#you become knotted up and reduced to nothing in your own right

[vinecoveredgarden]

I'm just so tired.

[lethalchiralium]

Play Pretend | Higgs Monaghan x GN!Reader

a/n: just a lil thing i kept meaning to post, nothing meaningful i just keep thinking about him 🥺

warnings: TW: allusions to self harm, allusions of suicide. higgs being a dick like always.

summary: You’re in it for something, he concluded. He needs help, you thought, more than he’s willing to take.

The fire that warmed your hands crackled softly, the cold breeze gently nipped at your ears and nose. You took a bite out of the lukewarm chicken that Higgs had managed to scrounge up, cook, and not actually burn. Your eyes didn’t dare glance away from the sight before you, the once highly feared man was now reduced to a man barely surviving. It was honestly a sight; his clean shave was now a dark scruffy beard, his usually short hair was now growing out and becoming wavy. You knew it was hard on him since you were an independent Porter and he couldn’t go and rest where you would, but it did give him a good shock not being able to be in control of everything.

Today was the day before you were able to finally go to your new shelter and finally be able to get Higgs into a real place.

“You’re starin’, sugarplum.”

You blinked quickly before giving him a soft smile. “Sorry, just zoned out.”

He answered with a grunt before beginning to devour the other chicken wing, and you couldn’t help but gaze at him from across the fire. If you had just met the man, you would’ve thought he was just a lost person from one of the Knot Cities; he looked harmless with that blank stare in his eyes. Barely spoke a word when you finally found him in front of the Middle Knot Ruins, you could’ve sworn that he was trying to get hung upside down by the BTs.

You looked down and took another bite, then looked back up to Higgs, who met your gaze with furrowed eyebrows. “Why are you starin’ at me for?”

“You just look very beautiful in this lighting.” You said and even though the fire had a warm glow, you could see his entire face flush red. He immediately looked down at his food and continued to eat and so did you, that inkling of doubt in your stomach for complimenting him was becoming bigger.

“Don’t compliment me.” He answered after a few more moments of silence; He chucked the empty bone into the fire, staring at it. “I don’t deserve sympathy.”

He tossed another bone into the fire and you decided to stay quiet. Time went by quickly, almost five minutes passed before he spoke again.

“You shouldn’t care about me.”

“I know.”

“Can’t you-“ He threw a bone at your head, it barely even grazed your hair as you looked at him. His face flushed red with anger, his body tensing, “-fucking hate me? Yell or something?”

You let out a breath, eyes boring into the stormy seas of Higgs’ own eyes. He was looking desperately for something to exploit, to gain leverage - there wasn’t anything he hasn’t used.

“Pass me the salt packet.”

The damn thing was stuck. All of these credits poured into this brand-new shelter and the terminal was stuck in the floor.

Higgs stood off to the side in the overhang, the heavy timefall thundered upon the cold mud outside. Your foot hit the floor again, hands in your pockets as you just kept kicking the damn thing. The man looked towards the timefall again, watching as the trees swayed in the strong winds; he took a step further into the shelter. The timefall looked peaceful to him - no matter how hard it was raining, he considered the timefall to be an ideal death. Suffering until the rain decided he needed to return to the Earth - he deserved to suffer.

His daddy was always right, Higgs concluded. The outside world was out to kill him, the timefall would wash him away, that he deserved to suffer for even breathing. He only turned away, looking to you as you moved backwards from the circle in the floor.

He was still trying to figure you out - no one gave pity without knowing they’ll receive something in return. You wanted something from him, he felt it in his bones; but he had nothing to give. Amelie had taken his power, his fire, his will to even stand, all of the friends he had once hate him now or have died by his hand. He had no possessions, no credits - what were you in it for?

“Finally.” You muttered as the terminal popped up from the floor. Placing your cuff link underneath the scanner, the menu popped up and Higgs looked back to the outside world. He deserved to sit under Timefall and wither away. Maybe flowers would grow from his corpse, only to wither a moment later - maybe cause a voidout. He’d love to finally end it, to finally be able to be at peace.

Higgs almost walked into the downpour if it wasn’t for your arm slithering around his own, pulling him downstairs. His gaze moved from the outside world to a tiny prison. You pulled him with you - not ahead, behind. Beside you. Like he deserved to live here.

Higgs has never wanted to blow his brains out this much until now.

But he held his tongue as he was pulled around, you flicked on the lights with a button on your cuff link hologram. He made a quick glance around the place, deciding very quickly that he wasn’t meant to be here.

“Get out of your head.”

You pulled him forward and down the hall, Higgs gave some resistance but quickly followed. Flicking on the light, you pulled him into the small bedroom and turned to look at him again.

“Sleep.”

You moved right past him, now standing outside of the room while still watching him. He gazed around the BRIDGES-style private room, condensed into a small room. He set down his dufflebag onto the floor before looking back at you.

If you weren’t still angered about the terminal upstairs, you would have sworn to God that he looked to you for guidance.

“You’ll be safe here.”

He huffed out a laugh.

“I’ll never be safe as long as I breathe, sugar.”

Copyright © 2023 lethalchiralium. All rights reserved.

[grokebaby]

Devil held their bruised arm, semi-limping in the knee deep snow. They were certain they'd shaken off the human troops from their tail by now, but that didn't make the trek back to their hideout much easier.

Stupid! They hissed at themself. Stupid crustacean! You'd spoken far too much to those mortals!

Obviously, the humans had plenty to be mad about. Having a strange creature take refuge in their already scraggly camp, only to tell them it was one of the main reasons their life had become this.. Apocalyptic?

Yeah, I'd be mad too, I guess..

I just wish they'd be more understanding. I mean why point fingers when we could all benefit from cooperation?

The Devil squinted, bringing their good arm up to shield their eyes from the turbulent ice. Odd.. The cave entry wasn't glowing. God hadn't gotten distracted, right? Even then though, the fallen angel's presence was supposed to illicit some sort of reaction in x. An anxious thought crept into the devil's mind. God wasn't hurt, right? What if - what if the humans had gotten so pissed, that they'd sent troops out, and found their hideout before before devil had the chance to even get there?

They picked up their pace. No way. Right? Surely, even if they didn't believe in God (as they claimed), they wouldn't simply stake some primordial entity at first sight.

Then again, they'd been fully ready to do such to the devil.

Their jog turned to a frantic, stumbling sprint. Snow bloomed in white puffy explosions around them at every other step, as they hurriedly scurried to the cave entrance, nearly leaping inside.

"God?! God!!" Devil squeaked worriedly, eyes flying all over the hideout in a panic. Everything seemed to be where they'd last left it. Nothing was broken, no signs of forced entry..

Unless they came knocking, and God simply invited them inside..

Knowing God, the thought was eerily possible.

Stumbling further inside, past the fireplace which was now reduced to warm embers, devil ran towards the giant head huddled to the back wall. X seemed to be leaning heavily, wings lazily strewn every which direction. X didn't appear hurt, which was a relief on closer inspection. "God, buddy..?"

No response. Worry knotted itself tighter in devil's stomach, despite the initial relief. Xs sparce stubble felt coarse against their palm - coarse, which it hadn't always been..

"God? You hear me? Did anyone come by while i was away?" Devil craned their neck upwards, only finding their own reflection on xs slanted glasses. The final flicks of orange light from the fireplace clouded the window-sized lense.

"There, it hath return, rejoice for the reunion of a friend!" God muttered between purplish lips. Though the tone was the usual, peppy and brainless chant, xs voice had grown tired and hoarse. The Devil paused, gracing their palm more examiningly on xs skin. It was chilly, with visible pores, and sorely paled. No, that's not right..

"Erm yes, right, rejoice for the return of, ykno.. Me. I'm back. But was there anyone else here, before me?" Devil rushed to ask again, hastily stroking God's chiseled jawline, shocked at how cold and poor it's condition was. "Before the isopod, the devil, there roam many an angel, and many a more mortal-" God began, perking up ever so slightly, the glint of x eyeball flashing from behind the frame of x glasses. "I didn't mean that! Not that kinda before, I meant-!" Devil scoffed, stopping themself to take a deep breath, slowing down before they'd start getting frustrated at the deity. Too soon. For now..

A silence fell between them for the moment, until god leaned forward, glasses sliding down x nose as it did. "I like the drawings.. On your carapace.." x chuckled in a breathy voice. Drawings? Oh..

Devil cleared their throat. "These aren't drawings, they're scratches. The humans.. Attacked me.." they sighed, sliding down to sit against gods face. "Oh me! Why would they do such!" x exclaimed calmly. Devil mulled over on how to explain everything that had happened in the last few hours. "They.. They got angry. And, apparently they.." Devil swallowed. "The humans they - don't believe in God anymore.."

"God? Who be that?"

The Devil froze for a moment, heart jumping to their throat.

"Wh.."

What the fuck? - Was what sprang to their mind first. They kept it to themself. They cleared their throat. "That.. That's you, God. You're God. Remember?" they squeaked, hesitantly looking up at the deliriously smiling face. X was quiet for a few seconds too long, until a little hearty chuckle bubbled out of it. "Why me, yes! Of course, God is me. I am god!" x replied, as if just remembering it. That can't be good..

Devil leaned back on x cheek again, sighing. "Yeah.. That's you, buddy. Seems like my plan.. Well, didn't really work out. Again.." they lamented, counting down just how many different ideas and strategies they'd had to brainstorm as the smart one of this duo. This current one was supposed to get the humans on their side, so they could help in restoring the earth. Ykno, having more pairs of hands and more heads to think would've been a great help in this situation. Especially considering one head around here was so, utterly, despicably useless. Devil groaned.

[This post was an unfinished draft. It's been posted for fun since it likely wouldn't be finished. Originally made: 4th July 2023]

[nobodyeverasked]

lonely hearts club; zhong chenle

(12,685) words - large

summary ➣ Y/N follows this unknown impulse to the gym to find his school's star basketball player, Zhong Chenle, all by himself. These two borderline strangers spend a little more time together than they intended to, and find out that they're a little less alone than they were used to thinking.

genre ➣ angst ( + fluff )

note ➣ This is ending six of seven for the dear dream series. This story takes place right after the dear dream prologue, an ‘alternate’ to endings such as runaways (Jaemin), stars around scars (Mark), and the others.

The prologue is a decent place to start for a little bit of context. However, lonely hearts club is also able to bed read on its own. So, if you just want a little bit of Chenle content, then happy reading ♡

-: ✧  prologue — mark - renjun - jeno - haechan - jaemin - chenle - jisung  ✧ :-

.・゜-: ✧ :- .・゜-: ✧ :-   -: ✧ :-゜・. -: ✧ :-゜・．​

The lights submerging Y/N’s breaths in the memory of how easy they used to be to let out, the dapples of golden sunlight tying in knots on his skin; it was too much for Y/N to take and too difficult for him to focus on anything related to the biology textbook open in front of him. Words and paragraphs seemed to shift and change the moment Y/N looked away for too long, nothing between the lines made sense. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore.

Y/N was so used to not knowing the answers, but now, these past few weeks, Y/N’s finally been forced to fill in blanks he's not quite ready to yet. He’s still dealing with the blanks being there in the first place.

Letting out one more breath, Y/N swung his bag over his shoulder and tucked in his chair, however, his silent steps out the door were cut off almost instantly.

“Hey!” The whispers of Y/N’s tattered sneakers against the classroom tiles were torn to shreds by a voice whose underlit rasp ran through him like nobody else’s ever could. It was so familiar, like a home he never wanted to go back to - backpack gathered in his hands, always ready to run. But Lee Jeno always caught him, no matter where he ran or how far or in who’s arms he sought the fleeting sweetness of reprieve in next. “Watch it, dipshit!”

Y/N turned around to see Jeno’s already shot out of the seat just behind him. How long was he there? Sitting silently, glaring relentlessly into the back of Y/N’s head until he’d reduce the ends of Y/N’s sweater to ashes? The same sweater that still managed to cling to the warmth of the candlelight he and Renjun sat in back when they were diligent enough to remember their local library had a special room with ‘fire hazards’ galore decorating antique tables.

“Language, Mr. Lee!” The supply teacher sitting said harshly as he peered above the rim of his reading glasses, legs kicked up on the large desk at the head of the classroom. “I’ve been sending you to detention so much, you should get a loyalty card. Don’t make me send you again.”

“Whatever.” Jeno spat, but his voice rose above the subtle golds of the still sunlit sky pouring through the windows for Y/N to hear. “If your dumb ass bag hit me, I would’ve given you a reason to skip these classes.”

“Consider it a parting gift. It could help jump-start a few more brain cells of yours.” Y/N felt the fear, the knots in his throat that made all of his words fall apart the moment he could make them. He felt the butterflies Renjun would always set free in his stomach that Jeno would crush in his tightened fists the moment Y/N turned to meet his eyes. The ashes that scratched the surface of his skin, the morsels of dignity that Jeno would leave him with only to ravage them later. Y/N felt all of its weight and weightlessness, all Jeno’s given to him and all he’s taken; but for once, he didn’t care. He heard the lifeless creaking of the rolling chair their supply shifted in, he watched the flares of anger dance with such a passion in Jeno’s eyes.

But he also watched them slowly begin to flicker the longer Y/N’s frown threatened to become a snarl.

“Are you fucking kidding me…?” Jeno stepped closer, knuckles white from the tension of his balled-up fists. Y/N didn’t move back, didn’t falter, in fact, he began to think that Jeno’s question was almost laughable - or, at least, convinced himself of that. Y/N liked the idea of being amused at the fact that Jeno didn’t know what to say. 

The idea was hanging by a thread, though, Y/N could feel his brashness dwindling. He didn’t know what was coming over him, but all he did know was that he wanted all of this to stop, and for him to match the smiles of the people who still made time in their lives to love him.

“No. I’m not.”

“Okay, boys, enough.” The supply teacher set down his glasses and book and began to round the table, ready to split up whatever this was and was going to unravel into becoming.

“You’re really stepping up to me? You think you’re doing something here?” Jeno shone this sinister smile as he didn’t get a response, nothing but the persistence of Y/N’s glare and the fact that he still hasn’t taken a step back from when Jeno stepped up to him. “There’s nobody here to protect you-”

“I don’t need anyone to protect me!” Y/N’s raised voice made the supply teacher flinch before he stood between them, trying to settle both of them down but failing miserably. All Y/N wanted to do was shove past the supply teacher and get in Jeno’s face again, to say anything he could to hurt him… 

But he didn’t know how, he didn’t know what could hurt Jeno, if he could get hurt more than he already probably hurts inside. 

“I just need you to leave me the fuck alone.” Y/N’s voice painfully quiet and breathless as all the anger Y/N held in his weathered hands and had wandering aimlessly across his bruised heart was just swept away in an instant. He wanted to be angry for longer, he wanted to feel the seething pain in his voice as he spat back whatever Jeno threw at him, pay his debts to the sole person responsible for leaving him broken and socially penniless for half his high school life. But he felt nothing but this emptiness as he let his final words trickle from his loosened frown. 

With Jeno’s silence filling whatever space between them their supply teacher and his pitiful choice of sweater vests didn’t already take up, Y/N turned and slipped out the doorway, leaving Jeno and whoever was left to watch them stunned, speechless. The only thing he could feel was the withering fire of Jeno’s gaze on his back until he turned the corner, leaving only the sunlight kicked up from the hallway floors in his wake.

By the time Y/N made his way down the corridor, wearing himself down under the trying sunlight and the weathered, beaten down glow of the overhead lights on his shoulders, he finally realized what he had done. The high of confidence seeped from every fiber of his being, fading and washing away almost as quickly as it came in that classroom; the spark in Jeno’s voice that lit his fire was the exact same thing that put it out. 

Y/N thought about everything they said, how close they were, Jeno’s tightened fists that threatened to whip up and pull him even closer by the collar. He felt something winding around his chest, something in between all the fear and relief and anxiety that he felt numb to at that moment, it was beating at him so hard he needed to take a breath at the stairwell door.

Finally finding a gap in his thoughts and all the things he couldn’t bring himself to think of, Y/N flicked out his phone again to see Renjun’s text still flashing on his phone’s lock screen:

‘Hey I’m really sorry we couldn’t hang out. I’m still free tonight to make up for yesterday.’

Y/N found himself at a loss looking over Renjun’s text, trying to find breath between every letter and in every line - even if there was only one line. It left him leaning against the doorframe, stuck in its spaces and fidgeting with whatever was left of the fragile golden sunlight that he didn’t rip apart with his still-shaking hands. There was something that Y/N wasn’t seeing, something that he needed to analyze in this, he knew it… What was Renjun trying to say?

However, as Y/N tried to venture deeper into the thought and memories and images behind Renjun’s words, it only made the text even more of an unintelligible blur. There was no reason, or at least one that Y/N couldn’t see without thinking about how Renjun was always ready to admit to mistakes he never made. A subtle - almost teasingly so - simmer of guilt began to course through Y/N, bubble beneath his skin as he could think about it now - how Renjun’s smile always seemed so close to collapsing, as if his stars had been burning too bright for far too long.

Renjun’s been the only light Y/N’s been able to count on, the only star hung in Y/N’s sky that he can still feel safe to wish on. But maybe all of that, Renjun adhering himself to Y/N’s washed-out skies, is what’s leaving him burnt out and worn with his light fading. All of that, all of those things that Y/N had a vague idea of observing, and he still couldn’t figure out why…? He could not think of what he’s done, or what has happened to one of his only friends that makes the guilt and regret run through him, blooming as thorns in his sides.

Y/N wished he had made it more blatant, how much he appreciates Renjun. Rather than giving all of his attention to the ideas of things long gone that he’s still grieving, as if the loss meant anything to the people who seemed to have such ease in loosening the knots of starlit nights that Y/N thought bound them in more than blood and tears and tiny, handwritten notes slipped into lockers on Valentine’s day. He’s grateful for Renjun, and never wanted Renjun to ever bend and twist himself to the rules of a world that they were supposed to be creating together.

Taking out his phone once more, and looking over Renjun’s text that he still hasn’t answered - he wondered if Renjun was looking back through the screen - Y/N didn’t know why this was so hard to answer or respond to. Even now, thinking about how all the throwaway comments that Y/N never looked back at were some of the only things keeping Renjun afloat on his bad days that Y/N never knew about, the guilt swept him up like their coffee-stained Sunday mornings that they were just building a routine around.

With a loosely gathered breath, Y/N tapped into his phone, throwing out a message to a probably paranoid Renjun that ‘it’s fine’ and that he ‘didn’t need to make up for anything. I’m free tomorrow, though, there’s something I need to make up for’.

Y/N had so much to say, so much to talk about; and all Y/N wants to do is to see Renjun standing in front of him and take him in by the shoulders and tell him how much he appreciates him. But Renjun wasn’t here by the time Y/N finally made his way into the school’s front foyer to escape the confines of the classrooms and hallways that seemed to carry a lot more memories that Y/N ever remembered. They always showed up when Y/N least wanted. 

His instincts, the ones that gave Y/N those vague, colourless hints of how Renjun always seemed to feel; they seemed to sense Renjun just passing by, his silhouette lost among the twisting walls of the main level’s hallways.

Y/N shook his head, trying his best to avoid the cracks he could already feel forming in his resolve and not fall through. Somehow, it was so much harder to stop the quivering in his hands when Jeno wasn’t there. And Y/N didn’t have anything to distract him from the bitterness that churned in his stomach at the thought of all the things Jeno’s taken from him, at least, until he pushed himself past the flickers of satisfaction upon texting Renjun back and looked up across the foyer.

Practically encased in the copper glow of the sunlight pouring in through the foyer’s skylight, the entrance to the gymnasium stood, painted in the blush of the sunset’s sky. One of the doors was cracked half-open and sounds slowly trickled out, a solitary melody that flittered about in the oddly stark darkness of the gym - echoes of sneakers screeching against the floor, sighs of a basketball slipping through the next almost effortlessly. The faint, but familiar sound of after-hours sports practice brought Y/N closer, dragged him across the tiles. There was something so singular about the sounds as he grew closer, the pounding of a basketball against the scuffed gym floors, how everything Y/N heard weaved in and out of itself so seamlessly, as if it found a rhythm in itself. 

Y/N’s school had good basketball players, great even - most of the varsity basketball team was already more than halfway through the doors of some of the best post-secondary sports programs in the state on full scholarship. However, not many assumed a presence like this, as if their intensity was palpable, weighed down the air and peeled back the flourishes of Sunlight leaking in through the half-opened gym door.

And then, a brief shine of red and black flashing through the gap in the open door. All Y/N could think about was that morning: Chenle and the brandish of the morning light against the red and black leather letterman jacket, the warmth of his hands as he helped Y/N up and brushed against his when he neatly tucked Y/N’s books back under his arm.

Chenle’s indifferent, courteous smile that was a shimmer off from friendly; how his eyes lit up in such a subtle way when he made that Joke about Jane Austen; and then the way he brushed it off with a barely noticeable wave as if it never happened - boarding up that window of time where Chenle acted and smiled and chuckled and presented himself in a way that Y/N has never seen. 

It all stayed in Y/N’s head the moment they parted ways and swept themselves up into the crowds around them - where Chenle belonged, but where Y/N didn’t.

Y/N didn’t know why, but whatever pulled him closer kept tugging. This unknown impulse he could feel spreading beneath the surface of his skin where his scars and barely healed wounds lay, where the stains of sleepless nights and afternoons of held hands and broken promises he tried to forget settled. It lingered there for a moment with a simmer, a whisper of starlight hidden below the horizon until he finally made his way through the space in the door.

Maybe it was just to say ‘thanks’ for helping Y/N pick up his books and not scramble around in his embarrassment alone, maybe it was something else - that smile that Chenle shone him, it was so different to the ones he saw him put on everywhere else.

He didn’t have time to think about it further, as Y/N rounded the corner to see Chenle dribbling the ball with such precision and speed, burning deliberate, meticulous circles into the gym floor with agile footwork that the whole school was familiar with whenever they crowded on the gym’s built-in bleachers to watch his games, fill them to capacity.

Whether people really knew the person behind that footwork, the heavy breaths that fell to the red and white blur Chenle’s Jordans made as he maneuvered down the court; Y/N didn’t know for sure. Part of him, the pessimist always there in every folded, wrinkled, and torn corner of his thoughts, hopes Chenle didn’t either. He didn’t want Chenle to know the answers to the questions people probably didn’t bother to ask when the game was over.

By the time Y/N blinked in the darkness of the gym - only the faint coral glow of the sunset-lit sky leaking through small, high-placed windows helping Y/N make out Chenle’s outline - Chenle was already weaving in between invisible walls of people and scoring basket after basket until he was but a tangle of red, black, and all the colours of the sky caught up in his hair from his lunch periods spent standing on picnic tables with the people who’ve assigned themselves to him.

They were always loud enough to hear from where Y/N and Renjun would sit, and Y/N would always hear his laughter and think about how it always sounded the same - the faint light of a chuckle, a shriek tearing it apart at its end. It sounded rehearsed, something that he’s practiced almost as much as his half-court shots that he’s been renowned for since he took the basketball team by storm in freshman year.

“Hey-”

Y/N tried to speak up, but Chenle already caught the outline of Y/N’s figure, the momentary stretch of his shadow, from the corner of his eye.

“Did you need something?”

Chenle’s tongue was wring dry, his voice peeled from his breathless chest. He caught his ball as it rebounded off the backboard with his eyes still on Y/N, who was nervously shifting and nearly speechless.

“N- no, I mean…” Y/N stumbled over himself, this felt so different than their interactions just this morning, as if Chenle saw him as someone else. He didn’t know what slight apprehension had been Chenle’s default setting for the last couple weeks - Chenle was waiting for that moment, that indication that he could let down the walls he’s only just now started to build. 

He was tired of being the gullible, eager popular guy who’s just looking to be liked, he was tired of being more of a status symbol than a real person, and he was tired of constantly recognizing it just late enough to deal with the way it burned when he was reminded of how lonely he really was. 

“I just wanted to say thank you…? For earlier…? Nobody else on the team would be insane enough to practice after hours on a Friday, so I assumed that you were here when I saw the door open.” Scratched at the back of his head, trying to ease his laughter in the space between them, but he was so far that it fell off into the silence Chenle left him in. Chenle was just trying to process what Y/N said, how he said it, the light in his eyes, what was there, what wasn’t there. Everything he taught himself to do, what to look for.

Chenle didn’t want to bother looking at Y/N more than he needed to, but he couldn’t help but hold his gaze on Y/N just a little bit more for good measure. How he was silhouetted by the foyer lights pouring in through the doors Y/N pushed further open, his nervous yet observant eyes, his silence that always seemed to say more than anyone ever has to him.

He found himself remembering the warmth of their interaction from the morning, too. The fragile sparks that ran between their hands as his fingers grazed Y/N’s. That fire, that momentary blooming of light, it was gone the moment he realized it was there.

That’s what that kind of warmth always was to Chenle; transient, fleeting and temporary, always ripped away from him, pulled out from under him the moment he gets used to it, feeling the sunlight’s shine in a way he’s always wanted to. He never could hold the sunset’s golden shine in his hands for long - it always lost its colour whenever he held on for too long.

Chenle figured out the hard way, that the tighter he clung to a flickering flame, desperate to keep it close, the faster it died. Sometimes, he finds himself slipping on the ashes of his dwindled flames every now and then, when he spots the faces of those in the crowds at his games that he shared too much with - stars he flew too close to. They were always there, watching him play; cheering when he scored, yelping when he almost missed, protesting the referee’s calls whenever something would tip just out of Chenle’s favour. But it seemed that they were never there for Chenle by the time the buzzer was beat.

Chenle kept his voice calm and stern as he looked over Y/N and found himself unable to look away, trying his best to remain unforgiving and stern with his response. However, it didn’t stop his words from being any less stupid than how they sounded in his head.

“Really…?”

Chenle’s response left Y/N cocking his head, almost holding back a chuckle until he realized that Chenle was maybe trying to be serious. Was he genuinely surprised…?

“Yeah, really. You kinda saved me from feeling the full force of my embarrassment, so…” Y/N trailed off, he could feel Chenle’s disinterest even from the distance at which he was standing. He started to regret doing the least he could so someone who’s always responded to his existence with something that was always better than nauseating disgust or blatant disregard. Chenle was nice to him, nodding to him in the hallway whenever they sustained awkwardly long eye contact, and even talking Jeno down a couple times whenever things were one misstep away from going too far between him and Y/N. “The least you deserve is for me to say ‘thanks’.”

He wondered why there seemed to be such a sudden turn in Chenle, more importantly, he tried to understand. Chenle wasn’t giving him a lot to work with, though.

Their silence was painful, it almost burned, until Chenle finally spoke into it, fidgeting with the basketball he had between his hands. Now, it was his turn to be uncertain, to look at Y/N and see all the times Chenle wished he could do more for him. Y/N was here to repay Chenle’s ‘kindness’, Chenle knew that, he observed Y/N enough in wayward stares across the cafeteria or in small smiles Chenle would give to Y/N’s back as they would be walking down the hall to completely different classes. Repaying ‘kindness’ was just a transaction that Chenle was never able to get used to for long.

“Uhm…” Chenle felt his guard slowly slipping, and he let it. He’s seen what Y/N’s had to go through, and he rightly assumed that the last thing Y/N would ever want to do was to use Chenle in the ways that he feared. “If you wanna stay and talk, I’m gonna just practice for a few more minutes…” 

Y/N tilted his head again, trying to regain his balance from Chenle’s sudden invitation, the shift in the golden tides of sunlight that felt as if they were pulled taut around them. They were loosening, however, and for the first time in the lifetime that passed in the last few weeks, Chenle felt partially okay with that.

Y/N didn’t know what to do, how to handle Chenle’s invitation to spend more time in the gym than Y/N thought. But maybe this was what Y/N needed to take his mind off everything else, wasting a day with someone who wanted to trust him, who wanted to spin sunlight between them.

"I'll wait." Y/N said as he shuffled over to the bleachers, perching himself on its lowest seat with his hands in his lap. By the time Y/N got as comfortable as he could on the bleacher seat’s hard plastic, Chenle already sunk another shot into the net, a rough breath following him as he jogged after the ball. “How’d you make that look so easy? That was amazing!”

“You’re sounding just like everyone else…” Chenle let his words escape him before he could catch onto them and hold them back. Y/N sounded so much like those who’d sing his praises and buy out space to watch his games and parade him around like some sort of vicarious accomplishment, yet still didn’t know his birthday, where he liked to eat to celebrate his wins; sometimes, they knew no more than the last name on his jersey, not even his first. 

Maybe the thought of Y/N, the thoughts of Y/N he’s had for a while, were just that. Wishful pleas that gave the benefit of all his doubts.

“Everyone else…?” Y/N tried not to take Chenle’s statement too personally, looking up with still, indifferent eyes that left Chenle feeling worse than if Y/N was hurt by what he said.

“Yes. Everyone else.” Chenle said, feeding into Y/N’s question, rubbing at his temple with his free hand and pinching the bridge of his nose as he made his way closer to where Y/N was sitting.

Y/N watched as Chenle seemed to unravel in his own distress, it was painful to watch. And even more painful not knowing what was causing it. “What d’you mean-”

"So you came in here just to say thanks. You don't want anything...? Nothing at all...?" Chenle didn’t answer the question, all the tension making his ears ring and coiling up in his throat snapping as he just blurted his words out. Voice abrupt and sharp, his breath worn thin in a way he knew Y/N’s never seen. 

He didn’t want to blame Y/N for anything, but he couldn’t help but feed into all the speculation he’s conditioned himself into doing the moment someone claims to pay his kindness back, walk up to him with a smile and a compliment. 

It was so exhausting, needing to try and see through the eyes of everyone who asks how he’s doing - then again, people weren’t really concerned with how their star basketball player was doing, only how large he made the point difference between their school and anybody else who were looking to dethrone Chenle’s unstoppable force.

“Just to say thanks… Is that such an uncommon thing?” Y/N started to piece things together, and the more he read into Chenle’s crumbling frustrations, the sadder he became. He should’ve known of the pristine veneer that hid all the dents in Chenle’s armour, he should’ve guessed that not everything was like it seemed whenever he could see Chenle’s smile dying before the rest of his team or group or posse or whoever clung to him for social momentum.

“If you only knew…” Chenle said it quietly enough for only the weathered sunlight spilled down his back to hear.

He wanted to know Y/N enough to say it louder, and sometimes, when his subconscious slipped out from under him, he was convinced he did know Y/N. Through Jeno’s rants about this ‘jackass’ talking back to him in a way he knew only Y/N could; the way Y/N’s name was tangled up in conversation whenever he stayed for a little bit too long with the baseball team, and how the person he learned was Y/N’s ex-best-friend, Jisung, would just keep his eyes down before speaking up about a memory he had with Y/N. Jeno would always shut him down, tell him to pick a side before leaving them in a silence that submerged the rest of their lunch period.

Most importantly, it was that one day, freshman year, that made Chenle think the most of Y/N. An evening after last period, the P.E. class they shared, left in the dreadful and awkward silence left to decay in the locker room by Chenle’s basketball teammates. The conversation Y/N and Chenle had to fill in the quiet’s spaces was too cathartic and candid for people who flames to have barely met. It felt like they knew each other beyond stolen glances across morning-lit hallways, and mistranslated stories passed on through middle parties that Chenle would catch onto whenever he took a break from listening to Jeno talk about himself.

However, that was always what happened when Chenle jumped to conclusions, liked people too quickly and dove blindly into waters that were never there for long. He’d convince himself that he had friends, that nobody would want to hurt him - look to cast him away when his shine as a novelty has worn out; he would always recognize it too late no matter how many times it happened. By the time his scars had settled and upon the realziation that there was nobody out there to draw stars and hearts around them, that was when he truly knew how alone he was.

Chenle didn’t know why, but for some reason, Y/N felt different. The way he listened, spoke to him, the way they moved closer to each other on that locker room bench as they spoke, and the way Chenle was welcome to smooth his hands down Y/N’s back as he hung his head under the weight of their words. It was unlike anything Chenle ever experienced, and he found himself wanting something like that ever since. Even now he can feel it, Y/N listening.

As Chenle sat himself down on the bench next to Y/N, water bottle clutched tightly in his hands, he could remember that locker-room conversation as clearly as if a year and a half of social misadventures and placing his trust in the wrong hands countless times didn’t dilute its memory - a held breath in the mundanity of another week.

He remembered YN murmuring about being stuck in a class filled with brain-dead jocks, and Chenle agreeing with a bitter chuckle. He recalled talking about feeling like a sore thumb on that team, and everything he and Y/N tackled about tumbling downhill from there.

Loneliness and Jeno and Jisung, then feeling weak and friendless and Jeno and Jisung and Chenle’s imposter syndrome and people Chenle named but Y/N doesn’t know, then feeling spend and powerless and themselves and the things they never thought they’d let out in the open…

If it wasn’t for Chenle reading Y/N’s shortening responses and shifting gaze - and then their P.E. teacher’s call into the change room: ‘alright lovebirds! Wrap it up in there!’ which made them both sheepishly chuckle - they would’ve kept going and stumbling and falling over all the things they never knew they were struggling so hard with.

