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caelum-in-the-avatarverse · 1 year ago

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Fandom can do a little gatekeeping. As a treat.

So I finally decided to archive-lock my fics on AO3 last night. I’ve been considering it since the AI scrape last year, but the tipping point was this whole lore.fm debacle, coupled with some thoughts I’ve been thinking regarding Fandom These Days in general and Fandom As A Community in particular. So I wanna explain why I waited so long, why I locked my stuff up now, and why I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a-okay with making it harder for people to see my stories.

Lurkers really are great, tho

I’m a chronic lurker, and have been since I started hanging out on the internet as a teen in the 00s. These days it’s just cuz I don’t feel a need to socialize very often, but back then it was because I was shy and knew I was socially awkward. Even if I made an account, I’d spend months lurking on message boards or forums or Livejournals, watching other people interact and getting a feel for that particular community’s culture and etiquette before I finally started interacting myself. And y’know, that approach saved me a lot of embarrassment. Over the course of my lurking on any site, there was always some other person who’d clearly joined up five minutes after learning the place existed, barged in without a care for their behavior, and committed so many social faux pas that all the other users were immediately annoyed with them at best. I learned a lot observing those incidents. Lurk More is Rule 33 of the internet for very good reason.

Lurking isn’t bad or weird or creepy. It’s perfectly normal. I love lurking. It’s hard for me to not lurk - socializing takes a lot of energy out of me, even via text. (Heck it took 12 hours for me to write this post, I wish I was kidding--) Occasionally I’ll manage longer bouts of interaction - a few weeks posting here, almost a year chatting in a discord there - but I’m always gonna end up going radio silent for months at some point. I used to feel bad about it, but I’ve long since made peace with the fact that it’s just the way my brain works. I’m a chronic lurker, and in the long term nothing is going to change that.

The thing with being a chronic lurker is that you have to accept that you are not actually seen as part of the community you are lurking in. That’s not to say that lurkers are unimportant - lurkers actually are important, and they make up a large proportion of any online community - but it’s simple cause and effect. You may think of it as “your community”, but if you’ve never said a word, how is the community supposed to know you exist? If I lurked on someone’s LJ, and then that person suddenly friendslocked their blog, I knew that I had two choices: Either accept that I would never be able to read their posts again, or reach out to them and ask if I could be added to their friends list with the full understanding that I was a rando they might not decide to trust. I usually went with the first option, because my invisibility as a lurker was more important to me than talking to strangers on the internet.

Lurking is like sitting on a park bench, quietly people-watching and eavesdropping on the conversations other people are having around you. You’re in the park, but you’re not actively participating in anything happening there. You can see and hear things that you become very interested in! But if you don’t introduce yourself and become part of the conversation, you won’t be able to keep listening to it when those people walk away. When fandom migrated away from Livejournal, people moved to new platforms alongside their friends, but lurkers were often left behind. No one knew they existed, so they weren’t told where everyone else was going. To be seen as part of a fandom community, you need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with lurking. There can actually be benefits to lurking, both for the lurkers and the communities they lurk in. It’s just another way to be in a fandom. But if that is how you exist in fandom--and remember, I say this as someone who often does exist that way in fandom--you need to remember that you’re on the outside looking in, and the curtains can always close.

I’ve always been super sympathetic to lurkers, because I am one. I know there’s a lot of people like me who just don’t socialize often. I know there’s plenty of reasons why someone might not make an account on the internet - maybe they’re nervous, maybe they’re young and their parents don’t allow them to, maybe they’re in a bad situation where someone is monitoring their activity, maybe they can only access the internet from public computer terminals. Heck, I’ve never even logged into AO3 on my phone--if I’m away from my computer I just read what’s publicly available.

I know I have people lurking on my fics. I know my fics probably mean a lot to someone I don’t even know exists. I know this because there are plenty of fics I love whose writers don’t know I exist.

I love my commenters personally; I love my lurkers as an abstract concept. I know they’re there and I wish them well, and if they ever de-lurk I love them all the more.

So up until last year I never considered archive-locking my fic, because I get it. The AI scraping was upsetting, but I still hesitated because I was thinking of lurkers and guests and remembering what it felt like to be 15 and wondering if it’d be worth letting a stranger on the internet know I existed and asking to be added to their friends list just so I could reread a funny post they made once.

But the internet has changed a lot since the 00s, and fandom has changed with it. I’ve read some things and been doing some thinking about fandom-as-community over the last few years, and reading through the lore.fm drama made me decide that it’s time for me to set some boundaries.

I still love my lurkers, and I feel bad about leaving any guest commenters behind, especially if they’re in a situation where they can’t make an account for some reason. But from here on out, even my lurkers are going to have to do the bare minimum to read my fics--make an AO3 account.

Should we gatekeep fandom?

I’ve seen a few people ask this question, usually rhetorically, sometimes as a joke, always with a bit of seriousness. And I think…yeah, maybe we should. Except wait, no, not like that--

A decade ago, when people talked about fandom gatekeeping and why it was bad to do, it intersected with a lot of other things, mainly feminism and classism. The prevalent image of fandom gatekeeping was, like, a man learning that a woman likes Star Wars and haughtily demanding, “Oh, yeah? Well if you’re REALLY a fan, name ten EU novels” to belittle and dismiss her, expecting that a “real fan” would have the money and time to be familiar with the EU, and ignoring the fact that male movie-only fans were still considered fans. The thing being gatekept was the very definition of “being a fan” and people’s right to describe themselves as one.

That’s not what I mean when I say maybe fandom should gatekeep more. Anyone can call themselves a fan if they like something, that’s fine. But when it comes to the ability to enjoy the fanworks produced by the fandom community…that might be something worth gatekeeping.

See, back in the 00s, it was perfectly common for people to just…not go on the internet. Surfing the web was a thing, but it was just, like, a fun pastime. Not everyone did it. It wasn’t until the rise of social media that going online became a thing everyone and their grandmother did every day. Back then, going on the internet was just…a hobby.

So one of the first gates online fandom ever had was the simple fact that the entire world wasn’t here yet.

The entire world is here now. That gate has been demolished.

And it’s a lot easier to find us now. Even scattered across platforms, fandom is so centralized these days. It isn’t a network of dedicated webshrines and forums that you can only find via webrings anymore, it’s right there on all the big social media sites. AO3 didn’t set out to be the main fanfic website, but that’s definitely what it’s become. It’s easy for people to find us--and that includes people who don’t care about the community, and just want “content.”

Transformative fandom doesn’t like it when people see our fanworks as “content”. “Content” is a pretty broad term, but when fandom uses it we’re usually referring to creative works that are churned out by content creators to be consumed by an audience as quickly as possible as often as possible so that the content creator can generate revenue. This not-so-new normal has caused a massive shift in how people who are new to fandom view fanworks--instead of seeing fic or art as something a fellow fan made and shared with you, they see fanworks as products to be consumed.

Transformative fandom has, in general, always been a gift economy. We put time and effort into creating fanworks that we share with our fellow fans for free. We do this so we don’t get sued, but fandom as a whole actually gets a lot out of the gift economy. Offer your community a story, and in return you can get comments, build friendships, or inspire other people to write things that you might want to read. Readers are given the gift of free stories to read and enjoy, and while lurking is fine, they have the choice to engage with the writer and other readers by leaving comments or making reclists to help build the community.

And look, don’t get me wrong. People have never engaged with fanfic as much as fan writers wish they would. There has always been “no one comments anymore” wank. There have always been people who only comment to say “MORE!” or otherwise demand or guilt trip writers into posting the next chapter. But fandom has always agreed that those commenters are rude and annoying, and as those commenters navigate fandom they have the chance to learn proper community etiquette.

However, now it seems that a lot of the people who are consuming fanworks aren’t actually in the community.

I won’t say “they aren’t real fans” because that’s silly; there’s lots of ways to be a fan. But there seem to be a lot of fans now who have no interest in fandom as a community, or in adhering to community etiquette, or in respecting the gift economy. They consume our fics, but they don’t appreciate fan labor. They want our “content”, but they don’t respect our control over our creations.

And even worse--they see us as a resource. We share our work for free, as a gift, but all they see is an open-source content farm waiting to be tapped into. We shared it for free, so clearly they can do whatever they want with it. Why should we care if they feed our work into AI training datasets, or copy/paste our unfinished stories into ChatGPT to get an ending, or charge people for an unnecessary third-party AO3 app, or sell fanbindings on etsy for a profit without the author’s permission, or turn our stories into poor imitations of podfics to be posted on other platforms without giving us credit or asking our consent, while also using it to lure in people they can datascrape for their Forbes 30 Under 30 company?

And sure, people have been doing shady things with other people’s fanworks since forever. Art theft and reposting has always been a big problem. Fanfic is harder to flat-out repost, but I’ve heard of unauthorized fic translations getting posted without crediting the original author. Once in…I think the 2010s? I read a post by a woman who had gone to some sort of local bookselling event, only to find that the man selling “his” novel had actually self-published her fanfic. (Wish I could find that one again, I don’t even remember where I read it.)

But aside from that third example, the thing is…as awful as fanart/writing theft is, back in the day, the main thing a thief would gain from it was clout. Clout that should rightfully go to the creators who gifted their work in the first place, yeah, but still. Just clout. People will do a lot of hurtful things for clout, but fandom clout means nothing outside of fandom. Fandom clout is not enough to incentivize the sort of wide-scale pillaging we’re seeing from community outsiders today.

Money, on the other hand… Well, fandom’s just a giant, untapped content farm, isn’t it? Think of how much revenue all that content could generate.

Lurkers are a normal and even beneficial part of any online community. Maybe one day they’ll de-lurk and easily slide into place beside their fellow fans because they already know the etiquette. Maybe they’re active in another community, and they can spread information from the community they lurk in to the community they’re active in. At the very least, they silently observe, and even if they’re not active community members, they understand the community.

Fans who see fanworks as “content” don’t belong in the same category as lurkers. They’re tourists.

While reading through the initial Reddit thread on the lore.fm situation, I found this comment:

[ID: Reddit User Cabbitowo says: ... So in anime fandoms we have a word called tourist and essentially it means a fan of a few anime and doesn't care about anime tropes and actively criticizes them. This is kind of how fandoms on tiktok feel. They're touring fanfics and fanart and actively criticizes tropes that have been in the fandom since the 60s. They want to be in a fandom but they don't want to engage in fandom

OP totallymandy responds: Just entered back into Reddit after a long day to see this most recent reply. And as a fellow anime fan this making me laugh so much since it’s true! But it sorta hurts too when the reality sets in. Modern fandom is so entitled and bratty and you’d think it’s the minors only but that’s not even true, my age-mates and older seem to be like that. They want to eat their cake and complain all whilst bringing nothing to the potluck… :/ END ID]

“Tourist” is an apt name for this sort of fan. They don’t want to be part of our community, and they don’t have to be in order to come into our spaces and consume our work. Even if they don’t steal our work themselves, they feel so entitled to it that they’re fine with ignoring our wishes and letting other people take it to make AI “podfics” for them to listen to (there are a lot of comments on lore.fm’s shutdown announcement video from people telling them to just ignore the writers and do it anyway). They’ll use AI to generate an ending to an unfinished fic because they don’t care about seeing “the ending this writer would have given to the story they were telling”, they just want “an ending”. For these tourist fans, the ends justify the means, and their end goal is content for them to consume, with no care for the community that created it for them in the first place.

I don’t think this is confined to a specific age group. This isn’t “13-year-olds on Wattpad” or “Zoomers on TikTok” or whatever pointless generation war we’re in now. This is coming from people who are new to fandom, whose main experience with creative works on the internet is this new content culture and who don’t understand fandom as a community. That description can be true of someone from any age group.

It’s so easy to find fandom these days. It is, in fact, too easy. Newcomers face no hurdles or challenges that would encourage them to lurk and observe a bit before engaging, and it’s easy for people who would otherwise move on and leave us alone to start making trouble. From tourist fans to content entrepreneurs to random people who just want to gawk, it’s so easy for people who don’t care about the fandom community to reap all of its fruits.

So when I say maybe fandom should start gatekeeping a bit, I’m referring to the fact that we barely even have a gate anymore. Everyone is on the internet now; the entire world can find us, and they don’t need to bother learning community etiquette when they do. Before, we were protected by the fact that fandom was considered weird and most people didn’t look at it twice. Now, fandom is pretty mainstream. People who never would’ve bothered with it before are now comfortable strolling in like they own the place. They have no regard for the fandom community, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to. They want to treat it just like the rest of the content they consume online.

And then they’re surprised when those of us who understand fandom culture get upset. Fanworks have existed far longer than the algorithmic internet’s content. Fanworks existed long before the internet. We’ve lived like this for ages and we like it.

So if someone can’t be bothered to respect fandom as a community, I don’t see why I should give them easy access to my fics.

Think of it like a garden gate

When I interact with commenters on my fic, I have this sense of hospitality.

