#poc!reader implied

[dynaxplosion]

"silent care"

you sat on the bench near the training grounds, staring at the wound inflicted into your thigh as you zone out. you reply the moments of the spar between you and your boyfriend katsuki, you were used to him not holding back, but it still bewildered you every time

"oi, get yer ass over here. lemme bandage you up" katsuki's voice called out to you, his words familiar. he'd always help take care of you in his own way, especially after sparring with you

you walk over to him, eyeing the rubbing alcohol and bandages in his hand, a first aid kit beside him. you sit down next to him, thighs touching. you wince when he daps the cotton ball damp with rubing alcohol

"shut yer ass up, I'm tryin' to concentrate" bakugo muttered, his tone stern and gruff like always

"your yapping like your the one who is enduring this big ass cut on my thigh" you retort, rolling your eyes playfully as he disinfects the area of your wound

"yer lucky I didn't mess up that pretty face of yours" he huffed, a defiant smirk gracing his features

"just keep going!" you shoot, playfully obviously

he replies with a deep laugh rumbling from his chest. once he's done disinfecting your wound, he take the bandage he set aside. he carefully lifts your thigh up and wraps the bandage around your thighs surprisingly gently

katsuki bakugo spoke with actions, not words

once he was done, he dramatically sighed

"there. I'm done taking care of yer lazy ass" he spoke, a dramatic look on his face

"oh shush" you snapped back, slapping a hand to his rock hard bicep

"now come on. I'm not gonna wait for yer ass again, y/n" he said, standing up after returning the medkit

"I'm coming, I'm coming!!" you replied, approaching him not long after

you two walked back to his dorm, playful banter accompanying the orange and pink hues of the sunset

once the door to his dorm shut with a soft click, you two were sighing in exhaustion from the day. you stripped from your clothes, so did katsuki as he started the water for a shower

you grabbed some clothes that katsuki kept at his dorm for whenever you stayed over, walking over to the bathroom where katsuki was, checking the warmth of the water every few minutes

you smiled softly at him, which he responded with a dopey smile, as if he didn't even know how to smile until you showed up

you two got into the shower, skin to skin, breaths mingling with each other from how close you two were. you admired his surprisingly soft spikes, his cherry irises, his very hard-earned body from hero training. he admired your (e/c) eyes, the way your hair/curls fell over your face and framed it perfectly, he admired your body, loving the way it feels in his hands

katsuki bakugo was so whipped for you

it was only in vulnerable moments like this where he'd mutter and "I love you" which he did. you almost didn't hear it from how softly he spoke. it was rare for him to say that, but when he did, you knew he meant it

"I love you too, katsuki" you replied, melting into his touch

his fingertips massaged the shampoo into your hair, deliberately washing the soap suds out of your hair before working in the conditioner

after the shower, you both dressed yourselves beside each other. you two melted into the soft fabric of his sheets, his arms wrapping around you as you tucked your head under his chin, the soft fabric of your bonnet/hair tickling his skin as the two of you drift to sleep

hey guys!! sorry I wasnt writing for a bit, my school is just piling assignments on me like summer is literally only a week away WHYY but anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this. have a good rest of your day!!

TAGLIST: @raelikesdinosaurs @00o-kobenii-myphoone

(lowkey forgot about the taglist..😓)

[laddelulu30]

Blind Date Stimulation

A/N: Writing this was exceptionally difficult but I think it came out well. I wrote this for @unintentionalseductress for the “Blind Date Matchmaking”. A thousand apologies, I know I’m a bit late, but I hope you all enjoy the short all the same. I won't bore you with long notes, so I hope you all enjoy…

Your wavy hair is pulled into a ponytail, still somehow curling at the ends. You were dressed in a chiffon A-line summer dress. Lilac. Off the shoulders.

 Looking at your reflection, the lilac looks good against your desi features. But nervous energy still slithers in your veins. 

What if he found you ugly? Not his type? Or worse... a pity date? your thoughts spiraled.

And the more they did, the angrier you got. So what if he didn't? If this date was a failure too, you were determined to simply remain single. In peace with your research and the occasional hiking trip.

Men weren't all the hype anyway.

With one last look, you sigh then leave your condo in Linkon. Walking to a nearby park in tennis shoes that matches your dress and near a body of water, and was lined up with food vendors.

 Couples were already grabbing food and carrying on with their walks. 

Watching them woke a tight pang of longing in your chest, so you decided to look at the setting sun instead. On one hand, you wanted to watch as others interacted with each other and be included. But on the other hand, you enjoyed your peace in seclusion.

You crossed your hands behind your back, then exhaled again, looking down at the ground.

You kicked a pebble, not noticing that someone was approaching you until there was a tap on your shoulder. 

You let out a startled gasp, turning to face the person that tapped you.

“Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you,” says a gentle male voice, followed with a light chuckle. 

Your eyes meet and you falter, frozen as you gaze into his purple eyes littered with stars like an expanding galaxy. 

His eyes widen just as he gets a look at your face,  wonder and awe as he whispers, "Beautiful..." 

Your eyes may have been dark, but with the soft glittering eyeshadow, they were expressive. 

You cough to clear your throat, looking away. Refusing to believe that love at first sight was a thing.

“Sorry, I don't mean to stare,” you say softly, "But you scared me.” 

“That's my fault. My friend, Tara, told me that I could meet my soulmate at the park,” he says with a warm smile. 

Your ears perk at hearing Tara's name. Surely, he must be talking about a different Tara. 

"Um... If I may ask, what else did she tell you ?" you press, trying not to be too nosey.

"She said to look for the prettiest woman here. Ask her if she knew Tara,” he says, his ears turning red at the ends.

“Is that what you were going to ask before I made that horrible squeak?” you ask.

“I was, but your eyes kinda made me forget what I was supposed to ask. Plus, given your reaction, you must know Tara as well. Unless… I just embarrassed myself…” his voice started to fade off into a whisper as he started to feel more and more shy and hesitant. 

"I mean.. what are the odds that we both know a Tara?" you offer, trying to help. 

“Even more if we know the same Tara?” he quipped back.

“She didn't happen to give you a number, did she?” you ask.

“A number?" he echoes. 

"To call. To make sure you got the right person?" 

“Um.. yeah.  Should I call her?”

“You should. Else you've been talking to a complete Stranger instead of the person you're supposed to be on a date with…”

He lets out a sheepish laugh, stepping away to make the call. He's away for a few minutes, and your phone rings.

Tara: You found him?

You: Found who? 

Tara: Your date?

You: Tara?

Tara: Y/N?(She says in mock shock) 

You: What did you do?

Tara: I got you a date. Try it out and if it falls then you can go back to working your butt off. Love you, hun, genuinely hope it works out. Because Simone said you need a man that will blow your back out not ruin your makeup. (the line clicks, ending the call) 

Your face is frozen in shock and the purple eyed hottie comes back. 

“So..she doesn't answer my call. But I’m gonna go out on a limb and say she called you?" He says. 

"Yeah. Love her and Simone to bits but I’m gonna strangle them later."

“And I.. should probably introduce myself, huh?” he says with a light laugh following.

"I should introduce myself too.” you hold your hand out, waiting to shake his. 

"I’m Caleb,” he smiles, grasping your hand firmly. 

His hand is surprisingly soft and calloused. And he smells good. Like spiced apples. Crisp.

Damn Simone and Tara. Where'd they'd even find this guy? He's totally your type.

“I'm Y/N.”  you reply with an answering smile. 

After a moment, you're both still shaking hands. 

“Your hands are soft,” he comments first.

“Yours too, and slightly calloused,” you reply with a laugh.

You both pull away.

“I hope I wasn't too late," he laughs. 

“No, not at all. I came early to look around,” you reply.

“Hungry? We can check out one of these vendors near the water,” he offers.

 “Sure. I’ve never seen these vendors before. But that could be because I mostly work and order take out," you reply. 

“Take-out? Geez. You're missing out on the benefits of a home cooked meal. But these vendors are pretty good. Which one do you want to try?” he says. 

Even his voice is warm and inviting. 

“Well, I’m sure you've tried them. Which one is your favorite?” you ask.

“Hmm? You see that one that has hanging bulbs that look almost like Christmas lights?” he leans in, pointing to the vendor he described.

“Yeah?” you say. 

"Believe it or not, that vendor has the best braised pork belly around and it's affordable.”

"Then let's try it,” you smile, curious as your stomach grows in agreement. 

Caleb pays for the food and you two spend the rest of the evening talking. You and Caleb talk about anything and everything.

And the more you two talk, the more attractive he looks to you.

Time gets away from you and neither of you notice when the park grows quiet. The vendors packed up, gone, and the park goers have gone home. 

"Oh, wow, I've never been out this late before," he says, checking his watch. 

"It has gotten pretty late, hasn't it?” you say, a yawn slipping through.

"And someone is ready to sleep,” he teases then asks, " Would you mind if I walk you home?" 

"I'd love that,” you smile softly.

Cable walks you home. You stand on the mat in front of your door, fiddling with your keys, hesitant to go inside just yet. 

"Would it.. be presumptuous of me to ask you on another date?” Caleb asks, the tips of his ears turning red again as he rubs the back of his neck. 

"You want.. to go on another date?"

"I'd really like to. Unless, I misunderstood that we were getting along well.”

“No, you didn't, I'm just... surprised." 

“Surprised? That I want to go on another date with a super smart, beautiful woman," he grins. 

And I almost melt.

"Well.. When you say it like that.." 

He laughs, “How does this Saturday at 5:30 in the evening sound? We can try another street vendor Or I can look for you in your place?”

"Let’s put a pin in you cooking for me. I'd like to try another street vendor,” you say.

Shyly, he grabs your hand. Softly rubbing your knuckles. Tender and soft. 

"Would it be okay.. if I kissed you?” he asks.

You don't give him a verbal answer, you simply grab the collar of his shirt and pull him towards you. 

His lips meet yours, soft and hesitant. But the kiss grows and he pulls back Placing a chaste kiss on your knuckles. 

His purple galaxy eyes sparkle as he gazes at you, “See you this Saturday, my beautiful goddess”

Your heart flutters and your lower belly tightens as he gives you a wink then leaves. 

The date that Saturday passes as pleasant blur, time blending into one until night turns to dusk. With a tease, he walks you home again. 

He asks for another date to which you gleefully accept. And he offers next week in the early evening. And you nod.

You return to  work, powering through it with a frenzy. Urgently trying to complete everything accurately so that there was no repeating and no work left over. 

You fight Wanderers with newfound motivation. You see them as an obstacle. 

A week passes. The dates continue to be just as stimulating as it is fun. Another week turns into 2. Then a month. A year. 

But oddly enough, Caleb doesn't do more than snuggle and kiss when you're in each other's company. 

He respects your boundaries. Almost irritatingly well. He gives you kisses on your neck and forehead. And he's a snuggler, just like you. 

But he doesn't go further. Doesn't initiate. He simply slips out of the bed, planting fervent kisses before pulling away to go to work. 

And honestly... It's starting to piss you off. 

A week later, he's staying the night and you just emerged from taking a shower. You rub oils and lotions into your skin. 

"Y/N, I made a snack. It's on the counter if you want some," Caleb calls from the kitchen.

Unassuming, you walk out from the bathroom, wrapped in your plushy towel. 

You walk into the kitchen, eyeing the “snack" he made. 

A platter of cheeses and crackers with meats. Then a teapot bowling for beverages. A new habit you picked up from Tara. Her suggestion was that it was better for your immune system, a noticeable difference in your energy levels and your pH balance. 

“Hey, I got the tea going that Tara recommend..." he starts to say, then freezes. 

You watch his purple gaze darken at the sight of you. 

You lock eyes with each other, frozen. Neither of you moving a muscle. 

Then he slowly starts walking towards you. His slow steps have you backing up around the island, circling around the it. 

“Did you… come out dressed like that to tempt me?” he says, growling slightly at the end. 

A shiver skitters down your back.

“No…” you almost squeak when he traps you against the stainless steel door of the fridge. 

His hand slowly snakes around your towel clad body, pulling you flush against him. 

His eyes scream wolf, hungry. 

The hand gently grasps your chin, and he leans forward. "Tell me And I'll stop right now," he says, his voice almost a begging whisper. 

Your skin is hot, prickling with awareness. 

“Do you want to go further?” he says, voice a heated whisper and eyes dark with want. 

You nod, not trusting yourself to speak. 

"Words, little bird. I want to hear you say it,” he says, his lips are a breath away from yours but he's patient. 

Oh so patient. 

Infuriatingly so. 

“ I do.. so bad” you whisper. 

“I was trying.. to maintain my distance... to be a gentleman,” his words are deep, gravely and somehow soft. 

A warning. 

“Remember.. you asked for this,” he almost growls. 

Picking you up, and putting your 5ft 5 thick curvy body over his shoulders effortlessly. 

You panic. A slight fear that you're too heavy and he might drop you. 

"I lift weights for a reason, little bird. And it's so I can carry you like you weigh nothing. So relax,” he says, his fingers digging into your fleshy thighs as he carries you into your bedroom and lays you on the bed. 

Carefully. As if something precious. Something fragile. 

And although his eyes are dark and swirling with promise, he parts your legs gently. Slowly. 

"You smell so good,” he whispers as his nose glides along the inside of your thighs. 

As he gets closer to the apex of your thighs, you get the sudden urge to close your legs. 

Feeling the flinching in your thigh. Caleb nips on the jumping muscle, "Nuh uh.” 

He delves his nose into your throbbing folds, inhaling. It elicits a gasp from your lips. 

And he places a kiss on your weeping slit. 

“You smell even better here,” he says, a whisper. 

A long, unhurried lick. 

He groans, broken, ”Fuck." 

You whimper. 

“Fly for me, baby,” he whispers and lavishes your cunt with his tongue and teeth. 

Sucking and nibbling. Worshipping like your body was a Deity of his sole reason for being.

You hadn't realized that the long year of teasing kisses had done nothing but edge you on. 

So to feel the unrestrained heat and attentions of his tongue, you were ready to break apart almost immediately. 

“That's it. Let go,” he coos, a soft encouragement, never stopping his ministrations. 

His speed and intensity never changes. And he doesn't stop at making you cum once.  

He keeps going. Determined to have you fall apart beneath him, on his tongue as many times as your body allowed. 

And then some. 

And to think, all of this stimmed from a blind date.

Copywrite: @laddelulu30; Do not translate or copy without permission.

Title Banner: yours truly. MDNI Banner: @jiyascepter

@unintentionalseductress @deepspacenova @jinwoosbabyboo @aeyumicore @reilemon @nebulaeternal @thathuntergirl @brightcolorsare4wh0res @hrhmimieucliffe @uyai1101-lads @chibichibi-mia @jonghyunyourenotmybias

A/N: I wanted to write with my fancy fountain pen and every OCR software acted like it couldn't read my perfectly legible handwriting. So, it was a process to get it up, but I'm glad it came out well. And I love the comments. You guys are so sweet!!

[missacidburn928]

Drabble, Drabble, Drabble

Thor x Nonhuman! Reader

I can’t take my eyes off her. The way she moves her body to the music. Utilizing her curves to paint the most enticing picture. Luring unsuspecting victims in with the hypnotizing rhythm of her hips.

She turns in my direction, and our gaze’s lock. The hunger in her eyes is highlighted by the ring of red bleeding into her iris. Circling her pupils like a warning sign to keep your distance.

Do I heed the warning and keep myself from this otherworldly beauty?

Of course not.

I have faced the most nightmarish creatures the nine realms has to offer. I am sure I can provide her with far better sustenance than any of these mere mortals. Keep her nice and full in more ways than one.

Is that so God of Thunder?

So she can mind speak. A nifty little parlor trick.

No trick. Just a means of safety. Mortals can be extremely volatile under certain circumstances.

When faced with their possible demise any creature will retaliate.

You speak truth. But I have no need for their demise. Just their lust and blood. Give me enough sexual tension to fill my belly and my fangs have no need to puncture flesh. Well, unless…

Unless what?

Unless I want them too of course. I must say your jugular vein is looking rather thick and delicious right now. May I have a taste?

She asks for my permission. You really aren’t like others of your kind.

I find when given freely the blood tastes that much sweeter. So what say you Demi God? Will you help keep me nice and full?

You already know the answer to that when you made yourself known in my mind.

Let’s get out of here then. Your place or mine?

Mine. I would love to see how my teammates react to someone like you.

And here I thought your brother was the only trickster, Odinson.

I learned from the best. My apologies but I do not know your name.

You’ll have to earn that one. My name holds too much power to give it over so freely.

Challenge accepted.

[anastasiabowe]

" WATASHI WA STAR! "

✩ɞ You're a fucking star. And they want a taste of it.

cw. MDNI, [SEPERATE] fan (except Nanami) (Toji, Nanami, Choso, Geto) with celeb reader, female implied reader, mild stalking, POC implied reader (specifically African/African American, but not secluded to such), semi-public sex, caught sex, piv, oral (m & f receiving), unprotected, creep tendencies, squirting. (Ps. Not too much on perspective shifts, I low-key was fighting demons trying to stay on 3rd person perspective but I gave up..sorry..)

wc. 6,776

TOJI FUSHIGURO ☆ backstage pass.

It wasn't every tour you offered such an amazing type of pass for your millions of fans. The back stage pass. You avoided it, you didn't like the idea of people looking at you from behind stage, getting in the way between songs, or even abusing the opportunity. But, when your team pointed out how much money you could make, how this could boost your morale, how could you refuse?

When it was announced that you were offering such a deal, the amount of people who made posts, videos, tweets about it, the amount of people that pleaded in your dm's about you saving them a ticket was overwhelming to say the least. It was mère weeks of the constant buzz about the special pass that was limited to 3 people. The seconds felt like minutes, the minutes felt like hours, the hours felt like days for all the fans who would be coming to your Japan show that was in a couple of weeks.

Launch day was terrifying. The second the tickets went for sale, Ticketmaster crashed from the amount of people trying to fight and pay their way to the special pass. After it was fixed, and the many apologies given from yourself and your team. The first 5 were sold. But so were the 200,000 open seats that very day. Was it record breaking? Nearly, did it break headlines? Definitely.

That was a few weeks ago. Now it's the day of your concert. You weren't nervous, you've done this for years, I mean how could you be? The thing you were slightly anxious about was the 3 fans who'd be backstage with you. They aren't only back stage, they get free food, a meet and greet with you, back stage seats to watch you perform, and they get to listen to your unreleased single before anyone else. What if they were creepy old men who want to hurt you? What if they had a bomb, or gun, and wanted to kill you? Those thoughts ran through your head as someone knocked on your door.

"Y/n? Backstage pass holders are here. It's time for you to greet them." Your manager called through the door*

"Alright, thank you." You shook the nerves and opened your dressing room, following your manager out to the empty foyer except for the single man standing there.

You approached the smiling man. He wore nothing but black, but you could see the small logo of your logo on the left side of his all black shirt, under his leather jacket. It was clearly your merch.

"Hello." You spoke to the man. You studied his face as you spoke. He wasn't half bad looking. He was taller than you, he had well defined muscles under your merch, and he had a scar on his lip. He smirked and looked down at you.

"Hey, princess." He said too casually. You frowned at the nickname, unsure how to feel about it. Your mind didn't like it, but the butterflies that filled your belly proved otherwise.

"Is it just you?" You asked, looking behind him. He chuckled and looked behind and around himself.

"Guess so," he smirked. "Guess it's just you and me backstage." You frowned even more. Damn, now you have to entertain him for the "meet & greet" portion, and after the concert for when he hears your unreleased song. It's going to be a long night.

"Okay, well, thank you for purchasing the backstage pass. You'd be the first to enjoy the luxury." You said plainly, trying to fight the fact the longer he looked at you, the more shy and flustered you felt. Okay, you were lying. This man is hot. You imagined things about him you shouldn't..like how his scar might feel on your-

"princess?" He waved his hand in front of your face, chuckling. "There she is." You blinked and looked up at him. God, why does he have to call you that? It makes you even more flustered and those damn butterflies don't know how to fucking die. Did he even say anything? All you heard or saw was those highly inappropriate and fanciful visions of him and you indulging in- activities.

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" You asked, no longer slightly flustered, but very flustered. He had his phone out and looked at you

"Yeah, I said my name's Toji, can we take a photo for my son?" His tone was a bit snarky and I rolled my eyes. He had a kid? I mean, makes sense, who wouldn't want a man like that to get them preg- damnit what the hell is going on with you?!

"Oh, yeah, sure! Just a photo?"

"Yeah, unless you wanna do a video or something." He said nonchalantly. I shook my head. "no, it's okay." He only chuckled at that and positioned his phone to take a selfie. He wrapped his larger arm around your waist and pulled you close, heads touching. He brought his hand to your left tit and secretly placed his hand on there as if he was innocently trying to hold you close. He took a few more and you pulled away, trying to seem unbothered, but damn did that turn you on.

He put his phone away and smiled. He knew you were flustered. I mean it was obvious by how slightly red your face was, even under all that makeup, your ears were a little red. He could tell from the way your eyes flickered to his body as often, if not more often than he did to you. You bit your lip occasionally, and stared at his longer than necessary. He wanted you, and now he can tell you did too, but he wouldn't admit that. He continued to study your body language, and he then noticed, it was almost too discreet to see, but he knew what he saw. You rubbed your thighs together, and not because of how you stood. He knew he had you. The breath y/n was falling for him. If not that, somewhat into him.

"you okay princess? I hope my company isn't...bothering you." He smirked as he stared you down.

"H-Huh?" You stuttered like a damn fool. God, you're the y/n, why the hell is this nobody making you feel this way. Especially this quick! It's been what, maybe 20 minutes, and you're already thirsting over this stranger! Ugh! Get a fucking grip!

"You've been staring off into space, I'm starting to think all that money I paid to see your cute face was f'r nothing." He teased as he crossed his arms.

"No! No, it wasn't for nothing, I'm just a bit..nervous! Nervous for the show, you know?" You tried to lie. It was so fucking obvious you were lying. You've bragged to the world at how comfortable you were on stage and how when you performed for half a million, you were only nervous that you might slip or fall in the heels you wore, but not from the amount of people looking at you. He knew it was a bold face lie, and he found great joy in your flustered state.

"Hmm, is that so? I guess I see no lie in that." He said, emphasizing the lie part. Damnit, now you were aware of the fact he knew you were lying. He definitely knows you're into him. But you can't be! I mean all those dating rumors, fan theories, I mean hell, what if you lose your following!? You sighed. Fuck...why were you giving in so damn easily? Why was he making you feel like this..I mean all he has is a pretty face! And a pretty body..and voic- fuck!

"Uh..what time is it?" You asked, trying to change the subject from the roaring thoughts filling your mind. He laughed and grabbed your wrist with your watch on it. "Hmmm, I wonder princess. It's almost like you have a watch on your wrist." Of course he'd be sarcastic, of course! Just find every fucking opportunity to make you embarrassed, huh?

"O-Oh.. I knew that." You tried to play it off. It was only 5:30, and your concern starts at 7. You had maybe an hour left with him alone before you had to be brought back into your dressing room to get ready for your concert. He continued his grip on your wrist, and that's when he did it. He pulled you to him. Right in the middle of that empty foyer.

"you know princess, I paid a whopping $2000 for this backstage pass. It wasn't easy getting the pass. And it certainly wasn't easy making sure I was the only one you'd be seeing tonight, so I think I should make it worth the money, don't ya think?" He smirked as he said that inches from your face. "You got a room we can go to? So we can..chat a little?"

You knew exactly what he was insinuating. He had you flush against him. He was whispering lowly in that deep, seductive voice of his. He was luring you in, and it was working. You should be pulling away. His wandering hand down to your ass didn't go unnoticed, yet you didn't pull away. You only nodded and that's how you found yourself bent over on your vanity in your dressing room, hair wrapped manically in his thick fingers as he fucked you from behind, forcing yourself to make eye contact with him.

"yeahhh, that's what 'm fucking talking' about." He growled as he stared at your pretty tear stained face. All that damn expensive makeup you wore just for him to find a game in trying to take it off by tears alone was comical to him. Your legs felt like jelly, and the mean arch you were in was borderline painful, but he hit it so fucking good!

"ah-ah-ah!" You cried as his rough thrusts hit deeper and deeper. Your eyes rolled and crossed and molded into hers as you felt him in your gut. He planned this, that's what's so infuriating about this. He had the condoms ready, the fresh tattoo of your name, small, but visible right above his dick. He had all the right things to say and things to do to get you to the point of letting this- stranger fuck you!

"T-Toj-" he cut you off as he brought his lips to your ear in a mean smile as he stared at your tear-stricken face in the mirror. "Shhhh, princess. Just let me take care of you." He chuckled. His hand that was on your hip was now on your breast, fondling and pulling at the nipple. He moved his other hand from your hair to your neck so he could pull you up, and fuck you like that. God you were so hot. He just wanted you all to his self. For 5 fucking years he wanted you. Yeah, it was creepy, maybe just a little, but he never did anything diabolical! He put posters and pictures of you up in his son's room so he has an excuse to see your face. He always saved your photos, screenshot them from any platform you posted them on and put them into a hidden album. He never missed an album or single released from you. He wished he could travel the world with you to see you at every concert you had, but he wasn't a millionaire.

"Love this pussy, love this body, love this voice, and fuck I love you." Any person in their right mind would find his words creepy, but you weren't in the right mind, you didn't even think you had one at the moment. His words only brought you closer to your release. After a while, he let go of your tit and neck and pulled out. He picked you up like a doll and brought you to the couch in the dressing room. He sat down and had his arms around your legs in a full nelson. He inserted himself and began fucking you like that. He let out the hottest groan you've ever heard and you cried from pleasure in this new position.

"Fuck me!" You whined as he chuckled. He grabbed your jaw and kissed you, nothing but spit and teeth as he fucked up into you. He muttered things no woman would want to hear from a stranger.

"Makin' it real hard not to put a baby into you, just so everyone can know you're mine.. maybe take ya home with me, show you off to my kid..you know he'd love it, right? He wouldn't let you go, oh no he wouldn't. How's that sound? Knock you off this high horse your own and mommify you, domesticate you." No, no, no, he didn't mean that, he couldn't have. But of course, you didn't reply. You brain was mush. All these words did were turn you on to the point you came without letting him know.

"Naughty fuckin' girl. Did I say you could cum? So fucking greedy, don't know what to do with ya." He meanly said. He started rubbing your cunt, continuing to fuck you. "Since you like cumming so much, let's just see how much more you can, princess."

Stupid backstage pass.

NANAMI KENTO ☆ post premier.

Oh the actor life. Full of filming, premiers, releases, interviews, fame. You were currently one of the highest trending actresses of 2024. Next to Margot Robbie, Zendaya, hell even Anne Hathaway. You had movies, after movies, after shows coming out for a couple of years, and each a rising hit. You were currently at the red carpet of your newest movie. You wore a beautiful black dress that was tight and long. It had a draped back, that showed off your beautifully toned and clear back. The draped part hung low and perfect right above your ass, and your hair was just as pretty. It was a wig that looked stunning on you. It was long, and the curled layers added to the elegance. You were currently resting your hand on your co-star, Kento. He was new to the acting industry, but any movie you were in with any co-star made every actor seem like an A-list actor.

The paparazzi and journalists loved your chemistry the best. Kento was a fine man. Had good morals, spoke nothing but respect and admiration for you at interviews. He had high respect for you in person with the way he looked, spoke, and touched you. He kept his hands to himself, or at respectable places on your body like your arm, which many other co-stars didn't. If he saw your dress was slipping down too much, or the people taking a gazillion photos of you focused on your chest or lower region, he'd cover it up with his hand or body. Those actions didn't go unnoticed by anyone. Everyone praised and fawned over your relationship. It almost seemed like your relationship in the romance movie was...real.

You and Kento soon began to enter the elegant and high class theater, but before, you were pulled gently by him for an interview with a well known journalist for a well known magazine.

"Kento, y/n. Tell us about the dynamics in your movie before it's released to the public." The Australian man asked, more focused on Kento for the moment.

"Well, our characters are from 2 completely different worlds. Y/n's character is lively, fun, not as well off as my character, but she brings joy to the people around her, like in real life. She brings joy everywhere she goes. My character is more reserved, well off, and a bit more modest and stoic. Much more like myself, I prefer to stay out of the spotlight. I think it's a very common trope in most romance movies, but the plot and acting really make our movie stand out, and I'm excited for all to see." Kento said as he looked at me, the journalist and camera.

"And as for you, Y/n?"

You smiled and looked at Kento. "Just as he said, but I'd like to add that our characters may be completely different, but they fit together so well. I think we balanced each other out quite well, and as you will see in the movie when it comes out, the chemistry between them seems almost fanciful. But I think that's what true love should look like." You smiled up at Kento, and the journalist couldn't even tell if you were actually talking about the characters, or yourselves. He smiled, and nodded.

"Well, we're excited to watch your movie when it comes out." You and Kento nodded as well, and waved as you both began to head into the theater. You kept your hands around his arm as you both walked and he leaned down and kissed your exposed shoulder.

"Are you okay?" He asked as he looked at your face. You looked up at him and nodded.

"yes, I'm excited to watch our movie." You softly laughed as you both and many others including other co-stars and the bits team headed into the theater. You saw a few other celebrity friends of yours, and you waved to them, but you never left Kento's side. You both found your seats and sat down. This might be a late to say, but you and Kento were secretly dating. I mean, that type of chemistry in your movie and person wasn't just good friends, it was the chemistry of lovers. Everyone you knew, knew you and Kento were dating, and they all were respectful and quiet about it. I mean it was almost obvious that you both were dating though. He constantly has his hands on you, even though they could be mistaken for a co-star being kind to their other co-stars, you knew he was just being slightly possessive. He kissed your shoulder often, and when paparazzi or journalists/interviewers were out of sight, his hand wandered to your exposed lower back.

You both weren't hiding your relationship, but you also weren't super open about it because it was your relationship. And you wanted it to be strictly your guys', not the world's.

"I'm nervous about the adult scene." He muttered honestly. You laughed and placed your hand on his. He was so cute, it was hard to believe he'd, such a domestic and masculine man could be so cute. You squeezed his hand and reassured him. "Especially since we know what really went down."

You blushed and nodded. Even though the adult scene was fake, you both were into it, and in the real way. Kento did ask once if the padding they wore was necessary, and the body suit you had to wear to keep the movie 17+ and not rated R. They gave you the freedom to do what you pleased in the general sense of 'making love' and not anything more.

"I think it'll be a good trip down memory lane." You smiled. The director of the movie came on the stage in front of the screen, and gave a synopsis and introduction to the movie. He thanked us all and the movie began. Throughout the movie, many of us actors laughed and smiled about the scenes we were in. Ken often smiled and quickly told me about what he did or felt, or reminded me of the bloopers. I smiled and laughed quietly at his remarks. The adult scene came and passed, and you smiled through it all. Soon the movie came to an end and the theater erupted in claps. You and Ken had rehearsed this moment of where after the movie you'd each give your own person thank you or speech. We both got up and he helped me carefully onto the stage and began speaking.

"thank you all who showed up, watched, and enjoyed the movie. Me, Rayna, our co-star and movie team are so thankful for the opportunity to fill this movie. We hope you all enjoyed it, and will continue to." He continued in thanking individuals for a specific thing and I remained silent and had my hand on his lower back as spoke. He then clapped with everyone else when he was done, and looked at you as you began to speak. Of course, you were starting to tear up like you did with every premier. It wasn't an annoyance, and everyone knew they were tears from how proud you were of everyone and how you always have some emotional tie to the movie or show you filmed. This one was different though, because you found a lover through it. For the first time.

"I just want to thank Ken. I mean, I've done movies like his for years, and I've never felt this way for a co-star. He is brilliant, kind, hardworking, and caring, and I wouldn't wish for someone better. This is his first movie, believe it or not, and I'm so proud of him. I'm proud of everyone, but I'm proud of him." Everyone clapped and you laughed as he pulled you into a hug. You cried into the hug and everyone clapped and cheered.

After the premier, you and Kento were in the car on your way back to your house. He wanted to celebrate with you for the movie. There were already good remarks from critics, and the movie is already trending without even being out. You reached your mansion, and entered the cold but warm place. You got out of your dress and into more comfortable clothes. Ken as well.

You both sat on your couch and enjoyed some wine and champagne. You sat there in his shirt and panties. He in a shirt and his dress pants from the evening. You smiled as you both sat there in comfortable silence.

"I'm so proud of you, love." He finally said. His eyes were staring ahead as he took a sip from his glass. "So damn proud of you." He then looked at you and smiled. You smiled back.

"I'm so proud of you. You made this my favorite movie I've ever filmed."

"And you made my first movie the best movie I've ever filmed." He said warmly, setting his glass down, and taking yours from your hand, setting it down. He pulled you into his lap, straddling him, and wrapped his arms around you. He buried his face into your neck and sighed contently. You threaded your fingers in his blonde locks and rested your head on his.

He softly moaned to the feeling of your fingers in his hair, and gently kissed your chest over the shirt. You smiled, and settled further into his lap. He groaned slightly and gripped your hips. "Don't move like that, love, you know it was hard enough to keep myself under control when you were in that dress.

"We're alone now, what's there to hold back?" You smiled mischievously and slowly began to grind on him. He groaned again, and looked up at you, once neat and smooth hair, now messy and fluffy. His eyes bore into yours as he groaned again. You looked down at him and bit your lip with a smile. "What's wrong, ken?" You asked innocently.

He chuckled and shook his head, pulling you down on his clothed cock harder. "You know, y/n, that adult scene gave me ideas." He muttered as he ran his hands over your waist. "How it must feel to just make love..all night." You blushed at his words.

"Y-Yeah?" You stuttered as your face felt warm.

"yeah. I think we should try it again but for real this time." He smirked. "How's that sound, love?"

You felt impossibly warmer. You guys never 'made love' quote on quote. You didn't fuck either.. you guys barely made it past kissing and dry humping, so now he wants to make love. I mean, who were you to refuse.

"I would like that, ken..a lot." You smiled. He smiled back and nodded. He then began to kiss your neck gently, pressing warm but cold and wet kisses to your neck. His hands slipped under his shirt (that you wore) and caressed your soft body. You moved your head to give him more access, and you softly moaned. He gently pulled the shirt over your head, exposing your body, now only in the black panties you chose to wear. He marveled at your body, eyes never leaving your chest. He smiled, and moved his kisses from your neck, to your collarbone and below. He took his time with you. He wanted you to feel his love for you, every single drop. His kisses were deliberate and targeted. His kisses made your tummy heat up, and thighs wanting to close, but his legs which you were sitting on prevented such.

"K-Ken-..more please.." you muttered as your hands gripped his hair tighter. He nodded and gently bit your chest. "As you wish love." He had his hands on your hips as he laid your nearly naked body onto the couch. He slipped off his shirt, and undid his pants, sliding them down. "Tell me what you want, love."

No, no, no.. not this, please. You internally begged. You hated when he did this, you just wanted him to touch you where it hurt, where it begged for him. "Kennn!" You whined. He knew what he was doing! He smirked. That damn smirk that makes you melt and fold in ways no other man has ever gotten you to do. He chuckled and leaned down to kiss your lips. "I'm sorry baby, you know how I am. Tell me what you want, and you'll get it, I promise." He smiled as he almost babied you, which you really didn't mind.

"Mmm, touch me..down there.." you muttered, now feeling shy. He smiled and brought his hands to your lower stomach. "Here?" He smiled. You whined and he chuckled. "You gotta be a little more specific love, there's a lot "down there"."

