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vbecker10 · 5 months ago

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I Kissed Her

Pairing: Bucky x female reader (Y/N) established relationship

Summary: Bucky went on a short mission and when he comes home he's distant and anxious which makes you nervous that something horrible happened in the field. You reassure him that he can talk to you and he opens up about how he needed to pretend he was married to his ex girlfriend, Natasha, for their mission and he kissed her.

Warnings: angst... Bucky feeling guilty and feeling like he cheated (but he didn't, it was purely for their cover story), Bucky being afraid you won't want to be with him anymore, Natasha being a horrible and petty person (sorry, that just sort of happened but I usually really like her)... fluffy ending 😊

A/N: I'm sorry for this one but I'm pretty stressed out from life so you're getting Bucky angst 💚 This is a spin on the fake marriage scenario while on a mission so I hope everyone likes it!

Your phone goes off and you read the automated notification from SHIELD for all nonessential personnel to clear the landing area for the incoming jet. Jumping up from the couch, you grab your phone and slip on your shoes. The only jet that was out was the one Bucky, Steve and Natasha had taken for their mission. You pull your door shut and call Bucky, groaning impatiently as you listen to it ring over and over.

Bucky's been gone for three days and two long nights. Unfortunately, you hadn't been assigned as an analyst for that mission so you weren't told where he was going or when he'd return. All you know is that you miss your boyfriend and you can't wait to see him again.

Bucky finally answers as you are deciding if you should hang up and text him. "Hi," he says with little enthusiasm which causes your smile to falter slightly but you try not to let it affect your mood. You know he's probably tired, he never sleeps well when he's away and neither do you.

"Hey Bucky," you say cheerfully, hoping your excitement will be contagious, "I heard the jet landed so I was hoping that meant you were home."

"Yeah, we just got in," he answers and you can hear people talking in the background. "Sorry I didn't text you." You get into the elevator and push the button for his floor.

You're anxiety rises as you begin to worry if he didn't want you to know he was back home yet for some reason. Typically, Bucky would text or call you as soon as possible to let you know he was on his way back and he couldn't wait to see you.

"Can I come by to say hi?" you ask unsure of his mood or what's affecting it. "I'm sure you're tired but I really missed you."

"Sure," he agrees to letting you visit.

You wait for him to tell you he missed you over the last few days but when he doesn't you ask, "Bucky are you okay?"

"Yeah," he mumbles. "Sorry, just a lot on my mind from the mission."

"Okay, I'll be there in a minute," you tell him.

"Okay," he responds then ends the call before saying goodbye.

You look down at your phone as your heart beats faster in your chest. Something really horrible must have happened while they were on the mission, you can't help but think. Bucky didn't sound like himself and it worried you immensely.

You knock on his door and it opens immediately, he takes a step back to let you in. As soon as you are inside, you put your arms around Bucky without saying a word and the super soldier hugs you back tightly, almost as if he will never let go. The two of you stay like that silently for a few moments, you close your eyes and try to relax as you listen to his breathing. He leans down to kiss your forehead lightly but before you can return the kiss, he releases you from the hug and takes a step away.

"Bucky..." you start and his eyes drop to the floor, there's no hiding how anxious he looks. His metal hand flexes slowly and you ask him, "What's wrong? Did something happen on the mission?"

He nods a little at your second question and your mind races as you close the distance he created between you both, "Did Steve get hurt?"

"Steve and Natasha are fine," Bucky answers and you breath a little easier. You know important Steve is to him as a friend but you honestly you hadn't even thought something might have happened to Natasha too. Even with all the awkward tension between you and the spy, you were glad she was okay also. If no one was hurt, what else could have happened, you wonder to yourself.

"I need to shower then we can talk, okay?" he asks and you nod then he adds, "I don't want you to hear about any of this from her."

"I'll be here when you're ready," you offer him a small smile to reassure him you aren't going anywhere. You stand by his front door as he turns and walks into his room, closing the door. Letting out a nervous sigh, you take a seat on his couch and hold one of the pillows tightly to your chest as you look around his living room. Your focus settles on a picture of the two of you sitting on his end table from when you first started dating six months ago. A smile starts to spread across your lips when you remember how much fun you had at Bryant Park with him that day but then his words echo in your mind.

'I don't want you to hear about any of this from her,' he told you. He obviously meant Natasha but what was he talking about?

Natasha all but refuses to speak to you unless it is specifically about official SHIELD business and you are more than fine with that. His ex girlfriend has made no attempt to hide how much she dislikes you or your relationship with Bucky. The spy still blames you for Bucky leaving her even though you had barely known him when he ended their year long relationship. You and Bucky didn't begin dating until a few months later but you were never quite able to escape the numerous rumors that spread through the Tower. Bucky ignored all the gossip easily enough but you found it harder to shake the accusing whispers that you started your relationship with Bucky before he ended things with Natasha.

You lift your head when you hear his door open and watch quietly as Bucky sits next to you on the couch. His hair is still wet and he tucks it behind his ear when he looks at you. Bucky's eyes met yours and he says, "I know I need to tell you what happened but I'm afraid you'll hate me."

Your heart beats faster and you ask, "Why would I hate you?" He looks down and you move closer to him, taking his right hand in yours.

He shakes his head instead of answering you and squeezes your hand, "You know how much I love you, right Y/N?"

"I love you too," you tell him then take a deep breath and force yourself to ask, "But are you breaking up with me? Cause this feels-"

"What? No!" he says quickly as he cuts you off. "I'm just scared you're going to leave me when I tell you what happened with Natasha."

"I don't understand..." you start then bite your lip as your mind begins to put together the very few pieces you have. Bucky was away on a mission with his ex girlfriend and now he's distant and nervous and afraid you're going to hate him, you think as you grip the pillow next to you tightly. Natasha flirted with him every chance she could, you had seen it yourself dozens of times because she seemed to really enjoy doing it right in front of you. Had he finally given in while he was away on the mission?

"Bucky," you clear your throat and try to prepare yourself to ask something you never thought you'd have to ask him. "Did you cheat on me with Natasha?"

He sighs deeply and you fight to hold back the tears you can feel wanting to fall. "I don't know," he says and you look at him in confused silence. "No, I mean... I don't think so but-"

"You don't know!?" you ask harshly, unable to contain the mixture of emotions that flood through you. In an instant you feel hurt, betrayed, confused, angry and so many other things you can barely think straight. You pull your hand free from his and stand up, "How could you not know? You either did or you didn't."

"It's complicated," he says as he looks up at you from the couch. "Please, just let me explain," he reaches up and takes your hand.

You let his metal fingers grip your hand gently as he pulls you back down on the couch. "Fine," you mumble and quickly wipe away a single stray tear that runs down your cheek.

"I didn't tell you I was back yet because I needed to think-" he starts to explain.

"Of an excuse for cheating on me?" you interrupt him and let go of his metal hand.

"No," he shakes his head. "Just..." he sighs deeply, "Just listen please? I want to tell you everything."

You nod and sit facing him with your arms crossed over your chest. You can't imagine what he could possibly tell you that would make the feelings swirling inside of you go away but you're willing to hear him out.

He starts at the beginning, "We went to Germany, SHIELD found a high stakes poker game that a lot of high ranking Hydra officers attend on Friday nights. Natasha, Steve and I went undercover using those nanotech masks from Stark."

You look at him quietly, waiting for him to get to the point.

"Agent Hill worked up a cover story to get us in the game," he explains. "I was a wealthy arms dealer from Romania, Steve was my bodyguard and Natasha was my wife. We were just supposed to gather information, see who was there so SHIELD could decide who to go after next."

"Okay..." you say as he rubs his hands together nervously and describes every detail of the mission.

------------------------------------------------

Steve knocks four times rhythmically on the metal door and waits for the small window to slide open. "Hail Hydra," he whispers to the dark figure who slams the window shut then opens the door. Bucky let's out a small sigh of relief knowing the previously gathered intelligence was correct.

Natasha smiles up at Bucky, holding onto his arm as they walk through the door followed closely by Steve. Steve looks around the room, his dark sunglasses capturing images of everyone he sees and sending the information back to analysts at SHIELD. The three of them are greeted by a well known Hydra officer, Captain Marc Burwell, and are escorted to a poker table in the middle of another, much less crowded room.

"Your wife can wait in the other room," Burwell says to Bucky as he unbuttons his black suit jacket and takes a seat at the table.

"She stays with me," Bucky responds with a smirk. "She's my good luck charm."

Burwell's attention shifts to the plunging neckline of Natasha's dress when she leans down to place a soft kiss on her fake husband's cheek. "If I had a wife that looked like yours, I'd never let her out of my sight either," the man chuckles as his eyes roam over the spy's body. Her long, shimmery black dress reveals a high slit when she moves to sit on Bucky's lap sideways, her arm resting around his neck.

Bucky looks up at the man, his jaw tightening, "Keep looking at my wife like that and I'll remove your eyes myself."

Natasha giggles and plays with her necklace, adjusting the pendant as it connects to the numerous cell phones in the room. Steve takes a step forward, standing just behind Bucky as he folds his arms and stares at the now very nervous captain. He clears his throat and apologizes before excusing himself quickly.

The dealer takes his position at the head of the table and the rest of the players sit around Bucky. He checks his watch to ensure it's transmitting the conversations of those close to him as the first hand is dealt.

"Good luck baby," Natasha says as he picks up his cards and he smiles in return. She kisses his cheek again, this time leaving a light lipstick mark and she wipes it away, "Oops."

He clears his throat and whispers, "They already bought that we're married, you can ease up with the kisses." He moves his free hand so it barely rests on her lower back while Steve stands behind him in silence.

"Come on baby," Natasha whispers in response. "Hold me like you want me, like you used to."

Bucky chuckles as if she said something flirtatious and runs his fingers up and down her back slowly. He looks at her as if to ask if that was better and in response, she presses her lips to his then rests her head on his shoulder.

He tries to ignore the kiss, focusing instead on the cards in his hand and the bets being placed. SHIELD wasn't too concerned about Bucky winning or losing so long as the information was gathered but he needed to at least keep up with the other players. While he waits for the players to place their bets, his mind wanders to his previous relationship with Natasha.

It had started purely because they were paired together so often on missions. Pretending to date or be married to each other over and over had convinced them that a real relationship would work. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case and it took Bucky a long time to voice how unhappy he was to Natasha. She was dismissive and ignored his concerns which finally caused him to leave her. It was the best decision he could have made, because he found someone a few months later who truly made him happy, you.

Serval uneventful hands later, Bucky orders a drink from the waitress as his fingers trace small circles on the exposed skin of Natasha's arm. The quiet woman places his drink on the table in front of him but he makes no move to pick it up as he examines his cards. Natasha smirks and lifts the glass to Bucky's lips, "Here baby."

"Thanks sweetheart," Bucky says with a smile as he cringes internally after he takes a drink. He had always hated when she called him 'baby' while they were dating. He wasn't sure why he didn't like it but he had asked her not to do it several times and she never listened.

Without warning, Natasha presses her lips to his and for a moment he forgets they are pretending to be married. Bucky pulls back slightly to separate from her but she only smiles in response, running her fingers through his hair while her other fingers trace the rim of his glass.

"Need another drink?" she asks and he nods, not wanting to draw the attention of the others at the table. Natasha lifts the drink to his lips again then just as she pulls it away, she kisses him again.

Bucky closes his eyes and kisses her back, unsure of what else to do in the moment. His mind fills with images of you but he can't trick himself into thinking you're here instead of Natasha. When she finally breaks the long, deep kiss she giggles and places the empty glass back on the table.

He's unable to focus and folds his cards then plays two more hands, losing both. At the end of each hand, Natasha kisses him and he's forced to kiss her back to keep their cover in tact. After the two loses, Bucky wins a large pot and he reaches across the table to gather all of his chips with a smirk. When he sits back in his seat, his fake wife presses her lips to his in celebration.

As the dealer is shuffling, Steve receives word through his ear piece that SHIELD has enough information. He taps Bucky's shoulder and leans down to whisper that they can leave, sending a wave of relief through him.

------------------------------------------------

"I couldn't wait to get back on the jet and see you again," he says, finally looking up at you.

"But you didn't call or text me," you remind him.

"I know..." he pauses. "Like I said, I was trying to think."

"About what?" you ask.

"About if what I did was wrong or not," he says and you realize he was being serious when he said he didn't know if he cheated. "Natasha sat with me in the back of the jet while Steve flew us home," he explains. "She asked me if I wanted to continue where we left off then tried to sit on my lap again. When I told her no, she got really upset. She told me she couldn't wait to tell you how much fun the mission was and by the time she was done you would never forgive me."

"But... you didn't do anything," you tell him.

"I kissed her," he says with a sigh.

"Right, but you only did it because you had to," you remind him gently.

He nods quickly and you move closer to him on the couch, taking his hand and he squeezes it. "I know it was just for our cover story but she got in my head while we were coming home. Natasha kept telling me I kissed her like I used to when we were dating and that she could feel how much I still cared for her," he says.

"You still-" you start to ask and almost pull your hand free from his but he keeps his fingers intertwined with yours.

"No," he cuts you off before you can finish your sentence. "No, Y/N, I don't have any feelings for her. I haven't since before you and I started dating, you know that," he assures you and you nod. "It was just something she was going to tell you to drive a wedge between us." He sighs and mumbles under his breath, "I think Steve's right, I'm an idiot."

You can't help but agree, "You are an idiot."

He looks up at you but doesn't say anything.

"Bucky," you cup his cheek, still holding his hand tightly. He breaths deeply, preparing himself for the worst when you smile and his eyes fill with confusion. "You got me all stressed out and nervous because your ex girlfriend is crazy," you say at you breath a little easier. "I already knew that."

"I... what?" he asks.

You let out a little laugh at his reaction, "Did you want to kiss her?"

"No," he answers quickly.

"Did you enjoy kissing her?" you ask.

"No," he answers again and shakes his head.

"Do you wish you were with her instead of me?" you already know the answer to that one but you want to prove a point.

"Absolutely not," Bucky lifts your hand and kisses the back of it.

"So that means..." you start and give him a second to catch up.

He smiles a little, "It wasn't cheating?"

"I don't think it counts," you tell him honestly. "It's like if you were an actor and had to kiss someone for a role. You were just doing your job, right?"

You watch him breath a heavy sigh of relief, "That's what Steve said when we landed. He was listening to pretty much everything she said and he told me I really needed to talk to you before she did."

"I think you need to listen to Steve more often," you tell him and he nods.

"I'm sorry," he says and you move closer to cuddle against him. He wraps his arms around you and you feel him relax for the first time since he left.

"It's okay, I still love you," you look up at him with a smile.

He smiles in return, "I hope so because I love you more than anything." He leans down to kiss your lips, cupping your cheek lightly. You close your eyes and kiss him back, running your fingers through his damp hair.

When you pull away, you tell him, "That doesn't mean I'm thrilled about this whole thing. I mean, I understand why you had to do it... I just really wish it had been anyone else. Natasha doesn't seem like she's going to give up on trying to ruin our relationship any time soon."

"She probably won't but honestly I don't think it's because she wants me back," he says. "I think she just hates that we're happy."

You rest your head on his shoulder, "Just keep being honest with me like this and we'll be okay. Maybe... phrase things a little better?"

He chuckles and nods, "I'll have Steve prep what I should say for next time."

You giggle, "Next time you should just pretend you and Steve are married and she's your bodyguard."

He smiles and plays with your hair, "I'll ask Agent Hill about that."

"Wait, really?" you ask sitting up a little.

He laughs, "No. I'm not kissing Steve."

"Lame," you smile and kiss him again.

"I'm sorry," he says with a smile, keeping his arms around you tightly. "Can you stay the night? I can never sleep without you."

"I think I can do that," you agree easily.

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marigold-hills · 7 months ago

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Sirius Black who doesn’t know what to do with his inheritance, so he gets deep into smart home technology.

Everything in his flat gets automated. His coffee maks itself, his fridge orders groceries, his washing machine always chooses the right cycle. He doesn’t need to do anything - weather and news displayed on the bathroom mirror before he can ask, the shower always perfect temperature when he steps under the spray.

It’s boring. He didn’t realise how much time he’d left over once all his life admin is done for him.

He’d get rid of the whole system if not for the Computer’s voice. He goes pathetic for it.

It’s soothing, when it speaks back to him, strangely human. Good at cheering him up when he’s a bit down and reminding him to eat or call his friends or take a walk when he gets too deep into a project.

Sirius falls half in love with a machine.

What he doesn’t know:

Remus Lupin has medical debt. Lots of medical debt. The company he works for has covered the expenses so he’s got a ten year iron-clad i breakable contract with them. Can’t quit his job until it’s paid off. Not unless he wants to be sued for everything he’s worth and he’s worth nothing.

He watches this man every second. Sleeps only when he sleeps. Has alarms set that respond to changes in his breathing, in his heart rate, so he’s sure to wake up before Sirius does. Can’t miss him asking for lights or for coffee or for his shower to be turned on.

Can’t make a mistake. If the company loses a client, it gets added onto Remus’ debt.

The cameras are everywhere, and the man doesn’t know. Remus is as good as his slave, and the man doesn’t know. Thinks it’s a computer he’s telling about his life and his problems and his joys, annoyances, days.

Remus falls half in love with him, then quite completely.

It’s risky, when he starts dropping hints. Tiny ones. Absolutely not to be noticed by anyone else, but he knows Sirius. Sirius will.

And Sirius does.

#wolfstar #sirius black #remus lupin #marauders #remus x sirius #dead gay wizards #fanfic #marauders era #marigold micros

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jjungkooksthighs · 4 months ago

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Zenith

♊︎–Pairing: (X-02) Caleb x fem reader

♊︎–Genre: Angst, fluff, and smut

♊︎–Rating: 18+/ nsfw (mdni)

♊︎–Word Count: 17,200 words (31 pages y’all are in for it)

♊︎–Summary: After being torn away from you, your lover finally comes home to you after a mission alone and without you. You soon realize he hasn’t been taking care of himself in his separation from you and take it upon yourself to fix that in the ways that only you can.

♊︎–Warnings: Possessive!X-02/Caleb, obsessive!caleb, soft dom!Caleb, sub! reader, mentions of blood, slick and pre-ejaculatory production, scenting, dirty talk (lbr I love that shit), praising, handjob, grinding, cunnilingus (oral f), creampie, breast worship (just a tad), breast/nipple play, nipping, sucking, begging, muscle kink, scratching, cum eating, manhandling, cursing, wet and messy sex (he’s hungry alr), size kink, face riding, pinning, lots of marking, fucked against the wall

♊︎–A/N: I humbly present my first offering to fellow LADS and Caleb enthusiasts that was made with excitement following his myth release and then horniness when I started ovulating this week. I was extremely horny and this…well, this happened.

The ticking of the clock, once a sound that elicited excitement in the promise of his return, now grates on your ears like the engines of the spaceship that has become a prison rather than a home to you. The clock’s sound, after years of longing fiercer than the sun, was harsh and unforgiving in its continual, ceaseless passing that waited for no one.

Least of all the love of your life.

It had been a blue moon the last time you’d been separated from him, but this mission that the higher ups had given you both had been unlike anything either of you had been assigned.

It had come after your paired scouting of the ruined planet of Philos, the life and greenery of the planet now a wasteland of death and scraps.

You both had been tasked with discerning if the planet were habitable after years of quiet desolation, and after only a single moon on Philos, you had determined that the anger and sorrow of the system had harvested too deeply into the very soils to sustain more than the weeds that grew sadly from the split, fractured soil.

You try to sleep, the dark canvas of space and array of stars offering you their respects in the dim, slow blinks of the white balls of light that colored the endless expanse before the glass panes of the viewport that act as bars between you and the limitless freedom of darkness beyond.

That damn ticking. It doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even muffle itself in apology when you throw a pillow over your head as your thoughts fly to the terrible, cold abyss of the worst that could have happened to the only person who held your heart in his hands.

You toss and turn, body sore and aching from being launched too hard into the metal of the training room walls when the training bot, who had taken the form of a large, mechanized Hoartfrost Wyrmload, had taken advantage of your momentary lapse of action when your lover’s face, twisted in pain, had flashed through your mind when you’d let it wander.

Had it not been for the powered exosuit you’d worn, you surely would have had bruises, much less broken bones.

To punish you for your failure to clear the training floor unscathed as Ever’s most finely crafted and battle-hardened weapon, you had had to fight for hours in that fluorescently lit room, the loud clangs and broken whirrs of the bots slicing through the air as the black, blade-like extensions of your power cut them through. Sent out in waves, it had been relentless monotony, but you’d had no choice.

The organization’s manipulative, calculating leader would never allow you to see your lover-much less protect him from their malevolent experimentations-if you did not do their bidding.

Only after 202 monsters and a decapitated Wyrmlord had the thick, heavy automated door risen and you’d all but run to your chambers, heart racing in excitement.

Asta, the ship’s commandant and head of Ever, had told you that the he who your heart desired would finally, finally be allowed to rendezvous with you there after he debriefed the highest ranked officers on his mission that he’d been sworn to keep hidden even from you.

It’s been 2 days, 20 hours, and 2 minutes since his departure and each second feels like a decade in the excruciating torment of his absence.

You curse under your breath, the sharpness of worry curving your nails inward toward your palm as the blanket your other half had made for you slides from your shoulders when you rise from your bed. Its warmth fails to offer even half the amount that your lover does, but you still cover your shoulders with it, imagining that it is him that envelops you as you pad forward toward the biggest of the translucent panels that overlooks the infinite space of the darkness.

The brightest of the hot, white orbs of light of the stars looks like two joined stick figures, forever together in each other’s embrace as the two twin bodies who you’d named Pollux and Castor study you.

It is the Gemini constellation– one that you find your attention drawn to in your lover’s absence. You press your hand against the glass, peering up at the star sign he was created under and praying to it to watch over him while you cannot.

You liked to think that the stars knew when your lover was near and tried to commune with you in your bottomless worry whenever you were apart from him, for the glow of their light always seemed so much brighter when he was near. When he held you in his arms under them and spoke sweet, wonderful promises into your ear that he always, always kept.

Right now, Castor and Pollux flare fiercely, almost as if to mock you in the biting, gnawing loneliness that only your lover could soothe.

His name flits between your lips like an atom through space–quiet but there, refusing to be relinquished.

The quiet of your chamber soon steals his name, its taunt loud in the seizure of it.

You pull your blanket tighter around your barely clad body, the thin, short nightgown of black you’d worn to match your sinking spirits leaving much of you exposed to the prickling chill of the chamber that never was warm unless he was in it.

“Hurry back to me, Caleb,” you whisper to the stars, hoping they will hear your plea, “I miss you.”

The figures of light nestled within expanse of the endless sky of ebony twinkle as if to tell you they’ve received your wish, and then the only door admitting entry to your chambers directly behind you opens, all the way across the room, makes reverberating rumbling noises that grind your ears in their unpleasant din.

The clock continues to chip away at time as if you aren’t enslaved to it.

He’d have come to you by now if he were on the ship, and so you don’t bother to look away from the stars when you grouse, “If Asta has sent you to examine me out of concern for my performance, you can shove that bullshit up your ass.”

You’d become well acquainted with combat, your own code rewritten by Ever over and over again in their pursuit to make a heartless warrior capable only of doling out death and destruction. But your hardwiring had changed the moment your lover had laid his lips over yours, had professed his love so tenderly that it disassembled the walls around your heart and tuned it just to him.

Footsteps sound from behind you, the thud of heavy boots not lifting a hair of fear on you. Their wearer moves with purpose, never standing still as they cross the open chamber toward you. They do not cease their magnetic pull toward you until they stand behind you, still and unmoving as the planetary systems before you.

So absorbed in the memory of his smile that brought more light to your world than any moon and in eyes that have entire supernovas swirling within them, you don’t even notice the way your body has already begun to seek the one to the back of you.

“I was told that it is good manners to speak when you’re spoken to. I don’t need an examination right now. Leave, because no one except X-02 may touch me.” You adjust the soft velvet blanket closer around you, wishing with the might of an entire galaxy that your lover was here with you. “You can tell Asta I’ll execute whatever Wanderer that Ever wants dead in two seconds flat if he just gives me the word. I’ll terminate it in exchange for what I really want.”

Silence.

A heart’s beat passes before strong, familiar arms encircle you around your middle, and instinctively, you let their bearer bring you against him.

Were it anyone else, your impulse to fight would already have rendered them unconscious and in a heap on the floor.

But you know this embrace. You’ve been swathed in it many, many times before.

Then, with a voice smoother than honey, “And what is it you really want, huh, pip-squeak? Surely it must be me.”

From the very first word he speaks, your entire soul seems to ascend, your attention uncontrollably tugged into those familiar, warm discs of nebulae that make a ring where irises should be that are of purple and pink.

“Caleb…” You say his name like he’s a cosmos that has bewildered you, gazing up from where he stands over a head above you as one of your hands rises so your fingers can explore him in a gentle orbit along his cheekbone as if to prove to yourself that he’s here, that he’s not some holograph you unwittingly conjured up.

