closed behind you. he makes his way through your apartment, touching little things as he goes. he adjusts the picture frame that holds the photo of you, the other second years, himself, satoru, and shoko. he avoids looking at haibara's smiling face and continues on into your room.

before following him, you grab him one of his favorite bottled teas from your fridge. you always kept a pack for him, and last week you found yourself unpacking them from your trip to the grocery store before you even realized what you had done.

when you enter your room, you see him sat on the edge of your bed. you come to stand between his spread legs, cold drink in your left hand while your right comes up to trace around his face. you play with the little bang that he always keeps out of his bun. "are slut strands just allowed in your cult or are they mandatory?" you tease.

"ha ha." suguru replies dryly. "give me some of the tea, please." you crack the cap open and extend the drink towards his hand, but instead of receiving it, he grabs your hips. thinking he's just being lazy, you bring the edge to his lips, ready to pour it in for him. his lips stay sealed and he shakes his head. confused, you still for a moment befor- oh. oh. as the realization dawns on your face, he grins and gently nods.

the bastard wants you to spit it in his mouth. it's something that started out a long time ago as a joke and stuck around, you doing it to one another every so often. but now? "you can drink it yourself, dickhead." you say, but he digs his fingers into your hips, and keeps his lips together, the refusal crystal clear. you know you shouldn't-- he is currently a criminal of the highest order. he's killed innocents and shed the blood of those you have risked your life to protect. he is a million times more dangerous than the cigarette he chided you for earlier. and yet. and yet and yet and yet. the pressure of his hands on your hips is so familiar and you have missed it so much. he has filled the space in your apartment that he left behind and just seeing him here once again is making your heart thump. logically, you should run as fast as you can. instead, you bring the rim to your lips, let the cool liquid fill your mouth, and lean over. suguru brings one hand up from your hip, dragging it up your body before coming to rest on your face. you lean into the touch that you missed so much and allow him to bring your face to his, to bring your lips together. you let the tea pass from your lips to his and a bit spills down his chin. even so, he does nothing to stop it, and you aren't even entirely sure he noticed at all because as soon as the tea is done trickling into his mouth, his tongue comes into your mouth to tangle with yours. the hand on your cheek reaches around your head to press you closer into him. he takes the bottle from your hand and reaches down to place it on the floor before standing.

suguru is intoxicating. that is the only way you can describe him. with just a few kisses he has complete power over you. as he leans over to continue making out with you, you tug at his shirt, eager to run your hands across his skin again. you've missed the feeling so much. smiling into your kiss, he reaches down to grab the end of the cloth and bring it over his head, only separating long enough to get the shirt off before returning to you. he reaches down to grab the backs of your thighs and you jump, straddling him as you take his bottom lip between your teeth. you nibble softly, teasingly as you open your eyes to look into his. his pupils are blown and you know yours must be the same. he turns to face the bed, bringing his knee up and working his way up until he can lay you on your pillows. suguru cradles your head as he sets you on the bed, finally separating from you to lean back and get a good look at you. your spit shines on his lips as moonlight filters in through the space where your curtains don't quite close.

your chest rises and falls with vigor, finally getting an adequate air supply, but you itch to be close to him once again. you grab your shirt and rid yourself of it quickly, absentmindedly noting that it was actually one of the shirts he left at your place a while ago. you wore them when you missed him. (not a night passed in a shirt that wasn't his.) his fingers reach for the waistband of your shorts, grabbing the edge of your panties with them and working them down your legs. though standing for 10 seconds and ridding himself of his pants would have been easier, suguru shares your desperation for closeness and bends at the waist, laving at the hollow of your neck while shimmying out of his pants. your hands tug at his hair and run over the muscles of his back not minding the rustle of his body over yours because the weight over you was one you missed so much. when he finally kicks his pants and boxers off, he stays stuck to your chest, leaving a trail of little kisses in his wake. he makes it to your nipple where he presses one sweet kiss to the tip before taking it in his mouth and sucking. he moans at the feeling of your soft flesh in his mouth. you are an exquisite being and he truly worships every fiber of your existence. during the time he spent apart from you, he thought of this moment over and over. he moves over to your other nipple, sucking in marks on the way, making sure you are left with lasting evidence of his love. you gasp at the sting of his bite, looking down at where he laps at a small bead of red from where his teeth broke skin. over his broad shoulders, you can see where he grinds his hips into the bed, mindlessly seeking release while he focuses on his current devotion. your tummy swirls as he makes his way down, leaving little nips and hickies scattered in a pattern not unlike what he saw earlier in the sky. when he finally reaches your mound and presses a first kiss to your clit, you reach down and grab his face.

when suguru looks you in the eyes from his position between your legs, you swear he is only half registering you. he seems almost dazed, eyes glossy and head yearning to drop back down into your heat to give you the head of your life. before he can swat away your hands, however, you speak up, voice thick with need. "feel s'empty sugu." you whine, "need you in me now. it's been so long."

"but baby, need'ta stretch you out. need to make you cum and get you all ready t' take me. neeeed to taste you" he says, still fighting the hands that keep him up.

"i don't need it sugu. m' so wet. i promise. i need you to fill me up, 've missed it so much." this gets him out of his daze, and he begins to crawl back up to you.

"you need me that bad? yeah?" he whispers, hovering over you.

"mmhmm"

"needy girl got all soaked from just having me here, huh? you just need to be fucked this instant? my poor baby. i've neglected you too much." he starts dragging his dick up and down your folds, collecting your slick to make sure that he'll slide in easy enough. your nails grip on to his back, trying to entice him to put it in already. "okay baby, don't worry. i'll give you what you need."

suguru places a kiss to your cheekbone as pushes in. you both inhale at the sensation taking a moment to adjust. he slowly continues lowering himself in, murmuring small praises into your ear as you take all of him in. the stretch brings a twinge of pain, and likely would have been absent all together had suguru been allowed to give you the foreplay he wanted but the sense of love and tranquility that filled you as soon as he was all the way in was the closest thing you could get to heaven on earth. there was nothing in your heart, mind, or soul but love for the man taking over your senses.

sex with suguru varied a lot. nights after bars and parties were filled with giggly sex and lots of foreplay. after high adrenaline missions he was rough and experimental. if a teammate was seriously hurt or there was a casualty, he tended to need to be more dominant, finding solace in being able to control every aspect of your pleasure, from denying you your orgasm all night or overstimulating you and getting you to your peak more times than you could count. sometimes he liked to use toys, to tie you up, to let you tie him up. tonight though, he was tentative. he knew what you wanted and you were clear that you needed him, but the now that he was so close to you, the small, ugly voice of insecurity and shame inside bubbled up. shame for shutting you out, for his sins, for leaving, the list goes on. and so he uses each thrust into you as an apology. he reaches for your hand, sliding his fingers between yours and pressing them into your mattress. his eyes were screwed shut because he wasn't sure that if he looked at your teary eyes he could keep his composure and he needed tonight to be about you, to make you feel good.

he's quieter than normal and you notice it. the turmoil is all too clear to you and you know that he needs you now more than ever. "s- suguru, baby, look at me. please."

he shakes his head in response and your heart quivers. he's still your suguru despite it all. "baby please. look at me. it's okay. i'm okay and you're okay and we are going to make it through this." you place kisses on his nose and cheeks as he eases the tension in his face, peeking at you. the second he gets a good look at you, sweat already starting to stick hair to your forehead and eyes so enamored they almost have hearts in them, he groans and his pace falters for a sec. "you're making me feel so good suguru, you know that? you're so good to me, handsome. i could never stop loving you." you praise. you'd continue, but he dips his mouth to yours, cutting you off. you arch your back, pebbled nipples grazing his chest and he groans into you unlacing your fingers and bringing his hand to pinch your nipples. your moans fill the room. his thrusts get faster and the little plaps of your hips when they meet turn into more forceful smacks.

your praise and the way you feel around him nearly fry suguru's brain. the voices in his head are loud, telling him he's undeserving of you and your love and he whispers his apologies into your skin. he's overwhelmed and he's tearing up but he keeps rolling his hips into yours as if the world would end if he stopped. you try to get his attention by calling his name or clawing a bit at his back but he's in deep. reaching down between you, you swipe at your folds with two fingers, gathering some of your wetness only to reach up and stick them into suguru's mouth. he can't apologize with your digits pressing down on his tongue and you take the moment to reinforce your love. "suguru, listen to me. I love you and you don't have to apologize. you did what you had to do and that's okay. I love you." you pepper kisses between your words, trying your best to get your message through to him. he finally looks you in the eyes again, your voice his saving grace. "hi, baby. you back yet?" you say.

suguru finishes sucking your fingers clean and pulls back. "yeah, thanks for getting me out of there. 'was spiraling a lil bit. sor-" you cut off his apology with fingers to his lips and a roll of your own hips.

"don't apologize. just be here with me." you push at one shoulder with your arms, and suguru understands, grabbing your hips and flipping you over. "'s this okay?" you ask, straddling his hips and beginning to ride him.