You huffed and wrapped your legs around his waist. "Kennn! You know where!" He tried to act like he didn't and you groaned. "I wanna feel you in me!" He chuckled and leaned down to kiss your cheek. "Better." He then hooked his fingers into the panties, and pulled them up your legs, you immediately unlocking them from his waist so he could pull them off. He pulled off his boxers as well, his angry tip slapping against his stomach. You looked down at his cock, it was so pretty. You've only seen it once before, but not for something like this. He reached into his wallet which was in his pants pocket and pulled out a condom.

"No." You sat up and grabbed the condom, throwing it away from you both. He looked at you with furrowed brows. "Honey?" He asked confused why you did that. You now felt sheepish but you stayed firm. "I-I want you inside.. I wanna feel all of you."

"Are you sure?" He asked carefully. He was hoping you were sure of what you were implying. He had no problem with it, but it could lead to a longer term issue. A child. You nodded and locked your legs around his waist again. "I'm sure, now please put it in..I just wanna feel you, that's all, please." He couldn't say no to that cute face. Your cute body, he just couldn't. So he lined himself up, and remained hovering over you.

"Take some deep breaths, love." He whispered as he slowly inserted his thick tip. You gasped and held onto him, arms wrapped around his neck and back, nails scratching. He paused and waited till you calmed down before he slowly inserted himself. He was so thick, and long, and God did it feel glorious. When you gave him the okay, it was like a whole new world was opened. You weren't new to sex, you've had a few hookups throughout the years, but they were never this intimate, this intense. Kento cared about you and your well-being over his own pleasure, and to be honest, you think he finds pleasure in your well-being! He grunted as his pace increased and each grunt sent another deep pang of butterflies into your tummy. You moaned and whimpered into his ear at how good he felt. It was so overwhelming that a tear slid down your cheek. No words were said throughout this moment. He kissed your tears and lips. He kissed your nose and cheeks. He loved you, but he wouldn't say it until you did. He didn't wanna scare you off.

He hit so deep, and the mixture of pleasure, and security you felt made it 10x better. "K-Ken- fuck, it's so good, it's so, so, good, please don't stop." You cried as he continued his pace, increasing the speed of it slightly. He felt himself letting go, but he couldn't do it before you, he couldn't.

"sweetheart, you-fuck, you close?" He groaned as he felt himself too close. You whined and nodded. He tapped his shoulder repeatedly as you came and that's all it took for him to come inside. He captured your lips in a kiss as he fucked you both through it. It was too good, too fucking good, and you both felt it. He pulled away slightly to catch his breath and he chuckled.

"I'm hard again."

CHOSO KAMO ☆ cute stalker.

There you were. Walking through all those paparazzi wannabe's. They wish you looked at them like you did him. They wished you got on your knees for them like you did him. They wanted to be him so bad, your lover. Except, you didn't even know who he was. You never met him, seen him, touched him. It was all in his head. Choso wasn't crazy, he swears he's not. He just likes every photo, video, interview you were in, your account or not. He would constantly buy new phones from himself constantly breaking them from throwing them from seeing you with another man. He wanted you all to his self.

He wasn't crazy, he swears he isn't. He just wants the love of his life all to himself, that's all. I mean how could he not, you were beautiful, and you always look at him, every time you follow him you see him, you smile and wave at him. No you didn't. He follows you and whatever way you look and he happens to be secretly stalking you from, he thinks that's you looking at him. But, you have met, once. At your meet and greet. He was so excited to see you, and he did, but he let something slip out that got him kicked out. He said he'd kill for you. He was dead serious, but he didn't mean he'd ACTUALLY kill FOR YOU! He just meant he'd protect you. But there's been too many cases of celebrities being killed by crazy fans who have the "if I can't have you, no one will" mentality. But he'd never kill you, he wants you for real and not in the afterlife.

So here he was, deliberately walking towards you, pushing past paparazzi, and straight to you. He was nervous. The bouquet in his hands, the chocolate in his other. The large teddy bear with your name on its tummy squeezed tight to his chest, he was ready. But just as he was about to reach you, he was yanked away by a security guard. The security guard threw him into the wall yelling at him to step away. He cried out, and you widened your eyes at the contact. You pushed the security guard away and rushed to him despite the other security stopping you.

"Are you okay?! Why the hell did you do that!?" You asked Chris, and yelled at the security. The security didn't look sorry for hurting Choso, but a bit startled at your yelling. You gently brought your hand to the back of his head which was bleeding from the impact, and frowned. You gathered the flowers that thankfully stayed together, the chocolate, and bear and handed it to him. "I'm so sorry, are you okay?"

He didn't take the gifts and nodded. "Those are for you..and I'm okay.." he was fighting tears, but not from pain, from you being so close to him. His dream girl. You smiled at his words on how those gifts were for you. You looked at the bear and clutched it to your pretty chest, oh the chest that he'd bury his face in for decades. He stared at your pretty face as you talked to him. You were inviting him to eat with you, but all he heard was "bla bla bla, I love you, bla bla bla." He'd probably explode if his head wasn't elsewhere at your invite. You noticed his dazed expression and softly laughed, tapping his cheek.

"hello?" He shook himself out of his fantasy and looked at you when you got his attention. "Do you want to have lunch with me? To apologize for what my security did?" Did he hear you right?! The paparazzi was continuously snapping photos of them, but he didn't care. He nodded and smiled, with your help, stood up. You were slightly shorter than him, and he couldn't help but find you adorable as you held his hand and pulled him into the restaurant you were going to dine in. It was a celebrity restaurant meant for no flash photography or paparazzi in general. You got a table and sat across from him, your security remained at the table next to you.

"I'm really sorry about that, your head is bleeding.." I frowned when I looked at my hand which touched his head a bit ago. He waved you off, too focused on your casual beauty. He knew you weren't wearing makeup, and how cute you looked without it. You let him order whatever he wanted, and you smiled and chatted with him. Each sentence, word, syllable that came out of your mouth made him even more obsessed with you. All those months of following you did not go in vain. It was all worth it. This would be a life lesson to you all who read this, good things comes to those who wait.

You found yourself finding the man kind of..cute? He had this cute purple hue under his eyes, and his 2 spikey buns were adorable. He smiled and was attentive to you, and you couldn't help but enjoy his company. You must have enjoyed it too much, because here you were, in the bathroom of that restaurant sucking him off.

"Aha, y-y/n.." he moaned your name as you licked and sucked his cock. It was so good, so yummy. You enjoyed the feeling of it laying heavy in your mouth. He thought he was dreaming, the delusion finally winning, but no, here he was getting head from his favorite actress. You brought your tits to his cock, and began pushing them together and squeezing his cock with them. He didn't know what to do with his hands. Does he put them on the sink, or does he put them in your hair? You smiled up at him so devilishly that he chose the latter. You stuck your tongue out, and licked his tip with every up and down you made your tits go. Almost like a premature teen, he came over your tits and onto your tongue, chin, collarbone. You continued to stroke him, and licked up his mess.

"Mm, so pretty."

GETO SUGURU ☆ chauffeur.

You've gone through driver after driver, but they all weren't like Geto. He was your personal driver, went everywhere you did. He knew the routes you liked, he knew how to keep you entertained. He understood you when you complained to him. He was always on time to pick you up and drop you off. He knew how you liked the car you were in, the right temperature, whether you wanted the windows down or not, he also knew what Spotify playlist you'd be into, which was usually your songs. But also, he knew he was in love with you.

He always remained respectful of you, cheeky yes, but never crude or creepy. He complimented you, helped you into the car and out, always saying something about you being a "princess". He loved driving for you. He loved that you loved him driving for you. He knew he was a shoulder for you to cry on, and that's why you usually always confided in him, no matter how long the drive. You also sit in the front more often than not. Most people don't do that, but he makes you feel welcome in the front, and you like sitting in the front.

You soon found yourself way too comfortable with him. He practically was your boyfriend without the touching and title. You told him about your period, your cravings, your needs, desires, wants. You've talked about your body and how you love it or hate it. You complained to him about sexual frustration. It wasn't like you had to tell him any of that, you certainly didn't. You had many friends who you could tell that too instead, but there was something about him that was so inviting. He's also confided in you too. He talked to you about this girl he liked and how he wanted her. He talked to you about his hair and how he's happy you like it long. He's let you even do his hair in long traffic stops. You guys were like lovers without being official.

But you'd be a damn fool to say he wasn't attractive. You found yourself almost excited when he honked the horn every time he waited for you outside, or how upset you'd be when he didn't pick you up and someone else did instead. You found yourself staring at him and imagining how it'd feel for you to grip his hair as he hugged you, or did other activities. You wondered if he would be into hair pulling, or if he'd be into other things. It was inappropriate, it was weird, and it definitely wasn't the cause to the fact you're riding him in the backseat of your limo.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Geto repeated as you hopped on his dick. You tugged his hair as you rolled your hips and slid up and down his lengthy cock. He captured your left tit into his mouth as his hands remained firm on your lower ribs. You moaned as your legs burned, but the feeling of his cock inside you overpowered all your senses and you prevailed. You never lent up as he has came many times, you just as many. He was completely pussy drunk off of you. Soon enough, he couldn't handle it anymore and came again. You moaned and giggled as he came inside you, you enjoyed the feeling, and your body shivered at it. You continued to grind down fervently. He let out the hottest whimpers and groans as you fucked him dry. You soon came and slowed down to a stop. He held your front to his tightly as he shook from how much he came.

"W-want to taste you.." he shamelessly admitted, pulling you gently off of him, and laid you in the gap between the driver and passenger seats so he could eat you out. He let out a shaky breath as he looked at your soppy, creamy cunt, mixed with his and your juices. He pressed his nose and lips to your cunt and began gently sucking and licking you clean. His tongue slapped up every juice from you. You moaned and your legs shook at the overstimulation. He didn't even realize how good you tasted till he found himself panting as he continued to desperately eat you out. You let out a scream in pleasure and pulled his hair.

"G-Getooo! T-too much~♡!" He groaned and continued to eat you out. He inserted his middle and ring finger and began fucking you with them. You squealed and he smiled. You tried to push his head away, legs kicking and shaking as you felt your release again.

"S-Sugu-ahhh!" You shook as you came again, your juices sprayed against his face and he let out the hardest groan, cumming himself simply from eating you out. He slowly licked you clean and pulled away, hair a bit wet from you squirting.

"First time you've given me a ride." He chuckled, kissing your thighs.

"it definitely won't be the last."

[omniphilic]

⠀⠀⠀⭒󠀠󠀠󠀠 ( ´ཀ` ) YOU LOOK HUNGRY ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀mark actually makes it in time for dinner, but he thinks missing it would’ve been less embarrassing than getting bricked up at your table.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀a.k.a ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Amber’s Mom Has Got It Going On

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀> all characters involved are 18 and older. the following fic contains ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀mark grayson thirsting over someone at least 20 years his senior. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

warnings & tags | i guess it is implied the reader is poc. but idk if u are white just imagine amber is biracial (or imagine the one from the comics ig) 🤷🏾‍♀️ inconvenient boners, the perverse mind of a sweet suburban boy (he's thirsty), mishandling of an embarrassing situation, male masturbation, scent kink, misuse of cow print panties. mark thinks of cheating on amber (spiritually?), you're not in on it <3 you are a baddie minding your business. reader is a good mom (serious). reader is said to have fat/pudge/curves at least once. mark is uncircumcised. the reader is referred to using titles that align with she/her/hers, you are considered Amber's 'mom'. PORN WITH PLOT i take the premise extremely seriously lol. 7.3k words.

yapper notes | i went to a music lounge and a young woman (very beautiful alt girl) sang a song dedicated to her ex called 'you look hungry' and i immediately got the idea for this fic . shout out to the big homie @on-hit for helping me every step of the way with it they are an AWESOME beta reader, and to my inspirations @sophsthebest @slutla @batsovergotham @nana-au @arieswritez who have been making me go CWAZY with their mark content. first fic is dedicated to yall <33 taglist | @zomqiez

“—k hungry.” His glass clinks off the wood of the table when you set it down, the sound snapping Mark back to reality.

Mark blinks out of his stupor, memories of the time and place rushing back to him. “I’m sorry Mrs. Bennett—what’d you say?” Smiling awkwardly, Mark realized then and there he should not have agreed to this. He should have found some way to tell Amber he couldn’t make it.  He should have bailed and asked mom to make some shit up so he didn’t have to be seated across from you at this dinner table. The flu excuse was a classic—although, he hadn’t seemed sick earlier that week. Scratch that, couldn’t work. Food poisoning, though? He was sure that could’ve worked well enough to have kept him the fuck home. 

He knows that Mom probably wouldn’t have done it, though. She’d have gone on and on about honesty—sincerity. The things that make or break a relationship. He would’ve had to tell Amber himself anyway.

He secretly hoped Cecil changed his mind about having reassigned him, but dashed the thought as quickly as he had it. Mark Grayson would never hope to be that lucky.

“You look hungry.” Your emphasis. It draws out the grit in your voice; that saccharine drawl lances through his thoughts and spears him right in the chest. His heart pounds with the roar of a war drum, disconcertingly loud in his ears and you’re standing so close—just to pour his water—that he worries for a moment you can hear it too. He prays to God you don’t notice how tense he is or how red his face has gotten since you’ve stepped into his vicinity. 

What is he so flustered by, anyway? Is it the smell of your perfume that’s got him short circuiting? The faint tickle of your breath on his ear? The mere thought of you being anywhere near him?

The answer is D: all of the above. 

Having come to this conclusion, it sets the facts in stone--

He really is fucked. 

He’d be surprised if he still had a girlfriend by the end of the night cause his eyes have been glued to you since you opened the door, caught on your every word. Amber was over the moon about it at first. He’d been housebroken in five minutes tops; yes and ma’am his two favorite words.

“Hungry?”

It's hardly anything but you light up anyway, your shock giving way to a restrained excitement and in an instant your demeanor entirely made over. Your eyes became alive and bright, smile lines gentle crescents on your face as your grin spans ear to ear. 

You have been doing most of the talking. He can’t get his thoughts in a straight line when you look him in the eyes so instead of being tongue-tied, second guessing and editing every genuine reaction, he made himself set dressing; he was your coat rack in the corner, the ottoman that held your drinks, your plaid couch cushion. He observed the banter between you and Amber and acted like some stranger, or her shadow as opposed to ‘her little friend.’ You had tried to coax him out of his shell.

Nudged his shoulder. A quick What do you think, Mark? just to see if he’ll bite. He only nodded politely. Kept eye-contact but hardly emoted; you don’t think this kid has blinked for the past five minutes. I think it’s just fine, ma’am. No dice. Cool and calm, but it feels too curated. Contained.

You think he doesn’t like you at first and that is entirely on him. The bit of sadness in your eyes and the odd glance from Amber fills him with dread, but ultimately he decides it’s worth it. It was far better than you getting too close and finding out he actually likes you—a lot more than he should. He feels the rage of his hormones itching at his hind brain; a stirring in his pants just because you brushed his shoulder.

During all your pleasantries he was preoccupied. Busy exercising dwindling self-restraint, jaw tightened and fingers dug into his palms so hard he’s sure he bled a bit.

Behind his eyes is his rational mind resisting the urge to ogle. Eye contact is the bane of him but so is your body, each curve and sharp edge unfortunately (mournfully, even) hidden beneath the threshold of your neck. He dared not look any lower. 

He’d done more than enough staring when Amber first showed him your picture. She brought up the whole dinner idea and flashed a pic of you offhandedly, said it was from your birthday.

He should’ve called it there. He should’ve wisened up and cut his losses, because this was a bad fucking idea. 

He was staring for wayyy too long; being rendered slack-jawed in front of your girl for any amount of time by anyone who’s not her is immediately and unignorably suspect. However, you are the girl’s mother, and Mark is praying Amber thinks he is in his right mind and does not jump to the conclusion that, briefly, he wondered what your tits looked like sans top. 

“She’s…” Hot. “Beautiful. I see where you get your good looks from, babe.” Amber laughed at that, missing the single drip of sweat that had to have been sliding down his temple. She elbowed him, paltry laughter coloring her speech. “Okay good, cuz’ that was a test.” Mark squints at her, hands closing in at her waist and gently pinching her fat, teasing. “Testing me? What are you vetting for? What—” He had laughed from the nerves, picked at a loose thread on his jeans to diffuse his inner tension. “Do people say crazy shit about your mom to your face?”

He’d been peering at the picture from beneath her thumb when she shook her head. “You’d be surprised! Some people booold as fuck.”

Mark was busy looking, didn’t respond right away. “Yeah… that’s, that’s wild.” 

Did you get knocked up fresh out of highschool? There are some natural lines of age that accentuate your smile and reach your eyes, but none of that even matters; it’s like your aura is timeless, your confidence striking, he could feel your joy, and he smiles back at you like a dumbass.

“You good?” She’s noticed it, the shift in the energy. 

SOUND THE ALARMS! He’s been caught. It’s over. Amber hates his guts thinks he’s disgusting and is never going to speak to him again—

“Yeah! I’m just super excited to meet her. She seems like a lovely woman.” When she smiles back, the flood sirens stop, hazard lights go out. “She is! Mom of year material, swear to god.” 

“...yeah.”

Good grief, what the hell would his mother say? Catching him drooling over a woman twice his age—he hoped she’d at least laugh before she smacked him upside the head.

But he feels as blameless as he does shameful.

Because look at you. As far as he’s concerned, dinner’s already been served.

His mouth is dry by the time it catches up to his mind. 

“Yeah, I know that look man. You’re starving.” You step back from around him and walk towards the oven, and he justifies his staring by convincing himself he was already looking over before you walked there. He gulps.

Your pants cup your ass so perfectly; two beautiful cheeks, teasing him from under thin denim— “Uh.. yeah, I guess I am. Thirsty, too. Thanks for the water,” he cheers at you and you shake your head, putting on cow print oven mitts. They match your apron, your drink coasters, and utensil grips. There’s a joke there somewhere: something something, mommies and milkies.

“Don’t mention it! But sorry for the wait; dinner doesn’t usually take this long to start—I have no idea what that girl is doing up there.” You open the oven. “Oh! Before I forget: if you want anything other than water, or if you want seconds, just let me know sweetheart.”

He eats you up with his eyes, you don’t know he’s already on his third plate.

Your voice—suave, smooth—soothes and excites him. You speak with the cadence of a song, your expressive lilt or husky croons tickle his brain in just the right way. You are genuine, cordial, have been since he’s stepped foot into your home. Amber is always coming over with little lunches, post-it notes with squiggly hearts attached. You sign everything in the same flowy script, for my beautiful daughter; since you have learned of his existence, you’ve tacked on and her little friend in parenthesis, packing the snacks Amber told you he liked. 

You’re attentive. Thoughtful. You’d even gotten him a gift for his birthday before you even met in person. He refused to accept the present at first, but Amber said it’d be a bigger hassle to try and get you to give it back, from one of those shows Amber said you liked written on the card attached. 

A limited edition shiny, which he can’t fathom you found for any price cheaper than an arm and a leg. Amber said you had a friend and just thought he might like it.

It was really… sweet. How much you wanted them to work out. He senses that same sincerity in your every action. In every smile or wave, in the time you took to prepare him a beautiful dinner—and you’re right, he actually is hungry—all in an effort to get to know him better. You’re not some cougar, or some hyper-nymphomaniac slut who’d try to seduce her daughter’s boyfriend. Which was unfortunate, for him.

You are just a good mom. A great one even, and a better host besides. Mark is just some fucking pervert.

While you’re pulling the trays out of the oven, he is glued to your every movement, tilting his head to get your best angles. Your spread is immaculate.

The gentle swing of your hips, and fuck—he swears he can see the outline of it. The subtle flare of your pussy lips, shrink wrapped in your jeans. Either he’s imagining things, or your cunt’s just as fat as he thought it’d be.

Fuck dinner, he desperately wants to skip straight to dessert, peach juice dribbling down his chin. He’d lick you up quick—you’re liquid gold, too precious to waste a drop. “...she’s probably getting cute for her little friend…” You mutter to yourself, which cuts through the fog of perversion, and he takes a sip of his water in a futile attempt to cool off.

His final shame would be getting hard at your dinner table. It’s not like you’re doing it on purpose, it’s just out of your control just like it’s out of his, in a way. You can’t help looking good in your clothes!  That’s why you buy them, for the way they cuddle your supple curves, snuggle between your folds, caressing your fat so well they had to have been tailor-made for you. 

You’d look good in his clothes, too.

His dick twitches at the thought, grip around his glass tightening.

��I should’ve asked Amber what you like to eat but,” You start, still taking trays out the oven.”I guess the invitation was super last minute, so apologies if our meager dinner doesn’t suit your highfalutin’ tastes.” He can hear the smile on the tip of your tongue, your jibes easing his wariness. ”Don’t even worry about that,” he reassures, thinking too hard about what to say next. “It smells way too good in here for the food to not hit, ya’know?” He facepalms internally.

“Well, aren’t you a flatterer? Why thank you, Mark. It’s nice to feel appreciated.” You’re dramatic, palm to chest and flourishing with the flair of a broadway star, and it catches him so off guard he laughs. You’re emboldened by his energy, moving around with an ineffable pep, almost like you’re dancing. It’s silly frankly, watching you butter bread buns as you jam to an invisible concert.

Mark should have been laughing. Should have been prancing around the kitchen alongside you, playing The Good Boyfriend, collecting his brownie points by helping his girlfriend’s mother around the house. Just be a normal fucking person.

But he’s caught. Fish-on-the-hook, rat-in-a-trap, caught. On the swell of your hips, the twist of your spine, the expanse of your neck, the dimples on your back whenever your shirt rides up. The way your ass sticks out when you get on your tippy toes to grab something from a high shelf. Your body is intoxicating and Mark isn’t the drinking type, but since time immemorial have there been exceptions. He’s been making a lot, tonight, so what’s another?

Everything about this is lovely. There’s fresh baked bread, rice and beans on the stove, baked mac and cheese set aside on a cooling rack, and the chicken… he sniffs. 

“Is that cumin?” He asks, in an attempt to distract himself. You make a noise that sounds like surprise and glance back at him. “Yeah! It is. Some nose you got on ya, Mark! You cook a lot or something? Or maybe…just have an uncanny sense of smell.” You tap your nose, smirking, and Mark just shrugs. “I watch my Mom, she shows me how to cook some stuff from time to time. Or when I ask. But I’m not exactly the greatest student, so I don’t wanna waste her time you know.” He laughs. It makes an odd wheeze coming out, and on impulse he scratches the back of his neck as you sample a sauce. “No worries about that, here. I’m an excellent teacher.” Your smugness palpable, you crook your finger at him. “C’mere, I’ll show you a little something-something.”

And he can’t just say no.

So, there he stands next to you, half-chubbed, in front of the stove. You two are hip-to-hip at your insistence—you can’t learn standing all the way back there—the steam in his face not nearly as hot as he is under the collar. “Veggies with lotsa water are a bitch to cook so I don’t even bother. We’re doing cauliflower tonight. Something simple, sumn’ light. Now, the trick is to be loose with it, don’t worry about whether or not you’re gonna fuck it up. Just let it rock,” You look over at him and he is stiff, like he has half a mind to let your hard work burn to a blackened crisp. You grab his hand to try help him stir and he starts to turn pink. You didn’t think the kitchen was that hot.  “Try and relax. Breathe in, breathe out. You got this baby.” You’re fucking with him. You just have to be. 

Are you really that sultry-toned, bedroom-eyed? Or is he seeing things, steam fogging up his thoughts. He begins, trying not to sound so nervous, “Mrs. Bennett—”

“You can just call me by my name, Mark.” You snort. He swallows. “Okay, ma’a- Uhhh,” He stutters and you chuckle. “If that’s too familiar for you, you can always just call me Mom.” You wink and his heart flutters in his chest. “Okay, mom.” He has to keep himself from shivering as the word rolls off his tongue. 

He’s out of place next to you, a milk jug in the candy aisle, clown shoes paired with a cocktail dress. Your softness contrasts his on-edge, he’s surprised he hasn’t cut you yet. 

“Take a deep breath Mark, you don’t need to overthink it. We’re not doing rocket science.” You guide him. In and then out. Your hand crooks his wrist and he forces himself to relax. “Grab the handle of the pan.” It’s easy to do whatever you ask of him. He’s only waiting for you to say jump. 

“Now stir in a slow continuous motion, loosen your wrists but keep your grip on the spoon tight.” 

You’re training wheels falling away as the cogs in his brain start to turn again. He rotates his wrist and keeps going, stirring in time with your humming. The pale cauliflower change color from white to gold. He takes a peek out of his periphery to gauge how he’s doing, and the wry grin splitting your face makes him smile, too. 

“See? You’re a natural when you put your mind to it. Or maybe you just needed a more hands-on kind of teacher?” you hum. 

He short circuits a second. He doesn’t even notice you snatching a simmering cauliflower out of the pan; you have a mother’s immunity to this kind of heat. “Sample your work always. Never serve someone something you haven’t tried yourself.” You blow gently on the piece you plucked and offer it to him.

“My hands are sort of preoccupied, mom.” Saying that feels much better than it should. “I don’t think I can—” Heat at his lips silences him.

“Open.” 

Housebroken was right. He doesn’t have to think about it, he’s blinked and the cauliflower is already grinding under his teeth. The tastes of garlic and onion bloom beautifully on his palette, not overbearing, just delicious.

“Oh shit yeah,” He groans a little, then remembers himself, drawing back in. “Sorry, pardon my language.” Try as he might to dissuade himself, a snake of a smile slithers onto his face. “It’s great.” Mark smacks his lips together gently as you look at him, expectant. He licks the residue of seasonings off his lip and tries not to imagine what you taste like. “I’m wondering if your tongue’s as sensitive as your nose. So what’s the verdict? Give me a run down.”

He sucks his teeth. “Garlic. Onions. Or maybe shallots? Is there a difference? I just assumed they were just kind of smaller onions.”  He can smell the difference but he likes the way you light up when he asks. “Yeah, there is! Shallots are like… a distant cousin. They’re from a whole different family, Allum- something or other.” You reach in front of him to turn down the heat on the stove and you get far too close for comfort.

“Go on.” He thinks for a moment. “I thought I tasted,” You hold out your hand and he instinctively hands you the spoon. “Hm. I don’t know, I thought I tasted something spicy, a little sweet, maybe.” You nod. “That’s what you call the spice of life: Paprika.” Que jazz hands.

“Two outta three isn’t too bad. I’ll make a chef out of you yet Grayson.” You beam and it is blinding, he has to look away. “You’re shaping up to be an excellent pupil.”  He full body perks up at your praise. If he had a tail, it’d be wagging. “Do me a favor Mark?” His dog ears perk up. “Get a cup from the cabinet above you. Then take the pitcher,” You gesture as you slide your oven mitts on. “And put it in the middle of the table.”

“Okay!” He nods so giddily at you that you can’t help your laughter, rich as it flows from you. You’re opening the oven when you say it. You don’t even have the courtesy of facing him as you completely and utterly ruin his life.

“You’re a real good boy, aren’t you Mark?”  

Everything is quiet then—

—SMASH!

The pitcher makes your teeth rattle when it shatters, your head darting to the side so quick it’s a miracle you don’t snap your neck. Mark is standing there a few feet away from you, turned around, water and glass shards pooled at his feet.

“Are you okay?” The urgency in your voice pulls him out of his stupor. “Um. Yeah!” He chirps back, too fast. He is frozen in place. 

“Just! Hold on—” You drop the flan on the counter and chuck your mitts. 

Mark does not move.

His system is shot. All the blood has been evacuated from his brain, he can hardly focus on regulating his breathing—nevermind the words coming out your mouth. “Sweetheart..?” You try, brow arching. “What happened? Are you hurt?” 

“No! I’m fine.” He is on fire. Every muscle in his body coils tight as his fight or flight malfunctions. He freezes.

He’s completely crashed.

Over two fucking words.

Mark is stock still for a second, rock hard dick trapped between his thigh and pants far too tight.

You’re taken aback by his abruptness and quiet for a moment. “Okaaay. Well. Are you going to move over, at least?” You have something like a laugh lodged in between your words, riding closely behind irritation as your eyes follow the rolling stream of water beneath his feet.

“Yes! Yeah, of course, sorry.” 

He doesn’t mean to whimper like a kicked puppy, adorned with shame and all, and Mark hates the way you fold for him. The way you reassure him. It’s fine, crooned in that same saccharine tone because you wholeheartedly give a shit about him. Which is the worst, because he does not deserve your concern. He does not deserve your daughter. He does not deserve you. Least of all your damn dinner.

He was right. He only wished he could’ve been happy about that. 

Mark feels your laser eyes biting into his back, scoring over his skin as he moves out of the mess he’s made.

“Thank you. Now, can you pass me the broom? It’s in front of you.” 

He presses his palm to his mouth and eats his sigh. “Of course,” The throbbing in his pants is growing more insistent by the second but he can’t look down. Can’t acknowledge it or it’ll become uncomfortably real. But it’s not like he can stand still forever. He walks forward and grabs the broom, quick as he turns and hands it to you. You’re not even looking at him, too busy making sure you’re not tracking water underfoot. “I’m so, so sorry.” He starts, but you wave him off, leaning the broom against the fridge as you kneel to sop up the water.

”I didn’t think you were the jumpy type.” You jibe, spritely even as you weave around glass splinter and shards, trying not to scrape your hardwood floor. “But it’s fine—it happens to me too. Sometimes shit breaks,” you shrug. “Pardon my french, but no point bitching about it! ” You chuckle. “I am definitely gonna bully you about it, though.” You really, really shouldn’t; he likes this pair of pants.

His shoulders loosen hesitantly, only to be agitated as he gauges the urgency of his real problem. He is tenting.

His jeans are more heavy duty than the suggestion you call clothing but it’s obvious if you know what to look for. The tautness in the material as his dick fills it out, darkening brought on by the precum crowning his tip.

“Yeah, sorry. I guess I just—got worked up.” That’s certainly a way of putting it. “I was worried about messing this whole thing up, but then I went and made a fool of myself anyway.  Real classy, me.”  He laughs as he scolds himself, scratching the back of his head. You don’t see him while you’re bent over, cleaning, but he’s sure as hell seeing you. His conscience hits him with quick onset shame, but there’s not enough blood circulating to his brain for it to keep up with his reservations; he ogles shamelessly.

He has to catch himself everytime he leans too far forward, but it can’t be helped. He has a premium seat at the theatre and the main feature is your panty line, the poor excuse for a thong that creeps down the cleft of your ass, dipping below the horizon of your cheeks.  He envies it.

“I had a feeling you might’ve been a little nervous,” Your voice snaps him out of his perv’s reverie.  “But don’t worry, I like you plenty Mark. ‘M not expecting you to roll over or jump through hoops to impress me. You’re not a dog.” you say, laughing, but you don’t know. 

You rise from where you were crouched on the floor and turn quicker than he was expecting, but it’s easy to play off his staring and meets you with a smile. It is returned. ”You’re good, right? Not wet or anything?” You give him a quick once over and he stops breathing. 

You don’t seem to find what you’re looking for, meeting his eyes once more. “Yeah,” he says when he finds his voice, “Not anything, I’m fine.” You nod, exhaling short through your nose as if to say okay. 

“Great.” You sigh, arms akimbo, as you look at the shattered glass, at the broom, then at Mark. “Come here.” 

Then you’re on top of him. Hugging him. Ruffling the hair on the back of his head, tits pushed up against his chest, hard nipples poking through your bra, hugging him. “Uh, Mrs. Bennett—”

“What’d I say about calling me that?” You pull back, holding his shoulders while he stands with all the confidence of a wet cat, looking bewildered, then bashful. “At least say Miss, it makes me feel younger.” You joke.

“Miss,” He can’t help but comply. “What uh, what are you doing?” You squeeze his arms. 

“...have you never been hugged before, Mark Grayson?” You tease, while he attempts to position his hips as far away from your anything as he can. “I’m doing the Mom thing, you know? Comforting you.” You can hardly keep your laughter in one second, and then the next you’re decadently soothing, voice barely above a whisper. 

“You didn’t embarrass yourself, okay? Mistakes happen. You’ll give yourself an aneurysm if you keep stressing about making a good impression. As far as I’m concerned, you’re already part of the family.” You snuggle into him, rubbing comforting circles on his back. He shudders at your touch. 

You’re just as soft as he imagined, just as plush and warm, but he can’t hug you back, not in his state. You won't let him go.

“I can feel it, you know?”

His heart sinks. “Uh? What’re you talking about?

“Your tension. You’re stiff as all hell, man. You were sorta makin’ me nervous, cause you wanna look like you’re being held hostage.” He briefly looks at the arms girding him, then back to your babydoll face.

Wow. You’re breathtaking. Pillowy lips, spiderwicked lashes, vibrant eyes. You smell softly of coconut, cocoa butter, vanilla, a hint of sweet almonds. 

“Just relax man. Deep breath in, deep breath out.” He complies as his compulsion demands of him, and he, regretfully, relaxes in your arms. He relaxes to the feel, sight, and smell of you.

You made him too comfortable. He let out a sigh, eyes closed as he draped himself over your shoulder.

“That’s it, big guy, just calm down.” You pat him gently. He returns the hug.

Mark knows when you feel it. He knows because it sends a nasty jolt through his entire body when you rub up against it. His body locks up and his eyes widen, mortified. He feels hot, the room almost set to spinning as his mind is overwhelmed; he startles himself, the tiniest groan escaping him, but that is not when you notice, no.

He doesn’t say anything. He just leaves it be, cock throbbing as he tries to wade through the bog of his thoughts, trying not to rock himself against you.

It’s only when you pull back that you see it. You had this half-smile on your face, hand propped on your hip, mouth open like you were about to speak and then,

you looked down.

On reflex. It was quick. Not even a half-a-second long. But then you double, triple take.

He wondered if you thought he was big, naturally, though the state of your face summed up everything you’d never say. The wide-eyed shock, inhale of breath, supple lips softly parted. Then confusion, a furrow in your brow, uncertainty as your eyes flick back to his burning face. A twinge of disgust, but it’s brief as you are quick to school your expression. 

He’s bigger than your husband, maybe, or you’re wondering if this dick has fucked your daughter.

(He’s wondering if you’d take it better.)

If there’s hunger in your eyes, he couldn’t read it. Hell, he honestly can’t look you in the eye long enough to try.

In reality, you’re only surprised his face is so red; you’d have thought all the blood went, well…

“Oh.” You step away from him and tuck your hands behind your back. Neither of you speak for a moment, his wide eyes blinking at your indecipherable expression. 

Then, you attempt to diffuse the tension. “Well.  I'm... sure it happens to the best of us, Mark. It’s no hard feelings, I mean!--” You seem to remember the broken glass then, the thing you should've looked at in the first place, and busy yourself begin cleaning it up.

He doesn't try to speak. The silence resumes.

Until eventually, you try again. “When I met my husband, he had an issue with getting ‘excited’ too, you know?” Around you? Color Mark unsurprised.  “It’s only natural, especially for young men your age! Don’t worry.”

 His face burns with shame, or is it irritation? If old boy’s not in the picture, then maybe he could…?

No, no, he’s getting ahead of himself again.

He eats up your sweetness, and his teeth rot alongside his dignity. “Amber’s not ready, so you can head up to the bathroom while I clean up in here and we never have to talk about it again.  It can be our little secret.” You didn’t have to whisper the last part. He swears you’re just mocking him now. 

“Really?” He heaves sighs like mountains, eyes wily as they connect with yours. “You won’t tell Amber?”

“Really really, Mark. I’m sure she can live without knowing…this,” You gesture to him with your palm and all five fingers. “Ever happened. Especially after last time, she’s probaby--” You touch on something you clearly didn’t mean to, cutting yourself off before heaping refuse into a cow-print pail. “Nevermind. Bathroom’s upstairs, second door on the left, sweetheart. There are some towels too, if you need to, um…?” You trail off. “Uh. Under the cabinet.”