The usual black visor he wears is gone, the same powered exosuit of black covering him from his neck down. It was the garb that most shook in terror upon seeing, but for you, it inspired only the weightless feeling of joy and joviality.

The sunset of his eyes bask you in their tenderness as he leans into your touch, a long, drawn out breath falling from between his lips as he relishes in the feeling of softness that only you can summon in a universe so twisted and cruel.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to come back to you, pip-squeak.” He apologizes, the guilt caging each syllable while he tilts his head down so their sin is left at the crest of your forehead, his arms coaxing you more insistently into him so that not even the air can come between the two of you. “You were in my every thought whether I was awake or in hypersleep. Every second I spent away from you, I wanted to be by your side. I wanted to be with you in any way I could.”

His larger hands that rest on your abdomen move around the atmosphere of you, around each side of your waist, urging you to turn and face him. He rotates you as if you’re his very axis, and the truth of his confessions utterly disintegrates the sadness that had begun to pressurize between your ribs— that had begun to make even breathing a hard thing to do.

In its undoing, however, the bottled up emotions you’d kept so carefully contained spiral out of control, overwhelming you such that you–without even a fraction of your strength–strike your fist against where his heart throbs for you.

“You stopped responding to my messages and calls exactly at hour and minute 22:02. I thought something had happened.” Your eyes start to burn with the tears that threaten to escape, your fingers finding the edge of his jaw before you take his chin between them. He crumbles at your touch, his expression shifting to one of shame over his err as he lets you maneuver him closer like you’re the center of his gravitational field. “You aren’t allowed to do that to me, Caleb. I…I-” your voice deserts you, the tight lump that has formed in your throat forcing you to try to swallow past the worry that had been gripping you with the intensity of a thousand hands.

I can’t lose you.

His dark brows stretch toward each other, concern shooting through his eyes in their versions of meteorites before he rests his forehead against yours. “I’m here now, pip-squeak. It’s alright.” His fingers dig possessively into the soft flesh of your waist as if you might disappear if doesn’t hold onto you tight. “I want you to know that I lost contact with Ever when I went too far past the protofield protecting the ruined kingdom of Philos. It somehow fried my communication systems, pip-squeak.” His voice cracks under the weight of being alone, of being ripped away from you while he’d been able to do little but be Ever’s volatile weapon who it kept from exploding by using you as its collateral. “I couldn’t contact you no matter how many times I tried. When I returned, I demanded to see you, but they threatened to hurt you if I didn’t brief them on what had happened down there.”

“You of all people know that I can handle myself,” you sniffle when the first tear falls, his irises tracking it as it descends down your cheek. Long, metallic digits of his right hand find it before it can douse his foot in your sadness as you croak, “I can handle anything so long as I am with you.”

Your sadness, surely, is his Roche limit in how cataclysmic it is to him. Enough to make him want to collapse everything until only the two of you remain. But there was no escape from some gravitational phenomena. Phenomena like Ever that had invaded every corner of the universe and would never cease to persecute you until he tore it all down for you.

And to do that, he needed to get stronger. No matter what it took.

“I know, honey. I know that better than anyone. But I have to be Ever’s dog to keep you safe. You are their prized possession–but more importantly, mine.” He adds after a pause, irises locked onto your next tear on the other side of your face. He catches this with the same hand where no sensation kindles his receptors any longer–with the knuckle in the middle of where a human finger would have been– the cool wetness of your emotions putting his systems into alert. “Do you remember what I told you when we went down to the remains of Philos together, Y/N?”

You nod against him, too choked up to answer beyond that even if you tried.

You both had crash landed on that planet, only his metallic wings and the tortuous pain they caused him saving the both of you when your cruiser’s engine had failed. He’d become unconscious after using his body as a shield against terrain that had slowly been doomed to death by a planet that’s energy source had abandoned it. It had been your kiss that woke him, the distraction of your tender lips almost enough to negate the agonizing pain that stabbed into your every cell like pointed icicles from where your palms had been connected through the transfer port in your mechanical suits.

You’d felt the grimace and contorted expressions against your lips while you’d siphoned the sounds of his suffering into you, wishing with every fiber of your being that you could have taken all of it into yourself.

So many times you had been forced–trapped– in the experimental glass pod, unable to do anything but watch while the only person your heart longed for had suffered, his heart-rending bellowings unfathomable and unescapable even when the prickling syringes and needles tried to erase your memories.

Always they remained and lingered, just like the name you’d given him.

And his pain… it was beyond anything any creature should have been capable of bearing—an unholy force that consumed every part of him, twisting his insides, grinding his being into pieces. It wasn’t a simple ache or throbbing wound. It was as if every nerve in his body had been frozen and shot with ice, each pulse of agony a jagged shard of frigidity, carving deeper and deeper until he could no longer tell where anything was.

But he never failed to recognize you and he had not hesitated to hold you close in his arms, cradling you there as if you were the most precious thing in his eyes as you both careened into the landscape of decay and desolation. He’d willingly taken the brunt–or rather, the entirety–of the fall for you, the idea of any harm coming to you more horrifying to him than his own death.

His unconsciousness had become his enemy, his worst nightmare exerting itself upon him in a reaper’s scythe that brought only your sharp screams and wails, your lifeless, broken body in a heap while he’d held you against his chest. His own sorrow had flowed forth like a waterfall in the stream of crimson tears down his face, the grief and suffering breaking every part of him into pieces that attacked and impaled themselves into each other over and over again.

He’d only escaped that haunting, horrible hell of darkness and cold worse than any winter was by following your voice that beckoned him back towards the soothing, warm light of life that he only found meaning in when you were the his moon that drew the waves of being forth, his very epicenter attracted to your beautiful, gentle core.

In what once had been a lively, vibrant meadow rested nature’s cemetery. Only the sickly, warped weeds sprouted beneath him where you’d somehow managed to drag him against a dead trunk of a tree that had been split in half by the sickness that had ravaged this land.

But there you were, on your knees between his with your kind, nurturing lips planted between the part of his hair as you’d hummed the remains of the song he’d sung for you since you were children whenever he needed to calm you down.

It was a song only you knew. A song that needed no words when your eyes could speak them so much clearer than any letters could hope to try to describe the meaning of. A song that, like a black hole, called forth everything that you both were to each other. It channels it all together before transforming, evolving, changing it into something so much more than any word could express.

He’d confessed to you there, in that meadow on Philos–a once human inhabited planet that required massive amounts of energy, power, and sacrifice of one sovereign for many–what both of you had been held captive from admitting for so many years prior, your memories chipped and chaffed by the needle of Ever’s scientists that, until he’d grown strong enough to serve as a better candidate, had stuck into you.

In effort to find a way to contain you, to control you, the head of Ever had assigned only one person to ever be your partner when sent on missions meant for bloodshed and annihilation of the monsters it had created.

And oh, how hard he had fallen for you. It was as inescapable as trying to free himself from gravity.

You grounded him. Enveloped and surrounded him in every sense of the word with your cute laughs, your pretty smiles, your glimmering eyes, your voice of silk that, even when you told a bad joke, still trilled softly and dulcetly in his ears. You were everywhere in his head and yet, so far away, as untouchable as the clouds in the sky up until that fateful day in the meadow.

There, he’d let the confessions burst through his chest like some supernova, the bond you’d built together with him birthed anew under the crushing weight of what had been–and what could be–when he’d pierced through the deep space of the forbidden and uttered, the undeniable and undisputable. He’d only ever wanted to be in your world, for he’d for so long yearned for a place beside you that was not one of imagination or observance from a distance.

After all, he had been doomed to that tortuous fate before becoming your hunting partner when he’d been stuck behind that horrible glass wall with you trapped on the other side.

And when he’d coaxed you close in that meadow, those same arms–one cold, rigid, and bionic while the other was warm, pliant, and fleshly– led your front against the strong, chiseled chest covered in the dark fabric that lovingly clung to what little of his human body remained, he’d declared a different kind of need–one that wanted to devour you from where you’d sat atop of him.

You’d never forget the way his mouth had sought your ear, his breath hot against the shell of it as he’d said something that would lay eternally with you every time you closed your eyes. Every second that was spent in the shivering rigidness of his absence.

“I want to feel your warmth, your heartbeat…Everything…I want you to stay with me…Forever.”

When he’d nuzzled his cheek against yours, coveting every moment of touch that made every single one of his receptors charged with what felt like electricity zipping through his body, you’d let him, the obsessive flare in his eyes sparking something baser in you that only ignited deliciously more when he touched you like you were his entire world and looked at you like you were a celestial creature descended from the sun, the moon and the stars.

No amount of testing or experimentation on you could erase that memory. He’d made sure of it, hiding that, among what remained of your memories with him, inside a small pocket of a void in your mind that even Ever could not touch after many attempts spent honing his power for your sake.

Only two months and two days have passed since then, but he’d turned your world upside down and become the equator of your system far, far before then. It was as if your kiss had been the unavoidable calamity that had made his desires collide and converge, their amalgamation too powerful for him to resist in your magnetic pull whenever he saw you, smelled you, thought of you.

And now, as he stands before you as solid as the glass at your back, that same reaction, set off by every atom that made you up, has you repeating those words he’d spoken to you by the remains of that charred yet living tree stump on Philos. The same stump had had the beginnings of moss attached to it, the two bodies of alternate forms helplessly clinging to each other even after their environment had been unforgiving to them.

Under the intensity of those nebulous eyes powerful enough to make you fall to your knees, you repeat what your lover had professed so ardently to you, his yearning dressing the guilt that is draped under his eyes. It is enough to take your breath away when his long, mechanical fingers wrap around your wrist where you had been dragging your own digits down towards his lips.

He leads your digits to them, the pads of your own fingers steered along the edge of his mouth before they follow the outline of his lower, fuller lip. It has become cracked in the aridity of whatever planet he’d been sent to, and you wet your own as you stare, unabashedly at his.

Embarrassment that had once perched heavily over your shoulder at the very thought of him no longer does in the nest he’s made in your chest, and so the words fly free when he draws your digits over and along his thinner upper lip to his defined Cupid’s bow. It, too, is dry and begging for the nourishment only you can give.

“You are dehydrated, Caleb. You weren’t taking care of yourself again,” you whisper, the nerves in your still human digits crackling with sensation when he pilots them so they catch and carry the plumpness of his lower lip down, his saliva seeking you before the pink of his lip returns to contain it after your fingers have been conducted toward the corner of his jaw so you can hold him there.

Your touch sends sparks down his spine, and he relishes in the warmth of you that no sun could ever hope to emit as he closes his eyes, nudging into your hand while he utters, “That does not matter to me when there are more important things that require my attention.”

The meaning of that is not lost on you, and you knew well the lengths he would go to shower you in every iota of his devotion as vast as space itself. His calibration had, for a long time, been warped in its centering all around you, and so descript was it that he often forgot to attend to his own needs as long as yours were. You’d since figured out a way to navigate that, for it burned you to see him neglect himself for your sake.

“I’m thirsty, Caleb. Carry me to the kitchen, will you?” You ask, affection flowing forth like water when he gives a smile that could light up any room at your request. You encircle your arms around his neck, needing this closeness just as much as he does after being away from you too long.

“You don’t have to tell me twice, pip-squeak,” his hands travel down from where they’d been resting on your hips, ginger and gentle as they glide from your sides downward past the curve of your backside to their destination on the backs of your legs.

When he’s wound his fingers around the underside of your thighs, it takes little effort for him to hoist you up against him, your legs automatically wrapping around his waist like he is your own charging port. Unlike you, part of him has been fused with metal, his right arm lost to Ever’s unassailable greed for perfection in creating life that was as dangerous as it was perfect.

Created to serve as your precursor–your corrupted guardian and watchdog–your body had been spared over the trials done on his so that you could be the organization’s angel of blood and slaughter.

With you held closely in his arms, he crosses the distance of the open concept chamber complete with a long, rectangular coffee table made entirely of glass that is accented by two black leather couches in front and behind it. On the far side of it are two lounge chairs, one smaller than the other, arranged next to each other and facing the viewport with its wide view of the stars and dark sky. The larger one is worn and has small tears in its armrests from where he’d gripped them so hard during many dawns and dusks spent either with you in his head, on his lap, or between his legs.

On one end of the parlor is an impressively sized bedroom, grand bathroom, and boudoir, the last of which he’d built himself using his Evol, his sweat, and his hands. On the other end of the sitting room, there is a sleek kitchen of chrome appliances, grey cabinets, and a sizable island of white marble that looked like the moon’s dust had settled across it.

It is here that your lover brings you, unwilling to let you go even for a moment as he strides to the refrigerator and waits patiently for you to open it.

In the short time he’d gathered you in his arms, you’d been swept astray into the whirling domain of his eyes, and when he arches a brown brow upward in a teasing move that gets your pulse quickening, you pry your sights away from him.

Like he is your own force of momentum, your inertia is swift to alter its state and you open the refrigerator door, quickly procuring the pitcher of apple juice he’d prepared for you the morning he’d left. The note written on a sticky note still remains stuck to its side, the words ‘Made with love for my special, beautiful girl whom I miss dearly’ smudged from the oils on your fingertips as you’d held it.

Only a quarter of the amber colored liquid remains, for you’d been unable to resist the sweet taste that reminded you so much of him when it fell across your tongue. He doesn’t question your choice of drink when he notices the bent edges of the sticky note that must have been anxiously fiddled with by your fingers while you’d waited for him.

Instead, he teases you once again as he turns to place you on the island behind you. “Missed me, didn’t you, pip-squeak?”

“You taught me that missing someone is wanting them to be with you even when they can’t be. And every minute you were away, I wished for you to be here with me, by my side.” You confess, the frigid and hard stone under you a stark contrast to the calefaction he radiates. Not wanting to let him go, you ask, “By the way, can you get me the glass I left at the edge of the counter? My arm isn’t long enough to reach it.”

Your admission has his blood rushing to his face, a grin that even Cupid would have been jealous of crossing his face.

“But of course, my lady,” he bows his head in obedience, the playfulness jumping off each vowel tugging at the chords of your boundless feelings for him. “One glass for the pretty girl coming right up.”

As if every second of your touch had charged him up, he dutifully reaches around you for the apple-shaped glass you��d left out earlier. The small action has him leaning forward, his hot breath fanning against your lips. Like this, you can tell that the usual lively color of those lips of his that are vibrant like a flower’s petal in spring had lost some of their vivid pigmentation, the lack of proper nutrition stealing it from him.

It makes your stomach twist, even the basic tenets of self-care eradicated from his mind when all but you dwelled in it during the times he was separated from you.

With the cup in tow, he rises back to his full height, oblivious as usual to his malnourished state that only befell him when he was away from you. Anger worms its way through you, an anger that would bury itself in you until you’d found a way to save him from the assholes that sent him on that godsforsaken mission and did this to him.

“How much do you want, pip-squeak?” He inquires, taking the pitcher from you and pouring the sparkling juice forth from it.

His voice cools the ire that had been slithering inside your stomach, but jealousy over a damned cup that had apprehended his attention away from you makes you possessively squeeze him between your thighs where he stands.

He makes a surprised sound at that, the sound making you ascend as it tumbles from his cracked lips.

Your resolve hardens as you watch him selflessly tend to you through the stream of juice that conforms to the shape of the cup he’d crafted for you.

“Give it all to me.” You tell him, impatient for his attention again to be attached to you.

The burbling stops, and finally, those eyes of his rush toward yours like fucking meteorites.

“I told you before, pip-squeak,” His fingers constrict around the neck of the pitcher, the glass cracking under the pressure of him as he sets it down, “If it’s my unique scent you want,” with his other hand, he brings the cup of juice under your lips, “a uniform filled with memories,” he tips the cup just the slightest bit toward you, your mouth parting to accept the cold, tart liquid over your tongue, “or even the authority to command me,” the last few words siphon something hungry in you despite the liquid that is beginning to fill your mouth, the slender, metallic digits of his other palm slipping around the back of your neck to tilt your head back so more of the juice can spill between your lips with its sweet tinge, “I’ll make sure you get everything you could ever ask for.”

You hold eye contact with him like he might vanish if you don’t keep him held under the whirling pressure of you, tipping your chin back more as he encourages you with the hand he holds you with while he keeps you close, just as unwilling to be too far away from you.

The sight of you–your legs spread with him nestled between them and your wet, soft lips accepting what he feeds you as you let him lean you back, willing and pliable for him–makes the still-fleshy organ in his netherregion harden where he’s confined in his powered exosuit.

He observes you with captivation starring the corner of his purple-pink orbs, watching the honey-colored juice disappear into the cavern between your lips as it pours forth into you. Each mouthful of it down your throat has him feeling as though his internal temperature has begun to overheat, a different kind of steam demanding to be let out when the last of the contents of the drink flow into the chamber of your mouth.

You don’t swallow this one.

Rather, you lift one of your hands, making a come-hither gesture with your finger while intention–magnifying and polarizing–harnesses him to you like a magnet.

He knew you more intimately than you knew yourself, and so the realization that dusks over his countenance casts you into the heatwave of his fierce, intense emotions once reserved only for his mind.

As tall as he is, his shadow shades you in the soft light of the moon that sits in the distance of the dark realm outside as your lover’s front falls forward, one of his hands closing around the edge of the counter as he husks. “You’re a bad liar, pip-squeak. You can’t fool me. You want me to drink from you that badly, huh?” the glass he’d been pressing against your lips is put down, his irises dipping from yours to your mouth before his index comes upon one side of your cheek where his thumb spans your other, his other knuckles urging your chin up so that you can’t escape the all encompassing gravity of his affliction for you. His hot breath fans your lips as he draws inevitably nearer, “You can be such a silly girl, and yet-”

Waiting for him to come to you is an eternity you can’t possibly bear, and when finally he closes the distance between you– two masses of matter inextricably colliding and crashing together as you seek each other’s every molecule in a searingly passionate kiss–the natural release of the liquid you’d been storing for him is diffused into the chasm of his mouth, his groan short-circuiting you as he deepens the kiss, the fusion between you expelling reason and logic until all there is is him.

More you give and more he takes, his long tongue flitting over yours while he explores you like it’s the first time.

Against your mouth, he breathes, “You’re irresistible to me. I can’t stop myself from falling for you. Every. Single. Time.” The words are passed between voyages of his mouth as he returns, over and over again, to his origin point of you, fire licking up at you from where he’s connected to you.

His fingers depress themselves into your flesh as if you are the foundation he needs to stay afloat in the depth of his all consuming weakness for you, the slight pressure that action imposes on you making your lips pucker against his where you feed the still crisp juice to him. Stray trails of it dribble down your chin, your neck and then between the valley of your breasts that strain against the low v-cut nightgown hardly even reaching past your ass.

You’d chosen it knowing it was his favorite of the many he’d stitched and sewn himself just for you. He’d taught you a great many things about feelings, emotions, and that little thing called desire, and you’d begun to see just how much-with the tiniest of actions or words- you jumbled his impulses and want that only you could rewire, rewrite, and reshape.

“Caleb,” you grapple for the leather strap overlaying his powered exosuit below where the amber colored crystal is embedded at the base of his neck, his mouth claiming yours as you pull him closer, needing him everywhere and anywhere you can have him in the visceral summonings only he can make well up within you. Your shallowing breaths and spit swirl together in the clash of your tongues and teeth, neither of you able to resist the other.

He swallows what makes it past the ring of his lips, hungry for more even when your lungs begin to burn from lack of air, and in their enviousness, rip you away from him.

Like the wane of a moon, his eyes have gone dark when he breaks the seal of his mouth over yours, the string of saliva bridging you to him refusing to snap until he straightens, his index smearing the remains of his own essence over your upper lip as he utters, “My name isn’t a safe word, pip-squeak. Saying it won’t make me stop.” His hand slides into your hair while the other now has the counter in an iron-grip as he battles to control himself, his lips coursing toward the edge of your mouth where his finger had been. The pink of his tongue slips from between them to lap up in a long, wet stripe as he collects the pleasing, saccharine remnants of apple juice that had escaped. “You just make me want more.”

Your eyelids flutter at the sensation, his words making heat bloom in the apex between your thighs that you hadn’t even realized you’d begun to rut against him in search of friction where they are still wound, with the rest of your legs, around his waist.

“Y-you made it spill,” you stammer when that knowing muscle betwixt his lips is brought under the edge of the other side of your own. There, he leaves the slick of his saliva from his tongue’s travels downwards as he gathers the taint of sticky, sugary remains on you there, too.

“You think that was an accident, baby? It wasn’t.” His hand slinks toward the back of your head so he can take a handful of your locks and gently guide you down until your back meets the hard plane of the counter. Reduced to a weightless mass in the omnipresent skies of him you could forever exist within, you can do little but wait for him to maneuver you, your own digits holding on tighter to the leather strap below his neck where he hovers above you because somehow, someway, you needed to keep yourself by him, the void of space observing you from outside the glass walls of your chambers both a hope and a curse.

“Mmm… Thank you for feeding me. That was good,” He hums, the transparency of his yearning there in his eyes, showing the basest part of him sequestered in the far reaches of his orbs while he continues his devoted descent, the passage of his mouth one that follows the winding paths of the existing tracks of liquid that had traveled south along your throat and chest from earlier. Each time his soft lips land, the hot of his tongue is there to scavenge for your taste that has become deliciously mixed with that of apples. Between them, he tells you, “I missed you so much, pip-squeak.”Craving more of you, he keeps driving his mouth to the ocean that is you, the wet sound of his kisses on your flesh and devoutness of his touch making everything else sink away.

Before they can completely desert you, you need him to know something. You hardly stutter his name out in a poor excuse for his attention, but it is enough for him to pause, his mouth ghosting the spot between your collarbones where’d he’d been laving the pink muscle along the trails of the sweet liquid that had converged into one before dripping down your chest.

“What is it, my sweet girl?” He questions, tilting his head to the side so the ebony of his bangs falls just over the one eye that he usually sweeps free of his fringe. “Did I do something wrong?”

“You’re not allowed to leave me like that again. It felt like one half of me was missing. Like there was an empty hole in my chest the entire time you were gone.” You tug him down with you, the metal of the roboticized fingers of his right hand bracing him by one side of your head while his other cradles the back of your skull. His breath hitches when you confess, “It was like that hole sucked up all of the happiness and good in my world because you were not in it.”

Before him, you’d been a stranger to all but death, your swords sharp and your orders from the scientists at the lab unforgiving. But despite missions of bloodshed and piercing, terrorizing screams, everyday you’d both watched each other from behind the see-through wall of your glass cages. You’d listened to his stories and musings raptly while inextricably drawn to his side like he was the center of all gravity, your palms separated by the barrier between you when you weren’t trapped in your glass pod.

He had always been the only source of sensation or sentiment, and in him, you’d found what only he could give: home.

He can feel the vulnerability that has locked your muscles in place, so he croons, “I’m here now. Nothing will take me away from you ever again. We will always be together.”

“Promise me,” you don’t let his words drift away from you, the echo of a vow made when you’d both been much smaller surfacing in the back of your mind, “Promise me again, Caleb. I won’t forgive you if you break it.”

Something flickers behind the window of his eyes. The tenderness that colors his voice dulls everything but him, even the clock’s ticking muted when he answers, the blizzard of the air pushed away when the summer of his breath blows along your chin from where he looks fondly down at you, “I promise, my one and only.”

When you relax beneath him, your ligaments freed from their invisible chains, you use the grip you have on the leather strap to lead him to your waiting lips, the sincerity of his words tangible in the featherlight brush of his lips over yours that makes your heart skip a beat. He must hear that, because he deepens the kiss as if he can circumfuse all of his love into you through that action alone. Insistence takes over, and you relish in it when he slots his mouth harder into yours, not willing to release you from the endless expanse of his ardor for you until oxygen–the damned nuisance–tears you away from him once again.

His breaths are short and shallow while they coalesce with yours, his chest heaving above you where your other hand–the one not already clutching the thin strap below his throat–rises so your fingers can carefully trace the outline of his lips that are fine and fair, almost like satin. No longer are they dry, the sheen of your spit there, embracing them in your care for him while he stares lovingly at you. His lips are so malleable, so nimble as your digit glides across them, his mouth pursuing your hand as if to forage for more of your warmth.

“Affection?” You pose the question, a fledgling still to the ways of showing the indescribable ways he makes you feel when you’d spent so much of your life behind a glass case.

His orbs soften under the silver light of the moon that all but makes him glow when he affirms, “Affection. Do you need me to shower you in affection, my one and only?”

Your fingers gravitate down his chin, his throat, the upper plane of his chiseled, muscled pectoral where his own heart pounds fiercely and quickly, like it, too, is trying to reach for you; like it, too, preens happily under your touch and attention. Your own thrums against your ribcage to the same hurried rhythm as if in a dance of passion, neither able to step away from the other.

Swept into that symphony of sensation that only he could orchestrate, you don’t hesitate when you answer, “Yes. As long as it is you, the answer will always be yes.”

