#which is a real thought i have had and has been plaguing me for the past week. jesse what the fuck are you talking about

[walterdecourceys]

ocd sucks for a number of reasons but it's objectively at its stupidest when the inside of my brain just sounds like a twitter argument between two people who haven't been outside in a month

[thebestsetter]

"If I was a color, I think I'd be yellow"

"Why?"

"Non-important. I just feel it"

He has never seen yellow the same way again. It was everywhere. He looked for it everywhere. And everytime, without fail, he remembered you. A pretty sunflower. Your blinding smile. A little minion figure he saw on the mall. You crying after watching the latest "Despicable Me" movie (and him laughing at your cute stupid crying face). A silly Winnie the Pooh keychain on a crying child's backpack. You talking to the said sad kid you both saw on the street and trying to cheer them up, playing with them and making sure they were smiling, their worries melting away in the speed of light (you'd make such a great mother, he thinks, making his face grow bright red right after). The sun in all of it's glory. You. You. You. You.

You were like a plague infecting his brain and soul. He couldn't focus on anything anymore because you were always running through his head, the sound of your laugh playing inside his mind 24/7 and driving him half insane. He couldn't take it anymore. He had to ask you why you said to him you were yellow. How did you know? What made you so sure of it? Why you had put him under this spell in which everytime he catches just the smallest and quickest glimpse of yellow, the image of you came flooding his mind and senses? Did you even think about him the same amount of times he thought about you? He didn't know. He couldn't know unless he asked you. And it was not fair. Not fair at all.

"Remember that day you told me you were yellow?"

"Yeah" you said, stopping mid-sip of your milkshake and looking at him with your beautiful a confused face "Yeah, I do. Why?"

"You never gave me an answer to the question I asked you that day" he ignored how the first sentence you said made his heart fluster and his stomach go silly.

"Which question?" How humilliating. He's gonna have to swallow his pride and repeat it. Utterly ridiculous.

"Why?" He couldn't care less about how hurt his ego was right now "Actually, how. How did you know you're yellow?"

"Easy. It's 'cause yellow and purple are opposites, so they look good when put together"

"What?"

"Yellow and purple are on opposite sides of the color wheel, silly! So they're complementary colors and go well together"

"I know that. But what does purple have to do with you being yellow?"

"You remind me of purple"

And suddenly, he realized yellow has never been alone. Next to the beautiful sunflower, there's a bellflower, that looks gloom when compared to the yellow plant, but basks in the joy it seems to bring nonetheless. Just like you are the one to bring joy to his life. Beside the minion figure, there's a figure of those bad purple minions, and while one is considered pretty, funny and nice, the other one is scary, angry and people tend to avoid them. It reminds him of you two: extroverted and kind you and introverted and rude him. Perfect opposites. Perfect together. He hadn't noticed before, but the child's backpack was purple, and this memory was followed by the the sound of the laughs you and the little fella shared. Kids should always be happy, smiling, harmless and having fun. Comfortable. Safe. In that way, you make him feel like a little kid. Your warm embrace, so protective and oh so motherly. He feels relaxed around you. Overjoyed. And even though he doesn't smile a lot, you always seem to make him want to crack a real, big grin. It must be a superpower of yours. Lastly, the sun, always followed by the moon. Even though they don't "meet" often, when they do, they create one of the prettiest phenomena known to humanity: an eclipse. They're always apart, but when they're together, it's so beautiful that the whole world stops to see.

"That's cringy. And kinda stupid."

"No it's not! We're a perfect duo! Just admit it!!"

"'Course we are"

"What did you say? I didn't quite hear you!!"

"I'm not saying it again."

So don't act surprised when your wedding is full of beautiful sunflowers and bellflowers. You should see it coming. They look good together right? Just like you two.

RIN ITOSHI, Kunigami Rensuke, Nagi Seishiro, MICHAEL KAISER, Barou Shohei, SAE ITOSHI, TODOROKI SHOTO, SHINSOU HITOSHI, BAKUGOU KATSUKI, USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI, KAGEYAMA TOBIO, TSUKISHIMA KEI (his name's kanji meaning moon is just so-- perfect fot this fic) , Osamu Miya, Suna Rintarou, MEGUMI FUSHIGURO + any character you think fits this!!

Curiosity!!!: Bellflowers mean "everlasting love and commitment" in flower language, while sunflowers mean steadfast love!!

Masterlist

Wrote this in the middle of my portuguese class. I hate it. I'm in love with him

[pipsyy]

detestable...

enemies to lovers dom!hamzah x f!reader

hi everyone! i have had the most absolutely terrible writer's block recently, which is why this fic has taken so long. but i hope you enjoy regardless! please send me reqs if you have them!

summary: y/n absolutely hates hamzah, detests him, actually. until one day, when that undeniable feeling of angers burns into an even hotter flame.

warnings: SMUT SMUT SMUTTY SMUTTING SMUT SMOT! DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18.

word count: 3066

You loved your life. Your home, your animals, your friends, your youtube channel, everything. There was nothing about your life that irked you. Except for one thing. Him. Hamzah. You had become friends with Mandy over two years ago, over similar interests and styles of youtube channels, and had met Hamzah about six months into your friendship with her. You had never met somebody like him before. You got along with everyone, even if they slightly pissed you off, you were able to stomach their presence and create minimal amounts of respectable small talk. But not with Hamzah. In fact, when you were first invited over to Mandy’s house for a party and heard he was going to be there, you were excited. You had seen his online presence and thought he was funny, charming, and kind, only to find out upon meeting him that the complete opposite was the truth. He was awkward, and weird, and nothing at all like you thought he would be. The two of you were unable to mesh a single comfortable conversation together and, since then, you had effectively avoided him like the plague.

The angry tension between the two of you finally exploded one Friday night. You had been invited to dinner at Mandy’s house, and you were ecstatic. You imagined your night playing out with the two of you cooking and baking delicious food, sharing some with Martin in his man-cave, then diving into the delicacies in front of a cozy fall movie. What you did not expect was Hamzah to be there.

“Hey, y/n!” Mandy said excitedly, as she opened the door and welcomed you into her home. “Are you ready for tonight?”

“Oh my god,” you said, grasping her hands in yours. “You have no idea! I’ve been looking forward to it all day.” You took your shoes off before following the brunette into the kitchen. The two of you were laughing and talking until you stopped dead in the middle of the kitchen, starting out towards the living room. Two male heads were positioned together on the couch, one with straight, almost black, locks and the other with luscious, dark curls. You would recognize those curls anywhere. Shit.

You grabbed Mandy by her forearm and whispered in her ear, “I didn’t know he would be here.”

“Who?” she asked cluelessly, swiveling her head to where your wide-eyed gaze was fixated upon. “Oh, right…Hamzah. Martin and him filmed a video today and he’s not leaving until later. I’m so sorry, y/n. I really tried to get him out of the house, but he insisted on staying for dinner.” You knew that Hamzah liked to rile you up, he made it abundantly clear whenever the two of you would have a conversation.

“He just wants to piss me off,” you responded. “It’s okay. We can just ignore them and have fun.” Mandy smiled at you. The two of you began gathering items and ingredients from around the kitchen to make the dinner. You had decided on making fettuccine alfredo with broccoli and chicken over text with pumpkin cream cheese cupcakes for dessert. The two of you labored over the pasta for almost an hour, laughing and giggling over every single thing. The boys mainly kept to themselves, occasionally laughing softly at the game they were playing on the TV. You paused from stirring the cheesy sauce, simmering softly in the pan.

“You can go ahead and combine this sauce with the pasta, Mandy,” you said, nudging the brunette girl with your elbow. “I’m going to head to the bathroom real quick.” You went to the bathroom down the hall and completed your business, flushing the toilet and washing your hands. As you exited the bathroom, you ran right into a pair of broad, muscular shoulders. You look up, an apology bubbling from your lips, until you meet a pair of wide, dark eyes: Hamzah. His eyes narrow and his brow furrows. Your lips curl into a sneer, the close proximity of him causing hot, red anger to flare in your chest. The two of you attempt to get around each other, moving in sync. This annoying act continued until Hamzah’s large hands grip your waist and practically lifted you up, moving you out of his way. He continued down the hallway to the guest room without looking back, leaving you stunned into silence in the middle of the hallway. Your waist tingled lightly where his hands had touched you. The way his large hands were able to almost completely engulf your waist, followed by how effortlessly he had lifted you, caused inappropriate, unwanted thoughts to flow through your mind. You shook your head, internally scolding yourself for your rash behavior. When you reunited with Mandy in the kitchen, she gave you a confused look.

“You okay?” she asked. No doubt your silent demeanor and red face giving away some of your internal embarrassment.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” you responded, unconvincingly.

“You sure?” she pressed. “I saw Hamzah leave and I just thought–”

“Yes!” you snapped, cutting her off. “I am perfectly fine.” You ran a hand through your hair and Mandy laughed, shaking her head at your idiocy.

“If you say so, girl.” The night continued smoothly once you had calmed yourself down from your strained interaction with Hamzah. The pasta was cheesy and delicious, followed by the brownies which were sweet and rich with chocolate. Mandy shared the brownies with the two boys, Martin full of compliments and praise for the two of you, while Hamzah enjoyed his in silence, glancing at you every so often with a wide-eyed stare that made you feel both uncomfortable and anxious. Throughout the night, Martin and Mandy exchanged coy looks, giggling under their breath at something that seemed to you like an inside joke, but you were unsure. Finally, you reached your breaking point, and blurted out your confusion at the couple’s strange attitude.

“What the hell are you two plotting?” you asked. The couple exchanged a knowing look, smirking at each other.

“Plotting?” Mandy repeated. “We’re not plotting anything.”

“I know you are,” you said. 

To your utter surprise, Hamzah chimed in in agreement. “Yeah,” he said, mouth full of brownie. “You’re both acting so weird. What’s going on?”

Mandy gave Martin another weird look, the two nodding at each other in joint agreement. “Well…” Mandy said. “There’s this movie that Martin and I have been dying to see and it comes out today. We’re going to leave to see it now.”

“And we know that the two of you have some unsettled differences,” Martin chimed in. “So while we go out to see this movie, the two of you are going to stay here and figure them out.”

“Are you serious, Mandy?” you said, exasperation at this situation obvious in your voice. You glanced at Hamzah who had undeniable shock plastered all over his face. “No…” you said, as the couple began to pack up their things and pull their shoes on in quick succession. “No, no, you’re not doing this.”

“We’ll just leave the house, Martin,” Hamzah said.

“We’re locking the two of you in,” the brunette replied. “You’re not getting out this easy. The way you two absolutely despise each other pisses us off. So, you’re both not leaving until you have established some sort of mutual camaraderie or something like it. Understand?” You and Hamzah stood up from the table in protest, but it was too late, Mandy and Martin left the house in sync, locking the door from the outside. The two of you were trapped, together and alone, for an uncomfortable, inestimable amount of hours. You let out a sigh of pure frustration, understanding that the following couple of hours were going to be the most uncomfortable and angry you had felt in a while.

“Well, shit,” Hamzah said, sitting back down and folding his arms across his broad chest.

You rolled your eyes. “This is fucking ridiculous,” you said. “There’s no way I’m doing this.” You get up and pace the wooden floor, head lowered as you think of all the ways you could escape Hamzah and his brown-eyed gaze that you could feel following your every move.

“Oh, come on,” he said, standing up from his seat. He moved in front of you, blocking your path, looking down at you with a facetious smirk that boiled your blood. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Oh, trust me,” you said, maneuvering around the larger man. “It can and it is.” Hamzah reached out, fast as lightning, and grabbed your forearm. The slight touch sent undeniable shivers down your spine, which you hated. He turned you around to face him, the two of you inches from one another. You gazed down at his hand, still wrapped around your forearm.

“Am I really that detestable to you, y/n?” he asked, voice at a decibel so low you had to crane your ears to even hear him. The inches between the two of you began closing, his eyes—so brown they looked black—drawing you closer. Dark, seductive images flitted through your mind: Hamzah’s large hands gripping your waist, his lips on your neck, hands fisting your hair, gripping your throat, touching your cunt. Shocked, you wretch your forearm out of his grasp.

“Yes,” you breathed out, chest heaving, mind reeling from your stupid imagination and wandering mind. “You are that detestable.”

“Really?” Hamzah asked, voice no louder than a whisper. You realized as your back hit the wall that he had backed you into a both physical and mental corner. You gulped as he drew closer and closer. “Because—I think—you like to think of me as something more than just detestable.”

“I don’t like to think of you at all, Hamzah,” you said, skin burning as his dark eyes remained locked on yours, unyielding in their direct gaze.

“You don’t?” he said, scoffing. He leaned closer, lips practically brushing yours. His large hands maneuver to grip your waist, and you don’t even try to stop him. “Not at all, huh. Not even at night, when you’re alone in your bed.” His grip on your waist tightened and shockwaves of undeniable pleasure flash through your spine like needles. “Cause I do. All the fucking time.” You look up at him, eyes widened in shock. He curses, the grip on your waist tightening so hard you thought it would bruise. “Don’t,” he said, voice rough and gravely. “Don’t fucking look at me like that…or I’m going to do something we both will regret.”

You had never expected to feel this way about Hamzah. But seeing him—a man so stupid and narcissistic and haughty—reduced to this…reduced to a quivering mess of a man with needy desperation written all over him, you felt that you couldn’t help yourself. You whimpered as your core tightened. Your back brushed the wall and Hamzah leaned impossibly closer, chest brushing against your own.

“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me you don’t want this.” You froze, the repeated words brushing your lips, bubbling up inside you. But you couldn’t lie. You couldn’t say them. For deep down inside you, in a place you had buried since you got to know him, lay the dirty, red-hot truth. You wanted him too, equally as bad. Your shaking hands, puppeteered not by your brain, but by that stupid feeling deep in your heart, reached up to intertwine behind Hamzah’s neck, grasping at the delicate curls at his nape. Hamzah’s eyes widened at the realization that you weren’t backing away.

“I can’t,” you confessed. Hamzah, lips quivering with desire, leaned closer, brushing your soft and plush mouth with his own. Unable to contain your palpitating desire, you tightened your grip on his curls and pulled him into you, pressing your lips violently together. Your lips locked together, a wet mess of tongue and spit as you desperately clung to each other. Hamzah’s hands ran up and down your body, unsure of what part of you he wanted to touch first, desperate for everything, all at once. He separated from your lips, and you let out a needy, unfiltered whine at the lack of contact. Hamzah began kissing down your neck, suckling on that sweet spot behind your ear that made you cry out in pleasure.

“You have no idea,” he whispered, in between open-mouthed kisses planted on your neck. “You have no fucking idea what you do to me.” You whimpered at the blunt confession, hands yanking at his curls. His hands grabbed at your ass, lifting you up effortlessly as you wrapped your legs around his waist. Hamzah roughly pushed you up against the wall, lips connecting with your own again. You yanked at his t-shirt and he paused his motions, pulling it over his head and throwing it somewhere in the room. You came face-to-face with his body, ribbed and muscular from his time in the gym, while also maintaining enough tummy to make your thighs squeeze together. You mirror his movements, pulling your tanktop off and shucking your sweats down your legs, leaving you in your bra and underwear. Hamzah looks at you starstruck.

“Holy shit,” he whispered, reaching to grasp at your covered tits. “You’re even prettier than I imagined.” You giggled slightly, a gesture that never occurred to you would happen with Hamzah. Hamzah sunk down to his knees, leaving little kisses along your stomach and the underside of your tits. Kissing and biting your inner thighs, he dragged your underwear down your legs, mouth agape as you came face-to-face with your soaking cunt. He looked up at you with wide eyes, pupils dilated, and you felt your knees weaken. Hamzah grabbed one of your thighs after the other, wrapping your legs around his shoulders practically sitting on him, leaning against the wall. He continued to leave little kisses along your legs, suckling purple bruises onto your inner thighs.

“Hamzah–” you whine, tightening your grip in his curls.

“Use your words, y/n,” he said, looking up at you through his thick eyelashes.

“I need you,” you say, your desperation overwhelming your embarrassment and confusion. Hamzah smirked up at you, before shoving his head deep between your thighs. He licked a long strip up your folds, holding eye contact with you, before circling his tongue around your clit. As his tongue connected with your sensitive bud, you let out a long moan, head tilting back against the wall. Hamzah ate you out like it was his last meal, licking, sucking, and slurping your juices in a constant state of desperation for more. You felt yourself coming closer and closer to your climax, hands tightening his hair as his nose rubbed deep into your clit. You came with a cry, legs shaking around his head as you shuddered and convulsed, white spots bedazzling your vision.

Hamzah lifted you up, wrapping your legs back around his waist and kissed you, mouth stained with your juices. You tasted yourself on his tongue and moaned at the feel of his tongue poking its way into your mouth.

“God, you’re so fucking sexy,” he whispered. “You have no idea how bad I wanted you.”

“Hamzah—” you panted. “I need you inside of me.” He reached down into his pants, pulling out his hard member, stroking it a few times before rubbing it up and down your wet folds. He slid into you with a gasp, the two of you moaning at the feel of him sheathed inside of you. He began slowly thrusting in and out of you, the stretch of his thick cock inside your cunt drawing whimpers from deep in your throat. While your eyes rolled back into your head from the pleasure, Hamzah never broke eye contact.

“God, you’re such a fucking slut,” he said. “You hate me, huh?”

You whimper in response.

“Yeah, you hate me…but you’re still here, being fucked by this cock, huh?” You couldn’t respond, the only sound flowing from you being heady whines and high-pitched moans. You felt yourself inching closer towards another release, one of your hands reaching between your legs to rub your clit. One of Hamzah’s hands wrapped around your throat, squeezing slightly, you realized with a jolt that he was holding you up with one hand. The fact that this man could hold you up and fuck you so good with just the strength of one arm made your core tighten.

“I–I’m gonna cum, Hamzah,” you manage to cry out, dangerously tipping on the precipice of release.

“Oh, yeah?” Hamzah responded breathlessly. “You gonna cum, baby? Shit. Cum for me, pretty girl.” You cum with a strangled yelp falling from your lips. 

“Good girl,” Hamzah moaned out, hips beginning to stutter. “Good girl, so pretty, so fucking pretty for me.” Your hands grabbed onto his curls tightly, yanking as you came down from your high. The feel of his dark strands being pulled so tightly sent Hamzah over the edge. Hips stuttering as he came, head buried deep into your neck, he let out a flurry of whimpers and praises. The two of you sat there for a minute, Hamzah breathing heavily into your neck. Just then, you heard the jangle and clank of keys outside of the door. Hamzah’s eyes locked onto yours, wide with shock and fear.

“Shit,” you say. Untangling your limbs, the two of you rushed to dress in five seconds flat. You threw yourselves onto the couch, sitting on opposite ends just as Mandy and Martin opened the door and returned.

“The cinema was closed, guys,” Martin announced as he took off his coat and boots, Mandy close behind him. “Did you at least make up though?”

“Yeah, we did,” Hamzah responded, voice still rough and breathless. The couple finally came into your view, cheeks and ears red from the outside wind. You knew that the two of you were a strange sight: clothes rumpled, cheeks flushed with embarrassment and something dirtier. You also knew that, ever the observer, it would be Mandy to notice.

“Oh my god!” she said, covering her shocked face with a hand. “OH MY GOD, MARTIN!” She yanked on his sleeve, jumping up and down.

“What?!” he asked. “I don’t get it.”

“They fucked, holy shit, they fucked,” she laughed and giggled, jumping up and down with glee. “You owe me a hundred dollars, Martin.”

[hotpinkstars]

ESPRESSO - aventurine x reader

- "now he's thinkin' bout me, everynight, oh, is it that sweet? i guess so." or, how does aventurine do when he's in love?

- GUYS GUYS QUEEN SABRINA DROPPED A SINGLE i've been listening to this for days and i needed to write about it sooooooooooo yeah! anyways i'll get to writing probably a few requests tomorrow and wednesday (expect 4-5 posts between those days to make up for my absence) and yeahhhhhh enjoy!!

- aventurine might be a little ooc, mentions of his trauma (so penacony main quest spoilers), reader confesses at the end. wc 1067

Aventurine doesn’t know what to do when he first figures out that the feeling in his chest whenever he saw you was because he liked you. He probably tried to deny it, until Topaz caught him blushing like crazy after you walked away from the conversation you two had just finished. (Even then, she had to tell him, and then he spent a long time thinking that possibility through. She might have been right). 

You plague his visions. Why does he always want something to do with you? Why does he always want to be in your space, but also never wants to see you again? You’ve noticed his weird behavior, considering you were one of the first people he’s ever genuinely called a friend, but didn’t really think too far into it. 

Though, it didn’t stop you from paying more attention to it, that's for a fact. Sometimes you’d pay more attention to his body movements around you, the way he speaks, his etiquette, etc. You and Topaz communicate through it, and it’s a little bit different from his conversations with her. 

You know he can be cocky. Like, very cocky. You know he’s not too afraid to talk back, to challenge someone to a gamble (spoiler he wins), and to be reckless. Though, you also know about his backstory. So you can kind of understand where he’s coming from. 

He’s been pretty open with you about all of the things he’s endured. You know his real name, he’s described how his family has looked, and he’s described his years he endured slavery and what his home planet was like. You know about the Men in Black and the Katicans. And you know how traumatized he is.

Now, you’ve known him for a long, long time before this. You welcomed him into the IPC when Jade first announced his arrival, and you kind of showed him the ropes. He thought you seemed kind, so he stayed in contact with you.

You’ve watched him change, all of his progress through life, the hard times and the good times, and so much more. And that's what gets him the most, he thinks. 

He never realized how much he trusted you until he realized he liked you. You know every single thing about this man, which was the reason why he was rather… nervous when he’d have to communicate with you face to face. He did a good job at keeping up his front he uses to talk to people, but you sensed a slight form of stress underneath all the layers he put up to look tough. 

He lays awake, thinking about you. You’ve made part of his mind your home, and it’s the part he comes back to over and over again. You replay in his mind like a good song that he can’t get enough of- on, and on, and on, and on. 

He does like to bring you little trinkets he finds pretty when he goes out in public to do some shopping. Considering how wealthy he is, he could probably afford to buy out the whole store, so if you even mention something you like to him, he’s on his way to find it for you. He likes to think of it as he’s buying your kindness, but you think something completely different. You enjoy his sudden gift giving, not just because of your gain, but because he thought about you enough to do such a thing. It always makes you slightly blush before laughing while opening the box presented in front of you. He thinks that's the most precious part about your time spent together; all of the opportunities he gets to listen to your gorgeous laughter and see your flawless smile. Topaz, pinch the man, he’s in his own personal dreampool.

Oh, how bad he wants to confess to you, but he’s really afraid of rejection. He fears losing you entirely, fears that you won’t look at him like you always do if he asked if you two could be a thing. He fears you’d think he was odd for wanting you to himself, and that you’d slowly back away until you refuse to even look at his broken, battered form any longer. The thought makes a shiver crawl up his back. He can’t lose you too. 

All this man asks is to find a way to remove you from his head. You’re absolutely tormenting him! Notice how he’s been lacking on his work lately, always caught in a daze when he’s sitting down at his desk? That’s you he’s daydreaming about. He’s no good with his emotions. He knows how to hide sadness, fear, and anger, but he’s never been in this boat before. Love is a whole new concept to him. 

“Aventurine, you’ve been out of it lately. Tell me, is something the matter?” You barge through the blonde's office, not even bothering to knock. You know you don’t have to, he’s never doing anything so significant in that tiny space that it needs to be kept private.

“What are you saying? Nothings up with me,” he drops his pen in the small plaster pen cup you bought for him. “Work has been tiring lately. Nothing to stress over.” 

You plop into the chair in front of his desk, resting your arms on the top and putting your head in between your palms.

“I can tell when you lie. Tell the truth.”

He looks away. What was he supposed to say? That he couldn’t get you out of his brain, and that you’re the only thing he can focus on? That’ll scare you off for sure!

“Aventurine?? You there?” you wave a hand in front of his face, snapping him out of his daze once more. “You know, you don’t have to lie. I already know what you’re thinking.”

His eyes slightly widen, just enough for you to notice. You giggle very lightly before continuing on with your sentence. “You have a little crush, don’t you? Don’t worry, I like you back. Seriously, I do.”

He doesn’t know how to reply to that. He doesn’t know if he wants to faint or make out with you right now. “So that makes us…?”

“I don’t know. We could remain friends, we could be boyfriend girlfriend, whatever you want. I don’t care.”

Well, he believes he already knows the answer he’s choosing.

[yandere-daze]

I´ve had this idea plague my mind for the last few days and now it´s finally time for me to unleash it onto the world. Feel free to comment on or ask questions about this idea/ AU if you find it interesting!

This work was inspired by the normalized yandere genshin AU I stumbled upon while scrolling through Tumblr, created by @fancyfeathers

Hope you enjoy!

gn reader

2,2k words

tw yandere, normalized yandere behaviour, mentions of obsession, possessiveness, kidnapping, stalking, murder, emotional manipulation and isolation

Yandere! Genshin Academy/Normalized Yandere AU

In this AU, yanderes are a normal and accepted part of society. Not only are their toxic attitudes and behaviours permitted but even encouraged. Somehow, over the years, people have even started to wish for a yandere as their partners. By Teyvat society at large, yanderes are seen as somewhat of an ideal partner. They´re fiercely loyal and would do absolutely anything for their darlings, right?

And yet, many darlings sing a different tune when reality suddenly comes crashing down onto them when a yandere actually starts pursuing them. Fantasizing about things such as being kidnapped is simply something entirely different compared to experiencing the real thing. And yet, when they call out for help from their loved ones, they´re simply patted on their back and congratulated. Some might even express their condolences to the poor yandere, saying that it always takes a bit of time for a darling to realize that this is for the best.

You are one of the few people who are completely horrified by the concept of a yandere and even more so to see everyone around you treat kidnappings or murder sprees as something completely normal or even romantic. You shudder at the thought of ever attracting the attention of a yandere, knowing that you would have no one to help you avoid that dreadful fate.

Which is why your complete world is turned upside down when you´ve been registered at the wrong academy by mistake. An administrative error, you were told. One, that might take a few weeks or even months to correct.

Now normally, you would have been annoyed but fine with this. You would just have to bear with it for a bit and attend a different school until the error is fixed and you can finally go to your desired one.

But you felt a pool of dread form deep within you when you did some research on the academy you had been wrongly assigned to. It actually wasn´t all that easy to find information on the academy, which you found strange, seeing as this has never been an issue with any other well-regarded academy. But no matter how much you search, nothing concrete is to be found. Only a few abandoned forum posts where people asked around about their missing friend who had last been seen close to the academy in question.

It made you feel a bit uneasy but you figured that it probably didn´t have anything to do with the academy itself. As sad as it was, disappearances were happening all over Teyvat, so this one case wasn´t really of note.

But seeing as you couldn´t find anything else, you figured that you would just need to figure things out on your first day attending the academy.

And oh, were you in for a nasty surprise.

As soon as you sat down for your first lesson, you noticed how strange the atmosphere was. Everyone had been staring at you so strangely when you entered the room, it kind of unnerved you.

After that, a few introductions were exchanged and you slowly calmed down again. Your classmates seemed nice enough and you thought that maybe, your time here wouldn´t be so bad after all.

All that quickly changed when your professor finally entered the room and introduced himself as the instructor who would teach you the subject of "stalking".

Turning your head left and right, you tried to see if anyone else was as shocked about this as you were but to your surprise, no one even raised an eyebrow at this very concerning introduction.

A class on stalking? Maybe this wasn´t what you actually feared and more so a clumsy way of saying that this would be a psychology class focusing on the mental effects stalking has on the victims? With all these yanderes running around unchecked, there were bound to be many victims and so a class like this might actually be beneficiary. I mean surely they wouldn´t actually try to teach young adults how to kidnap someone, right?

Right?

Well, it turns out you were wrong when the professor started outlining different forms of stalking. Following "your darling" around, stalking them online, placing cameras or microphones in their rooms to observe them anytime you wanted.

Your mind was spiraling as you listened to the lecture and you briefly wondered at just what kind of an academy you had been enlisted in. Surely this must be some kind of joke, right? A prank played on newcomers at the academy to get them spooked? Surely someone is going to come in any moment, clear all of this up and then laugh at you actually falling for this?

But no matter how much you hoped for this to be the case, no one was coming. No one was making fun of you for falling for such an obvious prank. In fact, none of your classmates seemed perturbed at all by what was being taught here. How could they be okay with a lesson that basically amounted to "how to stalk someone 101"? You felt like you were losing your mind.

Glancing to your right, you see your blond deskmate eagerly nodding along to whatever the professor was saying and swiftly taking notes whenever a sentence seemed to particularly strike a chord with him. His red eyes practically sparkled as he outlined "helpful tips and tricks for not alerting your darling of your presence" on his paper, using a text marker to highlight a particular passage as if to say that it would come in handy in the future.

On your left, you saw another tall male student and for a moment you hoped that maybe, just maybe, there was someone else here who was bothered by the lecture given. He had a bored look on his face and he was wearing some type of headphones over his grey hair. Was he even paying attention? Maybe he was trying to cancel out the horrific lecture taking place at the moment.

You discreetly leaned over a bit, only to see that he was actually holding a book hidden under the desk, his eyes carefully following the paragraphs of tiny letters. Well, it seems like he certainly wasn´t paying much attention to the lecture because what he was secretly reading seemed to be some advanced material on the success rate of different methods of stalking, from the looks of it.

You quickly turned your head back when you saw him glancing over at you with an unreadable stare. Well, it looks like your hopes were dashed again after all. This guy was nuts too.

Knowing this, you really couldn´t do much aside from waiting for class to be over.

Your small hope that this was just a really strange outlier was quickly destroyed again in your following classes.

Next was a class on emotional manipulation and how to get your darling to depend on you.

Then, a class on how to force yourself into your darling´s life and how to approach growing closer to them.

Finally, the day ended with a lecture on how to kidnap your darling and make them disappear without a trace.