They would've kept finding the security in each other's eyes, fed into the unsaid pledges of secrecy that ran between them, moved closer and closer into the obscure sense of comfort that somehow sparked between them. The school's shining star and a mere flicker in the vast expanse of the hallway's sky. 

Turns out they were both burnt out, withered lights fooled into thinking they were suns; that they had gravity, light and purpose. But they didn't, they were drifting across the novas of all the others who fed on their glow and their memories and their love and their promises.

“I guess I don’t know.” Y/N said, his voice cutting finely through the silence.

Chenle flinched at Y/N’s response. He didn’t intend for Y/N to hear that, because he knew, to a certain extent, that Y/N did know.

“It feels like I don’t know anything anymore…” Y/N���s voice died down, eyes trained to the notches in the scuffed floorboards and then to the way Chenle’s Jordans swayed idly to the sound of Y/N’s meek whimpers into the sunset-stained air. 

“Y/N…” Chenle wanted to find a way to comfort Y/N. His sadness was so palpable, he felt it practically singeing his skin, wherever the sunlight settled.

Y/N caught onto his words a little too late, finding them fluttering remorselessly in the air, out for Chenle to hear. “Oh my God, I’m sorry…” Y/N stammered out, “I didn’t mean to projectile vomit my problems all over you.”

“No, Y/N, it’s okay. Really…” Chenle said, bringing his hand to settle on Y/N’s shoulder. He only realized what he did when Y/N shifted slightly under his touch. “I literally just did, and we’ve done it before. Plus, I think you deserve - at least need - a place to let it out.”

Y/N froze as he began to remember as well. The thick, nauseating haze of body spray dissipating in an instant when Chenle invited him shyly to the space next to him on the bench, the rest being history under their tongues when all of their fractured memories and longing sighs and bitten back words just spilled out of them. He almost forgot how little they spoke, yet how much they knew about each other. They found relief in the most uncommon of places.

“I… Uhm…” Y/N couldn’t find anything to say even when he scavenged for the ones he held back during that unnecessarily deep locker-room talk. “I appreciate it.”

“Of course…” It felt as if Chenle’s response only added to the stillness between them. However, Chenle stayed optimistic - despite everything he needed to do to keep his wounds from flourishing like the torturously persistent weeds that leaked out from the cracks of concrete by the basketball courts just outside the school boundaries. Oddly enough, he felt safe, safer than he’s ever felt in the longest time. He wanted to make Y/N feel the same way, too. “Do you like basketball…?”

“Bitch- what!?” Y/N considered Chenle’s question for a moment, shuddering at the thought of needing to participate in sports. “I haven’t chosen to run since freshman year…”

“Really…?” Chenle’s voice held this sarcastic drawl as a couple more memories from freshman year trickled into his mind like morning sunlight. He recalled lining up with Y/N, Jeno, and a few others that signed up for the freshman league soccer team by hastily arranged wooden benches in the gym that were promptly replaced with the massive plastic bleachers as soon as their new school achieved a sizable budget. The smiles they shone, the ball adorned with their made-up signatures held between Y/N and Jeno - the two best players of the season who seemed to cover and account for each other’s weaknesses so perfectly it was as if they were meant to stand on that front line together.

With the way that makeshift empire came tumbling down sophomore and junior year, though, Chenle wasn’t surprised that Y/N did his best to intercept those hits to his resolve like the punts down the field he would always make his way to before their opponents could. He and Jeno tore apart any defensive line that stood before, almost as meticulously and flawlessly they seemed to do it to each other one summer after.

“What about when you committed literal athletic terrorism on every other school when we were on the soccer team?” Chenle lit his words with a teasing smile that brought a small smirk to Y/N’s face. It wasn’t one of regret or painful hindsight, but one of reminiscence. He and Y/N were on the same team, but with Chenle always a field-length away on the defensive line, they never had much time to talk outside of when they’d accidentally catch each other half-naked, struggling with their cheap jerseys and cleats that were impossible to walk on solid floor with. “I guess a lot’s changed since freshman year.”

That remark that Y/N knew was an earnest attempt at a joke made his emerging smile falter a little bit. Chenle saw it, too, and started to regret the way he said it; his laughter faded almost instantly and he sifted through his thoughts to make Y/N feel better about everything that came rushing at them all of the sudden. It was just like their talk in the locker room, one misplaced step and here they were, tumbling down slippery slopes they’ve spent two and a half years climbing up.

“If you only knew…” Y/N mimicked Chenle’s breathy, laboured words and they both shared chuckles between them. 

He just wanted to avoid the recognition of how much really has changed, how a single summer seemed to change their school’s tides as swift as a change in the seasons. The leaves fell and so did Y/N from the grace he was barely assured in the first place, now Y/N but another withered blossom on the sidewalk, trying to slip into the cracks before he crumbles under one too many springtime breezes.

“Hey, I have an idea.” Chenle said, breaching his laughter’s surface for a breath.

Y/N turned to Chenle, his eyes oddly lit up as he was barely able to hold back what he was about to say next.

When they locked eyes, Y/N attentive and listening like he always seemed to be with Chenle, that’s when Chenle’ continued. “How about we take your mind off all this shit? It’s a Friday night and we don’t need all of our woes keeping us up - we have Monday-through-Thursday to mope.”

He buried a chuckle under his breath when Y/N raised an eyebrow, still listening. He didn’t know if it was in anticipation, interest, or if he were just merely humouring him. But Chenle appreciated Y/N keeping his eyes on him, seeming to lightly trace Chenle’s sunlit figure - his hands as they fiddled with his water bottle, the way his sleeves draped over his shoulders, his earnest smile and passionate eyes. 

“Let’s play some basketball! I always head to the courts at the end of the lot whenever I need to blow off some steam.” Chenle turned his head over to the back of the gym, the direction in which the basketball courts were, always waiting, as if he could see through the sunset’s glow coating the walls. He looked back to Y/N, the liveliness behind his eyes dying a little bit as he looked over the cringe that began to rightfully bloom on Y/N’s lips - outlined with a copper glimmer by the pretentious, mocking sunlight. “The view of the sunset’s best there, too…” Chenle kept his voice quieter, as if he wasn’t too sure that information was necessary. 

He wanted to know if Y/N was more of a sunrise or sunset kind of guy, which one might be better to watch with Chenle by his side as colours from the horizon spilled and bled out into the skies in faint lilacs or coral-stained peonies or the yellow roses of the morning.

Chenle found himself thinking about which of these colours would’ve looked best as shimmers in Y/N’s eyes, at least, until Y/N’s voice tore him away from his trance.

“Chenle…” Y/N said, scratching at the back of his neck, flashes back to his prowess on the soccer team making him wince in disappointment, and those times in gym class - back when he was athletic ‘for fun’ - where he’d always be first pick on a team of people who liked him as much as they feared him on the field. He and Jeno were always on opposite teams because of that, and now, Y/N thinks of facing off with Jeno on the opposite end of the centre line as nothing but a sour sense of foreshadowing. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I literally can’t do sports. I get winded going up the stairs to my homeroom, so think about what would happen if I had to run while operating a basketball, and looking around, and breathing, and existing, and thinking... All at the same time!”

Bracing himself for what instantly came into his head, Chenle let it out with bated breath, already thinking of Y/N’s response - and his many non-responses. “At least I could say that I took your breath away…?”

“That was vile.” Y/N’s words didn’t match his grin, wide and brilliant as he rolled his eyes. His voice was tinged with the flickers of laughter, heavy with the weight of copper sunlight on his tongue. He haphazardly wondered if he’d be able to smile more like this, see Chenle smile along with him as they eased each other of their burdens with nothing but scraps of nostalgia and soft words, if he managed to catch Chenle practicing earlier. 

He wished he did.

“But you sold me, let’s go.”

*

Y/N clung to his sweater as he and Chenle shoved themselves through the side exit of the gymnasium, the careless whispers of the breeze passing by, playing with their hair in heaves and chuckles against their sunlit skin. Their footprints in the field were swept over with each trickle of the breeze that came in through the gaps in the tree-line, carrying with it the coral and copper flush of the setting sun as it rested upon the silhouettes of rooftops and tall pines that jutted beyond backyard fences and lined cobbled paths that Y/N was sure he explored one day - the memories elude him now, and maybe for good reason.

The laughter that tumbled down from Y/N’s smile and probably still blooming in the cracks of the slate and hanging from the canopy of trees that filtered light through the green and yellow and red glass of the leaves that chattered amongst themselves in the wind. Y/N was sure that sooner or later, he would’ve tried to forget what that laughter meant to him, and recognized that he’d never be able to reclaim it.

Shaking his head from his thoughts, Y/N looked over to Chenle, who had his eyes on Y/N the entire time as they were walking over to the courts. Did he say something? Was he supposed to say something? Y/N felt this silent panic overtake him as he couldn’t find anything in Chenle’s eyes to work with, the sunset’s glow that caught itself in his gaze made him look so happy, so carefree, but with the way everything bubbled beneath the surface of the conversation they just had, Y/N didn’t know what to think or if this little session of Chenle tormenting Y/N on the court would take their minds off anything.

It was the thought that counts, at least.

“I promise I’ll go easy on you, if that’s what you're worried about…” Chenle, with one smooth movement that burst out of him like a held breath, he took Y/N in with an arm around the shoulders, bringing him closer. Y/N practically collapsed in Chenle’s comforting touch, barely keeping in mind that they’ve never been this close before. He liked it, though, he felt this warmth surge between them, leak from Chenle’s fingertips as he squeezed Y/N’s shoulder in reassurance with the brilliant smile that was plastered all over the school’s massive screens whenever they’d catch Chenle just after he made a shot in his games. 

It was so wide and effortless. He only seemed to shine it in that split second in between then the timer counts down and the buzzer pulls him down from his high, that singular moment of happiness that only lasts for as long as all his senses run dry, his world is only the blurs in the crowds. That smile was there for only a brief moment of happiness and nothing else, and to see it laid out in front of him, Y/N couldn’t help but smile too.

Despite how little they’ve met and how much they seem to know about each other, Chenle felt this sense of freedom around Y/N that he hasn’t felt in the longest time; since the summer freed him from the shackles of his obligations and he was bound to no number on a team, no time to meet up with people who don’t care to know him, no days trying to differentiate between being lonely and alone, if he was both or neither or either or something else entirely. Y/N felt exactly like that, the warmth and weightlessness of the summers where Chenle didn’t feel the need to resist anything.

“Are you kidding? That’s the one thing I’m not worried about.” Y/N crossed his arms, nudging at Chenle’s side with this fake haughtiness in his pressed lips. He could only hold it for so long until Chenle’s scoff brought his smile right back. “Beating you is gonna be the easiest thing I’ll ever do this year.”

“That’s a bold opinion.” Chenle felt his chest swell, not in the ways it did whenever he’d catch onto trash-talk from his opponents across the gym or whenever a ‘joke’ made at his resident picnic table were a bit too pointed for comfort, but with this sweet feeling of pride and content. 

He didn’t know if the pride he felt was for himself or in Y/N being unafraid to let a little bit of that sarcasm leak back into his voice, the same sharp melody that traced his rare but golden comebacks that he’d throw back to Jeno in the halls. They would always leave Chenle doubling over laughing until Jeno would finally threaten to shut him up when they reached their history class. 

“But it’s okay to be wrong sometimes, I accept that about you.” With a condescending pat to Y/N’s shoulder, his laughter was sent spiralling into the sky when Y/N flashed a pointed glare once more, prodding at his side a little bit harder, but not shying away from where Chenle’s arm still wrapped around Y/N’s shoulders. “I hope you skipped lunch, cause I’m gonna make you eat your words!”

“Again, I don’t know if I should think that was clever or disgusting…” Y/N wanted to humour Chenle, so badly, but seeing his pout as Y/N considered him with nothing but a light eye roll lit sparks under his skin.

“It was fucking great and you know it!” Chenle brought Y/N in closer, arm around his neck, pressing the sides of their heads together as he jabbed his water bottle up into the copper sky, the sunset’s bronze and coral light spilled into the spaces of their breathless laughter, setting alight a glow in their cheeks and smiles. As Chenle looked over to see how delicately the setting sun held all of Y/N’s features, carved them out with such grace, he just couldn’t take his eyes away. “We’ll have the whole night to ourselves for me to work on my already flawless humour.”

All good things come to an end, though, and so did this moment between them when Chenle’s breath was cut short by a rough, bitter snicker from behind them. They both turned around to see Jeno, arms folded over his sweat-laden baseball uniform. Behind him in the distance was a line of his team members, run ragged by the red sands of the diamonds, stains of their hard work caught in their hair down to the auburn scars on their baseball cleats. The team was filing back into the gym and into the changerooms, the mark of the end of their practice.

“I think the only thing ‘funny’ is how you just don’t let up, Y/N.” Jeno titled his head, his teeth already bared in a sneer that seized the sunlight and twisted it. He settled his eyes on Y/N, the weight of his glare already making Y/N waver. But Y/N wasn’t going anywhere, he tightened his fists up in the pockets of his sweatshirt and stood as resolute as he could, trying not to mind the cracks in his confidence he could already feel forming as Jeno’s voice dug in deeper. “I guess you’ll cling to anyone who’ll entertain your bullshit.”

Chenle groaned and shook off Jeno’s gesture with a dismissive eye roll. “Fuck off Jeno, this isn’t necessary.”

“No, I think it is.” Jeno returned Chenle’s contempt, arching his eyebrow and shifting back and forth on his cleats, as if this conversation was nothing but a waste of time for him.

“It’s not, actually.” Y/N stepped closer to Jeno, unwinding his tightened knuckles to fold his arms in front of his chest. His voice was louder now, rougher around its edges, serrated and sharp in a way that both Jeno and Chenle never thought it could become. Even after the altercation in the classroom that still left ashes on Jeno’s skin from the way Y/N’s voice and words clung to him, it wasn’t like this - severe and still growing, the blooming of some monstrous, withered rose. “And maybe you should take your own advice and stop being so desperate.”

“Excuse me?” Jeno matched Y/N’s steps, brushing off how Chenle stepped up to him too, and just focused on finding something to say. He didn’t know why he was here, if he was being honest; his need to reclaim the pride Y/N tore apart in that classroom? Maybe, and Jeno still tried to make sense of it. But he didn’t, he couldn’t, even as he was standing here. That lack of an answer, the senselessness in all of it as he looked into Y/N’s eyes and began to find nothing, it made him even angrier.

He needed something, anything to hurt Y/N. He found himself scrambling, and he knew that Y/N recognized that.

“In case you forgot, I’m not the one who’s still waiting for the best friend I never had.”

“Jeno-” Without skipping a beat in the breeze’s silence, Chenle strode up into Jeno’s face, his face contorted in anger. He took as much pleasure as he could in the way it made Jeno freeze for a slight second. But before he could continue with his arm out and in front of Y/N to protect him from something that could have only twisted the blade in all the scars he knew Y/N was still healing from, Y/N cut him off, pushing past Chenle’s attempt to protect him.

“So, is there a point to this? Or did you just go out of your way to be an asshole, like always?” Y/N’s voice was so subtle, yet so meticulously ravenous, as it tore through the air. It was as if Jeno was speaking. 

But Jeno wasn’t speaking, he just stood there with his mouth hung slightly open; and before he could even catch himself out of his stumble of shock, Y/N started once more, stepping closer, giving Jeno no chance to breathe.

“My life isn’t your business.”

“It became my business-”

“When YOU wanted it to!” Y/N’s voice rose, tearing at the seams of the sunset coloured sky, and Chenle flinched as he looked over to see Y/N’s face, a snarl shattering the light of his smiles that rested there just moments ago. There was something that was rising in Y/N, and Chenle didn’t like it. As much as he knew Y/N needed this, as much as he felt like this was something that was worth doing with how long Jeno’s been tormenting him, Chenle hated seeing it. 

Y/N’s grimace, the roughness in his voice, the darkness in his eyes as they stared Jeno down, Chenle’s seen all of it before in mirror’s he’s threatened to shatter, he’s felt it in his own balled up fists and the heat that rose in his throat and scorched it. It was like Chenle felt the pain before the others did, the people he wanted to hurt.

Y/N didn’t stop. He jabbed a finger into Jeno’s chest, fearless in the face of Jeno’s furious eyes. “What’s your problem with me, Jeno!? I literally haven’t done anything to you and all you’ve done since I moved here is make my life absolute hell!”

“Well-”

“I don’t give a shit how insecure you are, or what unresolved psychological conflicts you have going on in that non-existent brain of yours. But I’m done being your emotional punching bag and I’m done letting you hurt me!” There was no bumbling supply teacher to put space between them, and Chenle tugging on Y/N’s sleeve could only do so much before he was finally a hair’s breadth from Jeno’s face. Every livid shimmer in Y/N’s eyes matched Jeno’s, and with them, he watched as his words, lit ablaze and enraged, burned into Jeno and all the places that Jeno always tried to never go.

Y/N could feel his chest tightening, a sob threatening to weave between his breath, but he swallowed it. Jeno tried to step up and match him, but he was still held speechless in the grip of Y/N’s words, all his awe and rage failing to sink in fast enough to say anything back.

“I-”

“I’M NOT DONE!” With Y/N’s voice ravaging through the air, anger boiling over, he shoved Jeno back as hard as he could, sending him stumbling to the ground, leaving them all, including Y/N, in a state of shock that rendered them all breathless. Y/N didn’t stop, though, in fact, he was far from done. Chenle surged up to hold Y/N back by his arms, try and calm him down by easing his hands around Y/N’s tightened fists, but before he could realize, Y/N pushed past him and swiped Chenle’s water bottle, its cap already flicked off and sent off into the field. They all knew exactly what Y/N was going to do.

“Y/N, please…” Chenle heard himelf practically whine. He felt powerless even as he was holding Y/N in place.

In that moment, in that field surrounded by the untameable fires of Y/N’s anger and the scattered ashes of what was left of Jeno’s ego, that’s when everything clicked in all the wrong places. Seeing Y/N like this, all Chenle could think about was how it reminded him too much of who he used to be at a time already fallen from the grace of all the lavish praise and claims to friendship and the golds and silvers of promises and success. When he’d lash out at all his fake friends when he found them out too late and cursed everyone including himself, a tangle of cries and fights in the parking lot that never lasted long enough to start; that’s what he was, that was the impression he made in skies he thought were never meant to fit him.

Chenle knew that this wasn’t how Y/N wanted to be, how he wanted to feel or what he wanted to say. The anger between all of them was almost palpable, stung to the touch, but Chenle’s felt it before. The last thing he wanted was for Y/N to feel that same merciless burn in his chest, but here he was, spitting up flames.

It was so hard for Y/N to shove aside Chenle’s pleas to step back. Deep breaths were too hard to take now, and as Y/N said: he wasn’t done.

“I told you to leave me the fuck alone, and obviously you don’t seem to get a fucking hint!”

The way Y/N’s voice warped and rippled across the sky caught the attention of one of Jeno’s teammates, one who lingered at the end of the light just a little bit longer as he saw Jeno split off from them by the door. But he finally gave in to his urges to look over to where Jeno was, his figure and two others cast in shadow as they burned themselves into the treeline and copper sky, someone being suddenly pushed down as something that vaguely resembled Y/N’s voice stretched over a rough, unrecognizable cry. 

All of his thoughts and one-sided conversations about Y/N that would always slip out from under him whenever it got too quiet, Jisung felt them seep into his bones, an instinct taking him over. He needed to protect Y/N, something was wrong, and if Jeno had anything to do with how Y/N’s voice twisted up in the sunlight, then something was going to go wrong very fast. He ran over to where the blurs in the distance were, but as he got closer, he was too late in recognizing who needed protecting.

It wasn’t Y/N.

Regardless, Jisung found himself automatically bringing his hands to Y/N’s shoulders, his touch gentle yet desperate on him.

“Y/N! Are you okay-” 

“Don’t touch me!” Y/N’s voice was hoarse and merciless and forced Jisung off of him. Only then did Jisung finally turn around, blind to his urges to keep Y/N out of harm, to see Jeno on the ground, utterly speechless, eyes weight down by the way Y/N tore into him with his words. Y/N couldn’t care about Jisung, he didn’t want to. All he cared about was Jeno, giving him what he thought Jeno deserved - his grip on Chenle’s opened water bottle tightening, nearly shattering its plastic pieces in his grip.

Chenle’s tugs and pulls and whimpers of protest were all in vain, Y/N still pulled himself closer to Jeno.

“It’s finally time for me to teach you a lesson for once.”

Y/N, with a jerk of his shoulder, poured all the water over Jeno’s head, soaking every inch of his head and shoulders. The moments in between Jeno’s sputters as he staggered backward from where he was on the ground were just silence. Silence of pure shock, the sky waiting with its breath peeled from the horizon. 

Only when Jeno did nothing but stay on the ground, dripping wet, Chenle’s water running down his face like tears, his uniform’s top sticking to his skin, his hair pressed to his head and dangling limply over the withered fires in his eyes. That’s when Y/N finally realized what he did.

Y/N dropped Chenle’s water bottle and finally gave in to Chenle’s pulls backward. He stumbled into Chenle’s arms as they held him not in restraint, but some form of comfort that the sheer force of regret that left Y/N near breathless couldn’t let him feel. All the fire Y/N felt boiling over in his throat dissipated in an instant. All the light in Y/N’s eyes stifled and words tried to bubble up, but nothing came out, a tangle’s-worth of a stutter lodged in his throat, choking him.

“I…” Y/N scrambled for something as Jeno stayed on the ground for what felt like painfully long. 

Jeno was still dealing with the shock that ran through him, ruthless and bitter and cold, the breeze shattering on his shoulders, his breath in shudders.

“I’m sorry- I… I don’t know what-”

“Shut up.” Jeno cut Y/N off, leaving yet another dreadful fissure of silence to rip the ground up beneath them. He pulled at his soaking wet collar before standing up, his voice was hoarse, breathless, all his words half-composed as if he was still grappling with the reality of the situation itself. Jeno couldn’t find anything else to say, he couldn’t find the space in his heart - hollowed out by the flames of his anger, surprise and the slightest spark of fear and sadness - to find anything else to feel. 

And maybe that was for the best.

“Just… Shut up…”

Jeno’s voice was swept up by the wind as it trickled in between him and Y/N and Chenle and Jisung who just watched him stand. With one last look into Y/N’s fearful eyes, he just turned around and walked away, his sunlit figure - dripping wet and dejected, anything that made him ‘Jeno’ laid out crumbling behind him and the dragging of his steps - disappearing into the distance and behind the gym’s door.

A stifling type of quiet consumed the remaining three who stood above the remains of Y/N’s cries and Jeno’s speechless shock and where all of Chenle’s pleas for Y/N to hold himself back fell in a heap at their feet. Their air around them felt so delicate, as if they tore through the sky as if it were skin, the sunlight bleeding and losing its colour - nobody wanted to stride through the silence. Y/N was trembling in Chenle’s arms, Chenle was doing his best to comfort Y/N despite still processing what just happened, his eyes on Jeno, and Jisung had his eyes on Y/N and all the dissipated anger and fear and sadness and confusion that was in his eyes. 

“Are you okay…?” Jisung finally said, his voice cautious and hesitant, then dying down as he saw Y/N flinch at the sound of his voice - one he probably hasn’t heard up close in the year and a half Y/N spent trying to think nothing of all the days together that used to mean so much. It took Y/N a while to feel Jisung’s words settle in, even with the faint hints of feeling that sparked at his fingertips as Chenle was still holding his hand.

Jisung fidgeted in the painful silence he sort of knew he deserved to hear, and looked up to meet not Y/N’s eyes, but Chenle’s as their stares met over Y/N’s shoulders. Chenle’s gaze took on this knowing, unkindly shine as he looked over Jisung and all the regret he could practically feel running through Jisung’s body. He had no sympathy, though, for how Jisung was holding his breath and the suffocating silence, waiting restlessly for Y/N to answer him.

Chenle’s been through the exact same thing, giving everything to someone, only for them to pay it back in silence and unread texts, and leaving them empty-handed with nothing left for themselves. Part of Chenle wanted Y/N not to answer at all; Jisung still hasn’t reached out, he hasn’t answered to Y/N’s sadness, someone who was supposed to be his best friend at one point. He knew, from how Jisung would sigh wistfully as he’d look anywhere but at the group during their lunch, that Jisung wanted to do something but he was scared, holding himself back in fear that it was too late.

But none of that mattered, Jisung’s meaningless intentions lost their gravity the moment he sought a place in Jeno’s entourage over what he candidly shared as a place at the side of ‘the best person he’s ever known’.

The moment Chenle’s eyes ignited into a glare and made Jisung flinch and shift around even more, Y/N finally spoke up.

“I’d give you an answer, but I don’t know if you’d care what it was.” Y/N looked into Jisung’s eyes and knew that Jisung already knew the answer to that. The last year and a half was more than enough of one to begin with.

“Y/N-”

“Not right now…” Y/N immediately batted away Jisung’s attempt to say something, tensing up as Jisung tried to shuffle closer and lay a hand on his shoulder. As Jisung stepped back, sadness rich and dark in his eyes, Y/N felt something tangle in his throat, it laced his voice with something that made it barely audible - a bitter mixture of guilt and regret and anger and agony, something that hurt too much to bite back the longer he looked into Jisung’s eyes. The longer he stared, the more lights in Jisung’s eyes he could see stayed the exact same - it pained Y/N to see that Jisung still managed to remind him of all the things they went through. He couldn’t scrub those memories away now, they stained him like the misgivings of a bad conscience.

Jisung left him with the scattered pieces of all the words they’ve said to each other in the violet hush of the night, all the mornings wrapped around each other on Y/N’s roof, overlooking the first bloom of colour in the sky. Now Y/N’s had to deal with the cuts he’s borne with trying to pick those pieces back up.

“But Y/N…” Jisung stopped while he was ahead. He had no reason, at least no reason that could explain all of his silence. And all of that, the emptiness in his rationale, is what made the pain in his chest burn even more as he looked at Y/N.

“I just need my space.”

And with that, Y/N turned around, Chenle following suit. All Jisung could do was watch as they turned their backs on him and made their way to the basketball courts, only slivers of the setting sun squeezing in between spaces in the house’s silhouettes. Everything Jisung wanted to say taunted him under the darkening sky, his thoughts seeming to echo in the breeze and drown themselves out in the grass beneath his feet. When Y/N and Chenle turned the corner of the school, that was when he never felt more alone. 

He finally felt what Y/N did, emptiness and desperation and longing clawed mercilessly at him. He made Y/N feel these things, he forced him to deal with holes in his stories, and tears in his memories. He was too late to mend them and stitch them back together.

Now, here he is, looking over Y/N’s scars, knowing that he turned his back on the best thing he had ever known.

*

“Hey… Y/N…?” Chenle strode through the silence that the darkening sky and the slightest peek of ivory moonlight beyond the horizon built between them. They were at the basketball courts now, sitting on one of the cement benches bolted to the ground on the court’s edge. The moonlight, as it trickled in from the blacks and violets that began to bleed into the sky, spilled over the concrete, the worn yellow paint that marked halfway lines and boundaries that were more of a suggestion than something anybody who lingered to play on the courts actually followed.

Chenle and Y/N were seated beside each other, overlooking the court and the dandelions that bloomed in the cracks of the pavement and toward the rusted cage of half-deflated basketballs. It seemed as if they were still struggling to process what happened between Y/N and Chenle and Jeno and Jisung, tension that was pulled taut between them now torn, and only sadness was left to take over where all of Y/N’s cries out into the air could still be seen at a distance. 

“I don’t know if I liked that side of you…” Despite what Chenle said, he couldn’t look Y/N in the eyes when he turned and followed Chenle’s shrivelled whimper of a voice. He took sudden interest in grinding his shoes against the worn butt of a cigarette, but the way it soundlessly crumpled under his heel brought him back to where Y/N was staring sadly, regretfully at him. Chenle didn’t know if he wanted to continue; the last thing he wanted to do was to make Y/N feel worse. He was supposed to be there to make Y/N feel better, to support him. However, he couldn’t help but think about how conflicted Y/N’s actions left him, and how it hurt so much more to see himself where Y/N stood. “I know you’ve been through so much with Jeno and Jisung-”

Chenle stopped himself as he watched Y/N practically curl in on himself, wedging his teeth into his lip and holding back the sob that would’ve rolled off his tongue like the tears that caressed his cheeks with a shimmer as they fell. Seeing them fall and not knowing if he should wipe them away, it broke Chenle’s heart to see.

“I- I’m sorry…”

“No… It’s okay. The shit I went through isn’t really an excuse.” Y/N shuffled closer to the warmth Chenle’s hesitant words seem to radiate and rested a hand on Chenle’s thigh - welcomed by Chenle’s hand smoothing over his own. There was this hope in Y/N that his touch, the withered sparks under his fingers that could still feel the water he poured over Jeno stain them like crystal clear blood, could somehow remedy what he did, what he said. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me…”

Even with all the anger Y/N held, all the resentment and fear that built up in him and burrowed under his surface with every time Jeno would pick him apart, Y/N never wanted it to boil over like this - for him to become a product of all the things that hurt him. It made him no better than those who caused him all that pain.

“It was only a matter of time, I know, they put you through hell.” Chenle focused on kneading circles into Y/N’s knuckles with his hands. “It was just kinda scary, that’s all. It’s like you became someone else.”

“I should’ve listened to you, I should’ve stopped.” Y/N tried to bring his hands up to cover his eyes, hide himself in the shame of his balled up firsts and all the marks he made in his palms whenever his nails would have dug into them, but he realized that Chenle was holding one of them. He watched as Chenle turned his hand over, tracing, delicately and cautiously, the indents Y/N left in his palms. Listening to the way Y/N’s voice twisted up in agony, stumbled over itself as Y/N tried to swallow it all behind quivering lips, Chenle felt this unbearable pain stir in his stomach and a heaviness in his throat. “I could’ve stood up for myself another way, I could’ve-”

“It’s okay, Y/N… It happened…” Meeting Y/N’s eyes, reluctantly following his tears and the drops of moonlight they carried, Chenle slid closer, holding Y/N’s hand firmly now in his own. He felt this bitterness swell up behind his words, a sob threatening to tangle up his breath, hold it captive. “Standing up for yourself doesn’t make you a terrible person, you know. I just… I was in that exact position, and I felt the things that you felt and the pain that you had to endure just saying all of those things… It was horrible seeing you go through that much pain too, that’s all…”

“I’m sorry…” Y/N said again into the night-stained air, and drew in a sharp breath that made his lungs burn with the night’s silence. All the guilt that wound up in his chest, though, began to unwind just a little as Y/N looked back at Chenle’s comforting smile - so warm and bright even after all that’s happened to him that could’ve diminished it. Arching an eyebrow with a small smile, Y/N rested back on his hands and looked over Chenle - the moonlight gracefully dancing on his skin, resting in ivory shimmers on his jacket. 

Everything from their locker-room talk was coming back to him. How close they were, the hushed sincerity of their voices, how they seemed to connect so quickly it was as if they were always so unconsciously tethered to each other.

“You know a lot more about me than you let on, Chenle…”

Chenle met Y/N’s smile with the brightening of his own, letting out a breathy chuckle as if an agonized whimper wasn’t just stuck between his teeth. “Well, I have to be observant so I don’t place my trust in the wrong people. I can’t worry about fake smiles and broken promises if I steer clear of them…” Heaving out a sigh, Chenle felt his voice begin to crumble once more, feeling a sour, eerie laugh as he opened his hand to Y/N’s feeling their fingers weave together. “The lengths I go to in order to not get hurt, and it still happens.”

Looking back on all those plastic smiles, weightless words, vapid screams of praise and worthless promises that never lasted more than a day before fleeing for the sunset; Chenle wondered how he was able to take it all, how naive he could’ve been to just wait for all of it to come around, expecting the best of them. To the crowds in hallways and clusters of self-proclaimed friends on the bleachers at his games, he was nothing but a symbol of status and affiliation, someone who was an idea, a concept rather than a person. 

“And it sucks…” Chenle could feel the tears begin to trip and trickle over his lashes, carving rivers into his cheeks, lingering by his chin before dropping onto Y/N’s hand as it held his. He scrambled to wipe them away as they trembled on Y/N’s skin, but with one, soft yet firm squeeze from Y/N to Chenle’s fingers, he stopped, gathering his breath. Y/N was here, and he wasn’t leaving him, not like everyone else. “It fucking sucks that you know exactly what that feels like… I just stood there and watched all these things happen to you, I felt everything you did. And all I could do was help you with your books and make a stupid fucking Jane Austen joke…”

“Chenle…” Y/N shook his head and brought his hands up to Chenle’s shoulders. “Just because we’re going through the same shit or feeling the same things doesn’t mean you need to take that on some sort of responsibility… You don’t deserve that…”

“But I want to be here for you, just like you’re here for me.” Before Chenle attempted to hide his tear-stained face in his hands, he could see some sort of thought behind Y/N’s eyes. It wasn’t like the reflection and contemplation that shone behind them this whole time, it assumed this brighter shine, one Chenle thought seized to exist when Jeno initially ripped them away from what was supposed to be their breath of relief.

