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pascallftv · 2 months ago

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not a fair fight

pairing: steve harrington x f!reader

summary: steve covers for robin at the hawkins fair. unfortunately for him, your booth is right across from his. he’s going to make you spit that gum out one way or another.

warnings: very brief discussion of weight (not towards reader), steve is an asshole, reader is a brat, brat taming, forced proximity kinda, enemies to lovers if you squint, f!oral, unprotected p in v, fingering, dom!steve lowkey, missionary, doggystyle, cock warming

word count: 5.6k

Steve hadn’t wanted to work the fair. He would have rathered to be at Tommy’s back to school party, but here he was, stationed under a rickety tent at the Hawkins fairgrounds, sweat beading on his forehead and gathering at the small of his back.

He wasn’t thinking when he made that deal with Robin.

Steve had struck a deal with Robin that if she watched the Family Video counter for him while he scattered off to help the kids for a couple days, that he’d do whatever she conjured up as payback for him.

In her case, it was Steve covering her shifts at the Guess Your Height and Weight booth for the entirety of the county fair. It was a bullshit deal really. It wasn’t like two shifts at Family Video even came close to an entire weekend at the fair, but Steve had no choice. A deal was a deal, and he wasn’t one to break his promise.

“How much you think I weigh, Harrington?”

Steve’s arms were crossed, his facial expression disinterested and borderline appalled. In front of him stood some girl he’d seen at a couple of Tommy’s parties, but her name was a mystery to him. Her blonde hair cascaded down her exposed back, her clothing leaving little to nothing to the imagination.

Steve mumbled out a random number monotone. He couldn’t care to actually guess, and quite frankly, he didn’t give a shit either way.

The girl gasped and crossed her arms. Her boyfriend stood behind her, his eyebrows furrowing. He stepped forward, wallowing his tongue around in his mouth for a second before spitting at Steve’s shoes.

“What the fuck, man?” Steve grunted, stepping back from the pissed off boyfriend billowing in front of him.

“Let’s go, baby.” He snapped, grabbing the girl’s hand and escorting her away from the booth.

“Hey! That’s two dollars!” Steve called after them. The boyfriend turned his head and flashed him a middle finger in response.

Steve sighed heavily and looked down at the wad of spit running across his shoe. His eyes flickered up and found you sat in a lawn chair, your leg propped up over the arm of the chair, swinging haphazardly. You looked up at him over the top of your book, smacking gum between your cherry lips, a taunting grin pulling at them.

“Smooth, Harrington.” You said, looking back down at your book and flipping a page.

Steve rolled his eyes and grabbed the towel off of the table tucked back in the tent and began wiping at his shoe. His eyes flicked up to you inside your booth. You were surrounded by a multitude of makeup products that he had no idea what they were. In his eyes it was all fucking junk.

“How many tubes of lip balm have you sold, baby cakes?” Steve called out to you. Your head didn’t move, just your eyes as you looked back up to him.

“None of your business.” You said, your voice bored and unamused.

“No one’s going to buy that shit.” He continued, grunting as he lowered his foot from the table.

You stared back at him, deciding whether or not you wanted to get up and strangle him or set fire to his booth with a flame torch. You were under the impression that Robin would be across from you all weekend, but much to your disappointment, it was Man Whoreington instead. You’d always fucking despised him ever since you moved to Hawkins two years ago.

A group of middle school aged girls hurried into your booth, squealing in excitement at all the products for sale.

“I’ll take one of each.” One of the girls said, smacking a one hundred dollar bill down on the table in front of you. You gazed up at her, then over to Steve, whose eyes were as big as saucers.

“Sure thing, baby cakes.” You bit back a smile.

It was absolutely ridiculous. Steve watched in awe as girls crowded your booth, the cash flowing.

“What was that you were saying, Harrington?” You cocked a smile as you packaged up the girl’s products. Steve ran his tongue across the front of his teeth and shook his head.

You blew a bubble with your gum as you waved the girls along, then sat back in your lawn chair, propping your legs up on a box. Steve had always been a douche to you, and you weren’t sure why. You’d always been nothing but nice to him, and you were especially nice to Nancy and Jonathan, as well as those boys you always saw Steve babysitting.

Your eyes were locked on your book as a figure loomed over the table in front of you. A throat cleared, and you lifted your eyes. Steve leaned down on the table, a strand of his brown hair falling over his forehead. Your gaze traced up from the moles on his neck to his hazel eyes.

“Can I help you?” You mumbled, looking back down at your book.

Steve's eyes trailed from your smug face, to your chest, then down to your bare thighs where your denim shorts had ridden up.

You didn’t move, just smacked your gum— sharp, loud, and completely on purpose.

“Jesus christ.” He muttered, straightening his back. “Can you not chew like a fucking cow for five minutes?”

You blinked up at him, your gaze innocent. “Something bothering you, Harrington?”

“Yes. That sound. It’s like—“ He mimicked the gum smacking sound with his teeth and tongue, his mouth opening in an exaggerated, and quite obnoxious, chomp. “That. It’s giving me a fucking migraine.”

You tilted your head and ran your teeth along your bottom lip, stretching your arms up over your head, exposing a bit of your belly. “Free will.”

“What?” Steve spat.

You sat up slightly and leaned your arms on the table. “It’s called free will, Stevie. You can walk away whenever you want.”

Steve laughed under his breath, running a hand through his wavy hair. “Believe me, I want to. But just our luck I’m stuck across your glitter and bumble gum empire this entire weekend. Gotta make sure you don’t choke everyone out with your raging estrogen.”

You smiled devilishly and grabbed a lock of your hair, twirling it around your finger. “Aww, Stevie. You watching me, then?”

“Would be hard to miss ya, all the chewing and—“ he motioned to your body, “everything.”

You popped another bubble, this one even louder and wetter than the last. You let it snap, then slurped the gum back into your mouth with a wink.

“Fascinating.” You spoke monotone.

Steve’s hands dropped to his hips, clearly running out of patience. “Spit it out.”

You arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“The gum. Spit it out. Before I do it for you.”

Your pulse quickened at his words. Not because you were intimidated, more just… heated. Not heated in a pissed off way, but in the kind that made your cheeks hot and in the way you wouldn’t want to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging.

You rolled the gum to the side of your mouth. “Is that a threat or a promise?”

He leaned forward again, both palms braced on the table of your booth, his face inches from yours now.

“Depends.” He said softer. “You always this bratty or do I just bring it out of you?”

Your smirk didn’t fade, but you didn’t answer him. Maybe he was right, but you’d never admit that to him. And perhaps you wanted to see how far you could push this.

Just your luck, you watched a group of guys walk up to the Height and Weight booth across the way. You dramatically sighed and shook your head.

“Maybe if you can guess their weights correctly I’ll tell you.” You gestured towards the guys and leaned back in your chair, this time kicking your feet up on the table.

Steve turned his head and noticed the group, and you swear you could see the steam beginning to roll out of his ears. He clocked them immediately. They were the jocks that took over after he graduated. The kind you used to flirt with in school.

One of them waved from across the way, and you waved back, extra slow and sweet. Making sure Steve was watching, you blew them a kiss. You heard him mutter something under his breath. Then you watched his jaw tense so tight you thought all his teeth would break.

“Aww, don’t pout. You’ll get wrinkles.” You teased, drumming your fingernails against the back of your book.

“You’re not cute.” He snapped, not even looking at you.

“You sure about that?”

His head whipped towards you. He leaned back over the table, this time so close you could feel the heat radiating off of him.

“Keep pushing, sweetheart. And you’ll find out exactly how uncute I think you are.”

You popped your gum again just to spite him. Then slow and daring, you plucked the gum from your lips, holding the sticky pink blob between your fingers.

“Here, since it bothers you so much.” You said, extending it towards him.

He managed to get even closer, and grabbed your wrist. “Next time I tell you to spit it out, I won’t be so polite.”

You blinked, your pulse rising up your throat. Then, he let you go, turned, and stalked back to his booth.

You sat there, hand still half-raised, gum dangling from your fingers. Suddenly you weren’t feeling so smug.

The fair shut down for the night around eleven, the loudspeaker croaking its final calls. The lights began to dim across the fairgrounds, and the soft hum of generators filled the background with white noise.

You were back at your camper, freshly showered, bare-legged and barefoot, your cami clinging to you in the summer heat. You’d tossed your book aside half an hour ago. You couldn’t focus, not with this heat. Not with the constant vision replaying of your mind of Steve leaned towards you, his voice, his grip.

Then the music started.

Steve’s camper was close, too close. The walls were paper thin, and when he cranked the volume on some Billy Idol song, it vibrated the walls. You clenched your jaw.

You gave it five more minutes.

Then you slammed the door behind you and stormed the ten feet to his. You didn’t knock. You banged. Hard.

The music didn’t stop, but the door swung open a moment later. Steve stood there in shorts, shirtless, and his hair damp like he just showered. A towel was hung around his neck, and a smug grin toyed at his mouth like he had been expecting you any moment.

“What?” He cooed, like he had no idea what could’ve possibly inspired you to knock at his camper at almost midnight.

“Turn it down.”

“No.”

“Seriously?” You crossed your arms in disbelief.

“Seriously.” He leaned a shoulder against the frame of the door, deliberately relaxed. “Unless you came over to apologize for being a brat all night.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “You were the one being a brat. You grabbed my arm.”

“Because you don’t listen.”

You scoffed. “You don’t scare me, Harrington.”

“Didn’t say I was trying to.”

But the way he said it, quiet and low, made your heart hammer against your chest. He watched your face shift, and something unreadable passed over his expression.

“You still chewing that gum?” He asked.

You blinked and wallowed your gum to the side of your mouth. “Maybe.”

“I’m serious. I’ll take that shit out of your mouth myself this time.”

Your breath caught.

A tense beat of silence passed between you, you standing there gawking at him in the low glow of the camper light. You hated how good he looked like this, casual, smug, and shirtless.

“You done staring?” He taunted.

“In your dreams, Harrington.”

You turned on your heel and walked back to your camper, trying not to let your knees buckle. His music continued in the background.

That didn’t stop you from laying in your bunk for the next hour, wide awake. The music finally stopped an hour ago, but you were still unable to sleep. You chewed haphazardly on your gum, blowing bubbles every few minutes.

You were half asleep when the knock came. It wasn’t loud or aggressive, just three measured raps against the door. You sat up slowly. The clock read 12:59 a.m. You padded barefoot to the door and cracked it open.

Steve stood there, this time with a t-shirt pulled over his head. He looked tired and less smug than earlier.

You blinked up at him. “You lost or something?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

You raised a brow. “So you thought bothering me might help?”

“Yeah, actually.” He leaned an arm against the door frame. “Look.. you piss me off.”

“You piss me off too. Why does this concern me at one o’clock in the morning?”

Silence. It was strange, seeing him like this. Quiet, no booth, no crowd, no one to impress. Just Steve.

“Can I come in?” He asked.

You hesitated for a second, and against your better judgement, you stepped aside.

The camper was cramped. One bench, one tiny sink, and a bed pressed against the far wall.

Steve moved slowly, ducking his head as he stepped inside. He didn’t say anything for a moment and looked around, then sat on the bench like he didn’t know what to do with himself.

You leaned against the sink, arms crossed. “So now what?”

Steve looked up at you, eyes shadowed and unreadable. “I meant what I said earlier.”

“Which part? The part where you threatened me, or the part where you said I’m not cute?”

His jaw ticked.

“The part where I said you don’t listen. And the part where I said I’d take the gum out of your mouth myself.”

Your breath hitched.

He stood slowly.

“You’ve been acting like you want me to lose it.”

You stayed where you were, your pulse rapidly increasing. “And what if I do?”

His mouth twitched.

Then he crossed the room in two big strides and backed you against the sink. One hand planted beside your hip, the other grazing the strap of your cami.

“Then I guess it’s not a fair fight, is it?” He murmured.

Then he kissed you. Hard.

Your teeth clacked, and you tasted like bubblegum and he tasted like cherry cola. His fingers curled under your jaw as your hands bunched at the bottom of his shirt. He pressed you back until the countertop dug into your lower back, and you made a noise in the back of your throat that made him groan into your mouth.

He pulled back just long enough to whisper, his breath hot against your lips:

“Told you I’d shut you up.”

And then he kissed you again, like he was mad at you. For every eye roll, every gum smack, every moment you’d made his life hell. And god, you kissed him right back, like you’d been waiting all fucking day for this.

Steve’s hands were everywhere at once. He squeezed your waist, your hips, the backs of your thighs. He lifted you onto the edge of the counter like you weighed nothing, his mouth never leaving yours. You parted your knees around his hips, the camper creaking beneath the sudden shift in weight.

“This what you wanted?” He muttered against your lips. “Me losing my shit?”

You grinned against his lips as you panted. “Took you long enough.”

Steve chuckled once, his voice low and gravelly. He grabbed your jaw and tilted your face so he could take you in with his eyes.

“I want to take that fucking gum out of your mouth.” He said.

You wallowed the gum from the side of your mouth and went to reach for it, but he caught your wrist in his hand.

“No, I’ll take it out.”

Then he was kissing you again, this time tougher. His tongue swiped the gum from your lips, taking it for himself, then pulled away just enough to spit the gum into the sink beside you.

You gawked at him, your cheeks flushed and your lips swollen.

Steve grinned. “There. Better.”

You reached for him this time, yanking him by the front of his shirt to wrap your legs back around his waist. He groaned when he felt how hot you were against him. You rocked against him, slow and taunting.

“Still think I’m not cute?” You whispered, your teeth grazing his earlobe.

He let out a strangled laugh and slid his hands under your cami and over your bare skin. “No. I think you’re a fucking problem.”

“Well, you gonna solve it then?”

He didn’t answer, at least not with words.

Steve grabbed the hem of your cami and pulled it up over your head, and tossed it over his shoulder. His mouth went straight to your chest, his tongue flicking across your nipple. One hand reached behind your back to arch your closer.

You gasped, your fingers digging into his hair, pulling just hard enough to make him whimper.

“So fucking full of attitude.” He muttered against your skin.

You leaned back, watching through heavy eyelids as he dropped to his knees in front of you, his fingers trailing down your thighs, thumbs brushing against the waistband of your shorts.

“What are you going to do about it, Harrington?”

“Going to teach you a lesson.” He said.

He hooked his fingers in your shorts and dragged them down agonizingly slow. His smirk grew bigger as he watched your breath hitch.

“You gonna tell me how much you hate me?”

You didn’t say anything. You didn’t need to. The look you gave him, your eyelids heavy, lips parted, and your body leaning into his every touch told him everything he needed to know.

Steve’s hands were rough on your thighs, his thumbs digging in as he pulled you close to the edge of the counter. He traced hot, open-mouthed kisses along the inside of your thighs, his teeth dragging just enough to make your grip claw into the edge of the counter.

“Still seem a little bratty.” He said, then landed his mouth on your mound from the outside of your panties.

You sucked in air as his fingers looped into the waistband of your panties and dragged them down your legs, dropping them to the floor. Your brows furrowed in awe as you watched him take in the sight of your bare pussy.

“Fuck.” He breathed out, and reached a finger up to your folds, and ran a finger along the length of you, your arousal coating it.

You whined, titling your head over onto your shoulder as you watched his facial expression grow more concentrated. You sucked in a sharp breath and Steve’s mouth came down on you, his tongue licking an agonizing stripe up your heat, gathering your wetness. Suddenly his finger found your opening, prodding at it for a moment before pressing into you. You let out a gasp and jolted, your head tilting back at the intrusion.

He hummed against your folds, his tongue finding its way to your clit, flicking fast against it as his finger began to pump in a consistent rhythm in and out of you. You sighed deeply, a soft moan leaving your lips as his finger curled perfectly inside of you, teasing as your spongy g-spot. Steve added another finger, spreading you open wider. You whined out, your hand coming down to latch onto his hair. His mouth worked harder against your clit, the pleasure winding tight in your lower abdomen.

He pumped his fingers faster, curling them in perfect rhythm. You whined when he pulled his mouth away, but only missed the sensation briefly as his free thumb came down to circle your clit.

“Fuck.” You sputtered out, your pussy clenching at the added pressure.

“I can feel you squeezing my fingers.” Steve murmured, staring up at you through hooded eyes.

You panted heavily, the knot in your lower belly winding tighter at his words. He was relentless, his thumb still working magic circles and his fingers pounding into you with great speed.

Your orgasm hit you unexpectedly, your breath leaving your throat, your cheeks flushing hotter and your toes curled behind Steve’s back.

“That’s it.” He urged, fingering you through your orgasm, your come coating his knuckles.

You rode out your high, your eyes clenching shut in pleasure. You breathed out through your nose as you felt Steve’s touch leave you. He stood up between your legs his hand snaking up your belly to your nipple, giving it a gentle pinch.

“Still smug.” He murmured against the skin of your tit. “Even with my mouth between your legs.”

You didn’t laugh, still trying to catch your breath and regain your vision.

And then he stopped talking. You heard the rustle of fabric against skin, and you realized Steve was taking off his t-shirt. Then his fingers looped into the waistband of his shorts, pulling them down his thighs, exposing his erect cock. He wasn’t wearing boxers, just his short shorts. You stared down at him in awe, his tip leaking and angry. His hand fell to his length, pumping it in slow strokes, his gaze falling from your tits to your pussy, which was practically dripping, your arousal threatening to drop onto the floor.

“Cat got your tongue, baby cakes?” Steve grunted, his fingers sliding up your heat and landing on your sensitive clit, giving it a pinch.

You gasped, your thighs clenching together.

“Nuh uh.” Steve growled, his hands coming down to spread your legs back open. “These.. stay open.”

“Steve, fuck.” You said breathlessly, looking down at his erection. He was bigger than you expected, much to your surprise.

“I’m going to fuck you so hard that you’re going to forget how to talk. Forget how to chew that stupid fucking gum.” Steve grumbled.

You watched through tired eyes as Steve ran his length against the inside of your thigh, teasing your core. A smirk tugged at his lips as he watched your eyebrows furrow.

“What do you need?” He said, his voice low. His tip was ghosting over your folds now, your arousal mixing with his precum.

“Mmm, fuck.” You tilted your head back as he nicked your clit that was still too sensitive from your orgasm.

Suddenly Steve’s hand slapped your ass hard, your body jolting from the sudden hit.

“Fuck!” You exclaimed, your legs tightening around Steve’s hips unwillingly.

“I said.” He leaned closer, his breath fanning over your lips. “What do you need?”

“Need you to fuck me.” You whispered, trying to close the gap between your mouths to kiss him, but he pulled away an inch to tease you.

“Hmm, couldn’t quite hear that. Might need to say it a bit louder.” Steve taunted you. Goosebumps littered your skin as his hand that was haphazardly stroking his cock trailed down to your clit, your legs jolting as he began to slowly rub in gentle circles.

“I-I need you.. to f-fuck me.” You struggled, your thighs clenching around his hand, but his assault didn’t stop.

He rubbed faster circles, this time he closed the gap between your mouths, and kissed you intensely. His teeth took your bottom lip, and he bit down slightly, not enough to draw blood, but enough to assert his power over you, even in a kiss. Then his tongue was against yours, tasting every bit of your mouth, running along your teeth. It was disgusting really, having him consume in such a thorough way, but you didn’t care. You needed more.

His tip prodded at your entrance, your pussy now throbbing from the lack of intrusion. His finger slowed on your clit, and you awaited the feeling of him stretching you. His free hand reached up to one of your nipples, giving it a gentle squeeze before slowly rolling his hips towards yours, his tip breaching your opening, the stretch radiating deep in your belly. Your head fell back in a moan, and Steve took this as an opportunity to litter kisses from your throat down to your chest, taking your nipple in his mouth.

He rocked his hips into yours, his length pumping in and out of you, your walls stretching to accommodate his length. You hadn’t had sex in months, and even then, your partner hadn’t been this big. This was uncharted territory and you feared after tonight, you weren’t sure how you’d be able to find someone who’d compare to this.

“Feels so good.” Steve grunted as he thrusted into you, his hands traveling all over you.

His hands squeezed at your breasts, then trailed down to your ass to squeeze the flesh of your cheeks, spreading them a bit, before finding their way to your thighs. You panted heavily over the sound of skin slapping, and basked in the feeling of Steve’s breath fanning over the sensitive pebbles of your nipples.

Suddenly Steve was pulling out of you, and you whimpered from the emptiness between your legs. He stepped back, and began lazily stroking his length again. He tilted his head toward the bed.

“Go get on the bed. On your hands and knees.” He demanded. Sweat was beading on his forehead, and your eyes trailed from his face, down the hair on his chest to his trimmed pubes, then to his hand wrapped around his cock.

You obeyed his orders and ambled over to the bed. You did as you were told and got on your hands and knees, your ass perched up in the air, your holes on display for him. Steve groaned at the sight of your drenched pussy catching the dim glow of the lamp as he got closer to you.

You exhaled shakily as Steve’s hands found their way to your ass, spreading the flesh to get a better look at you. Your brows furrowed when you felt his hot breath on your folds, and sharply inhaled when his tongue lapped up your arousal, brushing your clit.

Without warning, Steve was pushing back into you, not taking it slow at all. He fully sheathed himself in you, his girth stretching you once again. You gasped and grabbed a fistful on the sheet, your tits bouncing from his rapid thrusts.

“Jesus—“ You said between thrusts. “Christ.”

“Been wanting to fuck you like this all day.” Steve breathed out, leaning down so his chest was pressed to your back.

His hand snaked around your shoulders to lightly cup the front of your throat. He gave the sides of your throat a gentle squeeze, resulting in your pussy clenching down around him.

“Oh, you liked that, huh?” He said, his hand repeating its movement.

You whined, your back arching into his front. You were like a bitch in heat, and the sounds of wet skin slapping permeated the air. Never in a million years did you expect to be bent over by Steve Harrington, let alone loving it this much.

“I’m g-gonna come again.” You stammered, you lowered the side of your face into the mattress, Steve’s hands spreading your ass again to watch his length disappear and reappear from your entrance.

“Come on, baby. Let me feel it.” Steve said, a hand trailing down to your clit, rubbing gentle circles.

You whined out at the added pressure, your lower belly tying knot after knot. You flexed your calves, feeling the pleasure beginning to heat up deep inside you. Your next orgasm washed over you, your vision becoming fuzzy as every muscle in your body clenched. Your breath caught in your throat, and your grip tightened even more on the sheets.

“That’s it.” Steve muttered, his finger working your clit through your orgasm.

Your orgasm subsided, and your chest heaved in heavy pants as you came down from your high. Your senses were back, and Steve’s finger on your clit was about to make you scream.

Your hand swatted his hand away from between your thighs, and you groaned as his other hand gripped the flesh of your hip tighter.

Steve pulled out of you again, holding himself off from his release. He wanted this moment to last forever, and he wasn’t done with you quite yet.

“Lay on your back for me.” Steve said, his tone less demanding and softer.

You rolled over, and scooted yourself towards the head of the small bed, resting your head against your pillow. Steve climbed onto the bed and onto his knees, positioning himself between your legs.

“You on the pill?” Steve asked as he lowered himself over you.

“Yes.” You said, your arms reached up to cup his face, pulling his face down into a firm kiss.

Steve took the moment to sheath himself back inside you, your mouth parting. You would never get used to the feeling of him inside of you, and you’re not sure you ever want that feeling to stop. Steve fucked into you steadily, his skin slapping against yours.

His mouth left yours and trailed back down to your chest, his mouth working on one nipple while his free hand squeezed your other tit. Your head felt back against the mattress, your eyes rolling back at the new angle.

With every thrust you could feel his cock rutting up almost to your cervix, your g-spot being stimulating perfectly.

“God, you’re driving me fucking crazy.” Steve panted as he fucked into you faster. He was close, and he was shamelessly chasing his high.

“I hate how good this feels.” You said, your voice sounding almost drunk. You were half present mentally, your orgasms taking most of your energy.

“Yeah?” He bent down and rested his forehead against yours. “Want me to stop?”

“No.” You spat out quickly.

“Didn’t think so.” He said, and his mouth was on you again, this time sucking on the flesh of your neck like a vampire, his teeth working against your skin.

He wanted to mark you. He wanted those jocks to know you were already claimed and were off limits. He wanted you for himself.

“Not going to last much longer.” Steve sputtered, his thrusts becoming sloppier and more staggered.

Your nipples hardened as you felt the coil tightening again in your core, your third orgasm drawing closer. One of your hands trailed between you, finding your clit. Steve leaned up a bit to give you more room, one hand gripping your waist and the other squeezing the flesh of your ass. He took in the sight of you underneath him, your cheeks flushed, your tits bouncing with every rock of his hips, your fingers working in messy circles around your clit as you chased your high once again.

“That’s it, come for me again.” Steve panted.

He was dangerously close. He was feeling his lower belly beginning to tighten. Any second his muscles were going to betray him and let his high overcome him.

Your third orgasm hit you hard, and you involuntarily whimpered, your body shaking as it overcame you. Your toes curled and your back arched, and your hearing went fuzzy. Steve followed suit, his release shooting hot spurts deep into you, his lower abdomen clenching through his orgasm. He whined, feeling your walls clamp down on him, milking every last ounce of his seed into you.

Your high slowly faded, and you were still trying to catch your breath. Your skin was flushed and damp and Steve laid on top of you, his legs intertwined with yours, his cock softening inside of you. Steve’s chest rose and fell against yours, one of his arms draped lazily by your head, his fingertips toying with the ends of your hair.

Neither of you said anything for a long while.

Outside, the fair grounds were silent. No rides creaking, not fair-goers in sight, no sound of Steve’s music blaring. Just the two of you trying to catch your breath.

You finally shifted, just enough to look down at him, his face pressed to your chest. His eyes were open, looking off into the camper, like something was on his mind.

“You okay?” You asked, voice low.

He blinked, then shifted to look up at you. His hand moved to your face, brushing a strand of your hair behind your ear.

“Yeah. Just wasn’t.. expecting that.”

A tired smile tugged at your lips. “Which part? Where you spit out my gum for me or the part where you fucked me and liked it?”

Steve huffed a laugh and shook his head. “You’re exhausting.” He muttered, but his voice was soft and fond in a way that made your chest ache a little.

“Seriously though. If you regret it and never want to speak to me again, I get it.” You tucked an arm under your head and watched his face.

His eyes narrowed slightly at you. “Do you?”

You hesitated, but only for a second. “No.”

He exhaled, slow. “Then I don’t either.”

Then, quietly and hesitantly, Steve shifted to pull the thin blanket up over you. It was then you realized he was still inside of you, soft, but you still felt full. His hand found yours beneath it, lacing your fingers together.

“Don’t tell Robin.” He murmured, half asleep now, using your tits as a pillow.

You smiled, eyes slipping shut. “Don’t tell her what?”

“That I like you.”

He said it like a secret.

And you held onto that like a promise, and you hoped that when the morning sun came, Steve Harrington wouldn’t regret those words.

#steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington #steve harrington smut #steve x reader #stranger things #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #my fic

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svnriseblvdd · 4 months ago

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neighbour! clark kent x new girl! reader

SYNOPSIS: with a new problem in smallville ridding people of their inhibitions and exacerbating urges, clark finds himself confronted with a dilemma as his neighbour arrives in his loft, afflicted by the same epidemic

WARNINGS: where to start?, slight dubcon (purely because reader's emotions are being exaggerated by an outside force (not a person though, it's unspecified)) but consent is verbalised later between both parties, clark is kind of pathetic (what did you expect from me?), kissing, palming(?), he's a sensitive guy, clark reacts to seeing reader's bare skin like a victorian man seeing a woman's ankle, kind of dirty talk, clark in that white t-shirt (i KNOW you know what i mean), blowjob, handjob, clark compares every sexual experience to ascending to a new plane of existence and finding paradise, he's a loud boy, couch sex, semi-public sex? (in the loft in the barn, but literally no one is around and they're alone for hours), fingering, clark using his super speed for illicit activities, cowgirl, missionary, it's not said whether or not clark is a virgin, but he's definitely inexperienced, clark being scared of his strength being a danger to reader, praise kink (neither of them react to the praise in any particular way, it's just that there's a lot of praise so if anything i'm just showing off my praise kink), mention of sex against a wall, creampie

this is inspired by the episode of smallville in season one where there's that flower that makes people make poor decisions and behave rashly, and also by this scene that i saw on tiktok with clark and lana (if anyone finds this i need them to send me the link... for research purposes) (EDIT: someone found it so here's the link) where he just folds the moment she kisses his neck. i also borrowed a few lines of dialogue from my clark jacking off headcanons.

also for someone who rarely spells the word rhythm right first try, i use it a lot in this. fair warning there may be accidental tense changes and pronoun changes but i've tried to go through and eliminate that.

this will probably be the last instalment of the neighbour clark series, although i'll probably return to this idea eventually to add thoughts, but they won't be tied directly to this series, just to neighbour clark as an au. thank you to everyone who has enjoyed and supported this series and been so patient with me (i had no idea it had been over a month since part four).

part one! part two! part three! part four! part five!

Clark can’t seem to escape you over the next week, not that he really minds much. But it’s become almost impossible to make it through an encounter with you where he doesn’t feel like he’s at risk of coming undone.

You’re always hanging out with Lana and Chloe in school and out of it, you’re at the Torch whenever he is, same with the Talon. He’s even come home to find you baking with his mother! What divine power hates him so much that you have to be everywhere he turns?