As the bell finally rung, the professor informed your class that there was also an optional class about how to effectively "get rid" of a rival that you can sign up for. You pretended to not be bothered when several students raised their hands to show their interest in attending this course.

You scrambled to get out of your seat as fast as possible, not wanting to stay in this hellish classroom for even a second later. You fled into the hallway and walk by groups of students excitedly chattering about things you didn´t want to listen to.

"Oh, I hope I can find my darling soon! I just know I´ll feel a special connection when we first make eye contact! I´ve been waiting for so long", the first girl swooned as she twirled strands of her long brown hair around her finger, seemingly lost in her own fantasies.

"Agreed. I know that once I meet my darling, I won´t let anything get between us. I will never let them go. It´s only a matter of time", the taller, blue-haired woman chimed in, her voice calmer than that of her excitable friend.

You didn´t like the way her eyes linger on you as you pass by them.

Once home, you tried to make contact with the administrative office again to ask them if the process of your transfer can be sped up in any way. You didn´t want to spend another second in that academy.

With what you have seen today, you were easily able to deduce the true nature of this academy and it left you absolutely terrified.

The fact that you weren´t able to find any information about the academy beforehand, your strange classmates fixated on their potential "darlings" and of course the horrid classes being taught there.

Somehow, you have ended up in an academy for yanderes. Every single person you saw there today was a lovesick lunatic in some shape or form. And the more you thought about it, the more you realized you were in huge danger there. What would your crazed classmates do if they ever found out that you actually weren´t a fellow yandere but someone they could claim as a "darling"? The very thought of it makes you sick. You have to get out of there immediately!

Which is why your heart dropped when after some long hesitation, the person on the phone finally answered you.

"You must excuse me but I´m afraid to tell you that there have been some... unforeseen circumstances that do not permit me to work on your case at the moment. I have been asked to postpone this matter until further notice".

"What? Why?", is all you could manage to say in your befuddlement. You knew bureaucracy can take a long time but for this woman to specifically be asked to postpone this? Just what was going on here?

Again, the woman on the phone hesitated to answer and you could hear a tinge of nervousness in her voice when she finally spoke up. As if she wasn´t sure if she was allowed to say what she was about to.

"I´m afraid that I´m not at liberty to provide this information. The person asking me to...focus on different cases for the meantime wished to stay anonymous. Even so, it is not within my power to refuse their wishes as they have provided our establishment with a generous donation. I sadly cannot help you with this issue", at least the woman did sound generally apologetic but that didn´t really help you in this situation.

Your mind was still reeling as you processed this information. Someone specifically asked for your transferal to not be worked on? Why would anyone do this? And they seemed to have a large fortune too? Why all this to make you stay around?

It can´t be that you already attracted someone´s attention while at the academy, right? Surely that couldn´t be true! You made sure to not interact with anyone directly after you realized just what kind of people attended this school. How could one of these yanderes have "fallen for you" already?

It seemed so utterly unbelievable and if you were being honest, you didn´t want to believe that it was true either. But nothing else made sense. Why would anyone do this otherwise?

Noticing your prolonged silence, the woman spoke up once more.

"I´m sure that all of this will be resolved soon. It will only be a few months. I am sure you will find many friends at your current school soon."

You sure hoped not. The thought of being noticed by any of the yanderes already made the hairs on your neck rise. You vowed to stay away from anyone who even showed a fleeting interest in you. You had to keep yourself safe until you can finally switch schools. You could do this, you had to!

You barely registered when the woman bid you farewell and hung up the phone after you once again didn´t answer her.

Now completely alone, you forged a plan. If you didn´t want to get involved in anything dangerous, no one could find out that you were actually here by mistake and not a yandere. Nothing could be worse than these lunatics finding out that you´re a darling, so you´ll have to be very careful. But how do you do this?

Well, it seemed like you must act like a yandere yourself. You would have to pretend that you´re a lovesick fool who totally isn´t bothered by all this talk about kidnapping, stalking, and murder. Thinking about it again already made you sick but you didn´t really have any other options. No one could find out or it was over for you.

You only hoped that you could convincingly play the part and that no one was perceptive enough to see right through you. Well, it couldn´t be that hard, right?

Surely no one already had their eye on you. Right?

[eroscomet]

Picking Up Pieces That Aren't Yours

Chapter one- Pieces of the Past

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Paring: Tara Carpenter x Fem!Reader

Context: You've known Tara for most of her life in Woodsboro, though you two were never close. After moving to NYC to escape everything she and her sister endured, she finds herself trying to regain control of her life despite being a wreck. After killing Amber, who had been her girlfriend for years, she has a hard time trusting new people as well as trusting relationships. During her time at Blackmore University, she finds herself getting closer to you. She unintentionally plays the push-and-pull game with you, pulling you in as if she wants to be more than friends with you and then pulling away when you actually seem to want to commit.

Warnings: Talks about death, murder, grievance, Trauma, PTSD, Mentions of forms of abuse, Mentions alcoholism, Mentions of weapons, bad writing. (Let me know if I missed anything!)

Word count: 2.5k

A/N: Hellooooo, lovelies! I am currently working on the second part of 'Make it Right', it will be out soon, I promise. For now, I've decided to also begin writing other one-shots or starting other stories! I believe I am going to write more fics for Jenna's different characters. It might've been just a bit inspired by 'Casual' by Chappell Roan but that'll come in later chapters.

Not proof read

╰┈➤Series Masterlist

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No one said it was going to be easy, especially for the Carpenter sisters. With everything that they have endured, they now carry emotional baggage that they feel will follow them everywhere. Or so Sam feels that way. Tara refuses forthat to be her path, she refuses to be someone who lets one event define her entire life. She saw it with Sidney, Gale, and all those who have been through the same thing as her. People who can never seem to escape or move on from their past.

Tara refuses to see the therapist that Sam has been in contact with for her therapy sessions. She truly believes that she can handle it all on her own. Which, in retrospect, sounds absurd. Planning to go through four years of university without any help with her mental and emotional baggage? She doesn't want to talk to her friends about what happened or even think about what happened.

A part of her is still somewhat grieving Amber, it's expected, though. They had dated for quite some while, but Tara is now left with the thoughts of, 'Was any of it real?' Was Tara a pawn in Amber's sick and twisted game? That's how she felt like, at least. Like she let this all happen. Like all of it was somehow her fault. These destructive thoughts allowed Tara to cave in on herself. Her mind was as much a battlefield as her life itself.

Did she survive? Yes. Did she escape? No. She thought that moving away from Woodsboro would save her, she thought it was an escape. Her mind restricted her of that relief, of that escape. She survived, but at what cost? She feels she has absolutely no sense of direction. She wanted to blame Amber just as everyone had and then moved on, but she couldn'twhen she blamed herself for somehow allowing this to happen. Even now that Amber is gone, she still plagues her mind. 

There is no excuse that she can give for Amber's actions, and she isn't sure that she wants to make an excuse for her.Every night for her is the same. The memory, the nightmare turned reality, haunts her. It's always the same but in a third-person point of view. She sees herself holding the gun, everything slowing down for her at that exact moment. The gun recoiled as the shot was taken, the noise ringing out from it. The look on Amber's face, the realization on her face.

Like every time, the bullet comes in contact with Amber's head, and just like that, she's dead again. The sound of the knife that she once held in her hand clattering on the floor. The sound had been almost deafening in her nightmares. It'salmost taunting the way that she watched as the blood splattered on her face. The blood that had belonged to her once beloved girlfriend.

Beloved. That's how Tara had seen Amber.

It's almost comical to you how Tara had ever seen Amber in any context but fake and off-putting. Amber wasn't the kindest, the easiest to get along with, or even the most caring. You'd almost feel guilty for not speaking out about it earlier if it weren't for others who had also felt that way and kept quiet as well. You weren't exactly friends with their friend group, you had always felt yourself to be a side character.

Chad had always been all over Liv. They were cute, sure, but there was no need for that PDA. Mindy was constantly going on about different horror movies, as well as still somehow complaining about not having a girlfriend and not wanting to commit to one. Wes was caring and all, but he could also get annoying at times. He had been the only one in the friend group who had felt the off feeling about Amber. It seemed like he and Amber were always bumping heads about Tara.

When Wes died, and the news got out about Amber being the one behind the killings along with Sam's boyfriend, Richie, you knew why he had been killed. Amber felt like he was an obstacle—blocking her path to Tara, stopping her from moving forward with everything. But what frustrated her the most was how much he'd begun questioning her, noticing how strangely she’d been acting. You felt almost thankful for keeping your mouth shut about how you felt. It could have been you.

In all honesty, you and Tara had been close at one point. Back in elementary, you had always invited Tara over to your house after noticing how Tara would spend hours waiting for someone to pick her up after school. She'd sometimes mention how she'd be locked out of her house because her mother wasn't home. You had let her come over, you never minded it since the two of you were friends after all.

Looking back at it, knowing what you know now, it's a bit bittersweet. Knowing the only reason it would take a while for someone to pick up Tara was that she had to wait until Sam got out of school, then walk from her middle school to Tara's elementary school, and finally bring Tara home. The times that she would say she was locked out of the house were either her mother was off getting drunk anywhere she could or her mother would lock her out as a form of punishment.

The thought of you not being there for her earlier had always stung. What about the times that it was raining? Was Tara out in the rain alone? You could never bring yourself to ask her, careful not to bring something up that could take her back to that time. You two had stuck together since those days in elementary when she'd come over constantly. Middle school is when it had gotten a bit rocky, Amber had finally come into the picture.

Amber was new, and Tara had always been too kind and understanding for her good. One day of simply showing Amber around the school had turned into having lunches together or hanging out after school. Days when you'd hang out with them or even with Tara alone, you had always felt Amber's burning glare and jealousy, even from behind. You always ignored it though, being able to hang out with Tara was worth it.

It was around this time that you had begun to like Tara and not in a normal friendship platonic way. It was easy to fall for Tara, or so you thought so. She was pretty, inside and out. Her face had always perfectly reflected her beauty on the inside. You were sure that Amber somehow knew that you liked her because of the constant glares. Still, you ignored her because you knew Tara way before Amber had ever known her.

Ignoring, however, had made it worse even though you were trying to steer away from conflict. Amber didn't take you ignoring her lightly. She began finding excuses to take you and Tara's time away from you. Saying anything that would make sweet and naive Tara feel guilty for leaving Amber behind. Hangouts between you and her had become hangouts between the three of you. Then, slowly, Tara slipped away from your fingers and right into Amber's arms.

You tried not to dwell on it too much, as was expected, but it had hurt how it had seemed so easy for Tara to forget and replace you. You weren't angry with Tara, but you were bitter with Amber, yet you held your tongue for Tara's sake.When high school rolled around, rumors had gone around during freshman year that Amber and Tara had begun dating.

This had set you off; your friends hadn't heard the end of it for almost that entire school year. Everything that you see them do, you feel more bitter. That never stopped your feelings for Tara, though, they had only grown since Tara stayed her usual sweet self that had always swept you off your feet. Sophomore year, you spent your entire time busying yourself with your studies and soccer practice. You shut yourself away from hearing things about Tara and Amber's 'amazing' relationship.

That's when junior year rolled by, it seemed like you had some luck this year. You and Tara shared a math class, Algebra II, without a certain possessive girlfriend around to keep you away from Tara. You're sure that Amber noticed you two shared a class because Tara wasn't as talkative with you. Maybe you had grown apart? Or maybe Amber had told her to stay away from you? 

Senior year is when it all happened. It was hard to keep up with all the information that felt like it was being thrown at you. First, Tara's attack, then the following murders, Sam being back in town with her weird boyfriend, and Amber suddenly getting more controlling and possessive.

Tara, on the other hand, felt like she had been thrown into the eye of the tornado. She was both happy and bitter that her sister had returned after having no contact with her for so long. Just because she had gotten hurt, she returned? It sounded like bullshit to her, but a big part of her had missed Sam. 

Sam had been around to meet Amber, having left when Tara had been in 8th grade. She never liked Amber; she had always felt something was off about her, and no matter the countless times she told Tara that, Tara had always defended Amber. Upon seeing that Amber was still a part of Tara's life and now has a more important role than a friend, it irked her a bit. Amber had been bitter with Sam from the moment that she returned; maybe it was because of everything Tara had opened up to her about Sam, or maybe it was all a part of the act.

When it had been just Sam and Tara in the room, she had asked Tara where you had gone. "Whatever happened to her, I liked her." She had said. Tara had dismissed it with a small excuse, but hearing your name had tugged at her heart a bit, though she quickly ignored it. When Tara thought back to then, it made her feel stupid how she hadn't reached out to you sooner, but she knew that she was stuck in a position she couldn't leave. She was blinded by what she had thought was love with Amber. 

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Tara woke up on the couch in the apartment that she, Sam, and their roommate Quinn shared. Quinn was out, probably on some Tinder date that would end in her staying the night with her date. Sam had been working late shifts, still trying to afford both the apartment and now Tara's education as well. She awoke to the sound of a phone ringing, a small groan escaping her lips. 

She sat up on the couch, sighing before grabbing her phone off of the coffee table. She didn't care to check the contact name, she simply picked up the phone. All she had heard was a static noise, which caused her to furrow her eyebrows. A breathing noise was heard through the other end of the phone. Suddenly, the noise of the front door's knob jingling had caused her to be on high alert.

She felt herself retreat to the state she was never able to leave behind. Her hands shook as her heart began to pound, dropping her phone on the floor. A soft thump was heard as her phone fell onto the living room carpet. She completely froze, not knowing what to do and even if she had known, she was too paralyzed��by fear to do it. 

Eventually, the door opened and she clasped her hand over her mouth, her other hand grabbing the remote from next to her on the couch. Felt tears beginning to prick from the corners of her eyes.

"Tara! Sam asked me to check up on you-" You had begun saying before you felt the remote hit you in the head to which your hand reflexively held where the remote hit you on the head. "Gah! What the-"

You felt your words die on your lips as you saw Tara in the state she was in. Her sigh of relief did not go unnoticed by you as you began putting two and two together that you had triggered her. Before you could say anything, you saw tears slip from her eyes and roll down her cheeks. You put down the bag of take-out that you had brought for her to eat onto the coffee table before rushing to her. Kneeling in front of her a waterfall of apologies escaped from your lips.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. Tara, it's just me. I came to check up on you, Sam just wanted to make sure you were okay." You said as you leaned up, wrapping your arms around her. She quickly responded by wrapping her trembling arms around you.

Ever since attending Blackmore with Tara and her friend group, completely unplanned, you had gotten back into touch with her. You were one of the only 'outsiders' that she trusted with Tara to check up on her on nights like this. It would be considered a bit pathetic how you seemed at Tara's disposal. Everything she needed, you wanted to give her. 

So, for every message, call, and hang out, you'd immediately accept. Tara knew you liked her but she could never bring herself to be honest with herself about her feelings for you. She just knew it felt good to be cared for by you and to have your attention. All your actions were right, she just couldn't bring herself to trust to love someone and trust someone again.

The thought of a relationship was completely out of her mind until it came to you. This was quickly shaken away by her clouding thoughts of fear. She can't deny the pull to you, but she also cannot deny the thoughts that practically consumed her. Still, she continued to see you. She continued to call on you and be around you. She thought that the two of you had come to the understanding that things between the two of you were casual and light. 

Any time that you had begun to bring up wanting more than stolen kisses and secret cuddling, she'd quickly change the topic. You almost felt embarrassed for wanting to ask what you two were. Then again, you felt like it was better to have her this way than not at all.

"Are you okay?" You asked as you pulled away from the hug, your hands cupping her face to carefully examine her. Her tears had calmed, her breathing a little shaky and uneven, but she still had nodded.

"Yeah, I'm okay." She said with a small sniffle, "Just everything felt like... Never mind." 

"I'm sorry. I just came to check up and bring you something to eat." You said as you began peppering her face with soft and short kisses, trying to make her feel better and partially so she could forgive you. 

"You need to eat." You had added as you pulled away, tucking her bangs behind her ears as she nodded. Sending her a small, soft smile, you began to unpack the takeout for the both of you.

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A/N: I'm going, to be honest, I did not expect to write so much. I had to cut it short because I was going to go on and on. I'm beginning to contemplate turning into a fic as well. The words sort of flowed out of me, and there definitely is a plot that I can build on. I hope you guys enjoyed this! Again, I am currently making the next part to 'Make it Right,' this was meant to be like a little filler to keep you guys entertained, and I started a whole new fic. I'm going to hope to finish the next part of 'Make it Right' and post it sometime tomorrow. Thank you all for reading, as well as for the support on my last post! Bye, lovelies!

[imaginespazzi]

Part 4: Warning Bells

Masterlist - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11

I don't think I can do this again (do you remember it too?)

(In which a self-admittedly all over the place writer takes you on a bit of a rollercoaster)

Pairing: Paige Bueckers X Azzi Fudd

Themes: Fluff, Angst, Pining (the usuals)

Words: 6.1K

TW: Swearing, Mentions of Divorce

A/N: Hi lovelies :) Guess who made a deadline again? I'm as shocked as y'all are but I do wanna just warn y'all that August is gonna be really busy for me so as much as I'm gonna try to stick to schedule, there's a pretty good chance I won't. I really appreciate y'alls feedback with live-reacts/long reviews and it's truly the motivating factor behind my writing so pretty please keep sending them. I did edit (as usual) but please let me know the most likely existent typos anyway. As always, let me know what you liked, disliked and what you wanna see next. Have a lovely rest of your week my loves <3

March 2033 

Here’s what Azzi has learned about motherhood: having kids means that there will come many times in your life, when you will look around you and wonder how the hell did I get here. It’s that thought that’s currently plaguing her as she finishes hanging up the WELCOME HOME banner on the living room wall in her ex-girlfriend’s new apartment. And when she’s talking about kids, she’s not talking about her five year old who’s currently sticking purple hearts on every surface she can find. No, she’s talking about her 6’5 teammate who she’d once “adopted” as a joke in college, but who’s basically become her surrogate child ever since they’d ended up on the same WNBA team. 

It had started as a casual conversation when Jana, as she often did, had shown up for an impromptu lunch. The topic of Paige was hard to avoid considering it was Stephie’s favorite subject, heightened by the fact that Paige was coming back soon and Stephie was far too excited to finally have her Miss Buecks back. Jana was more than happy to indulge the little girl in conversation about what Paige had been like at UConn. And if Azzi had lost herself in those memories for a moment, transported back in time to a world that had once been blooming with promise before wilting in a darkness she’d created herself, well, she’d done an excellent job not letting it show on her face. 

The real issue had started when Jana had casually let slip her idea of surprising Paige with a little welcome party. And as Stephie had started reciting all the different things they could do -because of course me and Mama will help you Aunty J, Azzi had glared at Jana, only to receive an innocent smile in return that told her everything she needed to know. She’d been set up. 

That’s how, instead of spending her Saturday curled up on her comfortable couch with a book in her hands, Azzi is here instead and in true fashion, she’s the only one actually getting anything done. Jana, who had just left about twenty minutes ago to pick Paige up, had invited some of the other girls on the team to come help out yet, something about more hands on deck. Those supposed helpful hands had spent the last hour blowing up and popping balloons and getting nothing else done.

“I can’t believe y’all have me decorating for the woman who cost me my first national championship,” Joyce laments, “I still have nightmares from that game.”

“You gotta let that hurt go Aunty Joy,” Stephie says impishly, mimicking what Jana would normally say whenever the infamous 2025 South Carolina vs UConn national championship got brought up. 

“Don’t sass me Miss Stephanie,” Joyce sticks out her tongue at the little girl, throwing a purple balloon at Stephie’s head, “hasn’t your Mama taught you that we don’t mock people’s pain.”

“Ignore her Steph,” Tessa says, bumping her former Gamecock teammate as she shares a devilish grin with Azzi’s daughter, “she’s just upset she only won one. Some of us have two.”

Joyce guffaws, throwing another balloon, this time aimed at Tessa, “dude we’re supposed to be on the same team. What would Coach Staley say to you teaming with UConn people of all things to bully me?”

“She’d thank me for making sure you didn’t get a big head,” Tessa snipes back. 

Whatever response Joyce has to that quip is cut short by the doorbell ringing and Azzi feels her heartbeat quicken as Stephie lets out a squeal, dropping everything to go answer it. Things had been different since the facetime call almost two weeks ago. They’d accidentally on purpose settled into a routine where Stephie would call Paige at exactly 7 p.m. and Paige would answer on the first ring, promising to stay on the phone till the little girl fell asleep. And it would’ve been fine if that’s all it was. But then Paige started staying on the phone till after Stephie fell asleep and suddenly it was like they were back to their teenage selves, talking about everything and nothing, trying to learn every page of each other’s story all over again. 

Azzi had missed so much about Paige in the last couple of years but there was nothing she’d missed more than just talking to her best friend. She’d missed the way Paige would tell a story, going off on a million tangents in between. She’d missed the way her eyes would light up when she got to a particularly exciting part of the story, specks of gold shimmering in the blue like sunlight hitting the ocean. She’d missed the way Paige’s hands would be flying animatedly all over the place, even when she was whispering. She’d missed the way the blonde would pause halfway through to observe if Azzi was still listening, making sure all of the attention was still on her. And she’d missed the way that when it was Azzi’s turn to speak, Paige would hang onto every word like it was gospel, intently listening like she’d never forgive herself if she couldn’t recite everything Azzi had just said from memory. She’d missed the way Paige would let her emotions freely flicker across her face, because whatever happened to Azzi, Paige felt it too. 

She’d missed and missed, convinced the pain would be the end of her, until she’d tricked her mind into forgetting. And now Azzi’s beginning to realize that remembering it all again, might just be the thing that kills her. 

“Nevermind,” Stephie walks back to the room, sulking slightly, “it’s just Aunty Liyah.”

“Oh thanks Stephie babe. That makes me feel so wonderful,” Aaliyah says, walking in behind Stephie with an offended expression on her face, “and here I thought bringing cupcakes would make me popular.”

“Tell me those are store-bought Chavez. I ain’t trusting them if you made them yourselves,” Joyce says, side-eyeing the cupcakes. 

“Trust me I would never waste my precious time baking for y’all ungrateful ass-”

“Aaliyah,” Azzi shoots her younger teammate a sharp look.

“-ungrateful people,” Aaliyah corrects sheepishly, “cupcakes because y’all clearly don’t appreciate me.”

“I pre-ciate you Aunty Liyah,” Stephie says innocently, trying to get a better look at the aforementioned cupcakes, “you got the pu-ple ones right? They have to be pu-ple for Miss Buecks.”

Aaliyah bends down to Stephie’s level to show her the box of sweet treats “the perfect purple cupcakes for your Miss Buecks. How come you never wanna do nice things like this for us Stephie?”

“Because Miss Buecks is special,” Stephie retorts matter-of-factly.

“Oh so we’re not special?” Tessa asks, raising an eyebrow at Stephie.

“‘Course you are but Miss Buecks is special-er.”

And while her teammates all pretend to dramatically gasp at that, shaking their heads at Stephie, Azzi feels like someone’s squeezing her heart, twisting and twisting but never fully breaking it. She wonders if that might hurt less.

It’s another 10 minutes later when the doorbell rings again and Azzi watches her daughter’s face break into an incandescent grin, filled with hope, as she rushes to open the door because it has to be Paige this time. Azzi follows after her, trying to keep her breathing under control as anticipation clings to her nerves. Azzi’s gotten so spectacularly good at lying to herself that she tells herself this next one with ease: there’s not a single part of her that’s eager to see Paige again. 

“SURPRISE,” Stephie screams, flinging the front door open with as much strength as she can muster. She doesn’t give Paige a chance to react before she’s throwing herself against the blonde’s legs, hugging her thighs. 

It takes a second for Paige to register what’s happening, but when she does, it’s Azzi she’s looking at. Everything seems to move in slow motion as they stare at each other, the reality of the moment suddenly settling in. Paige is here. In Oakland. They’re going to be teammates; they’re going to see each other almost every day. Just like they used to. Except nothing is like it used to be and as that bitter truth comes up like bile in Azzi’s throat, she has to force herself to look away. 

“Miss Buecks,” Stephie calls out, tugging at the hem of Paige’s white shirt to get her attention, “do you like my surprise?”

Paige tears her eyes away from Azzi, leaning down to pick Stephie up before peppering her faces with kisses and making the younger girl squeal in delight, “best surprise ever.”

And Azzi really, really, can’t watch this. Not when it makes her want to walk over and cocoon herself in with the two of them, makes her want to pretend that she’s living in another life, one where she hadn’t thrown away the chance of a happily ever after with the girl she’d fallen in love with at fourteen, 

“Oh yeah Stephie, your surprise. Take all the credit. Not like the rest of us did anything,” Joyce rolls her eyes goodnaturedly, before pulling Paige into a one-armed hug, “welcome to the Bay Area Bueckers.”

Tessa and Aaliyah are next, both sharing warm hugs with their new teammate. Once they’ve had their turn, all eyes seem to turn to Azzi expectantly and the brunette blanches under their gaze. Other than Jana, who suddenly seems pretty heavily interested in the doorframe, the rest of her teammates don’t know about her past with Paige. So it’s only natural they’d expect her to greet Paige with all the cordiality of an old friend. 

“Y’all good?” Joyce asks slowly, looking between the two of them, “do you want me to introduce y’all or?”

“Shut up,” Azzi murmurs before drawing in a deep breath and stepping towards Paige. She tries not to fixate on the way Paige’s jaw flexes when the blonde swallows, tries not to think about all the patterns she’d once carved against that little patch of skin because she knew it drove Paige insane. The thing is Azzi can’t even really remember the last time they hugged beyond a for-the-cameras one at a game. But as she wraps her arms around Paige, the older woman’s breath tickling against her ear as she grips Azzi’s waist, it doesn’t feel that much different from how it used to be. Paige’s arms are still safe and strong and Azzi still wants to melt into them. But what’s different is that Stephie’s in between them now, tiny hands securely fastened around both of their necks. And Azzi almost, almost gives into the feeling of belonging as she whispers two simple words that mean just a little too much.

“Welcome home.”

***

Seven pairs of eyes watch as the movers move box after box after box into Paige’s apartment, until there’s more cardboard than floor visible. The three non-UConn girlies are wide-eyed as they watch the pile grow endlessly. Meanwhile Jana is laughing while Azzi tries to hide a smile behind her hands as the realization that she’d have to unpack all of her stuff hits Paige in waves, and her expression grows more and more somber. Once the movers are finally done, it’s Stephie, whose hand is still firmly clasped in Paige’s, who breaks the silence. 

“You have a lot of things Miss Buecks,” the little girl crinkles her nose, as she points out the obvious, “do you really need all of this stuff.”

“Of course I do Stephie,” Paige says indignantly and Azzi scoffs, earning her a withering glare from the blond. 

“Aight well it was nice to meet you-” Joyce starts, slowly backing away from the mess until Jana blocks her way. 

“Oh no you don’t. I told y’all we were all gonna help her move in. Call it team bonding,” the Egyptian says, her voice vaguely threatening. 

“Most of the team isn’t even here,” Aaliyah points out cautiously. 

“That’s not the point,” Jana rebukes, “alright team listen up. Here’s how this is going to go-”

“Maybe Paige should take charge. It is her apartment,” Tessa says slowly. 

“If we put Paige in charge she’ll tell us all to go home and procrastinate doing anything until after the season,” Azzi says, a knowing smirk playing on her lips. 

Paige pouts, “hey! I’m not that bad.”

“Oh you absolutely are.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“O-kay,” Jana claps, breaking apart the bickering, “it’s good to see the two of you are apparently younger than Stephie,” she holds up a hands a both Paige and Azzi start to splutter in their defense, “now as I was saying before being rudely interrupted. We’re gonna split this up. Joyce and I are gonna do the living room. Aaliyah and Tessa, y’all are gonna fix the guest room. Which leaves,” Jana smiles, and it’s only because Azzi knows her so well that she can read the menacing sparkle behind it, “Paige and Azzi to tackle the master bedroom.”

They both open their mouths to protest but are quick to get cut off by an excited Stephie, “I’mma help Mama and Miss Buecks!”

“Of course you are, why would you ever help anybody else? Clearly you don’t love us anymore. Not since your precious Miss Buecks got here,” Joyce says dramatically and while Paige smirks and the rest of the girls pretend to act mock offended, Azzi uses the distraction to sidle up to Jana. 

“What the fuck are you playing at El-Alfy,” she hisses under hear breath.

Jana shrugs innocently, “the master bedroom is the hardest because Paige has so many fucking clothes so I’m letting y’all old heads do it. Some of us are below 30 ya know.”

“Cut the bullshit,” Azzi snaps. 

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about Fudd,” Jana says airily as she starts to unpack a box, leaving Azzi muttering curses under her breath. 

“Hey-”

Azzi spins around at the soft voice, only to find herself crashing against a solid body. It’s instinct, the way Paige’s hands immediately reach out to steady her and it’s instinct, the way Azzi’s hands grab at the lapels of the blond’s shirt. Goosebumps trails up her skin as Paige's breath, hot and heavy, fans across her face. They’re too close; way too close and yet the idea of stepping away feels like a sin. Azzi gulps as her thumb accidentally brushes Paige’s collarbone and the other woman shivers under her touch. She thinks she could probably get drunk off the feeling of knowing that she can still affect Paige like that. 

“You uh-” Paige swallows, fingers squeezing involuntarily against Azzi’s hip, “you don’t have to listen to Jana. I can- I can figure it out myself.”

“N-no,” Azzi stutters and she wonders if Paige feels a high from the way she still affects Azzi too, “there’s um- you have- uh- you have a lot of stuff. I can-,” she sucks in a deep breath, “I’ll help.”

“You sure?” there’s a vulnerable edge to Paige’s tone and any resolve Azzi could ever have melts immediately. 

“I want to help,” she says softly, letting a small smile slip onto her lips. 

The smile she gets in return is bright and sparkling, just like Paige herself and Azzi’s heart lurches, pleased to be the one receiving it, pleased to be the one who’d elicited it, “Good, cause I really wanted your help.”