“Then that’s fine, but you don’t owe me anything for just being a friend.” Y/N brought his delicate touch down from Chenle’s shoulders and tipped his chin up to keep their stare bound in one another’s. Y/N felt this sting in his chest as he thought about how much Chenle has given, how much he’s thrown away and how little he’s received back. It might be late for Y/N to help heal wounds, they’ve already faded below Chenle’s surface, but at least he could draw hearts around where Chenle’s needed to stitch them back up all by himself. They could be each other’s gravity, finally help each other stand upright in a world that’s knocked them down and left them confused and disoriented and heartbroken.

Y/N did his best to shake off all the weight of their sadness - he can’t let their guilt and regret eat away at them for as long as it already has these painful last couple years. This feeling, the one that stands hopelessly on the intersection between dreadful realization and immeasurable pain, they’ve grown too accustomed to weaving it in their sunlight in attempts to just deal with it. They can’t let anything stand between them and the sky anymore, what the sky used to mean - what used to mean didn’t matter; what ‘used to’ can’t be what they continue to become anymore.

A look of awe broke through Chenle’s heavy frown as he began to see the beginning of a smirk bloom on his lips. He followed Y/N’s coy gesture to the cracked concrete, and flinched at the way Y/N seemed to leap off the bench with this air of jovial glee. It was such a departure from how they both knew they were feeling, but Chenle felt himself leaving the heaviness in his heart behind as well.

“But what you do owe me is the one-on-one you promised.” Y/N said, and smiled when Chenle’s mouth hung agape. “Unless you’re afraid that I’ll completely destroy you.”

“You…? One-on-one me…?” Chenle stood in awe of Y/N’s assured tone and cocky smile and the way he pranced over to the rusted cage of basketballs and sifted through them to find one that was slightly more above-average than the others. Even as he came back, fumbling with it as he dribbled, he carried with him that made Chenle hesitate on his words with a giggle. “Are you sure about that?”

“I don’t believe I stuttered, Zhong Chenle, now let’s get this over with so we can have more time to salvage your ego.” There was a sweetness at the end of Y/N’s words as he shuffled up to Chenle - an open-mouthed smirk still lingering with his genuine surprise - and cocked his head, twisting the blade of his sarcasm into where a faint flush crept up on Chenle’s neck. “C’mon, number five, let’s go.” Y/N lifted his eyebrow, a fake sneer on his lips, and with it, Chenle’s smile only grew wider, brighter.

Chenle craned his neck to crack it, a breath trickling from his tensed jaw and crooked smile as he shrugged off his jacket, and in one, frustratingly smooth movement, he wrapped it around Y/N’s shoulders and pulled him in closer. The way the cocky glint in Y/N’s challenging smile instantly faded away, settled beneath the night and just left his widened eyes and eager grin, it made Chenle want to bring him closer, make the space between them that much more negligible for the moonlight to fit in between them. Chenle’s voice was low and quiet, and he raised a hand to run it through Y/N’s hair with a teasing smile. “You have no idea what you’re getting into, do you…?” 

“No, sir, I do not.” Y/N bounced on his heels to adjust the jacket Chenle slung over his shoulders, shoving his arms through its sleeves and already flaunting it as if it were his. He was too focused on dribbling the ball and not looking stupid in his fit of boldness to see how Chenle’s eyes lingered over him and how his jacket managed to fit Y/N so perfectly, drape down from his shoulders, catch the moonlight in the wear and shine of its leather. Y/N’s voice brought Chenle out of his trance, but only briefly, as when Y/N turned around with Chenle’s last name and jersey number on his back, Chenle found himself falling right back into it. “Now let’s get going so I can score a goal or whatever.”

“You mean a ‘basket’?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Y/N brushed off and shooed away Chenle’s laughter. “Get ready, ‘cause imma make the biggest play of your career-”

Y/N could barely get a feel of the basketball beginning to already deflate in his hands as Chenle surged up and stole the ball right out of his grip. He charged the net and flung his arms up, the ball carving an arc, settling in the sky only briefly as a dim, auburn moon, and sinking into the net. The ball fell right back into Chenle’s hands as he stood, proud and the perfect amount of conceited, under the net’s torn fringes - the ball seemed to be pulled into his effortless gravity, the same one that Y/N felt himself being drawn to as he made his way closer to take the ball back.

But Chenle wasn’t going to make it that easy.

“I’m still waiting for the play, Y/N.” Chenle kept the ball out of Y/N’s reach when he stretched himself out to reach it. And, almost comically, Chenle held Y/N at a distance with a hand to his chest, watching with glee as the most beautiful pout made its way onto Y/N’s face as he stopped his efforts and gave in to Chenle’s touch.

“Do I at least get an assist for that one?” Y/N cocked his head with an annoyed huff, smiling again when Chenle brought him closer and placed the basketball between their hands. Their hands overlapped briefly, Chenle’s touch settling in the grooves of Y/N’s knuckles as if they were always meant to fall into place. They kept each other there for what felt like a brief moment, enjoying the silence between them and how the sparks between their fingertips, running under Chenle’s hands as he slowly and tenderly traced over Y/N’s.

He let go for Y/N to take the ball, and as Y/N reluctantly drew his hands back but didn’t move back from him any farther in fear of losing this feeling that’s running between them, setting alight the sparks in their eyes and the brilliance in their sheepish smiles; they couldn’t help but feel the shadows of their touch dancing with them.

“Of course you do…”

*

No matter how little they got done, or their misshapen attempts at getting Y/N to actually play the game, they’ve already worn the night thin with their laughter, voices nearly crumbling beneath them, hanging off the tips of their tongues as moonlight settled on their backs. The indigo glare of the sky leaking into the air they breathed, silver starlight pouring from weathered seams on the horizon and pooling in the cracks of concrete that Y/N’s stumbled over - and Chenle’s caught him from; it was all just a backdrop. An elaborate set propped up around them to give colour and feeling to emotions they thought were too good to feel for this long.

Their chests burned with their laughter as they ended up playing with each other rather than against each other, tearing out rules and writing in new ones as they went to the point where Chenle didn’t even know if they were playing basketball anymore. Y/N still had Chenle’s jacket on, and Chenle was teaching him how to finally shoot the ball without needed to run out into the moon-stained fields in order to get it back - despite Chenle’s favourite feeling being when they left the field with an ivory shimmer caught on their skin whenever they would end up threatening and play-fighting with each other rather than getting the ball that sat nearly forgotten.

Chenle had his arms wrapped around Y/N as he guided his arms and the ball in his hands, and made sure to be extra patronizing just so he could see Y/N’s beautiful, moonlit pout.

“So, do you wanna try actually playing the game now?” Chenle patted Y/N’s sides before reaching out to catch the rebounding ball. He stepped back to toss it between his hands, and looked up with a grin as he saw Y/N’s face, twisted slightly in awe and mock offense of Chenle’s pestering. Y/N couldn’t stay annoyed at Chenle for long, though, with the way Chenle’s teasing smirk shone just right.

“Bitch-” Y/N pressed an accusatory finger toward Chenle, taking the ball from his hands before making his way out to the center of the court. He dribbled the ball cautiously, but still held with him this look of confidence and brashness that only made the laughter Chenle attempted to hold in wind up tighter in his chest. “Now that I know how to dribble the ball, you better fucking watch out.”

Without warning, Y/N charged up to the net to try and score, but Chenle instantly met him halfway with a smile, blocking his angles. When Y/N attempts to pivot away from Chenle’s reach, he stumbles over himself, and Chenle was too close to catch them and keep their balance. Y/N curled his arms around Chenle’s head to protect him as they fell, but they barely impact of his arms and Chenle’s back and hips and legs against the concrete as Y/N landed on top of him. They were too focused on how close they were to one another, the hair’s breadth of space that that kept their embarrassed smiles apart, Y/N’s hands on either side of Chenle, legs seizing his waist, the stillness of the moonlight as it seemed to gasp in its places above and between and around them. 

That moment where they stayed frozen crumbled beneath them when Y/N flinched back, frightened at himself and helpless as a deep flush overtook the colour in his cheeks - tortuously bright and vibrant, sunset-stained roses showing Y/N’s embarrassment even through the lilacs of the night that bloomed around them. He finally unwound his arms from where they were wrapped protectively around Chenle’s head, and he finally leaned up enough to watch the grin that spread across Chenle’s lips. The way it shone so relentlessly, it only made Y/N want to bury his flushed, burning hot face in his hands.

“I guess I really did need to watch out, huh…?” Chenle stopped Y/N before he could do that, though, taking Y/N’s hands in his own, bringing them back down to the concrete, Y/N’s palms pushing up against his, the warmth that flourished between them faded away into the night-stained coolness of the concrete. He watched the glimmers of panic rise in Y/N’s eyes, one by one, and Chenle couldn’t help but drown in them with a snicker as Y/N did nothing to move himself away. They were just laying there on the jagged, scarred surface of the asphalt, the only thing between Y/N and a concussion being Chenle and his irritatingly bright smile and teasing gaze and sarcastic voice.

Y/N wedged his teeth into his lip before he could stammer out an apology, and Chenle just looked at him silently, a smirk on his face as he untied their hands and let them amble about in the still small space between them.

“Oh my God- Chenle, I’m so sorry! I- uhm… I don’t-”

Y/N’s panic was too much for Chenle to bear, he needed to find something, anything to filter it all out - the quivering in Y/N’s hands, the fading of his words. The way Y/N’s flush ignited under the starlight, though, it just brought Chenle closer and closer as if it had its own gravity. He couldn’t help but be pulled in the only direction he’d ever want to be - closer to Y/N.

“Hey!” Chenle reached out in an effort to bring an end to Y/N’s painfully incoherent murmuring, and held Y/N by his cheeks, bringing him closer, ever closer. “You can stop now, or I’ll give you something to be sorry about.” He didn’t realize what he said until the shock in Y/N’s eyes, the way his blush burned to Chenle’s touch in the most blissful way possible, gave way to bright, coy shimmers and a smirk that made Chenle pause and read the words he left hanging in the thinning air between them.

Y/N’s hands made their way up Chenle’s chest to his shoulders and settled in the curves of his neck, and everything hung still once more - the moonlight midway through its shine, indigo petals falling from the sky, twines of silver starlight tangling up between them; bringing them closer, closer and even closer.

“Alright, then make me.”

Everything around them turned to blurs and flashes as the shine on their smirks were caught between their teeth by the entwining of their lips. Chenle’s hands wound up in Y/N’s hair as he took the back of Y/N’s head and tugged at the collar of his jacket.

They were expecting it, they wanted it, but everything that followed happened so suddenly. The feeling of sparks dripping from the corners of their lips and down their chins faded and quickly as they noticed their burns. When they pulled back and looked silently at each other, though, everything came rushing back to them with this numbing sweetness and stifled their senses, tying their gazes together before pulling them in to dive into each other’s waters once more.

It was as if they couldn’t keep away, they were constantly swept over by the way they reduced moonlight to ashes and how they wore starlight thin and painted their jaws and necks and cheeks with it.

That flash of warmth between their lips - like the breaking of dawn, the brief shine pearls in the sunlit sky - felt and tasted of horizons they had yet to see. It burned, stung and scorched them as they bit it back when Y/N pulled back once more and held his breath over Chenle’s still parted lips. They could feel something bursting through their veins, running through them with the spark of golden sunlight, soaking his skin in what felt like an endless summer that ran beneath their surface, already carved their initials into June’s skies before they slipped out from under them, dying fields they’ll dance in the colours of the intoxicating flush running under Chenle’s touch as he held Y/N’s face in their beautiful silence, inches from his lips - breath still, mouths unmoving.

Y/N was the sweetness of the wildflowers that carried on the breezes Chenle would ride on his walks by the coastline, his eyes like starlit skies and crystal waters and the pearls of morning dew or that brief moment of silence between the changes in the horizon’s colour. He was everything that reminded him of how big the world was and how much he’d need to grow if he’d ever want to accomplish those far-fetched childhood dreams and finally conquer it.

Chenle couldn’t help but melt under the light of Y/N’s bright smile, feeling its radiance between his teeth when Y/N leaned in and pressed a brilliant, gentle kiss to his lips once more. If Y/N looked this beautiful when he was happy, then Chenle wanted to make him the happiest man all the time.

“I guess you did make me…” Y/N murmured into Chenle’s parted lips, nearly collapsing into the giggle that stained the corner of his mouth. When the numbness of his senses finally burned away with the feeling of Chenle’s hands kneading into the back of his neck, every sensation before the stars between their teeth aligned came flooding back in pools of the moonlight they left in shreds around them.

Y/N didn’t notice the roughness of the concrete beneath his knees, and Chenle couldn’t feel its jagged, marred surface prodding at his back until he shifted under the weight of Y/N’s hips on his - what left him blissfully numb for this long.

“Oh crap- we literally kissed on concrete… How romantic…”

“Nothing says ‘romance’ quite like pebbles down my shirt, and your hands up my shirt at the same time.” Chenle pinched at Y/N’s reddening cheeks before taking Y/N’s hands as he clambered off of Chenle’s waist. He uttered an animated groan as Y/N helped him up. “It’s okay, Y/N,” he could see the embarrassment on Y/N’s face and tried to comfort him. Maybe he could if he held Y/N’s face again and see what follows this time… “I could barely feel it anyways.”

“Still, I’m sorry-” Y/N was cut off as Chenle grabbed him by the collar of the jacket slung around his shoulders and pulled him close. Chenle smiled as Y/N held his breath, and took all the air they kept trapped under their tongues between their lips once more. “Maybe I should say sorry more often.” The sweetness of Y/N’s eager smile as he pulled back with it plastered on his face, it was almost too much for Chenle to bear.

“Maybe… But I want us to stop being sorry for shit. We spent too long feeling sorry for the things people did to us.” Chenle playfully jostled Y/N around by his grip on Y/N’s collar, but Y/N could see this seriousness behind Chenle’s eyes.

“You’re right.” Y/N said, looking down to where the tips of their shoes touched, Y/N’s tattered sneakers creasing the front of Chenle’s pristine Jordans.

He tried to think about the truth in Chenle’s words, but the moment he settled the weight of his thoughts onto them, Chenle nudged Y/N’s chin up again and fixed their stares together. Chenle couldn’t stand one more of Y/N’s downcast gazes.

“You know what?” Y/N raised his head, scrunching his nose at Chenle’s giggle as they took a moment to soak themselves in this feeling of weightlessness - one they’ve spent so long searching for, longing for. “Something I’m not sorry for is how good I look in your jacket.”

“I’m not sorry for how amazing you look, either…”

Chenle cupped Y/N’s face again, leaning in to tie their tongues together. His endless fall into the gravity of Y/N’s smile has only just begun, but he already knows that he’ll never want to escape the clutches of Y/N’s soft touch and loving eyes and bright laughter. It stained him with all the sunsets they’ve missed looking blindly for the ones taken away from them, standing here before Y/N - Y/N standing here with Chenle - it was a promise of something new; the golden slates of evening skies wiped clean of all the times they’ve tried to fold them over, rip and tear at them, erase them and leave nothing but midday coloured smudges on their consciences.

They were finally ready to take a leap, fall from grace together and find their own wherever they landed.

It was hard for Y/N to build his words up with the way his radiant grin stretched them out and wore them down - each and every one of their kisses left him more breathless than the last. “Let’s head to my place? It’s not far of a walk…”

Y/N didn’t even need an answer, as Chenle instantly turned around after fixing his jacket over Y/N’s shoulders, and followed in the moonlight’s footsteps - already letting them be led by nothing but blind faith and dimly lit intersections.

“That sounds great…” Chenle said before just crossing the threshold between the court and the sidewalk that wrapped around the school’s border; there was some unfinished business, and it involved finally watching that ball sink into the net one last time. A victory lap with Y/N there to cheer for him. “One last shot though!”

From now on, looking into the bleachers, wondering if he could find a single shine of legitimacy among those faceless colours in the audience, were nothing but a scattered, faded memory. Y/N was here now, he was going to be front and center at every single one, he’d look into the bleachers, find the brilliant shine of his smile - letterman jacket around his shoulders - and feel the world turn in his orbit. Everything would feel right for once, the pieces that would never fit together now falling into place like the way Y/N’s laughter fell on his ears, or the way he fell so deeply for all of the things he always wanted to know about Y/N.

“THIS ONE’S FOR YOU!” Chenle screamed into the night sky, tearing it in two as he dribbled the ball a couple times, felt its rough surface under his fingers. He thought about how he’d shout that every time he’d find himself at half-court, ready to beat that timer again and again, right to where Y/N would be sitting. Swinging himself back, Chenle leapt up and lobbed the ball into the air, it’s perfect arc stilling the world on its axis like it did in those split seconds Chenle felt were made for him.

They both watched, Y/N in slight amusement, and Chenle in complete and utter horror as the ball completely missed the net. It sailed into silence, and with a blunt, echoing bounce against the concrete that was almost too painful to pay attention to, the ball rolled off into a patch of grass to lay lifelessly. It practically deflated in its own disappointment, and it left Y/N and Chenle in this shattering silence that left the stars snickering between each other with its merciless glow against the emptiness of the net, the dull shine of the ball as it laid just out of the shadows and right for Chenle to keep staring at.

“Wow…” Chenle’s voice was wrung dry of its sound. It was swiftly overtaken by Y/N’s cackling; and Chenle wasn’t even mad at it, its melody was somewhat comforting. He didn’t need to share this embarrassment alone with only the moonlight to pay witness to it. The ways Chenle is probably going to be teased for this will be endless - he won’t hear the end of it until he does something else monumentally humiliating.

“For me…?” Y/N heaved out, his squeak-like laughter and wheezes at the way Chenle’s embarrassed pout seemed to deepen only leaving his words even thinner. He curled over, rested his hands on his knees and took a sharp, rough breath in. “You shouldn’t have!”

“I’m so embarrassed…”

“I’m embarrassed for you.” Y/N struggled to control his chuckles, even as Chenle jogged up and assumed his rightful place next to Y/N and continued their walk away from the court - now with more reason than ever; to escape this hell-hole of embarrassment that Chenle graciously blessed Y/N with. “Fuck, I should’ve recorded that.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Chenle rolled his eyes and slipped his hand in the rear pocket of Y/N’s jeans. He hoped that he could get Y/N to stop laughing for even a moment as they made their way down the sidewalk and away from where that ball was - and will probably lay for whoever came to play in the morning to look at and probably double over in their own second hand embarrassment.

“I can see why you’re not on the baseball team…” Y/N’s words were left to hang in silence until he reached back and patted at Chenle’s hand, the one still wedged in Y/N’s back pocket. “You really like to skip those bases…”

Y/N snickered at the way Chenle shook his head in this mocking approval, only to tighten his grip on what he could hold from Y/N’s pocket. Chenle just pulled him closer, burying a kiss and a chuckle in Y/N’s hair.

They both looked up to the sky, and somehow, the pinpoints of ivory stars that looked as if they were weaving swathes of the night’s blue velvet together seemed to look so much brighter. They barely needed the streetlights to guide their way home, just the solace they could finally find in silence, a silence they’ve been trying to run away from. But they’ve spent so much time wasting away, wishing they had more to realize that they were just waiting for the right person to make the quiet feel like peace, and not like loneliness.

It’s been a while since Y/N could be lonely together with someone, since he could sign his name in the byline of his skies without flinching at the space that the horizon had left to fill. However, with Chenle’s hand in his, he’s finally sure that he could take his time in writing in the rest - there was a name next to his, now, that was never going to leave. 

[sundaysundaes]

Craving

Lee Donghyuck/Haechan X Reader | Vampire AU, Roommates AU | Smut, Fluff, Humor, Romance

Summary: Dating a brat is exhausting. Dating a bratty vampire is even more exhausting so you wonder, why did I even agree to this?

It’s a continuation of Love Bites but can be read separately because it’s really just 12k long of vampire porn with no real plot.

Warnings: Vampire sex, bondage, oral sex (69), overstimulation, unprotected sex, fingering, implied public sex, a little bit of dom!hyuck and a little bit of exhibitionist!hyuck, blood sucking (plenty of that) 

Not once in your life did you ever imagine yourself dating a vampire. And certainly, never thought about living together with that so-called vampire boyfriend of yours. You never know what to expect from a situation like this but maybe it’s better not to think too much about it anyway since Lee Donghyuck always manages to exceed your expectation.

Before you became his personal midnight snack, Donghyuck had to search for his own food which either meant he had to buy blood bags from the cheapest hospital around or pick up girls with low self-esteems downtown to have kinky and messy—like really messy, blood everywhere, you don’t want to imagine—one night stands with them to fulfill both his needs for blood and sex. He often complained about it, grumbling with his lips turning into this adorable pout as he told you how he wasn’t fond of his way of life or the effort he had to make just to survive.

So now that he has you as his personal walking blood bag, Donghyuck is having the time of his life and he’s enjoying every minute of it. He’s one hundred percent happy all the time that it annoys the heck out of you. It’s not that you don’t want him to be happy��of course, you want your boyfriend to be happy—but happy Donghyuck means he’s gonna get all clingy and playful, and him being clingy and playful means hell.

“Hyuck.”

“Yes, baby?”

“I’m trying to do my laundry.”

“I’m aware.”

“So, can you get off of me for a second, please?”

“For a second? Sure.” He untangles himself away from you but only for a second, literally. “Second’s up!” The way he giggles is almost like a child, circling his arms along your waist and buries his face in the crook of your neck again, nuzzling up to you while chanting, “Cute, cute, cute, you’re so cute. The cutest girl in the whole universe!” 

Donghyuck is clingy as fuck. He can’t go through the whole ten minutes without, at least, ruffling your hair, poking your cheek, or pinching the bridge of your nose. You’ve known for a while that he’s fond of skinship more than anyone you’ve ever met and it was bearable before since he only did it when he was flirting with you. But ever since you’ve become official, he just literally couldn’t get his hands off you.

So, how on earth would you get any of your work done?

The second the sun sinks below the horizon, Donghyuck will come out of his room with the biggest smile on his face and his arms spread wide, “Baby, I’m awake! Come here and get your daily dose of Hyuck’s loving!” And if you don’t respond to him in the way he wants to—which is by embracing him and kissing him for a good half an hour or so—he will make sure you won’t be able to pay attention to anything else but him for the rest of the evening.

He follows you around like a puppy, humming the same Michael Jackson’s song over and over again as he waits for you to finish washing the dishes, his feet tapping against the floor to match the beats in his head.

“Don’t you have something else to do besides waiting for me?” You ask, scrubbing the rest of the barbecue sauce off your plate. 

“I do have something to do.” And he suddenly pops up behind you, blowing air to your ear. “You.”

And you raise your silver spoon in the air, forcing him to run to the other side of the room, whining, “Baby, that’s not fair!”

Whenever you’re busy reading a book, Donghyuck will snuggle close and insist for you to sit on his lap. You’re not complaining in the slightest because it does feel nice and he rarely does anything weird since he also enjoys spending his time watching tv with his chin placed on the top of your head and his arms circled idly around your waist. It’s you who tends to get distracted with the way his chest is pressing against your spine, his laugh reverberating straight to your skin whenever something funny is playing on the screen. And when you get distracted, your heart races, and when he hears your heartbeat increasing, he chuckles lowly, leaning in to nibble at your earlobe while whispering, “If you’re horny, you can just tell me, baby.”

And you smack him in the head with your book.

Today is a bit different. Today, you have dedicated yourself to switch your role and be the one who teases the hell out of him instead. But since he’s too sly, always a step ahead of you whenever you make a plan to humiliate him, there’s only one way you can win this game: ignoring him.

So that’s what you intend to do. When the night takes over and Donghyuck comes out from his room with a bird’s nest on his head and a cheeky grin on his face, saying, “Baby, I’m awake and I’m ready to hear how much you’ve missed me during the day,” you just sit there on the couch, flipping another page of your novel. “Hey, Hyuck,” you simply greet him.

“Hey, Hyuck?” He repeats, appalled and disgusted with the way you said it. “What kind of treatment is that? Is it that time of the month already?” He takes a whiff of the air. “No, it’s not. I can smell it.”

“For the sake of our relationship, please refrain yourself from smelling my scent to know my menstruation cycle in the future, thank you.”

“How? You want me to stop breathing?” He laughs to himself. “Just kidding. You know I don’t breathe.”

You want to roll your eyes and bury your face in your hands—ashamed of the things he said—but you realize that you have to play it cool and give him the cold shoulder.

Placing hands on his hips, he questions with a huff, “So I’m not getting any hug around here?” 

“I’ll be with you in a moment.” 

You move away from the living room, doing literally anything else but giving him what he asks for. Donghyuck sighs and follows you too, as expected, leaning his back against the kitchen counter as he waits for you to finish making yourself a cup of coffee.

“Did I do something that upset you?” He asks, scratching his cheek.

“No, of course not.” You smile, giving him a squeeze on his arm. But then you walk away, leaving him confused and bitter.

Ignoring him is both fun and hilarious because you can see him stealing glances at you even when he tries to act cool about it. He tries to distract himself by playing video games but he keeps on losing so he presses his fingers a little too hard to the controller, nearly breaking it in half.

“Careful,” you warn. “I borrowed that thing.”

“Whatever.” He throws the controller away, scoffing. “It’s stupid anyway.”

To know that his happy self can be reduced to this grumbling mess just because you’re ignoring him makes you feel elated and you wonder, am I a sadist for enjoying this so much?

Hours have passed and you still won’t give in to him, which is really something because he’s doing things that almost make you crawl back to his lap. Donghyuck knows how hot he is, knows how his eyebrow raise and half-lidded eyes do wonders to your heart and mind. So it’s not a surprise when he walks out of the bathroom with his wet hair pushed back, showcasing his temple and his perfect eyebrows. Droplets of water are sliding down from his bare chest to his v-lines, with his white towel hanging dangerously low on his hips. He doesn’t head back to his room right away, and instead, takes a seat on the coffee table, right in front of you.

“Babe.”

You promise yourself inwardly that you will not take a fucking glance at him when he’s like this. “Hmm?”

“I know you’re trying your best to ignore me but your heart is beating like crazy.” He’s raising his eyebrow. You know it. You’re not seeing it but you know it. “Isn’t it time for you to give up your stupid little prank and make-out with me already?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” This time, you open your MacBook, busying yourself with typing words on your keyboards.

Donghyuck walks over—still in his fucking towel and nothing more, for God’s sake—and leans closer from behind the couch. He looks over your shoulder as you browse the internet to find something to distract your thoughts. He snorts loudly when he sees the article you’re reading.

“Chalamet?” He jeers. “Who’s Timothee Chalamet? What kind of name is Timothee Chalamet?”

“He’s an Oscar nominee and he’s barely twenty-five. He’s cute.”

“So? I’m cuter than Timothee Chalamet. Way more beautiful too. Just FYI, they invented the term ‘beautiful’ to describe me actually. Happened a long time ago. It’s a fact.”

“That’s great,” you blankly respond, typing another name of a celebrity on the search bar. “I know there’s another term they invented for you.”

“What, ethereal?”

“Cocky-Ass Bitch.”

He gasps and he’s not even breathing.

And when you keep denying his protest, he pushes your MacBook away from your lap and tackles you down to the couch.

“I can’t believe you’re looking at some other dude when you have me paying you full attention,” he says, wetting his lower lip as he peers into your eyes, his body hovering dangerously close above yours. His eyes are gleaming with both desire and affection which still makes the knot in your stomach tighten to this day but you’re a tad better at controlling your expression this time. A droplet of water drops from the tip of his hair to your cheek.

Wiping it off with a slide of your thumb, you comment, “You’re wet.”

“So are you, ever since you’ve met me.” He winces at his words when a few seconds pass by in silence. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

You tap his cheek. “As long as you’ve learned your lesson.”

He pouts as he heads back to the main topic. “Your prank is going too far, Sweetheart.”

“What prank? I don’t do pranks, Hyuck. I’m not you.”

“So, why have you been ignoring me then?”

“Is it really that weird for me to just have some time for myself?”

“Well—I—” It’s the first time he ever seems lost for words. “I just—”

“What, are you thirsty?” You flatly ask, telling yourself to not let your eyes wander to the muscles in his arms and stomach. “Don’t tell me you want to drink again. It’s only been a day, Hyuck.”

“It’s not that!” He whines, pouting with his eyebrows knitting in a frown. “Can’t I snuggle with my girlfriend?”

“That’s literally what you’ve been doing all this time.”

“Yes, but you haven’t been focusing on me properly!” He sighs loudly, letting you go, and throws himself down on the other end of the couch with a loud huff. “You know what, I think we really should talk about this.”

“Talk about what?”

“About how you’re not really cute these days!” He blurts out, hands moving animatedly as he speaks. “You used to be all fidgety and shy, blushing all the time whenever you see me—”

“In your head, maybe. I don’t recall ever doing that.”

“See, this!” He throws his hands in the air, exasperated. “This is what I’m talking about. You’re mean to me now! Not cute at all!”

“Is this our first fight?” You ask, yawning a little which makes your boyfriend gapes in disbelief. “Are we really fighting over the fact I’m not cute anymore? Seriously?” But when he becomes more upset, you break out in a grin. “I’m just messing with you.” Still laying down on the couch, you tug at his hand. “Come here.”

He crosses his arms on his chest. “No.”

“You don’t want your daily dose of my sweet, sweet loving?”

He shakes his head, his lower lip protruding. “Why should I be the one who needs to crawl over to you? This is your fault. You come here.”

You exhale loudly but on the inside, you can’t help but squeal he’s so fucking cute.

You’re not usually aggressive during make-out sessions—well, at least not with Donghyuck anyway. With Mark, you had to take a lead or else you’d just end up watching TV until you both pass out on the couch. But you decide to step up your game today because just as much as he likes to tease you, you also like to tease him.

“Fine,” you say, crawling over to the other side of the couch and settle yourself on his lap. You lay your hand on his shoulders, massaging the tense muscles. “Better?”

Donghyuck is still glowering at you in response so you decide to take a step further. “You look so hot without your clothes on,” you praise him, thanking God that your voice doesn’t stutter. Your fingertips draw a line from his Adam’s apple down to his chest. “But I guess you already know that seeing how many times you’re doing this on purpose.”

He scoffs, swatting your hand away before he crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Don’t touch me. I’m still pissed at you.”

You chuckle. “Ah, so no Hyuck’s loving for me tonight?”

“No Hyuck’s loving for the whole week.”

“You sure about that?” Toying with the buttons of your shirt, you wiggle your eyebrows seductively at him.

He hears the sound of your button being popped open but gives his best effort to keep his eyes away. “What are you doing?”

“Undressing myself.”

“Why?”

“Because my cute vampire boyfriend is upset,” you pause to stand on your knees, tugging the rest of your shirt out from your skirt before you discard it to the floor. “And I know this would please him.”

He instinctively turns to you, his nose almost grazing your bare stomach before he quickly looks away again, albeit tempted to suck bruises on the supple skin. Donghyuck’s eyes move to stare at the ceiling, gulping at the sound of you pulling down the zipper on your skirt to loosen the fabric before you push it up to your hips, giving him the chance to stare at your thighs when he wants.

“Hyuck,” you move your hips slightly, giving him enough friction to entice his mind. “Baby.”

Donghyuck tries his very best to avert his gaze to anything else besides the part that connects you to him. “No,” he repeats, clenching his jaw.

“But Hyuck…” You realize you’re practically moaning his name now and it’s both embarrassing and exciting that you can play the role of a seductress and having that kind of effect on him. Hooking a finger around your bra strap, you pull it down, exposing the joints between your neck and your shoulder. “Don’t you want me?”

He suddenly whines loudly, throwing his head back with his teeth gritting against one another as he murmurs “You’re unbelievable,” bitterly into the air but you can hear his confidence wavering. It only takes another grind of your hips against him before he snaps. 

You’re suddenly thrown back to his bed before you know it. He was moving too fast for your eyes to process that you could only felt being carried for a split second before you have your back pressed against the sheets.

He’s hovering on top of you, your hips trapped between his knees. “You do realize,” he begins, “That I never just look at you as an object of sexual desire, right? You’re more than that to me.” He bends down, one hand curling against the front of your neck, his thumb tracing your beating vein. “Way, way more than that.”

His sincerity and serious demeanor catch you off guard. “Yeah, also as someone to fill your midnight cravings.”

“Of course not—”

“I’m kidding, I know.” Your playful gaze is replaced with a tender one. “But you always react like this whenever I tempt you that way so I couldn’t help but tease.”

He scrunches up his nose. “You’re not cute.” But the way he slots his mouth against yours speak nothing but praise and adoration. “You’re not cute at all.”