“Okay—I’m gonna go now, if you don’t mind, thank you so much ma’am—” He stands and for some reason you’re not looking him in the eyes anymore. 

“It’s no problem Mark, none at all.” You smile, quickly turning to dump the glass in the trash as he heads out. You catch the back of his head out of the corner of your eye, and let go of the chuckle you were holding onto as soon as you think he’s gone. “...just make sure you don’t poke someone’s eye out with that thing.” 

He doesn’t know where his mind goes after that. He’s hardly walked down the hall and he’s already played it over in his head five times. He’s deluded, mind a broken record, cock trying to jump out his pants and it only gets worse the more your words play over in his head. He walks with great urgency, gait awkward as he skids to the far end of the hall and reaches the base of the staircase.

In the blink of an eye he’s at the top of the stairs and yet, he is not fast enough to miss your rose of a daughter. Amber looks surprised to see him. “You came up to find me?” She was just touching up her makeup by the looks of it, blush renewed, baby blue eyeshadow reapplied, that artificial cherry gloss he likes. He could smell it from a mile off.

“Yeah,” He lies reflexively, “You were kind of taking forever…we thought you got lost on the way back or somethin’.”  Amber sounds so carefree when she laughs. He notices now how her face crinkles a lot like yours does, those same dimples and smile lines feeling intimately familiar now that he’s basked in your presence. She does a little flourish for him, stepping between him and the washroom and posing a little. “So! How am I looking?” She pauses after she takes him in, his cheeks bleeding red, eyes flittering elsewhere.

“Mark, you feeling alright? You’re looking really… hot?” Mark blanks for a second thinking of what he ought to say before she glances down. Amber expression dwells somewhere between humored and pleasant as she stares, openly.

He is going to die.

“Uhh, I’m flattered Mark, but right now isn’t really the best time,” she laughs. He sees now where she gets her humor from. “I’ll make a mental note: deep necklines and low rise jeans got you whipped.” 

He has absolutely no rebuttal to that. You wear it better, though.

God that’s so fucked—

“I, uh-- I can explain,” He starts, but Amber holds her hand up, fingers curling around his outstretched hand. “No need.” He sighs in relief. “The bathroom’s behind me. I’ll be with Mom. I’ve been gone for way too long, she’ll start thinking I died or something.” She smiles and heads towards the stairs.

“Just—give me a few minutes. Don’t wait up.” Amber says something that’s muffled by the click of the bathroom door.

Finally.

He relaxes at the door, the roar in his mind quieted by the change in scenery.

Even the inside of your bathroom is cute. There is more bovine based decor bathed in warm yellow light. Everything from the soap dispenser to the rugs to the curtains are brown, beige, sand, pink or peach, and it smells utterly divine.

It’s that perfume you’re wearing. Mark should be concerned he has already committed that scent to memory but he’s all bloodhound, thrown caution to the wind, sense on overdrive as he follows the trail to its end, X tucked behind the curtain of your bathtub. 

…

It’s your underwear. He knows it’s yours on account of the cow spots. Not like he could imagine Amber in a number this racy anyway; the crotch is missing, blue frills lining the slit down the center and what he assumed were the leg holes. Modesty was certainly not something she inherited from you, he thinks, as he plucks this choice piece off the rack.

He has to hold it in both hands, feel the cotton under his thumb pad to believe it’s real. The fabric is soft to the touch. He can catch a whiff of the soap you used, the scent of your skin lingering just behind that. He’s not even holding you close and you’re still so potent it makes his eye twitch and head hurt.

He imagines you in them. The smooth plane of your ass filling it out, the squish of your skin under the tension of the elastic. 

He shouldn’t even be entertaining the thought, and yet…

…

Soon he’s slumped over your toilet seat, arm laid up on the tank as his hand darts down to his pants and undoes the clasp. “Fuuuuck me,“ He groans, some of the pressure relieved as his tent pitches up, freed and now angrily demanding his attention. With your panties in his left hand, he pulls his boxers down with the other, his cock smacking against his stomach with a dull smack. 

He knows he’s big but you must’ve done something to him, spiked his water, casted a spell, something, cause his tip is so red--so leaky, drooling and needy--and he’s soo fucking hard. His cock stands ramrod, twitching as he rubs the tip with a tentative index finger. He makes himself whimper, replaces index with his thumb, smearing his pre-cum in circles until he’s bold enough to curl his hand around the shaft. The slightest touch makes him buck, hips swinging upward as his balls clap against the back of his hand, his expression breaking off into a half dazed smile as his spine decompresses and his body begins to truly relax.

He goes slow, breath catching as he gets used to the feeling of doing this, relieving himself among your things, in your space, your fucking panties folded in his hand, but he can’t care. He can’t care when he feels this wired; can’t care when the feeling of his foreskin dragging back and forth, up and down, and it feels mind-numbing, a match to his skin. He happily burns.

Propriety is dead; all he can think about is you. The way you sung his name and praises. The way your ass looked so perky in jeans. The way your tits bounce with your gait.  “God,” he could cum just thinking about it. He’s already moaning, arm sliding up his shirt to cup his pec, the shlick, schlick of him hammering his fist filling the bathroom; he’s got a steady rhythm up and down his cock, his sensitivity feeling heightened from your affections. He’s still thinking about the way you looked at it.

The way your jaw dropped, mouth hung open like a proposition. If you’d get on your knees to clean up the mess he made, what else could he make you kneel for?

“fuck—”

You called him a good boy. 

Good boy? 

Mark Grayson was everything, anything, but.

He certainly did feel like a dog, though. Panting, half bent over himself and jerking his dick so hard his toes are curling. 

Mark gets himself worked up easily. When it smells like you, it’s easy to get lost in the fantasy, your precious hands wrapped around his fat dick and sucking it for all its worth. He wonders what kind of noise you make—if you suck just as sloppily as Amber. 

You seem like you’d have a tight throat. Tight pussy, too. Maybe he has to give it to you easy, treat you gentle and feed it in slow til’ you’re squeezing on his dick like a vicegrip and mewling for him.  Or maybe—

—maybe, he can just sliiiiiide right in. Fill you out all nice-like, leave you with a real good first impression. You would fit him like a glove, wet cunt soaking him to the bone.

And exactly how would he have you? There’s no shortage of options, just not enough time. You’d live your whole life and never know a moment of peace again, if he got his hands on you.

Then there’s your panties. He doesn’t even know what to do with them, having left them limply dangling between his hand and his thigh as he’s beside himself, because you linger in his bones like bad cold, all ice and teeth and biting. He breathes heat into the air as he lets his head fall back, pretending the tightness of his fist is as good as the inside of your pussy. He imagines the way your ass would squish against his hips when he pounds you from the back. His balls would slap against your clit so good, have your eyes rolling back, ecstasy running a live wire through you, set your system to shock.

He’d probably fold you in half, first, give it to you standing. Thinks about how easy it would be, to pull your hair, flip you around, bend you over. 

He wants to Fuck. You. Up.

You look like a moaner too. He can picture it, your tits smushed up against his chest as he gets your legs slung over his shoulders and breaks your back in.

He can hear the way you whimper out his name, stitched together from the bytes of you he’s stored in his memory. Mark has you wailing, whining, scratching your nails blunt on the flat of his back. 

You whisper his name in prayer. 

Mark. 

Mark. 

Mark.

MARK!—

He feels his balls tighten, just as a fist hammers against the door.

“Maaark!” 

He cums to the sound of Amber’s voice; you two sound so, so similar. Like your voice, too, it snaps him back to reality. He was wholly unprepared for this moment. He can’t stop cumming.

It shoots on to his tummy, thick white ropes of cum sticking to his abdomen before he can think to stop it, and Amber is still hammering on the door, could’ve been for the past five minutes and Mark could not have known. He can’t speak for a moment, throat dry and gummed together at the same time.

“...Mark?” The knocking softens. “Are you okay?”

His cock throbs in his hand as it pumps another load and his mind is stuff chock full of fuzz, vision spacey as he comes down from seeing stars. He can’t bask in the afterglow long, not to the sound of Amber knocking.  Mark’s eyes go wide as saucers, and his mind runs on instinct.

He reflexively wipes the cum off his stomach with your thong. His pupils dilate. Uh…

Guess he can’t take it back now. He cleans himself off, catching the rest of his mess in the sponge of fabric. 

The panties are properly soiled by the time he’s done.

Voice broken like he’d been crying (because he had shed a few tears), he calls back. “I’ll be out in a second.” The knocking stops and the voice on the other end sighs. “We thought you slipped and cracked your head dude; you’ve been gone for a cool 15. Unless you’re taking a-”

Mark opens the door. 

He’s looking pristine; zen, subtle smile breaking his nonchalant demeanor. He looks down at her, expectantly. “You gonna move over, or do I have to make you?” He jokes with a tilt of his head.

Amber quirks her lips at him, then backs up to give him space. He spills out of the bathroom and quickly closes the door behind him. 

“It always take you that long to freshen up?” Mark sucks his teeth as they begin to walk down the stairs. “You can’t talk. How long were you gone for again? Like thirty minutes? Just to put on blush?” She elbows him, giggling.

“It’s my house you dolt, I’ll go missing in it as long as I want.” They can laugh together, finally, and it surprises Amber, the first time she’s seen him unwound the whole night. “What kind of peptalk did you give yourself to make your little problem go away, huh?” She asks at the last second; he uses them crossing the threshold of your kitchen as an excuse to keep mum.

“Found him, ma!” Amber presents him as he takes a seat at this godforsaken table.

Dinner is just fine. Perfect, you could say. There’s a light in Mark’s eyes you haven’t seen all night, his conversation lively and engaging. No more yes ma’am, no ma’am; no ma’am at all for the rest of the night. 

That’s not to mention the food itself. It’s immaculate, meat fall-off-the-bone tender, beans seasoned and flavorful, garlic buttered bread so good it’s got his thighs squeezing together.

But he still can’t help but think:

You’d taste so much better.

FIN

Later…

Home.

At home, he can lock himself in his room and no nosy girlfriend will come knocking. 

At home he can kick his feet up, play with his balls and beat off to the thought of you without interruption. 

But it’s odd. He smells himself, the room around him. It smells like you still, somehow. Mark thinks he’s just caught on you, olfactory giving him false signals, but before he brushes it off as a red herring, he catches another whiff of you.

Then another.

And another,

Until he’s tearing up his room looking for the source of it. Until he finds himself staring at the pair of khakis he wore. Until he’s picking them up, and realizes the outside of the pocket looks greasy—or damp.

He slowly reaches in, revealing a sad, sad pair of panties, surely missing the ass that filled them out. At first he has the sensibility to be horrified, but while holding them, cum smeared and all, he sniffs. He stifles the little groan that slips from his lips. 

Yup, that’s you alright.

He looks around like he’s being judged by the shadows, the light filtering in through the curtains. 

He closes them.

The world shouldn’t have to bear witness to his depravity.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀all writtens are penned by ©️omniphilic !

thank you so much for reading! drink some water (cause ik you thirsty), remember to reblog, & stay tuned for more writing. comments, questions or thirsts? send it to my inbox or leave a note below!

[cherry-lala]

Whispers of Memories, Chains of Time

Parings: human-turned-vampire!Remmick x human-turned-vampire!Poc fem reader

Genres: Southern Gothic ,Vampire Romance ,Dark Angst,Supernatural Tragedy, Fluff(..)

Wordcount:14.8k+

Content warning: vampire transformation (non-consensual), blood, emotional manipulation, obsession, toxic romance, grief, PTSD, trauma aftermath, sexual tension, implied sex, body horror, hunting/killing, possessiveness, violence (not glorified), slow descent into monsterhood

A/n: this was a request from @0angel-tears0 , and i truly poured my heart into bringing it to life. i tried to weave in every detail that was asked for, and i hope it resonates with you the way it did with me while writing. thank you for the inspiration—i really hope you enjoy it. And thank you for the support^^

He was on his knees.

Not like a man prayin’, but like one beggin’ the grave to let him stay buried.

“Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” Remmick rasped, voice low and cracked, like gravel dragged through honey. His hands hovered near mine, never quite touchin’. “You want me gone, I’ll disappear. You want me dead, well… you know better than most, darlin’. That ain’t never been easy.”

The rain hit the ground like it was tryin’ to drown out the past.

I stood there, silent. Watchin’ the same man who once turned my blood to fire now tremble like he ain’t felt warmth in centuries. His eyes flickered red. Still beautiful. Still dangerous. Still mine—once.

And then the memory came back sharp as bone:

His mouth at my throat.

My scream shatterin’ the quiet.

The taste of betrayal on my tongue before I ever knew what betrayal truly was.

The night he turned me.

The night I stopped bein’ his salvation and became his punishment.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

Remmick's Pov

The smoke from the baker’s chimney curled lazy into the grey mornin’, twistin’ up toward a sky that hadn’t yet made up its mind. Pale, dull, hangin’ low like grief. I shifted the crate on my shoulder, feelin’ the dig of wood through damp wool. My boots were slick with yesterday’s rain, slippin’ now and then on the cobbles that shone like a drunkard’s teeth—wet and crooked.

I passed the butcher, same as always. He gave me a nod stiff as his apron. Behind him, the meat swung on hooks, pink and heavy, lookin’ like saints in some holy place I’d never set foot in. I hated that shop. Too many flies. Too many mouths left open, waitin’ for a prayer that’d never come.

The crate weren’t much—few bottles of oil, sacks of dried lavender, and somethin’ sealed in wax I didn’t bother askin’ after. I just hauled it. Dropped it off with the woman behind the counter who didn’t look me in the eye, and left. No lingerin’. Places that smelled like sickness and sorrow weren’t ones I liked to haunt long.

I’d lived in this village long enough that most folks stopped whisperin’. Didn’t mean they trusted me. Just meant I was another fixture—like a broken fence or an old gate that still held up in a storm. I worked. Didn’t drink myself blind. Didn’t steal. Kept to myself. That was enough for them.

But it weren’t enough for me.

Some days I wondered if I was real at all. Or just a shadow they let move through the fog.

I took the back path out, cuttin’ ‘round the edge of the market square. Didn’t care for crowds. The noise. The eyes.

That’s when I saw her.

Not all at once. Just a flicker first—somethin’ movin’ slow near the trees where the path opened wide. A figure bent low, rearrangin’ a basket. Her movements were deliberate, like the world could wait its turn. Like she had all the time God ever gave.

Her dress was simple, but it carried different. Lighter. Like she came from somewhere the sun hit softer. And her—

Christ.

I don’t know the word for what she was.

Not just beautiful. No.

Marked.

Like the earth itself had touched her, pressed a thumbprint right into her soul, and said: this one.

I should’ve kept walkin’. I didn’t.

She straightened, basket shiftin’ easy on her hip like it belonged there. The light caught her skin, and it weren’t fair, how it looked. Her eyes passed over me once—just a blink—but they didn’t flinch. Didn’t linger.

That’s what did it.

She didn’t look at me like I was strange. Or cursed. Or nothin’. She looked past me. Like she’d seen worse. Lived through more. Like she carried the memory of fire behind her ribs and still breathed easy through the smoke.

And me?

I forgot the path. Forgot the ache in my shoulder and the filth on my hands. Forgot the hinge I was meant to fix, the roof that needed patchin’. Forgot the name I answered to.

She turned.

Walked into the crowd and was gone.

And my chest—quiet near a decade—stirred like somethin’ old had woken up in it.

Somethin’ dangerous.

Somethin’ like hunger.

Or recognition.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The next time I saw her, it was rainin’.

Not the sort that passed in a hush and vanished clean. No, this was the old kind. The kind that settled in your bones and made the village feel more graveyard than home. Clouds hung low, heavy as guilt. The air smelled like peat, smoke, and wet wool.

I hadn’t planned on cuttin’ through the square. Meant to head straight to the chapel—Father Callahan’d cracked a hinge clean off the sacristy door again, and I’d promised to fix it. Hammer tucked under my coat, hands still black with soot from cleanin’ out the baker’s flue that mornin’. My back ached. My boots were soaked.

And then—

I saw her.

She stood quiet as a shadow in front of the apothecary, tucked beneath the narrow eave that dripped steady at her feet. Her dress was simple, the color of river clay, clingin’ to her like the rain knew better than to touch her skin. A basket sat on the crook of her arm, filled with wild garlic and herbs, and her other hand held a cloth to her lips—like she was keepin’ something back.

A cough. Or a secret.

I oughta have kept walkin’.

But I didn’t.

I stood there like a daft fool in the muck, starin’ at her like the rain could wash the sense back into me.

She looked up.

And this time, she saw me.

Really saw me.

Her eyes—dark as peat, clear as glass—locked with mine. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. Didn’t carry the same weight in her stare that most folks did when they looked my way. There was no pity. No suspicion.

Just stillness.

She wore it like armor.

Like maybe the storm belonged to her.

“You alright there?” I called, my voice louder than I meant over the hiss of rain.

Her gaze dipped for a breath, then came back. She lowered the cloth. “Far as I can be, considerin’,” she said. Her voice was even, lower than I remembered. The words came proper enough, but the sound of her was not local. Something about it curled at the edges. Like she’d learned the language well but carried a different song in her throat.

“You’re not from here,” I said. The words left me before I could think to swallow ‘em.

Her lips twitched, not quite smilin’. “Neither are you.”

She weren’t wrong.

Folk around here called me the outsider. Came in after my brother passed, and I stayed—fixin’ broken fences, sharpenin’ shears, patchin’ roofs after windstorms. I kept to myself. Said little. Answered less. Most folks left me be. Grief has a way of makin’ ghosts of the livin’.

But she—she was no ghost.

She was too solid. Too certain.

“You deal in herbs?” I asked, noddin’ toward her basket.

She glanced down, then back. “Some for trade. Some for me. Depends who’s askin’.”

“Folk here don’t always take kindly to unfamiliar hands mixin’ medicine.”

“They don’t take kindly to much at all,” she said. Her tone didn’t shift. Didn’t get sharp or soft. “But I’m not here to please them.”

My mouth twitched. Could’ve been a smile. Could’ve been a warning.

“They call me Remmick,” I offered, though I don’t know why. She hadn’t asked.

She nodded slow, like she was tuckin’ the name somewhere safe. “I’ve heard of you. Fix things, don’t you?”

I gave a short nod. “Try to.”

She tilted her head, studyin’ me like I was a nail half-driven. “Can you fix what ain’t made of wood or iron?”

I blinked. “Suppose that depends on how broke it is.”

That made her pause. Her eyes lingered, like she was weighin’ my words on a scale only she could read.

“Good answer,” she murmured, and stepped out into the rain.

She moved like dusk—quiet, certain, untouched by the cold. Her shoes sank into the mud, her hair clung to her nape, and still she didn’t flinch. Didn’t falter. Didn’t look back.

Didn’t need to.

I stood there a long while after she’d gone, hammer still clutched in my hand, like I’d forgotten what I was doin’.

Something about her wouldn’t let go.

It wasn’t just her face, though it was a face worth rememberin’.

It was the way she made the world feel like it wasn’t mine anymore.

Like she’d stepped out of some place older than time.

And my soul—fool that it is—reached for her like it already knew the fall was comin’.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The next time I saw her, I was carryin’ a sack of empty flour tins and cussin’ at the wind. The path out toward the edge of town had turned near to muck from the week’s worth of rain, and the soles of my boots were caked thick with it. I’d been sent by old Mr. Fallon to fetch a bundle of dried thyme and wild caraway for his bread—claimed the flavor wouldn’t be worth spit without it. Gave me a half-torn scrap with the address written in crooked scrawl and waved me off like I didn’t have ten other things to fix today.

I followed the directions, takin’ the narrow road past the blacksmith’s, past the place where the woods leaned too close to the path, until the town itself felt far behind me. When I reached the cottage, it was tucked back in a thicket of elder trees, vines curlin’ up its stone sides like time was tryin’ to reclaim it.

Didn’t seem like the sort of place anybody lived.

But there was smoke risin’ from the chimney, soft and pale.

I knocked on the door. Didn’t expect her to answer.

But she did.

The door creaked open slow, and there she stood. Same earth-toned dress, sleeves rolled up this time, fingers stained green from somethin’ she’d been grinding. Her hair was wrapped back, loose pieces stickin’ to her temple from sweat.

I blinked. She didn’t.

“You here for the baker’s herbs?” she asked, before I could speak.

“Aye,” I said, a little too quick. “Didn’t know it was you who put ‘em together.”

She gave a small shrug, half-turning back into the house. “I make do with what I can. Come on in. It’s dry, at least.”

I hesitated on the threshold.

Then stepped inside.

The cottage smelled like cedar smoke and mint, sharp with somethin’ bitter beneath it—wormwood, maybe, or sorrow. Shelves lined the walls, filled with glass jars and cloth bundles, herbs hangin’ to dry like prayer strings. Light came in soft through the foggy windows, catchin’ on the motes floatin’ in the air.

I watched her move through the space like she belonged to it. Like the walls were built to her shape.

“You live alone out here?” I asked, settin’ the tin sack down by the door.

She nodded without lookin’ back. “Folk don’t visit much. Suits me fine.”

“Bit far from everything, don’t you think?”

Her hands didn’t stop as she tied a bundle of dried leaves with twine. “Distance keeps peace. Or at least quiet.”

I hummed low. “Seems lonely.”

She paused, just a moment. “Lonely’s better than bein’ caged.”

I didn’t have an answer for that.

She turned then, handin’ me the bundle wrapped in cloth. “Here. Tell Fallon I added wild rosemary. He’ll complain, but he’ll use it anyway.”

I took the bundle, our fingers brushin’ again. Brief, but not unremarkable.

“Thank you,” I said. “For this.”

She nodded. Her eyes lingered on mine longer than they should’ve.

“You always this polite, or just when you’re in someone’s home?”

I let a ghost of a smile tug at my mouth. “Only when I’m talkin’ to someone who don’t scare easy.”

She raised an eyebrow, a corner of her lip curlin’. “Good. I don’t trust men who only speak sweet to the meek.”

There was a silence then—an easy one, somehow, but it sat heavy with things unspoken.

“You never gave me your name,” I said, shifting the weight of the herbs in my hands.

She looked down, then back up. “That’s ‘cause I haven’t decided if you’ve earned it.”

And damn me, but I liked the sound of that.

“Well,” I said, stepping back toward the door, “if you ever reckon I have, I’ll be around. Usually fixin’ things folk’ve broken.”

She tilted her head, arms crossed now. “Maybe I’ll break somethin’ just to see if you’ll come.”

The door creaked shut behind me before I could think of somethin’ clever to say.

Outside, the air smelled like wet leaves and woodsmoke. I walked back down the muddy path with her words echoing in my chest—soft as silk, sharp as flint.

And somewhere in the quiet between my heartbeats, I realized I’d be lookin’ for reasons to come back.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The morning stretched soft and gold over the village, sun filterin’ through a sky still patched with the pale hush of dawn. It’d rained heavy the night before, and now the earth smelled like moss and old stone, like every breath belonged to something older than me.

I took the same path I always did, worn into the hills by habit and need. A leather satchel slung cross my shoulder, tools knockin’ gentle against one another with each step. The hammer I used for roofs, the little brush I used for oilin’ hinges—all packed like I was some saint come to bless broken things.

Only I wasn’t goin’ to the chapel today.

The note had come from the baker, scribbled mess of ink sayin’ one of the herb women needed her ceilin’ patched. Didn’t give a name, just said “the dark-eyed one what don’t smile easy.” I knew then.

Didn’t tell myself that out loud, but my chest said it plain.

Her.

The woman who spoke like secrets. Moved like the rain followed her for warmth. I’d seen her twice now, and still she sat behind my eyes like a prayer I couldn’t finish.

Her cottage sat just beyond the low bend of the road, tucked behind a line of cypress trees with their roots grippin’ the wet soil like they feared bein’ torn up. Ivy climbed the corners of the stone, and a little row of jars lined the windowsill—dried flowers, maybe. Bits of lavender. Or bones.

I knocked soft. Once. Twice. No answer. I knocked again, louder this time, the wood thuddin’ beneath my fist.

“Comin’,” came her voice, muffled but steady.

The door creaked open and there she was, standin’ barefoot on the wood floor with sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her dress was a muted brown, plain as river mud, but it clung to her like she’d shaped it herself from dusk and silence.

“You’re the one with the leak,” I said, tryin’ to keep my voice level, casual. “I was sent from the bakery to patch it up proper.”

Her eyes flicked down to my satchel, then back to me. “Figured someone would show. Just didn’t think it’d be you.”

I raised a brow. “That a complaint?”

She didn’t smile, but her lips twitched at the corners. “Not yet.”

She stepped aside, lettin’ me in with a tilt of her head. The air inside her cottage was warm—herby, thick with dried thyme and somethin’ sweeter beneath it, like burnt sugar.

“Ceilin’s in the back room,” she said. “It leaks when the rain hits from the east.”

I followed her down the narrow hall, tools shiftin’ with each step. The floor creaked beneath our weight, and the walls held the quiet hum of a lived-in place—one made by hand, not bought with coin.

As I entered the room, I looked up at the corner where the water had left its mark—dark ring bloomin’ like rot in the ceiling. I set my satchel down near the edge of a low table and rolled up my sleeves.

“You don’t strike me as the sort who sends for help,” I said, climbin’ onto the little stool below the leak. “Let alone a village man.”

“I’m not,” she replied, movin’ to the table and startin’ to sort herbs into small bundles. “But I’m also not the sort who lets water make a home where it don’t belong.”

“That so?” I grinned. “Maybe you oughta carve that on a stone outside. Might keep trouble at bay.”

Her hands stilled a moment on the stems before resummin’. “Trouble always finds its way back. Whether you carve warnings or not.”

There was somethin’ in her tone—like she knew the feel of trouble’s hands around her throat and had stopped bein’ afraid of it.

I scraped at the softened wood, lettin’ silence settle between us, comfortable as an old coat.

I was halfway through tightening the last hinge when she spoke again.

“You always this quiet when you work?” she asked, voice soft, but not shy. There was somethin’ in it—like a cat stretchin’ in a sunbeam. Casual. Watchin’.

I glanced down from the stool I’d set beneath her ceiling, my sleeve wet with old rainwater and plaster dust stickin’ to my arms.

“Only when the job’s worth concentratin’ on,” I muttered, brows knit, screwin’ the final nail in. “And when the roof don’t behave.”

She made a small sound—almost a laugh. “Should I apologize on its behalf?”

“If it gives me a bit o’ peace, then aye.”

She leaned her shoulder to the doorframe, arms folded, basket still on the table behind her. The light from the window framed her in pieces—forehead, cheekbone, collarbone. Dust floated between us, and outside, the wind shifted the branches in her little garden.

“You’re better at this than the last fella they sent,” she said after a while. “Didn’t even last long enough to hammer twice before he said the house gave him a bad feelin’.”

“Most things give folk a bad feelin’ when they ain’t lookin’ hard enough,” I answered, setting the hammer down and wiping my hands on my trousers. “Or when they’re daft.”

“And what about you?” she asked, that same not-smile flirtin’ at the corners of her mouth. “You get any feelin’ from this place?”

I turned, finally facing her proper. “Aye,” I said. “That you’re hidin’ somethin’.”

Her expression didn’t change, but her gaze sharpened.

“I mean,” I added, before she could speak, “that you don’t talk much, yet you’ve got books stacked on herbs that don’t grow this side of the sea. Things bundled in your basket most folks wouldn’t know to pick. You knew I’d come back for the ceiling before I even told you I would.”

She tilted her head, lips pressing together. “I listen. I pay attention,” she said simply. “People show who they are even when they don’t mean to.”

“And what have I shown, then?” I asked, stepping down from the stool, slow.

She hesitated only a breath. “That you’re more than you say,” she said. “And you carry your grief like it’s welded to your spine.”

I stopped cold. And for once, I didn’t have somethin’ clever to say. Just stood there, feelin’ the weight of her words settle where they landed—deep.

She walked past me then, to the table, and pulled a small dark glass jar from the corner beside a bound book. Set it in my hands.

“For the cold,” she said. “Rain’ll catch up with you sooner than you think, and you smell like someone who won’t rest long enough to sweat it out.”

I looked down at the jar, then up at her again.

“You trust me not to drop dead drinkin’ this?” I asked, eyebrow cocked.

“If I wanted you dead,” she said plainly, “I’d’ve let the ceiling fall.”

That made me laugh, a dry sound I hadn’t heard in my own throat in some time.

“Fair ‘nough.”

She moved toward the door to open it for me, but I didn’t walk out just yet. Still holdin’ the jar, I looked back at her, searching her face like the name might rise from her skin if I stared long enough.

“You gonna tell me your name, or do I keep callin’ you Moonflower in my head?” I asked, the smirk creepin’ up despite myself.

She blinked at that. “Moonflower?”

“You only bloom at night. Got a scent that lingers. And I reckon you’ll poison a man if he ain’t careful.”

That made her pause. Then, a smile—real this time, curved and quiet.

“Don’t know if I oughta be flattered or offended.”

“Both, maybe.”

She nodded, opening the door wider. “See you next time, then… handyman.”

“Remmick,” I reminded her, steppin’ out into the daylight again.

“I know,” she said, leaning on the frame. “Still deciding if you deserve to be called by it.”

And then she shut the door.

But the air behind me stayed full of her voice. Of rain. And herbs. And somethin’ that hadn’t yet been named.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The woods had a hush to ’em that day—like even the birds were holdin’ their tongues to listen. Not a drop of rain on the ground, but the air was thick with damp, like the earth’d been cryin’ in secret. I weren’t lookin’ for her. Not exactly. But I took the long path from town anyhow, boots slippin’ over moss and roots, hands deep in my coat like I didn’t care where I was headed.

Truth was, I hadn’t seen her in three days. And it felt like somethin’ gnawin’ at the hollow in my ribs.

I told myself she was off gatherin’ or restin’, that folk like her didn’t owe nothin’ to folk like me. But the stillness where she ought to’ve been—it sat too long in the pit of my chest.

Then I saw her. Perched on a fallen log off the trail, elbow on her knee, chin in her palm. Her basket laid beside her, near empty, just a few stringy greens hangin’ on like stubborn ghosts. The wind played gentle at her scarf, and she looked like she’d been carved outta stillness. A woman built from pause and ache.

“Thought the trees’d gone and swallowed you,” I said, easin’ around the bend with a crooked smile tryin’ to pass as casual.

Her gaze met mine. Slow. Sure. “They tried,” she said. “But I told ’em I still had things to finish.”

A laugh threatened my throat. I let it sit behind my teeth.

“Was beginnin’ to think I imagined you,” I said, shiftin’ my weight through the soft earth. “Like somethin’ dreamt up on a fevered night.”

She looked me over like she could tell I meant it. “You dream often, Remmick?”

“Only when I’ve got somethin’ heavy on the soul.”

She didn’t answer that. Just scooted over and tapped the space beside her.

So I sat.

We let the silence settle between us for a time, let it stretch long and deep. She played with a blade of grass, foldin’ it in half, then again, ’til it split. I watched the way her fingers moved, careful but worn.

“I been thinkin’,” she said after a while, voice quiet but steady. “How a place can be full of people and still feel empty.”

My eyes shifted to her, to the way her jaw set like she’d swallowed too many truths. “This place do that to you?”

She shrugged. Not quite yes, not quite no. Then after a beat, “My home wasn’t kind either. But it was mine. Then it weren’t.”

I didn’t say nothin’. Just let her speak.

“There was a war. Not one with drums and soldiers, but somethin’ quieter. Slower. Took everything soft and left the bones.”

Her fingers stilled. Her face didn’t change, but I saw the weight behind her eyes.

“I ran,” she said. “Kept runnin’. Learned to talk like I belonged. Learned to walk like I wasn’t watchin’ every step.”

“You shouldn’t’ve had to,” I muttered, voice rough. “No one should.”

She looked at me then, like she weren’t expectin’ that.

“Folk back home say runnin’ makes you weak,” she said. “But it’s what saved me.”

I nodded slow. “I ran, too. When my brother died, I packed what little I had and left. Not just the grief, but… the hunger. Crops were failin’. Bellies were empty. We were ghosts by winter.”

She blinked, brows drawin’ together.

“Ireland’s a beautiful place, but she’s cruel when she wants to be. The year before I left, there was rot in the potatoes—black and wet, like somethin’ cursed the fields. Folks buried more kin than crops that year.”

I swallowed.

“I couldn’t stay and starve with the bones of my family.”

She watched me. Didn’t speak. Just watched.

“So I came here,” I went on, voice low. “Thought maybe fixin’ things might fix me, too.”

She tilted her head. “Has it?”

I looked down at my hands. Calloused. Dirty. Then I looked at her.

“I’m still cracked,” I said. “But I don’t feel so hollow when you’re nearby.”

Her lips parted, just a little. Eyes softenin’, like she didn’t know what to do with that.

“You always say things like that?”

“Only when I mean ’em.”

The breeze stirred again. Her scarf lifted and fell.

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” she said, voice low. “What I’ve seen. I’m not made of mercy, Remmick. I’ve got sharp edges.”

“I ain’t afraid of a cut,” I said, leanin’ forward. “Not if it means gettin’ close to somethin’ real.”

She reached into her basket then, pullin’ out a folded cloth with a little vial inside—amber-glass, stoppered with care.

“More, For the rain,” she said. “To keep the cold outta your bones.”

I took it from her gently, thumb brushing hers. “You always takin’ care of me.”

She smiled, barely. “You look like someone who don’t know how to ask for help.”

“And you look like someone who’s tired of watchin’ folk suffer.”

She stood, dustin’ off her skirts.

“Walk me home?” she asked.

I stood too, tucking the vial safe in my coat. “Aye. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

And I meant it. From the ache behind my ribs to the silence between her words—I meant every damn word.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

Days passed as I began to see her more and more. Every time was like a dream I didn’t want to end—just like today.

The clearing sat just beyond the old stone wall, tucked where the trees thinned and the wild things dared bloom without asking permission. The sun poured itself across the earth like warm cream, catchin’ on petals and blades of grass, paintin’ everything gold.

She was already there when I arrived—kneelin’ low, sleeves rolled up past her elbows, fingers brushin’ through stalks of green like she were coaxin’ secrets from the dirt. Some of the flowers were in full bloom, heads high like they knew they were worth praisin’. Others drooped, wilted from the heat or time. Still, she moved between them with care, never avoidin’ the ones that’d gone soft at the edges.

“You’re late,” she said without lookin’ at me, voice light but pointed.

I knelt beside her, restin’ my tools down with a soft thump. “Was mendin’ a crooked stair, not flirtin’ with the baker’s daughter if that’s what you’re thinkin’.”

She smirked. “Didn’t say you were.”

“Aye, but you thought it.”

She shook her head, then held up a stem with tiny white buds. “Chamomile. You pick it now, when the sun’s at its highest. Any later, and it starts losin’ its strength.”

I took it from her, turnin’ the stem between my fingers. “Looks like nothin’ special.”

She raised a brow. “And yet it calms nerves, soothes bellies, and can ease nightmares.”

My lips curled. “Maybe I oughta be stuffin’ my pillow with it.”

“Wouldn’t hurt.”

The way she said it made me glance sideways at her—how the sun lit up her cheekbones, how the wind caught loose strands of hair and played with ‘em like a lover. She looked too alive to belong to the quiet.

“Which one’s next?” I asked, clearin’ my throat.

She reached out, pluckin’ a stem from the base of a nearby cluster. “Yarrow. Good for wounds.”

“That for folk like me who get in fights with doors and lose?”

She gave me a sidelong look. “It’s for those who carry hurts they don’t speak on.”

I didn’t answer. Not right away.