The comment section is my front porch. The fic is my garden. I created my garden because I really wanted to, and I’m proud of it, and I’m happy to share it with other people.

Lots of people enjoy looking at my garden. Many walk through without saying anything. Some stop to leave kudos. Some recommend my garden to their friends. And some people take the time to stop by my front porch and let me know what a beautiful garden it is and how much they’ve enjoyed it.

Any fic writer can tell you that getting comments is an incredible feeling. I always try to answer all my comments. I don’t always manage it, but my fics’ comment sections are the one place that I manage to consistently socialize in fandom. When I respond to a comment, it feels like I’m pouring out a glass of lemonade to share with this lovely commenter on my front porch, a thank you for their thank you. We take a moment to admire my garden together, and then I see them out. The next time they drop by, I recognize them and am happy to pour another glass of lemonade.

My garden has always been open and easy to access. No fences, no walls. You just have to know where to find it. Fandom in general was once protected by its own obscurity, an out-of-the-way town that showed up on maps but was usually ignored.

But now there’s a highway that makes it easy to get to, and we have all these out-of-towner tourists coming in to gawk and steal our lawn ornaments and wonder if they can use the place to make themselves some money.

I don’t care to have those types trampling over my garden and eating all my vegetables and digging up my flowers to repot and sell, so I’ve put up a wall. It has a gate that visitors can get through if they just take the time to open it.

Admittedly, it’s a small obstacle. But when I share my fics, I share them as a gift with my fellow fans, the ones who understand that fandom is a community, even if they’re lurkers. As for tourist fans and entrepreneurs who see fic as content, who have no qualms ignoring the writer’s wishes, who refuse to respect or understand the fandom community…well, they’re not the people I mean to share my fic with, so I have no issues locking them out. If they want access to my stories, they’ll have to do the bare minimum to become a community member and join the AO3 invite queue.

And y’know, I’ve said a lot about fandom and community here, and I just want to say, I hope it’s not intimidating. When I was younger, talk about The Fandom Community made me feel insecure, and I didn’t think I’d ever manage to be active enough in fandom spaces to be counted as A Member Of The Community. But you don’t have to be a social butterfly to participate in fandom. I’ll always and forever be a chronic lurker, I reblog more than I post, I rarely manage to comment on fic, and I go radio silent for months at a time--but I write and post fanfiction. That’s my contribution.

Do you write, draw, vid, gif, or otherwise create? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you leave comments? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you curate reclists? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you maintain a fandom blog or fuckyeah blog? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you provide a space for other fans to convene in? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you regularly send asks (off anon so people know who you are)? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you have fandom friends who you interact with? Congrats, you're a community member.

There’s lots of ways to be a fan. Just make sure to respect and appreciate your fellow fans and the work they put in for you to enjoy and the gift economy fandom culture that keeps this community going.

#ao3 #lore.fm #fanfiction #fandom history #gift economy #caelum rambles

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mojifushiguro · 17 days ago

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punishment ! c.springer

being bothersome always gets you what you want, but sometimes you can get a bit too much of what you want. connie x brat!reader (request)

warnings: smut! choking, mild aggression (during the yk), no protection (always use!), very mild degrading, cursing, cries of pleasure, slight overstimulation, lengthy!

mdni.

you were such a hassle.

connie knew that.

if you didn't get what you wanted, when you wanted, you'd totally shut down, and right now, your boyfriend was all you wanted.

you had your boyfriend all day every day. all the time, basically.

but gosh, you just wanted him extra. you missed him. you just wanted him to be home with you. he was out with his friends at the moment, and as soon as he came home, yeah, you can have him all to yourself.

but you hateeee when he goes out.

'connie'

'baby'

'I miss you'

'you dont even have to be with your hbs... you see em all the time.'

'I know you see my messages.'

constantly texting his phone. he was your boyfriend, and you missed him. you trust him not to be out doing shit he had no business, but you didn't care about that.

'ima be home soon mama'

'be patient'

'but I miss you tf'

'hello?'

you laid across your bed in nothing but pink panties and a spaghetti strap that hugged your body perfectly, and no bra. low music played in the background, which you played to distract you from your boyfriend being gone.

he only left about three hours ago, and you didn't blame him... no. you'd be out longer than him. but shit.

sometimes you just got extra clingy.

'you know I dont like your friends.'

'I know baby lol'

he wasn't giving you enough, so you pressed the call button.

no answer.

you squinted, pressing it again, and finally hearing connie with faint music in the background.

you pressed the FaceTime option, holding the camera to where you could see your face, and your perfectly visible cleavage, sitting nicely in the camera.

you stared at connie as you saw him walk around of the house he was in, looking down at the camera as he made his way outside.

"bae, I told you ima be at home soon. why you keep blowing my shit up?"

"cus I miss you, dont you miss me?"

connie stared at you in the camera, glancing up and away from It before biting his lip, looking back down. "you know I do."

a smile crept onto your face. "so come home."

connie rubbed his forehead, inhaling and exhaling. "cmon baby... you get to have me all night, every single day. I cant hang wit my homeboys for a night?"

one side of your upper lip raised and you rolled your eyes, sighing.

connie already knew you'd get an attitude, but when don't you have one? in this case, at least.

"fuck, y/n." he felt himself getting slight irritated. he was having fun.

then again... coming home to you earlier than planned didn't seem like such a bad idea.

he sighed again.

you already knew his answer. "you know what? stay out." you hung up and put your phone on do not disturb, swiping off of the messages. you swiped down to your Lock Screen, watching as Connies messages came in.

'you know how much u piss me off sometimes?'

'like u dtm, but you know that'

'ima be home soon ma, calm ts down'

you swiped to the side, going straight to your camera, and hopping up from the bed. if he didn't wanna come home to perfection, you'd just have to show him what he was missing.

you went to the bathroom, and looked at yourself in the mirror.

"do I want... to put shorts on?"

hmm... no.

you held your phone, posing cutely in your big mirror, getting your best angle.

right when you found your favorite picture, you went straight to instagram and on your story.

only adding a simple red heart, and pressing the post button.

with a small smile, you walked back into your shared bedroom and laid across the bed, lazily scrolling on social media.

you constantly swiped down to your lock screen, checking your notifications for your likes. through out all the likes and replies you received, all the heart eyes, none of them were your boyfriend.

"fuck nigga." you mumbled to yourself, rolling your eyes.

another hour of temptation to text him, to keep spamming him, passed. still no sound of the door opening, no reply or like.

you got the genius thought to check your story views, knowing he's normally at the top. but again, nothing.

now, you started to really get irritated. and another hour passed. you'd already given up on checking anything from connie.

but, without thinking, you swiped to your lock screen to check the time.

3 missed calls.

5 new messages, 30 mins ago.

yep, your heart was in your fat ass.

hesitantly pressing Connies contact name, you read through the messages, your heart speeding up.

'wtf yo problem is?'

'delete ts you literally in yo fuckin panties.'

'answer the phone'

'why you playin?'

'nvm dont worry bout it lmfao 😂'

before you could even start typing, and telling him how you'd take it down, you heard the knob to the front door, instantly making you sit up in bed and look towards the closed door of your bedroom.

you heard his keys hit the kitchen table and heard his footsteps on the stairs, slowly coming toward the door.

quickly throwing your phone to the end of the bed, you grabbed the remote and turned the tv up, pretending you were busy watching it. you didn't know if he'd believe you didn't see your phone, but you know connie knew you better than you knew yourself.

hearing him stop at the door, then after a few seconds come in silently, only made your heart start to race more.

but you thought about it. he went all night, lying like he'd be home soon. he had no reason to be mad.

when connie made his way in the room, he took his shoes off by the door, and pulled off his hoodie, going straight to the bathroom.

you only looked his way when the door was finally closed.

he was showering, totally forgot about what you posted... you think.

you grabbed your phone and quickly deleted the picture off of your story, tossing it back to the end of the bed.

minutes passed, and connie walked out of the steamy bathroom, cutting the light off behind him in only shorts, and no shirt. his body was shiny, sweaty you were guessing, and it made him look so good.

but that was the last of your worries right now.

completely ignoring the fact that you were "watching tv", he cut his game on, grabbing his controller, and picking through which game he wanted to play.

"you aint see me watching tv?" you frowned at him, tilting your head as his back faced you.

he didn't reply.

you smacked your lips. "you so..." you only shook your head and grabbed your phone. connie glanced back at you with a completely straight face.

basically telling you to shut the fuck up without actually saying anything.

and you cant lie... you did just that. but your patience grew thin. you didn't practically beg for your boyfriend to come home just to be neglected by him.

for what, so that he could play a stupid game with the same people he literally just saw?

hell no.

but, you stayed quiet, letting another hour pass by.

12:36AM.

you sat criss crossed in the middle of the bed, on your phone. every now and then glancing up whenever you heard connies small curses under his breath, or whenever you heard him groan, or look at the ceiling.

looking up at the tv, he was playing one of the games he hated the most, because he'd always lose. even you knew that.

why the fuck is he playing a game he never beats.

that's when connie paused the game on the main screen, and tossed the controller on the small table underneath your tv.

staring at the back of his head, you waited, just to see his next move.

he just stared at the wall before reaching back to grab his phone, turning his body to the side with the action. your eyes quickly drifted back down to your own phone, not even wanting to piss him off.

he huffed, checking the time on his phone and putting it back down.

his eyes made their way to you. you only sat there, not daring to look at him. but the longer he stared, made you finally look at him.

his face was completely emotionless.

'fuck.' you thought to yourself.

your mind instantly went in defensive mode. "you were out all night, and I missed you. so you can get over that shit." you mumbled the last part, but connie could hear it perfectly.

"you aint see yo phone?"

"connie, you-"

"did you. or did you not. see your phone?"

you just stared at him, before slowly rolling your eyes. connie could feel his nerves being poked at.

that's when he got on the bed, fully. snatching your phone from your hand, and grabbing your jaw.

"you piss me off more than anybody. you know that shit?" he scanned your face, and you just looked to the side. "look at me."

you looked into Connies eyes.

"you know that?"

biting your lip nervously, you slowly nodded.

Connies eyes lowered at you, as he pushed you back on the bed, licking the inside of his cheek. he grabbed your legs, pushing them apart.

his gaze trailed down between your legs, seeing that you were already turned on, and your panties were already damp.

"this all you wanted." connie looked at you like you were just pathetic, but in his mind, he was just sick of your shit. but damn, he missed you tonight more than anything.

with one of his hands under your leg, right behind your knee, and another on your waist, he moved it down to your clit, right over your panties.

putting a soft amount of pressure, it made you inhale and bite your lip, moving your hips against his thumb.

but when you saw him look up at you, his face said 'stop.'

you furrowed your eyebrows, giving him a face of pleases and sorries. "connieee... I just missed you..." you looked into his eyes, reaching down to tug at his waist band. "I deleted the picture..."

connie bit his cheek, his eyes moving down to your hand as you pulled him closer to you by his hips.

you could easy see his boner through his basketball shorts, but he wasn't going for it, so he looked from your hands to your face, still biting his cheek, breathing so heavy you could hear it.

he just watched you struggle, and you hated it.

you were so needy for him.

he moved your hand and moved back, sitting normally on the end of the bed.

you quickly shook your head. "baby, come onnn" you whined, crawling back over to him, starting to kiss on his neck.

connie would be lying if he said he wasn't getting more and more turned on by your actions. his face was so damn good as hiding it, but his dick told you different.

"please?" you tilted your head at him, grabbing his hand and moving it down back between your legs.

an amused, but still denying look came across his face as he looked you up and down. you moved his hand to your breast, hoping he'd give in.

he only sighed, legs spread. he slowly looked down at his boner, and back up at you. he stared right into your eyes, he knew the exact apology he'd take. and you did too.

you, still beside him, got on your hands and knees on the bed, arch perfectly in view for your boyfriend.

he watched at you reached in his pants, pulling them down a little, and taking him in your hand. you looked at him once again, before finally leaning down and softly licking him tip, making his dick jump a little.

you slowly lowered your mouth around the tip, sucking softly. connie let out a low groan, biting his lip and grabbing your hair, pushing you lower.

"go low." was the only thing he muttered.

feeling yourself start to gag, you did exactly what he said, letting connie lean back on his hands, staring down at you.

why did you have to be so damn pretty, but such a fuckin problem?

your eyes started to water as you bobbed your head, connie moving his hand to your hips and up your back.

he slowly started thrusting against your throat, letting out a shaky breath. "fuck..." he whispered, grabbing your hair and pulling your head up.

his hand moved to your neck, putting more pressure on it than usual, and pulling you in for a kiss. his kisses were so aggressive, and feeling his soft tongue on yours just made you even more desperate.

letting go of your throat and gripping your jaw, he looked into your eyes again. "I cant stand the fuckin stupid shit you do."

a tear dripping from your eye from the pressure on your throat, you smiled softly. "I know."

connie slowly shook his head, getting off the bed and standing in front of you, you were about to lay on your back, but connie flipped you on your stomach.