Sometimes you’re not even doing anything particularly scandalous. The only remotely salacious thing you did while baking was licking the batter off your fingers, and that definitely did send Clark through the loop. Your pure existence anywhere nearby just threw him off.

~~~

You have one thought and one thought only as you walk towards the barn that contains Clark’s little hideaway. The farm is empty besides him - Mr and Mrs Kent are in town at the market, so they’ll be gone for a while. You’ll have plenty of alone time with Clark.

“Clark?” You call as you enter the barn.

“Hey!” He greets, voice a little breathy.

“Can I come up?”

“Yeah, no problem.” You make your way upstairs, finding Clark reading through some book when you reach the top. “Hey, what’s-”

He turns, and the sight he’s met with has him pausing. You’re in a pair of teeny denim shorts, a black cropped tank top with thin straps, and an open button-up. It’s a warm summer’s day and your skin is practically glowing in the light that filters through into the barn. The cute little brown cowboy boots on your feet really tie it together. There’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary about your outfit, but something about it feels different. It feels… he can’t place it. Although maybe it’s just to do with the air you have about you as you stand there.

“What are- what are you doing here?” He asks.

You shrug. “Well, it’s just been such a long, hard day, and I missed you. Kept thinking about you. Thought we could hang out. We haven’t hung out together in ages, you know? Just the two of us.” You’re moving towards him as you speak. Well, it looks like you’re just moving further into the space - pacing, perhaps - but he’s sort of backing away the entire time, keeping equal distance, and you’re turning to match his direction the entire time. “It’s been so long, Clark.”

Your hand grazes over the telescope, but you don’t move it, don’t look in it (which he’s more than thankful for, because it’s currently aimed towards your house).

“Y-yeah, we can hang out.”

“What have you been doing?” You ask, looking around, then at him.

You take off the shirt, and it feels like he’s watching it in slow motion. The way your head turns, the way the material just gently, slowly glides down your smooth skin, and then it’s draped over the back of a chair. You stretch, arms reaching into the air above your head and showing off more bare skin. And as you reach the peak of your stretch, fighting the tension in your muscles and bones, you let out a purposeful moan.

Clark is going to die.

“Uh, just homework,” he says, swallowing to combat the dryness in his mouth as you turn towards him and begin to approach him.

You smile a little. “So smart. You’re so good, Clark.” Well, you and he both know exactly where that comment’s going.

“Uh- hm. Not- I’m not…” He’s backing away from you to keep some distance as you keep walking towards him. His foot hits a metal bucket, a loud clang! ringing around the barn as he stumbles a little.

“Not what, Clark? Not smart? Not good?” Clark glances behind him to make sure that he’s not going to trip over something else or fall down the stairs, and when he turns his head back to face you, he’s shocked to find you directly in front of him.

Your fingers hook onto his belt loops, tugging him closer to you by his hips. His eyes go wide as he looks down, then at you, multiple times in very quick succession, his face the epitome of bewilderment.

“We both know that’s not true, Clark. You’re good. And smart. And strong. You’re amazing.”

“Wh-what are you doing?” He manages.

“Come on, Clark, I know.”

“What?”

“I know how you feel. I get it now. I’ve been totally blind to it because you’re too polite to look. But I want you to. I want you to look. I want you to touch-” His eyes turn wider still, and he’s still looking confused beyond anything. “I want you to taste. I want you to do whatever you want.”

He sees then how dilated your pupils are, how heat radiates off you. You’re not yourself. Whatever’s been going around and getting to people the past few days has reached you. This isn’t you.

But everything he knows points to this thing, whatever it is, exacerbating existing feelings, not creating new ones. So maybe you do really want him. It doesn’t make it any better, though. It’s still taking advantage.

“Y-you’re sick,” he tells you as you lean in and begin to mouth at his neck.

His eyelids flutter and a smile begins to pull at the corners of his lips. No. No, he needs to be responsible. He can’t do this now. Even though you’re handing yourself to him on a silver platter, telling him you want him to. Even though his heightened senses are letting him know the way your heart begins to beat a little faster, the way your breath turns shallow and gaspy, the way you smell as arousal begins to form a little patch in your underwear.

“This isn’t really you. You’re sick.”

“Oh, trust me, Clark, I’ve wanted this for a while.”

“N-no, you’re not yourself. You can’t - ah!” He’s cut off by his own high whine when one hand releases his belt loop and instead directly palms him. His hips buck into your touch involuntarily. “Oh my God.” You apply the slightest bit of pressure, and watch proudly as his eyes roll back momentarily. Oh, he’s pent up. “N-no, no you- you’re sick. This is wrong.”

“Don’t you want me?” You ask.

“Baby, I’ve never wanted anything more than this, but-”

“Then take me!” You whine. “Fuck me!”

“Please,” he tries, although with your hand still on his clothed cock and his neck still tingling with the lasting effect of your kisses, it comes out more like a whine.

You lean up, kissing at his jaw. “What if it makes me feel better? What if it cures me?”

“I-I don’t think-”

“Don’t think, Clark. Please. Just- just let go. Just be with me.”

His eyes shut for a moment. “Fuck,” he breathes out as he reaches his verdict. He turns his head, meeting your lips. It’s a messy clash of tongues, desperate for one another.

You back him towards a desk that’s been set up against a wall, and push at his shoulders to make him sit down. He looks up at you with those angel eyes, pupils blown and eyebrows raised a little, lips pouting and all coming together to create a look that just begs you to ravish him.

You meet his lips with yours again, hands reaching blindly to find the hem of his sweater. You find it, pulling it up and over his head with as much speed as possible, finding that tight white t-shirt underneath.

“Fuckin’ love this shirt,” you mumble, kissing him again. “But I need it gone.”

Clark nods, eagerly reaching to pull the t-shirt over his head. His desperation means it gets stuck a little on the way up, and you have to help him get it off, but you don’t mind. You’re quick to get your hands on him, as he begins to kiss down your neck, you trail your hands over every muscled inch of him.

He sucks a mark into the skin of your neck, kissing over it when he’s done, like a finishing touch. “Oh, Clark,” you breathe out, nails lightly scratching over his stomach. He shivers a little, breath shaking.

Your fingers find his chin, tilting his face up to give him another kiss, before you’re getting to your knees in front of him. He watches with wide, adoring eyes as you begin to undo his jeans, kissing down his stomach as you do.

You make quick work of his jeans, bringing them halfway down his thighs, then pulling his boxers down far enough to free his cock. He looks painfully hard. Clark knows that this is his body’s standard reaction to you. You don’t. You’re also not aware of the way Clark’s thoughts run wild when he fists his cock to the image of you at night. Granted none of his fantasies have ever played out quite like today has, but he’s going to be thinking of this for a very long time.

Your hand wraps around his thick base, and he lets out a precious little gasp. You smile up at him, and from this angle, you look like a fucking enchantress. He swears you’ve got him under some kind of spell.

You move your hand. Clark is ascending to a new plane.

And then, with your hand still pumping him, and as Clark watches, you lean your head closer to his tip. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

You lick over his slit, and his head tilts back against his wishes. He doesn’t want to look away. Doesn’t want to miss a single moment. He wants to bask in the glory of this image forever.

And then your lips wrap around his tip, a sensation like no other, and you press forward, taking him as far as you can. “Oh, baby, please-” he moans, wrangling the urge to flex his hips forward. “Y-yeah, that’s it, honey.”

His head tilts back, eyes fluttering shut as your hand pumps what you can’t fit in your mouth. You watch him through your lashes, waiting for him to look back at you. But he doesn’t.

So you pull off.

Clark just about suppresses the whine that threatens to escape at the loss of the wet heat of your mouth, and instead a rather disappointed sigh leaves him. The world outside your mouth feels cold and lonely.

But you fix it by leaning forwards and beginning to kiss around his pelvis, smirking a little against his skin as he shudders. Your hand is still moving to a steady rhythm, and even though Clark misses the feeling of your mouth, the combined sensation of your slick hand and your kisses on his hips is too good. “Clark, honey,” you mumble, nipping at the skin over his hip bone. He gasps. “Would you look at me?”

“C-can’t,” he denies, shaking his head.

“Why not?”

“Because - oh, God-” You suck his skin just a couple of inches away from his base, disappointed to find no mark when you pull away. “Because if I look at you, I think I might cum.”

You give him a sympathetic look. “What would be so bad about that?”

“I can’t. Not yet. Have to - have to last.”

“Oh, Clark,” you hum with a pout. “It’s okay if you cum. I want you to. We’ll go as long as you can. We’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.” You reach a hand up, smoothing it over the planes of his chest. “Look at me? Please?” Clark nods, looking down and meeting your eyes. “There’re those pretty eyes.”

You plant a final kiss on his hip before taking him in your mouth again. “Oh, please,” he whimpers, his hips twitching.

His hands rest against the desk beneath him, but not gripping it, instead clenching his fists until his knuckles turn white. You reach for one of his hands, guiding it towards you, but Clark shakes his head and pulls it back, placing it firmly on the desk again.

“Keep going, baby, please. I’m almost there.”

You pull away to breathe, jerking him off with newfound speed, and Clark’s breaths turn into panting moans. This time, when he feels the urge to throw his head back, he fights it. He holds the eye contact you’re giving him, just like you’d asked.

“Let go for me, Clark. Wanna see it. Wanna taste it.” Your tongue meets his tip as you wrap your mouth around the blushing tip of his cock, and you drag along his slit.

“Yeah. Right there. Yes, yes, fuck!”

Clark crumbles as he cums, shooting spurts onto your tongue and moaning through it, your hand and mouth working him through the pleasure and milking him for all he’s worth.

You grin up at him, kissing the head of his cock, and standing. He lifts a hand, cupping your face and shifting some fallen hair, smiling at you, blissed-out and awe-struck.

He leans forwards, catching your lips in a sweet kiss. “Couch?” You mumble, and he nods, taking your hands in his as he walks towards the couch. He sits down on it, an old and worn piece of furniture - but it’ll do. It looks sturdy enough.

You sink into his lap, knees either side of his hips, kissing him. You blindly find his hands, pulling them to the button of your shorts. The way his fingers move to get you out of those shorts is nothing short of eager, quick and fumbling in his desperation to become impossibly closer to you.

He finally gets the button undone and the zipper down, and you clamber off him, pushing the shorts down till they hit the floor, and you step out of them. Clark sits forward, pretty green eyes gazing up at you, flickering down to the hem of your tank top.

His nose nudges at the skin revealed beneath the bottom, and he takes a long breath in, eyes closed, as though he’s savouring a sweet smell. Through all this, though, his hands remain balled into fists at his sides. He doesn’t grip the couch cushions like you’d expect, doesn’t dare touch you, for whatever reason.

You toy with the hem of your tank top for a moment, Clark watching with hopeful eyes, and then you pull it up and over your head. You hook a finger into the band of your underwear - another light blue set Clark remembers fantasising about, silk and lace and matching the bra - and pause. “You wanna help me take these off, Clark?” He nods, lifting his hands and hooking his fingers into the material on your hips, tugging them down gently.

“Oh-” he breathes out. You push him back softly with a hand on his chest, straddling him again. His eyes trail down from yours, landing on your clothed chest.

You laugh a little. “Touch me, Clark. Then I’ll take it off and you can get a look.”

“Y-yeah. Yeah. Okay.”

You smile, grabbing one of his hands and guiding it to your core, fingers gently stroking over your folds. One finger slips through, and Clark almost gasps.

He’s slow with it at first, tentative, until you kiss him and whisper, “Clark, please.”

He adds a finger, finds a rhythm, faster, but still so gentle, like he’s afraid he’ll hurt you. He curls his fingers just right, prompting a moan from you.

“Oh, God,” he whispers to himself at the feel of how wet you are. Because of him.

You reach a hand between you, middle and index finger on your clit, and you begin to rub tight circles, gasping at the spike in pleasure.

Clark is watching every response to every bit of stimulation, and he looks down at your moving fingers. “Does it- does it feel good when you do that?” He asks. You nod. He meets your eyes, innocent as can be for someone who’s got two fingers buried inside you. “I want- can I?” He asks.

“Uh-huh.” Clark replaces your fingers with the thumb of his free hand. His hands are huge. You’ve thought about it before, plenty, about Clark’s large hands on you, on your chest or cupping your ass, but now that you’re actually with him in this setting, the thought turns you on even more. If only he didn’t seem scared to touch you.

“Am I-” Clark begins, looking up at you with hopeful eyes.

“You’re doing so good Clark,” you praise. “So good. Please.”

He leans forwards, kissing your neck, collarbone, down until he finds the tops of your breasts. He kisses you there too, while his fingers below speed up in their rhythm, driving you closer and closer to the edge.

“Clark- Clark, oh, please.”

“Good?” He questions.

“Yes. Yes. Don’t stop, please don’t stop.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, breathless.

Your hips begin to move with the rhythm of his fingers, and Clark watches in awe as you do, adding pressure to your clit and practically doubling his speed. Your eyes go wide at the feeling, intense but so, so good. He’s so fast, you think it’s inhuman. In fact you’re pretty sure it has to be.

“Hhhmmmm, Clark, how are - fuck, oh, God - how are you doing that?”

Clark doesn’t respond, and you don’t get the chance to ask again because all of a sudden, your orgasm crashes over you in a heavy wave that feels like it’ll never end.

You collapse onto him, legs trembling and chest heaving. You bite into his shoulder, hard enough to break skin possibly, which you feel bad for, but he doesn’t seem hurt by it.

“Oh my God, Clark. That was incredible.” You lean back, cupping Clark’s jaw and tilting his head so he meets your eyes.

“Can I- can you, uh…?” His gaze lowers to your chest momentarily, and you smile. Your hands reach for his wrists, lifting them up, pushing his fingers towards his mouth. He knows what you want, and he complies wordlessly, sticking his fingers in his mouth and licking them clean of your slick.

“That’s it,” you hum, guiding his hands to your back, to the clasp of the bra.

He unhooks it, dragging the straps down your arms, and discards it to the side. He stares at your bare chest in complete awe, green eyes shining.

You reach down, pumping his cock to get him good and ready, and Clark still struggles to shift his gaze. “You ready?” You ask, and he nods.

You push yourself up on your knees, and Clark’s eyes widen a little suddenly. “Wait, wait, what about protection?”

“I’m on the pill,” you say. “And I’m clean. Are you?”

“Yeah.”

“And do you still want to do this?”

“More than anything.”

“Good.” You line him up with your entrance, and sink down onto him.

If Clark thought anything before was good, this was a whole new level of ecstasy. “Fuck, oh my God,” he gasps.

His hands clench into fists at his sides again. You ignore it for now, even though you want nothing more than to feel his hands on you.

You begin to move, starting with a slow rhythm to ease Clark into it, and hooking your arms around his neck, kissing him. “You feel so good,” he whispers. “You’re tight, and wet, and warm.” He kisses you softly. “Baby, please.”

“I know.” You pick up your pace, bouncing on his lap, smiling at the way he moans. Your ass meets his thighs with a rhythmic plap! plap! plap! sound, your hands clinging to his shoulders for some stability, because he’s still not touching you, and more than confused, you’re starting to feel even a little insulted.

You kiss his pulse point, just beneath his jaw, and bite at his earlobe. Your hands slide up to his hair, giving a tug, and he moans. You notice his hands twitch, but he doesn’t touch you.

“Why won’t you touch me, Clark?” You ask, leaning back and slowing your hips.

He meets your eyes, guilt flashing through. “I-I just… I’m really strong.”

“I know,” you say, one hand squeezing at his bicep.

“N-no. I mean… like, really strong. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m not fragile, Clark.”

“I know, but - I’m inhumanly strong. And if something goes wrong…”

“I don’t care. It’s a minor risk. You know what I do care about? The fact that I have an insanely hot guy under me who refuses to touch me. And my legs feel like they’re gonna give out. So unless you want this to stop right now, you’re gonna have to take the risk.”

He nods. “Are you sure? I don’t want-”

“You won’t hurt me, Clark. I trust you.”

He nods again, hands finally finding your hips, and with the aforementioned inhuman strength lifts you up and lays you down on the couch, crawling on top of you.

“There we go,” you say, grinning and looping your arms behind his neck.

Clark slips back into you, beginning to thrust slowly. “You look so pretty under me,” he muses.

“Clark, you can’t just say that to a girl,” you giggle. He laughs a little, kissing you softly. He’s still keeping a slow pace, which you presume comes from the fear of hurting you accidentally by using too much force, but you’re impatient. “Clark, can you go faster?”

“Y-yeah. Yeah.” He speeds up, and props himself up with one arm above your head, while the other heads south, fingers finding your clit and beginning to rub circles onto it, just like before.

“That’s good. That’s good.”

He nods, and more sounds begin to flood from his mouth, matching your moans. “Oh, God, baby. You feel so good. You’re so good. So pretty.”

“You’re doing so well Clark,” you tell him. You wonder about his strength, about what he means by inhuman. Certainly, there was something inhuman about his speed earlier as he worked your clit. “Do I get to see this inhuman strength later?”

“Uh- I probably-”

“Please?” You clench around him for a moment.

He falters, hips stuttering a little as a whimper escapes him. “If you do that, I think I’d give you anything you wanted.”

“So I can see?”

“Yeah, you can see. I’ll show you. Promise, baby.”

Clark lets out a breathy moan, head falling into the crook of your neck as his hips gain speed, and he adjusts his thrusts to match it. “Are you close, Clark?”

He nods. He hardly trusts his voice. “Just need a moment.”

“It’s okay. You can cum.”

He shakes his head. “Not before you.” God, you’d think his invulnerability would give him some advantage in holding out, but poor Clark’s so sensitive that every stroke feels like absolute heaven and it feels like he’s barrelling full-force to what will no doubt be the most incredible finish of his life.

And then his fingers are moving against your clit just as fast as before, if not faster, desperate to get you to finish before he does. “Oh my God, Clark, what the fuck? How are you doing that?” A loud moan escapes you. “Fuck-”

“You like that?” He asks.

“Fuck, yes. What other inhuman abilities are you hiding from me?”

“I’ll tell you later?”

“You better.”

He leans down, kisses everywhere he can reach, your jaw, your neck, your chest, your lips, even drags your earlobe between his teeth and gives it a gentle bite. You really don’t care about Clark hurting you, because it doesn’t exist as a thought in your mind that he could. He wouldn’t ever lay a hand on you, and you know that. In fact, at this point you’d willingly let him throw you against a wall and take you there.

“Clark, I - I’m close. Please.”

“I’ve got you. It’s okay, baby.” He adjusts himself to grab your hand, holding it by your head and intertwining his fingers with yours.

You lift your head, searching for his lips, and he’s more than happy to gift you a kiss, soft in comparison to the speed and desperation of his thrusts. You moan into his mouth as you reach your climax, body twitching as Clark carries you through it, your walls clenching around him like a vice, drawing a particularly loud moan from him.

“That’s it,” he hums as you come down from your high. “You okay?”

You nod, a blissed smile on your face. “So okay.”

You card your fingers through his hair, pulling lightly, and Clark moans. “I’m close, baby. Please, I need it. Need it so bad. Can I - where do you want me to-”

“Inside,” you say. “Want to feel it.”

“Okay.”

His eyes meet yours properly, finding your dilated pupils, hazy eyes, and the utter joy in them, and that’s all it takes for him to be thrown headfirst into his own climax. He presses his forehead to yours, gasping your name as he spills his load inside of you. “God, you feel so good. Oh, fuck.”

“There you go. That’s so good, Clark,” you praise, kissing him and swallowing his whimper. “You’re so good, honey.”

Clark pants as he slows to a stop, giving you a soft kiss before he pulls out. He watches in awe at the way his cum drips out of you and onto the couch beneath you.

“You were amazing, Clark.”

“You were incredible,” he says, smiling at you.

You pull him onto you and wrap your arms around him, smiling when he does the same to you.

Needless to say, when Clark later demonstrates his inhuman strength by lifting a literal tractor above his head (not forgetting the joke you made when you met him about him benching a tractor), you’re quick to drag him up to his room before he can show you all the other superpowers he possesses. Although he does a damn good job of showing you that super strength.

taglist;

@mariswxt @blueeweeb @ssnapsaurus @i-got-a-bad-feeling-about-this @milestellerismybf @purple-1995 @writergiih @elysianrosie @glennussy @rainwaterxx @brinascorpio @withthistreaserisummon @babble28 @mollymal @alexcole1326 @mizzfizz @jiminie1028

#muse: clark #clark kent imagine #clark kent smut #clark kent x reader #smallville clark kent #smallville clark kent x reader

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darkmatilda · 3 months ago

Text

𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫 | 𝐬.𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: you join the team as a replacement after jj's departure. despite the initial stress and difficulties adapting, you manage to fully connect with the rest of the team. more than that—you make friends. and fall in love. but after unexpected events and returns, your time with them comes to an end—because, in the end, you were only a placeholder.

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬/𝐭𝐰: spencer reid x bau!female reader, reader is an anxious overthinker whom i want to hug so badly, my intention was not to antagonize jj and i don't want it to be perceived that way, possibly incorrect infodump about tiramisu—offended italians, please don’t come to my house with torches and forks, melancholic, sad ending aka matilda's standard

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬: 5.3k

𝐚/𝐧: anon's request

6 months ago…

If you look at it in a certain way, almost everything started with tiramisu. Or rather, it started with your conversation with Penelope—overheard by Rossi—where you boasted about being an expert at making this Italian dessert. Or perhaps the most accurate statement would be that it started with JJ. After all, you were brought into the Behavioral Analysis Unit as her replacement — their new, young media liaison, meant to gain more experience through the role.

Anyway, that Saturday evening, you felt a slight chill on your shoulders as you stepped out of the car, clutching a massive tray of freshly made tiramisu and silently praying not to drop it before making it inside. Rossi’s house—excuse me, his mansion—truly looked impressive.

You couldn’t say you weren’t nervous. In fact, you were absolutely terrified—and not because of what the senior member of your new team might say about your baking skills. It was something else entirely.Eeryone had been invited that evening, including the team members you hadn’t yet gotten to know outside of work. Your relationship with them was strictly professional, and more often than not, you caught yourself wanting to appear flawless in their eyes. To prove that, despite your lack of experience, you were worthy of taking on this role. That, despite your relatively young age, you were mature and responsible.

So yes, you were nervous. In fact, the anxiety grew with every step you took toward the door, your grip on the tray tightening until your knuckles turned white.That didn’t stop you from almost dropping it when you suddenly jumped at the sound of your name spoken from behind.

"Oh my—" you gasped, inhaling sharply, instinctively wanting to clutch your chest—except both your hands were occupied.

Spencer Reid's brown eyes widened as he realized just how badly he had startled you.

"Sorry, I didn’t mean to—"

"It’s fine," you assured him, nodding a little too quickly. You took a slower breath, feeling slightly embarrassed. You worked with people who hunted serial killers for a living, delved into the darkest, most nightmarish cases—and yet, you nearly had a heart attack just because someone called your name.

In your defense, you were a woman alone at night, and a tray of tiramisu wasn’t exactly the deadliest weapon.Noticing the guilt still lingering on his face, you forced a smile and lifted the tray slightly. "I mean it. As long as I didn’t drop the cake, everything’s fine."

He stood before you with his hands tucked into the pockets of his dark coat, a purple scarf draped around his neck. The corners of his lips lifted slightly at your response, but you knew it was just a polite gesture—there was nothing particularly amusing about what you’d said.

You suddenly became aware of the silence stretching between you, neither of you moving, the moment teetering on the edge of awkwardness. You cleared your throat. Maybe you should compliment the scarf. You couldn’t help but feel a little intimidated by him.

After all, this was Dr. Spencer Reid—the man whose name had once reached your ears and settled somewhere in your thoughts, cementing itself under the label of genius. That was the lens through which you saw him, having yet to familiarize yourself with any of his other traits.

What you had noticed, however, was that he seemed to prefer keeping you at a distance. And yes, it all traced back to your first meeting—your first greeting, your first outstretched hand, and the first, slightly awkward:

It’s actually safer to kiss.

“You think we’re the first ones here?" you asked, just before pressing the doorbell. Then, hesitating, you bit the inside of your cheek. "Actually…maybe we’re a little too early."

"I think we’re fine," he replied. "Rossi said eight."

You gave a small nod. The door swung open.

“What are you doing here so early?" You and Spencer exchanged a glance.

"If I remember correctly—and I do—you said eight. It’s eight."

"Decent people show up fashionably late."

"And then you’d complain that the younger generation doesn’t respect your time."

You watched the exchange in silence, noticing the flicker of amusement in both men’s eyes. Of course, they weren’t actually arguing—just friendly banter. Still, something about it caught your attention. You wondered if you’d ever feel comfortable enough around them to join in like that.

He stepped aside to let you both in, and as you crossed the threshold, you realized you hadn’t said a word yet.

“As promised," you started, nodding toward the dessert in your hands. "My specialty."

Rossi raised an eyebrow at you.

"We’ll see about that. “

But he did take the tray from you while you slipped off your coat.

"I was actually about to make an important call," he announced. "Before someone decided to show up early. So, if you’ll excuse me, you’ll have to entertain yourselves for a bit. Be so kind as not to destroy my kitchen. Everyone else should be here soon."

And with that, he simply left you there.

Reid clearly knew his way around the house—he had to—because without hesitation, he led you straight to the kitchen, where you set the dessert down on the black marble countertop. And just like that, the two of you were left alone, connected by a slightly awkward silence.

"Maybe I should cut it," you mused, your gaze falling on the tiramisu. "Rossi wouldn’t mind if I used his knives, right?"

"I don’t think so," he said, standing on the other side of the kitchen island, made of white wood with plenty of drawers.

To your surprise, you realized he was watching your movements. He, on the other hand, didn’t seem to realize that you noticed it from the corner of your eye. Or maybe you were imagining it, but you could swear you heard him swallow.

"You know, there are many theories about when and how tiramisu was actually invented," he remarked.

"I don't think I've heard any of them," you admitted, glancing around for a knife. "I mean, I can make it, but I can’t explain…the historical context behind it"

He leaned his elbows on the counter, briefly lowering his gaze to his hands. The sleeves of his purple shirt remained slightly rolled up, not quite reaching his wrists.

"It originated in Italy, of course. And the most popular version says it was invented in the 1960s in Treviso. At least, before that period, the name doesn’t appear in any sources."

Focused on cutting the cake evenly, unconsciously sticking out the tip of your tongue, you couldn’t muster any reaction, but you listened intently. Spencer, however, seemed to think otherwise—after briefly glancing at your face, he looked away, apparently deciding to drop the topic.

"What does it mean?" you asked. Your eyes met, and for a moment, he looked surprised. "I mean, what does the name mean?" you clarified with a gentle smile. "I should probably expand my knowledge. What if Rossi decides to quiz me?"

After a brief moment, a small, friendly smile bloomed on his lips.

"Well, in that case, I’ll do my best to prepare you."

You hadn’t been working together for long, but even so, you had already discovered—fascinated—that he was a true wellspring of knowledge, with no apparent limits to his mind. Sometimes, he would lose his train of thought—you had noticed that too. And sometimes, he would stumble when he realized it himself. You found it somewhat endearing. Or at the very least, well…you liked listening to it.

Somewhere around the time you had been acquainted with three theories about its origin, the etymology of its name, the original recipe and its variations, as well as a few interesting fun facts about tiramisu—which you listened to without even realizing that you were still holding the knife despite having finished cutting the cake—the sound of the host’s footsteps reached you. But they weren’t headed in your direction. Instead, he made his way to the door to let the other guests in.

You tried to relax your shoulders, aiming to appear at ease. Bodies are often treacherous and rarely care about how you wish to be perceived. Instead, they ignore your intentions and take cues from your subconscious—and subconsciously, you were stressed.

You quietly scolded yourself, shaking your head slightly. After all, they were all profilers—experts at reading body language. As if on cue, just as the thought crossed your mind, you accidentally caught Reid’s gaze fixed on you. You shrugged, the corners of your lips lifting slightly, feigning ignorance.

Truthfully, you weren’t entirely sure what was going through your own head. Maybe it was that deep-seated belief that you always had to present yourself at your best—worthy of this job. Even though this was supposed to be a casual gathering, off the clock, in your free time.

“You guys already here?” Prentiss raised an eyebrow, glancing between you and Spencer on opposite sides of the kitchen island. Hotch followed behind her, nodding in greeting. “We’re not late, are we?”

“We’re late?” Penelope’s voice rang out as she peeked into the room, her head appearing in the doorway. She stopped short, and Morgan, walking right behind her, gently grabbed her shoulders to keep from bumping into her.

“It’s just me, baby girl,” he reassured her, a faint smirk on his lips. “Or maybe too much me, judging by that jump. Hey, everyone. Reid. New girl. Good to see you. Not sick of us yet after this week, are you?"

"Oh, come on, don’t act like we’re that unbearable," Prentiss chided, shooting him a look.

By then, everyone had made their way inside, starting to take seats on the high bar stools. You stood there, returning smiles and greetings, and let Garcia pull you into a hug. Derek called you New girl. While you'd grown to like him, the nickname didn’t sit quite right with you. It highlighted your place in the team, making it clear that you weren’t quite like the rest of them.

"Actually, the way we perceive ourselves can be different from how we really are, simply because of how much time we spend together," Spencer mused aloud.

"You might be onto something," Morgan nodded at him, then turned his gaze back to you. "Let’s get an outside opinion. Are we unbearable?"

"You are," Rossi confirmed immediately, not even glancing up from the wine bottle in his hands, likely searching for the vintage.

"I said outside opinion."

Then, all the curious gazes had settled on you. Up until now, your hands had rested casually on the counter, but you pulled them away to hide how anxiously they were moving. Spencer tracked the motion with his eyes—something you caught in your peripheral vision, and you had to resist the urge to curse under your breath. Hiding your anxiety from these people, especially from him, was proving harder than you’d expected.

You hesitated, searching for the perfect answer. You often caught yourself doing this in social situations—as if this were a test question with only one correct response, rather than a casual conversation where anything you said would be fine as long as it was honest.

That evening, everyone seemed to be in good spirits. They were joking easily, teasing one another, and now that all their attention was focused on you, you wanted to say something that would blend you into the moment, something that would break the ice. This was your first time meeting outside of work.

But the longer you stayed silent, the more the right words slipped away from you. It was like a black curtain had suddenly dropped over your mind.