Surprisingly, Donghyuck is gentler after your first sexual encounter with him. Maybe it’s because he feels sorry for sucking too much blood and went a little rough when it was your first time on everything. You always try to convince him that it’s fine and it doesn’t hurt at all during the time you have sex with him—because the chemicals in his saliva triggered an endorphin rush, pumping pleasure all over your body—but seeing how you could barely walk on the next morning, Donghyuck decides to restrain himself.

You still remember the second time he decided to take a step further, about two weeks after your first intimate session with him. Donghyuck was at his very best behavior that night—making you dinner, listening to you complaining about your work, and swaying his body with you to the soft music he played in the background. Being in such close proximity, you couldn’t help but wonder why he never laid a hand on you again. He did drink from you, once every two days, but he always acted so rigid, so jittery when he held you to his chest, drinking from the side of your neck. You were awkward too, not sure how to place your hands or say something to break the tension. You could hear him swallowing, once, twice, taking a big gulp each time and you could feel yourself drowning in refined pleasure, losing track of the world from his bite.

Speaking of that, you notice one thing. This endorphin rush you feel every time he sinks his teeth into your skin also affects your sexual desire. You didn’t realize that before because you were having sex the first time he bit you. You finally understand why those slutty girls he brought home loved having their blood sucked by vampires. Sex with a vampire itself is transcendent, so having your blood sucked during sex? A dangerous, erotic, and lovely bliss.

But Donghyuck never touched you that way, that was the problem. Every time he finished drinking, he’d retract his fangs back, making you whimper at the loss of his effects on you and leaving you dizzy with blood loss. He’d wipe his mouth clean, tilt your face to check on your condition—which you always responded with a goofy smile as you reeled on the lingering sensation of his bite—and say, “I’m sorry that you had to do this for me. I’ll carry you back to your room. Hold on to me.” And you’d allow him to do just that, secretly hoping that he would join you in bed but he never did. 

Was the sex not good? Were you too loud? Too whiny? Too docile? Were you too shy? Does he prefer his partner to take control in bed? Be more aggressive? These questions ran back-and-forth in your mind to the point that you began to have trouble sleeping.

So when two weeks had passed after that bathroom incident and nothing happened, you decided to bring the matter down to the table. You were craving for his touch, even more so when he looked so fucking good with his hair slightly pushed back, his shirt doing nothing at hiding the muscles in his arms, his face hovering just a few inches away from yours as he led you close in a slow dance. You just needed to ask before you went crazy.

“Why won’t you touch me?”

Donghyuck blinked. “What?”

“Why won’t you touch me?” You repeated, heat rising to your cheeks. “After that night in the bathroom, you never… made a move on me.”

That question should’ve triggered something sinful coming from his mouth, probably like, “Oh, so you want me to touch you? Enlighten me, Sweetheart, just how much do you want me? Where do you exactly want me to touch you?”

But Donghyuck actually just stood in silence with conflicted eyes. You had to call his name to force him to speak. “I don’t want to hurt you again.”

“You won’t hurt me—”

“No, you don’t understand.” He cupped the side of your face, thumb rubbing soothingly against your cheekbone. “Drinking your blood already makes me want to do crazy things to you. You’re so alluring, so…” He wetted his lip, his eyes going down to take in the shape of your mouth. “Intoxicating.” He moved his thumb to trace the smoothness of your lips. “I’m just afraid that I won’t be able to control myself when we take a step further than this. I don’t want to hurt you again like I did the first time.”

It’s funny how he mentioned the word intoxicating because that was how exactly you perceived him. His whole being was intoxicating, turning every sound in the room into a whisper, every bit of your surroundings into a blur. The world did not matter when you were with him, as it solely revolved around him.

So you yanked him down by the collar of his shirt, slotted your mouth against his, lips parting to taste a hint of the coppery flavor of your blood on his tongue. Donghyuck instinctively reacted by enclosing his arms along your waist, pulling you close until you breathed heavily against his mouth. He was a man of passion, burning like the sun, lips scorching as he met yours in a searing kiss.

He tried to break away, holding your wrist in the air. “Wait, stop—”

“I have an idea,” you immediately said, kissing him once again just because you couldn’t hold yourself away from the temptation. “I have an idea we can try, so—” Another kiss, but he was the one who initiated it this time. He pushed you against the wall, gentle but dominating, his knee slipping between your legs, pushing up the fabric of your dress. You moaned against his mouth, fingers fisting against his shirt, desperate for support. He slid both hands down your thighs, silky smooth against your skin, and lifted your legs in the air, forcing you to tangle them around his waist to maintain stability.

“Fuck,” you cursed under your breath, reeling in the way he peppered kisses from your jawline down to your neck, tongue lapping at a speck of dry blood on your marked skin. “Let’s go—ah—let’s go to your room—Hyuck—”

He was busy having his hand under your shirt, splaying his fingers on your stomach before they found their way up to your breast, but he heard your order. He carried you back to his room, lips never leaving yours and you found yourself pressed against the sheet the next time you blinked your eyes. 

“Those handcuffs,” you gasped out between his smothering kisses. “Those handcuffs of yours that you keep in your closet. Use them.”

Donghyuck abruptly stopped, tugged himself away. “What?”

You were breathless and lightheaded, chest heaving up and down. “It upsets me to say this,” you confessed, “But I remember that time when we haven’t started dating, I found a pair of handcuffs in your closet and—”

“You went into my closet?”

“To clean your stuff. You had your clothes scattered all over the place so I had to fold them up and when I was about to put them back in, I saw them. I thought it was probably one of your kinks so I just shrugged it off. You honestly didn’t realize how clean and organized your closet was that day?”

“Well, I was never messy to begin with.”

“That’s bullshit and we both know it.”

He pouted, sighing. “Right, so you knew about my bondage kink. You’re telling me you want us to use it?” He gave you a look. “You had sex one time and you’ve already found yourself a kink? Seems like I underestimated your sexual curiosity, woman.”

“It’s not that.” You rolled your eyes. All of this rambling did not fuel your arousal, at all. “I want you to wear it.”

Donghyuck actually looked disgusted. “I like to tie my women, not being tied up, thank you very much.”

“You said you were scared of losing control, right? If you’re tied up, you won’t be able to hurt me.”

He snorted. “A cheap handcuff like that won’t be able to hold me down, Sweetheart.”

“But at least it serves as a reminder.” You laid your hand on his chest, drawing lines on the cold skin. “I mean, I’m fine whether you wear it or not. I just want to be with you.” You pulled him down into an innocent hug, but the way you were grinding your hips against him was anything but that. “But if you feel this,” you palmed his length through his jeans, forcing him to emit a groan from the back of his throat, “can make you lose control then maybe we should try my idea. I don’t want us to stop, Hyuck, and I don’t care if you break me.” You leaned in to bury your face in the juncture of his neck, whispering, “I just want to feel you inside me again.”

“Fuck.” He groaned loudly against your shoulder, fingers twisting against the sheet. “Okay, where’s that fucking handcuff—” The way he tumbled down the bed—a century-old vampire tumbling down the bed—makes you giggle, even more so when he frantically rummages his closet, throwing clothes here and there, muttering, “where is it, where is it, come on, come on, come on, where’s that fucking thing,” to himself, until he finally hooked his fingers around a pair of handcuffs, shouting, “YES, I FOUND THEM,” to the air. 

He hurriedly went back to the bed, looking breathless when he wasn’t even breathing, and crawled on top of you again. He chased after your lips and your laughter soon reduced back into gasps and moans before he finally broke away, asking, “Okay, tie me up. Hurry.” You’d think that being alive for more than a century would’ve taught him some self-control, but Donghyuck was eager and desperate, way more than you were.

He flipped your body before you could prepare yourself so you yelped in surprise, landing on his chest as he laid himself down on the bed, his head nearly knocking against the headboard. He offered you his wrists, saying, “I’m all yours, Sweetheart.” And you gulped hard, heartbeat blasting through the roof, heat rising to your cheeks. 

The handcuffs were made of steel, cold to the touch and you secretly thanked the Lord that they weren’t one of those furry ones you saw in porn movies. You were secretly drooling at the sight of your usually dominating boyfriend lying helplessly on the bed, waiting for you to take the lead; his broad chest displayed under your hands, with you straddling him by the hips. His shirt was slightly pushed up, showcasing his v-lines and his navel that usually stayed hidden underneath. You followed his happy trail, disappointed when it disappeared behind the hem of his jeans.

“Stop being so blatant about it.” His voice was velvety, thick with seduction. “You’re gonna make me blush.”

“I—I wasn’t staring.”

“Never said you were.”

It was annoying how easily he could make you feel all hot and flustered. “S-shouldn’t you take off your shirt first?”

He held back a smile. “I can fuck you just fine with my shirt on but sure, I’ll take it off.” There was something in the way he grabbed the back of his shirt before he pulled it over his head that made you blush, averting your gaze but managed to sneak a peek at the way the muscles on his abs were contracting under the movement.

“Baby?” He snatched you back to reality when a few seconds had passed in silence. “If you don’t tie me up now, I’m gonna tie you up and have my way with you.”

You blushed. That… actually doesn’t sound so bad. You shook your head. That can wait. With shaky fingers, you place one of the handcuffs around his wrist and tied the other one to his headboard. He tried to yank his hand free, testing the strength of it. “I can break this in a split second,” he commented, “But I guess it does work as a reminder.”

“Do you have another pair that I can use to tie your other hand?”

“Leave my other hand free,” he demanded, eyes gleaming as he gazed at you. “I want to touch you.”

You breathed heavily. “O-okay.”

“So,” he smiled, awkward and amused. “We’re doing this?”

You bit your lip, slowly nodding. “W-we’re doing this.”

“Aaw, nervous?” His laughter sounded light in your ears. “How cute.”

“Shut up.”

“Then, come here,” he invited, gesturing you to come close with one hand. “Kiss me.”

You didn’t waste a second longer. 

His kiss was slower this time, almost shy as if it was the first kiss you shared with him and it somehow made your heart beat even faster. You could hear him chuckling against your mouth, probably noticing your heart rate and you slapped his chest playfully to stop him from hearing things he wasn’t supposed to.

“Ah, you’re cute, so cute,” he kept saying, tracing his tongue along your lower lip, begging for entrance. His kisses gradually became deeper, harder, and his muffled laughter was replaced with soft groans. His praise was reduced to your name and you sighed in pleasure when you felt his lips moving down your neck, grazing your beating vein.

The position felt a bit awkward but possibly because you had never done it with him before. You were lying on top of him, your body pressed hotly against his chest and although he was already half-naked, you were still fully clothed. You weren’t sure whether you should undress yourself or let him do the work, but could he do it with one hand?

You remembered the time when he ripped your camisole and bra at the same time with only his fingers.

Yes. Yes, he could.

But Donghyuck seemed to be aware of what you were thinking because he ordered you to, “Take your clothes off.”

“I’m—” Flabbergasted, you pulled away, sitting straight on his stomach. “C-can’t you just take them off for me?”

You could tell he was trying to hold back another smirk from breaking upon his face. “But baby,” he cooed, raising his free hand in the air. “I only have one hand.”

“You practically ripped my undergarments with one finger before.”

“Did I?” His smirk grew prominent. “I forgot.”

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“What, being straddled by my girlfriend as she tries to undress herself while I’m being tied up to the bed?” He shrugged nonchalantly. “Meh, it’s not bad.”

“Why you little—”

Donghyuck’s laughter was contagious when you tickled him on the sides of his stomach that you ended up smiling at him too but it soon faltered when he curled his fingers around your locks, bringing your head down to smash his lips against yours until they were red and bruised. You became nervous once again when he tugged on your shirt, silently ordering you to take it off.

“Okay,” you said, sitting on his stomach, fingers trembling slightly as they were fiddling around the top of your dress. “Can you… look away, please?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re making me nervous.”

“Baby,” he tittered, “Just in case you weren’t aware of this. Being your boyfriend means that I’m allowed to enjoy the sight of my girlfriend taking her clothes off.”

“M-maybe later in the future. Can you just look away now?” When he was still adamant about it, you added, “Please?”

He sighed. “Fine, but in the future don’t blame me if I ask you to strip-tease to make up for this.” He closed his eyes, lips pouting. “Also, this is the only time I’ll allow this to happen.”

“Two weeks in our relationship and you’re already ordering me around.”

“It’s not—” He groaned loudly, opening his eyes again to make sure you knew that he was glaring. “It’s not that. I just really want to look. There’s something sexy about girls taking their clothes off.”

“Girls?”

“I mean, you, baby. Only you.”

You gave him a flat look. “Whatever. Close your eyes.”

He jutted out his bottom lip but followed your command, while quietly repeating your line, “Two weeks in our relationship and you’re already ordering me around.”

“I heard that.”

“I heard that,” he mocked and you flicked him on his Adam’s apple until he whined.

Dating a brat was exhausting. Dating a bratty vampire was even more exhausting, but Donghyuck could also be charming and mature when he needed to be so you forgave him for that.

Seeing how he kept his eyes closed, you reached the end of your dress and pulled it off your head in one try. Strands of your hair were caught in the zipper, tugging at your scalp when you tried to unravel them in a hurry. Clicking your tongue in annoyance, you gave better effort to disentangled them with more patience.

“Need a hand, Sweetheart?”

You jolted, a squeak fell off your mouth. When you turned around to see him, your boyfriend was staring at you with a bratty grin on his face.

“Hey!” Flushed, you slapped him on the chest. “I didn’t tell you to look.”

“You told me not to look when you took your clothes off. You didn’t say anything about me staring at my cute girlfriend having the biggest crisis of her life.” His little laughter was just as annoying as it was charming. “Come here, I’ll help you.”

Your pride wouldn’t let you but you had spent minutes trying to break free from your stupid dress with no satisfying result so, with a heavy heart and a prominent scowl on your face, you bent down, leaning close to him until he could let his hand roam along your locks.

“This is so stupid,” you grumbled.

“I think it’s cute,” he chuckled, carefully unwinding the strands from your zipper. “This is the cutest you’ve ever been to me.”

You blushed slightly. Trying to avert your attention away, you began to focus on the sight in front of you. Pressed against his chest, your face was almost buried in the crook of his neck. You took the chance to press soft kisses on the cold skin, running your fingertips down from his collarbone to his navel. 

“There, done,” he said, tossing the dress away without a care. He sounded a bit breathily when your teeth grazed against his neck. “Let’s not waste any more time. Come here, I need you.” The way he tugged you toward him by your elbow was firm but not forceful. And no matter how much you had kissed him already, he still loved the way you moved your lips against his and never wanted it to stop.

Being on top of him didn’t necessarily mean you were in control. Even with one hand tied, Donghyuck knew how to lead, whispering guidance here and there, sometimes in the way that made you blush from how specific his orders were. Before you knew it, you were both fully naked, with you sitting on his thighs, stroking at his length as directed.

Donghyuck shivered under your touch, his eyes half-lidded in pleasure. “You—” He had to nip on his bottom lip to contain his groan when you swiped your thumb along his slit. “You don’t happen to have any lube with you, do you?”

You were so captivated by the way he looked, all needy under your fingers, that he had to call you by your name to gather your focus back to his question. “Oh, n-no. Why?” You stroked him faster, curling your fingers a little bit tighter around his length.

Donghyuck threw his head back, eyebrows adjoined in the middle. “Fuck,” he hissed, eyes glazed and when they peered back into yours, they were glowing brightly in topaz—almost golden, and brighter from the dim lighting of his room. “Well then,” he heaved, wetting his lip. “I guess, we’ll do it the old school way. Turn your body around for me.”

“What?”

“I want to be romantic and use pretty words, but desperate times need desperate measures so get your ass over here,” he gestured with his hand for you to come over to his face, “and your face over there.”

Steam practically came out of your ears from how ashamed you were. “What?!”

“I need to make you wet and you need to coat my dick with saliva so it won’t hurt when I get inside you.”

He wasn’t joking when he said he wasn’t going to be romantic about it. How the fuck can he say something like that so easily?! “I—I can’t,” you were practically wheezing, “It’s too embarrassing—I—”

“If you don’t want to suck my dick, you can just spit on your hand and—”

“I’m more worried about sitting on your face—”

“Oh, no need to worry about that.” He gave you a reassuring smile which somehow upsets you even more. “It’s actually something I’ve been imagining to happen—”

“Oh my God—”

“Would you stop freaking-out and listen to me, please?” He was laughing and you were having a seizure. “Babe, relax. Trust me, it will feel good.”

You had no doubts about that but still, it didn’t suddenly make it easy for you to just naturally sit on his face. But to be honest, the thought of it was as exciting as it was embarrassing and with Donghyuck being relaxed about it—not making this into such a big deal, unlike how Mark reacted when anything sexual occurred—you couldn’t help but succumb to your own curiosity.

“Okay,” you pressed a hand against your chest. “Just let me calm myself down a little.”

He suppressed a smile. “You’re having a crisis again?”

“Shut up.”

No matter how much you tried to compose yourself, you couldn’t. You became even more nervous, and you thought that wasn’t possible. The naughty twinkle in Donghyuck’s eyes gradually turned tender and he reached out a hand. “Here, let me help you relax.” 

You let him take hold of your wrist, bringing it to his face. He kissed your inner palm before he dragged his lips down to your wrist, his eyes peering into yours as he did it. You could feel his lips turning into a faint smile as they grazed your skin but on the next second, he bared his teeth, extended his fangs, and punctured your skin with them.

“Hyuck—” You yelped from the pain but soon began to lose yourself to the ecstasy of his bite. You could feel all the knots in your body started to loosen one-by-one, your mind becoming hazy with bliss. 

Donghyuck didn’t sink his teeth too deep and didn’t drink too much, only a gulp and nothing more even when his eyes were glowing bright, gravely needing another taste of your blood. He lapped at the wound, kissing the bite mark he made on your skin. “How do you feel?”

“I’m…” Your eyes began to droop, blinking slowly. “Great…. I feel great…”

He chuckled at your words. “That’s good to hear,” he said, “Now turn around and lower yourself on my face.”

You could barely hear him but you got the picture. As if hypnotized, you felt your body moved even before you could finish your thought. Donghyuck’s free hand was placed on the inner part of your thigh as you hovered above his head, spreading your legs apart. “Come down here, Sweetheart, I don’t bite.” You couldn’t see his face but you could tell he was smirking, and if you weren’t this intoxicated, you would’ve smacked him with the nearest pillow over his poor choice of words. But the effects of his bite and the rush of endorphin that were still coursing through your veins made you follow his commands without further question.

You were balancing yourself with your hands on his stomach as he ran his tongue along your folds, tasting you just a little bit but you already shivered at the sensation. “Hyuck…”

He hummed in response, sounding like he was having the time of his life, pushing your thigh further apart so you could lower yourself more, his tongue dipping into your heat this time.

You were going insane, you could feel it. Breathing heavily, you decided to focus on a task at hand. You curled your fingers around his length, thumb brushing against the slit again because you knew how much he liked it before, and you could feel him moan before you could hear him.

You gave a tentative lick on the head, kissing his tip before running your tongue along the vein. Your fingers were stroking the area your tongue didn’t cover and you could hear him purring in content. After a brief second of self-preparation, you parted your lips and tried to go down on him in one try. Donghyuck threw his head back against the sheet, groaning loudly between a train of expletives, so sexy and obscene. 

Hearing his moans encouraged you to do better so you tried to swallow him whole again. You could feel his tip hitting the back of your throat, making you tear up a little bit from the discomfort but you hollowed your cheeks and swallowed around him.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Donghyuck swore, his grip around your thigh grew tighter that it made you flinch but you continued with your ministration, bringing your hand into the game this time. It was so exciting, the sensation of having him dissolve into a groaning mess under your touch so you stroked him faster, sucked him harder, and continued even when he was practically whimpering in ecstasy.

As an act of revenge, Donghyuck licked his way deep into you with his free hand pumping a finger inside you and adding another one soon after. When you moaned around him, it urged him to go faster, his digits were now scissoring inside of you.

You were practically crying by the time he told you to stop, urging you to turn around to face him because “I want to see your face when you come.” You positioned yourself on top of his length, cheeks bright red from all the passion and lust you have swirling inside your chest, and slowly sank yourself down.

Donghyuck’s handcuff was rattling against the headboard as he reeled in the sensation. His fangs were extended once again, his eyes glowing almost dangerously as he gazed at you from behind his bangs. “Fuck, you’re so—“ he hissed, his eyes going down to the part where you were connected to him. “How can you be so sexy without trying—”

The way he twitched inside of you made you quiver, and you tumbled down to his chest, your face closing in on him. He met you halfway when you sent him a signal to kiss you, smothering you with his lips, wet with tongues and painted with both desperation and urgency.

“Move,” he ordered, his voice suddenly turning low and perilous. “Baby, move for me, please.”

You granted his wish, wincing at the feeling of him growing larger inside you. The friction still burned so you tried to muffle your cry with his kisses, but after a few shallow thrusts, you could finally feel yourself relaxing, adjusting to his length.

“Faster,” he urged, unconsciously tried to hold your hips with both hands and groaned loudly when his handcuff pulled his hand back to the headboard. “Dammit. Baby, please, move faster.”

“Be patient,” you said between small gasps. Your nails were almost sinking to his chest. “It’s only my second time, Hyuck. Let me do it at my own pace.”

He initially groaned in protest, eyes tightly shut with his eyebrows furrowed but when he managed to collect himself, he apologized, "You're right, I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm so hasty, you just make me feel so—" His jaw hung low when he felt you move, and by the time you began to clench your walls around him, he took his bottom lip between his teeth, leaning his head back against the headboard, relishing the moment.

As you steadied yourself with your hands on his chest, grinding your hips against him, you admired the details of his profile—his sultry half-lidded eyes, his plump lips, his cute front teeth that peeked out when he parted his lips in a silent moan, the tiny moles on his jaw and neck. He was both handsome and cute, and you were lucky—so damn lucky—to be able to witness these details with your own eyes.

“Fuck, I can’t—“ His voice startled you, snapping you out from your reverie. “I can’t do it like this. I’m gonna go crazy. Can you get off for a second?”

You were frowning but his urgency made you follow with a nod. You let him slid off of you, wincing slightly at both the pain and the loss of him. Donghyuck shifted his body until he was sitting on the bed, his spine pressed against the headboard. “Okay, come here,” he said, patting his thigh twice. You crawled over to his lap as requested, sitting on your knees as he held his length in one hand, positioning it over your entrance. You lowered yourself down, adjusting to his size once again and wrapping your arms around his neck for support.

“I can never get used to the feeling of you taking me in like that,” he murmured against your ear. “You’re so fucking tight.”

The new position allowed you to embrace him properly and you took advantage of it, meshing your lips with him as you bounced up and down, your breasts pressing against his chest. His free hand was urging you to move faster, nails sinking into the skin and you complied, trying to move as fast you can. “Yes,” he moaned, mouthing against your shoulder. “Just like that. You’re so good.”

The sounds he was making were so erotic that they made you weak. When he felt your movements gradually became slower, he began to buck his hips forward, thrusting into you hard while holding you firmly with one hand. 

He nearly broke his handcuff from how desperate he was in wanting to hold you tightly with both hands, fucking you senselessly like how did with you before in the bathroom. But the way the steel was nearly sinking into his skin reminded him of the sole purpose of having it around his wrist. Feeling restrained only made his thrusts grow even more frantic, pushing your hips down to meet his at such a quick pace.

“Wait—” Taken by surprise, you clutched your arms tightly around him. “Hyuck—”

He suddenly sank his teeth on the skin under your jaw, between the earlobe and the collarbone and you nearly jumped out of your skin. For half an instant, it was agonizing. Painful and horrible. And then, just like that, the pain disappeared. He swallowed twice, moaning against your skin, his thrusts going out of rhythm. 

The rush of endorphin helped to push you to the brink, clouding your thoughts and you couldn't tell where your body ended and his began but it didn't matter. That was how you always wanted it to be anyway. Donghyuck's lascivious grunts tugged on your heartstrings and with a couple of his hard thrusts, you began to shake. "H-Hyuck, I think I'm gonna—"

His mouth was still on your neck, now sucking bruises with his cuspids threatening to puncture. "Come, baby."

You came undone, body trembling with the biggest orgasm you’d ever felt. Donghyuck moaned your name against your ear when he felt you clenching and shaking around him. “God, that felt so good,” he said, still moving his hips, not caring if you were still sensitive after your orgasm. “You feel so good around me. Fuck, I want to do this again and again—I want to feel you more—I want to break you—”

And when his hips began to stutter, you knew he was close. He pulled you into a messy kiss where you could taste copper on his tongue but you didn’t mind and bounced faster on his lap, driving him to the edge.

You were startled by the sound of him breaking free from his handcuff with a hard yank of his wrist, but before you could react, he was pushing you off his lap, forcing you to stand with your knees on the bed, facing the headboard. Still reveling in the aftershock of your orgasm, your legs almost gave out on you so you placed both hands on the wall for support. "Hyuck—"

He was almost growling when he placed both hands on your hips and pushed himself back in a way that was so forceful, you ended up having your upper body pressed against the wall. He brought your hips closer to his, his tongue trailed against the dip of your spine, and you begged him to, "S-slow down, I just came—" but all that he did was the opposite. He snapped his hips forward, knocking the breath out of your lungs with each pound while murmuring, "Just a little bit more, baby," with so much lust and avidity. You gritted your teeth, curling your fingers against the railing of your headboard as if you were hanging on for dear life. Everything felt so good, so fucking good that you began to part your mouth in a silent scream. 

With his head dangling forward, glowing eyes covered with his fringe, and your name tumbling down his lips in a soft, throaty moan, he came.

***

“How are you feeling?”

Dazed and completely fucked-out, you thought, but only answered with, “Tired.”

“Are you hurt somewhere?”

You shook your head.

“Thank God,” Donghyuck pulled you closer by the waist, both of your naked bodies were buried under the blanket. “I kind of lost control at the end.” He sheepishly chuckled at himself. “You were so hot when you came.”

“Shut up.” But that only made him laugh a bit louder. He pried your hands away before you could bury your face in them and cupped your cheek so you could do nothing but stare back at him.

“Is it too fast to say I love you?” He asked and his eyes were sincere but you were too embarrassed to respond properly so you pushed your palm to his face, pushing him away.

“Of course, it’s too fast. We’ve only started dating for like what, two weeks?” But the way your heart almost leaped in joy betrayed you. You turned away from him, focusing your gaze on the bed lamp on his nightstand instead of his face. “If you tell me in like a year or something, maybe I’ll believe you.”

His laughter was warm, a stark contrast to how his skin felt under your touch. He leaned close, lips brushing against your hair as he embraced you close to his chest. “Then I’ll say it every day until you say it back to me next year,” he said, voice gentle and sincere. “I love you, baby.”

“Ugh, you’re gross.”

“There you go, playing hard to get again.” He whispered the next words with his lips brushing your earlobe. “Your ears are going red, though.”

“I’m going to kick you.”

“Well, I’m going to love you.”

But you kicked him anyway. The playful punches and kicks under the blanket managed to ease the tension, and before long, you were back to exchanging nonsensical banters with him again. The sunrise was still three hours away and even though your eyes were a bit heavy with sleep, your body exhausted beyond belief, you tried to keep yourself awake to spend a moment longer with him. You didn’t have any schedule the next morning anyway, so you could sleep to make up for the time you spent.

“Hyuck?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s… something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while but I couldn’t since I felt so embarrassed about it.”

“Oh? It’s not often you’re honest like this.” He smirked, pushing the bangs out of your eyes. “What is it?”

“Did you…” You cleared your throat, trying not to be awkward. “Did you get to come when we had sex the first time?”

He blinked twice, startled. “Oh… I didn’t, actually.” He timidly smiled. “You kind of passed out during that time and I didn’t have the heart to continue so I just carried you back to your room.”

With cheeks turning scarlet, you squeezing his hand. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He pecked you on the nose. “It was my fault anyway. I shouldn’t have taken so much of your blood.” He gradually grew more serious. “I guess I’ve never thanked you for that, huh?” He tucked some strands of your hair behind your ear. “Thank you for giving me your blood. You’re literally the reason why I’m still alive to this day.”

“You’re welcome.” You mirrored his smile. “I have two other questions if you don’t mind.”

“Shoot.”

“Can vampires actually come?” You had to look away, noticing how stupid your questions was and added, “I mean, like, properly? Like humans do?”

“What, you didn’t feel it when I came inside you just now?”

You blushed madly. “I was too dizzy from the bite to notice.”

“Right, you passed out too. Again.” And before you could shout out your protest, he muffled your lips with his. “Of course, we can, Sweetheart. What, are you interested in making me come again?”

You gulped. “M-maybe later.” When you noticed him raising an eyebrow, you mentally slap yourself in the face.” I-I mean, not that I’m suggesting we should have sex again after this—”

“Oh? I was willing, though.” His godforsaken smirk should be banned from this world. Earning another punch to his stomach, he asked with a wince, “What’s the other question?”

You were still pouting from before but you asked, “Can vampires impregnate humans?”

“So eager to have my baby already? Two weeks in our relationship? Really?”

“Do you want to be punched again?”

“By your lips? Yes, plea—Aaw, hey, that hurts!” As he tried to soothe the pain away from the punch you landed on his chest, he added, “To answer your question, no. We don’t breed that way. Vampires are turned, not born.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He laughed. “Trust me, if vampires could get humans pregnant, then I would father hundreds of Hyuck babies by now.”

The thought of him having sexual relationships with other women in a way that was probably much hotter than yours made your heart drop to your stomach. There was an unfamiliar pain in your chest, pumping jealousy and resentment to your veins, clouding your thoughts with images of him lying in bed with naked women.

You turned away to face the ceiling, not saying a word. Donghyuck seemed to notice the way you got all tense and rigid so he laced your fingers with his, bringing your knuckles to his lips. “There’s only you now, you know that, right? For me, there’s only you.”

 You nodded but only so slightly, still felt uneasy. You knew that it wouldn’t be fair to be mad at him about this—it’s not like he was cheating behind your back. And he’d lived for more than a century, of course, he had plenty of both romantic and sexual relationships. You were just upset because he was your first and that meant the whole world to you, but you weren’t even included in the top 10—or 100, even.

Donghyuck eyed you in concern and carefully wrapped an arm around your stomach, fingertips trailing around your navel. “Did you realize that,” he began, voice soft and tender, “a few months before we started dating, I stopped bringing girls to our apartment? I switched entirely to blood bags to the point I had to spend all my money. Do you know why I did that?”

You turned to him, snuggling close but still wasn’t brave enough to make eye contact. “Why?”

He had his lips brushed against your temple as he spoke. “Because it felt wrong. Every time I got together with someone, I thought about you. When I drank their blood, I thought about how your blood would taste like in my mouth. When I held them, I thought about what kind of face would you make as you writhed underneath me. When they moaned out my name, I thought about how hot would it be if it tumbled out from your lips instead. You, with that cute voice of yours.”

You blushed from ear-to-ear. “I-Is that so…”

He smiled a little, probably noticing how loudly your heart was thumping inside your chest. “I had to stop entirely when I accidentally moaned your name during sex. Man, she was so pissed.”

You nearly fainted from the sheer embarrassment. “How can you say these things so nonchalantly?”

“I’m actually pretty shy about it.” And this time he did sound sheepish. He lowered his head down, lips lingering close, nearly grazing the vein that beats faintly under your neck. “So don’t think about my past too much, because I’ve been thinking about you—only you—for a while now.”

You shivered, his lips ghosting over your skin. “Cool.”

Donghyuck pulled away, scrunched up his nose. “Cool?”

“Yeah.”

“I literally just poured all my feelings out to you, embarrassingly so, and your response is cool?”

You gave him your signature ignorant shrug. “Well, I’ve known for a while that you had a crush on me. I’m flattered. Thanks.”

“You’re so—” He attacked you with playful pokes and tickles, hands fumbling all over the place until you both ended up falling from the bed, laughing against each other’s mouth.

***

“Babe, you ready?”

You push your door open at the sound of his call, still struggling with tidying your bangs so they can frame your face perfectly. You’re about to go on a date with your boyfriend and this is the first time he actually asks you out properly. You’ve gone out many times with him before but it was always either to shop for groceries or have dinner in the cheap Chinese restaurant nearby.

So you kind of dressed up all the way, curling your hair and tying it up in a perfect ponytail—because you know just how much he likes seeing your neck exposed—wearing minimal make-up but with bright red lipstick, and a matching red off-shoulder dress that highlights your collarbones. 

“Do you think this is too much?” You ask from the bathroom, still busy trying to put on your earring. When you’re done, you walk back to the living room, approaching his spot. “You haven’t told me where we’re going so I’m not sure what to wear—” You catch the way he’s looking at you, wide-eyed with lips parted in awe. “W-what is it? Are you thirsty again?”

He blinks himself awake. “For blood? Nope. For you?” He’s not subtle at all with his staring, eyes going up and down your body, committing every feature to his memory. “Parched.”

“If you’re gonna be this embarrassing the whole date, I’d choose to stay home, thank you very much.”

“What, can’t a man appreciate his girlfriend’s beauty?”

“Sometimes just a simple, you look nice, is enough.”