"hell naw" he muttered, grabbing your hips and lifting you to your knees, aggressively pulling your panties down and pushing your back down into an arch.

"wait, wait-" before you could even protest about having to get adjusted to his size, because honestly, connie had a big dick, you felt him quickly thrust into you, making you instantly grip the sheets.

"fuck! con!" you reached back, but that only made things worse, you should've known.

he stretched you out, and he loved the way you fluttered around him, whether it was due to pain or pleasure. he didn't really care either.

you tried to pull yourself away as his thrusts got quicker and harder, biting your lip, probably to the point of bleeding, "connieee!"

"fuck you goin?" he breathed out, pulling you back toward him by your hips, only to go deeper.

"fu..ck... im- im sorry pa.." you whined. feeling him deep in your stomach almost, the only thing you could do was apologize.

"huh?" connie frowned, reaching up to grab your neck. and fuck, it only made you arch even more.

"mmh... yo shit too tight..." connie leaned forward, slowing down and grabbing your chin with his hand. he pulled your head back, slowly thrusting deeper into you.

"you missed me? huh? or you missed getting fucked?" connie wrapped his other arm around your stomach.

"too.. deep.. connie please" you moaned, your eyes rolling to the back of your head.

"please, what? stop fuckin you like this?"

you nodded slowly, and with that, connie pulled out, taking your panties from around your ankles and tossing them to the side.

he rolled you over to your back, leaning down towards you again. all of a sudden, you felt yourself falling into another deep wave of pleasure. "fuck!" you moaned out, pushing against Connies hips.

he only pulled you closer to him again, just to fuck you deeper, and the arches out of shock weren't helping.

"come on, you been takin me like a champ all these other nights, what's different?" he looked down, watching you throb around him, completely hypnotized by you.

and he hadn't smiled during any of this yet. that's what was different.

this was pure frustration and punishment. you knew you would get it, but not like this.

"connie... I cant-" you couldn't even finish your sentence before he sharply thrusted into you again, after all those deep, slow strokes.

he was driving you crazy.

"cant what? you cant take it?" he finally looked at your face.

"look at me when I fuck you, y/n."

you practically had to peel your eyes open, them rolling back every deep stroke. connie slowly shook his head at you, as tear drops trailed down your cheeks, and sniffle sounds came from your nose and mouth.

"my baby..." he grabbed your cheek, watching as you held his wrist tightly, soft whimpers and moans leaving your mouth with every thrust.

he wiped your tears, leaning over and kissing you, softly biting your lip as he pulled away, just to look at you again.

your eyes were pink and glossy, but you loved every minute of this.

"hold me." he mumbled.

and you did just that, wrapping your arms around his neck tightly. "I love you..." you whispered. connie hummed lowly, using his hand to open your legs wider and move it to your clit, rubbing in quick circles and quickening his thrusting pace.

you started to let out soft, quick and choppy moans. "slow... slowww..." you whined, letting connie go and gripping the sheets beside your head.

connie bit his lip, frowning and looking at you, shaking his head.

"p-please" you whispered, twitching as connie fucked you through your orgasm. you went completely silent, your legs shaking and your body twitching, before letting out a loud gasp and crying out your last moan.

still going, connie purposely made you feel every bit of your orgasm, licking his lips and staring at you deeply before pulling out and grabbing his dick, softly rubbing his tip on your clit, feeling it twitch against him.

"look atchu. begging me to come home and cant even take dick right." connie fixed his self, watching you as you laid there, legs still open.

what could you even say?

connie softly grabbed your face, squishing it slowly shaking it side to side, "stop allat whining. im done." he chuckled, leaning down to kiss you one more time and patting your breast twice.

he walked over to sit on the end of the bed again, grabbing the controller, not even bothering to clean you up or wash his hands.

"and I love you too."

clearly.

#𝐦𝐨𝐣𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐨⁴⁴⁴ #connie x black reader #aot x black y/n #aot x black reader #aot connie #aot x reader #aot smut #connie springer x reader #connie x black y/n #connie x reader #connie springer #connie springer smut #connie smut #attack on titan smut #connie x reader smut #connie x you

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shadowtraveled · 1 year ago

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"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.

but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)

mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…

the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.

every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.

first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic

which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.

which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.

the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.

walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?

well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.

you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?

it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.

when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.

and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.

kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.

yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.

#dungeon meshi spoilers #mithrun #dungeon meshi #this has been rotating for a while but i wanted to check my evidence before getting into it thanks user angelspenance for posting that meme #half of this is just the text and the other half i'm sure has been said before but it's making my brain [radio static] so here this is #someone did for sure mention this but i do find it very cute that in his fucked up conjured world meant to portray his ideal reality #his teammates came to visit him. like part of the fantasy was then explicitly that they cared about him and were his friends. even though #he says he tried to see the worst in them.#hm it does feel important to note that i do also believe 100% in mithrun suicidality--his desire to be eaten does seem to focus a lot on #wanting it to be Over. wanting not to be left incomplete and empty anymore.#but that loops back around a bit to the hole in your heart that appears when you feel unloved. it's many things and the same thing at once #snakes #long post #severe problems #meshy

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ceilidho · 2 months ago

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fig. 3. heart in flames; baptism by fire | John Price x Reader

MASTERLIST · AO3

The universe hasn't seen fit to give Price a mate of his own. He'll have to take matters into his own hands.

or: the forced mating omegaverse au

tags: Size Difference, Size Kink, Omegaverse, Explicit Sexual Content, AFAB Reader, Stalking, Kidnapping, Heavy Noncon/Dubcon Elements

His appetite is an arsenal all on its own.

It’s always been bigger than him, barrel-chested. All consuming. It’s the reason that John is where he is today, always chasing down something larger than himself. Greedy for what he can’t have. Ambitious to a fault. Promotions and titles and commendations and accolades; they’re all wrapped up in his psychology, into whatever it is about him that wants without end. Without satisfaction.

It’s likely why he ends up being referred to an endocrinologist specializing in hormone disorders in alphas when an overproduction of androstenone turns his ruts violent. Over the years, they’ve been steadily getting worse, even with a partner to help see him through the worst of it, the overproduction of hormones making him a little too mindless, a little too frenzied.

“It’s not especially common for men your age, if I can be frank,” the doctor tells him, flipping through his chart. “Not uncommon, but low enough that I want to send you for a couple tests just to be safe. You’re still unmated?”

John nods. “That’s right.”

It’s not that the option hasn’t ever presented itself, but the timing has never felt right. Even marriage hadn’t sweetened the deal, and maybe that’s why he’s just north of forty-five and already divorced. The fault lies with him alone; he’s man enough to admit that. Maybe if he’d been more attentive, less likely to disappear for months at a time; if he’d swallowed his reluctance and just bit his omega instead of dragging his feet through his marriage like a prisoner marching to his own doom—maybe things might be different.

“Any plans to change that?”

“‘Fraid not.”

The truth of the matter is that, though he’s waited a lifetime for that special someone to cross his path, no one has ever come close to smelling right. Even his ex-wife had only come so close—good enough to turn his head, but not enough to keep him. Or maybe he hadn’t been enough to keep her. These days, it’s hard to say which feels more like the truth.

Sometimes John thinks that it’s simply not in the cards for him. That for whatever reason, destiny or God or the universe or whatever force that decides the fate of all things, has deemed him unfit for the other half of his soul.

It’s just that it’s been—

It’s been a long time without anyone to call his own.

The doctor scribbles something down in John’s chart. “Alright.”

With his rut coming up in just a few days, the timing couldn’t be better. It sizzles like a low grade fever under his skin. He works up a sweat more easily, even a couple flights of stairs leaving the pits of his shirt dark and damp. There’s a little extra padding around his midsection, a bit more bulk on his arms and thighs; his beard a little thicker than usual, forcing him to trim it twice a day to keep it from growing out of control. Even though it happens every year, it sneaks up on him, the added mass making him a bit lethargic in the weeks before his rut.

“We won’t have the results in time for your next scheduled rut, but I’d recommend asking a trusted partner to help you out. And wear protection. We have extra mouth guards and other paraphernalia if you need anything.”

John holds up a hand when the doctor goes to open a drawer. “I’ve got plenty at home. Appreciate the advice though. Any medication I should be taking?”

“I don’t want to start you on anything this close to your rut, but maybe after. I’ll have the front desk set up a follow up appointment for you for two weeks from now.”

He nods, making a mental note.

There are a couple girls he could call up on short notice, but the thought sits like a dull weight in his chest. The decades of casual heats and ruts have left him with little appetite for that sort of thing these days. What he wants—craves really, needs really—is something permanent, something meaningful. John’s been around the block enough to know that he’s looking for something more.

He’s had good ruts and bad ruts. Ruts spent in the warm embrace of another, filling up a soft, wet hole again and again until his spend leaked down their thighs, lost in a daze of pheromones and heat-slick. Ruts spent entombed in his own frustrated lust, mindlessly rutting into a cum-filled fleshlight to slake a thirst that never ebbs, only flows and rushes over the guardrails, dragging him further under.

This one might end up falling into the latter category.

“Right, well, thanks for stopping by, John. You have a good rest of your day, alright?”

“Same to you.”

His nostrils burn the second he walks back into the main corridor, which is teeming with activity, children climbing over their parents’ laps and people still waiting to see a doctor slumped over in their chairs. Two interns wheel a bed down the hall, forcing everyone to scoot to the side and cling to the wall to get out of the way. There’s always too many people in the hospital. Too many smells.

This close to his rut, everything reeks. Congealed sweat and antiseptic; plastic chairs that smell simultaneously of sick and Lysol wipes, confusing his nose. Stale body odour from those in the waiting room on their sixth hour of waiting on loved ones or on an available doctor. It’s a bludgeon to the senses, particularly when they’re more sensitive than usual.

An elevator takes him down to the first floor, which is even more chaotic than the one John was just on somehow. Patients and doctors spilling out of rooms, announcement after announcement blaring over the intercom, and always—always—the sharp scent of isopropyl, astringent against the inside of his nose.

“I don’t understand—did she leave?”

The voice catches him like a fish on a hook on his way towards the main entrance, beadhead soaring through the air and slipping under the surface of the water just as he’s angling to leave.

When John turns around, you’re standing by the front desk with your chin tucked into your chest. You make a pitiful sight like that, with your lips pursed and your eyebrows pinched, and you hold yourself almost delicately, hands gripping the edge of the desk to stabilize yourself.

He takes a deep inhale. Though admittedly he’s not close enough to get a good whiff, your scent is muted, likely dampened by the effects of several painkillers and the anesthetic still running through your system. The stench of pain is strong too, which accounts for the way you hold your body and move so gingerly, the brace on your arm a good indication.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. If she’s not here, she must have left. You could try calling her?” the nurse at the front desk says, almost apologetic. “We can’t let you leave without an escort to take you home.”

“Okay, um…” you whisper, and now your scent is pungent with panic, acerbic. “Let me call her and ask her to come back.”

The sound of your voice is stronger now that it’s had time to travel. Again he feels it pinch him like coming out of a dream.

It’s so unremarkable that John nearly carries on down the hall towards the entrance, nothing about the interaction sticking out.

Something keeps him rooted in place though. Intuition or a sixth sense or finely honed instincts. So instead of leaving, he turns around and walks right back to the front desk, stopping when he’s within arm’s length of you, eyes soaking up the sight of your tensed shoulders.

He doesn’t know the words are going to come out of his mouth until they do. “Lost your way home?”

When you turn your eyes up to look at him, he feels the breath get knocked out of him. Prettier than anything he’s ever seen, the lure at the end of a fishing line drawing him in.

And yet, for as pleasant as you smell, it’s nothing dissimilar to the countless omegas John has come across before. It evokes nothing primal—no deep-seated urge to sink his canines into a plump gland and bind you to him.

You simply smell nice.

It’s difficult to articulate the devastation that courses through him. He’d hoped against hope that it would happen, that someday he would turn a corner and his fated mate would be there, looking at him like what took you so long? But how long can a man be expected to wait? How many years of disappointment can he be expected to weather by himself, his hopes dashed repeatedly?

In less than a second, he makes a decision.

One too many times, he’s hoped for fate to intervene and reward him for his patience. It never has. That responsibility must fall on him.

There’s nothing new about trying to immanentize the eschaton, but John has faith in himself. If fate won’t do what must be done, then he will instead.

“Excuse me?” you ask. So polite.

“Heard you talking to the nurse about your ride home; sounds like you’re in a bit of a fix.”

“Yeah, I…um…” You seem torn on whether or not to keep up the conversation, likely finding his attention a bit intrusive, but gentility prevails in the end. Good. He was just starting to like you. “My friend was supposed to drive me home after surgery, but it looks like she might’ve bailed. She’s not answering my texts, but someone else said they saw her leave.”

“Sorry to hear that. Not fair, putting you in a spot like that.”

