moonlesslights

[moonlesslights]

I Can’t Protect You From Everything

pairing: jack abbot x nurse!reader (fem!reader, no physical description)

summary : You’re assaulted in the ER. Jack sees red. But it’s not just the rage—it’s the fallout, the quiet after, the grief, the guilt, the way he holds you like his own body can bring you back to life.

content: medical trauma, assault aftermath, blood, concussion, strong emotional themes, PTSD undertones, canon-level violence, smut (established marriage), soft dom!Jack, comfort sex, hurt/comfort, healing arc

word count: ~3K , not beta read (this is just a hobby <3)

18+ ONLY

You hear the voice before you see him.

Low. Sharp. Controlled like a lit match held too close to a fuse.

“Move.”

The nurses part without a word. Not because they recognize the attending. But because they feel the shift in the air.

Jack Abbot is in motion. And he’s not stopping.

You’re still on the floor of Room 12. Head spinning. The tile’s cold under your cheek, but everything else burns—your skull, your vision, the jagged pulse in your throat.

The patient—drunk, belligerent—just laughs.

“She got in my face, man,” he slurs to no one. “Shoulda stayed outta it.”

The next sound is a crash. A metal tray sent flying.

Jack doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t need to. One look at your body on the ground, your hair matted with blood—and he’s on the guy in seconds.

“Jack—Jack!” Robby grabs him from behind, arms locked around his chest. “She’s down—she needs you, not this.”

“Let me go,” Jack growls, low and lethal.

“You touch him, you’re done. You hear me? She’s bleeding. Focus, man.”

Jack’s breathing hard, jaw clenched so tight you think it might snap. But his eyes are locked on you now. Not the patient. Not the shouting.

Just you.

He drops to his knees beside you. Gently turns your face toward him with trembling fingers.

“Hey,” he says, soft. Too soft for a man who just looked ready to kill. “Stay with me, sweetheart. C’mon.”

You try to smile.

“Didn’t like that, huh?” you whisper, lips barely moving.

His eyes go dark. “I’m gonna kill him.”

“No you’re not.”

“He touched you.”

You blink. Everything spins.

“Jack—my head hurts.”

His breath catches. All that fury folds into fear. And you know—if your heart stopped right now, his would go with it.

“You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

He always says that. And you always believe him.

Your fingers twitch weakly against his scrubs, barely a brush.

"…Don’t go anywhere,” you breathe, eyelids fluttering shut.

You're out before your head even hits the pillow of the gurney.

Jack doesn’t move from your side. Blood—your blood—dries tacky and rust-colored on your temple.

“Let’s go,” he barks at the transport tech. His voice is too sharp, but no one challenges him. Not now. Not when the calm, collected attending has cracked.

Robby walks beside him, clipboard clutched tight. “She needs a non-contrast head CT, stat. LOC, blunt force trauma, disorientation. I already paged neuro.”

Jack doesn't respond. Doesn’t blink. His eyes are fixed on your face as they wheel you through the fluorescent-lit hall.

In the CT bay, he’s forced to stop outside the radiation line.

“I’ll be five minutes,” the tech promises. “You can see her again once she’s cleared.”

Jack doesn’t nod. Just stands there, like a soldier on post, watching through the glass as your body is slid into the machine like it’s a coffin.

Later.

“Concussion,” Robby says quietly, handing Jack the annotated imaging results. “No hemorrhage. No skull fracture. She is lucky.”

Jack doesn’t feel lucky. He feels like he's going to throw up.

Robby gives him a look. One Jack doesn’t like.

“Maybe don’t start a war in the trauma bay next time someone touches her.”

You wake slowly, brain fogged, heart pounding. For a second, the disorientation pulls you under—you're sure you're still in the trauma bay. The smell of antiseptic, the beeping, the chaos.

But then you feel it.

A warm hand curled around yours. The scent of Jack’s cologne. The distant hum of your house’s old heating unit.

You’re not in the hospital anymore.

You’re home.

The small home you share with Jack—the one he remodeled himself, every corner touched by his hands, from the creaking floorboards to the stubborn cabinet hinges. Medical journals are stacked high on the coffee table, dog-eared and covered in notes, like neither of you quite know how to leave work behind. It's lived-in and quiet and yours—built like a fortress to keep the world out.

Jack’s sitting beside the bed, one hand cradling your wrist, thumb brushing your pulse point.

“You’re awake,” he says.

You blink slowly. “Am I supposed to be?”

He exhales like it hurt to hold in. “You scared the shit out of me.”

You smile faintly. “Don’t I always?”

He doesn’t laugh. His eyes are rimmed red—and it kills you to see it.

“You didn’t say anything when I went down,” you whisper.

“I couldn’t,” he says, voice cracked and raw.

You reach for his face. He leans into your touch like he’s starved for it.

“I was going to kill him,” he murmurs. “If Robby hadn’t pulled me off—I was gone. I saw red.”

You stroke his hair. “You didn’t. That’s what matters.”

He shakes his head. “No. What matters is that you were hurt because I wasn’t there.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I don’t care.”

“Come here,” you whisper.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. You never do.”

He slides into bed, quiet and heavy beside you.

“Why’d you marry me?” you ask.

Jack flinches. “Because no one’s ever looked at me the way you do. Like I’m not broken.”

“You’re not.”

He kisses you then.

And when you say, "Show me I’m still here," he pulls back just enough to search your face. His thumb brushes along your cheekbone, like he still doesn’t trust what he sees.

Then he nods, just once. Like he’s made up his mind.

His hands shake as they trail down your sides, memorizing the feel of you again. He looks like he’s on the edge of breaking open entirely.

Still half-dressed, the soft stretch of sweatpants low on his hips, he leans down slowly. His shirt’s already gone. His breath is warm against your collarbone.

He shifts his position like he’s not sure he’s allowed. Like he’s still that eighteen-year-old kid who enlisted too young, carried too much, and learned how to weaponize silence before he ever understood how to ask for comfort. Still moving like he’s made of edges—too strong, too fast, too sharp.

He’s always been gentle with you. But tonight, he’s something else entirely.

He kisses you like it hurts. Like every inch of skin he touches could vanish. His lips are hot and searching, pulling at yours with need, like he's starving and you’re the only thing that will bring him back.

You reach for his waistband and push his sweatpants down, his breath catching when your fingers graze him—thick, heavy, already hard.

“Please,” you whisper. “I need to feel you. All of you.”

He exhales harshly, like it’s killing him to take his time, but he does.

Jack kisses his way down your neck, slow and reverent, his hands now slipping beneath the waistband of your shorts. He peels them down with slow, careful movements, like he’s unwrapping something fragile. Only when they’re off does he lower himself between your thighs. His breath ghosts across your skin before his tongue follows—warm, wet, devastating. He licks into you like he’s memorizing you all over again. Like this is the only proof you’re still here.

Your hips buck, but his hands pin you in place, steady on your thighs. The stubble on his jaw scrapes softly against sensitive skin, the contrast enough to make your vision blur.

"You taste like home," he groans, eyes dark. "I needed this—needed you—more than I want to admit."

He cuts himself off with a moan as you tangle your fingers in his hair.

Your climax builds fast. It feels too good. Too much. You try to warn him, but he groans against you, and it tips you over—your whole body arching off the bed as you cry out his name.

He doesn’t stop until your thighs are trembling and you’re panting for air.

Only then does he crawl back up, mouth slick, pupils blown wide.

You pull him into a kiss, tasting yourself on his lips, and reach between you to guide him into place.

He lines up, breath ragged, and you feel the blunt pressure of him at your entrance.

“Look at me, Y/N”.

You do.

And then he pushes in.

Slow. So goddamn slow. Stretching you inch by inch until he’s buried deep, forehead pressed to yours like the contact is the only thing anchoring him.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” you breathe. “More than okay.”

Then he starts to move.

Each thrust is deliberate, controlled, like he’s checking your pulse with his body. The slide of skin on skin. The soft drag of his mouth along your throat. The way he groans when your nails rake down his back.

“I missed this,” he chokes out. “Missed you.”

“I’m right here.”

“You scared the shit out of me.”

You grip his face. “So fuck me like it matters.”

Something in him breaks.

He shifts, grabs your hips, and starts to thrust harder, deeper. The bed creaks under the rhythm, sweat building where your bodies meet, breath punching out of you with every stroke.

You meet him thrust for thrust, your gasps syncing with his groans until you’re both unraveling.

When you come again, it rips through you—louder this time, body shuddering beneath him. He follows with a hoarse shout of your name, hips stuttering as he spills inside you.

But even then, he doesn’t let go.

His arms stay locked around you. His face buried in your neck. His chest rising and falling against yours as he stays inside you, warm and still.

After a moment, he shifts—just slightly—and you feel him stir again. Still hard. Still aching. But this time, there’s a tension in his body that feels less like hesitation and more like possession.

He doesn’t speak. Just kisses you—rougher now, teeth grazing your bottom lip, hand sliding down your side to pull your leg around his waist. You feel it in the way he grabs your thigh, in the low growl that escapes when he sinks into you again without warning.

The pace is different this time. Less reverent. More raw. His thrusts are deeper, heavier, his body pressing you into the mattress with every stroke. You whimper his name and he groans—head falling to your shoulder, teeth grazing your skin.

It’s all slick heat and friction. The sound of skin meeting skin, the rasp of his breath in your ear. He fucks you like he needs to burn out the fear, chase away the image of your blood on tile. Like your body is the only thing tethering him to the present.

Your nails rake down his back. He hisses, grabbing your wrists and pinning them above your head.

“Jack—”

“You’re mine,” he grits out. “Still mine.”

He leans in, kissing you hard, sloppy, teeth clashing. His hips piston into you harder, faster, building to the edge with brutal precision.

You come with a cry, your entire body curling around him as your walls clamp down, trembling and wet and perfect.

He follows with a low, broken moan, collapsing into you as he spills deep inside, every inch of him wrapped around you like a shield.

And when he finally stops shaking, he doesn’t pull out.

Doesn’t move.

Just holds you there, sweat and heat and breath shared between you.

This time, when he whispers, “You’re okay,” it sounds less like a question.

And more like the truth.

He kisses the corners of your eyes. Your jaw. The inside of your wrist.

"I’m here, Jack.”

You wake up alone.

The panic is immediate. But then you hear the soft clang of a mug in the kitchen.

You find him by the stove, shirtless. Dog tags dangling against his chest.

“Couldn’t sleep?” you ask softly.

He doesn’t turn. “Didn’t want to wake you.”

You come up behind him, wrap your arms around his waist.

He sinks into it. Finally exhales.

“I keep seeing it,” he murmurs. “The blood. Your eyes. I thought I lost you… I felt it. Just like I did overseas. That second where it all slows down, and you just know."

You press your cheek to his back. "You're here. I'm here. That's what matters."

He turns then. Cups your face. And this time, when he kisses you, it's not frantic. Not heavy.

It's soft.

And finally—it's peace.

The peace doesn’t last.

By 7:03 a.m., Jack’s badge is clipped back to his scrubs, his jaw freshly shaved, and his eyes—still bruised at the edges from lack of sleep—are locked on the hallway leading to trauma intake.

You’re behind him. Walking slower than usual, sure. But walking.

The minute you swipe into the main ER pod, it’s like someone hit pause. Heads lift. Conversations stop. A nurse stops mid-sentence and stares at the dried red line still barely visible at your temple.

Jack says nothing. Keeps walking.