He chuckles softly, closing the space between you and running his thumb along your cheekbone as he cups your face. “I want to kiss you and ruin your lipstick so badly,” he murmurs, eyes almost glowing. The way he brings his lower lip between his teeth as he stares at you in a daze makes your stomach flip in delight. “But you look very beautiful right now and it would be a waste. I’ll wait until the end of our date. Then, I’ll savor every bit of you.” He leans in to whisper close in your ear, his smirk grazing against your earlobe. “In any way possible.”

You yank him by the hand, pulling him towards the door. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

You can’t wait until your date is over.

***

Donghyuck reeks with charms and allures. You notice that, certainly, but unfortunately for you, so do other people because he is gathering attention from every woman he passes by on the street—even some men. He’s just walking along the pavements in his black ripped jeans and denim jacket, but he makes it look like a fashion show. He’s deep in concentration, thumb sliding on his phone’s screen as he searches for the location of the place he’s planning to take you. His brooding look makes you swoon but you try to be subtle about it, unlike those females who pass by, practically undressing him with their eyes.

You’re uncomfortable and jealous but you try to keep yourself composed. “Is it far from here?”

“Just a couple of blocks,” he answers, smiling as he tucks his phone back. “Are you hungry? Do you want to stop by and grab some dinner before we go?”

You’ve lost your appetite. “I’ll eat on our way back.”

“You sure?”

You respond with a nod but he seems worried. You notice some people whispering behind your back, questioning with a mocking tone about your status with this God-like male in front of you and you couldn’t help but to sigh. “Can we go now?” Your tone sounds a bit cold even to your own ears, and you feel sorry because this is not how you planned your date night to go.

Donghyuck must have noticed the silent chatters, or at least, the hurting look on your face. Taking a hold of your wrist, he pulls you forward until you stumble to his chest and kisses your lips. You swear you could hear people gasping at that, but you don’t care. You don’t care that he’s kissing you in public, on the side of the street, with his hand secured tightly around your waist. You don’t care if your lipstick is ruined, though he kisses you softly to make sure it stays intact. And you don’t care if people are questioning his sanity for dating a girl like you because Donghyuck belongs to you and he’s proud of showing that to the world.

When he lets you go, your lips are curving up into a grin, cheeks reddening both from the cold and his touch. “You have lipstick on you,” you say, tiptoeing on your feet to brush the stain off his lips with your thumb, and Donghyuck, with that sexy, mischievous twinkle in his eyes, parts his lips, playfully placing your thumb between his teeth just a second before he lets it slide away. Your head is about to explode from how sexy he just looked and he chuckles at the sight, pecking you on the forehead once. “Let’s go, baby.” He strokes your hair before he lets his hand slide down to your waist again, walking next to you with your body pressed close to his side.

It turns out your boyfriend is taking you to a photo studio which is quite huge for a normal photo shoot. As you see so many staff, models, and photographers around you, walking back-and-forth in the studio to make sure everything is in order, you begin to realize. “Are you—”

“Yep,” he beams at you, proudly. “I’ve got a modeling gig.” 

Your eyes grow wide because by the brand logo that you see plastered all over the place—on the back of the chairs, the doors, embossed in articles of clothing—it’s one of the top designer brands in the country. “What—how—” You’re flabbergasted. “How did you get this job?”

“I got cast on the street.” He simply shrugs. “It’s a one-time gig though, so nothing serious. But it is my first time so I’m pretty nervous about it, which is why I brought you along.” He swats the bangs out of your eyes, looking apologetic. “I’m sorry. This is probably not how you imagined our date night was going to be.”

“No, but this is better.” Your eyes are scanning the place. “Look at all these models! They’re so beautiful—Oh my God, I know him!” You almost jump on your feet at the sight of a famous model getting his hair fixed by his stylist. “Isn’t he the one who was on the cover of W Magazine last month? Oh my God.”

“Hey, hey, hey, hey,” Donghyuck pulls you back by the fabric of your dress. “I didn’t invite you to ogle at another man’s body.”

“It’s not his body, Hyuck. It’s his face, look at him!” You gesture toward the man with a sigh. “Look at those cheekbones, sweet Lord. His jawline has me feeling like sliced bread.”

Donghyuck snorts loudly. “Are you an idiot?”

“Might as well be. Can you get me his autograph?”

“I’m leaving.” And he really walks away, just like that, with his hands tucked inside the pocket of his jeans, and a scowl on his face.

“Wait, I’m sorry,” you hurriedly say, taking a hold of his arm. “Good luck with the photo shoot. I know you’d be amazing.”

He’s still not happy when he looks at you but he sighs, patting your head. “Thanks. You can wait for me in the hall. I think they have snacks and stuff.”

“Can’t I just linger around here?”

“To see me or to see him?”

“To see you, of course.” There’s no hesitation in your voice. “Seeing him is just a bonus. You’re my number one, Hyuck.”

He leers at you with suspicious eyes, still not one hundred percent pleased or convinced. “Well, I have to go. I need to change and get my make-up done.”

“Wait.” you hold him back again. “Do these people here know you’re, you know, not human?”

“No, and I intend to keep it that way. So, if you could just not mention it again, that’d help.”

You nod but when he’s about to part ways again, you reach out to him once more. 

“What?” He whines, groaning. “I really have to—”

You stand on your toes and interrupt him with a kiss, hands winding around his neck. It’s just your lips meeting his for a few seconds and nothing more, but it’s still painted thickly with passion and desire.

“Good luck,” you whisper with a shy smile. He’s left a bit dazed but eventually nods his head. When he walks away, he rubs his nape, a gesture he tends to make whenever he’s flustered. You grin proudly to yourself. He’s wrapped around your fingers just as much as you are around his.

After half an hour has passed, you see Donghyuck walking back into the studio in a new outfit that makes him look so goddamn attractive that it literally steals your breath away.  He’s wearing all black, from his turtle neck shirt, his khaki pants, his suit, even his hair looks somehow darker. He’s absolutely gorgeous, even the male photographer has to stop and stare for a good few seconds before he remembers to adjust his lenses.

Donghyuck poses naturally in front of the camera and it startles you how a simple pose could look so beautiful when it’s done by him. He unbuttons his suit, lets it falls off his shoulder, his eyes half-lidded as he stares into the camera—everything that he does reeks masculinity and femininity at the same time and you don’t know if that’s even possible. You’ve known that his body proportions are insane but this outfit just highlights every inch of his body that needs to be appreciated. 

A staff hands him a rose and he brings it close to his face, his lips grazing against the petal—making him look like a painting. His usual cheeky grin has vanished without a trace and the way he stares back at the camera—both enchanting and challenging—sends shivers down your spine.

Fuck, how is he so hot?

Two hours long photoshoot feels like a minute to you and you’re feeling a bit dazed when it’s over. Donghyuck walks over to your spot, pushing up his long sleeves to his elbows. “Hey,” he says, smiling a little. “Sorry, did I make you wait long?”

“Oh… Umm…” You’re blushing and you don’t know why. You’re just suddenly overwhelmed with his presence. “Y-you were…” Fantastic. Breathtaking. Absolutely gorgeous. Please take me home and have me as dessert. “You were good.”

“Good?” He raises an eyebrow, making you gulp. “That’s it?”

“I…” Your fingers are curling against the fabric of your dress. “You were great.”

Donghyuck seems a bit amused until he realizes something. He leans close, making you flinch when he takes a sniff near your neck. “Why do you smell like you’re…” A smirk creeps up his face. “Aroused?”

Yes, okay, just kill me. Kill me now. “I’m not—”

“Seems like someone is enjoying this photoshoot too much.”

You’re about to combust into flames. “Are you done? Can we go home now?”

“You want to go home? And do what?” He bites the corner of his lip as he tries to contain his grin. “Enlighten me, Baby.”

He’s seducing you, torturing you, and he’s enjoying every second of it. “Fine, then. I’ll walk home by myself.”

But as you turn around on your heels, Donghyuck grabs you by the wrist and pulls you forward to match his step, going in the opposite direction of where you were planning to go. “Wha—where are you taking me?!”

He shushes you quickly and makes a turn, barging into one of the changing rooms that models often use to get prepared for the photoshoot. The room is bright with fluorescent lights, though not as spacious as you’d thought it would be, but the only thing that matters now is that it’s unoccupied. 

Donghyuck kicks the door closed with his feet before he pushes you against it, lips meeting you in a searing kiss as he locks the door behind you. “Your scent,” he breathlessly says against your mouth, running his tongue along your lower lip. “It’s so thick with lust.” If it’s as thick as the teasing tone in his voice, you’re so doomed. “Are you okay, baby?”

“Shut up.” You kiss him, fisting the fabric of his shirt before you pull it off his head. Your hands immediately go down to his chest, caressing his stomach before they circle his neck again. “If we’re gonna do this then hurry up and fuck me.”

A small laugh reverberates from his chest. “So aggressive. And to think you were so shy yesterday.”

“Shut up. Does sex usually involve this much talking?”

“With me, it does.” He purrs against your ear, tugging your earlobe between his teeth. “Because then I get to see more of your expressions.” His tongue feels hot and dangerous on your sensitive skin. “You’re so fucking cute when you blush, but you being aggressive like this isn’t too bad.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up.” You’re already dying from shame and his unnecessary comments only fuel it even more. “Are we really—” you gasp when he pushes you up the wall, and you quickly tangle your legs around his waist for balance, the back of your red heels pressing against his spine. “Are we really doing this? Here?”

“Of course, we’re doing this.” His hands are sliding dangerously along your thighs, pushing the fabric of your dress up your body until it pools around your waist. “I’ve been wanting to do this ever since you laid your eyes on him.”

“What—” You throw your head back, making a soft thud when it meets the door. Hopefully, no one catches that. “You mean that model? I was just kidding—”

“Kidding?” He slips two of his fingers inside his mouth, coating them with saliva and it’s so sensual, the sight of him, that only seeing him do that already makes you feel sinful. He slides his hand down between your legs, wet fingers immediately finding their way to your heat from the side of your lingerie. “I don’t think it was funny.” He inserts his first digit, making you sink your nails into his shoulders. “Do you, baby?”

You’re breathing hard, temple pressing against his. When he feels you stretched enough, he adds another one. “Baby, I asked you a question,” he chuckles, scissoring his fingers inside you. “Do you think it was funny?”

“No.” You shake your head, a sob nearly escapes your lips.  The mixed feelings of being dominated, teased and pleasured at the same time make you feel lightheaded, and he hasn’t even drunk from you yet. “I-I’m sorry.”

“Aaw, but I’m not mad,” he coos, kissing you softly on the corner of your lips. “I’m a bit pissed-off but certainly not angry.”

His words are doing very little in reassuring you but you’re too busy focusing on the way he’s pumping his fingers in and out, his thumb rubbing fervently against your clit. “Hyuck—”

“Sssh.” He perks up, his movements stop abruptly. “Someone’s here.”

You mouth What?! in horror, about to shove him away so you can land back on your feet and fix your clothes and hair but he keeps you still. He presses his body harder, one hand holding the back of your thigh while his other one still lingers near your lingerie. There’s absolutely no way you can fight his superhuman strength.

Within the next few seconds, you can hear the clicking of heels meeting the marbled floor and you hold your breath, fingers shaking but the rest of your body is still. Donghyuck keeps his gaze on you, his eyes unwavering as he tries to read the situation.

“Hey, it’s locked. Why is it locked?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t locked before.”

Two female voices can be heard from exactly behind you and you’re about to break out in a cold sweat. If you breathe just a little bit harder, they probably can hear you. Donghyuck notices the way your breathing tatters and with a gleam in his eyes, he smirks.

And moves his fingers again.

Your hand immediately shifts from his shoulder to his wrist, trying desperately to keep it from moving. Your eyes are throwing ice daggers as you mouth don’t you fucking dare to him but his sly grin only gets wider. He leans in to pepper sultry kisses on your jawline, up to your ear, whispering, “Keep your voice down.” And though he speaks reassurance, his fingers are not.

He slides one between your folds, tentatively pressing into your heat before he drags it back, heel continues to add pressure to your clit. It’s when he inserts the digit back into you that you begin to flinch. He helps muffle your voice down with his kisses first but when you truly need to be silenced, he pulls away, enjoying the view of your cheeks turning scarlet, bangs sticking to your temple with sweat, and adding another finger into your warmth.

“So cute,” he whispers, his eyes are starting to glow. You notice that their color changes depending on what he’s feeling.  They glow when he’s thirsty, that much is obvious, but there’s also one other condition. The more he’s aroused, the brighter they get, almost turning topaz entirely, and soon his cuspids will follow, extending to take a bite. He still has his fangs retracted, but his eyes are gradually gleaming brighter as he takes in your expressions. “So pretty…” The way he praises you is almost like he’s in a haze. “I love seeing you like this.”

“What to do? My purse is inside.”

“Shall we ask around for the key?”

You’re so scared, terrified beyond belief and Donghyuck is savoring every moment of you trying to contain your moans. “Aaw, they’re going to open the door,” he murmurs against your ear. “What do you think we should do, baby?”

Fuck if I know. Your eyes are closed shut, your fingers curling against his nape. He licks a stripe up your neck, moaning softly from the desire to fill his mouth with your blood. “I know one thing for sure,” he swallows, wetting his lip. “I need to make you come first.”

Donghyuck always lives up to his promise. He knows what he’s doing and it feels extremely pleasant having his fingers deep inside you but you can’t give yourself into the pleasure entirely from the fear of being caught. But as he goes faster, now focusing more on playing with your clit, you feel fire coursing through your veins, loosening the knot in your stomach, and out of panic, you bite him hard on the part where his neck meets his shoulder, muffling your moan as you come onto his hand.

You can feel him flinching, a low grunt erupting from the back of his throat but you’re too dazed to notice. When the aftertaste of your orgasm starts to decrease, Donghyuck lets you down to the floor. You have to keep your hold on him as your legs wobble under your weight and when you look up, you see him with his fangs fully extended, his eyes glowing as bright as the sun.

“Hyuck—“ He bites into your skin without permission, and he does it fiercely, sloppily, that your blood begins to taint your dress. You’re grateful that it’s at least in the same color as your blood so a few drops won’t be noticed. The rush of endorphin calms your nerves, almost leaving your senses dull and you slide down to the floor, your spine still pressed against the door.

When he pulls away, he lets his tongue runs along his lower lip, wiping it clean from your blood. His eyes are strictly golden.

“My turn now.”

***

[blahkugo]

𝟖 ༒ 𝔱𝔥𝔬𝔲 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔩𝔱 𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔞𝔩

⤷ dirty valentine m.list

⤷ complete hq m.list

atsumu miya — bondage

a/n: rc is bratty, atsumu is bratty, he/she/we are bratty. it’s basically enemies to lovers but they’re already fucking dating (aka my dream relationship)

wc: 1.4k

cw: bratty switch!tsumu, bondage (silk scarf), rough sex, begging, face slapping, degradation

Atsumu, in and of himself, is a challenge. Since you met the rowdy bleached blonde, every moment has been riddled with confrontation and provocation, spite and acts of defiance—clear cut attempts to prove one thing he believes wholeheartedly: in every sense of the word, he is better than you.

It’s a fucking marvel that the two of you are dating now.

“You’re a bitch,” he spits, all bark and no bite, sweat already beading atop his forehead.

“Did you say tighter? I can do that.” You knot the silk scarf around his wrists, tugging a bit harder just to see the scowl he wears so well spread across his face. The objective isn’t pain, but a reaction.

You want nothing more than to see him riled up, to push the loud mouthed bastard past his breaking point, until his curses become pleas and his only coherent thought is release. Tough as he may be, he always looks the prettiest when he snaps—a teary-eyed mess whimpering for a freedom only you can provide him.

But it’s far too soon for any of that; once the restraint is secured, he’s running his mouth all over again. Be it a smug click of his teeth or foul curses, Atsumu tries every possible tactic to talk his way out of knots and in between your legs.

“Not sure why you’re even trying,” he baits, “we both know you want me to fuck you senseless.”

“Baby,” you sigh, running a manicured finger up his bare thigh and reveling in the shiver it evokes, “I’d gag you if I wasn’t about to make you beg.”

“Over my dead bod–” He cuts off all at once, letting out a sharp inhale, teeth gritted, the moment your hand wraps around the head of his cock. His thighs tense, shuddering as you pump his cock, once, twice—making sure to stroke at the spot that makes him see stars—before promptly letting go.

“You were saying?” You can’t help the soft laugh that escapes you, the power you feel surging through you at the thought of leaving Atsumu speechless. The disappointment on his face is palpable, glassy eyes and upturned brows saying everything he refuses to. But a sullen stare is not enough; you want him completely bewitched, want to hear the pleas of a man under a divine spell, one only Hecate herself could muster.

Your taunt seems to snap him out of his daze, resurges the disobedience you know so well. His mouth sets in a hard line, his hands straining against their confines once again. When he looks at you, the contempt is palpable, flows through the air like his own attempt at black magic.

But what’s a mere human to the divine?

“I could leave you here until you learn how to act right,” you begin shifting away, grazing his muscled thighs as you move. Once you situate yourself in front of him, you begin slowly stripping off what little lingerie you’re wearing. First, your bra. You rub at your skin, make sure to exaggerate the parting of your lips—the breathy sigh that leaves you—as you circle your exposed nipples.

When you remove the skimpy little piece of lace you call panties, the real show begins. “Or I could let you fuck me.” You spread your legs, revealing your slick cunt in all its glory. Atsumu’s gasp pierces the air, the widening of his eyes and swipe of his tongue across his lip making you grin. “I need you, ‘tsumu,” you find yourself baiting as you ghost a single finger across your slit.

“So untie me,” he asserts, a wolffish grin plastered across his face, “let me take care of you, princess.” Even with the smug declaration, his eyes don’t leave your heat, don’t dare to look you in the eyes when heaven lies down below.

You don’t respond, don’t care to drag out this little game of dominance any longer, choosing instead to crawl over and answer with a peck to his chest. Soon, you’re moving downwards, kissing and sucking his chest, his well-sculpted abs, following the path of soft brown hair that leads to his cock. All the while, Atsumu stares hungrily, believing his smooth talking has reaped some sort of deserved gratification.

When you reach his dick, hard and throbbing with need, you wrap your lips around the head and get to work. With every lick of your tongue against the underside or moan around his member, Atsumu stiffens, attempting to rut his hips into your mouth despite the restraints.

And this is the true nature of your spell, to lull him into a false sense of superiority, make him think he’s won—that his power over you can be validated with a few simple words and a flash of pearly whites—when in reality, this is the beginning of your victory.

When you feel him approaching the edge, chest heaving, low groans and curses muttered beneath his chest, you stop.

“What the f-fuck, no!” He wriggles against the lace scarf, desperately trying to push his cock back into your wet hole.

“Beg.” Your command is simple, should be easy enough for the wanton blonde to follow, but he hesitates. Stubborn bastard. Still, you can see him starting to bend—can see it in blown out pupils and quivering lip, his death grip on the headboard. Just a little more.

You clamber on top of him, hands stroking at his soft cheeks, and grind against him. “Tell me how badly you want me,” you tweak at a nipple, moaning when your clit brushes his cock, “be a good boy and beg for me.”

And like the magic chant of a spell, it’s that simple praise that breaks him.

“Please.” The word comes out rushed, embarrassed, especially when he repeats it. But it’s enough for you to sink down onto him, groaning at the welcomed stretch.

Once he’s inside your warm walls, the shame seems to dissipate. Over and over again, Atsumu prays and pleads, until your Achilles of a boyfriend is reduced to a mess of whimpers and tears—a mortal in your celestial realm.

The power is delicious, intoxicating even, but you can’t say you aren’t enjoying the sex too. Every slap of your thighs against his sends you reeling, his own desperate thrusts meeting your bounces and causing his cock to settle deep inside of you. Soon, you’re lost in the pleasure, unable to keep your voice muffled.

“Fuck– God yes, ‘tsumu,” you choke out amongst his symphony of groans, scratching red into his broad chest. The room is ablaze with sweat and heat, glossy eyes, bitten lips and the sweet sound of skin against skin. It’s almost too much, his dick pounding against your cervix over and over again.

So when he asks, no– commands, you to ‘fucking untie him,’ you do.

In seconds, your back is slammed into the mattress and your legs are pressed far above your head. Atsumu thrusts into you like he’s starved, grabbing at any skin he can—thumbing your clit, hands roaming your waist—as if he’s doing it simply to prove he can.

“You’re just a fucking brat on a power trip,” he stresses between grunts, “but we both know you like to be fucked ‘till you’re crying.” All you can do is garble and choke, a pitiable response unfit for such a divine being. But attempting anything more is a fruitless endeavor when his hand presses bruises into you, when his cock doesn’t let up, when his fingers slide against your bundle of nerves and make you keen with desire.

Once Atsumu starts running his mouth, he doesn’t know when to stop. “Who fucks you this good, huh?” When you don’t answer, he slaps your cheek roughly, a sting that makes your head spin. “Answer,” he demands, “or you won’t cum.”

And so you do, crying out strings of his name and his name only—the humble offering of an unworthy devotee. It becomes incoherent, as garbled and twisted as the coil in your gut as you approach your high. Atsumu is cruel, unrelenting in chasing his orgasm; your own is simply a bonus.

After all, what’s a minor divinity to the god of war?

[ultimateluckystudent-writes]

Restraint

Summary: You and Nagito's flirtations are sickening. Izuru still sees himself as a cure. As per usual, he only makes things worse.

Word count: 5.2k

Content Warnings: Uneven Power Dynamics, Under-Negotiated Kink, Possible Dubcon, Dom/Sub, Spanking, Bondage, Choking, Mentions of Sickness, Degradation, Slut Shaming, Sex As 'Punishment', Slight Breeding Kink, Orgasm Denial, Female Reader, She/Her Pronouns

General Themes/Tags: Despair!Era, Despair!Reader, Sub!Reader, Sub!Nagito, Dom!Izuru, Voyeurism, Exhibitionism

Ao3 Link

A/N: Reader is a slut and Komaeda's a freak what can I say... also I'm sorry for doing this before requests but no I'm not I'm busy writing smut <3

Izuru found that there was indeed a certain kind of beauty to the handiwork of his knots. The candy-apple red rope, the color of the ruined sky, the color of his chemically altered eyes, the color of her nails, the color of despair, looked rather fetching when tied around Nagito’s pale wrists. His green-blue veins ran under it, visible through his sickly, translucent pale skin. Izuru could smell the cancerous cells on his breath alone. Just like a dog! A voice in his head that sounded just like hers sounded. Just like a dog, his own voice repeated.

“Enoshima tells me that your… indecision and cowardice..." Izuru droned as he circled around the uncomfortable, between the wooden chair Nagito was bound to and the edge of bed (Y/N) sat on. Unlike the rest of the ‘rooms’ the rest of the Despair were afforded in their base, which were really much more like modified holding cells, Izuru’s room was fitted with a regular queen-sized bed with threadbare sheets. He didn’t mind the sheets, but he wouldn’t have minded staying in a holding cell like the rest of them either. He wouldn’t have minded any of it.

“Has affected the operations of all of the Despair.” He glowered down at them, the shadows on his face looming even darker from their seated positions. Izuru caught her hands fidgeting in her lap, and how Nagito’s ever-twitching leg began to bounce even faster. “How pathetic.” He said of both their actions and reactions. The woman flinched visibly. Nagito’s leg stilled. “You are both acting like children. Simpering after each other expends so much of your time that you’ve managed to become even more useless to us than before as you fail to complete assigned tasks.” He crossed the room to stand right in front of (Y/N). Though all of his steps were light- in the way only the Ultimate Assassin, or Spy, or Ninja, and or the countless other multitudes of titles he fit aptly could be- or rather, perhaps because of this, both of their throats bobbed with a heavy swallow.

“Therefore,” His voice was quiet, but in the otherwise silent room, his two captives could hear him clearly. He placed his hand on her cheek. It was such a foreign movement from him, so calm, so sudden, that she almost gasped from it alone. It was much warmer than she expected. She realized as he stood over her, his well-fitted suit accentuating the already sharp angles of his perfect posture, his clothes heavy with the smoky scent of the fires blazing outside, his eyes indecipherable, that he was so much warmer than she expected. He thought idly that he could name every muscle in her face that tensed under his fingers. “You have been left to my discretion.”

“Ah, of course!” Nagito finally gushed, breaking the tension between the other two at once. Both of their heads snapped to look at the shaking, beaming man. He seemed to be enamoured with simply the prospect. His arms twitched and pulled at his bonds, but he had no intention of attempting escape. He merely forgot in his excitement that he could not hold himself. “I see no fate fitting more for my dearest- to be left to the hands of the Ultimate Hope- to be graced with Kamukura-sama’s presence, his touch-” He uttered a little moan, his eyes fluttering for just a bit. “For him to have already tied me up like the pathetic little vermin I am… He could truly do as he wishes with us...” Nobody in the room was surprised at his reaction, however, (Y/N) was a bit amused that he had shown his true colors as a fanatic quite so quickly. “Whatever despair he induces can only be overcome by the hope you two inspire by nearly being around me!” His eyes finally seemed to focus back onto his lover. They seemed to warm just by looking at her, a detail that sent an unfamiliar rush through her. If he had looked at her before, she had only just noticed, and was still unused to such… vulnerability nowadays. She quickly looked away. “I can only imagine what you must be feeli-”

“Enough.” Izuru finally snapped. Nagito silenced at once. He immediately schooled his expression into one of subtle pleasure. His naturally heavy-lidded eyes seemed almost heated in the particular situation. “This inane drivel is precisely the sorts of issues we’ve been having,” Izuru finally brought up his other hand, which contained an identical rope to the one wrapped around Nagito’s wrist like the perfect present. “And you’ve done little to end it.”

(Y/N) found that she had trouble looking at the red of Izuru’s eyes or the rope in his hands. Both cultivated more of the sickening feeling in her gut, the overwhelming dread that conjured images of Izuru idly pressing his foot down onto her fingers holding the edge of a cliff, supporting both her and Nagito’s weight. It felt like bile rising in her throat, only creeping further as she caught glances of either. As Izuru held the rope in front of her face, a wordless taunt, she refused to break her gaze. She wanted to rot in the feeling.

“Turn.” Izuru ordered. She knew at once it would be the first of many tonight. Though she had watched Izuru carefully as he bound Nagito, it was nothing compared to how despair-inducing it was to feel her miniscule chances of escaping reduce to less than nothing. Her breathing grew heavier as she felt those sure hands tie one knot, then two, then three, until she purposefully lost count of how many loops there were around her wrists. Every time his knuckles brushed against her arms, her pulse points, she wondered more and more if it was truly an accident. She had never known the Ultimate Hope to be capable of accidents. When he finished, the silence rang heavy in her ears. She had foolishly half-expected to hear praise, to hear the words ‘good girl’ fall from his lips.

“Pathetic.” He repeated instead, sending both her and Nagito’s teeth deeper into their own lips. She felt it deeply, kneeling on the bed, her back to the man she knew held her life in his hands, the man she cared for so deeply privy to every little thing that would be done to her without being able to do anything. The feeling in her stomach had begun to sink lower and lower, though it felt much more heated. She was a fool, but not a naive one. Izuru always knew what he was doing, including what tone he was setting. She felt her own legs begin to shake. “I’m sure by now the two of you understand where this is going. Bend over.”

She obliged like it was second nature. She obeyed like it might as well have been her own thoughts asking. She bent over and stuck her ass up and face into the mattress, right in front of Izuru, with a speed that surprised most of the room. Izuru, however, remained unfazed. He almost seemed to expect it. Her whole body felt hot, displayed like this for Izuru and subsequently Nagito. She knew he could see her panties he could see below her short skirt. She’d taken to wearing much skimpier clothes recently, especially when she began her… affair with Nagito. Despite herself, she wondered if he enjoyed them. He wouldn’t have been the first. She liked it when it was hard for people to touch her without coming in contact with her skin.

“Let this serve as a reminder to the both of you.” Izuru said behind her. She wondered how much closer he’d have to get to feel the vibrations of his deep voice. “None of you have any room for affection in you. You wouldn’t be with our association if you could. You saw how easily she bent over for me. You’re nothing special, Komaeda, she would take it from anyone if she could.” He paused. She didn’t even get to wonder why before her head was grabbed and roughly turned to the side so she was looking directly at Komaeda. His face was flushing, beginning to turn the red color of so many things around him, giving into the situation. Though his mouth was slightly agape as he took the scene before him, he seemed to be at a complete loss for words. She’d never seen him like this before. “Do you see how aroused he is at this? How eager he was for me? He’s much the same. You two are, for lack of a better word, whores. Easy-” He didn’t get to finish his sentence, as both of the other two released small moans at his words. (Y/N) thighs clenched as she tried her hardest not to back her eager body back up against him. Nagito rocked his own back and forth, attempting to find friction against his growing erection. Izuru sighed. “Precisely.”

With no other warning, he shoved her panties down her hips. A string of her slick connected them for just a second, quickly severed with no regard from Izuru. Nagito stopped rocking. He stared, mouth agape, at her now exposed pussy. She couldn’t even tell him to stop looking. She didn’t want him to stop looking. Behind her, she heard the familiar sound of a belt unbuckling. Once again, instinct took over, and she spread her legs further for him. The fabric of his pants and underwear rustled as he pulled them down just enough to pull his cock out and stroke it.

“Wow.” Nagito muttered, looking all for the world like he didn’t even realize he was doing it. “Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow- t- to bear witness to this- to-”

“You will speak only when spoken to from here on out, Komaeda.” Izuru said without even looking up at him. Nagito swallowed hard. Behind his chair, he pulled ever so slightly at his restraints. Izuru rubbed the head of his cock up and down her lips, spreading her slick around. (Y/N)’s head finally dropped back down, looking away from Nagito, as she tried hard to not let any more noises escape her. Even if she knew Izuru could feel her desperate arousal in her heavy breathing, the way she wiggled and pressed into him, her fingers trembling in front of him, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of letting it consciously escape her mouth.

“Be honest, (L/N)...” Izuru’s words were so gentle and soft that she knew at once that whatever sharp insult he would throw at her would make up for it. “Tell Komaeda about every Remnant’s cock and fingers you’ve had in your pussy.” She gasped at once, her eyes widening, but as the focus fell heavy on what she would say next, denial escaped hers. She could feel Komaeda’s eyes on her, but she couldn’t even bring herself to look into his eyes. Guilt and shame that she had never felt about her previous dalliances before were searing in her stomach. “Not to mention the people you’ve taken on the outside.” All the while, his cock continued to move back and forth over her hole, never pressing any further. Teasing her, seeing how much she could take. “How many?” He asked rhetorically. “Two dozen? More?”

The enticing idea that it was Izuru’s cock didn’t escape her. It was one of the many details that had made her so wet so quickly. She couldn’t believe that someone so singularly powerful and superhuman was even giving her thought. She couldn’t believe that he had taken the time to notice how big of a slut she was. Nagito wasn’t alone in his obsession with Izuru, she was merely better at hiding it.

“What does it matter?” She spat. A cruel smirk that only Nagito could see crossed her face. “Angry they got to me before you d-” She was interrupted as Izuru’s swift hand came down to firmly squeeze the sides of her throat, literally choking her on her words. Her labored, raspy breathing echoed through the room at once. Next to them, Nagito whimpered, but continued to bite his tongue. Under furrowed brows, his eyes flicked quickly between Izuru’s unyielding face and his hand around her throat. Nonetheless, his smile remained on his face.

“You’re actually less insufferable when you’re just moaning.” Izuru noted. Her eyes rolled back into her head, but she couldn’t do much else. The press of those sure hands was incessant. “I might begin to see why you seem so eager to be reduced to that state so often.” He lowered his mouth by her ear, but his voice was just loud enough to let Nagito hear. “I wouldn’t recommend boring or annoying me. We wouldn’t want me to push you too far past your limits, would we?” His vice-like grip only tightened. Though she could still breathe a bit, every second he held her was a second she became closer and closer to melting like putty in his hands. Beside them, Nagito groaned, deep in his throat, at the idea of pushing her past her limits. Too many thoughts were beginning to swirl in his head, and not having anything or anyone touching him to quell it was only making it worse. Kamukura finally released her. She took a deep breath in and coughed a bit. Izuru’s focus went back to her now soaking pussy.

“Now, as I was saying, the only difference between Komaeda and all of your previous conquests is how… inexperienced he is. That, and his crumbling mental state, means he’s developed quite an obsession with you. Isn’t that right, Komaeda?”

“Yes!” Komaeda practically barked, words bursting out of him like a damn. “Yes, yes, I would devote my body to her so willingly- she’s extraordinary, the- the idea of touching her? The idea of her wanting me,” he rambled, drool finally beginning to spill out of his lips in his practically cross-eyed fervor. His chest heaved with his panting. “Oh, it fills me with such an incredible feeling!” He cried. “I selfishly desire her every day, every moment-”

“Enough.” Izuru sighed. Nagito’s lips couldn’t even shut this time. He moaned once more at the sight and his ideas, hips rocking quickly. “You like the attention. It shows. Look how easy it is for me to take her.” At once, his cock stopped teasing her, and finally sunk in. She yelped loudly at the sudden, intense feeling as Izuru quickly and completely filled her. Her walls squeezed around him, beckoning him to stay as his cock kissed the deepest parts of her. Between the look on her face and Izuru’s hands on his lover’s hips, Nagito couldn’t contain himself anymore.