"Who wants to try the tiramisu?" you blurted out at last.

An unbearable awkwardness tightened around your chest—but then, to your surprise, Prentiss laughed, setting off the rest of the group.

"I’m not accepting this subject change," Morgan shook his head.

"I, on the other hand, think it was a good move. Almost diplomatic," Spencer countered. His gaze flickered toward you for a brief second, and you caught something there—though you weren’t entirely sure what. Understanding, maybe? Either way, you felt the urge to flash a grateful smile at both him and Emily.

But Spencer quickly refocused on Derek, directing his next words at him. "Because the real answer could be…” he lowered his voice dramatically, "…mercilessly brutal."

“Oh, you’re all wrong," Penelope rolled her eyes. "Obviously, she was going to say she’s already fallen in love with all of us. Right, sweetheart?" She turned to you but didn’t wait for an answer—actually, you didn’t even have time to move, let alone speak. "See? Just like I said. Now, let’s try that cake, because I can’t stand the way it’s looking at me with those heavenly little eyes..."

The tight, complicated knot in your stomach started to loosen, little by little. Garcia’s suggestion was met with general enthusiasm and quickly turned into action. Naturally, Rossi had to be the first to take a bite. Everyone’s eyes locked onto him as he slowly swallowed a microscopic piece, as if he were some renowned food critic. You could see amusement on everyone’s faces—even Hotch’s—which was a completely new experience for you.

After a long, tension-filled moment, Rossi gave a slight nod of approval.

You placed a hand over your chest in mock relief.

“That’s the proudest I’ve felt since I got my diploma," you said casually—straightforward, natural, without overthinking.

Maybe you really were starting to open up.

Time moved forward at a gentle pace, and while you didn’t suddenly become the life of the party, the friendly atmosphere started to get to you. You all opened the bottle of wine the host had brought, raising your glasses in a toast to whatever came to mind—after all, there was no real occasion to celebrate.

You noticed that Spencer wasn’t drinking, but he still joined in, lifting a handful of chips instead. The sight made you smile softly before you could stop yourself.

He noticed you watching him. In the background, conversation buzzed, someone laughed loudly, but for a moment, it felt like the two of you were elsewhere.

“Well…” he started, swallowing nervously. You hoped he didn’t feel pressured into making conversation just because you were looking at him. Though, another thought crept in—what other reason could he have for feeling awkward? Only after a beat did you realize that you often felt that way too, for no particular reason. That was just how you were. Apparently, so was he.

“What did you do before?” he asked, then immediately backtracked. “I mean, I know what, of course I know—that’s public information, if you know what I mean. I just meant more like…” He sighed, lowering his gaze for a second, as if exhausted by his own rambling. Then, he tried again, slower this time. “I meant, how do you feel about it? And about the change?”

His question piqued the interest of the others, their gazes shifting back to you. Whatever had momentarily set the two of you apart from the group vanished in an instant.

Just as you opened your mouth to respond, a sound cut through the conversation.

“That’s mine, sorry,” Prentiss apologized, reaching into her pocket for her ringing phone. She didn’t even glance at the screen at first, her thumb already poised to decline the call—until she hesitated. Her expression shifted in an instant, lighting up with surprise. “Oh my God, it’s JJ!”

Everyone reacted similarly, and you tried to mirror their excitement, summoning a smile to your face—though it lacked sincerity. It wasn’t out of any personal dislike toward Jareau; nothing like that. You had met her, of course—you were taking her place, after all, and she had to introduce you to everything quickly. But it hadn’t been enough to form a deep friendship, or any friendship at all. That made you the only one in this group who felt completely neutral about her.

“Oh, you have to answer,” Penelope urged, nodding enthusiastically. “Totally. And tell her I say hi!”

“And me,” Spencer and Morgan added almost simultaneously.

“From all of us,” Hotch clarified, with Rossi confirming it with a nod.

Prentiss stood from her seat, clearly intending to step out of the kitchen to take the call in private—it was meant for her, after all. But just before she left, she hesitated in the doorway, as if mentally going over the instructions.

“Say hi from everyone. Got it,” she muttered under her breath.

“Especially from Penelope.”

“And from—”

“Everyone. Got it.”

When Prentiss’ dark hair disappeared from view, a brief silence settled over the group, broken only by Garcia’s deep sigh.

“I miss her. A lot.”

“It’s not like she died, babygirl,” Derek responded with a teasing edge, though something in his tone—between the words—carried a similar feeling.

“Ugh, you know what I mean,” Garcia huffed at him. “I miss having her with us. At work. In the team. Remember…remember how she always used to…”

She drifted into a story, weaving nostalgic but ultimately amused expressions onto her friends’ faces. You caught a glimpse of Spencer out of the corner of your eye, wondering if he still remembered the question he had asked you before the phone rang. But his gaze was fixed on Garcia, listening to her tale with a small smile forming at the corners of his lips.

You tuned out for a moment, lost in your own thoughts, only to be pulled back to reality by an outburst of laughter. You had missed a good chunk of the story—though you weren’t sure if it mattered. Some anecdotes, especially the ones built on shared memories, were meant for everyone’s ears but truly reached only those who had been there. You suspected this was one of them, but still, you joined in on the laughter. Even if you hadn’t caught the joke, you didn’t want to dampen the mood with a blank expression.

You tried to push away the feeling of not belonging. It was difficult at first, but then you realized—that wasn’t the way. You couldn’t push it away; you had to accept it. Because the truth was, you didn’t quite belong. Or rather, you hadn’t belonged long enough. That was natural. You would feel this way for who knows how long, but certainly for a while. As long as the nickname New Girl still clung to you.

Surprisingly, that very acceptance made the rest of the evening easier to get through. Prentiss returned after a while, briefly summarizing what JJ had been up to, but the conversation didn’t linger on her. The knot in your stomach didn’t tighten again. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was something else. Maybe, for the first time, you were starting to feel okay.

now

You recalled that specific moment in your memories, simultaneously sinking into it as if it were happening in real time, yet with the suffocating weight of reality breathing down your neck—a voice whispering that it was just a memory.

If it were happening now, Emily wouldn’t have left the room to take the call. No phone would have even rung. Emily was gone. You had just been to her funeral.

At an hour when most people were deep in sleep, when street advertisements and billboards cut through the darkness, illuminating the city more effectively than the stars ever could, you were half-sitting, half-lying on your bed, your back pressed against the headboard. The dark room was filled with nothing but shapes, mere outlines of furniture—just like your mind was filled only with fragments and silhouettes of thoughts. Frayed, scattered, following no chronology or pattern.

It had been six months since you joined the BAU. Some might say that’s not enough time to form real friendships. But in a job where you could die any day, six months was plenty. In those circumstances, attachment only formed faster.

Your eyelids burned with exhaustion, but you couldn’t close them. With a heavy weight in your chest, for reasons you couldn’t quite explain, you kept replaying that moment—that evening at Rossi’s. Those conversations echoed vividly in your mind, but over time, they began to fade, pushed aside by another sound.

Breathing.

Not yours.

Oh. Right.

That night, you didn’t sleep alone.

While you sat on the bed, Spencer lay on his side, his back turned to you, his head resting somewhere near your hip. You weren’t sure how it had happened.

Sleeping in the same bed wasn’t something natural for the two of you—not as just friends. Though over the past two months, that label might have been debatable in the eyes of many. You had never really defined it between yourselves, so you kept calling it friendship.

You weren’t exactly sure how it had happened that night, specifically. After the funeral, after that entire exhausting day, when the sun had set, you had somehow, instinctively, ended up moving in the same direction—toward his apartment. And somehow, instinctively, you had kept postponing the moment of leaving. But when it finally came, his lips had somehow, instinctively, formed the word stay.

So you stayed, changing out of your funeral attire into one of his random T-shirts, the scent of it tickling your nose as you finally lay down, your back turned to him.

You knew he wasn’t asleep either, but what could you say? What could you do? In moments like these, everyone was alone in their own way. Maybe that was why it was so important to have someone there, physically—but even that didn’t quite apply to your situation. His bed wasn’t huge, but it was big enough that neither of you touched. So, in a way, you were alone in both senses, but it didn’t sting as much, mostly because of the scent surrounding you, wrapping around you like an embrace.

You even managed to close your eyes—not that it meant you’d actually sleep. In fact, you felt just as far from it as when they were wide open. At least they didn’t burn anymore.

At some point—after an amount of time you couldn’t track—the scent deepened, became stronger. You tensed, unsure why, until it finally dawned on you with a quiet exhale.

It wasn’t just the scent of his T-shirt. It was him.

Moving closer.

First just slightly, then more. Until eventually, his arm draped over your curled-up frame, his hand settling somewhere against your stomach, where the fabric of the blanket bunched up.

A delicate tickle against your neck. His breath, his head almost nestled in the crook of it.

Definitely awake—you could tell by the rhythm.

And it was him. Spencer.

It’s actually safer to kiss Spencer.

"Are you awake?" he asked, so quietly the words barely brushed the air. There was a chance they hadn’t even spoken at all. Maybe it was just the sound of his breath, somehow resembling them. Maybe it was just your exhausted imagination.

Still, you chose to answer.

"No," you murmured. "I can't sleep."

"Me neither," he added, though that much was obvious. A shift of his head, an unconscious brush against your neck, sending the faintest shiver down your spine. “Does this bother you?"

"It’s nice," you said softly, unsure of what else you could add. You didn’t really want to speak. His words melted smoothly into the quiet, while yours cut through it—harsh, even when you tried to whisper.

Maybe he took it as hesitation, because his body tensed for a brief second before he started to pull away.

"No…" You tried to stop him, your hand catching his forearm—the one holding you. "Just…stay."

"Oh. Okay."

As if following your request to the letter, he stayed exactly where he was. More than that, he seemed to settle into it even further. The pressure of his chest against your back felt good. You heard him swallow, close to your ear. “Th-thank you. I don’t think…I don’t think I could—I don’t think I’d be able to fall asleep alone. Not tonight.”

You didn’t let go of his hand. Instead, you just adjusted your grip, holding it more comfortably.

And just when you were starting to come to terms with it, you suddenly found out that Emily was still alive. You could say she had never died, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. Well, in a way, yes—her body never stopped functioning, nor was it buried in a coffin. But in your minds, in your belief, in your feelings, it was different. You buried her and went through the grieving process. To you, she was dead.

When she reappeared, everything was too chaotic to dwell on it. There was no shock, no tears—you had your hands full, focused on capturing Doyle.

The realization of it all began to sink in for you, as well as for the rest of the team, only later. She had faked her death. She had allowed you to mourn her. And what was even more shocking to you—JJ had known all along. You knew the two of them trusted each other deeply, but in some way, you couldn't grasp it. How she could stand beside you at the funeral, shedding a few tears, offering comforting pats on the back. How she could keep up the act for days, weeks, and months.

You knew Spencer was furious with her. It was obvious—the anger was clear in his eyes. But even if he had tried to hide it, you would have known. Because ever since Emily's supposed death, the two of you had grown even closer.

Nights spent side by side had become something that no longer required a quiet request; they had become entirely natural for you both. That was how you saw it—a way for two friends to cope with grief and sleepless hours.

You probably should have talked about your relationship. It was something you thought about often—when his sleepy breath brushed against your neck, when his lips occasionally grazed it while he spoke. You should have talked, but that didn’t mean you did.

Maybe you were both too focused on other things to worry about your feelings for each other.

Either way, at first, he was furious with her. You accidentally overheard part of their argument about it, just as you were also an accidental witness to the embrace they pulled each other into when they finally decided to let it go.

A certain skepticism lingered within you. Of course, you didn’t want to dictate whom he could forgive or what he was allowed to demand—that was his decision alone. You understood that. And yet, you couldn’t stop thinking about how you were the one who had watched what those past months had done to him. How close he had come to slipping back into that.

When his relationship with JJ had finally returned to normal, you couldn’t hold back anymore—you tried to bring it up.

All you got in response was You wouldn’t understand.

And perhaps he was right. Some things simply weren’t yours to understand—not as someone who had only recently entered his life. Unlike JJ, you hadn’t been there for years.

As they quickly rebuilt their trust, their dynamic, their friendship, a strange, somber thought crossed your mind. You started wondering if, from the very beginning, you had only been filling the space she left behind—just as you had done with the team, stepping into her role.

Before, you had convinced yourself that his friendship with her was entirely different from what he had with you. Because with you, you had foolishly believed, it wasn’t just friendship.

But the more time passed, the more you started to realize that maybe—maybe that had only ever been wishful thinking.

These were the kind of worries you kept entirely to yourself, but at the same time, they gnawed at you from the inside, needing to be shared with someone.

You wanted to talk to someone about it, but there was no one to turn to. I mean, everything was the same as always. Everyone loved JJ—they never stopped—and you were the new, younger girl who might have seemed like she was speaking badly about her out of pure, immature jealousy.

Until now, aside from Spencer, the person you were closest to was Prentiss, but for obvious reasons, you couldn’t go to her. Besides, she would have chosen JJ over you too. That was undeniable.

And that’s how, somehow, you ended up standing outside Penelope’s office, telling yourself that maybe she would understand.

But just as you were about to open the door, doubt crept in. You sighed and leaned your back against the wall. Maybe, when it came to this, there was simply no one on the team you could turn to.

You abandoned the idea entirely, yet your feet refused to move. There was so much internal, mental exhaustion weighing you down. So many sleepless nights, so much stress and worry, so much uncertainty and so many questions.

You heard footsteps approaching. Turning your head to the side, you saw Hotch stopping just two steps away from you. For a moment, he simply looked at you in silence, studying your face.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," you replied flatly. You couldn’t breathe properly. You already knew—had known the moment he stopped—that he wasn’t here to ask about how you were feeling.

"Just tired."

He gave a slow nod.

"I need to have a word with you."

Pressing your teeth into the inside of your cheek, you nodded back.

You didn’t actually keep many personal things in the office.

You made sure the rest of the team had been sent out into the field before you started packing them into a small box. They fit easily—it wasn’t even heavy. And yet, as you stared at it sitting on your desk, it felt impossibly difficult to lift.

You guessed flawlessly what Hotch wanted to talk to you about because, in a way, it was obvious.

JJ was back. Emily was back. The team had too many members now, and someone had to go. And the choice was just as obvious.

Honestly, you weren’t even angry. It had to be you—the placeholder.

But if you were aware of that, why did something bitter nest in your throat?

Before you could take even two steps forward toward the exit, Spencer had already reached you, hesitantly extending his hands.

"Let me help—"

"No need," you said, tucking the box under your arm, keeping it out of his reach.

For a moment, you both just stared at each other in silence. You had no idea what to say. In fact, it was hard to even look at him. That was why you wanted to do this alone—to just leave quietly. You didn't even know why he was there. You must have miscalculated something, or maybe they had simply come back earlier.

His lips pressed into a thin line, and for a moment, he, too, remained silent. Walking past him now would signal anger, resentment—but that wasn’t exactly what you felt. So you stood in front of him, waiting for him to speak.

"You're leaving," he finally said, swallowing hard. A statement of fact he could have easily left unsaid. Adjusting the box in your arms, you simply nodded.

"I mean—what I wanted to say is… just remember that you're my friend. And I hope you still will be, even…even if we’re not working together. This doesn’t really change anything."

But if you hadn’t worked together, you never would have met. Never would have grown close. Besides, it wasn’t even the job that had stood in your way. It was something else—something simpler, because it depended only on the two of you, yet for that very reason, it was also much more complicated. Specifically, communication.

"I know," you admitted with a slight nod, though without much conviction.

Spencer tried to smile, briefly catching your gaze—one you immediately dropped to the box in your hands before he could read anything from your eyes.

"I have to go now. This is starting to get a little heavy."

"You know, I can really help you—"

"It's fine," you cut him off firmly. "It's really fine, Spencer."

He let out a quiet sigh of surrender as you headed toward the exit.

#criminal minds fic #criminal minds angst #criminal minds #spence reid #spencer reid criminal minds #spencer reid angst #doctor spencer reid #dr spencer reid #spencer reid #dr spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid fic

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robynlilyblack · 6 months ago

Text

But you’re over here

Fred Weasley x fem! shy! Potter! Reader

Summary: During the final game of the season, a certain redhead couldn’t care less about the trophy

Warnings/tags: swearing, friends to lovers, first kiss, getting together, mutual pining, Hufflepuff reader, potter reader, James being a good dad, Cedric being the best wing and hype man, Jess, Timothy and Joey OCs, marauders being parents

A/n: 4.4k words, ngl the alchemy plays in my head during this kiss scene, apologies for any mistakes I'm a bit ill right now, as always reader can be the bio or adopted older daughter of James and Lily, based on this and this requests ♡

Navigation | Fred Weasley Masterlist

“Oh boy, oh boy!” James claps his hands, rubbing them together in excitement as he, Lily, Remus, and Sirius reach the top of the stands

Lily giggles at her husband's enthusiasm, following him to the front row, while Remus and Sirius brace themselves at the top, catching their breaths after a quite frankly atrocious number of stairs

Today was the big game, not only was it the old rivalry between Slytherin and Gryffindor, but it was the final, and the first year Harry was serving as captain after Oliver passed the torch to him two years ago. It was safe to say as fun as the Triwizard tournament was the previous year, quidditch was still the marauders and co’s favourite pastime. Hell, the whole school was buzzing

“Were they always that high?” Sirius whispers, rubbing his chest “Fuck me” he breathes heavily

“I think we’re just old now my love” Remus chuckles, after all these years he still can’t help but wind up his husband just a little bit

Sirius makes a face “Fuck you! I’m not old…you’re old!” he childishly argues, wearing a grumpy pout that twitches everyone once and again, revealing the smile beneath

“And when is your birthday?”

Sirius’ mouth opens to reply but alas the man has nothing and is caught looking like a fish, though he’s a very cute fish in Remus’ mind

“We might be old…but you’re still as pretty as you were last time we were up here” Remus compliments, leaning down to peck Sirius’ tinting cheeks “Pretty boy” he whispers one last blow before pushing off the beam and joining his friends leaving Sirius flustered

“Pads? You comin?” James calls out, head shooting over “Ohhhh” James barks a knowing laugh, whispering something to Remus and patting his back as he sits down

Sirius can’t help but let out a small smile as they turn away “He thinks I’m pretty” he mutters all giddy to himself before joining his friends, taking a seat between Remus and James, with Lily on James’ other side

“See! I told you we were smart coming early, it’s already beginning to fill up” Lily points out, smiling to herself as she shrugs off her jacket, grabbing the others as well, before laying them on the seats behind them to save room for when the McKinnon’s made their fashionably late appearance

James smiles, hand finding the top of Lily's head “That we were, hun” he agrees, patting her head and soaking up her proud little smile as she smooths out the rest of the coats

“Who are you looking for?” Remus asks, pulling James’ attention back to find Sirius squinting off into the distance

“Our goddaughter, I haven’t seen her in ages” Sirius pouts, squinting harder

“You saw her at Easter break” James chuckles

“Oh yeah” Sirius nods, remembering “Still, I miss her” he confesses, warming the men's hearts

Sirius and Remus decided against children, not that they didn’t want them per se, more they couldn’t confirm the child's safety with Remus’ furry little problem. As such, they filled that hole with you and Harry. Sirius took an extra shine to you though, maybe it was your shy yet cheeky nature that reminded him of Remus, or maybe it’s the little bit of himself he saw in you, watching you get sorted into Hufflepuff when everyone else in your big, wonderfully weird family was Gryffindor. Whatever it was, though today was Harry’s day, he still had to make sure you were alright

“Do you want your glasses?” Remus offers, sighing as he watches his husbands sorry display and reaches for his bag

Sirius swats his hand away “I don’t need glasses moony, I’m fine. It’s just the wind, it’s blowing stuff in my eyes” he gestures around his face, scrunching his nose before attempting to subtly squint again

Remus’ eyes meet James’, shaking his head as he mouths ‘why can’t he admit defeat?’

James smirks, shrugging as he turns away, now interested in where you were, as is Lily after overhearing the debacle. The four searched for you as the student body make their way to the stands. Glancing around Remus’ spots a wild Weasley, smiling as he watches Ron attempt to hold back his blushes as Hermione fixes the red paint on his cheeks. Lily spots Neville, Ginny and Luna in another stand wearing their handmade lion mains. Sirius spots well…nothing, but your father on the other hand is the one to finally find you.

He watches as you enter the stand diagonal to them with Cedric, Jess and two other boys he doesn’t quite recognise but based on their green scarfs must be Timothy and Joey, which would be two out of the four very few Slytherins in this world he accepted were good, the others being his best friends’ brother and the one and only Dorcas Meadows

“Found her” he points with joy “There she is, ain’t our little fawn beautiful” he shines, causing all their eyes to fall on you as you all worm your way to the front of your own stand

“It’s funny seeing them in red and gold” Remus notes, an amused look as he observes yours, Cedric, and Jess’s Gryffindor scarves, most likely stolen from your brother and his friends…or perhaps secretly gifted from one particular Weasley

Lily nods, but her head tilts to the side as your head taps the taller of the other boy's shoulders “They seem close, which one is he again, Tim or Joe?” she ponders trying to remember

“Tim, she said he was tall in the letters” James confirms “They aren’t together” he says with confidence

“And how would you know that Captain Oblivious?” Remus’ laughs, eyeing his friend but then his gaze drifts to peak at his husband, who's been unusually quiet, realising he’s still very much struggling to see you

Remus slowly collects the glasses from his bag again and holds them up in offering

“Dammit” Sirius sighs accepting the truth and putting them on, looking grumpy until his eyes widen, like he’s seeing a brand-new world

“Better love?” Remus teases while pointing you out again

“Shut up moo…aww there she is, beautiful as ever” he adjusts them smiling “Wait…whoa” he looks at James doing a double take as everything is now in high definition “You’ve aged so well” he notes

James’ smirks “Why thank you, I steal Lily’s muggles products” he admits unapologetically, not that it’s much of a surprise to the girl next to him who just rolls her eyes, accepting the fact she now buys two of every product just for him

“It’s the one with lighter hair, not Cedric, the taller one” Remus points out to Sirius

“Oh…” Sirius eyes the boy, judging “...nah”

“What do you mean nah?” everyone jumps a little at first turning around to see Marlene, Dorcas and the cutest little lion there had ever been joining them “Holy shi… sugar those specks are something” Marlene laughs, catching herself before glancing at her wife, mouthing an apology while their daughter looks up at them confused

“Suu’gar” the little cub repeats before pointing at Sirius “Specky!” she says excitedly “Unkie Jams t‘win” she claps, pointing between James and Sirius before jumping and clapping again all happy with herself

Sirius’ quickly pulls the glasses off, cheeks heating while the others struggle to hold in their giggles

“I don’t need them” he looks straight at Marlene, trying his best to be convincing

She just gives him a ‘really’ look in return before smiling softly

Sirius half chuckles, half sighs as he admits defeat, flashing the women a genuine smile “It’s good to see you Marls, you too Dorca darlin” he then looks down at little Lacy “Hello little cub” he coos

“Rwah!” Lacy holds up her hands in a claw motion, doing her best lion impression

It was well known the Marauders had one brain cell between them, but when that cell fired it was magical, all including her mothers and godmother pretended she was the most fearsome thing they’d ever beheld, even a couple other parents who had taken seats little ways down joined in. After some pleas and chocolate offered to calm the beast, the group settled in again, catching up as they waited for the game to start.

You rocked on your feet, eyes continually flicking to the players entrance in anticipation

“You good sunshine?” you feel a soft pat to the top of your head, looking up you’re greeted with Timothy's soft smile, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly as he checked in, worried the ruckus and busyness of the stand was a bit overwhelming for you

You gently tap your head into his shoulder, nodding “I’m good…just excited” you confess with warm cheeks as your nose is flooded with the scent of your scarf again

“Ahhhh” he elongates, giving you and then the scarf a look “Y/n and Freddie sitting in a tree” he whisper sings

Your eyes widen before you attempt a scowl that looks more like a puppy pouting “Shut up” you chide, fixing the scarf a little before looking away, hoping Cedric, Jess and Joey were having a more in depth conversion but instead you find them grinning “Sugar” you press your lips into a downturned smile

They all looked at each other before singing in unison

“K…i…s…s…i…n…g!”

Despite your cheeks positively flaming around the second ‘s’, you can help but break into a smile. Your friends knew about your little crush on the Weasley boy from afar. Despite your brother’s closeness with the family you didn’t have such ties, you adored Ginny on the few occasions she had visited, along with Ron and Hermione, but as for the rest of the clan your paths rarely crossed. You were meant to spend the summer with them as your families decided to holiday together, but when Cedric won the Triwizard tournament that changed, and instead, he took you and your friends traveling with the prize money

Yours paths finally crossed at the beginning of the school year, when Sprout created a seating pattern allowing everyone to get familiar with their randomised Herbology partner before the end of year assignment. You were nervous at first, as you were sure the professor was when she pulled out your names. Putting the quietest person in Hogwarts with the loudest person seemed like it would either be the worst pairing she had ever seen or the most genius

To her good fortune…and ego, it was the latter. It was surprising to see the king of mischief actually try with his assignments, but most chalked it up to the fact that while you were quiet, you were well-loved by your year, you held no prejudices, helped people with their assignments when the asked you, and was just in general sweet to everyone, to the point even the meanest Slytherins were a little soft on you. Therefore, most assumed Fred couldn’t bear to let you down either, and while that was true at first, a second reason soon bloomed for the boy

It bloomed for you as well, you slowly opened up to him each class, topics drifting to something deeper, and by the time Christmas rolled around you both were close friends. So close in fact you began inviting him to your friend’s secret hideaway by black lake, at first to study, but then to hang out both with and without your other friends. It was funny at first, with Cedric and Jess being rivals in quidditch and Timothy and Joey's Slytherin status, but Fred warmed to them, gaining their trust and, not that they told either of you, their blessing

“I hate you all” you pout, falling into Cedric’s side hug as you shake your head

“Nah” Timothy joins from the other side

“You love us” Jess chimes in, beaming at you

“Not as much as she loves him though” Joey adds cheekily, nodding towards the pitch, it seems none of you had noticed the crowds stir for the players appearances during your teasing session

Cedric and Timothy quickly retract their grasp, smiling at one another as you lunge adorably forward to see. Your friends soon join you, all cheering, while you find Fred in the small mass of people, admiring him as he laughs with the others. After a few moments, the team is finished talking, beginning to take flight and get into position. Once there, you watch as Fred’s eyes begin to scan the crowd, heart thumping as his gaze slowly draws closer, skipping a beat when they fall on you, and damn near stopping as he doubles back, face lifting

You see, a few weeks ago you had met Fred to check over your final herbology assignment, which meant a late-night picnic waiting to see if your flower would bloom under the full moon. While chatting, the topic of today's game came up. Of course, now that Hufflepuff were out for the count, he teased you with who you would be supporting, his teasing backfired however when, without missing a beat, said you would be supporting whatever team he was playing in.

After his slight fluster, which, to this day is one of your proudest achievements, conversation returned to normal, you figured he’s forgotten about it until a first year found you this morning holding a small bundle of Gryffindor scarves, one of which had a red ribbon around it with a note for you

You bring your hands up, hugging the scarf as your eyes meet, causing the biggest smile to take over his face. It was times like this you truly believed your crush was requited, and little did you know a certain redhead was thinking the same thing

“Be brave and go for it” Cedric whispers some encouragement

He’s right, you think, Now or never

As you mouth him ‘Good luck’, you add a little extra to it, blowing him a kiss

His eyes widen in a pleasant shock, melting into a mix of joy and pride as he pretends to catch it, winking at you before kissing his balled up fist before returning his gaze to the field just before the starting whistle blows

“Way to go gal” Jess cheers, reaching over to give your arm a soft squeeze

“Aww the grew up so fast don’t they” Timothy wipes an imaginary tear from his eye while Cedric and Jess both match his energy, taking out handkerchiefs and pretending to be forlorn mothers, with Joey doing the same but with an imaginary tissue

You giggle at them, and while you would usually try to come up with some sort of witty answer, you instead break into a smile “He likes me” you say simply, swaying side to side

“If he didn’t, he’d be an idiot love” Cedric gives you a side hug while the rest of your friends’ smile, happy for you “Now let’s what your man kick snake butt”

“Hey-” Joey and Tim begin to object together but then shrug

“Oh, who are we kiddin” Timothy laughs, taking off his green scarf and pulling out a red and gold one as does Joey “Pusey’s an arsehole and I want a chance to be a bridesman at your wedding someday”

“Bridesman?” you giggle, heartwarming at the idea of you and Fred getting married someday

“Yip, Ceds already called man of honour”

The match was a whirlwind of emotion, the kind of game that left everyone on the edge of their seats. Gryffindor and Slytherin were neck and neck at every turn, every goal answered by another, and it was clear to everyone that this match would come down who would catch the snitch first

“Holy shit, this is intense!” James exclaims, practically bouncing in his seat “Merlin, how the hell did you guys watch me and Marls do this back in the day?”

“Jamie…language!” Lily scolds with a giggle, lips quirking up in amusement as she gives Dorcas a please forgive us look

“Oh, don’t worry, Lacey can’t hear a thing thanks to these” Dorcas it waves off, gesturing to Lacey’s adorable, enchanted earmuffs “Watch this” she says leaning over the little girl perched on her lap “You want some ice cream, bubs? What about a unicorn?”