We moved in silence for a while, fingers grazin’ blooms, knees in the soft earth. I watched her more than I watched the plants, truth be told. There was a rhythm to her. A kind of stillness that weren’t born from silence but from knowledge. Like she knew exactly where she stood and why the world moved around her.

“Why d’you teach me this?” I asked finally.

She shrugged. “Because most folk pluck what’s pretty and leave what’s useful.”

“And you think I’m worth teachin’?”

She looked at me then. Really looked. “I think you listen when I speak,” she said. “That’s rare enough.”

My chest pulled tight at that. Not from surprise. From feelin’ seen.

“I like hearin’ you talk,” I said, softer than I meant. “Even when you don’t say much.”

She didn’t smile, but she didn’t look away either. “What else do you like?”

“Your hands,” I said before thinkin’. “How sure they are. How you never flinch when you touch things other folk avoid.”

Her gaze flicked down to the herbs between us. “And what if I touch somethin’ dangerous?”

“Then I reckon it’d be lucky to be held by you.”

The wind stirred again, rustlin’ the trees, bendin’ the tall grass in waves. A butterfly danced between us and didn’t land.

She exhaled slow, like maybe she’d been holdin’ her breath. “You’re a strange man, Remmick.”

“Aye,” I said, smilin’. “But I’m learnin’ from the best.”

We sat there till the sun dipped just low enough to cast long shadows. The air thickened with the smell of lavender and crushed thyme. She handed me one last sprig—something bitter, sharp to the nose.

“For the headaches you pretend not to have,” she said.

I tucked it behind my ear like a fool.

She laughed, the sound as soft as the breeze through yarrow leaves.

And I thought—if this were all I ever had of her, it’d be enough.

But some part of me already knew I’d want more.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The sun was dippin’ low, spillin’ orange light across the field like it was tryin’ to make somethin’ holy outta the ordinary. We’d wandered farther than usual — past the woods, down near where the blackberry bushes crept wild along the stone fences. Grass brushed at our ankles, and the air smelled like dust, crushed fruit, and late summer.

She’d been hummin’ under her breath again. I never knew the tune, but it stuck in my head all the same.

“Careful now,” she said, glancin’ back at me with that half-grin. “These brambles’ll catch your trousers and your pride in one go.”

I muttered somethin’ about her bein’ the real menace, not the bushes, which made her laugh — that soft, real kind that made my chest feel too small.

We settled on a slope where the hill dipped shallow. She sat cross-legged without a care, skirt flared, one hand restin’ against a warm rock. I sat beside her, knees bent, boots diggin’ into the earth. Not too close. Not too far.“You always find the best places,” I said, watchin’ the horizon melt.She shrugged like it weren’t nothin’. “Places don’t gotta be grand to be good. Just quiet. Just safe.”

I glanced at her, and for a second, she looked made of the light itself — all gold and shadow, like she belonged to a world I hadn’t earned yet.

“How come you never told me your name?” I asked, leanin’ back on my elbows. “Might start thinkin’ you ain’t got one.”

She chuckled, pickin’ a stem of clover and twistin’ it between her fingers. “Maybe I was waitin’. Maybe I needed to know if you’d ruin it.”

I arched a brow. “Ruin it how?”

“Some folk take your name like it’s a possession,” she said, serious now. “Say it too often. Say it wrong. Say it like they own it.”

I nodded slow. “And you think I’d do that?”

She looked at me then — really looked — and whatever she saw there must’ve settled somethin’.

“No,” she said soft. “I don’t think you would.”

The breeze picked up. She reached into her basket, pulled out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. Bread and somethin’ sharp-smellin’, maybe a bit of goat cheese.

“Payment,” she said, handin’ me the bread. “For carryin’ all my baskets last week like a proper mule.”

I grinned. “Best damn mule you ever met.”

“You might be right.” She took a bite of her own bread, chewin’ slow, like she had all the time in the world.

Silence sat easy between us, stitched together by cicadas and the rustle of the grass.

Then she said it, casual as the weather.

“My name’s Y/N.”

I turned to her, blinkin’. “Y/N,” I repeated, like it was a word I already knew but hadn’t tasted proper yet.

“Don’t wear it out,” she warned, smirkin’ over her bite of cheese.

“I wouldn’t dare,” I said, and meant it.

We watched the last of the sun sink behind the ridge, the sky bruisin’ with twilight.

“Y/N,” I murmured again, like a prayer I hadn’t realized I’d needed.

She didn’t look at me this time. But I saw the way her smile turned soft at the edges.

And that was enough.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The sun sat high, spillin’ gold all across the yard like it’d been poured straight from God’s own pitcher. Cicadas were hummin’, lazy and loud, and the stump tree in front of her little place offered just enough shade to make sittin’ there feel like somethin’ sacred.

She was bent over a wide wooden bowl in her lap, sleeves rolled to her elbows, grindin’ the herbs we’d gathered just the day before. Her wrists moved smooth, slow—like she was coaxin’ the medicine out with patience instead of pressure. The scent of rosemary and dry lavender clung to the air. I sat nearby on the grass, a small pile of weeds beside me I’d promised to pull up while she worked, though I’d barely made a dent.

Didn’t matter much.

I wasn’t here to work.

I was here to watch her.

To listen to her hum low under her breath, not a tune I knew, but soft enough to settle the ache that’d been coiled in my chest since the last time she’d gone quiet on me.

She reached for another bundle of dried stalks, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear with the back of her wrist.

“You done plannin’ on helpin’ or you just gonna keep starin’?” she asked, not lookin’ up.

“Both, maybe,” I said, leanin’ back on my elbows with a grin. “Can’t blame a man for admirin’ the view.”

She snorted, but her lips twitched. “If you’re tryin’ to be smooth, you’re slippin’, Remmick.”

“Me? Slippin’?” I let my accent thicken, feignin’ offense. “I’ll have you know I was voted most charming back home. ’Course, that was by a goat and my granda.”

That earned me a laugh. Not loud, but enough to stir the birds in the tree overhead.

I watched her as she went back to work, the sun catchin’ on her skin and her voice hummin’ again. My hand found a stray flower near my boot, tugging it from the grass. Yellow, scraggly thing. Not as pretty as the ones she kept hung dry above her stove, but it reminded me of her in some crooked way—sturdy and soft at the same time.

“You ever think about stayin’?” I asked, real quiet. “In one place, I mean. Lettin’ somethin’ root you instead of always runnin’?”

She paused, mortar stillin’ in her hand. “You mean lettin’ people in?”

“I mean lettin’ one in,” I said, twirlin’ the flower between my fingers. “Just one.”

She turned her head toward me, squintin’ a little like the light was in her eyes and not the words. “That what you’ve been gettin’ at this whole time?”

I didn’t answer. Just tucked the flower behind my ear with mock grace.

“What d’you think?”

She looked at me for a long time. Then smiled. Not wide. Not coy. Just somethin’ soft and real, like the kind of smile you give someone you ain’t afraid of no more.

“I think you talk too much,” she said, goin’ back to grindin’. “But I like it.”

I didn’t need more than that.

Didn’t need her to say the thing out loud.

Not yet.

The breeze picked up, stirrin’ the dust, the herbs, the ache in my chest that didn’t feel quite so heavy no more.

I pulled the flower from its place on behind ear and putting it neatly on hers and she smiles shyly.

And beneath that old stump tree, under the watchful hush of midday, I let myself believe—just a little—that maybe I weren’t the only one feelin’ it.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The smell of sugar and sun-warmed fruit clung to the cottage like a promise. Late afternoon spilled through the kitchen window in golden sheets, catching in the little dust motes that danced above the wooden counter. The bowl between us was nearly full—fat blueberries she’d hand-picked that morning, now tossed in flour and cinnamon, waiting for their crusted cradle.

I stood elbow-deep in dough, arms dusted white, sweat at my brow and not just from the heat.

“Careful,” she said, reaching across me. Her hand brushed mine. “You’re foldin’ it too hard. Gotta coax it, not fight it.”

I glanced up.

Sunlight hit the side of her face, turned her lashes gold. She was smiling soft—barely there—but it pulled somethin’ straight outta my ribs.

“Aye,” I muttered. “Didn’t know you trained with the Queen’s pastry cooks.”

She snorted. “Didn’t need to. Just had a gran who’d bite your fingers if you got heavy-handed with her dough.”

“Sounds like a wise woman.”

“She was mean as vinegar and twice as sharp.”

I tried again, slower now, and she nodded her approval. The next few minutes passed with quiet hums and giggles. I couldn’t help but sneak glances—at the curve of her neck, the smudge of flour on her cheek, the way her fingers moved like she were tellin’ a story only she knew.

Then I caught her lookin’ at me.

We both froze.

Neither of us said nothin’, but somethin’ heavy and warm unfurled between us, soft as steam off a pie fresh from the oven.

She turned first, busyin’ herself with the tin. I took the chance to toss a pinch of flour at her back.

It hit her scarf.

She whirled. “Oh, you didn’t—!”

I grinned. “Didn’t what?”

She grabbed a handful and threw it square at my chest. The puff exploded, dustin’ my shirt and the air between us. I lunged with a laugh, and she shrieked, giggling as she dodged around the table.

We wrestled, gently. My hands found her waist, hers pressed against my chest, and when she stumbled, I caught her.

Held her.

Our breath caught in the same place.

“You’ve got… flour,” I murmured, brushing her cheek.

“So do you,” she whispered, staring up at me.

I don’t remember leanin’ in. Just that my lips found hers like they’d been waitin’ their whole life.

She kissed me back slow—like she weren’t sure she should, but couldn’t help herself.

Then it changed.

Got deeper. Hungrier.

She tugged my shirt, I backed her into the counter. My hands ran over her hips, then up, tanglin’ in her hair as she moaned into my mouth.

“Y/N…” I whispered against her jaw.

She didn’t answer. Just pulled me toward the bedroom like it was a decision already made.

The room was dim and warm, the last of the sun stretchin’ long through the window. She peeled her top away first, the thin cotton fallin’ to the floor. I watched her chest rise, eyes dark with want but soft, too.

I pulled my shirt over my head, dropped it, then stepped close.

“Sure ‘bout this?” I asked, voice low.

She nodded. “Been sure.”

That’s all I needed.

I kissed her again, slower this time, carryin’ her back until her knees hit the bed. We sank down together.

Our clothes came off like pages turned, deliberate and slow. My hands traced every inch of her, commitin’ it to memory like scripture. She gasped when I kissed her collarbone, whimpered when I moved down, when my mouth found the place that made her hips jerk and thighs tremble.

“Remmick,” she breathed, fingers in my hair, head tipped back.

I could’ve died in that moment and called it heaven.

When I slid inside her, she clung to me like she’d fall apart otherwise.

We moved together like we’d been doin’ it forever. Like we were born for it. Her nails scraped down my back, my mouth found her throat. I whispered her name like a hymn, like a confession.

She cried out when she came—legs locked around me, eyes wet, lips parted.

I followed close behind, buryin’ my face in her neck with a groan, her name spillin’ from my mouth like a prayer I’d never learned to say right.

After, we didn’t speak.

Just laid tangled in each other, the sound of our breath and the warm hush of evening wrappin’ around us.

I pressed a kiss to her shoulder.

She didn’t flinch.

Didn’t pull away.

And I swear—right then—I could’ve stayed there forever.

But forever’s a long time.

And fate, as I’ve learned, don’t ever keep still.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The first whisper came from the well.

A woman claimin’ her husband’d died after takin’ a tincture from Y/N. Said it were meant to calm his fever, but he didn’t see the next mornin’. She left out the weeks of coughin’ blood, the yellow tint in his eyes, the black along his gums. She left out the death already settin’ up house in his chest. No, she only spoke of the bottle. And the woman who brewed it. The quiet one, with dark hands and darker eyes, and a garden full o’ herbs no one dared name.

By midday, more tales grew teeth.

A child gone pale after tastin’ sweetroot she’d sold. A cow miscarryin’ out near the woods. An old man mutterin’ in his sleep that he’d seen a shadow slip past his window—and his joints ain’t been right since.

That evenin’, someone carved a jagged symbol into the bark of the tree outside her home.

The kind meant to ward off evil.

Or invite it.

I heard the talk at the forge. At the tavern. At the bloody baker’s shop, while I were settin’ a hinge right on their back door.

“She don’t age,” one man whispered.

“She don’t bleed,” said another.

“Heard her kiss tastes like rusted iron,” a third muttered, voice thick with ale and foolishness.

“She’s a witch.”

“She’s the reason the sickness won’t lift.”

I laid the hammer down slow. Let the nails clatter onto the bench one by one. Didn’t say a word. Just slipped out the back, fists clenched so tight I damn near split my own skin.

By the time I made it to her cottage, dusk had painted the sky grey and mean. I found her in the back garden, tendin’ her herbs like nothin’ was crumblin’ ‘round her.

“Evenin’,” she said when I stepped through the gate. Her voice soft, same as always, but her shoulders were stiff.

“You been into town lately?” I asked.

“Two mornings past,” she said, still kneelin’. “Why?”

I moved closer, my jaw grindin’. “Folk are talkin’. Sayin’ you’re the reason that man’s dead.”

She stood slow, wiped her hands on her apron. “He was already dyin’. The brew was to ease his passin’. I ain’t the one who filled his lungs with rot.”

“I know that. But they don’t. And they’re lookin’ for someone to blame.”

“They always are.”

I swallowed hard, shakin’ my head. “They carved a mark outside your gate.”

She turned to me fully then. “Let ‘em.”

“They’re callin’ you a witch.”

“And what do you call me?”

My throat tightened. “I call you brave. Foolish, maybe. But brave.”

She held my gaze. “I’ve run before, Remmick. I’ll do it again if I must.”

“Don’t,” I said, louder than I meant to. “Don’t run.”

She looked back to the herbs. “I won’t beg to keep a life I built with my own hands.”

“You won’t have to.” My voice dipped low. “But promise me—no more goin’ into town alone.”

She hesitated. “Alright.”

But I knew, right then, she were already thinkin’ of leavin’.

Three days passed.

She didn’t listen.

Said she needed sugar. Cinnamon bark. Said she’d be quick.

A boy came runnin’ to my door before midday, breathless. “She’s been hurt,” he gasped. “They said she cursed their land. Threw stones. She bled.”

I didn’t ask. Just ran.

When I reached her home, she was packin’. A bandage round her brow, blood stainin’ the edge of it. Her hands moved fast, throwin’ jars and vials into her satchel.

“You went alone?” I barked, stormin’ into the room.

“I didn’t think—”

“No,” I snapped, “you didn’t.”

She didn’t stop movin’.

“You plannin’ on runnin’, then?”

“What choice do I have?” she hissed. “You said it yourself—they’ll burn the source.”

My chest hurt. “Don’t go.”

She paused. Just for a moment.

Then kept packin’. “You can’t save me from all this.”

“I can try.”

That night, I left.

Didn’t tell her where I was goin’. Only knew one place left to turn.

Deep in the hills, past the boglands and the stone-faced ruins. A place folk didn’t speak of unless drink loosened their tongues. Said there was a woman there, old as death, who could grant power—if you paid the price.

And I paid it.

Gave up my last ounce o’ peace for it.

“Give me what I need to protect her,” I said, kneelin’ in the dirt.

The voice that answered sounded like it had no mouth, no shape.

You’ll have it. But you’ll never be what you were.

I woke with fire behind my eyes.

With hunger in my chest.

And power under my skin.

I ran back.

Too late.

Blood painted the porch. A poisoned arrow stickin’ out her side. Her breath shallow. Barely holdin’ on.

“Y/N,” I choked, fallin’ beside her. “No, no, no—stay with me, darlin’, please.”

“They came,” she rasped. “Said I brought plague…”

“We’ll leave. I’ll carry you. I’ll get you out—”

She smiled. Weak. “You’ve got to live, Remmick.”

“I ain’t livin’ without you.”

She tried to lift her hand. Failed.

And I broke.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, tears runnin’. “Forgive me.”

I sank my teeth into her throat.

She gasped.

Horrified.

“You didn’t…” she whimpered as blood began spraying a bit from the wound. “You didn’t ask…”

“I couldn’t lose you, Moonflower.”

The torches were comin’. Voices behind the trees.

But I held her tighter than I’d ever held anythin’ as she stopped breathing.

And I cursed myself with every breath.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

Y/N’s Pov

I woke with my mouth dry and the taste of iron sittin’ heavy on my tongue.

The ceiling above me weren’t my own. It sloped too sharp, boards too clean, the scent of smoke and earth clingin’ to the beams like old ghosts. The air was still—too still—like the house itself was holdin’ its breath.

I sat up slow. My limbs moved strange—lighter, too light, like my body forgot how much it used to weigh. My skin felt tight over my bones, raw at the seams, like somethin’ inside me had been stretched too far and stitched back wrong.

The blanket slid off my shoulders.

I was wearin’ someone else’s dress.

Not mine. Not torn. Not bloodstained.

But that’s what I remembered last.

Blood. The color of it flashin’ under the moonlight. The ache of it tearin’ through my ribs. The sound of Remmick’s voice, tremblin’ as he cradled me like I was already gone. And then—

My throat closed.

I remembered his mouth on my neck.

His whisper. His kiss.

The bite.

And suddenly it hit—like a storm comin’ in sideways.

The pain. The fire. The way my body twisted from the inside out, like my soul didn’t wanna be here no more but the rest of me refused to let go. My hands clutched the mattress. Breath comin’ fast, sharp.

He turned me.

He turned me without askin’.

I swung my legs off the side of the bed, bare feet hittin’ cool wood. The room around me was dim but familiar in a way that made my stomach knot. It was his. It had to be. One of the places he used—clean, hidden, a house that didn’t remember its own name.

A chair was pulled close to the bed. A half-burnt candle melted into the table beside it.

He’d been watchin’ me.

Waitin’ for me to wake.

And yet he was gone now.

Good.

I didn’t want him to see me like this—split open from the inside, grief sittin’ heavy in my chest like a second heart.

I rose, legs unsteady beneath me, and caught sight of my reflection in the small mirror above the wash basin.

I froze.

My eyes—black at the center, rimmed in red like coals just startin’ to burn. My skin a bit discolored as early frost, no warmth left to hold. My lips, faintly stained.

I touched them.

They still felt like mine.

But they weren’t.

A sound left me. Not a sob. Not quite.

Somethin’ between a growl and a cry—like grief wearin’ new teeth.

I should’ve been dead.

That’s what I chose. That’s what I meant.

I told him to run.

I told him to live.

And instead, he tethered me to this life—this curse—with his own teeth.

My hand found the edge of the basin and gripped it tight.

The wood cracked under my fingers.

I let go, heart poundin’ louder than thought.

This wasn’t love.

This was control.

A man holdin’ too tight to what he couldn’t bear to lose.

He’d rather unmake me than grieve me.

And yet—beneath the rage, beneath the betrayal—somethin’ else stirred.

Somethin’ I hated more than him in that moment.

I didn’t feel dead.

I felt strong.

Feral.

Awake.

Every sound in the woods outside was clearer. The creak of the beams. The wind slippin’ under the door. I could smell the ash in the hearth and the echo of blood that once lived in these floorboards.

And that scared me more than anything.

Because I knew what came next.

The hunger.

The ache.

The war I’d have to fight inside myself, every minute, every hour.

All because he couldn’t let me go.

I stepped away from the mirror.

The next time I saw Remmick, I wasn’t sure if I was gonna kiss him…

or kill him.

So I ran.

Not for the first time.

But this time, I crossed oceans.

The Atlantic didn’t welcome me. It didn’t whisper comfort. It roared—salt-raw and cruel, like it knew what I was carryin’. Not just the hunger. Not just the curse. But the truth: I wasn’t runnin’ from a man.

I was runnin’ from the memory of one.

I didn’t look back when Europe disappeared behind fog. Too many ghosts in the soil. Too many names I couldn’t say anymore. Too many faces I’d borrowed and buried.

I took the long way to nowhere.

Lived beneath borrowed roofs and behind shuttered windows. Spain. France. Portugal. I spoke like them, walked like them, bent like them. But my voice never quite fit right. My skin whispered stories the villagers didn’t know how to read. And when they couldn’t read you, they made you into somethin’ to fear.

So I disappeared again.

City to countryside. From the coast to quiet farms. I slept in cellars. Fed in alleyways. Hid my teeth like a shame. Covered my eyes when they burned too bright. But no matter where I went, I couldn’t bury what he’d done to me. What I’d become.

Vampire. Woman. Stranger.

Sin.

Then came America.

I heard tales of it in the mouths of men too poor to own boots but rich enough to dream. A place where no one knew your name unless you gave it. Where you could vanish on purpose. So I boarded a ship under another name and crossed a second ocean.

They didn’t see me.

Didn’t ask what land I came from.

Only that I kept quiet. Paid in coin. Kept to my corner.

And I did.

I stepped off that boat like a shadow lookin’ for a body.

Years blurred. The states changed names and faces. I moved where the fear was low and the sun easier to dodge. Pennsylvania. Georgia. Louisiana. Tennessee.

But nothin’ felt like mine.

Not until Mississippi.

The Delta didn’t ask questions. It didn’t blink twice at a woman whose hands knew how to soothe fever, or whose voice carried like river water over stone. It didn’t care where I came from—just that I came with honesty and stayed with my head down.

And Lord, the pain here… it sang.

You could hear it in the soil. In the fields. In the bones of folk who worked the land like they were tryin’ to forgive it for all it had taken. The joy didn’t come easy here—but it came. It bled through laughter, through music, through bodies swayin’ in defiance of grief.

Here, sorrow didn’t hide from joy.

They danced together.

And for someone like me, that meant maybe I could belong.

I found a room behind a narrow house with warped floorboards and a window I never opened. Miss Adele, who owned it, looked me over long and low before passin’ me the key.

“You ain’t from here,” she said.

“No, ma’am.”

She nodded. “But you wear the heat like it’s home. Just don’t bring no trouble through my door.”

I didn’t make promises. But I paid in full.

I stayed quiet. Covered my skin when the sun rose. Fed when I had to—clean, discreet, never twice in the same place. I helped when I could. Tinctures, poultices, teas. I kept to myself. Most folk didn’t know my story.

Didn’t know I once had a man.

Didn’t know he turned me with a kiss and a curse and then begged me to thank him for it.

Didn’t know I used to love him.

I didn’t even know if he was still alive.

I hadn’t seen Remmick in over a century. Hadn’t heard whispers of him. Sometimes, when the wind shifted just right, I swore I could smell the cold of his coat, the copper of his breath. But that was just memory. Just the mind playin’ cruel.

He could’ve turned to dust for all I knew.

I prayed he had.

Still, I never let myself settle too deep.

The room I rented had no roots.

The name I gave was borrowed.

But the juke joint?

That felt like a church.

When Annie smiled at me and Stack nodded toward the dance floor, when the music rolled through me like a hymn with no preacher—I felt human again. I let my body move. I let myself forget. Just for a night. Just for a song.

And when it was over, I stepped back into shadow like I never left it.

They didn’t know what I was.

Not yet.

But I knew what they were.

Wounded. Brave. Alive.

Mississippi didn’t need my past. It didn’t ask for blood oaths or confession. It let me be.

And for the first time in over a hundred years, that was enough.

But peace?

Peace don’t last for things like me.

Because the past got claws.

And I knew, deep down—

if he was still out there, he’d find me.

What I didn’t know… was that he already had.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The air smelled of fried grease, wet moss, and wood smoke—the kind of southern night that clung to your skin like sweat and memory. I’d just left Miss Lila’s porch, her boy burnin’ up with fever again, and her nerves worn thin as dishwater. I’d left her with a small jar of bark-root and clove oil, told her to steep it slow and keep a cool cloth on his head. She didn’t ask what was in it. Folks rarely did when they was desperate.

The street stretched quiet before me, the dirt packed down by bare feet and Sunday wagons. My boots scuffed low as I walked, the hem of my skirt brushing the edge of dust and dew. The stars hung low tonight, strung like pinholes across a sky too tired to hold itself up.

I passed shuttered windows and sleeping dogs. Passed rusted signs and flickering lamps, the ones that leaned crooked like they were listenin’. I clutched my shawl tighter, the chill sneakier in the spring—evenin’s cool breath slidin’ down the back of my neck.

And then I saw it—the juke joint. It sat tucked behind a bend in the road like a secret meant to be found. Light spilled out through the cracks in the wood like it couldn’t bear to be kept in. Music pulsed low from inside—bluesy and slow, like sorrow had found its rhythm.

Cornbread stood out front like always, arms crossed, leanin’ on the doorframe with that half-grin like he owned the night.

He spotted me before I hit the steps. “Well now,” he said, voice smooth like creek water. “Evenin’, Miss Y/N. Came to bless us with your presence?”

I gave a quiet chuckle, noddin’. “Only if I’m welcome.”

He laughed soft, pushin’ the door open. “Girl, you family by now. Don’t need to be askin’ no more.”

“Still,” I said, steppin’ closer. “Mama always said it’s good manners to ask ‘fore walkin’ into a space that ain’t yours.”

“Ain’t nobody gonna question your manners,” he muttered, wavin’ me through. “Now get in ‘fore the music runs out.”

Inside was a rush of warmth—smoke, sweat, the sweet bite of corn liquor, and somethin’ else… somethin’ close to joy. The music crawled under your skin ‘til your hips remembered how to sway without askin’. Voices buzzed like bees in summer heat, laughter rollin’ like dice across the room.

I eased onto the barstool I always took—third from the left, right where the fan overhead spun lazy—and let my bag fall soft at my boots. Didn’t order nothin’. I never did.

Annie caught sight of me behind the bar, swayin’ easy as ever with a tray of empty glasses tucked on her hip.

“You bring what I asked for?” she asked, duckin’ behind the counter.

I reached into my satchel and handed her the cotton-wrapped bundle. “Steep it slow. Sip, don’t gulp. Should ease you through the worst of it.”

She winked. “Law, I owe you my life.”

“Nah,” I said, settlin’ onto the stool near the end of the bar. “Just owe me a plate of cornbread next time you cookin’.”

That got a laugh out of her, quick and sweet, before she vanished into the back.

I turned back toward the floor, just as Mary’s voice cut through the buzz of conversation like a blade through hushpuppies.

“Y’all hear ‘bout the farmer boy gone missin’?” she said, leanin’ into the group crowded ‘round the far end of the bar. Smoke was there, elbow propped, brows knit low. Two more men sat hunched close—quiet, listening.

“Wasn’t just him,” one said. “Old Mabel from the creek road said her nephew ain’t been seen in two days. Said his boots still sittin’ on the porch like he vanished mid-step.”

Smoke grunted. “I say it’s a man gone mad. Roamin’ through the woods, takin’ what he pleases. We’ve seen worse.”

One of the others leaned in, voice hushed. “The natives been whisperin’ it ain’t a man.”

That brought stillness. Even the music in the back room seemed to hush a beat.

“What they say?” Mary asked, brows raised.

“They say somethin’ old woke up,” the man said, voice nearly swallowed by the crackle of heat and distance. “Somethin’ that walks like a man, but ain’t. They leave herbs and ash circles at the edge of the trees again—like back in the old days.”

Mary scoffed, but it sounded unsure. “Old tales. Spirits don’t need bodies to raise hell.”

“They said this one’s lookin’ for somethin’,” he continued, eyes flickin’ toward the windows like the night itself might be listenin’. “Or someone. Been walkin’ the land with hunger in its bones and a face nobody can seem to remember after seein’ it.”

I sat quiet, still as dusk.

“Could just be some drifter,” Smoke said. “Folks get riled when trouble comes and ain’t got no face to pin it on.”

“Then why the sudden vanishings?” Mary pressed. “Why now?”

“Maybe it ain’t sudden,” I said before I could stop myself, my voice low and calm. “Maybe it’s just the first time we’re payin’ attention.”

Four heads turned my way.

Mary squinted. “You heard somethin’ too?”

I shook my head slow. “Just a feelin’. The kind that settles in your back teeth when the wind shifts wrong.”

They didn’t say nothin’ to that. Not directly. But Smoke nodded once, solemn, like he’d felt it too.

The conversation drifted back to softer things—music, cards, the preacher’s crooked fence—but I sat still. That ache behind my ribs hadn’t let up since the moon turned last. The way the air felt heavy even when it wasn’t humid. The way dogs stopped barkin’ at shadows like they knew they couldn’t win.

It weren’t just madness.

And it sure as hell weren’t random.

I could feel it deep.

Like breath on the back of my neck.

Something was here.

Something was comin’.

And this time, I didn’t know if I’d be able to outrun it.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

Remmick’s Pov

It started with the absence.

Not the kind that’s loud—grief flung sharp across the soul. No. This one crept in slow, like rot behind the walls. Quiet. Patient. The kind of missing that don’t scream. It whispers.

I walked to an empty room. No blood on the floor, no broken window, no fight to mark the leaving. Just cold air where her warmth used to linger. Her scent still clung to the linens. The floor creaked where she last stood.

I called her name.

Once.

Twice.

A third time—barely a whisper. Like maybe she’d come back if I said it soft.

But she didn’t.

And God help me, I searched.

I turned over every rock in that cursed country. Asked after a woman with a strange voice and steady hands. A healer. A ghost. I heard stories that might’ve been her—always just a breath behind. A girl boardin’ a carriage to Marseille. A woman leavin’ a parcel at a chapel in Lisbon. A stranger with dark eyes and no surname passin’ through Antwerp.

I missed her by hours. Days. Once, by a damned blink.

The trail always went cold. But I kept followin’. Because somethin’ in me—somethin’ older than this cursed body—knew she was still out there.

I stopped feedin’ off folk unless I had to. Couldn’t stomach it. Not with her voice echoing in my head, the way she looked at me that night—betrayal writ clear on every bone in her face.

I never meant to hurt her.

I only meant to save her.

But what I gave her weren’t salvation. It was a cage.

A century passed me like smoke through fingers. I lost track of time, faces, cities. Learned to blend into the edges. Changed my name more than once. The world changed, and I watched it like a man outside a window he couldn’t break through.

Then word came.

A dockhand in Barcelona. Drunk off his ass. Said he’d seen a woman walkin’ off a freighter bound for the States. Said she didn’t belong to nobody’s country. Said she looked like a shadow stitched to the sea.

That was all I needed.

I took the next ship out. Didn’t care where it landed—so long as it took me west. Toward her.

The ocean ain’t merciful.

The waves came like judgment. Ripped through the hull on the second week. Screams. Salt. Fire where it shouldn’t be. They said none survived.

They were wrong.

I clung to the wreckage ‘til the sky cracked open with morning. Drifted on broken boards and rage. Burned here and there by the time I reached land—ain’t proud of that. But grief makes monsters outta men, and I already was halfway there.

I moved through towns like a ghost with teeth. New York. Georgia. Tennessee. Small towns and big cities, never settlin’. I listened to whispers in back alleys and watched for her in every market, every dusk-lit chapel, every face turned away from the sun.

Nothing. For years.

But I could feel her.

She was here.

Like the heat before a storm. Like a name you ain’t heard in decades but still makes your gut twist.

It led me to Mississippi.

The Delta pressed down heavy on the chest, thick with memory and blood. And that’s when I knew—she was close. Her scent was buried in the clay. In the river. In the music that throbbed outta them joints deep in the trees.

I watched from the shadows first. Didn’t trust myself not to shatter somethin’ if I saw her too soon.

She danced now. She smiled. But I could see the armor in her eyes. She never looked back when she left a room. Never stepped through a door without pausin’. Still runnin’. Even after all this time.

And me?

I’d come too far.

Burned too much.

So I waited. Watched.

And when the moment was right, I’d step out of the dark…

…and she’d never be able to leave me again.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

There was somethin’ stirrin’ in the wind lately. Not loud, not sharp—just enough to make the back of my neck prickle, enough to keep my eyes glancin’ twice at shadows I used to pass without a care. Folks round here would say it’s just the season changin’. The cotton bloomin’ slow. The river swellin’ with too much rain. But I knew better.

I knew what it felt like when the past came knockin’.

It started with a weight I couldn’t name. Not sorrow, not fear. Just… a tightness in the air. Like the calm right before a storm that don’t care how long you prayed.

I was sweepin’ the porch when it hit strongest. Sun had already gone down behind the trees, but the sky still held that warm blue gold, thick and low, like honey drippin’ off the edge of the world. The breeze carried the scent of pine, of distant smoke and a sweetness I couldn’t quite place. My broom slowed. My breath did too.

I didn’t see nobody. Didn’t hear a damn thing.

But I knew. Somethin’ was watchin’.

I didn’t flinch. Just kept sweepin’, let the wind pull at the hem of my skirt and carried myself like I hadn’t just felt old ghosts shift under my ribs.

Come nightfall, I made my way to the juke. Same as always. Parcel of dried herb tucked in my satchel for Grace. A wrapped cloth of rosehip and sassafras root for Annie. Folks counted on me for that, and I didn’t mind. Gave me a reason to keep movin’. Gave me an excuse to slip past the ache.

Cornbread tipped his chin at me when I reached the door. “You late, sugar.”

I grinned easy, lifting the edge of my shawl. “Didn’t know there was a curfew.”

He stepped aside with a smirk. “Ain’t one. But if you keep showin’ up this late, I’m gon’ start worryin’. Com’ in.”

“Now you sound like Adele,” I teased, brushin’ past him.

Inside, the world came alive. Warm wood floors thrummin’ underfoot. Smoke curlin’ from rolled cigars. Sweat glistenin’ on cheeks mid-laugh. A fiddle cried through the room like it’d been born from somebody’s bones, and I breathed deep. I needed that sound.

I didn’t dance. Not tonight. Just eased myself onto the stool at the far corner and let my satchel rest on the floor. The room buzzed around me, voices rollin’ like riverwater.

Then I felt it again.

That chill. That soft press of a stare at my back. Not unkind. But heavy.

I didn’t turn. Didn’t let it show on my face. But somethin’ old shifted inside me. Somethin’ I’d buried centuries deep.

Not here, I thought. Not now.

I caught Annie passin’ and handed her the pouch. She squeezed my arm with a thank-you, unaware of how tight my chest had gone.

“You feelin’ alright?” she asked.

“Just tired,” I lied, soft. “Been a long week.”

She nodded and moved on, bless her.

But my eyes didn’t move from the corner of the room, where the light barely touched.

Nothin’ was there.

But I felt him.

Or maybe I was just tired.

Maybe.

I left earlier than usual, sayin’ my goodbyes with a smile that didn’t quite touch the bone. The walk back was quiet—too quiet for a town this close to midnight. I kept to the edge of the trees, let the dark wrap around me like a veil.

At my door, I paused. Looked over my shoulder.

Still nothin’.

Still that weight.

Inside, I lit one lamp and sat down slow on the edge of the bed, unwrappin’ my scarf. My hands were shakin’, just a little.

There’s a certain kind of fear that don’t come with panic. Don’t scream in your ears or rush your breath.

It settles.

Like a coat. Like a second skin.

And I knew that fear.

I knew it like I knew the taste of ash on my tongue. Like I knew the look in his eyes the night he chose for me what I would never have chosen for myself.

I leaned back, arms crossin’ my chest.

If it was him, he wouldn’t show yet.

Not ‘til he was ready.

Not ‘til I couldn’t run again.

So I did the only thing I could do.

I waited.

And in the silence, my soul whispered one word.

Remmick.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The grass whispered under my steps as I walked. Basket on my arm. Sun barely peekin’ through the trees. I’d meant only to gather herbs ‘fore the day grew too hot—rosemary, some goldenrod, a few stubborn mint sprigs for Annie’s cough. But the air felt… wrong.

Not wrong like danger.

Wrong like memory.

Like grief wearin’ another man’s skin.