You’re used to the way the ER stares. What you’re not used to is the way they stare at him.

Whispers follow.

"Did you hear he nearly decked that guy?"

"Dr. Robby had to physically restrain him."

"Jack's lucky he still has a license."

Jack doesn’t flinch, but you see it. The way his knuckles go white holding the patient chart. The way he refuses to make eye contact with anyone.

Robby catches up to Jack just outside the nurses station. He leans against the wall beside him, quite a beat before he speaks.

"You holding up?"

Jack huffs out a breath. "Define 'holding up.'"

Robby studies him. "Everyone’s talking. You know that, right? About what happened. About you."

"Let them talk."

Robby nods slowly. "They will. But for what it's worth, people know you didn't lose it. Not really. You stopped yourself. That matters."

Jack doesn’t say anything, but the line of his jaw softens—barely. He looks over at you down the hall, where you're laughing quietly with another nurse, a clipboard in your hands.

Robby claps Jack gently on the back. “Get back out there. But maybe… don’t take the guy in Room 9.”

Jack stiffens.

He knows who’s in Room 9.

It’s another combative drunk. Came in swinging at EMS. Male, mid-40s, belligerent as hell, already yelling at a med student for trying to take vitals. It’s not the same guy—but it’s close enough. Same profile. Same energy. Same trigger.

“I wasn’t planning to,” Jack mutters, voice low.

Robby just nods. “Didn’t think so.”

You head back to your rounds, trying to pretend like it’s a normal day. But you feel Jack’s eyes on you like a second shadow.

Every time you so much as check a patient’s IV or lean in to auscultate a chest, you can feel the weight of his stare across the room.

By the time you step out of Room 4 with a vitals chart in hand, Jack intercepts you mid-hallway and drags you to the nearest supply closet.

“You’re done,” he says quietly. “For today.”

You blink. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not ready to be back. You shouldn’t even be on the floor. Let me talk to–.”

You cross your arms. “I passed neuro eval. Twice. I’m cleared.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re safe.”

His voice is low but firm, eyes darting toward passing residents. You pull him into the side med supply closet before someone catches the tail end of his tone.

Inside, it’s quiet. Fluorescent lights buzzing.

“I need to be here,” you say. “For my own head. I need to prove to myself that I’m okay.”

Jack leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He looks at you like it’s killing him to hear that. “I almost lost you on the floor you’re walking back into like nothing happened.”

“I’m not walking in like nothing happened,” you snap.

He exhales through his nose, shaking his head. “What if it happens again?”

“Then it does. And I deal with it. And you deal with it. But you can’t wrap me in gauze and keep me behind the nurses’ station just because you’re scared.”

He closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them, his voice is softer. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever cared about more than this job.”

You step toward him. Let your fingers hook in the front of his scrubs.

“I’m not asking you to stop caring,” you whisper. “I’m asking you to trust me. The same way I trust you every time we walk into the emergency room together.”

His jaw works, eyes closing again. He leans forward, rests his forehead to yours.

“I’m trying,” he murmurs. “I’m really fucking trying.”

And you believe him.

But when you step out of the closet and head toward your next patient, you don’t need to turn around to know he’s still watching you. Still waiting for the worst.

Still holding his breath.

That night, you don’t talk much on the drive home.

The hospital faded in the rearview, but the weight of the day hasn’t.

You both pretend to wind down—but everything feels like if either of you speak too loudly, you both might crack.

So you turn off the lights.

You crawl into bed.

And Jack follows.

It’s only when you’re curled together under the covers, his chest to your back, that he finally says it:

“I can’t protect you from everything.”

You nod, fingers wrapped around his. “I don’t want you to. I just want you to be there. Like you always are. That's why I married you.”

“I was scared,” he murmurs. “Like full-body, I-don’t-know-who-I-am scared. I haven’t felt like that in a long time.”

“I know,” you whisper. “Me too.”

He presses a kiss to the back of your shoulder. He exhales, the air leaving him slow and steady.

He holds you closer.

And for the first time in two days, he sleeps.

And so do you.

[moonlesslights]

Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) | The Pitt: "6:00 PM"

This is no-frills combat zone medicine. No ultrasound, no X-rays, no CT, no labs.

[moonlesslights]

SQUID GAME + text post (part I )

[moonlesslights]

“Do you miss me?”

Max Verstappen x Sergio Pérez

He wakes up covered in sweat. Again.

The sun lies still hidden beneath the moon and the stars, although it must not be long before his alarm goes off beside his bed. His feet are cold even when his hair sticks to his forehead, wet. The air is oppressive and he can’t breathe.

“Fuck.” He cusses, softly, when his skin touches the cold floor of the hotel bedroom.

He moves out of instinct, barely stopping to put on a couple of sandals. His eyes don’t wander too much around the room, he already knows how big it is, how much space for a single person, how every of his movements echoes around the furniture, as if mocking him for his loneliness. His smallness.

He pulls his shirt down, sighs, takes the handle of the door, pulls…, and then he stops. His brain starts to dispel the fogginess around it. ‘Where are you going?’ It asks him.

To Checo’s room, he responds. But his thought falls silent almost as soon as it comes.

Checo’s not here. Remember?

He left in December. Because of your lies, and the way the team treated him. Because of the hell he had to put up with.

Everyone is asleep, Liam doesn’t even stay in the same hotel. The person that reserved the room beneath yours every weekend, is gone. There’s no one waiting for you to knock on his door so you can sleep between his sheets the last hours of the early morning.

You’re alone.

And suddenly, the room felt much colder. The space around him, overwhelming. He closes the door. It echoes through his whole body. It mocks him.

The alarm goes off.

Max takes a step back, then another, until he finally reaches his nightstand and is able to press ‘stop’ on his screen. Then, the silence again, the picture of his latest championship looks back at him.

Checo was there. He remembers it.

The way he screamed at his victory, the way he laughed and laughed until he was in front of the mexican in the garage again. His dark eyes were soft, the thin lines of his smile made a beautiful groove around his lips. He was so sad and Max should’ve known, he should’ve known better: It was the end.

If I had known, he thinks, raising his phone on his hand, if I had known it was the last time I would see you, would I have smiled longer? Would I have set aside your hands when you tried to congratulate me and hold you tighter? Just like the first time we won, together.

Why weren’t you by my side this time?

Was it my fault?

Was it I?

Did my insatiable hunger for more ended up hurting you too?

Did I bit too deep?

His fingers swipe through his phone, he itches in his palms as he looks through his contacts, anxiously looking in recents for his name. Those five letters that he learned to pronounce with such gentleness, with the thick accent the mexican brought with him.

He reaches December 18th and he has to take a second to remember he didn’t call. His partner had just suddenly vanished, stepped out of his life and he couldn’t make enough courage to ask him why.

Why without a goodbye?

Why without a kiss?

He feels his heart getting heavy as the seconds pass. What would he do if he had another chance?What did he win?

Was the money enough of a compensation for never hearing his calm voice calling out his name every morning?

Max.

If he only had one more morning, one more sunrise with his hot breath, his soft smile ‘Max, wake up.’ Maybe this time he wouldn’t pull the covers above his head, or watch him with a frown as the man stands completely dressed while he would stay with the marks of the pillow on his cheek for another couple hours. No. Maybe this time he wouldn’t hold his breath and act like a dazzled dear when Checo lowers his head to him, or when he presses a hand besides his head, or puts a leg between his, imprisoning him so slightly yet so much that just every breath threatened to push him out of the blurred lines between them.

This time he wouldn’t look away, he would keep his eyes on his, drinking of the dark coffee his irises offered him. This time he would pull him in, placing his hand on the back of his head; his leg would find a way around Checo's waist, till he could make sure to keep him locked there, to feel him moving.

He would taste his lips.

Over, and over, and over again.

And maybe that’s why it never happened. Cause once his tongue explored his skin, there was no turning back. He wouldn’t care about the race, the championship, the glory and the fame. The only from that moment on would be Checo.

Checo. Checo. Checo.

He would’ve sacrificed everything if he had asked him. He would’ve tear his career apart for a single ‘I want you.’ I love you.

Could love be this way?

Could it hurt so bad?

Could I have done every wrong because hurting you was the only way to keep you mine?

You hated this team, you hated the fame and the cameras. You hated the headlines and the shouting. If you kept improving, if you kept showing how strong you are, you would have left me.

There wouldn’t be a single team not wanting you and you would’ve left me.

But now you hate me too, isn’t it?

This December finally, nothing stopped you.

His index presses down the screen. The beeping begins. Repetitive, slow. One after another. The sun rises behind his window.

“Do you miss me?”

~

Hello! I wrote this short little thing a couple of days after Checo's retirement from Red Bull. I’m a huge fan of his and although it really hurt just the way it is, I had the idea for this post for a time before finally putting effort and editing into it.

Thank you for thanking a minute to read it. I hope you enjoyed.

Love, Liz. xx

PS: The final is intended. I wanted it to be reader's decision if it was a line from Checo or Max.

[moonlesslights]

reblog the money pigeon for a financially stable future

[moonlesslights]

"save me, substance abuse!" i cry. before you can moralize to me about the dangers of addiction, a noble and powerful steed gallops into the room - my horse whom i have named "substance abuse". you learn an important lesson about making assumptions. i snort a line off its back

[moonlesslights]

About the car scene in Deadpool and Wolverine (spoilers)

Can we all agree, that during their massive fight in the car--

--that these two has at least stopped fighting once to have wild, angry sex with each other.

The way to screen moves down to the car plate, the way they're making sounds that can be interpreted as either fucking or fighting as the car is shaking, the way the time transitions from day to night, then BACK to day--

The way earlier in the film, a bartender comments that he can't tell if the two of them are going to fuck or fight==

The way that by the end of the scene Wolverine had somehow managed to tire out Deadpool enough and have him willingly strapped down with the seatbelts.

That they were sleeping so soundly-- passed out from sheer exhaustion that X-23 is able to get in the car, drive them back to her base-- and neither of these superhumans were awakened by it.

Pure. Poetic. Cinema.

Anyway yeah, don't take this post seriously. But it is a scene that can be left up for interpretation, and I choose to interpret that Logan absolutely fucked the lights out of Deadpool, who volunteered to bottom.

[moonlesslights]

a normal heterosexual fight would’ve taken place OUTSIDE of the honda odyssey in the big open space of the forest but NO they HAD to be pressed up against each other in an enclosed space all day and night.

[moonlesslights]

My thoughts

[moonlesslights]

You think Deadpool listens to Chappell roans casual and thinks about his time in the Honda odyssey with Wolverine I think he dose

[moonlesslights]

what do you mean it wasn’t a romcom

[moonlesslights]

dauntless parties - peter hayes

hi!! here’s another peter hayes fic, which i’ve decided to post in full on tumblr instead of just linking to my ao3. also i’d like to remind everyone that i’m still taking requests!

Word Count: 3,324

Pairing: Peter Hayes x Reader

Description: Peter always comes to you when he’s hurt, tonight is no different. No War AU

Warnings: Very brief sexual references, blood, injury, mention of alcohol.

Music echoed throughout the infirmary, the only sign of the Dauntless party happening a level below, the one you were so unceremoniously disinvited to when you’d been called to work the night shift. It seemed to be taunting you, and as the hour grew darker, and the fluorescent lighting grew stronger, you could feel your own annoyance grow

You supposed you wouldn’t care much if you had any company, but all the beds were empty— Dauntless would rather die than miss a party, apparently— and the other nurses saw no reason to stay when you could clearly hold down the fort on your own. It was just typical, really, for them to do this. What kind of a job was a nurse for a Dauntless, anyways? Someone had to do it, but why you? Of course, you knew the answer; they couldn’t think of a better place to put an Abnegation transfer.