“What an amazing opportunity this is! What a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” he panted. “To watch hope himself and my love together so intimately… ah, you must think I’m so perverted.” Despite his tone, Nagito’s face remained stuck in a blissed out expression, belaying his enjoyment at his self-degradation. “To be enjoying this so… I’m filthy...” He moaned. There was a pause, for just a moment. His tone changed slightly, but it so happened that Nagito was trapped in a room with the only two people in the world who would be able to tell. “Though… some might call it perverted for you to be doing this at all, Kamukura-sama.”

“Are you... insulting me, Komaeda?” Though he didn’t look back over at Nagito, Izuru punctuated his words with his first thrusts into (Y/N). Her noises were muffled by the mattress, and though the tension in the room eased a bit with it, it still hung heavily above her head between the two men.

“Lowly scum like me? Insult you? I would never dream of it, Kamukura-sama.” Nagito smiled cheerfully. Despite his words, the look that he gave Izuru was not with his usual reverence. Izuru’s own eyes narrowed, rolling the emphasis on his words over in his head. With no other words, Izuru’s hands gripped (Y/N)’s hips tighter until the whites of his knuckles were visible and he was sure there would be bruises the next morning.

"Let me make myself clear. This is only for my relief." He punctuated his words with a particularly rough, deep thrust. A broken keen spilled forth as he bottomed her out. "Both from the constant whining and drivel from the two of you... but yes, also sexually." He tangled his hand in her hair. "Unfortunately, my body is that of a teenager’s. It... is filled with hormones that make my body want to breed." He pulled a bit on her hair. She moaned gutturally, fighting with herself to arch into and out of the feeling. His eyes flicked up to meet Komaeda's. "Komaeda, you would not believe how... exquisite she feels... how warm and inviting she is..." Izuru’s lip twitched into the ghost of a smirk. Nagito didn't miss it, he didn’t miss anything. His eyes eagerly drank in every detail of the two of them entwined.

"St- stop talking about m- me like I'm n- not here." She managed, gasping around every other word. Izuru hummed, like he was considering her words, before shoving her head back down harshly into the mattress. His other hand came down in a ruthless slap to her ass, making her gasp, both for air and in surprise. Her hands clenched around nothing behind her back.

"I've got no need to differentiate how I talk to your face from behind your back." Though his face did not change, his tone held a bit of smugness. It was the only indication that what had left her a panting, moaning mess had any effect on him, besides the slight dampness to his brow. "And this is not so much about you as it is about Komaeda." Once more, his tone carried more of his annoyance than usual. "He is incessant. Obsessive. Possessive. And over all a hindrance to the operations of the Despair in his pathetic desire. I was hoping tonight would see a folly to that… but he’s as worked up over you as ever.”

For a second, (Y/N) and Nagito caught each other’s eyes. Arousal that made her clit throb washed through her as she took in the look in his eye. She had never known Nagito to be possessive, as Izuru had claimed. In fact, he often turned down situations that might lead to being in her presence, citing that she deserved better. However, the completely captivated and hungry look would have made anyone feel like they were his. Even without his words or touch, she felt marked as his. Her noises grew even louder. The pride in his eyes, like she was a beloved toy he was showing off, was almost too much.

Izuru didn’t miss this. All at once, he stopped moving, though he was still buried deep inside her. She whined wordlessly, causing him to deliver another hard slap to her ass. She whimpered quietly at it, clenching around his cock, but said nothing else.

“If you’d like to look at each other so badly, so be it.” His voice was even angrier now. If she didn’t know any better, she would say that it almost sounded like Izuru was growing frustrated with the two of them. She couldn’t tell why though. Izuru finally removed his tie and jacket. Most of his clothes remained on, as the motion was not taxing to him in the slightest, but he felt a bit hot under the collar now. He figured it had to do with her body heat. She was very warm.

He pulled out of her and wordlessly picked her up to turn her and face her towards Nagito. She silently thanked the fact that her hands were tied up for once, since it meant it would be hard to pick her head up and look at him constantly. But as Izuru sunk into her once more, one hand gripped the rope binding her hands and the other her shoulder. He leaned down to speak to her.

“Seems you’re lucky as well.” He murmured to her. Her eyes were wide in surprise. Even as Izuru spoke to her, both of their gazes remained fixated on Nagito. She could feel his hot breath on the shell of her ear. It made her shiver as he held her close. “I’m not so bored I feel the need to hold you by the hair.” He considered her for a moment. Her hands were pressed up against his firm stomach. He felt so solid and tall and imposing behind her. Though he was ruthless and unforgiving in his motions, she also knew he could have done much, much worse had he wanted to. The way he took control of her so quickly, so unquestionably so, was what she had been craving from someone every time she had been with someone else.

She finally realized what he was doing. He was showing both of them that she didn’t need to seek another person to give her what she wanted- didn’t need to seek Nagito to give her what she wanted- because he, and only he, could give it to her.

At once, Izuru picked up speed again. She cried out, her fingers scrabbling at the buttons of his shirt, pulling him close, pulling him closer. The sudden roughness made her cry out, the noises broken by each slam of his hips against hers. She could feel the smooth fabric of his pants, still on him, every time he buried himself in her. His hair began to fall down from behind her, brushing her shoulders and sides, tickling her with their silky softness. For a moment, the mischievous thought of pulling it crossed her mind, before she remembered once more that she was tied up at his mercy.

Her eyes focused on Nagito. He was moaning and mumbling to himself, looking lovestruck and animalistic with his wild eyes and hair. She couldn’t quite hear him over her own noises and Izuru’s breathing by her ear. He was leaning forward as much as he could, taking everything in raptly. She could see his erection pressing hard against his jeans, but he seemed to have completely forgotten about it, at least for a bit.

“Fuck!” She hissed, shutting her eyes tight just to get a bit of respite from the onslaught of pleasure she’d been feeling. “Fuck, fuck, fuck yes!”

“Make use of that mouth without foul language. Tell me, is this pleasurable to you?” Izuru asked, but the gentle, dangerous voice he was affecting was strained now. She squeezed her thighs together, in an unconscious attempt to receive friction on her clit, but she was rewarded instead with a quiet moan from Izuru.

“Y- Yes, Kamukura-sama!” You nodded weakly. In the greatest surprise of your night, you heard him laugh for just a second behind you. Quietly, more of a snicker than anything, but a laugh nonetheless. It was a low, smug noise.

“Mmm. Now admit to both of us, that even with me fucking you right now, you’d rather have Komaeda’s cock.” He demanded, making Nagito’s hips jerk up. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yes! It- It is!” You longed desperately to reach out to Nagito, just to feel him, just to touch him, but you were beginning to understand the true reason Izuru had tied both of your hands behind your back.

“Then say it.”

“I’d rather have your cock, Komae- ah- Komaeda-kun!” She practically shouted. Izuru began slamming into her harder when she’d gotten to saying Komaeda’s name. The irony didn’t escape her, that although it was Nagito’s name she was crying, it was Izuru that was making her feel that way. Nagito was always hard to read, but although she couldn’t tell exactly what he was thinking about, he was enamoured nonetheless.

“I think we’re well past the point of formalities, (Y/N).” Her first name sounded heavenly on his lips. “Go ahead and try again.”

“I want y- you, Nagito!”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” Nagito was panting and squirming almost more than she was. It seemed he’d found a rhythm grinding up against his own pants and thighs. His eyes rolled up. “A- again, please, please, please!” He begged, knowing that he was taking a risk by speaking once more. She opened her mouth, but all that fell from it was a squeal as Izuru spanked her with the hand previously holding the rope.

“I made myself clear, Nagito.” Izuru practically purred as he spanked her again and again. She jumped with every one, but she loved the sting regardless. Each one made her feel a little more used, a little more worthless as anything but a toy for the two men. Nagito didn’t like seeing her hurting, but it pleased something deeply sadistic in him, and he wasn’t the one doing it. The friction was barely enough, but he was getting close.

“I- Izuru! Please, please, please…” She pleaded, beginning to rock herself back against his cock sloppily, not in time with his thrusts.

“Hold still.” He practically growled, smacking her once more before digging his fingers back into her waist. She almost couldn’t take it anymore.

“Izuru, please, my- my clit- please, please!”

“Would you like me to touch you properly so you can finish?” Izuru practically purred. She nodded, noises like sobs escaping her mouth. Izuru laughed once more. The hand on her shoulders let go, sending her falling back into the mattress, before he was gathering her hair and pulling her head up once more. “Stupid little girl. You really thought I had no punishment in store for you?” He continued to slam into her, leaving her too mindless to even respond. He was all-encompassing- she could smell him, feel him around and in her, hear only his voice- but all she could see was Nagito, practically on the edge of his seat, getting off to her abuse. “You really think you’re going to cum? How pathetic. You two are suited for each other. If you’re going to cum you’re going to cum from my cock alone. But as much of a dumb slut as you are, I don’t really think you can do that, so you’ll just take it while I finish inside you. After all, my body still wants you bred.”

“W- Wait!” You choked out. Although the smallest part of you that still retained thought worried about what he was saying, the louder part had flooded with a fresh wave of pleasure and arousal at his words. He made no move to pause, but you didn’t have anything else to say. In front of you, you could tell Nagito was close as well, beginning to heave breaths that sounded like laughs. He was sweating, heated by the jacket he was still wearing, but it seemed like the least of his concerns. His noises were high, breathy, and pleading. More than anything he wanted to touch, to feel anything but the confines of his own jeans, but instead he watched helplessly as another man threatened to finish inside his beloved.

Izuru finally began making quiet grunts of his own right in her ear. They were deep and animalistic, something she never thought she would hear from Izuru. However, as he began nearing his edge, his noises only grew more similar in desperation to that of the other two. For just a moment, all three could be heard finding their own pleasure, before Nagito threw his head back with a sobbing noise and climaxed first, emptying into his own underwear. He wished desperately that he was the one in her, even alongside Izuru.

The other two now took their own turn watching Nagito as he finished, their eyes focused on his trembling, his white locks falling back, the way he rutted into the air in his desperation. Izuru’s orgasm took even him by surprise as he watched, and he seated himself in her fully with a loud groan as he filled her up even more. Her noises now sounded broken and pathetic, pleasure overriding her thought process as she let him empty within her without fuss. When he was sure the last of it was inside her, he finally pulled out and set her carefully down on the bed. She didn’t even complain about the loss, since she could still feel his seed dripping out of her twitching core.

She felt his hands on her wrists, which she had grown accustomed to, before realizing that he was undoing his knots. In a couple of tugs, his work came undone, and he laid the rope down next to her. She still couldn’t find the energy to sit up. He then moved around her and to Nagito, still recovering from his own orgasm. Nagito smiled weakly at him. Izuru took Nagito’s hair into his hands, but didn’t pull.

“Clean me up.” He ordered. Nagito seemed shocked, but didn’t waste time. He wrapped his lips around Izuru’s cock, still slick with his cum and her natural lubricant, and began to lick it clean. He moaned and his eyes fluttered shut like it was the most wonderful thing he had ever tasted. Izuru’s nose wrinkled a bit from overstimulation. Nagito’s pink lips moved back and forth hypnotically over Izuru, until finally, he tugged him off with a ‘pop’. He nodded curtly, and tucked himself back away in his pants. Nagito licked his lips, from which drool had begun to escape him again. Izuru moved behind the chair and undid Nagito’s knots before going to redress in his tie and jacket. “Clean up your mess.”

He turned slightly away from the two, listening as Nagito quickly got to the bed, he assumed to tend to her. He looked back when he finished, realizing she was moaning once more. Instead of attempting to help her sit up or speaking to her, Nagito was kneeling between her legs, lips around her pussy, eyes dutifully closed and hands behind his back. Izuru quickly leaned over and grabbed Nagito by the collar of his shirt, pulling him away from his task.

“I told you she’s not to cum.” Izuru growled. “You’ve already gone against my wishes by finishing yourself-”

“My sincerest apologies, Kamu- Izuru.” Nagito’s head was bowed respectfully. “I truly meant only to help put your seed back into her.” His eyes flicked up to meet Izuru’s. They were not filled with the subservience his posture suggested, but instead flickered with his own machinations. “Who better to be filled with your cum than her? The despair of breeding her during such a time means nothing compared to the hope your progeny would bring! If I’m blessed with the taste of the aftermath of your intimate act in the process... well, that’s just my luck.” He practically giggled. “I suppose I’d merely gotten used to not using my hands.” Despite his mad words, Izuru expected something of the sort from him. He sighed, and let go of his collar.

“I’m leaving now. I expect not to see either of you in my room when I return. Let this be the last time we must have this… discussion.” Izuru said, making his way to the door. “Next time,” He paused in the frame. “I won’t be so kind.” With one last nod to the two of them, he shut the door behind him.

*****

A/N: I'm not sorry, except that this is my first time writing something like this w/ three characters so I know it jumps around a lot but eh here you are! Love, love

[americxn]

Hi, I have a request 🤗

Colin Zabel and reader like she’s suspect of a crime but they have a night together before and They are shocked when found each other again.

She’s younger than him, I don’t know if you already watched Pretty Little Liars but if you did. It’s like when Aria meet Ezra

❤️



Suspect (Colin x Reader)

a/n: i watched pll ageees ago and can’t really remember anything about it so I’m sorry if this isn’t what you wanted. also, once again, I have no clue about any judicial processes or anything like that so lets just use our imagination and pretend that this is accurate.

wordcount: 1.7k warnings: slight mention of anxiety

Your stomach had long since been reduced to a tight knot of deep-rooted nerves, your skin tight dress doing nothing to quell the almost nauseating apprehension that had your mouth completely dry and your fingers trembling. You swallowed in a vain attempt to rehydrate your mouth as your taxi pulled up in front of the newly opened restaurant in the main quarter of town. Checking your phone, you swiped onto Colin’s name, checking for the fifth time that hour that you had the right place and time. You paid, stalling slightly by wishing the driver a pleasant night before stepping into the cool air, the street lamps bright overhead. The warmth of the restaurant was welcome on your bare legs as you stepped through the front door, the smile of the waiting on staff situated by the small front desk even warmer as they asked if you had a reservation. You nodded, clearing your throat and giving Colin’s name, unsure as to whether he was already here or not. He was, and your nerves were dulled just a fraction as he spotted you being lead to the table, his smile the warmest of them all as he stood and brought you into a tight embrace.

He pulled out your chair for you, coaxing a small smile to your face, before maneuvering around the table and falling into his own seat across from you. You glanced at him, a furry of butterflies replacing the sickening nerves that had graced your stomach mere moments before, the undeniable attractiveness of his kind features a pleasant surprise; for your first time meeting, you were unsure how true to reality the pictures on his tinder profile would be and here he was, proving that your initial attraction to his pictures was more than justified.  “Hi.” He said simply, his eyes alight with excitement as he beheld you in slight disbelief; he had honestly not expected you to show, and your presence was both relieving and enthralling as he took in your face, half shadowed in the dim light of the quiet corner of the restaurant you had been allocated. “Hi.” You responded, offering him a warm smile before introducing yourself, delving into the conversation to combat the awkwardness that threatened to stunt your meeting. Colin indulged in your conversation too, the small space between you warming, the flowing exchange being interrupted only when a waitress came to ask for your food and drink orders. The service was quick, and soon you were completely at ease in Colin’s presence, the two of you musing about the high quality of the food and stealing sips of each others wine. “So, you said that you did detective work?” You questioned when your previous topic of conversation ran dry. “Yeah,” he began, taking a deep drink of his wine before indulging in your question. “I have a big case starting tomorrow, I’m a little nervous.” He admitted with a vulnerable smile. “Why?” You question, cocking your head slightly and taking a bite of your food. He paused, a mouthful of food poised on his fork as he carefully considered your question. “Well, we only have one suspect. And I usually specialise in homicide or missing person cases. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but it’s a very complex, on running fraud case.” You paused, swallowing your food and flicking you eyes down at you partly cleared plate, your earlier nerves returning with twice as much vigour. “Oh right.” You nodded, your confidence and tone wavering. He regarded you with interest at your sudden evident change in demeanor, his tongue working within the confines of his closed mouth to clear the food from his teeth. You cleared your throat, attempting to shift the change in mood and topic of conversation with it. Colin’s brow creased gently as you kept your gaze averted from his, bringing another mouthful of food up to your lips as he surveyed you. He allowed you to change the conversation, the two of you relaxing as the previous amiable exchange returned, the two of you clearing your plates and finishing off your shared bottle of wine, talking and laughing softly together. Your mood fell once more when your plates were cleared, your shoulders curving inwards; you knew what had to happen next. After what Colin had just revealed to you, and the actions to which you had stooped to in the past year, you knew what you had to do when he offered you a lopsided smile, his accompanying words painfully tempting: “I’m not ready to leave yet. Dessert?” You exhaled slowly, your smile turning sad. Reaching into your clutch, Colin’s dark eyes fell dull as you pulled out a twenty dollar bill, chucking it on the table and thanking him before standing to leave. “Wait!” Colin exclaimed, a slight pleading tone entering his voice. He lurched to his feet, reaching out and taking hold of your wrist. You turned, the dejected look on his face cracking your heart in two. “I’m sorry,” he blurted, “I didn’t realise that you weren’t having a good time.” “No.” You said hurriedly, your head shaking fervently. “No. Colin, I’ve had an amazing night.” You admitted, Colin’s eyes flashing with hope. The next words were horribly painful to form, your eyes having to drop to the floor in order to let the words out. “I just don’t see this working.” You admitted to his feet, pulling your wrist gently from his grasp. “Thank you. I’m sorry.” The words were whispered, your eyes flicking to his as you offered him a parting smile before turning, forcing the tears that formed in your eyes to remain hidden as you pulled out your phone to book a taxi back home. Colin watched you go, utterly confused as his eyes remained trained on your back until you disappeared out the front door, his arm falling to hang limp at his side. 

For the second time that week, your stomach was infested with nerves, your chest tight and leg bouncing in the empty waiting room, your carefully crafted alibi swirling around and around in your head. Your fingers shook as you ran them over your face, every muscle in your body tightening to the point of pain when you heard a door open and close down the hallway, the sound echoing through the quiet of the empty corridor to your ears. Exhaling deeply, you fortified your mind, reminding yourself what was about to happen and how you were going to deal with it.  “Y/n?” Your head jerked up in the direction of the voice. The kindly receptionist that had directed you to the waiting room twenty minutes earlier offered you an easy smile, beckoning you. “He’s ready for you now.” You nodded, swallowing and wincing when the dry walls of your throat rubbed together. You stood and took the directions the reception provided you with to the door at the bottom of the short hallway to the right, installing feigned confidence in your steps and trying to shake the anxious anticipation racking your body. You knocked on the door before pushing it open and stepping inside, your gaze dropping to the small table at the centre of the room, a neat stack of papers sitting before a painfully familiar man. The two of you froze in unison, the dread swirling in your gut only worsening as Colin’s mouth formed a thin line, his elbows braced on the edge of the table and his hands clasped together beneath his chin. Your mouth parted with the icy surprise that doused the entirety of your being. “Come in.” He motioned to the seat opposite him, his tone tense and his eyes weary as they tracked your journey from the door to the chair he indicated to with a nod of his head. You perched on the chair, averting your gaze to instead stare at the hands you had clasped together in your lap. “It all made sense when I read your file this morning.” Was all he said, not allowing any indication to how he felt about having to question you enter his tone, blocking out the memory of how you had left him at the restaurant with no warning and becoming completely professional. “I just have a few questions for you to answer and then you can leave.” At your silence, your eyes transfixed on your lap, he continued: “But based on the amount of evidence we have gathered against you, I don’t think that this will be our last meeting. And not in the way that I had hoped.” Remaining utterly silent, you nodded shallowly in acknowledgement of his tensely spoken words. “Do you submit to this questioning, yes or no?” He continued on a lengthy sigh. You rose your chin to look at him, muttering a reluctant “yes” and glancing back down at the clean surface of the table before you as you awaited his first question.  Your alibi was weak and Colin had torn through it in a matter of minutes, an utterly irritable demeanour settling over him as the questioning commenced, your responses becoming weaker and weaker until you finally gave in, asking Colin to repeat his previous questions and offering him the truthful answers.  By the end of your questioning, you sat low in your chair, your eyes settling on anything but the man sat before you, feeling completely and utterly dejected as the sound of Colin’s pen scribbling on various thin sheets of paper filled the small room. You forced your humiliated, guilt-fuelled tears to remain hidden within your tear ducts, your teeth clamping down hard on your lower lip when it threatened to quiver of its own accord. “Okay.” Colin sighed after several minutes of uncomfortable silence and meeting your teary eyes, his own gaze weary. “I need you to come with me for processing and then we’ll take it from there.” You didn’t bother asking what he meant but stood when he pushed himself to his feet and trailed him out of the door, not even able to watch Colin’s back as he lead you down the corridor, bracing yourself for whatever was to come next.

taglist: @kitwalker02 @three-eyed-snail @forevercountess @kitwalkerangel @milly-louise @thecountessesglove @undeadcortez @kitwalker64 @samsassinparvismagna @xmaximoffic @divineruler @liandav @tatesweaterweather @evanmybeloved @tatelangdonsupremacist @ikkleroniekins @ananad1 @shlutnutt

[aenaxes]

chasing fountains

[fives x afab!reader] it's so easy to forget that the man you love is war incarnate. and maybe that's exactly why he can't be yours.

warnings: nsfw, angst, breakup sex, cunnilingus, unprotected vaginal sex

w/c: 2.6k

a/n: wrote this while listening to the reverb edit of good days by sza and definitely didn't cry idk what you're talking about

"Are we gonna be adults about this, or are you gonna give me the silent treatment until I guess what I did wrong?"

Fives's tone is no longer a novel sound in the dark walls of your apartment, a jagged sneer sawing through the silence as he sets his helmet down hard on the countertop. It's the kind of sound that doesn't cut deep but cuts wide, leaving a broad swath of gnarled scar tissue that will never heal quite right. (The worst kind.)

The holodrama in front of you drones mindlessly over the midnight channel.

You tell yourself that you've grown used to it, the cold and bitter thing that found home between you after the rosy light he flooded into the room faded away leave after leave, tour after tour. It helps you cope. But your body remembers what your mind tries to forget—memories of first leaves in months and boyish glee as Fives swept you into his arms and kissed you breathless in the narrow berth of your kitchen—and you flinch anyways.

"Isn't it obvious?" you sigh. It's a labored thing that crowds the bottom of your lungs up to your collarbones and chokes your throat with what's left of your straining heart.

You don't think it's anger.

It's something muted, something like the ache of a rusted plasma turbine sputtering out what last dregs of fuel it has left, numb and rote but the only thing it's ever known before it careens off the side of a landing bay and into dark waters. It happens, disrepair, discord. But the fact that it happens somehow makes you feel even worse, makes it feel like it was bound to happen.

"No, cyare, it's really not," Fives frowns.

You can hear the scowl in his voice.

"You forgot to call," you mumble, shifting your arms tighter over your chest, and you aren't sure whether the pressure in your chest is anger or the desperate claws of sorrow trying to remind you that you used to care. That he used to care.

"Cyare, I'm sorry I forgot to call, but I was in an active warzone. I can't just call you whenever to tell you goodnight because I'm usually writing condolences to the training squads of the men I bury."

You can hear the anger tearing at the fine threads of his restraint, his voice rising and rising until it's another sound away from a full-bodied yell. Before now, that sort of volume, that sort of presence, had been exclusive to late-night speeder bike joyrides and chasing fountains of youth over sandy dunes—the types of adrenaline rushes that felt good. You wonder if it's now become resentment or regret or a combination of both.

"You forgot to call for our anniversary," you say at last. Maker, you can't believe how pathetic you sound.

"I'm sorry, but I almost lost my entire squadron out there. I have to prioritize... differently, on the field," Fives says after a moment's pause (so he really did forget), his voice soft again but no less cold, no less tired of raising hellfire and being greeted with an impassive glaze over your eyes.

Silence settles through the room again, thick enough that the holodrama playing before you is reduced to a low buzz, and you tell yourself that your fingers feel numb because you always let the air conditioning run colder when Fives was on tour.

"Look, I'll try to make it up to you next time, cyar'ika," Fives murmurs, picking across the threshold and dropping down onto the couch beside you.

You aren't sure if there ever will be a next time when Fives only exists because of this endless war that cracks open the earth and swallows battalions whole. But when you drop your head onto his shoulder; when he tugs you close and cradles your head with a rough, warm palm; when you both pause and breathe the same breath together, you can pretend for just a moment that things are good again.

"'m tired," you mumble.

"What can I do?" It's the most earnest his voice has been all night, seeking gaps in the armor, places where he can reach in past the stony impasse and to that pearlescent light you've long since hidden from him. It's the closest to an apology you'll get.

"Take me to bed," you say.

Fives gently untangles you from around him, clicking off the holo before he secures his arms beneath you and carefully lifts you into his arms. Bittersweet memory, fragrant and dusted from months of disuse, floods your tongue as you loop your arms around Fives's neck and feel him press a kiss to your temple.

It's muscle memory, really. Nothing more. But it completes the little show of normalcy. It shifts you away from the hazy fugue of the present and back into better days when touch carried with it tender intent, more than ritual motion.

Fives presses a second kiss to your neck when you reach the bedroom door, mouthing his dry lips softly over your pulse. You cling to him and sigh. A third on your jaw, the next on your cheek, and another, another, another over your lips as he shifts you upright and lets you wrap your legs around his waist so you can tilt your head and push your tongue into his mouth.

It's muscle memory when, after he's thrown his armour off into the darkness of your room, you shift your hips down against his, gasping softly over his tongue as you catch the bulge in his blacks and heat floods your core. He groans into your mouth, fisting one hand in your hair and kissing you so hard it's almost crushing. It's muscle memory.

"Fives," you breathe, and it's becoming harder to tell performance from truth as something else hums in your chest.

"I've got you," he murmurs against your lips. "I'm right here, cyare. I'm always gonna be here." And the way he says it almost makes it believable.

You kiss him before he can say anything else, your teeth clacking against his as you swallow his words with a low moan, too afraid that if he says any more, you might actually convince yourself that this is more than an elaborately rewound memory.

Fives is no fool.

He knows, too, laying you carefully on the bed where he would usually toss you onto the mattress with a gleeful laugh and tumble in after you. In the darkness, you catch him hastily twisting out of his top, the low light catching over rippling muscle and warm skin before he rushes between your thighs and drops to his knees. He kisses the soft inner skin of your thighs like he always does, but this time, he does not linger instead kissing you for the sake of motion than playful desire.

This is choreography.

But performance as it might be, you do not need to pretend your pleasure when his heady exhale over your clit serves as a brief warning before Fives licks a broad, wet stripe over your cunt.

In the early days, you had been eager to chalk it up to the end of the gilded shimmer of the honeymoon phase, an entry into a stabler shared life that would be just as sweet. You're not certain what you've become, he and you, but it isn't that.

Whatever you are now, it has no concern in this moment because Fives still knows how to coax pleasure from your deepest parts, finding your softest, most vulnerable places and calling you to something better than a frigid spat to welcome him home.

You clap your hand over your mouth as Fives wraps his lips around your clit, pulling a raw euphoria from your heaving lungs that has you moaning louder than you have in too long. He groans your name into your own skin, gasps, and delves deep again.

"Fives, Fives," you plead, reaching down to grope for his head in your blind pleasure.

"Cyar'ika?" Fives pauses only to respond then plunges his tongue back into the saccharine wetness of your cunt, feeling you jump and spasm around him.

"Fuck me," you cry over a groan, knotting your fingers in his hair.

"You didn't come yet," he murmurs into your skin, almost irritated, his voice thrumming straight to your core as you cry out again.

"It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter," you chant. The intimacy will only prolong the ordeal of greed, will only make you want more when you're already drowning under the weight of what little remains now. "Need you inside me, please."

Fives hums his assent, curls his tongue into your cunt one last time, and leaves you with a ghost of a kiss pressed over your clit. He staggers up off his knees, hardly bothering to lick your slick smeared over his lips—to savor it with the mischievous delight he no longer shares before you—and cups the back of your neck to pull you into a crushing kiss that might almost be painful if you weren't so desperate to soak up every last touch he has to give.

"Tell me if it hurts," he says like he has every time he's pulled you into his arms and parted your thighs. Except this time, there is no lingering gaze, no silent professions of something more than physicality in a moment of heat. Fives only kisses you one last time before he buries his nose in the crook of your neck.

This is a performance, you tell yourself as you press close.

And then he's pushing into you, stretching you open around him and filling you in every way you forgot that you needed, in the way only he could as he cages you between his arms.

He sets a pace that is altogether the same and yet nothing like how you remember him. You're playing out something you had done before arguments lasted weeks and couches became occasional beds. Yet it feels just like the real thing, his thighs sticking to the skin of your ass as he plunges up into that spot that whites out your vision and curls your toes tight.

It feels so real that if you squeeze your eyes shut and release the tension coiled at the base of your neck, you can pretend that when you meet his eyes, Fives will flash you the smile that crinkles around the corners of his eyes and bubbles laughter from his chest.

Instead, he shifts your ankles from the base of his spine, his brows knit tight and his chest heaving as he hefts your legs over his shoulders. You sob as he fucks into you harder now, hard enough to nearly fold you in two and fill the bedroom with the sharp clarity of his skin pressing into yours. You wonder if it's to crowd you close, to mold himself as close as he may ever be and take one more fleeting taste of you.

"Fives," you cry out one last time, the flared ridge of his cockhead catching your clit as he pulls out.

Desire crests so high in your core you almost feel sick with want for more. You cling to the feeling, committing to memory what you will later try to scrub away: how you flutter around the ridges of Fives's cock, how he fucks you in the way only months of true, genuine desire would allow him to know, how when your legs jerk and he lathes his tongue your shoulder that you might have called this love.

It's ironic how that's the one thing that crosses your mind when you squeeze your arms around his neck and come with a strangled sob. His hips connect hard with yours, fucking into you in one swift motion that has your back arching off the sheets. You blindly kiss over the coarse stubble of Fives's jaw, and it crushes the air from your lungs as he takes your chin in his hands, all gentle and trembling restraint, and kisses you so sweetly it burns.

A few more sloppy thrusts, and Fives bows his head low and pushes deeper than he has all night. Groping over his shoulder for his hand, he frantically laces his fingers with yours, squeezing tight. And when you squeeze back, you hear him make something of a moan and a sob pushed into one as he finishes inside you.

He overwhelms you with one last gesture of him as you pulse around his softening cock, and you can't help how you look to him with stars in your eyes, just like before, just like how it was supposed to be. He notices—opening his eyes to reveal something forgiving and warm—but before whatever it is drags you both into its inescapable orbit, he takes you into his arms and collapses onto his side.

Fives pulls out of you with an obscene noise, something you might have laughed at before the thorns of distance had grown long and sharp between you. You only sigh at the slow drip of his come sliding over your skin and pooling over the sheets as he pulls out.

For a while, you lie there, the sheets kicked to the foot of the bed and your cheek pressed to the sweat-slicked skin of his chest. You don't remember what you would do to fill the buzzing silence of afterglow, but you remember it felt better than what you're feeling, the slow descent of gilded curtains in a dark room, falling, falling.

Fives takes the guesswork out of it for you, though. There's a semblance of real tenderness when he kisses your brow and shifts away just enough that he can't meet your eyes but instead can keep you close enough to touch.

"When's your next tour?" you whisper into the quiet as he lifts his hand to your face.

"I have a week of leave," Fives responds. He traces his fingertips over the highest points of your cheeks and nose, memorializing in touch what the darkness tucks away.

"Where to?"

"Ringo Vinda." His fingers curl over your chin, cradling you to his skin before he slowly sweeps them up the edge of your jaw.

"That's far," you say.

"Not too far," he chuckles, hollow and weak as he runs his thumb over your ear. "I can still call you at night."

"You don't have to."

"I want to, y/n."

"Don't," you whisper, and you hear his inhale catch in his throat.

It's where this entire evening has been going from the moment he stepped foot into your apartment until now: one final, cresting movement pressed into the absence of space between you, impossibly wide and impossibly close all at once as Fives's hand stills over the skin just beneath your eye.

"Don't call?" He knows his answer, but he says it anyways, desperate rhetoric clinging to something that has already been gone for months.

"Don't," you manage to say over the heat in your eyes and the asphyxiating swell at the back of your throat. "Please."

There's still a part of you that wants him to fight. Wants him to rear back, raise his voice, and look you in the eyes to say horrible things to fight for the sum of you and him like he always has. Because it isn't right for it to end like this, a lonely blip over the comm channels that cries once then blinks out forever. It isn't right.

But you're tired.

"I'm sorry." Your calm breaks with a trembling sob.