Azzi shakes her head, trying to ignore the warning bells blazing in her head at the fact that they’re still holding each other, “why’d you pretend you didn’t?”

“I just wanted to hear you say it first,” Paige says, biting at her bottom lip. It leaves a light mark and Azzi finds herself wanting to soothe it over with her own tongue.

She thinks it might have been easier if it was just a little harder to fall back into Paige. It shouldn’t be so simple to fall back into late night conversations, so simple to fall back into easy teasing, so simple to fall back into feeling at peace in Paige’s arms. But it is. 

“Mama, Miss Buecks,” it’s Stephie who breaks their bubble but instead of jumping away from each other like they should, they step apart only enough to let the little girl into the space between them, so she can lace her hands through both of theirs, “are you ready?”

“Before you go Paige,” Tessa calls out, holding up a clear bag of corner guards and edge protectors, “what are we doing with these?”

Paige shuffles her feet nervously, “you um- you put them on the edge of like tables and stuff.”

“Bro but they’re for people who have children?” Joyce says, giving Paige a weird look, “you have a kid we don’t know about?”

Paige’s eyes flicker to Stephie for a brief second and Azzi freezes, a warm realization tickling up her spine. Butterflies erupt in her stomach, their wings fluttering to the beat of what’s mine could have been ours. 

“Of course not. I’m just super clumsy so precautions and all that,” the blond explains, shooting Jana a glare when the taller woman barely masks a giggle, “quit procrastinating by asking all these questions and get to work.”

“Has anyone ever told you the importance of first impressions? Because I’m telling you Bueckers, using your teammates as unpaid labor the first time you meet them is not it,” Aaliyah gives Paige a pointed look. 

“This wasn’t even my idea in the first place,” Paige defends. 

“True,” Tessa nods with a sickly sweet smile, “but you’re gonna pay for the pizza anyways.”

“I’m not pay-”

“PIZZA,” Stephie squeals, “Miss Buecks you’re gonna get us Pizza?”

“Yeah Miss Buecks,” Azzi smickers, crossing her arms as Paige’s stubborn retort dies on her lips, “you gonna get us pizza?”

Paige glares at her before she’s swinging Stephie up onto her lap again. And she really needs to stop doing things like that because it’s not remotely good for Azzi’s mental health to watch the way Stephie seems to fit perfectly in Paige’s arms, “of course I am Steph, what do you want?”

The two of them are lost in their own world discussing pizza toppings as Paige starts walking over to the master bedroom, until suddenly they're both turning around, looking at Azzi with identical expressions. And the brunette feels her heart tap out this could be my everything against her ribcage. 

“You coming Azzi?”

“Mama, are you coming?”

I’d go anywhere with the two of you, Azzi thinks as she nods her head, a light skip in her step as she moves to catch up with the two of them. 

“Of course I’m coming.”

***

Less than 10 minutes into trying to unpack, Azzi realizes that she’s the only one trying to unpack anything when she looks up from where she’s been folding t-shirts -trying and failing at not breathing in their familiar scent- to find Stephie decked in a colorful cardigan that goes all the way down to her toes, her feet clad in a pair of PB4’s that must be three times the size of her own shoes. A pair of Louis Vuitton sunglasses hide almost her entire face as she strikes pose after pose and Paige diligently takes pictures of her. 

“YES Stephie,” the blond indulges, “work it girl. There you go babe, hold that pose for me. You’re a natural in front of the camera.”

Stephie giggles and Azzi feels her heart constrict. Her favorite sound in the whole world has never sounded more like a signal for danger. 

“Ahem ahem,” she coughs, narrowing her eyes at the two people in front of her, “doesn’t look like y’all are unpacking to me.”

“Mama Miss Buecks has so many pretty clothes,” Stephie gushes, completely ignoring what her mother just said. 

“They’d look even prettier folded in her closet,” Azzi says pointedly. 

Stephie pouts, “you don’t think I look pretty?”

“You look really pretty in my clothes Stephie,” Paige cuts in, tapping the little girl on the nose before she turns her gaze towards Azzi, “just like your Mama used to.”

The silk material shirt slips out of Azzi’s hand as Paige’s words drizzle around her, like the rain after a drought. It takes every little bit of strength she can muster to force herself to ignore Paige’s words and pick up another shirt to fold even if she can’t stop the rouge tint that colors her face. There’s this part of her that’s been dormant for years but every little interaction with Paige threatens to awaken it and Azzi’s scared that if she lets that happen, she’ll never be able to put it to sleep again. 

“Just- just focus on unpacking,” Azzi mutters darkly. 

She spends the next hour or so, keeping her eyes downcast, her complete focus on the task at hand. Because if she looks up, if she lets herself see the way Stephie and Paige are folding clothes together while giggling about something, if she lets herself see the way Stephie climbs onto Paige’s back so the woman can give her a piggyback to the closet to deposit the folded clothes, she thinks she could fall in love with this moment, capture it behind her eyelids and let it live there forever. But this moment doesn’t belong to Azzi. Because Paige doesn’t belong to Azzi. Not anymore. 

Azzi’s taken away from her thoughts when she feels a tiny hand wrapping around her neck from behind, Stephie’s warm body pressing against her back and just like that, all the tension in her muscles seem to dissipate. 

“What’s up sweetheart,” she asks, turning her head to press her lips against her daughter’s temple. 

“Nothing Mama,” Stephie says sweetly, “just wanted to give you a hug.”

“Sure you’re not just trying to get out of helping Miss Buecks unpack?” Azzi asks slyly, pulling Stephie from behind her, so the little girl’s lying on her lap instead. She can feel Paige’s eyes focused on the two of them and even without looking, she thinks she knows what she’d find in them if she did. 

“Of course not Mama,” Stephie grins and then squeals as Azzi begins to tickle her. 

“I think you are,” Azzi sings-songs as she continues to poke at her daughter’s stomach, reveling in the way it makes the child laugh. 

“N-no Mama stop, stop,” Stephie manages to wrench herself out from Azzi’s grip, darting to hide behind Paige’s legs, “Miss Buecks save me.”

“There’s no saving you now Stephie-bear,” Azzi roars dramatically as she picks herself off the floor, smirking at her daughter as she wriggles her fingers menacingly. 

“You know what the best way to stop someone from tickling you is Stephie?” Paige says slowly, sending the little girl a conspiratorial wink.

“Don’t you dare-” 

“You tickle them back,” Paige yells and Stephie eyes widen with excitement, “did you know your Mama’s extremely ticklish?”

“Paige no,” Azzi starts moving back, hands held in surrender. 

“You started it.”

“Yeah Mama, you started it.”

“Paige. Stephie. Ple-” Azzi cuts herself off with squeal as two sets of hands start mercilessly prodding at her ribcage. She can’t get away, not when Paige has her securely wrapped from the back and Stephie’s pressed against her front, both of them laughing maniacally. They’re a mess of limbs that’s becoming harder and harder to tell apart as the three of them topple onto Paige’s bed. And Azzi thinks maybe she doesn’t want to escape it at all. She thinks she’d like to freeze them in this moment instead. Forever. 

“Pizza’s here,” someone yells from the living room and it’s Stephie who stops first, immediately jumping off the bed at the mention of food, leaving Paige and Azzi alone. On Paige’s bed. Barely an inch of distance between them as they try to catch their breath. It’s Azzi who sits up first, smoothening the wrinkles on her shirt. And just as she’s about to stand up fully, she feels a hand circling around her wrist. 

“It’s gonna be weird being alone tonight,” Paige confesses softly and Azzi feels her breath hitch.

“Didn’t you live alone in Dallas? At least after the divorce?” she tries to keep the bitterness out of her voice at the last word, a bitterness she knows she has absolutely no right to feel. 

Paige shrugs, her shoulders brushing against Azzi’s, “I did but I knew Dallas. I don’t know this place.”

“What exactly are you asking me?” Azzi asks even though she knows. 

“I’m not asking you anything. I don’t know if I have that right anymore” Paige says softly, letting go of Azzi’s wrist as she starts to walk towards the living room, turning her head back slightly once she gets to the door, “I’m just telling you I don’t wanna be alone tonight.”

***

Damn Paige Bueckers and her vulnerable eyes and her earnest tone because Azzi would, really, really like to be enjoying her slice of pizza right now. Instead everything tastes like ashes as Paige’s unsaid plea rings in her head. There are so many reasons why Azzi absolutely shouldn’t give in, why she should grab Stephie, get into her car, drive home and never look back. This involuntary dance the two of them are starting is far too familiar to what they’d done when they were teenagers and the vivid memories of the day the music stopped and they’re feet stopped moving still haunt Azzi every time she lets herself think of it for a little too long. And she shouldn’t push herself into this fire again, not when there’s Stephie to think about, but there’s a tiny little problem. She thinks she might be addicted to burning in Paige’s flames. 

So when the pizza’s done and the house is more or less in order, and her teammates are ready to leave, looking expectantly at Azzi, she finds herself leaping into lava, “um- I think Stephie and I are gonna stay for a little bit longer.”

“We are?” Stephie asks, a huge smile stretching the length of her face as she looks up at her mother. 

“Yeah. Um- Paige’s bedroom still um- still needs some work,” Azzi tries to justify her decision, ignoring the heat of the blond’s eyes that seem to be perpetually stuck staring at her. 

Joyce raises a perplexed eyebrow, “it looked done to me.”

Paige clears her throat, “there’s definitely uh- a couple more things that need to be handled.”

“It’s almost Stephie’s bedtime. I could stay and help-” Jana begins, eyeing the two of them suspiciously.

“No,” Paige says, a little louder than necessary, “I mean you’ve already done so much for me today Jana,” she manages a smirk, “let Azzi pull her weight a little bit too ya know.”

Janna narrows her eyes but doesn’t push it. It’s oddly domestic, standing side by side with Paige bidding goodbye to their teammates, Stephie in between them happily waving at the people that are leaving. The warning bells get louder and louder; Azzi continues to do nothing to stop them. 

“Mama, how long are we staying?” Stephie asks innocently. 

“We um-” Azzi chews at her lip, finally giving into the temptation to look at Paige, “we’re gonna stay with Miss Buecks tonight so she doesn’t feel alone.”

The shrill scream that escapes Stephie’s mouth could probably break glass as she turns herself around to grab at Paige’s waist, “Miss Buecks I’m gonna stay with you! We’re gonna have a sleep-over.”

Paige laughs, kneeling down so she’s face to face with the little girl, “yeah we are.”

“Are you scared to sleep alone too Miss Buecks?” Stephie asks cautiously, cupping Paige’s face with tiny hands. 

“Just a little bit,” Paige admits, leaning into Stephie’s touch. 

“Me too,” Stephie whispers shyly, “that’s why I sneak into Mama's bed and she gives me lots and lots and lots of cuddles. Mama’s cuddles are the best,” she turns to Azzi, “Mama will you give Miss Buecks cuddles tonight too?”

“I uh-” Azzi swallows, taken aback by the question, “I thought you didn’t like sharing Mama’s cuddles?”

“I don’t,” Stephie agrees, “but I’d be okay sharing them with Miss Buecks.”

***

Azzi had planned -a loose term because really she hadn’t planned on any of this- for her and Stephie to take the guest room. Paige had been ready to give up her own room on the grounds of politeness. And Stephie was insistent that she needed to sleep in between both Mama and Miss Buecks tonight because it’s a sleepover we all have to stay together. Obviously out of the three of them, only one of them was going their way and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who that would be.  That’s how they’d ended up here, dragging chairs and pillows and blankets into the middle of the living room to create a makeshift fort. 

Azzi’s putting on the finishing touches, stringing purple fairy lights Paige had produced out of nowhere, when Stephie emerges from Paige’s bedroom where she’d gone looking for something to wear in lieu of pajamas. 

“Mama look what I found,” Stephie beams, proudly pointing at the black t-shirt she’s found that covers her whole body, “it’s you and Miss Buecks when you were littler.”

It’s their SLAM cover t-shirt and Azzi feels tears prickling at her waterline as she’s met with the picture of a younger version of the two of them. Back when they’d been so hopeful and carefree, ready to take on the world as long as they could do it together. Back when they’d been 2 in a million.

“I can’t believe you still have this,” Azzi whispers, unable to stop herself from running her fingers across the version of who they used to be. She wonders what those girls would think of them now; those girls who’d laid and bed and pinky promised forever. She thinks they’d probably be appalled at the fact that Paige and Azzi had spent eight years barely speaking. She thinks maybe they’d hate her for what she’d done. She thinks maybe she hates herself a little bit for what she’s done to them. 

Paige is leaning against the wall, her voice quiet when she speaks, “I couldn’t let it go.”

And they both know she’s not talking about the shirt. 

“Can we watch a movie?” Stephie asks, diving into the fort and peering up at the two adults. 

Paige recovers first, “yeah- yeah of course Steph,” she looks at Azzi, “do you- do you want something else to sleep in?”

“I’m good,” Azzi says, trying to inconspicuously brush away a rebellious tear. The shirt she’s wearing feels itchy against her skin but she doesn’t think she could handle wearing something of Paige’s. She scooches into the fort, leaning back against one of the pillows and Stephie’s quick to curl into her and Azzi absentmindedly rubs her hands down her daughter’s back. Paige switches on the TV, letting Stephie dictate a movie choice before letting herself into the fort, laying down on Stephie’s other side. 

“Miss Buecks come cuddle,” Stephie demands from where her head is laying on Azzi’s chest. When Paige hesitates, the younger girl takes it upon herself to pull Paige’s arms over her, making the older woman lie on her side so she can drape her hands over Stephie's stomach, accidentally brushing against Azzi’s ribcage. Stephie lets out a satisfied sigh, lying back down against Azzi, crossing her arms so she can hold Paige’s hand with one and latch onto her mother with the other. 

“Perfect.”

And it is. The sound of Stephie’s chatter slowly fading away mixed with Paige’s quiet breathing is the perfect lullaby and Azzi finds herself drifting off into the best sleep she’s had in years. 

***

Sunlight peeks in through the window and Azzi groans at the interruption. Her whole body feels a little stiff, not used to sleeping on the floor like this. A quick glance at her phone tells her it’s 7 a.m. and Azzi’s just about to let herself fall back asleep when her eyes land on the two sleeping figures next to her. Stephie’s face is buried in Paige’s neck, one arm slung over her waist. Paige, mouth slightly ajar as she sleeps, has both hands fastened on the younger, holding her tightly against her chest like she’d fight the world if someone tried to steal her from her grip. They look happy, content, at peace. And Azzi can’t breathe. 

The warning bells in her head create a cacophonous commotion that she can no longer escape. It hits her like whiplash that she can’t do this. She doesn’t know what had gotten into her last night, why she’d agreed to this, to any of this. But she can’t do this. 

“Stephie,” Azzi whispers urgently, trying to pull her daughter out of Paige’s grasp, “Stephie wake up.”

“Az?” Paige asks groggily, stirring in her sleep, “what’s going on?”

“We need to go home,” Azzi says and she can’t bear to look at Paige. 

“What?” Paige is far more awake now as she glances at her phone, “it’s 7 am Azzi. What’s the rush?"

Azzi ignores her, still trying to wake Stephie up who groans, “Mama too early.”

“Steph-”

“Azzi,” Paige’s voice is firm as she wraps her hand around Azzi’s wrist, slipping Stephie off of her, “what is going on.”

Azzi grits her teeth, “nothing’s going on. We just need to go home.”

“Azzi-”

“We shouldn’t have stayed last night Paige,” Azzi bursts out and Paige freezes. 

“Come out of the fort Azzi,” the blond says, her voice eerily calm as she stands up. Azzi follows after her, heart beating rapidly against her chest as she tries to keep the tears at bay. 

“We need to go home,” the brunette repeats, struggling to breathe, “this was a mistake,” Paige flinches and Azzi feels a knife turn in her own hurt, “we can’t do this.”

“Do what Azzi?” Paige asks exasperatedly, still trying to keep her voice low for Stephie’s sake. 

“This,” Azzi all but shrieks, throwing her hands up, “it’s too much, too quick and Stephie- Stephie’s getting attached and I can’t- I can’t let that happen.”

“Why not?” Paige argues stubbornly. 

“Because these last two weeks she couldn’t fall asleep without you on the phone. Because you’re all she talks about sometimes. Because she’s gonna want you forever,” Azzi’s voice breaks, “and she can’t have you forever.”

“Az-”

“And you’re getting attached too. I see the way you look at her and it’s amazing but it’s not- it’s not sustainable Paige. For either of you. Because you’re gonna find someone soon,” the words taste sour on Azzi’s tongue, “and you’re not gonna have time for her and missing you is going to kill her and the guilt of that is going to hurt you. I’m trying to pro-”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Paige’s voice is hard now, eyes gleaming with fire, “you’re basing all of this on a hypothetical that might not even come true. You’re not protecting anybody. You’re projecting.”

Azzi reels back, “I am not projecting.”

“Yes you are,” Paige hisses, “you’re not scared of Stephie or me getting too attached. You’re scared of yourself getting too attached.”

“Mama? Miss Buecks,” Stephie’s tired eyes look warily between the two of them, “what’s going on?”

Azzi plasters a smile on her face as she picks up her little girl, trying to pretend that the truth in Paige’s words haven’t just made her feel hollow, “we’re going home Stephie.”

“I don’t wanna go home,” Stephie fights against Azzi’s grip, looking helplessly at Paige, “Miss Buecks I wanna stay. Can I please stay?”

“You have to listen to your Mama sweetheart” Paige says softly, heartbreak written over her face as she moves to press a kiss against Stephie’s knuckles, “but I’ll see you soon okay. I promise.”

“Miss Buecks,” Stephie whimpers and Azzi has never hated herself more as she rushes out of Paige’s new house, willing herself to not look back. She buckles Stephie in the back, pretending she doesn’t see the way Paige is watching them leave from the porch, like she’d do anything to stop it. And then she drives away. 

It isn’t until she’s safely in the confines over her own room, that Azzi finally lets the tears fall. And she consoles herself with the fact that it’s okay to crack her daughter's heart, to crack Paige’s heart, to crack her own heart, if that’s the only way she can stop their hearts from breaking altogether.

[aureum-cordis]

Lost & Found, Part 4

A/N: Hey! It’s been a short while since my last update, college got a little hectic for me. But I’ve gotta admit, this has been my favorite part to write so far. I really have to thank everyone for checking out this little fic and I appreciate all of the reblogs and follows, as well as the notes! Thank you all so much! Check out the other parts here: Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3

_________________________________________________

You were more than content to have an audience as you drew an amalgamation of little doodles on the page you were provided. CraftyCorn was offering you any crayon, marker, or pencil you even vaguely gestured to while Bobby BearHug rested her head on DogDay’s shoulder.

The dog was unbothered by this, especially since this was the happiest he had seen the other two in what felt like years. He was grateful for this little moment of peace, even if some nagging thought attempted to plague his mind with negativity. It wasn’t as if he would ignore the thought that this could be stripped away just as quickly as it came, but he refused to feed into it.

Even he was surprised by the way he felt fiercely protective over you and the others, not that it was a negative form of surprise at all. You, and that precious little smile on your face as you lifted the page to show the trio of Smiling Critters that you had drawn them, had caused the little amount of hope in his heart to flourish. If you had survived then it was possible that they all could, that this situation wasn’t impossible to walk away from.

He wrapped his arm around the bear that rested her head on his shoulder in a side hug of sorts, allowing his own head to gently press against hers. The two watched as you gestured for CraftyCorn to join you, to which they happily accepted.

You still sat cross-legged on the ground but the unicorn laid on her stomach to join you, taking a crayon between their hooves and helping you in drawing the scenery of your little drawing of the Smiling Critters as well as yourself.

DogDay and Bobby BearHug watched you and the unicorn as you both drew an adorable image of the strange yet endearing quartet they had formed through chance. You and CraftyCorn were passing crayons and markers of various colors between each other, a wordless understanding between the two of you.

The leader of what remained of the Smiling Critters was more than content to just rest against the bear of the group as he watched you enjoy yourself, even if your hands were now covered in various colors from your composition.

You were far from deterred nor were you upset from such a thing, even going as far as admiring the smear of vibrant colors that covered your palms and fingers.

It was something so small yet noticeable that the dog and the bear couldn’t help but laugh softly at the little display, even more so as CraftyCorn lifted her hooves to show you that their luck with the crafts wasn’t all that orderly either.

The unicorn muttered her praises, admiring the way you drew each of them as well as the background they had been helping you design. You shook your head, pointing at yourself and then the Smiling Critter that had joined you.

She paused for a moment, watching your gesture before it finally clicked what you had meant. “Oh, I didn’t contribute much, this was all you. I could never take credit for it.” They replied in an amused yet genuine tone, it wasn’t fair when you had done the majority of the artwork.

You shook your head again, more enthusiastic this time and bent down to point at the paper. One of your small fingers rested on the drawn unicorn on the page, before you pointed at the real one in front of you. CraftyCorn raised her hooves in a manner that bordered on compliant, yielding their stance on rejecting any credit.

The white furred member of the Smiling Critters shifted from the prone position they were in to a seated one as she spoke. “While I still think I didn’t do much, I appreciate that you let me join you. Together, we created something that easily beats anything I have ever drawn alone.” You were positively beaming as you heard the final agreement that left the artist of the quartet.

Slowly, you moved the papers and the art supplies out of the way as you stood up. CraftyCorn was about to speak when you suddenly wrapped your arms around her torso and squeezed her in a warm embrace.

The unicorn was stunned, unsure of what to do at that moment, and turned to look at DogDay and Bobby BearHug. The dog was about to speak when the bear at his side hugged him in an instant, whispering as she did so. “Hug them!” It was a hushed shout in anything but you seemed unphased, nuzzling into the soft fur that was the unicorn’s chest as they gently wrapped their arms around you in return.

The touch was featherlight, as if you would break should any force be applied. Regardless, you were more than happy to be held even if it was by an incredibly careful unicorn.

A tired yawn left your mouth, the sound still audible despite the fact that you hadn’t, or perhaps were unable, to speak a word. With a balled up first, you rubbed one of your eyes which grew teary from the drowsiness that overcame you.

DogDay knew that you would crash soon when he had found you, the bags under your eyes were more than a sign of the sleep deprivation you suffered from. CraftyCorn allowed her arms to fall to her sides as you broke the hug and backed up slightly. Still rubbing your eyes, you turned to look at the duo that were still close together.

Bobby BearHug hadn’t let go of DogDay since she had first hugged him and he was content enough to not stop her. He didn’t have the heart to do so, not when she had been so distant until you came along, and because he didn’t mind the contact. With a slow and sluggish gait, you walked over to the two of them.

The orange dog was a little puzzled as you approached, extending the arm that he didn’t have around the bear at his side to you. You grabbed his arm and used it to steady your wobbly steps before you promptly sat yourself down in his lap. The suddenness of your action caused some of the wind to be knocked from him, but not a word of protest left his mouth.

He watched as you curled up in his lap and gently pulled the arm you had been holding onto earlier closer to you. He was more than willing to allow you to do such a thing and if he were able to cry in that moment, he would’ve. You wrapped your little arms around his as his hand rested against your back, supporting you to keep you from falling should you stir in your sleep.

A tired smile rested on your face as you looked up at him, before nestling up against his leg and closing your eyes. Together, all three of the Smiling Critters watched as your little chest rose and fell, falling entirely silent to keep from disturbing you as you rested. Collectively, they could all see how exhausted you were, which was exactly why they were more than willing to let you sleep.

For several long moments, they all remained where they were, simply observing you as you clung to the leader’s arm as if they would vanish if you let go. Carefully, CraftyCorn slowly approached the trio and sat down on the side of DogDay that was unoccupied.

There, she rested their chin on his shoulder and looked down at you, nothing but sympathy and a warmth that would soothe anyone in her gaze. They shifted slightly, resting against the dog with her body to be closer to him and you. He was more than pleased with the action, a happiness that he hadn’t felt in a very long time came to the surface, warming his heart and bringing with it an unbridled sense of joy.

You had brought forth a side to himself and the others that he feared was long gone, yet in this very moment it returned. It wasn’t until he heard a steady and rythmic thumping against the ground did he realize what was happening. His tail was the cause of the sound, wagging openly as a display of his happiness and how overjoyed he was that the others had finally been able to find a beacon of hope in this otherwise grim situation.

None of those around him stirred at the disruption nor did they seem bothered by it in the slightest. DogDay himself was embarrassed by the physical reaction that displayed his elation, but it faded as Bobby BearHug continued to embrace him and CraftyCorn’s head now rested on his shoulder and their sides pressed against one another. They were just as content as he was and that only made the thumping of his tail increase in pace.

The only sounds that filled the room were the quiet inhales and exhales of your sleeping form and the sound of the orange dog’s tail as it met the floor as those most important to him were surrounding him. Despite the fact that they had all met you today, they all shared the same sentiment as their leader did. You were now a very dear member of what remained of the Smiling Critters.

[akutasoda]

do you like scary movies?

synopsis - taking an acting job may end up with you discovering alot more about the esteemed director than you wished you would've known

includes - mr reca

warnings - gn!reader, fluff??, mentions of murder, minor character death, wc - 1.5k

a/n: this possessed me yesterday... i dont like it that much but here you go! happy halloween to those who celebrate :) shouts to @mitsvriii (reca kisser in denial) + @theother-victoria / @https-sourlimes (my fellow ceos of the reca fanclub) for proofreading!! and victoria has kind of enticed me to make a part two...

“it's a bit insensitive, don't you think?” another of actor whispered to you

mere moments ago, you had all been handed the newest script for the highly esteemed mr reca's new film. you had always wanted to have a part in one of his films and so when you saw a post about auditions on paperfolds university notice board, you jumped at the opportunity, to say the audition was nerve-wracking would be a massive underestimate. for one of your first auditions, going for a role in mr reca's film was certainly ambitious.

but by some stroke if luck, you landed a part. and the lead role at that - you swore you nearly ascended to aeonhood when you received the news. the nerves never really went away however, now you felt an immense pressure to do well. mr reca himself had chosen you to play a lead role in his new film. you couldn't let him down.

on the initial audition post, it detailed how it was for roles in a horror film, nothing else. he could be quite secretive like that. so as soon as all roles had been chosen the scripts were handed out in complete confidence and you were all informed of when you needed each part memorized.

“i mean sort of? but people make documentaries all the time…” another one actor whispered before they were quickly shut down by the former who angrily whispered back,

“yeah but those are documentaries! and normally they have eyewitness testimonies!! not some actors acting out stories around it!!”

your slightly scrunched your eyebrows as you re-read the script. you could definitely see it as being somewhat insensitive. it was very evident that the director had taken some inspiration from the current serial killings that were plaguing penacony and outside the dreamscape.

there had been multiple instances of various penacony goers suddenly becoming unresponsive in the dreamscape and then later found dead in their hotel rooms in the real world. it had taken penacony by storm and multiple messages from the family had been issued to try and calm the masses.

although the family's noticeable lack of actual action was what caused most of the panic, they only addressed it and told people to stay safe. not taking any proper action like they should be doing.

this was probably why mr reca began directing a horror film now, with everyone's eyes on the news about this masked killer horror was all the rage - it would be weird if not even one director didn't capitalize of this event as morbid as that may seem.

but some days, penacony was the emptiest it had ever been due to the constant fear of becoming the serial killer's next victim. apparently, however, mr reca didn't seem to be phased by such fads. as written in the scripts were detail for detail deaths that perfectly resemble their real life counterparts.

each one even had a perfect example for how the kill was carried out which, admittedly, sent a shiver down your spine. it wasn't exactly unknown that reca used some real life scenarios to model parts of his films, but this did seem excessive. but you weren't really in a position to argue against him.

so while your fellow actors bickered about the script, you bit your tongue and held your thoughts in - despite the constant unease that plagued the back of your mind. you were an actor, this was a film. all you had to do was memorize your lines and prove to mr reca that he chose the right person to play the main character.

the first few days of filming had gone well, so far your character had yet to encounter the killer and was living up to the overused “plot armor” character. from what you had read in the script, your character was meant to live until the end, losing all your friends along the way and narrowly escaping death more times than you could count. typical horror movie protagonist.

you had to admit, mr reca certainly was… out there when it came to the creative liberty he had taken about the backstories of how the kills were carried out. you could almost imagine that he was there with how well thought out it was - especially paired with how accurately detailed the kills were… even though the family kept most of the details secret…

he probably had a way of getting those. probably best not to dwell on it.

everything went rather smoothly until the last couple scenes. your character was meant to encounter the killer face to face for the first time after seeing your best friend be killed - in the same manner as the last victim that lost their life a couple days before filming to the real serial killer - and then you'd run away and survive. pretty standard acting in your eyes.

but when you entered the studio, the first thing you noticed was the lack of other actors or crew. the only other person you had seen so far was the other actor who was meant to be playing the role of “your best friend” but they were leaving as you entered.

then you encountered mr reca himself, standing in the middle of the set half dressed in the exact same outfit as the real masked killer detailed by the family to watch out for. he was really making this authentic huh?

“mr reca, sir, i didn't know you were playing a role in your own film?” you poised, you knew he'd be there with his assistant but that was to oversee the filming but you hadn't expected him to take up a role himself.

he hummed “yes. normally i don't but i deemed my original choice unfit and it's too late for replacements” the costume certainly fit him too well for a last minute replacement.. did he have it made recently?

he took a couple steps over to a table that was on set, looking over it before picking up a knife that seemed a bit too real to be a prop, “plus, i had an idea. a change in scenes you may say and i wanted to personally try out my new idea”

panic flooded your body at the idea of not going by the original script you memorized, but you swallowed any hesitancy and agreed, you could handle an impromptu scene change right? you shakily agreed and sensing your nerves, reca continued

“don't worry, i don't expect you to get it right on the first try, i did drop this on you. i may need to act it out a couple times to decide myself” this time, he stalked over to you and gave you a smirk that set off your fight or flight “i haven't quite decided which kill i prefer yet”

the filming certainly took longer than you anticipated, mr reca kept changing the scenario and you always tried to keep up with his ideas but you were wearing thin. it appeared as though his main change was making your character become the final victim. you knew it was all acting and he was trying to find the perfect end but there was something about how passionate he was about each scenario that unnerved you more and more.

each scenario was so perfectly planned out. you could take a guess that they could all be carried out without a hitch or even a suspect if the current serial killer were to perform them. even halfway through, on one of your breaks, you made a joke about it to him.