The thought made you groan, throwing down the book you’d been flipping through aimlessly. If they weren’t going to respect you, why should you respect them? There weren't even any patients there, there hardly ever were; no self-respecting Dauntless would be found in the infirmary unless they absolutely needed to be there, and, to their credit, they rarely did.

Besides, tonight was a party, the only people getting hurt were idiots. Idiots who probably didn’t even deserve your attention. Idiots who—

Banging at the door interrupted your internal rant, but before you could even see who was there, Peter came stumbling in, and suddenly you understood the purpose of you being here tonight. Idiots like him, of course.

You could tell the extent of his injuries from the way he smiled at you, goofier than Peter had ever mustered before, or had ever wanted to. Still, he wore that same smug look he always had, and seeing him so bold in such a vulnerable state left you with the urge to roll your eyes. Unfortunately, telling him off would have to wait, overwhelmed by your need to help him— whether that comes from your Abnegation roots or your medical training, you don’t know, but you can’t be bothered to think too deeply about it, especially now— and you find yourself rushing towards him to take a better look at the damage.

“I think I just need some rest,” He says, leaning heavily against the wall as if he intends to fall asleep where he stood.

“You need stitches,” You correct him, ignoring the way he winces as you poke at the gash above his eyebrow. “How did you even get that?”

“Fist fight turned into a knife fight,” Peter groans, allowing you to lead him to one of the beds. He sits on the edge, clutching his side. “Who brings a knife to a party?”

“You do,” You say with an amused sniff. You know fully well Peter is only playing dumb with you because he wants your sympathy, and because he doesn’t want to admit to losing a fight he probably initiated himself. If you knew him, which you did, the other guy was fairly cut up as well, but no one had as good a reason to make a trip to the infirmary than the boy in front of you.

“Just lay down,” You sigh, and he listens, though his pained expression shows it’s not with much ease. You begin to rummage through the cabinet for the supplies you need, watching him from the corner of your eye. It’s been such a long time since you first saw him this way, but the memory feels fresh.

You’d been in initiation together, fought each other even, though fighting you rarely seemed to earn him more than a scratch. Looking back, you figured that had been a good thing. You passed initiation, but not by much, and that kept you off Peter’s radar for the most part.

It had been a fight with Edward that left you caring for him that first time. He had too much pride to go to the actual infirmary, and so you found him tending to his own wounds in the bathroom, late at night.

“Tell anyone about this, and you’ll be dead,” He had said as you wrapped a bandage around his bruised knuckles. His words were so cold that even the memory of them made you shiver.

You knew you shouldn’t have helped him, but you really shouldn’t have continued to do so after Edward lost his eye just a few days later. Peter made no attempt to hide this side of himself from you, but still, it became a habit for you to tend to his injuries, to take care of him. It happened again and again, until his threats disappeared and were replaced with words you could almost call compliments. Even after initiation, he came to you for help. Soon, you realized he would only come to you. Something in you warmed at the thought.

You weren’t sure if you hated the way he made you feel, but you were sure you wanted to. Your wants, however, seemed futile in the wake of his presence, like your caring for him was a tsunami washing over you, swallowing you up.

Even now, as you return to him, he looks at you with his big, doe eyes, and you want nothing more than to punch him. You’re sure he knows what he’s doing (when doesn’t he?) but you don’t say a word.

You unscrew the lid to a bottle of pills the Erudite makes especially for Dauntless fighters, some magic cure-all that your father would probably claim kills brain cells. You hand feed a couple to Peter, to which he has no protest, and you can imagine the looks you’d get if you weren’t alone. The thought makes you laugh to yourself.

“What’s so funny?” He asks, blinking up at you through a swollen eye.

“Just you,” You say as you return the pills to their place in the cabinet and lock it. With a second glance at Peter, you realize the Erudite science has proved you useless again, and sigh as you put the needle and thread back too, opting for a bandage instead.

“I thought I was your favorite patient?” Peter asks, giving you his best puppy-dog eyes, but you only scoff.

“Maybe if you got hurt less than twice a week,” You say as you begin to apply ointment to the cut above his eyebrow. He sucks in a breath through his teeth, but doesn’t complain. If you had any less willpower, you might’ve apologized.

“So,” He says, his need to be a nuisance greater than any pain that could be inflicted on him, “What I’m hearing is you hate to see me hurt.”

“You always hear what you want to, don’t you? I hate to see anyone hurt,” You make sure to apply his bandage with a little more pressure than necessary. “It makes my job harder.”

“So cynical,” he tuts, shaking his head. “Have you ever heard of proper bedside manner?”

“Dauntless doesn’t care much about the patient's health, Peter,” You tell him, and he smiles. Of course, it’s that cruelty that made him so fit for Dauntless in the first place.

“Then how come you’re always so sweet to me?” He says sarcastically, and you frown, glaring at him. “When you’re not jabbing at me with a needle or wrapping my bandages too tight, that is.”

“Any jabbing or lack of blood flow is for your own good,” You say, though it’s a struggle not to laugh as you think of the times you’ve had to give him stitches, and how he’d look at the needle like it was a grenade. You were sure he’d rather be looking down the barrel of a gun.

“So you do care?” Peter grins so wide it looks like it must hurt.

“Only as much as I’m required to,” You stand up, making a move away from his side, but before you can take even a step further, he grabs your hand.

“Sit with me a while longer,” He says, pulling you back to where you were. You listen, as if you could even try and will yourself away, and you can tell by the cheeky look on his face that he takes some kind of pride in this.

The build between you had been so slow, you’re not sure either of you could pinpoint when you became aware of his hold on you. It seemed likely he’d known for far longer than you, maybe even since that first night on the bathroom floor. Peter was manipulative, he was cruel, you knew it as well as anyone else, it was completely reasonable to assume he’d been exploiting this little crush you had on him. The thought made you feel sick.

“Are you alright?” He asks, and though you can tell he’s trying to be nice, he still looks at you as if you’ve swallowed a bug. Maybe it’s a symptom of his injured state, or maybe it’s the years of fake niceties catching up with him. Either seems entirely possible.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” You say, looking around the room for an excuse to leave his side, though his hand is still clasped firmly over yours, as if he can read your mind. “Maybe you should eat, any alcohol in your system will delay the healing process and food could—”

“I didn’t drink,” Peter interrupts you, and you eye him suspiciously. “Seriously! I don’t trust my drunk self at a Dauntless party, not after what happened last time.”

“I wouldn’t either,” You say, though you’re secretly glad for that reassurance. The few times you had seen Peter drunk made you cringe now, especially the times he found it appropriate to drape an arm around you, whispering incomprehensible innuendos in your ear as you smiled awkwardly at curious passersby and hoped none of your friends found you. Apparently he thought it was amusing to humiliate you, despite all you’d done for him, but you couldn’t be mad at him when any scolding you tried just left him grinning like an idiot. “You’re impossibly annoying when you’re drunk.”

“Really? I thought you liked me hanging off of you,” He sighs, as if disappointed. “Besides, you’re not much better.”

“What?” You ask, the shock so clear in your voice that he laughs.

“You don’t remember?” Peter looks at you with a smirk. “I guess I’m not surprised, you were pretty out of it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That party just a couple weeks ago, when the power went out?” You know what he’s talking about, or at least, you heard about it.

“I thought Christina took me home,” You say, though now that you thought about it, the night was too blurry for you to confirm that with yourself.

“Maybe,” he shrugs, “But you’d been dancing with me all night, and when I got back to my place, you were there waiting outside my door.”

“Oh god, we didn’t—?”

“No, no. I told you, I swore off drinking at parties months ago,” Peter shakes his head, and you breathe a sigh of relief. “I just took you home, stayed with you most of the night.”

“Really?” You ask, finding it hard to believe he’d ever do something like that.

“Well, it was free entertainment,” He says with that wicked look in his eye. “You tried to flirt with me for at least a couple hours. I didn’t know you were so persistent.”

You feel yourself go bright red, not able to imagine the things you must’ve said. You’re about to apologize when he stops you.

“I imagine I’m worse though,” He laughs, “With the way you look and all.”

You’re a bit taken aback by that, but he seems unfazed, as if what he’s said is completely normal. He looks at you the way he’s always looked at you, but his words still make your heart beat a little faster, no matter how casual he seems.

“It was nice, though, when you danced with me. It seems like you’re always avoiding me,” He says after we’ve been quiet for a moment. He doesn’t seem sad, or even angry, more just curious, or maybe amused. Like he’s satisfied with his reputation. “Is it because of your friends? Or because of me?”

“You’re not exactly nice to them.” Or me, You consider adding, but don’t.

“Why should I be nice to them?” Peter laughs as if the idea is ridiculous. “I don’t like them.”

“Oh please, you don’t like anyone,” The words taste bad in your mouth, but you know they’re true, and you rip your hand out of his grasp. This is his greatest talent, of course, getting people riled up. He seems to relish in it. “Not even your lackeys.”

“They’re idiots,” Peter says dismissively, and you can’t help but feel wounded. If he thinks of the people he calls friends as idiots, what could he possibly think of you? You must seem like a total pushover to him, and though you hate to care about his opinion, the thought hurts you deep in your core. You feel as if your stomach might turn inside out.

But before you can worry yourself to death, he says, “You're wrong, though.”

You lift your eyebrows and fold your arms across your chest, urging him to go on, but too afraid to open your mouth out of fear of what you might say. You don’t want to stoop to his level.

“I do like some people,” You watch intently as Peter places a hand on your thigh, much more innocently than you thought he was capable of. “I like you.”

When you open your mouth to speak, it’s as if your tongue has been cut out. Your mind is screaming at you to say something, anything, but you simply cannot. This feels as if it goes on for hours before Peter looks at you with the most obnoxious grin, and suddenly, your voice returns, as if your very being simply couldn’t allow him this win.

“Wipe that smug look off your face,” You snap, but he only laughs. “I’m serious.”

“I bet you are,” he says, and though you’d never take this from anyone else, you find yourself only minorly annoyed by Peter, again. Really, if he was anyone else, you probably would’ve killed him by now.

“I should’ve gone to that damn party,” You think back to your inconsiderate coworkers with a glare at the door. “Maybe you wouldn’t have ended up here.”

“I think I would’ve ended up in your apartment instead,” He says, almost wistfully. “Though, it’s not too late for any of that.”

With a glance to the clock on the wall, you see he’s right. It’s not even one yet.

The look he gives you, like always, leaves you wanting nothing more than to even have a clue as to what he’s thinking. At least now, you have a better guess.

“How about this,” Peter starts, a mischievous glint in his eye that leaves you more excited than it should. “I don’t tell your superiors you left your post, and you give me one dance.”

“Nothing explicit,” You add, and he rolls his eyes.

“Fine,” He says, “But you might not be able to resist.”

You groan in disgust, but as he stands you take his hand and allow him to lead you out of the infirmary.

—

It’s almost funny, the way you walk in together, with your arm looped around his. What’s even more odd is that Peter was the one to insist upon it, but you see its deeper purpose in the looks you receive. You can tell from the skip in his step that he loves the attention.