You watch his veiled control crease his thick brows and diverge his lips, a fragmented breath leaving him when the hard, cool, robotic fingers of his right hand circle around your forearm to direct your open palm up, the sculpted realm of his body hidden by the mesh of his suit where his chest is before the rigidness of alloy encases his throat and shoulders.

At the base of his throat that alloy is carved out to contain a golden crystal, and it is here that he lets your fingers hover, waiting for you to tap it so you can press the series of holographic buttons only you know the right combinations to.

“Humans show affection in many ways. But there are ways they do it that are only done when they have found their other half…their one and only.” The metal of his hand ascends up your arm until his palm is pressed against the back of yours, the interconnected phalanges of his fingers bending around yours as he tells you, “Kissing is one way of it. But to let the one person you share the deepest of bonds with feel and see you–all of you– so they can accept and welcome that, too…that’s another way. And I want you to do that with me, my precious girl. I want you to accept every part of me.”

With his digits wrapped around yours, your index lightly pushes against the crystal nestled between the two notches of his collarbones, the familiar amber light of the holographic panel coming to life before you. You don’t need to look down at it anymore, opting instead to glimpse the nebulas of his eyes that glint intensely at you while your fingers move with practiced ease over each of the three symbols amid the pyramid displayed before you.

After you’ve hit the final one, there’s a series of chinks and chimes, the nanotechnology embedded in his suit fluorescing in particles of purple that ripple outwards from around the crystal, the flow of light extending outward from it as the black mesh and alloy disintegrate everywhere the light falls like a tide of violet over the glorious sculpture of his body.

Inch by inch the canvas of him is bared to you, neither of you hearing the thud of the abandoned crystal hitting the ground beneath you when the art in front of you captures all of your attention, the polar pull too strong for you to resist even if you wanted to when your eyeline veers down his body in a mouthwatering view that has both sets of your lips slickening.

Years of modification, missions, and maintained training regimen had corded every bit of him in muscle, his abdomen etched into six defined, sharp blocks across his middle. Framed by two more below, he’s a well-made mosaic of a human being. Even his pectorals are cut seamlessly in their curvatures that cling to the rest of him, his broad, strong shoulders accenting it all where the left arm connected to them looks as if it has been stroked entirely with thick thew from his bicep to his forearm. From the back of his hand, thick veins branch out, the raised lines offshooting up his forearm.

Where flesh and that same muscle should have wound down his other arm, the metal of a robotic replacement remains. Like a restoration piece, it attempts to match its mirror in the sinuous, sinewy make that no longer can receive feeling beyond pain.

He senses the subtle squirm of your fingers where they now rest against his sternum, your basest receptors within itching to rediscover him.

“Go on, pip-squeak. Feel me,” he implores, trailing the hand of yours that he still holds down across his pectoral until your palm rests just over the strong, erratic palpitations of his heart, “This is all yours. It always has been.”

The beat of the organ beneath your hand pushes your own along, your fingers becoming curious travelers that wander along the mountainous range between his pectorals, the smaller pads of each of your five fingers crossing along, under, and around every contour and curve of him upward from his defined collarbones to the blocks of muscle lining his abdomen. Somewhere along the way, his hand detaches from yours, his knuckles turning white where grips onto the counter so you’re pressed between the pleasing warmth of his body and the cold foundation of the countertop.

Each stroke of your fingers along the plains of his chest has his breaths deepening like each touch both satisfies and starves him, and when your fingers roam down a little too far past the slabs of thew settled over his stomach, that’s when he nestles his nose into the crook of your neck, his balmy breath sweeping over the sensitive area on the side of your throat as he inhales the essence of you before he checks, “You want to go there, my darling? Are you sure?”

You had never cared to know what pleased a man before him. But years of tension and longing for this man before you had built up inside you and made you overflow and fucking brim with want that could only be fulfilled by him.

No one had ever asked what you wanted, much less if you were clear on what it was you even thought you wished for in the first place.

But he had. He always had.

That is why your own digits drift downward until they amble along one side of the impressively large shaft standing at attention between his thick, muscled thighs, fingers skimming along the ridges of his proud cock.

“Fuck,” he curses when you reach his base, only able to get half of your hand around him before ascending. “You really did miss me, didn’t you, my sweet girl?”

“Can I show you?” You turn your head, lips searching for his where they linger along your sternocleidomastoid muscle lining the side of your throat. You peer at him with innocent doe-eyes that are enough to make him into your slave if you wished it. “I know how because of you.” You squeeze him lightly–deliciously– under the bulbous head of his cock, transfixed by the way his eyes become hooded while your hand descends down back to his engorging base just the way he’d taught you to.

Unable to ever deny you when you look at him like that, he breathes out, “You know you can do whatever you want to me, pretty girl.” His handsome expression contorts into one of contained pleasure, his brows pulling together and mouth falling open when you handle him just a little faster, your thumb spreading the newly rolled beads of pre-cum over the mushroom-shaped tip of his length that made your own mouth and sex cry out of need for him.

“This body is yours, baby.” He emits a long, drawn out sound of pleasure when you stroke him there and back, your other fingers brushing at the swelling bulbs of his balls beneath his sumptuously sized cock. You feel, fascination pooling in your core, the way the veins that wrap around his member have begun to jump excitedly under your touch, and gods, did the man in front of you look delicious when in the throes of rapture only you could bring.

Watching him was addicting. It was like a drug that you could never, ever, stop taking, your brain and very blood now so dependent and entrenched in the sights, sounds, sensations, and thoughts of him that it could no longer fire correctly unless your fix was with you–or inside you.

“Mine.” You repeat, your hand picking up the speed you rub him up and down with, your other fingers curling around one of his engorging balls and massaging it before giving the same attention to the other. He inclines his head as if in deference, irises loyally bowing down to yours, for he is utterly weak to your ministrations.

Your voice and touch are his aphrodisiac, and in his absence, he’d become so very starved for you.

“You’ve become so good at this, haven’t you? You’re going to make me cum for you if you keep going like this, pretty girl.” He pants laboriously, concentration painting its way across his face when you tighten your grip around him, the vice of your hand making the top of of his length weep, its wetness drawn down by you every so often when you wind and twist your hand around his large, fleshy head before dragging it back down. “Feels so fucking good, pip-squeak. I taught you too well, didn’t I?”

“I had a very good teacher,” you agree, your legs securing around him harder in your keenness to bring him closer because as near as he is, you need him more than the air that hovers between you while you rub at his testicles with one of your hands and other, becoming a vice around his cock, gropingly glides along his length without pause–without abandon– your joined flesh making obscene sounds of his slick and wetness as you please him.

His breaths become heavier the faster you go, knuckles going whiter than snow as he fights to contain his release that he can feel quivering in the base of his balls all the way to the curving arc of his cock that reaches for you in its beautiful, long curvature.

He’s so fucking close. He’s just at the fucking edge of the precipice of his release, but that end that suspends itself over him now is not the one he had envisioned upon his return to you. The appetite he had for you made him hunger for another, more carnal means. One that only you could parch the cavern of his mouth from.

No, he needed you in a different way. He could wait. He was no stranger to that when it came to you.

“Yeah? Well as much as I want to cum for you, pretty girl,” both of his larger hands seize your wrists, pinning them above your head, his cock pressing against the wailing apex between your legs as he tells you, “You did so well to feed me earlier, and now I want more. I’m so hungry, pretty girl. And only you can satisfy me.”

“Hungry?” You moan when he gives a purposeful roll of his hips into you, the tip of his fully erect cock a little ways under his belly button yet the rest of him sliding deliciously along your folds.

He chuckles low when you moan at the way his cock slides against the button of nerves above your folds when he undulates those toned hips of his again.

“Yes, baby. Starving.” The space around your arms shifts and invisible streaks erupting through it before the colorless, leaden matter set alight by embers shoots down around your forearms and hands, his Evol over gravity tethering you in place so his hands can wrap around your thighs, pulling them over each of his broad shoulders so he’s got your ass resting against his sternum and your sex inches from his waiting mouth.“I told you before…I want everything you are willing to give me. That includes your sweet, delicious honey.”

You don’t resist him. You’re exactly where you want to be right now while his irises lower to where you’re bare for him. He sucks in a breath, staring like he’s looking a fucking meal, “You left yourself bare for me…what a needy girl. But you know, I like my girl needy for me. That’s hot.”

He inhales deeply through his nose, your intoxicating scent making his eyes roll back before those heavy tendrils of his power, receptive to his hunger, pull at the edges of your nightgown. They slowly tug it up your body, each sliver of skin you present to him making his salivary glands water as he swallows around a suddenly dry throat. And between his legs, his cock hardens impossibly more when the fabric of your nightgown crests over your perfect, pert breasts, the peaks of which are stiff and demanding of his attention. You’re already glistening with wetness for him, the evidence of your arousal evident in the sheen of it that coats your cunt from your earlier illicit activity.

“pip-squeak…you’re so beautiful.” It’s a remnant of his usual voice that comes out, for you’ve stolen his ability to breathe not for the first time, and certainly not for the last. “Please let me have you right here on the counter in our kitchen. I’ll make you feel good just like I always do. I’ll take such good care of you, baby.”

Ever mindful of you and your wishes, he gives you the chance to decide. And ever the light to his shadow, you could sooner reject him than the moon could halt its wayward journey around the solar system.

“I’m all yours, Caleb.” You muster, your own words rushed under the current of his eyes that garner every bit of your attention.

“Do you have any idea what you do to me when you say that, my sweet girl?” The pink of his tongue peeks from between his lips, stretching and elongating before it gently passes itself along the slit of your sex, licking up in a long, wet stripe before it curls back into his mouth, the thick glaze of you covering it before it disappears between his lips. “You make me want to please you so fucking much. I won’t be able to stop until you’re a moaning, writhing mess for me.” His eyes darken as the essence of you spreads itself across every taste bud, his fingers coiling harder into your thighs. “I’m going to eat you out until I am satisfied, my sweet girl. Until you fill my fucking mouth with your precious come.”

He doesn’t give you time to respond after that, for he attaches his mouth to your cunt like a man starved, his mouth becoming a circle of searing suction that demands everything you have. The tang of you is unlike any savory substance he’s ever had across his palate, and mixed with the sugary drippings of apple juice that had coursed down from your breasts to your belly to the thin thatch of hair that his nose is now buried in, you’re a mix of delicacy and sin that he will never tire of supping.

“C-Caleb…ah-” You stutter when that expert of a tongue of his sidles between your folds, lapping you up like he’s a dog.

“Mmm, you taste so fucking delicious, baby,” he hums against your sex, the metal of one hand glinting in the silvery moonlight as he slides it up the supple curves of your body until his fingers are wound around your breast. There, he kneads into your flesh, loving the show of expressions dressed in your satisfaction that you bear to him while you are made the receiver of his gluttony. “Your tits are so perky and perfect just like the rest of you. I love how they fit in my hands, pretty girl.” The strong muscle that he glides between your labia there and back makes a sweltering heat begin to pool in the basest part of you, the fingers he has on your breast running over the dusky bud of your areola before they roll it between them. “I can’t wait to put my mouth on them later.”

Your spine arches at that, the beauteous arc of that making him ache between his legs as he ravenously suckles you like you’re a meal he’s happy to wolf down, your very essence slathered across his tongue where he flattens it between your soddened lips, dragging it up and over your hole that clenches around nothing while he consumes you with the vigor of a man drunk on the high of you.

“Yes, fuck…more, pretty girl. Feed me more,” his words are muffled with his mouth still swathed around you, the flat of his tongue splaying itself over your hole only to twist around it in frenzied rotations to draw out more tears of your need from it. “You’re so fucking good.”

Freer than water over the brim of a cup, your voice spills from your throat, “P-please, Caleb…Please.”

With your pleas drawn forth from you, thirst saturates his orbs as he sucks you between his teeth, the sounds of his slurping causing an even fiercer wave of desire to engulf you as your sex sheds even more slick for him. He catches it all onto his tongue with fervor, the resulting sigh of his satisfaction joining the filthy sounds of your passion that you make together.

“You want this tongue inside you, baby?” He mouths from where his mouth is melded to you, “What my sweet girl wants is what she will get.” His last word is swallowed by your cunt when the tip of his tongue slips into your hole, and he slowly sinks into you inch by delicious inch. You keen at that, and when he flicks it against your walls side to side, it makes the warmth of bliss surge up through your fucking veins from where he’s fixed to you with each devastating flick of it along your plush, velveteen insides that welcome him eagerly.

There’s nothing languid about the way it writhes along the soft cushion of your walls, the movements of it wild and fevered like he can’t get enough of your addicting flavor as he uses the possessive grip he’s got on the pillow of your thigh to impel himself deeper inside you while you tighten around him. With his tongue still lodged within you, he mumbles, “Be a good girl and wrap your legs tighter around me, baby. I want to feast on you as much as I can. Can you do that for me?”

The vibrations of his voice are carried along his tongue and straight into the bundle of nerves nestled deep within you. You barely manage to comprehend his request, your brain malfunctioning under the burrowing of his tongue farther into you so you’re stuffed unbelievably with the wet length of him while he palms at your breast, twiddling your nipple between his thumb and index while heat coils in your core.

In the absence of your mind’s input, your walls constrict around him and your body obeys him, your thighs closing around his head to keep him lodged between your legs, your ankles crossing over each other so your heels can secure and lock him in place.

“There you go.” His words are smothered by your cunt as he dines on you, “That’s it, pretty girl.” He guzzles you between his lips, tongue grazing and gliding over each and every edge and lineation of your silken basin until no part of you has not been left lathered in his saliva while his other hand joins its counterpart so on your neglected breast.

You feel those familiar tendrils of his Evol holding your hips in place, even his own power refusing to relinquish you while his hand cups the underside of your tit, thumb dragging itself along your nipple while his artificial palm fondles your other.

You cry out at the series of sensations that don’t pause or let up, his eyes misting over in the haze of his desire that demands every bit of you as he breathes in your inebriating aroma that drives him fucking mad.

You call out his name, begging for him once again, and it earns you another twirl of his tongue around the tunnel of your pussy as he intones, “I know, pretty girl. I’m making you into a desperate little mess. But don’t worry, I’ll make you come soon, baby. I want you to cream all over my face just as badly as you do.” He draws in a deep breath of you at the same time that vulgar tongue of his swivels inside you, his fingers playing with the buds of your nipples while you moan loudly as the coil in your core tautens. “You’re getting close already, huh, baby? It makes me feel so good to be able to listen to you sing for me while I pleasure you. Shit...I just can’t get enough of you.”

You entice him even nearer with your legs, squeezing him between your thighs by way of answer, your words lost to the pleasure that steadily begins to wind around your lower abdomen all the way to your brain. Your hips try to buck against him in search of more friction, but his Evol keeps you in place, unable to move while he tongue-fucks you, swallowing every now and again the taint of your own appetence.

He notices that small movement of your hips, listens to your resulting whine when you are halted from that endeavor, because then the tendrils of his Evol that had been binding you still from above and below your waist start to conform to your shape, the makeshift digits acting as hands that support you down your back and ass rather than tethering your hips in place.

“Ride my face, pretty girl,” he instructs as the hot length of his tongue penetrates the tight ring of your hole, immediately striking you frenetically along your walls while he’s swaddled in the vice of your cunt that clenches around him. “Remember what I taught you.”

His encouragement fires the sparks of your action, and you immediately follow his directive. Your hips roll into him, the border of your lips catching on his nose and just barely hitting the edge of the bundle of nerves crowning your cunt while his fingers gently trace the pebbling outline of your nipples. Your mouth soon falls open to emit the wanton sounds of your blissful rhapsody.

Headiness makes the air heavy between you, your back bowing at the tantalizing thrill that he arouses in you while he continues to flit his tongue in rampant, gyrated motions inside you while you grind yourself against his face like he’d told you to while he praises, “Just like that. You’re doing so well for me, baby. You’re so nice to suck on while you’re using my face to feel good.”

Over and over you oscillate your hips against him, for each time producing a faster, fevered rhythm in the back-and-forth of the hot muscle of his tongue against you while he swills your piquant quintessence into his mouth. His hands never stray from your breasts, devoted to the peaks of your tits that have peaked under his constant attention. His irises smolder you in his zealousness, and you can’t escape the wildfires they make you burn with as he lavishes his love on you.

Inevitably, the coil of need that had been building inside you threatens to burst, and he knows it, because when he buries his face even farther into you, angling his chin in this way and that so he can lave his tongue up the far end of your walls before pivoting it provokingly at places you didn’t even know existed in the trench of you, he feels the way you grip onto him harder, your sex contracting harder around him while he coos, “Yeah, fuck, I’m so hard for you, baby. Keep going.”

Your hips hasten their pace, chasing the ecstasy that twines itself tighter in the base of your belly with every sway of them along the lower half of his nose, cheeks, and mouth. Your breaths have become shallow, barely a figment of what they once were where you whimper for him. The globes of your breasts heave up and down even with his hands still covering and rubbing at your rigid peaks while you rock yourself shamelessly on him, deliriousness spewing into him as you careen toward your end.

“Tell me how good I am, baby.” His voice is smothered by you, his tongue drowning most of the syllables in the depths of you, “Tell me I’m the only one who can make you into a wet, dripping mess that wants no one but me. Let me hear your voice, pretty girl, and I’ll give you what you want so badly.”

You grind like a craven creature along the bridge of his nose all the way down to the end of his chin, the gleam of your taint left in your continual passage atop of him, your entire system flushed with the same frenzy he takes you with.

Coherency has forsaken you now, its forebear of wantonness left to overwhelm you in its place.

It is why you moan out, “You’re so good to me, Caleb. So, so good. Better than anyone could ever be,” you throw your head back, and he sees the whites of your eyes when his tongue streaks faster than a comet back and forth within your plush galaxy that he could spend years exploring, words slurred from your efforts as you soddenly cant your hips astride him while avarice incarnate churns your core and cunt. “No one can fuck me like you, touch me like you do, or kiss me like you do. No one, and absolutely no one, can love me as you do.”

The words are but echoes of a chant he’d been your maestro for, aiding and directing your notes of enthrallment for him while he’d pitched you into an impassioned dance your body had responded only to him with.

Your answer activates something feral in him, his pupils blowing wide and nearly absorbing the circlets of compressed morning dawn in them. Metal fingers take your chin between them, maneuvering your attention back to him and all you can see are the dimmed nebulae of his eyes as the space above where you both have become one distorts and distills. The tendrils of his Evol divaricate and break through it, reaching down until-

“Only I can have you like this. Now look at me when I make you cum, baby. I want you to remember this memory of me between your legs and never, ever forget it. You’re going to recognize me by sight, smell, touch, sound…everything.” Your eyes snap open and latch onto him when the cumbrous, corpulent striations of his Evol, all at once, press down on your clit in a feeling akin to hundreds of tiny palpitations and pulses against the bundle of nerves as he manipulates gravity solely for you. Your gasp is garbled and your hips jerk and jounce at the sudden flux of sensations, and then his other hand is there, on your hip, to help you keep going while his tongue makes schlepping noises where he fervently frisks it up and down in rapid succession within your clinging walls. “Such a good listener you are. I need you to cum in my mouth now, pretty girl. I need you to feed me your honey.”

Your mouth falls open in an ‘o’ shape, the sonorous scream that resounds from you making even the walls tremble in its volume as your body obeys his directive and your world goes white with the shattering of the tension he’d founded in you. From its springs a fierce, fiery pleasure that floods you from he’s fused with you, the torrid, intense waves of it washing over you from the tips of your fingers to the ends of your toes that cramp and curl behind his back.

He fucks you through your orgasm, the ribbons under his control winding down your sex slithering around and between his lips before they nuzzle the flowerbed of nerves buried far into you. The hot length he threshes about in your silken channel moves with an inhuman speed as the other hundreds of tendrils of his Evol ruinously ravage your clit over and over again while you wail and whimper for the man beneath you, your cunt cinching and spasming around him.

Your essence gushes forth like a lewd stream into his anticipating mouth where he’s still got it moored to you, groaning deep and low where he receives you before he’s relaxing his tongue and opening wider to thirstily drink up the saccharine juices you have made for him.

“Keep coming. Fuck, keep coming for me. I love your taste. Need it every fucking day,” he sloppily swallows your slick down, “Give me every drop, baby. I want your taste to linger in my mouth forever.”

You don’t have to be told twice, the tendrils ceaseless and unabating in their pressure as they depress themselves over the most sensitive parts of you without pause. They leave no area unclaimed, rushing and lapping at you everywhere over and around your clit and g-spot in their own kisses to you that make their master jealous.

Their master, who pushes his hips into the counter, halting the small undulations they’d been making into it while he observes your euphorically erotic performance just for him. Their master, who squeezes himself between the counter and his body where his cock splutters with pre-cum, a pervasive twinging of an ache declaring its longing for you even when he stifles it with the small, constringing threads of his Evol that force his orgasm down into the base of his balls.

More you spill into his mouth as if a dam had been broken between your legs while he guides your grinding pussy there and back along his nose to his chin, the reservoir of his mouth receiving your release while you gush uncontrollably between his lips.

“Such a tasty cunt,” He drains you like you’re the fountain of his very life, each movement of his Adam’s apple bringing with it the sound of his gratification in the low groans he lets out. When the flow of your juices begins to slow, each of those colorless ribbons of his power disintegrate, his tongue retreating into his mouth so he can sip on you again and again– insatiable for you as an emaciated, famished male who hasn’t fed for weeks.

His want is there, each time he draws you in, and it writhes in the irises that dilate and expand as he besottedly ogles the blissed, fucked out expression that has you mewling, the unbelievable intensity of your climax leaving you feeling as if you’re suspended entirely in some astral dimension that only your lover could augment before you.

“Thank you,” he says it in some kind of daze, like the tart twang and tangy scent of you have clogged his mind of any reasonable thought while he languidly cleans you up, “Thank you so much, my love.”

Fondness makes your heart swell for him, and you’ve forgotten that the ribbons of his Evol still keep your arms tied down and entirely too distant from him.

“Caleb,” your voice is hoarse from your earlier outcries, “I want to touch you. Can I?”

Your plea has the tendrils binding your arms to the counter dissolving and releasing you, your request brushing past the brume of the trance that you’d put him under while the other strands of his Evol encasing you around your pelvis diffuse into thin air.

He cleans you with his tongue, entreating whatever remains onto it, your thighs slackening and opening around his head in the feeling that has been sapped out of you.

Once he’s sure he’s devoured every last morsel of the dinner, lunch, and breakfast that he’d made of you, his hands return to your sides to carefully ease you back down onto the counter so you’re laid against it once more.

“You do not need to ask me that, my love. I love it when you touch me,” He licks his lips, the lewd daubing of your taint embracing the wet length of him as satisfaction morphs his handsome features when the last of you is lathered across his palate. “I live only for you, anyway.”

His confession makes your cheeks flush a shade of red even rubies couldn’t hope to compare to, and it only becomes a mightier shade when you blink up at him with those long, obsidian-like lashes of yours while he uses the back of his artificial, roboticized hand to wipe away the glistening sheen of your essence that still sullies his chin and nose before the pink muscle in his mouth slips out to relish in that, too. “I would do anything for you because I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

Familiar heat simmers between your legs, and you extend your slightly shaky arm toward him, fingers outstretched in effort to make contact with him while you answer, “You would never let me forget.” As tall as he is, he’s too far away even though he’s stood against the countertop, your own legs now dangling on either side of him.

You whine at his unwanted farness despite your thighs that tremblingly try and fail to clamp him between them, and the resulting chuckle of amusement makes wings take flight in your chest as he responsively tilts his front forward, head lowering a little so you can dotingly cradle his cheek in your hand.

“What do you want, pip-squeak?” He rests his head in your hand, his knuckles of his other hand tenderly trailing down the underside of your arm to feel more of your smooth skin while his other, bionic one braces him against the counter so his chest hangs closely above yours.

“You.” Your answer is fetched forth by the attracting force that is him, the debris of hesitation eradicated under the nebulae in his eyes that spin with adoration and devotion solely to you.

“You have me, sweet girl,” he coos. “You always have.”

You’d never been good with words. Still, he made you want to be.

So you try to show him what you mean another way, bending one elbow under you so you can surround yourself in his musky, masculine scent of iron and grass. Like this, you can’t miss the fully engorged, painfully erect member between his thighs that’d he’d left neglected out of his devoutness to you.

You whine at the sight of him, fingers twitching impulsively at the sight of him as he tells you, “I know that look in your eyes, pretty girl, but I won’t last if you touch me there right now. I need you too much right now.”

An emotion your language simply didn’t have a means of expressing makes the whole of your heart twinge and pang for him, your fingers drifting down from his cheek so they can maunder down his neck to where pliant flesh meets rigid, hard metal. The daintiness of your touch makes him shudder, and his carefully shrouded vulnerability exposes itself in the shadows within the corner of one of his eyes as your fingers nimbly meander down the dark plating of iron where his receptors can’t feel you anymore–nonetheless, you don’t stop until your palm lays against the back of his.