“you know, mr reca” he turned to look at you “your scenarios are always really planned out! it's like your a natural at this” you let out a small awkward chuckle as you trailed off

he smiled “a good director must know about what he's directing, that's how a film feels authentic” a small pause as he looked down at the “prop” in his hand, turning it a few times “and even get some hands on experience…”

you couldn't quite catch his last few words so you asked him to repeat but he made a small vague dismissive gesture with his empty hand

“dont worry about it, what's more important is that i think i figured out what i want for the scene” he beamed and so you agreed to wrap up filming for that day.

the next day, for your own piece of mind, you decided to ignore the latest death that occured last night being carried out the exact same way that you acted out with him that previous night.

and you didn't look into the fact that he personally asked you to act again in his next horror film as the main character again. it was all a coincidence right? mr reca wouldn't hurt you if it wasn't though… right?

taglist - @little-miss-chaoss, @frankiesteinn

[ewanmitchellcrumbs]

Dream of Me

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen (House of the Dragon) x f!reader Warnings: Dirty talk, smut. Word count: ~1.2k

Summary: Upon learning of Helaena's lady in waiting's dream of him, Aemond is plagued by his own.

Author's note: Can be read as part two of this fic, but also works as a standalone. Day two of the Smuffmas prompts - "dreams and dirty talk". No tag list. Follow @fics-by-ewanmitchellcrumbs and turn on post notifications.

“Just so you know, if I were going to pleasure you with my mouth, I would do it before I stuck my cock in your cunt, not after.”

The words Aemond had spoken to her play on a loop in his mind as he readies himself for bed, a smug smirk of satisfaction playing delicately upon his lips.

Her shocked expression is one he wants to keep in his mind’s eye as he pleasures himself, but is frustrated to find that his overindulgence of wine at that evening’s supper renders him unable to rouse his cock to attention, it lays flaccid and useless in his palm, causing him to tuck it away with a frustrated sigh.

As he lays tangled in the soft cotton of the bedsheets, his final thought as sleep tugs him towards hazy unconsciousness is that he hopes she will dream of him again.

She has her back turned to him, fingers tracing carefully over the spines of the books on the shelf she faces in the library. He strides purposefully towards her, the dulcet tone of her gasp shooting straight to his stones, making them ache, as he wraps a deft hand around her throat. 

He can feel the heat of her body through his jerkin as he pulls her back against his chest, the skin of her jaw soft as peach flesh as he trails his mouth against it. She shivers against him, not fighting his advances, simply allowing him to do with her as he pleases.

The lacings that fasten the back of her gown tear effortlessly in his grasp as his free hand rips at them, the garment falling from her body, leaving her completely bare to him.

Her hands reach up the shelves, gripping for purchase, whether it is to keep herself steady, or an attempt to get away from him, Aemond is unsure, but desire boils too hotly in his blood for him to care.

He is swift to untie his breeches, grabbing her hips and sinking himself into her tight, wet heat. His name has never sounded sweeter than it does when it topples from her lips in the throes of ecstasy, coupled with the sticky sounds that accompany every push into her. She is so warm, so warm, so very warm…

There is warmth against his flesh when Aemond opens his eye, the bright sunlight that bleeds through the crack in the curtains making him grimace as he scrubs a hand across his face.

He has been dreaming, and yet it had felt so real. He swears he can feel her arousal, the heat of her, and then he sees the sticky translucence that coats his lower abdomen.

Just a dream.

The shame of which he will wash away in his morning bath.

He feels restless throughout the day, nothing satisfies the pulsating ache of want that simmers hotly in his lower abdomen.

The burning in his shoulder from wielding his sword, bringing it down upon Ser Criston’s upturned shield, and watching the wood splinter into fragments across the gravel of the training yard does nothing to quell the storm that rages inside him.

Perhaps it is not physical stimulation that he needs he reasons, nowhere has offered him solace quite like the quiet solitude that can be found between the yellowing pages of a historical tome.

The library is silent as he enters it, the thud of his boots against the flagstone floor echoing off of the vaulted ceiling as he makes his way slowly between the towering shelves. The supple leather that binds the covers of his favourite philosophy and history books feels rough against his fingertips. Nothing could compare with the velvety softness of how her flesh had dimpled beneath the press of his fingertips, but that was all in his imagination. How could a simple dream have rendered him so listless?

He swallows, screwing his eye shut, attempting to ignore the throbbing between his legs.

Just a dream. No reality would ever yield such pleasure. The depravity he had dared to peruse since learning of her dream of him would never be as pleasurable as he had built it up in his mind to be.

He exhales a shaky breath, attempting to calm himself, and when he opens his eye she is there, much more real than anything he could imagine. Yet the sight of her, back turned to him as her eyes wander the shelves feels so familiar. He is frozen in place, until she feels his attention on her and turns slightly, offering the softest of smiles.

He clears his throat, stepping towards her, his voice low.

“I trust you slept well, my lady?”

“Mmm, yes, my Prince, very well indeed,” she responds politely, turning to face him.

His eye roves across her, taking in her delicate features, the gentle slope of her neck, the swell of her breasts in her bodice, the subtle curve of her hips beneath her skirts, before lifting once more to her face.

“Were your dreams pleasant?” He asks with a smirk.

“You mean did I dream of you?” She replies cheeikly.

Little temptress.

“I dreamed of you,” he whispers, stepping towards her, backing her against the shelves. There is no fear reflected back at him in her eyes, as she stares up at him, only glittering excitement. It takes all of his restraint not to grab her by the waist and pull her to him.

“Pleasant, I hope?” Her chest rises and falls in a sudden state of breathlessness.

“You drive me to distraction,” he utters. “Tell me, how easily would your dress tear from your body if I were to tug hard enough?”

Her eyes go wide as her breath hitches, but still she does not look away. “I–I do not know,” is all she is able to offer.

“I ripped it from you in my dreams,” he whispers, ducking his head low to whisper against the shell of her air, delighting in the way her skin erupts into gooseflesh at the feel of his breath. “I sank inside of you, and you screamed my name in ecstasy.”

“Aemond…” she gasps helplessly, hands clutching at the black material of his jerkin.

“It sounds so sweet from your mouth. Does it leave your lips so freely when you pleasure yourself?”

Finally she averts her gaze, her voice small and embarrassed sounding when she answers. “...yes.”

His nose trails a path from her ear, down her neck, stopping when he reaches her clavicle. She smells sweet, like rosewater, her flesh as delicate as the petals from which it derives its scent, exactly as he had dreamed it would.

“Please…” she whines, her fists coiling tighter in the leather that covers his chest.

“Please what?” He asks coyly, lifting his gaze, his face mere inches away from hers.

“Touch me.”

“You would like that, would you not? For me to soak my cock with your maidenhead, leave your betrothed dissatisfied with what he finds on your wedding night?”

“But I want you,” she pleads quietly.

“And I you, my lady,” he grips her jaw tightly in his hand, running his thumb over the plumpness of her bottom lip. “But for now, sweet dreams of each other will have to do. I hope to visit you in yours again soon.”

With that, Aemond abruptly steps away from her, leaving the library in desperate need to relieve the way he strains against the confines of his trousers. He hopes he dreams of her again tonight, and every night after that.

[sapphosclosefriend]

- Money, Power, Glory pt 5 -

Pairing: CEO! Silverfox! Natasha Romanoff x Escort! Fem! Reader

Genre: smut, fluff, a little pining??

Summary: your Christmas vacation with Natasha couldn't start off in a better way… Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Word count: 5.2k

Warnings: top! Natasha x bottom! R, Natasha has a penis, big age gap (N=56, R=24), very brief drinking (N), SMUT, anal play (R receiving), butt plugs (R), anal sex (R receiving)

A/N: this story contains smut so anyone who isn’t 18+ DNI. I already have something in mind for the next part, but after that I still don't know how it will go…anyway, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and happy holidays!!! As usual, likes, reblogs and comments are very appreciated! Enjoy ♡

Masterlist

To say it was cold was an understatement and soon a part of you regretted getting out of bed, despite the turmoil of emotions that plagued your mind any time you stopped for more than one second and got the chance to let your thoughts run free.

It had been weeks since that one beautiful weekend in Cuba and Natasha’s words still echoed clearly in your head.

“You make me wanna be perfect.”

You didn't care about her being “perfect”, she already was, but the thought of Natasha caring about what you thought of her made you feel special, deep down. You made sure not to bring up the topic if not prompted by her, though. You remembered very clearly the uncertainty in her beautiful eyes as she had said those words and, despite the reassurance you had tried your best to give her once she tried to apologize for her confession, you knew she still wasn't completely confident with the things she felt with you.

After her confession, for some time, asking you to spend more than a couple hours with her, something you had done almost as soon as you got to know each other, had started to feel almost overbearing to Natasha. It was her instinct immediately screaming at her to run away, just like usual, but the deal she had made with herself pushed her to try her best this time around. So she ended up doing what had plagued her mind for hours to no end, she asked you to spend Christmas with her. She knew it wasn't a holiday you particularly liked to spend with anybody, so she hoped there could've been a remote chance of you possibly agreeing to spend it with her.

She honestly didn't like how, deep down, she was starting to feel something extremely close to desperation at the prospect of, by chance, spending the day alone, yet again. It usually wouldn't have upset her too much, but this year she felt herself being more emotional than usual, thanks to the tumult of emotions you had been making her feel, which is why she knew that doing her usual trip to that place would've been so much harder than usual…

But luckily enough for her, you said yes and spared her heart an ache she really wasn't looking forward to feeling.

You didn't know what you were expecting when she said she'd bring you to a special place she liked, but a gigantic, wooden mansion in the woods wasn't exactly what you anticipated. At first it didn't really feel like something that would fit Natasha’s character, but when you thought about it a bit more, it was actually the perfect place for someone like her. Yes, it was still incredibly luxurious and slightly over the top, like the strong, stone cold CEO everyone knew her to be, but the quiet nature surrounding it, completely void of the chaos of the city and any people, felt like the real Natasha, the quiet, almost slightly shy one you had gotten to know in private.

You knew she had worked nonstop right until you had left, so you were pretty sure she would've appreciated what you had planned for your first day of vacation.

As soon as you got to your destination and she had given you a brief tour of the beautiful place, you were in her bed, not to do anything scandalous for once. You had barely given her the time to get in the bedroom before you were pushing her on the soft mattress and getting to work to give her the best massage you could, trying your best to relax her tense muscles at least a little bit. Thankfully, it had definitely worked because not only was she moaning the whole time in a way that you could barely ignore by the end of your little session, but she was out for a good three hours as soon as you finished your job.

You wanted nothing more than to bask in her relaxed beauty as she soundly slept next to you, but her calmness almost immediately lulled you into a delicious slumber as well.

You had unfortunately woken up from your nap all alone but you thankfully found her quite easily, despite the extremely large building you were still unfamiliar with.

You immediately missed the warmth coming from the cracking wood in the fireplace as soon as you stepped foot outside. Despite someone having taken care of the previously fully white hangout area right outside of the living room, there were still traces of snow over the large terrace as you shakily crossed it to reach Natasha. Maybe you underestimated the weather a bit too much and you definitely shouldn't have gone out only in sweatpants, uggs and a sweater but it was too late to change now, you needed to be with her.

She was leaning over the railing, facing the frozen lake a couple of feet away from the house while she lazily smoked a cigarette by herself. You had strangely never seen her smoke, but the lighter always sitting on the coffee table in the terrace back at her home suggested she sometimes indulged herself in it. She heard you way before you were able to reach her and, by the time you were by her side, she was already welcoming you with open arms, waiting for you to sneak in front of her to close her coat over the both of you.

"You're gonna freeze to death, detka."

Her murmured words and her voice, still slightly raspy from sleep, warmed you up just a little as you sneaked a hand out of its warm spot to snatch her cigarette and take a drag, appreciating even the small traces of warmth on your fingers from the end burning. Your breath, mixing with the smoke in the cold air, created a thick cloud in front of the two of you as you gave her back her cigarette.

"You should stop."

A sense of déjàvu seemed to suddenly hit Natasha as you repeated the words she'd heard from every single one of her wives. But the usual hints of annoyance she expected to feel at the thought of someone trying to tell her what to do surprisingly never came, leaving her only with the faint need to grant your wish and prevent you from worrying for her.

“If it'll make my sweet girl happy, maybe I will.”

“My”, that word hit you so deep and kept echoing in your mind over and over. How good did it sound, the idea of being Natasha's girl, of being the one next to her in life. It must've been even colder than you thought for your brain to get lost in such thoughts once again. You promised yourself you wouldn't give them air, yet there you were, melting in her arms at such simple words she probably didn't mean in such a deep way. Ok, maybe she did mean them in the exact way you were hoping…

You admittedly couldn't stop thinking about her, the deeper and deeper feelings you had for her plagued your mind all. the. time. And the only thing that reigned in your head every second of every hour was pure, emotional chaos. You knew you had to decide whether you wanted to try to pursue her in a less…professional way, but you hated to admit that you didn't know if you were brave enough to do so. You were still technically working when you spent time with her and hiding behind your job admittedly gave you a small sense of reassurance while you tried to get a grip on your spiraling thoughts.

You hated the fact that you were making her wait, you still hadn't given her a sign as clear as hers that you reciprocated the way she felt for you, and you knew that, if you waited for too long, your chance would've slipped away.

You didn't even really know what caused your stupid hesitation and you hated yourself for it. You could only do what felt the most fitting lately and tried not to think about it for too long. And the beautiful woman pressed right against your back, despite being the cause of your dilemma, at the same time easily gave you the perfect distraction any time you needed.

“It would…tho, I've got to admit, you're so hot when you smoke, jesus christ!”

You used the pretense of the icy weather to hide most of your face behind her warm coat, but she immediately noticed your genuine shyness behind the action at your spontaneous admittance. It warmed her heart every time you left some appreciations slip and got embarrassed for it. She only chuckled at your words and finished the rest of her cigarette in silence, soaking in the calmness from simply being in each other's presence.

As soon as she was done smoking you couldn't help but turn around in her arms, hugging her under her coat and breathing in her intoxicating scent from your warm spot in her hold. Your not so sneaky kiss on her neck as you hugged her could only make her need to feel your lips on hers and, lifting your chin with her index finger, she finally lost herself in a soft kiss. For once, you managed to lazily make out without your clothes immediately ending up scattered everywhere and you had to admit that you loved the tender, yet still passionate, moment just so much more than you expected. You gladly would've spent the rest of the day frozen in that moment, but you knew that, if you didn't stop yourself, you were the one who would've ended up frozen to death. And you wanted to live long enough to at least show her what you had ready for her…

“I have a surprise for you”

You barely managed to break the kiss to murmur the words against her lips and the small glint in her eyes made your stomach flutter like crazy.

“Another one? You're spoiling me, pretty girl.”

She seriously had to stop calling you all those names or else you were sure you wouldn't have been able to handle being called anything else ever again.

“I'm barely repaying you. You do so much for me.”

You felt your cheeks slightly warm up at your own words and the way she sweetly kissed your lips as a response certainly didn't help. You felt some of your confidence come back, though, once your mind went back, once again, at what the rest of the day would've been.

“Now, how about you go get comfortable on the couch, relax a little and wait for me? I'll be quick, I promise.”

“Yes ma'am.”

She smirked as she muttered her words, knowing that was the most you could manage to boss her around. She was more than happy to comply, though. Not only was she actually curious of what was to come, but she knew she would've done basically anything in her comfort zone to make you happy.

So she did just what you said. She made herself a drink, sat on the couch in front of the fireplace and patiently waited for you to finally come back to her. She barely had the time to get herself lost in thought, before the sound of your footsteps got closer and closer to her. The white fur trims were the first things she saw once you rounded the corner and, as soon as your full figure graced her eyes, a playful, yet genuine, smile broke out on her face.

You had decided to do something a little more playful, and got yourself a red velvet mini dress with white fur trims at the bottom of the skirt and the top of the cleavage. If you had to be honest, you didn't even mind it, the dress itself definitely wasn't on the cheap side and you actually felt quite pretty in it. You also knew that Natasha liked something a bit different from time to time, so the thought of making her happy was most definitely a big plus.

“God, detka! You only get prettier, don't you? “

Despite your innocent facade you had purposely put on, your big smile and brief giggle were the most genuine thanks to her words. You couldn't help but lean over, giving her a perfect view of your cleavage in the meantime, to give her a quick kiss on the lips as a way to thank her.

As you turned around to move towards an armchair near the couch she was sitting on, she noticed the small pouch bag you'd been holding behind your back the whole time and couldn't help but grow curious as you got something from it. Leaning over to get the object you were looking for, the short skirt rode up your thighs deliciously, barely covering your center. Natasha knew she would've ended up leaning her head down to get a peak of what was hidden from her if you didn't straighten your back once again. And the initial, very brief, disappointment, immediately got replaced, once again, by anticipation as she intently observed your every movement. Gosh, you were driving her crazy while barely doing anything…

You held the mystery item behind your back the same way you were doing before with the bag and made your way back towards her, stopping in front of her. Natasha could immediately notice the mischievous nature behind the tiny smile you were trying to hide. She was starting to grow restless and she would've almost jumped on you if you didn't start talking.

“You've been very very good this year and I think you deserve a nice reward!”

She didn't utter a word as she waited for you to finish. Curiosity was eating her up, though, and sitting still on the couch, with you standing in front of her, your beautiful body perfectly on display for her, was getting harder by the second.

Thankfully, you easily got her attention as you showed her what you had behind your back.

“But first, you need to help me out with something.”

Your innocent voice and the glass candy cane that was hanging from your index finger, something most definitely void of any innocence, created a contrast that Natasha immediately felt in her pants. She had long given up by then, knowing that even the smallest thing you did or said could've easily gotten her riled up in a matter of seconds.

Her full attention was soon back on you once you'd gotten a secure hold of the candy cane and licked its tip before slowly pushing it into your mouth, stopping only once you had gotten down to its curve. Natasha couldn't stop a low groan of hers at the sight and unconsciously gripped her own thighs as to control herself once you leaned down. Your raised eyebrow and your eyes moving from hers to the toy made her understand what you wanted her to do. Your hollowed cheeks as she slowly pulled the candy cane out of your mouth, helped her pants feel even tighter and your pop once she fully pulled it out made it even worse.

Before she could make sure to calm herself down a bit, though, you turned around and leaned down a little, resting your hands on your own knees. Your new position made the skirt of your dress ride up dangerously and, soon enough, Natasha was finally able to fully see your surprisingly exposed center. She could only hum from the beautiful view of your already glistening core.

“Go on, put it in.”

Your words finally pulled her attention back to your face, as you now tried your best to look back at her. Happy to comply with your playfulness, she immediately went to push the end of the glass toy, now wet from your spit, into your pussy, but your giggle made her stop her movements as her smirk fell.

“Not in there, silly!”

She was at a loss for words and, thinking it was all a dream, she had to make sure she understood you correctly.

“Are you sure?”

You just smiled and nodded as a response and, seeing her still stuck in place, you wiggled your ass a little to get her attention back to her task in hand. Natasha took a deep breath to try to get a grip on herself. She knew that the tent in her pants was only destined to get worse in a matter of seconds.

Once she finally pushed the glass toy into the tight hole of your ass, she couldn't help but loudly curse. Your soft moans as she very slowly pushed more and more of it inside of you were already driving her crazy. Not wanting to go too fast she stopped herself once the straight end of the candy cane was around halfway inside and admired the amazing view in front of her. She could see how you unconsciously tried to squeeze your legs together as you softly whimpered from the different, yet extremely good, feeling.

As soon as she noticed her free hand getting closer to her own pants almost as if on its own, her attention was back on you. You slowly started to move back and forth over the glass toy Natasha held still in her hand and, the thought of possibly feeling her cock inside of you instead, surprised you with a loud moan of your own. Despite the toy's girth being quite alright, you soon found yourself needing more. You wanted her, you needed her. You could also hear Natasha's breathing getting a bit quicker partly thanks to her own hand now massaging herself through her pants.

So you pushed down one last time and, once you reached the curve of the candy cane, making the older woman groan at the lewd sight, you fully lifted yourself off of it with a breathy moan. The toy left a small opening once it left your hole and Natasha couldn't stop herself from imagining what it would’ve looked like if it was her cock you had fucked, instead. In that moment, the need to manhandle you on all fours to fuck you until you couldn't remember your own name hit her stronger than ever since you had known each other. But she did her best to hold herself back to find out what you were planning to do next.

The older woman was partly thankful once you moved away to rummage through your pouch bag, giving her some time to catch her breath and quickly finish her drink in one go. Once you got back, she knew it was all in vain, though.

Of course, the first thing she noticed was the butt plug you were holding that you had covered with lube. How could it not be? She had to admit it took her a couple of seconds to snap out of her trance as she admired you once again standing in front of her, this time offering the new toy to her. Once she was finally able to move a muscle and grab it, you turned around and leaned down like before, waiting for Natasha to do what you silently asked her to. The cold metal on your skin slightly made you jump in surprise as she moved the tip over your hole to get some lube over it too. Feeling her applying a bit more pressure, you tried to relax as much as you could, but couldn't hold back a whine as she gradually pushed more and more. Natasha's low cursing kept gracing your ears and only made you more eager to please her. You held your breath as the widest part pushed past your ring and, just like that, the rest slipped in almost as if on its own, making you yelp in surprise.

You giggled at your own reaction and, looking back at her, you found her eyes still on your center as her hands gently moved over your cheeks. Natasha couldn't believe how much she was being affected by everything you were doing and the sight of the red stone on your tight hole and your pussy now most definitely wet, were starting to make her twitch in her own pants. You still hadn't explicitly said if you wanted her to fuck you, so she made sure

to make the most out of the beautiful view in front of her, definitely more than enough for now.

You unfortunately put a stop to it to stand back up, taking a deep breath and turning around to face her once again.

“Much better!”

Your smile was filled with fake innocence as you leaned down to kiss her on the lips and whisper to her as if you were telling her a secret.

“I'll wait for you in the bedroom”

You barely had the time to leave the living room before she was catching up on you and following you towards the bedroom, shamelessly admiring your exposed thighs. She couldn't stop thinking about what was hidden under your skirt and her anticipation kept growing bigger and bigger with every step you took and every gentle sway of your hips.

You wanted to treat her to a night all about her, and you also selfishly wanted to do it because you liked it too, but she apparently was more needy than you made her out to be.

As soon as you got into the bedroom and you tried to make her lie down to properly worship her body, she was pushing you to stay under her instead. The way she had manhandled you and her slightly flushed cheeks as she hovered over you, made your center spasm around the plug still inside of you, drawing a moan out of you. She couldn't waste one more second, her cock was almost painfully hard and the sight of you lying down under her, with your skimpy dress and your legs open, were making her, if possible, even more eager to have you.

Seeing her frantically taking her pants and underwear off all while looking at your core made you pathetically whimper and you couldn't hold yourself from moving your own hand downwards to gently rub your clit in the meantime. You both knew you wouldn't have been able to indulge yourselves in any foreplay today, so you let her climb on the bed, between your legs, as you made yourself comfortable, ready to let her do whatever she wanted to you. But, before you could lay your head on the pillows, she made you turn around and pulled your ass up, making you kneel on all fours before her. You could barely breathe, she was always the one in charge during your sessions, but this was a slightly different side of Natasha you still hadn't met, unfortunately.

She ran her hands over your ass cheeks once again, lifting your skirt while doing so, before gliding her palms over the small of your back and upwards. Once she got to your shoulder blades she gently, yet purposefully, pushed until the side of your face was pressed against the mattress and your ass was in the air. You could see her admiring you from the corner of your eye and after a few seconds she leaned down a little to get closer to your face.

“Can I take it out, detka?”

Her soft voice was so much different than her actions and it made your heart flutter. You could only eagerly nod and whisper a small “yes, please”, after which she immediately straightened her back up, kneeling behind you, and took a deep breath before taking a hold of the end of the plug. She gently pulled on it, making you gasp at the incredible feeling, and gradually pulled it out. Natasha couldn't help but moan at the sight of your ass stretching over the largest part of the toy and the need to feel you got almost unbearable.

She made sure to get a hold on herself, though, wanting to make the experience as comfortable as possible for you, and thoroughly lubed her cock.

“You ready?”

As soon as you answered positively, she positioned her cock against your ass, trying to calm down her breathing in the meantime.

Your mouth opened in a silent moan as she slowly pushed the head of her cock inside. It felt overwhelming yet not nearly enough at the same time and you didn't know whether you wanted her to stop or give you more. She wasn't even halfway inside when she stopped moving for a little bit to let you get used to it and, in the meantime, admire once again the way your ass tightened around her.

She couldn't believe how good you felt around her even without moving at all and she ended up having to focus on your beautiful face to distract herself while you got more comfortable. Your eyes were closed while you grasped one of the pillows for dear life and your lips looked even more tempting than usual as you shakily breathed through them. She would've gladly leaned down to kiss you with all the lo-care she had, but she wanted to wait for you to be more at ease.

“Please, move”

Your small, trembling voice that finally graced her ears after a bit, sounded heavenly to Natasha, who, taking a hold on your hips, slowly pulled out a little, before pushing back in, gradually going just a little deeper each time. She basked in the blissful sounds you were making and, once she settled on a regular pace, she finally left herself get lost in the pleasure. You finally got to hear her guttural moans as she fucked you still at a quite slow pace. You were sure there couldn't have been a more beautiful sound in the world and you would've gladly done anything to listen to it all the time.

Natasha's hold on your hips kept getting tighter and tighter, almost to the point of it being painful. You knew she was holding back and while at first you were thankful for it, you were once again feeling the gnawing need to feel more of her.

“Oh shit”

Natasha couldn't help but curse under her breath once she started feeling you pushing back against her every thrust, and your loud moan as you tightened around her once again did nothing but drive her wild. You tried to look back at her to admire her beautiful face of pure bliss and, once her eyes met yours, you couldn’t help but moan and move a little bit faster, making her movements quicken as well.

You settled on a steady pace and, while it satisfied you for a bit, you soon found yourselves needing more and more and more. It seemed like it was never enough.

You were desperate to feel each other cum as soon as possible, but, at the same time, you didn't want the blissful moment to end.

After a bit, sensing both of your orgasms approaching, Natasha pushed as much of herself she could inside of you, staying still for a couple of seconds and admiring you as you tried to hold yourself upright. You could barely breathe, if you thought she felt big while fucking you, you were wrong.

Once she finally pulled out, she graced you with a loud groan as you collapsed on the bed. Your and Natasha's heaving was the only sound in the room as you tried to recover as much as you possibly could.

You only noticed the tear that had escaped your eye once she gently wiped it with her thumb, before leaning down and kissing your cheek so softly you barely felt it.

“Are you ok?”

She barely pulled away to whisper her words, lowly speaking as if to make sure no one else could hear her. You only nodded while looking at her beautiful face and basked in the feeling of her hand gently running up and down your back.

“Do you wanna keep going?”

This time your nod was more eager, despite your energy starting to run low, and before she could ask you again, you made sure to confirm your desire with a firm “yes”.

As soon as you complied, she once again kissed your cheek and helped you turn around, letting you lie on your back to face her. She looked so beautiful, even more beautiful than usual, if that was even possible, and you suddenly felt an overwhelming feeling tugging at your heart at the sight of Natasha softly smiling down at you. You almost wanted to cry, but before you could get even more emotional than you apparently already were, you caressed her cheek and leaned up to deeply kiss her on the lips.

As you kept languidly making out, she ran her hands over your thighs as she settled between them and made you open them as much as you could. Once she broke the kiss, she leaned her forehead against yours and pushed her cock back inside of your ass, making you whimper at the even more intense feeling thanks to her closeness this time.

Thanks to the orgasm you both were about to reach just minutes before, you soon found yourselves settling back into a regular pace, gradually growing quicker by the minute.

You couldn't hold back another whine when Natasha straightened her back to stand on her knees, putting some distance between the two of you you admittedly hated deep down. But her hold on your waist as she resumed with a fast pace and her other hand moving to your clit, easily clouded your mind once again.

She was making you once again get closer to your peak incredibly fast and as much as you tried to hold it back for as long as you could, knowing that she was equally close to cumming, made you get even more lost in the highest pleasure you'd ever felt. She looked like a straight up goddess as she breathed hard through her mouth with her eyebrows furrowed, and her eyes roaming every snippet of your figure she could, made you feel like you couldn't be blessed by anything holier in your life.

You never wanted her to stop gracing your eyes and ears and skin. You wanted, no, needed her at all times and the moans that you couldn't hold back were unfortunately the only thing you could offer her back.

You could feel it coming, oh how sweet was your peak going to be, like no other in your entire life.

There it was! It was coming to the surface! No no no no, it wasn't a moan! Why couldn't you stop it!

“I love you!”

.

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Part 6

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Tags: @fxckmiup @natashasilverfox @dmenby3100 @marvels--slut @dvrkhcld @elenimoris @mrsrushman @mrsromanoff @thalia-is-not-ok @alianovnasposts @clintsupremacy @taliiiaasteria @meowymari @lissaaaa145 @natashaswife4125 @olsenmyolsen @angrywhisperslove @aemilia19 @setsuna1415 @letsboandy @mrsromanovaa @wizardofstories @karsonromanoff @scarlettbitchx

[da-rulah]

In Cold Blood - Terzo x f!reader

Summary: Solitude had always appealed. Perhaps that’s why you took on this project… The thought of transforming a dilapidated old Victorian farmhouse into a sanctuary of your own, to live in peace and the romanticisms of a gothic home you fell in love with.