The woods around me were still—too still. The birds had hushed. Even the wind held its breath. And I knew. Same way you know a snake’s behind you without seein’ it. Same way your spirit clenches when the past is near.

I stopped by the creekbed, crouched low like I was studyin’ the mint. But my breath’d already gone shallow. I didn’t need to see him to feel him. The air had thickened, the way it always did before a summer storm. Thick like honey gone too long. Like hunger waitin’ in a dark room.

“I know it’s you,” I said, not even botherin’ to turn. My voice didn’t shake. Not even once. “Ain’t no use hidin’ in the shade. You was never no shadow.”

No answer.

Not yet.

But I felt him in the stillness. In the hush between my heartbeats.

“Come on out, Remmick.”

His name cracked the air open like thunder.

And then—branches shifted.

I turned slow.

He was leanin’ against a tree like he’d been grown there. Pale, still, boots clean despite the mud. Hair tousled like sleep or war. Those eyes—red as dusk and just as dangerous. But his face…

His face looked like grief tryin’ to wear calm like a disguise.

“You always did know how to find me,” he said, voice low and silk-slick, but it cracked under the weight of memory.

“I didn’t find you,” I snapped. “You been followin’ me.”

He smiled—sad and sharp. “Reckon I have.”

The basket slipped from my hand, landin’ soft in the dirt. My jaw clenched.

“You survived.”

“Aye,” he said, never lookin’ away. “Didn’t think I would. But I’ve always been hard to kill.”

I laughed, bitter. “Too stubborn for death, too stupid to know when to quit.”

He took a step. Measured. Careful.

“I looked for you,” he said, breath catchin’.

“And when you found me,” I cut in, “you hid.”

He flinched. “I wasn’t ready. You left, Y/N. After everythin’—”

“You turned me!” I snapped, voice shakin’. “You took my choice and dressed it up like mercy.”

“I saved you.”

“You cursed me.”

Silence. Heavy and wet like the air.

“I woke up hungry, Remmick,” I whispered. “Starvin’. Scared. Watchin’ my own hands do things I couldn’t stop. You weren’t there.”

“I didn’t know what it would do to you,” he said. “But I couldn’t bury you. Not you.”

I took a step back. My heart was thunderin’ in my ears.

“You should’ve let me die.”

His eyes shone then—not from the red glow, but from somethin’ older. Somethin’ breakin’.

“I couldn’t,” he breathed. “I’d already lost everythin’. My brother. My home. And then you—” He stopped, jaw tight. “I’d have nothin’ left if you died.”

I stared at him, tears burnin’ the backs of my eyes. “So instead you dragged me into this hell and called it love?”

“I loved you.”

“I loved you too,” I said. “And that’s what makes it worse.”

His hands twitched at his sides like he wanted to reach out, but didn’t dare.

“You think I ain’t felt you watchin’ me these last few weeks?” I said, steady now. “Think I didn’t know the air changed when you came near?”

“I didn’t know how to face you,” he admitted, voice ragged. “Not after what I did. Not after you ran.”

“I had to,” I said. “You made me a monster. I couldn’t look at you without hearin’ the scream I let out when I woke up.”

We stood there, tangled in the ache of a hundred years.

Then he said quiet, “I didn’t want to own you. I just wanted to belong to someone again.”

I closed my eyes. And Lord, that was the worst part.

Because some part of me still did ache for him. Still remembered the feel of his hand in mine when we were both still human. Still remembered that look he gave me like I hung the moon crooked just to keep him wonderin’.

But ache ain’t the same as love.

“You got no right,” I whispered. “Not to this town. Not to me.”

His jaw flexed.

“Then why’d you call my name?”

“Because I felt you,” I said. “And I’d rather look the devil in the eye than let him haunt me from the trees.”

He smiled then, soft and bitter.

“I ain’t the devil.”

“No,” I said. “But you sure learned how to dance like him.”

He stared at me a long time.

And I knew, right then, this wasn’t over.

Not by a long shot.

But I’d bought myself a moment.

And in a life like mine, a moment might just be the thing that saves you.

“Go,” I said, voice barely above a whisper. “Before I decide to hate you more than I already do.”

He took a breath. Then turned.

Walked back into the woods without a word.

But I knew that weren’t the last of him.

Because men like Remmick?

They don’t come to say goodbye.

They come to take back what they think belongs to them.

And this is the point when patience isn’t known to him.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The joint was hummin’.

Music slid through the floor like syrup, thick with bass and heat. Somebody’s uncle was hollerin’ over a blues tune on the piano, Annie behind the bar crackin’ jokes while slippin’ flasks under the table. Sweat glistened on the back of my neck, curls stickin’ to my skin, and laughter rolled up from the dance floor like smoke. I was leanin’ into a conversation with Josephine at the bar, her eyes wide as she told me about a man she caught slippin’ out her window barefoot just before his wife came knockin’.

I chuckled low, brows raised. “And you didn’t slap him upside the head first?”

She rolled her eyes. “I had better things to do than waste my strength on a fool.”

“Amen to that,” I said, liftin’ my glass, though I hadn’t drunk a drop.

Then I felt it.

A cold ripple slid down the length of my spine—so sudden, it stole the breath right out my lungs. It weren’t fear, not quite. But the kind of dread that came from knowin’ something was wrong before your eyes could prove it.

I didn’t see the door.

But I saw Stack.

He was on his feet, jaw tight, walkin’ past me with that slow kind of purpose. Smoke followed close behind, his eyes narrowin’ toward the open entrance. Cornbread had gone quiet at the door, and that alone was enough to knot my gut.

Josephine kept talkin’, but her voice faded into nothin’.

My body moved on its own.

I stood, heart poundin’ like a war drum behind my ribs. The music didn’t stop, but everything inside me did. I walked past the tables, past the girls, through the perfume and pipe smoke and scent of sweat and spilt whiskey.

And then—

His voice.

Smooth. Mockin’. Sugar over glass.

“Evenin’,” Remmick drawled, like he’d been invited to church supper and meant to charm the whole congregation. “Lovely place y’all got here. Full of… soul.”

My blood turned to ice.

He was speakin’ to Cornbread, who stood stiff as a gatepost, eyes narrowin’ as the air seemed to stretch thin between ‘em.

“Think you might be lost,” Cornbread said slowly, not movin’ from his post. “There’s places in town for your kind. This ain’t one.”

“Oh, but I’m right where I need to be,” Remmick smiled, sharp and hollow. “Heard tale of music, drink, and dancin’. Figured I’d see it for myself. Can’t a man enjoy the night?”

His eyes flicked past Cornbread—landin’ square on me.

Like he’d planned it. Like he’d waited for the silence in my soul to find the crack just wide enough to step through.

“Y/N,” he said.

My stomach dropped.

Stack stepped in front of me. “You know this man?”

“I do,” I said. My voice came out steady, but my hands curled into fists at my sides. “I know him.”

“Name’s Remmick,” he said, glancin’ at the twins with a false-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Old friends with the lady. We go back.”

“Too far,” I muttered.

He took a step forward, and Stack shifted, blockin’ him.

“Easy now,” Remmick said, hands liftin’. “I’m just here to talk. That all right with you, darlin’?”

His tone curled around that word like it meant everything and nothin’ at all. The same way it used to when he wanted me quiet. Wanted me pliant.

“No,” I snapped. “You ain’t supposed to be here.”

Cornbread’s hand twitched toward the bat leanin’ beside the door.

Remmick chuckled. “Didn’t know you needed permission to visit old flames. Thought we were past pretendin’, Y/N.”

My jaw clenched. I stepped in front of Stack and Smoke, meetin’ Remmick’s eyes dead on.

“You’re pushin’ it,” I said low, “and you know it.”

He tilted his head. “I’m just tryin’ to make amends. Catch up. Maybe remind you of what we—”

“Shut up,” I snapped. “Not here.”

He didn’t shut up.

Instead, he smirked and said, “What? Afraid somebody might recognize what you really are?”

That was it.

I moved fast. My hand gripped his arm hard, draggin’ him back from the door ‘fore anyone else could hear. His boots scraped the dirt as I yanked him past the porch, into the woods just beyond the edge of the firelight.

We didn’t stop ‘til the juke faded behind us, til the only sound was the hiss of the crickets and the rasp of my breath.

Then I let go.

He stumbled back, laughin’ low.

“You always were the fiery sort,” he muttered. “Mouth full of ash and thunder.”

My eyes flared, shiftin’ to that color I only saw when my blood ran too hot. “Are you outta your damn mind, comin’ up in there like that?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t figure you’d come callin’ again. Had to make the introduction myself.”

“You could’ve blown everything,” I hissed. “You wanna waltz in there flashin’ teeth and riddles, but these people don’t forget what monsters look like once they get wind of it. You forgot that part?”

His face twisted, somethin’ cruel and wounded all at once. “You forgot I ain’t been welcome in any place for centuries. You found a home. I found shadows. You danced while I starved.”

I stepped close, close enough to see the red flicker in his eyes again.

“You don’t get to turn this on me,” I said, voice droppin’ into a tremble of fury. “You made me this way. You left me this way. And now you think you can show up with your coy words and puppy eyes and take what ain’t yours anymore?”

He leaned in, voice barely breathin’.

“You were always mine, darlin’. Long ‘fore the blood ever touched your lips.”

I slapped him.

The sound cracked like a pistol in the hush.

He didn’t flinch.

Didn’t raise his voice.

But that smile—the slow, dangerous one he wore like armor—slipped off his face like a mask too heavy to hold.

I was breathin’ hard. Fists clenched. Rain gatherin’ on my skin like it had permission. Like even the sky had been waitin’ for us to come undone.

“You don’t get to say that,” I seethed, chest heavin’. “You don’t ever get to say that to me.”

Remmick stayed where he stood—still, calm. Too calm. Like the eye of a storm that knew the ruin already circlin’ it.

“I reckon I just did,” he said low, almost kind. “And I meant it.”

My jaw shook. “You think this is love? You think this is some twisted soul-bind you can drag behind you like a dog on a chain?”

His brow ticked, barely. “No chain ever held you, Y/N. You cut every one yourself.”

I took a step toward him, finger pointed like it might draw blood.

“You turned me without askin’. You let me wake up alone. You watched me starve. And now you show up actin’ like I owe you somethin’?”

He didn’t move. Just tilted his head, watchin’ me unravel.

“I didn’t say you owed me. I came to see if there was anythin’ left.”

“There wasn’t!” I shouted, voice crackin’. “There ain’t! Not after what you did.”

He exhaled slow through his nose, like he’d been expectin’ this. Like he’d already played it out a thousand ways in the hollows of his mind.

“You always did throw fire when your heart got loud.”

“You got no right to talk about my heart,” I hissed. “Not after the way you crushed it and called it savin’ me.”

He stepped closer—just one step. Careful. Calm.

“You think I ain’t spent the last hundred years crawlin’ through the world lookin’ for pieces of you? You think I didn’t see the wreck I left behind? I know what I did.”

“Then why are you here?” My voice trembled. “Why now?”

He looked at me like I was still the only song he remembered the words to.

“Because even now,” he said, soft and razor-sharp, “you’re still the only thing that makes me feel like I didn’t die all the way.”

The rain started then—slow at first, then heavy. Soakin’ my dress. Mattin’ my hair to my face. But I didn’t move. Didn’t wipe the water from my eyes.

Because it wasn’t just rain.

It was rage.

It was heartbreak.

It was every scream I swallowed the night he turned me.

“You ruined me,” I said. “And now you want me to weep for you?”

“No.” He blinked once. Steady. “I want nothin’ from you you don’t give me freely.”

“You’re a liar.”

“I was,” he said. “But I ain’t lyin’ now.”

I laughed, bitter and sharp. “So what? You want redemption?”

He shook his head. “That ain’t a road I get to walk.”

The silence that followed was thick. Biblical.

And then, slow—too slow—Remmick sank to his knees.

Not like a man prayin’.

But like one beggin’ the grave to let him stay buried.

“Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” he said, voice quiet and cracked around the edges. “You want me gone, I’ll disappear. You want me dead, well… you know better than most, darlin’. That ain’t never been easy.”

Rain slammed the earth in waves now, like it meant to bury every word between us.

I didn’t speak.

Didn’t move.

Just watched him kneel in the mud, pale hands open, head bowed like even he knew he didn’t deserve forgiveness.

His eyes flickered red in the stormlight.

Still beautiful.

Still dangerous.

Still mine—once.

And then the memory returned—

His mouth on my throat.

My scream breakin’ the sky.

The taste of betrayal before I even knew the word for it.

The night he turned me.

The night I stopped bein’ his salvation…

…and became his punishment.

He didn’t move.

Didn’t rise.

Just stayed there on his knees in the wet earth, eyes on me like I was a hymn he’d long forgotten how to pray, but still couldn’t stop hummin’.

“You don’t get to play the martyr,” I said, rain slidin’ down the slope of my jaw, voice low and level. “You don’t get to break somethin’ and call it love.”

His jaw worked, but he stayed quiet. Good. He was learnin’.

I stepped closer, slow enough for the mud to cling to my boots like memory.

“You think this—” I gestured at his posture, at the rain, the ache between us— “makes you smaller than me? It don’t. You still got teeth. Still got hunger. But now you got somethin’ else too.”

I let the silence hang for a breath.

Then another.

“My hand ain’t on your throat, Remmick. I ain’t pulled no blade. But you still follow, don’t you?”

His eyes flickered, faint red beneath the dark.

“You follow ‘cause you can’t help it,” I said, takin’ one more step. “Not ‘cause I told you to. But because I’m the ghost you ain’t never been able to bury.”

His mouth parted—like maybe he’d speak, maybe he’d beg again—but I beat him to it.

“You been searchin’ all these years thinkin’ I was the piece you lost.” My voice dipped lower, soft as a curse. “But maybe I was the punishment you earned.”

He flinched.

Just barely.

But I saw it.

Felt it.

“You ain’t on your knees ‘cause of guilt,” I said. “You’re down there ‘cause you know deep in your bones—I still got a leash on your soul.”

He looked up at me then.

Really looked.

And for the first time since he crawled back into my world, he didn’t reach.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t beg.

He just watched.

Like he knew I was right.

Like he knew that no matter how far I’d run or how cruel I’d grown…

…I’d always be the one holdin’ the reins.

I turned without another word, walked back through the trees, each step heavy with the truth we couldn’t outrun.

And though I didn’t hear him rise—

I knew he would.

I knew he’d follow.

Because men like Remmick?

They don’t vanish.

They linger.

They haunt.

They wait for the softest crack in your armor, then slip back in like they never left.

But this time, he’d have to wait.

This time, I wasn’t runnin’.

And I wasn’t lettin’ him in, either.

Let him kneel in the mud.

Let him feel what it’s like to want somethin’ that won’t break for him no more.

Because even monsters got leashes.

And some ain’t made of rope.

They’re made of memory.

Of ache.

Of the one person who walked away—and meant it.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

Taglist:@jakecockley,@alastorhazbin,

[heartsforrain00]

𝐒𝐮𝐤𝐮𝐧𝐚 𝐑𝐲ō𝐦𝐞𝐧 - 𝐂𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞’𝐬 𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐜é !

warnings : Sukuna has never celebrated Valentine’s Day at all, he spoils you, you two end off the night with sex, jealousy - a servant tries giving you chocolate, killing, true-form! Sukuna, he has two cocks, and can spawn tongues anywhere, he overstimulates you, pet names - princess, ‘pet’, he calls you wife even though y’all aren’t even married yet. Mating press, breeding, DP, P in V, public sex, and more that will come up. afab!reader implied, female pronouns, poc!reader.

(a’s note ! - there’s porn links hidden in here, hope you find them ! y’all gonna be reading books at night so ima say this now, y’all got light, idk how but yall got light.)

𐙚 It was February 14th. Which meant it was Valentine's Day, so you decided to decorate one of the many rooms throughout the household that Sukuna said you could use whenever you were mad at him.

you knew he wouldn't really care for this type of stuff since he always said it was ‘foolish mortal stuff’ but then again he did celebrate everything with you if you asked nicely, or threatened him. Only he knows when he wants to be nice to you.

“wife. what are you doing?” you hear sukuna say from behind you, you don’t jump or anything you’ve gotten used to him appearing out of nowhere. “I’m decorating Ryõmen, what does it look like?” You question.

Ryōmen remembers when you two were being so affectionate, he love when you two are getting it on and that’s always what causes him to zone out when he’s looking at your sweet ass. “What? Don’t get smart with me brat.”

He simply rolls his eyes and walks over towards you. “we’re going out tonight. Be ready in an hour.” He says, not allowing you to respond before he leaves back out.

𐙚 You got ready in that hour he gave you, wearing a dress he had recently brought you. “Ryōmen. What do you think?” You question, spinning in a circle as you approach him. He just gave you a small nod, before fixing his tie and turning to you, he thought you looked beautiful.

He planned to take you to a restaurant, and afterwards he was going to take you to the beach, of course at a time when no one else was there that way he can be alone with you, though of course he would never act on it without you consenting.

He would hope you wouldn’t be a brat tonight, that way he doesn’t have to gag you like usual during your little acts. “Ryōmen! I’ve been calling your damn name for ten minutes, are we leaving or not?” You question, finally seeing him snap out of whatever daze he was in. He just nods, and grabs your hand, taking you outside to the car.

One of the driver’s opens the door for you and him, and allows you two to get in the car, before going back to the driver’s side and driving off to the restaurant. Once the car stops, Sukuna puts a blindfold over your eyes and leads you inside the restaurant. He sits you down before taking off the blindfold.

It was a neatly decorated Valentine’s Day themed booth, that he personally decorated just for you, he wanted everything to be perfect just for you. “Do you like it wife?” He questioned, sitting down as he puts the present he brought you on the table and pushed it towards you.

You nod and begin to open the present, pausing before you continue to ask for confirmation to open. He gives you a small nod, gesturing you to open it for him. you listen and begin to open the present. It was a camera, a promise ring, a new bathing suit, an anklet with his initials and yours, a necklace with his initials, and earrings.

“Oh! This is quite a lot, but thank you Ryōmen, I love you so much.” You murmured, storing it in the bag he brought with the two of you. He just grunts and orders the two of you food, allowing you to get whatever you want.

𐙚 After you two ate, he took you to a nearby beach. Now you see what he brought you a new bathing suit for. you take the bathing suit and go change, it wasn't as windy as it normally was tonight.

When you finally came out the bathroom, he had set up multiple towels so you two would be comfortable. He was currently sitting down on the towels, his head resting on his arm as he read the book he brought along.

He looks up, seeing you finally came out the bathroom, he moves the book, and pats the spot next to him, signaling for you to sit down. you sit down next to him and hum.

“took you long enough brat, now you wanna go get in the water with me or you wanna stay here?” he questioned, waiting for your answer before getting up, all you did was stay seated as a single you wanted to stay at the towels. “Let’s stay here.” You say, laying on your stomach as you began to read a book.

He felt horny just looking at your backside. He hums and grabs you and forces you onto your hands and needs. “Can I?” He questions, waiting for your nod of approval. And you give him the nod of approval.

He grins and pulls down your underwear, and pushes down his boxers and swim shorts. He does a few lazy strokes before positioning himself at your entrance.

You let out a moan, allowing him to push himself inside of you as you two fucked in a public space. Luckily no one was around. His hands gripped your hips, trying to angle himself deeper inside of you as just you just hoped your arms wouldn’t give out or your legs in this moment.

“Feeling good?” He questioned, as he bent down and covering your neck in kisses. You just let out a moan mixed with a shudder. Of course you felt good, he was fucking you so nicely on the beach, you didn’t have a care in the world if you two got caught.

He just kept thrusting until you came on his cocks, eventually cumming right after you did. He picks you up, wraps a towel around you and puts you in the car as he grabs the rest of you guys' stuff and goes to the car.

He mumbles an I love you to you, and allows you to fall asleep on his lap until you get home. Once you two get home, he washes you up and lays you in bed. “Happy Valentine's Day, my wife.”

He lovesssss when your small body is taking his big cock.

Sukuna might have to put a baby in you after all.

You were needy while in the car so he fucked you while you two were being driven back to the mansion.

EDIT: pretend this was posted on Valentine’s Day at 12am !!

Tagged: @babyblue0t7 - technically another part to the other things since I never did Sukuna 💗 Oops.. you already saw it😭😭

[ksnzuy]

Hi koli i saw your request were open and was wondering if you could do a Tokyo revengers x reader (final timeline) where they have a baby and they say their first word with preferably: chifyuy, kazutora, baji, mikey, izana, rindou, shinichiro and any others you would like to include

۶ৎ. Babies First.

Tokyo Revenger Boys.

۶ৎ auth: ahhhh omg my first request in like so long, I’m actually so excited to work on this!!! Feel free to request any anime, show or movie, and any character!! :) I might make a taglist.

۶ৎ Summary: After so much back and forth to fix the future, you’ve finally settled down—and finally had a baby. The joys of parenthood only continue and your baby says their first words.

۶ৎ: sfw | scenario | fem reader | babies/parenthood | fluff | time skipped | implied poc reader, though you could ignore the information that doesn't fit you.

۶ৎ Characters Included: Chifuyu Matsuno, Kazutora Hanemiya, Baji Keisuke, Manjiro (Mikey) Sano, Izana Kurokawa, Rindou Haitani, Shinichiro Sano, Kokonoi Hajime, Ken Ryuguji.

۶ৎChifuyu Matsuno

It’s an ordinary evening, and Chifuyu sits with the baby on his lap, his calm, logical demeanor softened by the tiny bundle in his arms. His black undercut, neatly styled, contrasts with the gentle warmth that radiates from him as he softly coos at the little one, a sense of peace enveloping the moment. The baby’s big, curious eyes stare up at him, the faintest glimmer of recognition in their gaze.

You’re nearby, watching quietly from the kitchen, as usual, keeping a close eye on the small family gathering. The baby shifts slightly in Chifuyu’s arms, their little hands reaching out, exploring, unsure of the world but finding comfort in the familiar presence of their father.

Chifuyu looks at the baby, a tender smile creeping across his face. He’s normally so composed, always the steady one, but this… this softens him, makes him feel an unfamiliar kind of warmth. “Come on,” he murmurs softly, “say something for me.”

The baby babbles incoherently for a moment, small giggles escaping their lips as they grab hold of his finger, wrapping their tiny hand around it like it’s the most important thing in the world. Chifuyu chuckles, shaking his head softly. “You’re as stubborn as your mom,” he says under his breath, smiling at the thought of you.

Then, suddenly, the baby’s little voice breaks the silence. It’s not a full word, but there’s a clear attempt to speak. “Da-da!” the baby declares proudly, their voice high-pitched but full of delight. Chifuyu freezes for a moment, his face lighting up with surprise, a hint of pride showing in his usually calm features.

You, hearing the unexpected word, laugh softly from your spot, watching the exchange. Chifuyu’s usual composed self cracks for a brief moment as he stares down at the baby in awe. “Did… did you just say ‘Dada’?” he asks, though it’s clear he’s delighted.

The baby repeats it again, this time with even more enthusiasm, “Da-da!” Chifuyu shakes his head, a small laugh escaping his lips. “Guess I’ll take that as a victory.”

You walk over quietly, your heart swelling at the sight of Chifuyu, who’s always so composed, now with the smallest of smiles, cradling their child with complete adoration. The baby, seeing you, reaches out with their tiny arms, making a soft noise of recognition.

“Looks like you’ve got competition,” you tease, leaning against the doorframe, your voice light and playful.

Chifuyu’s face turns slightly red, his calm demeanor returning, though the smile still lingers. “It’s just a fluke,” he mutters, though it’s clear he’s overjoyed. The baby giggles again, the sound filling the room, and Chifuyu leans in, pressing a soft kiss to their forehead. “I can’t believe you said ‘Dada’ first,” he murmurs, his voice low and full of affection.

The baby, oblivious to the momentous occasion, just giggles again, content in the safety of their father’s arms. It’s a simple, tender moment, but to Chifuyu, it’s everything.

۶ৎKazutora Hanemiya

The air is still, heavy with the calm that comes with the evening as Kazutora sits on the couch, a small, fragile smile on his face as he looks down at the baby resting in his arms. His long, black hair, streaked with yellow, falls lazily over his shoulders, the strands a contrast to the tenderness with which he holds the child. There’s an unfamiliar peace in his expression, a quiet moment of solace after all the chaos that’s filled his life. His usually volatile demeanor seems distant as he looks at the little one, their soft breaths the only sound between them.

You’re just a few steps away, your presence like a gentle echo in the background, keeping watch as Kazutora carefully adjusts the baby in his arms, the kind of delicate handling that surprises even him. He’s never been one for softness, always pushing against the world with a hardness that left little room for gentleness—until now. He looks down, eyes tracing the baby’s tiny hands, the little fingers wrapped around his own with surprising strength.

The baby stirs, their wide eyes blinking up at him, and Kazutora’s breath catches slightly in his chest. For a moment, it’s as if everything else—the turmoil, the chaos, the memories—fades into the background, leaving only this quiet exchange between father and child.

Kazutora’s voice is soft, almost hesitant as he speaks to the baby, a far cry from the manic energy he once carried. “Hey, little one… can you say something for me?” he murmurs, his voice filled with a quiet kind of longing, though it’s not for the world outside—it’s for this fragile connection he never thought he would have.

The baby, in their own way, tries to respond, making gurgling noises that grow into more distinct sounds. Kazutora watches in silent anticipation, a rare, genuine smile creeping onto his face as the baby’s mouth moves again. It’s almost as if they’ve been waiting for the right moment to speak.

Then, with a bright, innocent giggle, the baby suddenly blurts out a word, though it’s not what Kazutora expected. “Dada!” they say, the sound coming out in a clear, high-pitched tone.

Kazutora freezes, his eyes wide in disbelief for a second. His heart lurches unexpectedly in his chest, and he looks down at the baby as though they’ve just given him the most precious gift. His expression softens, a deep and almost bittersweet tenderness settling in his gaze. “Dada…” he repeats under his breath, as though trying to wrap his mind around it. There’s a tremor in his voice, something raw and vulnerable that he doesn’t often let surface.

You can’t help but smile as you watch the moment unfold, the baby’s innocent giggle filling the room, unaware of the weight they’ve just placed on Kazutora’s heart. Kazutora’s fingers twitch slightly as he holds them closer, his past, his pain, his regret all swirling beneath the surface of this simple, unexpected moment.

The baby, sensing the comfort of Kazutora’s embrace, reaches up with their tiny hands, trying to grab at his face. Kazutora laughs softly, the sound foreign yet warm as he leans into the baby’s touch. “You’re gonna make me soft, huh?” he mutters, though there’s no bitterness in his words—only a quiet affection.

You step forward then, offering him a soft, knowing glance. Kazutora looks up, his eyes meeting yours, and for a moment, everything between the two of you seems to settle. There’s a flicker of something deeper in his gaze, something that says more than words ever could.

Kazutora’s voice breaks the silence, still low and almost tender. “I never thought I’d be here, y’know? This… this feels different.”

You smile gently, watching him with the baby in his arms, a sense of peace settling over you both. The moment is fleeting, but it’s a reminder—Kazutora, despite his past, is finding something he never thought he deserved.

۶ৎBaji Keisuke

The night is quiet, the soft hum of the streetlights casting a dim glow in the room where Baji sits, his wild, untamed jet-black hair falling to his shoulders in loose waves. His usual grin is absent for the moment, replaced by a look of calm as he watches the baby in his arms, who is squirming lightly, their little hands reaching up as if trying to make sense of the world around them. There’s an intensity in Baji’s eyes, but it’s not the usual fire of a fight—it’s something softer, something that only surfaces when he’s with his family.

You stand by the doorway, leaning against the frame, quietly watching the scene unfold. Baji, who is always full of energy, the type to jump into action at any given moment, seems almost frozen in this moment, the wild spark in his eyes replaced by a rare tenderness as he holds the baby close to his chest.

The baby gurgles softly, their small face scrunching in curiosity as they look up at him. Baji’s lips twitch into a small smile, but it’s different than his usual mischievous grin—it’s something warmer, more protective. “What’s going on in that head of yours, huh?” he murmurs, his voice low and warm, though a hint of his usual playful nature is still there.

The baby babbles in response, their little voice almost a melody as they stare at Baji with wide, innocent eyes. And then, as if on a whim, the baby utters a word. It’s clear and unambiguous, the word they’ve been practicing, but it’s not what Baji expected.

“Dada!” The word rings out, not perfectly clear, but undeniably present.

Baji’s eyes widen, and for a moment, his usual grin falters, replaced by something almost vulnerable. He looks down at the baby, his hand resting gently against their tiny back, and the slightest breath escapes him. His fingers twitch as if unsure how to react to the sudden surge of emotion he didn’t anticipate. His heart pounds, a rush of warmth flooding through him, and despite all his bravado, there’s a crack in the tough exterior.

You smile, stepping a little closer to them, your heart swelling at the sight. “Looks like you’ve got a little fan there,” you tease softly.

Baji’s grin slowly returns, though it’s softer now, not the usual wild energy that so often defines him, but something more intimate. He leans down, his sharp canine teeth flashing briefly as he chuckles under his breath, the sound light and full of affection. “Yeah, I guess so.” He says it with his usual swagger, but it’s evident that something about the moment has shifted. This isn’t a victory he expected, but it’s a victory that matters more than any battle.

The baby reaches up toward his face, their tiny fingers brushing against his cheek, and Baji’s heart skips a beat. He looks at you for a moment, a wordless exchange between the two of you, before he leans down and presses a gentle kiss to the baby’s forehead. “Good job,” he mutters, his voice soft but steady.

You can’t help but watch the moment unfold with a quiet admiration. Baji, the wild, adrenaline-fueled force of nature, has just experienced something that slows him down, something that pulls him out of the chaos of the world and into a simple, pure connection. The baby giggles, their tiny hands grasping for his hair, and Baji laughs too, the sound genuine and full of joy.

For a brief moment, the world outside seems distant, and all that matters is the little family in that room—the wild heart of Baji, softened and made whole in the presence of his child.

۶ৎManjiro (Mikey) Sano

Mikey sits in the quiet of the living room, the soft hum of the clock the only sound besides the gentle breath of the baby in his arms. His short, dark hair is parted neatly at the middle, the weight of the world outside this moment temporarily forgotten. The familiar carefree energy that Mikey is known for seems absent now, replaced by a tenderness he rarely shows. He’s holding the little one close, his hands steady and secure around them, the once-unshakable pillar of Toman now softened by something unexpected.

The baby stirs in his arms, their small face scrunching in confusion as they try to adjust to the world around them. Mikey watches them with a faint smile, though there’s something more complex behind his eyes. The carefree grin that usually defines him is replaced by a quiet focus, a vulnerability that he seldom allows others to see. His heart is heavy with thoughts of the past, of everything he’s lost, but in this moment, the baby offers him something pure, something he hasn’t had in a long time—peace.

The baby’s tiny hand reaches up, grasping for the fabric of his suit, their tiny fingers curling in and out as if trying to touch something they don’t fully understand yet. Mikey’s breath catches in his chest, his gaze softening. He can feel the warmth of their small body, the innocent trust they place in him without question, and for a moment, it feels like the weight of his own burdens lifts just slightly.

“Mama?” The baby says, the word coming out softly but unmistakably.

Mikey freezes. The sound is far from perfect, the baby’s voice still nasally and unsure, but it’s clear enough, and Mikey’s heart skips a beat. He blinks down at the child, his expression flickering between surprise and a strange tenderness, something unfamiliar and soft that he never expected to experience. His hand twitches, fingers tightening around the baby instinctively as if protecting them from the world outside.

You, standing nearby, catch his gaze, the understanding between the two of you unspoken. Mikey clears his throat, the faintest hint of a grin tugging at the corner of his lips as he glances at you, trying to regain some of his usual bravado. “Guess that’s not the word I was hoping for,” he says, his tone playful, though there’s a depth to it, a warmth he’s not used to showing.

The baby reaches up again, this time grasping Mikey’s finger, their touch delicate yet insistent. Mikey smiles softly, the usual coldness in his eyes replaced with something warmer, something that speaks to the weight of the love he’s learning to give. “It’s okay, little one,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “Maybe next time, huh?”

He presses a gentle kiss to the baby’s forehead, his lips lingering just a little longer than necessary. The moment feels suspended in time, as if the world around him has faded and all that matters is this—the small, fragile life in his arms and the quiet peace they’ve brought him, in spite of everything he’s carried.

You step closer, watching the scene with a soft smile of your own. Mikey looks up at you then, his expression still soft, but now there’s a flicker of something deeper in his eyes. He may have once carried a darkness that threatened to consume him, but here, now, with his child in his arms, that darkness feels far away, as if for a brief moment, he can just be… Mikey. The Mikey who is a child at heart, who’s capable of tenderness and love even amidst the weight of his past.

With a soft chuckle, Mikey leans back slightly, his hand still holding the baby close as he looks at you with a playful glint in his eyes. “You heard that, right?” he asks, his voice teasing but there’s something vulnerable in it too. “They said ‘mama.’ Guess I’m off the hook for now.”

You laugh, the sound light and full of warmth. Mikey’s grin widens just a little, and though it’s not the wild grin of a fighter or leader, it’s something just as genuine—something that feels like a promise, a reassurance that even with all the darkness he’s faced, he’s finding light again. And maybe, just maybe, this little one is part of that light.

۶ৎIzana Kurokawa

Izana sits in the dimly lit room, the soft hum of a guitar string resonating in the air. His large purple eyes, usually cold and calculating, are softened by the warmth of the baby in his arms. His wavy hair falls gently around his face, the strands catching the light as he adjusts the baby’s tiny body against his chest, the faint scent of plants and the soft ripple of water from the fish tank nearby offering a peaceful backdrop to an otherwise chaotic life. He had never imagined this—holding a child, one so small, so fragile in his arms. His usual detachment feels muted, replaced by a strange sense of responsibility, a sensation he’s never quite allowed himself to experience before.

The baby stirs in his arms, eyes blinking open and gaze unfocused, their small hands reaching out in curiosity. Izana’s usual composure doesn’t waver, but the faintest trace of tenderness lingers in his gaze as he watches the child, something unfamiliar surfacing beneath the layers of bitterness and coldness he’s built over the years.

The baby makes a small noise, a soft whine, their lips twitching as they try to vocalize something. Izana tilts his head slightly, his eyes narrowing, waiting. His fingers gently caress the baby’s back, an instinctive gesture of care that surprises even him. In the silence of the room, a soft and tentative word escapes the baby’s lips. It’s not quite clear, but the intention is unmistakable.

“Dada.”

Izana freezes. His grip on the guitar tightens for a brief moment, his eyes blinking as he processes the sound, the word hanging in the air like a sudden, unexpected shift in his world. It’s simple—just one word—but for someone like Izana, who has spent most of his life surrounded by cold, violence, and manipulation, hearing such a soft and innocent utterance stirs something deep within him.

A flash of his past flashes through his mind—the loneliness, the bitterness that once consumed him. He had never felt a connection to anyone, certainly not like this. He had always been the one to push people away, to make himself unapproachable, but here, in this moment, the baby’s small hand wraps around his finger, their soft grip a reminder of something pure, something he had lost long ago—the ability to care without expecting anything in return.

He exhales slowly, his face betraying nothing but the faintest softness that only the baby could elicit from him. His hand gently lifts the child, their eyes still wide with curiosity, before he leans in close, pressing a soft kiss to their forehead.

“Dada, huh?” Izana murmurs, his voice quiet but not without a hint of amusement, the corners of his lips turning upward in a small, unexpected smile. It’s a rare sight, one that doesn’t appear often, but in the quiet presence of the baby, it feels more natural than anything he’s ever known. “Guess I’m not as bad as I thought,” he adds softly, almost to himself.