Lacey doesn’t react at all, instead she stays focused on mimicking her other mothers’ gestures and waves towards the pitch

“Those are…” Lily starts but is promptly cut off

“What the hell was that!” Marlene huffs, throwing up her hands as the crowds roar once more, a mix of cheers and groans as the Slytherins risky manoeuvre pays off leading to another goal “Fucking Pusey again!”

“Did you get the earmuffs for the crowd or for Marls?” Remus whispers to Dorcas, who struggles to hold back a smile

“Oi! Gingers! Stay in formation! Godric, what are you doing?!” Marlene shouts again, shaking her head as Fred and George narrowly avoid colliding whilst going for the same bludger

“No comment” Dorcas replies with a grin before planting a kiss on Lacey’s cheek

The match grows increasingly heated after Harry lets the snitch slip through his grasp, igniting a fire under Slytherins asses causing their play to get even more aggressive

“This game is insane!” Cedric grips the railing so tightly his knuckles turn white

“Come on, Freddie!” you yell, unable to stop yourself as he whizzes by

You watch him turn ever so slightly, catching your voice over the roar before he dives back into the action, pulling off a spectacular move that has more than one person flushing

“Offt…your man’s a beast” Timothy mutters as Fred swoops in to deflect a bludger, shirt riding up a little as he does “What? I can admire” his cheeks tint as he sees all of your raised eyebrows

“Don’t worry” you say with a laugh, “He’ll never admit it, but he has a little guy crush on you too”

“Really?”

“Really” you confirm, giggling

“Did you see that?!” Sirius exclaims, pointing towards Fred after he executes a spectacular mid-air spin to block the Bludger aimed at Angelina “Can’t deny the boys got style!”

“Sure does” James agrees but then his expression sinks to a smug one as he adjusts his glasses “Almost as cool as some of the moves we pulled off ay Marls?” he tries to get her attention but is gifted a passive ‘uh huh’ instead

“Oh, please” Remus argues, chuckling “Are we forgetting in our final year when you tried to do a spin like that and your glasses came flying clean off?”

“What?!” Lily, Sirius, and Dorcas all turned to him in unison

“Moony!” James protests before his face slowly sinks as if awaiting his impending doom

“Wait…” Marlene turns slowly, looking menacingly down at James “You’re telling me. I almost lost my final match as captain because of your speckyless ass?”

James hesitates, his ears turning near crimson as he sheepishly scratches the back of his neck “…no comment”

With one final push, the final whistle blows, and the crowd erupts into cheers. You and your friends join in, your eyes look over towards Fred, who’s the first to get to Harry, pulling him into the biggest bear hug. The sight makes your heart warm, but your admiration is cut short as your friends practically pick you up, ushering you to move

“What’s happening” you ask confused

“Come on, we gotta get down their sunshine” Timothy insists, shooing you along with Cedric, Jess and Joey “You’ve got a ginger to congratulate”

Over on the other stands your family celebrates. Everyone’s on their feet, except Lacey who is now glued to Marlene’s hip as they cheer

“Yesssss!” James roars, pulling Lily into a celebratory hug…and subsequent snog

“That’s my godson!” Sirius bellows, fist pumping the air before looking to hug James then realises “Oh…well if that’s what we’re doing, come here moons!” he hithers towards Remus, arms outstretched

Remus laughs softly before indulging his husband, pulling him in for a kiss before dramatically dipping him

Meanwhile Marlene and little Lacey remain oblivious to the romance in the air, as she was too busy yelling so hard her voice will be lost come tomorrow “THAT’S MY LIONS!”

Dorcas just chuckles at the scene, pulling out Lilys camera and snapping a shot of them all (A/n: art of this bit in the future?)

As their celebrations calm down, they notice the teams beginning to land and everyone else begin to make their way down to join them

“This takes me back” Remus lets out a small laugh watching the red and gold scarfs fly around

Nostalgia fills the air as the others join him, gazing down

“Man…that used to be us” James remarks, letting out a breathy laugh before glancing over at Marlene

She nods, a happy yet bittersweet smile on her face “Yeah…good times” she reminisces before looking down at Lacey “Times are still pretty good…maybe better” she confesses watching her little cub cheer

Dorcas joins her side, arm wrapping around both Marlene and Lacy as their foreheads meet

“I think we should give them their moment” Lily suggests “We have time to embarrass them later” she giggles

The group hums in agreement. As their stand empties, they begin pointing out things only they are privy to from their vantage point. Like Nevilles and Lunas intertwined hands as they weave through the crowd with Ginny, Lee sprinting to hug George, the Slytherin team sulks, or even Snape begrudgingly handing a couple of gallons to McGonagall. None of them, however, have managed to spot you or your friends yet.

“I hope y/ns alright in the crowds” James says softly next to Lily

“As long as she’s with her friends I have no doubt shell be alright” she hums, giving your fathers arm a squeeze

“Oh, there she is…” Sirius points you out before chuckling to himself “…maybe being your twin ain’t so bad” he jokes, wiggling his glasses

James laughs, wrapping an arm around Sirius as everyone turns their attention back towards you

Down on the pitch, it’s a flurry of red and gold, so you hold back at the edge where it was quieter, encouraging your friends to head into the chaos and enjoy it. Jess, Joey and Timothy promise to be right back, while Cedric spots Cho in the crowd little ways from yourself and joins her, being careful not to drift too far from you

You beam as you take a couple of steps back, watching Harry get lifted up by Ron and Neville. Much like your parents and family above, you want Harry and Fred to have their moment in the spotlight. There would be more than enough time to talk to them after

Unbeknownst to you, one of that duo was already looking for you. Fred’s eyes scan the chaos for your figure, but finds a familiar blonde in the crowd first, and he smiles watching him kiss Cho’s cheek. Cedric feels the eyes on them, looking up and noticing Fred’s searching expression. He smiles, giving a knowing nod towards you, as does Cho who’s clearly been filled in on the situation.

Fred’s eyes follow the direction and there you are, standing apart from the rest, your gaze locked on Harry. Taking a deep breath, he hypes himself up, realising in that moment you aren’t just wearing his scarf, but the jumper he gave you to keep warm a few weeks ago as well. That along with the kiss you blew him earlier, are all the signs he needed to finally make a move

“Oi, Freddie” George calls as he moves away from the rest of the team “Where ya going?” George tries again but to no avail, Fred’s already gone, pushing through the crowd, using his broom to help manage the masses

As he breaks free, you do a double take, and he finds himself smiling as your confused expression melts into hope and joy

��You’re supposed to be over there” you tell him, taking a few steps forward as he closes the gap

“But you’re over here” he replies simply before leaning closer, eyes searching yours for permission

You bite your lip, giving him a nod, to which his own smile grows and his broom is abandoned as his larger hands come up to cradle your cheeks guiding them up towards his lips as they crash into your own. You clutch the front of his sweater, pulling him closer but Fred being the showman he is had other ideas. His hands drop down, snaking around your hips before he dips you back. You squeal at first, then laugh softly with him before your lips reconnect. After that the rest of the world fades away. The cheers and buzz around you becoming a distant hum, neither of you reacting to your friends’ cheers nor the flash of Jess’ camera

Your friends aren’t the only spectators of course…

“Wait…” Marlene points towards you and Fred “…is he about to…oh!” her mouth drops open, gently covering Lacey’s eyes while Dorcas smiles in a happy shock beside her

Remus, Sirius, Lily are next to react, eyes widening, before breaking into smiles. Remus and Sirius take a moment longer, clearly doing the ‘does he deserve her’ math in their heads first

“That’s my girl” Lilys hands come up to face, overjoyed, she had an inkling you were a little love struck from your letters, she just didn’t know with who until now

“He’s alright” Sirius begrudgingly admits while Remus nods in agreement

Their smiles and shock soon melt into anticipation as they all slowly turn towards James, who had been a bit too quiet considering the situation. But when they see him, he is…beaming?

Turns out Lily wasn’t the only one with an incline, in fact, James being the girl dad he was, has known about every crush you’ve ever had, your one on Fred being no different. Safe to say, he was ecstatic

“Yes!” he cheers “Oh the dips a nice touch, very classy” he nods in approval before looking over at the others “What?” he takes in their shocked faces

“Prongs?” Remus eyes him “You realise that’s y/n, right?” he feels the need to check

“Yeah” James shrugs before his mouth makes an ‘oh’ shape, his reply sending them into fits of laughter “I’m supposed to be mad right now, aren’t I?”

Thank you for reading ♡

2K notes · View notes

cherrygarcia-07 · 26 days ago

Note

Absolutely no pressure, babes. Writing should be fun, not stressful!

What thoughts do you have about say…early seasons Spencer being completely whipped for his girlfriend? He has absolutely no idea how he landed this really awesome gal, but there she is, his beautiful girl, who wants to listen to him, spend time with him.

Serendipity // Spencer Reid☕️

Thank you so much for my first request🥺 your support means so much! I got a little carried away, this is definitely more elaborate than what you asked, I hope you like it anyway but lmk if you want anything a little more playful and light and I can totally give that a go too!

Synopsis: Spencer Reid has never looked for love, believing it was simply just not in the cards for him. That was until you stumbled into his life, changing his perceptive on life- and on himself.

Pairing: early seasons glasses! spencer x reader

Genre: deep fluff

Word Count: 3k

Notes/Tags: bees as a catalyst for love because why the hell not, infodumping as flirting, talks about constellations (from me? shocker), lot of references to spencer’s past bullying & home life, hes down BAD bad he literally studies what to do on a date, princess and the frog reference at the end just pretend it didn’t come out in 2009 okay <3

masterlist

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Spencer Reid had always been a man of science, not of superstitions or of coincidences of the universe. While he found stories fascinating, to him that’s all they were- stories. He believed in facts and numbers, things that were tangible and real and he never indulged in any kind of magic of destiny. That was until he met you. No amount of research, no book he threw himself into or study he conducted could ever account for just how he ended up with you. He wrecked his brain trying to calculate the statistical probability of this happening and how you could have appeared right when he needed you, but for once in his life he was stumped.

He’d never been one to look for love. It wasn’t that he didn’t want it, in fact he felt it like a rock in his chest where his heart should be, heavy and aching behind his ribs as it yearned for what it thought it could never be. It was simply something Spencer believed just wasn’t meant for him. He’d never seen himself in the happy faces of couples he passed on the street, he never related to the dreamy, put-together romantic leads he’d seen in movies, rather he saw himself in isolation. In solitude. A lone star with no constellation. He was there, that much he knew, and he twinkled in his own way, but not in any way that drew attention. Just enough to show that he was alive, just evidence that he existed up there too. He had no connections around him, no story to be told and no greater picture that he was a part of. He felt more like a torch imitating a star, a false light that didn’t dazzle quite as authentically as it searched the dark for what it needed rather than just resting in what it had. Spencer had made his peace with this though- at least he thought he had. After all, the stories behind the constellations are just myths. They’re simply just things humanity had attached meaning to with no real science or history behind them, and he truly believed that.

That’s why you were so baffling to him.

It started with a bee, of all things. It was Spencer’s turn to do the coffee run for the team in the middle of a local case, his steps weighing beneath him with exhaustion despite it being the middle of the day as he dragged himself to the door of the café. He had just wrapped his fingers around the door handle and was gathering the little energy left in him to swing it open when a sudden scream rang out behind him, jolting him awake as he dropped his hand and spun to face the noise. On edge from the case, his mind rattled through a thousand dire possibilities as he mentally prepared to jump into action. What his eyes landed on, however, wasn’t any kind of crash or violent attack like he had feared, but rather a girl… swatting a bee. The panicked lump in his throat cleared as he caught his breath and watched you flail your arms in the air as you continued squealing, coffee flying out of the small hole in the top of your takeaway cup in every direction. Deciding to put you out of your misery, as it was still his duty to protect no matter how small the stakes, he took a step closer and with one heroic wave of his arm the bee was gone.

There was a feeling he couldn’t quite place somewhere deep in his chest as he took in your expression; big dazed eyes flooding with relief as they watched the culprit flew away; soft cheeks painted pink in the aftermath of the chaos; and lips parted ever so delicately as small puffs of air escaped them, before they spread into a brilliant grin that took over your whole face. Laughing lightly, you reached out and gently held his arm to grab his attention, not realising you’d had it the whole time.

“Thank you so much. You saved my life there.” Your voice chirped, though he barely registered it through the flustered rush of blood pounding in his ears.

Spencer looked down to where your hand still rested on his arm. Usually this was the part where he would recoil, politely but firmly snatching his arm back as he mumbled something about germs and bacteria and pathogens. But he didn’t pull away. Why didn’t he pull away? A beat of awkward silence passed as he stuttered internally, trying to get his mouth to cooperate with his brain as he failed to tear his gaze away from your eyes.

“It was a drone.” He groaned at himself in his head. Respond normally, idiot his brain yelled.

For a second, your brow furrowed as you bit your lip in thought. “I’m sorry?”

“It, uh-“ He stammered, painfully aware that your hand was still on his arm. “It was a drone. A male bee. It wouldn’t have hurt you.”

Nice going he cursed himself. Spencer held his breath as he braced himself for the inevitable reaction he was all too familiar with; the awkward hum as the other person pulled away, the barely masked grimace on their face at his compulsive need to drop facts at any given moment, and finally one of the many variations of ‘I’m running late, I better get going” among other excuses to stop talking to him. Except it never came.

Instead, you tilted your head to the side curiously, a thoughtful look on your face as you stared at the space in the air where the bee had been just moments ago. You were still touching him.

“Do male bees not sting or something?” You asked, the genuine interest in your voice taking Spencer by surprise.

He almost wasn’t sure what to do. If he wasn’t used to people actually listening to him when he rambled, someone asking him for even more information was practically unheard of.

“They can’t sting,” he begun, a mix of confidence and excitement at your interest bubbling up in his words, “stingers aren’t compatible with their anatomy. The stinger is essentially a modified ovipositor so it only exists on the female bees so they can lay their eggs. The stinger also isn’t needed for male bees for any defensive purposes since they have no role in defending the hive either so, uh.” His voice trailed off as he cleared his throat, his confidence dipping as he realised how much he was speaking. “Yeah, perfectly harmless.”

He sheepishly met your gaze once again, still half expecting to find that disinterested, disapproving look in your eyes. You finally pulled your hand away from his arm and oddly, Spencer found himself mourning your warmth through his sleeve and shocked himself with how much he wished you would reach for him again.

“That’s actually good to know.” His heart raced as you flashed a grin at him. “I’ve always been terrified of bees. That little fight you saw just now is a regular thing for me.” You replied with a giggle so sweet Spencer thought he should bottle it and pour it in his coffee- if he ever remembers to go in and get it.

“It’s a pretty common phobia, but actually bees have a lot of positive symbolism that contradicts people’s connotations about them.” His felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He ignored it.

“Oh yeah? Like what?” Spencer noted the way your fingers drummed against the coffee cup in your hands, realising you had your drink already and there was really no reason for you to be here anymore. You were choosing to be here with him. For a moment, he felt like he’d had the breath knocked out of him and he felt his heart beat so hard behind his shirt he worried it would break out.

“Most commonly, they’re associated with hard work and community but in a lot of cultures they also represent prosperity and the circle of life. In ancient cultures they even believed bees to be of divine wisdom and they were seen as a symbol of guidance.” His cadence was suddenly a lot livelier, much more sure of itself as it evened out and strayed from the quiet shake of his words earlier.

“A symbol of guidance?” You repeated, not so subtly eyeing him up and down, adoring the nerdy way his glasses slipped down his nose as he spoke. “Maybe that’s what that bee was doing here today.”

There was a flirty undertone to your voice, not that Spencer noticed. Girls never flirted with him, or at least he convinced himself they didn’t. He’d spent far too much time on the receiving end of older girls in school pretending to like him for their own amusement and so he’d stopped looking for the signs entirely until they just began to pass him by.

“What do you mean?” He asked quizzically, his head tilting like a puppies in confusion.

“It guided you to me.”

His phone began ringing again- no doubt the team wondering where their coffees were, but he couldn’t even hear it over the ringing in his ears.

“Do you need to get that…?” You trailed off, trying to catch his name.

“Spencer.” He managed to croak out eventually. “And no- well I probably should actually, but it can wait.”

His doe eyes were blown wide, his mouth hanging open like a fish in a stunned state you didn’t yet know you would grow to love. You bumped his arm in a playful manner, holding back a smirk when his still dazed eyes darted between your face and your hand on his arm once again.

“Give me another one before you go, another nice bee thing.” You smiled softly, staring up at him through your lashes, and the invitation to teach again pulled him back to reality as he snapped into action instantly.

“This isn’t necessarily anything to do with bees themselves but have you heard of the Beehive Cluster?” He smiled fondly when you shook your head. “It’s a cluster of around a thousand stars within the Cancer constellation- described by Ptolemy as a nebulous mass. It’s named after its resemblance to a beehive, both in shape and in symbolism- the stars together in harmony like the bees.”

“That sounds beautiful, Spencer. You know a lot about the stars?” He nodded eagerly, but not smug. More like a man who was passionate about what he knew and was eternally grateful to have someone to share it with. “Well you’ll have to take me stargazing some time, it looks like I’ve got a lot to learn. What do you think?”

It was as if he’d been hypnotised, your proposal like the magic word that snapped his confidence back like elastic as his jaw dropped again immediately and he became a stuttering mess right there in front of you.

Spencer had a lot of explaining to do when he arrived back at the BAU empty handed.

Fast forward a few unfathomable months down the line and here he was, somehow lying beside you in bed watching the moonlight drape over your sleeping frame like the blanket wrapped around your waist. A heavy but pleasant feeling tugged at his consciousness, unsure whether it was from the late hour blinking on the clock or the love-drunk haze he always seemed to be in around you (though he would happily bet on the latter).

Afraid to touch you and disturb your sleep, Spencer let his eyes wander over you lovingly. His breath hitched with admiration as if it was his first time looking at you, overwhelmed and quite frankly astounded at the fact you were even here. With him. He gazed over your hands -your soft, gentle hands that pushed his glasses back up his nose with a touch so delicate against his face that he forgot about every hand that ever struck him there; your doting, attentive hands that buttoned his cardigans each morning when he was rushing too much to care about it himself; your tender, caring hands that combed through his hair as he cried into your shoulder after a case that hit him particularly hard. He let out a shuddering breath, his trance travelling to your lips, parted in your sleep and rosy like a cherub’s. Those same lips that harboured your sweet voice and that flashed your heavenly smile his way and made him weak. Those lips that reassured him that he was the only thing that mattered when he felt he was the only thing that didn’t. Finally, with bated breath, his focus shifted to your eyes that shone like the north star. His Polaris. His guiding light home, always waiting in the dark with open arms for him to fall into whenever he was lost. Those enchanting eyes that saw the beauty in everything- that somehow saw it in him.

Spencer was someone who valued his privacy and he had tried to keep the relationship to himself for a while, but working with a team of profilers and the fact he wore his heart on his sleeve meant it didn’t last very long. Before your first date he had shown up to work a little fancier than usual, like a child on their first day of school, knowing he would have to meet you straight from the office. Derek had immediately caught onto his gelled back hair and elaborate tie, embroidered with a sea of stars, and had thrown a few teasing comments his way along with his signature brotherly smirk. Gideon in a fatherly manner had straightened his tie for him before he left, patting him on the back and holding back a proud smile. The next day, when the grin Spencer wore pulled at his lips so hard it may as well have been stitched in place, his walls came crashing down and he told the team everything.

Spencer would never admit it but he’d studied beforehand, scouring the library for anything and everything even remotely romance related. As it turns out, being years below your peers your whole life doesn’t really open any doors in the dating world, often leaving him tuning out his emotions over a solitary game of chess, but he was determined to do everything he could to learn to be the perfect gentleman for you. At the restaurant, he pulled your chair out for you before seating himself closest to the door to protect you from the breeze whenever it swung open. Afterwards he walked you home, lingering close enough to breathe in the intoxicating smell of your perfume but refusing to touch you uninvited lest you think that was all he wanted from you.

Eventually, you approached your front door and you stopped for a moment, turning your head up towards the blackening sky, the stars not quite poking their pretty little heads out yet.

“What’s the matter?” Spencer asked, concerned as you sported a slight pout.

“I wanted you to show me the Beehive Cluster.” You sighed, dropping your gaze to the floor, a crease appearing between your brows that he found himself wishing he could kiss away, touched that you’d even remembered what he’d told you.

Your head snapped back up as he reached into his pocket, pulling out a notepad and pen with a small smile. You watched, confused as he frantically scribbled in silence, not daring to speak incase you burst the focused bubble he was in. After a moment, he glanced back up at you with a bashful expression, shyly holding out the piece of paper, now torn from the book.

“Until next time.” He said softly, barely audible but impactful nonetheless. Heart melting, you took in the scribbled illustration of the cluster on the page, fingers delicately tracing the ink like it was sacred.

That same drawing now lived framed on the nightstand beside where you slept, lit up by the moonlight creeping in through the curtains. The memory played over in Spencer’s mind on loop and he thought about waking you, overcome with the urge to pepper your face with a thousand kisses for every painful memory of his past you’d overwritten. For every girl that had asked him out as a joke; for every boy that made him feel inferior; for every time he had refused to let himself believe he could be in love, there was a countless amount of new memories with you. From his understanding of the world, love had always looked like something that left you in pieces more often than it put you back together. Love looked like a broken home and a broken family. Like something that only worked out in fiction and sometimes not even then. Love was a forbidden fruit hanging illuminated in an artificial light that looked just real enough to trick people into taking a bite, punishing those who dared think they were deserving of it. What he never even dreamed was that love could look just like this. Like sci-fi movie nights curled up together on the couch wearing matching mis-matched socks, or like quiet evenings spent comfortably side by side saying nothing but feeling everything. Truthfully, he never knew love could look like you.

All this time, Spencer believed it was his place in the universe to sit alone and observe, twinkling humbly from his place in the dark. He believed he was simply meant to tell the stories, not be part of one himself. Little did he know his place was beside you, his Evangeline, in a harmonious beehive all his own.

Spencer Reid had always been a man of science. But that night, as you lay beside him, he thought about the old mythological beliefs that bees were once divine messengers between mortals and the Gods- and he thought that maybe he believed it. Tears pricked his eyes as he leaned in and pressed a feather light kiss to your forehead and he found himself thanking that serendipitous bee that day for bringing him everything he didn’t know he was missing.

#criminal minds #spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid fic #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fic #spencer reid drabble #spencer reid headcanon #spencer reid oneshot #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you

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tbaluver · 7 months ago

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his treasure- sylus x reader

pairing: dragon!sylus x fem!reader cw/tags: MDNI, monster fucking-ish(?), size diference, p in v, sucking breasts genre: smut + drabble a/n: this is just inspo from his new myth that's coming out and omgee im so excited ٩(^ᗜ^)و i hope everyone that wants his memory gets it! enjoy reading! (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ)♡

no one dared to enter the dragon’s cave. the tales of hidden riches of gold, jewels, and treasures beyond anyone’s dreams laid all out by a fearsome dragon who kept it all to himself.

groups and groups of townspeople have set out on the journey to see if the stories were true but have never returned to tell the horrible tale of what they have witnessed.

as they stepped into the cave, piles of gold in every corner of the room, mixed in with a pile of jewels and treasures they’ve heard from the tales. but as they stepped further in they witnessed the beast itself.

there he was, on top of a girl, marks littered all over her body as she whimpered in ‘pain’. his wings shielded over his and her body and the possible true horrors of what he’s done to her.

they had dug their own graves, foolishly shouting at the beast and raising their weapons as if it were to intimate him. the dragon- sylus, lifts his head from your neck. his growl menacing and filled with annoyance.

the torches that lined along the walls extinguished in an instant, the dragon striking each and every man that had decided to trespass his lair that day.

each time the townspeople refused to learn from the past group, stubbornly believing they would succeed with the dragon slain with hoards of golds and jewels in tow.

as weeks and months passed by, the townspeople's expeditions dwindled until no one dared to try again anymore.

at last, he has you all to himself. no more foolish humans to bother and no distractions. just him and you.

he laid you down onto the plush carpet, better than the rough surface he calls his throne. around you flickered the glow of candles, leaving a warm glow around both of your bodies.

sylus leans forward, placing a kiss on your nipple before looking up at you. his tongue slowly rolls around your bud, sucking it gently after. he found himself groaning, nuzzling against the valley of your breasts.

biting your lip, you watch as sucks the other, his eyes never leaving yours as his tongue continues to tease you. his warm mouth surrounds your nipple as his fangs barely graze your soft skin.

with a quiet pop, he pulls off your breasts, a string of saliva keeping him and your breasts connected. he sits up, his crimson eyes traced the delicate curves of your body.

his tail coiled around you, wrapping you to keep you in place. the scales brushed against your skin, prickling you and leaving small marks. he made sure to lick each and every mark he had left, his tongue gliding across your skin making the lingering sting begin to fade.

sylus was always tender at times like this, treating you like find gold- not counting what he’s like during his heat.

you gasp, your eyes fluttering shut as you continue to rock yourself below him.

he was big, almost too big for your liking. it took some time getting used too and no matter how many times you both fucked, your pussy was always so tight around him, the stretch burning you so deliciously.

his hard cock too thick and long to fit inside of you as he ruts between your thighs, shaking your whole entire body. its rough edges massaged your walls good that your drools pooled down to your neck.

your body twitched and trembled as he continued to plow into you and you knew he was getting closer. your walls were squeezing him and had him near the edge, ready to spill his load deep inside of you.

his eyes fluttered shut, tilting his head back. groans escaping his lips as his hips picked up the pace. your eyes rolled to the back of your head as you felt a slight burn on the lower half of your body.

his knot stretched into you wider, his bulge in your lower abdomen growing as hot loads painted your walls creamy white.

he growls, careful not to place his claws on you. you were so tight, so warm, so perfect. his mind was spinning as his heart raced.

even with all this fine gold and jewels in this cave nothing can compare to the treasure he has cradled in his arms.

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andypantsx3 · 1 year ago

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contents: general bakugou x princess reader; 1.1k, fem reader. lowkey dedicated to the loml @ofmermaidstories even tho there's e2l undertones.

thinking about being a princess forced into a political marriage. your father is ailing and with no sons in his lineage, your country risks dissolution and open war if you do not marry.

already several of the more prominent families are forming factions; those with eligible sons are desperately trying to engineer opportunities for themselves, those without are amassing foot soldiers and weapons.

you cannot stand any of the pompous, greedy, egocentric princelings put forth by the noble families; men who care nothing for the country or its people, men with no thought for policy or justice—men who would gorge themselves on wine and women as the country crumbled at their feet.

even with a husband, there is no guarantee against a coup, not unless your husband is formidable enough to suppress one.

there is only one man you can stomach the thought of assuming the throne, one man with a head for strategy, a sense of duty, and a reputation strong enough to suppress the growing threat of political discord.

you find general bakugou katsuki in his quarters in the small hours of the morning, unable to sleep for your nerves.

"princess," he rasps, opening the door in nothing but his breeches. your face burns as you're confronted with the sight of a man's naked chest, miles of bare skin, golden in the glow of the torch lights.

"general," you say, resolutely raising your eyes to his face. there is no time to dance around the issue. "i need you to marry me."

bakugou's blonde hair is bed-rumpled, his manner sleep-soft, though his gaze is sharp. he watches you for a long moment before answering.

"'s an awful unromantic proposal," he says, an eyebrow raising.

despite his honorability, he's always had a way of grating on your nerves, and he knows it. you can't stop the reflexive scowl that paints your mouth, nor the irritability that seeps into your tone.

"i am being serious," you say, crossing your arms.

bakugou's eyes follow the movement. you are suddenly all too aware that you've marched through the castle halls in nothing but your night rail, too overcome with the thought of what must be done to pay the appropriate attention to your wardrobe.

"what, you lookin' to consummate it now?" he asks, gaze almost burning through the thin cotton of your shift.

your ears go hot. "can you stop being the most obnoxious man on earth for one moment."

bakugou leans an arm against his open door, bicep flexing with the movement. you try valiantly not to notice the way the shadows pool in the divots of his muscle, the way his trousers sit against the plane of his toned stomach.

"if you want me to say yes, you're gonna need to be a little nicer, princess," he says, mouth flicking into an awful little smirk.

"general—bakugou," you hiss. "do you want to watch the country you've spent years defending dissolve into nothing at the hands of these narcissistic, coddled fools?"

"rich words for a princess," bakugou says, his voice nearly a growl in the dim.

you are aware that you are sheltered as a royal. you are aware you are soft and naive. but you are educated, you are strong-willed, and you care. you may not be a son to your father, but you know you know have studied harder than any man on your father's court. you want to do your best for this country.

"do not mock me," you command.

bakugou's scarlet gaze trails over you, hot and liquid in the flickering torchlight.