“I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, but…uh…” You laugh, a touch derisively. “This is kind of screwing me over. I’m trying to get another friend to come pick me up, but it’s short notice and most people can’t just call out of work at the drop of a hat.”

There’s a vulnerable note in your voice almost masked by the touch of annoyance in your laugh but still plain for anyone attentive enough to hear. John is nothing but attentive.

“Don’t let her screw you over and get away with it,” he says, positioning himself on your side. “Short of someone dying, there’s no reason she should’ve left you on your own after an operation.”

“You’re probably right,” you murmur, too tired to put up a fight. “It just sucks. I wish she hadn’t told me yes in the first place—I could’ve asked someone else and given them more notice.”

“If you’re looking for a way home, I’d be happy to give you a lift.” John shrugs a shoulder when your lips open, the polite refusal already bubbling up your throat rebuffed by his next words. “I’m headed out now anyway. Just came to get some bloodwork done, nothing serious. Wouldn’t be an imposition at all.”

Your eyebrows pull together, teeth sinking into your bottom lip.

“I’m not sure if I should be accepting rides from strangers.”

There’s a teasing lilt there, but also an undercurrent that he’s become familiar with over the years. A tempered kind of caution. One that says the words with a smile but prepares to sprint the other way.

He smiles and holds out his hand. “I’m John.” When you take it, he knows he’s got you. “Not strangers anymore, are we?”

You answer that with a coy shake of your head, giving your name just as readily.

“So, how about it? Can I take you home?” John asks, repeating the invitation. His blood simmers when you take too long to answer.

“Ma’am,” the nurse suddenly interjects from the front desk, taking your attention away from him. It’s surprising how much that displeases him. “Have you gotten in touch with your friend yet or do we have to put you on the list for the drop-off service?”

John can see you warring with the options in your mind, eyes flitting between him and the nurse.

“Actually, I found a ride home. Can I sign out?”

“Mind if I ask what you were in for?”

The drive to your house is mostly uneventful. He plugs your address into the GPS and hits save when something outside the window catches your attention.

“It was just a little procedure.” His ensuing silence must make you nervous because you volunteer the reason for your stay after just a few short seconds. “Carpal tunnel release. My job involves a lot of typing, so I couldn’t keep putting it off; can’t wait to go back to living normally.”

He clocked the splint and the bandage around your hand and wrist when he approached you at the hospital, but it’s good to put a label on it. John makes a mental note to look up the post-op protocol for carpal tunnel surgery when the two of you get home. It’ll help him to better understand and address your needs in the coming days and weeks, and what he’ll need to watch out for when his rut finally sets in.

He’ll clue you in on all of that later when he’s had a chance to explain himself.

“Shame that your friend didn’t stick around to get you home. Probably still in a bit of pain, aren’t you?”

“Not yet. The painkillers they’ve got me on are really good.”

“Hm. I bet.”

You’re not that loopy despite being on painkillers though. More tired than anything.

“I probably could’ve planned this better. I didn’t even get groceries before leaving for surgery.”

“You want me to stop and pick you up a couple things?”

He can see you turn to look at him from the corner of his eye. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve got time. Do you know what you need?”

You rattle off the couple items that you need and John merges into the left lane while listening, heading towards the nearest grocery store.

He makes you stay in the car while he goes in to pick up a couple things, his number plugged into your phone in case you need him to rush back. The few items you rattle off aren’t sufficient enough for what you’ll need over the coming weeks, so John takes the liberty of purchasing a few extra things. Cured meats, fruit, a box of pastries for breakfast, and a couple frozen microwaveable meals. Baby wipes, lotion, and a multivitamin. All the essentials for a rut.

There are things back at his place that he’ll need for his rut, but he’ll ask Simon to pick those up whenever he has a chance. It’s why John gave him a spare key after all.

When he wheels the cart out of the store, he comes around by the back of the car, popping the trunk before you have a chance to see the sheer amount of bags in his cart. There will be a time later to talk you through what’s going to happen.

“Sorry if my list was complicated,” you apologize when he gets back into the front seat, the cart in the corral. It doesn’t change where things were already heading, but it makes him look at you a bit differently. There’s a sweetness to you, one he hadn’t noticed before.

He likes it though.

“Wasn’t complicated in the least,” John says, brushing off the apology. “Just took me a while to find everything. Didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

Your eyes crinkle when you smile. “I’m not in any hurry.”

John’s always liked docile things. Sweet, simpering things with nervous eyes and gentle demeanours.

Moreover—

what isn’t already tamed is his to break.

You’re a cagey thing as well though. At least, you get cagey when John gets out of the car and follows you up the front stairs on your porch instead of hovering a safe distance away. He keeps the subterfuge up by only carrying in the bags with the things you requested, leaving the rest in his car for now.

“I really appreciate all your help; I should be able to take it from here though,” you tell him at the door, the key still tucked in your hand. Your voice is infused with enough gratitude that a duller man might let it stroke their ego while you slipped inside and out of their grasp.

John smiles instead. “Wouldn’t be doing the right thing if I let you go without making sure you got to bed safe and sound. Open the door, sweetheart.”

He can see the hesitation on your face plain as day. Every instinct telling you not to let a man into your house, much less an alpha.

But inevitably you let him in.

Good girl.

The house is saturated with your scent. He has to take a deep inhale right off the bat, committing your scent to memory. Without the overwhelming stench of antiseptic and sickness from the hospital, your scent is cleaner, richer. Preserved in amber.

There’s something faint underlying your lived-in scent though. He can’t quite name it, but it sits on the tip of his tongue like a tune he’s heard before.

“Mind if I put these away for you?” John asks, lifting the grocery bags in his hands.

“Oh—yes, thank you. The kitchen’s that way.” You point towards the back of the house.

John carries the bags with just your groceries to the kitchen and unloads everything one by one into the fridge. The meager contents of your fridge speak to a frugal, solitary existence, and suddenly the faint smell permeating through your house has a name. Loneliness.

A man hasn’t been in here in quite some time, if ever. Every single inch of the house has been scrubbed with your scent, not a trace of any former occupant remaining. No roommate or close friend or boyfriend.

“Nice place you’ve got,” he comments when he walks back into the living room to find you fiddling around with the cushions on the couch, arranging them to make yourself a cozy spot to lie down.

You look up at the sound of his voice and smile, faintly flattered. “Thank you. I’ve only had it a year, but uh…I’ve been doing my best. Also—thanks again for driving me home. And stopping for groceries.” Your lips go round like you’ve remembered something. “I still have to pay you back by the way. Wait right here.”

“Let me go get the rest from the car first,” John says.

“There’s more?” you ask, surprised.

He nods. “I got you a couple extra things—on me. I hope that wasn’t too much of an overstep.”

You chew your lip but ultimately the uncertainty melts from your gaze the longer he stands there waiting for your approval. “…No, that’s…that’s fine. You didn’t have to, but thank you.”

His overstep is just a toe over the lip of the door, but it’s still a foot keeping the door from closing.

On his way back out to the car, John happens to glance down while passing the table in the entryway and finds, much to his delight, your phone resting casually beside the vanity tray. It sits there like you purposefully left it for him to take.

If not you, then fate.

With deft fingers practiced at lifting, he pockets your phone, and then heads back to the car for the rest of the groceries, whistling the whole way there and back.

You start to look at him a bit differently when he brings in the second round of groceries. The number of bags hanging from his forearms must strike you as odd, too many for what you asked him to pick up. John doesn’t bother making any excuses though.

He can see your trust wavering, pulled out from the water and left belly up in the air, gasping for breath. It wouldn’t be hard to fix it. It wouldn’t be hard to go about this the right way—leave you with your groceries and pain meds, tuck you into bed before seeing himself out, and then waiting a couple days to ask you out for coffee. To leave now would mend your trust entirely.

He considers it even, never one for turning down a potential strategy without considering its merit. But his alpha digs its heels in when he contemplates leaving, pushing every inch of its weight into rooting him in place.

It doesn’t want him to leave; and truth be told, John can’t bear the thought either.

The little trust you extended evaporates more and more as the minutes tick by and he shows no sign of leaving. You dance around it for a while, cautiously hopeful that he might be inadvertently overstaying his welcome, and John watches your descent into hopelessness from the corner of his eyes.

It’s only when he helps himself to a snack from the fridge and turns the television on that you break, sweat beading on your upper lip.

“John, I think maybe you s-should leave.”

The confidence you muster up to even just say that impresses him. It takes a lot out of you though, your body sagging when the words come out of your mouth, so much tension building up in your muscles that it literally weighs you down.

The hand with the remote drifts down to his side. “What do you mean, sweetheart?” John asks.

“Well, I’ve—I’ve got it from here.” You switch to a more diplomatic tone, likely wary of worsening the situation you’ve gotten yourself into. Aware that you’ve invited him into your house, that your safe space now has another resident. “I don’t need any more help.”

Though not as close to his rut as he will be in the coming days, the sentiment still makes him bristle. You don’t need any more help. Rich considering you let a strange alpha take you home not half an hour ago.

He places the remote down and advances on you briskly, all of a sudden, quick enough that you only notice when he’s right in front of you, surprise overriding your fight or flight response.

John cups the back of your neck with a big hand and tilts your head up until he can see the puffy, virgin mating gland sitting in the crook of your neck. Thumbs it too, ignoring the way your eyes go wide and horrified, and the way you try to wriggle out of his grasp until he tightens his hand around the nape of your neck.

“Of course you do, sweetheart. Can't have you wandering around like this—wrong person might try to take advantage.”

Fear makes your pupils dilate. It stinks too, the stench wafting off you. A bit of initial unpleasantness is expected though, and understandable. It’ll be a lot to help work you through the worst of it, but it’s nothing he hadn’t already internally committed to.

“You’re—you’re not going to leave?”

John shakes his head and smiles.

Smart girl that you are, you don’t jump to screaming and shouting. Not that the urge isn’t there building in your chest, but you know the odds are stacked against you. You’ve already let him in.

Your breathing picks up though, and your lip trembles. An anxious swallow follows, then another, throat too dry for you to speak.

“Why?”

“C’mere, sweetheart.” John takes you by the hand, careful to avoid the bandaged one, and pulls you to the couch, where he takes a seat. “We can only have a frank conversation about this if you promise to be polite and wait your turn to speak. Clear?”

Your lips twitch with displeasure but you nod.

“My rut’s coming up in a week.” He catches you before you spring back up to your feet, yanking you back down by your arm. “No, don’t try to run; this is happening, love. My rut’s coming up and I’m staying here for it, okay?”

“I can stay someplace else,” you offer weakly, voice breaking.

His smile verges on pitying. “No, sweetheart. You’re staying here with me for it.”

Your scent goes sour. Ammonium sulfide and allicin. His nose would wrinkle if he’d been expecting anything less than your reaction, but you conform, as always, beautifully to his expectations.

“You can’t…make me go through a rut with you.” Your throat constricts around the word rut.

“Yes, I can,” he says simply because that’s what it is. Simple.

In a world of people riddled with guilt complexes and victim mentalities, he stands alone. He has no qualms about taking what’s owed to him, or with shaping the world according to the version of it that lives in his head. That’s how history is made.

He can’t judge others for their nature the same way he can’t fault himself for his.

“I thought you said you were in the army.”

“I did.”

“Isn’t this…—this is against the law then, isn’t it?”

“You’re thinking of American law, sweetheart.” He doesn’t bring up any similar protection against forced billeting enshrined in English law. Best to not get lost in the weeds.

There’s a tick in your eyes that betrays you. John readies himself for a chase when your eyes glance over his shoulders towards the door, but you discard that plan as quickly as it entered your brain. Weighing the odds and finding them not in your favour.

“I have friends,” you blurt out. “Family. People check up on me.”

“That’s fine, love. When they do, you’re gonna tell them that you’re taking a week off to rest and you don’t want anyone coming by in the meantime.” When you don’t respond, clearly thinking something different, irritation flickers in his chest. “Wanna know why you’re going to do that?”

“…Why?”

“‘Cause you know this could go one of two ways. We could either have a nice time together and I’ll be on my way afterwards…or I could bite that little mating gland of yours now and we can take that option off the table.”

There’s no point in telling you that he’s already made up his mind about that part. The allure of hope is too tempting; he has to give you something to latch onto.

“Do we understand each other?” he asks.

Your initial hesitation tells him all he needs to know. This won’t be an easy conquest or a city handed over to spare its citizens pain—you won’t hesitate to put up a fight.

“Okay.”

John makes himself at home like a fox laying claim to a rabbit’s burrow.

Siege warfare. A lifetime in the military has made him well versed in poliorcetics. He knows of how the Romans once conquered the city of Fidene by launching false attacks from four different directions at four different times before breaching the city through a long tunnel that passed under its walls, and how Alexander captured the city of Tyre by building a kilometer-long causeway and besieging it for seven months.