"so much better than okay, gorgeous. 's perfect." as you bounce up and down, suguru reaches up to play with your clit and you feel the nerves send shocks up your spine. he starts whispering things like "you are the best thing that has ever happened to me" and "you're so perfect, doll. all mine"

as you near your peak, your legs start to shake and burn. you whine at the at the decrease in friction that comes of your slowing hips and suguru takes this as his moment to pick things back up. with his hands lifting you, he gives himself enough space to prop himself up and get a strong base to thrust into you from below. with your sugu now taking the lead, everything is just more intense. you fold over, trying to kiss him but missing due to the sheer force with which suguru is moving your body. small 'ah's come from your mouth and you feel your toes curl as you are tipped over, a wave of pleasure washing over you. you tighten up and your muscles twitch as suguru continues thrusting, chasing after his release and following just behind you. he pulls your body to his, gripping you in a tight, tight hug as he spills into you. his legs give out from under him and you land together in a little heap of love, sweat, and limbs. his dick slips out of you and you already miss the sensation of being full, of being so close to him. for now though, you take the moment to catch your breath and to let your heart sync up with his. in a little, you two will get up and you will pee and brush your teeth side by side. when you come out, the bed will be clean and you will cuddle with your lover and be soothed into sleep by his slow breaths, grateful that you had at least this moment with him, sure that he'll disappear on you come sunrise.

in the morning, as the sun begins to warm your room, every logical thought is tell him to leave before you wake up. it will be easier to split without seeing your face, and talking in the morning will only create longer term attachment that has no place in the future he is building for himself and his girls. honestly, best case scenario would be you being so angry at him for leaving that you get over him all together. it is so simple!

so when he finds himself in your kitchen, making your eggs how you like them and pouring your cup of coffee in your favorite mug with just the right amount of milk in sugar, he's just as surprised as you are. and when you give him a kiss and sit in his lap and he sees the splotches of reds and purples that decorate your neck, paired with the little bit of drool from sleeping so well, he remembers why he didn't choose the easy route. where things will go from here is uncertain, but the outside world has no place in your apartment-- in his sanctuary. all that matters is your warmth in his arms and your lips on his.

[yeyinde]

SEA, SWALLOW ME | Simon Riley x GN!Reader

No one wrenches you open, leaving you raw and exposed, like Simon. A wound that never heals. A sickness that never dissipates. You carry the weight of him between your ribs and thundering heart. A place of safekeeping, protecting this precious knot that gnarls inside of you from everything else out there that might want to hurt it. It thrums now, dizzy with the feeling of him so close to you.

》 WARNINGS: 18+ – MATURE, SMUT | GN!Reader: no use of pronouns, gendered language or anatomy; very soft smut; light breath play/choking but. It serves a narrative purpose.

》 WORD COUNT: 9,4k (of pure, unadulterated nonsense)

》 NOTES: UM. This was meant to subvert standard D/s | Predator/Prey dynamics for Ghost but became a mess of nonsensical metaphors instead.

As far as missions went, this was slated to be amongst the easiest assigned out to your group—a standard hostage rescue of a foreign diplomat. 

It's a sequence you've played out many times over in basic training. The steps, drills, are already ingrained in your memory with minor changes to suit the situation unfolding in a place you'd never been before, and probably will never see again. Rudimentary. Boring, almost. 

The chance of injury was minimal. The probability of death is even infinitesimal. 

And yet—

He pulls you into an alcove in the safe house you've been holed up in for the last twelve hours, alternating between bouts of sleep, and pouring over each minute detail of your roles. 

Price's voice cracked an hour ago. 

It was Gaz who called it with a soft chuff. "Guess that means we're good to go, eh, cap?"

"Off with you, then," he groused, reaching for a bottle of water. "We'll head out in an hour. Be ready." 

You meant to sneak away to the gym and exercise some of the anticipation pooling inside your veins—a physical outlet to exert the antsy feeling that made your fingers tap a soundless beat against your shaking thigh; a post-mission ritual to saturate your brain in those feel-good chemicals caused by the rush of adrenaline. 

But you were stopped by a hand on your wrist. One that snaked through the tenebrous of the storage closet that housed the guns, weapons, and ammunition, all spread out on the walls with a bench in the middle. 

Simon leans back against it, guns spread out on the surface behind him. The hand not curled around your wrist is pressed flat, bare, to the granite top, only inches away from the collection of knives he meticulously tends to before each assignment. 

His sleeves are rolled up to his forearm, ink coloured in a hazy smear of yellow from the lamp spilling across the table in the corner. Your eyes are drawn there first—the shadows cast over the thick veins running along his forearms, hidden beneath the charcoal. 

The other flexes around your wrist, rough skin scorching when it presses against yours. Seeing the bulk of his palm swallowing the entirety of your wrist and half of your hand has your mouth running dry.

There's something about him, about the fold of his massive frame condensing itself into a nook much too small for him to fit, that feeds into a part of your head that aches to fly. To scale mountains, to reach the summit. To be the first person to stand on top of the highest peak, and gaze down at the world shaded in blues, greens, and greys below. 

Staring at Simon fills you with summit fever. 

"Did I scare you?" 

It's hard to rip your gaze away from him with so much of his flesh bared to you. He's usually dressed by now in his jacket and vest. Always prepared for the next slaughter. This—

This is new. Unusual. 

You huff, rolling your eyes toward the domed ceiling, and struggle to stave off the influx of anxiety that gnarls inside of you. A break in the routine. It unsettles you. "Hardly." 

He makes a low, starchy noise in his throat, muffled partially by the balaclava covering his mouth. "That so?"

He runs his thumb over your pulse, drawing your attention to the rapid thud of your heartbeat under his finger. It's a slow, meticulous circle, and his eyes dance with derision when you scoff, a touch embarrassed, and curl your fingers into a fist as if that would somehow stop the thundering in your chest. 

"Whatever," you murmur, defensive. "I drank an espresso. It's just a natural, bodily reaction—"

His hand twitches again, fingers lifting from your skin as he slowly peels away from you. The chill against your flesh makes you shiver, already missing the intensity of his heat. 

"If you say so," he volleys, settling his hand back on the table, palm cupping the thick ledge, fingers tucked under the surface. The motion makes his muscles quiver. 

Goosebumps prickle along your flesh. Your throat runs dry. 

"Got somethin' for you."

It's standard, benign—the words are flat considering the weight behind them, the potency. They're all he'll allow in this brief window of privacy when everyone else is busying themselves with their pre-mission rituals. 

Price leans against the wall in the corner of the room, fingers curled into the straps of his tac-vest. His chin is dipped low, eyes fixed on the table a metre away where the files lay open, floorplans exposed. Despite the evenness of his brow, and the squared set of his shoulders, you can see the weight of everything circling in stormy blue. 

The success of this will be shared amongst everyone, but the loss will be solely his own. 

On the opposite side of the room, Soap picks over every centimetre of your weapons and tactical gear. Scouring every iota in an effort to make sure nothing will fail anyone. 

Gaz, as the youngest, shoulders it all, and pours over the blueprints, committing each exit and entrance point to memory. He won't be caught unawares if a route is compromised. He'll get everyone out to safety. 

By stark contrast, Ghost does nothing. 

He doesn't look over the documents, but he doesn't need to. The blood vessels streaking through jaundiced white speak of a sleepless night staring at the photos of the men you're supposed to hunt down. The people you're supposed to rescue. 

Before he slips on his gloves, you catch ink stains on his thumb and inside his forefinger. The thick scent of gunpowder and oil clings to him. His weapon is sleek: gunmetal grey and cleaned. Meticulous. His attention to detail is unyielding. 

He did everything he was supposed to do last night when he didn't come and sneak into your room.

But he never does. Not before a mission. 

You sometimes wonder if he likes to torture himself with the if only or the what if that lingers whenever you split apart, left to your devices and wholly dependent on yourself for survival. He keeps his distance. Doesn't want, nor need, the distraction.

Some might think it cruel that he avoids you like you're already caught in the clutch of the Reaper; skin shading a sickly grey as your blood rots from within. But you know him. You know Simon. 

And when he hands you your gun, you can feel that it's already been loaded, and tended to. There's a fine sheen of oil glued to the tight folds of metal from where his meticulous cleaning couldn't reach. 

Your tac-vest is packed with everything he deems necessary for your own survival (and even a few things he doesn't but you do). 

He hands you a knife, too—one you know is from his personal collection. It fits into the palm of your hand like it was made for you, and you wonder—with a small smile blooming across your cheeks—how long he took looking over them before picking this one. A perfect fit. 

"Thank you," you murmur, low and soft. No one is paying attention to you at all—there is no time to do so when you can feel the seconds ticking down. "I'll do my best not to get your pretty knife dirty." 

He snorts. "Defeats the purpose, doesn't it? And it ain't mine." 

"My knife, then." 