"no? then what d'you want me to do to you?" he asks.

you fight down the furious flush of humiliation. "i want you," you repeat through gritted teeth, "to marry me."

bakugou's golden eyelashes dip as his gaze slides back over your crossed arms, then lower, all the way down to your bare toes. you feel horribly vulnerable under his scrutiny, even more knowing you are already at his mercy.

"you're serious," he rasps, eyes cutting back to yours.

"unfortunately," you grit out.

that draws another flicker of a smirk out of him. "and y'came running down here at midnight in your little nightdress because you were too scared you'd chicken out, is that it?"

that is absolutely it, and you hate that he knows it.

"will you marry me or not?" you demand, even your nose feeling hot now. "i don't know what my nightdress has to do with the question!"

"your nightdress is gonna have a lot to do with it if i say yes, angel," bakugou says.

you hate him. maybe it's better to just let the country fall to ruin, let some jumped up coalition of families amass power and overwhelm bakugou and his soldiers. with any luck maybe they will stab him.

you'll have to come up with another plan.

"fine," you hiss, turning on your heel. "message received."

but a hot hand closes on your arm before you can take another step, yanking you back to him. you stumble, barely catching yourself before bashing your nose into his chest.

"you know what you're asking for?" bakugou demands, leaning in to look into your face. "you know this wouldn't be easy."

"i know," you say begrudgingly. "but you are the country's best option—my best option. none of the men put forth are acceptable."

"don't like pretty boys, princess?" bakugou asks.

"you're plenty pretty," you bite out before you can think. horror overwhelms you when bakugou's smirk grows wider, a sharp white knife in the dark.

"think i'm pretty huh?" he says, his tone gloating.

"i think that you are awful and maybe i'd rather take my chances with a coup," you growl, trying to pry your arm from his grip.

but bakugou's hold tightens for a moment, and he leans down, close enough that his breath ghosts over the collar of your night rail.

"then if you're sure this is what you want, princess, you can have it," bakugou says. his thumb smoothes over the skin of your arm for just a moment, soft and feather light before he lets you go.

you step out of his reach, skin tingling, face flaming. there's no reason to delay, then. "fine, we're agreed. i'll see you in the morning. we'll announce it then."

you spin on your heel, bakugou's grunt of acceptance following you as turn back down the hall.

"see you in the morning, angel," he drawls, suddenly all agreement.

he may be the general between the two of you, but you know when it's time for a strategic retreat. you ignore his response and flee—your ears burning all the way to your chambers.

#bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugo x you #bakugou katuski x reader #bakugou x you #character: bakugou katsuki

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wholoveseggs · 10 months ago

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Homecoming

18+ ---- {Masterlist} {Tag-List}

{Daemon Targaryen x Reader} You haven't seen your husband since your passionate wedding night, leaving you to doubt his love. Now, three months later, you're round with child and missing him more than ever—until he suddenly returns.

♡♡ This is purely just to get all my daddy Daemon feelings out, I 100% believe he has a breeding kink. ♡♡

3.2k words - Warnings: smut, major breeding kink, slow sex, so so so much fluff, a little bit of angst and Daemon apologizing in bed...

@elijahstwink @starshipcookie @absolutemarveltrash @odairtrqsh @darkened-writer

@cheneyq @fallout-girl219 @nina6708 @evasmlp @sadmonke

@deamonloverrrr @urmomsgirlfriend1 @moonsleep

It was another quiet night, in a bed far too large for one. The wind was gently blowing through the curtains, bringing with it a cool breeze and the smell of the sea. It was late, and everyone was asleep, yet you laid awake, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep.

You rolled over onto your side, the silk of the sheets sliding against your bare skin. These days, sleep evaded you, no matter how much you tried. If it wasn't your thoughts keeping you up, it was your changing body and the ever growing life inside of you.

Three months ago you had gotten married to the prince Daemon, a dream of many girls across the kingdom. But your marriage was hardly that. The day after the ceremony you woke up in an empty bed, and hadn't seen your husband since, leaving you to wonder if you had done something wrong.

He had left you no letter, no message. Nothing. Only the memory of your wedding night, the way he touched and kissed you, his sweet whispers of adoration as he made you his. On the loneliest days you would close your eyes and remember it all, his lips on yours, the way his fingers caressed you, the feel of him inside you.

You place your hand on the small bump of your stomach, a smile spreading across your lips. Although it had only been one night, he did his duty and you were pregnant. A piece of him was always with you.

But it wasn't enough.

You longed to see him again, to touch him and be held by him, to tell him of the life growing within you. You wanted so desperately to be with him, but instead you were left with the ghost of his love, a memory that wasn't enough to fill the hole in your heart.

You sighed, trying to push away those thoughts, and attempted to fall asleep, but every time you closed your eyes all you could see was his handsome face. You opened them again and sat up, staring into the darkness.

You could see the light of a torch through the cracks of the door, and the sound of footsteps. You knew exactly who it was, the guard outside your door. His shift was almost over, and soon a new one would be out there, watching over you. There was a muffled conversation, and the sound of someone walking away.

A few moments later the door cracked open, and the torch light poured into the room. Your eyes squinted at the sudden brightness, and as the person entered the room they shut the door.

You were about to give your guard a kindly lecture on waking you up when you noticed that it wasn't the guard who had walked in, but a hooded man. You opened your mouth to call for help, but before you could get a sound out he was at your bedside, his hand covering your mouth.

"Don't scream, my love, it's me." He whispered.

You blinked at the voice, your mind taking a second to process what was happening. Your eyes widened, and you reached for his hand. He took it away from your mouth and intertwined your fingers together, his other hand pulling down his hood.

"Daemon." You breathed, looking up at his face.

The torchlight casted a warm glow on his handsome features, highlighting his strong cheekbones and sharp jawline. His hair was longer than the last time you saw him, hanging past his shoulders, his eyes were dark and clever, looking you over with admiration.

You pulled him towards you, your lips crashing into his. He let out a sigh, a sound that sounded almost pained, and returned your kiss. Then you harshly pushed him away, hitting his chest.

"Where have you been?" You demanded.

"I had matters to attend to." He told you.

"Three months!" You cried. "Three months I waited for you, and you were doing what?"

He smiled and pulled off his cloak, his eyes raking over your form. He reached out to cup your cheek, his thumb gently stroking your skin.

You wanted to be angry with him, you really did, but the look he was giving you, like he was starved, melted away your resolve. You leaned into his touch and looked up at him through your lashes, a smile tugging at your lips.

"Asshole," You whispered.

"My love." He whispered back, leaning down and placing a kiss to your forehead.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him in for another heated kiss. You were angry, yes, but seeing him now made all of that fade away. Your ire could wait until the morning.

His lips were gentle and loving, and you were so happy that you had almost forgotten that he had been gone. He kneeled on the bed and pulled you close, his hands cupping your cheeks.

When he pulled away, you rested your forehead against his, smiling and breathing hard.

"I thought you left me," You admitted, your hands gripping his wrists, as though you could keep him there forever by holding on to him.

He hummed, his nose nuzzling against yours and you pressed yourself closer to him, trying to get as much contact as possible.

His large, warm hands moved down to the swell of your stomach. He placed his palms flat against the bump and leaned back, a small smile tugging at his lips.

"Did the maesters tell you?" You asked, placing your hands over his.

He nodded, his eyes lifting up to meet yours. "How are you feeling?" He asked, with such gentle kindness that it made your heart melt.

"Big." You answered, laughing slightly. "I can't wear any of my old clothes, and I have to have new ones made all the time. And the way the ladies look at me when I go out..."

He shook his head, a breathy laugh escaping him, his thumbs caressing your skin. It was true that you had changed since the wedding, your body swelling with his child. You were nervous about how he would react, but the softness in his eyes and the way he touched you told you otherwise.

"I wish I could have told you the news myself, it's a shame you had to hear it from some crusty old maester," you said.

"It is a wonderful thing to return home too," he smiled, leaning forward and pressing his lips against yours.

He kissed you deeply, his arms wrapping around your waist. You smiled into the kiss, your fingers weaving through his long, silver hair. You could feel his lips turn up against yours, and you both pulled away.

He looked at you for a moment, his eyes raking over your features, a smirk tugging at his lips. His hands trailed down your sides, sending a wave of heat through you.

"My prince," you said softly, your fingers brushing along his cheekbone. "We've already made a baby. You don't have to do this."

He laughed, and shook his head, a look in his eyes you couldn't decipher. "I forget just how innocent you are," he said, his hands trailing down to your thighs.

“Well, whose fault is that?” You teased, smiling up at your handsome husband.

You sucked in a breath as he leaned down, his lips trailing kisses along your neck, his teeth grazing over your skin.

"It's true, I've been away for too long, my lady wife has forgotten what it is I crave," he breathed against your skin, his lips finding yours once more.

Your hands slid down his shoulders and arms, feeling his muscles. He pulled back slightly and tugged off his shirt, letting it fall to the floor.

"You have gotten bigger as well," you said, running your hands across his chest, feeling the hard muscles.

He smirked, a cocky gleam in his eyes. "Oh?"

"It suits you," you said, a playful smile on your lips.

His hand came to rest on the side of your neck, his fingers caressing your jaw. His thumb brushed against your bottom lip and he leaned in, capturing your mouth with his.

"And you are more beautiful than the day we wed," he said, his voice husky.

"My prince flatters me." You breathed, a blush rising on your cheeks.

His eyes went to the ties on your nightdress, a row of pretty little bows that went down to the valley of your breasts. He tugged at one of the ribbons, the fabric becoming loose.

He pushed it aside and his hand moved up to caress your breast, his thumb rubbing your nipple, causing you to gasp.

"Still as sensitive." He said, a smirk on his lips.

He leaned down and took your other nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it, before gently biting down. You tugged hard on his hair, your legs kicking and squirming as he continued to play with you.

"Daemon," you moaned.

He hummed, the vibration causing a wave of pleasure to wash over you. He let go of your nipple, and his mouth moved lower, placing hot kisses along your skin, his hand pushing up your night dress.

"Perhaps a bit more sensitive." He commented, his hand brushing along your thigh.

He hooked a finger into the waistband of your small clothes and pulled them off. You were now naked, your body on full display for him, and he leaned back and admired his work. His hand on the swell of your belly, his thumb tracing over a stretch mark.

"Beautiful." He said, a sincerity in his voice that made your heart skip a beat.

You looked away, suddenly shy. You had only spent one night with him, and now he was here again. His touch, his words, they all still had an affect on you, making your stomach flutter and heart race.

He leaned down, and pressed a kiss to your bump, his hand resting on the side of it, his lips trailing lower. You smiled softly, and ran your fingers through his hair, the silver strands smooth between your fingers.

His hand came to rest on your thighs, gently coaxing your legs open. You watched as he positioned himself between them, his head almost disappearing behind your bump.

His eyes flickered up to yours, and his smirk was all too knowing, causing you to blush and turn away. He leaned forward, his tongue darting out and licking up your slit.

You gasped, your grip on his hair tightening. He did it again, this time focusing his attention on that sensitive little spot he introduced to you on your wedding night. He placed a soft kiss on it, his tongue circling it.

"Dae-ah," you moaned, trying to muffle the sound by pressing a hand over your mouth.

You didn't know if it was the fact that you were pregnant, or maybe that you missed him more than anything, but everything felt different, his touch more intense.

His hands gripped the backs of your thighs, holding you down as his tongue licked and circled you. His mouth moved down and his tongue slid into you, making you arch and cry out. He lapped at your arousal, his tongue going in and out, the sounds he made, the hums and sighs, driving you wild.

He groaned, a sound that vibrated through your entire body, and his tongue went up, swirling around that little spot again, his mouth closing over it.

You moaned his name, your thighs squeezing him, your whole body trembling as your release washed over you.

He placed a few more kisses to the inside of your thighs before rising up, his hair messy and face glistening with you. He wiped his face with his arm and leaned down, his lips capturing yours.

You could taste yourself on him, and you kissed him hard, your hand tangling into his hair, the other reaching down to the ties of his trousers. He helped you undo them, and kicked off his pants.

His hard length sprung free, and you wrapped a hand around it, causing him to let out a shaky moan. He pressed his forehead against yours, his hand cupping your cheek, and his eyes locking onto yours.

You slowly started to stroke him, and he let out another moan, his eyes fluttering closed, his breath hot against your skin.

"My love," he groaned, his hips thrusting into your hand.

You loved the effect you had on him, the control you had. To have the prince of dragonstone, the most dangerous man in the realm, at the palm of your hand, made your heart flutter.

His hand found yours, and he guided it away from his length, a whine leaving your throat. He chuckled and gave you a quick kiss before positioning himself between your legs.

He slowly pushed himself in, causing you both to moan. It hurt a little, just like the first time, but his hands were on your thighs, his thumb caressing your skin, and he slowly pulled out and pushed back in, letting you adjust.

"My love, I'm not going to break," you said.

He smirked and gave a shallow thrust, a gasp leaving you.

"I can't be too careful with what is mine." He said, leaning down and giving you a heated kiss.

He pulled away and rested his forehead against yours, his hand sliding up the length of your leg, coming to rest on your bump, his other hand planted next to your head, holding himself up.

He started to move, his length slowly sliding in and out, the pace slow and gentle. You could feel every inch of him, rubbing against that perfect spot. A soft moan left you, and you reached out, your hands on his chest, feeling the hand planes of muscle underneath his skin.

His thumb caressed your belly, his eyes never leaving your face, studying every detail, memorizing each feature. You felt so exposed under his gaze and turned away, your cheeks flushed.

He smiled, a soft, loving smile, and kissed you.

"How I've missed you, my beautiful wife," he said, his voice thick with emotion.

You looked up at him, seeing nothing but love in his eyes. It was the way he had looked at you at your wedding, the two of you standing there in the sept, whispering promises to each other. The world had disappeared around you, and in that moment you were the only people that existed.

He kissed you again, and began moving a little faster, the sound of his hips meeting yours filling the room. He groaned, his hand still gently stroking your bump.

"I can't believe such a perfect creature could bear my child," he said, his eyes trailing down to where his hand rested.

"Our child," you corrected, giving him a teasing smile.

He hummed, leaning back and wrapping his arms around your waist and helping you into a sitting position. He pulled you onto his lap, and you moaned at the way he was buried deeper inside you.

His lips left open mouth kisses on your shoulders, and his hands rested on your hips, guiding you. You braced yourself on his shoulders, his hands back on your bump as you moved. You knew he liked the feel of it, and he couldn't get enough.

Your name left his lips as you bounced in his lap, his hands cupping your ass, squeezing you. You moaned, your hands sliding into his hair, tugging at the silver locks. You were growing louder, your body humming, that feeling building within you.

"Not too loud, my love," he whispered. "I do not wish for the guards to hear,"

A moan, that was halfway to a laugh escaped you, and he cut it off with a deep kiss. You buried your face in the crook of his neck, as you kept moving, the feeling of your release building.

"For your lovely sounds are only for me," he continued, his voice in your ear.

You let out another shaky moan, his hands squeezing you. He was moving his hips to meet yours, and you could feel him shaking beneath you. His hands gripped your hips tighter, and pulled you harder, his voice soft yet commanding as he talked you closer to your peak.

Your hands gripped his arms and back, and when he said your name, a deep, low groan that sounded almost pained, you toppled over the edge, falling in a pool of ecstasy. All the pent up emotions and frustration that you had been holding in were released, and you let go of a final moan that you muffle in the crook of his neck.

He followed soon after, capturing your lips in a heated kiss and letting out a deep, satisfied moan. You clung to him, afraid that he might disappear if you didn't. His arms were wrapped around your middle, cradling you close to him, his lips pressed to your temple.

The two of you breathed in each other's air, a simple shared breath, your foreheads pressed together, your eyes closed. You could feel his lips on your sweat slicked skin, his fingertips still caressing your bump.

When you both had returned to your senses, he gently laid you back on the bed. He leaned down, the tip of his nose nuzzling against yours, and peppered your face with little kisses. You smiled and let your eyes flutter open, finding him staring at you, a sweet, lovestruck look in his eye.

He grabbed the blanket, and covered your naked form with it, tucking it around you, almost protectively. He crawled under with you,his head resting against your chest, his hand still protectively cradling the swell of your stomach.

You wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and ran your fingers through his hair, smiling. He looked up at you, his eyes sleepy, and he pressed a kiss to your bump.

"I hope it's a boy," you said, continuing to stroke his hair. "With the most handsome features, and a true warrior, like his father."

"Mm," he hummed, his eyes closing, and his arms wrapping around your waist. "I hope it is a girl, a daughter that looks just like her mother."

He was silent for a moment, and you wondered if he had fallen asleep, when his eyes suddenly opened.

"Or perhaps both," he said, his voice serious, a glimmer of something in his eyes.

"Twins?" You laughed. "I don't think I could handle two little dragons running about."

He chuckled, his fingers drawing lazy circles on your skin. "I will be here to help you," he said, his eyes meeting yours. "I am not going anywhere."

"You better not," you warned, poking his chest. "You've kept me waiting long enough."

He laughed again and caught your wrist, bringing your finger to his lips and placing a gentle kiss there. He slid his arms back around you, and pulled you close, your foreheads touching, your noses brushing.

You were content, your heart filled with so much love for him, and as his breathing evened out and his eyelids drooped, you knew he felt the same. You drifted off to sleep, dreaming of what was to come. Of a big family, a happy life, and many more nights just like this one.

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kneelingshadowsalome · 1 year ago

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Minotaur!König x Ariadne!Reader Theseus is dead. You’re escorting the Minotaur, more beast than a man, out of the Labyrinth. The problem is, he seems to be more interested in what’s between your legs than in his mission of killing the notorious king of Crete… (12 k. Minotaur is not an actual hybrid in this fic. Reader is Hecate’s initiate. Part 1 here.) Tags/warnings: Shameless smut mdni, dubious consent, extremely possessive behaviour, abduction, first time (König & reader are both virgins), hugs & cuddles, washing blood off your monster boyfriend, awkward flirting, semi-rough sex, shifting power dynamics, sexist insults & slurs (the citizens of Crete do not approve of your choices), implied cannibalism, fluffy ending. Mythical AU.

The candle goes out before you reach the surface.

To someone else, it would be the end of the world: to you, it’s only a hindrance, a nuisance, mostly.

You’re not easily distressed. If you were, you wouldn’t be in the service of the greatest goddess of the Underworld. And you’re not mourning losing the sight of your warmly illuminated beast... You’re only worried about what he will do once the darkness descends. Whether he will forget about his vow, whether the baser instincts take over him once the darkness falls.

And darkness is not capable of making you lost: you can always follow the string in your hand. But without light, it’s difficult to predict the Bull’s moves: whether he decides to maim or fuck you against the wall, you can never tell. He hasn’t lived in the real world among people; he doesn’t know what’s right or wrong and what’s expected of him. Even the best of men can succumb to the demands of the flesh, so what power would a Bull Man have against his animal wants? No one ever taught him to respect the gods, let alone the maidens who serve them...

Then again, if a simple candle was the only thing that kept you alive, then what’s the point of lamenting the loss of it? Your life was already forfeit when you chose to descend here.

So you let it go: as always, the greatest lesson in life is to simply let go. Of control, of judgment, of fear, of hope.

He doesn’t say a thing when the light flickers, then fades. The candle goes out in silence, and you let it drop before the remaining wax burns your palm.

And it’s not the absence of light, but strength, that forces you on your knees before even an hour has passed. There’s still a long way to go, and the yarn is like a thin string of hope in your hand, but you’re too exhausted, too worn out, too hungry and too tired to go on.

The Bull Man doesn’t object to your suggestion to lay down and sleep for a while. He has walked behind you in silence the whole day. Or night… You can’t tell the difference; you lost count somewhere along the way down here. The air is stale and humid, and there’s no torch, not a single candle anywhere and even if there were, you wouldn’t do anything with them without a flint.

The horror is kept at bay only through your numerous exercises with the goddess who introduced you to darkness many, many moons ago. You were initiated during the dark Moon, the new Moon, the blood Moon, introduced to the mysteries of the maiden, mother and crone, to the secrets of both the living and the dead. You’re not afraid, but your body still warns you of danger: you just don’t know if it’s a memory from childhood or a reaction to the Bull, panting behind you – out of lust or exertion, you don’t even know. Someone who wasn’t a maiden probably could tell… At times, you curse the fact that there hasn’t been a single phallus inside you because men too possess knowledge. Taking a man into your bed would have initiated you to a different set of mysteries, but now, you are poking blind.

The Bull Man is an animal, you remind yourself. The longer you stay in his company, the more he starts to resemble a human, even if he is a man of few words. How he even remembers them is another mystery: you thought he was sent down here as a young boy. He speaks oddly but eloquently, a remnant of his noble descent, perhaps. Or perhaps he has listened to the people speaking in the Labyrinth, eavesdropped his victims an hour or two before killing them. Whatever the reason, you have to constantly tie your tongue because there’s simply no point in talking to a beast. The less you know about him and his past, the better.

You ready yourself for sleep, but the cursed cold of the tunnels keeps your body awake. Your flesh is human even if your mind is forged to withstand hunger, thirst and pain. Endurance against cold was never your strong suit, and you miss the heat of the sun, the warmth of it on your skin, even the ample light it gives. You, a lover of the moon, missing the heat of Apollo… It’s a joke, surely.

On the stone floor, it’s even colder, the rough, damp ground making your very bones ache. How on Hecate’s name has the beast survived this place?

“Bull Man,” you speak into the darkness, thick like an impenetrable wall and thin like a virgin’s veil.

“Maiden,” he echoes with a dark, low growl, slightly amused by the name you’ve selected for him.

“Are you cold?” You whisper.

Perhaps he doesn’t quite understand the question or why you asked it. It doesn’t matter: you have to swallow your pride and ask for his help if you’re going to survive this dark prison.

“I don’t get cold,” he finally responds.

“Good. I need your heat.”

The silence drags on, and you fear he has misunderstood you again, but then he speaks again, with the same slightly amused tone as before.

“Come take it.”

You’re not sure if you’ve completely lost your mind, crawling to him through the uneven floor of the Labyrinth. Who knows what he will do to you once he gets those arms of iron around you? You’re placing your maidenhood, your whole body at his mercy. And you’re not even sure if it’s a he, if this thing is human at all.

Human or animal, your hand meets the bull’s head on the way to him. He has taken it off, then... It’s not a part of him, just like you suspected. Maybe he is just a giant, daunting man, born from whatever forbidden desire Pasiphae had. Who knows if she only went to a foreign lover’s arms when her husband was at war? Who knows if King Minos has trouble getting his phallus up… These things happen: women get pregnant from their lovers, they do desperate things to pacify their husbands. And you don’t need a bull to get yourself an heir...

You feel his heat before you feel his skin: the Minotaur is verily blazing. He has gotten used to the cold, it seems, his body like a small bonfire in the clammy tunnel.

“Cold little female,” he comments when you snuggle towards him shyly, thoroughly aware of the uninviting chill of your body.

You settle next to him, every muscle in your body tight like a bowstring, your breaths shallow when he gives you a welcoming rumble. Goosebumps prickle across your skin and your throat goes dry, the thick swallow in the tunnel echoing around you like a thief.

Arms like iron go around you, and his body is taut, just like yours, but for a whole different reason entirely. He’s not afraid or nervous; he’s just… big. Pure muscle, his whole body thick, the stock and heat of him remind you of the sun. A miniature sun down here in these dark tunnels, but while you start to slowly soften in his arms, a different threat is already emerging. It doesn’t take long before his cock stiffens against you, and with the scarce clothing you both have, you can feel its every excited twitch.

Artemis… Protect me from this beast. Turn him into a dog if he tries to penetrate me. Let him rip my throat instead…

You’ve never prayed to the Virgin Goddess; you don’t know if she can even hear you from down here. But Hecate would only laugh if this Bull decided to breed you. No mercy would arrive from that direction: she would either send a disease of blisters upon the Minotaur for touching her chosen or then she would cackle like an old woman, thousand times raped.

“Thank you,” you whisper, hoping your kindness will distract him from what’s happening downstairs.

“My pleasure,” he grumbles, mimicking the words he probably heard as a child in his father’s great hall.

It sends a chill down your spine and butterflies into your heart to hear him speak like a polite man of court. And again, you think of asking him about his childhood... His mother, his father, the things he remembers from the surface. How he survived here without water, if there are underground springs here somewhere. Whether he eats humans like they say... If he ever embraced the dead women he killed.

“Can you do it again,” he rumbles against you, cutting you away from your grotesque thoughts.

“...Do what again?”

“Touch me… With your hand.”

His words are blunt now, his speech clumsy. But the way he says it is not an order. It’s an odd beg, more like. Laced with hope and wishes far away from greed. This Bull is never greedy, per se… He’s just lacking. Starved, for so many things that you fear there’s not enough time nor kindness to give him what he needs.

Your pulse flutters when you slowly lift your hand and caress the strong cords of muscle that make his neck. The rumbling returns; it turns into a low purr as the beast relaxes under your touch. Something softens inside you when he sighs from relief. His unbridled happiness tugs at your heart, trying to yank open something forbidden. It’s the softest violation you’ve ever felt: to be held by a giant killer having a roaring erection, while the said killer clearly enjoys your caress like it’s the touch of Aphrodite herself…

You even stroke his face. His jaw, unclenching under your touch; his cheek, covered with what you suppose is simply a wild, overgrown beard.

“Your hand,” he groans softly, “makes me sleepy and warm…”

The cold, uncaring goddess recedes. The burdens of past, present and future dissolve. Softness takes place in your heart; the iron locks give in like brittle brass. A smile plays on your lips as you continue to pet him softly, lulling you both to sleep with your voice.

“Then sleep, Bull of Crete...”

…

You wake up to his cock pressing against you.

Not against your stomach like when you went to sleep – that you could do with – but against your cunt, barely veiled by the thin linen of your dress.

The panic is soon wrestled down with reason: you tell yourself it’s just a cock. It’s just him. You’re simply in the Minotaur’s arms, and he’s sound asleep still; there’s no reason to buck and jerk and scream.

The darkness feels like a safe womb now, but with nothing to lock your gaze to, you have to take a moment to ground yourself into reality. And the first thing you ground into is a thick cockhead, pressing fast into your nether lips. He’s practically at the gates, and you’re lucky he’s still asleep.

It’s perhaps your fault this happened in the first place: you notice you’ve dragged your thigh over his hip; as if wanting him to fuck you in your sleep… You embrace him like Helen of Troy, and he holds you through his sleep like a man in love, perfectly content with napping on the cold ground with you.

“Mm…” The beast stirs, probably noticing how the female in his arms is tense as a rod. “You smell like you want to fuck…”

“No I don’t,” you hurry to whisper.

Gods curse this man’s ability to smell everything from miles away. Blood and humans and, apparently, a woman at her most receptive.

What if he can actually smell the wetness between your legs?

“We need to go,” you slowly remove your leg from on top of his waist, hoping it would go unnoticed that you were clutching him like a lover. You have no such luck: he grabs your thigh and draws it back, sets it safe and snug around his waist while adjusting his grip on you, now hugging you entirely like a lover would.

“I want to mate with you,” he says softly. “You want to mate too. Why go?”

He sounds so adorable when he’s still in the process of waking up to a new day. Drowsy and sweet, voice husky from sleep, body warm as can be, the hard-on between his legs happy and stiff.

“I thought you wanted to kill the king,” you try to point out.

“This is more important,” he gruffs. “Urgent.”

The cock pushes further up and against you, now spreading your folds under the dress, trying to penetrate into your heat. Your eyes go wide as thick need pools down to meet his greed. His body, his cock makes your head go dull for a moment; you feel like you’re not even capable of thinking actual thoughts.

“No, it’s not. We need to get up.”

You stiffen in his arms, push yourself away, and to your surprise, he actually lets you go. Reluctantly and with a hollow grunt, but he lets you go.

You rise with a wobble, and adjust your dress, your head spinning from his advances. You swear he becomes more man-like every day, every passing hour, even. Or is it just you who’s changing…?

The Bull Man is up before you get to ponder on that thought for too long. Your heart and head struggle to find their footing for a moment, your legs are so weak you feel like fainting. He catches you before you fall, the warm, thick arms closing around you with stout affection.

“You need more heat?” He asks softly.

You look up out of habit, even if you can't see his eyes, covered by the carcass again because his voice is muffled.

“No… I’m hungry.”

He’s silent for a moment, probably thinking what he could do to help the situation. You fear he will suggest you go back to visit his “pantry” and eat whatever horrible, half-rotten man-flesh he might have in store there, but he only holds you close to prevent you from sliding back to the ground.

“Hmm. No mice up here,” he ponders.

“You eat mice…?”

“Sometimes.”

You leave it at that: you don’t want to know what he’s had to do to sustain himself down here. You don’t even have a fire to cook the vermin, even if you would be ready to eat even those after another day or two without food.

“Not a long way up,” he says. “We will reach the sun soon. Then I’ll find you something to eat.”

“How do you know that…?”

“The air smells different.”

You sigh and search for the string, your lifeline to the outside world. You can’t wait to get out of here, and with both hurry and an odd dread, you hike for what seems like another whole day. Tension, hunger and thirst distort your thoughts, and you’re sure by now that the time flows differently here in the Underworld. With no small amount of pride, you feel accomplished to have survived this place so far. Even gods have had to do some tricks to escape the nether worlds: it is no small feat to charm the Minotaur and then walk out of here unharmed.