“You once said that humans who love each other can mate their souls together if their vessels become one.” Your digits curl inward, filling the space he’d left open for you between his metallic fingers while his other digits reverently follow the curve of your shoulder blade to the dip of your spine. “I want that with you.”

His breath is snagged away by you, and he still sounds so very winded whenever the imaginings he’d had of you are replaced with the reality that is so, so much more beautiful than anything his mind could conjure.

“Are you certain, my one and only?” He asks breathlessly while you bring the artificial phalanges of his iron hand to your lips, kissing each where human joints would be in the middle of every single one of them.

Ever considerate of you and your own will, his question only whisks forth the truth of many moons and suns spent basking in the rays of his care and affection.

“These past two cycles without you made me realize that there is only one thing that has any meaning to me in this place, Caleb, and that is you,” You profess, turning his hand over so you can intertwine your fingers with his. He interlaces his with yours, each fitting perfectly next yours like they were designed just for this purpose. All the while, he admires every bit of the spread of red dusting over your cheeks while you say, “Make love to me until our spirits mate for life. Until we can’t remember what it was to be without each other.”

The kindle of your voice sets him alight with pining that refuses to be doused until his very being is joined in the heat of passion with yours, and he stiffens unbelievably more between your parted legs while the bulbous head of his enlarged, swollen cock leaks his pre-cum that has you wetting your lips, your tastebuds secreting saliva at the delicious sight of him.

“As you wish,” he faithfully utters before using the union made by your hands to help you sit up. His other digits faintly course down your spine, pebbling your flesh as they go. The soft pads of his fingertips don’t disappear until he reaches the small of your back where the globes of your ass hide you from him. “My moon and my stars,” those calloused digits fasten around your thigh, “My one and only in this life and the next.”

You watch him bring your intertangled hands to his mouth, the shape of them pledging themselves to you in the fleeting, deferent kiss he impresses upon the back of yours before he ensconces it over the corded thew of his shoulder, doing the same to with your other.

“However you’ll have me, I’ll come to you. And I will make all your wishes come true. Every single one of them,” His bionic, metal hand joins its counterpart along the home of the backs of your thighs so he can entwine you around his toned torso one leg after the other. While he does this, he angles his head to the side, the hotness of his breath blown against the shell of your ear while he murmurs, “I made a promise to you that I’d bring you to a paradise that is just for us. Whether it is my body or being that takes you there, my sweet girl, you’ll find it with me.” The torrid territory of his mouth skims the cartilage of your ear as he admits, “After all, you have been my Eden from the first time I looked upon you in that garden of tubes, glass, and monitors.”

“Take me, then. Make me entirely yours so that we can always be together.” You declare, wrapping your legs and arms resolutely, unwaveringly around him.

His control snaps, and from its remains, his want takes over.

“Finally,” The word is hurried, rushed from the base of his throat when he easily lifts you up against his body and turns to hastily trudge away from the counter, his mouth tangling with yours in a mess of teeth and spit, the wet smacking of your lips all that you hear past his groan when you move your hips against him, your sex skirting along the tip of the several inches of his infatuation with you before your spine hits a wall, an untamed intent rearing in his eyes when he surfaces for air to husk, “Take it off for me, pretty girl. You won’t need that little nightdress before, during, or after what I’m going to do to you.”

You heed him, peeling it off your body where it had been bunched atop your breasts and discarding it somewhere behind him unceremoniously while his irises roam and ravage your completely exposed form to make heat ignite everywhere they raze.

“Caleb,” you whine, entranced by the unbridled, unadulterated lust that conflagrates in his orbs, stoking you in his desire.

“You looked so pretty for me when you were getting off on my tongue earlier, my love. I would have come against the counter just from watching you, but I couldn’t let myself. Do you want to know why?” He mutters, adjusting and raising you up before the streaks of his Evol quickly clamor around your lower half so he can release you with one of his hands to take his massive, veiny and girthy length into it. “One: you were so beautiful while you enjoyed yourself on that countertop. I couldn’t bear to stop when you looked so tempting. Two: I wanted to come home. I wanted to cum inside you.”

Possessiveness has him slapping his head against your core to sodden you in his own essence, your pussy contracting around nothing while you shed more tears for him there.

He exhales shakily, prodding at your entrance with his tip. “You’re so wet for me, pretty girl. My spit and your juices look so pretty on you.” He lines himself up with your drenched hole and he sighs satisfactorily at the way you gaze at him from under a fan of dark lashes, “I’m going to fuck you until all that you know is me, my love. Until all that you can think about is me. Until all you can remember is me.”

You clasp your arms around his neck, touching the bridge of his nose with yours, “That sounds like paradise to me.”

With your consent, his Evol bears you down onto his cock all in one fluid motion, the delightful fullness and friction from him bottoming out within you making your eyelids flutter while the both of you elicit the vocal sounds resonant of your rapturous union.

“Fuck,” he curses, “You feel like a dream.” He husks, the invisible tendrils under his control holding your hips in place and turning you weightless while he nearly draws himself out of you only to bury himself back into you to the hilt nice and deep. “No, you’re better than a dream. And you’re all mine. Say it, pretty girl. Say you’re mine.”

“Y-yours,” you stammer when his warm, wet mouth encloses you where your shoulder meets your neck, sucking you between his teeth hungrily as the blood that rushes beneath it is coaxed to where he mars you while he thrusts debasingly into your pussy.

“I have to remind you that I belong to you, baby, and leave traces of me all over you. You’ll look so gorgeous with my marks all over you.” Up your neck he travels, leaving flowers of red and pink in his wake while he crosses the orchard of your neck to the other side, the veins of his cock brushing against your walls caressingly as he picks up his pace needfully. “When you look at them, you’ll see that I chose you. That I’d only ever choose you. ”

Your walls embrace him tightly at that, and it earns a long, drawn out groan from where his mouth captures yours, teeth gnashing and tongue thrashing against yours in his insistence.

“I want it. Want you,” You mewl into him, your head falling back when his skilled maw descends to dote on your chest, the hot length of his tongue licking around and then over the pliant area of your nipple. He draws a line of spit with it to your other, taking it into his mouth so he can taste you while he plunges powerfully into you with his bulging cock that rubs deliriously against you.

“I’ll give it to you, pretty girl. You’re taking me so well. You feel so good,” He grits his teeth at the divine and damning sanctuary of your body, hastening the drive of his length into you even through the denial of his own end and continual shunting of it with his Evol that swells his balls and member to the brim in the buildup of his captivation for you. “I was made for you, pretty girl. And you were made just for me.”

Through the haze of your lust that he fills you with, you can vaguely ascertain that he’s fuller than usual, that the network of veins and ridges constellating his much thicker cock pulsate sporadically while he tries to mask it with a bite onto your tit, teeth sinking into you that will surely impart a series of crescents there in the shape of him.

“Caleb-” You barely get his name out before he shoves his throbbing member harder into you so every bit of him is seated in you, his pace quickening with each purposeful drive of his cock inside your willing and waiting cunt that clamps around him as if to keep him there.

The slap of his heavy balls against your ass are obscene even to your own ears as his tip kisses your cervix with each quickening thrust, each one turning your thoughts to mush while his eyes flash feverishly up at you from where he’s got your tit bound between his lips.

“Command me,” he orders, teeth territorially leaving their impression over and around the peaked bud of your other breast while he slams his length into you even faster as he sets a brutal, merciless rhythm, your whimpers wrenched from your throat while he drools around you, spit gleaming licentiously in its viscous venture down your belly. “Command me to let go for you, baby. Tell me to give the seed of my love to you that you’re going to carry inside this pretty pussy of yours.”

You can’t even think anymore, your words lost to the unwavering, relentless pistoning of his pulsating, swollen member that knocks against your g-spot each and every time he pounds into you to make the heat that has spread in your core smolder and flare with an intensity that even a wildfire would fail to contain.

Fingers of steel that can no longer detect sensation grab your jaw in an iron-grip, the manic glint in his eyes sending you deeper into the flames of felicity while his other hand flattens against your belly to feel himself where he protrudes against you while rams himself into your silken channel. “I said,” he punctuates each word with a lurid lurch of his hips, “Command me.”

His order summons your voice from the bowels of your body, your baser being temporarily avulsed from the depths of yourself as your mouth falls ajar when the palm against your stomach turns so the pads of his index and middle fingers can zealously stroke the cluster of nerves of your clit, the heel of his hand pushing into the sensitive area just above the thatch of hair overlying your sex to make his intrusions even more decadently depraved.

“Let…l-let go for me, Caleb,” you incoherently babble, “W-want your…want your seed inside me.”

His eyes darken, and then he hums, “Mmm, I knew you would listen. You’re such a good girl. I’m going to ask you to do one more thing for me. Can you do that?”

You nod, not trusting your voice to last with how he splits you apart until you don’t know where you start and he ends, tits jiggling and jostling where the colorless striations of his Evol don’t pin you in place against the wall while his fingers render aberrant patterns over and on your sensitive bundle of nerves cresting your cunt.

“Fall apart on my cock and succumb to me, baby. Milk me fucking dry.” His fingers push down along your engorged nub while several invisible streaks of the power under his control stretch around and between his digits to consort with him like extensions of his own hand, brutally impelling themselves against your bloated button of nerves in tandem with the catastrophic whirl of his fingers against it. ”Show me how much you love me while I fill you up with mine.”

You dazedly watch his lips move, the meaning of them slow to find you while he ravishes you with his cock with a final, fatal, calamitous blow that hits you in all the right places, not a single part of you devoid of his length as your body obeys him. Your walls spasm and convulse around him as you let out a piercing cry of his name and hot, blinding, white pleasure uproariously makes you its fortissimo.

He’s bewitched by you as you move like a melody caught in slow motion, each breath a note drawn out, deliberate, aching with anticipation. The rhythm built inside you–a private symphony–pulsing low and deep like bass beneath the velvet sky of the dark. You were the strings of a musical instrument and he the composer, your body arched in perfect sync with the rising tempo. When your climax comes, it is a full crescendo–raw, electric, soul-deep–the kind of moment where the world falls away and only the music remains, echoing in your bones long after the final note fades. You don’t just feel pleasure–you become the song, and in that instant, you and he are infinite.

Your voluminous, glorious orgasm sends him into his, and he fucking bursts, shooting his molten seed inside you with a reverberating rumble of groan that sets your blood afire.

“That’s right, pretty girl,” he encourages, “You’re so gorgeous when you lose yourself on top of me, my love. Keep going. I won’t let a single bit of me out of you.”

You do as he says, even your labored breaths clinging to each other as he ruts his hips into yours, helping you to ride out your orgasm until your walls have stopped fluttering around him in a euphoric ballad while his mouth secures itself to yours, mingling his saliva and breath with yours in a messy string of kisses that don’t cease until his fingers find the backs of your thighs so he can languidly summon his Evol into the ether just to hold you nearer against his chest.

Still he fills you, each white spurt lovingly caressing parts of you that you didn’t even know you had.

So stuffed full of his cum, a sliver of it slips down your thigh, but several streaks of his power push it back up inside your cunt, keeping it all there while you try to hold the rest of his release within you.

Your limbs tremble from the intenseness of your illicit activities, but it is a pleasing kind of numbness that is left in his wake while your hands dangle from the back of his neck, fresh red lines made from your nails now adorning him there that he wears proudly.

He waits until you’ve caught your breath until he asks, “Are you okay, pip-squeak? Was I too much?”

You smile at him, a different kind of feeling flittering through your chest when his eyes light up at you while you say, “There’s no such thing as ‘too much’ with you. I loved it…and you.” You attempt to card your quivering, jellified fingers through his tousled, mussed hair and he preens at the action.

He croons, his own smile reaching his eyes when he rubs his nose against yours, “That’s what I like to hear. I love you, too, you know.” He gives a soothing squeeze to your strained and still quaking muscles along your thighs, “ Do you need me to give you a massage? You may not be able to use your legs for a little while, pip-squeak.”

Your cheeks burn at that last part, the inclination to hide your face in his neck where he’s shining with the sheen of sweat awfully provocative right now. “That does sound appealing, but you have not properly eaten yet. You need to.”

He arches a brow, and incredulous, he retorts, “What are you talking about? I just did. And it was delicious.”

Impulsiveness wins over your still recovering rationale, and you claim his Adam’s apple between your teeth while you challenge, “That’s not a real meal, mister. I’m not going to let you starve because of me. I love you too much for that. You can make us both something and we can eat together. I’ll tell you about the dreams I had of you while you were gone. How does that sound?”

That piques his interest, and then he’s heading toward your bedroom with you tucked safely in his arms while he offers, “Sounds good to me. But I think a shower is in order after that. I need to clean you up.”

He watches your irises dip down where you’re both still connected, chuckling to himself when you give an inquisitive look. “And you plan to keep that inside me while you do?”

“Oh, pip-squeak,” he muses, “There are many ways to make sure it stays where it belongs. And if you lose any of it,” He takes the bottom of your earlobe between his teeth, “I’ll just make sure you give you some more.”

Familiar heat stirs between your legs, and you playfully nip over the notch of his Adam's apple while you say, “You’re insatiable.”

“Only for you, my love,” He passionately professes through a pleased grunt, “So, what do you want me to make for us?”

“Anything as long as it is made by you. You can choose for me. You know what I like better than I do.” Your answer honestly as your lids grow heavy, and when you lay your head against his chest, you can hear how his heart is tuned to the same beat of yours. “My only request is something with apples in it. They remind me of you.”

“And what is it about them that reminds you of me?” His tone is the timbre of music in its peaked curiosity, the plop of his feet against the floor a soft backdrop against it as he peers amorously down at you.

Crisp where he needed to be, soft where he allowed, with a tartness that showed when life bit too hard. The scientists and commanders of Ever thought they knew him after one passing, scrutinizing glare, but they missed the way he carried seasons in his soul– the sunlight, the storms, the long patient ripening. And like an apple, he held your truth at the core– not always easy to reach, but real, and worth it.

You confess the musings you’d long harvested in your heart, they flow easily when he looks at you like you’re his entire universe. Each word nurtures in him a happiness that beams from those brilliant eyes of dawn and sunset that are merged together in them, and he effuses that comfortable warmth through your every bone, cell, and atom, your body fusing itself to his in a manner of seeking that went far beyond the flesh and mortal coil.

Hours pass and he never drifts from you, unable to leave his moon and stars. Time is but a poor construct in his presence, because he instills and imparts in you the rich, vibrant wonders of life that manifest down to his every breath.

When your bellies have been sated and he’s carefully washed you of the sweat, spit, and slick you’d unconditionally made for each other, he takes you to bed. There, his fingers–magnetized to you–lulling each tensed, overused muscle of yours into relaxedness from where he’d lain you atop of him before tracing the outline of your every curve while whispering sweet nothings into your ear where it had been nestled into the crook of his neck.

You’d given in easily into the tantalizing tug of sleep, for he’d enticed all of your energy and ability to move properly, the devout worship of his digits–both of metal and of flesh–too divine not to surrender to.

When your even, measured breaths brush at his throat and your eyes have fallen closed, that’s when he presents his mouth against your temple, surreptitiously delivering a vow of his fealty, loyalty, and faith while you sleep peacefully–blissfully– in his arms.

“Rest well, my one and only. I promise to you that in life and in death, we will never be apart.”

Your peaceful expression lures him into his dreams, wanting to be with you there, too.

The black void of space soon swarms him, his body robbed of its weight as he falls toward a scorched, scarred planet iriscable in the flame of its doomed fate. He’s been torn away from you again, and when he attempts to move, to try to find you, his appendages each fail him, each bereft and depleted of strength.

Dismembered drones, Wanderers, and synthetic droids plummet past pieces of what once were cruisers, the lone, untouched ship of steel above him an abandoned refuge to the holder of his heart who dives toward him unflinchingly and determinedly as you cry out his name.

Your kindling touch, when you furl your arms around his neck, restarts his every nerve and it’s all he can do to warn you of the imminence of his decay, your consuming connection corrupted by the same source that made you for each other of which he’d been trying to protect you from.

There’s nothing but conviction in the pools of your eyes when you confess that this–being with him– is where you want to be. That the world being wrought in disastrous destruction is not scary, but losing him–going on to exist in a place where he is not– that is a nightmare you could never bear.

There, in the pit of space, he makes his final promise to you, sealing it with a deep and devouring kiss that even the sun and moon commit to memory in the passionate profession of your love to the galaxy beyond. Then, the powerful intensity that your souls burn with for each other finally, fatally combusts into an inferno of light and matter.

Like two stars that can’t be contained in their destiny to be together, the spark of your connection explodes, and then, he knows only you as the brilliant phosphorescence your union creates swirls and whirls around you, a supernova of destructive proportion coupling you with him forever that is felt through the far reaches of space.

Subconsciously, he ensconces you in his arms just a little tighter from where you both lie with each other in your bed, your name spoken as a servant addresses their goddess.

And unknowing yet just as perceptive to him, you press yourself against him just a little more insistently, his name a pleading prayer as it flits past your lips while you slumber on in the solace only he could ever bring.

#lads caleb #love and deepspace caleb #caleb #lnds caleb #caleb x reader #caleb x you #caleb x fem reader #caleb smut #lnds #caleb angst #caleb fluff #lads smut #lads fanfic #lads fluff #lads angst #caleb myth #love and deepspace

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sleeprecoverytech · 1 month ago

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The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Best Smart Thermostat for Optimal Sleep

Smart thermostats play a crucial role in optimizing sleep quality by regulating bedroom temperature. By choosing the right smart thermostat, you can create a more comfortable sleep environment tailored to your preferences. When selecting a smart thermostat for sleep improvement, consider key factors such as temperature control features, energy efficiency, and compatibility with home automation…

#bedroom environment #best smart thermostats #energy efficiency #home automation #sleep aids #sleep quality #sleep technology #smart devices #smart home technology #temperature control

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nanamiskentos · 8 months ago

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regular/modern!human x true form sukuna boyfriend headcanons for fun <3 mainly for my pookie @kasukuna bc that's who i think of when i think of bf!sukuna

sees that men get their lovers cute things like flowers and chocolate and thinks its overrated. sukuna realises he needs to up his game with a romantic gesture, and thinks its cool to carve your name into a tree with his claws. you catch him picking bark from out under his dark nails.

saw that you made smoothies in the morning with breakfast and waited till you left the house to try it for himself (he always said he didn't care for them but he just doesn't want to admit). sukuna threw together a ripe banana, a loaf of bread and a whole METAL can of tuna and turned the blender on. you came home to a broken, smoking blender and a gross, banana-covered king of curses who acted like this was your fault.

no table manners, sorry. you think that the happiest you've ever seen sukuna is when you're back with the groceries and there's a raw leg of lamb wrapped up in butcher's paper. delights in the idea of a rare cooked steak, but prefers to eat them bloody.

if you study (say you're in college or university) he claims he doesn't give a flying fuck about what you learn, and doesn't understand the concept of degrees. he wonders why people just aren't allowed to practice their trade, and why they need a piece of paper first. but when you're not around, he reads through your textbooks and quotes them to you afterwards. but sukuna pretends he just already knew all that shit anyway.

absolutely no patience in the morning for lazying around. you figure a big, massive being like himself can sleep through sunrise. but he's got unblinking, freaky eyes and when you crack open your eyelids in the morning, he's already looking down at you, demanding that you get up and not waste your day. at first, you worry that he just doesn't even sleep. you need not worry about that, he can knock himself flat out like an elephant that bathed in nyquil.

you asked him to help with dinner one day. kind of annoying how sukuna's very good at malicious noncompliance. you know that he is an expert in all things sharp and weapon-like, and a kitchen knife is no exception. and yet, he decides to use his long claws to cut the parsnip, slicing through them very slowly in a way that drags and creaks agains the chopping board.

sukuna rages over mario kart and rainbow. has grown oddly obsessed with the leaderboard and claims that he will vanquish the player titled 'sixeyes1989' that keeps calling him rude names online.

thinks siri is mocking him and sulks the entire day at this automated voice that seems to not understand what hes saying. you ask sukuna to gently release the grip he has on your phone before he shatters it. again.

you mentioned something about how sweet it is that your friend's boyfriend leaves her little cute notes with love affirmations on it. the next day, you find sweeping yet scrawled foreign symbols on peeled sticky notes. turns out that his version of cute love notes are ominous, medieval runes that are protection spells against curses.

does NOT play fair in games night. sukuna burned all the monopoly money when you charged him rent for mayfair. invents random words and claim they're from his era in scrabble, and he insists they count. almost set something on fire during go fish and ate the cards. has sat on a chessboard just so you wouldn't win.

#this is kind of piling on the ask reddit 'help i summoned the king of curses!' au <3 #ryomen sukuna #sukuna x reader #sukuna fluff #ryomen sukuna x reader #jjk x reader #jjk fluff #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen fluff #jjk headcanons #sukuna #sukuna x y/n #sukuna x you #jjk x y/n #jjk x you #works #daphworks

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yandere-daydreams · 4 months ago

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Legit ended up having a dream about a robot apocalypse and robots just taking whatever human they saw nearby as pets. Like you're chosen and that was final, don't even have to know each other beforehand. It went on to show one robot that carried their human's remains after they passed. Literally just chained feet. Absolute dedication. Anyways my ass got got last second. Woke up and thought of you.

tw - mentions of death, kidnapping, forced dependence.

hmmm while i cannot speak on the ethics of robots reinventing taxidermy just to preserve and continue to maintain their former human pets (which, in the worst possible world, they'd keep in a very large, very well-adorned room for you to inevitably stumble upon), this did get me thinking about how post-apocalypse robots would acquire their humans in the first place,,, there is much to discuss ofc ofc.

the low population and unpredictable temperaments of human would take things like traditional adoption centers off the table, but i do think there'd be programs in place to get particularly docile captured humans to bots who'd malfunction without something to take care of - the automated homes and child-rearing droids, machines who wouldn't have a purpose without something delicate and mortal to keep alive. that doesn't mean they don't have preferences, though. your new caretaker is more than happy to tell you all about the other humans that have been sent to them, the ones who proved too cold or too hostile or too ungrateful to be kept around for very long. but, you're different. even if you've only just met, they're sure you're different. such a soft little thing - they know you wouldn't be able to survive on your own, and they know that once you've settled into your new life, you'll stop trying to. they'll even give you a little longer than they gave the others - a few weeks, rather than a few minutes; a handful of warnings, rather than an immediate and humane dose of some lethal compound injected directly into your carotid artery. they've already got your new wardrobe picked out and oh, humans need to sleep, don't they? they'll start working out your schedule right away. so long as you're good for them, they'll be able to take care of you for the rest of time, or at least for as long as your constantly deteriorating body will allow.

so long as you're good for them, you won't have to end up like the others.

#personal #anon ask #yandere robot #yandere

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trriviall · 27 days ago

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OFFLINE: CHAPTER 3

Summary: a 2000's pazzi au where azzi just won a championship and paige is a ceo of a nonprofit and runs downtown LA nightlife

warnings: drinking

wk: 4.6 k

Paige and Azzi had both been up for nearly three days straight. Both for very different reasons, however.

Kelsey had decided to spoil her teammates with a trip to the Bahamas, one last celebratory activity before the team went their separate ways for the offseason. The team had been running on straight adrenaline, alcohol, power naps, and excitement to keep them upright ever since their plane touched down on the island. Azzi was sure she had consumed more fruity cocktails and flavorful spritzers during the past three days than she had in her entire life.

The trip was only five days, and the entirety of the team finally crashed after day three. They spent the majority of day four catching up on much needed sleep, some players sleeping for almost eighteen hours. But by the time the sun rose on day five, the Sparks were back in town, hopping from beach bar to beach bar. Slides and strappy sandals confidently hit the pavement as they moved through the city. But by the time the trip was over, those same slides and sandals dragged along the tarmac accompanying sluggish movements.

Paige had been up for a very different reason.

She was on a mission to acquire Azzi’s phone number. When Paige sat down Wednesday night with a phone book in one hand and 5 Nights investigator on the line in the other, she figured it would take her a few hours to get Azzi’s number.

Not a few days.

After hour four, Paige caved and decided to call Cam and ask for her number. Paige spent the next two hours trying to get a hold of Cam, the line ringing but the blonde never picking up. After hour six, Paige almost decided to go to bed and pick back up tomorrow. But it was only midnight. When the sun rose at six am and Nika called Paige wondering where she was, Paige lied and said she was sick.

To be fair, Paige was sick. Sick because she couldn’t find Azzi’s number.

By hour fifteen, Paige had decided to call KK and get Azzi’s number from the younger girl. But alas, that phone call consisted of KK’s endless teasing and poking fun at the blonde. Paige listened to it for almost two hours before she hung up, numberless. By hour twenty, Paige’s coffee machine was starting to hate her. So much that it almost broke, taking the coffee grounds but not brewing a pot of coffee.

By the end of day three, Nika came knocking on her door. Nika had figured out that Paige was in fact not sick when the 5 Nights manager, Ice, needed an investigator for. Nika swore her head almost flew off of her body.