After the structural integrity of the house is replenished, you fill your days with DIY and decorating, bringing to life a house that had been frozen in time and left to rot for decades. You could enjoy the solitude of the land already, a few miles outside of a town plagued by disappearances and a fear of the dark. But you couldn’t escape the news of more missing people, nor the strange occurrences happening around your new home.

Were you imagining things? Or was there indeed a shadow haunting your sanctuary?

Rating: Explicit, 18+ MDNI Word Count: 19.6k (i'm back bitchesssss)

Warnings: Dark fiction, horror fic, mentions of murder, coercion, manipulation, obsession, masturbation (f), voyeurism, manhandling, threat and mild violence, dubious consent (later turns to verbal consent), oral sex (f receiving), fingering, penetrative sex, blood, blood drinking, unprotected sex

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WARNING: This is a work of DARK FICTION. It is a horror fic, and contains mentions of violence as well as elements of dubious consent and manipulation. Please do not read if this is going to affect you negatively. You have been warned, and I take no responsibility if you choose to ignore the warnings and triggers attached.

a/n: well hello there. It's been a while, hm? Radio silence and then BOOM, a 20k word fic outta nowhere? Well, this was written for the wonderful @angellayercake's birthday, and she's been so kind as to give her permission for me to share it. I promise, more new content coming soon, and I'll be working on an update for The Mayor's Daughter ASAP! Happy reading, creeps...

“What’s the catch?”

The real estate agent blinked at you in confusion, as if you’d just asked her to recite the square route of pi to the 30th decimal.

“The… the catch?” she asked, “I don’t understand.”

“Well, it’s just so cheap, I have to wonder which closet the skeletons are hiding in…” you joked, knowing full well the skeletons were actually in the backyard under the headstones that sat growing moss and ivy for the last six decades at least.

“Ma’am… I’ve been very upfront about the state of the house. It needs extensive repairs and renovation, it has a graveyard out back, it’s way out in the sticks and the landscaping is overrun… What more could be wrong with it?” She rang out her hands nervously, chewing on her cherry red lips as you scrutinised her body language. You’re sure there was something she wasn’t telling you, but this was a perfect opportunity for you…

Coming off the back of a decent chunk of inheritance left by a relative you’d long-since forgotten, you needed a project. You’d always wanted to renovate a beautifully gothic home from the 19th century, and when you saw the listing for exactly that on the edge of a small town? Ideal. Perfect. Exactly what you wanted. The thought of being a little out in the country, surrounded by land and away from the bustle of the city you grew up in was all too appealing.

“It has a charm to it, don’t you think?” you smiled to yourself, fiddling with the dusty net curtains still hanging in the living room’s huge bay window.

“Uh… sure, yeah,” the agent agreed with reluctance, still so confused as to why you would be at all interested in this ruin that she couldn’t even show you all of due to the structural integrity of the floorboards.

“I’d like to put in an offer,” you told her, turning back to face her with a smile on your face.

“You… really? Oh, my god! Okay, great! Well, I’ll get the paperwork…” she sprung into action, suddenly full of an energy that could only have been triggered by the whiff of her future commission.

It would take some work, sure, but this place had the potential to be the perfect project and future home for you…

It took six months, but the structural integrity of the house had been stabilised by a team of builders you’d hired to take care of the place while you got your affairs in order and ready to move halfway across the country. You weren’t taking much; a lot of the furniture left in the abandoned house was part of the project and with a little restoration would be absolutely beautiful. You were ready for the work, ready to create a home that you could be so proud of and had your stamp on it.

Moving into the house was quicker than you thought it would be, with most of your furniture sold and donated. For now, you had to live out of suitcases until you had a bedroom and closet space that was clean enough to hang your things in.

At the very least, you’d cleaned and stripped the four-poster bed that still lay in the master suite, checking the integrity of the bed itself and noting how… pristine it seemed compared to a lot of the other furniture left behind. But this was made of expensive, dark mahogany wood – it was built to last, and so with a polish, a new mattress and sheets? You had a gorgeous bed to sleep in each night, taking a little bit of pressure off when you’d spent an entire day exhausting yourself over more renovations.

One of your first jobs had been landscaping in the graveyard. You’d felt pulled to the graves, wanting to give whoever was buried on your property a much more respectful resting place, rather than allowing them to be swamped by ivy and moss.

It seemed to be a family plot, probably the last family to have owned the home. Every stone had the same surname, dating back to the first of the deaths in 1904. What struck you as odd, however, was the nature of the stones themselves…

For the time period, you might have expected angels, cherubs, perhaps a cross or two. But whilst these stones were ornate and beautiful, they were not steeped in biblical references at all. Instead, the eldest stone had a decaying gargoyle sat atop it… Another, a ram’s head at the base. One had a stone skeleton laying above where the body would have been buried, carved into a slab of concrete as if it was protruding from the grave itself. You’d never seen graves like this before, symbols and carvings you couldn’t identify but had you on edge the minute you looked at them. But one of those symbols, you certainly recognised.

A pentagram.

Now, as a purveyor of the dark and mysterious, you hadn’t minded the thought of a graveyard in your garden. For goodness sake, you loved the gothic aesthetic, the dark and macabre had always called out to you. But to find these graves had a theme to them, a darker, occult theme… It cast a deeper shadow over the home you’d purchased.

Who were this family? Were they part of an occult? You were itching to understand the history, to uncover more about the lost family that let their home fall to ruin and their graves be overrun by nature.

But it had to wait, the renovations taking over to make your house a far more liveable abode. With the graves at least clear from nature’s extremities, you could come back to them another time to give them a proper clean, to uncover the names in full and potentially use the information to gather more with a trip to the local library or a google search.

For now, you had to get to cleaning room by room so you could begin stripping and re-decorating where it needed it most.

“…The Sheriff’s office have released a statement today to calm locals calling for more action in the string of disappearances throughout town. Last Monday saw the latest in the line of disappearances, 29 year old store clerk, Andrew Walton, taking the total up to 12 missing in the last nine months. Mr Walton was last seen on CCTV heading into the alley of the 7/11 where he worked…”

The radio news bulletin caught your attention as you were working in the master bedroom, stripping the already peeling wallpaper from the panelled walls atop a stepladder. You’d only moved in three weeks ago, and yet, the little radio you always put on to work to kept churning out the same story consistently – the string of disappearances in town that seemed to be getting more and more frequent.  

It would seem it was the town with skeletons in the closet, not your precious new home. The estate agent failed to mention that one…

When you first heard about it, you’d made sure the house was secure, with locks on the windows, every entrance bolted and sturdy. Being so far outside of town, you weren’t particularly worried since you rarely ventured from your home, particularly not at night when most of these disappearances seemed to have taken place. But it didn’t hurt to be safe...

Still, the thought that there may be someone out there snatching people for God only knows what purpose was a little unsettling. You could only hope the sheriff would do his job and catch whoever was behind the crimes soon – but it had already been nine months… All you could do was lay low, stay as far away from the potential risks of heading into town alone in the dark.

As the lunchtime bulletin ended, the radio began to play one of the top 40 songs you’d heard at least three times already today. Whilst it was repetitive, you’d learned the words, and found yourself singing along as you scraped at patches of wallpaper residue with your little scraping tool. You lost yourself to easily in the renovation tasks, the monotony allowing for your brain to whisk you away to distant worlds, like shooting your own music videos to the songs as you sang along.

Drifting so far off into your own thoughts is probably the reason you hadn’t realised the radio had actually cut out completely, and it was just you singing and the sound of the metal scraper to fill the silence… The batteries had died.

“Ah, shit…” you mumbled to yourself, stepping off the ladder and reaching for the radio you’d placed on the window sill. Upon closer inspection, you made the definite conclusion that it was in fact the batteries, and sighed in annoyance. Of all the things you didn’t think you’d need for a while at least, you would now have to rummage around in the unemptied moving boxes that were still stockpiled in the dining room, filled with ‘random crap’ from your ‘random crap’ drawers – the drawers every home has… You just hadn’t renovated enough of the kitchen to have a ‘random crap’ drawer yet.

Digging through the boxes, you pulled a tape measure, a pack of four highlighters with two missing, six bank statements dated four years ago and a set of tiny little wrenches from the collection, until finally, you found a pack of unopened batteries at the bottom of the box.

You fumbled with them, rushing to get them out and replace the dead ones in the radio so you could get your music back and get back to work. Just as you pushed the second battery in, the radio roared to life again, startling you with a sudden gasp. Your heart raced in your chest as you chuckled at yourself, laughing at how stupid you’d been to have forgotten to turn it off before you pushed the new batteries in.

But a sudden and much more frightening crash from beneath you had you jumping again within seconds, your grip on the radio faltering as it flew to the ground, the new batteries flying out at the impact and drenching the room in silence again.

Your head flew immediately to the old door to your left, the one that led beneath the house to the basement…

You don’t know how long you stared at it, your heart rate never calming down as your mind raced with scenarios. An animal? Old house falling apart? Ghost? Psycho killer from town? You had no idea what to think.

But you lived alone. No noise should be coming from down in the damn basement.

You stared for so long, you began to question if you’d heard anything at all. Perhaps your mind was playing tricks on you. But with a mental kick up the arse and a quick shake of the head to rid yourself of the fear, you marched over to the door to investigate like every stupid final girl in every horror movie you’d ever seen.

When you pulled on the string light, it buzzed and flickered before settling on a barely-there orange glow. Thankfully, it didn’t matter so much, the small windows in the house’s foundations letting in just enough light to deem the room visible. You could smell the must as you stepped down the wooden stairs, creaking under your feet as if some obnoxious special effects guy was dubbing the scene.

The movers had moved some of the restorable furniture you’d asked them to keep down here, stacking it in a far corner for you to come back to when you’d sorted the main structure and décor of the house. They were caked in a thick layer of dust, fingerprints from the movers clearly visible.

But nothing looked like it had fallen, there wasn’t anything broken or toppled over on the floor at all. The bang you’d heard had no source, that you could see. Even the cellar doors that led to the yard out back were still chained and bolted shut – you couldn’t blame it on a gust of wind, and upon first inspection, there was no sign of an animal somehow making its way inside either.

But to be sure, you walked through the clear space in the centre of the basement and over to the furniture pile of display cabinets, side tables, some chairs and a wardrobe you’d had moved from the master bedroom. It was one of your favourite pieces, that wardrobe. You planned to only clean it up and revarnish it, matching the ornate wood of the bed that had been kept pristine and you now used as your own. Even the mirrors on the door – oval shaped with dark ivy carved into the edges – were in fantastic condition. No scratches, just caked in a layer of dust like the rest.

A closer look proved there were no animals in the basement, no rodents or critters to try and ferry back outside. But what you did notice were the fingerprints on the brass handles of the wardrobe. Perhaps the movers had peaked inside – you hadn’t when you viewed the place. Maybe there were some old clothes still left behind from another decade?

Curiosity got the best of you, and you opened the door with a shriek of its hinges to find… nothing. The wardrobe was empty save for a few wire hangers that jingled with the opening of the door, and another layer of dust, albeit thinner, on the low shelf inside. But the dust was disturbed…

In the centre, there was a rectangle in the dust, as if it had been carefully wiped clean with absolute precision… It was about the size of a shoe box, but the dark grain of the wood stood out around the greyed and dulled wood surrounding it. Something had been in there for years, and had been removed…

Instantly, you blamed the movers. They’d gone nosing around and taken something they thought was valuable? Oh hell no. It got your back up immediately… You’d trusted these people, and they’d stolen from you? They’d be getting a phone call later.

Now pissed, you shut the door to the wardrobe a little harder than perhaps you should, the bang that sounded ricocheting off the stone walls of the basement.

That sounded like what you’d heard from upstairs.

You brushed it off, thinking nothing of it and instead looking up into the oval mirror of the door to check you’d left no damage to it.

But then you saw him. A man, in the dusty reflection standing in the far corner, the darkest spot of the basement. You could only see an outline, a silhouette. But one of his eyes seemed to gleam brighter than the other, the light perhaps hitting it just right. He was glaring at you, watching you intently in the dull reflection…

You shrieked, spinning in your place and slamming your back into the wardrobe behind you. Your chest heaved in panic, heart racing and breaths coming short and fast while your eyes searched the dimly lit corner and found nothing.

There was no man stood in the corner, nothing at all in fact. You were completely alone, your mind playing havoc on you in your heightened state of anxiety and anger. Even now, your heart was still hammering away, your lungs just beginning to regulate your breathing.

You straightened yourself up and wiped at your clothes that collected dust from the wardrobe when you’d slammed into it.

“Dumbass,” you mumbled to yourself, heading back upstairs quickly and slamming the basement door. You tried your best to shake off the anxiety, putting your batteries back into your radio and rushing back to the master bedroom to continue with the wallpaper scraping in the hopes it might put your mind back at ease. But for the rest of the day, you felt an anxiety you couldn’t shift, as if there truly was a man in the corner of every room you entered, glaring at you from the shadows.

It took a few days to get all the paper and residue off the walls in the master bedroom, careful not to mess with the panelling you wanted to sand down and keep as part of the décor. But for now, you could finally get onto stripping the paper in one of the other bedrooms, hoping to strip all of the paper from the upstairs in one go before getting around to sanding and replacing any panelling so you wouldn’t be spreading the dust into rooms you’d already finished and cleaned. There was method in your madness – strip everything down, sand, then clean.

The next biggest room upstairs had no furniture in it and was in the worst state, having been the room with the most extensive damage to the flooring and structural integrity. Builders had to replace the entire floor, and so had removed everything to do so. Apparently a leak in the roof – now fixed, of course – had caused irreparable water damage to the far corner, where they’d also removed the mouldy panelling and cleaned the remaining black mould properly and safely.

But now the rest of the room needed its paper stripped, so that’s where you found yourself. Your little radio blared the same station as always as you scraped away at the paper, making your way along the walls. It came off easier than the master bedroom, the damp of the room helping to already ease the adhesive from the plaster beneath.

As you moved to a section of the wall near the window, placing the stepladder on the floorboard, you heard one rattle beneath it. Having had the entire floor replaced, you’d assumed that every floorboard would be secured down. Perhaps the builders had missed one, but a few nails and you could fix that. So you moved the stepladder out of the way and crouched to inspect the plank that wobbled.

It had the holes in it where the nails should have been, and yet, there were no nails to hold it down… It was as if it had been secured and then pulled up again, except you couldn’t figure out why.

Curiosity got the best of you, and you pushed on one end of it to lift it from the structured beams beneath it. It opened up to a crawl space filled with fresh insulation and piping beneath the room. But when you pulled out your phone to flick on the flashlight, you noticed a rather out of place looking jewellery box had been hidden just to one side of the loose floorboard.

Instinct overruled you and you reached for it, pulling it from under the floorboard and wiping the dust from the top of it. It was a beautiful jewellery box, made of dark wood with an intricate baroque pattern carved into it and filled with some kind of gold resin. It had no lock on it, only a hook to keep its lid closed.

It made no sense to you… Why would this be under the floorboards when the floor was so new? Where had it come from? Should you open it?

And then your brain connected the dots. This box was the same shape, and a similar size to the disturbed dust inside the wardrobe in the basement. This had come from the wardrobe…

Logically, you concocted a story that maybe one of the builders had found it and wanted to hide it, come back for it later but forgot. But if they knew it was of value, surely they wouldn’t have forgotten it? And that patch in the wardrobe seemed too fresh, too pristine… Still, you had no other logical answer. You refused to believe it had magically found its way up from the basement and under the floorboards by itself – or even more horrifyingly, at the hands of someone else.

But you had to open it, right? You had to see what was inside, to see why someone would want to hide such a pretty little box at all. So you flicked the hook open, and slowly opened up the jewellery box…

You’d have to say you were disappointed. There were things in here, but nothing that screamed value at you, more like cheap and random items. There were some cuff links that you thought may have been silver, but were only sterling silver; a costume jewellery bracelet made of plastic pearls; a lipstick, worn down to within an inch of its life in a deep red shade; various little knick-knacks that together made absolutely no sense at all. The only thing that stood out to you as remotely unusual, was a watch.

This watch looked ordinary, something you’d pick up for cheap. It was broken, the glass cracked and the time clearly not moving on from 11:06 on the day it broke. It wasn’t branded, the clock face not diamond-incrusted or made of any real precious materials. But just under where the hands connected in the centre was a tiny little rotating set of numbers for a date, reading as 19/03/24 – just over a week ago. The watch had stopped working just over a week ago.

You couldn’t entertain this idea any longer. You stuffed the watch back into the box, slamming the lid closed and putting it back under the floorboards in the hope it might poof itself out of existence. You had to be imagining things, this wasn’t real. First, hearing noises down in the basement. Then, seeing the reflection of a man in the wardrobe mirror, only for him to disappear when you turned around. Now, finding a box of trinkets in the floorboards with items that were completely out of place for the time period of the old house.

You were being ridiculous, making up things that didn’t exist and had no significance at all. This must have been left by a builder, the battery being the reason it stopped, not the crack in the glass. There was just no way. No one had been by the house since you moved in besides the postman, and even he had quickly stuffed the mail into the mailbox at the end of your drive and run off quickly every time you caught him.

A creak in the floorboards in the hallway snapped you from your racing conspiracies, igniting your fight or flight response much like the noise in the basement the other day. This time you didn’t freeze, you stood up quickly and ran to the doorway to see if you could catch whatever was making the noise.

There he was again.

The same silhouette, a man stood in the hallway, backlit from the large window behind him and the sun streaming in through it. You couldn’t see his face properly, left in shadow but you could see those same eyes, glaring at you, watching to see if you would make a move…

Anger flared inside you, thinking you had an intruder in your home. You weren’t one to back down from a fight or go quietly. If this man was skulking around your house in broad fucking daylight, you were going to confront him.

“HEY! Who the fuck are you?!” you yelled from the doorway, “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

The silhouette said nothing, instead stepping to the right through the door to your master bedroom. Without a second thought you ran towards the open doorway, grabbing the scraper from the floor where you’d set it down earlier as some kind of precautionary weapon.

“I said, get out of my-“ you stopped, frozen in fear. You couldn’t believe what you were seeing, confusion replacing the rage inside you.

Nothing.

There was nobody in here. And you made damn sure to check… No one behind the door, no one in the en-suite, no one under the bed… No one.

You were losing your mind. You had to be. Perhaps you had spent too long alone in this old house, maybe you needed to socialise, head into town and meet some real people instead of chasing shadows. This wasn’t healthy, all this obsessive renovation work. This was your brain telling you you needed a break, right? It had to be that, because you could come up with no sound, logical explanation as to why you were seeing a shadow man roaming around your house other than madness. None of this was really happening, this was simply a descent into insanity caused by too much isolation.

At least, that’s what you told yourself to quiet the pounding heartbeat in your ears as the fear crept its way inside, burrowing deeper with every strange happening you seemed to experience.

A day off was all you’d needed, time out of the house to escape the need to be working, to essentially touch some grass and speak to another actual human being besides the shadow you’d conjured in your head. You’d gone into town, done some shopping, sat in a local coffee shop… You’d met a lovely older woman in there – Amelie, a widow and life-long resident – who’d welcomed you to town, so excited to have a fresh and pretty face to say hello to.

Although, she had warned you to head home before the sun set… That you should never walk alone in the evenings, and should lock your doors and windows at night.

“He likes the younger ones,” she’d told you. “I’m no good, you see… He likes them young.”

That had chilled you to the bone… Perhaps the mad ramblings of a woman hitting senility, but already on edge after the last few days at home, it seemed to strike a nerve. But nothing could have prepared you for the look on her face when she’d asked her where in town you had moved into, and you divulged it was the old farmhouse on the outskirts.

Her cheeks had sagged, smile dropping instantly. She shifted in the chair she’d taken at your table, straightening out the skirt of her dress over her knees and avoiding eye contact. And then she clutched her necklace in her fist – a gold crucifix – as she reached to take yours in her other hand.

“You must protect yourself, yes? That house… Something is there. You must be careful,” she told you, her voice as stern as she could make it to hide the tremble of fear.

“I-I’m okay, really… It just looks old, it’s overgrown and falling apart but I’m working on-“

“No!” she yelled, turning the heads of other patrons in the coffee shop. Her grip on your hand squeezed tighter, her nails digging into your hand painfully. “You should leave, before it’s too late. Such a pretty young thing, you shouldn’t be there…”

You pried her bony, arthritic fingers from around your hand and gently held hers in both of yours.

“I’m okay, Amelie. Please, don’t worry…” you comforted her, but she seemed dissatisfied, her eyes wide as she conceded.

That entire interaction had sat with you for the rest of the day as you’d wandered through the local farmer’s market, picking up fresh vegetables to turn into a casserole for one tonight. It shouldn’t have unnerved you the way it did, such an elderly woman was clearly suffering the effects of an ageing mind and yet, with the experiences of the last few days? Her warning unnerved you.

You headed home long before sunset, and locked the doors and windows like she’d told you to. Did it make you feel any better? Absolutely not… But as you pottered around in the kitchen making the casserole you’d planned, slowly the anxiety started to ease, helped mostly by the music on your little radio.

You ate in peace, scrolling through your phone while you tapped your foot on the tiled floor of the kitchen. You didn’t mind these lonely evenings so much, having grown tired of the bustling city long ago. These days, the quiet of your own company was quite welcome, easily sinking into your own little world.

Even as you stood at the sink, scrubbing at the dishes, you were in your own world, humming along to another overplayed song you’d heard time and time again. You’d find yourself staring out the window in front of you at the sunset, the sky painted pinks and oranges and casting a tranquil glow over the little graveyard out back. Dusk was quickly approaching, the night drawing in as you cleaned.

Just as you placed your plate on the drying rack beside you, you looked out again at the graves, now like silhouettes as the sky turned to a deeper shade of bluey purple. But your heart dropped, every hair on your body standing on end.

The shadow figure. The same shadow figure… Stood out by the graves, looking down at them with its back to you. He seemed to be wearing the same thing as last time you spotted him; slacks, a black coat made of heavy wool that just passed his knees. He was just standing, staring…

You froze in place, watching… You felt paralysed, like you’d spotted a large spider on the wall, staring at it to make sure it didn’t move out of sight because losing it was worse than staring in fear.

It didn’t move, just standing there, staring down.

A rush of anger hit you out of nowhere – this fucker was trespassing on your property, scaring you stupid. You’d locked this prick out when you’d come home, and so he thought it was okay to skulk around your land, trying to frighten you?

Fuck that. No. Enough of this.

You wiped your hands on the dish towel to the side, instinctively reaching for the biggest knife in your knife block on the counter before running to the back door. You unbolted the top and bottom, and ran out into the evening with a surge of adrenaline.

“HEY!” you yelled, like you had when you’d seen him in your hallway, “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!”

The figure didn’t move, still staring down as you approached quickly from behind. You stayed back a few feet, clutching the knife in your hand and ready to use it should this fucker try anything…

“Answer me…” your voice shook with fear, no matter how hard you tried to keep it steady and strong. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing on my land?”

A dark chuckle… The shoulders of the figure shook with his laugh, and it only pissed you off more.

“Your land? Interesting…” the figure muttered, his voice thick with a heavy Italian accent and gruff like he hadn’t spoken aloud in decades.

“I-I’ll call the cops…” you threatened, “just leave and no one gets hurt.”

His head cocked up at that, turning to look over his shoulder. For the first time, you got a small glimpse at his face, and the eye that gleamed brighter than it should. He seemed to be smirking, as if this situation was somehow funny to him.

“You would hurt me, cara mio?” he teased, his eyes flitting down to the knife you held extended towards him. “I did not have you pegged for a violent woman.”

It caught you off guard, the way he spoke to you. Was he trying to belittle you? Make you question your own self-defense to weaken you? You wouldn’t let that happen.

“What are you doing here?” you asked him defiantly, ignoring his comments and still wielding the knife.

“Paying my respects,” he grumbled, as if he were annoyed by an intrusive question.

“Th-this is my property, and you need to leave. I’ve seen you in my house, and you need to go before I call the cops,” you repeated yourself, your voice shaking.

“Why did you buy this house?” he asked, frustratingly ignoring your warnings.

“None of your business-“

“It is my business,” he snapped, “This house belonged to my family,” he span on the spot, finally facing you. His expression was intimidating, his eyes – now visibly different colours – were boring into you, just begging you to try something. “These are their graves. This is their house. It does not, and will never, belong to you.”

“Well you might want to tell the bank that, Mr, uh…” his name escaped you, forgetting the surname that you’d uncovered weeks ago on the graves behind him.

“Emeritus,” he smiled sadistically. “Terzo Emeritus, and this house is mine.”

He took a step closer to you, and naturally you stepped back in fear. The grip on the knife readjusted with the second step he took, readying yourself to use it should you need to.

“But a pretty thing like you? I’m willing to share…”

“Don’t make another move…” you jabbed the knife forward a little, raising your voice in an attempt to appear threatening. “I know there’s some creep going around town, snatching people… And now you’re here, in MY house, threatening me?”

“I think I’m the one being threatened, cara mio…”

“SHUT UP!” you yelled. “Leave, now. Or I will call the fucking police.”

His hands, encased in leather gloves, shot up in a defensive pose, his smile widening sickeningly. He stopped approaching, but his morbidly beautiful eyes slowly scanned you from head to toe, taking you in, analysing. For a moment, you were locked in a stalemate, staring each other down. You thought maybe he was sizing you up, waiting for the opportune moment to strike like a predator hunting its prey.   

But instead of pouncing like you’d expected, he turned back around and knelt down before the graves.

“Penso che forse lei non è così affezionato a me come io sono di lei, non siete d'accordo? (I think maybe she is not as fond of me as I am of her, don’t you agree?)” he mumbled, as if the dead could hear every word. “Non temere, non lascerò che questa bellezza mi scaccia, i miei fratelli. Questa è casa nostra e imparerà a godere della mia compagnia. (Fear not, I will not let this beauty drive me away, my brothers. This is our house, and she will learn to enjoy my company.)”

“W-what did you say?” you stuttered, still wielding the knife. He looked briefly over his shoulder at you.

“Non vedevo tanta bellezza da più di un secolo, (I haven’t seen such beauty in over a century,)” he spoke to the graves again. “Non dal mio esilio e ritorno. (not since my exile and return.)”

You were growing more and more frustrated as he spoke his mother tongue to thin air, waiting for him to do something – even if that something were to force you to defend yourself. This was just… bizarre.

He stood again, kissing the tips of his gloves and pressing them to each headstone, save for one on the end. Why he missed that one, you weren’t sure, but you couldn’t focus on that right now. He seemed to be saying a goodbye, as if he were actually going to leave upon your request.

“Until next time, bella cosa (pretty thing),” he bowed his head a little and began to walk towards you, giving you a wide berth but keeping his eyes trained on you at all times. You figured he was simply making sure you didn’t try to stab him as he passed, walking himself out of the gates of your land and a little ways down the street before he turned back to you, and blew you a slow, calculated flying kiss.

As he continued to walk away down the lane that stretched towards town, you quickly glanced back at the graves, noting now that the names did indeed all share a common family name.

Primo Emeritus. Secondo Emeritus. Copia Emeritus. Terzo Emeritus.

Your eyes widened. You were sure that was the name he just told you belonged to him? That wasn’t possible… Such an unusual name, and he’d made no mention of being a ‘Terzo Junior’, or ‘Terzo the second’. And it was the only grave he didn’t plant his kiss to…

You span around in the grass beneath your feet, looking out down the lane you’d just seen him walking down and yet, he was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t in the fields that lined the lane into town, and the road stretched with no bends for at least two miles, no obstructions at all. You should be able to still see him walking, running even if he had chosen to. He hadn’t had time to vanish like he had, in mere seconds.

Your head whipped back to the grave – his grave? – before you shook your head of the nonsense that he might well be some kind of spirit who can appear or disappear in the blink of an eye. These ‘occurrences’ were nothing more than fuel for a spooky story around a campfire. None of this was true, you’d just… lost sight of him, or misjudged the view of the road. Something, anything, had to explain this away.

But it didn’t stop you from bolting back through the garden and into the kitchen, slamming the door behind you with the knife still in hand and bolting the door shut, heart thumping in your ears.

You slept with that knife under your mattress that night.

His face haunted you, both day and night. No matter what you did, or how you tried to refocus your mind, to fixate on only your renovations, you couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. In the few days since the incident by the graves, you were questioning your sanity more than ever.

Had that even been real? Was he real? He couldn’t possibly be… The way he disappeared in an instant every time you saw him led you only to the conclusion that you’d lost your mind, officially. You must have concocted this spectre after seeing his name on the grave when you’d cleared the landscaping around them. You told yourself that over and over again.

That became harder to do though, when you’d spot him out by the graves again not even a week after the first time. You’d been installing some small curtains to the window by the kitchen sink for you to hide the site from view when you’d spooked yourself at the mere thought of that night, and yet there he was again.

You stared in shock, frozen and motionless, as he turned his head towards the house, looking it up and down, before his gaze settled on you in the window. He raised his hand, but before he could gesture a wave at you, you shut the new curtains and obscured his view, darting out of the kitchen and hiding in the dining room still full of packed boxes.

Your heart pounded as it always did when your imagination ran away with you and spooked you like this. You shook your head, told yourself to snap the fuck out of it.

But then you saw him every evening.

Always by the graves, always turning to wave at you, no matter from which window you were watching him from. You did your best to hide, to ignore it and tell yourself he wasn’t real. You just had to keep going, to continue your work and maybe find a good psychologist in town one of these days.

This plan of wilful ignorance was barely working, but what else could you do? Giving this apparition any kind of attention would surely only make it worse, whether he was a figment of your imagination or a genuine ghost from the past.

Ignoring him was hard. There was such a large part of you that wanted more information about him, to learn where he’d come from, why he haunted you. He was intriguing, if terrifying. The face that followed your dreams, both day and night, was starting to become all too familiar, all too comfortable. If it weren’t for that ghostly white eye of his, he’d have quite a charming face. His glare wouldn’t seem so dark if it wasn’t pierced by the white glow, and perhaps he wouldn’t be so threatening… Home invasion and grave haunting aside.