To your knowledge, you’re the only one who has ever escaped the Labyrinth. You haven’t even had time to think about what you will unleash with you… The demon that walks on your heels will take his revenge, not only on the king but on the city who threw him here.

Well. It’s their problem now. Minos and Pasiphae simply have to deal with their successor. The world will simply have to deal with the Underworld’s wrath.

And oh, how Hecate would laugh if she saw this monster prince of Crete escape his prison because of you – the feared Minotaur set free, only because he’s mesmerized by a woman. You suspect he would have his cock jumping for any girl, though. It's not because you're an exceptional sorceress that he follows you: it's your cunt he's after. And it shouldn’t make you feel jealous that he probably gets distracted the moment he sees a better offer walk by.

But it does. In your darkest wishes, you would keep the Bull Man all to yourself. Get him a leash, perhaps... Feed him with your own hands and let him grope you in the dark, watch him go wild from lust when you finally give him access to your cunt.

Many would hardly think you’re a virgin if they took a peek inside your head. But the things you’ve seen and done, the white bulls you’ve slaughtered for the dark Goddess, adorning them with cypress wreaths before slashing their throats open, would turn any woman bleak and twisted like this. For once, you would like to save the bull from slaughter.

When you see the first evidence of light, your body lets out a sigh it has been holding ever since you arrived here. Seeing the sun gives you more strength than any food or meal, and you pick up your pace while the Minotaur behind you begins to hesitate.

“It’s too bright,” he says before you’ve even walked out of the tunnel, now turning into a vast cave, the entrance to the Labyrinth.

You turn around to look and stop in your tracks when you see the fear in his eyes is acute. It’s mixed with wonder, the curiosity wrestling away doubt slowly but surely. He only needs a little nudge, a gentle pull, an enticing little smile and eyes that he can trust.

“You’ll get used to it soon,” you extend your hand.

He takes a step, then another, then another, until he reaches your outstretched fingers, and hand in hand you walk out of the Labyrinth and into the bright morning sun, burning over the kingdom of Crete.

He’s only a breath away from panicking, but covers it well. You wonder if it’s truly the light that’s too bright or if the feeling of being so exposed is what makes him so afraid. Clearly, the vast space opening up before him is intimidating.

There are grassy plains as far as the eye can see, little hills that dot the horizon, and skies so expansive and bright it must hurt his eyes. Goats are grazing under the sun, trees are bending in the wind, the rustling of leaves and the sound of birds calling him to look in all directions as he tries to make some sense of his surroundings.

“It’s alright,” you give his palm a soft squeeze, and the way he looks there under the sun, so big and powerful and able, and still so utterly lost, is giving you heartache you haven’t known since you were a child.

“There’s… so many colours,” he says, looking at the blue summer sky, the deep olive greens, the dirty whiteness of the goats, the flowers upon the grass. A butterfly, flying past, yellow like the citrus that people harvest from a few miles from here. A big blackbird with an orange beak, swooping down to catch a cricket, the slate grey pigeons flying so close to the sun that he has to shield his eyes even if they’re already safe and sheltered under the bull head.

Seeing his wonder and awe makes you look at the scenery so differently that it burns, it actually hurts: there’s so much beauty in the world, and you have always taken it for granted. Cursed the rain and the storms, cursed the droughts, cursed the gods for sending down another famine, when in truth, the world was filled with abundance, of colours, of life and joy… And all you’ve done is worship darkness. Now the darkness is out: it’s standing next to you, watching the view of your mundane everyday life like it’s nothing short of a miracle.

And when you turn back to look at him again, his eyes are upon you.

“What?” You ask, freshly caught in your moment of weakness.

“You are pretty,” he says, eyes wrinkling with delight under the mask.

Gods damn him…

He doesn’t know that human men don’t act like this, talk like this, or if they do, there’s usually something vile involved behind it all. He doesn’t know how to play games, he was never introduced to the lies and deceit of the world.

The Bull of Crete only looks at you with soft fondness in his stare – he doesn’t understand that he should cover that softness as well if he intends to win. Any woman could put a leash on him before another moon has passed, but he doesn’t seem to care. And it’s not even heat or hunger that makes you weak this time... It’s those eyes, looking at you with more and more warmth.

“Nonsense,” you huff without a voice, and turn towards the old road with an adoring bull on your heels.

The cold sigh of the underworld is quickly left behind you as you walk up the old carriage road, nearly grown in with weeds. The Labyrinth is located miles away from civilization, but the people living in these hills are used to the cold cave by now. They trust that the Minotaur will never escape and only turn away their heads and close the doors of their huts when the screaming, crying human sacrifices are delivered to the mouth of the cave. Little do they know that the monster is now looking at their little hills and goats with delight, not bloodlust.

For the Minotaur is fascinated with your world: he has to touch every leaf, every tree, every blade of grass, it seems. The goats are afraid of him, but one small nanny is bold enough to come and sniff his hand. Perhaps it remembers that beings walking on two feet give her apples sometimes, and the giant studies this small white animal with gentle curiosity, allows the goat to smell his hand, only chuckles when the goat gives out a little scoff when she notices there are no treats to be found there.

The vision is more adorable than when you’ve seen children play with kittens, and no matter what you do, you can’t turn your heart into ice anymore. You were taught that the Minotaur is a monster who enjoys torturing his victims, creatures far more helpless than him. Now you see him watching the she-goat with warm curiosity, rumbling softly inside his helm, far from the ravaging beast that approached you in that tunnel what seems like months ago.

You watch him with tender sadness as he marvels at the sky and remembers how he used to sit in the shade of an olive tree when he was a child. He goes to sit there now and examines how the sun filters through the massive branches of the tree as if trying to recall the memory.

He asks questions like: “How can you humans stand this heat?” or “Why is there only one road?” and listens to your answers carefully.

He says he can smell the sea, even if the salty water is miles and miles away, and gets curious about what’s behind that hill, or that one, what about that one… You wonder if he’s even interested in killing the king anymore and suggest that he could just forget about this cruel place and buy himself a sea voyage with that expensive sword. He could get rid of his helmet and ask if anyone needs a goat herd or an able-bodied man to help at construction sites or stables; he could get work from the docks any day, sail to Athens or some other big city, forge himself a new life.

But he doesn’t want to.

He says he has to avenge his mother who always cried when he was little.

More wretched tugs pull at your heart as you approach the city. The lovely summer’s day turns into a nightmare once people see who’s on his way to the heart of Crete.

You don’t understand their screams, not anymore, while only a few days ago you knew they preceded death. The Minotaur doesn’t kill anyone, mainly because he doesn’t have to. Everyone flees before his wake, people rush to their homes and bar the doors, even soldiers slip away to be with their loved ones or run to warn the king if they have any loyalty left.

You’re left to walk through the marketplace in settling dust and tense silence as the Bull Man explores the abundant samples of food on display. He has to have a taste of everything from all stands, but only after he has offered figs, olives, grain, grapes, grilled meat and fish to you first.

“Eat,” he says and shoves a handful of pine seeds your way. “You were hungry?”

“This is not the way to–” you ignore the food only through sheer willpower. “This is not right. People own these things. They sell them at the market, you need to pay for these.”

“Pay? With what?”

He looks at you for a moment, unable to recall what money is and how these things are supposed to work. He probably had his mother’s servants bring him everything he needed as a child anyway, so how could he know?

“They will take your hands for stealing,” you try to explain with softly building despair.

“I will take their heads before that.”

“The next king will hunt you down and punish you,” you rush after him, and when he won’t listen, you seize his hand and finally get him to halt. He looks down at the weak palm around his wrist, then raises his gaze to you.

“Bulls don’t have kings.”

Your attempts to tame him are futile. The things they’ve taught him to be are now being used as a way to escape responsibility, and while it’s none of your business, you refuse to let him believe that he is nothing more than an animal.

“You are not a bull,” you wail in frustration. “You’re a man.”

He hesitates, only for a moment; the gentle, loving gaze makes your legs weak.

“You’re the first to think that.”

Then he rips himself away from you, softly but sternly.

He doesn’t need directions to the palace: he knows he has to head for the most prominent building in the city to reach the king. The grandiose heart of Crete, white-chalked and beautiful under the burning midday sun is the pride of every citizen, even if it houses another monster.

You sigh as you watch him go: the Bull Man, the demon of the underworld, the one you thought would rape you bloody before you get to crawl out of the Labyrinth. The fact that he wanted to kill his father more than he wanted to be born again into a new life wasn’t a surprise, but that he chose to bloody his sword rather than his cock is somehow... insulting, almost.

What actually haunts you is how your insides coil and turn when you rush back to your temple. It’s not like you thought the Minotaur would take you with him. Board some trade ship bound for distant shores, and ravage you ever so softly in the belly of the creaking hull. It’s not like you dreamed of petting him to sleep while you two embark on a new life. But the way your heart twists and wails inside your chest makes it clear that losing him is even more painful than losing Theseus and the life he promised you.

You never even wanted Theseus; you only wanted him to take you away from here. His affection would have been the result of ample witchcraft at best.

He’s practically already dead, and your heart turns to stone far more slowly than you would prefer. It’s just your luck to first have the golden hero of Greece look down on you in disdain, and then witness even the Bull Man walk away from you like you never meant anything to him. Men killing each other is the oldest story in the world, and you want no part in it, but something in this beast has stirred you awake from a long, cold slumber. It’s infuriating that you can’t dispel a simple animal from your heart. Oldest story in the book, that one, too…

But oh, how you now yearn after some cruel, lowly, dirty beast… The Minotaur already owns you, and he never even had to plunge his sword inside you to prove that. Besides, you would’ve been perfectly willing had he decided to take you on the green grass, under the vast sky, while some noisy goats graze around you. You realize that that’s what you expected to happen, and when it didn’t, you’re left more than disappointed: you're left completely hollow. You always find out these things a little too late, it seems… The Bull is headed for the palace and will likely get killed after he slaughters his cruel father. There’s at least thirty spears in that building, and more will arrive when called.

You arrive at the temple, panting and with your body flushed and weak. The maidens at the entrance share a quick glance with each other before turning their fearful gazes back to you. They’re the youngest arrivals, not even initiates yet; one of them hardly even bleeds.

“The King is dead,” you announce without bothering to even greet them, and the girls huddle up together like they’re a bunch of slaves about to get slapped.

You realize you must look like an animal with your dirty robes, dishevelled hair and your wild, alive stare. No wonder they look like they’ve seen a ghost... You basically are one, coming back from the dead like this.

“What?”

A priestess arrives at the threshold like an image of Hecate herself, dressed in robes as black as the midnight sky, but you don’t shy away from her like you used to.

“Or he will be. Soon. The Minotaur is here.”

“How did you… How did it...”

You’ve never seen the priestess in disarray. She’s always composed, cold and distant, but seeing you like the wraith that you are, freshly escaped from the Labyrinth, spat back from the bowels of the earth like the dark gods didn’t even want you there, makes even the greatest of Hecate’s servants a little uneasy.

She gathers what’s left of her dignity and finds her most commanding voice. Sadly, it doesn’t have the power to shake the ground anymore.

“Where is Theseus of Athens?”

“Disemboweled… is my best guess,” you say in a listless voice, then turn your head toward the smell of fresh fruit.

Normally, you would walk these halls with dignity, but now, you simply barge in and grab the first piece of food you find. You ought to get whipped for your insolence, but no one dares to raise a hand against you. The maids and priestesses stare in shock as you eat and drink like a starved prisoner. You’re a living Hecate in certain aspects, your arrival the first toll of the bell of doom as the palace guards sound the alarm.

So…

The Minotaur has reached the king.

…

The priestesses deem it only logical that the King finally pays for his sins: the gods have been offended by the number of human sacrifices sent to the Labyrinth, and this is their way of exacting revenge. You were only an instrument of their will.

After a quick wash and some more food, you begin to feel like a human again. The maids bring you a new chiton, flowing and white: your old clothes are burned in a brazier as if that would help you forget.

And this might be the only place you don’t get blamed for unleashing a monster. You were at a crossroads with the Minotaur, and anyone would have done the same: try to talk him out of his killing spree, calm him down, entice him with a gift. No one expected that the beast could even speak, so your approach was unusual, perhaps, but it worked. Hecate guided you through the tunnels, even when the candle went out, she stilled the Bull’s loins until you reached the sunlight where the beast got distracted with other things. You leave out the Minotaur's attraction to birds, bees and butterflies because your story is unbelievable enough as it is.

But the Minotaur will be slain after he has done his deed: Minos is the one who should be punished, not the city of Crete. And it is only just to put down this beast, a mercy.

So when he appears between the pillars of temple, this time wholly covered in blood, people are bound to scream. Even the priestesses who are used to seeing blood, shriek like widows when the Minotaur steps inside the holy shrine of Hecate.

“Where is the maiden of the crossroads?”

He came back for you, after all…

The boom of his voice is familiar, and yet, you cower on the bench when you hear it. The Minotaur sounds like he’s an envoy of Hades himself, and while you’re not among those who scream and yell, it still sends shivers down your spine to hear him speak like that.

Or is it the excitement, a tiny flame of hope that makes you quiver like this?

“We all belong to the goddess,” someone peeps, the Minotaur now descending down the stairs.

The massive head turns, gaze like razor sweeping across the marbled shrine. You’re so far back that he can’t catch you, sitting behind many bodies and faces, and before you can force yourself to rise, the main priestess, the oldest, most crooked of the crones, steps forth to meet this beast.

“This is a House of Hecate,” she speaks. “No man is allowed to enter unless they are Death.”

The black carcass turns, but the priestess doesn’t waver. If anything, her spine turns into unbreakable metal before this man’s gaze.

“I am Death,” he says, far more gently than anyone would expect. Then he walks past the crone like she’s just a harmless elder. No one does a thing, because even the head of your temple is powerless now.

“She had a red string and a candle. Where is she?”

He grabs the first woman he sees, and you rise up before he decides it’s time to thrust his blade into someone to loosen the tongues of these women.

“Please,” you take a hesitant step towards your Bull. “I’m here... I’m the one you’re looking for.”

The Minotaur lets go of the frightened initiate the instant he sees you. She’s shoved aside with little interest, the blue eyes behind the corpse now solely fixed on you. The way they soften into hazy ice makes your knees weak – that’s the stare of someone who recognizes their loved one among a thick, dull crowd…

“Come with me,” he extends a hand when he reaches you, strong legs swallowing tiles like he’s in a hurry to get back to you. You open your mouth, close it, and look at his hand, the rough, enormous palm held out for you to place your own little hand in.

“You belong to me,” he says with great weight when you don’t speak. It should spark the ire of the goddess for him to dare to talk to you like this… But mostly, your body sings. It tells you to take a step and take his hand: to let him have you, once and for all.

“My place is here,” you utter, all power gone from your voice. All your dreams, all your fears are offering their hand to you with his, and the maidens, mothers and crones of this hall look upon your exchange with the Bull Man in stupefied silence.

“You were sent down to me,” he presses on. “You are mine now. You belong to me.”

Your body is singing, singing, singing.

It’s not a request… Or a proposal.

It’s a god, taking what’s his.

…

You swallow with nothing in your throat and look at the head priestess with helpless misery: she looks back with the eyes of a noxious Medusa, wholly dispassionate to the problems you brought upon yourself. And what could she even do? She’s unarmed against the claims of Hades: Death is now in love with you, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.

He doesn’t want to stay in the city, as enchanting as it is, saying that it stinks and that he’s tired of the screams. No one wants him here; he already knows that, and the task he was meant to do is done. He doesn’t seem to be much moved by it either, only asking you if there is a place where he can wash the blood off himself.

People become more bold when they see you walk out of the city. Not even the sight of a crimson demigod makes them watch their tongues. Insults and slurs follow you through the streets, shouts such as “Kingslayer!” and “Beast!” are accompanied with curses such as “You are an abomination!” and “Go back to your lair!”

No one treats him as their prince and savior, no one sees him as the man he truly is. And because hatred thickens in crowds, you get your share of the insults as well.

What kind of a woman would follow a beast like him? Have you sold your soul to the demons of the desert, or has Hades himself forced you to be with this monster? Are you behind the murder of their king?

“Must I remind you?” You turn on your heels, standing tall and proud with the posture of a queen. “According to the old laws, the one who slays the king is the next to rule.”

“You led him out of the Labyrinth, didn’t you?” the voices ask.

“Gave him your cunt, too,” they sneer.

“You’re worse than the bloody Gorgon,” they mock, but you have a thick skin: if anything, you take it as a compliment to be referred to the mighty slayers of men.

What cuts through your heart is the filth and hate they spit at him, the man who has known nothing but loath since he was born.

“Hecate’s whore… I should kill you first,” one soldier shouts with spit running down his chin.

The citizens of Crete would never hail the Minotaur as their king, but none can say the deed didn’t prove great strength. Some would even call it justice. He is the queen’s son, after all: he’s more royal than any of these dung-stinking peasants will ever be. He should never have been sent down to those tunnels in the first place.

Before you know it, the Minotaur swoops past you in haste, diving towards the screaming crowd with hunched shoulders and a fiery breath.

“Stop,” you say, and he halts immediately, gaze still directed to the one who called you a whore. The soldiers back away along with the peasants and tradesmen, these poor, humble Cretes who act like they never meant to be so mean.

“Let us go in peace,” you command, voice unwavering and stern. “Or I will curse you all. You and your families, down to the seventh son and seventh daughter.”

That manages to shut them up. The threat of a curse frightens these poor beasts even more than the enraged Minotaur breathing fire through his helm. No one wants rot and puke to follow them wherever they go; no one wants to doom their offspring with illness, death and sorrow. They disperse in all directions and only hiss and whisper as they go.

You spit on the ground as your last gift to these people, leaving the city of Crete with the ever-adoring Bull at your heels.

“You’re even prettier when you’re angry,” he says while walking next to you, voice thick with genuine passion and awe.

You roll your eyes: any man would cower before Hecate’s curse, but this one? This one only gets more horny.

“Perhaps you are part bull after all,” you retort dryly.

“It takes more than one spear to kill me,” he boasts, but you don’t need more proof of his prowess. Surely, people have tried to kill him in the Labyrinth, but he’s survived every single attempt on his life – for that alone, he should be a decorated hero.

The only thing that makes you annoyed, however, is this childish need to prove he could’ve taken the whole city by himself just because some man happened to call you a slut.

“Mother said I’m a monster instead of a man,” he says, completely unaware that your snap wasn't meant as a compliment. He says it like he’s partly proud of it, and you finally sigh and turn.

“Your mother was heartless. And wrong.”

The Minotaur only looks at you with a building passion that goes straight to your loins.

“But you’re not.”

“...What?”

“Heartless.”

You feel stripped naked before him, the way his eyes seem to burn away your poor dress. But the fact that he unearths your most guarded secret, just like that, is a catastrophe of a far wider scale.

You’re not sure who’s tied to whom anymore… Or if you’re tied to each other, the gods now laughing in their wine as they look down at you two: a fierce and bloodied giant following the maiden he stole like it’s you who took him and not the other way around.

You reach the roaring waters of a waterfall in silence, the night wrapping the lands inside a dark blue veil. Stars will be visible soon, and with the moon creeping up to the sky, you won’t be needing candles tonight. The silver mistress gives plenty of light for you to admire your beast, and compared to the thick darkness of the tunnels you emerged from this morning, it feels like a generous blessing.

You sit on the banks of the small, clear pond, utterly exquisite at nightfall. The sun’s heat has turned into a warm, caressing breeze, and you submerge your feet into the water, giving out a satisfied sigh as the cool pond embraces your travel worn feet. The Bull sinks to a crouch some distance away from you, curious about your obvious moment of pleasure.

“Did you meet her…? Your mother?” You ask from the cool water lapping at your feet – how can a simple man make you feel so restless and shy?

“Did you… kill her?”

“She cursed me,” he says, sullen and wholly unsurprised. Time and time again, you are shocked by the hatred his own kin shows him. How can a mother be so cruel?

“How could I kill my own maker?”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper. “For everything.”

You swallow before such unwavering love. The same man who cursed the gods yesterday honours the womb he came from so much that he won’t raise a hand against it, not even when his own mother spits curses at him. You don’t know if it’s his greatest strength or biggest weakness, but sometimes you wonder if he’s more human than humans, this beast.

“I’m not,” he retorts immediately. “The king is dead. Mother is safe. I have you... This is the best day of my life.”

You turn to look at him. Time and again, the lack of lies and deceit in this man catches you off guard. It’s more painful than any wound, to see how the Minotaur has no protective skin against the corrupted human nature, that he is human nature before it was defiled.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” you falter.

The chiton pools around your ankles, and you wonder if the man even breathes anymore. You know your skin is glowing with the last rays of the setting sun, you’re aware that the water and moonlight play upon your skin and make you look like an illusion, powerful in its own way.

When have you ever faltered…? Back when you were a little girl, you reckon, the notion euphoric and eerie in your bones.

You rise up and undress before him nonchalantly, trying to ignore the fervid stare of your admirer. Unclasping the brooches holding up your white linen dress, you let it fall down and set you free, secretly reveling in the downright carnal stare now glued to your skin.

Ripe for plucking, you think while stepping out of the pile of cloth and into the thin evening air. His gaze feasts on you: the plump breasts no one ever loved, the vulnerable navel down below, the dark triangle between your legs, the secret power it holds.

Heat pools into your core as you watch him: everything in your body turns warm and soft when you take in the utter heftiness of him. The mean, swelling phallus between his legs, the near inhuman strength those shoulders and chest possess. Your body is the complete opposite of him, ethereal, almost, compared to the absolute brute strength before you.

His eyes linger there the longest until he rises too, stiff and dreamy, a beast entirely taken by a thrall. The loincloth is practically torn away, as if it’s only a nuisance he must get rid of immediately. His eyes never leave your shape while he bares himself, and the phallus, you notice, belongs to a human. It’s thick and wondrous, fully erect, adorned with dark curls and accompanied by a set of balls you’ve mainly seen on horses. Big, full and round but unlike animals, they’re covered in dark fur, almost black here in the evening light. Thick seed beads through the slit of his cock from simply seeing you, and the way his chest heaves makes it clear that this man is ready to mate as soon as he’s allowed to do so.

“You need to take off your helm,” you lift your chin, thoroughly aware of your power over him, even if it’s laughable, a miracle that he doesn’t fuck you on the spot like the animal he is. “You’re a man, not a bull.”

His eyes don’t betray any kind of hesitation. He doesn’t seem to be interested in whether he wears his mask or not. He just blinks as if he’s indeed under a spell and nods.

“If you say so.”

The broad muscles flex as he takes it off, and what is revealed to you from underneath the head is both a surprise and a disappointment. There’s not a monster under there, only a man, a stoic, boorish, shaggy male who’s in desperate need of a wash and a comb. He’s somewhat handsome under all that facial hair and knots, actually, not bad at all – if you like your men rugged and wild.

He lets the head drop to the ground with a thud as if it was never a part of him at all, and follows you into the pool like you’re his mother and he’s your cub about to get scrubbed clean.

He seems to dwarf you, even when half submerged in the pond, leaning back with a sigh not unlike yours. If you’re afraid, your body has a peculiar way of showing it: even in the clear, glossy water, you can feel yourself get wet. Never have you seen such strength, not in any man: in horror and awe, you realize he could be a descendant of Zeus himself. As if providing proof to these claims, he looks up to the sky, mesmerized by the myriad stars dotting the vast, unattainable blue.

Using this momentary distraction to your advantage, you reach to pluck a handful of moss from the bank. With this soft little sponge in your hand, you hope to make it clear that this is indeed a bath, not foreplay.

“They’re stars,” you say softly while slinking closer to him. “Have you ever seen them...?”

“Yes,” he rasps with his head lolled back, throat completely exposed. It always hurts your heart to see that he trusts you so fully. You are no threat to him – even if the gods changed the moss in your hand into a weapon of some sort, you wouldn’t pose any kind of challenge. And still, the way he allows you to creep towards him and wipe his rough hide with the makeshift sponge without so much as flinching is heartbreaking.

“I have forgotten…” his voice drifts off as he examines the night sky, eyes filled with distant, glass-like delight.

“Beautiful, aren’t they...?”

“Your world is pretty,” he brings his gaze back to earth and to you. “But you’re the loveliest thing I’ve seen so far.”

You almost freeze upon hearing that. His compliments always catch you off guard, but this time, something forbidden and long forgotten comes undone: a lost want, no, a need to hear such simple words of shallow praise.

“You do not scream... You do not run. Why?”

Your eyes are liquid, glass about to break as you set yourself on the task of scrubbing him clean. You refuse to get emotional in front of him: an initiate of the dark goddess, shedding tears when a horny man calls her pretty? What utter nonsense.

But then he grabs your wrist: not to seize back power, but to prevent you from escaping this fragile moment.

“You are different,” he agrees calmly, then releases you, but you reckon it’s mostly because he misses the soft rubs you were giving him.

“Perhaps I’m crazy,” you breathe while looking at the damp curls on his chest.

Yes… That’s the only explanation for this madness. It has to be.

“Is that why you took me?”

“I took you because you’re mine. I want you.”

“You can’t just take what you want,” you warn softly.

“Why not?” His head tilts a little to the side as he’s trying to make sense of you and the manners of your world. “Don’t you want to be mine?”

You lift your gaze and risk a look into his eyes, stripped from all facades as always. You even catch a passing wave of worry there: he had counted on you being as fascinated with him as he is with you. The hunger behind that want, the need to be something special to you, is a whole another issue that must wait until your head is more clear. Way more clear…

“Perhaps,” you confess.

“I have nothing to give you,” he shrugs, eyes looking slightly past you this time, out of shame or anxiety. It takes a while for you to understand he’s liking you to the goods at the market and thinks he’s expected to have money to be able to keep you.

“You don’t need to pay for me,” you smile, trying your best to disguise the soft amusement in your voice. His brows only furrow as he tries to calculate and think.

“I don’t understand the rules of this world,” he finally shakes his head.

“I’ll teach you.”

For a while, he only looks on with fascination how you rub his arms and belly, basically massaging him with the wet moss. His eyes drift closed when you scrub the back of his neck, the stout erection only getting thicker under the cool water. You’re careful with his legs, not because you’re afraid he’s ticklish but because you try to avoid touching the huge cock already jutting up from happiness. It gives a few excited bounces when you wash his inner thighs, hopeful to get its needs satiated soon.

“I can hunt for you,” he suggests. “Bring you food… Protect you.”

He’s visibly excited when figuring out a way to give you something in return. He wants to provide offerings for your company, your lore, and eventually, your cunt, too. You might be a virgin, but you’re not stupid: of course he wants the soft, wet prize between your legs. A pair of lovely tits to squeeze at night... Ears to groan hushed confessions into, thighs to nibble, bite and suck until you cry...

“What do you think?” He asks, breath heavy from the bliss you’re already granting him by simply giving him a bath. “I could give you my heat. Please you...”

“You know how to please women?”

“No. But you could teach me.”

The way he says it is not shy. Only tentative. A bear, walking on ice and hoping it would carry his weight. One wrong step and the ice will swallow him, spitting out his bones only in spring.

And then…

“Do you know how to fuck?”

The ice holds, mainly because you’re too shocked to even slap or ridicule this man. His eyes bore into you with such unbridled greed that you have trouble keeping your precious pride intact.

“Of course,” you hear yourself whisper like it would be an insult to your intellect if you didn’t.

“Teach me,” he says, ever more greedily.

“I…”

Your jaw is left open, but not a word comes out. A strong palm closes around your wrist again, this time to bring you flush against him. The water laps at your skin, a distant crow cackles somewhere. Your hand is brought to his phallus, but he doesn’t have to wrap your fingers around it: you do it all by yourself, breath locked in your throat as you feel how hard and blazing he is.

“You want my cock,” he says, mouth only an inch from yours. “Don’t you...?”

You wet your lips – a mistake, because his half-lidded gaze darts to your mouth the instant your pink tongue lashes out. You’re in a predicament, but on the other hand, what else did you expect, taking your clothes off in front of a touch-starved bull?

“I’d give it to you happily,” he insists. “No female ever wanted to spread her legs for me.”

Or a leash.

Your fingers tighten on their own, they mould around him. Like a bond…

“Really?” You breathe. “What fools they were...”

The cock gives a full throb inside your palm, exalted to be yours. But only a moment later, the dreaded Minotaur moves.

You find yourself under him before you can even gasp for air: the soaked, hot body of a giant now pinning you on the grass and crushing you under it with ease. The weight of your error is fully pressed against you: he was never tamed, and you were a fool to think you could put him in chains.

The raw scent of earth and musk fills your nostrils, making the stars above you spin. His cock is trapped between your bodies, giving another rich pulse against your thigh. Gods, if he were throbbing like that inside you…

“You make my skin burn,” he growls into your ear, the heat of his skin now unbearable, the coarse hair prickling your skin from neck to thigh. “My loins, ache…”