“Here,” Nika said, slapping a stick note onto Paige’s desk. “Call her. After that, take a shower and a nap. Meeting tomorrow at nine.”

Without another word, Nika left both Paige’s home office and her apartment, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor as she walked away. Paige looked at Nika’s retreating figure in offense, part of her resenting Nika for being able to obtain Azzi’s number. Paige reached for the paper and unfolded it with shaky hands. Paige let out a sigh of relief upon seeing the digits scrawled under Nika’s cursive handwriting. Paige pulled out her phone and dialed the number, bringing her phone up to her ear. Her heart was beating so loud she swore she could hear it.

When an automated dial tone was heard, Paige let out a groan of frustration. This was not Azzi’s number. Paige didn’t know if she wanted to laugh, cry, or scream. Damn Nika for giving her a false sense of hope.

Despite the disappointment, it was exactly what Paige needed to snap out of her self-induced zombie-like state. Paige stood up from her office chair, all 206 of her bones aching in protest, her knees screaming. Paige stumbled to her room and into the bathroom, where she washed her hair and body under a scalding hot stream of water. Paige's skin was screaming red, her cheeks flushed, but she felt cleaner than she had in days. Throwing on an old t-shirt and a pair of boxers, Paige climbed into bed, making sure her alarm was set.

Paige had decided to forgo looking for Azzi’s number, chalking it up to the fact that she wasn’t meant to find it. She believed, however, that she would run into Azzi again and work up the courage to ask Azzi for her number. Hopefully.

That didn’t stop her from being mad at Nika.

“A fake number? Really Niks?” Paige said a few days later while aggressively drying a wine glass behind the bar at 5 Nights.

“It wasn’t fake!” Nika said, aggressively washing a wine glass out before handing it to Paige. “KK gave me Azzi’s number. Maybe you typed it wrong. One too many clicks.” Nika shrugged. Paige scoffed, turning around to place the glass on a shelf before taking the next glass from Nika.

“I know how to type in a damn phone number,” Paige mumbled. “Maybe you wrote it down wrong.”

“Nope,” Nika said confidently, shaking her head. “KK wrote the number, I just wrote Azzi’s name. So if anything, you should be mad at KK.”

“Oh, so we’re just going to blame it on someone who isn’t here to defend themselves?” Paige said, kissing her teeth and shaking her head. Nika groaned, choosing to pick up another glass to wash instead of arguing with the blonde.

The truth was, no one had gotten it wrong. KK wrote down the right number and Paige typed it in correctly. The number just wasn’t Azzi’s updated number. After a particularly long night out, Azzi lost her phone. After circling back to the bar she lost it at, with Cam by her side, someone had turned it in. But just Azzi’s luck, it had been stepped on. Many times.

So Azzi decided to forgo a phone for the rest of the trip. Hence why Paige got an automated voicemail. The phone number wasn’t Azzi’s anymore.

Sitting next to Cam on the plane as it lands in LA, Azzi is oblivious to the blonde’s slack jaw next to her. Cam, like the rest of the team, is just now looking at her phone. Which means she is just now seeing the hundreds of missed calls from Paige. Cam almost thinks something is seriously wrong, that someone died, until she sees Paige’s texts coming in from all different times of night.

paigey

answer ur phone

hello???

bro pick up

i need u 2 give me azzi numba

plz?

alr cam

Cam had to hold back a laugh, not wanting to alert the curly haired girl next to her. Instead, Cam decided to nudge Azzi with her foot across the aisle of the plane. Azzi turned her head, looking up from the book she was reading. Azzi raised her brow, waiting for Cam to talk.

“When are you getting another phone?” Azzi furrowed her eyebrows, before shrugging her shoulders.

“Whenever I have time when we touch down. Why?” Now it was Cam’s turn to shrug her shoulders.

“No reason.” Azzi stared at Cam with squinted eyes for a few seconds, before she let out a hum, then went back to reading her book. Cam sighed to herself, thinking of something she could do to push Azzi’s agenda further along. Cam went back to her phone, seeing a text from her manager reminded her of this weekend's schedule. Cam smiled to herself when she saw she had a dinner with Paige scheduled. It was a monthly thing they did. Paige would come over to Cam’s apartment, and they would spend time together. If Ben was in town, he would hang out with them too. They normally cooked together, and Paige would stop at the store to get dessert.

“Hey,” Cam said, nudging Azzi again. Azzi sighed through her nose, before she pulled her attention away from her book again. When Azzi made eye contact with Cam, the blonde smiled. “Wanna come over for dinner this weekend?”

To Cam’s surprise, Azzi quickly agreed. “Yeah. Just let me know the details.”

“Sunday night at six. Be there or be square.” Cam’s words made Azzi laugh to herself, shaking her head at the blonde's antics. Cam smiled to herself, going back to her phone. Cam texted Paige, not bothering to reply to her previous texts. All she did was inform her sister that there would be an extra guest joining them for dinner this weekend, “forgetting” to mention who.

+++

Paige wasn’t a yearner.

She didn’t yearn for anyone or anything.

When Paige’s mom left and moved to Montana, she didn’t yearn for her parents to be together again. When her dad would miss away games she didn’t yearn to see him in the stands. When Paige went to college, she didn’t yearn to be back at home in her childhood bedroom. There wasn’t much Paige yearned for.

There were a lot of things Paige wanted. She wanted her parents to not be so focused on her love life. For 5 Nights to bring in a large profit every night. To be able to play basketball again. For her dog to not throw up on her expensive rug.

Standing in front of the baked goods section, trying to pick something out for her dinner with Cam, Paige wanted to be in her bed. She had no desire to show up at Cam’s and entertain her sister’s everlasting social battery, knowing her own could very much die quickly. Nonetheless, Paige grabbed a case of cheese danishes and went to check out, sighing to herself in preparation for the walk to Cam’s.

Cam actually lived in the apartment building across the street from Paige’s. It was funny, really, how the two blondes lived so close together and had such a close relationship, without seeing each other all that much. Especially in the summer, since Cam was in season and it was one of the busiest seasons for clubs and bars in LA, 5 Nights included.

When Paige passed her apartment building, the feeling of want came back. Paige wanted to be in bed, cuddled up with her dog, Kyrie, and have Azzi’s number saved in her phone.

But Paige has learned, she doesn’t always get what she wants.

Paige let out a deep breath before she knocked on Cam’s door. It was quiet after Paige’s knuckles hit the painted wood, before a voice shouted from the inside that the door was open. Bracing herself for the chaos that normally accompanied Cam, Paige pushed the door open.

Paige furrowed her brows when she didn't hear any clattering or conversation, something she normally heard every time she stepped foot into Cam’s. Paige toes off her shoes, pushing the sleeves of her hoodie up her forearms. Paige made a detour to the kitchen, placing the bag from the store onto the counter. From the floorplan of Cam’s apartment, Paige couldn’t see the living room from the kitchen.

Which is why Paige froze when she entered the living room, her jaw going slack and eyes going wide.

There, seated on the couch next to Cam, sipping red wine from a glass, was Azzi.

Cam glanced at Paige when she saw her from the corner of her eye, just standing in place, and smiled at her sister. “Hey Paige!” Cam said, her grin widening. Azzi, whose back was towards the blonde, twisted her torso around so her upper body was leaning on the back of the couch. Paige could have sworn her soul left her body with the way Azzi was looking at her.

Azzi sent Paige a soft smile, her bunny teeth slightly poking her bottom lip. She was in much more comfortable clothes than the previous times Paige had seen her, and Paige decided right there that this was her favorite version of Azzi. Her face was bare and her curls were piled atop her head, a few curls framing her face and making her look ethereal. She was wearing pink Juicy Couture pants with an oversized Sparks t-shirt, somehow pulling off the mismatched look perfectly. Paige felt very underdressed in her plain gray hoodie and sweatshorts.

“Hey,” Azzi said, her voice smooth and soft like butter, making Paige melt. “I didn’t know you would be here.”

“Yeah…” Paige mumbled, her feet still glued to the floor. “Cam didn’t tell me you would be here.”

“Surprise!” Cam said, standing from the couch and grabbing her wine glass from the table. “Come on, we;re making pizza. Paige, you have catching up to do.” Cam shook her wine glass in her hand, stalking off to the kitchen. Azzi looked at Paige, who was still frozen, and smiled before getting up herself.

As Azzi passed Paige, Paige caught a whiff of Azzi again. It was the same scent she smelled in the club, a mix of fresh fruit, vanilla, and something so painfully Azzi. Only this time, it felt warmer. Most likely due to the fact that they were at Cam’s apartment, somewhere comfortable, and not out and about. Still, it drew Paige in.

After a few seconds of Paige standing dumbly by herself, she turned around and followed the girls into the kitchen.

Cam had already laid out three balls of dough, the kitchen island coated in a thick layer of flour. Azzi was leaning against the counter, casually sipping from her glass. Cam was pulling items out of the fridge, the oven already pre-heating. Cam shut the fridge and turned to Azzi and Paige with a grin.

“Okay, I’ve got everything we need to make our pizzas. Let me just use the bathroom first.” Azzi nodded at Cam’s words, not having any intentions to move from her place against the counter. Paige was only able to handle the silence for so long before she became too antsy, and needed to break it. Azzi, noticing the slight fidgeting from Paige, saw the blonde’s gears turning, finding things she could say. After a few more moments of silence, Azzi decided to make it easy for the blonde.

“What are you going to put on your pizza?” Paige froze for a second, before her shoulders relaxed. Paige carded her fingers through her hair before she answered.

“Probably basic toppings. Pepperoni and olives. Nothing too fancy.” Azzi nodded, setting her glass down on the counter next to her. Paige watched her every move silently fawning over the veins in Azzi’s hands or the way her lips moved as she looked around. “What about you?”

“I’m going to put spinach on mine.” Paige made a face of disgust, which caused Azzu to softly laugh. “Not a fan of spinach?”

“Of anything green,” Paige grumbled. “Spinach on pizza?” Azzi shrugged, a relaxed smile on her face.

“Don’t knock it till you try it. You really don’t like veggies?” Azzi asked.

“I like…carrots. And like cucumbers.”

“Cucumbers are a fruit.” At Paige’s silence, Azzi let out another soft laugh. Despite Paige’s mild embarrassment, she couldn’t hold back a smile upon hearing Azzi’s giggles. Azzi couldn’t help the layer of satisfaction that settled deep in her gut upon seeing Paige’s gummy smile and her rosy cheeks. Something she did.

“They’re green. It counts.” Azzi nodded her head, Paige making a point.

Cam walked back in a few seconds later, rolling up her sleeves and already talking about her pizza was going to look the best. Paige scoffed, rolling her eyes and already back talking. Azzi claimed her dough ball while the sisters bickered, already getting a head start.

When it finally registered to the blondes that Azzi was already rolling out her dough, they turned to another another and promptly blamed it on the other being “distracing”. Azzi laughed out loud when Paige shoved Cam’s shoulder in order to reach the island first to claim her dough, selecting the dough ball right next to Azzi’s.

The three girls took their time making their pizza’s, all of them in a silent competition with one another. Well, mainly Paige thought so. Azzi was never in the competition, and Cam gave up halfway through when she realized she doesn’t care how her pizza looks, just that it tastes good. When all the girls were done with their pizza’s, they played tetris in order to make all three of them fit into the oven at the same time. After a few minutes, Cam shut the oven door, turning to the other two girls with a smile.

“In fifteen minutes, we will have three gorgeous pizza’s!”

Cam opened another bottle of wine, refilling the three glasses against Paige’s words. “Cam, I have to walk home.” Paige groaned out. Cam just shrugged, claiming Paige needed to enjoy the moment.

Despite her protests, and eye rolls, Paige happily sipped on her glass of wine while they waited for their pizzas to be done. Cam and Azzi sat on the barstools at the island, while Paige stood with her back to the counter. She had her arms crossed, which allowed her hoodie to rise up, and reveal a sliver of her stomach to Azzi. Azzi had to avert her eyes several times throughout the conversation, though her eyes kept traveling back to the pale skin.

When Cam’s looney tunes kitchen timer went off, Paige eagerly stood up and opened the oven, revealing the pizzas to the other girls. They were baked to perfection, the crust golden brown and the cheese perfectly melted. Paige rubbed her hands together in anticipation, but stepped to the side and allowed Cam to pull them out of the oven.

“Wait, I want to take a picture first!” Paige groaned at her sister's words, rolling her eyes. Cam left the kitchen for a moment, Paige and Azzi sharing a quick look and a smile. When Cam came back, she held her camera above the pizzas, waiting for the flash to go off before she set it down on the counter.

“Can we eat now?” Paige asked, already grabbing a plate. Cam rolled her eyes, but grabbed a plate for both her and Azzi.

“Yes Paige, we can eat.”

Paige dug in, piling her plate high. Despite her having no desire to be here earlier, the presence of both Azzi and her delicious pizza managed to change Paige’s mind. Once everyone had their plates ready and a full glass of wine, Cam guided all three girls back over to the living room. Cam turned on the TV, a rerun of last season’s Big Brother playing in the background while they talked.

It was mostly Cam talking and Paige annoying her, Azzi content to watch the sisters interact with each other. At one point, Cam was telling a story that made Paige laugh so hard she almost choked on her pizza. Her face turned bright red and her eyes started to water. Despite this, Azzi enjoyed watching Paige react to Cam’s words. Every brow twitch, laugh, and smile made Azzi’s heart warm. Paige’s simple beauty needed to be studied, truly.

By the time everyone was ready to wrap it up, two more bottles of wine had been emptied and all the pizza had been eaten. Azzi and Paige helped Cam wash dishes and clean the kitchen, putting away any unused pizza toppings. Cam thanked both the girls for coming over at the door.

“I had fun. We should do this again,” Cam said, wrapping Paige in a bone crushing hug. “Don’t be a grump.”

“Me?” Paige teasingly asked as she pulled away. Paige shook her head and scoffed. “Never.” Cam rolled her eyes, ignoring Paige’s words, and turned to Azzi to give her a hug.

“You guys be safe, okay?” Cam said. Azzi and Paige nodded, sliding their shoes on and stepping out the door. Cam waved to them before shutting the door.

In the quiet of the hallway under the bright lights, Azzi noticed Paige was definitely more of a lightweight than she let on. Her cheeks were flushed bright pink, her body was loose, and she had a carefree smile resting on her face. Paige started to walk with Azzi, but stopped in confusion when the basketball player stopped at the next door.

Paige looked from the door to Azzi in confusion. “Is this yours?” Azzi nodded, biting her lip to hold back a smile. Paig let out a soft breath, almost like she was realizing something for the first time.

“Did you walk here?” Azzi asked, even though she remembered Paige saying she would have to walk back. Paige nodded, her blonde hair framing her flushed cheeks. Azzi pursed her lips as she took in Paige’s state. Azzi placed her hand on the door handle and cocked her head inside. “Stay the night. You shouldn’t walk home alone.”

Paige scoffed, crossing her arms. “Why not? I’m a big girl.”

Azzi pursed her lips again, her eyes narrowing. Paige was going to try to fight her on this. When Azzi remained silent, Paige began to squirm. “My building is across the street. One block.” She grumbled.

“Why did you say you could walk home alone?” Azzi asked, her voice flat.

“Uh…” Paige said, seeming to forget everything under Azzi’s intense gaze. “I’m a big girl?” Azzi kissed her teeth and nodded her head, opening her apartment door and standing to the side to allow Paige inside.

“Exactly. You’re still a girl. I’m not letting you walk home alone at night in LA, half drunk.”

“M’not drunk,” Paige grumbled. Despite this, she dropped her hands to her sides and walked in the apartment door. Out of Paige’s sight, Azzi smirked. Something about the way Paige so easily gave into Azzi’s demands satisfied something deep in her gut. She had watched Paige be stubborn all night and argue with Cam about anything she could. But the way she so easily gave in to Azzi was everything Azzi could have asked for.

Azzi stepped inside behind Paige, turning on the foyer lights and kicking off her shoes. Paige was standing just inside the door, looking much like a lost toddler. Azzi smirked at her, and gestured with her head for Paige to follow her.

Paige followed Azzi down a hallway, away from the living space. Azzi stopped at the second door, shoving it open with her foot. “Here,” Azzi said. “Bathroom.”

Paige nodded, gnawing on her bottom lip with her teeth. Azzi briefly let her gaze fall to Paige’s now red and irritated lip, before she glanced away and went further down the hallway. The next door Azzi also shoved open with her foot. “This is the guest room. Extra pillows and blankets are in the closet. My room is right across the hallway. Do you need pj’s?”

“Uhm,” Paige glanced at her clothes before slowly nodding. “Yes please.” Azzi stared at her for a second, her brown eyes boring into Paige’s blue ones, before she nodded and slipped into her room. A few seconds later, she re-emerged with folded clothes in her hands.

“Here,” Azzi said, placing the clothes in Paige's arms. Paige had to physically restrain herself from reacting to the feeling of Azzi’s skin on hers. “Goodnight Paige.” Azzi said softly. Paige froze for a minute, her brain forgetting to reply.

“Goodnight Azzi.”

Azzi smiled at Paige, before she slipped back into her room, leaving the door cracked open.

When Paige came to the next morning, it was of her own accord instead of her normal blaring alarm. Paige momentarily forgot where she was, which set off alarm bells, but relaxed back into the covers when images of last night came flooding back to her. Part of Paige was a little sad that she didn’t have either of her dogs nosing at her face when she hit snooze on her alarm.

At that thought, Paige sat up quickly. Her two dogs had been left alone all night, when she promised them she would be back before she left. Gosh, she was a horrible mom. She would have to take down the plastic trophy Cam got her last christmas that said “World’s best dog mom”.

With a huff and begrudden urgency, Paige tossed the covers off her legs and sat up, running her hands through her hair before standing up. Paige made sure to grab her hoodie and toss it on over the pj’s Azzi had lended her last night, before grabbing her phone and wallet off of the floor. Paige decided she did not have time to put her own clothes back on, so she carried her sweats and t-shirt in her hand instead of throwing them on.

Exiting the room, Paige had to tug down the shorts she was wearing. The Soffee Short’s Azzi had lended her were a bit…shorter than Paige was used to. But Azzi was kind enough to let her stay and lend her clothes, so Paige didn’t complain.

Paige was momentarily confused when she heard the click of nails on the hardwood. Paige froze in front of the shut door, before a small face peered at her. A small brown dog with spots was standing just around the corner, looking at Paige with a quiet curiosity. Paige smiled to herself, before she quickly realised what she was leaving for.

“Sorry,” Paige murmured to the dog, stopping to scratch his head. “Momma’s on a mission.”

Paige rounded the corner into the living space, freezing when she caught Azzi’s eye. The curly haired girl was sitting on the couch, the TV playing the news while she sipped from a coffee mug. Her slippered feet were kicked up on the coffee table, and she watched Paige with one brow raised.

“Morning.” Azzi said.

“Uhm…Morning,” Paige swallowed. “What time is it?” Azzi took in Paige’s disheveled appearance, hiding her smirk behind her mug.

“Just after nine. Why? Got plans?” Paige flushed, and she tucked wild strands of hair behind her ear.

“Nope. Just realized I left my dogs alone overnight.” Azzi’s amused smile turned soft at Paige’s words, her eyes softening.

“I see,” Azzi hummed. “Well, the door’s open. Just shut it behind you so Stewie doesn’t get out.”

“Your dog's name is Stewie?” Paige asked. Azzi lowered her mug and let her smile show.

“What about yours?”

“I have two. Moore and Copper,” Paige paused, and Azzi could see the hesitancy in her body. “Can I…have your number?” Azzi paused for a moment, making Paige’s nerves skyrocket. Paige allowed herself to let out a breath when Azzi’s neutral face slowly curved into a smile.

“I thought you’d never ask.” Azzi set her mug on the coffee table and stood up, grabbing a stack of sticky notes and a pen from the side table. Azzi wrote her number down on the pink sticky note, before folding it in half and walking it to the blonde. Paige flushed, but grabbed the folded piece of paper and held onto it tight.

“Thanks,” Paige said, practically a whisper. “I’ll uhm…I’ll call you?” Azzi smiled again, her bunny teeth probing her bottom lip, making Paige practically melt.

“I’ll be waiting.”

Paige blushed again and sent Azzi a shy smile before she turned and walked to the door. She slid her shoes on and sent Azzi a shy wave before opening the door. Azzi sent Paige a grin but couldn’t help herself when Paige turned around. Maybe Azzi gave Paige a pair of Soffee shorts on purpose, waiting for the moment Azzi would have to watch her leave and get to see Paige’s cute ass in the short shorts.

Azzi was no better than a man.

#azzi fudd #paige bueckers #paige bueckers fic #paige x azzi #pazzi #pazzi fics #uconn wbb

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flemingsfreckles · 11 months ago

Text

Drunk Dial

Synopsis: After a rough night out, you accidentally call your ex-girlfriend to come pick you up, causing unresolved feelings and confessions to be made.

Warning: mentions of alcohol consumption, drunkenness, mention of nonsexual nudity, language, unwanted sexual attention from men

WC: 3.7k

A/N: this was supposed to be like a 1k little fic and then it became this, I’m debating a part 2 if people are interested as well

You try and catch your breath as you pull out your phone, hand shaking as you click though your contacts. Your best friend was out of town, she’d be no help. You debate a few other names, some had kids, you couldn’t wake them at this hour, some you didn’t feel comfortable asking. Until your eyes fell on her name.

You shouldn’t call her. You were supposed to be no contact. But maybe she’d answer. She was in town, as far as you knew, she didn’t have kids, she was a safe person for you. You still shouldn’t call her. Despite knowing you shouldn’t click her name, you do anyway. Letting it ring and ring. As it rings, you receive a text.

Jessie: butt dial?

You respond embarrassingly fast. The ringing stops, you hear the automated voice begin to talk about a voicemail. You end the call and text her back.

You: No

Jessie matches your embarrassing response time, but instead of responding with a text, she calls you back.

“Hello?” She says. As she picks up the phone she’s able to make out the loud music muffled by the sound of the building and the noise of the occasional car on the street.

Your stomach sinks hearing her voice. You had gotten so used to hearing that soft, sweet, voice everyday until you didn’t. Until you went weeks without hearing it. You clear your throat trying to clear your mind. “I’m sorry, I didn’t have anyone else to call.” Your voice breaks slightly.

“What?” You can hear the sleep in her voice. That was the voice that you used to hear in the mornings after your spend the night, the voice you heard after she’d fall asleep cuddled into your side watching a movie. You hear her clear her throat. “What’s going on?”

“Oh my god you’re sleeping, I’m so sorry. I’ll call someone else.” You quickly pull the phone from your ear, you can hear Jessie talking but it’s too late as you hit the button ending the call. Less than a second later Jessie is calling you again.

You stare at her picture looking back at you. It was one you had taken of her on your one year anniversary date. You had taken her for a hike, packing a picnic for the two of you to enjoy with a beautiful view of a waterfall. The photo is her, black baseball cap sitting on top of her curls, smiling at you as she holds out a flower to you. You let it ring, and ring. Until her face disappears.

Jessie: Answer the phone.

Jessie: I’m not kidding.

Her face appears again, you sigh. You didn’t have much of a choice, she was still someone you trusted, you were too far from home to walk, not to mention it was 2am. you slide your thumb slowly across the screen, answering the call.

“Um.”

“Where are you?” Her sleepy voice is gone, instead it’s been replaced with one of concern.

“Outside of Marathon.” It was a bar the two of you frequented while together, which probably didn’t help, memories flashing through your head at every turn when you were inside. The booth the two of you shared the first time you went there. The table you stood at watching as she played darts with another patron, coming back between throws to cuddle into your side. You saw the large table that had been filled with Jessie’s teammates the first time she brought you to meet them. The bathroom stall that the two of you had done some rather inappropriate things in, it was all here, leading you to ordering drink after drink, drowning out your sorrows and the memories.

“What are you doing at a bar at 2 in the morning?”

“I went out Jessie. Which was a mistake, I’m going home now.” You huff, you didn’t want to have to explain to her. You didn’t want to admit that you were trying to move on. You didn’t want to have to admit that you got stood up, that would be embarrassing. You didn’t want to have to explain to her how you spent most of the night trying to reject men who thought they had a chance, one of them not caring for your rejection at the bar, finding you later on the dance floor and grinding himself against your backside, causing you to bolt from the establishment.

You hear loud rustling on the other end of the line. “Okay, I’m going to come get you okay?” There’s more sounds, likely of Jessie moving around but you can’t tell. The sound of keys and a door closing.

“No, Jessie you don’t have to, I can get home.” You stand turning, looking down both directions of the street. You could walk either way. It was a city, it was set up in blocks. Over a few up a few, or up first then over, it didn’t matter.

“No. There’s a reason you called, do not start walking home.” Her voice is stern, you can picture her face, eyebrows scrunched, her lips pulled tight. “Seriously, stay where you’re at.” You hear the car start. “I’ll be there in a few minutes, do not move.”