And when pries his fingertips from your face to wrap his arms around your shoulders and pull you close, you know it is the last time you will fly this close to the sun; the last time you will bear witness to the glorious, warm light that had only soured in the time you shared.

"I'm sorry," you hiccup.

"It's okay," Fives's voice rumbles under your ear, backgrounded by tight, shallow breaths that only close the vice tighter around your throat. "I'm sorry, too."

And you let him go.

(He doesn't call.)

[heliads]

In Need of Comfort

Based on this request: “reader breaks into piotr rasputin’s room in the middle of the night because she wants cuddles. but they usually don't cuddle often so he doesn't know how to answer.”

masterlist

You’re back again, back in the dream. Then again, to call this thing a dream is to call the worst of tortures a mild exercise in self control; it’s as close as you can come to a nightmare without outright reducing yourself to insanity. The worst part is that you’ve lived through this nightmare many times before, and the worst part is that you were there in real life first, even before it invaded your dreams.

The room is the exact same, it always is. Bleached tiles, the faint and acrid scent of antiseptic even though you shouldn't be able to smell things in dreams at all. How is it that your worst nightmares always seem to break the rules that should confine them? It’s not as if you needed any more hints that what was happening in your head was crucially, brutally wrong in every sense of the word.

You’re strapped to a medical bed, thick restraints on your arms and legs and throat, although space is made for easy access to your key arteries. Your thin hospital gown is stained with blood, the same rusty smears on the floor beneath you. Sometimes, there’s too much even for the cleaners to remove. You scream and scream for as long as you want, but it doesn’t matter- no one will hear you. No one ever does.

The doctors linger by your eyes, your heart, your lungs. They poke and prod then sew you back up only for the process to start all over again. Why shouldn’t they keep going, they ask? What is it about a mutant that would ever let them show you an ounce of mercy? In the end, they grow tired of your pleading and silence you once and for all. It is only then, once they wipe their hands of blood and begin to walk away, that you finally wake up in a cold sweat.

You have to stare around the room for many minutes, chest heaving with stolen breath, before you can remind yourself of where you are and be sure that it’s not just another lie made to make you believe that you escaped from the labs. No- everything is here, everything is in place. The sheets are a tangled, sweaty mess around you, but that isn’t new. You’re still in your room at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, still just as hurt as you were the first time you showed up.

Now that you’ve assured yourself that you’re still here, you begin to lean back a little, muscles screaming in protest after the apparent exertion of the nightmare. You press a hand to your forehead and find it hot; whether that’s because you’re feverish or simply because your fingers are shaking too much for you to think much of anything, that is up to you. You should be able to sense anything about your body, as that is your gift, but you’re too rattled for anything to make sense.

You were supposed to be a healer, you know. You were supposed to mend broken bones instead of shattering them, save dozens instead of killing hundreds. When you first discovered your mutation, back when you were very young, that’s what you thought you would be: a healer, a savior. Someone people could look to with a smile or a plea whenever they needed help, someone who would most certainly not be feared as a destroyer of homes and lives.

Then the doctors at the labs had found you and brought you in, and just like that, all of your best wishes for your future were gone. They had stripped away the healer in you, and replaced it with a mindless killer. Instead of slowing blood flow and grafting skin, you tore flesh from bone. Your powers could be boiled down to the bare ability to change the function of the human body. So, the doctors merely changed you to harm instead of heal. It was the simplest of answers- everyone needs a soldier, no one needs a medic. Why shouldn’t they change you?

It wasn’t that easy for you, of course. The doctors weren’t the ones strapped to a medical bed and forced to live through round after round of excruciating procedures, they were the ones holding the scalpel. By some sheer force of will, you managed to survive, although you were never quite the same. No one really could, right? There is no way that you would be able to pick up every single piece of yourself and put it back together again. After all, your status as a healer was a thing of the past.

Xavier had found you shortly after that, a monster still trying its best to scrub away the blood underneath its fingernails. Instead of putting you down or trying to lock you away, he’d offered you a place in his school. All he asked is that you try to get back to the person you once were, to convince your mind to save instead of hurt. It was a lot harder than he had thought- the doctors had pretty much rewritten your DNA to change your mutation for the worse. However, you’re willing to give it a shot.

That’s why you’re here, now, sitting terrified in your bed reliving the past instead of still being stuck in it. You know that, and you should be able to breathe more evenly and go back to sleep, but you can’t. This nightmare was too vivid, seemed too real. If you didn’t know better, you’d say that they were getting worse. No, the possibility of sleep is something you can’t possibly consider, not until you know for a fact that you’re going to be alright after this.

So, you get up, forcing the knotted bedsheets away from you. Your tired footsteps pad down the hallway, away from your room and towards a more familiar one. You only have to knock once or twice before the door opens to reveal the face you’ve been longing to see- Piotr Rasputin, although he does look fairly surprised to see you here at this hour of the night. He starts to ask a question, you can see that in his sleep-laced eyes, but you can’t come up with an answer. Instead, you move forward, slumping against his chest.

After a second, he wraps his arms around you, guiding you inside and shutting the door. “Nightmare?” He asks, although the question is mostly irrelevant now. Piotr knows about these dreams, they stick with you just as his own seem to stay with him. He promises that he’ll track down the doctors from the lab and make sure they can never haunt you again. He says this every single time you’ve had a nightmare, every time you’ve woken up too scared to even think about closing your eyes. This is why he’s sworn this exact oath maybe a hundred times.

However, you never came to him after the nightmares, choosing instead to deal with them in the quiet solitude of your own room. Tonight’s dream was especially bad, though, which is why you needed your boyfriend here to remind you that you’re still safe in the school. Piotr senses all of this, and picks you up, carrying you back to his bed. He climbs in next to you, pulling up the blankets around you. The air is cold in Xavier’s School at this time of night; already, you’re cooling off and grateful for the comfort of the sleep-warmed fabric.

Piotr’s arms settle around you once again. “Do you want to talk about it?” The syllables are slow to come, drenched with the exhaustion of waking up so late into the night. Then again, he’s still fairly conscious for such an odd time to be awake. It appears that you weren’t the only one to wake up with a nightmare of the things trapped in the dark recesses of your mind and memories.

You shake your head quietly. It’s too recent, your mind still trapped in that half-real realm between sleep and consciousness that you’re afraid that by speaking the names of your fears, they could still visit you here, even after you woke up. Piotr nods, although judging by the slight clench of his jaw he feels bad that he can’t even provide you this relief. You haven’t done this recently, if ever- he doesn’t know how to convince you that you’re still in reality if he’s not that sure of it himself.

However, he’s not willing to give up on you just yet. That’s why you fell in love with him in the first place, isn’t it? There isn’t a thing that he wouldn’t do for you, and right now, that means Piotr will stay with you until he’s sure that you’re going to be alright, at least for now. So, he tightens his grip on you, pulling you close until your head is nestled against his chest. It’s funny- for someone who’s mutation is becoming a man made entirely of hard, dense metal, he can be fairly soft and comforting when he wants to be.

His breath is warm against the top of your head. “What do you plan on doing today? We’ve got classes, of course, and practice, but other than that the day is free. We could do anything.” You can feel your own breathing evening out as you listen to him speak. “What is there to do?” Piotr fishes around for an answer before responding. “It’s supposed to be a nice day. We could walk around the grounds.”

You pause for a moment, considering this. “It’s not supposed to rain?” Piotr shakes his head. “Not a drop. Nothing but clear blue skies all day.” Your movements still slightly. Even now, so close to your boyfriend and so far from the labs, you’re unable to let go of the horrors of the nightmares. “I don’t think I was ever meant to be a blue sky. I’ve got too many thunderstorms for that.” Something almost like a smile touches upon Piotr’s lips. “Well, in all honesty I like thunderstorms more. Nothing but blue can get pretty boring after a while.”

You can hear the words he’s not saying: even in times like this, when you’re still shaking from the nightmares, he’d pick you. He’d pick you every time. Honestly, for someone who has no idea how to make you feel better, he’s doing a pretty good job of it. You snuggle up closer to him, wrapping the blankets even tighter around yourself. “Thank you, Piotr.”

His smile is deeper now. “Of course, Y/N. Anytime.” You can tell he means it. You had intended to stay awake a little longer, to say something else, but you’re so tired and the bed is so warm that you can’t seem to stop your eyelids from drooping. Sleep is already upon you, and you feel Piotr press a kiss to your forehead just before you fall completely under the tide. For once, you have no nightmares at all.

xmen tag list: my anti nightmare homie (thats a thing now) @underc0vercryptid​

[suoyou]

[wip] 真金不怕火炼; true gold fears no flame

incomplete wip. 2744 words, rated t. 

originally drafted for the wangxian weddings for maubrey collection. a sequel to baby’s first wangxian fic 蓝色生死恋; a blue love (to live and to die for)

Wei Wuxian wakes up the morning after his wedding a little cold and a lot sore, skin tingling like it’s new. He’s spent a lot of both lives waking up feeling like his skeleton had sneakily rearranged itself overnight in the worst way—a rib in his throat, a femur jammed up through his belly, vertebrae scattered around him like loose gravel. 

But today he wakes up with the sun in a crescent on his hip, smiling at the edge of the window, feeling like every part of his body for once is in the right place. Brain in his head, head on his shoulders, heart in his chest. Lan Zhan is, of course, already awake, staring up at the canopy of their wedding bed. Not wide-eyed, and possibly for the first time in Wei Wuxian’s life, lazy. 

“Lan Zhan.” He can hear his own voice vibrate against Lan Zhan’s body. 

“You’re awake.”

“What were you doing up, earlier?” Wei Wuxian presses a deep yawn into the side of his husband’s—husband’s!—neck, the kind that sends shivers all the way down into his ankles and feet. “It was barely dawn. Don’t tell me you weren’t tired? I can’t believe I didn’t tire you out last night. I don’t even know if I was awake for our last round.” The thought makes heat flare in Wei Wuxian’s cheeks. They’ll have to revisit that.

“Hm,” Lan Zhan says, and the low thrum of laughter runs through him. It’s mostly silent; Wei Wuxian feels it more than he hears it. “You were, but only just.” Then, “I thought of a song.”

“A song?”

“Yes.”

“About what?”

“You,” Lan Zhan says, both fondly and in a way that says this should be obvious.

“About my oral prowess, I hope.”

“It was not.”

“Is it happy, at least?”

Lan Zhan is quiet. “My other song for you is not very happy, is it?” 

“Well,” Wei Wuxian pushes himself upright so that he’s lying on top of Lan Zhan, rests his chin on his folded wrists. A constellation of hickeys and bruises stretches across Lan Zhan’s neck, and Wei Wuxian takes his time studying them. He hasn’t seen his own skin yet, but he can tell the violet blooms are already fading on Lan Zhan, burnt back by the heat of his golden core. “I think someone a lot lonelier than the Lan Zhan I married wrote that song, is all.”

“Mm.” Lan Zhan holds Wei Wuxian by the waist, steady, steady, like balancing the weight of the world on him in the cradle of his palms. “But you’re here now. To have you like this, it would be impossible to feel lonely again.”

“To have me like how?” Wei Wuxian asks, propping his chin in his palm, wide-eyed with mock wonder. “Will the esteemed Hanguang-jun care to elaborate?”

Lan Zhan’s eyes darken, narrowing for a flicker of a moment before he moves, and Wei Wuxian ends up on his back so fast that ah, there, there’s that feeling that his bones are all in the wrong places—in the best way, in the only way he hopes to know it again, with Lan Zhan’s hands on his body  and heart against his. Beating, beating, beating.

☄

For some reason, Wei Wuxian is surprised when he gets up and Lan Zhan offers him clothes that look virtually identical to the ones he’s always worn—dark, red accents, wristcuffs laced with ribbons. Everything is a little nicer, and even for someone who never cared to notice, the fabric folds heavy and well-made in his hands. There are cloud patterns embroidered in black thread along the collars, and peonies in the shoulder patches. 

He stands in the middle of their wedding chamber, naked as the day he was born, turning them back and forth without slipping them on. 

“Do you not like them?” Lan Zhan asks, already decent with his satin underrobe on.

“I love them, they’re just so—me?” Wei Wuxian lowers them. 

“Would you like me to put them on?”

“Yes!” Wei Wuxian says. He lifts his arms helpfully when Lan Zhan comes to him, slipping the sleeves of a new red underrobe over him and leaning close to do the ties at Wei Wuxian’s waist. He’s so close that Wei Wuxian simply leans forward and kisses the crown of Lan Zhan’s head. Then his temple. Then he stops, because if he doesn’t, they will never leave this chamber. 

“These were commissioned from a different tailor,” Lan Zhan says when he slips the black outer robe onto Wei Wuxian’s body. “I was concerned that they wouldn’t get your measurements right, but I’m glad to see it fits.”

It fits like a hug around Wei Wuxian’s body. 

“The collars of the underrobe are quite high?”

Lan Zhan looks at him. “That was intentional.”

Wei Wuxian stares blankly until the faint ache of hickeys registers, and he puts his hands over his face and groans, “Ohhh. Oh, I won’t make it through the week like this.”

“Wei Ying.”

“I love you, Lan Zhan, I really do, with all the force of ten thousand weeping mountains—a hundred thousand—but my heart will give out. It will cave.”

Lan Zhan ignores his theatrics and turns him around to run his hairbrush through Wei Wuxian’s hair. He’s always so gentle when he does it for Wei Wuxian—not that he’s rough on himself, but he certainly doesn’t seem to take as long, brushing out every lock of hair between his fingers. 

“I can’t believe the Chief Cultivator can’t even take a few days to himself. After his own wedding!” Wei Wuxian says as Lan Zhan twists his hair up into a soft knot. It’s elegant and something Wei Wuxian will likely never learn how to do himself. “I want to stay with you all day. I want to lie in the sun with you and then go running by the beaches at sunset. Well—I’ll run, you can walk gracefully, as you do. I want to sit in the grass with you and feed the rabbits until the wet seeps up into my robes.”

“Mm. So do I.” Lan Zhan pushes his hairstick through the base of the knot. “But it will be a short meeting. Just a report and a written acknowledgment that we are married, that the sects have bore witness that we are married. And that any assault upon you would be considered an offense to the Lan Sect.” 

Wei Wuxian’s knees go soft and it has nothing to do with the exhaustion from the night before. “Lan Zhan...”

“You could come if you like, but I would not ask you to.”

“Because you’re flawless and perfect.”

Lan Zhan exhales. It’s his favorite way to laugh. Then he smooths his hand down the free length of Wei Wuxian’s hair. “I’ll meet you in the Jingshi for lunch.”

“Come back to me soon.”

“Always.”

☄

For two weeks after the wedding, Lan Zhan has reduced duties and Wei Wuxian a leave of absence from classes, but it has been a while since he watched the sun turn the sky blue, then grey, then lace-white as it rises over the blanket of clouds. Once, on a night hunt, Wei Wuxian had climbed high enough in the Cloud Recesses that the clouds were finally under him, and he looked over the endlessness of it, feeling like he was standing at the edge of existence. 

By the third day, after all the guests leave, Wei Wuxian finally gets some much-needed solitude. It’s a weird thing to need, for him, anyway, considering how much time he’s already spent alone. When he sits in the meadow of rabbits in the back hills of the Cloud Recesses, he lies down with his arms spread until he can feel rabbit nosing at his pockets.

“I haven’t brought anything for you,” he says, eyes closed. The sun is orange and veiny against his closed eyes. “Since when did you guys even like me enough to look for snacks?”

There are voices coming down the mountain path, though, so Wei Wuxian sits up and brushes stray bits of grass off his back and knees, tries to pick some out of his hair. Before his wedding, he would not have cared, but he’s husband to the Chief Cultivator now. He needs to look the part. 

“Morning,” he greets, and blinks when it’s a handful of older Lan women carrying the rabbit feed today. Tending to the rabbits is disciple work, usually, but vaguely, he knows they had to change the structure of classes for the two weeks he isn’t teaching. 

“Oh! Wei gongzi. We didn’t expect to see you out here.”

“Hanguang-jun isn’t with you?”

“He’s busy in the mornings,” says Wei Wuxian, hands jumping to the collars of his robes. They’re bound tight, thank heavens. “I’ve simply been unwinding after a wedding like that. It really takes everything out of you, doesn’t it?”

“Being married does that to you,” says one of the women, sagely. Lan Danyi if Wei Wuxian’s memory serves him correctly. The other women nod, murmuring their assent.

“It...takes everything out of you?” he asks. That doesn’t sound pleasant, but he hasn’t been anything but happy since being married. Is he doing something wrong?

“When does it not?” says another. Lan Ruyi, who looks so much like her sister that they could be mirror images. “You’re lucky you married Hanguang-jun, Wei gongzi. Marriage is hard work. The first year of a marriage is the hardest year of any relationship.”

“It—it is? Why?”

“Well, of course,” they say, like this should be common knowledge. Lan Danyi bends down and begins feeding the rabbits their carrots. “You will probably have it better than we do, but when you get married, who do you become? You lose your sense of self. Before this, you’re your own person, but you don’t just belong to you anymore, don’t you? Of course, Hanguang-jun would never be so uncouth, I see that he doesn’t mind that Wei gongzi continues to wear his own robes. Which is as it should be, do you remember that Zhao Xiaohong that Lan Hongqi married a few years ago?”

“Oh,” says Wei Wuxian. He hadn’t thought of that. 

“Of course, of course,” says the third woman. Wei Wuxian well and truly cannot remember her name, which is going to be a problem if he’s going to be part of the Lan Sect now. “But your future isn’t your own anymore, either. You walk a two-person path now. When one person hurts their feet, you must check your own for thorns. Sometimes the path diverges and you want to take a different one than the one they choose.” She sighs. “And you have to choose the one they want to take.”

“I think learning how to walk one, honest path is romantic in and of itself, Jianying.”

“Perhaps. But not all of us can marry Hanguang-jun, so really, how romantic could it be.”

“So you can’t be headstrong, it’ll be such a pain,” Lan Ruyi says. “It’s easier for someone who grew up in the Lan Sect, but marrying in is always harder.”

“Which is what makes the first year of living together the hardest,” says Lan Danyi, nodding. “You don’t want to be someone difficult to share space with. But, Wei gongzi, I’m sure you and Hanguang-jun won’t have a problem at all. Right?”

“Right,” he says faintly. A morning with the rabbits is almost always calm and soothing, but today he feels neither calm nor soothed. “Uh, have a lovely morning.”

“Wei gongzi, go safely!” they call after him as he slip-slides back onto the path.

He gives them a wave, and starts heading back alone.

☄

“—ying. Wei Ying?”

 He blinks.  Then he comes to, piece by piece, chopsticks still aloft between his bowl and his mouth. A bite of married-couple spiced tripe drips its fiery oil into his food, a little red coin on the pebbled surface of his rice. Lan Zhan has leaned forward, mouth set in a taut line of concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Wei Wuxian shovels his food into his mouth. “Nothing, Lan Zhan.”

His husband—will he ever tire of that title? Evidence points to no—is not convinced. Not that Wei Wuxian expected him to be, but he also doesn’t expect Lan Zhan to set his own bowl down, resting his chopsticks over the rim, and insist, again, “There’s something wrong.”

“Lan Zhan, it’s really...really, it’s…”

Of course, Hanguang-jun would never be so uncouth, I see that he doesn’t mind that Wei gongzi continues to wear his own robes.

“Well,” says Wei Wuxian, and Lan Zhan leans forward minutely to listen, “Lan Zhan, do you hate that I dress this way?”

This question apparently catches Lan Zhan off-guard. He blinks once, twice, then asks, “In what way, Wei Ying?”

“Like...myself.” Like my unmarried self. 

A faint ribbon of confusion slips between Lan Zhan’s eyebrows. “I love you regardless of what you wear.”

“You probably prefer me not wearing anything, right, Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian jokes weakly. 

“Yes. But,” says Lan Zhan, as Wei Wuxian wheezes at his frankness, “what is this about?”

“I just thought,” Wei Wuxian says, feeling wild and stupid, because they’re married, they’re married, why is he being silly about this, “that. I don’t know, I’d look different after I got married. To you? That I should look different.” I want to look different. I want to look like I belong to somewhere, to someplace, to someone.

“Different how?”

“Uhm,” he looks down into his rice, chili oil staining the grains a bright, yolky gold. Gods, this is ridiculous. “Never mind.”

Lan Zhan is a quiet rustle of fabric and footsteps when he stands and moves around the dining table. When he sits down beside Wei Wuxian he’s a warm waft of sandalwood and camellia oil. “Wei Ying,” he says, brings Wei Ying’s hand into his lap between his own. “Something troubles you.”

“It’s not—I’m not troubled, Lan Zhan, I promise. But I guess I. I want to look married to you.”

Lan Zhan searches his face. The concern softens around the edges. “How so?”

“I don’t think I can wear all white or a forehead ribbon, or more than three layers,” Wei Wuxian warns, “but. I felt at home, wearing your white underrobe. It’s not that I don’t like red, but I only wore it so much so you couldn’t see the bloo—”

Wei Wuxian snaps his mouth shut. Really, is this a topic he should be bringing up a day after their wedding, at dinner, no less? He feels like an uninvited, rain-soaked guest falling through the doorway of a place he’s not welcome. 

“Stains less,” he finishes in a tiny voice. 

“Wei Ying,” says Lan Zhan, and he reaches up to tuck one of Wei Wuxian’s feathery wisps of hair behind his ear. “If that is what you want to wear, then you should wear it.”

“I didn’t want to make you feel bad. You commissioned those for me in mind specially.”

Lan Zhan shakes his head. “Only because I mistook your preference for them. What you wear is your choice, Wei Ying. In this life, you do not have to look any way but the way you want to. All white. All black. A bit of both, or neither. The things we put on our bodies...they’re an extension of us. Whatever that looks like to you now is what I’ll love.”

“What if I want to wear a pink tunic and a green skirt and, and a gold belt, and no shoes?”

“You would look like Nezha,” Lan Zhan says very seriously, “and I would love you all the same.”

Wei Wuxian laughs, and then he kisses his husband right there at the dinner table, and he thinks that being married really doesn’t take too much out of you at all. Lan Zhan steadies him by the arms, and then pulls him into his lap, and Wei Wuxian’s ribs wedge into the side of the table and the bruise from even that will be sore and sweet the way a hickey is.

What a fortune it is to be married, Wei Wuxian thinks, when Lan Zhan has him on the bamboo mat floors and his hair in a dark fan across them, and have the privilege to be nothing but your messy, scattered, glimmering self. 

[shoichee]

potential juicy part 3: when they meet akashi again at the winter cup, reader, who now "hates" him, disrespects him to his face + pretends she doesn't care. but after kuroko reveals the whole story the night before rakuzan game, she's forced to confront the truth + they go all out against him (and win ofc) so akashi, now back to being akashi, confesses to reader, ig reader finally tells him what happened? (did i just write a wholeass fic in your askbox i am so sorry) btw tysm for the part 1!!

LMAOO THE WHOLEASS FIC SENT ME HELPP you snapped off in your request i can only deliver justice.... did i just listened to some KNB openings on repeat to manifest myself to pretend I’m the characters so I can accurately write them?.......... n-no...... part 1 here and part 2 here ^^ AND part 4 here

Akashi x f!Reader (but 99% g/n)

Part 3 

[Teiko!manager Headcanons]

shortly after Rakuzan’s victory against Shuutoku, the Rakuzan starters were walking together in the hallway to their lockers when you were blocking the way, hogging up the vending machines in the middle of the hallway to buy your teammates refreshments and snacks and then shoving them into your small backpack

Hayama impatiently yells at you to scram and Mayuzumi gives his own condescending comment, and you immediately looked up to see the infamous team

you instantly freeze up when you see Akashi in the back of the group just wordlessly staring as usual, and you just stay at your spot completely still for a while

“... Girl! Are you even listening?! Are you dumb or deaf?”

“That’s no way to speak to a girl!”

“Ow! But Reo-nee…”

“Maybe she just needs to eat? She’s probably hungry.”

“Ugh, no one else is like you, you know!”

“Tch.”

Mayuzumi merely frowns before he casually looks behind to see a rather intense aura emanating from Akashi, which is quite rare considering that you were a nobody compared to him and you weren’t someone who threatened him in any way… unless that was actually the case? but he merely observes from the shadows

“Move. You’re in the way.”

you incredulously stand up straight from his words and point a finger at him:

“I-I… I can’t believe it! This is the first thing you say to me after all this time?! Everything that happened at Teiko… was… was all your fucking fault! I hope the final game becomes your own downfall, you fucking jerk! And I hope I never see you again after tomorrow night.”

by now, you were hyperventilating from shouting at him, and the teammates were stunned… and absolutely fearful, their gazes darting back to Akashi to see his chilling gaze at you, looking quite calm

“How laughable. You haven’t changed at all, (y/n). You can believe in Seirin’s basketball all you want, say all you want, but it’s all pointless. Rakuzan will achieve victory like it always has. Now step aside.”

you only gape your mouth as you furiously huff and aggressively grab your packed bag and run, but as you dash away, you slightly stumble from the dizziness you felt from the emotional stress

ngl, Reo and Nebuya kinda pitied you watching you run

when you were gone from his field of vision, Akashi merely tells them to move onto the lockers and acts like nothing ever happened

you’ve practically convinced yourself that you truly hated Akashi for hurting Kuroko and destroying teamplay at Teiko… but in truth, you were only using him as a scapegoat to get over your unrequited feelings for him // of course the deepest part of you knew that the adults were responsible, and you knew that Akashi fulfilled his role of captain to the very end (while you meanwhile still had lingering feelings of self-doubt in your work ethic all this time)

while you were extremely happy for the Seirin team for making it to Winter Cup finals, you were so ashamed to even have the fleeting thought that you wanted Seirin to lose in the semi-finals so you didn’t have to face Akashi again

the late evening before the game tomorrow, Kuroko was in the mostly empty stadium, mostly because he wanted to reminisce about the old times before he faces Rakuzan tomorrow

it was a very unfortunate coincidence that Akashi was also there to survey the court for a moment before the game tomorrow

both of them held a long moment of eye contact before Kuroko decides to call him out

“Akashi-kun.”

“Tetsuya.”

“Have you ever had fun playing with Rakuzan?”

“To think that I had a fleeting thought of you asking me a different question this time. I can never understand how you’re fixated on such a pitiful ideal.”

“... Then… have you always felt this way even since the beginning of Teiko?” Akashi merely narrows his eyes at Kuroko

“Get to the point.”

“I’ve just been… wondering, that’s all.”

“Then I will not dally here further just to have a reunion about the past.” Akashi turns around to leave and walks a few steps before Kuroko calls out to stop him in his tracks

“... I want to ask you about (y/n)-san.” He merely watches Akashi slightly turning his head around before continuing. “What do you think about her?”

“She was Teiko’s head manager. How else did you think my opinion was, Tetsuya? She, just like Daiki, just like everyone else, was an asset to achieving victory. I will not repeat myself again.”

“Akashi-kun, with your Emperor Eye, surely you would’ve noticed something was amiss with (y/n)-san for a while now.” Akashi turns completely around with an impassive gaze

“Broken plates can still function fine. It’s no different with Daiki.” Kuroko grows furious for your sake

“H-How… how can you say that? Do you know how much she’s overworked herself and collapsed throughout these past months for the sake of our team? Did you even know how much of our own 1st-string players were belittling her despite her continuing to give it her all? She cared for our team—she cared for you! She didn’t even want to let you know what was going on behind your back to not burden you any further—and for you to only chalk her up as a tool—”

Akashi is slightly taken back at the sudden info dump/confession from Kuroko, struggling to process the new information… but his face gives little away; Kuroko continues on:

“We’re going to win tomorrow. I swear that Seirin will win against Rakuzan.”

“... It will be intriguing to see you try.” Akashi turns to finally exit out, leaving Kuroko simmering in his thoughts alone (excluding a few janitors) for a few minutes before he exits the stadium himself

in seeing you again the next day, Kuroko immediately notices how antsy you got and even offered to give you the massages to get rid of your own stress knots AND YOU INSTANTLY FEEL WARM BECAUSE YOU TAUGHT HIM YOUR TECHNIQUES SO LONG AGO, AND HE STILL REMEMBERS

you confide in Kuroko as he works out the knots, confessing that you don’t want to be there at the final game but you didn’t want to be selfish and ditch the team, especially since everyone made you feel like you mattered to the team (and you told him about your incident with Akashi yesterday too)

Kuroko shares his own fears and unresolved feelings to you to show that you weren’t alone in feeling uneasy (although he doesn’t share the info that he met up with Akashi)

wholesome friendship moment #753358

the talk made you made up your resolve, and you tell him that you were going to be there at the front bench to support Seirin like you’ve always done, but you do make a request for him to make an excuse for you in case you chicken out and flee mid-game or something

Kuroko agrees and to make you feel better, he proposes for you to focus on him throughout the game so you don’t have to look at Akashi; he knows you still harbor feelings for the Rakuzan captain

while the Seirin starters were warming up, you opted to survey the building interior to find the best route around… just in case if you wanted to flee // you meet Kaijo’s team by coincidence, and Kasamatsu ushers the rest of the team forward to leave you and Kise alone

Kise affectionately ruffles your hair and wishes you and Seirin good luck but also notices how anxious you look; this idiot slaps your back to calm you down LOL

“(y/n)-cchi! What are you so nervous for?”

“Ow! What the hell?”

“O-Ow, ow! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hit that hard—can you please let go?!”

“It’s been a while since I shoulder-locked you, huh…”

“Well, I certainly don’t miss it! You’re so cruel!”

and you only give him an all-knowing look at his “cruel” comment, and Kise panics again at his usual poor word choice… but you merely laugh at his distress

unintentionally, Kise does end up being the one to help you clear up the bundles of nerves… he’s still really worried for you because he definitely can see how you’re still hung up on Akashi

at the same time, when Seirin was watching Rakuzan team members do perfect layups, getting nervous about the game, you were a nervous wreck in your own world at the bench, triple-checking everything and giving massages to Teppei to relieve his knee pain for the time being

throughout the game, Akashi does throw a casual glance at you here and there when no one’s really looking, and meanwhile, you’re incredibly fixated on Kuroko (doing what he told you so you wouldn’t be tempted to look at Akashi)

a lot of your attention was on Furihata anyways because you were focused on massaging particular areas to reduce the physical stress exerted on them during the game

part of Akashi wants to go all out and win this game not only to prove you and Kuroko wrong, but also to impress you, but that’s something his true self feels (who is dormant in his subconscious) rather than his current self… but it’s still there

the moment you broke was when the Akashi you knew and liked finally returned to the court, and you immediately excused yourself to the empty infirmary room to bawl your eyes out and put yourself together; you tell yourself that it’s just another tactic of Akashi and return to the game right when Seirin makes their game point

Oreshi gave 100% in battling against Seirin but occasional glances constantly were shot over to Seirin’s bench to look for you, but you were gone at the last part of the game until at the very end

after the team lineups and trophy distributions, you immediately run outside of the stadium for crisp night air, heaving in as much as you could to try to prevent your body from having any funny ideas of dying on the spot

“... (l/n)-san.”

from his voice, you knew it was Akashi, and you debated on running as fast as you can but the current state of your body didn’t make it a viable option; you opted to stand still quietly, your back still facing him

“(/n)-san,” Akashi softly says again, slowly walking up to you and stopping four meters behind you to give you reasonable space in the confrontation

“... I hate you, you know that? Didn’t I tell you that I didn’t want to see you again after this game?”

“Kuroko disclosed to me what happened.”

“He what?!” In your shock, you whirl around to face Akashi, only to be stunned to see his gentle eyes filled with guilt and worry

“... I want to give you my sincerest apology for everything I’ve done and for what I didn’t do for you. In seeing how the Generation of Miracles had their talents bloomed substantially at a rapid rate, I had believed chasing for absolute victory was the only way to hold us together. Teamwork was nigh impossible given that we had no equal rivals from the outside. Even if that was the only plausible option to take as captain, I still failed Teiko’s other members, including you. To think that I was foolish in letting go what was most important to me.”

he gives a deep bow, further shocking you of your wits

“I…” You pause before you frown. “What did Kuroko even tell you?”

Akashi tells you exactly what Kuroko said and you immediately deny it

“Th-That’s… I only worked hard to get better, so I wouldn’t get left behind. Our old teammates were a testament that I was lacking, and I tried hard to catch up to everyone. I only collapsed due to my own irresponsibility. No matter how much I tried, I could never reach up to everyone’s level, even until now.”