Still, you did your best to continue as normal. The renovations continued, and before long you had stripped every room upstairs of the aged and withered wallpaper that desperately needed replacing. Finally, you could start decorating to your own tastes – starting with your bedroom.

After a trip to the nearest hardware store, and a delivery of wooden slats, you got busy creating the wainscoting that was to run along the bottom three feet of the wall in your bedroom. The idea was to panel it, and then paint everything a beautiful deep shade of royal purple. The hardwood floor was going to be stained a dark shade throughout the entire upstairs, but you’d managed to source a stunning Persian rug in a purple that matched the aesthetic you were hoping for. The furniture – the items you’d had moved to the basement – were already perfect for the room, matching the bed that had also been left behind. You’d chosen gold metal accents to replace the handles on the wardrobe and chest of drawers, and sourced lamps and trinkets in the same gold to match.

After no longer than a week, you’d completed the room with a mix and match of modern and Victorian gothic aesthetics. Frankly, it looked like a Pinterest board – but it was so inherently you.

When you’d laid the finishing touches to the room, you stood in the middle of it, proudly looking around with a wide grin on your face at the beautifully finished space. That estate agent couldn’t see the potential of this house, but you had the second you stepped foot inside. And whilst it was only one room, the rest of the house still just the bare skeletal bones of a home, this was a huge victory.

“I like what you’ve done with my bedroom, bella cosa (pretty thing).”

Your body stiffened at the sound of his voice, coming from the doorway behind you. You squeezed your eyes shut, shaking your head and willing for the nightmare to stop. You hadn’t heard him, you were imagining it. You had to be.

Except, you heard footsteps behind you, on the hardwood floors. His shoes clacked with every step, slow and deliberate as if he was taking in his surrounding, inspecting your work. When you braved opening your eyes, that’s exactly what he was doing.

He really was here.

“Grazie for keeping my furniture, cara mio. I was always fond of it, and you’ve given it new life,” he said, ogling the wardrobe as he dragged his gloved fingertips along the edge of the wood.

“And purple, too…” he span on his heels to face you, a warm smile crossing his dark features, “My favourite colour.”

“How did you get in here?” you asked, voice shaking as you watched him look around the room.

“I told you, cara, this was my house. I know every entrance and exit there is,” his mismatched eyes settled on you again, “even the ones you don’t.”

He was lying. There were only three ways in or out of the house, and they were all locked – bolted, latched, even the cellar doors in the basement were chained shut.

“This is not your house,” you argued, spitting the words through grit teeth. “You need to leave. I will call the police.”

His eyes darkened again, a veil of threat overcoming him.

“And I told you, this has always been my house.”

You weighed your options. Your phone was on the kitchen counter downstairs; if you were fast enough, you could run down to it and out the back door before he caught you, calling the police as you ran along the road into town. If you didn’t fuck it up, you could even lock him in, taking the key from the back door and locking it shut behind you, leaving him gift wrapped for the cops.

You just had to be quick.

And you tried, you really did. You bolted out of the bedroom, running down the length of the long hall towards the top of the stairs. You hadn’t heard him behind you, his shoes making no noise behind you and so you imagined he’d been left stunned by your sudden departure, giving you a head start.

So you hadn’t expected a pair of large, strong hands to grip you by the tops of your arms at the top of the stairs, and slam your body into the wall. A sharp pain radiated up through your spine, but you cried out in fear more so than pain when you realised he’d trapped you, palms flat against the wall by your head and arms encasing you.

Instinct had you closing your eyes, squeezing them shut and waiting for the next blow, or for this nightmare to end. You could feel a cool breeze against your cheek as you turned your head away from the man trapping you, as if his breath were ice cold.

“Look at me, cara mio,” he ordered, his voice deep and slow. You whimpered beneath him, trying to plant yourself flat against the wall to get as far away from him as possible. “Per favore, I want to see you.”

You wanted to deny him, but his silence said he’d wait for an eternity until you did. And you didn’t want to find out just how aggressive he could be, if given the chance. So slowly, you opened your eyes, looking at him through your peripheral vision before you turned your head ever so slightly.

His face was so close to yours, hovering above you. His eyes flickered across your features, like he was looking for something, or maybe mapping every feature and committing it to his memory for some nefarious reason.

This close to him, you couldn’t stop yourself from doing the same… You avoided his eyes, noting instead how his skin seemed pale for an Italian man, but soft and smooth without a single imperfection. His jawline was chiselled, like you’d cut your palm if you tried to slap him. He had frown lines in his forehead that came with a life of frustration, yet forked lines from the outer corners of his eyes that came with a life of happiness; neither made him look haggard, yet showed he wasn’t quite as youthful as you.

Despite his pale complexion, his lips remained a soft pink. They were full, parted as you both silently examined each other up close. That breeze you felt was most definitely his breath, which you’d expected to be warmer but given the situation, perhaps it was your fear adding to the chill.

Running out of features to scan, you landed on his eyes; the eyes that haunted you more than any you’d seen. At first glance, the colour mismatch was disconcerting. It would put anybody on edge, perhaps make them wonder if he’d fallen victim to some kind of accident or birth defect but the more you stared, the more you fell into them. You couldn’t place why, but they seemed older than the rest of his features, holding more wisdom than you might have expected.

“Are you real?” you asked him, logic and reason battling against the very real fear that you were imagining him, that he was some kind of spirit that haunted his family home you’d never be rid of. But you’d felt him. His hands had been the ones to throw you against this wall, his body was imposing on yours as he trapped you. He was solid, flesh and blood. But there was an innate and visceral fear that something was wrong.

At your question, his eyes met yours, and his lips quirked into a playful smile.

“I am very real, cara mio,” he assured, taking his hand from beside your head and wrapping his gloved fingers around your wrist. He lifted your palm, gently laying it flat against his chest. “Can you not feel me?”

You could. He was solid, like you’d now discovered and you could feel his heartbeat beneath his shirt. Still, something felt wrong. He had no body heat like a normal living man through a simple cotton shirt should, and the heartbeat you felt was significantly slower than it should be.

“Who are you?” you whimpered, palm to his chest without even an attempt to remove it.

“I told you who I was. Terzo Emeritus.”

“J-junior?” you asked him. His brow creased in confusion, missing what you were asking entirely. “Terzo Junior? The grave, it… it says Terzo.”

Now he understood, sensing your confusion and chuckling lightly at it.

“Just Terzo,” he told you, gentle grip still on your wrist. You could pull your hand away if you tried, and yet, you kept it in place as if his own slow heartbeat was somehow reducing your own to a more comfortable pace.

You were at a loss for words now, brain running far too quickly to settle on something suitable to say to him. But at least now you had grown aware of your palm still settled on his chest, prompting you to rip it from his grip expecting him to put up some kind of resistance, to which you met none.

“What do you want from me?” you asked him, unable to tear your eyes from him in the same manner you’d torn your wrist from him.

“Perhaps only your company,” he shrugged slightly, raising an eyebrow in suggestion. “To exist with you, here.”

“This is my house…”

“Sí, so you keep saying.” A beat of silence passed as you thought of what he was truly asking, what that even meant.

“I want you to stay away from me,” you insisted, finding a shred of strength within you. Terzo took in a deep breath through his nose, letting it go as he studied you.

“I don’t think I can do that, cara mio,” he sighed. His admission had tears forming in your waterline, a new fear that you wouldn’t be able to shake this man’s seemingly growing obsession with you. All you wanted was peace, solitude and an escape but you’d fallen into a web, and the spider was crawling towards you agonisingly slowly.

You took a few deep breaths, each exhale shaky. You just wanted him to go, to leave you alone. Maybe this had been his house once before, but it was yours now, and he couldn’t stay here. He already seemed infatuated with you, if the way he looked at you now was anything to go by. His eyes drank you in like he was a starving man, and you were the ripest of fruits for him to devour.

“Please, I just want to be left alone…” you begged, tilting your head back against the wall and letting the tears fall as you squeezed your eyes shut, suppressing a sob in your chest.

Silence descended, and suddenly the weighted oppression of his presence vanished with a swift breeze. Even with your eyes shut, you could feel he wasn’t entrapping you anymore but when you opened them, you saw he wasn’t anywhere near you at all.

He’d vanished again, faster than a snap of your fingers.

And you were left wondering if any of that, once again, was real or a fantasy of your own making. You were so sure you felt a solid body, a real heartbeat. You weren’t a scientist, nor a paranormal specialist but you would assume if he was the spirit of the man buried in your back yard, you wouldn’t be able to feel him in such a way.

But now he had vanished, the feeling he left with you felt very much like an oppressive presence, a lingering energy. Now he left you with the anxiety of another visit without warning, another appearance to trick you into believing your delusions were true.

You expected to see him again.

Another week passed, a surface layer of anxiety lingering persistently. All you could do was focus your attention on your project, doing your absolute best to continue as normal. Now you had finished the master bedroom, you moved onto the upstairs bathroom, which had needed gutting and refitting.

You’d had a small team of plumbers in to replace the pipes through the house just as you had electricians to rewire the place before you’d moved in, and until now, all you’d had was the bare bones of a shiny new bathroom. You’d installed some counters with a new sink, the gold hardware matching around the bathroom. The marble top was a beautifully tasteful black with gold veins to match the black wood of the cabinets.

Even in here, you stuck to your darker aesthetic. The walls were painted a beautiful matte black, the floor tiled with black and white squares. It took you all week, two of those days on tiling alone. But it was something to focus on, a room that you knew would be frequently used and so needed to be finished now your bedroom was complete.

When it came to adding the finishing touches, it felt like the cherry on top of another beautifully made cake. Your house was quickly turning into a showroom, a place that could be featured in home renovation magazines had you been willing to open it up.

But already, you’d had one too many visitors in your home for your liking…

By the end of the week, you were exhausted – more so than usual. The anxiety of feeling watched, monitored, stalked was taking its toll on you, and you needed some respite. For all you knew, Terzo Emeritus could show up at any moment to frighten, repulse and excite you. It was weighing heavy, and your mind was just as spent as your body was.

As you headed to bed that evening, you allowed yourself some self-care in the bathroom you’d now finished. The point of renovating this house was to enjoy it, right? So why deny yourself that…

You filled the new clawfoot tub with hot water, brimming with bubbles and scents that had you falling into a state of total calm before you’d even sunk into it. Your tiny little radio joined you in the bathroom, tuned to a station that played nothing but classical, and on a bath shelf you’d bought you rested some candles, a book and a full glass of red wine to enjoy as you pampered yourself.

Sinking into the water, you relished in the feeling of being submerged in its warmth. Almost instantly, the tension in your shoulders melted away, eyes closing in bliss as your head slipped back to rest against the tub’s edge. You couldn’t help but let out a hum of satisfaction, the relief and pleasure accumulating in a soft moan.

As you let your body relax, a noise caught your attention; a floorboard, creaking just outside of the bathroom door. Your eyes shot open, your body reacting and freezing in place. However when you let your eyes roam over to the mirror above the bathroom sink, you saw him…

By force of habit, you’d left the bathroom door ajar, a small gap just large enough to be able to see that ghostly eye of his in the dim hallway, and the outline of him peeking through the door. Your heart rate hammered in your chest as it always did when you saw him, but you remained still. For now, he wasn’t making any kind of move, and he didn’t seem to be aware you had seen him.

But he was definitely there, watching you as you bathed. It was violating, invasive, perverse… And yet, you did nothing about it.

Instead, you sank further underneath the bubbles, reaching for your wine glass with your eyes trained on the mirror. You took a sip, relishing in the taste and releasing another satisfied moan as if putting on a damn show for him. What possessed you to do so, you had no idea, but he’d been tormenting your mind for weeks now – why couldn’t you do the same to him?

Reaching for your loofah, you dunked it under the water and sat upright, back exposed to him. You stretched your arm out, running the loofah along your skin in a slow and deliberate manner. You were careful to never expose yourself too much, but to tease with the expanse of pretty, bare skin to conjure enough suggestion in his mind that would leave a man desperate to see more.

When you ran the loofah up the length of your leg just above the water, you heard the floorboards creak again, like he was fidgeting on the other side of the door. You checked in the mirror to see if he was still there, and he most certainly was, but you were having the effect on him you hoped for.

Perhaps you stretched it out a little longer than necessary, running the loofah over your body more than needed but you were making your point. Your wicked little mind was ticking over, aware he could only see what you wanted him to; your shoulders and head above the bubbles from behind. Do you dare to cross the line…?

Perhaps the thrill of being watched was having an effect on you too, because you came to the conclusion that yes, you did dare to cross the line.

You lay back against the tub again, using the loofah now to run across your shoulders and down between the valley of your breasts, which the bubbles were barely covering in your relaxed position. You trailed the loofah further down, reaching over your stomach and between your legs.

Your breath hitched in your throat as you brushed the loofah over your core, now realising that washing yourself so intimately – and being watched while doing so – had aroused you more than you’d first thought. A flash of pleasure had you squeezing your eyes shut again, and you couldn’t stop yourself from grazing over your centre with added pressure, hips rocking in the water.

Before long, you abandoned the loofah all together, and from where he was stood, Terzo could see it float and bob up to the surface which had him drawing only one conclusion; you were definitely not just washing yourself.

You worked slowly, methodically. It had been so long since you’d let go like this, since you’d last touched yourself at all and you wanted to savour it, to enjoy it. You were in no rush, working your fingers in gentle and slow circles over your clit under the water. The moans that you let slip weren’t at all restrained or controlled; for all you knew, you were alone, right? So why would you hold back?

 It was impossible not to keep checking the mirror, to make sure he was still there and every time, he was. You couldn’t help but let your imagination run away with you, picturing him entering the room, kneeling down beside the tub and reaching his hand between your legs for you. You pictured him taking you from the bathroom, into the bedroom and having his way with you, dark, handsome and brooding as he always had been.

You imagined his hands beneath his gloves, his bare fingertips tracing patterns into your skin, his full lips trailing kisses down your still wet body. What did he look like under those layers of his? How would he feel under your own fingertips? How would he feel inside you?

But Terzo made no such move. Instead, he watched silently from the shadows, and each time you caught that glimpse of him your hips bucked towards your hand until eventually, you couldn’t hold back anymore and allowed yourself to fall over the precipice.

Your orgasm was powerful, thanks to not only the lack of self love recently, but also, the arousal of becoming an exhibitionist. It rippled through your body like the water around you, and had you crying out wordlessly as you sank further into the water up to your chin. You hadn’t felt so good in a long time, and it worked perfectly to relieve the remainder of that tension in your body.

As you came down from the orgasm, you dared to glance back at the mirror only to find that he’d vanished. Another little disappearing act, only this time, you found yourself free of the anxiety that usually came with that, and instead smug with the knowledge you might have got one over on him for a change. You’d teased him to a point that he couldn’t tear his eyes from you until it was over, and for a moment you felt truly powerful. At least, if he were real… and not a fantasy you’d concocted for yourself. There was still the very real possibility that all of this was just your own madness and loneliness, and you were just now starting to lean into the delusions as a form of self-preservation.

For a little while longer, you stayed put in the tub, enjoying your book, the rest of your wine and the music in the background. Of course, you kept checking on the mirror to see if maybe he’d return for another look, but nothing. It was twisted, the way your stomach drooped in disappointment each time, but you brushed it off. You were sure before long, you would see him again – whether real or fictional.

Once you had finished in the bathroom, draining the tub and rinsing the suds away, you floated back into your bedroom wrapped in a bathrobe and ready to sink into bed with your book. You pottered around, changing into some pyjamas and crawling under the sheets when a glimpse of colour caught the light beside your bed, earning your attention.

Hanging from your bedside lamp was a pendant, and most certainly not one of yours. They were stored in a jewellery box atop the dresser, not hung on display like this… but it was beautiful, and you reached over to lay the charm in your palm and inspect it properly.

It was simple, yet elegant. The charm was shaped like a water drop, except the stone was purple; perhaps amethyst or a rarer sapphire but it caught the light exceptionally. Surrounding it, were smaller stones that resembled diamonds, but your knowledge of precious stones couldn’t confirm whether they were in fact real, or if this were costume jewellery. It didn’t matter though, it was beautiful as it was, sparkling under your bedside lamp.

You had no idea how it got here, but you could hazard a guess. It had been left for you like a gift, delicately placed in a position that would get your attention. There was only one person it could have come from, and as you played with the unusual pendant under the light, you began to realise that maybe he wasn’t the figment of your imagination you were trying to pass him off as…

The next morning, you had a revived energy, a spring in your step from a decent night’s sleep. The time spent on self care seemed to do the job, relieving the stress enough for you to be ready to tackle the downstairs living room next. Truthfully, your new found vigour may have also had something to do with a large part of you giving in to the idea that Terzo was not a fantasy, he’d been very real this whole time.

You still had no idea who he was, or how he was a real person. You were beginning to think that perhaps spirits did walk the earth, just by how he seemed to appear and disappear on a dime. But you remembered the heartbeat, the solid chest under your palm…

There were so many questions. Who was he? A descendant of the family this house once belonged to, and rested in your garden? How does he keep getting in? He mentioned entrances you might not know about, but you’d searched thoroughly, or so you thought. Was he obsessed with you? Stalking you?

Was he dangerous?

His behaviour was most definitely shady – people don’t just come and go in other people’s homes as they please. But you’d never reported him, no matter how much you’d threatened it. To begin with you’d hoped the threat of calling the cops would be enough to deter him, but he always came back. And at every opportunity, he could have done something to hurt you, yet never did. Even last night, you were in a completely vulnerable position. And whilst peeping on you in the bath was absolutely a violation and a crime in itself, all he did was watch. And you let him.

His existence was confusing, but you’d surrendered to the notion that he did in fact exist; and honestly, that in itself was quite freeing. It felt like some kind of weight had lifted, and it made beginning work on the living room easier to stomach.

This room had suffered in the years the house sat in decay. The old windows had made way for black mould to grow around it, and whilst you’d had the windows replaced since, the mould was still present. Your first job was to clean the walls and potentially replace some of the floorboards, if the moisture had taken hold of the wood.

Armed with a bucket of diluted bleach and a sponge, you got to work scrubbing at the walls and the large window sill that you were planning to convert into a cosy nook; a perfect place to sit and watch the world go by, book in hand. Your little radio sat on the mantelpiece of the stunning fireplace you were going to bring back to life, blaring out the same cycle of tunes you were used to now you’d tuned it back from the classical of last night.

You let yourself zone out as you scrubbed at the mould, singing along to the radio now you knew most of the songs blaring from it. It was a wonder you weren’t sick of them yet, but you still hadn’t got around to unpacking your record player that was supposed to have a home in this particular room. First, you had to finish it though, of course.

As one song ended, the radio host announced a lunchtime bulletin. By this time you were only half listening, fixated on the satisfying cleaning job.

“It’s 1pm, you’re listening to 108.3fm – here’s your lunchtime bulletin. Police have made a shocking discovery after the disappearance of 25 year old Amanda Riley just three days ago.”

Your ears perked up at the news, now getting your attention. Another one? This was concerning, terrifying even. And now they’d made a discovery?

“Human remains were discovered just outside of town in a wooded area yesterday, which police have now confirmed are that of Amanda. Family members formally identified the body, and police have given a statement to locals urging caution and vigilance. Sheriff Ansel had this to say…

“‘We believe Ms. Riley’s murder to be connected to the string of disappearances in the area in the last few months. The victim was found with all her personal belongings still on her person, including wallet, cash, ID and mobile phone, however when the family came to formally identify the body, they noted that the only thing taken from her was her unusual pendant…’”

Your blood turned cold. The hand still scrubbing at the wall froze in place, and slowly, you turned to look at the radio as if it was speaking directly to you.

“‘The pendant is recognisable as a purple amethyst in a teardrop shape, surrounded by smaller white diamonds. While the item is valuable, we believe that the killer may have taken such a personal item as a trophy, which could be part of their M.O. Still, we are urging the public to please keep an eye out to see if we can trace this item, either in pawn shops or perhaps being sold online. We ask that you not panic, and please get in touch if you note anything suspicious. Thank you.’”

Your hand dropped the sponge back into the bucket of diluted bleach, drifting up to your chest where that very same pendant was sat against your skin. You’d put it on that morning, barely even thinking about it, just because you liked it.

But he’d given it to you. Left it out in the open for you, like he was proud of it. He’d given you a dead girl’s fucking necklace. And there was only one way he could have got it…

You stood up, running into the kitchen and colliding with the sink before your body displayed it’s disgust by vomiting violently. All those unanswered questions, and yet, one of them had been answered.

Who was he? A murderer.

As you coughed and spluttered your breakfast into the sink, your mind raced. She wasn’t the only missing person, just the first body to have been found. There were others. So many others, for nine months. Thirteen missing people, one of which found dead with this fucking necklace missing.

You felt dizzy, like a wave of vertigo hit you in an instant. You hobbled over to the fridge, clutching at the kitchen counter to keep yourself steady and rooting around for a bottle of water. Your hands shook as you unscrewed the lid, taking a sip to rinse out your mouth as you stumbled back to the sink to spit. You took another sip, this time swallowing and trying your best to focus on the sensation of the cool water trickling down your throat. But your head was too busy.

Trophies. He was taking trophies? Why? This sick bastard must enjoy it, he must relish in his kills, wanting something to remember each one by. What else had he taken…? And then you remembered.

The box under the floorboards.

You slammed the water bottle down on the side, a jet propelling out onto the work surface from the force. Before you knew it your feet were moving of their own accord, up the stairs and down the hall. You were unsteady, tripping into the walls as you walked. You needed to know, but you didn’t want to.

Stumbling into the bare room, you fell to your knees with a hard smack where the floorboard was loose. Shaking hands lifted the plank, reaching underneath to check the box was still there; it was. You pulled it from its hiding place setting it down on the floor while you racked up the courage to open it again.

In one quick motion, you unlocked the latch and flung the lid open like ripping off a band aid. All the items were still there, just the way you’d left them, including the watch that had made you question them in the first place. It looked like it could have been vintage, save for the date wound to March of this year.

You looked at the collection of random items; the watch, the cuff links, the old red lipstick, the cheap bracelet, a skeleton key, a tiny used bottle of perfume, a red comb, an old butterfly hairpin, a daisy pin badge, a rusty swiss army knife, a fountain pen and a vintage zippo lighter.

Twelve items.

With the necklace, that made thirteen. Thirteen items. Thirteen victims. Thirteen trophies.

“I should have hidden them better, eh?”

The sound of his voice had your body stiffening in fear, skin instantly peppered with goosebumps. You hadn’t even begun to think about confronting him or having to see him. You weren’t sure what you were going to do yet, but you’d have hoped to have time to calm yourself down and think rationally about your options.

But you were going to have to do this ad-hoc.

“I don’t often make mistakes, bella cosa, but when I do… They haunt me. I suppose my kindness is coming back to bite me on the culo (ass).”

He sounded surprisingly calm for a man who’d just been found out to be a serial killer. It unnerved you, and no part of you could figure out his next move. You were a sitting duck.

Slowly, and carefully, you stood up, turning around to look at him. Part of you worried if you startled him with sudden movement, he might strike like any predator would its prey.

He was stood in the doorway, leaning up against the wood with his hands buried in the pockets of his slacks, coat pushed back behind them. He looked far too casual, his face hinting at neither anger nor humour – nowhere on the emotional spectrum.

“Kindness?” you asked, ruminating over his use of the word. “There’s no kindness in what you’ve done.” Perhaps it was dangerous to speak so ill of the murderer in front of you, but you couldn’t help yourself.

His neutral expression darkened in a warning glare, his chin tipping up so he was looking down on you, adding to his intimidating aura.

“Not everybody deserves kindness, cara mio. Some deserve far less,” he challenged, pushing himself off the doorframe and taking slow steps into the room, keeping a distance from you still.

“No one deserves that…”

Terzo scoffed, looking off to gaze out of the window and shaking his head as if what you said offended him in some way.

“So now you know,” he shrugged, looking back towards you, his hands still shoved deep in his pockets. You kept an eye on them, mind racing with all kinds of possibilities – he could have a weapon of some sorts hidden from view. You needed to be on your guard. “I suppose you will report me now, sí?”

There was a playful glint in his eyes that you didn’t miss, like he was taunting you, waving a red flag to a bull. If you said you were, would he attack you too? But surely he couldn’t simply take your word for it if you said you wouldn’t either… Truthfully, you weren’t sure what you were going to do. Your only instinct was to run – fast.

You let his question linger in the air, far too much silence going by as he watched you, assuming you’d frozen in fear. He hadn’t expected you to dart towards the door, your only goal to get downstairs and out of the house as quickly as possible. So when you did exactly that, he watched for a split second, anger snapping inside him.

You barely made it out of the room before you felt a sudden force slam you forwards and into the wall of the corridor. A scream erupted from your chest, blood-curdling and gut-wrenching to anyone who would have heard it – but out here? No one would. How he’d moved so fast, you had no idea, but he had both of your wrists behind your back, and his whole body weight held you tightly against the wall.

“You are leaving so soon?” he asked, leaning in to speak directly in your ear as you writhed under him to try and escape, but his grip was too strong even without him putting seemingly any effort into it. “I was just getting used to you living in my house…”

“This is MY house,” you growled, gritting your teeth and avoiding his eyes.

“Then why should you want to leave? Are you scared I might hurt you, cara mio?”

Tears spilled from your waterline, giving away your fear and distress. Of course you were scared he was going to hurt you. He’d already hurt so many…

When he received no answer from you other than a sob in defeat and the stilling of your limbs as you gave up fighting his grip, he manhandled you until you span around, your back now against the wall just like it had been the other day.

“Th-this isn’t real… You’re not real…” you whispered to yourself, squeezing your eyes shut in the hopes you might wake up from your nightmare. You did not.

“I’m quite real, cara. We’ve been over this, no?” he lifted your wrist again like he had the other day, this time settling your hand delicately on his cheek and holding it there with his much bigger palm. “See?”

His gentility confused you, and when you opened your eyes, you saw a strange softness in his face. For a moment, you almost thought his expression was one of admiration. It didn’t matter what it was, but you couldn’t look away. This man – this serial killer – was being so gentle with you, his eyes cast over you like he was utterly obsessed with you.

“Why?” you whispered, more tears spilling over your cheeks. Still, you held his, despite his grip on your hand lessening ever so slightly. You wanted to understand, talk him down maybe just enough to let you go. You wanted to appeal to the softness you saw in him.

“I have no choice,” he said flatly, almost with a hint of shame. But that only crossed the wires in your mind more.

“I… I don’t understand.”

“I choose them carefully… They are not good people, cara. They have ruined others lives, even taken them and I-“ he stopped himself, looking down at the floor in shame. Your brows creased together, trying to piece your thoughts into coherency.

“It’s always a choice,” you started to argue back, softly so as not to raise any more rage within him in such a precarious position such as the one you found yourself in beneath him. But his head snapped back up nonetheless, his hand gripping onto yours and throwing it back down beside you. He kept you caged beneath him still, hands planted firmly on the wall.

“I assure you, bella ragazza (pretty girl), there is no choice. It is me or them.”

Slowly, he raised his head from where he’d stared at the floorboards between your feet. His eyes watched you closely as he tilted his head back a little, and his lips parted until you could clearly see two very white, very sharp fangs protruding from under his top lip.

For a moment you didn’t react at all, calculating what you were seeing. His hands hadn’t moved, so he hadn’t put them in himself. You’d seen him so many times, and up close too, and never saw them before… They had to be real. He had fangs.

“That’s impossible…” you whispered, “there’s no such thing as-“

“Vampires?” he finished your sentence for you, “I’m sorry to shatter your illusion of a perfect world, cara mio, but I can assure you, there certainly is.”

Finally, your survival instincts kicked in, adrenaline pumping through your veins almost in an instant. You shoved your hands against his chest and pushed with all the strength you had, trying to get him away from you, to preserve yourself. All this time you had felt like prey, and it had been instinct all along. You were prey.

Your shove did nothing. He remained unmoving, like stone encasing you against the wall. You thrashed your arms around, trying to escape him but it was completely useless. You were already trapped, and at the mercy of a real vampire.

“I’m sorry, cara mio, but you will not overcome my strength nor my speed. This is useless, I assure you.” His voice had no hint of patronising, instead of genuine sorrow. It felt as if he knew he had to kill you now, but he didn’t want to kill you. You gave up, your fists balling up against his chest as you lay your head back against the wall, out of breath and sobbing as you accepted your fate.

“Please… don’t kill me, Terzo…” you wept, head lolling forward to look into his eyes for what you thought might be the last time.

His brow was creased, his lips parted in horror as he looked back at you. He raised his gloved hand and wiped at the tracks on your cheek. “I don’t wish to kill you, cara mio… You understand, no? I must kill to stay alive, but not you – never you.”

You barely registered what he was saying before you were shooting questions at him again, needing to know more, to understand why he chose those people. Why he kept their trophies…

“Why them? Why did you choose them? They were innocent, just like me. Why did they deserve that?” you sobbed, your chest heaving as he held your cheek, still caging you against the wall.

“The girl they found? What the polizia (police) don’t know is she was behind the wheel of an intentional hit and run a few years ago. The store clerk a few weeks back? You do not want to see what was on his hard drive. All of them, vile humans. There is more evil in this world than you could possibly fathom, tesoro. They even tasted different…” he shrivelled his face in disgust, “but it keeps me alive, and my conscience semi-clear.”

The shock of his revelation did nothing to help your racing heart or foggy mind, processing everything far slower than you would like in this tumultuous situation.

“Suppose that was true, why do you keep their things?” you prodded further – there must be some part of him that enjoys it. Even if only the fact he were proud of removing scum from the earth, if that were true.

“Because I carry their souls with me… No matter how evil, they are people, and I take their life. Each one is a burden, and I must never forget that.”

There was genuine sorrow, genuine regret there. You could see it. But it changed nothing, he was still a murderer, a monster. And you were still trapped underneath him, literally backed up against a wall and inches away from deadly threat.