Your phone was the first thing to go, confiscated lest you got any funny ideas about calling someone to rescue you. Not that you need rescuing; in the end, you’ll see that this was in your best interests too. The next thing to do is your laptop, tucked away out of reach until you’ve proved yourself to be trustworthy.

He cuts off all trade routes and replaces them with his own, Simon showing up at the door the following morning with supplies. When you spot a man at the door, you must think saviour before foe, because you pound on the window facing the porch. At least John had the foresight to lock you out of the foyer before he opened the front door.

Simon cocks an eyebrow. “Noisy mouse, ain’t she?”

He shrugs. “She’ll learn. You got everything I asked for?”

“Check ‘n tell me if I missed anything. I ‘aven’t got time to get anything else today, but I can come back tomorrow.”

“Good man, Simon. Give me a minute, alright, lad?”

John gives the bag a cursory check, but just as he thought, Simon didn’t miss anything. He never does.

Simon helps him install an electronic lock on the front door from the inside before heading off to work and John spends the next ten minutes programming it while you stare through the foyer door helplessly. The back door gets the same treatment later on, effectively rendering you a prisoner in your own house.

Then he takes stock of the property.

You’ve made yourself a perfectly respectable home. It has all the charm of a simple family home, nothing like his ancestral estate on the Welsh border; there’s something real here, something designed with comfort in mind. You’ll have to live with summering there and wintering here in the city, but he won’t ask you to abandon the life you’ve made for yourself here. The stove’s at least thirty years old—one of those old brands made to last, likely passed down from a family member or bought secondhand.

But John takes stock of the layout of the house because the longer he’s there, the more his instincts tingle.

As well-decorated and maintained as your house is, it doesn’t feel ready for a rut. Too many hard edges and wide open spaces. Before humans became accustomed to single domiciles, instinct would’ve made them search far and wide for a burrow or cave comfortable enough to ride out their cycle.

Like nest building for omegas, den making is inherent to alphas. It’s programmed in his DNA. Even out in the wild, he’d know how to make one—know what materials to look for in the absence of soft pillows and sheets—and feel that same urge to make a space suitable for his mate.

Everything in its right place.

He starts by pulling the mattress off the bed frame and dragging it to the corner of the room. It makes your room feel like more of a den, a place to hunker down in, and that’s only reinforced when John pulls out every blanket and pillow from your linen closet and drapes them over the mattress. You don’t have blackout curtains, but he solves that by pinning a few sheets up on your blinds until barely any light passes through.

Preparing for a rut is a little like preparing for a storm. One has to batten down the hatches to ready themselves for the worst of it. He installs locks on the cutlery drawers and stows the knife block away in the highest cabinet, locking that as well. He thinks of the worst case scenarios and plans accordingly.

You don’t seem to appreciate his efforts though.

“Why are you—” you start and then abruptly stop, swallowing. “Please stop rearranging the furniture.”

John pauses, putting the couch down gently so as not to damage the floorboards or upset you with any sudden noise.

“Well, love, I’m not about to let you do all the backbreaking work, now am I?”

That response doesn’t seem to satisfy you, expression still twisted into a scowl. “Neither of us has to do any work. Why are you moving things around in the first place?”

“You really don’t get how these things are done, do you?”

Embarrassment makes you snappy. “No, and I don’t have to because it’s my fucking house either way. Stop moving my furniture.”

His eyes go half-lidded. Anger courses through his veins like floating down a lazy river. John has never liked being told what to do—it’s a personality quirk that’s been both a hindrance and a help to his career, but in his love life, he’s never allowed that sort of thing to fly. The dissolution of his first marriage speaks for itself.

He lumbers around the couch towards you and you flinch, walking backwards in the opposite direction. He’s quick despite his size though, hand reaching up and cupping the back of your neck before you hit the wall behind you, and all you can do is stare up at him towering over you nervously.

“Careful, sweetheart,” John murmurs, holding you firmly enough by the back of your neck that you whimper, only one hand able to press against his chest in an effort to push him away. The other you cradle limply against your chest. “Keep running your mouth like that and I might need to find a better way to put it to use. Ever had your mouth knotted?”

Nothing headier than the idea of pushing to the back of his omega’s throat and letting his knot expand until it’s trapped behind your teeth, keeping you locked on his cock until it’s softened enough to pull out.

He stores the idea away for later. It wouldn’t do to knot your mouth for the first time during his rut when he doesn’t have the wherewithal to take it slow and keep you centred, but it’s an idea he’ll have to return to at a later date. When he has time to sit you on his lap and comfort you after something so intense instead of thinking only of his own urges.

Rut isn’t a completely mindless state of being. Even in the thrall of his rut, John will still have enough cognizance to make somewhat informed decisions. It would be dangerous if alphas were susceptible to any influence during such a vulnerable period. Anyone could take advantage of someone in that state.

There are some things that he doesn’t have complete control over. The closer John gets to the onset of his rut, the stronger the urge to scent his territory gets.

It starts off relatively innocuous. He touches things more. Grips the doorframe when he enters a room and brushes against the wall when he turns a corner. Anything to leave a trace of his scent behind. But as the days progress and the urge to mark what’s his grows to monstrous proportions, the manner in which he chooses to do so shifts in kind.

“Did you piss in the shower?” you seethe, fists clenched when you storm into the living room where John is seated at the couch watching Casablanca in black and white.

He grunts. Nods.

“You could’ve turned the water on to rinse it out,” you hiss. “Or used the toilet.”

“Not the point,” John says.

“There was a point to pissing in my shower?”

“Never spent a rut with anyone, have you?” That pleases the lazy beast inside of him, but he’s not in any mood to explain himself. That’s what books are for. He prefers to teach through example.

“What does it matter? That still doesn’t mean you can piss in my shower.”

He takes a swig from the bottle in his hand. “Then you won’t wanna go around the side of the house.”

The screech gets all tangled up at the back of your throat, only the memory from the last time you sassed him staying your tongue. John can only smile to himself as you storm out of the room.

For all your resistance, he knows you’re not entirely immune to his presence, same as how he can’t shake the gnawing need to bury himself in you as deep as he can get. He’s a prime specimen of alpha—all thick muscle and dark tufts of hair, belly spilling over the top of his jeans and new notch on his belt from the mass he’s tacked on the weeks leading up to his rut. He’s been around the block enough to know his appeal.

It’s why John doesn’t worry when you hiss and spit. Views the fuss you put up akin to foreplay, a little rough-housing before the situation gets serious.

There are tells after all. It’s the way you look at him when you think he’s not paying attention. Furtive glances from the corners of your eyes. Shifting your hips in your chair when he sits across from you at meal times and spreads his legs wide, knocking his knees against yours. Eyes going hazy and lingering on the bulging muscles of his arms when you watch him move the furniture around in your house.

He thinks sometimes about dragging you into bed early. Getting it out of the way now and getting you used to his touch before his rut sets in. It would be a kindness, in a way.

But he relishes getting to see you squirm, the pseudo-heat sinking in day by day and making you more persuasive, less likely to bolt when your hand finally heals. Your instincts will do half the work for him. All he has to do is wait.

Besides, the greater the effort, the sweeter the reward.

Midway through the week, when his rut is close enough to be a thorn in his side but not close enough to have earned him the right to refuse to come in, Laswell has him come in for some inane reason.

John still doesn’t trust you enough to leave you alone though, so he calls Simon and asks him to babysit you for a couple hours. Not a half hour later, the man’s on his doorstep, hands by his sides and expression deadpan. Even out of the service, he’s still a good soldier.

It’s what makes Simon his favourite sometimes, though he’d never tell a soul. John knows it’s not right to play favourites with his men, but in the privacy of his own mind, he can face reality.

“I won’t be gone long, sweetheart, but Simon’s gonna watch you while I’m out. You gonna be on your best behaviour for him?”

Your eyes cut to Simon and they look dangerous. Calculating. His lips almost twitch in amusement under his mustache.

“Sure,” you say instead of arguing. It’s more of a red flag than if you had.

The five hours he spends away from you are excruciating, and his temper suffers for it. These days, at his own insistence he’s been relegated to something of a desk job, but that still comes with its fair share of responsibility. There are certain strategic meetings that he can’t simply decline to attend, and though the hours pass by fast enough, he can still feel your presence like an itch at the back of his head that he can’t seem to scratch.

When he gets home, the itch finally dissipates.

“How was she?” John asks.

“Biter.” Simon holds up a forearm where your bite mark sits livid red against his pale skin. The imprint is deep, nearly piercing right through flesh near the canines.

John whistles. “She did a number on you.”

Simon shrugs, unbothered. “Left the door unlocked and she tried to run. Fast on her feet.” Never did have his head on straight, that one. John feels no pity for the omega that’ll be his one day, but he has some sympathy.

He won’t discipline you just yet. That’ll be a project for another day—after you’re mated and hitched—and he can take his time training you. For now it’s enough that you’re still tucked away inside the den, not quick enough to outrun his lieutenant.

Simon leaves with a few crisp bills folded in his back pocket and John claps his shoulder on the way out.

The time is coming though. Every day pulls the sun thick off the horizon, the water dragging back from the shore. Soon, there will be a wave.

John knows his rut has started when he wakes up one morning as grumpy as a bear fresh out of hibernation.

The first thing he hears is the sound of his stomach growling. Food. His first conscious thought. His stomach aches something fierce, like he hasn’t eaten in quite some time, even though John vaguely recalls eating supper the night before (though for the life of him he can’t remember what).

His mind processes all of the information around him slowly and sluggishly, not in a hurry to make sense of anything. His vision still works perfectly fine, but his brain takes awhile to register what his eyes are seeing. Only base impulses make any sense. He sniffs the air to help guide him towards a food source.

Something warm-smelling comes slinking out of the bathroom quietly. His head snaps in its direction and it freezes in its tracks. Prey.

He sniffs again. No, not prey. Something different.

Standing up feels strange, like he’s out of his body. It’s too big somehow. Heavier than he remembers it being. The thing trembling by the doorway doesn’t move as he lumbers over, smart enough to know not to run. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from chasing it down if it tried to get away, prey or not.

It flinches when he drops his head, the bridge of his nose brushing against its temple. His scent’s all over this one. He must have come or pissed on it at one point, marking it as his own. His scent clings to its skin, buried deeper than the epidermis.

It shifts to one foot.

“Don’t…move…” he growls, tensing up. It tenses up too, breathing out short, shaky breaths.

“J-John?” it says, voice like a bell in his head. It knows his name.

“Hungry,” he says instead of asking how it knows who he is.

“I…I can make you breakfast.”

He herds it away from the bathroom door instead of answering, staring it down as it walks backwards down the hall and into the room that smells strongest of food.

The house smells of him only vaguely. It smells mainly of the thing he herds into the kitchen, warm and spicy like cinnamon or cloves. There’s a faint trace of his scent though, as if he’s been here for enough time that it isn’t wholly foreign. His hackles raise at the thought of not being in his own territory though.

But this must also be his. If you’re his, then your den must, in turn, belong to him.

You scurry around the kitchen gathering all of the ingredients for breakfast while he stares from his chair, eyes tracking your every move. Part of him waits for you to try and bolt, on edge when you open the fridge and the sound makes his ears twitch. His muscles sit bunched under his skin, ready to pounce and chase.

When you put the plate down in front of him, you make as if to take a step back, clearly meaning to give him some space. That won’t do. A firm hand on your forearm rectifies that; he pulls you down onto his lap before you’ve had a chance to register what’s happening.

“Whoa,” you gasp, all turned around.

The first piece of bacon he tries to pick up slips from his fingers. The next one he manages to pick up goes straight to your lips. “Eat.”

“I’m not—”

“Eat.”

Your cheeks bulge around the mouthful of bacon and eggs when he lifts another bite to your mouth. You chew quickly, swallowing before it’s fully chewed, nervous that his loose hold on his temper might slip. Only after you’ve had a couple filling bites does John allow himself to eat as well.

Some of his sense of self comes back with time. The pieces start coming back together. Your name, where he is, what you’re doing here. It comes back as his belly fills.

His nature doesn’t allow him to feel pity, but you should at least know what’s ahead of you.

“It’s starting today,” he tells you, breaking the silence. You go stiff in his arms and then swallow the mouthful of food you’d been chewing.

“Today?” you repeat, your voice slightly hoarse.

“Rut.”

The word hangs in the air between him and you. John can almost hear your heart start to double in rhythm.

You nod and whisper, “Okay.”

The thing behind his eyes stares you down. It watches you chew and swallow your food until there’s nothing left on the plate, until your lips are tacky with grease and you have to suck your teeth to dislodge the trapped bits.

With his belly full, other needs take precedence.

It starts with him pressing his nose to the crown of your head, gliding it down to your temple and sucking in lungfuls of your scent the whole way, imbibing your scent. Spicy and musky; still pungent with sweat from the night before since you haven’t had a chance to shower yet, nothing to distract from your true scent. It makes his cock throb against his thigh.