You glance down at the smooth curve of the blade, sharpened to a deadly point, and twist it in your hand to stare at the handle. It's black. Two stems jut out from the hilt, extended a bit longer than the blade. It's triangular and pitched in the centre before tapering off to a sharp point. It's the length of your forearm. Longer than the tactical knives issued by the weapons branch in the SAS. Bound in leather. The stitches look much too similar to the ones he threaded through your gaping skin in Jakarta. 

"Fairbairn-Sykes," you say, glancing up at him. "Thought they stopped using these?"

He rolls one massive shoulder. A man with his girth shrugging insouciantly is a strange sight. You almost expect to hear the distant roar of an avalanche. 

"Much better'in the cheap ones they give you."

"Oh, yeah? Kinda hard to hide, though—"

"If you don't want it—" 

Simon reaches for it, but you pull it close to your chest, grinning. 

"You can't take my knife away." 

He huffs, lowering his hand back to the table. His eyes are piercing. Heavy. "Then stop complainin' about it."

A fly buzzes by your ear. A bead of sweat drips down the nape of your neck. Something about the look in his dark, shadowed eyes sets your teeth on edge. 

It wells on your tongue, then—soft words not meant to be uttered in a room saturated in contracted death—and the astringent flood strips your enamel until your teeth ache with the urge to let them out, or swallow them down. You wonder what he would say if you let them free. If they slipped from your tongue and filled the room with the stench of your poisonous wants, ones left to rot inside your chest, your throat. 

The burn of them blisters your esophagus, leaving behind open wounds leaking infection into your bloodstream, into the vessels that run to your lungs, your heart. 

The tremendous weight of them makes your knees quiver, struggling to stay afloat in the thick atmosphere that sits, oppressive and unignorable, between you. 

It's all one-sided, of course—a hunger felt only by you. He doesn't acknowledge the gossamer of tension that bleeds into the room, wrapping tight around your neck like a phantom noose. To Simon, nothing is amiss; nothing is wrong—

And it isn't, you think. This spooling knot inside of you, wound tight into a ball, isn't wrong. It isn't bad to feel this way, but it's terrifying. 

Being with Simon is a bit like climbing a mountain. 

But there is scaling one in a harness, secured safe and sound with ropes and pitons, and then there is this: 

A free solo up the side of a chossy. 

The chalk on the tips of your fingers clumps together under the stickiness of your damp palm. One slip, and you'll be a wreck at the bottom before you can even try to hold on. 

Jagged rock at the bottom gnashes its teeth together in anticipation, eagerly waiting its chance to grind your flesh into pulp, and offer your spilled blood to Thanatos. 

Melodramatic, maybe, but something about Ghost brings out a sense of morbid sentimentality from within you. The feeling is a harsh juxtaposition to who the man really is. 

A mythological being who lingers in the foreground like a psychopomp, but gives you whittled knives from his personal collection, carefully whet to a fine point, and cracks stupid jokes in a deadpan manner as if the world around you wasn't raining bullets and reeking of gun cotton. 

Your gaze wavers, falls. There are a lot of things you are meant to say now, and many more that are forbidden. None of them brim through the humus that sticks to your throat. Disturbed dirt in a lonely graveyard. 

A flurry of motion snags your attention. In the corner of the room, you catch sight of the fly sitting on top of an intricate web. It runs its hands together, waiting. Mischievous. A morsel of food is still tangled in white lace. It feasts without worry, unaware of its impending demise as its feet glue to the threads woven below, shaped like the cracked skulls in a catacomb. 

As the fly feeds, the spider cocks its head up from a darkened crevasse, a multitude of eyes gleaming in the flushed light hanging overhead. 

It waits. 

Poor thing. 

"Thanks," you say again, wrenching your eyes away from the opening maw of the ossuarium in the corner. The sight unnerves you. 

It's not meant to be any more sincere than the first utterance of your gratitude, but you say it—if only to fill the stifling silence, and wonder if that carefully curated mask would shatter into pieces, revealing the bare-faced man (human: flesh, bone; vulnerable) beneath, if you uttered the words pulsing against your vocal cords like a pizzicato. 

He levels you with a flat look as if he, too, hears the whine of c minor screaming in your chest. 

"Hilt is new. Try not to get it dirty." 

You fight a shiver. Force yourself to give some facsimile of a smile in response.

"Wouldn't dream of it, Lt."

(A liar.)

You tuck the pretty knife in a tawny leather sheath into your pocket. 

"I'll take good care of it." 

(A thief.)

Behind smeared grey, charcoal black, his eyes narrow. Pensive. Considering. Something rears, lurks. Hidden in shadows. Cut into brimstone. It's the same shade of death that only surfaces when he's on the battlefield—no longer Simon, but—

"See that you don't." 

A ghost. 

(Just warmer than most.)

Your eyes stray back to the corner of the room where the black spider prowls closer to the hapless fly struggling to be free. 

Yeah, you think, a touch dazed. Your fingers tighten around the leather-bound hilt of the blade. Me, too. 

You dirty his knife. 

The chance for an injury is minor, but never zero. You find this out when someone grabs you from behind, knife pressed to your jugular. There is no fear, no terror. 

Just—

Embarrassment. Stupid. You know better than to leave your six unchecked. 

It ends with a paper-thin cut to your skin, and your knife buried in flesh. 

The hilt is bloodied. Authentic leather stained red. Grotesque. Garish. You can't tear your eyes away from the droplets that stain the handle. 

Plastic, usually. You know this because you looked it up. Polymer-covered wood. 

The leather was handmade. Sewn with thick, black thread. Glued to the stripped wood. 

Wrapped up pretty just for you. 

(Just for you.)

And you ruined it like you promised you wouldn't. 

(A liar. A thief.)

It makes you wince, and the burn in your chest hurts more than the sting in your neck. You thought you heard death and his fiddle this morning, but who knew his boney, rotted fingers would wrap around your wrists like it was the hilt of a conductor's baton. 

Simon doesn't say anything, but there's a weight in his silence. A soundless ticking in the background as he watches, placid, as you make your way to him. 

Nails bite into your palm until they're sticky with the blood that pools between your fingers. It's meant to be grounding. Replacing one hurt with another, but the biggest injury is the one to your pride, your ego. It's burned, blistered, and not even the swell of something you feel roiling through you at the sight of Simon, steady and sturdy—faultless despite the roaring that seems to echo around, the scream of the tide trying to pull you under—is able to quell the sting of humiliation. 

Your hands are stained just like them. Scars mattered across soft tissue, and despite the way they spill over your flesh like Orion, you still feel the pull of torn flesh beneath your armour. 

This—

This was an accident. Unfortunate. Unforgiving. It lingers between aching teeth, and tastes of raw wire. 

You won't let the shame dip its talons into your pride despite the bruise forming on the side of your veneer. 

Your chin lifts: defiant, almost. As if waiting for him to say something. 

Anger, you think, is easier to wield than culpability. 

There are a number of derisive, droll words he can pin you with, and your mind runs through the possibilities, the ones you heard barked out over the comms. Things like: rookie mistakes. Shoulda checked your six. How'd this happen? Thought you were better than this. Another scar to add to your collection, then? Better stop before you end up lookin' like me.

It surprises you, then, when he says none of them. 

"Alright?"

His hand lifts, and a weight settles against your jaw, lifting your chin. It's barely a cat scratch, and doesn't even need stitches, but it stings something fierce when he stretches the skin around it. Pulling, tugging. You clench your teeth, swallowing back a wince. 

He catches it, anyway. 

Stupid. 

You wait for the rest. For the or what? that traditionally follows a simple alright, but nothing comes. 

His hand drifts, palm cups the side of your neck, and—

It's indescribable. A rush, maybe. A raw, pulsing wound throbbing inside your throat where his heavy, rough hand sits. A plinth. You can't lower your chin with it in the way. Stuck, you think, and then—

You shiver. It's instinctual. The curve of your neck is vulnerable; a sacred place. Animals protect their jugular, their soft bellies, from attack, and something primal in you tenses up. Waiting for the strike. For the snapping of jowls into your soft skin. 

None come. Stupid. Of course—

"Jus'a little scratch."

His hand leaves almost quickly as it appeared, and you drift aimlessly, unconsciously, after it. 

Snapped out of your strange reverie when Price calls out your name. Paperwork, probably. You've been hurt, and as a response—or a sneaky punishment—you have a mountain of forms to fill out, t's to cross, i's to dot. 

The weight of Ghost's gaze on you is almost as heavy as the heft of his hand, and you linger for a moment in that strange, phantom noose, wondering what it would feel like if he held on just a little bit—

"Go on, then," his chin jerks toward Price. "Get cleaned up." 

Something shifts inside of you. The open of a proverbial floodgate. 

It's instant:

The weight of his palm, the press of his fingers—you feel them against your skin, a phantom whisper. A breath. 

There's something almost comforting about the danger of exposure, you think. About bearing your neck to the biggest predator around. 