“Are you a witch?” He asks, and you finally allow yourself to breathe.

If he only knew… But hexes and charms are of no use for you now: the only thing you can do is moan, apparently, as he dives for your neck, planting barbarous kisses on your skin.

Down, down, down he goes, pure avarice driving him to feast on every part of you. You’re too weak to stop him when he searches for the source of your intoxicating scent. Discovering it between your thighs, he dives nose-first into your sex, meeting your core with a hungry grunt.

Your back arcs with pleasure, your nails sink into his back: a funny thing to do when he’s already as close as can be. The trail of crude kisses leads him to your breasts, and you try to keep your whimpers in control, but a gasp erupts when he drags a hot tongue across your nipple. Massive palms close around your tits while you squirm in his hold: he doesn’t seem to be driven by the need to please you; rather, he wishes to study you first, examine how your body reacts to his groping. He leaves your breasts aching and sore, every bite and suck managing to make you wetter and wetter, your cunt screaming for attention by now.

“Gods...” you wriggle on the soft earthen bed, not expecting him to take you with his mouth first.

He withdraws, only a little, but his voice is surprisingly soft.

“Do I hurt you...?”

“No… But this is not mating…”

“Even I know that much,” he says darkly, and grabs you by the waist, moves you around like a doll until you find yourself on your belly.

He looks at you from between your thighs, demonic and keen. The broad shoulders force your legs wide apart when he’s seated there, waist-deep in the water, with you hauled to the shore like a siren.

Not a moment is wasted as he pulls you back to him by the hips: you’re drawn to all fours, a hot streak of cum dragging on the inside of your thigh from the cock that meets your skin. He grabs and steadies it with an annoyed grunt, and the fat tip is shoved straight into your folds, your nether lips parted with brute force almost.

“Guide me.”

His voice is demanding, impatient as he drags the fat head up and down the entrance of your hole, coating his cock with your slick in the process. You wonder if it’s instinctual, if he knows that this is where he should poke and that it will hurt you less if he’s well-oiled. He’s about to rut you into oblivion the instant you tell him where to shove his cock, and the prospect only sends more sap flowing down your thigh.

“There…” you stutter when he finds it, the aching spot that’s leaking profusely. He pushes the head in, not by teasing but by bullying, almost forcing it inside from how tight and unreceptive you are.

“Tighter than my fist,” is his only comment, and it makes you shudder. “I will not last long…”

You wince from the burn, but the rest of it glides in like a dream, and suddenly you’re filled, to the capacity, one could say. He grunts just from the way your womanhood is hugging him, not sure what this foreign object inside you is – is it a good thing or a threat?

“Easy then,” you breathe a huff into the sweet night air, filled with fireflies and night birds who know nothing about the fucking you’re about to go through.

He doesn’t move – inside you, that is. Outside, he crawls forward until he moulds around you, heavy body enveloping you completely. The hairs on his thighs tickle the back of your legs, his chest scrapes your back just so as he demonstrates how you belong to him in every way. But when your cunt starts to squeeze him again, he swallows thickly.

“Does this feel good to you too…?”

You catch faint confusion and concern in his voice, astonished that such a soft, frail body like yours can take his cock just like that. Little does he know you’re still adjusting to his size, thanking all the gods that he doesn’t move yet.

“Yes,” you confess because it does feel good: his thickness inside you, stretching you both gently and violently, studying how it feels to be inside a loving, wet heat.

“Then I will fuck you every day,” his lips come to brush your ear. “Many times...”

You hear yourself whimper, more humble now than ever. No man would dare to take you on all fours, but here you are, like a bought bride about to get stuffed…

He withdraws a little, asks, “Like this?” when he returns with a rough, nasty thrust. The balls meet your mound, heavy on the tender nub you’ve flicked when you’re lonely, covering your mouth while you do it. Both your hands are planted on the ground now, your legs spread before this beast, cunt filled to the brim with his cock.

“Not so rough,” you warn, and he heeds your instructions to the letter until he’s moving in and out with a slow, delicious pace that allows you to feel every thick bump of him. Soaked now down to your thighs, the sounds of your mating is utterly sloppy and slick, and of course he’s curious.

“Are you always like this…?”

“Like… what,” you huff in between the slow, torturous thrusts.

“Soft,” he rasps. “Tight… Wet like rain.”

“No. It’s just when…”

“When you want to fuck?”

You whimper for an answer, mostly because he starts to slip from the agreed sluggish pace. His cock invades you with more urgency, chasing the eruption that must be generous from those thick balls that should belong to a horse.

“I knew it…” he says dreamily behind you. “Some women want to mate with bulls...”

He punctuates his newfound pride with a full, deep thrust, and you wince.

“You’re not a–”

“Keep telling yourself that, little maiden.”

He exhales a hot smile next to your ear, and you’re neck deep in love. Your mouth hangs open, your lids half closed and fluttering from the way he pounds into your poor, abused cunt. Heavy balls slap your swollen nub with careless abandon, making you squeeze his thickness every time he hits the end of you. His grunts become more animalistic with every thrust, and your cunt is a wild thing, leaking and weeping and throbbing until you fear there’s something wrong with you – no woman is supposed to be this needy for a beast…

I’m going to come… You realize in horror as the slick sounds of fucking overthrow even the coursing roar of the waterfall. The knowledge shoots your body full of dark, hot ink; it explodes inside your core like a liquid star, throbbing through your cunt currently being ploughed like you’re nothing but a needy, sloppy hole for him. You’re swimming in so much pleasure that it’s almost painful, the revelation some secret of the gods, no doubt.

He growls when you moan, heavy arm snaking its way around your middle to keep you in place for him. The purr is eager and low, the rumble erupts from his chest like a thick, loving volcano, a statement of how perfect you are. He nuzzles his nose into your neck and rubs his scent all over you while fucking you through it, the divine rapture that leaves your throat dry from moans.

He doesn’t need to be told what it means when you’re crying like that: he doesn’t need to be explained that his cock is giving you ample pleasure. It’s so desperate, how much he wants to both fuck and please you, just own you and fulfill you, that you start to shake, your frail body not capable of handling the orgasm he just gave you.

Your strength fails, and you find yourself on your elbows, cunt even more exposed to him now, the cock pistoning into you with a relentless pace. He’s like a titan upon you, taking pleasure from your quivering, weak frame and the tight wet hole that belongs to it. You’re still in rapture when he starts to sound like broken, wounded man.

“You were made for me,” he huffs. “You were made...for me…”

His voice evaporates along with your thin, adoring mewls, just before he fucks himself over the edge. You can feel the hot, thick spurts, filling you as he roars into your hair, balls pressed flush against your sex, thighs meeting yours in a moment frozen in time.

They can probably hear him all the way to the city, hear what a cunt like yours does to an invincible beast like him… But his cries are only met with silence; the night sky looks back with disinterest, the birds continue their songs when they notice it was only the roar of a mighty beast that filled the land. Before long, he’s groaning above you, using your hole more softly; loving it until the last drop is milked.

When he stops, his whole body is trembling from release, but you’re not given a moment of reprieve. He forces you to the ground with him on your back, the rough, thick body never leaving yours. Coarse beard chafes your neck, his body trapping you completely under him, he even opens his jaw to take your shoulder between his teeth and bites you while his cock is still pulsing fat inside you.

“I can’t get enough of you,” he pants into your ear, angry, almost.

“Good,” you breathe a smile, but he’s not satisfied.

“You couldn’t get enough of me too… I noticed.”

“You gave me pleasure,” you agree. “Lots of it.”

“That was a lot of seed… I haven’t spilled in days.”

He huffs into your ear, astonished and proud that he could do such a thing. You feel him shift to take a better look at you, fingers arrive to graze your temple as if to make sure you’re real, as if having his cock inside you wasn’t enough proof of that. They’re a little shaky, a little uncouth, but the touch is gentle enough, and sweet.

He's boasting again perhaps, you don’t know, but you give him a soft laugh, notice how he stops breathing momentarily when hearing the bright sound.

“I am filled to the brim with you, yes… It will take a while before I can take more.”

“...You have other holes in you,” he offers after a while, quite seriously, in fact.

“Get off me, you beast,” you huff and squirm to get out from under him, but there’s a luscious grin on your face, a smile that tells him you would more than approve of his obscene ideas later.

“This feels good,” he murmurs into your hair. “This feels right...”

He allows you to leave from under him, only whines when his cock gets exiled from your cunt. He misses the wet heat like a newborn child misses the womb, but you need to recover from the recent invasion. Seed gushes out from your hole, making a mess on the ground as he pulls you against him, wanting to cuddle you next.

You wonder if he even knows what cuddling means as you lie there with a sticky mess between your legs and the heat of an entire sun on your cheeks. You smile into the coarse, sweaty body hair tickling your nose, deciding it doesn’t matter whether he knows or not: the most important thing is that he wants to hold you like this.

“Yes,” you smile. “This feels right…”

Something blooms in your chest. An odd flower, persistent and sweet.

The stars above are cold but motherly as they look down on you two: born again into a world that doesn’t want either of you. The only things that accept you now are flowers, birds, the wind and the rain, bees and salty sea, but that’s aplenty. That’s more than the whole of Crete could ever give you.

“Are you thinking about your hero,” he asks above you.

“What? No…”

“Good,” he rasps, so softly now that you start to fear he’s about to cry.

You are more than capable of lying, but Theseus hasn’t crossed your mind in hours: the last time it did, the memory was received with loath and disdain. Thinking about Theseus while you’re draped all over your Bull, his seed flowing out of your womb... What a ridiculous idea.

The reason for his hardly disguised anger is laid out plain before you: he's just jealous like any other man. Somehow, it makes you feel even more glowy inside.You’re my hero, you want to say, but have no courage to spill out the words. He was balls deep inside you mere moments ago, but telling him this intimate truth seems to be too much.

It never occurred to him, then, that you would enjoy copulating with him. He fucked you with the impression that you needed thoughts of another man to make you wet… That perhaps with the help of the image of Theseus in your mind, you were able to come with his cock inside you.

“My Bull,” you whisper. “Tell me your name. You must have a name…?”

His breath stops only for a moment, the heart in his chest gives an arduous beat before he answers.

“Asterion.”

Starry one…

Of course.

All monsters have names, usually the opposite of what they’re claimed to be. His birth is in heaven, in the stars; he belongs to the company of heroes and gods.

“Asterion,” you whisper it out into the night air while the animal an man both find their new home in your arms. “Your birth is written in the stars. Did you even know…?”

“Does that make me a hero?” He snorts, more old wounds torn open right before your eyes.

You wriggle yourself out of his hold, but he avoids your stare. You lift a hand to bring those beautiful Olympian eyes back to you.

“It makes you immortal.”

Perhaps you should’ve known he would be enticed with an apple instead of tethers and deals. Or with a palm, held out with no intent to strike…

It’s lovely, how he blinks every time he’s confused. You’ve yet to see him shy, but if he ever is, this might be the moment… You even catch him swallowing under that wild facial hair, an awkward blob right after that blink when his birthright is acknowledged.

But even more dumbfounded he becomes when he realizes you’re truly and veritably admiring him. When you whisper it to him – you’re my hero – and watch something shatter in him that was supposed to wrench itself free, that’s when he’s truly granted divinity.

Perhaps it was all about becoming animal again, allowing the other to have a sniff. Baring your throat and embracing the instinct to trust. Marrying your wild soul… The deepest magic of all.

#könig x reader #könig cod #könig x you #konig x reader #könig mw2 #konig x you #könig smut #könig fanfiction #konig smut #cod könig

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bitterrfruit · 30 days ago

Text

houndtooth [20]

[masterlist]

ghost x f! reader. 10.2k words cw: sexual assault. heavy violence. heavy gore. 18+ mdni

the jaws close.

The shrapnel of your blood-thinning scream strikes Ghost through the head with the force of a bullet.

It lodges in his brain, festering and swelling until a tumour forms around it, and it’s the only thing he can hear — not an echo, but a broken record, repeating and repeating until his vision turns red and the tendons of his hands nearly snap in the strain of his grip.

His eyes are wide with it as he turns the corner and wrenches the trigger of his rifle, lighting up the dark room with a strobe of yellow fire and shooting down two Konni soldiers in a fusillade of bullets. Even persisting in firing at their lead-riddled corpses once they collapse to the floor beneath them. Stupid, because he’s onto his second-last magazine, but he isn’t lending much thought to practical concerns.

He feels a writhing in his stomach, bubbling like cyanide, dissolving him from the inside out.

He failed you.

He lied to you.

You told him from the fucking start. You knew what would happen.

He didn’t believe you, and now you’re trapped with the very psychopath he promised you’d never have to see again. The fucking animal. At liberty to get his claws in you, his teeth in you, unmuzzled by an audience or the threat of retribution.

The veins in his temples thump hard when he pictures it, as he yells a command at his Sergeant to breach the room on his right. Sees the smug grin pulling in the pig’s paper-cut lips. Hears his frothy laughter among the shrieks you cry out in the hope Ghost can hear them and come to your aid like he promised he would.

Fills him with magmatic rage, viscous and molten in his blood, that makes his heart thud like a sledgehammer against his sternum. Makes his jaw grind to the point of ache, as he stomps his full weight into the head of the terrorist he had just gunned down. Just to see his skull pop. Wanted to feel bone and flesh crushing beneath the sole of his boot, imagining it as belonging to the man ensnaring you.

Six men have been killed in the trap he fell for.

Half of Delta team and two of his own. Their blood amalgamates with that of the enemy combatants he has killed, staining his clothes, dripping from the end of his gun, sticky on his cheeks.

“LT!” The Sergeant yells through a door on his right. “In ‘ere!”

“What?” Ghost roars, busy sweeping the bend in the hallway ahead.

“Just — you need to see this.”

Ghost growls in frustration as he turns to storm towards him. “Stop fucking around, Johnny, we need to get the fuck out of here! ”

There isn’t enough time to waste investigating what little bullshit might be littered around the dead-end factory, with the exfil helicopters a few clicks out, and your fragile life on the line.

“Look,” Soap barks urgently, standing in a cavernous storage room, where fluorescent bars hang on chains from the ceiling, tall rolling doors along one wall. Johnny shines the torch of his rifle on to a stacked palette, wrapped in packing film, concern etched in his pinching eyes. “Y’were right.”

“What is it,” Ghost grunts, coming to a hasty stop beside him, where Johnny tears away a layer of the plastic. Beneath sit four steel drums, lacquered in glossy navy enamel.

Johnny points imperatively at the label on one of the containers. A big yellow sticker, bedizened in a skull and crossbones, all of the warnings in Russian — danger, highly toxic, corrosive.

“Fuck’s sake, Soap, what am I looking at?”

“Phosphorus trichloride,” he blurts, “a shit-tonne of it.”

“And? English!” Ghost roars, impatience boiling within him so vigorously he can feel the steam rising up his throat.

“We were fuckin’ right the first time!” Johnny shouts, jutting a furious pointer finger at the drums. “They were making nerve agents. Our early intel was right. We’ve been following fuckin’ bait they tossed to throw us off the scent.”

If it were possible for Ghost to get any more furious, any more despondent, he might have broken his gun in half. Helps that the Sergeant is consistently cleverer than he gives him credit for — must have paid keen attention in his CBRN defence courses, such that he remembered even a precursor chemical to the production of nerve agents.

Certainty is a powerful weapon, though — and there isn’t a second left to waste pissing into the wind. He pulls his sat phone out of a pocket on his tacvest and dials up the Captain.

Picks up on the second ring — luckily — he was about to crush the plastic phone in his grip.

“Lieutenant — what’s the story.”

“There are no missiles,” Ghost barks, immediately, before the Captain is able to finish his dry greeting. “It’s fuckin’ nerve agents. Not missiles.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense. If they’ve been taken somewhere else, we need to—”

“Listen, Makarov fuckin’ baited us. It was a trap, a lie!”

“Have you checked—”

“Captain, are you fucking hearing me?” Ghost bellows, “there are. No. Missiles!”

There’s a pause of only a second, long enough to make a capillary burst in his sclera, before the Captain speaks again.

“Zakhaev’s bloody widow, eh?” He seethes, “I told you not to trust that lying bitch.”

The tendons of his neck crack in the strain of his fury. “Jesus — this isn’t her fault. Makarov gave her false intel so that we’d look in the wrong place.”

“So that you’d look in the wrong place. You followed your cock right into a trap. Fuck’s sake, of all people, I never thought you’d fall for—”

“We’re here because you believed the Americans’ intel, not because of her!” Ghost thunders, so ragged with rage that a mist of blood might have sprayed out with his broken voice. “You sent us hunting for missiles that never fucking existed — she is the one that figured that out, and now she’s being fucking tortured for it!”

“Careful, Lieutenant—”

“Pull your fucking head out of your ass, Captain. Makarov never left Kastovia, he’s at Zakhaev’s estate. They’ve got a launch code with hundreds of locations. They’ll already have a network of bombs just waiting for the push of a button, ready to go, no thanks to the fucking months we spent chasing our god-damned tails!”

There’s another venomous pause as the Captain must be in thought — rubbing his jowls, no doubt, white-knuckled and exasperated. If he were standing in front of Ghost in that moment he would have been met with a fist to the gut.

“Fucking hell,” he croaks. “Alright, okay. Fine. Nerve agents, then — how are they dispersing them? When? Have you got that far?”

“Today, Captain. They’re setting them off today.”

“How do you know?”

“Mia,” Ghost grits. “Mia found the drive containing the code.”

“And you believe her?” The Captain spits incredulously, “Sergeant Garrick and I are on route to Russia on her word — the same word that drove you into an ambush — and you still believe her?”

“Yes, Captain, I fucking believe her,” he rages. “I’m taking my team and what’s left of Delta back to the estate. I suggest you turn around, because there’ll be an army waiting for you when you land. Only telling you that because I like Gaz alive.”

Price’s sigh cuts through the line like a ripsaw.

“Alright, Simon,” he grumbles. “Garrick and I will circle back. Get the drive, if it exists — that’s the priority. Not Makarov, not the UNs, and not Zakhaev’s fucking wife. Understood?”

The phone screen cracks in his grasp. “Copy.”

There’s a point where terror loses its meaning.

Dulls to a blunt edge like an overused blade. Doesn’t cut as clean, doesn’t draw blood as quickly, but hacks away at flesh all the same.

Still drives you to kick, to scream, to buck and twist like a wrangled cat, to claw and bay and cry until your throat goes splinter-dry and it hurts to inhale; even if your senses are fraught to the point of fog, blurriness where your vision had been clear, a ringing in your ears that deadens your hearing.

It only makes him chuckle, like a dry joke, as he holds a stony arm around your neck, pit of his elbow pressing into your throat. Hauls you down the corridor of your mansion like dead game, towards an open door you’ve never seen before — tucked under the stairs, panelled in the same wainscotting as the rest of the wall. Hidden in plain sight for as long as you had lived there.

“Stay up here, both of you,” he demands, in Russian, to the armed soldiers that followed closely behind him, there to catch you in the unlikely circumstance of your escape.

It fills your belly with dread.

Briney. Corrosive. No audience to spectate him, that might question or criticise him, that he might feel the need to appease.

He wants you alone with him.

He has wanted that from the day you met him, plain as the murky death in the pits of his eyes. In the yellowing where his teeth meet his gums when he grins. In the ownership forboded by his touch.

The certainty of this inevitable outcome, seeded in his mind from the moment your husband had reclaimed the seat of power that would otherwise have fallen to him.

How better to avenge such an injustice than to steal everything he once owned? The throne, the money, the estates, the credit for their terrorist plot — and last of all, you.

You can hear it in his breathing, ragged and approving. Feel it in how he presses his nose into your hair as he drags you down a flight of exposed concrete steps, breathing in your fear like perfume. Fragrance bespoke for him. The raw musk of dread and corporeal anticipation of the agony he is yet to inflict on you.

You don’t bother begging. Your pleas turn to blood at the back of your throat. Wasted breath, because to hear you pray for mercy would only please him.

The crying is instinctive, though. Screams that rip from your chest and rend your diaphragm, sobs that you choke and gulp on and that drool from your mouth. There’s no swallowing that, no matter how hard you try to maintain some dignity, how hard you attempt to compose yourself in an effort to avoid arousing him.

Because you know that it does.

You know every tear that drips from your chin and lands on his forearm pulls vindictive blood into the cock you can feel against your spine. Every scream makes his smile wider. Every splutter makes his grip tighter.

Beyond purely sexual sadism, because you can smell his spite in the vapour of his breath. Rancour as putrid and sanguinary as raw meat. Hatred that has been stewing and rankling in the noxious pits of him for so long that it leaks from his skin and smears against yours.

He wants to hurt you because he loathes you almost as much as he loathed your husband. He delights in conquering you because you’re the trophy he has stolen from the only person that has ever been more powerful than himself.

He relishes in your screaming because to him it sings like victory.

“Here we are,” he croons, as he pulls you into a cement cave — a plainly square room, walls of raw concrete, with a lightbulb behind a cage bolted to the ceiling.

Nothing in here but a metal door in the corner, that ventures to somewhere unknown — and a small terminal fixed to the same wall, with a display the size of a postcard. A keyboard juts out from beneath it, atop a steel cabinet, where thick rope of corded multi-coloured wires creeps out and along the floor. Your eyes follow them to where they travel up to the top of the wall, through a small square hole and into the space behind it.

“Haven’t been down here before, eh?” He asks richly, entrapping you at the base of the stairs, with his cheek against yours.

You only whimper, refusing to ingratiate yourself with words, even if indulging him might help you.

“Keeping secrets was one thing Vic was good at, I’ll give him that,” he says smugly. “You were even better, though, weren’t you?”

You swallow the bile that pushes up your gullet as he nudges you in the direction of the terminal.

“Loyal girl,” he says into your skin. “Never told him about you and I, did you? Kept our secret from him until the day he died.”

He describes it like an affair, like you cuckolded your husband because you wanted to, like you had a choice in the matter.

“You must have known this is where you were headed. Straight back to me.”

You know he isn’t stupid enough to think that. He’s only mocking you. Tormenting you for something he knows you could not prevent.

“Mustn’t have told your Englishmen, either,” he drawls. “I’m sure they wouldn’t have sent you here if they had known how you spread your legs for me. If they had known who you are truly loyal to.”

You choke on a sob, as he shifts his suffocating arm from your throat, and both of his hands land on your shoulders. Fingers burrow into the tender meat just to make you squeak.

“It disappointed me that you did them favours so willingly, I admit,” he grumbles, into the hair at the crown of your head. “But, that’s why I let you send them to Mialstor. I knew you’d share that secret, at least.”

A single hand releases you, and he reaches around you — with the same USB drive you had discovered earlier pinched between his fingers, you watch as he plunges it into the plug at the base of the keyboard, and the little screen lights up. A black window, command prompt, with lines of white text at the top;

> 𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚘 𝚍𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚍𝚎𝚝𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚍

> 𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚘 𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚜𝚏𝚎𝚛𝚛𝚎𝚍

> 𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚘 𝚍𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚌𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚍

> патриот@𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚑𝚘𝚜𝚝: ~$ _

You feel your beating heart in your teeth, and his lips on the shell of your ear.

“But not our secret, eh, girl?” You feel him smile, his cold teeth on the thin layer of red skin over the cartilage. “Are you embarrassed? Or did you just want to avoid upsetting me?”

You cry, wrenching your eyes shut, and you taste your tears on your tongue.

“Hm?” He pesters, tightening his fingers around your trapezius. “Answer me.”

Every organ in your body resents the words you form with your tongue, but they spill from your mouth, because you do not want to know what he’ll do if you fail to obey a direct demand.

“I was embarrassed,” you sob, refusing to answer him in Russian, the frail syllables barely eking out of your throat. Chose the option you hope might even slightly bruise his ego.

But he only chuckles, synthetic sympathy in his breath.

“Oh, Mia,” he coos, his second hand sliding away from you, “no need to be embarrassed. You have far worse things to be embarrassed about.”

Your wet eyes follow as his restraining hand joins the other on the keyboard, arms enveloping you, the gritty skin of his clean-shaven jaw chafing against your ear.

He types a short line of command into the terminal;

> патриот@𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚑𝚘𝚜𝚝: ~$ 𝟷𝟷𝟶𝟷.𝚜𝚑 &

“Like fucking the man that murdered your husband,” he remarks, amusement in his tone. “Are you embarrassed about that?”

You whimper, and he laughs.

How could he know that? It makes you sick to think — had he planted listening devices throughout the whole house? Cameras you couldn’t see, or never thought to look for?

Had they been there since the funeral? Or ever since Victor bought the mansion for you, more than five years ago?

Your sight goes hazy at the thought that he had been observing you the entire time. At the thought that you never had a secret, never had a moment of privacy, never had a break from ravenous eyes — not once, not even in what you thought was your only place of respite.

That he had watched you shower, watched you masturbate, watched you fuck your husband, watched you scheme with the spec op that executed him, and watched you fuck that same man on the kitchen counter. Watched you bathe with him, touch him tenderly, sit on his cock in the bathwater. Watched you cry in remorse for it. Watched him cradle you. Watched you open yourself innocently to what you thought was a moment belonging to only two people; Simon and yourself.

But it was never just the two of you. It was never only you.

You’ve been a source of entertainment, of stolen pleasure, of inhumane gratification for every waking moment of your life. Raped by eyes you didn’t even know were defiling you. Followed unremittingly by sniffing dogs at every bend.

“Are you?”

“No,” you croak, because it’s true.

He lets out a chuff of laughter.

“Good,” he muses, “I’m glad, Mia. Because it just as likely could have been me. Shame he beat me to it!”

“What do you mean,” you whine, as his clammy palm slides down your arm, taking your hand in his, pinching you by the pointer finger.

You are past the point of being able or willing to resist him. Hopelessness sits heavy in your abdomen like a new organ, black and meaty. The venom of futility beats through you in place of your blood, it makes your skin turn grey, and your tongue chalk-dry.

You watch vacantly as he pushes the tip of your finger into the enter key. As a line pops up beneath the one he typed.

> 𝚎𝚌𝚑𝚘 𝚛𝚞𝚗𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐

“Victor was supposed to die here,” he explains gleefully, keeping your hand dead still, and your finger pressed deep into the key he had forced you to press.

You feel a weight in you that is unexplainable, elusive, incomprehensible. A black hole where your guts should be. Something Eldritchian, like gravity, that makes your head feel heavy and nebulous, and your feet sink into the floor.

“Don’t move your finger,” he instructs, stern and unforgiving. He means it.

“I don’t understand,” you cry, obeying as he releases your hand, and he pinches a thin green wire that pokes out from the side of the keyboard.

“I designed this all for him, you see—” he says, gliding his fingers down the wire, to where it enters the steel cabinet beneath the terminal. “He wanted to be the one to set everything in motion, fucking egotist that he was.”

He twists the small metal handle to open the door, and it squeals as it reveals its contents — you can’t quite see until he gives you room to look downward.

You’re not sure what you’re looking at, at first. Blocks of ivory clay, wrapped in plastic, webbed with wires and kept together with straps of black tape.

It dawns on you, though, as your eyes trail back up the little green wire, to where it connects to the keyboard, right beside the enter key.

You let out a whine like a kicked puppy. “Is it — is it going to explode?”

“Only if you lift your finger,” he hums, the pride of victory so concentrated in his voice that you can taste the salt of it in his breath.

You would cry more keenly if you weren’t suddenly petrified of moving — because you understand, now, that you are as good as a warm corpse. A dead man’s switch he had orchestrated for your husband to trigger. He couldn’t run the code himself, having designed it to kill whoever did.

No, he just used the same body he has never had any qualms about using, only this time for an additional purpose.

He has made you his weapon as much as his toy.

“What is it d-doing,” you sob, but you can guess the answer.

“You read the script, didn’t you?” He asks, hot breath seeping through the hair at the back of your head, as one of his hands settles on the side of your thigh. His palm is cold and sticky as it slides up to your hip. It makes your skin bristle and your heart drop.

“I didn’t — I didn’t know what it meant,” you moan, tongue slippery and stuttering on every syllable.

“You’re a clever girl, Mia,” he lauds deeply. “What do you think it’s doing?”

The repulsive softness of his touch makes you shudder, cold abhorrence dribbling down your spine — because he doesn’t need to be aggressive, nor forceful, nor violent, now that he has you where he wants you. Because he knows that you will not and cannot attempt to fight him off. Because he can fuck with your head, like he has always been predisposed to — putting the onus on you to refuse him, knowing that you wouldn’t. Then whose fault is it but your own?

This time, even crueller; he can handle you how he pleases, because he knows you want to live.

“Are there—” you ask in a whimper. “Are there bombs at the coordinates?”

His other hand fixes to your opposite hip, the hem of your long t-shirt draping over his wrists. He’ll have realised by now that you’re not wearing any underwear, because you are still wearing what you slept in. You can hear it in his breathing, it turns frayed as his hard fingertips brush your bare hips.

“Close,” he chuckles, head sinking to your neck.

You break out in sobs, hoarse and shattered, arm quivering where you can’t rest your weight into the chest-height keyboard, nor drop it to relax the slowly aching muscles.

You can hardly utter the words that stammer between your teeth. “Are p-people dying?”

“Guess.”

“Yes,” you whisper.

He smiles. “See?” He murmurs. “You’ve always known.”

The cement floor feels warm under the soles of your feet, and you wonder if the maws of hell are about to open up beneath you and swallow you whole. You hope it does, and you hope it digests you slowly. Hope it eats away at your sin and failures with brimstone and stomach acid, layer by layer, until there’s nothing left of you but the seeds of what once could have been a whole person. Seeds that might have germinated but were never planted, never nurtured. Wasted in the barren soil of a whore like you.

Your eyes cleave to the blinking underscore on the command prompt — running, it says, and it doesn’t change — and you think for a moment you might be able to hear the cries of death over the horizon. The brontide of murder by the thousands, every second. One for every breath you take.

You’re met only with beating silence, and the ragged breathing of the beast behind you.

“If I take my finger off, w-will it stop?”

You quietly hope that he might have overestimated your selfishness. Might have orchestrated some ploy that would force you to decide between your life or the lives of thousands of innocent people. Might tell you that releasing the key would put a stop to the suffering, both yours and theirs.