You don’t respond, instead choosing to hang up. You know deep down that probably will send her into a slight panic, thinking you weren’t waiting outside the bar. Per Jessie’s request, you stay where you’re at, but you wander over to the curb, sitting down in a rather clumsy manner. You think back though your evening, your mess of an evening. A couple of tears begin to flow as you feel sorry for yourself. You drop your head into your hands, your elbows propped up on your knees. You sit like that until your thoughts are broken into by a voice.

You hear your name being called and look over to see Jessie walking quickly toward you. You quickly bring your hands up to your face trying to clear the tears that stained your cheeks.

“Hey.” Jessie bends down when she reaches you. “Are you hurt?” You shake your head to her. “What happened?”

“I was supposed to be meeting this girl that I was sort of chatting up.” You swallow down tears and your pride as you continue on. “She um, well she stood me up, she never showed, so I had a couple drinks, and then a couple more, and then there was this man who tried to get me to go home with him, and he came up behind me when I was at the bar and he um.” Your eyes flick to Jessie. She was watching you with such intensity you felt as if you were suddenly under a microscope, being picked apart.

“You can tell me.” Jessie lets a hand come rest on your bent knee, giving you a reassuring squeeze.

“He put himself against me and it just, I asked him to stop, he didn’t, so then I ran. And I didn’t have anyone else to call, I’m so sorry. I just want to go home.”

“Don’t be sorry, I’ll get you home, can you stand up?” You nod. Ignoring her outstretched hand you attempt to get up yourself. Once you’re nearly standing it’s as if someone has spun the globe, feeling suddenly off balance you stumble a few steps.

Jessie’s hands are immediately reaching to you, one on your waist, the other gripping your bicep as she stands you upright. “Woah. You’re clearly not okay.” You hear her mumble to herself. “Come on, I'm parked just around the corner.”

“Piggyback.” You say to her. You didn’t want to walk your feet feeling like they were made of lead. You wanted a ride, Jessie frequently would pick you up on her back, or carry you bridal style, or across her front, it always made you feel special. Made, you remind yourself, in the past, she didn’t do that for you anymore.

“No, just, here I’ll help you walk.” She loops her arm around your shoulders and tries to get you to step but you let your feet remain in place, heavy to the ground.

“Jessssie.” You know you sounded whiny, but you didn’t care, the drinks in your bloodstream telling you it was okay. “Please.” You give her a pleading look, one you knew she had a hard time refusing back when the two of you were together. So what if you were pulling on her heartstrings a little, she was the one who offered to come get you.

Jessie lets out a huff, realizing it’ll be easier to get you to the car carrying you, instead of fighting your drunkenness the whole way. “Fine, but no piggyback, that’s not safe with you like this.”

“Koala then.” Before she can say yes, you're lunging at Jessie, wrapping your arms around her neck and your legs around her midsection.

You feel one of Jessie’s hands come to rest high on your back before the other finds its way to your ass, just like how she would have carried you when you were together. Her hand is only there for a moment before she whispers a quick apology and moves to your lower back. “Sorry, habit.” As soon as she apologizes she starts walking.

You rest your head on her shoulder, watching as she keeps her gaze forward, aggressively avoiding looking over at you. You admire her, her face, her eyes, the way her soft curls bounced in front of your face with each step she took, the smell of her shampoo bringing back even more memories. With each step your body gently bounces with her. Before you know it she stops walking and she slowly releases the hold on your back.

She keeps one hand on your back to steady you, her other reaches for the car door, opening it before gently pushing you toward the seat. “Get in.”

You're clumsy climbing into her passenger seat. Jessie’s hand comes to rest on the top of your head making sure you don’t hit it as you step into the car. As soon as you’re seated you let your head flop back to the headrest and your eyes fall shut as Jessie closes the door and she walks around climbing into the driver's seat. You hear the noises of the car as she turns it on, the radio softly playing.

“Put your seatbelt on.”

You hum back, hearing her words but the weight of your arms suddenly feels too much, your eyelids equally heavy, you didn’t want to open them, so you don’t. You remain in the passenger seat, eyes closed not moving. You hear Jessie shift in her seat, her own buckle being undone before she’s leaning over the console toward you, her hand blindly reaching for the seatbelt. You open your eyes to her face just inches from yours.

You begin to look at the freckles on her cheek. Freckles that you used to study when you’d wake up before her. The beautiful spots, you had once spent a whole evening trying to kiss each one, you spend hours and we’re still unable to kiss every single one. Freckles that haven’t changed despite everything between the two of you feeling as if it had.

“Close your eyes, you’re staring.”

“You’re pretty.” Is all that comes out of your mouth as you close your eyes again. Jessie finally is able to click your seatbelt before buckling her own. It doesn’t take long for the gentle movement of the car and your exhaustion to take over lulling you into deep sleep.

The raging headache you woke up to was preventing your ability to open your eyes, let alone pull yourself from your bed. You roll around reaching out to your nightstand hoping to find water but instead finding a lamp. You didn’t have a lamp on your nightstand. Your eyes open and then shoot wide when you realize where you were. You were in Jessie’s bedroom. You frantically roll over finding the other half of the bed to be empty.

You pull yourself from the blankets and the pillows that were encapsulating you in the smell of your former lover. Your feet touch the ground and you look down to see you weren’t in the jeans and shirt you had gone out in last night. You were in a pair of loose shorts and a simple shirt that you knew was Jessie’s.

You crack open Jessie’s bedroom door, looking out to the rest of her place, scanning the room until your eyes meet hers. She’s sitting on the couch, a pillow and blanket donned across the cushions, she had clearly slept there last night.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” She stands up from the couch but doesn’t move toward you. “Are you alright?”

“I mean, hungover, but yeah I’m okay, I think.” Your hands come down to the bottom of Jessie's shirt that sat across your chest. “I remember calling you but honestly, I don’t really remember anything after I got in your car.”

“I can tell you, if you want.”

You nod and make your way into her living room, sitting on a chair that sat adjacent to her sofa.

“You fell asleep on the ride home, I decided to bring you here, which I know wasn’t exactly what you asked but I was worried about you. I wanted to be nearby in case you needed anything, I don’t know what you drank or ate, it just didn’t feel right dropping you off at your place alone.” Jessie looks over to you, checking that you’re following her explanation.

You nod at her, encouraging her to continue.

“I brought you into my room, got some clothes for you, I then left to come get settled out here and then you came out here, um, without a shirt complaining that you couldn’t get your pants off so I helped you change. You said that was okay but obviously you were drunk so you can’t really consent but I figured it was okay, I just wanted to help you.”

You reach a hand out, placing it on her forearm. She stops talking, her attention being grabbed by the feeling of you hand on her body. “That’s fine Jessie, I asked and you were helping me. Plus it’s nothing you haven’t seen or touched before.”

Jessie smiles quickly, letting a quick laugh fall from her lips as she looks down shaking her head. “That’s what you said last night too. But, yeah then I tried to get you to brush your teeth, that was a challenge.”

You winced at your own behavior, embarrassed that you probably acted like a child. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be, it was fine. Then I got you into bed, made you drink some water, and you passed out pretty quick.” Jessie says, ending her sentence with a nod. What she didn’t tell you was how you had blabbered on about the girl you were supposed to have met that night.

“Jess, I don’t even think I want to date her.”

“Who?” Jessie asked as she rummaged in her closet for an extra toothbrush and a fresh washcloth.

“The girl who stood me up.”

Her hands froze as she reached for the small towel. She didn’t expect to have to talk about this with you. “Oh.”

“I think, I think, I’m just trying to get over you. Like you’re the love of my life, and we couldn’t make it work. And it hurts. And I want to fill that hole. So I got on Tinder, and I swiped and swiped and no one was even close to as amazing as you, but I’ll have to settle for someone right?”

“Um.” Jessie was pretty sure you had no idea what you were talking about, just letting every thought you had fall out of your mouth. She assumed you wouldn’t remember most of the night, especially this. She handed you the washcloth, to which you gave her a pouty frown. She sighed before wetting the washcloth herself, gently rubbing it across your face. As she wiped you began talking again.

“No one makes me smile like you did, no one makes me feel the heat, the butterflies, whatever it is, that feeling, no one can even compare. You’ve ruined love for me Jessie Fleming, no one can compete with you. I think I’m always going to love you, I still do. I want to text you after every game, I want to call you at night to hear your voice before I sleep. I miss waking up next to you. I just, I miss you. And I can’t have you. I was a distraction to you.”

The break up with Jessie had been amicable. You both came to the conclusion that life was too much. Jessie having to juggle the national team, being captain, dealing with the lawsuit, the drone scandal, on top of playing for Portland, she didn’t have time for you. You didn’t have much time for her either, having just gotten a new promotion, it came with new responsibilities. Responsibilities that had you in the office early and coming home late, responsibilities that had you traveling more often than not. The two of you watched as the living relationship you had built crumbled before your eyes, breaking both of your hearts. It would have been easier if you’d fallen out of love, if you had a huge fight, but you didn’t. Life had simply gotten in the way, and that hurt so much more.

“Let’s go get you tucked in.” Jessie says, trying to avoid the conversation you were having. She couldn’t do this with you, especially when she was pretty sure you didn’t know what you were even saying. She led you to the bed, pulling back the covers on what used to be your side of her bed, letting you climb in before pulling the sheet up for you. “Here’s water, drink some. If you need anything I’ll be out there.” She points toward the door.

“Stay?” Your question was almost a whisper, as if you were scared to ask. Jessie watched as you looked between her and the empty side of her bed.

“I,” Jessie shook her head at you. She longed so badly to be back in your arms, to fall asleep to the sound of your breathing. “I can’t.” She had turned and left you in the bed, her bed, leading herself to the couch where she knew she’d have a sleepless night, running through all the confessions you just told her.

”Well, I’m really, really sorry for putting you in that situation.”

“It’s okay, really.”

“No, it’s not, we were supposed to be no contact. I’m sorry I broke that.” You try to make eye contact with the Canadian, wanting her to know that while sure part of you was so happy to see her again, you felt embarrassed, you shouldn’t have made her come get you.

“It’s really okay, I’d rather you be safe than not call me.” Jessie grabs the pillow, placing it on her lap, her hands kneading at it.

“Well, thank you. Seriously.”

“Of course, I’m maybe not in love with you anymore, but I will always have love for you. And I’m always going to care about you. You can always call me.” Jessie said, knowing she was lying through her teeth. She still was very much in love with you. That’s why she jumped at the opportunity to come help, to see you again.

“Thanks.” You say quietly and Jessie nods slightly. The two of you are left in a silence for a moment. It was a new silence between the two of you. Silence had been common in your relationship, Jessie wasn’t always the biggest talker and you both enjoyed the peacefulness, but those had never been uncomfortable silences. This was uncomfortable.

“Well.” You clap your hands together across your lap. “I should go, get out of your hair, I’ve done enough.” You push up from the chair. “Where are my clothes from last night? I’ll give you these back.” You pull at the shirt you had on.

“Oh, don’t worry about it, just wear them home.” Jessie walks over to her kitchen counter handing you a reusable bag. “Here’s all your stuff, wallet is in there too. Your phone was charging next to the bed.”

“Yeah I grabbed it.” You show her the outline of our phone in the pocket of her shorts.

“Okay.”

“Okay. I guess I’ll be going.” You take a couple steps towards the door, finding the sneakers you had worn out the night before. “I’ll wash the clothes and get them back to you tomorrow, or I can bring you them tonight?”

“Whenever, it’s just sleeping clothes, I don’t need them back right away.”

“Okay.” You reach for the door before quickly turning to look at Jessie one more time. “Thank you again, and I’m really sorry.” The brunette just nodded at you. A smile that you couldn’t quite read across her face. She opened her mouth briefly before shutting it as if she wanted to say something but changed her mind. You head out the door, closing it behind you, unsure if you’d see her face again anytime soon.

As the door closed Jessie turned to face away from the door, backing up a few steps and letting her back rest against it for a moment. Maybe she should’ve told you, that you had told her about your feelings. Maybe she should’ve told you she still feels the same about you, that she’d be willing to try again, that she wanted to try again. But she hadn’t, and she’d have to learn to live with that.

#jessie fleming #jflem #jessie fleming x reader #jessie fleming imagine #woso x reader #woso imagine #jessie fleming blurb #canwnt x reader

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mrsaltieri-real · 2 years ago

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The Next Stop (Ethan Landry x AFAB!Reader)

Words: 1.6k

Warnings: slight langauge, AFAB!Reader, (no pronouns specified) vaginal fingering, clit rubbing, smut, public smut, slight dub-con, strangers, slight exhibitionist/voyeurism kink, shame kink, masturbation, (vibrator) mentions of Ethan being Ghostface and the killings.

A/N: I’ve been thinking about the gif below a LOT as of late, he looks so fucking hot and this just sprang to mind last night and I whacked it all together. It’s hot, I think. Getting fingered by Ethan on a train but you have no idea who the fuck he is??? Uhhh yeah, this plays into my exhibitionist kink nicely.

The subway was oddly quiet, granted it was coming up to three in the morning, but still. You’d stayed at college late, cramming for your upcoming finals until you’d noticed just how late it really was and decided it was time to race home, get a few hours of nyquil induced sleep before having to relive the same day again tomorrow. You could say you were a bit of an overachiever. You texted your roommate quickly once you flopped down in a free seat, utterly exhausted, telling her you were on the way home but didn’t receive a response.

You sighed, leaning your head back against your seat and mindlessly played around on your phone, flipping from app to app absently when you suddenly felt the uneasy feeling that somebody was watching you.

The subway car only had about fourteen people inside, some were asleep, others were hunched over their own devices, working from a laptop or texting from their cell as you had been. Everyone except a tall, lean curly haired guy who stood with his hand gripping the pole beside him so tightly his knuckles were completely white, his dark brown eyes shamelessly staring at you with an endearingly intense glint shining in them.

You cleared your throat, tearing your eyes away from his fervid and observing gaze, focusing your consciousness back onto your phone. He was pretty, no doubt about that, the way he was staring at you made a dull flutter cascade through your core and inflame your stomach. The coach came to an abrupt stop, your hand flying out to catch yourself on the pole beside you to stop yourself falling out of the seat and the automated woman on the speaker announced that you were two stops away from your destination. Your phone buzzed in your hand and you glanced down, seeing your roommate text you back that she was heading to bed and for you to make sure you get home safe.

As you were about to respond, you were suddenly aware that someone had sat down carefully beside you. You glanced up for a moment, noticing the curly haired boy had settled in the seat next to you, eyes now set forward at the doors of the train. The smell of his cologne filled your nose, the scent subtle yet having an unprecedented effect on you, thighs tensing and your cunt clenching. You looked away quickly, sending a quick reply to your roommate and wishing her a good night before placing your phone into your jacket pocket, choosing to settle your gaze on the window, watching as New York passed you by, trying to ignore the boy sitting beside you.

His knee was touching yours, the rough material of his jeans rubbing against your bare skin at every jostle of the train. His hand resting on his thigh deftly dropped between the small gap separating the two of you, his bare fingers making contact with your soft skin casually. Your eyes instinctively darted down, watching as his fingertips began to faintly stroke your skin, grazing over the hem of your skirt.

You couldn’t help but steal a glance at his pretty face and noticed he looked almost bored, completely uninterested and still not looking at you at all. You felt his fingers glide over your thigh, stopping abruptly as he reached the middle, a soft tap of his fingers as if he was ordering you to open your legs for him.

You couldn’t do this, let some random fucking guy you’d never met start touching your pussy on the middle of the subway.

Just from the limited contact alone, you were already pathetically wet. It was like your body and mind had completely separated from one another as you lightly inched your legs apart, allowing him to slide his hand between them, his fingers grazing at the sensitive skin of your inner thigh.

You let out a small, shaky sigh as he dragged his fingers up, stopping just before he made direct contact for a few seconds, as if he were making a decision about how he wanted to touch you before the rough pads of his fingers brushed over your strained clit through your panties softly, the touch so faint it shouldn’t have even had that much of an effect on you, but alas, it did.

Your breathing hitched and from the corner of your eye, you could’ve sworn you’d seen his lips twitch up into a small smile but you didn’t bother to look, worried it would snap you out of whatever the fuck had gotten into you.

This wasn’t you, you weren’t even the kind of person to interact with a stranger unless it was entirely necessary, but here you were, at three o’clock in the morning with your legs open and dying to let this random guy touch your pussy in a public space, practically gagging for it.

He began carefully moving his middle and forefinger in a gentle circular motion, rubbing your clit teasingly through your damp panties before, without warning, they were pushed aside, the hot pads of his fingers finally making direct contact with your strained, aching clit.

Your hand wrapped around the cold pole next to you again, this time to stop yourself from moaning aloud, your eyes fluttering closed as he began to play with your clit, his fingers skillful as he rubbed in small circular motions, his eyes still fixed ahead of him as though he wasn’t doing anything, as though this was an completely normal interaction. Perhaps it was for him, but at that moment you couldn’t care less. You didn’t care that the subway car was littered with strangers that could very well be watching this guy touch you so intimately, making you push yourself against his fingers like a needy whore with your head tilted back, eyes screwed up as you focused on just how good he was making you feel.

His fingers moved from your clit, dragging down your slit and collecting your juices, briefly plunging them inside and curling upward, pressing firmly against the spongy tissue and making you let out a soft whimper, looking down to see this strangers fingers gently pumping in and out of your cunt. Your legs were so wide from him now, your knee was practically resting against his thigh.

He removed his fingers before moving his fingers back up, using your juices coating his fingers to carry on playing with your exposed clit. Your chest began to heave, your hips unconsciously bucking against his hand as he worked over you casually, still not looking at you. Soft moans and gasps escaped you and you sunk your teeth harshly into your bottom lip and bit the inside of your cheeks so hard you could almost taste blood, trying desperately to be as quiet as you could manage as you clenched around nothing, feeling the fire in your stomach build and burn hotter and hotter with each expert glide of his slick fingers, your legs opening wider and wider for him which seemed to please him judging by how fast his fingers began to work your clit.

The pressure was perfect, the speed of his strong fingers was making your impending orgasm loom dangerously close as your back arched from your seat, pushing yourself against his long fingers before your eyes flew open and you came with a soft gasp on this tips of this stranger's fingers, hand gripping the cold metal of the pole so hard it’s a wonder it didn’t bend. Your eyes flew open as you reached your peak, meeting a man’s shocked and wide eyed gaze as he stared at you, mouth agape as he watched you cum, body shivering and writhing as you pushed your hips down against the strangers fingers, feeling them slide from your clit and into your soaked hole with every movement of your body.

The train stopped as you felt the warmth of his fingers abandon you. He cleared his throat a little, still not looking at you as he stood up, grabbing his bag from the ground and walked toward the doors. You finally moved your gaze onto him, watching as he left the train car, walked onto the platform without even looking back and disappeared up the steps of the station and vanished out of sight.

You felt suddenly self-conscious as your eyes met an older woman’s, her expression nothing short of disgusted, and the man that had watched you cum, his eyes still as wide as dinner plates as he stumbled up from his seat and adjusted himself in his pants, leaving the train looking completely dazed, as though this was the highlight of his month. Maybe it was. You shifted in your seat, feeling your wetness covering your thighs and no doubt staining the seat beneath you as you quickly closed your legs, crossing one over the other and pulled at the hem of your skirt, eyes quickly moving away from the woman and back through the window, beginning to bite at your nails, feeling satisfied yet extremely vulnerable and disgusting.

Did that really just fucking happen?

Despite the disgust you felt in yourself, it only added to your satisfaction. It felt new, different and exciting. You couldn't lie, you absolutely loved the combination of the mixed feelings.

Needless to say you never saw him again, you’d never really expected to. You thought about him a lot though, pressing your vibrator against your clit while you were alone in your bedroom, imagining the scent of his cologne, the warmth of his fingers as they expertly touched you, and just how fucking pretty he was and how hard he’d made you cum and just how easy it was for him to touch you, as if it was completely normal.

That was, until a few weeks later. You were at home, working on your thesis for class when the news grabbed your attention.

“Ghostface killers finally come to a grisly end. The family of killers, Detective Wayne Bailey and his children and resident Blackmore University students Quinn Bailey and Ethan Bailey, formally known as Landry, all brutally murdered after targeting previous survivors of the 2022 Woodsboro massacre, Samantha and Tara Carpenter, Chad and Mindy Meeks, and celebrity Gale Weathers.”

Your eyes widened as soon as you saw “Ethan’s” picture lighting up your screen, recognition hitting immediately. That was him, the stranger from the subway you'd all too willingly opened your legs for. Then your blood ran cold when the realisation that you’d let a murderer get you off and make you cum on a fucking train hit you like a ton of bricks.

#whooooo boy #this was FUN #look how pretty he is #LOOK #love him forever #anyways #i’m dead now #goodbye #scream #ethan landry #scream 6 #ethan landry x reader #ethan landry x you #ethan landry smut #ghostface #ghostface x reader #ghostface smut #slasher #slasher x reader

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thecreelhouse · 17 days ago

Text

fascination

part three - clouded mind, haunted lover

paring: mortician vampire!Steve Harrington x mortuary assistant!reader (fem)

summary: it quickly becomes apparent leaving to protect yourself and Steve does anything but that. if only it didn’t take a life threatening situation for you to understand. // MDNI 🔞

WC: 10.7k

includes: angst. hurt/comfort. not quite smut but there’s some Suggestive Activities™️ occurring here. fluff. blood (and very mild blood play). language. gentle reminders: vampires by lore are unnaturally strong, please keep that in mind during certain parts, Steve affectionately calls reader ‘angel’, and reader has no physical description, but she has specific personality traits. if any of this bothers you— this is not the fic for you.

masterlist // vampire vibes playlist

A/N: this part has the scene I wrote that originally kicked off this fic, so I’m really excited to share it with y’all!! like the tags say, it’s not quite smut, but we couldn’t jump into that without a lil’ foreplay, eh? 😏 thank you to everyone who has read so far!! hope y’all like reading this one as much as I enjoyed writing it <3 (title is from mean - health, chelsea wolfe / divider from @/strangergraphics!)

‘I can't fake it, I can't sleep / this fantasy I can't escape

clouded mind, haunted lover / doomed to want, can't get enough’

In the first 24 hours since leaving the funeral home, and leaving Steve behind, you come home to a message on your answering machine.

Dropping your grocery bags carelessly to the counter, you drag your feet over to the machine, hitting play. You rub your eyes, completely spent from not sleeping well the night prior— whatever effect Steve had on helping you sleep must’ve broke when you left him behind.

The automated voice reads out the time and date of the call as you begin putting groceries away. There’s an awkward cough on the voicemail, followed by a hesitant, familiar voice speaking out your name.

Eddie?

Your hands freeze in the paper bag, hyper-focusing on the answering machine.

“Uh, hey, kid. I didn’t know you were leaving, sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye. Steve won’t tell me shit, as usual, just that you quit… so… hope you’re okay. If you need anything, we’re here for you.”

The tape stops, leaving you alone in an empty, soulless apartment, tears slipping down your face and into the bag of food. You know Eddie’s being honest that Steve won’t tell him what happened, because he says “we’re here for you”.

And with the way you abandoned Steve, abandoned something that could’ve continued to flourish, abandoned a job you actually loved, there’s no way Steve would want to hear from you again.

After all, that silent, hidden, yet comforting presence you could feel most sleepless nights, lulling you into safe, restful dreams, had vanished completely.

It was only fair, after all— Steve gave up on you, the way you gave up on him.

⋆.˚───── 🩸 ─────˚.⋆

The next evening, you miss a call during your shower. The little blinking red light catches your attention as you leave the bathroom, wrapped in your robe.

Changing into pajamas can wait; you hit play, allowing the machine to give you the time and date before Eddie begins addressing you again.

“Steve’s too chickenshit to call after whatever the fuck happened, but he wants you to know you can come grab your stuff whenever you’re ready, no rush. If it helps, I can pick it up and drop it off. I don’t know what happened between you two, but he’s been a miserable son of a bitch ever since you left. That’s— I’m not saying it’s your fault. Whatever he did or said, though, he sure as fuck won’t forgive himself for, so uh… just really hope you’re okay.”

Silence fills the room, but the tape rolls on for a few seconds before Eddie sighs.

“Sorry for this. Hope you’re taking care of yourself, kid.”

The tape clicks off, and you’re left with your mind and heart treading in a sea of emotions.

You’re lost, you’re angry, you’re depressed, and you hate that Steve seems to be blaming himself for you leaving. He didn’t drive you away, you left out of pure cowardice, masked in the excuse of protecting you both.

Instead, you’re both left wounded and heartbroken.

⋆.˚───── 🩸 ─────˚.⋆

The third night goes by silently, and you consider that to be the end of Eddie reaching out on behalf of Steve.

On the fourth night, though, Eddie leaves another voicemail, one you’re around to hear in real time while mindlessly watching TV, but can’t bring yourself to pick up mid-recording.