It's not an act of submission. You'd never submit to Ghost, much less anyone else, but—

There's a sense of vulnerability there. Trust. 

(It's that unseen edge of danger: a spark of life in a world that's always shades of muted grey, and draped in the folds of calamity. Death sits only a hair's breadth away no matter where you go. So close, you can feel the ghastly chill on your skin; always cold. Always freezing. You can set fire to your flesh, but your teeth still chatter.

For the first time in years, the skin on your neck burns with feverish heat.)

(The warmth fades. You chase it, pressing your fingers flat to your pulse, but still feel the icy drift of the waiting Sheol against your skin.

Cold to the touch once more.)

His fingers ghost along the skin of your wrist, skimming over your pulse. It’s soft. Gentle. A light brush that has no other meaning or purpose except to gain your attention— 

—and oh, doesn’t it just. 

Simon doesn’t let it linger. He pulls his hand away when your chin jerks toward him, and slides them into the pockets of his trousers. Hidden away. Out of reach. 

Your wrist burns. 

"Could've just said hello." 

His eyes are heavy under the hood of his sweatshirt and lined with the grease paint he couldn't scour off. Maybe he never even tried to. Glacier blue framed in ashen blonde. His eyes remind you of the sandstone cliffs that line the Corfu shore. Stark white. Deep blue. 

They're weighed down with something—exhaustion, maybe. The last you'd heard of him, he was chasing after leads that might link you to Shepherd with Gaz (who sent a dry text in the early morning, between the keds and the dad jokes, I don't know how anyone could be scared of this Manc; and: does the man ever sleep, or is he fuelled on Tenzing and spite alone?). And now—

“C’mere.” He murmurs, eyes heavy and lidded, sparking with something sharp, acrid. Humour, you think, heart stuttering in your chest. 

The word is uttered just as softly as the touch against your flesh, and the sound—the phantom memory of the featherlight brush—burns with the heat in his gaze, the warmth that seeps through the gloves, and into your skin. Bone deep. You can feel the burn of him congealing in your cartilage. 

"Finally gonna do me in?" 

It earns you a dry scoff, the barest hint of an eye roll. "If I wanted to, you wouldn't see me coming." 

"You could have just said no, never," you mock, stifling down a grin. "Or—I wouldn't even think about hurting you—"

The rest of the words are cut off when he steps closer. Liquid agility: he moves quickly for a man cut from Everest, sifting through the shadows with no more than a soft thud of his heel clipping the linoleum. Ghost looms before you in a blink, head tilted down to gaze at you. 

His hand lifts, knuckle grazing the swell of your cheek. It's softer than he has any right to be. A warm brush across cold skin. The Agulhas current colliding into the Somali. It ripples across your surface and rattles the rotting bones below. The empty husk of you trembles. 

"No," he murmurs, words distant and warbled under the roaring in your ear. You watch a flicker of something tremble across his face. A frisson shuddering too fast for your sluggish, mortal eyes to discern. 

You can't find the remnants of that ugly, gnarled thing that sometimes stares back at you when he's unaware. A beast hiding in a forgotten bivouac, creeping through the desolate ruins of a travesty that reek of upturned humus. A ghost disinterred from its slumber. 

But when you stare at him, bare-faced and uncertain, you see a darkening edge in the cuts of blue: deep canyons and crevasse that warm when your reflection swims in the glossy curve, wide eyes and parted lips filling the tenebrous, the shadows. 

The things, disentombed, are at rest. Clouded over by the shocked face that swims in endless pools of blue. 

"Never." 

"Oh," you murmur, honeyed sweet and viciously coy. "How sweet of you."

(It takes you a moment to realise he's mocking you.

Your heart still thunders like the words were true.)

Simon cleans the hilt of the knife for you, bare fingers scouring away the blood that stains the leather. He lets you watch as he works, content to lean against the wall in silence as he dabs a cloth in a petri dish filled with cleaning solution, and gently scours the stain from the hide. 

The motions are gentle, and familiarity bleeds into each swipe. This isn't the first time he scrubbed away the rotting blood of a dead man, and some part of you aches, stupid, knowing that it won't be the last. 

A testament to the age-old woes of an occupational hazard. 

Watching him work, silent and unbothered by your intrusion ("of all the bloody gits, you're somehow the least annoying. For now;"), fills you with a strange sense of comfort. Of longing. 

(Domesticity makes your teeth ache and your cheeks burn.)

His knuckles are bruised. He won't tell you how it happened. Doesn't say much outside of, it's done, already, so no sense in worryin' about it. 

You suppose he's right. No sense in dwelling over what you can't change. But the sight of his hands—bruised, cracked and bloodied—makes your mouth dry, and your heart race. 

There's something about his hands that captivate you.  

You can't stop staring at them. The memory of what his molten flesh felt like against your icy skin sears into you. The weight of his palm on your neck. Steady, solid. 

Something predatory had risen from within you, and cocked its head to the side, allowing him an ounce more of your flesh for him to take. To touch. 

A bear will seek the warmest cave to slumber after gorging itself on flesh and bone. A moth will kill itself just to touch an open flame. 

There's something alluring about heat. Flames. Fire. 

(Ghost smells of cedar embers: pyrolysis.

You're cold enough to want to burn the tips of your fingers in the open flame. To immerse yourself in the fire that'll char your flesh, and blacken your bones. Hollowed marrow, now filled with charcoal and brimstone.)

Your knuckles twitch. You curl your fingers into fists by your side. 

"Done," he says, sitting back in the chair, and shaking you from your reverie. 

He turns to you, the knife perched in his upturned palm. The leather is dark, wet, but the blood is gone. 

On the table, the water in the Petri dish is diluted pink. 

You let yourself linger when you reach for the proffered knife, knuckles grazing the rough flesh of warm, bare palm. Greedily catching tendrils of heat on the tips of your fingers. 

"Thanks."

His eyes brim with something you can't name. "Try to keep it clean, or you'll ruin the leather."

You want to say, no one told you to make it pretty for me in the first place, but you don't. You think, instead, of summit fever, of scaling walls. The view from the top of a mountain must be worth the risk, the danger. To see the curve of the earth, and pure blue of the horizon yawning for you. As close to god as a mortal can climb with their bare hands.

It hits you like a punch to the gut. The rock crumbling. The chossy wobbling. Your feet giving away, fingers scraping against the granite as you fall to the rocks below. 

He waits, eyes narrowing in that same shade of pensive contemplation as before. 

You're lingering too much. Touching him too openly. Greedily. You wonder why he lets you when you pull away, shamefaced and meek. 

(How much of it, you wonder, is an act and how much of it is real. Subconscious submission. Meek and unassuming. It rears inside of you, a skittish animal. But you're not scared. Not of him. Never.

A sick joke. Mortal folly. Something inside of you wants to know you're alive, and so—

Roll over and he'll think you're prey.)

You manage a shaky smile, mind racing to the same tremulous crescendo as the arrhythmic drum of your heart.

You don't meet his gaze. Can't when there's a deluge of something—ugly and awful—roaring through you at the sight of his hands, and the scars that cover them. Some, you note, deep enough to knick bone. False starts. Your teeth ache at the sight. Stomach knotting. Churning. 

Something vicious gnarls through the rotten entombment of your living heart. 

Gaze lowered. Neck bared. 

Hook, line—

"Got it, Lt." 

He fractures his fingers in Medellín after chasing a man through the barrios. They're cracked on the concrete when he jumps from the roof and catches it on a metal rod sticking out from the ashlar. 

Those same ones that tilted your jaw back, bones creaking under the strain of his grip.

Ghost doesn't flinch, of course—you don't even know they're broken until he asks for gauze and a splint at the safe house you're holed up in. You just see him swing that same hand out, catching the man by the throat when he tries to slip past. Steady. Solid. An expert killing machine, numbed to the pain, the carnage. 

Simon holds him tight to the wall by his jugular, barking out coarse questions, demanding answers. His voice carries (who are you working for? Where are the others? Gimme a reason not to snap your neck right now—), and you watch it all unfold from your perch on the rafters beside the alcove. 

Watching his six—supposed to be, anyway—but you can't stop staring at the way he dwarfs the other man. The curve of his fingers, long and thick, around his throat. It fits like a scarf. A neck brace. 

Simon's so—

Massive. Undeniably so. And seeing it like this is mesmerising. Hypnotic, almost. 

Whatever the man says is swallowed by the roaring in your ears; the rush of the wind whistling through the houses below. 

He gasps something out, eyes wide, and whatever it is, it makes Simon nod. 

Right, then. Target acquired. 

The moment his jaw snaps shut, information unveiled, he barely has a chance to beg before Simon's hand twitches. 

You hear the sharp snap from your perch above him, and barely have a moment to collect yourself before the man goes limp. Simon pulls away from him, a half step back, and without his support, he falls to the ground with a soft thud. 

His hand falls to his side when the man falls, and it's then, in the fading ochre streaking through the concrete, you notice the drops of red staining his gloves. They catch in the light—a Rorschach of brutality and death—and you can't stop staring at them. At his hands. 