But you know he is smarter than that.

“No, girl,” he says dryly. “There’s no stopping it now. It’s already been done.”

You choke on a cry as he lifts your t-shirt to your waist, and you hear him chortle under his breath.

Seems he has staked his life on your desire to survive. Confident you won’t release the key and kill the both of you, because you want to live. Because you think you have somebody coming to save you. Because you think your life matters enough to preserve.

He nudges your legs apart with his knee, and your finger feels light on the key.

The air in the belly of the NH90 is resinous and heavy. Scarce. Hard to breathe and even harder to keep in his chest.

The weight of death and failure hangs thick in it, a smog, one that keeps the remaining soldiers penitently and bitterly silent. Seething, mourning the men they lost; whose bodies they had to abandon, left to bloat and rot in the ambush they were caught in like mice in an unmonitored trap.

There’s a rage shared, though. Swelling and shuddering in the steel bowel of the helicopter, as he and his men listen to the incoming reports from Laswell, and all they can do is sit and wait for the bird to approach its destination.

“…Istanbul, Hamburg — fuck. Zurich. Dublin. Two in Paris, so far,” her voice is weak, grim, compulsively relaying every attack as if it might fuel their hunger to stop it. “We’ve sent out an emergency alert to instruct civilians to stay indoors. Until you find that drive, that’s all we can do.”

“How frequent, Laswell,” Johnny grumbles into his headset.

“Roughly — one every thirty seconds.”

The Sergeant presses his fingertips into his eyes, head bowed, all but keeled over in his seat. Mumbles fuckin’ hell mournfully under his breath. Weighed down by that heroic grief, the poignant lamentation of his failure to save the lives he had set out to, the collapse of three years worth of efforts to prevent this very outcome.

“They’ve targeted business districts, street corners, office buildings. Public transport. Subways.”

Ghost checks his watch; just after half-past nine in the morning. One or two hours behind in the more western regions of Europe. Peak commuting hours in central cities.

Failure . It rumbles deep in Ghost’s ears as he stares into the dark clouds through the small window across from him.

It putrefies. It festers. Fury that turns black and sticky, thick in his veins — but not slow moving. It beats through him hard, and fast, it makes his vessels distend and his skin burn. Pellets of acidic sweat form on his skin and do little to cool him. His hands are rigid. Searing. Tendons taut and close to snapping. Knuckles white-hot.

His eyes are red with it. Wide and bloodshot and twitching in the corners. Jaw grinding so ferociously into his skull his molars threaten to shatter under the pressure.

He can hear you, indistinctly, somewhere in the hollows between his ear canals and the back of his throat.

Not only your indelible scream, the one ringing in his ears louder than his tinnitus — but your voice. The gentle terror in your throat every time you warned him of exactly this.

You know what will happen.

Riddles him with guilt that manifests as crude oil. Incendiary fuel for the rage that thunders within him, that needs only a single spark to ignite. But he contains it, for now. Chews on it like tobacco, lets the inebriant anger seep through his gums and bleed into his brain where it simmers behind his forehead.

His Captain told him that you aren’t his priority.

But you are.

Now, he knows it, as certain as gravity — there is no denying it anymore, no dancing around the inexorable fact, that you have been from the start.

You were his priority when he stole you. His priority when he interrogated you. His priority when he dragged you back to your estate. His priority when he let you loose among the mongrels.

He just hadn’t accepted it yet.

He had repudiated it with every fibre of his being, every synapse of his brain. Didn’t let himself make the calls he knew, deep in his gut, were the right calls to make — the call to spare you, the call to exonerate you, the call to send you home unharmed.

You are stuck where you are because he was too much of a coward to confront his own humanity.

He won’t abide his cowardice anymore. Any residual shame for his concern for you has sloughed from him like irradiated skin, been trampled beneath the rugged soles of his boots, shot to pieces the moment he heard your broken scream over the radio signal.

The ETA from the pilot crackles through his headset; “Five minutes out. Get ready to drop.”

He shoves the magazine he had been flipping between his knuckles into his rifle and it clicks as he seats it. Tugs back the charging handle to chamber a fresh round. Taps the spare clips he had preemptively stuffed into the pockets of his tacvest, the backup that the helo had brought along with it. A blessing, because he does not plan on being frugal with his bullets.

Igneous anticipation surges through him like a current, as he pushes himself to stand, gripping the handles on the ceiling of the aircraft to maintain his balance. Rolls open the sliding door early and peers out into the stormy sky — beneath the helicopter he sees the rampart of cedar hedges that encircle your summer estate, and he’s so close he can smell you.

Soon your mansion comes into view, and he hopes you can hear the blades of his helicopter thundering across the sky. He hopes the walls of the building shake with it. He hopes Makarov can fucking feel it in the air, the fate so soon to befall him once he is caught between Ghost’s teeth.

The Sergeant comes to stand beside him, clutching the ceiling and leaning out into the air to glare down at their destination.

“Reckon Makarov is still in there?” Johnny asks through gritted teeth, acrimony thick in his voice.

Ghost responds with a stiff nod. “He’ll be taking his fuckin’ time.”

“Plenty of time to catch him, then.”

Whatever tell he failed to conceal seems to alert Soap to the machinations of his mind, and the Sergeant lands a firm pat on his shoulder.

“She’s a tough girl,” he assures him. “Don’t lose your head, eh?”

Ghost bites on nothing, and a ragged breath rips from his lungs. “Too late.”

It’s a fast few minutes before the helicopter begins its descent behind the treeline, far enough from the mansion that they’ve avoided fire from the woefully unprepared mercenaries that litter the estate.

Ghost turns to address the men in the bird with him, and those that had been sent as reinforcement — the Captain had finally pulled his fucking head in, once the proof was drilled unremittingly into his ear, and he could suddenly justify returning to the estate with significant forces in tow. The next two aircrafts are not far behind.

So as he roars his orders into his headset, he addresses all of them.

“Right, the lot of you — we’re cleaning fucking house. Not a Konni soul left breathing. I want the fucking floor wiped with them! Copy?”

Follows the uproar of yes sirs and copies as the rest of the soldiers up and ready themselves, rearing and ripe with a hunger to avenge the men they have already lost and the lives still being taken every minute. Exactly the furore he needs from them — he needs them driven, and vigilant, and angry, so that he can focus on his own objective.

You.

He leans out of the open door, unblinking in the gale of the blades, glaring down into the waving sea of grass beneath him. Just about close enough to jump out without breaking his legs on landing.

“Alright!” Comes the inciting yell from the pilot, “move! Move! Move!”

Ghost had leapt to the ground at the first syllable.

He sprints with the fury of a hunting wolf, legs pumping with adrenaline and tumescent rage, and his boots singe the grass underfoot. His massive assault rifle is light in his grip, an extension of his hands, raised and ready, itching to unload on a hair-trigger.

He shoots down the first Konni soldier he sees through the trees before he had consciously acknowledged his presence there. The ear-splitting cracks of his gunfire reverberate through the steppe, likely alerting everyone in the vicinity to his incursion, if the helicopter hadn’t already.

Good.

He wants you to hear him coming for you. He wants those that entrap you scared and scrambling.

Stalks like an android. A terminator. Unrelenting and indomitable. Fires cannonades of red-hot bullets at every combatant that crosses his sights — precise, deadly, unhesitant. Splitting skulls with five-five-six calibre. Trampling over their corpses as he bulldozes towards the back door to your estate.

His vision narrows to an aperture. Turns black at the edges. Pulsing. Bloodthirsty. The sight that’s left is clear and sharp — a reticule, crosshairs bright red, infrared vision hunting for the heatmap of one creature.

Moves like he did when he first invaded your manor, back in the arctic mountains of your husband’s motherland. Just as hungry. Just as targeted. Killing every man in his sight without thought or vacillation — it happens instinctively, on autopilot, pre-programmed to clear targets as if they were still made of paper. His rage then was near as blinding, but rooted in an entirely different source.

His primary objective remains unchanged.

Finding you.

He fires a few rounds into the lofty glass of your sliding back door, and it shatters into shards of snow, sprinkling over his back as he storms in unhampered.

“Mia!” He roars into the hollow of your mansion, hoping only that you’ll hear him, that you’ll know he’s coming for you — he expects no response, but he is still fraught not to hear one.

Two soldiers in the sitting room. He shoots one through the forehead, but the other slips behind the stone pillar of the fireplace, out of sight.

No matter, Ghost advances without reluctance. The man looks surprised to see him when he appears beside him, likely having expected some ducking-for-cover shootout — doesn’t have long to regret it, though, before Ghost fires three rounds through his neck, and his carmine blood sprays in a mist over the cobbled stone behind him.

A chorus of gunfire wracks through the villa from every direction — up the stairs, through the corridor, out the front of the house. Stormed from every angle, now that the reinforcements had shown up, and his manpower matches that of the vermin that infest every corner of the property.

Their extinction is inevitable.

Now, he can focus on what he came here for.

He knows, wherever you are, that you can’t respond to him. So he calls for your captor instead.

“Makarov!” He bellows, steaming through the kitchen, dining room, lounge — “I fucking know you’re in here, you piece of shit.”

Continues up the stairs, shoots down another Konni that crosses his path.

“Wanna know what I’m gonna do when I fucking find you?”

Sweeps the second floor — your bedroom, your cunt husband’s office, the ensuite he can still smell you in. Leaves bloody boot prints in the plush carpet and the sulphur of gunpowder in the stagnant air.

“Might start with your tongue, you disgusting cunt. Gonna cut it out and make you fucking swallow it.”

The hatred starts to ulcerate within him when he doesn’t find you. Can’t even hear you. Feels the blisters of fury distending in every organ, threatening to burst, and he’s apoplectic with it.

“Where the fuck are you!”

He thunders down the stairs, still inexplicably certain you’re somewhere, somewhere in the bowels of the palace. Not sure what it is that fortifies his confidence — magnetoreception, perhaps, sensing you nearby like your presence disrupts a radio signal. Maybe the lingering fragrance of your perfume and your sweat that dances in the air, leading him toward you like a string through a maze.

But as there’s a fluke pause in the chaotic din of gunfire — in that fraction of a second—

He hears you.

What he thinks is you, anyway.

A cry that cuts through the ephemeral silence like a knife, the pitch of your voice just high enough to pass through walls, through foundations, as he tracks it to the wall beneath the floating staircase.

He notices immediately the gap in the edges of the panelling.

Doesn’t waste a heartbeat looking for how to open it, whatever convoluted mechanism there might be in place to keep it locked — he steps back, hurling his boot into the centre of the panel with an explosive thud , and the echo behind it sounds hollow.

He kicks it again, and again, and again, until a split forms in the lacquered wood — unceasing, even as he begins to feel splints in his shin — his boot slams into the panel unrelentingly until it erupts through the crater he deepened with every blow. His hands do the rest, tearing at the splintering wood like it’s made of cardboard, until the fissure is large enough for him to reach through and feel for a handle on the other side.

He finds it quickly. Pulls it down and opens the door. It creaks as it swings.

So encumbered by wrath that it weighs him down, his boots thud loudly with every step down the concrete stairs. Huffing like a bull. Steaming.

Hears the pig before he sees him.

“Unfortunate timing, Riley.”

Met with the back of him, sinewy fucking ghoul — panting as though short of breath, clad in a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Only as his hand lowers does Ghost catch a glimpse of the Pernach pistol wrenched in his grip — he wipes the long barrel on the leg of his trousers, and in the dim white light of the bulb in the ceiling, Ghost sees a smear of wetness left behind in the fabric.

The thought that crosses his mind is so putrid it makes his stomach rend itself in revulsion, and all he can do is hope that his assumption is erroneous.

“Interrupted the fun part.”

Ghost keeps the mouth of his rifle high, aligned with the back of his head. The only thing preventing him from pulling the trigger is his indecision on how slowly he wants him to die — and, more crucially, the risk that you are right behind him; that close-range bullets would tear straight through him and embed in you.

And he’s endlessly thankful he curbed the impulse, because he hears your whimper eke out from obscurity.

“Simon—”

You’re alive.

Relief as dizzying as liquor rushes through him in a torrent, a flash flood of napalm, and the embers of his worry reignite into an inferno of inveterate hatred, and his eyes glow red.

Makarov turns his head over his shoulder as he shifts, just slightly — and there, he sees you, hunched over but upright, between your anathema and the wall. Shaking. Knees locked but close to buckling.

There’s nothing else he needs to see. No greater confirmation.

The stifled fury sweltering within him tumefies to the point that the pressure threatens to crack his skull. He all but shudders with it, as he flips his rifle in his grip so that he holds it by the barrel like a baseball bat.

The fucking egomaniac must have expected time to monologue, turning to aim his glistening gun at Ghost far too late — hardly has time to blink before Ghost swings the butt of his rifle into his armed hand, weapons colliding with a crack and the deafening eruption of a too-slow bullet fired as a last resort. The pistol is catapulted from Makarov’s grip, clacking loudly as it slams into the cement wall and bounces off the floor.

Makarov snarls like a rabid cur, cursing through teeth; “Cукин сын.” Son of a bitch.

Greasy spite of besmears itself across his face. Eyes like beads in his gaunt skull. His belt is undone. Zipper down.

Ghost carelessly tosses his rifle aside, and it skids across the concrete into the corner of the room.

He was never going to proffer the pig the mercy of a bullet.

There was only ever one means of execution befitting him.

Frothing at the jaws as he abruptly thunders toward him, and despite the futile throw of a retaliatory fist, Ghost swiftly has him by the throat. Growls like a bear as he tackles him to the floor, in a furious blur, as the Russian contorts to pull an out-the-front switchblade from his sock.

Only notices when the blade slices through his cheek, sharp as a scalpel, steel knicking the bone — but nothing at this point can hurt him. Everything in him, every nerve, every muscle, every cell — so focussed, so honed in on his victim that anything else is so utterly insignificant it disperses into smoke.

The knife is gone before Makarov can muster a second attempt, riven from his grip and tossed to oblivion, and before he can swallow a breath, Ghost hurls his iron-hard knuckles square into the centre of his face, shattering his nose with a crunch , and the back of his head ricochets off the cement underneath with a teeth-chattering crack that makes the room go silent.

The pig blinks, still breathing — so Ghost throws another, so violent that his nose caves in, and the blood splatters over the taut skin of his fist.

Not enough. He throws another. Beats a crater into his forehead. Skull splits along the crest like ceramic wrapped together by skin.

He throws another. Wrapping splits in the fissure and the blood spills like milk.

Only sees red. Teeth bared. Eyes glass over.

Throws another, carmine fountain splashes out from the impact—

—another, eyeballs birthed from between purple eyelids, burst like blisters—

—another, jaw breaks at the hinges from the rest of his skull—

—another, tongue severed and jutting out through shattered teeth—

—another, grey parasite of gelatinous brain spills out onto the concrete—

—another, and thuds turn to squelches.

—another, a fracture in his own knuckle.

—another, his vision blurs.

…another, and his fist is hitting concrete.

Another. There’s nothing left.

“S-Simon—”

Your weak voice cuts through the red fog like a beacon.

His humanity gradually returns to him when he hears it. Comes back with a gulping breath, as he glares down at the body he bestrides. At the caldera of flesh and bone where his victim’s head used to be.

Chest hounding, jaw loose, he can taste the iron of blood in his teeth. It drips from his beaten knuckles, speckles the cement like spilt paint. It sprays up his forearm like a glove. It glitters across his cheeks like freckles.

You speak, again, and he finally breaks the surface.

“Simon, what do I do?”

He pushes himself to stand with a grunt, breathless, and attempts to wipe the blood spattered on his face with the back of his hand — smears the red leaking from his own wound in so doing, he forgot it was there.

Turns to you, where you still stand facing the wall, and he grimaces — are you chained to it?

“He m-made me—” You stammer out in broken sobs, and he grits his teeth as he girds himself to hear whatever horrific crime you were made victim to. “He made me press it. I c-can’t stop it — Simon, how do I make it stop?”

His brows knot in worried confusion as he rushes towards you, fighting the urge to immediately take you by the arm and haul you into an embrace; such an act would be for his own comfort more than yours.

But as though sensing his approach, you shriek—

“Don’t touch me!”

He stops behind you, but your agitation simmers quickly.

“You c-can’t — I can’t move,” you whine, shattered. “You can’t t-touch me.”

“Mia…” He mumbles, finally registering what you’re looking at as he moves beside you — eyes pinned to a terminal interface, finger pressed into a keyboard below it.

“It’s still going,” you weep. “It’s k-killing them… I can’t stop it. I’m killing them and I c-can’t stop it.”

The tunnel vision that had focused solely on you widens just enough for him to absorb what you are talking about. The terminal, the keyboard — and as he looks at it, the drive. Jutting out of the plug at the base.

The mission returns to him like a kick to the teeth. Laswell’s voice in his ear. Reminding him of every chemical bomb triggered, every thirty seconds, for the last forty minutes.

His eyes catch the wire snaking out from under the key you press. Where it enters the open cabinet beneath the keyboard. Can see past your knees the blocks of C4 stacked from base to top, wired up tidily by experienced fingers.

The realisation douses him like cold water.

“What do I do,” you cry, as he reaches a careful arm around you.

You flinch, and the guilt for startling you falls heavy in his stomach, but he can’t back away. Not now that he understands the predicament you’re caught in.

Settles a thick finger next to yours, pressing into the enter key beneath it.

“I need you to move your finger,” he murmurs gently.

You shake your head vigorously, desperately, shaking like a leaf but inadvertently leaning some of your weight against him. “I can’t.”

There isn’t a choice. He coils an arm around your waist, gripping tight, and he feels you deflate as he lifts you upward.

“ No, nonono, no…” you wail, but you don’t fight him; he twists you, reeling you away from the keyboard, until your finger is free and your hand drops to your side.

You collapse into him once you’re no longer holding the dead man’s trigger — head rocks against his shoulder, weary hands clutching onto his forearm as though you’d plummet off a cliff if you let go.

“I’m sorry,” you lament, voice frail and so fraught with grief it hurts him just to hear it. “I’m sorry — I let him — it’s my fault. I pressed it — I…”

To hear you apologise makes his ribs close in. That you could ever be sorry for anything, that you could shoulder even an ounce of guilt — an injustice he cannot abide, and he presses his lips into your hair.

“It’s not your fault, sweetheart,” he urges. “None of this is your fault. Hear me? It’s mine.”

You sob, and he wants nothing more than to wrap both of his arms around you; to embrace you in earnest, to apologise unremittingly into your skin so that even the blood that pumps under it believes him when he says it. It’s not your fault.

But he can’t. Your life is more important. “Now I need you to step back.”

He lets go of you as you manage to stand on your own feet, balancing you with a hand on your back when you stumble, but you do as you are told — stepping back slowly, trembling, not yet willing to run.

“Get out of the basement,” he orders firmly.

“No,” you refuse, shaking your head, still within arms reach — you gasp when the back of your heel collides with the corpse on the floor, and your head swivels to look down at it.

He sees you gawk at it. Lips parting in horror. Eyes bulging with it. Can barely muster a sound. “...Simon…”

“Look at me,” he insists, and sweet girl, you do. Rheumy-eyed and quivering. “Mia — go upstairs.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” you whimper, swallowing a breath. “Not without you.”

His chest tightens up, and it’s quickly clear to him you won’t leave unless compelled to — brave girl, your lack of self-preservation makes his teeth scrape together.

He needs you out of the room before he attempts to interrupt the script. He can enter the command without lifting his finger from the enter key — but he needs to release it in order to press it.

With his free hand, he speaks into his radio. “Johnny — how copy.”

“Solid, LT,” he returns immediately. “Fucken’ bloodbath out here.”

“I found the terminal. Entry under the stairs. Get here. Now.”

Not even a minute before he hears the heavy boots, bounding down the stairs, but the Sergeant screeches to a halt when met by the carnage on the floor.

“Jes— Jesus fucking Christ , Simon.”

Not often the boy uses his Lieutenants name; says it meekly, like it’s a greater sin than using the Lord’s name in vain.

“Is that…”

“Makarov,” Ghost spits his name out.

“Where’s the girl?” He asks sombrely, as though already anticipating bad news — the state of Makarov’s carcass likely evidence. Ghost only gives him a nod in your direction, and he turns his head over his shoulder; you shrivel up when the Sergeant looks at you.

“Listen to me,” Ghost barks, and Soap marches over hastily, ever obedient. “I need you to take her.”

“Now?” Johnny balks.

“Now.”

“What about the terminal?”

Ghost huffs through his teeth. “I’ve got it,” he grits. “Now get her on a fucking helo.”

“No — no,” you suddenly yelp, inching closer to him, as if he might be the one to protect you from the Sergeant he has ordered to take you. “I said I’m not going anywhere.”

His eyes wrench shut. Bites out a pained sigh. “Mia — go with him. Please.”

“No!” You yell, fragile voice breaking in the strain, “I’m staying, I’m not letting you disappear again—”

“Soap,” he grunts rigidly.

“Copy.”

Needn’t restate the order. The Sergeant understands well enough, and he marches toward you unrepentantly.

That ever-present guilt burns in his throat as he watches you cower away from him, shaking your head and gulping on sobs — but Johnny scoops you up like you weigh nothing, an arm firmly buckled around your waist, back riveted to his side. He wastes no time, stepping over the corpse on the floor and carrying you towards the stairs.

“Put me down!” You squeal — bucking, kicking, you even try to get an elbow in — “I’m not going! No! Simon! Simon!”

His eyes are warm. He cannot listen to it. Agonising as a ruptured eardrum to hear you cry for him — right there, where he could answer you — but he is cruelly unable to.

“Johnny — you get her that fucking passport if it’s the last thing you do,” he roars. “You hear me?”

“You got it, LT.”

The man carting you up the stairs is far stronger than the one who dragged you down them, and no amount of kicking or twisting or scratching loosens his grip.

All you can do is cry, and scream, and pray that Simon changes his mind, and comes bounding up the stairs, having performed a miracle — that he frees you from the restraint of his subordinate, that he promises never to leave you alone again, that he gets on the helicopter with you.

But you are carted down the hallway, toes dipping in the blood that puddles on the slate, and he does not come.

"Put me down you son of a bitch!” You wail, voice shredded to husks and squeaks after the labour of interminable screaming. “Simon!”

The Scotsman — Johnny — is steadfast. Unshakeable. Any moment you feel like you might come close to slithering out of his grip, he readjusts, reorients, subdues.

“I’m only following orders, hen,” he grumbles, and you can hear the unease in his voice, coating his throat. Perturbed, perhaps. Guilty. “Not trying to hurt ye.”

You are not afraid of him. There is nowhere worse he could take you than where you have already been, and you trust Simon not to have left you in the arms of somebody that could hurt you.

No, there’s something else that terrifies you.

That Simon will die at your hand, along with the thousands of others you have already killed.

Your fault, because you sent him to that factory, where there was never anything to be found. Your fault, because you let Vladimir command you like a puppet, too frightened to pull back on his strings. Your fault, because you let Simon ever think you could be useful for anything but your inbuilt purpose.

“I f-fucking hate you!” you sob, though once you utter it you’re not sure who the sentiment is for. Yourself, maybe. Johnny. Vladimir. Everyone you have ever met.

“Ah know,” he says stiffly, giving you a pat where his arm coils around your back. “But he wants you alive.”

He moves quickly despite your wriggling, keeping you as low as he can without letting your feet touch the floor — gunfire rings out in the distance, cracks that echo from within the house and outside.

Soon he has you over his shoulder, just to free a hand, and you hear him talking to somebody over the radio.

“Gaz, Gaz!” He belts, “how copy?”

You can’t hear whoever responds, assuming the conversation is being had within the man’s helmet.

“You near the birds? Reckon you could start one up for me?”

“Got the princess. Lieutenant wants her out of here. Yeah — she’s not happy about it.”

“Does it sound like I give a fuck what the Captain said?”

“Good man. Be there in two. Out.”

He lets out a sharp and beleaguered breath, lowering you from his shoulder, where he must have assumed you might have been uncomfortable — or, less charitably, worried you’d slip out of his grip.

Shards of glass crunch under his boots as he carries you through the shattered back door, out into the hammering rain, where the gunshots are close enough to make you cower into his chest as if he might shield you from them.

“Almost there, hen—”

Boom.

Assurance punctuated by deafening thunder that quakes the ground beneath him. Shatters all remaining glass on the first floor. Twinkles as the slivers fall to the patio behind you.

Your diaphragm seizes. Heart stops dead. Hearing goes dull. Tongue goes dry. Eyes go gauzy.

There’s a beat where you all but lose consciousness. Disappear within yourself like you’ve fallen down a well.

You resurface when your escort begins to run.

“NO!”

You shriek viciously enough to make your vocal cords bleed, entire body contorting and writhing until you finally break free from him, and you land in the grass with a thud.

He fails to grab you in time, you scurry in the mud, fingers clawing at handfuls of grass until you’re able to scramble to your feet — you break into a full sprint, bounding like a hare, sucking the wet air so deep into your lungs it makes you dizzy.

“Mia!” Johnny roars after you, quick in his chase, but you endure.

You run bare-footed over the shards, utterly ignorant to how many slivers might get embedded in your soles — the interior of the house is cloudy with dust and smoke, creaking and crumbling, moaning in dispute of its destruction.

“Simon!” You wail, scrambling down the hallway, towards the staircase — even more glass carpeting the floor where the balustrade had been blown to smithers, and rained down on the slate underneath it.

Charcoal-black smoke billows out from the open door to the basement, entirely obfuscating, beating and waving like a creature in itself.

You venture into it unhampered.

“S—” a shout bitten off by a cough as you leap down the stairs, “Simon! Please—”

You choke on your plea as you trip over something heavy at full speed, toppling into the smokey abyss and landing on sticky concrete.

You cry, it hurts, every part of you — your eyes burn, and your lungs singe with every breath, and your knee stings — but you hastily turn to feel for what you had tripped over, and your hands find warm fabric.

Simon. He made it to the stairs. Find his neck and you feel him breathing — hardly, he wheezes with every pitiful inhale.

And his skin feels wet. Gritty. Peeling.

“No, nononono,” you wail, clambering up and over him, attempting to situate yourself while utterly blind.

You feel desperately for his shoulders, scooping your hands through his underarms until you have him hooked by your elbows.

“Please, Simon—” You beg, coughing, spluttering, as you engage every fibre of muscle in your body to lift him from the stairs.

“Mia — are you in there?” Johnny calls from the basement door, voice dampened by the density of the smoke.

“He’s alive!” You try to roar, voice abraded to near-mute, and you’re not sure if the Scotsman could even hear you.

You heave , pulling Simon’s enormous body up a single step with all of your might — dizzyingly heavy, and yet somehow lighter than you would have expected. You cry in your strain as you pull him again, stepping backward onto the next step up, hauling him agonising inch by agonising inch.

Only as the smoke begins to settle, and you make it up another stair, do you see the blood. Coating you like paint.

The side of his head is singed where it wasn’t covered by his helmet. Thick fabric of his uniform shredded by the explosion, exposing the blackened skin within, where it blisters and peels to reveal the yellow fascia beneath it.

Your eyes land, then, on the strands of crimson flesh where his shin used to be.

“Oh, god,” you wretch, cough, and turn your head to spill tar-black vomit onto the cement wall beside you. “Fuck — S-Simon…”

You feel a hand on your arm, then, and it grabs you, picking you up and dragging you out of the smoke.

“No!” You sob, “no — please, he’s alive, you have to—”

Johnny plants you in front of him, firm hands on either side of your shoulders, and he glares into you with such piercing eyes you have no choice but to meet them.

“We’ll get him help, okay?” He pledges, firm, unyielding. “But he’ll never forgive either of us if you die here today, understood?”

You wheeze, lungs glutted with smoke and charcoal, tears so wet on your cheeks that your skin itches, and you’re not able to form a single word.

“C’mon, hen,” he says gently, scooping an arm under your knees and hoisting you deftly off the ground, carrying you tightly to his chest. “Let’s get you out of here.”

There’s no fight left in you. No wrath, no terror, no spite. Only a hollow pit in the core of you, sucking anything else into its void, and leaving you bitterly empty.

Johnny totes you back out into the pounding rain, and you feel it rinsing the coal and blood from your calloused skin as he sprints across the expansive lawn.

You hear the beating of the helicopter gradually grow louder as he gets closer to the treeline.

“They stopped!”

An unfamiliar shout over the roaring aircraft, but you don’t turn to look. You keep your stinging eyes held shut so that you can feel the grit of the smoke wearing down their film.

“Cannae hear ye, Gaz!” Johnny yells back, voice vibrating right through you.

“The bombs! They’ve fuckin’ stopped!”

You realise then that what you had thought was a shout, was a cheer.

“Hear that, hen?” Johnny says pridefully, lowering his head closer to yours so that you can hear him. “He did it.”

You have no words to utter, but you feel your heart twist up behind your sternum.

He did it.

Soon the helicopter’s engine is deafening, and Johnny unfurls you, raising you up by hands under your arms and sitting you down in the open door of the aircraft. Another hand encircles you, then, to prevent your limp body from falling back out.

“Jesus—” blurts the man beside you — the Sergeant. Gaz, you suppose. “She okay?”

“No,” Johnny barks, giving him a pat on the knee. “Y’take care of ‘er, yeah?”

“Course,” Gaz confirms solemnly, with a rigid nod.

The Scotsman addresses you, then.

“You enjoy that new life of yours, eh?” He says loudly, an indeterminate expression of certainty tight in his features. “You’ve earned it.”

With a nod, he’s away, unslinging his rifle from his back and barreling back off into battle. You watch vacantly as he disappears behind the oak trees.

The man in the helicopter with you gives you a nudge to get your attention — doesn’t grab you, or pull you, just waits patiently for you to turn your head and acknowledge him.

“Mia,” he says, as gently as he can while still audible over the helicopter blades. You finally turn to look at him. “C’mere, let’s buckle you in.”

He looks at you sincerely, sick worry in the back of his eyes, reflecting the dim light of the grey sky. You nod weakly, and he helps you stand, leading you to a seat and holding you as you slump into it. He tightens the straps over your chest, buckling them and giving them a jostle to make sure they’re secure.

He fixes a pair of earmuffs over your head, adjusting them over your ears, and you’re suddenly swimming in a deep and thumping silence. Puts a pair on himself.

“There we go,” he says into his microphone, and you can hear his voice clearly. He leans into the cockpit and taps the pilot on the shoulder. “Cleared hot.”

With that, the helicopter begins its ascent. Wobbling on its way up, as the Sergeant settles into the seat opposite you.

“Where are you going to take me now,” you ask dejectedly, hardly a squeak, voice excoriated beyond repair.

You expect him to say something vague, something obscurely menacing. To the compound. To an airbase. To a camp down south.

He gives you a weak smile.

“Home,” he says.

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