“So, uh… I really hope I’ve been calling the right number, otherwise this message is gonna sound fuckin’ nuts… if it’s not the right number, you heard nothing.”

That nearly brings a faint smile to your face, until Eddie says:

“Steve’s not feeding. I don’t think he has in days… and the, um,” Eddie coughs dramatically, “‘supply’ doesn’t stay fresh for long… he keeps telling me he’s not hungry.”

Your heart drops. Steve, from what he shared, didn’t like to take blood from the living, and you knew it was only a matter of time before blood of the deceased goes bad. Really bad.

“I know losing Robin hit him hard, but…” he grumbles some curses under his breath. “I think losing you in the same night is really doing a number on him.”

Bile rises in your throat; you never once considered how leaving in the same night that Robin died could mar his heart so heavily. He lost his best friend, his platonic soulmate, and then he loses you hours after confessing his truth, his feelings…

Oh, god. What have I done?

“Look, you don’t owe us shit right now, sure as fuck don’t owe anything to Steve… but I don’t know what to do or how to help him... and I know he means a lot to you, too, so I thought you should know about this.”

You could pick up the phone, grab it before Eddie hangs up, tell him everything and return to help Steve— but you’re frozen solid in your chair. By fear? Rejection? You’re unsure. You should pick up, or call back the moment his message ends, but you can’t.

There’s a sound of rustling, and in the distance you can hear footsteps bounding closer, with Steve yelling, “Eddie, I swear to god if you’re calling her again—“

“Dude! She has a right to know!”

“Fucking— give me that!“ there’s a slight struggle, a grunt, before you assume Steve takes the phone, voice closer, painfully crystal clear. “I don’t want to drag her down anymore!”

The call clicks onto dead air, whirring the tape to a halt. The TV drones on in the background, overshadowed by your shallow, panicked breaths.

Is that what he thinks? Is that what I made him think? He’s dragging me down? I fucked up, I fucked up so badly—

You find the strength to stumble out of your chair, clambering over to phone, but your hand hovers, fear holding you back again.

You could clearly hear how wounded he feels, just in that quick exchange. Would calling even help? Or would it make things worse?

He won’t want to hear from me, and I don’t blame him.

Reluctantly, you back away from the phone, eventually crawling into bed.

Steve’s words haunt you for the remainder of the night, keeping you in a restless state until dawn.

⋆.˚───── 🩸 ─────˚.⋆

You’re struggling to stay upright, afraid to even pour yourself some coffee and drop the pot out of pure exhaustion.

It’s morning, and you’re not sure if you slept a little or just imagined you did within your deprived state. So when the phone rings, it doesn’t register in your mind until two rings before the answering machine picks up. When Eddie frantically rambles, it takes you a minute to realize it’s morning.

He’s never up at this hour, neither is Steve, and now knowing the truth you understand why, so it’s alarming he’s calling so early.

“Kid, listen, I- I‘m going away for a bit, once night falls. I asked Steve if he needed me to stay but he wants me gone anyway.” A ragged sigh laced with frustration at best deflates out of Eddie. “I’m not telling you what to do, or what not to do, but just… be careful if you stop by to grab your shit, okay? If you decide to check on him, keep your distance.”

Fear slips back into your heart, pounding in your chest.

“He’s… he’s not himself right now. He won’t be until he feeds, and I can’t force him to. Trust me. I tried once back in ‘67, it was fuckin’ horrible.”

You’d laugh at his anecdote if this wasn’t so serious.

“Steve wouldn’t hurt you, though. I’m freaked out he’ll do something stupid in front of you, but never to you. He cares about you way too much.”

How could he still care? After what I’ve done to him?

“Here’s the number for where I’m staying…” Eddie rattles off a sequence of digits for you. “Call if anything gets worse. Stay safe, kid.”

⋆.˚───── 🩸 ─────˚.⋆

The sixth day, the phone rings mid-afternoon, you allow the answering machine to do its job while you attempt to focus on a book you’re reading, but you’ve been stuck on page 29 for a half hour now.

Heavy, shivering breaths rattle out of the speakers and through your apartment. It’s enough to make you jump, sending your heart racing. Your breath hitches as you wait for the caller to speak up.

It’s not Eddie this time.

“A- angel?”

Tears spring to your eyes— Steve sounds so fragile right now, the complete opposite of how he carries himself normally.

“Fuck, shouldn’t call you that anymore… m’sorry.” He’s slurring a little, as if he’s just your average human who had one too many drinks. Any hint of formality in his speech has vanished. “I should’ve kept everything to myself, but I was selfish. I’m so sorry.”

You throw the book aside, swinging your legs off the couch to stare down the answering machine across the room.

“Don’t worry about your credits, I’ll make sure you still get those, but you don’t have to come back… I’d love to have you back…but that’s not— you—“

Steve shudders out something akin to a sob; you can just picture his blood red tears, and it makes you sick.

You are the reason he feels so broken.

“If you come by to pick up your belongings, I’ll stay out of your way,” he promises. “Thank you… for being a part of my life, if only for a blip in time. I’m grateful you even gifted me that.”

No one, platonic or romantic, has ever talked to you this way, talked about your connection to them this way.

You royally fucked up leaving him that night.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you sleep anymore… but I hope you can still find sweet dreams.” He takes one final breath, and you finally find the courage to rush to the machine, ready to pick up and apologize left and right. Before you can reach the phone, he murmurs, “Goodbye, angel.”

The tape clicks off, just as your fingertips hit the phone.

Maybe this was beyond repair. Maybe not. The only way to find out is to try.

⋆.˚───── 🩸 ─────˚.⋆

Not one light is on inside the funeral home.

It took more time than you’d have liked— after 9 days of moping, avoiding calls, crying over voicemails, and dreading what’s to come, you reluctantly return, ready to pick up the rest of your belongings, and drop off your key to this former workplace you loved dearly.

Love. Still present tense. Strange to say about a place filled with death, but there’s more heart within this building than out in the real world.

There’s more heart within Steve than normally found in living beings.

The lights inside the home are always on, even if only dim. An unsettling feeling washes over you the moment you step through the front door. Some dull light peeks through the curtains, the grey kind on a cloudy day that can’t kill Steve; it only makes him ill if he’s out in that diffused light for too long.

You knew Eddie was on vacation, but Steve should still be here— he lives right upstairs anyway.

“… Hello?”

Nothing.

The door to Steve’s office is open, and you can make out a figure in the shadows, but barely.

“Steve?”

You allow your eyes to adjust to the light; he’s slumped over in his chair, head resting on his desk. He gives a weak grunt in return.

“What’s going on?”

“You need to leave,” He rasps out, sounding pained. It only urges you to move closer to him. “Don’t—“

“I just wanted to grab the rest of my stuff and drop off the key.” You keep your voice soft, calm, unsure what could trigger him further into whatever has him so weak and bitter. “Will you be alright?”

He slides his palms along the ebony wood desk, nails scraping into the dark surface as he pushes himself up with all the strength in his body. You rush to flip on a light, but he cries out in agony.

“Turn it off!”

Catching a glimpse of his face in the light, he looks like hell. His features are more gaunt, sickly pale than ever before; he appears as if he could wither away any second.

“I said off!” He slams his hands down on the desk, but it comes out as a weak slap instead. “Turn them off!”

You flip the switch while his anger grows, breaths falling ragged.

“I- I’m sorry.” You rush over to him, leaning over the desk to reach out for him, but he shoves your hands away, collapsing into the desk chair again. “What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter—“

“No. Don’t start that.” His attitude is dissolving your patience within seconds. “Tell me what happened, right now.”

“Did you forget how to listen? I said—“

You grab his face, firm hold, but not rough, just like he’s done to you before; his distant stare trails back to you with the exchange of control.

“And I said tell me what happened. Right. Now.” He’s unbearably cold, unlike anything you’ve felt before on his skin. It almost hurts, as if your fingers were shoved in snow for far too long. “You’re clearly unwell, Steve. What the hell is going on?”

Steve’s bottom lip trembles, just enough to catch it in the limited light.

“It hurts.”

Your expression softens, pitying him. “What hurts?”

“No more bodies.” His weak answer clicks for you immediately.

“Are you saying…” Eddie didn’t mention this in the messages. “Shit.” You fumble around in the dark to grab your sunglasses out of your bag, shoving them at Steve. “Put these on, I need to turn the light—“

“No!”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do right now.” Stomping across the room, you flip the switch, and Steve hisses, as if you shoved him directly into sunlight. Never have you heard such a sound leave him before. “Put them on, ‘cause I need the damn light to see what’s wrong.”

Viewing him in the light churns your stomach; normally, he’s pretty pale, but his skin is worn thin, transparent enough to see his strained veins with ease. Circles dark as night, with a purple tinge around the edges, hang heavy under his eyes; they’re prominent enough they push past the lenses of the sunglasses you forced on him. His hair is coarse and dry, lips chapped, and overall just looks frail.

Violently, you shove aside any and all hurt feelings; what matters most to you in this moment is reviving him.

“When did you last feed?”

You already knew the answer from Eddie’s voicemails, but you wanted to hear it from Steve directly. He shrugs, and even that is an aching effort; wincing from said pain also takes more energy than expected.

“A week ago? I…” his head lolls to the side, gripping the armrests of his chair weakly. “Haven’t had calls in a few days… like it matters.”

“Has this ever happened before? Like, a pause of embalmings, I mean.” He shakes his head. “No emergency blood stashes?” He grunts. “What should I do?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, for fucks’ sake, Steve, I’m not leaving you like this.”

“I deserve it.” His breathing is shallow, slumping little by little in the chair. “After overstepping the line… making you uncomfortable enough to leave—“

“No, it was my fault not yours, and—“ Shaking your head, you push hurt feelings aside. “None of that matters right now.”

You rush out of the room, flipping on the hallway light; when you return, you keep the door ajar, just for enough light to see, while you kill the light in the room. “Just tell me what to do. Should— fuck, I- I’ll bring someone back here if it means you’ll feel better. Tell me what you need, Steve.”

He only shrugs. You’re losing your patience, only because you want to help him, fix this, save him.

… There is one way to end his suffering immediately, though.

“How much blood do you need?” Your heartbeat roars through your ears as you try not to think too deeply into this. “What if you used me?”

Steve’s breath hitches in his throat, stays silent for a beat too long, convincing you he just died on the spot. He clears his throat, hoarsely speaking out, “… Absolutely not.”

“Is it possible to just take what you need? I’d be okay, I— I trust you, y’know.” He shakes his head, struggling to sit up straight. He throws the sunglasses onto the desk, groaning through mirthless, flat laughter. “It’s this or die, and you’re not dying on my watch.”

“Already dead, angel.”

You roll your eyes; he’s worse than humans when they get hangry.

You stand before him, running a hand through his hair, brittle and scratchy against your fingers; a stark difference to how luminous, soft, and effortlessly gorgeous it usually is. The touch still soothes him, just barely, but enough to relax his shoulders a bit. You take the opportunity as he melts into your touch, climbing onto his lap; it’s a bit uncomfortable as you swing your legs over his to straddle him, awkwardly hanging them under the armrests.

“Wh- what are you—“ Your arms wind around his neck, resting your forehead gently against his. His attempt at a warning tone comes out breathy and desperate, “Angel…”

“Do this one thing for me, okay? I need you to listen to me, just this once, and I swear to god, I’ll be out of your hair forever.”

If Steve wasn’t on the cusp of expiration, he’d tease you with something like ‘there is no god’, but he just whimpers. If the situation wasn’t dire, you’d allow yourself to revel in the fact your words made a vampire whimper.

“Please? I know you won’t…” Hurt you? Kill you? You can’t bring yourself to voice either. “You wouldn’t go too far.”

“You don’t know…” He trembles underneath you, restraining himself with the last of his self control. “… what you’re asking for, angel.”

“I do know. If I didn’t trust you, didn’t believe you could control yourself, I wouldn’t offer.” I’m out of my fucking mind. “Steve, please.”

You’d kill for a moment like this under different circumstances; one where you’re both in this solely for the attraction and pleasure. One where his lips are close to yours like this, almost touching, all because he wants you in other ways, not like this; not where you’re begging him to quite literally suck the life out of you, all to survive.

“You’re scared,�� He rasps, observing the way your skin prickles with his frostbite-inducing touch. He trails a hand up to the back of your neck, fingers splaying against your head and weakly tangling into your hair. “I’m scared, too.”

You’re glad you wore an older, worn shirt, one that stretches with ease as you pull at the collar to expose your neck.

“So… How bad will it hurt?”

“Bad, but only f- for a second.” He licks his lips, tongue sticking to his bottom lip for a second from how dry it is. “I wanted to— I wish this was— I wish we were—“

Gently, you shush him, head rolling to the side for easier access. “Save your energy, and tell me after.” You shiver against him, whether from the chill he holds or the anxiousness, it’s unclear. “I’m ready,” you whisper, but your quivering voice says otherwise.

Steve hesitantly leans into you, lips grazing your jaw, trailing down with weak kisses to your neck. They’re cold, stiff, but the mere thought alone of him kissing you makes you weak. It’s hard to hold back your shuddering breaths, aching to transform into needy whines. He’s murmuring apologies into your skin before his lips come to a halt.

He nuzzles his face into your neck, while your fingers find purchase in the fabric of his shirt, gripping tightly to brace yourself. At first, he’s sucking softly, like he’s trying to leave behind a mark, claim his territory. Involuntarily, you moan into his ear, and that drives him to sink his fangs into your neck.

“O- oh… fuck.”

He wasn’t kidding; this shit hurts.

The pain hits hard, searing through your neck and rapidly reaching every inch of your insides. You seize up as he pulls you closer, fangs plunging deeper. The unmistakable, metallic scent of blood fills the air, making your head spin. He inhales the sharp essence, body quaking against your own.

A faint sob rolls out as the inferno in your neck intensifies, trying your best not to squirm in his hold. He pulls back, barely, but enough for a rush of a chill to filter into the puncture wounds, making you cry again.

“Shh, shh, I’m sorry, angel.” He winds his free arm around your waist, fingers dancing along your back in soothing patterns. “It’ll feel good soon, I promise.” Even from the minimal blood he’s taken, he’s starting to sound a little more coherent. Again, he bites into you, and the pain begins to radiate away, only to actually fade completely.

You’re very aware of what’s going on, what he’s doing, but now it only feels as if he’s suckling gently on your neck. The scent of blood, and the drips of it cascading down your neck are still incredibly noticeable, but it’s not alarming anymore. In fact, it’s almost… pleasant.

The sounds of your shuddering breaths fill the room, floating among the faint noises of satisfaction, muffled against your neck as he continues to indulge in this feeding.

The pleasant sensation rolls into euphoria, urging your body to move on its own accord. You arch your back, pressing against him while whining. The whines turn to soft, airy moans, while your hips begin rolling back and forth. You’re in a daze, aware of what you’re doing, but too high on the bliss of Steve sucking your blood to care.

Slowly, he regains his strength, little by little with each draw of blood; it shows in the way his grip on you becomes sturdier, and how he pulls you even closer, satisfied noises muffled against your skin as his mouth fills with your blood. When you grind down a little too hard into his lap, his hips jolt up into you, earning a surprised moan.

Steve pulls his mouth back again, panting wildly. Though you want to look at him, you can’t bring yourself to; one look at the blood on his face will send you into a spiral, you just know it.

Draining blood and bodily fluids out of a corpse? No big deal, that’s a breeze to you. Witnessing your own blood drip down Steve’s face? It doesn’t disgust you, but it’s quite a bit to take in, with emotions heightened and an unexpected desire, rising deep from within.

“Could get addicted to your taste, angel.” Whining, you lean forward, urging him to take more. You’re both intoxicated by the lust that seems to accompany the act of feeding. He laps at the blood rolling down from the wounds. “How do you feel?”

“Need you,” You groan, rutting against the bulge underneath you. You’re so lost in the haze of pleasure, you’re unsure if he’s hardening, or you’re imagining it. “Need y’so bad, Steve.”

The hand on your hip tightens, digging his fingers into the plush curve. That’s when you dare to steal a glance, and yeah, you were right, the sight of your blood dripping down his pretty face is sending you into a tailspin.

“We should not do this,” he grits his blood tinged teeth. “Angel, we can’t.”

“We can— we already are,” You fight his hold, grinding against him lazily. It’s enough pressure, enough friction, where it catches on the seam of your jeans just right. Gasping, your eyes flutter shut as the pleasure builds. “Please?”

“This is why I warned you— shit.” Your grinding begins to reward him, too, causing his head to thunk onto the chair’s back with a hiss. His other hand departs from your neck, firmly grabbing your other hip, trying to stop you from moving. He has the super strength to halt your actions, but he’s not trying to hurt you. Not past feeding off of you, at least. “We’re done, I’m feeling okay enough to stop, alright? Just… will you stop fucking doing that— fuck—“ He sounds so beautiful, all breathy with gasps and shudders.

“I can’t, I- I don’t—“ Burning. Your skin is burning. There’s tears welling in your eyes while distress consumes your expression. “—it hurts, Steve.”

His eyes clamp shut, trying to steady his breathing and weigh the pros and cons to himself. If anything else happens, it’ll change things between the two of you forever.

Things have already changed, though, and drastically; he’s already crossed so many lines, as have you. Your dynamic shifted permanently since the night he admitted the truth about his past. The point of no return was the confessions of affection later that night.

The regret Steve couldn’t reverse already had done its damage; he was certain you’d both were on separate paths, for good. Now, you’re here, when he needed help, needed you the most.

You really are some kind of angel to him; the least he can do is help you in return.

“What hurts?” He’s half expecting you to gesture to your neck, but unsurprised when you only shove your hips into his lap desperately. “I am not going to force anything, but whatever can ease the pain, I’ll guide you through. Alright?”

You nod frantically, pulling your shirt off before he can protest. He’s dumbfounded, and lovestruck, politeness kicking in to keep his eyes from wandering down your figure. “M’sorry, it’s just— I feel— it’s hot and cold, and a little dizzy, I- I— I don’t know how else to describe it—“

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Steve coos, grip loosening enough to caress your hips, slowly inching up your sides with each slide of his fingers along your curves. He allows his stare to stray, breath hitching while he takes in your figure for only a moment. “Take what you need.”

With permission, you drag your clothed heat against his, earning a delicious shudder from him. In ecstasy, your head eventually lolls back after a few thrusts against him, breathy whimpers spilling from your lips. He does as he promised, guiding you along by your sides, pushing and pulling gently with your motions.

“There you go…” A throaty groan follows his praise as you wriggle down, adding more friction against his cock. He leans forward, kissing your collarbone, lips lingering each time he does. “You’re doing so well, angel.”

“Again… please, again…”

“What are you asking for? Don’t be afraid, you can tell me.” He slides a hand up your back, splaying his fingers again as he brings you closer. “I’ve got you.”

You roll your head forward, lids weighty with lust as your mouth falls open, focused on the space where your clothed heat meets his own. Between the blood loss— while not significantly dangerous, enough to keep you lightheaded— and the sinful release building within, it’s difficult to find the necessary words.

With a wavering hand, you trace a finger along the bite mark he left behind, gradually still oozing drops of blood. Some of it gets on your finger; you bring it up to his lips, patiently waiting for him to catch on. His tongue flits out, eyes rolling back, tasting you again. His gaze blows wide with lust before parting his lips, coaxing your finger in with his tongue lapping at the blood. He suckles softly, moaning around your digit before pulling back.

“It’s sinful how delicious you are…” He licks the skin clean, gasping as you find a steady, devious pace with grinding.

“A little more?” You pant, bringing that same finger to your own lips before lazily licking over his blood tinged spit left behind. “Please, Steve. Wanna feel you again.”

Tongue rolling over his lips, he stares down his piercing handiwork.

“Are you sure—“

“Yes!”

Steve’s fangs sink into the existing marks, but there’s been too long of a pause since he first pulled away, so the searing ache returns— and only grows.

“Ngh— is it…“ A ringing builds slowly in your ears, limbs tingling with an airy, lightheaded sensation. “Steve, is this supposed to—“ Your own guttural cry interrupts you, startling him off your neck. The pain breaks through your lust-clouded mind. “M’sorry, I didn’t— I thought it wouldn’t hurt—“

He cradles your face in his hands, thumbs caressing your cheeks and wiping away a stream of tears.

“You’ve no reason to apologize, it’s my fault.”

Even through the suffering that has returned with a vengeance, it’s a relief to see how much better he appears. Yet something about offering yourself to him past the point of need turns you on.

“But I— god this is embarrassing. I begged you, and…” The ringing hasn’t stopped, breaths falling shallow. “I still want—“

“No, and that’s final.” He pretends to ignore the way your hips twitch at his order, tucks it away for another time—if he’s lucky. “I should’ve known your limits and played it safe, I’m so sorry.”

“Steve—“

“Hold still,” He leans back into your neck, but you flinch. “Angel, I need to stop the bleeding. This won’t hurt at all, I swear.”

Steve kisses the wound, but doesn’t suck from it. He licks along the aftermath, lapping up the blood as it slows. You can’t see what’s happening, but you can feel the pain ebb away. Though it’s not as satisfying as when he drank your blood the first time, it’s certainly relieving.

It doesn’t ease every side effect, though.

“Steve? I really…” Air slips away as you try catching your breath, struggling to speak up. “… I don’t feel so good…”

Your vision begins to tunnel in, slumping in his embrace. Everything begins to float away like a dream, while sleep steals you quickly.

You never hear the panic in Steve’s voice as he calls your name, begging you to stay awake.

⋆.˚───── 🩸 ─────˚.⋆

“Quite extraordinary how vampires work, hm?”

You open your eyes, but everything’s bright white and blurred. Sitting up, everything feels heavy, making your brain spin.

“You should rest. It’s okay. The first time is overwhelming, and a bit frightening.” A voice recalls. “Had to help him once, and fainted while he fed from my arm.”

Coming into focus is a woman, standing overhead of you. She has kind eyes with a smile to match, with freckles glittered across her face; something about her seems familiar, but you’re not sure what.

Her hand slips into yours as she sits by your side.

“You don’t have to fear him, though. He’d truly do anything to keep you safe.” Her voice is so soothing, easing your worried thoughts. “He stands by his word. Even if you decide to go your separate ways, he’ll care for you, if you let him.”

“Who… Steve?”

The woman nods.

“Thank you for keeping him safe. He’ll never admit it, but he needs someone to look out for him, too.”

Wait— “Robin?” Her smile widens, kind gaze lighting up; she looks just as she did in that portrait with Steve. “I- I- I’m so sorry. I’m not trying to overstep, o- or take your place—“

“You’re taking a place he’s held open for so long, waiting for someone right to step in.” Softly, she squeezes your hand, “It was never like that with him and I, you know that. It’s relieving to see how happy he’s become since you entered his life.”

Guilt for leaving him settles in the pit of your stomach. “What if I ruin things? I don’t want to hurt him again.”

“You won’t. Just allow yourself to love again, and allow love to come to you. The rest will fall into place.”

Love? Is that what you’ve been feeling? Does he feel the same?

“Is he… is he okay?”

“You saved his life. I’d consider that incredibly okay.” She takes your free hand in hers, clasping them both together in her gentle, warm grip. “I hate to ask anything more of you, especially after the eventful day you’ve had… but would you pass a message along to him?”

It’s hard to focus as you gawk over her presence. Robin’s gorgeous, but her kindness brings out the best of her features; you can tell why Steve was mesmerized by her from the start, even if he grew out of those feelings rather quickly.

“Ye- yeah, yes, of course.” You reply quickly, a bit embarrassed for staring. “What’s the message?”

“A few things: that I’ll miss my best friend dearly, and I’m eternally grateful for his love and care.” Her gaze grows glassy as tears well along her lash line, offering a pensive smile. She squeezes your hands once more, bottom lip trembling slightly. “And please… let him know I made it home safely.”

Without a chance to reply, your surroundings and Robin begin to dissolve into dust around you.

⋆.˚───── 🩸 ─────˚.⋆

Something hard hits you, startling you awake. Rather, you hit something hard— the floor, to be exact.

Gripping your head, you groan from the unwelcome wake up call; footsteps dart closer to the doorway before it slams open, scaring you even more.

“Motherfucker— What the fuck—“

“Are you alright? Did you…” Steve scans over your figure; you’re fatigued, but nothing looks severely injured. He bites back a laugh. “You tumbled out of bed, didn’t you?”

“I’m dizzy! Not my fault, since you nearly sucked the life out of me.”

He sighs, shaking his head; with complete ease, he lifts you in his arms, bridal style, to rest you on the bed. You realize you’re in his bedroom while he pulls the covers over you. You’re also half naked, save for the boring bra and comfortable shorts you had worn.

God, why didn’t I wear a cuter bra—

Hang on … Why the fuck am I shirtless?

“How the hell did you lift me? Where’s my shirt?” You grab the comforter, covering your torso; it’s pointless, he’s clearly seen it all. “Why does it feel like I was hit by a train?”