“But… it’s sick, Terzo! They’re kept like trophies, like you’re proud of what you do to them!” you protested. He hollowed his cheeks in annoyance, becoming more defensive as you accused him.

The hand that wiped your tears lowered to your neck, his fingertips tracing along the chain of the necklace you had yet to take off, until it reached the unusual pendant, where he played with it against your collarbone.

“And yet, you still wear it. You had time to take it off, if you were so disgusted by it. But here it is, looking so pretty around your… beautiful neck,” he sighed, his eyes roaming hungrily over the exposed skin he so clearly wanted to puncture and drink from. The fear in you started to rise again, your pulse that had just started to settle raising. More hot tears fell over your waterline as you took a deep, shaky breath.

“What… what do you want from me?” you pleaded, your voice trembling and squeaky. His eyes flickered up to yours, fingertips still playing with the pendant, grazing the skin so gently it left goosebumps. You would never admit to the thrill his touch seemed to be giving you, knowing what you know of him now.

But Terzo leaned in further, his hips meeting yours and pressing you further against the wall. The hand that had been keeping you caged against the wall all this time dropped to your waist, holding you just enough to send a wave of curious gratification through your abdomen. He was close enough that your noses would touch, should he tip his head down to you. You could feel his icy breath against your face again – a symptom of his state of undead, you now understood.

“I want you to love me, tesoro…” he confessed in a whisper, watching for your reaction.

“I only fear you,” you defied, unable to admit the curiosity his request sparked.

“Are they not the same?” His eyebrow arched up in question, waiting for your response. But honestly, you had none. You were dumbfounded, wondering what on earth he meant by that. Of course they weren’t the same, nothing about love and fear are the same. The attraction you had felt towards him in recent encounters was fleeting; a right place, right time kind of attraction. It had nothing to do with him, and now knowing what he was, it could never be him again.

Terzo understood your silence to be an internal monologue, a debate in your own mind. He pressed further, illustrating his point.

“Let me ask you, tesoro, does the thought of me make your hairs stand on end?” his fingertips grazed along the length of your collarbone, the grip on your waist squeezing slightly, “Does it make your stomach fill with the flutter of butterfly wings? Does it make your heart beat like the thrum of a hummingbird’s wings?”

You couldn’t deny it, but those were markers of fear as well as love. It didn’t mean they were synonymous. You refused to answer him.

“I can hear it, you know…” his hand flattened against your collarbone, “The pounding in your chest, the rushing of your blood through your veins. I hear them, working so hard when you are near me.”

Terzo leaned into your neck, his nose brushing against your jugular so tenderly as he breathed in deeply, enjoying your scent to the point of near intoxication. Little did you know, it was that scent that drew him out of hiding in the first place. He simply couldn’t stay away from you, and when he saw where the scent was coming from, saw your sheer beauty, he understood why you smelled as tempting as you did.

“Fear smells just like love to me, tesoro. It adds a sweetness to your already saccharine scent. Just like nectar appeals to a honey bee, you appeal to me much the same,” he continued to nuzzle his nose against your skin, his breath fanning over your collarbone. Every so often in his clumsy, inebriated state his lips would gently tickle the skin, sending a rush through you that now you were certain he could smell. “That nectar can be turned into honey, no? I wonder if I could do the same for you…”

You bit your lip, looking up towards the ceiling in an attempt to avoid his eyes that frankly were too hypnotic for their own good.

“They are all markers of fear, Terzo…” you whimpered. You felt his breath as he chuckled against your skin.

“Then tell me why I can smell the sweetest honey already pooling between your legs, cara mio…”

Your head snapped down to look at him, and you met his eyes already waiting for you, a smirk on his lips. You wanted to deny it, to slap him, to push him away from you but what was the point? He was right. There was no denying it. He could smell you.

The shame you felt, letting a monster like him have such an effect on you, was astronomical.

“Please…”  you pleaded; for what, you weren’t sure.

“What is it, cara mio? What can I give you?” he asked, straightening up and again cupping your cheek with his gloved hand, still holding your waist, still pressing his hips to yours. His lips were so close, all you could do was stare at them until you snapped yourself out of it, looking him directly in the eyes.

“Everything.”

It took no longer than a heartbeat for Terzo to process your answer, before his lips attached to yours so fast and hard you felt his fangs scrape against your bottom lip. A thrill zapped your core, and your balled up fists against his chest gripped the lapels of his coat to bring him impossibly close. You succumbed so quickly to him, desperate to feel his lips against yours.

While you were sure this feeling was not love, it was certainly not fear either. ‘Infatuation’ felt closer to the truth, borderline obsession just as Terzo had exhibited towards you. But denying it was futile now, and so instead, you leaned into it. The pair of you desperately held onto each other, kissing as if this was the only way you could get oxygen, and you’d been suffocating without each other.

Terzo started to move, trailing his passion down to your jawline, underneath your ear and down to your neck. Your heartrate quickened again, knowing that his mouth near your neck could go only one of two ways. Both options seemed to excite you in equal measures…

“W-will it hurt…?” you asked him, as you felt his fangs graze against your skin lightly, like he was holding himself back.

“Just for a second…” he panted like a dog laying out in the sun. And he wasn’t wrong, the pain would be momentary, his fangs emitting a small amount of venom that acts as an anaesthetic. That wasn’t the problem, and it wasn’t what stopped him in his tracks. “But I can’t…”

You cupped his cheeks, lifting his head to look him in the eye again. “What’s wrong?”

He looked as if he were in pain, his face screwed up in utter agony. He kept shaking his head, like he didn’t want to say it, like he was hiding a secret that would break him just to say aloud.

“If… If I do this, I might not be able to stop,” he whined, “and even if I do, how could I ever let you go after tasting you?”

You searched his eyes, saw the pain and the uncertainty in them. He truly didn’t want to hurt you, and right now he looked more vulnerable than you would think a creature of the night was capable of being.

“When you moved in I couldn’t leave you, I couldn’t stay away… And that was merely your smell, Tesoro. I’m afraid if I taste you, I could never leave you alone again.”

His admission floored you, and as much as the idea of giving yourself over to him willingly seemed to appeal to you, the rational part of your brain was still working enough to understand that that was a line that should not be crossed just yet.

“It’s okay… It’s okay,” you told him sincerely, comforting his distress before bringing his lips back to yours and resuming your heated exchange. Perhaps someday you would allow him that taste, a way of committing deeper than you could possibly comprehend at this stage. But there was a reason for the phrase “blood pact”, and it didn’t originate with the exchange of open wounds between two mortals.

As enthralled as he was in your lips, feeling your pulse beneath them tempting him, Terzo had to push the thought to the back of his mind. He couldn’t lose himself to the temptation so soon. He’d frighten you away if you saw him so feral, and he couldn’t let you disappear like everyone else in his life – not the only woman to ever have smelled so divine to him. Only he knew what that meant, that pull…  You were it for him. His obsession was unavoidable, you were his promised love.

It happened instantaneously for his kind, but for you? It would take time for you to see it, to feel what he felt. Human sense of smell was nowhere near as powerful, and so you could never know just by his scent that he was the one for you, the soul on the other end of the red string tied around your wrist.

To rid his mind of the temptation, he focussed on the moment at hand. His intense grip on your waste drifted over your hips and to the backs of your thighs until he was lifting them, using his hips to ground you against the wall so you wouldn’t fall. It was as if you were weightless to him, his inhuman strength making such light work of carrying you further down the hall and into your bedroom – his bedroom – until you both fell onto the bed.

No part of you thought for even a millisecond of stopping him, an intense need for him screaming from within you. You pushed his coat from his shoulders, diverting to his shirt buttons as soon as he began pulling at his sleeves to rid himself of the heavy wool. In no time at all, his chest was bare to you, peppered with dark hair that you’d expect from a man of Italian descent. You pulled him closer to you, reattaching your lips desperately.

His gloves disappeared as you kissed him, and you couldn’t help but flinch at the touch of his cold skin on yours, his hands sliding up under the hem of your shirt to hold you. He paused for a moment, searching your face for any sign his touch wasn’t welcome.

“Just cold…” you assured him, running your fingers through the dark locks of hair that had fallen over his face as he hovered above you.

“I, eh… sí, mi scusi, I am cold to the touch…” he apologised, a wave of insecurity flashing through his expression.

“I don’t mind,” you smiled sweetly, pulling him down with your hand woven into his hair and kissing his insecurity away. He regained his confidence, grip returning to your bare waist under your shirt and tightening with gratitude at your reassurance.

The way he kissed you was like worship, like he valued every second you allowed him to touch you, to be with you – and as he slowly began to undress you, his worship continued. He started with your shirt, pushing it up your abdomen and peppering the skin with more kisses as he exposed it. Over the curve of your breast peaking from above the cup of your bra, you felt the low rumble of a groan against your chest that was suppressed as he buried his face into your flesh. He was so gentle, so calculated in his motions and it was driving you crazy already.

Once your shirt was finally above your head and discarded somewhere to the side, he pulled the straps of your bra down, kissing along your shoulders and down your arms until he reached behind you to unclasp it. Your breasts bounced before him, and he immediately began to leave open mouthed kisses over them, laving his tongue over your nipples as they stood to attention under the chill of his lips. His free hand worked at your other breast, kneading like he was making the finest ricciarelli biscuit dough.

You couldn’t help the soft whines and hums that left your body as he worshipped you, hips rolling under him in a desperate attempt to feel something more. You wanted him so badly, already overcome with desire.

His hand came to rest on your hip, squeezing and he continued to suckle at your breast. His fingers dipped easily into the waistband of your paint-smeared sweats – one of several pairs you alternated when working on the house renovations. Before long, he was dragging them down your thighs, his cold knuckles grazing at the skin and sending a pleasurable shiver down your spine.

Terzo was taking his time without wasting any. He knew what he wanted, what you wanted, but he spent just enough time working your body, lavishing it to build anticipation. But before long, his kisses began to travel south, leaving a path of wet little marks down between the valley of your breasts and your navel until he was tracing the hem of your underwear, daring to run his finger along the sensitive skin.

It took a formidable amount of strength and restraint to keep your hips as still as you did, and even then, you were wriggling under his touch. But when he could tell you were growing restless, he wrapped his arm underneath your thigh and lifted it above his shoulder. Naturally, you spread wider for him, giving him complete access to your covered core where he could see so clearly the stain of arousal.

He was so close to you, the scent of your sweet honey so intoxicating. You could never understand how divine that scent was with your own human senses, but to him? It cemented itself in his memory. He knew that after today, he would never forget it. He didn’t want to rush, but frankly, it was getting impossible to resist a taste.

He lifted the hem of your panties and pierced the material beneath it with his fangs, easily tearing it away from your body before he pressed his nose to your mound, and took in a deep inhale. He growled between your legs, the vibration and exhale teasing your nerves until you were clenching around nothing.

He could wait no longer, his tongue reaching out to lap between your folds in one slow motion. He savoured the taste on his tongue, making sure to collect as much honey as he could for a truly overwhelming taste. You watched as his hips rocked into the bed below him, his hands tightening on your thighs. His tongue felt cold too, but the pressure was so welcome, a wave of euphoria passing through your core.

Expertly, Terzo used his whole mouth to bring you the pleasure he thought you deserved and yet, not once did you worry about the sharp fangs he’d used to strip you. He had the ability to retract them should he need to, and for this particularly delicate activity, he did just that. But his lips and tongue worked together to have you moaning at every lap, hips rolling underneath him.

Your hands found their way to his hair for purchase, tugging at the roots every time he sent a surge of pleasure through your clit. He loved it, moaning with you as if he too was close to an orgasm. Both of you had lost yourselves to the moment, completely enthralled in lust.

Terzo was becoming more and more desperate to have you finish on his tongue. Each pretty little sound he caused only made him want to hear more, and as you grew closer and closer to orgasm, you sweetened with added hormones that drove him wild. He unwrapped a hand from around your thigh and easily slid two fingers inside, not bothering nor needing to tease with how your body already gave itself over to him. He curled his fingers inside you, a shock of pleasure forcing your back to arch from the mattress as he found the perfect position.

His pace increased with every moan he elicited, the tension in your lower abdomen growing until you were on the verge of snapping.

“T-Terzo… Please,” you begged him. He chuckled darkly as he buried his face deeper within you, his nose adding to the equation and making your hips writhe until finally, that tension inside you snapped.

He didn’t stop, holding you down with inhuman strength as you erupted in cries of bliss. Your muscles contracted, thighs trapping his head in place and fingers pulling painfully at his hair.

Terzo slurped at your core, not letting a single drop of arousal go to waste. You tasted different as you came, the rush of hormones adding something so damn addictive that it wasn’t until you physically tried pushing his head away in oversensitivity that he snapped out of his trance, his head jolting up to look at you with his mouth and skin shimmering. He looked completely feral, his eyes wide, and you watched as his fangs returned with a snarl of a hungry animal locking onto its kill.

Your heart jumped in your chest; out of fear or lust you couldn’t be sure. But he heard it, the irregular thump as you lay vulnerable and weak beneath him. It only served to make his erection twitch in his slacks… Fear was a powerful feeling, and mixed with lust it was one of the most erotic combinations.

He crawled his way back up your body, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before diving into a punishing kiss that knocked any remaining wind out of you. You could feel his length pressing into your hip, and while you were certainly already struggling with exertion you wanted nothing more than to know how he’d feel inside you.

So you reached between you both for his belt, fiddling with the buckle as you kissed him. Taking the hint, he kicked his shoes off over the edge of the bed, and when you’d managed to undo his belt and slacks, he helped to kick them with his underwear passed his knees to follow suit. With him bared to you and pressing into your hip once again, you could feel just how endowed he was, and just how ready for you he was.

“You are so beautiful, cara mio…” he mused between kisses, his cold fingertips trailing down your neck and arm, then back up. “And you can’t ever understand how exquisite you taste.”

“To an extent, I can…” you teased with a flirty smile, “I can taste myself on your tongue.”

He stared down at you for a moment, until realisation finally settled and his lips curled into a devilish grin.

“Tu sei una tentatrice, amore mio… (you are a temptress, my love…)” he whispered, lowering himself to your lips once again.

As you both lost yourself in another steamy kiss, you couldn’t help rolling your hips up to meet his. He hummed into your mouth, understanding that you wanted him completely, and reached between the two of you to grip himself. You spread your legs a little wider to make it easier for him, feeling how he prodded at your entrance once he’d lined himself up.

“Are you sure, amore?” he stopped to ask, and you nodded, biting your lip to contain the smile as you cupped his cheeks. With your permission, he slowly pushed forwards, filling you slowly as he glided through your slick. You fought to keep your eyes open, if only to watch the look of bliss that overcame his face – and boy was it worth it.

He looked so ethereal, like his pale skin had been carved by the finest of Greek sculptors in marble burdened with the curse of perfection. The chill of his skin did nothing to quell the burning heat of yours, finding the perfect balance.

“You’re so… warm,” he moaned, burying his face in the crook of your neck while he enjoyed the feeling for a moment. “Sembra fottutamente incredibile. (feels fucking incredible.)”

Given a moment to compose himself, he began to slowly rock his hips back and forth, gritting his teeth from the sensation alone. You would be the first to admit that he, too, felt incredible inside you, reaching places his fingers had only moments ago and sending waves of a dull pleasure through you once again at the embers of your last orgasm were being stoked.

His hand gripped your thigh and lifted it around his waist, obtaining a better angle and something for him to grip onto to stop his mind spiralling into sheer madness. Already, you were so difficult to resist; temptation was calling to him in the form of your steady, yet thundering pulse where his face lay against your neck. But if he lost himself, lost control like he was so terrified to, he was afraid resistance would fail him.

It was like torture. How could he feel so incredible pumping his length inside you while simultaneously experiencing the physical strain of holding his thirst back. You were his, he’d decided that long ago. But to truly make you his, all he would need to do was to give in, to sink his fangs into the skin he was peppering with kisses. He felt like a recovering addict desperately trying to resist as someone waved a hit under his nose. In some ways, that was exactly what he was.

But not yet. It was too soon. He had to resist for now, to let you make up your mind without ancient ritual influences before he allowed himself to truly make you his. He couldn’t bind himself to you, only for you to walk away when it all became too much, or hell forbid, you found someone more human to settle down with.

Instead, he focussed on the pleasure filling his cock as he pistoned in and out of you. He focussed on your pretty moans, and the way you clenched around him. He focussed on kisses to your neck instead of bites, groaning against your skin as he indulged in you. But too easily he lost himself, and soon he couldn’t help but drag his tongue from the bottom of your neck, to right underneath your ear.

You loved how it felt, completely oblivious to just how close you were to becoming a meal to him. To you it was simply another thing to drive you wild, and when you once again wrapped your fingers in his hair, your other arm pushing down on his back to pull him against you, you had no clue you were making it so much harder for him.

He kept suckling, licking, even nipping so gently at your neck – so fucking close to what he truly wanted as his instincts began to take over. He fought them as hard as he could snarling at himself in warning but still, you were oblivious to his internal fight and mistook his anguish for noises of pleasure.

Truly, he hadn’t meant to let it get this far; but when the sharp tip of his fang grazed just a little too close to where your pulse thundered against his tongue, and you writhed under him with a targeted hit to your g-spot, he nicked your skin just enough to draw the tiniest spec of blood… He hadn’t even noticed, your scent already filling his nose that he didn’t sense it intensify just a fraction until it was too late, and he’d laved his tongue over the graze.

It all happened too fast, then.

You were mid-moan when you felt an excruciating pain where his tongue had just been, the noise catching in your throat with a sudden choke. Your fingers naturally tightened in his hair, and your nails dug into the cold flesh of his back as a scream travelled its way through your ribcage and you couldn’t help but let it out. Your back arched and your muscles constricted, but Terzo’s hips never stopped and now that he’d got a taste of you – a real taste – he growled a visceral growl that you felt rumble in the pit of your stomach.

If he thought you’d tasted good between your legs, this was the most intensely delicious thing he’d ever had the pleasure of tasting. Such pure, untainted blood coated his tongue, dribbling down your neck as he ravished it. He’d known this was dangerous, that one bite would bind him to you for eternity after the first whiff of your scent when you moved in. But now that he’d tasted you, he couldn’t for the life of him remember why he’d fought so hard to stave off.

“T-Terzo, you-“ you tried to stop him, remembering how pained he’d looked when he explained why he really couldn’t do this, but it truly was too late. All it took was one drop. He cut you off with a hand clamping over your jaw, his other holding your hip in place with bruising force.

His hips never stopped, every sensation he felt only pushing him to fuck into you harder like a rabid monster. In that moment, that was exactly what he was. In that first split-second, he frightened you. You saw the side of him he’d tried so hard to hide, and coupled with the pain in your neck, your body flooded with adrenaline – which of course, only added to the sublime taste of your blood.

But like he had promised, the venom acted fast. The pain ebbed away into nothing but a sensation of being prodded and sucked at. Still you held onto him tightly, unable to deny that this was possible one of the most intimate feelings you’d ever felt, and the pleasure started to stack up.

Even to a point, where the rush of blood through the two puncture wounds in your neck became a pleasurable experience. You’d have trouble explaining just how, but it felt unbelievable, like a massage that tickled and sent endorphins flooding your mind. Little did you know, that was also the venom coursing through your body. But it didn’t matter, because coupled with Terzo’s cock thrusting against your g-spot it was the most glorious feeling in the entire world.

As you barrelled closer to a second orgasm, Terzo ripped his fangs from your neck and looked down at you beneath him. He had a look in his eye that was so predatory that you knew immediately you belonged to him now, whether you liked it or not. As luck would have it, you did like it; very much. That obsessive look, that ownership turned you on to a point that had you squealing for him beneath his hand.

Quickly, you reached your peak for a second time, holding him so tightly you thought that maybe even you would draw blood with your nails in his back. Just as that second burst of pleasure coursed through you, Terzo reattached himself to your neck, drinking in the newly sweetened blood that a rush of hormones created for him. If you could imagine the most expensive, and decadent wine you had ever tasted, it wouldn’t hold a candle to the taste of your blood to him right now.

Suddenly he lurched back again, this time removing his hands from your body and holding himself up, only to dive in and sink his fangs into the swell of your breast as it bounced with the force of each of his trusts. Again, you were met with pain the flooded your body but mixed with the high of your orgasm, you could only scream in pleasure. He drank from you again, kneading at your other breast as he too hurtled towards an orgasm.

The pain subsided quickly thanks to another dose of his venom, but he continued to drink from you, prolonging your euphoria just long enough for him to finally and violently reach his own high.

He erupted inside you, his head throwing back as he growled and lost his rhythm, pounding sloppily into you with each twitch of his cock. In your post-orgasm haze, you witnessed the look of bliss on his face, seeing for the first time the distinct red that coated his lips and dripped from his fangs down to his chin. He looked manic, but holy shit it was intensely erotic.

With the small amount of strength left in you, you sat up just enough to push your lips to his. You don’t know why you did it, or even that you had until you could taste the metallic twang of iron on your tongue. Terzo collapsed into you, wrapping his arms around you as he rolled to the side, taking you along with him. With the mess he created of your core, he slipped from inside you, now simply intent on holding you close while he processed that you were kissing him, despite being tainted with your blood. But it grounded him, and slowly, his orgasm subsided and his mind cleared of its fog.

Your kiss came to a natural end, the pair of you exhausted, and without a word you lay yourself on his chest, not bothering to wipe away the smears of blood around your own mouth as you caught your breath.

“I’m so sorry…” he whimpered, pulling you tighter against him and obscuring your view of his face so you wouldn’t have to witness the shame that settled there. You didn’t have the energy to speak, instead hoping that the circling of your thumb over the cool skin of his chest was enough comfort for now to show him you didn’t mind, that you’d wanted that as much as he had.

You let some time pass, calming yourselves down in each other’s arms. His grip on you lessened as the minutes passed, and eventually, you were able to look up at his face. To your shock and heartbreak, you noticed his cheeks were wet with something other than blood – Terzo was crying.

“Hey…” you soothed, shuffling further up the bed to hover above him. He covered his face with his hand, hiding himself but you pulled it away, cupping his cheek and swiping at the tear tracks. “No, no no… Stop this, it’s okay.”

“Mi dispiace tantissimo, (I’m so sorry,)” he cried, “I hurt you. I did the one thing I should never have done…”

“Shhh,” you hushed him like a newborn who couldn’t sleep, “I wanted that, remember? I told you you could.”

“You don’t understand, I… I have bound myself to you, and now, when you leave… it will devastate me,” he sobbed, staring straight up at the canopy of the large bed, unable to look you in the eye.

“What makes you think I will leave?” you asked him gently, still gently swiping his fresh tears away whilst fighting your own.

“Amore mio, I have lost everybody I have ever cared about,” he told you, finally looking you in the eye. “I have either outlived them, or watched as they turned their back on me. And now I have selfishly bound myself to you, knowing that I cannot ever let you go.”

His admission broke your heart. You certainly had no intention of going anywhere, the bond you now shared with him feeling strangely cemented and more intimate than any you’d had with another. But in the end, time would come for you just as it had the rest of his family, lying under the earth of your own back garden.

“How does someone… become like you?” you asked tentatively, absentmindedly, playing with the chest hair the covered his pecks.

Terzo’s brow creased in confusion. “Why would you ask such a thing? I couldn’t condemn you to a life like this…” After all he’d been through; the killings, loss, isolation, and even the exile he’d faced decades ago when the townspeople discovered what he was… He couldn’t put you in a position like that. He didn’t want you to become part of the dark legend of the Emeritus house, another spooky story passed from generation to generation to tell around campfires for years to come.

“Just tell me, how?” you pressed. He sighed, laying his head back on the pillow and staring back up at the canopy.

“You would need to drink the blood of my kind,” he stated simply, his nose wrinkling in disgust. “I could not ask that of you. The process is not an easy one, and to become like me is to be condemned to a life of heartache.”

You thought for a moment, acknowledging his concerns but deciding that whilst that had been his experience, it didn’t need to be yours. Not with him beside you – neither of you would need to be lonely ever again.

“I’m so sorry you’ve felt that heartache, but I believe that the two of us together could avoid that.”

He raised his head to look at you again, examining your face for a moment while he contemplated what some kind of future might look like with you.

“Perhaps not yet, I understand. But Terzo, I will prove that I intend on going nowhere. And when you feel like you might be ready to trust that, I’ll be waiting,” you promised him, cupping his jaw and stroking your thumb gently over his cheek. “Until then, I can be your very own personal supply, hm?” you smiled, “You won’t need to take a life, so long as you have me little and often, right?”

“You… would do that? For me?” his eyebrows creased together in question, truly in disbelief you would offer him such a thing.

“Mhm,” you nodded, “I mean as long as every time feels as incredible as that,” you giggled. “And besides, you’ll get a decent meal at least once a month,” you joked, lightening the mood a little with a cheeky smirk.

Terzo rolled his eyes with a laugh that vibrated his chest beneath you. He shook his head at the absurdity of your offer, no matter how technically practical that sort of arrangement would actually be to a man of his kind.

“Oh, amore… sei davvero una tentatrice (you really are a temptress)…” he grinned, leaning up to capture your lips in a sweet, blood-stained kiss.

A/N: Huge thank you to @her-satanic-wiles for beta reading! If you'd like to leave me a tip, you can do so here.

If you'd like to read any of my other works, you can find them here.

[fatcatlittlebox]

I find the recent comments from showrunners Payne and McKay interesting particularly when they state that Sauron did not want to kill Galadriel in the finale duel but for her to acknowledge him and "give him credit." Now why would that matter so much to him if not for the possibility that what he had done was done so with her in mind? Meaning, Sauron was thinking of Galadriel this whole time. His return to Mordor, the rings, his conquest. They are the broad strokes to the greater masterpiece he is shaping for her. She is his inspiration. She is his audience. Which brings me back to the theme of eyes. His eyes and hers. Eyes that see and look. The Eye is the mark of Sauron. But more than anything he wants Galadriel to see him. I made this last gifset to illustrate how this is the focus of Sauron's obsession and motivation.

Throughout his existence so far, he has been gifted and plagued by his ability to shapeshift and change form at will. He "has had many names." You see how this weighs upon his soul. He has had too many names. He has worn so many faces to too many people. He’s weary and the burden of not being seen for so many years, thousands - he almost comes apart.

This is why he desperately longs for Galadriel to see him. Not as the “abhorred” but as himself. Because to be seen is to be whole. To have one, true name even if it isn't uttered aloud. This is what Adar asked of Galadriel and I think it's meant to reflect Sauron as well. The difference is that Adar embraced the name he had earned while Sauron rejects his. Sauron hates his earned name because it is a constant reminder of how alone and misunderstood he feels in his purpose. That is until he meets Galadriel. She doesn’t abhor “Halbrand.” She loves him. She sees him. To her he is “friend" and "king."

"Galadriel. Look at me.” I believe that she did fall in love with the real him and he knows it. It's why he will always keep “Halbrand.” He will linger in the memories of when Galadriel knew him this way. That's why he continues to look like some variation of Halbrand. Because that's how Galadriel saw him. This the illusion he created for himself and one he is reluctant to leave. As long as she can see him. Just the possibility and the hope.

And while Galadriel can claim fondness for the part of him that was soft, vulnerable and human, that is not all she fell for. And Sauron won't let her get away with excusing herself or denying that she loved the parts that were truly him. This gesture, when he has her impaled with the crown and she averts her eyes away from his gaze.

He jerks her eyes upward as if to say, "Look." She fell in love with this person too. Sauron is Halbrand. The rage-filled, domineering and ambitious, violent spirit. He won't let her deny it. He won't let her look away. This is what they shared. She did not shrink before him when he pushed her away, when he told her of his darkness, when he told her, and showed her of how cruel and manipulative he could be. Remember, he saw her rage and vengeful side too. "Galadriel. Look at me." He says it aloud and presses these words upon her mind like a phantom prayer. His words probably haunt her soul. She feels it. It's what she hints at when she admits to Elrond that Gil Galad doesn't trust her alone with Sauron: You know why. The constant question that gropes her thoughts. It's the open invitation that still keeps the door open to his mind. She says she perceives "all of his mind as it concerns elves." I don't think that's because that is all that Sauron allows her to see. I think it's because that is what most occupies his thoughts. Her.

That's why, as I have previously wrote, I think the events of season 2 were setting the groundwork for manifesting the plan Sauron has for shaping the world as he saw it with Galadriel. He is going to enact their shared vision and, he believes, Galadriel will see its beauty and worth and return to him. Which leads me to her parting words to Sauron in episode 8. She tells him to heal himself. I think by now Sauron has enough insight to see that he is indeed a broken spirit. It comes up in his confessions with Celebrimbor and the showrunners have already hinted that Sauron is becoming increasingly aware that there is something about his very essence that poisons every meaningful relationship he has and dooms him to failure and despair. He also says to Galadriel at the start of their swordfight that he want to "heal..." and before he finishes with "Middle Earth", he pauses. He was going to say that he wants to heal himself. So by the time the viewer sees Galadriel tell him to basically fuck off and heal himself, those seeds are actually already planted. He has to cure himself of this blight. He has to purge himself of it. And now he has explicit instructions from Galadriel. He sees and remembers everything, right? He's going to do it. He's going to try to repair what he may see as his defect. It will be interesting to see how he interprets his marching orders from his queen. I think that is where the One Ring comes in.

The showrunners have already hinted that the forging of the One Ring will be an upcoming storyline soon. They also hinted that he's going to fuck something up. Furthermore, the audience has already been shown that the more of himself Sauron puts into a ring of power, the more corrupted and less potent of a creative, benevolent force it imparts. They've also shown that when Sauron tries to make rings on his own, he fails in the final product. He even went through a whole batch of mithril on his own without success. So if the writers have hinted that Sauron errs in the making of the ring, what could they possibly mean? Where did he go wrong? Is it that Sauron had different intentions for the Ring's purpose than what it ended up becoming? Or that he fulfilled its malicious purpose but with unintended side effects? If the former, I wonder if his true intention with the One Ring is to create another healing ring of power, his own ring as a mate of Galadriel's. Maybe he forges it, believing that this would meet Galadriel's demand to heal himself. The shownrunners have already shown that they like to put unexpected layers to the most well-known parts of Tolkien: “One ring to rule them all. One ring to find them. One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” Maybe those words have additional meaning.