He drags his nose down your temple to your cheek, nuzzling against the side of your head. Rumbling when you go still, turning your head away from him when he tries to go for your lips, denying him again.

It agitates him.

“Kiss me,” John growls. Demanding, not asking.

He pinches your cheeks with his grip and twists your head towards him. The little resistance you offer flickers briefly before being snuffed out when he slots his lips against yours.

What starts soft turns feverish in a matter of moments. Lips gliding and tongues twisting; the bridge of his nose pressed uncomfortably against yours, the whole kiss a mess of ache and teeth and hungry, greedy need. Spittle drips down your chin and you whine into his mouth when his beard scratches at the sensitive skin around your mouth.

Need prickles at the base of his spine. For days now, he’s kept his hunger contained when all it wanted was to run rampant. He’s been so good to you—given you days to ready yourself for what was inevitably to come. He never tried to conceal the reason behind his presence in your house.

And now it’s all coming to a head.

John slides you off his lap and down onto the floor under the table, planting his feet on the ground and lifting his hips to pull his sweats down, letting his cock flop out against his belly, heavy with blood.

“John, do I have to…?” you whimper, trailing off like even saying it out loud might jinx you.

“Want your mouth on my knot,” he says bluntly.

Your eyes are sparkly with tears when he looks down, big and wide and helpless and it somehow just makes him even harder. When you sniffle, a bead of precum dribbles down his shaft.

“Get it nice and wet,” John grunts, pushing your face into his dick. “It’s going inside you soon enough.”

“Please—” you whisper.

“It can go in dry too,” he warns.

Your tongue pokes out of your mouth reluctantly, face all scrunched up and petulant, but eventually you do as you’re told. Shy, kittenish licks around the base of his cock, right over his knot. Lazy pleasure ripples up his spine, each drag of your tongue over his soft knot making his vision go blurry and his breath get heavier. Practically panting by the time you kiss a particularly sensitive spot on the underside of his knot.

“My hand’s getting tired, sweetheart—mind taking over?”

He doesn’t wait for you to answer, letting go of his cock so that it droops, batting your nose on the way down. The affronted look on your face nearly makes him snort.

Your fingers curl around his cock, lifting it up. It looks brutish in your hand, ruddy and thick, precum leaking from the flushed head and dripping onto your head. If he were a decent man, he’d peel your hand off his cock and replace it with his own, get himself off with a rough, dirty tug instead of leaving that responsibility to you. Spoil you instead with gentle love making, all sweet talk and slow thrusts, decadent, languid kisses pulling your attention away from where it hurts.

But John isn’t a decent man. Not even a good man.

He lets you lick and kiss it all over until his knot is wet with spit. Every so often your teeth graze his knot, forcing a violent shudder up his spine, and he snarls down at you, teeth bared to get the message across. Don’t push too far.

He’s indulgent to a point.

“Suck it too,” he rasps. The hand on the back of your head tightens, angling your face until your lips are stretched around his rapidly filling knot and you have no choice but to gently suck the puffed skin of his knot, your nose pressed against the thatch of hair at the base of his cock.

His cock aches the longer you kneel there mouthing at his knot. It’d be nice to paint your face with cum—your tongue to start and then your cheeks and chin. A little on your forehead too just to mark you as his. He’s close enough to the edge that it wouldn’t take more than a few well-placed sucks, but his knot is already big enough. Any more and he won’t be able to fit it in you at all, at least not for another hour or so.

He clamps his hand around the back of your neck and pulls you off, a string of spit still connecting your lips to his knot. “That’s enough.”

You frown, bottom lip jutting out. “You didn’t like it?”

That soothes the tension in his shoulders a little, makes his lips twitch under his mustache.

“‘Course I liked it, sweetheart.” The weeping tip of his cock is enough evidence of that.

“Why—why’d you stop me then?”

“I’m gonna come soon, honey, and I’d like the first time to be inside you.”

Your eyes go wide. “Oh.”

It’s a challenge getting you onto your hands and knees after that, divesting you of your clothes too. He very nearly has to wrestle you down to the ground, but exerting even the slightest amount of force makes you instantly acquiesce, likely realizing that you won’t stand a chance fighting him. He shushes you when you choke back a sob, kissing the back of your neck soothingly.

At least, he hopes it soothes you.

John runs a hand over your rump and between your legs, finding your center damp and hot to the touch.

“Well, that’s a bit more inviting,” he says approvingly. “Been wet this whole time, sweetheart?”

You shake your head desperately, shoulders hitching with your quiet sobs. When he dips two fingers into your hole though, it’s soaked. Squelches when he pulls his fingers out and thrusts them back in.

If he didn’t have more pressing concerns, he’d be tempted to turn over onto his back and tug you down onto his face. That thought lingers for a moment and then takes root.

“Hold on, love—gotta do this first.”

The mattress springs back when he drops down onto his back. Your back arches when John grabs you by the hips and drags you over his mouth, your knees planted on either side of his head, one higher up than the other from being dragged down the bed.

“Wait, you never said—”

The crack across your ass interrupts you. He flexes his hand and then palms that same ass cheek, rubbing over the hurt. If you swear at him, it doesn’t register because his eyes are locked on the slice of heaven between your thighs, transfixed by your dew-slicked lips parting for his gaze.

“That’s better,” John murmurs, then digs his fingers into your hips and pulls you down onto his face.

The smell of your sex is drugging, mind-numbing. Musky and warm and fragrant. The hood of your clit is drawn back to expose the swollen bud and it calls to his tongue, a call which he answers in kind, gliding the flat of his tongue over it and smiling to himself when it twitches.

It satisfies every carnal urge breathing fire and brimstone in the back of his mind. His tongue saws up the seam of your cunt, parting the soft, delicate petals before drawing one into his mouth, humming around the mouthful. The vibrations must feel good because your whole body jolts in his arms.

When he sucks your clit into his mouth, you nearly wrench yourself right off his face, hands clawing at the bedsheets. Firm hands dig into the flesh of your backside and pull you back down though.

“Mm…you gonna cum, sweetheart?” he rumbles into your pussy, his words muffled.

“I—I’m gonna—oh…oh…—”

Music to his ears. He can tell it’s right around the corner when your breathing goes staccato and your thighs squeeze around his head, forcing him to move one of his hands to keep your legs spread. He can feel your hole clench around his tongue, hips jerking sharply.

He loves watching a pretty girl come. Loves feeling it on his tongue even more. It doesn’t take much to work you up to it either, likely on a hair trigger since he bolted the doors to your house shut and made himself at home.

Your upper body collapses onto the bed when you come, hips undulating over his tongue subconsciously, like you can’t help but chase your release. And who is he to deny you when you’ve been such a sweet girl?

John scoots down the bed to slide out from under you and sits up, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing your juices from his mouth to his cheek, drops clinging to the bristles of his beard. Trapped there, he’ll smell it for days.

Good. Better for him if he can.

Taking his place behind you again, he reaches down between his legs and lines his cock up with one hand, the other holding your hip steady before pressing in one inch at a time, a smooth, slow glide to the halfway mark. You squeeze him like a vice, pussy all clenched up like a fist, too wound up and stressed to relax enough to take him to the root. Even coming has barely loosened you up.

He topples over you until his chest is pressed to your back. The skin on your back is sticky with sweat, a tremor running through you and making you shake.

“Easy, sweetheart,” John murmurs into the side of your head, planting a kiss there for good measure. The skin over your knuckles pulls tight when you fist the sheet beneath you. “Can you relax for me?”

“N-no?” It’s said like a question, like you’re looking to him for reassurance, like you need your alpha to help you relax, to loosen you up.

It’s why he feels no guilt for the situation that you’re in. Trapped under your alpha, about to take his dick to the root. What would you have done if he hadn’t been around to take you home? Any matter of tragedy could have befallen you.

“I’ve got you.” Talking both to you and himself.

There’s nowhere for you to go but further up the bed when John forces the rest of his cock into you, gaining more ground with every thrust. That’s how soldiers make strides in new land, conquering new territory with every advance. Rigor and momentum.

The flesh of your ass ripples with every thrust, hips clapping against your cheeks. He drives into you with a single minded intensity, grunting through each thrust. Reason falls to the wayside. All that matters is knotting and breeding the omega under him.

Your cries echo through the bedroom in bright, clean bursts.

He feels virile, potent; it’s his alpha running hot in his veins and his body thick with muscle and the way you all but disappear underneath him, just a sweet and soft omega for him to use and breed. Back arched just enough to let him sink in as deep as he can get.

“John—” you wheeze. “T-too deep. It’s—unf, it’s, ah…it’s too deep.”

“Full, honey?” he grunts.

“Y-yeah,” you respond, whimpering through the word.

“I know, baby,” he says consolingly, contradicting his own sympathetic tone when his next stroke nudges against the seal of your womb. “Not very nice of me, is it?”

“Noooo,” you moan.

“Yeah, not very nice.” His laugh is breathless, mean. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

Coherency is a luxury that slips from his fingers as quickly as it came. Like a shroud falling over him, it cuts him off from everything but what he touches. Even your mating gland is forgotten in his fervour, its siren song going mute against the backdrop of the blood pounding in his ears.

His knot pops quick. Half a dozen more thrusts in and he feels it thicken and swell until he suddenly can’t pull out. It punches the breath out of him, making him bear down on you, trapping you both on his knot and under his weight.

“Oh—oh—oh—” you gasp, overwhelmed.

He hooks his chin over your shoulder and plants his hands on top of yours, twining your fingers together, an intimacy so staggering that he can feel it thrum through your body, your frame trembling underneath him.

Knot thoroughly plugged inside of you, he can only grind his hips forward, nudging that same tender spot over and over until your pussy draws up nice and tight around him, dragged unwillingly to another orgasm. He sees stars when your channel squeezes around his cock, milking him for all he’s worth.

Overwhelmed, your heart rate spikes and your scent intensifies, permeating the room and lodging itself into the deepest recesses of his being. Your hands claw up the mattress, ripping the sheet off the left corner, and you yelp when you realize that you can’t pull off his knot, truly trapped.

John’s hindbrain interprets your squirming as trying to get away and he reacts instinctively, forcing you down to the mattress until your arms collapse under you and pinning you there with his body.

“Where d’ya think you’re going?” he growls, mouth pressed to your ear.

You shudder, walls tensing up around his knot and making him spurt another wad of cum into you.

“Oh god,” you whisper, grunting softly when he forces more of his weight onto you, the mattress depressing under your combined weight.

Sticky, tacky skin. Laboured breaths. Dark. Tunnel vision. Everything narrows to a single point. In the crook of your neck, your mating gland pulses. He presses his tongue to your neck and drags it through a trail of salty sweat.

The vice grip around his knot has him swimming in and out of consciousness, vicious instincts clawing up his throat. It thins the barrier between him and his alpha, one no longer distinct from the other.

“Are you—are you going to bite me?” you ask through panted breaths.

His alpha considers it. That’s what he is now, at least. Its consciousness has usurped his, or moulded with his, or risen to the ranks of human. It tilts its head through him though, two beasts sharing a body and an appetite.

It runs its tongue over its lips. He does the same.

“Not yet.”

Voracious.

No matter how many times he cums or makes you cum, it’s never enough.

He still has to rest though. Much to his consternation, the body demands it, so he falls asleep with you resting against his chest or under the crook of his arm with your fist curled over his belly, and wakes to the damp clutch of your centre pressed against his thigh from when you rolled over in the middle of the night. Then wakes you up by grinding your hips down against the hard line of his thigh, sweet talking you through an orgasm that leaves you thick-tongued and cross-eyed.

Days pass that way. Blunt fingers; rake of tongue. Skimming his mouth over the valley of your tits and down the channel between your legs, gorging himself on the slick dripping from your pulsing hole. Scraped a bit raw from his beard, so he’s careful now; spreads your folds with his fingers before thrusting his tongue all the way in.

He comes back to himself every now and then, some memories easier to recall than others:

Your cheek smushed against the shower wall, hands clawing at the tile while he drives into you from behind, rivulets of water running down your body.

The feeling of your throat flexing around his shaft, your eyes watering when your nose nearly grazes his pubes. Pulling you off his cock to let you breathe and leaning down to press his forehead to yours.

Pinching your cheeks to open your mouth after cumming in order to watch it melt on your tongue.

Indulging in kisses messier than sex itself, lips going swollen and numb, eyes so masted that they’re barely even open. Each glide of your lips liquid and svelte.

Always wanting more and more and more.

Heavy footsteps following you into the kitchen as you scurry around looking for something to eat, wary glances thrown over your shoulder to keep track of him. Always keeping him in your line of sight. Smart girl; clever enough to know not to turn your back to a predator.

Occasionally, he loses track of you as a person again, thinking of you like an extension of himself instead. Your name disappears into the recesses of his mind, replaced by concepts like omega, mine, pup—

You cover his mouth with your hands to muffle his words and he bites your fingers one by one until you pull them away.