You, standing nearby, watch the scene unfold with a knowing smile. Izana doesn’t often allow anyone to witness such moments, but here, now, with the child in his arms, the pieces of his past—the anger, the bitterness—seem to fade into the background, if only for a moment. Izana looks up at you then, his eyes softer than usual, as if silently asking for your approval, for reassurance that he’s doing this right. That he’s not as lost as he often feels.

He doesn’t say anything more, but the warmth in his eyes speaks volumes. The man who once sought power, control, and dominance has now found something far more valuable—a sense of purpose, a bond he never thought he would have. As he looks down at the baby, his grip tightening slightly around them.

۶ৎRindou Haitani

Rindou sat on the floor of the living room, legs stretched out, his back against the couch, the afternoon sun casting long shadows through the windows. His pinkish-purple mullet, with its dark blue roots and tips, was damp from a shower, strands falling messily around his face. He had a lazy, almost indifferent expression as he stared at his phone, absently scrolling, but his free hand rested on the baby seated between his legs, offering a steady support as they clumsily played with a soft, squeaky toy.

The baby babbled, gnawing on the corner of the plush thing, drool soaking it thoroughly. Rindou, ever stoic, just watched, raising an eyebrow whenever the squeak got too loud. His black stud earrings caught the light, a stark contrast to the rough Bonten insignia tattoo inked boldly across his neck.

“You’re gonna drown in your own spit,” Rindou muttered, lifting the baby gently by their underarms, pulling them up into a wobbly stand on his thighs. The child stared back at him, wide-eyed, chubby cheeks flushed. Their little fists grabbed at his shirt, seeking balance, and for a moment, there was a quiet exchange—a softness that rarely found its way into Rindou’s life.

The baby blinked, their gaze fixed on Rindou’s face with intense concentration, like they were processing something far too big for their small brain. And then, out of nowhere, they let out a small, clear sound.

“Dada.”

Rindou froze.

The word was soft, tentative, but unmistakable. His blue-gray eyes snapped to the baby’s face, as though he wasn’t sure if he’d actually heard it. His normally stoic expression cracked, a rare flicker of surprise flashing across his sharp features.

“What…?”

The baby blinked again, almost as if testing the sound, and with a little more confidence, repeated it.

“Dada.”

This time, it wasn’t a fluke.

For a solid five seconds, Rindou just stared. The usual snarky, blasé attitude was nowhere to be found—his mouth slightly open, the baby still gripping his shirt tightly, unaware they’d just done something monumental.

A scoff broke the silence, but it was soft, almost disbelieving. “… No way.”

He tried to play it cool—but there was no hiding the way his lips twitched, threatening to pull into a smile.

“You’ve got shitty taste in first words,” he murmured, lifting the baby higher until their noses nearly touched. The baby, delighted with their new word, kicked their legs happily and repeated, “Dada,” with even more enthusiasm, like they knew they’d hit gold.

Rindou exhaled sharply through his nose, something warm and unfamiliar blooming in his chest. He glanced toward the hallway, as if making sure no one else was around to witness this moment of weakness.

“Yeah, yeah,” he whispered, giving in as he brushed his nose against the baby’s cheek, the smallest, almost imperceptible grin forming on his lips. “I hear you. I’m your ‘Dada,’ huh?”

The baby squealed, a high-pitched giggle, and Rindou couldn’t help the quiet chuckle that escaped him. He was used to fights, to blood and bruises, to commanding fear—but this? This was different. And for once, he didn’t mind losing. Not to them. Not to this.

۶ৎShinichiro Sano

It was a quiet afternoon at the Sano bike shop, the scent of oil and metal lingering in the warm air. The faint sound of a wrench clinking against the concrete floor echoed through the open garage, where Shinichiro Sano sat cross-legged, lazily working on a motorcycle engine. His unkempt black hair stuck out in random directions, and a cigarette hung loosely from his lips, the thin tendrils of smoke curling upward.

He wasn’t in any rush—never was, really. Dressed in his usual pearl-white shirt and light-washed jeans, a jacket lazily tied around his waist, he looked as effortlessly relaxed as ever. A silver chain peeked out from beneath his collar, catching the sunlight every now and then.

Nearby, his daughter sat on a thick blanket, surrounded by a mess of soft toys and teething rings. She was barely old enough to crawl properly, but that didn’t stop her from making every effort to squirm toward her father, her tiny hands grabbing at the air.

Shinichiro glanced over at her, a soft smile tugging at the corners of his thin lips. “You getting bored over there, sweetheart?” His voice was raspy, warm, and effortlessly gentle as he set the wrench down and wiped his hands on a nearby rag.

She responded with a string of baby babble, half-formed sounds that made no sense but filled the space with life. He watched her, enchanted by the simplest things—how her little fingers curled and uncurled, how her eyes, a perfect mirror of his own dull black ones, lit up every time he spoke.

“Hold on, hold on. I’m comin’.” Shinichiro stubbed out his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, rising to his feet with a lazy stretch. He scooped her up effortlessly, holding her against his chest, her small hand immediately tangling itself in the fabric of his shirt.

“You smell like motor oil,” he murmured with a chuckle, kissing the top of her head despite the mess on his hands. “Not exactly the ideal dad scent, huh?”

As he swayed gently, rocking her out of instinct more than anything, the baby stared up at him, wide-eyed and thoughtful, her chubby cheeks flushed pink from the warmth of the afternoon. She blinked slowly, as though studying him, her tiny mouth opening and closing like she wanted to say something.

And then, soft as a whisper, it happened.

“…Da…da…”

Shinichiro froze.

The word was faint, breathy—so delicate he almost thought he’d imagined it. His heart skipped a beat, a strange, unfamiliar warmth surging through his chest.

“…What?” His voice came out quiet, almost disbelieving, as he pulled her back slightly to look at her properly. “What’d you just say?”

The baby blinked again, her expression pure and innocent, and as if sensing his awe, she tried again, this time stronger, more confident.

“Dada.”

Shinichiro felt something inside him break wide open.

He laughed—not his usual lazy, carefree laugh, but something softer, shakier. “You serious right now?”

Her tiny hand reached up, grabbing at the silver chain around his neck, and for once, Shinichiro felt completely helpless—in the best way possible.

“You’re not supposed to say that yet…” he whispered, though the grin on his face betrayed him completely. His thumb brushed gently over her round cheek, his eyes shining with a tenderness so deep it made his chest ache.

“Yeah… yeah, I’m your ‘Dada,’” he murmured, pressing his forehead to hers, closing his eyes as he breathed her in. “Lucky me.”

The bike shop, the tools, the cigarette smoke—none of it mattered in that moment. All he knew was the weight of his daughter in his arms, her tiny voice calling out to him, grounding him in a way nothing else ever had.

And for the first time in a long while, Shinichiro felt like he truly had everything he could ever want.

۶ৎKokonoi Hajime

The city skyline glittered through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Kokonoi’s penthouse, casting long shadows over the sleek, minimalist living room. The distant hum of traffic blended with the soft jazz playing from the speaker, creating a calm, almost surreal atmosphere.

Koko sat cross-legged on the floor, dressed down in black sweatpants and a plain white shirt, his silver-white hair loose around his shoulders. He had a glass of whiskey beside him — untouched — as he watched their daughter with that same quiet intensity he reserved for high-stakes meetings… except this was different.

She was sitting in the middle of a plush play mat, surrounded by a chaotic scatter of toys, a stuffed bunny half-chewed, and a colorful book she had zero interest in. Her soft hair fell over her round cheeks, and she looked up at him with wide, thoughtful eyes — eyes that mirrored her mother’s so distinctly that Koko sometimes forgot how to breathe when she stared at him like that.

“Pretty, aren’t you?” he murmured, a faint smile touching the corner of his lips as he leaned back on his hands. “Got that from your mom… lucky kid.”

She babbled in response, smacking the bunny against the floor with impressive determination, her little brows furrowed as though she were solving some great mystery.

Koko’s gaze softened, a rare warmth breaking through his usual cool composure.

“You’re really giving that thing a hard time,” he remarked, watching her with a mix of amusement and fascination. “What did it ever do to you?”

She paused, blinking up at him, lips slightly parted, as though she was about to say something… but instead, she dropped the toy with a dramatic flair and crawled toward him, tiny hands smacking against the polished hardwood floor.

He sat up straighter, heart giving an odd little skip — not that he’d ever admit that.

“You comin’ over here?” he asked quietly, more to himself than her.

She reached him, pulling herself up with clumsy determination, her chubby fingers grabbing a fistful of his shirt as she balanced on unsteady legs. Koko’s hands hovered near her waist, ready to catch her if she wobbled too much.

And then, she looked up at him… and with a small, clear voice, said:

“Da…da.”

Koko blinked.

For a moment, he thought he’d imagined it. The word was soft, delicate, but unmistakable. His throat tightened, the glass of whiskey forgotten entirely.

“What… what did you say?” he asked, his voice lower now, almost a whisper.

She stared up at him with the same serious expression, as though this wasn’t a monumental moment — just another part of her day.

“Dada.”

The second time, it hit him harder.

A sharp inhale, and then — to his surprise — a soft laugh escaped him, the sound rough and disbelieving.

“You—” He ran a hand through his hair, as if trying to ground himself. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”

She, of course, said nothing. Just continued to stare at him, her tiny hands gripping his shirt like she had no intention of letting go.

“First word, huh?” Koko said, his voice softer now, almost fragile. “And it’s me…”

Something in his chest ached — something he hadn’t felt in years. He thought of how, for so long, he’d believed everything important in his life slipped through his fingers, no matter how tightly he held on. But here she was… holding onto him.

“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” he whispered, brushing a gentle hand over her soft hair.

She leaned forward, her head resting against his chest in a way that made his heart squeeze painfully.

“I should tell your mom,” he murmured, though he made no move to get up. “She’s gonna want to hear this…”

But he didn’t. He just stayed there, holding her, listening to the quiet rhythm of her breathing, as though he was afraid to break the spell.

“Dada,” she mumbled again, sleepily this time, as if testing the word.

Koko closed his eyes for a long moment, pressing a light kiss to the top of her head, the faintest smile on his lips.

“Yeah…” he whispered. “I’m your Dada.”

And for once, there was nothing else he needed.

۶ৎKen Ryuguji

The rain tapped lightly against the windows, casting soft shadows across the small but cozy apartment. The scent of warm tea and baby powder lingered in the air, a comforting mix that made the place feel lived-in — loved.

Draken sat on the floor, back against the couch, his long legs stretched out, and their daughter nestled comfortably between them. His strong, calloused hands were gentle as he helped her balance, her tiny fingers grabbing at the hem of his patterned jacket with the determination of someone on a mission.

“Steady now, princess,” he murmured, his deep voice softer than usual, a faint smile playing on his lips as he watched her.

She had her mother’s eyes — there was no denying it. That same soft, soulful gaze that could stop Draken in his tracks, no matter how tough he tried to act. The resemblance was almost eerie, especially when she stared up at him with that thoughtful, almost knowing expression, as if she could see right through him.

“You’re gonna be a heartbreaker, you know that?” he teased, running a hand over his buzzed undercut, the dragon tattoo on his temple stark against his skin. “Just like your mom…”

His daughter, of course, was unimpressed. She was too busy trying to pull herself up, grabbing at his jacket with clumsy determination, her chubby legs wobbling as she straightened herself.

Draken arched a brow, watching her with a mix of amusement and quiet pride. “Look at you… tough little thing,” he muttered. “Didn’t get that from her.”

She babbled something incoherent, rocking back and forth on her feet, her lips forming shapes that almost sounded like words.

“Yeah?” Draken chuckled, leaning in closer, his braid falling over his shoulder. “What are you tryin’ to tell me, huh?”

She paused then, swaying slightly before gripping his jacket tighter. For a split second, Draken thought she was about to fall — his hands twitched, ready to catch her — but she steadied herself, blinking up at him with wide, serious eyes.

And then…

“Da…da.”

Draken froze.

The word was soft, barely more than a whisper, but it hit him like a punch to the gut.

“What…?”

She said it again, clearer this time, her small voice filling the room in a way that made the air feel heavier.

“Dada.”

Draken stared at her, his heart pounding in a way he hadn’t felt since his gang days. His throat tightened, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure what to say — wasn’t sure if he could say anything at all.

“You…” He swallowed hard, his voice rougher now, a little hoarse. “You just—”

Before he could finish, she took an unsteady step forward and fell right into his chest, her tiny arms wrapping around him as best as they could.

“Dada,” she mumbled again, her voice muffled against his shirt.

And that… that broke him.

Draken closed his eyes, his large hand cradling the back of her head as he held her close, his thumb brushing over her soft hair. The warmth of her small body against his made his chest ache in a way he wasn’t prepared for — a deep, protective kind of love that scared him more than any fight ever had.

“Yeah…” he whispered after a long moment, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, his voice softer than it had ever been. “I’m your dad…”

He stayed like that for a while, holding her, feeling her small breaths against him. He didn’t call for her mom — not yet.

This moment was his. Just for now.

[district4widow]

salt in our wounds

finnick odair x reader

summary : you and finnick get separated in the blood rain, you reunite during the jabberjays incident, hearing your distorted voice, you fight to bring him back to reality. you comfort him through the chaos.

cw : (not proofread) angst, fluff, mentions of mild violence, blood rain, panic attacks and anxiety, implied physical injury (typical hunger games shit), nameless reader, poc friendly (hinted as black - mention of cornrows)

the jungle was a living, bleeding thing. red drips from the canopy like it’s been stabbed open, and everything—everything—smells like iron and rot. you can barely see through the downpour, even less with your bloodstained shirt plastered to your chest, your fingers slipping against the shaft of your knife.

“fuck,” johanna hisses behind you, voice sharp. “we need cover. now.”

you nod, jerking your head toward a dense cluster of ferns to your left. you and jo had been trying to double back to the others when the rain started—thick, hot, wrong. now you’re both covered in it. sticky, crimson, suffocating. you’d screamed finnick’s name when it began. over and over until your throat went raw.

but no one came.

no one heard.

or if they did, they were already in their own hell.

you don’t realize how far you’ve gone until the trees clear. until the sound shifts—not just rain, not just thunder, but screaming. sharp, constant, bone-deep.

that’s when you see them. peeta. katniss. and—

“finnick,” you breathe.

but it’s not the reunion you pictured—not the tear-soaked, arm-flung embrace your soul’s been begging for.

no.

he’s on his knees, his hands clenched in his hair, shouting, shoulders heaving.

and the screaming—it’s your voice.

your voice.

you stumble forward before johanna can stop you. it hits you in the chest like a gut punch: they’re using you.

your voice, twisted and looped, is echoing through the jungle, sobbing his name, begging for help, screaming in pain. all the things they knew would destroy him.

finnick is unraveling.

you focus on finnick again. the jabberjays are still screaming. katniss is screaming for her sister. trapped, she’s clawing at the glass wall

your thumb traces the invisible outline of finnick’s cheek. “you hold on, baby,” you murmur. “you hold on for me.”

he nods, just once. like it’s taking every shred of strength he has left.

behind you, johanna catches up, panting and bleeding from her arm. she sees what’s happening, hears your voice in the air and the panic in finnick’s body.

“fucking capitol,” she mutters. “fucking snow.”

but she stays back. lets you handle him. she knows this isn’t her moment.

you slide down to your knees, hands still on the wall, matching him. “come back to me,” you whisper.

he matches your position. lifts his hands. fingers splayed, trembling. mimicking yours on the other side of the wall.

the clock ticks down in your head. you’ve been in this arena long enough to feel the shift when a segment ends. and sure enough—after sixty long, agonizing minutes, the jabberjays vanish.

the screaming cuts out as the birds fall, as if a switch was flipped.

the glass wall begins to vanishes.

finnick stumbles forward.

you catch him.

he collapses into you like he’s been shot, his weight slamming into your chest, his arms clutching at you like you’re the only anchor left in a sinking world.

you cradle him, arms wrapping around his shoulders, your hand gripping the back of his neck. you press your lips to his temple and rock him gently as his body shakes with silent sobs.

you wrap around him like you’ve done a hundred times before. his face is in your neck, hands clutching at the fabric of your breasts like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered. he doesn’t sob. not anymore. he’s past sobbing. his body just shakes.

“i’m here,” you say again and again, even when your own voice cracks. “i’m here babe.”

people are staring.

you don’t care.

“cameras are probably wetting themselves,” johanna mutters nearby.

you don’t even turn around. “i don’t give a fuck about the cameras.”

she snorts. “didn’t think you did.”

you don’t realize how quiet it’s gotten until johanna screams.

“hey!”

you jerk your head up, still half-curled against finnick’s side. his body’s finally stopped shaking, your heart’s still in your throat, though. your hands still tangled in his hair.

finnick’s head lifts just slightly against your shoulder. you don’t say anything. you just hold him tighter.

johanna’s standing on the soil, blood dripping from her arm, eyes blazing like she could burn the whole fucking arena down with just a look.

she’s not screaming at you. not at the others.

she’s screaming at the sky.

at the cameras.

at him.

“how’s that sound, snow? huh? maybe we should set your backyard on fire—see how you like screaming into the dark with no one fucking coming!”

her voice cracks on fire, but she doesn’t stop.

“or better yet, maybe we drag your ass into the arena, drop in a couple jabberjays, and make you listen to your wife cry for help until you lose your goddamn mind!”

you don’t even look up. you just whisper, more to yourself than anyone,

“hope the cameras caught that.”

johanna laughs, bitter and sharp. “they fucking better have.”

the air goes quiet again. too quiet.

you glance up at the treeline.

no hovercams in sight.

“guess they cut us off again,” you mutter, relieved to finally have what you can ironically call privacy.

johanna turns around, shoulders heaving, and mutters, “fucking cowards.”

you almost say same.

later, the beach is quiet now.

sun beginning to dip. breeze soft on your skin.

you sit on the warm sand a few paces back from the shoreline, arms wrapped around your knees, chin resting on them. your cornrows are still damp, some blood dried at the tips. you should wash it out, but you don’t move.

you’re too busy watching him.

finnick’s maybe twenty feet out, standing where the tide kisses the shore. ankle-deep in the surf, his trident swinging low in one hand. he’s poking at the water, chasing fish like a kid would, letting out little whoops when one slips away from his reach.

he’s smiling. not wide, but real.

it’s not his stage-laugh. not the laugh the capitol dressed him in.

it’s real.

it’s yours.

and when you laugh back, low and breathless, he glances over his shoulder and grins like the sun cracked just for you.

you don’t know how long you stay like that — you on the beach, him dancing with the surf — but you do know that for the first time in years, it’s just you.

just this.

just you and him and the hum of the ocean.

you don’t notice you’re being watched until much later.

katniss and johanna are sitting further down the beach, perched on a piece of driftwood, both of them turned toward you. they’re not close enough to hear anything, but they’re close enough to see.

johanna’s chewing on a piece of dried root, legs splayed out like she owns the goddamn island. katniss sits stiffly beside her, eyes narrowed, head tilted slightly toward you and finnick. like she’s trying to understand what she’s seeing.

you don’t hide the way you’re smiling.

you don’t need to.

johanna lets the silence stretch before she says, real calm and low, “you really thought y’all were the only ones?”

katniss blinks. “what?”

“you and lover boy,” johanna says, nodding toward peeta off in the distance. “you think you invented tragic romance or something?”

katniss doesn’t answer.

johanna snorts, glances back at you and finnick — you laughing softly now, leaning your head back as he splashes you like a damn kid. you flick sand at him in return. he dodges it with that same cocky grin you’ve always known.

“they’ve been at it since they were like sixteen. first time I saw them kiss, i almost threw up. whole world could’ve ended around them and they wouldn’t’ve noticed.”

katniss swallows, glancing at you, then back at johanna.

“he never said anything.”

“yeah, no shit,” she mutters. “snow threatened to kill everybody they ever loved if he did. the capitol wouldn’t let them be public.” johanna rolls her eyes.

the cameras probably weren’t even on you anymore.

“he kept it quiet. protected her. played the capitol’s golden boy, kept everyone’s eyes off the real thing.”

katniss is quiet for a long time.

johanna leans back, stretches out. her gaze is still on finnick now, still on you — the way you just threw your head back laughing at something he said. the way he’s watching you like the world’s already ended and you’re the only thing left worth saving.

“don’t flatter yourself, everdeen,” johanna says, voice dry, but not cruel. “they were a goddamn tragedy long before you and peeta kissed in that cave.”

and across the sand, you laugh again — a warm, soft sound — as finnick drops his trident and runs toward you, dragging you up into his arms without hesitation.

katniss doesn’t respond.

johanna doesn’t expect her to.

[baby-yongbok]

What Are You Looking At?

Dom!Seungmin x Sub!Fem!Reader

-`♡´- Genre: Smut, some plot mostly porn

-`♡´- Summary: One question turned into an entire scene

-`♡´- Word Count: 3.9k

-`♡´- Warnings: Dominant/Submissive Dynamics, Hard Dom Seungmin and a bit of Dom Hyunjin, Choking, Slapping [for a second] , Degradation, Semi-Public Sex, Exhibitionism, Mentions of other members relationships, OT8 are involved, Previous consent implied, use of sex toys in public, Aftercare [Some on screen, more implied off screen] (Sorry If I missed any)

-`♡´- A/N: This was something that I've wanted to post for a while but I just never got around to editing it until now! I hope that you enjoy! And yes the reader is depicted as chubby/plus size and is a POC ♡. This fic was 100% self-indulgent and contributed towards my Seungmin Brainrot

❥ Names Used Towards Reader: Slut, Pathetic, Pitiful, Whore

-`♡´- Masterlist -`♡´-

It’s not everyday that your boyfriend invites you to be his date to an event, so when Seungmin invited you to attend one of the many events to promote the new album with him and his members, you excitedly accepted. It’s been a while since you’ve all gotten together and any day with all of the boys is more than entertaining so you found yourself getting more excited than usual for this event. 

Of course, Seungmin had one condition when he invited you, he had to pick out your entire outfit. It was a fairly upscale event so formal attire was the only appropriate choice. You knew the moment that he requested to pick out your outfit that you’d be matching your man, it’s something that he loves but will never admit. He loves when the two of you look like a couple and carry similar visual energies. 

Your outfits were fairly basic. He had a white dress shirt and black slacks with small more flashy designer elements incorporated into the outfit. For you, he picked out a black gown of the same brand that he was wearing. It’s his go to dress for you to wear at events when he wants you to be on everyone’s radar. When he wants the two of you to be eye-catching and wants every single person in the room to eye the dips and curves of your perfect plush figure.  

There was one condition to your outfit though, a dare of sorts. 

“Why are these here?” You asked as you looked over the outfit laid out on your bed. The soft black panties with the built in vibrator along the gusset were resting on top of your velvety black gown.

“Ah, right, I wanted to propose a little game for the night.” You eyed Seungmin through the bedroom mirror as he fiddled with the glossy buttons of his dress shirt. “ You wear those and let me control them throughout the night. If you hide it well you get to be in charge tonight.” 

Your face lights up at the sound of his offer. You’ve been begging him to let you dominate him in bed for months but he always turns you down.  

“If you make it too obvious or get caught in any way then I get to use you all night.” He turns to face you, slipping a hand into his pocket. “And I can use any toy that I please.”

You suck your teeth at him, he’s been itching to use the new spreader bar that he ordered a month ago since the day that it arrived. You weren’t sure about it when it got here and you still aren’t very sure about it now. Of course you think that it’ll be fun to use but you know Seungmin and you know just how rough he likes to be when you aren’t restricted by any toys or rope so you can only imagine how it’ll be when your legs are permanently spread open for him. You think for a second, trying to weigh your options but the thought of being able to be in charge of him for a night is way too tempting to pass up. 

“Deal.” You smile, holding out your pinky finger and he copies the action twisting his finger around yours and leaning in for a swift kiss. 

“Good luck, I’m not gonna take it easy on you.”

“Would it be so horrible to let me be in charge?” You scoff as you slip the panties on, aligning the vibrator to rest against your clit and folds comfortably. 

“Nah.” Just as you move to pick up your dress a deep vibration rumbles through your core and a gasp leaves your lips followed by a choked moan. You glare over at your boyfriend, his hand is in his pocket, most likely holding the tiny remote, and there’s a devious smirk resting on his lips while he watches you. “I just figured that if I’m gonna do it I should make you work for it.”

“You’re not gonna break me.” You roll your eyes as you push your thighs together, the vibrations stop abruptly and you let out a breath that you weren’t even aware you were holding.

“You know that I love a challenge."

You were more than excited when you saw all of the boys, but they seemed ten times more excited to see you. They updated you on everything that they could think of from games that they’ve started playing, songs that they started writing, and Hyunjin even let you get a sneak peak into his art folder on his phone. Of course, Seungmin decided to torture you in the most delicious way the entire time, but much to his dismay, you held your composure, even with him whispering pure filth into your ear all evening. You’ve been through your fair share of edging and teasing since dating Seungmin so a game like this was nothing compared to the countless times that you’ve begged and cried on his cock after being fucked for hours on end. He’s the type of dominant that takes pleasure in training his submissive and you’re the type of submissive that loves to do everything so perfectly that it’s almost infuriating, especially for someone like Seungmin who has a thing for taming brats.

“Can I have a coffee too?” You asked as you sat between Hyunjin and Changbin. Your boyfriend only glared at you as he stood from his seat and made his way over to the coffee machine to make himself a drink. You try your best to hide your smirk as you push your thighs together. He's being extra mean to you today and all of the guys have noticed it. They’ve all been extremely nice to you to make up for it but what they don’t know is that this is all a part of Seungmin’s game. He knows that you’re an absolute slut for degradation and that each nasty word and eyeroll is getting under your skin and sending a shock right to your clit but to the guys the two of you are just having a bad day. 

Changbin puts in his request right after you and follows by repeating your question but he’s met with silence just as you were a second ago. Instead of answering either of you, Seungmin starts talking to Jeongin about something that you’re barely paying any attention to as he makes everyone a drink except you, allegedly. 

You zone out as Changbin starts messing with Hyunjin, he’s teasing him about something random and the sound of them laughing registers as a distant echo as you take the time to admire just how good your man looks right now. You’ve seen Seungmin in more suits than you can count but there’s something about what he’s wearing tonight that has you in a choke hold. Maybe it's the perfect fit of his pressed dress shirt or the way the fabric of his dress pants stretches over his thighs. It could also be the fact that you’ve been edged by these damn vibrating panties for the past two and a half hours. You sat through an entire press conference as your boyfriend messed with the tiny remote in his pocket, watching you from the corner of his eye and stopping the vibration right when he saw your eyes roll back or noticed your balance become a bit unsteady. 

 You watch him as he takes out his phone and glances over at you for no more than a second before looking down at his screen. The micro interaction snaps you out of your daze and you pull your attention over to Changbin as you try your best to focus on anything else.

“You looked so cute on the stage, Hyunjinnie.” Changbin continues to tease the man next to you as he reaches behind you to pinch at his cheeks. Hyunjin moves away, dodging his hand and looking down at his phone, most likely to text his girlfriend who’s a close friend of yours. You smile to yourself since you’re the one who introduced them to each other and played cupid for a bit until they fell for each other.

“Binnie, he’s gonna keep ignoring you if you don’t -” You’re cut off by a loud gasp that catches Changbin off guard and startles Felix who’s sitting next to him. You clear your throat and shift in your seat a bit, trying your best to calm down as the vibrator buzzes against your core at its highest setting. Once you feel that you’ve settled a bit you glare over at your boyfriend with the calmest expression you can manage to keep. He stares back at you, matching your expression with a hint of a smirk on his face. 

"What are you looking at?" The slight smile on his face contradicts the bite in his voice and you find yourself pressing your plush thighs together again. The pressure against your clit pushes you closer to your orgasm but that’s the last thing that you want to do. You can’t cum here in front of all of his friends, not because it would be embarrassing, the two of you have talked about putting on a show for his friends for a long time and you’re more than into it, but if you cum right now in front of everyone you’ll lose the game. There’s no way that you’re losing this. 

"Seungmin, stop being so mean to her, what's up with you two?" Hyunjin tries to come to your defense, pushing his phone into his pocket and glaring at the younger member as you choke back a moan.

"She's a slut." His tone is flat like he’s speaking a well known fact.

"Hey, whoa why would you say that?" It's Changbin's turn to defend you, he sounds more than fed up with the attitude that your partner has had towards you today. Gosh, if only he knew the half of it.

"Because it's true, you're a slut aren't you?" Seungmin turns his attention towards you, taking a couple of steps forward and standing with his arms crossed over his chest as he watches you hold back. He notices every slight raise of your eyebrows and the way that you lightly bite at your bottom lip, he knows that he’s winning. All movement in the room comes to a subtle stop as the members watch the situation unfold in front of them. You can hear the door open and close quickly and you assume that what was left of the staff decided to give you all some privacy, thank gosh.

"Seungmin, seriously, stop it." Chan speaks up as he makes his way to the side of the couch that you’re sitting on with Changbin and Hyunjin. Your boyfriend is way too invested in you to heed his warning, he’s way too focused on winning to care about what anyone else says. He rolls up his sleeves further before kneeling in front of you and grabbing your jaw harshly. 

“Look at me.” You swiftly fix your gaze on him, earning more of a smile from the dark haired man in front of you. You can hear Han, Jeongin and Minho protest the harsh action in your defense. They all turn their chairs to face the two of you and Changbin moves over a bit to give you some room between him and Hyunjin. 

“Seungmin seriously.” Chan protests again, putting his hand on the younger member's shoulder but he swiftly shrugs it off, never taking his eyes off of you. 

"Tell them." You whimper at his request as you bat your thick lashes at him. Your glassy doe eyes tell him everything that he needs to know, He’s studied every single part of you, every move and every sound. You’re trying so hard to keep it in but your sub space is setting in heavy especially with all of these eyes on you, it just turns you on ten times more. You’re a sucker for being a good girl for your man especially when there’s an audience.  

"I'm a slut." Your words come out in a gasp as a tear trails down your cheek. The vibration abusing your clit feels so much more intense as your vision becomes hazy and your body starts to feel like it’s floating. Seungmin’s fully smiling now, admiring how pretty you look in your headspace. Since you’ve slipped into yours it’s time for him to fully slip into his. He’s in full dominant mode now, he’s hyper vigilant, using his extensive knowledge of you to lead him through the scene. Han stands from his seat, looking over the younger man's shoulder, unsure of what to say. 

"Tell. Them. Now." A small yet firm slap to your cheek punctuates each word that comes out of his mouth and you can hear Felix’s deep voice start to protest before it’s cut off by a deep moan leaving your parted lips. It feels like the air in the room thickened as soon as the sound registered, you blink a couple of times as you try to think of a way to cover it up, maybe you can say that you’re just kidding, maybe you can say that it was all a filthy prank. Maybe you’ll just ignore Seungmin’s orders, you need to win this game, there’s no way that you can lose.

Your thoughts are racing at a hundred miles per hour, but the moment that your eyes meet your partner's brown ones again, you cave. You crack completely, slipping deep enough into your sub space to be at his mercy. You know that he’d never put you in an unsafe situation and you both have even spoken to the guys about letting them sit in on a scene between you and him some day, you just didn’t know that today would be the day, to be fair none of them did, not even Seungmin.

"What the fuck?" That’s all that he can manage to think of but instead of answering him Seungmin waves at him dismissively. 

"Shh you'll miss the best part." His eyes stay on yours as he watches you slip and even through your hazy state you don’t dare to break his gaze.

"Color?" Changbin furrows his brows at the question that leaves your boyfriend's lips and Hyunjin raises his. You mumble a weak ‘green’ and you can hear your boyfriend confirm your response faintly before you turn your attention back over to your rising orgasm.

"No fucking way." Hyunjin scoffs in disbelief, a surprised yet entertained smile on his face. 

"Looks like you got caught." Seungmin teases as he exchanges looks with Hyunjin, the only other open and proud dominant in the room. Since you introduced Hyunjin to your close friend who is now his girlfriend and submissive, he and Seungmin have often talked about having semi-public scenes with their partners in front of the other members. Hyunjin swore that he'd be the first to do it but it looks like Seungmin beat him to it. 

"Pathetic isn't she?" Seungmin asks towards Hyunjin and he clicks his tongue in response. 

"Absolutely pitiful." 

"Why the fuck are you guys doing that? She's fucking crying for Christ's sake." Minho makes his way over to stand next to Chan and at this point there's an entire circle around the two of you. Hyunjin watches you with curious eyes and an amused grin as you press your plush thighs together which truly isn’t helping the violent pulsing of your clit against your panties. 

Seungmin watches you too, keeping note of your reaction and searching for any signs of discomfort. Once he's sure that you’re fine he lets go of his grip on your jaw and you whine at the loss of contact. You’re way too far gone to care about how you look or sound now, all that you know is that you're absolutely desperate for release and you’ll do anything to get it.

"You guys don't believe that she's a slut?" The room is quiet in response to Seungmin's question as they all watch her. Now they're catching on. "Watch."

Seungmin's hand cages your neck swiftly, pinning you against the curved back of the couch. His grip is light at first as he only applies a soft amount of pressure to the sides of your throat but you can feel his grip gradually become more intense with each passing second and you can’t help the whining moans that escape you as you fight the urge to rut your hips into the air as your dripping pussy clenches around nothing. 

"Seungmin, what the -'' Changbin is cut off by a loud whiny moan escaping you once Seungmin hits the pressure that you go dumb for. You lose your self control almost instantly and give into your horny desire to rut your hips into the air, desperate for any type of friction. 

"Such a whore. You want to cum?" You shake your head as best you can with whines falling from your lips uncontrollably. "Hyunjin, countdown from five."

"I'd love to." Hyunjin, turns more towards the two of you to get a clear look at the desperation on your face with each number that passes.

 "Five” He waits for a couple of seconds too long, clearly teasing you. Your friend did say that he could be a tease. You just wish that you weren’t finding that out right now. “Four...Three.”

He rests his chin in his palm, pretending to be bored with the task despite the smirk on his face “Three and a half....Two....hm where was I?"

Seungmin chuckles at your frustrated whine as Hyunjin fake pouts towards the two of you.

"Better start over to be sure." 

"I think you're right, let's see." Hyunjin takes a deep breath and you can’t help but to let out a deep desperate cry as tears flow down your cheeks. You’ve been holding back for so long that it feels like every inch of your body is on fire. You know the rules: If you cum without permission you get punished. Seungmin’s punishments are anything but fun. He has a talent for coming up with the most grueling punishments that could ever cross a dominants mind. You’ve learned to love them in a strange way but you’ve already lost the game, you don’t want to give him more to look forward to tonight. 

"So pretty when you cry" Seungmin smirks at Hyunjin’s comment while the others around them simply watch in aroused confusion. They haven't taken their eyes off of you since the beginning and they wouldn’t dream of even blinking now.  

"Alright so let’s do it nice and slow this time. One, Two, Three.”

“Three and a half.” He pauses, closing his eyes to ‘think’ for a second “Four....Four and a half.... Hmm.”

“What's after that?" Seungmin teases in mock confusion and Hyunjin shrugs as he looks around at the other members who now seem more than entertained by the game the two are playing.

"Mm, I don't remember. Do you remember, Felix?" Hyunjin asks the blonde sitting next to Changbin as he shifts his gaze fully towards you so that he can admire the way your eyes roll back as your body practically shakes with anticipation. Seungmin loosened his grip on your neck a couple of seconds ago but you haven’t stopped moaning and whimpering ever since he first touched you. 

"No clue." Hyunjin smiles as Felix plays along with him and Seungmin’s game.