Despite the fact that you’re completely sober, something comparable to the effects of alcohol had seemed to wash over you in the time it took to walk from the infirmary to the Pit. The worries that have plagued you for months now don’t even cross your mind; the betrayal you took part in every time you helped Peter, your Abnegation background haunting you even past initiation, not even the unexplainable affection you felt towards the boy next to you could weigh on your thoughts now. The music is too loud, the lights are too strong, and Peter is standing too close.

“Peter, what are you doing back here?” An angry voice calls from behind Peter, and, in just a moment, you’re whipped around along with him, face to face with Tris. She looks angry, to say the least, but with Peter’s presence that’s a given. When she sees you, though, her expression becomes unreadable.

“I got fixed up,” He says, gesturing to you, a wide grin spread over his face. You realize Tris is injured too, though far less than Peter is, and it becomes apparent she’s the one he’d fought with. “Figured I better come back with a date, too.”

“I thought you were working tonight,” Tris says, completely ignoring Peter.

“I was,” You admit, “But I couldn’t let him back out here unsupervised.”

“We always end up together at the end of the night anyways,” Peter says, prompting you to jab your elbow into his side.

Tris eyes you up and down, staring at you as if Peter isn’t even there. At first, you worry she’s giving you some kind of death glare, but you quickly realize she’s deciding whether or not to leave you with Peter.

“We’ll see you later, Tris,” You say finally, not giving her any time to reply before you’ve tugged

Peter away from her. A second longer and they might’ve been at it again, and you aren’t gonna end the night without the dance you’d promised Peter.

“So eager,” He says, whisper-shouting in your ear once you’ve read the center of the crowd. All around you are people dancing. or fighting. though some of it is hard to tell apart.

You roll your eyes at him, but don’t make any protest when he pulls you in close. You take cues from the rest of the crowd when it comes to dancing, your heartbeat too loud in your ears to be able to properly hear the music.

This isn’t the soft, romantic dancing you’d heard of Amity couples doing, Dauntless would never allow a slow enough song for that, but you wouldn’t have it any other way, and you can tell Peter feels the same. He keeps you pressed to him so tightly you’re afraid you might melt into one person. You’d expect the sweat between the two of you to make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, but instead it has you excited, so completely aware of every sense despite the fact that all of them are being overwhelmed.

At some point, you find yourselves in the center of a very rowdy group. It doesn’t bother you, really, but you can tell from the scowl on his face that you’re a few seconds away from losing his attention completely.

You place your hand under his chin and turn his head so his eyes are back on you. His gaze softens, though not in the same way it does for strangers and unsuspecting victims. You’re almost sure you’ve got that difference down now, or at least you’d like to think that you would after all the time you’ve spent with him.

“We should get out of here,” Peter says, though you have to read his lips a little to understand him.

“I think you’re right,” You agree, allowing him to tug you away from the Pit entirely.

You suppose you don’t realize where he’s leading you until you’re at his door, but another part of you was sure where the two of you were headed. Either way, you know you aren’t mad about it.

You are, however, surprised when he holds open the door for you.

[moonlesslights]

Can I please request a snape smut fic? The reader and him have been friends since school and she is in love with him only he does not know it or realize his feelings till Sirius is flirting with her and it leads to a fight between them leading to them confessing to their feelings. Maybe some dirty talk biting and rough smut

Sooo...I got a bit carried away with this...definetly not the roughest smut I've written, but I hope you like it anyway.

Severus and his sunshine

Pairing: Severus Snape x fem!reader

warnings: Smut, loss of virginity

Wordcount: 7402 (oops...)

Read on Ao3 or below the cut:

“To the youngest Professor in the history of Hogwarts!” You cheer and raise your glass clumsily into the air, spilling half your drink down your arm. “Oops-” You giggle. 

It’s not the first drink of the evening and not the first time you toast to Severus’ new job - and certainly not the last. It bears repeating after all because how fucking awesome is this? You have always known that Severus is the most intelligent and brilliant and ingenious person you’d ever meet! It’s unfair - no, a bloody shame! - how many people never realised it just because Severus’ is a bit awkward and rude and- alright he’s a downright cunt sometimes but he has every bloody right to be with the road his life has taken so far! With a father like that and that awful Potter and his stupid goons!

“We need to cut you off.” He drawls, the corner of his lips curling, and tries to snatch your glass from you. You jump off the chair you're standing on and cradle your drink protectively to your chest, firewhiskey dripping down your arm.

“Try and I’ll bite your finger off!”

“You’re drunk.”

“No, I’m not.” Severus shakes his head but doesn’t try to get your drink again, instead focusing on his own (the second of the evening - what a bore). The pub is crowded and loud, nobody pays any attention to the two of you sitting at a table in the corner.

You plop back down on your chair and take a sip of your drink. 

Severus’ eyes have gone distant again. That happens a lot lately. Like something is on his mind that he lacks the words to tell you. Social interactions aren’t his strong suit. You’re the ‘Severus-translator’ Lily used to joke when you three were still friends because you always knew what Severus wanted to say but couldn’t. You always made sure he was included in conversations, told others to shut up so he could speak or smooth over his rough edges whenever someone didn’t get Severus’ dry and dark sense of humour. 

One look at him from across the Great Hall during breakfast and you knew whether he was in a good or bad mood. You knew when he had a nightmare the night before and needed a gentler touch or when to bluntly tell him he’s being a cunt.

This you can’t seem to figure out. 

He smiles less these days. Even less than usual. The four years since you finished school have been hard, especially for him, especially with the war. 

Emotions are not Severus’ thing.

His long black hair falls into his face, hiding his grave expression from the world and you. His face has lost its boyish features. His jaw is more prominent, complementing his high cheekbones. His hooked nose suits him. It’s something about the proportions or symmetry of his face - you can’t quite put your finger on it. Most people seem to be put off by his appearance, but to you he has always held something uniquely beautiful.

He taps his finger against his glass repeatedly. His fingernails are still painted black…You made him let you paint them last time he was at your flat. It suits him.

You place your hand over his, stopping his fidgeting. You wish you’d know what’s going on in his head, clearly whatever it is puts him on edge, but you trust he’ll talk to you when he is ready. 

“You’ll be great.” You say. “I have no doubt. You’re a bloody genius, Severus! These kids are so lucky. They can learn so much from you!”

“I am certain they will share your attitude.” He says sardonically and you snort. Severus downs his drink and takes your empty glass to get another round (and probably a glass of water for you because he’s such a mum sometimes). You smirk as you watch him make his way through the crowd. 

He sticks out like a sore thumb in these new robes he got, but you think they too suit him. It’s probably the first time he isn’t wearing hand-me-downs. He’s wearing all black of course. The most colour you ever saw him wear was at Hogwarts in the form of his emerald green school tie. 

Severus looks intimidating. It makes him look older, stronger somehow. It’s such a stark difference to the beat up jeans, the The Cure bandshirt you gifted him one Christmas and the shabby leather jacket.

But not in a bad way.

He looks good. 

Maybe it’s the fact he has grown taller since graduation. He’s a head taller than he used to be and shed his bend over posture. Escaping both Hogwarts and his recently deceased father agrees with him. That and your continued effort of forcing him to eat three whole meals a day, every day.

His wide shoulders and dark hair disappear behind people and you rip your eyes from the spot you last saw him.

So much has changed in the last four years but that little flutter in your heart whenever you look at him has not changed. When it first started in your fourth year you didn’t even realise what it was about. You’d start stammering around him, earning you silent glares and raised eyebrows from Severus at which you’d blush. After an embarrassingly long time you finally accepted that you had developed a crush on your best friend. 

You’re too terrified of losing him as a friend to ever tell him though.

Severus isn’t good with feelings. They are too complicated. Too messy. He doesn’t need messy. His life is messy enough and so you swore to yourself to never tell him.

Your friendship was already a miracle. You are his polar opposite. You are outgoing and friendly, polite - too polite sometimes - bubbly and optimistic. Severus is - well Severus. He is grumpy and quiet and rude.

You decided to befriend him in your first year. You saw him during the sorting and something about him pulled you in. You really wanted to get to know him and when you heard him talk during your first potions class you made the decision to gain his friendship however long it would take.

You started by sitting at the table next to his in the library. You’d sit there everyday, quietly doing your homework and when he stopped shooting you irritated looks when he thought you weren’t looking, you moved to sitting at his table. You simply smiled at the befuddled Severus and did your work. 

You approached befriending Severus like one might approach gaining the trust of a wild animal. Over the year a truce-kind-of study group had formed between you.

Towards the end of term he asked for your help collecting some things from the forbidden forest - Lily would never break school rules, but you are certain Severus didn’t actually need help, he just didn’t know how to tell you he wanted to spend time with you.

During the summer you send him letters, even after not receiving any back from him and when you saw him by himself in the Hogwarts Express in September you sat down next to him and you’ve been friends since.

You know a romance is even less likely than your friendship was.

“Merlin! I almost didn’t fucking recognise you!” A familiar voice says and you throw up a little in your mouth.

“Black.” You say monotonous. As if he owns the place Black sits down opposite of you on Severus’ currently empty chair.

“You’re hot! How come we never snogged in school?”

“Because whenever I am forced to face the fact that you exist I want to smash my head against a wall.” You say with a honey-sweet tone of voice at which Black’s grin only grows. He doesn’t get the hint. 

“How come you’re drinking alone, gorgeous?” Black continues undeterred, a poised and arrogant grin on his lips.

“I’m not.” His grin wavers ever so slightly but Sirius Black has always believed himself so utterly irresistible that such small details don’t matter to him.

“I don’t see anyone.” He is wearing muggle clothes, trying just a tad too hard to look like a rockstar, but he talks and holds himself like a pureblood still. He might have run away from home but he is still living off of his family’s wealth and he hasn’t changed one bit since school.

Black is (as usual) utterly unaware that he isn’t welcome. Black’s eyes roam over your face and down to your chest like he is appraising you, determining how much effort you are worth putting into seducing you. 

“I think it’s fate we meet like this! You look-” He licks his lips and a shiver of disgust rushes over your arms. “So different. Bet you cut loose that tosser Snivellus. He was clearly dragging you under. A frown on such a pretty face should be considered a fucking crime.” You clench your fists under the table. You have your wand in your boot. It would be so easy to hex him-

“Someone as stunning as you- Oi! I was about to head to this club in Dublin that recently opened to meet Moony and Wormtail - You should join me!” He winks.

“As I said - I am here with someone.”

“But you could be with me!” He laughs as if he just made a joke but you know he is dead serious. He thinks you’d gladly ditched whomever you are here with for the chance of spending time with him. “Bring her too - the more the merrier.” There is a not so subtle suggestive tone to his words and he wiggles his eyebrows. “Come on gorgeous! Someone as sexy as you should not be so uptight! Let’s have some fun, let loose a little - it’ll be worthwhile to you, I swear.”

“What a compelling offer.” Sneers Severus and your heart drops. Great. “I wonder how many you made that promise to, Black, and how many you left disappointed.” Black’s grin falters for a split second.

That’s right.

Severus is different.

He stands taller. He’s fierce and strong and you aren’t at Hogwarts anymore where it’s four against one with the teachers turning a blind eye. You have no doubt Severus would pull out his nastiest curses on Black given the chance.

“Let’s leave, Sev.” 

“Come on, gorgeous!”

“That’s not her name, but one can hardly expect a simpleton like you to care for such fine details as names.”

“Sev.”

“No wonder she looked like somebody was fucking murdered in front of her eyes when I found her - how Lily could bear being close to you for so long I’ll never understand.” Black turns towards you. “Kick this dick to the curb - I’ll buy you a drink, gorgeous.”