Steve holds out a fist, straightening out a finger one by one with each answer. “With my arms, you threw it off while I was feeding from you, and probably from the blood loss— first time’s rough, I hear.”

“With my arms— okay, smartass, I’m not very light, y’know— Wait—” You wonder how you even made it into his bed to begin with. “You lifted me all the way up here? How?”

“I’m sure there’s a name more fitting than ‘super vampire strength’, but basically that.” Steve wiggles his eyebrows like a goofball, making you giggle. “Perks of being the scary monster with pointy teeth.”

He’s only joking, but your expression still falls. “You’re not a monster, Steve.”

“Maybe not to you.”

“Anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly boring and wrong.” Still semi-delirious, you reach your hands out to him, making grabbing motions in front of his face. Confused, he laughs softly, pretty fangs flashing in the dim candlelight.

“What are you doing?”

“Grabby hands.” He’s still lost, but his gentle grin doesn’t fade as you wiggle your fingers. “C’mere.”

“In bed? With you? You think that’s—“

“Yes. Just wanna cuddle. I gave you my life juice—“

“Ew, angel, don’t call it that.”

“Whatever. The least you can do is hug me.”

Steve’s body twitches, like he wants to immediately slide into bed next to you, but he hesitates. “That’s… not such a good idea. You’re still recovering…. and you wanted to leave for good. I made you uncomfortable.”

“Only because it felt necessary, thought it’d protect us both,” you admit with a hint of shame. “Not once have you ever made me feel uncomfortable, either.”

“How would that ever be necessary?” He sounds wounded, and you want to kick yourself that you believed walking away was the best option for you both. “I never wanted you to leave.”

“Then don’t let me go again.”

Steve runs his hand through his hair, exhaling slowly while he mulls over his decision; as if giving in to cuddling is a harder decision than whatever the hell happened earlier.

In seconds, he caves.

“Alright, alright. You win, angel.” He slips under the covers with you, while you’re already eager to share body heat and cozy up next to him.

Except there isn’t any body heat when it comes to this man.

His bare arms curl around you, making you yelp as his chilled skin meets your warmth. Shivering in his embrace, he notices the way you tremble, immediately pulling back. “I— wait, hang on.”

You still must be out of it, because you don’t realize he’s draping something over your shoulders. The sleeves tumble down your arms, enveloping you, soothing the shivers out of your body. It’s a loose, slouchy cardigan, stitches worn down from heavy, consistent love; you realize it’s the sweater he wore the night you two awkwardly tried to talk about your relationship. A relationship you’re still lost on.

“I can grab more blankets, too, if you’d—“ Steve only means to glance for a second, but he’s stuck, admiring you with his undivided attention. Heat burns under your skin as he continues to stare. “You’re so pretty, angel.”

Heat burrows under your skin from his compliment.

Sliding back into bed, his hold curves around you again. It’s easier to snuggle closer now with the knitted barrier, but you still duck your head under his chin, teeth chattering as you rest your face on his chest.

“Do you ever warm up?”

“You’re really bothered by the cold, aren’t you?”

“No— well, kinda, but doesn’t it bother you?”

Steve chuckles softly, but you feel the vibrations rumble in his chest against your own.

“Not really, no. It’s not uncommon for vampires.” He murmurs against the top of your head, sending shivers down your spine. “Are you scared I’ll freeze to death?”

“You’re already dead, Steve.”

“Un-dead, excuse you.” He corrects smugly. You scoff, and he misses the eye roll you give, face still buried in his chest. He’s tracing his fingers along your back, caressing up and down your spine. His voice drops just above a whisper, “Thank you for helping me. I know that isn’t why you returned, but… thank you.”

“I’m sorry I even left. You didn’t deserve that.” You inch back to meet his stare. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. Much better, thanks to you. And luckily, we’ve started getting business again the last two days, so that’s helped with the blood supply—“

You shoot up, squawking out, “I’m sorry, two days?” The room tilts, and it must be apparent by your expression, since Steve immediately guides you slowly back against the bed.

He winces, nodding slowly. “I tried gently waking you several times, but figured you really needed the rest. I hadn’t realized how much blood I took from you until you passed out in my arms.” Now he’s the one who jolts up suddenly, “Shit, I didn’t— I forgot— you definitely need water, and food— are you hungry? You must be starving by now.”

His concern warms your heart, but you shake your head. “Oh, it’s okay, I can just… I’ll just grab something on the way home.” He grabs your chin, like the week prior; your eyes widen as your heart pounds, pulse beating straight down between your legs from the quick change in demeanor.

“Angel, I meant it when I said I take care of my people,” He reminds you softly. Your breath hitches as you watch his stare flit down to your lips, only for a moment. “I don’t mean to make decisions for you, but I don’t feel comfortable with the idea of you driving tonight. Maybe even for a few days, depending on how long recovery takes.”

“But I…” He’s right. You know he’s right, yet you stay in denial. “I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

“You’re always welcome here, whenever you want, or need.” He releases your face and adds, “I’d offer to drive you home, and will if you truly so wish, but you probably should not be alone right now.”

You nod, knowing there’s no use in arguing that.

“Could you take me back so I can grab some stuff at least? I don’t have anything to wear, especially work clothes—“

“Oh, you’re not working, either. That I’m not budging on.”

“What? Why not?”

“Rest for the living is more important than tending to the dead,” Steve argues as he crosses his arms.

“I left you for a week already—“

“And while you help keep this place running smoothly, I can handle another week on my own. I promise.”

“Okay, but who’s doing pickups then if Eddie’s away?”

“Me, who else?” You frown comically, pulling a breathy laugh from his lungs. “Angel, it’s fine. I can handle it. If there’s anything you still need from home I can retrieve it, but otherwise, you’re recovering.”

Reluctantly, you nod. “Alright, fine. I’ll make a list.” He grins, rolling out of bed to grab a pen and some paper for you from a nearby desk.

You don’t need much, just a few necessities; scribbling them down quickly, you tear the paper off the notepad, handing it over.

“Good girl,” Steve murmurs, leaning down to kiss your forehead. He feels you shiver under his lips, smirking before he parts ways.

⋆.˚───── 🩸 ─────˚.⋆

Steve has to have a heightened sense of sound, or something; the moment your feet hit the floor, swung over the edge of his bed, he throws the door open, frantically rushing into the room.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

He stares at you wide eyed, while you haven’t even fully stood up yet.

You glance down at your feet, then to him, quirking a brow; you’re part annoyed for the way he’s hovering, and part grateful that he cares this much. “… Trying to walk?”

“You’re too weak for that right now,” he strides over to you, hands out to hold you in place by your shoulders. “You need more rest.”

“Okay, well I need to shower, it’s been days, and I feel gross, so-“ Steve picks you up in a flash, carrying you bridal style. “- hey, hey! Put me down!”

Damn him and this super strength bullshit vampires have.

“And risk you slipping in the shower?” He carries you out of the room effortlessly, down the hall with premeditated, cautious steps. “I don’t think so, angel.”

The soft glance he gives nearly dissolves the argument. You’re too drained to pretend you dislike the way he dotes on you; tucking your head into the ditch of his shoulder, your arms hook around his neck.

Okay, yeah, maybe it’s not so annoying to be cared for.

“So, what, I have to sit in the shower?”

“No,” he states calmly. “I have a bathtub.”

“Oh, okay, so I’ll drown instead.”

“No, you won’t, because I’m staying with you.” Steve reaches the bathroom, setting you down slowly.

You stumble as your feet hit the tiled floor— over his words, not weakness. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I won’t look, but you��re in no condition to be in a full tub all alone.”

Even the damn bathroom is elegant, with a massive, porcelain clawfoot tub as its centerpiece; candles are scattered throughout the room, offering a serene glow, yet you feel anything but relaxed.

Steve made it clear he’d only stay for your safety, but your mind still indulges in your desires.

Heat washes through you at the thought of sharing a bath together; your back against his chest, cool skin contrasting yours, hot to the touch… his fangs grazing your neck as he kisses you from behind, large hands exploring every inch and curve of your figure… him toying with you… while deep inside you, delicately feeding from your blood—

“Hey, where’s your mind off to now?” Steve’s gentle voice whisks you away from any impending filthy thoughts. He rests the back of his hand against your forehead, frowning. “Are you feeling ill? You’re pretty warm.”

Christ, I need to stop thinking like a goddamn romance novel.

Pushing his hand away, you refuse to look him in the eye. “M’fine, I’ll be quick, promise.”

Offering a glance of disbelief, he sighs with a nod. Still only in your underwear and his sweater, you pull the edges of the cardigan to wind around your body, shivering as he turns the faucet on. Your gaze falls upon him, studying his features, muscles in his arms flexing effortlessly with each turn of the handles. Something crossed between a dull ache and arousal ripple throughout your body.

You yearn to be closer with him, closer to him; the desire to feel not only passion and intimacy with him burns, but the desire to intertwine your lives where you take care of one another all the time… that burns brighter.

Placing fluffy, cloud-like towels next to the bathtub, Steve turns to you, inspecting your expression.

“How about I sit right outside the door, give you some privacy?” He asks, concern surfacing as he notices you shiver. “Or I can stay in here, but I mean it, I won’t look. It’ll only be precautionary—“

“N- no, I can… I’m okay alone, I promise.” Your fingers twitch as you ball them up tighter, sweater still snug within your grasp.

“The second you need something, though, just ask, alright?” He reaches out to your hands, resting his palms over them, thumbs gently caressing along your knuckles. “Need you to relax, angel.”

Shakily, you exhale, loosening your grip while daring to look Steve in the eye.

“Take all the time you need, and use whatever you want.”

You squeak out a quick “thank you” before he slips out the door, leaving it ajar just enough for a sheet of paper to fit through.

Eager for the tub’s warmth and to wash off two days worth of bed rest, you climb in, cautiously, of course. Involuntarily, a whimper escapes your lips the further you sink down into the sudsy water. The comfortable temperature should ease you to relax, but you can’t.

Your muscles only continue to tense up, and a groan rumbles through your chest, not quick enough to stop it.

The door creaks open an inch, but Steve still remains outside, respecting your privacy.

“Are you alright?”

“Uh-huh,” you reply, but it comes out full of uncertainty, not helping your case.

“Are you sure?”

“Mhm, y- yep!” You grab a bar of soap and a washcloth, hoping to scrub away your worries, and really, at first, it does start to relax you; there’s nothing like a relaxing, hot bath after tiring events, and you definitely earned the peace.

That quickly melts into unsolicited pleasure as the soapy cloth brushes against your chest. Your eyes jolt open as you gasp, sensitivity higher than you’ve ever experienced.

“What the fuck—“ you whisper, biting down on your bottom lip to stifle a moan. Heat burns white-hot throughout your body, pulsating from your core and rippling outward.

Imagery laced with lust float through your mind; you, sitting on Steve’s lap, a whining, nearly incoherent and dazed mess, grinding down on him. Steve, warning you of consequences, advising against giving into what you craved most.

You, begging, pleading, for more, while your blood drips from his lips. Lamenting to him of how it hurts, how something within you burns, and you need him—

Why does this feel so real? Why does it feel like you’ve been here before?

Has this already happened?

A breathy sigh slips from your lips as you realize your other hand is already between your legs, circling your aching clit. Your hips flex up in the water, cloth long forgotten among the bubbles as your other hand toys with your breasts.

That sigh molds into a moan, one you can’t hold back, lost in sinful thoughts of Steve touching you. That moan, also forms into his name, and you don’t realize it until he’s calling out in a panic.

“What’s going on?”

You gasp as your climax, once just out of reach, now withers away; as you pull your hands off your figure, embarrassment shadows over every other feeling that you were just sinking in moments ago.

“Angel?”

Trying to control your panting, you force yourself to respond, albeit while your voice trembles. “I- I’m okay!”

“You sound far from okay,” he counters, inching the door open a little, as a warning. “I’m coming in.”

“Steve, I’m fine, really!”

He refuses to take your word, and really, you don’t blame him; you probably sounded like a wounded animal on the other side of that door.

Sinking further into the water, gathering up the suds around you as a cover, you narrow your stare at him. There’s concern woven within his features, but … something you can’t quite pinpoint either.

God, you hope you weren’t too obvious.

Steve focuses on your lips, licking his own. He drops down to his knees next to the tub, making you extra aware you’re completely nude, only covered by the tub wall and bubbles; better than no barrier at all, you suppose.

“Steve, what are you—“

“Angel, hold still for me.”

It’s the ‘for me’ that nearly kills you inside, eats you alive from the inside out with adoration for this man.

Steve gently holds your chin in one hand, while licking his thumb in the other, gingerly swiping it along your bottom lip. The sting left behind from biting your lip— something you completely forgot about— ebbs away, twitching as you fight the urge to take his thumb into your mouth and suck softly.

Still holding you in place, he brings his other hand to his own lips, lapping away at the blood left behind on his thumb. A small, satisfied hum slips past his lips. You gawk as his tongue flits out, erasing any trace of crimson left behind. When his gaze finds your own, you notice a flash of deep red in his irises.

“There,” his hand on your chin moves to cup your cheek, thumb caressing over your cheekbone. “All better.”

⋆.˚───── 🩸 ─────˚.⋆

You somehow manage to convince Steve you can get out of the tub without assistance, and you’re grateful he gives you that moment alone, because you need a minute to yourself— what the fuck just happened?

With your clothes in the wash, and still yet to pick up your belongings from your place, Steve offers a cozy, fluffy robe for you to rest in. Except, there’s not much rest happening now, no thanks to that ruined orgasm and the wired, pent up energy you’re running off of.

Your desires eventually simmer enough to ignore them, enjoying a more wholesome hope you’ve had with Steve quite some time. It feels like the night you two officially declared friendship, where he began to open up.

Sitting cross-legged on Steve’s bed, you lean over to the water and snacks he grabbed for you, resting on the nightstand. He fixates on you as you speak, “I had a really weird dream, right before I woke up.” You pick at some grapes, throwing one in the air to try and catch it in your mouth; it bounces off your cheek instead, back into your hands.

“Never getting you grapes again, Steve, teases; laying on his side, leaning onto his arm while resting his head in his palm, he watches you with extra caution and concern. “That’s just a choking hazard waiting to happen.”

“I didn’t think vampires were all about safety first.”

“Maybe just this one. You humans are cute, but stress me the hell out.” A smile ghosts along his lips.

“May I remind you,” your eyes narrow towards him, “that you were human once too.”

“And never once a safety hazard like yourself.” He quips with a shrug, smirking as you roll your eyes. “Go on, what was your dream about?”

“Okay…” You huff, brushing off your nerves; you’re worried you’ll sound absolutely nuts.

Then again, not much more gets weirder than finding out your boss… friend… crush, is a vampire.

“It’s gonna sound bonkers, but… Robin appeared. I- I talked to her— well, she talked to me, first.”

Steve coughs, wide-eyed and taken aback. “What?”

“I know! I know, it sounds silly. I don’t know her aside from what you’ve told me, and the portrait she’s in, but she— I don’t know.”

He sits up, attention invested in your every word. “No, please, tell me what happened.”

“She mostly just reassured me everything would be okay… with you, and me… and us.” You go into more detail about the dream, ending with, “She wanted me to pass a message along, too.”

Steve’s gaze widens in anticipation. “What was it?”

“That she’ll miss you dearly, and she’s eternally grateful for your love and care while she was alive. Her words, not mine.” The last part takes a second to pop into your mind. “Oh, and she… she wanted you to know she ‘made it home safely’.”

Struck by something deep within him, he sits up and stares at you, dumbfounded. “Word for word?”

Your brows crinkle together, “Uh… yeah? I’m actually kinda shocked I remember this dream fully, they usually fade away the moment I begin talking about them— hey… are you okay?”

Steve runs a hand down his face, sighing and shaking his head in disbelief. Patiently, silently, you wait for an explanation.

“I always thought she was joking.” He gives a short huff of a laugh, but it isn’t melancholic. “When she was of sound mind, she’d tell me “I’ll let you know when I get home safe,” after leaving this world… always had this grin when she’d remind me, too.”

“She also said—“ You pause; maybe you should keep the rest of the dream to yourself. It’s too late, Steve’s already hanging on your unfinished thought. Shaking your head and hands, your eyes squeeze shut, feeling foolish. “It’s silly, I shouldn’t— I need to shut up.”

“Tell me,” He demands softly, hand slipping into yours. “Please?”

“Robin mentioned how… how nice it was to see you happy again, since we met. But she was still alive when we met, so how would she know?”

The smile that appears looks like one that pairs with tear-filled eyes, but he’s holding back. You wonder if that has anything to do with the way he cried in front of you the first time, with tears of blood. Maybe he’s worried he’ll scare you.

“When I’d visit her the last month or so, I might’ve brought you up a few times. The doctors encouraged talking to her, even in a coma, rather than weep by her bedside.”

“What, probably telling her how annoyed you were when I’d call you Mr. Harrington in the beginning, huh?”

“Alright, once, but aside from that—“ Steve chuckles, shaking his head. “I was talking about how good things had become since you came around.”

You’re surprised, and flattered, honestly; he saw you as someone worth telling his best friend about.

“I wish you could’ve met her, really met her. You two would’ve gotten along easily,” he grins fondly. “The kids, too. They could be troublemakers, but I think that’s part of being a kid.”

You get cozy, resting on your side, close to Steve, but nowhere near allowing your body to touch his, aside from your hands still clasped together. Snuggling into the pillow, you ask softly, “Were you like that as a kid, too?”

Steve’s mouth hangs open, struggling to find the right answer. “I… I don’t remember much of my childhood.”

Your heart aches, but you try approaching curiosity with sensitivity. “Is that, um… does that happen normally? Vampires forgetting parts of life like that?”

“Not sure, honestly.” He shrugs, “I have photographs as a kid, only a few, but they’re all blurry. Asking a child to sit for minutes long exposures is asking a lot.” He chuckles, but it’s tinged with a certain type of sorrow. “I have nothing else from that time, and I’m not sure if mementos would jog my memory enough, either.”

“I’m sorry, Steve.” You inch closer, breaking down the barrier of self-doubt, little by little.

“It’s alright.” He gives a gentle, lopsided smile. “I’m lucky enough to have watched those kids grow up, support them and cheer them on. That kind of fills the void left behind where I can’t remember my own childhood.”

“Will you tell me more about them? Someday, when you’re ready?”

He nods, softly agreeing, “Yes, of course. Might take me some time, the loss still feels fresh… even if it’s been decades. I’m sure that sounds ridiculous.”

“No, not at all. Grief is so finicky and works on its own time, not ours.” A stray strand of hair falls in front of his face; you reach out to gently brush it aside, fingertips lingering as they trail down the side of his face. “Take all the time you need, just know I’m ready to listen when you’re ready to open up.”

“There’s not enough of this kind of empathy when it comes to grief, certainly not in our field,” he observes. “It comes to you naturally, though.”

“So… does that mean I still have my job?” You offer a grimace-like smile, earning Steve’s gentle laugh, fangs and all.

You’re a sucker for that sight alone.

“Of course, as long as you want to come back.”

“Okay… b- but won’t it be a conflict of interest?” You inwardly curse at yourself for bringing professionalism back into this dynamic. “Power imbalance, and all of that?”

“Well, it could be… but I’ll let you decide for us, and for yourself.” His hand finds yours, still cradling his face, resting on top. He isn’t so cold anymore. Or maybe you’re growing used to it each time you touch. “You’re going back to school full time once the summer ends, anyway… and whatever you choose in the meantime, I support. No more pathetic, heartbroken voicemails, I promise.”

“Why don’t you get a say in any of this? It’s unfair to you if only I decide how this works out.”

“Because your time on this earth is limited, angel.” He turns his head, lightly kissing the heel of your palm. “You deserve to decide how you spend that time, not the guy who is stuck here forever.”

The one time you finally find someone interested enough in you that they respect your space, your choices, your autonomy, you’re reminded it’s not all perfect.

There’s always a catch.

“If this is what you want, and you have to want this on your own terms, I refuse to force you— we take things a day at a time.” He presses a kiss to your palm again, working slowly down to the pulse point in your wrist. Your veins throb, along with your still-sensitive core. “Understand?”

Subconsciously, you bite your lip as you nod, hissing as your tooth hits the spot of your now healed wound. It’s still sore, despite the skin’s lack of breakage.

“Don’t hurt your lip again, angel. I’d be tempted to kiss it better.”

“No one said you can’t,” you pout, coaxing his smile to stay put.

“It never came up, and I’d need your consent, anyway.”

“Wait. So… we never kissed when you fed from me?”

Steve’s bewildered. “No, not at all. You can’t remember what happened?” He asks, blushing a bit— so, vampires do blush— clearing his throat, “… Do you want to know?”

“Well, yeah, ‘cause I only remember when you first bit me, and how it began to feel good… then I woke up on the floor in here—“

“Fell out of bed onto the floor, you mean—“

“Oh, whatever.” You sit back up, playfully rolling your eyes; you reach out to the snack tray, popping another grape into your mouth. This time, you manage to catch it. “Just tell me what happened.”

Taking a deep breath, Steve exhales roughly, head tilting up toward the ceiling. You watch the blush splotch down his neck, spilling under the collar of his shirt— seriously, what’s the science behind vampires blushing?— “You became a bit… excited.”

“Excited?” A chuckle slips out. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Um, well, you see,” He looks down, but not at you, scrunching his eyes shut as he nervously begins to ramble. “It’s, uh, not uncommon for humans to become… aroused, while being fed from. It’s why I was worried to feed off of you in the first place, I didn’t— you don’t—“

“Oh.”

“I let you decide everything, and you told me it hurt, so I- I just wanted you to feel better, I told you to take what you need, so you, you know, you just…” He gestures to your hips, voice cracking. “You asked me to continue feeding, but the pain became too much, and you fainted— thankfully on me, not the floor, or I’d never forgive myself. Or if you bashed your head off the desk, that could’ve been horrible, and I— the whole thing—“

“Steve—“

“You were so good to me, caring for me like th- that. So good for me, I just wanted to help you. Wanted you to feel good.”

‘Good for me.’

Forget everything else he just said, all that matters are those three words, how electrifying they are to hear from a stunning creature like himself.

I’m so fucked.

Clearing your throat, you dare to ask, “… Did I?”

“Did you… what?”

“F- feel good?”

He nods cautiously, the lewd scene of you, grinding onto his lap in a lust-driven daze, replaying in his mind. You, desperately searching for some kind of respite after offering yourself to him. How you swiped the blood from your neck onto a finger, slipping it between his lips, studying every movement he made. It’s only up to the imagination to question what could’ve happened if you were able to continue.

“Steve?” You wave your hand in front of his face.

“Hm?” Gaze flitting down to your lips, he licks his own. “Uh… yes. I’d say so.”

You wait expectantly, laughing, “You’re not gonna elaborate?”

“Angel, I’m— I would rather not make you feel uncomfortable.” He nervously chuckles, stare darting away. “Maybe it’s best you don’t remember what happened.”

“Clearly, I wasn’t uncomfortable, and still am not, since I’m laying half-naked in your bed.” You gesture to the robe he offered you, while washing the clothes you had in the meantime.

“Well, a certain stubborn human refuses to rest, and won’t allow me to retrieve their belongings.”

“I never said you can’t go!” You roll your eyes. “I’m fine alone, seriously.”

He ignores you, narrowing his stare playfully. “Probably would’ve drowned in the tub, or choked on a damn grape by now.”

“Okay, okay, I promise I won’t be a stubborn, functioning human being while you’re gone!” You sit up with a smirk, “As long as you tell me what the hell happened when you were feeding.”

“Oh, we’re bargaining now?”

“Maybe. You could always just… show me what happened.”

You loosen your robe, allowing it to slink off of your shoulders; it’s enough to expose the top of your chest, but not enough to expose everything quite yet.

Mesmerized by the sight before him, Steve’s jaw drops, hands drawn to your figure like a moth to a flame. He leads you to lay back against the pillows in his strong grasp.

You gasp; this is it. Finally.

However, you don’t expect him to pull the duvet back over you. Or pull your robe back over your shoulders.

“What the—“

“You’re right, I could show you, and I’d love to,” he grins like the smug bastard he is. “But I meant it when I said you need rest.”

You pout dramatically, earning a genuine laugh from Steve, fangs gleaming in the candlelight, just like the night he confided in you of his past.

“Not even a kiss?”

He hums, offering performative contemplation before leaning down, hand winding behind your head to cradle it before pressing his lips against your forehead.

“The sooner you recover…” Steve tilts down to rest his forehead against yours, breathing deeply. Eyes fluttering shut, your breath hitches. His nose brushes against yours, the chill of his skin contrasting the heat of yours. So close… he’s so close— “The sooner you’ll get more than just a kiss.”

And just like that, he’s detached from you, leaving you utterly flustered.

With a disgruntled groan, your eyes open and roll, diving under the duvet as you grumble grievances to yourself. “Fine. Get outta here so I can rest or recover, or whatever.”

Steve chuckles as he leaves, hanging in the doorway for a moment. “Sweet dreams, angel.”

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #fic: fascination #my fics

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