A small thing, really. It's hardly anything noteworthy considering the litres of blood that saturate any of you on a particularly gruesome day, and yet something about the red smears on the back of his hands, staining the worn, faded white metacarpals catches your attention. Eyes glued to the way he shakes his big hand, as if throwing off the sting of split bones. 

(Even with splintered fingers, he was still able to snap a grown man's neck. The thought shouldn't be as enticing as it is.)

Later that night, you sit on your knees between his broad thighs, and gingerly take his bruised hand into yours. The contrast is laughable—his palm alone swallows the entirety of yours up. A cantaloupe to a satsuma. The mental image makes a smile crack on the corner of your mouth, a little twitch. 

He catches it. Always, always—

The hand that isn't several shades of indigo and burgundy lifts, settling on the curve of your jaw. Long, thick fingers splay out, stretching from the slope of your bone just below your ear, down to your chin. The entire expanse of your face cupped in his palm. 

Simon is a big man. Massive. 

(You sometimes forget that he's a direct descendant of Everest.)

Something inside of you gnarls, and tightens. There's always that thread of unease whenever he's juxtaposed to mortal men, to yourself; a lingering remnant, an atavistic fear for the beings that are bigger, broader than yourself. The primal instinct to run from the things that look like they could snap your bones into pieces with just their bare hands. 

It's a small thing, considering, and always washed away by the surge of desire that pools in the space it once occupied. 

He's big. 

(You've always had a fondness for heights.)

"Does it hurt?" 

If it does, he'll never admit to it; but you murmur the words, anyway—if only to feel the power in his hands when you move your jaw under his palm; the gentle resistance that meets you when you lower your chin, and hit the warmth of his skin.

"No," he says, and you fight back a smirk. "Are you finished yet?" 

His question pulls your attention back to his swelling hand, skin already turning glossy from the tumescence of inflammation. Irritated. Pulpy. The knuckles are split in the valleys; a deep divot of plum red. 

He has pretty hands, you think. 

Peached-tinged ivory dusted in a fine layer of coarse, flaxen hair, and broken into streams of scars and welts in a mosaic on his rough skin. Thick veins in ballpoint blue run from his knuckles to his forearms; all intersecting rivers that cross and meld into a confluence near the bend of his elbow. 

It's layered with fading charcoal ink pushed beneath his dermis. 

The slide of his palm is rough with a patchwork of scars that cut through his life line. Jagged little marks from the sharp end of a knife. Pockmarks from cigarettes. 

You like the way they feel on your skin. The weight behind them, the heat. The way they bend, and contort. Curling around the butt of a cigarette as he snipes game plans back and forth with Soap. Then the hilt of a rifle when he steadies it on concrete; playing God with gunmetal. 

The way they curl into loose fists by his sides when he's displeased, tense and ready for the impending alternation. 

How soft they are, then, when he slides the back of his hand against yours. Touches the small of your back, fingers curving around your waist when he pulls you close. 

The way he sometimes holds your face between his palms. 

You cover them up with the starchy gauze before lifting your chin to catch his gaze once again. 

His eyes are stagnant seas. 

You might think it's tranquillity that keeps the midnight blue surface from succumbing to the pull of the moon, and the tides; but that would be a fallacy. A death sentence. 

There's nothing calm in those depths. Below the thin film sits an endless abyss torn up by currents that carry the same inescapable grasp as the churning hydrology of a waterfall. It'll snatch you the moment you plunge into the blue, ripped through the water until it suctions you into a crevasse. 

But—

You hold his gaze as you lift your chin up, notching it higher until his hand slides down your jaw, palm now resting on the side of your neck. 

—You've never been afraid of drowning. 

"That's good," you murmur, tilting your head to the side until your neck is cupped in the palm of his hand. Algae blooms in those unfathomable depths when your pulse thuds against his thumb. "'Cause I was kinda thinking it would be nice to get your hands around my neck one of these days."

His hand twitches against your pulse. 

The usual caustic, derisive barbs and brackish quips are bereft from his hidden lips. You might mistake him as unbothered. Uninterested. But you've always been good at scraping off the veneer people tend to wrap themselves in, burrowing under their dermis, and the flash in those murky eyes—widened slightly at your words until it's a pretty polynya: icy white around a puddle of midnight blue—gives him away. 

His thumb slides down the column of your neck until it's pressed tight to the little jut of your jugular poking through thin, delicate skin. Ashen lashes flutter when you swallow against the soft press of his fingers; eyes flickering down, liquifying, as he takes in the way your muscles tense in his hand. 

He could close the entirety of his palm around the convex curve of your throat, and—if he really wanted to—his thumb and middle finger might meet in the back, nestled just above your spine. 

There's a heat simmering in your veins, stroked by the flex of his fingers as he mulls over what you're asking him for. The smooth, almost pensive way he brushes his thumb over your neck; an unconscious action, you think, with the way his lids dip, cresting over liquid black. 

His silence doesn't last long. Whatever conclusions he draws in that brief lull are tucked away, hidden from view, when he shifts in the old wicker chair.  

He leans forward a little—enough, you note, to hide the growing bulge in his slacks—and lifts his heavy gaze back to yours. 

"That so, pet?" 

It's rare you ever find Simon speechless, but you've known him long enough to know how to catch him off-guard. 

You swallow when his fingers thread through the loose hair along the curve of your ear, scratching his short nails along the skin of your skull. His thumb presses against the spot below your eye, lower lashes spilling over the tip of his finger when you blink up at him, eyes lidded with the weight of your want. Despite the languid, almost kittenish, way you tilt your chin until it's plinthed into his warm palm, your eyes are razors. Sharpened on the whetstone of your conviction. 

"Yes," you breathe. Your tongue runs across your bottom lip, as if chasing the words from lingering in the seam of your teeth. "That's so, Lt."

His fingers twitch at your words, eyes narrowing into those same contemplative slits as before. Then slowly, deliberately, he drags his hand down to rest once more over your jugular.

—sinker. 

Your nails dig into the hard flesh of his bicep until the skin breaks: crescent moons pool beneath the tips of your fingers. Red, raw. 

It makes him suck in a slow breath, the sound heavy in your ear. 

"Keep that up," he rasps, a livewire pressing into your naked chest. "And I'll have to do somethin' about it, pet." 

It's not an empty threat. You know Simon enough by now to know he never says anything he doesn't mean. But you still toss your head back, laughter slipping from your blood-red lips. High, you think, on the thrill of him. 

"Yeah? Promises, promises, Lt—"

A flash in liquid black. Napalm embers. 

One hand lifts, leaving the back of your knee. You know what's coming. Asked him for it, even, but it still takes you by surprise when his massive hand slips between your chin and neck, fingers curling until he has a perfect grip of your throat in his palm. Your head is forced back, pulse beats against his thumb; a frightened bird struggling in the grip of a predator. 

He isn't squeezing—not yet—but the hold he has on you is firm. 

You meet his stare, quivering in his arms. 

"Lay back." 

A slight pressure. You gasp. He feels the inhale under his hand, the thick swallow you take when he begins to push you down slowly. It makes him groan again when you lock up around his cock, tight and throbbing like the pulse under his fingers. 

"That's it." He holds you against the pillow. You don't test his grip, but you know it's ironclad. You're shackled to the bed. At his mercy.  

Tears burn your eyes. It's not fear, panic. The moisture leaking into the crease of your eyelids is involuntary. You want to tell him this, to let him know you want this, want his hand on your vulnerable neck.

You gasp quietly, the air barely slipping past the curl of his fingers—naked, warm, rough—on your skin. 

"Simon—"

"Relax," his voice is liquid sin; velvet draped over a kindling fire. The crackle floods you until you're panting, breathless. "C'mon…you can take it." 

Your fingers unfurl from his biceps, tips soothing along the irritated flesh, ghosting over scars—bullets, fire, knives, cigarettes: his flesh is a mosaic of history you're barred to ever uncover—but the way his muscles coil under the softness of your hands makes your chest lurch. 

You trail them down until you reach the thick forearm bent over your sweat-slicked chest, nails catching on the throbbing veins until you hear the rasp of his breath under the mask. 

Your palm is tiny, almost fragile, in comparison to his wrist. Wrapping your fingers around the thick of him is like holding onto the end of a bat. Your hands can only cup the width; a perfect crescent. 

It's that—the immense power, the strength of him, buzzing under his storied skin that makes your belly burn with the fever of your want. He's so—

Massive. 

Strong.

You can feel it, now. Fingers brush over the veins on the back of his hand, a seal around your throat, and you know that he's holding back. Has to. He could snap your neck with an ease that should terrify you. You've watched these same hands throw knives into men's throats. Watched them wrap around their necks, crushing the bones until the struggling ceased with a gut-wrenching snap, and they fell, limp, to the floor. 

His eyes flutter when you swallow, when your small, delicate throat works under his clutch. 