“She does not need you for that-”

“I can buy my own drinks.” You hiss and when Severus still makes no move towards leaving, you grab your jacket and storm off. Let them duel like little children if they want, but you won’t get in the middle of that. 

The cold hair of the night hits you while you run down the street. Tears sting in your eyes and you feel so stupid and pathetic for crying. Nothing even happened. You don’t know what’s going on- that’s a lie. Severus sounded like he was about to suggest you’re with him and therefore don’t need Black to buy you drinks which…it’s not wrong. You were at the pub with Severus and you were going to make him pay (he’s a Professor now after all and from what Sev let on the pay isn’t bad) but it wasn’t a date. And Severus suggesting or intending to suggest that hurts. You want it to be a date goddamn! You’ve wanted it for over eight years!

Severus calls your name but you just wrap your arms tighter around yourself and continue down the empty street on the outskirts of London.

“Just wait!” He catches up to you. “What a fucking wanker.” He huffs.

“Mh.”

“What did he say to you? I should have hexed him! I knew it!”

“Drop it.”

“No, I will not drop it! He made you cry- come on tell me what he said and I’ll-”

“What?!” Abruptly you stop walking and spin around to face Severus. He looks at you perplexed, his cloak billowing behind him in the breeze. “You’ll go and start a duel? Why? I told you to drop it.”

“He’s a fucking cavemen! Just the way he looked at you-” Severus grimaces. A muscle in his jaw tenses and he flexes his wand hand.

“Why the fuck do you suddenly feel the need to defend my honour?! You just ignored me in there- nevermind. I’m tired. I want to go home.”

“Don’t let Black ruin our night-”

“You ruined our night! I asked you to leave, you ignored me. I ask you to drop it, you ignore me. I don’t want you to fight Black! We aren’t at school anymore - you’ll get arrested!” Something you have never before seen crosses through Severus’ eyes. Something dark. A cold shiver runs down your spine and you take an involuntary step back.

“I wouldn’t be arrested, Sunshine.” He says, voice low, rumbling like thunder, a muttered promise of destruction and ruin and heat pools in your belly. That he called you by his nickname for you which he uses very sparingly, if ever, doesn’t help the matter. Severus takes a step forward. The heat morphs into a twisting, curling mass that takes your breath away. Severus looms over you, shadows dancing over his pale skin, drawing his cheekbones into an even sharper contrast and you gulp.

“You think Luci is going to come and rescue you?”

“Lucius? I don’t need Lucius for that.”

“Do you even fucking hear yourself?!” Your voice echoes through the empty streets, thrown back off the house.

“He made you cry!”

“Why does it matter?!”

“Because-” He clenches his jaw, his fists shake with suppressed rage. His nostrils flare and for a split second a tingling sensation winds around your heart at the expression in his eyes - the softness in the middle of a raging storm. A lone, untouched, unbothered island in the midst of a roaring ocean. 

Severus exhales. Tension falls off his frame and the expression is gone.

“Fine.” He says quietly. “Let’s go then.” And he walks past you.

“No.” You can hear his steps stop behind you. Tears drip over your cheeks and you stubbornly wipe them away. “Say what you wanted to say.”

“I thought you’re tired.”

“Say it.”

“It’s- it doesn’t matter.”

“I’m not moving until you say it.” You cross your arms in front of your chest. Behind you Severus sighs and you can practically hear him pinch the bridge of his nose like he does whenever you annoy him.

“You sound like a spoiled child.”

“Good practice then. You’ll have to deal with a lot of those, Professor.”

“Are you- I have the feeling you’re angry with me.” You spin around and glare at Severus. He’s not good with emotions, sure - but now he’s just being dense.

“What made you think that?” You deadpan. He rolls his eyes and his disregard for your feelings drives you mad. 

“Black’s a bastard-”

“This is Warren all over again!”

“Yeah and I was fucking right about Warren wasn’t I?” A vein on his forehead pulses, but you don’t give a shit. Warren was your first boyfriend and Severus behaved absolutely rotten towards you.

“Warren was a huge mistake, yes - but he was my mistake to make! What- do you actually fucking think I would ever fucking touch Black? Just the thought gives me an STD!” The barest flicker of amusement flashes over Severus’ features. “I just- I don’t get why you overreact like this everytime I talk to a guy. And it’s not like I was engaging Black there! The fucknugget is just to stupid to get a hint!”

“I-”

“There it is again! You did it again! What is it that you can’t tell me? Come on Sev! You can tell me everything. When did you start having secrets from me?” It’s a hit to your ego as much as you don’t like admitting it. 

You have always been Severus’ safespace. 

He told you things he never even told Lily! Something you didn’t know until third year when Lily asked whether Severus’ parents are ‘fighting again’ when you knew Tobias dickward Snape beat Sev with his belt the day before the Hogwarts Express left for the new term. You fucking healed him in you compartment because his ribs were broken and she asked whether they were fighting. 

Why can’t he tell you this?

Another tear slips over your lower lid and slides down your check. Your bottom lip quivers. You suppress a sniffle and nod. 

You have never felt further away from him than you do at this precise moment. It feels like Severus is sand slipping through your fingers and the harder you try to hold onto him, to the way it was before, the faster he slips away. Maybe too much has changed. Maybe he’s too different. Maybe this unlikely friendship was doomed from the beginning.

You know you’re about to start bawling and that’s the last you want Severus to see.

“Alright…I see.” You whisper. “Life’s different now. We’re keeping secrets now…”

“Sunshine-”

“No- no, ‘tis fine-” You roughly wipe your eyes. “See you- see you sometime….congratulations again.” You turn around to find a quiet alleyway to disapparate to your flat and break down there like a pathetic little teen that got her pathetic little heart broken without ever even working up the courage to confess her pathetic feelings. 

Your steps sound horribly loud in the dark, cold night and with every step you take away from Severus you feel like you’re losing him more, every step is another crack, another break, another insurmountable obstacle between you. The cold wind cuts through your clothes with ease and you shiver. 

“I love you.”

You stop dead in your tracks. Your heart skips a beat or two or maybe it forgets how to work entirely. 

Severus’ voice is quiet, uncertain like it has not been since second year when he thought you didn’t want to be friends with him anymore after he lashed out at you.

“Sunshine- I knew Warren would only hurt you. That he’s not good enough for you. He bragged in the Slytherin common room that you showed him your boobs- He said all sorts of awful things and I- I just sat there. I should have said something, defended you, made him shut up but- Warren was two years above us and…” He takes a shuddering breath, dispelling old shame and insecurity from his voice. “Black’s just like that. He never cared for you before and now all of a sudden he is dying to go out with you? You don’t even realise it, Sunshine but- you- you are stunning. You have changed so much since school, you are- fuck I don’t know- words-” He sighs and rubs his hands over his face. 

You feel numb and like you’re on fire at the same time. Of course you knew Warren spread some shit about you around, it’s why you broke up and broke his nose in the process for good measure, earning three weeks detention with McGonagall, but you wished you would have known sooner... 

And- Severus loves you? No- that can’t be right- He’s in love with Lily- it’s always been Lily-

“You’re happier somehow- you- you’re radiant and beautiful and- you’ve grown up so much and- and- I love you. I’ve loved you for years- I want to protect you. I want to guard your happiness and yes I’d go back to knock out every single one of Black’s teeth for talking to you like that. You just have to say the word - sunshine - I’m pretty sure there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. And I know I’m not bloody good enough for you- I am rude and surly and miserable to be around - I don’t expect you to feel the same…I- fuck I don’t know-”

“You love me?”

“I love you.”

“I thought you love Lily.”

“Lily is- was- still is- I have no goddamn clue- she’s like a sister. I love her. And I think marrying Potter was a huge mistake and that she’ll divorce him in about three years - if she manages to stand him that long and when she does I hope- I hope we can mend our friendship…maybe- but- but I don’t love her like that. Not like I love you.”

Severus loves you.

Has loved you for years.

Severus loves you… You swirl around and before your anxiety can overpower your heart, screaming and aching and thrashing about in your chest you cup his face with your trembling hands and press your lips against his.

Severus stiffens. For a moment you just stand there, on your tiptoes to be able to reach him, holding onto him, feeling his heat against you, your lips exploding with electrifying tingling. Your stomach clenches and twists, flip flops and gives birth to a thousand erratic butterflies and all flutter around in a whirlwind of emotions that are too colourful, too many, too intense to ever find words worthy of describing the sensation.

Cautiously Severus puts his hands on your back and moves his lips against yours. You’re still crying, tears stream over your cheeks and run along the curves of your face to your lips. 

As if woken from an enchanted slumber, Severus drags you against his chest and kisses you fiercely. One arm wrapped around your back and clutching at your waist, and one hand cradling the back of your head, long slender fingers threading through your hair. You grab the front of his robes and cling to him. 

You both stumble a few steps and your back hits the brick wall of a house. Severus licks along the seam of your lips which you happily part for him. Your kiss grows sloppy and desperate. Your tongues meet gingerly at first but soon the slight air of discomfort and wariness at this development vanishes, flies away into the cool air of the night, gone and forgotten, as unimportant as your stupid fight.

Severus is kissing you. You are finally kissing Severus. He loves you. He has loved you for years.

Everything is good.

“Sev-” You whimper against his lips between two kisses. You try to break them, to wrench an inch of air between you but Severus is like a man dying of thirst that finally found a water source and is clenching his burning thirst. “Sev-” You push against his chest. Severus releases your lips, but doesn’t move away, doesn’t let go of you. 

He leans his forehead against yours and blinks back at you, his dark eyes seemingly trying to pervade yours, to find a direct path to your deepest thoughts, a link between you and him that is untouchable by anybody else, that runs deeper than any other connection between two people.

“Don’t you want to invite me back to your place?” You murmur and tug playfully at the button just above his throat. Severus’ eyes darken. A muscle in his jaw jumps. Your cunt clenches around nothing. Needy, desperate, wanting.

He clears his throat and steps back. How the fuck does he still look put together? How can he manage to reign in that storm in his eyes so expertly, so fast and clean while you’re a panting, sweaty, needy mess after just a few damn kisses?

“You won’t like what I’d do then.” He says, voice heavy with what he leaves unsaid. You push yourself off the wall and wrap your arms around his shoulders. You trail a few chaste kisses up the side of his jaw and flick the tip of your tongue over his earlobe. Severus inhales sharply and flexes his hands again.

“I don’t break easy, Sev.” You whisper and press a kiss to his ear. “You should know that.” He takes another shuddering breath and just when you think you’ll have to deal with the aftermath of his kiss on your own while picturing him nestled between your thighs (once again), he pulls you against his chest and holds you in a bone-breaking grip. You feel the familiar pull of side-along apparition and in the next moment you smell the even more familiar, dusty scent of Severus’ house. The smell of books is new, added after Severus renovated the house enough to evict his father’s influences and put his own touch to it - namely by adding a shittone of books.

Severus doesn’t give you time to catch your breath. He grabs your hand and pulls you up the stairs. You giggle and run to keep up with him. He practically kicks the door to his old room open (you know for a fact he has not even touched the door to his parents room since his father died) and crushes his lips against yours as soon as he pulls you over the threshold.

The burn marks from where Severus used to zap flies with his wand are still on the ceiling. The little pencil sketches you made near the baseboards are as well. He replaced his bed though. A brand new double which you are being steered towards now.

“Severus-” You moan against his lips and tear at the buttons of his new robes.