[james-is-here]

Part one

Sections: Joining Ateez, Chan sees you've debuted again, Growing closer to Seonghwa, You plague Chan's feed, What happened after the end of Pt. 1/ You talk to Skz

Blogs: @heartbinn | @leezanetheofficial @belladonna6-6-6 @aygotnobitches who suggested some ideas to me which helped me make this.

Tags: Angst, fluff, Mn and SKZ make up, mention of a Sasaeng, Mn gets cut, idk what else to put here, Skz are like super regretful for what they did, Chan finds out your taken?, Seonghwa is protective over you in the airport part. That's all, i think.

(Joining Ateez)

Awkwardly shuffling on your feet, you eyes darting everywhere as you wait. A few weird glances were thrown at you. Did you wear something bad? Just converse, baggy jeans, and a light blue hoodie, a beanie also fit snug on your head.

You haven't felt this nervous since...since Chan brought you to meet the other boys he picked.

"Mn?" Looking to your left, you were expecting your new manager but instead were met with Hongjoong. "O-Oh, h-hi. I thought...I'm sorry." "It's okay. He ended up having to take care of something but I hope it's okay that I'm here instead to help you." "Of course it's okay, I-I'm just...a bit nervous. I...I haven't felt this way in a while." You kept it simple, didn't want to give too much information.

"Real quick, um, I wasn't told anything. Was just told that you'd be in the lobby." "I'm debuting aga- debuting with a group called Ateez, i think that's the name." "Yeah, it is! I'm the leader. Come on, I can introduce you to the others." "Wait, um, the last group I was in...well, they began excluding me, actually. Y-You seem really nice I just might take awhile to adjust." "That's okay." He smiled at you, it was so nice and genuine that you couldn't help but smile back and continue walking.

Meeting them was awkward and your aura must've been unwelcoming as Hongjoong introduced you, you could see the others were unsure but Hongjoong rested a hand gently on your arm and gave a little nod. You relax, exhaling slowly after taking a deep breath. "Sorry...I-I didn't mean to make any of you uncomfortable. I just left a...bad environment and I'm still adjusting. I'm really sorry." You bow deeply before standing up again.

"Let's do some ice breakers, yeah?" Hongjoong suggested and you nod as the others vocalized.

(Chan finds out you debuted again.)

He and the boys were crushed that you left. The sunshine twins wouldn't leave your room and Chan had found your cut outs in the trash and taped everything back up.

He was the one to call you the most, second was Jisung. He also texted you, 'Mn-ie <3' staring back at him every time he does. How could he never realize what they were doing to him? How could they not have noticed Mn wasn't included?

He sighs, the disconnected voicemail playing for the umpteenth time and he ends the attempted call. As per usual, he goes to any social media app in order to see if anything about you has been posted.

After months of finding nothing, he finally came upon a picture of you, a solo photo of yourself surrounded by a few blurbs and reading over it Chan noticed it was little details about yourself. Name, birthday, age, favorite hobby. It was a 'get to know me' photo. Swiping to the next photo, it was you in the middle of a group of boys, they were doing jazz hands around you as you smiled sheepishly. Reading the caption was like a knife twisted in his chest, he had found a group. What hurts Chan is how much happier he looks, he use to be that happy with them but they pushed him away, he doesn't even know why they did.

"Hyung? What's wrong?" He looks up to see Changbin in front of him. He lifts his phone lazily and the younger sighs. "You know calling him is futile." "No, not that..." He reaches out, handing his phone to Changbin who takes it, a moment later he's sitting on Chan's bed with a sigh and setting the phone down. "H-How could we have been so...blind? Why...Why did we push him away? That wasn't fair to him." "I ask myself the same thing, Bin." "Do you want to tell the others?" "Maybe. I know they've been trying to get updates out of manager-nim about Mn but...yeah, no, let's tell them."

Later that day, Chan told the rest of them about Mn and some were upset but some others were glad that after what they did to him, at least he found a better environment. All of them were beating themselves up. They all agreed that what they did was wrong but now...they can't get him back.

(Growing closer to Seonghwa)

You remember it clearly, the moment where Seonghwa gave you the same comfort someone else use to give.

It had been a year since you had joined Ateez, you felt so much more happy, less of a burden and more of an actual member of a group. All of them were protective over you after learning more about you. They would say you're a precious soul that needs protected at all costs.

All costs...even if it risks their safety.

You were walking with them through an airport, attached to Wooyoung the whole time but he didn't mind. Readjusting your jacket, you notice a lack of weight in your pocket and turn around, noticing your wallet now a few steps from where you just came from. You must've missed your pocket after putting something back.

You say a quick 'wait' to the boys around you and you jog over to your wallet, picking it up but another hand grabs it then suddenly a butterfly knife is pointed at you. "Woah-" "Why do you leave?!" A sasaeng, you just stared at her, you literally panic and every possible thought you could've had left as she advanced.

It felt like ages but it was really five seconds that so much unfolded. She lunged forward, blade catching your cheek at the same time Seonghwa was the first to reach you and pull you away. Security restraining the girl and taking your wallet from her.

Seonghwa walked backwards, taking you away from her as his arms squeezed around you when he heard you let out a small cry. One hand moves to the back of your neck, keeping you in the crook of his neck as he watches them take the girl away, hand squeezing your nape slightly before brushing through your hair, soothing you and helping you calm down.

Hongjoong was next to you guys shortly after Seonghwa grabbed you. "Shh, it's okay, Mn. She's gone." He whispered before reaching under the older males chin and thumbing at your cheek under the shallow cut. "Oh, Mn." He backs away, it wasn't deep, no blood, but it still looked bad.

"Come on, Mnie." You couldn't help but finally move your arms and hug Seonghwa tightly. You haven't heard that nickname in ages and hearing it from someone who sees you, it comforted you so much that you couldn't help the new wave of tears that fell but quickly pulled back and wiped under your eye as the tears stung the cut. Seonghwa's hand replaces yours, helping you wipe your tears and while you feel appreciated and cared for, Seonghwa is fighting himself internally as he found you the sweetest thing ever and officially doesn't like seeing you cry.

"I like Mn-ie..." "You do? Then I'll keep using it. That okay?" You nod softly, finally smiling at Seonghwa. He giggles softly, ruffling up your hair gently before giving a small head pat and guiding you away with Hongjoong on your other side.

(You plague Chan's feed)

Two years since learning about your re-debut, he's seen you everywhere.

Clips of your fan cams, pictures of your outfits, screenshots fans have taken from videos. He didn't stop himself from watching the videos or looking a photos for a moment longer than needed.

He refreshed the twitter feed and the top tweet was an Ateez Update fan page. Even fan pages are plaguing his feed.

There was a link, posted 20 minutes ago.

'Nn live featuring Seonghwa and Wooyoung'

He opened the link and it took him to the live. It looked like you were in your bed, knees pulled up as you talked to Wooyoung about something but all he could pay attention to was your looks. He still finds you adorable. He can't help but sit up in his bed, pulling his knees up as well and taking his pillow to hug as he watched you. You looked...happy. The familiar sting began in his eyes as you leaned back into Wooyoung, the boy wrapping his arms around your neck and pulling you back as Seonghwa started to tell a story.

He thought you two were cute together but a soft gasp and his lips part when you stare at the other male across from you. That glint, that shine. He knows that look and he chokes out a sob. You can't be gone. You still love him, right? You haven't moved on just yet, right?

He leaves his phone at his feet as he leans back, regret eating at him as he cries into his pillow. Minho came in moments later and saw Chan asleep but his phone still playing. He picked up the phone, sighing softly when he sees your face and your smile before turning it off and putting it to the side, moving to cover his hyung up and he leaves with one more look to Chan before he's out the door.

(The award ceremony, Chan POV then it switches to your POV)

Watching you kiss Seonghwa was like getting the air punched out of him with a bus.

The choked sob he let out was pathetic but he didn't care. He saw someone he loved disappear from right in front of him all over again. How could he take you for granted? If he just noticed the neglect sooner, you'd still be there with him, with the boys.

A hand is placed on his shoulder, he looks over to see Felix who sighs. "Chan..." He sniffs but it's futile as another sob escapes him and he just lets the tears fall. "A-After this long I-I still m-miss him. I-I still thought I c-could get him back..." Felix pulls him into a hug, letting him crying into his shoulder for a moment.

"Hyung...it's been seven years..." "Don't you think I know that?!" He snapped quietly but still let Felix attempt to fix his makeup. "I-I know...that it's b-been seven years...b-but he was...he was my f-first boyfriend, I loved him and it's hurting me because I still regret not seeing the neglect sooner. How could I, his fucking leader, not realize he was missing from practices or meetings. How could I be so blind?" "Hyung, we're at fault too." "Yeah, but I'm the main one that should've seen it. I-I'm the...the leader, I...I should've seen it..." His voice gradually became a whisper.

"Channie-Hyung..." Inhaling softly, he lifts his head, spinning around to come face to face with you and Seonghwa.

(POV Change)

As Seonghwa led you back, you realized that you just walked away. You didn't acknowledge them, you didn't wave back but do you have to? Last you checked, they didn't care about you but you still stopped in your tracks, zoned out for a moment as the male holding your hand tried to bring you back.

"Hey, Mn-ie, come back to me. You okay?" "Stray Kids is who hurt me...Th-They were the ones to- to shove me away and ignore me and neglect me." "Oh, Mn..." "I-I'm sorry I didn't t-tell any of you sooner, I just-" You bit your lip, willing yourself to not cry but seeing them after so long seemed to have brought the pain back. You could see the hope in Chan's eyes before you turned away and you found it unbelievable because even he was neglecting you but you also...felt bad?

"Hey, don't cry, it's okay." "I-I don't know why I feel guilty, Hwa. I-I shouldn't be feeling guilty and yet..." You take a deep breath, wiping your tears away carefully. "Maybe you should forgive them?" "Why should I do that? I was chosen to be in this group but then they were pushing me away and forgetting me. What was the point of adding me if I was to be forgotten?" "Mn-ie, they regret it. I could see it on their faces as I came to get you and they called out for you. They want you back, at least as a friend."

"But they-" "Mn...You know what else I can see?" "What?" You sniff. "You want your friends back." Seonghwa smiled at you gently, he knows you miss them deep down and thinking about it, you're still hurt from what they did to you but you do want them back. "Come on, Mn. You miss them and they've been missing you. I just know it."

With a sigh, you nod and Seonghwa takes you back to them. When you get there, you see Chan in Felix's arms. "I...I should've seen it..." You hear him mutter, stepping closer, the other boys have seen you returned and you speak up. "Channie-Hyung..." He turns towards you, staring at you, stunned that you came back and you have tear stains on your cheek.

You glance at Seonghwa who nods gently which just barely convinced you to step closer to the others. They watch your every step, waiting for what you're gonna do or say.

Smiling awkwardly, you reach out your hand, gesturing to Chan when all he did was stare at it before he took it. You pull him towards you, wrapping your arms around him in a hug. A small gasp leaves Chan as he stands there, arms hesitating around you and you laugh. "You can hug back, you know?" It was instant, his arms tight around you and his face buried in your shoulder. "We're sorry, Mn...I-I'm sorry." He cried and you rub his back.

"Hyung?" You look over to Felix on your left. He's as tall as you now and he looks even more precious, if that's even possible. "C'mere." You extend the arm around Chan's back out to him and he hugs you as well.

When Felix and Chan finally pull away, another member is suddenly wrapping his arms around your middle. Looking down, you laugh softly while wrapping your arms around Jisung. You also hug Hyunjin and Jeongin.

"We really are sorry, Mn." "I know...but what you did wasn't nice..." They nod, lowering their heads. "but I think after this long...I can sort of forgive you..." They looked like a deer in headlights making you giggle. "We can be friends again. I miss you guys." They smile, Felix hugs you again before stepping back and you turn to Chan.

You take a look towards Seonghwa and he nods. You don't even have to say anything and it honestly shocks you how well he can read you.

"Channie?" He looks up, his hands wringing together. You think you've never seen him looking so nervous. "Come here." He steps up to you and you take his hands into yours. "I know that I left abruptly...and didn't talk to you before leaving but you know why, correct?" He nods his head, his eyes still downcast. "I can see that you had some hope but I'm with Seonghwa..." He nods again and you can see tears welling up in his eyes again. " We can be friends though..." You smile. "Is that okay?" His eyes finally meet yours, smiling a bit. "Yeah, th-that's fine. I-I did have hope but honestly the most I wanted was just to have you back with us. I-It felt so...weird without you even after so long. I missed you...but I'm really glad you found someone else...we were terrible to you- I was terrible to you."

"Channie, your rambling." "S-sorry." He laughs before gasping and staring at you, glancing to Seonghwa then back at you. You kissed his cheek but the look in your eye was forgiving and he hugged you again. "But do anything dumb like that again and I'm gone." They knew you were half joking, there was a smile on your face and they laughed.

"Hyung, we gotta go fix your make up before going on stage." "Right, sorry for keeping you for so long." "You're fine, Mn. It's good to have you back." "You can't take me away though, you'd have to fight him and Wooyoung." "What do you mean?" Hyunjin asks and all you do is wink before stepping back to Seonghwa and leaving for your table again. "See you guys later."

There's still apart of you that never wanted to do that but Seonghwa made a point later that what you did was a good thing. You've had a grudge for seven years and he saw how regretful they looked. You agreed that it was time to let it go only with some hesitance.

But you realized in the passing days that they made up for it. If you had similar off days they would invite you out, they talked to you more whether it be nonsense or what they did that week. Jisung and Wooyoung jokingly fought for you. Han has made a couple comments about stealing you from Ateez and the fans found the joke fighting adorable.

When Stay noticed that the boys looked happier, lighter, of course the detective Stays did their digging and the most they found was a few pictures of you with a couple of the boys you've posted either at public events or pictures you've taken during outings you've had with the boys.

It doesn't matter though, all they care about is that you've seemed to have made up with Stray Kids --even though all they knew about your departure was that it was mental health issues-- and they're happy to see you with them again.

[peachdues]

COALESCENCE — RANDOM SNIPPETS

Levi x F!Reader • secret pregnancy AU

I feel bad I haven’t updated anything for Coalescence recently — so have some random snippets from Part I. I will return to Coalescence once Part III of my Demon Slayer fic, In the Netherwood, is complete.

CW: MDNI • mentions of injury • pregnancy • NSFW sneak peek at the end • Hange being Hange • Hange also finds out that Levi x Reader have been fucking and Reader is now pregnant • Levi eats pussy like a god

Death was far quieter than you’d imagined. It was dark, perhaps even peaceful. An endless oblivion amidst which you floated without form; weightless.

When you’d lost unconsciousness against the rubble that was once the Main Street of Trost, you’d accepted the very real — and likely — possibility that you would not wake up again.

In your youth, death had been nothing more than an abstract concept; something that happened only to the elderly or those who caught illnesses that could not be treated, or even to those who ventured beyond the Walls.

As a soldier within the Survey Corps, however, you’d learned that death was as certain as the sun even if you might not live long enough to see it rise.

And, having spent the last eight years of your life fighting on behalf of the Corps even as your comrades dropped like flies around you, you knew you’d long overstayed your welcome in this world overrun by titans.

So when everything had begun to fade to black as you laid broken on chunks of stone and brick, you thought death had finally come to collect on the debt you owed. You supposed you were grateful that your final moments were not spent struggling in the grip of a titan as it brought you to its open, salivating mouth.

Really, it wasn’t such a bad way to go, dying from injuries sustained in an explosion — even if the explosion had been caused by the stupidity of one of your own. You could make peace with it; you almost had.

Almost.

The one, nagging thought you’d had as the world around you melted into dark oblivion had been of him — of your dark-haired, brooding boyfriend, who was likely miles away from Trost and utterly unaware of the disaster that had befallen the district; that had befallen you.

Levi, you’d known, was going to be pissed when he found out you’d gotten yourself killed, after he’d told you, so many times, to avoid doing exactly that.

As much as you’d hoped he could find it within himself to forgive you, you knew he wouldn’t, and truthfully, you didn’t think you could forgive yourself. You knew how every face of your fallen comrades haunted the Captain’s waking hours — how their screams plagued his precious few hours of sleep.

And now, it seemed, you would only be adding yourself to the festering wound he carried on his heart; so no, you probably didn’t deserve his forgiveness anyways.

It would’ve been nice to see him, one last time — you would’ve taken one of his fierce verbal lashings, if it meant hearing his voice one last time.

There was nothing you could do, however but resign yourself to death’s beckoning embrace, to fade into the nether and dissolve among the stars —

A buzz broke the quiet black of your oblivion.

You frowned; the buzz seemed to grow louder with each dull thud of your heart. You wanted to bat it away, make the silence come back and sink into the calm stupor you’d been floating in once more.

But the buzz was incessant, growing louder until you realized it was not a buzz at all, but voices. Many voices, speaking over one another in hissed, urgent tones.

“Get me a sponge, I can’t see where all this blood is coming from —“

“— Did you see her bloodwork? She’s at least ten weeks along, she’ll need to be discharged immediately —“

“That’s assuming the fetus has even survived —“

“Shush, I think she’s coming to; someone get Squad Leader Hange —

The voices melted together above you, their grate making the ache in your head grow steadily more piecing with each passing breath.

With far more effort than you wanted to believe it would take, your eyes slowly opened, struggling to adjust against the harsh overhead light of the Trost infirmary.

That light, however, was quickly blocked out by a shadowy figure leaning over you, far too close to your face for you own comfort. Your eyelids fluttered as the figure above you sharpened into focus, revealing a pair of large brown eyes blinking owlishly down at you.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, soldier!” The unmistakable voice of your Squad Leader chirped. “Glad to have you with us!”

Your lips, dry and cracked parted to answer her, but you could do no more than respond with a strangled, pained groan.

The surface upon which you’d been lain — a cot, by the feel of it — dipped as Hange Zoe climbed atop it, legs carefully straddling your hips to keep their weight off you, as the Squad Leader leaned in close to your face.

“Squad Leader — you can’t —“ a nurse tried.

Her admonition fell on deaf ears. “You had me worried there, Y/N,” Hange’s began, fingers peeling back your eyelids to check the dilation of your pupils.

“You were in rough shape when Braus and another cadet pulled you free from that toppled building.”

You tried to ask how long you’d been out, but your mouth struggled to form around the shape of the words. Instead, all that came out was a garbled string of nonsense.

“You have a concussion, that’s for sure,” Hange said smoothly, fingers prodding at a tender spot against your temple.

“But that’s not the most important thing — Y/N, did you know you’re pregnant?”

That single word broke through the addled fog clogging your head.

“Preg—?” You managed, your tongue thick in your mouth.

Hange appeared to interpret the furrow of your eyebrows as a lack of comprehension rather than shock. “Yes, preg-nant. There is a small clump of cells growing inside you that will become a child —“

You grimaced. “N-no,” you tried. “I had — an implant —“

You heard the nurses desperately plea with your Squad Leader to get them down from where they’d perched upon your cot, but Hange paid them no mind.

“Hate to be the bearer of bad news, doll, but they aren’t always one hundred percent effective. It’s rare, but it happens.”

Under normal circumstances, you would have cursed your luck. Of course you’d end up being the exception.

“I can’t say I’m excited for you,” Hange continued, though it appeared they had been finally persuaded to remove themselves from your cot. The Squad Leader deftly stepped away from you, coming around the edge of your bed to take a clipboard from one of the nurses.

“You’re my best Scout; your pregnancy means I have to discharge you. No exceptions.”

You struggled to keep your eyes open, unconsciousness creeping in once more. “Is — am I still —?”

Hange looked up from your medical sheet, eyes softening. “Yes, Y/N, though you’re not entirely out of the clear, yet.”

You didn’t know whether to be relieved or not; part of you relaxed at the assurance, but until you could talk to Levi —

Levi.

Fuck, Levi.

You hadn’t known of your — condition — until mere seconds before, which meant Levi sure as hell had no clue that your birth control had failed, and you were now carrying irrefutable proof of the relationship the two of you had concealed for the last year.

Levi.

You needed to tell him, and fast; before it was too late to address the problem.

Levi.

There was nothing you could do at that moment as the world around you began to dim once more. Try as you might, your body was unable to fight off the sleep that crept in and began to tug you under, despite the urgency with which you thought of your need to get in contact with the Captain as soon as possible.

Levi. You needed to talk to Levi.

But the Trost infirmary slipped away, the voices of nurses and of Hange fading to the same buzz which had brought you back to consciousness the first time.

Before you slipped below the waves of sleep, you heard your Squad Leader’s lone gasp.

“Motherfucker-“

—-

(Levi’s POV)

Levi’s eccentric comrade emerged from the small examination room, a pensive look on their face.

Levi hadn’t given much thought as to what he would do if he ran into any of his colleagues among the upper ranks of the Scouts. His mind had been exclusively focused on her, and the news that had shaken him to his core.

He remained pressed against the corridor wall, for once uncertain whether he should make his presence known or stay still until Hange wandered away, leaving him to slip into the examination room unseen.

But the section leader had always had a peculiar sense as to when he was near, and so with a slight sense of foreboding, Levi watched as Hange’s head turned towards him, eyes as round and as bright as an owl’s.

“What a surprise it is to see you here, Levi.”

Levi kept his features neutral. “Is it?”

Hange’s expression was inscrutable. “What a day, huh?” They folded their arms across their chest and leaned against the doorway leading to her — to Y/N.

“A titan breach, gross incompetence by the Garrison causing even more casualties and destruction,” Hange counted off the day’s events on her fingers. “And to top it all off, the best scout on my squad not only got injured because of said incompetence, but she’s also pregnant.”

It took everything in him to keep his voice even and monotone. “Sounds like you’ve got quite the headache. The paperwork to discharge a scout is tedious at best.”

Levi brushed imaginary lint off the shoulder of his cape. “Better go get a move on.”

A strange smirk tugged at the corner of Hange’s mouth.

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything about who the prospective father is, have you?”

There was a beat. “No.”

Hange’s smirk turned into a grin. “Poor thing has a concussion — it’s small, don’t worry,” and Levi knew his face must have tightened. “But the funniest thing happened while the poor girl was coming in and out of consciousness.”

Levi’s fists clenched slightly at the feral glint in their eye.

“It was almost hard to hear what she was muttering, the poor dear,” Hange finally kicked off the door jam and moved to saunter past her raven-haired comrade.

“I didn’t realize you were on a first-name basis with my scout, Levi.”

Levi’s voice dropped to a near whisper as they brushed by him. “Hange.”

“It seems the pregnancy is still viable,” the section commander said quietly.

He couldn’t stifle the faint exhale of relief which left him at their reassurance. For as shocking as the news of her pregnancy was, Levindidnt want to think about the mental toll a miscarriage could have wrought upon you.

Or himself, for that matter.

“You can go in,” Hange’s voice interrupted is slight reprieve. “I’ll make sure no one comes this way for at least a few minutes. But you can’t stay long — Erwin wants to see us.”

—-

“Well, congratulations!” Hange boomed, clapping the Captain sharply on the shoulder. “Good on you for working to restore the human race!”

A muscle in Levi’s jaw ticked. “Hange—“

“I guess the moniker ‘humanity’s strongest’ doesn’t just apply to your combat skills —“

“Hange.”

“— I’m talking super swimmers —“

“Oi. Four-eyes.” Levi pulled on the eccentric squad leader’s ponytail to command their attention. “Enough.”

—-

(NSFW bonus)

“You’ve gotta speak up, sweetheart,” Levi mocked between teasing kitten licks against your outer folds. his breath was hot as he exhaled against your damp core. “I’m waiting.”

You felt frustrated tears gather in the corners of your eyes. With an impatient whine, you rolled your hips towards him desperately, eyes wide and pleading for him to do something to fill the empty ache you felt within.

“Not good enough,” Levi growled, tongue lazily circling your entrance, twitching away every time you jerked your hips towards his mouth.

“Levi, please, I—,” you choked off with a frustrated whine. “You’re not being nice — I’m pregnant —,”

The stoic Captain pulled his mouth away from you entirely, rocking back on his heels. From between your thighs, Levi studied you, a renewed heat flaring to life in his steely eyes.

“You are, aren’t you?” He conceded, his eyes locking in on your mouth as you sank your teeth into your bottom lip and mewled. “And all because of me.”

Levi’s eyes dropped back down to your core, slick and aching, ready to take him however he wanted.

“And what kind of father would I be if I made the mother of my child suffer unnecessarily?”

Any response or yearning plea you may have answered him with died in your throat as Levi surged forward, his tongue plunging deep within your entrance, his nose pressing right against that sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex of your thighs.

You just managed to slap your hand over your mouth to stifle the scream he pulled from you as the Captain began to fuck you with his tongue.

You considered yourself to be somewhat an expert on the eccentricities of Levi Ackerman. You knew he preferred two scoops of leaves for his morning cup of tea, but only one and a half in the evenings. You knew when he bathed he followed a precise routine, always washing himself twice before his hair, and that he always used two towels to dry off because he hated trailing water beyond the washroom.

You knew that he was dust and dirt’s greatest nemesis, and that even the slightest bit of clutter or disarray set his teeth on edge. You knew he loathed sharing any space with the cadets because no matter how many times he threatened them, they never seemed to remember to clean up after themselves properly.

You’d learned all of these quirks slowly, over years of proximity and tentative friendship with the brooding captain. You’d coveted each new discovery like some precious jewel, squirreling it away in a mental folder labeled “Levi,” that you periodically turned to whenever he was stressed or on his last nerve.

But there had been one attribute of his that you hadn’t learned about until after your relationship escalated — after he’d hauled you up onto his desk for the very first time and fucked you stupid.

And that insight was this: Levi, Captain of the Survey Corps’ Special Operations Squad and Commander Erwin’s right-hand soldier, ate pussy like a man possessed.

“You’re doing so good, doll,” he groaned between lewd smacks of his mouth against your syrupy folds, his lips and teeth alternating in their ministrations against your clit. “You’re so damn good, giving me a baby, making a father out of me.”

Hearing Levi not only acknowledge your pregnancy but speak as though he were excited the pair of you were venturing into parenthood together made the coil in your belly tighten.

Levi’s hands clamped down around your shins, guiding your legs until they bent at your knees before pushing them up and level with your hips. His fingers splayed around your calves, he used his grip to rock you back and forth against his face, allowing your juices to smear across his lips and jaw until his skin was shiny with your arousal.

He hummed in response to the staccato of “oh fuck, oh fuck — Levi —“ which fell from your lips until you could no longer remember how to form words.

His eyes remained open and fixed pointedly on your face, those gray irises tracking every twitch of your mouth and pinch of your brow. The louder your strangled whimpers became, the harder he moved you, until you were nearly sobbing for him to let you come apart on his tongue.

more levi content soon, babies!

[bridenore]

HD Being on the run fic recs

Here are a few Harry/Draco recs where Harry and Draco are on the run. Listed in alphabetical order, as always.

9 ½ Days by @magpiefngrl [69k]

After the events at the Manor, Harry and Draco find themselves stranded in the countryside with a broken wand and Death Eaters on their tail. This is the story of an uneasy truce, featuring faerie forests, seaside caves, Romani camps, kind old ladies, and a shared bed in an attic. Or how two boys fell in love in the midst of a bloody coup.

Crown Witness by @slytherco [70k]

After the war, wizarding society is oppressed by a new kind of plague—an organised crime group calling itself the Family. When Harry Potter goes to interrogate a potential witness, he doesn’t expect to end up on the run again, trying to keep Draco Malfoy alive, while a manhunt follows in their footsteps, adamant on eliminating the one witness that could ruin everything. In which Harry and Draco learn that the way to each other might just have to go through the dingiest hotels in Britain.

Eclipse by Mijan [287k]

"You're dead, Potter... I'm going to make you pay..." Draco swore his revenge on Harry for Lucius's imprisonment, and Harry all but laughed at him. But Draco is planning more than schoolyard pranks this time. The old rivalry turns deadly when Draco abducts Harry for Voldemort. It's the perfect plan, guaranteeing revenge, power, and prestige, all in one blow. But when Draco's world turns upside down, the fight to save himself and Harry begins, and the battle will take them both through hell and back. If they come back.

Hermione Granger's Hogwarts Crammer for Delinquents on the Run by @waspabi [93k]

'You're a wizard, Harry' is easier to hear from a half-giant when you're eleven, rather than from some kids on a tube platform when you're seventeen and late for work.

Oh, Sinnerman by @lou-isfake and @babooshkart [40k]

“I’m serious, Potter,” Malfoy said quietly. “That was some real bad luck you had, being there last night. They will come after you, and they will kill you—after torturing you for information on my whereabouts.” He pocketed Harry’s wand, but held on to his knife, twirling it between his fingers. Harry was distracted by its movement, the reflections of the bright, dawning sun on polished silver. “I’m not happy about it, either, but you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future.”   He watched Malfoy’s face for a long time, in a staring contest he wasn’t sure he’d signed up for. Stuck with Malfoy, for the foreseeable future, on the run from a massive crime syndicate that had infiltrated the Ministry and was out for their blood. It was all very familiar, except for the Malfoy part.

REVOLVEVLOVER by @firethesound and @lol-zeitgeistic [88k]

The work Harry does is justifiable. It’s justice. He works for his country, and his country is a republic—the magical side, anyway. It’s not laudable work, it’s not work he’s proud of, but it’s necessary work. Harry has always taken the necessary jobs that no one else has the stomach for. It’s just that he’s never deciphered a kill sheet and seen Draco Malfoy’s name on it.

A Sword Laid Aside by @korlaena [128k]

When Draco’s cover is blown during a deep undercover operation and the Ministry is compromised, Ron takes Draco to the only safe place he can think of—Harry. Hiding out with Harry Potter, who has been missing from the Wizarding World for almost two decades after a shocking fall from grace, is nothing like Draco thought it would be.

I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did!