"Hm, what about you Chan? Do you remember what comes after four?" Seungmin looks over at his elder, giving him a slight head tilt to confirm that he can truly answer. The once confused but now fully aroused member takes a second before replying. He looks over at you before finally saying the very thing that you’ve been dying to hear

"Five" You gasp in excitement as your lidded eyes meet the lust glazed ones of your partner. It’s almost like you forgot that everyone else was in the room. All that mattered was Seungmin and you only wanted to hear him say one thing.

"Lucky girl" Seungmin pulls you forward by your neck, the harsh movement makes you drag out a loud and lazy moan. "Cum."

Without so much as a second thought you’re letting go in front of everyone. You’re shaking, crying and gasping like a fish out of water as your orgasm rips through you like the venom of a vampire. You lean forward into Seungmin as you grid your cunt against the couch and rest your head on his shoulder. He moves his hand from your neck to your back as he rubs soothing circles into the velvet fabric of your dress. 

“That’s my girl. Sounds so pretty, did so well.” Everyone watches as they weave through various stages of amazement and disbelief as you come down from your high.

Once he sees that you’re riding out the pleasure Seungmin reaches into his pocket to turn off the vibrator. You pant against him, small whimpers escaping you as tears roll down your cheeks. 

“Han, would you pass me a water bottle please?” He does as he asks, leaning over a shocked Minho to reach for the water bottles on the table and handing one to Seungmin.

“I’ll get you your coffee and then I’ll hold you alright? Can you wait for just a second?” He whispers in your ear and you nod against him the best that you can. Usually he’d ask you to use your words but he figured that he’ll let it slide this time.

 Seungmin gives you a soft kiss on your cheek before leaning you back against the couch. You nearly fall over into Changbin who holds you up awkwardly before Hyunjin moves in a bit closer to you. He gives Seungmin a look, asking for permission to touch you which your partner swiftly allows before standing from his spot in front of you and moving back to the coffee machine. He rolls up his sleeves that have fallen down a bit as he starts the machine again and starts to make your favorite aftercare drink. 

Hyunjin puts his arm around you and he allows you to rest on his chest, he rubs up and down your arm and whispers to you to try and ground you a bit. This isn’t the first time that you and Seungmin have done a scene with Hyunjin so he’s no stranger to the type of aftercare that you receive. The rest of the boys look between your limp body resting against your friend and your boyfriend who’s nonchalantly operating the coffee machine while they  quietly try to put the pieces together and figure out exactly what they just witnessed. Seungmin feels the burning stares on the side of his face as he waits for your glass to fill and turns towards his members with a straight face. 

"What are you looking at?" No one responds, they all just stare between you as they open and close their mouths and try to figure out the right question to ask while attempting to hide their aching hard ons. The room stays quiet until Jeongin sighs and stands from his seat.

"Is anyone going to ask what the fuck just happened or is it going to have to be me?"

[Note: In a healthy BDSM dynamic or scene all members involved should consent before hand. This is a work of fiction and is no way a representation of what real ethical scenes should look like unless there are clear boundaries.]

[skzfairyyydreamz]

Christmas Gingerbread Competition w/ Bsf!Skz!!🎄

Genre: SUPER CRACKED Silly Goose Humor, text post/SMAU

Pairing: OT8 Bsf!Skz x y/n (in my mind reader is written as a POC but technically none of the dialog implies it, so not much of a difference)

Synopsis: its really just a group of friends teasing and shit talking each other MAINLY SEUNGMIN!!😂😂

Warnings: PROFANITYYY (the usual), one teeny weeny suggestive joke (!!MDNI!!) , gay jokes (please take no offense to this as i am of the fruity bunch myself) 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼 all pictures are from Pinterest!

A/N: MERRY BANGCHANMASSSSS !! MWAH!! 🎄🫶🏼💋

Taglist: @hanniemylovelyquokka @milknhoneyracha @tinyelfperson @jiisungllvr @imastraykidsfan@simpracha @turtledove824  @laylasbunbunny  @armystay89  @eclipsemina @4ln-stay8@aalexyuuuhm @scribblesnsketches05 @amarecerasus @euphoric-univers @stellasays45 @night-storm7 @vixensss @blossomlilly @jc003 @hanniesbubuwife @beccaskz@soyeonbean @kawaiijellyfishtimetravelr @chuuyaobsessed @estella-novella @gabriellamarie@livelaughloveskzmwah @thatshroomiegirl @flowerbunnii @whoa-jo @babygirlskz98@leftenemydestiny @dazzlingjade @hyuneyeon @nightmarenyxx @slayyparkjimin  @aliceskzfan@velvetmoonlght @here-to-read-and-read-fics @akira-yan @realrintaro @mafiulaputaama (plz lmk if you would like to be removed or added)

[rafeyswrd]

HER ROYAL HIGHNESS

benedict bridgerton x princess (poc) reader

prologue.

After a series of agonising years of begging her mother to be let out into society — as a commoner would, equally putting her as the diamond of the season, the queen has finally, yet hesitantly agreed. Though with a single condition;

Sponsor the upcoming season. SUCCESSFULLY.

It was proven to be a challenge when her faith was put into the hands of the eldest bridgerton, whom was stubborn beyond belief. And it was only with the help of the second eldest that the princess might accomplish her goal.

However, getting Anthony to be married seemed to be less of a struggle in comparison to the hardship soon to occur with Benedict. Whose eyes never seem to leave her own.

OVERALL WARNING. smut!! (and lots of implied sex & talk), age gap (almost 8 years), toxic family, mentions of mental health issues, classism, abuse of power, mean ish lady danbury (i had to okay), alcohol consumption, misogyny, miscommunication, slowwww burn.

GENRE. fluff, angst, smut. a slight Rapunzel retelling, set in season 2–3 with mentions of season 1.

AUTHORS NOTE. ahhh!! i’m so excited for this, i’ve had this idea since i rewatched season 2 of bridgerton and read a one shot on here about princess reader, and it has not left my mind since. it takes place in season 2 and will have snippets of season 3. please feel free to leave suggestions of what you’d like to see xx

also!! i’ll finish your requests in my inbox soon i promise, this’ll probs make me go back to wp lol

[clownstillwritesfanfic]

Drift Away - Five Hargreeves X Fem!Reader (REUPLOADED)

PLEASE READ: my old blog (clownwritesfanfic) was deleted when my main blog attached to it got terminated for some unknown reason. I can’t get it back so I’m reuploading everything I had saved in my notes app. Sorry for any inconvenience or disappointment, trust me, I’m devastated, but with your help I can get back to my former glory so PLEASE reblog if you like it 🙏😭

Summary: When Five gets stuck in the subway station all alone, he decides to stay in a comfortable timeline while he tries to figure out how to get back to his family, however, he didn’t plan on falling in love with the lonely woman who lives there.

Genre: Fluff/Angst

Word Count: 8,021

Warnings/Notes: death, slightly canon compliant, implied/referenced sex, slight nudity, author pretends to know when it comes to cottagecore living, soft Five, Fivela never happened, plus size friendly, poc friendly, trans fem friendly

Disclaimer: Five’s body is 24

———————————————————————

It had been a little over six years now. Six years of being stuck in a confusing maze of timelines and once again, Five was all alone.

At least in the first apocalypse, he found comfort in Delores. But down here, his only company was the rats.

Five was desperate. He wanted to go home, to see his family again, try and stop yet another apocalypse. He wasn’t going to give up, that wasn’t the kind of person he was.

But this place was driving him crazy. He couldn’t focus in here. He wanted a shower, clean clothes, a regular source of clean water and good food. He remembered a timeline he visited that looked peaceful, a place he could relax and feel safe to figure out a way back.

He picked himself up off the ground. His body aching and joints creaking. He may have a twenty-four year old’s body, but it sure felt like his body finally caught up to his age.

Five groaned as he stretched, feeling his sore muscles pull and his vertebrae clicking into place. Damn that felt good.

When the train came to a stop at his station and the doors slowly opened, he stepped on board and collapsed on the nearest seat. He was so hungry and dehydrated that he barely had any energy. He hoped it wouldn’t be long before he could get to the timeline he wanted.

It took about twenty minutes for Five to get to the right timeline, and another seven to exit the station. He was so exhausted that the stairs nearly made him pass out. He knew exactly where he was headed and he couldn’t wait to get there.

When he saw the little cottage far in the distance, he felt a burst of energy. He had been dragging himself along for thirty minutes and the knowledge of having good food and fresh water helped him find the strength to continue.

The gate to the property was open, its latch broken. Five made his way to the greenhouse as it was the closest thing and he knew there were strawberries inside from his last visit.

He opened the door, a burst of warm humid air hit him immediately as he stepped inside leaving the door ajar. He made a beeline for the plants and started picking and eating as many ripe strawberries as he could. They were so sweet and the juice ran down his chin.

He was busy stuffing his face when he heard the familiar cock of a gun causing him to freeze in place.

He slowly turned around, one hand frozen in place holding a strawberry near his face, his mouth full of the fruit. The first thing he noticed was the twin barrels of a shotgun a few feet away pointed directly at his head.

Then his eyes moved down to see whoever was holding the gun, was wearing a beautiful dress that stopped right above the person’s knees.

“What are you doing here?” A stern voice spoke out. The gun was obscuring their face but he could make out the long hair that framed it.

“I’m not going to ask again.” They readjusted the gun as a warning when he took too long to answer.

Five dropped the strawberries he was holding and held his hands up. He roughly swallowed what was in his mouth and tried to speak.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean any harm. I’ve been lost for a long time and I’m starving. I didn’t know anyone lived here.” He explained in a soft voice, trying not to startle the owner.

The gun faltered slightly before it was lowered slightly. A pair of eyes stared back at him with an unreadable look.

The person sighed and finally lowered the gun fully, the click of the safety being turned on being heard through the quiet greenhouse.

Five was able to see them fully now, a woman was stood blocking the entrance, and she looked beautiful.

“Come on, you look rough. I got some proper food inside and some clean clothes.” You gestured for him to follow you as you stepped out of the greenhouse.

Five eagerly followed you out, excited to finally eat something proper and get clean. You closed the door behind him and started towards the cottage a few feet away.

A few chickens roamed around the property, most running out of the way as you two walked but there was one or two you had to nudge out of the way with the barrel of the shotgun. You did it with such care and gentleness that you must’ve had to do it many times before.

You opened the wooden door to the cottage and held it open, gesturing for him to go in first. He thanked you as he passed you and took in his surroundings.

The inside was cute. It was small but not cramped, more…cozy. Plenty of room for two people to be comfortable.

You closed the door behind you and propped the shot gun against the wall. You startled Five, causing him to jump a bit when you accidentally clapped your hands together when brushing them off against each other.

“I’m sure you’d like to take a bath quickly. But everything’s pretty old school around here so it will take me a while to get enough water and warm it up. But I’ve got some soup simmering right now.” You put your hands on your hips as you looked him up and down.

“Thank you. Anything is perfect.” Five knew he looked (and smelled) bad. He hasn’t been able to do anything properly for six years and he was grateful for whatever you could provide.

You nodded, feeling weird having a man around after being alone for so long. You gestured for him to take a seat at the dining table as you walked to the kitchen and grabbed a bowl, ladling some of the soup into it. You placed the bowl down in front of him and grabbed some slices of sourdough bread you had made fresh that day and placed it in front of him as well as a spoon.

Five was nearly drooling at the steaming bowl of soup in front of him along with the fresh bread. You chuckled silently to yourself when you noticed his expression.

“It’s potato and leek and the bread is sourdough, made it today. I’m going to go get a bath ready for you, help yourself to seconds if you’d like, there’s plenty left.” You patted his shoulder before you left towards the bathroom.

“Thank you.” He called as you left and dug in. He moaned as the creamy and smooth soup slid down his throat so easily and warmed him up from the inside. He was quick to dip a piece of the bread into the soup and scarfing it down. He hasn’t had a proper meal in years so he couldn’t control himself.

It was about twenty five minutes later when he wandered into the bathroom. He had helped himself to seconds like you said and he also washed his dishes. He didn’t want to be any more of a burden than he already felt.

The bathroom was small. There was a big long metal tub sat on the side of the room, a wooden shelving unit with potted plants on the top few shelves and some different soaps on the lower shelves with in reach of the tub. On the opposite side of the small room was a metal basin full of charcoal that was glowing orange.

There was a window a few feet above the tub that was slightly open for ventilation, there was a door that lead to the outside that was wide open. As Five was busy observing his surroundings, you walked in from the open door. A pole was over your shoulders, two big metal buckets full of water on either side.

“Oh…hello…” You were startled at the sight of him but you couldn’t let it stop you cause the buckets were starting to feel heavier by the minute. You bent down at the knees and slid the pole off your shoulders, causing the buckets to hit the ground with a thump making some water splash out onto the concrete floor.

“I..uh…the soup was really good, thank you.” Five shuffled awkwardly and scratched the back of his neck. He was impressed by your strength, and watching you do it in a dress was just the cherry on top. He was used to seeing strong women due to his time in the Commission, but none of them looked as soft and feminine as you did. It was clear you were a tough individual and he liked it.

“No problem.” You lifted the buckets up and set them in the pile of lit charcoal and used a stick to move the charcoal around so it surrounded the buckets. “Sorry, I don’t have running water. I’ve gotten used taking cold baths, usually only heating it in the winter but I thought you’d appreciate a warm bath more.” You brushed your hands off and placed them on your hips.

“You don’t have to go through all this trouble for me.” Five felt awkward, he’d never had anyone care about him this much and he was slowly starting to realize how much he craved a simple life like this.

You waved him off with a scoff. “Just gaining some good karma points.” You joked. You reached in the cabinet that the container of charcoal was sat on top of and grabbed some big fluffy towels out and set them on the middle shelf near the tub.

As you checked on the temperature of the water, you explained to Five that all the soap and shampoo was homemade. Despite living in the middle of no where near a forest, you had a neighbour that you regularly trade with. She was an older lady that grew Beehive Ginger, a plant that produced a natural liquid shampoo. You were able to make your own bars of soap pretty easily with the lye you also made. You mostly had everything you needed out here but it didn’t help to build connections with those near by.

As you picked up one of the buckets, holding the bottom with a cloth you picked up earlier and poured it into the bath, Five was thinking to himself how much he wanted a life like this, he hoped he could when he got back to his family and figured out how to stop the Cleanse, but it was tempting to stay here with you.

You poured the second bucket into the tub, it didn’t fill it completely but it was full enough, it would’ve cooled down by the time she was able to grab more water and heat it up anyway and Five was grateful for any amount of water. You scooped up some of the smouldering coals with the bucket and dumped them into the water.

Five gave you a weird look and you let out a breathy laugh. “It will keep the water warm longer. The water put it out and cooled it enough where it won’t burn you, plus, charcoal ash is good for your skin. Helps bring out toxins and such.”

Five nodded and thanked you again. You left to go grab him some extra clothes you said you had lying around and he finally took the opportunity to strip out of his dirty clothing. He wasn’t sure where to put the clothes so he left them in a pile on the floor. When he was fully nude he climbed into the tub and sat down. He groaned when the warm water raised around him. It reached just above his belly button and he took a moment to just sit there and enjoy the warmth. Not wanting the water to get cold, he grabbed a small pitcher that was on one of the shelves next to the various soaps. He scooped up some water and poured it over his head, relishing in the warmth and how it felt as some of the dirt washed right off.

You walked into the bathroom, a folded up shirt, jeans, and a pair of briefs in your arms. You paused when you realized he was in the tub already, you couldn’t blame him, you’d want to clean off as soon as possible if you looked as bad as he did. The tub was high enough where you couldn’t see anything below his shoulders from where you stood.

“Sorry.” You laughed awkwardly. “I’m used to not having to knock. Here, got you some clean clothes. They should fit.” You placed them down on a stool nearby and noticed you hadn’t closed the door to the outside and walked over and latched it shut. “Sorry to get rid of the view but sometimes the goats get too curious and sneak their way in and that usually brings in the chickens.” You laughed.

Five smiled with a huff. “Thank you, again.”

“Stop it. No more of that.” You huffed. “I’ll be around. Just shout if you need something.” You smiled and gathered up his dirty clothing and left.

——————————————————————

An hour or so later, you had his original clothes all washed and hung up outside to dry in the sun.

You were sat at the dining room table, drinking some tea thinking about everything that’s happened so far.

Five entered the dining room and smiled. He opened his mouth to say something before you cut him off. “If you try and thank me one more time I’m going to kick you out.” You semi joked.

He silently laughed and shook his head. “Noted.” He pulled out a chair and sat adjacent to you. “I was actually going to say, I didn’t know how to empty the bath so I just left it.”

You waved your hand. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it later. Tea?” You gestured to the kettle sitting on the stove.

“I’m more of a coffee guy.” He sheepishly admitted.

“Oh, I’ve got some of that.” You stood up and grabbed the container of instant coffee and poured some into a mug and poured the hot water from the kettle into it and stirred it around. You placed the mug in front of him and sat back in your seat. You made it so quickly it was as if you’ve done it many times before. “Sorry it’s only instant. Coffee is kinda hard to get out here so we’d have to go to the nearest town for it which is about two hours away.”

“I’m grateful to be having any coffee at all. I haven’t had any for twelve years.” He picked up his mug and took a sip. It was the perfect strength, slightly bitter but it wasn’t the worst he’s ever had.

“Oh! I forgot to ask if you want cream or sugar with that.” You sounded concerned but didn’t really make a move to get up.

“Oh no, that’s alright. I take it black. This is great.” Five reassured.

“How are the clothes? They comfortable?” You asked as you sipped your tea.

“Great, yeah. They fit perfectly.” A little too perfectly to be honest.

“That’s good. I cleaned your other clothes, they’re outside right now hanging up.”

You both let a comfortable silence go through for a few minutes before you gasped. “Oh my god…I just realized I never asked for your name.” You laughed.

He smiled after taking a sip of his coffee. “It’s…Five.” He hesitated, not sure on if he should tell you his real name but deciding it was the least he could do.

“Five? Like the number?” You questioned.

“It’s…a long story.” He sheepishly replied.

“I got nothing but time…but I won’t make you talk about something you don’t want to.” He was grateful for that. “I’m Y/N by the way.”

He repeated your name. He liked the sound of it. “Do you live alone? I find it odd that a woman who I’ve only seen wear a dress so far has men’s clothes.”

“I….I had a husband.” You looked away.

“Oh..I’m sorry. I didn’t see a ring so I just assumed…” he trailed off when you grabbed the thin chain around your neck and pulled it out from the top of your dress. A simple metal ring hanging off the edge.

“Hard to do any work around here when you’re worrying about keeping a ring on your finger. Plus I’ve never been one for wearing rings. He made it himself out of some scrap metal he had lying around.” You explained as you played with the ring. “We got married officially down at the courthouse. No wedding though. We were never much for big events like that and we didn’t really have anyone to invite anyway.” Tears pricked at your eyes as you thought back to it all.

“If I may ask, what happened?” Five straightened up in his chair, feeling sorry for you.

“He went out one day to check the traps we have out in the woods…never came back. I went looking for him for months but I never found him. He wasn’t the kind of man to just leave. He loved it here. So I assumed something got him.” You sniffed and wiped your eyes. “Sorry…”

“No no it’s alright. That sounds awful. I’m sorry that happened.” He reached out and laid a hand on yours that was on the table. It was out of character for him, usually he wasn’t good at comforting others, but he felt like he needed to. Something drew him to you.

You smiled weakly. “It’s been three years. You learn to cope and move on quickly. Especially with this kind of life. You don’t get to mope around, there’s always stuff to do here so you have to work through it.”

“It must’ve been hard, having to do everything yourself after having someone else to split the chores with.”

“It was. But you get used to it. You sorta look like him too. The long hair and eyes, they’re just like his.” You smiled. “Anyway…enough about me. You can stay as long as you’d like. I’ve only got one bedroom but the couch is surprisingly comfortable. I’ve taken many naps on it. Sorry I can’t offer you something better.”

Five smiled. “Anything is better than what I’ve been sleeping on for the past six years.”

——————————————————————

Five originally planned on staying for a few days. But a few days turned into a few weeks, which then turned into a few months.

He hadn’t given up on finding a way home but he got a little…distracted. He helped you out around the house and small farm you had. You taught him how to do a lot of the more labour intensive tasks and over time you two grew closer.

You were in the greenhouse, collecting some of the strawberries to make jam later when Five appeared in the doorway, a watering can in his hand. He was wearing a green knitted sweater that used to be your husband’s favourite. He paused for a second to admire you and smiled to himself and busied himself with watering the plants.

You glanced over and smirked to yourself and picked one of the smaller strawberries and threw it at him. He tried to hold back a smile at your antics when he got hit with another strawberry, and then another, and another. Finally, he turned to you.

“You’re not going to have enough to make jam if you keep throwing them at me.” He smiled gently at you.

“Ah, they’re just the shitty ones I would’ve fed to the chickens. I think I have enough now anyway.” You took a few steps towards him before you stepped on the handle of a trowel that was left on the ground. It caused you to slip and you dropped the basket of strawberries in shock, you prepared to catch yourself when Five caught you just in time.

You both made eye contact. You felt a shiver go down your spine at seeing eyes that looked so similar to your late husbands. You felt yourself get lost in them the longer you looked and Five felt the same.

The last person he ever loved was Delores, and she wasn’t even real but he loved her all the same. But you made him feel the same way, only a thousand times more. He had started to fall for you over the months of being alone together.

He glanced down at your parted lips, silently asking for permission. You sucked in a small breath and looked down at his. He slowly leaned in, tilting his head slightly before closing his eyes and softly kissing you. When you parted you looked at each other again before Five whispered.

“Was that weird?”

“No…but that’s what makes it weird.” You replied.

At that, Five cupped the back of your neck and pulled you closer, bringing your lips back to his. This time the kiss was more passionate and loving. You held onto his shoulders, gripping his sweater.

You slowly dragged your kisses down his jaw right to a specific spot on his neck and harshly sucked. Five threw his head back and moaned lightly. He hadn’t been given a hickey before but it felt so good. After a few seconds you pulled away and admired the bruise starting to form.

You pulled away from him and walked towards the greenhouse door. He looked at you in confusion, wondering if he did something wrong or if you were just toying with him when you turned around to look at him and leaned against the doorframe.

“You coming?” You smirked with a look in your eyes.

He grinned and stalked towards you with a predatory look on his face. You giggled and took off towards the house with him chasing behind you.

——————————————————————

Five had been with you for six months now. He has since graduated from sleeping on the couch to sharing your bed.

He has been everything you could ask for. Attentive, loving, patient, caring, hard working, etc. He was perfect in your eyes.

You were once again in the greenhouse. It was your favourite place after all. You were sat on a crate, using some shears to tidy up some flowers for the small bouquet you were putting together.

Five walked in carrying two rabbits. “Oh wow look at that. Two this time.” You smiled.

“All because of your traps.” He winked and kneeled in front of you.

“Such a flatterer.” You smirked as you put down the shears and placed the last flower with the rest. “What are you hiding?” You inquired with a raised eyebrow.

“What do you mean?” He asked, trying hard to hide his smile.

“I know you. You got that look.”

“What look?”

“That guilty ‘I have a secret’ look!” You laughed.

“I have no such look.” He bit his lip holding back his smile.

“Whatever.” You rolled your eyes with a grin.

“Ok ok you’re twisting my arm.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls something out. “Here.” He holds it out to you.

You gently take it from him and notice it’s a bracelet made of metal. It’s beautifully twisted together making a unique piece of art. “Oh…Five, this is beautiful. Where did you get this?”

“I made it. Used the scrap metal I found lying around.” He looked up at you.

“I love it.” You looked up from admiring the bracelet into his eyes.

“I aim to please.” He looked at you full of love and smiled.

You grabbed the back of his head and pulled him in for a kiss. He placed a hand on your waist and leaned in to the kiss. He was always such a good kisser. It was passionate and full of love and want and always left you breathless.

You both slowly pulled away, leaning your foreheads together as you caught your breath.

“I love you, Five.” you whispered as you softly scratched his scalp.

“I love you too. So much.” He replied, his thumb rubbing your waist.

As much as you’d love to keep the moment going, he slowly pulled away and stood up. “I’m going to go look for more scrap metal, we’re getting low and one of the traps needs to be fixed. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

“Oh, okay. Be careful.” You smiled at him as he stood in the doorway.

“I will, love.” He replied softly before turning around and leaving.

Your smile fell as soon as he was gone. Now was as good a time as any.

——————————————————————

Despite finding peace and happiness with you, Five never stopped trying to find a way back home. His family was important to him and even though you were apart of it now, he still wanted to get back to his siblings.

He told you all about his family, his powers, how he got trapped in the future, his true age, everything that lead him to that point in time with you. The only thing he left out, was the subway. It was quite a distance away from your little piece of heaven and he didn’t want you to get stuck by accident like he did.

It was the one secret he kept from you, but what he didn’t know was that you had one of your own.

You had been feeling suspicious for a while about where he was getting all the metal. It was woods and foliage for miles so you had no clue where he was getting it all.

You weren’t stupid, you knew how much his family meant to him and you saw how it effected him being away from them for so long yet again. There would be days where he wasn’t himself, he was visibly depressed and his mind was occupied with the thoughts of his family. He would reassure you that he loved his life with you and didn’t regret a single thing, but being apart from them was hard.

But you were selfish. As much as you would love to meet his family, you refused to lose the one man that made you happy, again.

You waited for Five to get a head start before you went after him. You had to be careful, you knew he was a trained assassin and a former CIA agent, one little mistake and he’d catch you and you didn’t have an excuse thought up if he did. Luckily, you had some training yourself. Not at the level of Five’s but good enough where you were able to sneak up on him a few times before.

You followed a few yards behind him, staying close by but far enough behind where you won’t lose sight of him.

After about twenty minutes of walking, Five reached the entrance to the subway station. He looked around as a precaution before descending the stairs. Luckily, you had ducked down before he could spot you, you rose from your spot as you watched him go down the stairs.

You walked over and looked down from the top of the stairs and sighed heavily.

——————————————————————

A few months later, you were outside feeding the chickens when Five walked outside, he had the messenger bag he always used when going out slung around him.

He hadn’t needed to go to the subway station since the time you secretly followed him but a lot of things needed repairs recently so he had to find some more metal soon.

He walked up behind you and wrapped his arms around you and kissed your cheek. “I’m going out now. Be back soon, okay?” He said softly as he rested his head on your shoulder.

Five has become more touchy and cuddly recently and you’re not too sure why but you’re not exactly complaining.

“I can come with you. I don’t have much else to do right now that’s urgent. Just lemme finish up here.” You replied, throwing the rest of the seed to the birds.

“No no, it’s okay, love. You stay here. It’s safer here than out there.” He tried persuade you.

You huffed and turned around in his arms. “Five, I’ve survived out here on my own for three years before you showed up. I think I can handle it.”

“I know, but please? Just stay here. It gives me peace of mind knowing you’re here safe.” He looked down at you with pleading eyes.

You sighed exasperatedly. “Fine. But don’t be too long or I’m coming after you.”

“I won’t, love. See you soon.” He kissed you before taking off.

Five felt guilty. He had found a notebook that had the answers to find his way back home. He had held on to it for so long but he had no clue how to bring it up to you. He loved you, and he loved his life with you so much. But he also wanted to save his family, and as much as he’d love to bring them here, he knew most of them would refuse to drop their new lives to start over completely. Plus your cottage and garden kept both of you living comfortably and he had no idea what this timelines world was like outside of the small bubble you stayed in.

He was going to scavenge for metal but he was also hoping to study the notebook a little more. He had covered the subway walls in equations while he tried to think of all the possibilities of getting his family safe while also being able to stay with you. He knew you wouldn’t want to leave your timeline, especially since the one he was trying to get back to was turning to shit quite quickly.

Five had walked this path so many times that he was walking on auto pilot while looking down at the notebook and thinking. He had made it to the station and was about to take the first step down when he bumped into something solid.

He looked up and saw a bunch of wooden planks and chains blocking the entrance.

“What the hell?” He muttered to himself.

“I knew you’d come here.” He turned around when he heard your voice. You were stood a few feet away looking disappointed.

“Y/N? What are you doing here? I told you to stay back.”

“I know. But I wasn’t going to let you go down there again.” You crossed your arms.

“You did this?” He gestured to the shoddily put together barrier. “How do you even know about this place?”

“I followed you last time. I knew you were hiding something. Plus I was curious as to where all the metal was coming from. So…what’s that?” You nodded towards the notebook he was still holding.

“You have no right to keep me out of there.” He ignored the question and walked towards you.

“I can do whatever the fuck I want. You’re not going down there again.” You stood your ground.

“Oh yeah? And where else would I get the materials we need?” He was starting to get pissed off.

“Fuck all that! I don’t give a shit about that! What are you doing down there that’s so fucking important?” You yelled, getting frustrated with him diving the question.

“Trying to find a way back home! To my family!” He raised his voice back, throwing his arms up.

“This is your home now, Five. You’re happy here. We both are.”

“This is NOT my home. Without my siblings here, it will NEVER be home. With or without you here.”

That hit you hard. You felt a pang in your chest at hearing that.

“So that’s it? You’re just going to leave as soon as you can? You just can’t WAIT to get away from me huh?”

“Don’t be stupid.” He huffed.

“Stupid?! You won’t even tell me what the fuck is in that notebook or where you go it!” You waved your arms around.

“It’s the answer I’ve been looking for on how to get back to my timeline. Now, take this shit down so I can finish my equations.” He sighed.

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said no. You’re staying here.” You stared at him while he glared at you.

Five got close to you, getting up in your face. “What the fuck is your problem? What makes you think I won’t just blink down there and leave right n-“

“BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO LOSE YOU AGAIN!” You screamed as tears finally started falling down your face.

This startled Five, causing him to back up. It took him a second before he spoke up again.

“What do you mean ‘again’?” He questioned.

You squeezed your eyes shut and shook your head, hugging yourself.

“Y/N…” Five warned as he took a step towards you.

You hung your head as your tears kept falling. “I knew about timelines long before you showed up.” You sniffed and lifted your head, looking off to the side. “My husband…he…he found this place years ago. He went on the subway and came back telling me all about it. He was so captivated by it that he kept coming back, taking it to different timelines. I went with him once but we ended up somewhere awful. I never wanted him to go down there again. I didn’t trust it. But of course he was too stubborn and didn’t listen. He went out one day and…never came back. I waited for years. I came out here every day for about two of those years, just waiting for him to walk back up. I wanted to close it off but kept it open just incase he came back. Then you showed up…and I…I thought that you…were him. You looked and sounded the exact same. Even had the same name. But I knew you couldn’t have been him from the way you acted when we first met. But when I gave you his clothes to wear…all I saw was him.” You wiped your tears away.

Five was silent for a while. Trying to process everything you just dumped on him. “So…I was a replacement, for the version that you lost.” He clenched his jaw.

“No!” You looked at him with surprise. “No I swear you weren’t a replacement. Even if he was a version of you and you had a lot in common, you’re also different. There are things you do, things you say, that are so different from him. I never saw you as a replacement. I never saw you as him . I just saw someone so familiar that I felt so comfortable with. You made me fall in love all over again with a whole new person.” You tried to explain quickly.

Five sighed and looked away, scratching the back of his neck. “I need to get home.”

You sucked in a breath. “Five, please. Please don’t leave me alone out here again. I’ll…I’ll do better! I will do whatever you want as long as you just stay here. Please .” You felt tears stinging your eyes again as you reached out and held onto him.

“Y/N…” He sighed. He brought his arms around you and held you close. “I love you. I really do. But I don’t belong here. I’d love to stay with you. I really do. But your Five is out there somewhere. Stuck just like I was. He belongs here with you. I need to be with my family. I’m sorry.”

You sobbed into his chest as you tightened your grip on him.

“I’ll find your Five. I promise. I’ll find him and I’ll bring him back to you. You’re strong, you can take care of yourself while I look for him.” He reassured as he nuzzled into your hair.

“How do you know he’s even still alive?” You whimpered into his chest.

“He’s a Five. We’re stubborn, and if he loved you as much as I do then I know he’s fighting to get back to you.”

You both stood there, the air cold as you held each other. Your sobs mixing in with the sound of the wind. After a couple of minutes, your tears died down and you slowly pulled away from Five. He looked down at you, evidence of his own silent tears on his face.

You reached up and wiped the tears off his face. “I love you, Five. Just as much as I loved mine.”

He caught one of your wrists. “I know.” He whispered before kissing your palm. You both looked into each others watery eyes before stealing one last kiss.

When you pulled away, you leaned your forehead against his, one last time. “Do you promise you’ll find him?”

“I promise.”

With that, you backed away from him and held your hands close to your chest, one of them playing with the bracelet he made you all that time ago. You watched him look at you one more time, smiling, before suddenly he was gone in a flash.

You felt yourself fall to your knees as your curled in on yourself as you sobbed.

——————————————————————

Five had managed to arrive safely in his timeline. He was going to keep his promise to you, but first he needed to see his family.

His heart was still heavy at the thought of leaving you behind but he tried not to let it show. He didn’t want his siblings to pry too much when the wound was still open.

He walked up to the familiar house and sighed before knocking on the door. It opened to reveal Lila.

“Hey there you are. Finally.” She looked him up and down. “What the hell are you wearing?” She questioned.

“I can’t be comfortable?” He countered.

“Alright, don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’ve only ever seen you in suits or a school boy uniform. It’s weird seeing you in casual clothes.” He rolled his eyes at her statement. He certainly didn’t miss her quips. Lila stepped back and opened the door more to let Five in.

As soon as he stepped inside he saw Diego with Grace on his hip. “Heyyyy you made it, Cinco! Come on in, take your shoes off first though.”

Five softly smiled at the sight of his family safe and sound.

——————————————————————

Five found himself back in the subway station pretty quickly. The Cleanse had yet to be stopped and everything was escalating so fast but he knew he had a promise to keep. He hated leaving his family again with no explanation but he refused to let you down.

He was prepared to spend another six years down there all alone just for you. Luckily, he had only spent a few hours searching different timelines when he came across a deli.

He had followed what he swore was an another version of him down there. He hoped it was the one he was looking for.

However, he was shocked to find the entire place was full of doppelgängers. “Hey! Over here.” The Five in the suit that he followed called him over to a booth.

“What is this place?” He sat down across from himself.

“It’s a gas station. What the hell’s it look like? It’s a deli.” His counterpart replied sarcastically, sipping some coffee.

Another Five chuckled in the booth behind him while yet another copy of himself placed down a mug of coffee and two pastrami sandwiches on the table.

“Little light on the sauerkraut don’t you think?” Five joked.

“Yeah, it says it on the menu and I keep telling him but…he never listens.” He shook his head.

“Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Theoretically it is.” He picks up the mug of coffee.

“Oh, you’re not gonna like that.” The other Five points out.

He looks down at the coffee with a frown.

“So! I take it your figured out the subway system by now.” The Five takes a bite of his sandwich.

“Alternate versions of the same moment in time?”

“That is correct. You’d be surprised how long it took some of the Five’s to figure that out.” Five mumbles with a mouth full. It made him think back to you and how you always scolded him if he talked with his mouth full. He hoped you were alright.

Five swallowed and continued. “We’re all you. From alternate timelines, most of us have given up trying to fix the problem.”

He looked at his counterpart, confused. “What problem?”

“The broken timeline, man. There’s only supposed to be one.” Five sipped his coffee.

He thought for a moment. “I don’t get it.”

“Look around, Five.” He sighed. “Does this seem right to you?”

He looked to the side. “Well, no-“

“You think Einstein was thinking of this when he was figuring out relativity? Not a chance. This shit would’ve made his head explode.” He took another sip of his coffee.

“Ok so, what shattered the original timeline?” Five questions.

“Not what…who. And I’ll give you three guesses to figure it out.” A ding is heard through the deli.