“Is this real?” He whispers back and leans his forehead against yours again, watching you struggle with his clothes. “I’ve pictured this so many times- thought about how I would feel to have you here- is this happening? Or am I sleeping?”

“It’s real.” You say, lips against his recently freed throat. “I’m here.”

“You’re here…”

“Severus-” You hesitate and pause your quest of revealing Severus’ body to your eyes. “I’ve never done this-” Suddenly you feel shaky and overwhelmed.

“Warren-?”

“Is full of shit. He lied- about all of it. Have you-” He nods, but there’s a distant expression in his eyes that tells you it’s not something he wants to talk about. Probably something he’s ashamed of. You know the kind of company Lucius, Mulciber, Rosier and the other’s like to keep and don’t pry further.

“I’ll trust you then.” You murmur and sit down on the bed, pulling Severus down with you.

“I’d never want to hurt you, Sunshine.” You kiss and between kisses scoot up the bed until your head is resting on the soft pillows and Severus’ lean body between your thighs. “I’ll take care of you.” He mutters against the corner of your mouth and kisses your cheek. “Such good care.” He trails down your jaw. “Like Black or Warren never fucking could.”

“I never wanted them.” You moan. Your body moves on its own, knowing precisely what you want and need even if your mind has yet to catch up. Your legs wrap around his hips, your back arches, pressing your breasts to his chest. You thread your fingers through his silky hair. “Only you.”

“Me?”

“Only you. Always you. Whenever I thought about it…when I pictured how it would feel while touching myself I only ever pictured you.”

“Oh sunshine-” He groans and rolls his hips against you.

“Sev-” Severus draws his wand and mutters a quick spell. Something curls in your stomach, it’s the weirdest sensation and for a second you are utterly confused, but then your gaze meets Severus’ and you understand. Contraception spell. You didn’t even think of that. Of course Severus did. You smile. 

He mutters another charm and your clothes vanish. You squeak, blush and hide your face behind your hands.

You can hear the clanking of wood hitting wood as Severus tosses his wand onto the nightstand.

“You- fuck…” Cautiously you peek between your fingers. A faint pink tinge has spread over Severus’ cheeks and nose, down to his now fully exposed neck. He looks cute. Adorable. You take a deep breath and drop your hands. This is Severus. Your Severus. There is nothing to be afraid of with him. “You put to shame all great beauties of the comprehensive history of this world.” His words brush over your skin like a tender caress and make you shiver and burn with embarrassed heat at the same time.

“Severus-”

“It’s true. The old greek masters wish they would have had a model like you sit for their marmour statues. Such beauty has to be preserved for the ages - but you…you are just mine.”

“Who are you and what have you done to my stammering, cute, insecure Severus?” You tease. Severus’ eyes are still pinned to your breasts. He visibly snaps out of his thoughts and looks up to you. There he is. Flashing through his impossibly dark eyes for the flicker of a second before they return to the heavy gaze, consumed by carnal desire that has been ignored for too long and has now broken free with demanding force.

“He knows he’s about to find out how you feel.”

“Come and find out then.” You shoot him a challenging grin. Severus kisses you in response. He kisses you and settles more of his weight on you. His very much hard cock presses against your exposed cunt. You gasp and clutch at Severus.

“Shit- Severus- that won’t fit!”

“It will.”

“You sure?” He chuckles, his eyes lighting up with amusement like they do so rarely and you relax.

“I’m sure.” You trust him. You love him. You want him. He’ll take care of you. 

You let him take control. Severus kisses you more. He seems determined to cover every inch of your body with all the confessions of his love he has missed out on. All the elapsed opportunities. All the kisses you could have shared if you both had had just a little more courage. But it doesn’t matter. You are here now. You are together in his bed, skin pressed against skin, breathing the same air, staring into each other’s eyes longingly while his hand slips between your thighs.

You’re soaked and whimper when his slender fingers gather your slickness, brushing your aching cunt with featherlight touches. He draws gentle, slow circles over your clit. Pressure and heat build in your belly and deep inside your cunt fast. You cling to his shoulders, digging your nails into his skin without even noticing.

“I wondered so many times how you’d look…” He murmurs. His lips brush over yours as he speaks. His breath dances across your cheeks.

“...in the throes of pleasure.” Severus’ voice is deeper than you’ve ever heard it. A smoky rumble that goes straight to your core.

He teases your entrance until you’re squirming and rolling your hips against his touch before finally plunging a finger inside you. “I wondered how you’d sound…how I would feel knowing it was me making you feel like that…” You give him the answer promptly. Moaning and whining, gasping for air.

“Sev!” You throw your head back and arch your back. The pressure keeps building and building, beyond anything you ever managed yourself. He adds a second finger and with it a delicious, stinging stretch. He curls his fingers and presses the heel of his palm to your clit. You squirm under Severus’ intense gaze that seems to look right through you, through your skin down to your very soul. He watches every flicker of pleasure and desperation he paints onto your face with utter, devoted, undisturbed attention to you and nothing else. Nothing else matters.

Severus knows you like no other. It feels right to share this with him as well.

He loves you.

You still can’t believe it. 

“Sev!”

“Cum for me, sunshine. Cum on my fingers. I want to know- I’m done wondering. I want to know.” You do. Crying out and panting his name, thrashing about beneath him as waves upon waves of intense pleasure run havoc over you, but it’s fine. You can let go with Severus.

“I need you Sev- please-” You gasp even before your orgasm has released you from its clutches. “Please please please- Sev-” He groans. 

“Fuck and I thought you sounded needy in my head.” Severus mutters and aligns himself with you. He takes his time, giving you time to adjust to his girth, slowly pushing deeper and deeper into your still spasming channel, forcing it to give way to him. He grunts and whispers praise, how tight you are, how good you feel for him, how well you’re taking him. You whimper and hold onto him, leaving red streaks across his back. Severus doesn’t even bat an eye at it.

He buries his head in the crook of your neck and savours your every sound, every twitch and throb of your cunt finally, finally gloved around him.

“Sunshine-”

“Severus…” More words aren’t needed. He rests there, deep inside you, his body pressed to your trembling smaller one, shielding you from the cold of his room and the world itself and you know there is a promise in there somewhere.

“I can’t believe it-” He murmurs and kisses your collarbone, down to your sternum. He kisses and licks, sucks, grazes your skin with his teeth. “You feel…incredible…you’re so good for me sunshine-” He kisses your breasts, flicks his tongue over your hardened nipples, licks broad strokes and teasingly closes his lips around them.

When Severus finally moves again he does so in slow, measured thrusts. He watches your expression with hidden wariness, watches your every reaction. He can’t hide from you though. He is waiting for you to regret this. To tell him to stop. He’s afraid of letting go, afraid of scaring you off, of losing you.

But he’ll never lose you.

You buck your hips and whine impatiently. “Come on Sev.” You whimper. “Fuck me like you really want to fuck me.”

“It’s your first time I will not-”

“It’s done, Sev. Bye bye virginity! That train of stupid little things society places far too much worth in has left the station indefinitely. Now fuck me.”

“Sun-”

“Severus Snape! Fuck. me. properly.” He groans. His eyes roll to the back of his head.

“Fine.” Severus grunts and a rush of excitement pulses through your stomach and drenches his throbbing cock in more fluids. “I warned you.”

The bed creaks dangerously under his thrusts. His hips slap against yours with a wet, fleshy sound that drives you crazy.

“Oh fuck yes- yes- just like that- that’s-” You babble more nonsense, moaning and shredding Severus’ back with your nails. He fucks you mercilessly into the mattress, spearing you open with his cock with each hard thrust. Your entire body trembles under his thorough attention. Your cunt yields to him in wet, fluttering excitement. It cherishes the promise of soreness his thrusts leave behind. 

Any attempt at grasping for and trying to hold onto one of the many thoughts rushing through your fuzzy, hazy mind is a fruitless endeavour.

“Fuck! Ahhh- so good…” Severus mutters against your collarbone and plunges his cock into your drenched cunt again before pulling out almost completely and driving back in with such force he knocks your head against the headboard. You both laugh.

“Sorry-”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” You weave your fingers through his hair and pull him down into a sloppy, passionate kiss. You gasp and moan into the kiss and drink up the way Severus continues to lose the iron grip on his emotions he had cultivated since graduation, revealing more and more of the love-starved, unapologetic, fierce man you know him as. The man that feels so freely, so intensely, so deeply that it hurts him so much.

Every thrust, every kiss, every exploring hand gliding over your sweaty skin, squeezing your breasts in testing, careful motions is a testament to how deep his feelings for you run and have been running for so long. 

It breaks free of him in violent bursts and buries you beneath roaring pleasure. 

Severus is not good with words.

But he will be damned if he doesn’t show you what he can’t figure out how to say.

“Severus-” You moan, joining the creaking bed and his grunts, the symphony of your love. This would not be a pretty, romantic, fairytale like love. You are both messy and broken in your own ways. It will be hard. It will take work and compassion and will seem impossible at moments, especially in the midst of a war, but Severus is worth it.

To you he is worth it.

He always was and will always be.

You whine in protest when Severus pulls out of you but before you have a chance to voice it otherwise or even glare at him, Severus flips you over.

“Put your hands on the headboard.” He rasps in your ear. You are shaking and struggle to keep yourself upright, but Severus’ arms around your waist stabilise you. You hold onto the headboard so tight your knuckles turn white. Severus is kissing your neck, nibbling and sucking, painting his marks onto you as if to say ‘I was here’ or maybe ‘back off’. Maybe both. Maybe more.

He fills you up again, reaching much deeper than before and you gasp at the unfamiliar, intense feeling.

“Your cunt clutches me so hard-” He grunts and bottoms out. “Sucks me in- all soaked and desperate.”

“Sev-”

“Hmm…yes. I’m here…” He sucks the delicate skin on your neck into his mouth and bites down gently, at which a loud, wanton moan breaks free of you and he bites down harder. 

You meet his thrust with your hips, his cockhead hits a spot inside you it previously missed and you fall apart. His grip around your waist turns bruising and Severus pulls you back. Your grip around the headboard goes slack. You melt into his touch, twitching and shivering, whimpering, mind fuzzy with always new, higher, stronger, more intense levels of pleasure.

Severus holds you to his chest, your thighs on either side of his, useless, hands helplessly holding onto his arms, and moves your body up and down his hard shaft. Using you and the fluttering of your cunt as your orgasm continues to coarse through you. He grunts and bites your shoulder, harder than before and a particularly strong spasm shakes your body. You drop your head onto his shoulder, melting further against him.

“Again-” You rasp and present your neck to him. A grin flashes over Severus’ lips. Sweaty strands of hair stick to his forehead, his eyes are glazed over with hazy lust.

“My pleasure.” He coos, but instead of indulging you, he kisses you. One small, chaste peck after another. You squirm against his grip, claw at his arms, painting more red streaks on his pale skin.

“You never told me you got a tattoo-” You murmur. The sight of the jet black snake and skull on Severus’ left inner arm pulls your mind out of its haze and into a brief moment of clarity. Severus hesitates ever so slightly in his thorough, teasing attention he’s paying to your neck. Something about the tattoo unsettles you, though you can’t exactly decide why.

“Must have forgotten. It’s new.”

“Hmm…very metal.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Why’d you get it then?”

“I thought I would.” Severus sucks on your neck and that plummets you back into mind-numbing, all-consuming, ecstatic pleasure.