He has the capacity to ruin: 

Simon—Ghost—can break your neck without a flinch. 

And yet—

You meet his eyes, lips trembling, and then you slowly tip your head back. 

Submission. You give yourself to him wholly. 

(A toil—

come closer, pretty thing.)

Simon's breath stutters in his chest, his hand tenses. Eyes widened. The whites are stained with tendrils of red. 

His next breath is a snarl that bludgeons into your core. He leans down, cock jarring something inside of you that has the cosmos burning into your retinas. 

When he speaks, his words are raw. Scoured with sandpaper. It's almost animalistic when he growls your name, adds:

"So good for me, pet."

He matches the praise with a sharp jerk of his hips, sinking in deep until you can feel him throbbing in your sternum. 

When you clench, spasming around him, his fingers flex. 

It starts slow. 

He readjusts his grip until you're a perfect fit in the palm of his hand. A little bird begging for respite in the claw of a hungry lion. 

Ghost has never been a man of mercy. 

(And you'd long learned to stop trying to barter with a hurricane.)

There is no rhythm to the way he fucks you. An interrogation expert, skilled in torture, he keeps you on the edge the whole time. Left to do nothing but cling to him, and take it. All of it. Whatever he wants to give you. 

You suck in a breath, but it is stopped when his hand squeezes. Tighter, now. The air in your lungs is compressed, forced out until they're empty. 

His pulse beats against your throat. His heat is an inferno, a fever; he presses into you until you're panting, head soporific and gummy under the intense blaze of his body. Hard, firm: there is no give when you notch your knees to his ribs, pressing your caps into his flesh. He's unmovable. Unshakeable. 

Liquid pleasure spumes from that unfathomably deep place he batters into with his cock, and the tips of his fingers as he burrows both into your flesh. 

It's too much—

His hand drops from your knee, resting on the pillow beside your head. It brings him closer—now, almost chest to chest—and smothers the air from your lungs completely. His eyes, however, steal the last wisp of your breath away. 

Standing on the edge of a singularity, gazing into the event horizon. Black holes ready to swallow you whole. 

Bereft of oxygen, you begin to crumble in his hold. 

"That's it," he rasps, fingers tightening. "Fuck—you're so tight—gonna strangle me, pet—"

Your breath is clinched by the palm of his hand. Futile gasps, hiccups, spill from your lips as he shifts inside of you, bracing his knees on the bed, and driving forward until you see stars. Until you claw at his wrist, back arching like a bow. 

The cosmos tastes of gunfire. Smoke. The heavy scent clogs your throat until you're choking on the embers that seep from his skin.

"I'm not done with you, pet." His timbre pitches, low and sultry; a rough graze. A scraped knee. "I could do this for days."

It makes you whimper. Makes you thrash. He means it, too. Always. Always. He'll hold you down until you're drowning in it. 

Your head swims. Hypoxia bleeds into your eyes. 

"Simon…" you whimper when his hips slot into yours. "Simon. I'm—"

The words are swallowed down when he ruts into you again, driven mad by the clutch of your body, and the vulnerable way you look at him. His head drops, moussed hair tickling your nose. 

"Fuck, pet—," it's chiselled out of him. A warning, perhaps. Don't. Don't say any more. Don't—

His voice is polar when it drifts over you. The chill alone freezes the words in your throat. 

"You like this, don't you?" Detached. Distant. He can't let himself feel the quiver in your voice, the ache in your throat. If he lets himself have this, even a meagre amount of it—

You don't think he'll be able to let go. 

The words are tucked back into the pocket carved out in your ribs just for them. They'll sit until he's ready, until the storm in his Rorschach eyes dissipates—if, of course, it ever does. You'll wait for however long that might be, even if it lasts a lifetime. 

(closer, now—)

Your fingers spray wide over his skin, soothing and gentle—calm pets over a ruffled plumage—until you feel the tension bleed from his coiled muscles; softening back into the pliancy you've come to expect from him. 

He'll run if you're not careful. Flee. Disentangle himself from the weaved knots spooling between the fibrils of your bodies, atoms merging and moulding together in a joined entity. Severe himself even if it means losing limbs. 

You think of old dogs, strays. The ones that weave through the villages with matted fur, and battle scars; the wizened, grizzled muzzles from a short lifetime on the run. Wild, feral. Touches that don't cause hurt are bewilderingly foreign—the idea of a hand that doesn't maim, doesn't break is as unfamiliar to them as living inside of a home. 

The only way to gain their trust is patience. Perseverance. 

And so, you pull back. Let him breathe. 

"I love it, Simon."

The breathy utterance falling from your lips makes him twitch deep inside of you, a groan spilling out of the cage of his chest when he feels the vibrations of his given name against his naked palm. 

"Fuckin' hell, pet—," you might call it a snarl, a growl; a mangled curse in your likeness dipped in the palpable ache of his pleasure. 

He says nothing more. A man of little words and heavy actions, he shows you what he won't say, what he can't. 

His cock hits something deep inside that makes you see white; a nebula of bliss pooling deep inside of you until you're spasming over the absurd thickness of him. 

Ghost holds it for a moment, and it's that—the midnight hour pooling in black, covered in grease paint, and clothed under a thick balaclava—that, the subtle way he takes, takes, that makes you all too aware of who is fucking you right now. 

You're not fucking Simon. It's Ghost. Deadly. Dangerous. His eyes gleam in the light; dark and empty. Black holes pulling you in. 

He drags you to the edge until your eyes cross—hazy and unfocused, slipping into that blurred realm of semi-consciousness—and it's when you begin to slip down that precipice, head numbed and full of him, he pulls back. 

His cock bludgeons into you, seated deep, and when the head kisses the deepest part of you, grinding sharp, and intense, his grip on your neck eases. 

Air floods your lungs so quickly it hurts.

His name rushes out of you on the deep exhale, a wrecked, aching plea. It sounds like a hymn when you breathe it out, and the reverence of it makes him shudder. Makes his hand clench, and his cock throb. 

You feel it all. The deep twitch inside of you. The spasm of his knuckles. The way the air clicks in his throat, catching in his larynx. A thick swallow. Another spasm. You take it all. Everything. 

No one wrenches you open, leaving you raw and exposed, like Simon. A wound that never heals. A sickness that never dissipates. You carry the weight of him between your ribs and thundering heart. A place of safekeeping, protecting this precious knot that gnarls inside of you from everything else out there that might want to hurt it. It thrums now, dizzy with the feeling of him so close to you. 

His hand lifts from your thigh, reaching down to snag both of your wrists in the wide expanse of his palm. He drags them up, arched high above your head on the pillow stained with your sweat. The brassbound grip of his hold, locking you tight in the cup of his hand when he presses them into the pillow steals the last vestiges of air from your lungs. 

The hold on your neck eases. His long, thick fingers brush over the smooth column of your throat. You suck in a deep breath, letting it fill the vacancy of your lungs, and take the rich, dewy scent of him in until it clots to the fibrils inside. 

Filled, you think, to the brim with him.

He smells of chemise, tonyon, and dried hawthorn. Wet chaparral after a wildfire scorched the thicket to cinder and ash. 

With him perched above you, now drenched in the fullness of him—his smell, his touch, the way he sounds when he fits deep inside of you—you find the once unutterable words again. 

They've been buoying up and down for months now, maybe even years. Always left to rot in their esophageal prison, but as your airways open up, as this moment of utter vulnerability and underlying trust brims inside of you, hotter than the bliss burning through your core, they slip out, tangled up in the way you breathe his name. 

The orison rings with the palpable weight of your wants, oiled in the gossamer of your pleasure. It lingers in the scant space between you. 

Simon shudders as it tickles against his skin. A featherlight whisper over naked flesh stained with the brine of sex. 

You gaze up at him, burning the sight of him arched above you like the fruition of your yearning carved in flesh and bone, and a part of you selfishly hopes the barbed hooks of those words you're barred from saying sink into his pale flesh. Piercing deep enough to sink into his bloodstream. 

Infectious. Incurable. 

It's dark, and awful, and full of that ugly longing that makes your teeth ache to mark him up for the world to see, to know, that he's been conquered, claimed. Stupid. Silly. Infantile. You can't own a person, can't chain them to you through ichor and offerings, and yet—

Ghost groans when your teeth find purchase in the meat of his shoulder, a rough noise that rattles through your empty bones, and fills the barren space where humanity once beat. 

—You spill his blood on the altar. A sacrificial offering. Yours to keep. 

"Fuck," he rasps, the word sticking to the side of his raw throat. "Tryin'a give me a new scar, pet? Don't got enough already?"

Despite the weight of the words, they're uttered with a caveat that's almost indiscernible had you not the wherewithal to know him as intimately as you do. Equivalency bleeds in the vowels. 

It comes as no great surprise, then, when he huffs in your ear, dips his chin, and then sinks his teeth into your pulse point, just above the place where his thumb rests. 

(Matching offerings. A tangled web.)