“We did!” Another Five from behind the counter shouts.

The Five across from him looks exasperated. “Why you always gotta wreck shit, Brisket Five? Why?”

“By we he means…the family, my siblings?”

“The morons, yeah.”

“I’m familiar with them, yeah.”

“One perfect timeline and the moment we come into existence; boom! Shattered. Into an infinite number of alternate timelines in an infinite loop of time. As we try and save the world- how many times…was it again?” Five leaned over and asked the Five in the booth behind him.

“One hundred and forty five thousand four hundred and twelve.” The Five lowered his newspaper to look at the other two.

“That’s a lot. He’s like Rain Man, that one. He loves num- oh by the way. Look at the artwork.”

He turned and looked at all the framed photos littering the walls.

“All the different ways we made our universe go kaboom. Gold star for consistency, am I right?” He joked.

“We need to fix this.”

“Oh trust me, we tried. That’s why one of us created the commission. By the way that’s why there’s no paradox psychosis here. Uses the same technology that Five did for the panic room. He wanted to undo all the broken timelines, get back to the one and only. But that always fails because…?” He prompted.

“The family is the problem. We’re doomed to save or destroy the world over and over again and infinitum.” He sighed.

“Bingo.” A Five sat at a table holding a coffee chimed in.

“Bingo.” The Five across from him repeated with his mouth full.

“I need to get back to my family. Stop this from ever happening.” He stood up.

“Well…good luck with that. Guess you don’t want your brisket to-go?” The Five reached for his plate and slid it towards him.

He was about halfway to the door when he remembered his promise and turned around. “One last thing. I spent a year in a different timeline with a woman. Her name is Y/N, she said she lost her husband because of the subway and that he’s another Five.”

“Y/N, huh? Only a few of us have met someone with that name, but chances are you’re looking for that one over there.” He pointed to another Five who looked the worst out of all of them. He was hunched over a table in the far corner, head in his arms. “Used to talk non stop about his wife named Y/N and how he had to get home to her. Poor bastard got stuck and went crazy trying to find his way back.”

That’s all Five needed to hear. He walked over to the Five and shook his shoulder. The Five grumbled but lifted his head.

“Hey, I know how to get you back to your timeline. Your wife misses you a lot. She’s waiting for you right now.”

“Y/N?!” He straightened up.

“Yeah. C’mon. She needs you.” He helped the Five stand and lead him out of the deli.

——————————————————————

On the subway ride back to your timeline, your Five was pacing back and forth.

“Sit down. You’re gonna fall on your ass when the train stops.” Five tried to calm him down.

“I haven’t seen her in years. She told me to stop coming down here but I just couldn’t fucking listen and I ended up leaving her all alone.” He brushed his hand through his messy and dirty hair.

“Hey. She’s strong. She was doing just fine by herself when I met her. I promise she’s okay. She’ll be happy to see you again.” He sighed. He really wishes it could be him, but now that he knew his family was destined to destroy the world no matter how hard they try to stop it, he had to go back and be with them.

When the train stopped in the right timeline, he guided the other Five out. “Ah shit.” He muttered when he got to the stairs and saw it was still blocked off. “Forgot she did that.” He grabbed the other Five and blinked them to the surface. He shivered at the cold air. It must have been a few months since he left considering there was now snow on the ground.

“This way. I’m not sure how long it’s been for her so let’s not keep the lady waiting.” The disheveled Five followed close behind him, growing anxious at the familiar scenery. His heart started beating hard in his chest when he saw the cottage in the distance.

As they got closer, they could both see you exiting the greenhouse, a basket in your hands.

“Oh my god…” The Five whispered. He stood still in shock at seeing you again. You looked just as beautiful as he remembered. “Y/N!” He called out.

You looked around at the sound of your name being called. You had been hallucinating hearing your name in Five’s voice since he left so you were in complete shock when you looked over and saw your original Five a few yards away.

You dropped the basket, its contents spilling onto the snowy ground, and beelined for your husband, jumping right over the fence.

He ran towards you, quickly closing the distance before colliding in a desperate hug. Tears were pouring down both of your faces as you squeezed each other right. Scared that either one of you might disappear.

You looked up from his shoulder and through blurry vision you could see the Five you spent a year with standing in the distance. You smiled at him and mouth a “thank you” to him.

He smiled sadly back at you and nodded. You closed your eyes and nuzzled deep into your husbands neck. When you opened them again, Five had disappeared from view. You frowned, a part of you will always love and miss him , but you had your true Five back now. You could only hope he found someone that made him happy.

You pulled back from the hug and looked your Five in the eyes and smiled through the tears. “Welcome home, honey.”

——————————————————————

As Five stood hand in hand with his family as the Durango slowly consumed him, he thought back to you.

He had no idea what timeline was the right one, but he could only hope, that even if it was a slim chance, that your timeline was the correct one.

As you laid in bed, cuddled up to your husband, you didn’t feel a thing as your timeline disappeared.

——————————————————————

On the twelfth hour, of the eighth day of August, 2024, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary occurred.

Y/N would say, it was just a normal day as she watered the marigolds in her garden.

[mercurysmaelstrom]

Swan Song

pairing: Remmick x POC Reader

summary: As a vampire out in the present-day west, you take space on the stage of a local bar, playing the keys for a griot; however, on the night of your final performance, you're approached by a man who wants exactly what you're leaving behind.

or…

Remmick approaches you at the local bar you play at.

part 2

contains: vamp!reader, emphasis on tension, blood drinking, (blood kink if you squint), smoking, sexual themes, no use of y/n, modern au.

word count: 3k

notes: in this fic, i’m implying that once a griot is turned into a vampire, they can’t summon their ancestors since i’m running on the theory that remmick was a filídh back in his day, but he lost his ability to conjure spirits after he was turned. walk with me.

Music flowed alongside the barren streets that night, each sound swimming out of each open club.

But just a little deeper within the small town hid another bar, sitting cunningly behind the brick walls of vacant stores: a former prohibition-era speakeasy that still carried that title on its front window. And what bubbled from inside attracted the same old townsfolk who knew this place still existed.

On stage, you could never fight the wrinkle on your nose, nor could you fight the nodding of your head when your fingers caressed the keys, playing for the one woman in town who could hypnotize you with just her voice alone. Every weekend you let it wash over you.

Hell, you bathed in it. 

You drank in her voice. You drank in the kick drum that accompanied the snare’s metal rim and the closed hi-hat that bridged each gap between the beat, fusing together like a jigsaw puzzle—the soothing, yet vivacious rhythm merging with the lifeless beat in your chest. 

And you drank in the hands of the guitarist and bassist on each side of you, their fingers sliding against the neck of their guitars; their fingers strumming and plucking at the strings that seemed to grapple your limbs, seizing you on the platform. 

Not that you were eager to leave. 

The music was why you came here, and the band were why you stayed.

But even so, you knew you had to go. 

For fifteen years you performed at this bar, and though no one questioned why you began to look like the youngest in a band full of forty-something-year-olds who knew you to be the oldest, you realized that insisting you had a really good sunscreen wasn’t going to work anymore. 

Regardless of all this, you kept putting it off, telling yourself, “Just a couple more weeks,” which turned into a couple more months, and eventually another year.

This had to be your last night. 

“Alright, y’all,” huffed your lead singer, who despite being breathless, maintained her honey-smooth voice. With a handkerchief, she elegantly wiped off the sweat glistening on her forehead, glancing back at all the musicians behind her. “This is gonna be our,” she inhaled, “last song of the night.”

Last song of the night.

When the music slowly reached its end, you basked in the atmosphere one last time, scanning the crowd sitting ahead of you, swaying their heads and tapping their feet against the concrete floor or their fingers against their respective tables.

Then you observed the other crowd—intangible, yet wholly present, engaging in an incorporeal, cultural anachronism that somehow seemed to fit almost perfectly in this time and space. 

No. 

They transcended it.

Nevertheless, they vanished, as they always did. But this time around, you didn’t know when you were going to see them again. 

Gloomily, your fingers abandoned the keyboard and you ended up outside the bar attempting to light the cig tucked between your lips, the purple neon light above flashing on the back of your head as you leaned on the short, black metal gate wrapping around the front of the small building.

“Fuck,” you muttered, the lighter failing to do its only job. 

From inside, you could still hear the guitarist playing for a few extra minutes. Most of the time you’d stay back with him, rousing remnants of the melodious aroma left by the night’s session before you officially packed up. 

Tonight you couldn’t do it…because if you did, you knew you wouldn’t be able to bring yourself to leave.

“Allow me,” came a voice with an arm stretched out, a brass lighter in hand.

Belonging to the sudden voice, you saw, was a man—his dark hair damp from the summer heat. Clad on his body was a dark plaid button-up that looked just a little too big on his frame, and attached to his back was a guitar, its strap diagonal across his chest.

Naturally, you leaned in, his lighter finding its way just below your mouth and his other hand cupping over the flame even though the air stirred quietly. But the second he took another step closer, that very air curdled into something else; into something you hadn’t felt since the night you were infected.

You could feel his gaze latch onto you as he lit the cigarette between your lips, the tip glowing. Quickly, you glanced at him before you pulled apart, turning away from the man as you blew the smoke out from your nostrils. 

In that time, neither of you failed to recognize the flicker of something vaguely familiar behind your eyes.

“Thanks,” you uttered, leaning back against the fence. Cordially, you held out the cig in the brunette’s direction. Silently, he declined, putting up his palm before removing the guitar from his body and placing it on the concrete column beside him. 

He was an unwelcome presence, and perhaps he knew that. 

To your detriment, you didn’t say anything. 

“So, uh,” he scratched his stubbled cheek, clocking your keyboard in its carrying bag beside you, upright against the gate, “you the one on the keys, huh?”

“I was.” You cocked your head towards the bar. “This your first time comin’ to see the show?”

“I stroll around town every once and a while. S’pose I never got the chance to come in. Y’all play real nice though.” The man leaned against the gate and peered at the large window a few feet behind the barrier. “And whoever’s singin’...yeah, she’s got a voice on her, don’t she?”

You took another drag and blew out the side of your mouth, nodding fervently. 

“Everyone calls her Whiskey,” you replied, also turning back, catching the subject of your conversation talking to folks inside who were just as mesmerized as the both of you. “Never heard anyone like her.”

Facing away from the window, you took a gander at the man instead, catching something else in his eye—a glint of hunger followed by an infernal glow that matched the cherry of your cigarette…only darker.

“Your accent,” you tried to change the subject. “You’re not from here, are you?”

He fixed his gaze back on you. “North Carolina.” 

You hummed. “You’re far from home.”

“Like ya wouldn’t believe,” he laughed vacuously, tilting his head towards your friend. “Y’know, I’ve been meaning to meet her for some time now. Heard her so much, I gotta know what she’s like.”

You sighed. “Well, you go on and meet her then.”

He lifted an inquisitorial finger on his lower lip. “Maybe you could introduce me to her?” 

You pointed your thumb back. “I was about to leave after this actually—”

“I’m sure you could invite me in real quick.” He inched closer to you. “I’d hate to be impolite.”

You licked your lips. “Right.” 

Index finger and thumb softly pinching your cigarette, you took one last drag before dropping it to the ground and crushing it with your shoe. What a waste, you thought. 

Only briefly you peered through the window, assuring everyone inside was well-distracted by each other before grabbing the stranger’s throat, shoving him away from witnessing eyes and into the tunnel under a bridge nearby, until his back slammed into the brick wall, both of your bodies engulfed in warm darkness.

Although he appeared to be surprised, a grin slowly formed on his lips, teeth as sharp as yours—maybe even sharper—revealing themselves under the partial fluorescence of the violet neon sign.

He snickered. “Was wonderin’ when you’d break.”

You edged closer to his face. “What do you want?”

“You know what I want.” His hand steadily made its way to your wrist, wrapping his fingers around it. “That's why you’re here all the time, right? Just wanna have what you’re havin’. No need to be greedy.”

Your brows furrowed. “She can’t summon shit if she’s dead. I’d know.”

“Then she won’t have to be.” He shook his head, slightly inclining his face to yours. “You could let me in. And I could play witch’all.”

“I’m not in the band anymore.”

“All the more reason for me to join,” he insisted, his grip on your wrist tightening as he bent your arm away from him. “I could fill in.” 

Your mind couldn’t process the speed he moved in. 

One minute you had him on the ropes, or so you thought, and the next your own back was against the opposite wall of the tunnel with his hand on your throat this time, caging you with his body.

“Y’know, I’ve been watchin’ ya for a while now,” he rasped, his hand so high up your neck, straining your head to bend back. “Feastin’ on rats, livin’ a life of hunger and desperation—I mean, it’s sad really.”

You made an effort to push against him, but he was far stronger than you. Perhaps even older, you feared.

“I’m not the one who’s desperate,” you grunted.

His other hand firmly planted on your chest, pressing you even further against the hard surface behind you. “But you’re hungry, ain’tcha?”

He jutted his chin to the bar across from the tunnel, every warm being inside the bar broiling in the humid, cramped room. 

The vampire took a big whiff. “Ya gotta be starvin’.”

Feebly, you turned away from the sight of the very people you congregated with most nights, indeed famished. 

He leaned his slick forehead onto your temple, his thumb softly caressing your jaw, his nail gently scraping against your skin. “Ya can’t keep torturin’ yourself.”

In this moment you realized it was easier to resist listening to your stomach when there was no one there to tell you otherwise.

“How’d you even find this place?” You heaved, attempting to focus on the lamp post on the other side of the tunnel, trying to ignore the sapid smell of bodies oozing out across from you.

“A musician likes a bit of inspiration from time to time,” answered the stranger. “But when a voice like that reaches a man’s ears…ya can’t ignore it.”

You felt the light huff of air from his nose. 

“You certainly didn’t,” he carried on, turning your head back towards him. “I mean, look atcha—ya still here.”

You scowled. “What, you’ve been watching me this whole time?”

“Now don’t get it twisted. I came here for the music. For her. Findin’ my own kind though, that was a plus.”

My own kind. 

“I’m nothin’ like you,” you told him.

The inner corners of his brows crinkled and the sides of his mouth gently raised. “Oh yeah? What’s this then?”

He removed the hand he had on your chest and used his thumb to roughly wipe off the thick saliva you hadn’t realized was trickling from your mouth.

He scrutinized the liquid on his thumb, chuckling. “Nothin’ like me, huh?” 

Your eyes glided to the curved ceiling of the tunnel, unable to let yourself witness the very instincts you’d been muffling away for years.

The man licked your saliva off his tongue before laying a hand on the wall beside your ear. “I’m here for the same reason as you are—I just wanna see my people again.” The man’s grip on your neck began to loosen, though he didn’t let go. “We’re the same, you and I.”

Your gaze reluctantly dropped onto him. 

Through the shadows you could see his pupils uncannily dilate, his scarlet irises limited to a glint. And in the sympathetic bleakness of his stare, much too dark to find a reflection of anything, you still managed to see yourself buried somewhere in there, no matter how much you dared to deny it.

“Tell ya what,” the man began.

Gently, he released his grip on your neck, instead laying his palms on your shoulders, dusting off nothing in particular, then adjusting the neckline of your shirt.

You didn’t move.

“I’ll leave this place,” he told you, his fingers lingering around your collarbone. “Hell, I’ll leave your beloved Whiskey alone.”

Finally his touch left your body, which should have been a relief, until his claw-like nail slit against his wrist, his eyes fixated on you while his own blood tantalizingly leaked from the self-inflicted wound. And although the scent of crimson fluid from a living being laid incomparable to the leftovers of the undead, the years you spent chasing after rodents made the sight of his wrist look like a home cooked meal.

“If you join me,” he bargained, his other hand now placed on the back of your neck. “We could travel together. 

Even with the smallest movements of his wrist, the vampire stood entertained by your mouth, in a restrained manner, chasing its direction.

He squeezed his hand into a fist, sending more blood out of his laceration. “Clearly, you’re all packed up and ready to go. We can...find someone else to help us. Help me—” he paused for a moment—“and yourself find our people. Find a band to play with. It’ll be fun.”

The longer you watched his wrist, the hazier your mind grew, and everything that wasn’t pouring out of his skin blurred in your field of vision. 

The vampire snaked his hand away from your neck and back up to your mouth, taking a hold of your chin to wipe more of the drool that pooled over your bottom lip. “What d’ya say, hm?”

Eventually, his voice fizzled away once your teeth rushed after his wrist, biting into his flesh and sucking what tasted like stale nectar, but nectar nonetheless. And once his blood touched your tongue, the consequential guilt you’d feel after chasing the people inside the bar had faded into the back of your mind; the thrill of their blood rushing vigorously into your mouth, diverting the very conscience you allowed to guide you for decades.

“That’s it,” cooed the stranger, cupping the back of your head while your moans stifled against his skin, both of your hands clutching his forearm. “That’s it.”

He knew whatever he said to you—it didn’t need to be true—would slip past you once you’d eaten. Just one drop of sanguine delight was enough to pull you away from yourself, overcome by a spell that was produced from your own numinous hunger. It didn’t matter if he told you Whiskey was safe. Your newly returning thirst, he thought to himself, would neglect whatever concerns you had over her. 

Finally you released your canines from his wrist, tilting your mouth to the ceiling, deeply inhaling what resembled fresher and colder oxygen into your lungs, and accessing a sudden burst of energy surging through your veins.

He took a step closer, glancing at your red lips, tapping your cheek. “There’s more food inside. Nice and ripe for the takin’.”

You couldn’t remember much else from that night. Frankly, you didn’t want to. 

You lost.

You blocked out the screams. You blocked out the feedback from your old friend’s electric guitar; his pleads as you ravenously approached him. You blocked out the regrettable invitation you had drunkenly offered the vampire whose name was Remmick. And even after the slaughter, you followed the wicked man, too guilty to believe you deserved to do anything else.

He was right, you concluded. You were the same.

But the one thing you could remember—the only thing you permitted yourself to remember—demanded yourself to remember was the beastly “Run” rumbling from the depths of your blood-coated throat in front of a frightened Whiskey whose heels scuffed against the floor as she slid back toward the broken steps of the stage, viewing the man you had spoken to several times before laying on the floor below you—a river of red streaming from his shredded neck.

Whiskey did run. You didn’t know if she survived or not; if Remmick caught up to her, or if any of the people you turned in the bar found her. You only hoped she made it out. And if she did, maybe, just maybe, you hadn't completely lost.

That same night, Remmick found you crouched over another victim, the bottom half of your face dripping; your neck stained with red, alongside your clothes; the warm light of the bar gleaming against your cold, gray eyes. The elder vampire kneeled beside you, and he took either side of your cheeks, surveying your current state, pleased. 

Was he pleased with you or himself? It didn’t matter.

Everyone around the two of you laid still, not yet awakened by the burden you and Remmick had thrust upon them. 

And inebriated by the woman you just drank from, you didn’t pull away from him. Despite the shame that quietly loitered beneath your stomach, there was something liberating about seeing a monster in front of you that wasn’t in a mirror or every piece of glass that you passed.

“We gon’ have a lotta fun together,” he whispered, staring at a bullet of blood running down your chin before his lips met your skin, sucking teasingly at the red honey, thirstily searing a trail from your jaw to your neck, gluttonous for your prey’s remainders.

Innately, you tilted your head, opening up space for him with a sigh, placing your hands on his arms while his mouth traced upwards, returning to your chin, then pausing when he hovered over your mouth. A hand of his landed on the nape of your neck while he slid his tongue along his serrated teeth, waiting. 

He didn’t have to wait for long. 

You mimicked the man, indulging in his scraps with a long lick on his moist skin gliding from the bottom to the top of his neck, eagerly skipping his chin in order to capture his lips instead, lost in a frenzy you hadn’t experienced in a long time. 

Remmick moaned against you pleasantly as you forced your tongue into his mouth, tasting him and every unconscious person around you. You nearly pushed your body against his, close to straddling the man who diminished everything you worked for, until you pulled away, panting.

The vampire hummed curiously, wiping the blood from your cheek with his thumb.

With effort, you ventured to drag yourself down from your high by looking at everybody around you. But an obscure ache within you prevented you from separating from your catalyst just yet, because regrettably, you wanted more. And when he understood that, he took advantage of it. 

He encouraged you to seek for more—thirst for more.

And you did. But never without the penance of guilt that came with the sin you cyclically committed.

[abbyandersnsgf]

ivy towers | abby anderson

— still surprised by the acceptance letter months prior, you begin to navigate life within the ivy league. between socializing, attending lectures, studying, and the otherwise bustling life of your college town, you find yourself caught off guard by the increasingly persistent thoughts that have clouded your mind ever since you met abby anderson

tags: strangers to lovers, enemies to lovers, slow burn, college/university au, competitive flirting, banter, mutual secret pining, reader & abby are college age (18-20), reader afab, eventual smut, sexual themes implied. mentions of drugs, alcohol, and mental health matters

💌 there are no reader specific descriptions/mentions of a particular skin colour, hair colour, texture or length. any mention of skin/hair/nails etc, are vague, and non descriptive as i encourage the reader to imagine them as they see fit. this is a safe and inclusive space. if you feel something is not poc friendly, please reach out and correct me. 💌

Large, dark, aged wood doors squeak as you push your way into the lecture hall. The stadium seating was an overwhelming site, mixed with the adrenaline that was consuming your body and mind, causing physical anxiety like you'd never felt before. It was a site. The large chalkboard that stretched across the back wall, the stair-step tiered seats, and the all-consuming quiet emptiness that was held inside. The building had to be at least 200 years old you thought, as you made your way to the second to bottom row of seats, opting for the middle of the three large sections. The classroom filled with the warm smell of old pine wood, out-of-date textbooks, and classic literature that made you feel so at home and fluttery you almost felt nauseous.

A few months prior, you were sat back at home, decision letter in hand, feeling physically ill at the thought of being rejected from the school you had worked exhaustingly towards for the better part of five years. Trembling hands worked at the envelope seal as you laboriously tear the thing apart, not being able to wait another second. As you read the words "Congratulations!" you still remember audibly yelling, then collapsing, filled with pure joy, relief, excitement, and fear, you couldn't bear the task of remaining upright.

Thinking back to now, your eyes welled with tears at how proud you were of your hardworking attitude, and how far it'd brought you.

The groan of tired door hinges interrupting your thoughts, and composing yourself, you turn expecting to see a mature, middle-aged man but instead saunters a cocky, muscular blonde. She looks around your age. Her trousers and black t-shirt fitting so snugly around her muscular physique you can't help but gawk. Her long, blonde hair is messily braided down her back, with thin glasses adoring her nose. Freckles dance across the same area, stretching down and around her forehead and cheeks. Noticing the presence of someone typically not there, she glances up at you, a surprised look on her face.

You knew why, because it was the same reason you had the same expression, why was there someone else also here an entire 45 minutes early? Dread filling your body as you realize that this is probably the normal for Ivy League students, and an overachieving attitude was simply what was expected here.

"Why are you here so early?" the girl asks in a voice that's almost too feminine and soft to belong to such a intimidating presence.

Caught off guard you respond, "I could ask you the same thing, class doesn't start until 8."

The blonde takes a seat in the row in beside you, just across the isle. Both occupying the outer seats, you were maybe less than 2ft apart.

Noticing your bag, notebooks, colorful pens and highlighters, and textbook (Which she totally didn't forget to get), she clears her throat and responds, "I like getting here early. Its stressful like–rushing in and being late y'know?" nodding along, replying "Yeah, me too."

You feel her eyes burning into you, like she's trying to melt you, or set you on fire. Either way, its working. You feel flustered, and nervous. She's easily one of the most beautiful women you've ever seen, and she's sitting here, looking at you like you're some sort of Sunday crossword clue she's spent an hour trying to figure out.

"M'names Abby, this your second year?"

Smiling and introducing yourself you respond, "No, first."

Her eyebrows shoot up, "Wait, so how are you in a 200 level?" she asks, a hint of shock, possibly disbelief, in her tone. "I took the intro course in high school. Like a duel credit program thing–". Your voice cutoff by the sound of shuffling voices filing into the lecture hall, making small-talk-quiet conversation impossible. Turning in your seat, you couldn't help but feel an overwhelming nervous presence around her. Was it jealousy? Attraction? Competitiveness? You tried to place where you'd felt this emotion before, but it was coming up blank. You felt a fire ignite inside of you every time you felt her looking at you.

Over the next few weeks, the tension had grown into a living, breathing, palpable competitiveness that was noticed among even the most clueless of students. It began the first week, when you noticed her only raising your hand if you would, glancing to see if you'd noticed. At first you thought maybe she was flirting, maybe she's just teasing you–but after two more classes, the whole thing grew old and irritating, causing you to audibly huff in frustration once, eliciting a smirk and stifled laugh from the blonde sitting across from you. Ever since that first day, she's always shown up before you. Always had an answer, always knew what to say. Always had a comment, a point, a argument to make off of your answers. “Yeah, to piggyback off that–" she would start, immediately following it with a critique or insight that infuriatingly made sense. Every discussion board was met with "Constructive Criticism" as she put it, making sure to patronize you as much as the possibly could. She knew exactly how to get under your skin, to get you all worked up, and she seemed to almost...enjoy the fight. Like there's no other place she'd rather be than arguing with you during a lecture.

Legs burning and anxiety coursing through you, you rushed past the green lawns, large oaks, and students fraternizing within as ice coffee rattled around the plastic cup with every step. It was 7:30–following a late night study session which resulted in falling asleep without setting an alarm, at your desk, overtop an ethics textbook.

You fumble with your hands full, trying to open the heavy classroom door, as you see a large hand appear on the handle, pulling it open, and another large, warm hand on your lower back. Chills electrify you, the hair on the back of your neck standing straight up as you feel a warm familiar voice whisper into you, "Running late, are we? Thought I would miss having to see you get all, hot and bothered" Your voice caught inside your throat, the blonde smirks and lowers her hand towards your hips, spinning you to face her, your noses almost touching, "Y'know, I think I'd miss seeing how worked up I get you". Her voice low, sultry, and soft, she sounds seductive and you can feel yourself becoming red, the thought of Abby Anderson actually getting you worked up being enough to cause a damp spot to form in-between your legs. You decided to play along though, you know, for the hell of it. “Oh, you would like that, wouldn’t you?” you said just as sweetly, head cocked to the side, staring back into her eyes, now practically boring holes into your own. A pink tint arising on her cheeks as she shook her head and laughed. “Okay, you got me. First time for everything I guess, especially for you.” She slid between yourself and the door, your back pressed up against the back of the harsh oak, leaving you scoffing and rather flustered, again, the effect she had infuriatingly effective.

A/N: hiiiiiiii i wrote this months ago in my drafts and decided to post it bc why not!!! lmk if u want a part two🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

[tastesousweet]

⭒ the other woman

christopher sturniolo x poc!reader

summary: an angsty story of regret and selfishness told through different moments in time

warnings: alternate universe (takes place in the early 2000s bcs i’m obsessed), angst, implied sex, cigarettes, cheating (with, not on y/n)

a/n: hiiii srry for ghosting u guys again :/ i finally have motivation to write again!!! send in blurb or one shot ideas pls. unfortunately im putting tgwtt on hold for right now bc i feel writing that series takes so much out of me and i end up not enjoying anything i write. i hope u understand & im sorry to those who enjoy it! anyways i hope this is well received since it’s a bit different than my other works — lowkey tuned into my inner sally rooney bc her angst HITS . luv u baiiii

★ march 2004

there’s a vile and shameful look to you that you’re not so sure you’ve hidden well enough.

your stomach feels overweight and heavy with an extreme amount of pain bubbling and stabbing your insides whenever they decide to pop.

you clutch at the edge of the bathroom sink, staring at your figure and aching eyes (you added some dark eyeliner into your routine hoping to distract from your disdainful mood but you’re starting to think you may have drawn more attention with the dramatic look).

you suck your stained bottom lip into your mouth out of comfort or maybe a need for something to hold as you move to dig for the pack of slightly crumpled cigarettes in your small, wine-red purse.

the door handle begins to rattle unnervingly just as you spark the slim stick to life.

you comically still yourself in your exact position (bent over odd and cupping your hand around the cig as if there was any sudden wind to blow out your flame in your friend's classy bathroom).

"y/n? you in here?!"

your eyes widen first, before they eventually roll. you wave your hands around to cut through the plumes of clogged smoke in the quaint room.

“y/n!”

“someone’s in here!” you reply, taking another puff of smoke and adjusting your hair a bit in the mirror.

“you gonna open up for me?”

“ummm,” you sputter through the cigarette held in your mouth as you adjust your strapless dress with both hands in the mirror.

“y/n.”

you let out a soft groan and quickly smash the cigarette a few times against the french vanilla ceramic sink bowl, throwing what's left of it in the trash. you practically shove yourself against the tiny wall space to the side of the door as you inch it open enough for the two of you to gain a full view of each other.

you smile, “chris.”

★ december 2003

they say the holidays are worst when spent alone.

and despite having three siblings and parents who’d want nothing more than to spend their christmas eve with their son, chris has always preferred to spend the holidays with a beautiful girl — in hopes that she’d gift him the intoxicating feeling of her thighs tightly trapping his face by the end of the night.

so it’s shocking that he’s at your door step, dressed in a suave, ribbed white long sleeve, dark blue jeans, and somehow caught without one of his usual hats slouched on top of his head of fawn hair.

and it’s real fucking odd that you answer the door wearing a dress that fits you extremely well, paired with a cardigan to keep some modesty.

it’s so very weird given that chris has his girlfriend of over a year texting him another apology for abandoning their plans together to visit her family in wisconsin as you both share an intimate hug on your porch.

you try not to think it’s so unnatural for you and chris to go out for dinner, despite the fact that everyone in your small town knows he has a girlfriend who’s notably quite the opposite of you.

thank goodness chris keeps some casualty — leaving you to open your own door when climbing into his beloved truck.

★ february 2004

“okay, um, this is something you can eat and there’s, like, a million types- you like granny smith!”

“oo, apples!”

chris nods excitedly and flips to the next card, “it’s my favorite meal of the day.”

“breakfast!”

“yes, you’re perfect. alright this is casper the friendly-”

“ghost!”

“amazing! ‘kay, i’m always complaining that mine isn’t stiff enough.”

“your dick?” josh jokes.

“fuck off, josh! i’m more than capable…” chris laughs.

“gross! chris?!”

“what?! don’t make it a biggie. now hurry ‘n gimme that answer baby, please?”

“well i’m guessing it’s your mattress?!”

“you have 7 seconds!” nick says while intensely staring at the tiny hourglass.

chris gives an encouraging hand motion for her to continue on that path.

“ummm… your bed?!”

“yes! that’s what i’m talking about!” chris shoots up from his position, on the ground in front of the coffee table, and immediately picks liv up from the couch in celebration.

the group let out plenty of laughs and giggles at the fear in her eyes as she’s lifted up and down excitedly.

cassie yells out, “aw yay mom and dad!” when chris sets her down and kisses her lips.

you try to control your face. your eyes flicker over and see them smiling with their faces so close together. and it drives you a little mad that whatever chris whispered to make her burst into laughter can’t be heard from your spot across the couch, especially not when there are so many conversations going on at once.

it’s just a game. you have no right to be jealous. it’s fucking taboo.

you clear your throat and uncross your legs as you begin to leave from the leather couch, “matt and josh, you can go before me- i’m just gonna grab some water.”

★ march 2004

“smoking cigs again?” chris asks as he steps into the bathroom.

“no,” you lie, resting your hip against the edge of the counter.

he knows you’re lying but doesn’t bother to pressure the truth out of you, he’s not your father. or your boyfriend at that.

“are you doing okay?” he pauses and waits for you to acknowledge him.

you don’t.

he clears his throat, “you look beautiful in this,” he tugs your dress down showing off the cleavage you’d just got done hiding.

“‘m all good,” you answer his initial question while exaggerating a smile.

chris mindlessly nods his head and somehow gets even closer to you, to the point where you have to tilt your head just the slightest bit to make eye contact.

“can i kiss you?” he asks with a genuine glimmer of generosity in his eyes and tone; as if he wanted you to want it more than he wants it himself.

you’re silent. he holds your neck gently and raises his other hand to drag your large bottom lip downward, cooing a tease, “hmmm..?”

you whine a little to yourself — this can’t happen again.

“yes?” chris mocks a little, giving a squeeze to your neck, “say it.”

your eyes droop and suddenly the ache of pain and guilt melts down to a slush of excitement and warmth both inside and evidently outside, if the stickiness of your lace underwear says anything. you nod your head.

chris is so obsessed with your mouth, his thumb doesn't move from your bottom lip as you peek your tongue out to wet it, "yes, please." your words echo off of his lips that now practically hover yours.

even though you've used your manners you manage to deliver it as a command. and it doesn't help that you paired the sentence with your hands running up the hot skin underneath his dark shirt. his mouth hangs slightly ajar as his head nods softly once more and his eyes flicker over your pretty face.

you wait for his response before your eyes lock onto his and you pout, "i thought you wanted to kiss me, chris?"

★ december 2003

“that’s hot,” chris mumbles as he kicks his legs over eachother and stretches out on the longest part of your L - shaped, funky-green couch.

“what is?” you ask as you return to the living room, popcorn cradled in an oversized bowl against your waist.

“pamala anderson,” chris jokingly moans out, biting his bottom lip and covering his lower half with one of your fuzzy throw pillows.

“gross, you perv!” you throw a handful of popcorn at his face — that’s stretched into an adorable smile — and take a seat next to him.

“baywatch reruns are all that nbc play anymore,” you squint with a sigh, taking a swig of the cool bottle of beer chris requested before handing it to him.

“they lost the best thing to ever happen to ‘em, i’d milk that shit too.” he then takes a sip, smirking when a desperate pamala anderson begins to run in slow motion on your fuzzy box television.

“what would liv think of you drooling over some baywatch tits?”

“what would liv think of me replacing her with you for my christmas eve dinner?”

you can’t help but think that ‘replacing’ is possibly the meanest word he could have used.

he smiles and gives a soft laugh when your face doesn’t respond, “joking- don’t spaz on me now…” he rolls his eyes from you back to the screen in front of you.

you swallow and adjust your legs to sit underneath you, trying to get comfortable while remaining in your small red dress.

★ march 2004

“never again,” you remind chris and yourself as you step into your once discarded underwear.

chris nods his head a few times, replying when he finally catches his breath, “right.”

“okay,” you slip your dress back on and chris redresses himself away from you.

chris slowly comes up behind you, kissing your shoulder once and hugging you gently. you want to cry — because in any other circumstance you’d embrace this feeling. but you can’t help but feel dirty.

he whispers with his head buried in the side of your crowded neck, “you know your my best friend, right? i love you.”

and you can’t help the shivers and sobs that decide to escape from your sad, used body.

“shhhh,” he apologizes, “i’m sorry.”

★ december 2003

chris imagined having sex with you plenty of times before — figuring most guys have thought of it with all of their girl friends, at least his friends made it seem true.

though his imagination could never ever live up to your whines and the way your body effortlessly takes him as you bounce yourself on top of him.

you both knew this was a bad idea, it was bad before you ended up back at your place after dinner. chris is an admittedly horny drunk and you’re no better so sharing a few beers while sitting so close to each other was bound to backfire.

only in the morning would some ounce of guilt and regret wash over him, when he’d listen to the cheerful voicemail his unknowing girlfriend left him while he was busy with his fingers in your mouth.

★ november 2004

chris hasn’t spoken to you since you came clean to liv about your disloyalty, six months ago.

he yelled and cried at your doorstep. he told you that you ruined his entire life, that he never wants to see you again.

you convince yourself you never want to see him again, but you tend to miss him in the loneliest times. when you’re sat awake in your dark bedroom.

you still miss his voice and his face.