And it keeps—

going and going and going and going

—thoughts shaking loose from his head, one by one; hours disappearing into thin air, nothing real except the omega on the end of his knot. When it whimpers, his chest puffs out and his breathing goes laboured, his only concrete thought to fill it with more of his cum, make sure that it takes.

It will, if John gets his way.

And he always does.

Another season over, this one different from the rest.

You’re still in bed when he surfaces from his rut, low back cracking and popping when he sits up. His muscles will ache for days after this, the aftermath of any good rut lingering in the body longer than the rut itself.

John scrubs a hand down his face and cracks his jaw open for a good yawn, stretching everything out. When he looks down by his side, he finds you curled into yourself, cheek resting against the back of your hand, sleeping soundly.

You’re so tuckered out that your toes don’t twitch even when he drags his finger down the line of your back, stopping at your sacrum. The slope of your ass underneath the bed sheet is tempting, inviting him to part your legs and settle himself between them again, but he’s put you through enough over the past few days.

Later, he’ll want to check between your legs and see how much of his cum is still painted between your thighs. Either way, he’ll have to run you a bath with Epsom salt for you to soak in.

That’ll have to wait until after breakfast though.

Right on cue though, his stomach growls. No amount of preparation for a rut is ever enough—not once has he ever come out of one feeling refreshed. It’s always aching joints and empty stomachs and bruises where bruises usually shouldn’t be. His age only makes it all the more noticeable.

His future ruts won’t always be this way. Not when his hormones are tempered by his omega’s corresponding heat. In the future, proximity and cohabitation will align your heat and his rut cycles, making the whole ordeal far more pleasant. One to stabilize the other. You’ll put in for leave at the same time and slip into it quietly, like slipping into a gentle, welcoming stream.

That’s a thought for another time though. For now, John pulls himself out of bed and saunters towards the bathroom, intent on running a quick shower before fixing himself something to eat.

He takes a brisk shower under cold water, scrubbing his chest and letting the soap run down his legs for no longer than ten minutes before shutting off the water. It’s a shame that it washes your scent off of him, but he’ll rectify that later when you’re up.

The smell of bacon frying in the pan permeates the kitchen, the sound of it as emblematic of morning time as birds singing in the trees or the soft sound of the radio on in another room. A cool breeze spills in through the cracked open window.

It’s nearly time, but not quite.

He waited because he wanted this to be deliberate. Intentional, as everything he does always is.

It wouldn’t have been as meaningful in the throes of his rut. Easily chalked up to instinct or error, rather than seen as intended from the very beginning.

An hour or so later, you start to stir. Though his instincts aren’t as sharp as they were in the midst of his rut, he can still hear the bed creak in the other room.

The bedroom is bathed in light when he returns. In the center of the bed, you’ve turned over onto your back, the light cascading over you making you look almost angelic. His heart throbs in his chest.

One day, he might even love you.

“You awake?” John asks, resting his knee against the edge of the bed and slowly climbing over you. When you blink a couple times and nod, he leans down to draw you into a slow, drugging kiss.

The taste of your mouth is familiar now; he’s tasted it so many times over the past few days that it’s etched into his memory now.

“Hm? Yeah,” you sigh, then meet his eyes. You must register something there because you pause, squinting up at him. “Are you… Is it over?”

John nods. It’s easier to just say yes than qualify that the rut hormones haven’t fully left his system yet, still present though in much smaller quantities. He’ll still be quick to anger for the next few days, in no shape to return to work just yet, but eventually his system will flush those lingering traces of rut and he’ll be back to his normal self.

You smile, relieved. “Okay…that's uh, that’s good. Do you…do you mind if I rest a bit longer before I leave?”

“‘Course, sweetheart.”

He palms the side of your face, brushing the wispy baby hairs out of the way. All his life and he’s never seen something prettier than you.

“In fact,” John murmurs, canines aching when he runs his tongue over them. “You can stay as long as you’d like.”

You must catch the double meaning in his words because your eyes go sharp. “Huh?”

His eyes flicker down to your neck and it hits you like a battering ram.

It’s too late though. He gathers your wrists in his palm when you try to bat at his face, immediately going into struggle mode, and pins them down over your head with ease. With his other hand, he holds you by the neck and turns your head to one side, exposing the delicate skin of your neck.

“John—wait, no, no—waitwaitwait, please—you said—”

Legs kicking out, back nearly arching off the bed, you put every last bit of your fight into trying to throw him off, only for him to force you back down, barely a grunt passing his lips. Then he ducks his head into the crook of your neck.

“John—John, please!”

John bites down.

Under his teeth, your gland splits.

The moment of connection is just as divine as he imagined. When your gland breaks under his teeth and your blood oxidizes in his mouth, his world reconfigures itself around this new reality, one where you flow through his veins like blood and swim through his mind like thought.

He sees now what he missed before. All this time, he’s assumed that fate has railed against him, intent on him remaining alone.

What he understands now is that—

(you whimper under him and arch up into his body, saliva gurgling in your throat)

—fate has always been on his side.

After Ragnarok, the earth will once again bob out of the saltwater, dregs of ancestral seafoam lapping at the sides.

(he gnaws at the Yggdrasil’s roots)

In this life, nothing has ever been handed to him because he has needed to fight for it. Of course fate would have taken that into consideration when creating his mate. Baptism by fire. He never would’ve been satisfied with simply being handed his intended mate. He needed to leave the imprint of himself like chiselling into stone. Maker of his own fate.

When he pulls back, teeth unlatching from your shoulder and blood leaking from the wound, you stare up at him through misty, filmy eyes, tears scorching hot lines down your cheeks.

He can appreciate the shock this must come as. You thought you’d get off scot-free after all—just a few days of being fucked and knotted and then sent on your way—not kept like bounty from a sacked city. You are a prize though. His hard earned prize.

His moral compass doesn’t allow him to see this as a pillaging. Not when his actions are led by his heart.

You raise a shaky hand to cover the wound on your shoulder, wincing when your fingers brush the raw skin there, coming back saturated in blood. “You—you bit me.”

John hums. “It’s alright, sweetheart; it’s over now. Nothing to worry about anymore.”

“You said—you promised you wouldn’t,” you bleat.

He shakes his head, voice still soft when he responds. “Never said I wouldn’t, sweetheart.”

“You said you’d leave. You promised you’d leave.”

“Aw, honey, you wouldn’t do that to an old man, would you?” He lies down beside you, pulling on your heartstrings like a marionette. Plenty have called him a decent soldier, but no one has ever called him a good person. “Why make me leave when you could have someone in your corner instead?”

Tears like diamonds on your cheeks. You’re the most beautiful creature that John has ever laid eyes on; there’s no wonder why he had to make you his. Had he turned around in that hospital and walked out that door after hearing your voice, life would have been less complicated but it would have been dull, colourless. He would have woken up today with his mind at ease, but his heart would have been empty.

Now though—

“We’ll be good for each other,” John says, moving his hand over your throat, loose fingers simply resting there. Just enough to feel the thrum of your pulse under his palm. “I’ll prove it to you.”

He feels you swallow beneath his palm. It is easy to see why you might doubt his words.

But in the back of his mind, his alpha purrs, satisfied for once in its life, and when he tightens his fingers around your throat, you go still, all of your trust gathering there in the palm of his hand. He can live with that.

So long as he has you, he can live with anything.

#ceil writing #cod x reader #price x reader #john price/reader #price/reader #john price x reader #john price x you #captain price x reader #captain price x you

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lucrezianoin · 5 months ago

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How to bookbind your fanfic!

Part 1: From AO3 to printing

The necessary first step is turning your AO3 fanfic into booklets. Your whole book will be a bunch of booklets piled on top of each others and stitched together.

Booklet examples:

Btw, this is the official Word tutorial on how to make a booklet.

You can see there are different options. I usually do 8 pages, which is what you will see in the video. This means that a booklet of 8 pages is two sheets of paper, printed front and back, folded and one put inside the other. To have your word pages in the correct order you will need to format your word document.

Everything is in the video but here is the text for easy reading (btw the fanfic I used is Exit by schwutthing, an amazing Valjean/Javert fic)

Do not download the fanfic on AO3. Click on "Entire work" and copy paste it on word.

Format your word document. Click on File-> Margins. Select "Multiple pages: Book fold" and "Sheets per booklet: 8". Put "Gutter" to 1cm.

Double click on the empty area just above your text, on a random page of the document. This will make the "Do not download the fanfic on AO3. Click on "Entire work" and copy paste it on word.

Format your word document. Click on File-> Margins. Select "Multiple pages: Book fold" and "Sheets per booklet: 8". Put "Gutter" to 1cm.

Double click on the empty area just above your text, on a random page of the document. This will make the "Header and Footer" option appear. You can click on "Footer" and select the format for the pages' number. Always add the pages number, it will make your life easier.

Now you can justify your book. I usually justify (select all text with CTRL+A and click on Justify), but keep in mind that some documents might not enjoy passing through "justify" so double check your final document. For example, if there are lines of poetry and the author wrote into the next line without starting a new paragraph the justify option will make it weird.

Make your book pretty! I added some illustrations and blank pages. I also made the title of the fanfic bigger.

Fix the chapters' titles and notes. I clicked on Home-> Find and searched for "Chapter", so I could select on each chapter title and make it bold, and also delete the "Chapter text" added just after. You can do the same with "notes" in case you want to delete notes.

Now it is time to print! I prefer to save in pdf before, so I will do that.

IF YOU HAVE A PRINTER THAT DOES NOT PRINT BOTH SIDES

Click on print

Select "Microsoft print to pdf"

Select "Manually print on both sides"

This will create two different files pdf, one for the front pages, and one for the back pages.

Click on the file for the front pages and print them all. Do not panic if you see the pages number all over it.

Now take your printed (only on one side) block of pages and load it into your printer again, making sure that you will now print on the blank back. Open your back pages pdf file and print.

(you can do a trial with a few pages to see if everything is lining up correctly).

IF YOU HAVE A PRINTER THAT PRINT BOTH SIDES

"Click on print

Select "Microsoft print to pdf"

Select "Print on one side"

This will create a single pdf that you can print on your both-sides printer. You will see that the page are not in the order you had on the word document, but the whole file will start with page 8 (see video).

Now print!

What you want is this:

You can see that on the front you have page 8 first, page 1 after, because when folded it will end up with page 1 at the start of your booklet! And on the back of this first sheet you have 7 and 2, that will end up in the correct position.

Now you will have a lot of pages... time to fold and create your booklet! Every two sheets... you will fold as you see above.

Next post will be specifically about folding the booklet, making the holes and sewing them together.

#book binding #fanfic binding #book #booklet #guide #bookbinding guide

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writingunderneathawillow · 1 month ago

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blue valentine

- the four times bucky makes you cry + the one time you make him cry content warnings: heavy angst, bucky’s trauma, mental health plays a big part here, depression, ptsd, unwanted advances towards reader (not bucky), accidental violence against reader, crying, insecurities, hurt/comfort, very minor thunderbolts* spoilers word count: 3.3k a/n: inspired by nessa barrett’s song blue valentine, lyrics are in italics, this is unedited cause i’m lazy but i’ll try to get around to it tomorrow

you play it so damn cool, 'cause baby, you are Bucky was a quiet lover. He would send you flowers at the end of the week, little gifts on special occasions and he’d spend time with you, either tucked away in tranquil corners of restaurants or curled up together in dark corners and sequestered rooms of the tower. Most of the time however, you spent at your apartment. He had told you he was a private person when you met, and you had understood that. Sometimes you wanted to show him off just a little – introduce him to your parents and friends, kiss his cheek on his birthday – but you were patient and held out on such things. Instead, you relished in your shared secrecy. Keeping things just to yourself had its benefits as well. Most of the time.

But once you hit the six-months-mark in your relationship, things got a little rocky. Your friends were pushing to meet him, and you were eager to share your joy with them. Bucky protested the way only he could: With smooth words and even smoother kisses. “Doll, I just want us to stay us for a little longer. I like having you all to myself,” he explained, his voice dipped in soft honey. He pulled you in closer and kissed the corner of your mouth. His stubble tickled your skin and managed to produce a little giggle from your lips. “Well, baby, you still have all of me to yourself even if you meet some of my friends. They’re really curious about you and wanna know who I spend all of my time with,” you retorted and pushed him away just a little to look at him. Those ocean blue eyes, usually filled with so much warmth when he looked at you, clouded just a tiny bit when he noticed your reluctance to drop the topic.

He stayed quiet for a few seconds, and you felt the need to shrink away under his piercing stare, but you didn’t give up. “They’d love you.” “Sweetheart,” he began, “I wanna meet them. That’s not it. I just- I think I’m not ready to go there yet.” Something in you cracked – just a little. It would be easy to smooth it over, to fill the fracture in your heart and piece it back together, if he just added a few more soothing words, so that you wouldn’t feel like an idiot for wanting your boyfriend to meet your loved ones. But his lips remained sealed and he simply ran a hand over your cheek. “Yeah?” He asked once he had noticed that you hadn’t answered.