The sharp sting condenses into a blistering pleasure: a damnable bliss. It's the victory of your acquisition, the satisfaction of your merger. Your release bludgeons into you—a mix of euphoria and pain—and the world around you wobbles, narrows. There's a pinpoint where only the hazy shadow of ashen hair fills your periphery. The dark silhouette of a man you itch to pry open and burrow inside. 

A muted noise spills from the back of your throat. His name, maybe (Simon, Simon, Simon), but it's swallowed by his wet groan—blood-drenched and bitter. 

Maybe it's the bitter tang of you on his tongue, or the dribble of red on the corners of your mouth, caught when he flickers his gaze up to your own, catching the smear of his blood staining your lips, but he shudders above you. Rumbling like an earthquake. The clash of plates grinding together. It splits you down the middle, and shakes the chill from your bones until you're a molten mess of liquified limbs: polymer bones, bubbling blood. 

You melt into the mattress below with a hymn of his name—a blasphemous orison that has no place amongst the debauchery of sex-soaked sheets, and blood-stained teeth, but fits like a second skin when it brushes past your lips. 

Simon follows. He says your name—a rough and gritty howl in the back of his throat—and then he's burying himself so deep inside of you that something breaks apart, gives, and the consuming hole, the vacuum he wrought, is filled with him. Him, him. A void. A cenote. 

A gaping chasm of rot, need. Unquenchable.

"Fuck—" he snarls like a beast, the words crushing your ribcage, and leaking brimstone in your empty marrow. "Feels so fuckin' good, pet—"

There's something alluringly victorious about catching the biggest predator in the pen. A man made of death now bowing at the knees with just a flash of vulnerability; the slightest tilt of your delicate neck. 

A string coils around your finger, pulling taut when you tug. 

Bones ache when you move. Muscles scream when you swallow. Still, you lean forward, and syphon the heat from his skin, the blood from his veins. 

Your spoils to keep, wrapped up prettily inside a diaphanous web. 

Your nails rake across his flesh when you pull him close, curling around him in a spooled knot. When you grin, you feel the thick film of blood on your teeth. Vicious, victorious. "We match now, Simon." 

He might run.

But you've always been good at running: a long-distance sprinter in perpetual motion.

(You'll catch up, no matter where he goes.)

And when he breathes your name through the wet fabric of his mask, trembling with his release, you know that some things are worth chasing after. 

"You, uh… got anything to tell me?"

Gaz can't keep his eyes from straying to the moulted bruise on your neck—a startling smear of charcoal, flaxen, and indigo, broken in a perfect crescent of teeth—and each glance feels like a physical touch to your sensitive, inflamed skin.

It's childish. Immature. 

(You wear it proudly, flaunting your win to the world.)

"Not really," you shrug, body buzzing with heat. It simmers in your veins now. Syphoned warmth that spools in your bloodstream, leaks from your marrow. "Just tamed a stray over the weekend. You know how it is."

There's a strange cut in melted brown. A look you're much too familiar with. One might mistake it as condemnation, scorn, but you know Gaz. The quirk of his lips gives him away. 

"A stray, huh?" He intones contemplatively, timbre breezy, light, as he was mentioning the weather in Birmingham. Light drizzle, should clear up in the aft'. "Don't come aggin' to me when this backfires on you, yeah? Some never learn to stop biting." 

Gaz pointedly looks out toward the table where Ghost and Price pour over another set of documents—shoulders drawn tight as they toss ideas and plans back and forth—before turning back to you. 

"But I guess you know all about that already."

The barb in his tone—equal parts admonishing, and scathingly facetious—prickles against your skin. You offer a small smile, a languid shrug, and let your gaze drift, dragged back to Ghost. 

His hands are wrapped in white, his mask pulled over his neck, hiding your mark from the world. Another scar on top of a storied history of others, but far kinder than anything else he'd ever received. 

It prickles in your gums when you see him, and makes heat fill your chest when his eyes list to you, to Gaz, as if he can feel your stare, even when you're tucked away in a hidden crevasse, watching, waiting.

He won't come closer. Not when everyone else is around, but you catch the hunger in his gaze when you tilt your chin, exposing the soft, vulnerable curve of your neck, baring the bruise for him to see. It's rough, abrading. His eyes scrape over the varicoloured smear with a rapacious greediness that burrows under your skin. 

"I'm learning," you murmur, words muted, heavy with something that tastes like triumph when it slips out. "Baby steps, right?"

Ghost turns away first, tearing his gaze from the bruise on your neck, muscles tensing as he ducks his head, and forces his attention back to Price. 

In the corner of the room, a spider reaps the spoils of its fruit: a webbed sarcophagus around an exhausted fly that has long since given up on the struggle to get free. 

It opens its maw, fangs glinting in the jaundiced light.

Vicious, victorious: it feasts. 

(You drag your tongue over your warm lips, and feel the stirrings of hunger gnarl inside you once more.)

[solradguy]

I thought the early 2000s "strong yet naked/mostly naked woman kept in her place by stronger, bigger, beast/monster or gang of racist caricatures" trope* was known by basically everyone but I mentioned it as a criticism of this older art book I'd flipped through recently to a friend and it turns out it isn't lol Maybe I've just read too many Heavy Metal issues... It used to be HORRIBLY inescapable in any sort of mature art scene back in the day lmao

*This trope is different from the pre-2000s one because the women usually look like they COULD fight back for at least a little bit whereas the previous trope had them be completely helpless damsels in distress

[yuwuta]

If megumi asked uzhsjdhshd omg I totally see it tbh him wanting you, but I don't think megumi would ever ask yuuji to share you, in any type of way at all. (not trying to push my own hc here!!) I feel like yuuji himself would be the one asking megumi. Yuuji knows that he's yours just as much as he knows you're his. And he loves you too much, a lot, it's purest type of love he has ever felt for anyone. And megumi is his best friend, he loves him just as much, right? Yes, not the same love between you and him ofc but yes. And I have no idea what they were doing but yuuji's just says, kind of out of the blue, that he'd let megumi fuck you. The reason being exactly cause he knows you're his, and you're just so so good that he needs to have someone to talk to (about you and always so respectfully) and who better that his best friend?

you’re opening the pandora’s box that is itfs + reader…. god….. 

okok i agree. if you’re dating yuuji, megumi would never ask, yuuji would be the one to bring all three of you together. definitely because he loves you and you’re his, and he loves megumi too, so it just makes sense that his two favorite people also get to have each other—but also, yuuji can tell megumi likes you, and he can tell you think megumi is attractive and since yuuji’s so nice, what kinder thing to do than to set you two up so he can watch (: he definitely enjoys being the mediator, also enjoys the somewhat awkward air between you and megumi, how yeah, maybe it’s a little taboo that the two of you are about to make out while you’re boyfriend watches, but yuuji likes that too… also he likes knowing that you both like him. like how lucky is he that his best friend and his girlfriend adore him so much :(( you two together makes so much sense in his head, because he talks to megumi about you, and he talks to you about megumi, and now, he can just pour all his love for both of you out at the same time

but also…. i’d like to think that yuuji’s maybe not so nice when it’s the other way around—when he and megumi get together first, and you’re megumi’s best friend. he’s not mean, but he does like to tease... how naughty of megumi to ask out yuuji knowing he’s still got a crush on you, and god does yuuji like to tease him about it :/ jerks him off and taunts about how he knows megumi’s dirty little secret—that he’s in love with his best friend and fantasizes not just about having you, but about watching his own boyfriend fuck you too… 

yuuji knows megumi would take his feelings for you to the grave if he could (he’d have done the same with his feelings for yuuji if yuuji wasn’t the one to ask him out), but where’s the fun in that! you and megumi are sooo cute together after all, so yuuji doesn’t mind trying to get you two to confess to each other too. uses his proximity to megumi to get closer to you, takes advantage of his bubbly disposition to be physically affectionate with you, uses megumi’s feelings to his advantage to tease, to wink, to smirk whenever you and yuuji hug a little longer, when he texts megumi that he’s meeting up with you for lunch, when he gives you his jacket and doesn’t ask for it back… there’s so much fun in watching megumi blush and whine and get off at the thought of his best friend and his boyfriend together. and the thing is, yuuji genuinely does like you, too, he sees what megumi sees in you, and he thinks megumi is crazy to have not asked you out before, but he supposes everything happens for a reason, because now, this way, yuuji gets to be there and watch it all happen under his guidance. there’s something about the power, about being the bridge between you two even though you and megumi have known each other for much longer, about being in control of a dynamic that could have, but wouldn’t exist without him…

[necrotic-nephilim]

Do you have any more ideas about the dead dove vampire!dickxtim au you wrote a while ago? It's lived in my head ever since and I'd love to know more.