“Maybe we should go to Dublin after.” Severus purrs in your ear. “Show Black all your pretty marks.”

“Idiot.” You giggle.

“I’m going to cum-”

“Cum inside me.”

“I don’t have to.”

“Please, Sev! Cum in me.” Severus pushes you forward and you fall face first into the mattress with a tiny outrages squeal. Severus laughs at you and grips your hips, adjusting them to sit flush with his own. He fucks you roughly into the pillows. You clutch at the sheets. Severus loses more and more of what little composure he still had. He mutters things you can’t make out.

His thrusts are accompanied with lewd, wet noises and the headboard hitting the wall.

“Severus!”

“I’ll fill you up ahh- with my cum- leave you dripping-”

“Yesyesyes-” He moves your hips with each thrust, pulling you back into him as he buries his cock inside you. His balls hit your sensitive cunt. His fingers dig into your skin, sure to be leaving bruises. 

Severus cums with your name on his lips, tumbling over them in a low, reverent, lust-drenched prayer which you join with your own faint, desperate whimpers.

Feeling the hot spurts of cum hit your inner walls violently kicks you over the edge for the third time. Severus slumps above you, pressing his forehead to your back between your shoulder blades, panting and spent.

You stay like that for a while. Both of you trying to catch your breath, relishing in the buzzing glow of your aftershock and the feeling of each other’s love on your skin and warming you from the inside.

Gently Severus pulls his softening cock from you and lies down next to you, pulling you into a tight embrace.

“Sorry.” He murmurs in your hair and presses a tender kiss to the top of your head. “I hurt you.”

“I liked it.” You murmur back and place your hands against his chest, nuzzling your face to his neck. “Why did it take us so bloody long to finally do this?” He chuckles. He tugs a strand of messy hair behind your ear. You look up to meet his gaze. It’s heavy with emotions, a swirling storm of love and care and fear. You reach out to him in a futile attempt of soothing it. The pads of your fingers meet his cheek and he shudders under your touch, before leaning into it. His eyes fall closed and for a brief moment he looks at peace. Content. Home.

“I-” He opens his mouth as if to say something but closes it again. His brows pull together into a frown, a deep crease forming between them. His lips go white as he presses them together into a thin line. His jaw tenses. “I’ve made a terrible mistake-” His voice is hoarse from unshed tears and the effort of suppressing them. He loses. One escapes from between his closed lids and slides down his cheek, meeting your fingers. You wipe it away, but more follow. 

“I’m trying to fix it- I am! But I-”

“It’s ok.” You whisper and press a tender kiss to his jaw. 

So he did it…You had your suspicions, of course you did, but a part of you refused to believe Severus capable of those horrible acts committed by the Death Eaters. And you were right. The pain, regret and self-loathing is so evident in his face. He can’t bear to look at you.

“We’ll fix it. Together. It’ll be fine.”

You are there when the Aurors storm his house to arrest him. You were sitting on the threadbare sofa in his arms as he read to you. 

You tell him not to resist, to not tell them anything.

You send an owl to Dumbledore.

You are at the trial, sitting on one of the benches. Severus looks miserable sitting in the middle of the courtroom, deep shadows under his eyes, a tremor in his wand hand. The chains of the chair are wrapped tightly around his arms. He avoids your eyes.

Dumbledore defends him passionately. Recounting Severus’ turning spy for him, reporting you-know-who’s steps to Dumbledore, how invaluable his intel had been. He recounts the dangers Severus was willing to face. He demands he is released. And he is. The Wizengamot clears him of all charges and you walk out of the Ministry with him, holding his still trembling hand in your own.

“Is this real?” He whispers and you bite the inside of your cheek to not start crying. You want to be strong for him.

“Yes.” You kiss his cheek and wrap your arms around his neck. “It’s real. You’re a free man. I’m here. I will always be here. We’ll figure this out.”

“Together?”

“Together. I love you, Severus.”

“I love you too, Sunshine.”

[moonlesslights]

me, a writer, at 3am: WHAT? I CANT FIND THE SPECIFIC FANFIC THAT I MADE UP IN MY MIND WITH A WHOLE PLOT AND ORIGINAL CHARACTERS??? WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE??? DO THEY EXPECT ME TO WRITE THE STORY I THOUGHT UP OF???

[moonlesslights]

god only knows

Horacio Carrillo x reader

Summary: who would've thought his ex-wife would ask God to send Horacio an angel? To fill the space she couldn't fill, and to do what Horacio wouldn't even do for himself.

Word Count: 1.1k

Warnings: Divorce. Horacio being head over heels for reader. Fluff. Love. All that fun stuff.

Author's Note: quick little something I wrote before bed because I rly miss my favorite soldier and because I needed a break from school. Might make sense, might not. I did state that one of my new years resolutions was to write at least one piece of writing for each month so I am doing this before the month ends. Mistakes and errors are all my own, I didn't have time to check it. Let me know what you think :3

Composed. Collected. Calm. That’s what made Horacio an excellent soldier and an even better Colonel. Ever since his training days at the academy, he was an exemplary student. A promising star who was meant to be a leader. 

And a leader he became.

He’d set the tempo, and everyone else would follow the rhythm of his steps. His family talked wonders of the honorable man he became, to anyone who would listen. It was no surprise that the women were fawning over him, and much to his family’s constant pestering of finding the perfect wife, he found Juliana. 

Together, they found a mutual and tranquil love. Maybe the kind that develops over time, but certainly not one to last forever. 

If Horacio were to match Juliana to an animal, he’d say she was a doe. Skittish, gentle, docile. She was a good wife to him and always fulfilled her duties. She��d have three meals a day ready for the family. She’d stay home and focus on the children. She’d be devoted to her husband forever. 

Just as tradition states.

Horacio was to fulfill his duties as a husband too. He’d go to work, dedicate most of his time to it not only because he wanted the best for his country, but he wanted a safe place for his children to grow. He’d come back home and sometimes have dinner with his family. He’d be devoted to his wife forever.

Just as tradition states.

Tradition didn’t talk about divorce. Tradition didn’t talk about intruders and third parties shaking the very core of an honorable man’s beliefs.

Tradition never changes.

Tradition was broken when Julianna eventually got tired of Horacio’s lifestyle. It was broken when fear crept into their home, and found a host to latch on to. Fear was deeply rooted in Julianna’s heart from one minute to the next; fearing that every day that passed would be their last with Escobar on the run.

She went against her duties and beliefs and did what she saw fit. Bags packed, a new home far from Medellin, and divorce papers were her top three priorities for a few weeks. Eventually, she did the first two, but she couldn’t bring herself to give the papers to Horacio herself. She prayed, day and night, for guidance on what she should do but at the end of the day, her and her children’s safety were her number one priority. Horacio would be able to fend for himself. 

That never stopped her from reciting a quick prayer for him every night before bed. As she found herself far away from Medellin and Horacio, she’d pray for the safety of her ex-husband. After all, she still had a fondness for him and he was the father of her children. She shared many years and a home with him, it was someone she couldn’t just forget about overnight. 

She prayed to God to send Archangel Michael and his soldiers to watch over and protect Horacio from harm. Whether it may be from self-harm or others, she prayed for his safety. Send him your fiercest angel, the most courageous and brave one to keep him from harm’s way.

Horacio never knew this, for if he had he would’ve thanked Juliana for her wishes and prayers. Because if it wouldn’t have been for her, he wouldn’t have found you. 

You came into his life like a goddamn lightning bolt. He’d feel you in the air, the startling feeling jolting him as soon as you’d walk into the room. Unapologetically yourself and nothing else. You’d make a friend of anyone that crossed your path, but he’d also seen the rage within you. If there was someone he’d fear, it would be you. 

You were quick on your feet, and somehow quicker with your gun. He wasn’t sure why the DEA didn’t make you a sniper, but you were awfully good at your job. And yet, you were unapologetically gentle. You wouldn’t think twice about taking a bullet for him, and it made him laugh at times. A woman of your stature stepping in front of him, to protect him from harm’s way. A woman who was breaking tradition day by day and night by night. You weren’t quite like anything he’s ever seen before, and he loved that about you.

He loved how, despite igniting fear into even his soldiers’ minds and hearts, you wouldn’t budge. He could yell and scream and bark orders at you and you’d remain with the most serene energy he’s ever seen. Your eyes fixed on him, the storm brewing within you. Horacio wasn’t scared of many things, but he was scared of you.

How is it that you, someone so tender yet menacing, could have that balance within? He was scared of the way you would keep your innocence despite the amount of deaths and blood you’ve seen this city shed at the hands of Pablo Escobar. The way a smile would come so easy to you. The way a laugh was so easy to coax out of you. He was absolutely enamored by your very being.

Something he had never truly quite felt.

The time came when he lost everything he ever thought he was. Horacio started to lose his composure. He’d start to notice the way his heart would threaten to jump out at the sight of you. The way his pulse would quicken by just being by your side. The way his mind would seem to forget about every word to ever exist when you were speaking to him.

He started to notice how clumsy he would unwillingly become. How he’d stumble over his words when you were in the room. How his hands would betray him and drop the items they were carrying, because it would somehow elicit a giggle out of you. How he’d blush whenever you focused on him, as if he was the only person in the world that mattered.

Tradition was never supposed to change, right?

Yet you continued to prove that you didn’t care what tradition said. You approached Horacio first. You asked him out first. You kissed him first. You weren’t worried about what anyone else would think. You didn’t even care about what Horacio would think. 

It’s not like he never wanted to start anything, he was just too busy being consumed by your presence. You had a light within you that was blinding, but all Horacio wanted to do was look at you even if that meant he’d lose his senses for the rest of his life. 

It was only when you became a couple that he realized you were the protector. No matter how much he tried, you were always one step ahead of him. Ready to attack at the slightest moment anyone got too close to him. Ready to give your life up for him. 

Ready to fill his life with the most pure and sincere love he’d ever felt. 

It was as if God himself picked you to be placed on his path. 

[moonlesslights]

Lost Time

Horacio Carrillo x F!Reader

For Day 25 of @narcosfandomdiscord's July Smut Alphabet: yearning

Warnings: 18+, smut, language, light angst

Word Count: 2.9k

A/N: Horacio Carrillo and his messy relationships, my beloveds 😌

Narcos Taglist: @thesandbeneathmytoes @garbinge @winchestershiresauce @sizzlingcloudmentality @panagiasikelia @616wilsons @hauntedforsst @mirabee @buckybarneshairpullingkink @boomclapxox @nessamc @supersanelyromantic @padbrookcottage @mysun-n-stars @raincoffeeandfandoms @justreblogginfics @ashlingnarcos @proceduralpassion @artemiseamoon @hausofmamadas @narcolini @cositapreciosa (If you want to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!)

You’d lost track of the last time the two of you had spoken. The last phone call between you felt like it had happened lifetimes ago. The last face-to-face conversation? Even longer than that. You both had the feeling that it was coming. Inevitable was too strong of a word, but it was much more than probable.

It would only be so long before he really started holding it against you. You knew that was coming, too. No one got to leave him and let it be a clean break. There always had to be a little bit of a mess. He was practically hardwired for it.

Which was why you didn’t know how shocked you really were when you walked through the airport and saw him standing there waiting for you.

“Horacio?” you said, adjusting the bag on your shoulder.

“I heard you were coming home,” he said, his tone painfully neutral. “I wanted to see it for myself.”