“That’s not the whole truth isn’t it, (l/n)-san?” You widen your eyes at his statement, worried about the insinuation of his words

Oreshi now was not the same Oreshi back in Teiko; he’s now much sharper when it comes to you; he senses that there was something else amiss

“Why didn’t you tell me about what happened back at Teiko? Did you feel that you couldn’t rely on me as a captain?” Akashi sounds hurt… really hurt

you, taken back, immediately were quick to answer:

“N-No! If anything, I… I didn’t want you to look at me in a lesser light if you ever found out that our members started losing faith in me, and I… I wanted to be dependable like everyone else on the team! And if I was reliable, you would be able to depend on me like you used to in the very beginning…”

“(l/n)-san,” Akashi mumbles with upturned brows. “You’ve always been viable to me and the team. Why do you go through such lengths?” Your tears burst forth uncontrollably before you choked out:

“Because I liked you! You were so accomplished and reputable…! I had always th-thought that deep down, i-if I kept improving myself, that you’d notice me in the way I saw you!” Both you and Akashi widened your eyes at what you just said

well shit, maybe now is a good time to run? but before you even had any other ideas, Akashi steps forward to gently clasp your wrist

“... How do you feel about me now?” You obviously hesitate and look down at your clasped wrist, tears still streaky on your face, and at your silence, Akashi continues. “If you truly despise me… I understand. I won’t bother you anymore after tonight… But please believe me (l/n)-san, when I say…”

he moves from your wrist to your hand, taking his other hand to bring up both your hands in a delicate clasp

“... that I’ve always been fond of you, ever since the beginning.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am not, (l/n).” To prove his point, Akashi places a tentative ghost kiss on his hands holding yours, wary in trying not to overstep his boundaries in case you didn’t want your hands to be kissed by him; he leaves his lips there before he murmurs

“... How can I make it up to you?” You feel his soft breath reverberating through your own hands, and it felt so sincere

“Well… for starters, I want to know the Akashi outside of basketball…” He lets go of your hands and gives a small smile

“Then it would be more appropriate to call me Seijurō, don’t you think?”

“Ah… then… you can call me by my first name too.”

“(y/n)... please don’t hesitate to come to me when anything troubles you.”

“I’ll try.”

“And please don’t overwork yourself. It’s not good for you.”

“I’m not making promises.”

“I do hope that in time you’ll come to realize that you’re an extremely talented person… quite a force to be reckoned with too.”

“Was the second half an innuendo of some sorts?”

“You don’t meet someone everyday who wouldn’t hesitate to cuss out the Rakuzan captain while pointing at his face.”

“I…! I’m sorry! I spoke out of—” He puts a finger to your lips with a teasing smile before he grows serious

“I must also apologize for my cruel words…

… I hope that you would find it in yourself to forgive all of my own misdeeds.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you mumble. “Maybe that will happen sooner than later because I do… like you.”

“It’s nice to hear a confirmation from you.”

“Stop acting like you got me figured out, Seijurō!”

“I wouldn’t dare, (y/n).”

bonus: imagine the shock from Seirin and Rakuzan to see you two DATING (when that eventually happens), like Hayama is losing his entire MIND over this it’s SO FUNNY LMAO // Kuroko and Kise are so smug and happy for you two it’s very wholesome

The… end?

UPDATE: sike, by the time you read this, there is a part 4 epilogue

[lovehotelreservation]

Lineage

Summary: Business or pleasure. 

Respite was hard to attain for the Warrior of Light and the Speaker of the House of Lords. Even now, with you and Aymeric oceans away for a belated honeymoon in Costa del Sol, the two of you weren’t exactly free from your duties.

The task?

To sire an heir to the Borel name.

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Plus Size F!Reader/Aymeric

YEEHAW

WHEN I TELL U THE WAY I YELLED WHEN I GOT THIS COMM PROMPT ON MY KO-FI FHAKLFHAKLF 🥺💙💙💙💙💙🥺 THANK YOU TO THE DEAREST COMMISSIONER FOR THIS CHANCE TO WRITE ABOUT MY FAVORITE BISHOUNEN ELF MANS!!!

I HOPE U ALL ENJOY!!!

----------

Night had fallen but the air was still so warm, so humid.

The sound of gently rolling sapphire waves washing up onto pristine white sand, the exotic scent of surrounding tropical fauna mingling with the smoky burn of a BBQ bonfire malms away down the coastline, the gorgeously ethereal shine of moonlight above in the onyx sky.

From where you stood upon the polished wooden floor of your private bungalow suite with your window open, you were in the ideal position to take in all the sights, scents, and sensations that elated each of your senses.

Truly, it was a beautiful night to be in Costa del Sol.

Though, one whiff of the salt-tinged ocean air instantly took you back to the snow swept lands of Ishgard.

The city you had since called to be your home.

Something made official when you were finally wed to the one and only Aymeric de Borel.

He was why the two of you were in Costa del Sol in the first place.

Aside from finally having the proper honeymoon that the two of you did not get to enjoy after your wedding--given that the escalated rebellions in Ala Mhigo and Doma called for your immediate presence--there was one specific reason why you were here to admire this gorgeous Costa del Sol night.

Wearing nothing but an exquisite royal blue lace chemise.

It wasn’t too long ago that you had just finished up assisting Stephanivien with teaching a lecture to a new class of fresh-faced machinists at the Skysteel Manufactory when none other than a beaming Haurchefant came sprinting towards you the moment you emerged through the door.

“Many tidings to you, my splendid friend! I wish you great blessings upon the Borel heir to be!”

The first sentence you were prepared for, the second you were not.

“Borel heir...to be?” You repeated as your mind processed just what Haurchefant chirped to you.

Though, before you could ask for what he meant, the towering knight was suddenly made to bow by none other than one irritated Estinien.

“Oi, we were supposed to head out to Aurum Vale already,” he grumbled, just before looking towards you with a look of resigned exasperation. “As for you, it’s better if you hear what lover boy has planned for you himself.”

Without sparing another word to even begin to clarify, Estinien proceeded to drag Haurchefant--who happily offered you his goodbyes with a supportive thumbs up--away while muttering something about sprout greenling paladins who bit off more they could chew.

Your subsequent return to the Borel Manor where your husband was there to tenderly greet you with a loving embrace and tender kisses resulted in his affectionate expression becoming intensely flustered when you brought up Haurchefant’s sudden declaration.

The parchment letter marked with the seal of one of Costa del Sol’s most luxurious resorts that was tucked in his pocket was thankfully still kept as a surprise at the very least.

Thus, with the reveal that soon followed, you and Aymeric took off from Ishgard’s eternal winter to bask in the endless summer of Costa del Sol.

And why you were gazing out towards the evening tropical scenery with a fluttering heart.

After all, tonight was meant to not only celebrate the union between you and your husband, but to begin the journey of bearing an heir to the Borel name.

Though Ishgard was in the midst of a historical change within its society to break from tradition and move towards a more open-minded one, there was still an expectation for the House of Lords’s speaker to sire a child, the pressure of which had been pushing increasingly upon Aymeric’s shoulders during your absence.

While starting a family was a conversation that the two of you had spoken about in earnest throughout your relationship prior to this night, to do so now with the layer of political presumption from Ishgard’s governing body was enough to twist your nerves into knots.

A feeling that dissipated the moment you felt a pair of arms wrap tenderly around your waist.

Body heat exemplified by a recent hot shower emanated behind you, the sensation deepened by a chiseled bare chest pressing right against your back, pushing the warmth even further into your skin through the flimsy fabric of your chemise, of which contrasted with the thicker material of a bath towel that hung securely on sturdy hips.

And even here, in a tropical paradise that was oceans away from the inescapable snow that enveloped all of Ishgard, a delightful shiver still trailed along your body from the words that was murmured hotly into your ear,

“I must send my regards to the hotel staff for their hospitality. I did not expect to receive such a divinely wrapped present after my bath.”

Your head turned back, your eyes soon captivated by sapphire irises that gazed earnestly into yours with affection.

Almost overwhelmingly so.

You were used to seeing love akin to absolute reverence in Aymeric’s eyes whenever your gaze would meet his.

But unlike the light that glinted in his blue eyes from when he helped out off the boat that carried you to Costa del Sol, here on this night, there was a darkened, longing desire reflected in his gaze.

Though you had faced many a foe whose schemes spelled ruin across every inch of the realm, it was now that you suddenly found yourself shrinking back with shyness. Giggling amidst your overwhelmed nerves, you teased in response, “Must you charm me more, Ser Aymeric? Was our wedding not enough?”

“You know I will never have enough of you, darling.”

You froze.

Aymeric’s voice was already so dulcetly rich and deep, but the tone of his words smoldered with conviction.

His embrace around your ample waist tightened, a sigh of utter satisfaction escaping him as he beheld your full physique, his face finding its way to the crook of your neck for loving nuzzles. “Gods, when was the last time I’ve gotten to hold you like this? Every inch of you is divine--how I never wish to let go of you.”

Each word spoken was laced with need, all while his hands began to trail over your body in soft caresses, even while his fingers ached to tear off the lace that kept him away from your bare skin.

He drew away from your neck, calling out your name huskily as his eyes found yours once more. “Will you pardon this enamored fool for his selfishness during this holiday, my beloved?” His face closed the distance between yours and his as he continued, “I am going to savor this respite like nothing else--the beautiful time spent with turning you into the mother of my children.”

“Aymeric,” you moaned, feeling your knees weaken as you leaned further against him. What more could you even say at this point when he had you reduced to such a state by the conviction in his words alone?

While he looked all too pleased from having you already melting in his arms, his expression turned serious as he remarked, “Before we begin, I want to make this clear and certain—by no means are we doing this for the sake of Ishgard.”

His hands rested protectively upon your soft belly, his heart already thrumming with excitement to witness your stomach grow rounder and full with his child upon the months to follow. “As you know, starting a family with you has been something I’ve craved the moment you captured my heart.”

Aymeric brought his lips to yours for a kiss most tender. “We’re doing this out of our own shared volition--the House of Lords finally granting me respite so I can claim you over and over was just a blessing from Halone herself.”

Already overwhelmed and dazed by your husband’s intense and loving resolve, all you could let out was a breathless yet eager, “Yes...our shared will.”

A smile quirked onto his lips. “And so we shall share our love with no restraint.”

And then Aymeric’s lips smothered yours for a kiss that was most far from chaste.

Away from the window, towards the bed.

From bathing moonlight to flickering candles.

The kiss shared with your husband was broken for a moment, just so he could gently have you lay upon the bed.

But the moment Aymeric assumed his place on top of you, he became a man possessed.

A man possessed by his love for you, by his desire to claim your body with his seed.

He meant his words from earlier, his hands tearing into the lace of your chemise like gift wrap.

The composed and regal speaker of the House of Lords was nowhere to be found by the way Aymeric hungrily sought out your lips, his hands fondling your supple breasts, his mouth watering at the thought of soon getting to suckle on your nipples and lavish your core with the needy flicks of his tongue while your thick thighs squeezed around his head.

The fumbling yet earnest virgin during the first time you were intimate together was but a precious memory at this point.

Instead, here was a man who knew exactly what to do to elicit the sweet moans of his name off of your lips.

To make you mewl with each teasing pinch and indulgent kiss to your nipples.

To cause your back to arch in sheer pleasure with the obscenely noisy manner he stroked your sopping core with his tongue, all while his hands happily fondled your plump thighs as they remained pressed against either side of his head.

But that knowledge was how he kept you ever on the edge, making sure you remained a step away from your orgasm.

Never to be outright malicious--such would be an outright sin to commit against you as your husband!

Rather, to ready your body for the long and indulgent night to come.

He did not even spare a moment for you to savor his cock with your mouth, keeping you right on your back.

Long had he waited for this moment, and he was going to save every dribble of his cum inside of you instead.

Your lips parted for breathless pants, your cheeks kissed with red heat, your thighs quivering with anticipation once your husband was finally sheathing the full heavy length of his cock into your core.

The delighted hiss of your name from Aymeric’s lips would be forever imprinted in your memory, as would the tremendous pressure he soon exerted as he soon worked the tempo of his thrusts into something swift in its neediness and fierce in its fervor.

One hand locked onto your hip as he plunged his cock into you, the other reached for your breast to squeeze before he planted his lips onto your nipple once more, his mind already anticipating when he would be able to gulp down mouthfuls of sweet milk once you were showing with his child.

Such an experience had him pushing into your core with even greater intensity, of which dragged out yet another lovely squeal from your lips.

He could not resist from grinning, even with his mouth full of your breast.

Onwards he continued, the viciousness of his thrusts sounding out by the indecent slaps of his balls against your ass each time his cock plunged inside of you.

So free, so unrestrained.

Aymeric felt alive, he felt deeply in love.

His lips left your nipple with a pop as he lifted his head, driven by the desire to catch sight of the look on your face as he felt his orgasm approach, all while your slick core milked his cock even more with your own imminent release.

The helpless pleads for more of his touch, the obscenely yearning look of desire on your face.

Halone be merciful on whatever was left of his self-restraint.

Your name was uttered out at a gutteral low from the depths of his throat.

His eyes caught yours yet again, holding onto your gaze as his thrusts quickened in his frantic need for release.

“My beloved, you already enamor me so with those elegant curves of yours--”

You felt the drag of his hand along your body, cupping your breasts, caressing your sides, trailing longingly over your belly.

“--but then, when I think of you strolling through Ishgard, shining with a maternal glow as you carry around our child…!”

A visible shudder seized hold of his body, his teeth clenching with pleasure as he readied himself for what was soon to come, a reaction mirrored by you as you prepared for your own orgasm.

“By the Fury, I will not let you out of this bed until your womb is absolutely flooded with my seed!”

With a snarl, Aymeric captured your lips in a scorching kiss as he pounded into your core harder, hot sticky spurts of his seed soon being pumped into you with each thrust that continued on and on afterwards.

Your arms hugged around his neck, pulling him close as the two of you relished in your orgasms, the two of you smiling into your kiss.

Tonight would be the first of many spent away from Ishgard, but oh how the two of you hoped to return to your home together with a newfound soul in your belly.

[egcdeath]

a blip in the reader-verse

chapter 1: beginnings and endings

summary: a minor mistake causes a shift in the multiverse that only you have the capacity to fix.

(current) pairing: steve rogers x reader

word count: 1.2k

warnings: pretty angsty, unhealthy relationships (codependency) 

author’s note: i published this earlier but with a completely different plot (oops) ((i had to rewrite this whole thing)). i’ve never written anything longer than a one shot before, so please be nice! all reblogs are appreciated <3

Nothing had been the same since the Snap.

Unsurprisingly, watching half of your friends and teammates dissolve into no more than desaturated soot took an astounding toll in every single aspect of your life, but more than anything, in your love life.

Despite having some of your teammates left in the aftermath, you found yourself growing more and more anchored to Steve, and him with you. Although you began dating around a year before the Snap, the heavy loss that the both of you faced seem to launch you straight into the abyss of codependency.

Deep down, you knew that this wasn’t healthy for you. You’d be told millions of times by your remaining family and friends that no one should ever be as attached to anyone or anything as you were to Steve. He was your drug of choice, and you were reduced down to an addict.

You grew frustrated with those who challenged the nature of your relationship. It boiled down to the way that you felt that no one could truly understand the pain and guilt that the two of you constantly were doused in. Yet, at the same time, nothing could take your pain away and distract you from the distressing feelings more than Steve could.

You knew that if something were ever to happen to him, you’d be absolutely destroyed. You weren’t sure how you’d be able to go on through life without the super soldier by your side. Yet, this feeling was far from exclusive.

A multitude of nights had been spent in the dark, on opposite sides of the sofa in the living room of your apartment, silently listening to Steve vent, or allowing yourself to divulge your feelings yourself over the tragedy, your deepest fears, and anything else that was on your mind.

You were more than aware that Steve was just as afraid of losing you as you were of losing him.

That’s why you’d been so shocked when he offered to return the Infinity Stones sometime after Carol’s second snap.

You stood in the large field behind the Compound with knots tying and untying themselves in your stomach. You genuinely had an awful feeling about what was bound to occur, and you just weren't sure exactly why, it was just a gut feeling.

Coming up beside you, Sam looked around the field, observing the small platform, along with Steve as he chatted with Bruce and Tony, who were putting the final touches on the time machine.

“You okay? You’re chewing your lip like it’s an overcooked steak, or something,” he chuckled, clearly trying to lighten the mood.

“I don't know, Sam. I just don’t feel right about this,” you said softly, turning to look at him.

“It’s alright to be nervous, Y/N. Hell, I’m nervous too! But if it makes you feel any better, he’ll be back in like, 30 seconds, with not even a scratch on his body. And maybe it’ll do you guys some good to have some away time. I heard a certain couple became surgically attached at the hip while I was gone,” he gave you a little smirk.

“Ha ha,” you said drily, actually a bit more annoyed at the topic than you tried to let on. “Promise me he’s gonna be okay?” You asked, looking deep into Sam’s eyes, trying to draw out as much truth as possible.

“I promise. He’s coming over now, so try not to act like you’re on the brink of a heart attack,” he stepped aside, then received a big hug from his friend, before Steve moved on to bid you a farewell.

You sighed contentedly as you were wrapped in his warm and familiar embrace. The comfort of the hug alone had already calmed you down more than you could’ve ever expected.

“Why do you have to go?” You whispered sadly into his collarbone.

“I just do. But I’ll be back before you even realize I’m gone, okay?” He brought a hand up to your hair, and stroked it in what you’d learned was somewhat of a nervous tick. You simply nodded at the question, too upset with the situation to form the right words.

“I love you,” was all you could come up with.

“I love you too. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do while I’m gone.” He stepped away from you somewhat so he could get a good, final look at you.

“Come on, Rogers. Don’t you have some diamonds you’re supposed to be returning to the jewler  right now?” Tony asked jokingly. You gave him a sour face, but acknowledged that it was time for him to go.

With that, all you were able to do was stand back and watch. But after a moment, Steve’s returning point had passed. Then, a minute had passed. That minute turned to five. And your worst nightmare had suddenly become your reality.

----

Returning the stones had gone well, at first. Until it didn’t. Suddenly, Steve was in Stark Tower in 2012, Pym Particles smashed unceremoniously on the ground after falling several floors in the midst of a tussle with himself.

Steve couldn’t think of any worse scenario. Well, maybe if he hadn’t already returned all but the stone. But that didn’t even matter to him at the moment, he was permanently stuck in the past, and had probably created all sorts of time paradoxes.

Despite his own personal conflicts, he still had one task left, and he wasn’t going to risk a whole universe plunging into their darkest timeline due to a major panic on his part. After escaping the grasp of himself from the past, he managed to slip out of the building in one piece, before wandering the battered streets of New York in an attempt to find the Sanctum.

When Steve arrived at the Sanctum, the door had opened right up for him, as if he’d been expected all this time, and he was greeted by none other than the Ancient One.

“Captain Rogers,” she greeted, nodding, “I’m assuming you have something for me?”

Steve nodded, then handed her the briefcase. She opened it, then gladly put the Time Stone back in it’s proper home. “Ancient One, I need you to help me with something. Is there any way at all that you’d be able to send me back home?”

“Why can’t you get back yourself?” She questioned.

“Well, I kind of can’t. All the particles I used to get here are kind of.. Gone.” He sighed, cringing internally at his own irresponsibility.

The Ancient One sighed, and shook her head, “I can do my best, but I can’t guarantee you’ll get back home. I can help you send some sort of SOS to your friends, and I can send you to a new reality, but I can’t promise you’ll end up exactly where you want to be.”

“But we have to try something.” He added helplessly, gaining a nod from the woman standing across from him.

“You’re right. I think I have an idea of what we need to do.”

next chapter

[thatesqcrush]

The Hunter

Kevin Mulrooney x. Reader. Fandom: Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Episode Reference: Lady’s Man (S.8, E.11). As requested by an anon. Not my usual fluff and smut... so heed the warnings below. I hope you enjoy.

Warnings: Dark! Ficlet - mentions of murder, violence, blood/gore. Also: smut, language. NSFW.

WC: 1K

---

When you woke up, it was early morning. The room still permeated with the heavy scent of the sex. You stretched, arching your back and elongating your limbs, enjoying the way the cool sheets felt against your naked body. You looked over to the empty space behind you and you called out your boyfriend’s name questioningly. There was no response and you frowned. A knot began to form in the pit of your stomach.

You pulled the sheet down your body and inspected the damage of your sex marathon with your boyfriend. Your hips were decorated with bruises, in a distinct pattern that you recognized it as fingertips. Mixed purple and red marks covered your body and you shivered as you recalled the sensation of your boyfriend’s mouth on your skin. There was a deep ache in between your legs. You swung your legs over, groaning as you stood, wrapping the grey fitted sheet around your body. You picked up the bottom of the sheet, lest you trip and you made way out of the bedroom in a quest to find your boyfriend.

His apartment was dark and eerily quiet. You froze when you spotted Kevin standing by the kitchen window, looking out with a mug in hand.

“Kevin?”

Kevin Mulrooney turned around, an unreadable look on his face. Still holding the sheet up, you did your best to cross your arms. “Everything okay?”

Kevin blinked, shaking his head, as if coming back to the present. He was clad in nothing but charcoal dark grey lounge pants that hung dangerously low on his hips. Your eyes trailed the dark, but neatly trimmed, chest hair that smattered his chest, trailing down until it disappeared under the band of his pants.

“Oh, no, nothing.” Kevin murmured, waving his hand off. “Just thinking about the Burnham case.”

“You weren’t in bed. I was worried.” You replied approaching him. You leaned up to kiss him when you spotted his hand wrapped up; blood was soaking through. “Oh my God! Are you okay?”

Kevin spun around, looking at where your eyes were focused on. “Oh, that? It’s fine.”

“Kevin, what happened?” You asked ignoring his comment. You picked up his hand and unwrapped the gauze gingerly. You winced at the deep wound.

“I couldn’t sleep; I decided to deal with the recycle and I dropped a bottle.” Kevin explained calmly.

You furrowed your brow at his response. “Oh, I didn’t hear anything… this is kind of deep, I think it needs stitches.”

“It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.” Kevin pressed a soft kiss to your forehead. As you met his eyes once more, a salacious smile graced his face. “Now, how about we go back to the bedroom and pick up where we left off.” He pulled you close to him, one arm wrapped around you. He trailed his thumb slowly from your temple to your lips, rubbing your bottom lip. You moved your head, sucking in his thumb before nipping the fleshy pad, which warranted a growl from him. You looked into his eyes, already blown with desire and dropped some of the sheet down to your waist, showing off the marks made. You dropped the rest of the sheet, letting it pool down to your feet and took off to the bedroom, with Kevin following suit.

***

Back in the bedroom, Kevin crushed his lips over yours as he pushed you back on the bed. The bedsheet was long gone, left in a discarded heap in the hallway. He crawled over you, covering your body with his. You wrapped your legs around his hips. Kevin kissed you deeply, rolling his hips into yours. Even through his lounge pants, you could feel how hard he was.

You let out a moan. “Oh Kev—”

Kevin let out a low chuckle, before adjusting his position over you so that he could stroke your cunt, which was already wet with your arousal. You moaned again as he thrusted two fingers inside of you easily. He quickly started a rhythm in and out of you. “Oh darling, you are so wet and ready.” He cooed as pushed his palm hard against your clit, causing you to buck into his hand.

“All for you.” You moaned. “Just fuck me, please.”

Kevin pushed down his pants, just under his hips, releasing his angry and weeping cock. He rubbed his cock along your slit and then lined himself up with your entrance. In one motion, he slid his cock into you, burying himself to the hilt. You reached up to wrap your arms around him, but instead he pinned your arms above your head, interlocking your fingers with his as he began to fuck you earnestly. He watched as your tits bounced with every deep and hard thrust. You bit your lip, holding back a moan and he lowered his head to your ear, commanding you to not hold back.

You could feel his balls slap against your body, and you began to rub yourself, feeling your orgasm crest. It only took a few haphazard strokes and you came hard, wailing his name. Hearing you come and the feel of your cunt clenching violently around his cock, made Kevin fuck you harder. He released your arms and pushed your knees up to the sides of your head, gripping tightly. The intensity of it all caused you to come again. Kevin was too lost in chasing his own orgasm and his mind drifted to how earlier – while you were asleep – he sought out Boz Burnham, the case that he lost all those years ago and how he was reduced to some hack that no one took seriously, instead of climbing the career ladder. His own paralegal at the time had become an attorney in her own right and he was now even taking orders from her. But now that was a thing of the past – he got his revenge by murdering Boz. No one would suspect him at all – no, because Gabrielle Roth, his alter-ego was the one who did it. And as he came deep inside of you, his own hot, sticky release dripping out of you, he recalled how he emasculated Boz, removing his own genitals with a glass bottle found on the beach. He recalled how the blood, still warm, covered his hands.

Kevin rolled off you quickly and you both laid there panting, entirely spent.

“That was fun.” You commented, rolling onto your side, stroking his chest. Kevin let out a dark chuckle and pulled you close to him.

“Yeah.” He agreed. “That was a lot of fun.” You none the wiser, pressed a kiss to his jaw before getting up and grabbing a robe.

“I’ll go get started on some breakfast.”

“Be there in a minute.” Kevin called out. As you left, he covered his face with his hands, sniffing them. He could still smell the salt from the beach and if he listened closely, he could hear the crash of the waves on the beach where he got his revenge.

FIN

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[refriedweeb]

TO STAY HERE WITH ME, TONIGHT

A/N: refriedweeb here! have some gentle comfort fluff.

Prompt: When you signed up for a career as a pro-hero, you knew it’d be hard. So, when your fast flying boyfriend comes home defeated and seemingly broken, you do whatever it is you can to let him know you’re there for him.

word count: 1,938

Being a hero wasn’t always easy work. It wasn’t all sunshine and glamor as the media made it out to be sometimes. The commercials, the endorsement, the glorification of what you did to help reduce crime and make the world a better place wasn’t as glorious as it was always painted to be. Sometimes, the heroes lost. The people that they wanted to save weren’t always saved. Their intentions, no matter how pure or genuine, weren’t always seen through for a number of various reasons. The world wasn’t a fair place, and there was nothing that could be down about the ones that you couldn’t save. As a pro-hero yourself, this was something that you had to come to terms with time and time again. It never got easier after losing on a mission, or coming home empty-handed.

When you did, your long-term boyfriend Keigo Takami was always there to console you. To run his hand up and down your back in soothing circles, to whisper that it wasn’t your fault, that these things were often out of your control. That sometimes doing your best wasn’t enough to do anything, but that it still mattered in the end. Both of you had gone through your fair share of anguish in dealing with helping the community, and it had become something of a sore pleasure to fold yourself into his arms after it happened to you. It wasn’t like you wanted to go through the trouble of losing a civilian or failing on a mission after giving everything you had, but the reality of it was made easier when Keigo silently folded you in his arms. 

Tonight was one of those nights that Keigo had lost. You’d come from your own patrol just a few hours ago to see the news covering the accident. A train wreck gone wrong, Keigo unable to get any of his feathers whether small or big through the wreckage to get the last trapped victim. Their bleeding had been far too great and without medical care in the time between the crash and when Keigo had been fighting to get them out, passed away. It was never easy, and you’d shed a few tears of your own. You knew what you would wordlessly do for him when he got home.

 For a few hours after the news you’d watched, it was impossible to get a hold of him. He’d likely switched his phone off, not wanting to deal with any of the texts or phone calls he’d get through the agency he’d started or the commission at that. Your heart was heavy for him, thinking that he’d probably just took to the sky to ride out the guilt he was putting himself through. You were the same, in that way. You needed to isolate and take out your pain and guilt in a way that kept you away from other people before you were ready to ask for comfort. Instead of worrying, you simply left the balcony door open for him to come in through to avoid the media mob down at the entrance of your building. 

More time passed until you heard the flutter of wings pulling in, shaking off the excursion that he’d just been under. You shuffled out from your bedroom, having just switched into your pajamas for the night when you saw him. His shoulders were hanging low, weighed down by the weight of what happened that day. His head was down, the front of it hanging over his forehead to obscure his vision as he kicked his shoes off. Even his wings, usually so vibrant and proud, seemed to drop. His goggles and headphones were in his hands, which he dropped unceremoniously onto the sofa. Everything about his energy, his aura, felt a million times heavier than what it’d been when you parted ways that morning.

“Keigo...” you started, folding your arms under your chest. You always thought Keigo had been the better one at consoling, somehow knowing all the right things to say when you were feeling at your worst. You only ever wanted to do the same for him, but never thought you did a good enough job. “Hey...” you said gently. 

Hawks’ head lifted slowly, and your heart dropped. He looked dejected, broken. The light in his eyes that spoke of his curious and forward thinking nature gone. It’d been like everything about him that made him, him, had been left at the crash scene. The weight of responsibility in his eyes was one you understood, but it didn’t mean you liked seeing how devastated it made the most beautiful man you’d ever seen. “(Y/N),” he said, voice soft. His defeated voice alone made him seem years younger, too small in the lined jacket he wore while working. Hawks needed you in that moment, and you understood how he needed you to be there for him. 

The sound of your footsteps padding along your floor was the only one there was until you were standing in front of him. You could still smell the fire from the accident, the sweat that had once been running down his skin as he’d worked to save all those innocent people. The person you loved the most in that world was hurting in a way you couldn’t erase, but could only ease. You were gentle and slow in your movements, pushing down his jacket, folding it over the arm of the sofa. That too, had felt horrifically heavy in your arms. Keigo stood there, silent and unwavering as you helped get his shoes off his feet, setting them on the ground. As you stood up, he was watching you. Pleading with you to make the pain and the guilt stop existing. In that moment, as in every moment when it came to these instances, you would have traded your quirk permanently to ensure that he never went through a pain like that again. He had already suffered through so much in his life, that it was cruel the universe continued to make him.

You leaned up on your tip toes in order to wrap as much of yourself around Keigo as you pulled him into a hug. His hands settled behind your hips, his face buried into the mess of your neck and hair. You whispered his name, brushing your fingers through his golden locks of hair, soothing him as best as you could. You pressed kisses against both of his temples, his forehead. Whispered how much you loved him against the curve of his ears. “There wasn’t anything you could have done, Keigo.” you affirmed, your nails trailing down his back to the spot where his feathers connected to the rest of his skin. On better days, it was a mark of sensitivity that had him riled up. But for times like this, you ran the flat of your palm up the bone of his feathers, smoothing over them back and forth, back and forth. This was something that relaxed him, and as you continued the motion you could feel the weight of his body start to get heavier against yours as his muscles seemed to unwind from all the weight he’d been carrying since the accident.

The skin at your neck had grown wet, and you knew it was because he’d been silently crying. You didn’t make a comment on it, knowing better. Instead, you turned your face into his hair. It smelled like the acrid smoke, of rain, of the shampoo that was yours that he swore he didn’t use in the shower. This was your home, your Keigo. And you wanted nothing more than to protect him from the pain in the world you were subject to because of your desire to make the world a better place. “You are a hero, Keigo.” you reaffirmed. “You have done so many great things in this world for people who will never know it was you who saved them. You don’t ask for applause. You don’t ask for anything other than the need to have more free time.” his hands tightened around your waist.  “You are a great hero and this world would be lost without your presence in it. This world needs you,” you kissed his hair again. “I need you. And as long as I’m living, I’ll never let you forget how important you are to this world, to me.” Keigo turns his face into your neck, his nose brushing against it. “I will love you, however imperfect or perfect you are. However you come home to me, I will love you.”

He exhales, sending goosebumps over your skin. “Can we go to bed?” His voice is still quiet, almost child-like in how timid it is. You nod, and his hands slip a little lower over your backside to pick you up. Your hands stay knotted in his hair, the other still moving back and forth over one of his wings as he walks you to your shared bedroom. 

There’s silence as Keigo pulls back the duvet and top sheet before he leans over, letting you hit the mattress gently. You scoot to the center of the bed as Keigo climbs in after you, only letting himself come to rest on top of your body once you’re settled. His wings take up the majority of the bed, but the thickest part folds around you as a shield. Keigo hides under the duvet, pulling it up as high as he can while his head nuzzles against your chest, his fists clutching at the fabric of your pajamas. The night is far from over, as are the tears that you know will come intermittently from the man you’ve committed yourself to. Your hands move through his hair, humming one of the little tunes you’d heard him doing the same with before. Keigo exhales, those honey colored eyes falling shut. Eventually his grip on your pajamas loosen, moving under your shirt until he’s rubbing circles over your hip with his thumb. Throughout the night, as you knew was regular, he broke into tears a couple of times. And when those times came, you soothed him, reaffirmed all of the things you’d said earlier and more. Your shattered hero, brought to you and laid out in your hands that you were in charge of piecing back together. Frankly...you didn’t mind. Keigo had done it for you time and time again, and you would do it for him to stop the world of pain he was feeling. “I love you...” was what he said to you before exhaustion from what he’d been through physically and emotionally claimed him.

Being a hero was no easy task. You were never going to be able to save everyone. You were going to lose people you’d promised that you saved. This was an unspoken truth that not many could look in the face. It was a heartbreak that hurt each and every time it happened, a stark reminder that underneath your hero quirks and outfits, the bravery that you put on for the media and the public, that you were both just human. And you felt human emotions. Grief and guilt were just a few of those. It didn’t make the work you did any less important, and that was something that you and Keigo reminded one another of when it came to the times of suffering and pain just like that night. And you would be there for him, every step of the way, healing the pain he felt without a single complaint. Because that was what you did for the person you loved.