first of all thank you so much that's so sweet! second of all, i have SO many ideas you have no idea. that fic ate at my brain for like a month before i found the time to write it so i had plenty of ideas i didn't fully explore. i'm adding a read more just bc. that was one of my more fucked up fics so i don't want to subject anyone to a necro kink jumpscare

so one of the big ideas i've thought about with that fic is Tim dealing with the aftermath of it, right. bc he's of course going to hide it from everyone. the Batfam all just neds to hold onto the hope that they can save Dick somehow, and knowing what Dick did would kill any lingering hope that there's anything left of Dick Grayson in the walking husk that he's become. so Tim has to deal with the worst of it alone, probably not even mentioning he ran into Dick.

the fun part tho is that above everything else, Tim wouldn't be able to let go of Dick's comment about fantasizing about Tim before being a vampire. Tim knows the comment was made just to get in his head, but that doesn't stop it from working. he spends hours pouring over old footage of him and Dick training, hanging out, on patrol, anything he can find. just to like. try to find evidence of Dick's gaze lingering. it eats Tim alive not knowing one way or the other if it was a lie. if it's true, at least it makes it easier for Tim to move on from the memory of Dick. but not knowing is worse. and he never finds anything that satiates the question so like. that'd destroy Tim the most. (the real answer is that Dick genuinely didn't feel attraction to Tim before being a vampire, *but* Dick is convinced he did bc being a vampire fucked him up so badly that he's become his own unreliable narrator. so it's both true and untrue, and in the end, it doesn't matter either way bc Tim is fucked up by the thought of it and even if they "fixed" Dick by curing him, i think Dick's romantic feelings would linger in the horror of what he did.)

i'm really just. in love with Dick's feelings toward Tim in the fic. the most difficult part of the fic was figuring out how to end it, bc sure as a sexual fantasy Dick is obsessed with killing Tim, but he's also deeply in love with Tim, so it's difficult to follow through on. Dick wants to make Tim a vampire more than anything, but he is genuinely worried about how well it'd take for Tim. the fic doesn't really go into who's on Dick's side as a vampire, but i personally believe he's turned most of the Titans. probably some of his own rogues as well, i could see him turning Slade. i can't explain why, those are just the vibes.

it is important to me just how much of Dick's feelings for Tim are based in him not wanting Tim to live under Bruce's thumb. like the whole vampire brain has convinced Dick that Bruce is somehow the villain in this, and it was Bruce's control keeping Dick from being the person he wanted to be. it's a very warped reality and if i continued the fic i'd love for the second part to be from Dick's perspective just to have fun with the unreliable narrator of it.

back to the porn tho. Dick would seek TIm out again. probably in Tim's own apartment, just bc he wants to destroy every safe space Tim has. getting into Tim's head is an important part of breaking TIm down. the fear of Tim fighting back against being a vampire is one that Dick is trying to figure out how to manage and his current plan is to break Tim mentally. it's why he brings up wanting to sleep with TIm before being a vampire. he *knows* it's gonna fuck up Tim. and the more he puts these little cracks in Tim's psyche, the more he's sure he's breaking Tim down enough to be able to turn him. so going to Tim's apartment and proving that at any point, Dick can easily find Tim and fuck him. always holding the threat of killing Tim over his head. and Dick knows Tim didn't tell anyone when days pass after their first meeting and no Bat comes after him so like. Dick really just pushes the limits. i think he would brand Tim just bc he can. i also got a comment on the fic that mentioned Dick stabbing Tim and fucking the wound and i canNOT get that image out of my head either-

and the necro/snuff kink just. Dick playing the long game, so it takes maybe months of stalking Tim, going after him. sometimes he fucks Tim, sometimes he just fights and taunts him. and all the talk about killing Tim fucks with Tim's head a little bit. i think it'd be fun if it killed Tim's ability to have vanilla/normal sex with someone else, like Kon. it's hard for Tim to understand anyone being attracted to him in a way that doesn't involve him being a dead body. i don't think he develops the kink fully, but he does end up convincing himself being a corpse is the only way he's attractive bc of all the things Dick has said to him. it all plays into Dick psychologically breaking Tim.

i am a lover of fucked up/unhappy endings so. for me. the ending would be Dick following through on his plan to kill Tim and turn him. it'd take months for Dick to work up the courage bc TIm was absolutely right when he pointed out that Dick was too scared to actually follow through on his fantasy. Dick tries, multiple times. he convinces himself no less than five times that this is going to be the one. this'll be the time he really does it. but just as Tim starts to die, Dick panics. i think it's especially fun if once Dick even gives Tim CPR bc of his cold feet. so Tim does "die" for a second and has to brutally come back while Dick is buried inside of him.

but when Dick does it, his fears manifest in that Tim does *not* take being a vampire well. he's constantly trying to kill himself (in the time it takes for Dick to break Tim, Tim probably does figure out what poison can kill a vampire) and Dick ends up having to keep Tim locked up so Tim doesn't kill himself. would truly love to try to write Tim as mentally shattered as possible. part of him loves Dick, but he's fighting himself so hard he's not even sure if it's the vampire side that loves Dick or the human side. he's kept like a human pet, bc Dick is convinced he'll get Tim to accept it sooner or later. just a very fun, very fucked up sort of ending. i say this about all the fics i write but this one specifically i do *really* want to continue someday. i know exactly the direction i'd take it, and it could turn into a pretty long fic with a lot of fucked up porn, a lot of unrequited love, and an eventual mind break for Tim.

[beastsovrevelation]

Right, then. The sick part of my brain is terrorizing me once more, and taking an idea from it is like taking a bone from an angry rottweiler.

Who wants a fucked up Michael Langdon x Reader oneshot?.. I really do not feel like making a yet another OC, and adding a yet enother epic to my endless list.

[citrinesparkles]

stormy weather

jason todd x gender neutral reader. 720 words. notes: a very abstract take on 'write a true story about you with characters instead of people', one of the prompts from the ever lovely @reaperintheroses drabble december! this was more 'write about feelings', but i tried. warnings: vague bad headspace on jason's part

he was in a mood.

you weren't sure what mood, but it wasn't good.

it was, however, familiar enough that you weren't surprised when he walked through the bedroom like a ghost.

all he took with him as he left it was a nail file.

you sat quietly, listening for the window.

there it was, about half a minute later: the sliding sound of the window in the frame was quiet but unmistakable, as was the sound of it sliding shut behind him.

fire escape brooding.

you sighed- that was a surefire sign that the mood had settled in completely. you had hoped, somewhat naïvely, that it would be a "wrong side of the bed" situation; had hoped he would be able to shake it off.

with the mood here to stay, you put your phone aside and slid out of bed.

it wasn't something to fix. not days like this. as much as you wished you could carry the weight of this for him, you settled instead for trying to share the load.

you took your time walking through the apartment, giving him his space for a little while as you boiled water and steeped tea for him.

you dug out his largest, warmest sweatshirt, tugging it on to brace against the cold you knew was wrapped around him both mentally and literally. then, with a glance at his silhouette in the window, you picked up his mug and approached.

he barely reacted to the sound of the window opening, only shifting slightly so his ear was towards you in silent acknowledgement.

"i made tea," you said softly, leaning on the sill. "interested?"

jason hesitated a moment, the only sounds the traffic below.

he shrugged, twirling the nail file between two fingers.

you reached over, gently pressing the mug into his free hand, watching as he pulled it to his chest with a hum.

"do you want space, or would you prefer i join you?"

"...you can." his voice was steady, but uncharacteristically quiet and lifeless. "not gonna be much company right now."

you slid out the window, closing it behind you, and he glanced up at you blankly. "you don't have to be," you said firmly, quietly, as you sat down beside him. "i'm just here."

the metal was freezing, even through your thick sweatpants. it would take more than a stretch of the imagination to call it comfortable, but you settled in like it was memory foam.

you sat in silence, listening to him breathe beside you and watching it fog in your peripheral.

you sat until your legs ached and your nose felt about ready to fall off from the cold. you sat for far longer than it took him to drain his mug. you sat long enough that the rush of lunch traffic came and went below you.

you sat watching gray clouds churn in the sky, offering the only comfort you could: he wasn't alone.

eventually, he inhaled deeply, and you felt something shift.

"you want a grilled cheese?" his voice was rough and quiet, but using it was a good sign.

you recognized the offer as the thank you that it was.

"yeah," you matched his volume, gently breaking your silence. "that sounds good."

it wasn't over, not by a long shot. you could feel it in the air around you, as though jason was a storm and the front was rolling in. it would be a few days, you suspected, of this- of disconnect, of that distant look in his eyes.

and that was the best case scenario.

he pushed himself up and off the ground, wincing when his bad ankle popped unpleasantly, and you changed your mind. he wasn't the storm. a storm in his own right, sure, strong and beautiful and immovable to all the world, but in this case he was standing on the coast and watching the storm turn the ocean angry.

he reached a hand down to help you up.

you took it, squeezing it once, twice, three times in quick succession as you hauled yourself to your feet. once there, you relaxed your grip.

he kept his, keeping your palm against his own. bracing himself against the wind.

you'd be damned if you let him board up the windows and sandbag the doorways on his own.