No. Not yeah. The words almost spilled out, but you clamped your teeth shut against each other, biting away the tears which threatened to fall. “Okay, baby,” you said instead and nodded for good measure, ignoring the blistering pain, lit by insecurities, that burned its way through your mind. Bucky didn’t notice the way your waterline began to swim. He either genuinely thought that things were fine this way or he chose to ignore the way you mumbled a quick excuse to take a shower. Either option worsened the hurt you were already feeling.

In the bathroom you let the tears fall. You turned on the shower and stripped off your clothes as the salt streamed down your face. Your brain was working overtime as you wondered what was holding him back. Six months was already a long time to not have met your friends, but now, turning down your explicit request – it stung even more. Little by little, moments of the last half year came back to you, rushing onto you like a thunderstorm. His birthday when you had not been allowed to throw a party for him (“I’m fine celebrating just with my best girl”). Turned down dinner invitations with his friends (“You’ll meet them soon, doll, don’t worry, just not tonight”). A quick getaway from the bar he had taken you to once he had spotted Sam (“I’ll introduce you soon but not now, it’s not right”). The shower hid your sobs and blended right into your tears, so when you stepped out and rejoined Bucky in your bedroom, you made up some story about getting soap in your eyes to explain away the red rims. I burn red for you Just a few weeks later, he splintered your already cracked heart. A simple night out, just the two of you of course, had gone sideways. A guy in a bar, drunk out of his mind and an asshole in general just to top it off, had wandering hands. While Bucky sat at one of the tables, you had begged him to let you choose a drink for him and after successfully convincing him, you had made your way to the bartender. The drunk idiot next to you called out to you, shouting over the music to ask for, or much rather demand, your number. Despite ignoring him and then outright rejecting him, he didn’t get the hint and refused to give up. His hands were on your arm for less than five seconds before he was ripped away with the flash of vibranium arm and his head collided with a brick wall. Bucky’s chest heaved as he landed a few punches, two to the gut and multiple to the creep’s face, before all three of you were thrown out of the bar. For a second you didn’t recognise the man before you. Fire raged in his eyes as he wrapped his metal fist around your wrist and pulled you down the street – to what he presumed safety. “Baby,” you winced, trying to free your arm from his tight grip. “Baby, please let go.” But he didn’t hear you. His body shielded you from the outside world when he led you, practically teared you, into an alleyway. Pushed against the wall, his fingers still wrapped around your wrist, he frantically checked you for injuries and stopped abruptly when he saw the tears welling up in your eyes. “Sweetheart?” He asked, neck craning to search for threats, “What? What is it?” You wiggled your fingers hopelessly and whispered: “You’re hurting me.” No other feeling will ever compare to the one that swallowed you whole once your words had processed in his mind. His entire face dropped, and he put about ten feet between the two of you. His gaze was glued to your arm where angry red marks, shaped and moulded to his fingerprints, sat accusatory. “Sweetheart, I’m- I’m so sorry,” he murmured and stepped forwards, but he stopped himself before closing any real distance. “I’m- I didn’t mean to- I just saw his hands on you and I- fuck, I’m so sorry.” You exhaled deeply, trying to collect yourself, and wiped away the streaks on your face. “It’s okay, Bucky,” you mumbled and walked towards him. He shook his head and took another step back only to collide with the wall. “No, it’s not okay. I- fuck- I hurt you.” Bucky’s voice trembled and his hands – both metal and flesh – closed into fists. “I’m so fucking sorry. I… I can’t explain it and there’s no excuse, but I- I saw how he touched you and it- I-,” he stumbled over his words, trying to make you understand, not seeing that you already did. “I saw red. Nothing else. The only thing on my mind was getting you outta there.”

“I get it,” you replied gently and pulled your sleeves down, a feeble attempt at hiding the remnants of his grip. You managed a smile and softened your voice. “It’s not your fault. But we’re safe. We’re okay. Alright?” Feels like nobody knows The L-word had been on the tip of your tongue for months now. Pretty much since you had started dating. Bucky was easy to fall for. It took a little more effort to stay there with his closed off demeanour and reluctance to fully enter your world – he still hadn’t offered to introduce you to his friends and turned down any instance where he could have met yours. But it was worth it to you. You were royally whipped for him. So, the word dangled between the two of you, unspoken but mutually felt – or so you hoped. It was another late night, cozied up together on your bed while a movie played in the background. Neither of you was paying much attention to the plot, instead the focus had drifted into a heated make-out session. His hands rested below your shirt, warmth seeping into your skin as he traced shapes onto your bare back. You pulled away for a few seconds to take him in. Lips kissed rosy and swollen, a faint trace of a cocky smile on his face. His hair was messy from how often you had run your hands through it and a love-drunk haze veiled his eyes.

It felt right to say it then. There was no doubt in you, no fears that you might be knocking on a closed door. You breathed in deeply and placed another sweet kiss on his cheek before you said it. “I love you.”

He froze. You felt every single one of his muscles come to a halt below you. The thighs that had supported your weight on his lap went taut with tension and his fingers stopped moving.

You had heard of fight or flight before, experienced it yourself a couple of times and had seen it in action on Bucky. But he had always chosen fight so far. A punch thrown, a blow landed, a bullet shot. But he had never frozen. He sat below you, eyes trained on a spot behind you, and you were wondering if you needed to call Sam. Or 911. He seemed almost catatonic, like a deer in headlights. You wished you were the deer and the headlights would come a little faster towards you.

“Bucky?” You asked quietly, slowly easing off of his lap and his head snapped to you so quickly that it made you jump. “What?” His voice was hoarse, and you prayed that the ground would open up to swallow you. “Did, uh, did you hear me?” You hated the way your voice shook, already feeling the prickling in your eyes.

He didn’t answer but he nodded slowly. You hadn’t confessed your love to that many people yet in your life, but this was certainly the worst way it had ever gone. “Uh, okay,” you whispered. There was a sharp crack on the last syllable of your words, and you instinctively covered your mouth with your hands. You didn’t want to cry. You didn’t want to guilt-trip him into saying it back. You just wanted him to feel it, too. “Doll,” he began, an apologetic tone tinging his voice, but you interrupted him. “No, no, Bucky, I’m- I’m sorry, I, uh, you don’t need to say it back. It’s okay.”

It really, really wasn’t. Nine months, that’s how long you two were together now. Nine months of getting to know each other in and out, of spending days on end with each other and learning to love one another – at least that’s what you had thought. You scrambled up from the couch, clutching the hem of your shirt in an attempt to bring yourself back to earth and to hinder the tears from falling. Bucky stayed in his spot, his eyes helplessly tracking your movements as you increased the distance between the two of you – not enough to translate the emotional distance you felt right now.

“Sweetheart, it’s not- fuck, I mean, it’s not that I don’t… you know. But I… I can’t,” Bucky urged quietly. His words made little sense to your mind as it was consumed by grief. Grief for what should have been. “It’s fine,” you maintained and as if the universe was playing a cruel joke on you to undermine your words, a single tear breached forward and slipped down your cheek. Do you really love me? Or just love to make me cry?

The following days were cruel. Both of you shut down completely. Conversations were rare and seeing each other even rarer. You walked through your own apartment like a ghost, staring at your phone like it might light up with an apology, or an explanation or anything. But no, radio silence. You heard from Bucky twice. The first time, he sent you a quick text to tell you that he was needed for a mission and would be back in a few days. Then, the second message came once he’d returned from the mission, asking you if he could come over. A ‘we need to talk’- text was rarely a good sign but you did. You needed to talk. It had been a sleepless night for you already, so you said yes, despite the fact that it was a little after 1 a.m. and anxiety rolled over you in waves at the thought of him ending everything you two had worked towards. The knock on your front door was accompanied by the loud boom of thunder. Rain hit the windows almost horizontally and wind rattled the glass. When you opened the door, you saw that Bucky had just barely escaped the worst of the storm. A few drops pearled down from his leather jacket onto your door mat and you – curse your stupid heart – immediately ushered him inside and went to get him a towel.

The silence stretched in between you. He dried off quickly but kept his shoes on. One foot out the door already. His boots squeaked as he walked towards you, and you saw it in his eyes. This would be your worst heartbreak to date. “Doll,” that wretched nickname, which usually gave you butterflies, now turned your stomach around, “I think… it’s… I-“

You listened to his stammers, his attempts at forming a sentence. Bucky usually seemed like the type of guy to have prepared a speech on the way here, but he was at a loss for words. He seemed like he was trying to spare you the heartache but there were no words invented for that. “Do you want to break up with me?” You asked bluntly. He looked at the floor, then at you and then back at the floor. Barely perceptible, he shook his head. “No.” He sighed and ran a hand over his face. “But we should.” For a second, you closed your eyes. Blood rushed through your ears, quieting everything around you, and for just a moment you could pretend that he wasn’t here. That he hadn’t just said that. “Why?” You deserved to know at least that. You didn’t want to be left with no explanation, only the what-ifs and if-onlys to keep you comfort. Another sigh, and you felt propelled to scream in his face. To yell at him, to slap him and to throw him out of your apartment. “I can’t do this- us,” he stammered. “Why, Bucky? Why?” You tried to swallow the tears, tried to suppress the voice crack but the air in your lungs didn’t suffice, not with the lump in your throat.

He couldn’t look at you, instead he faintly shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t know. I just…,” he trailed off, gesturing loosely to you before dropping his arms to his sides. “Do you not love me? Did I do something?” “No, sweeth-, no, that’s not it.” “Then what?” “I want to want this but I…,” he shrugged helplessly and for a second you caught his eyes, filled with despair and vulnerability. “But you don’t,” you finished his sentence for him. He shook his head again and this time kept up the eye contact. “No, I just can’t.” More tears fell and you wiped at them furiously, rubbing the skin on your cheeks raw. When you looked at him again, the only thing you saw was self-hatred. And you couldn’t stand it. You turned around. You heard movements, and begged God, the universe, anyone that he’d walk to you. The door slammed. Lying next to you, ‘cause all you ever do is make me blue The continuous pitter patter of the rain lulled you to sleep in the early morning hours, the sky just shy of turning orange.

The tears had only found their end once you fell into a restless dream. Splatters of the fight, mixed with distorted visions of a future with Bucky that seemed out of reach forever broke forth from your subconscious and kept you from getting any rest. Half drifted off, you registered the sounds of your door opening but you were in too deep to fully distinguish between your dream and the real world. But the warmth was real. The dip of the mattress was real. The shaky hand, flesh not metal, that rested timidly on your arm, was real. You woke with a flinch, and it took a few seconds for your eyes to clear enough to see Bucky. Disoriented and questioning if you were maybe hallucinating, you sat up. But no, he truly was here. Your vocal cords didn’t cooperate as you tried to say his name “I’m sorry.” He looked at you, and what you would have thought were leftovers of the rain, turned out to be tears on his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he repeated as you stayed quiet. “You’re back,” you finally managed to say, the disbelief in your words unmistakable. “Yeah,” he confirmed quietly, “I shouldn’t have left in the first place.” “Then why did you?” He stayed silent for a beat, then began talking. “I broke your heart. And I couldn’t keep looking at you while you were… looking at me like that.” You tried to intercept, but he raised his hand slowly, asking you to let him continue. “I should have stayed. Because I want to. I want to be in your life. I just don’t know if I can allow myself to do that.” You shifted in bed, straightening up a little. “I want you. I… I love you,” he whispered, “But I don’t get to have good things. Good people like you. They die or they leave. And I can’t let that happen to you. I need you to live forever.”

Theoretically, you would do anything for him. But that was a request you couldn’t fulfil. “Bucky,” you began, but he shook his head again. “No, I know. I know, okay? It’s unfair of me to say that. But it’s true. I won’t survive if you die, or if you leave. And that scares me. So, I pushed you away. And I’m sorry for that. But I just… I can’t put you through that. A life with me is not something you want.” “That’s not your choice,” you implored quietly. Now it was your turn to shush him when he tried to protest. “No, Bucky, really. It’s not your choice. It wasn’t even my choice. But I fell for you. I love you and if I could have chosen, I’d do it again.” “I can’t give you anything. Stability. Promises. A future.” “I don’t want anything. I just want you.” Your words came out a little louder, a little harsher. But something had to penetrate that thick wall in his head that he had spent way too long building. “I want you. Now. Today. Tomorrow. Forever. When you make me laugh and even when you make me cry.” You leaned forward and gently grabbed his chin, swiping at the tears that had made their descent into his beard. “Do you hear me?” “Yes, ma’am. I hear you. I just… I don’t know how to accept it.” “I’ll help you. I’ll make you accept it. Now, come lie down.” He shrugged of his jacket and took off his boots. Then, slowly he eased himself into bed next to you and after a moment of hesitation, he wrapped his arms around you. “I’m sorry for making you cry,” he whispered against your hair. “It’s okay. You cried, too,” you replied quietly and pressed a kiss against his skin.

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