His tone was controlled but you could see it in his eyes that there was more he wanted to say. There was more that he wanted to get into. He wouldn’t do that here, though, not in front of so many people. The look in his eyes almost made you want to remind him that Colombia might’ve been home for him, but it wasn’t home for you. Especially not once he stopped calling.

“Well,” you shrugged, “here I am.”

Your assumption was that the person getting you from the airport was going to be Steve or Javi. Someone from your team. Someone that you figured might still actually want to see you. It crossed your mind that maybe Carrillo had missed you more than his lack of letters and phone calls led you to believe. That, or he just wanted to give you a bit of a hard time and a cold shoulder about the whole ordeal. One of those felt a little more likely than the other.

He at least helped you with your bags. You had the backpack on your shoulders, pulling one rolling suitcase with you while he had the other. It was amazing to you that you’d learned to parse your life down to three bags. If someone had told you five years ago that you’d be able to do that, and that you wouldn’t feel like you were missing parts of yourself in doing so, you would’ve told them that they were insane.

He loaded everything into the back of the CNP vehicle. You made your way to the passenger seat. Just as you were going to buckle yourself in, Carrillo pulled the driver’s door open. And, just for a moment, it felt like you’d never left. There was that strange air of routine to it all. The problem was that everything else about the two of you felt different, strained in a way it never used to be.

“I was just going to head home,” you said as he put the key in the ignition, “unless they really need me there today.”

He gave a slight shake of his head. “Tomorrow is fine.”

“Alright.”

“Same building, right?”

You nodded, watching as his hand maneuvered the gear-shift and put the car in drive. “Yea. Same building. Couple floors up from where I was before.” You paused, trying to cut through whatever weird lingering tension was still in the air between you. “Peña and Murphy will have to put in a little work now if they wanna come up and see me.”

You were ready for him to make a comment about that. Some remark about how you’d still have your same place, the little shoebox of an apartment that had a balcony with a view that made up for all the rest of it, if you just hadn’t up and left. You could see the comments practically dancing on the tip of his tongue. There was a slight shift in his jaw as he bit them back, and you almost wished that he’d let them fly. Him being angry with you would make the previous weeks and weeks of silence a little more understandable. Maybe even palatable.

Whatever snide remarks he’d come up with, he stored away for another time. Anger that he would take out on someone else at a later date, you were sure. His grip on the steering wheel tightened as he forced out a simple, “Okay.”

When he pulled into the parking lot of your apartment building, you were ready for him to help you get your bags out, and then just leave the rest of it to you. It wasn’t as though you expected him to come up and help you unpack. Part of you was still surprised that he’d been the one to come and get you. You couldn’t tell what his angle was. You’d seen enough of his anger to know what that was like, and this wasn’t it. But it didn’t feel the same way that it used to between you either.

“I can get it from here,” you told him when he set your bags on the ground.

He shook his head. “I’ll help.”

“Horacio—”

“It’s fine.”

Of all the arguments that the two of you were practically destined to get into in the coming weeks, you weren’t going to let this be one of them. Grabbing one suitcase, you left the other for him. “Thank you.”

Slipping the key into the lock on the door, you let yourself in. You walked in first, Carrillo following close behind. You looked around the apartment as you stepped into it. It was nice enough, the way that most of the housing agents were put up in tended to be. It wasn’t luxury, but it was comfortable. That was really all you needed. You’d only be there to sleep anyway, and it wasn’t as though any of you did enough of that.

“I’d offer you a drink or something,” you told him, chuckling quietly as you dropped your backpack to the floor, “but I’m pretty sure I’ve got nothing to offer.”

“It’s alright.”

The two of you stood there in the space between your new living room and kitchen, the one patch of apartment that had nothing furnishing it. You waited for him to leave, or say something. It still felt like you were waiting for the other shoe to drop. You watched him as he looked around, like your government-furnished apartment was suddenly the most interesting thing he’d ever seen before.

“I didn’t think that you’d be the one to come get me,” you told him honestly, cutting through the silence since he clearly had no intention to.

“Why not?”

You laughed, more out of shock than amusement. Carrillo was many things, but he wasn’t stupid. Stubborn, yes, but not stupid. There was no way that he didn’t understand what you meant, why you said it. “You didn’t even want to make a phone call, Horacio.” You shook your head. “Going out of your way to play chauffer didn’t seem like it was going to be in the cards.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to.” His response was quick, his words quiet. You were expecting an edge to his voice but found none.

“No?” you asked, still not believing him.

“I didn’t think that you were ever coming back. So,” he looked down at the floor, shaking his head, “what was the point?”

“The point?” You stepped in closer to him. “I care about you. That was the point. I figured you cared about me too. Maybe that could’ve been the point.”

“Of course I cared.” He caught himself. “Care.”

You frowned. “Cutting me out without telling me why was a weird way to show that.”

“I couldn’t keep listening to you knowing that I wasn’t ever going to see you again. Talking to you, hearing about your day,” he shook his head, “when I wasn’t part—”

“You were part of it, though,” you countered, practically chest-to-chest with him now. “That’s why I spent so much time fucking calling you, writing you. That was you being part of my day. Me being part of yours.” Tears began to sting at the edges of your eyes, emotions you hadn’t had the time to feel in months bubbling back to the surface. “Then you gave it up.”

“You left first,” he argued, but his voice was still quiet.

“But you stopped trying first.”

He wanted to tell you the truth. He wanted to be able to say it all, but words had never been his strong suit. He wanted to tell you that every night he’d get off the phone and for as much as he loved hearing your voice on the other end of the line, it felt like someone dropped a weight on his chest each time he put the phone back down on the receiver. For as much as he loved reading every letter from you, studying all the intricacies of your handwriting, having to see a return address that was so far from where he was stung. He wasn’t enough to make you stay, and the ache of missing you was one type of pain he didn’t know how to stomach.

There was only a shred of distance left between the two of you, but you erased it anyway. Resting your hand on his shoulder, you squeezed lightly. “I missed you.”

His eyes went to your hand, traveling up your arm until they finally reached your face. “I missed you too.” He took a deep breath, forcing himself to relax slightly as he leaned in and let his forehead rest against yours. “It’s why I stopped picking up.”

Your eyes shut, and you could feel the tears that were clinging to your eyelashes. “You should’ve said that.”

He couldn’t go back and fix what had already happened, change the things that he did or didn’t say. But he could tell you now, at least. “I stopped because it hurt, because you weren’t coming back. It felt foolish, like I was holding out hope for something that wasn’t going to—”

“But it did,” you said, cutting him off. “And we could’ve had all that time.”

It was an argument that the two of you easily could’ve kept taking in circles. He could keep saying you kicked it all off by leaving, and you could keep saying that he put the final nail in the coffin because he stopped answering your calls. You were both right, and it wasn’t getting either of you anywhere.

“And now?” he asked.

You brought your hand from his shoulder to the side of his face, thumb grazing along his cheek. “I still miss you.”

He felt the way your thumb stopped moving, the way the tips of your fingers pressed into his skin just slightly. You were almost pulling him towards you, but you stopped yourself. Like you heard the words but were still deciding what they meant, how much weight was really behind them. So instead of saying anything more, Carrillo decided that he would just show you instead.

Lifting his chin, he moved just enough to bring his lips to yours. A gesture that was supposed to be soft, a gentle punctuation to prove that he meant what he’d said to you. But the moment that he felt the soft warmth of your lips against his, all of that went out the window. The second he could feel the quick breath that you sucked in when you realized what was happening, all he could do was desperately try to pour himself into you.

His arms snaked around you, pulling himself tight to you. His lips slotted against yours, desperate and bruising. Desperate to put all those nights filled with longing and missing you into something that would actually do one of you some sort of good. He didn’t know who was getting more out of it at that point. He didn’t really care.

He was everything you remembered, all hunger and need, traces of cigarette smoke still lingering on his tongue. A filthy habit you had been on him to quit but in that moment it tasted like coming home. Your fingers curled into the stiff material of his fatigues, needing to find purchase in something to make sure it was all real, that it wasn’t just part of a cruel trick he was playing.

He stopped kissing you for a moment, but his lips were still brushing against yours as he spoke. “I missed you,” he repeated.

In all the late night and early morning calls, the letters that went back and forth, he never really said it like that. Not so concisely, so directly. Like saying it as such would’ve given it too much power, made the distance between you and the yearning that filled it a little too real and too heavy. But now you were in front of him. You were here and he was kissing you, holding you. And he could say it. It was safe to say it now because he already had you back.

You were going to tell him the same, let him know that he wasn’t alone in all of this. He never had been. But he didn’t give you the chance. His lips crashed against yours once more, none of the calculated finesse that was such a staple with the Colonel in any other capacity. It nearly knocked the wind out of you, made your knees buckle, but it didn’t matter because he was holding you tightly enough to keep you from crumbling anyway.

Suddenly he had you falling back onto the sofa. He moved you through the apartment with the ease of someone who had been spending time there with you for weeks already. You didn’t fight him on it, letting your back hit the cushions, his body pinning to yours as he followed you down. You were pulling at his shirt, untucking it from the pants of his fatigues. His hands were already working at your button and zipper, each of you trying to peel the layers off each other as quickly and as clumsily as possible.

It'd gone differently in his head, all the nights when his mind wandered and conjured up what it would be like if he got to see you again, have you again like he used to. It was never quite like this when he pictured it. He’d given himself too much credit, thinking that he would be able to hold back at all, control himself. He couldn’t. From the second he felt the warmth of your skin against his, the tickle of your breath against his jaw, there was no moderation to be found.

Next time, he thought to himself as he yanked your jeans down your legs, next time he would drag it out. He’d take his time with you. But this had all been dragged out long enough. He wouldn’t have even taken the time to bother with his shirt if you hadn’t started with it first, but that was one thing he could easily do for you. He didn’t have it in him to take his time, but he could at least give you that. It hit the floor right before the rest of his clothes.

The groan that he let out as he pushed into you set every inch of you on fire. Your nails dug into his back, raking along skin that you hadn’t been able to touch in far too long. His lips moved away from yours, pressing a kiss to the side of your neck right before his teeth sank into it. Your body drew itself to his, wanting every bit of contact you could get.

He settled inside you for a moment, hips pressed tightly to yours. For a moment all of your thoughts about Colombia not being home couldn’t have felt further from the truth. You were fighting to catch your breath and the two of you had hardly gotten started. Your eyes fluttered shut, focused on how he felt against you, hips against yours, his face in the crook of your neck. You tried to pull him tighter to you, unsure if it was even possible to do so.

The second he started to move his hips, all you had it in you to do was let his name tumble from your lips. You could feel what it did to him, the way his movements became a little more desperate. Every thrust, each press of his lips to your skin, all just trying to pull that sound from you over and over again. Trying to make up for lost nights, all the times when he wanted to hear that same breathless tone from you but couldn’t, wanted to feel the warmth of you against him but you weren’t there. It was a lot to ask when you’d only been back in Colombia for a couple of hours, but it wouldn’t be the first time the Colonel was being unfair. You didn’t mind it this time, though, as his hands slid up your thighs, moving your legs so he could push deeper into you. His lips dragged along your jaw and all the thoughts, the memories, the weight of the last few months, all of it disappeared. It was just the two of you again, finally, for however long it lasted this time.

[moonlesslights]

Sweet Like Candy

Day 5:  Sex pollen (Horacio Carrillo x F!Reader)

(For the 2023 Kinktober event that I created on my own because I am boring and basic and am trying to keep it simple this year...found here!) 

CW:  Dub-con due to sex pollen trope; smut (PiV, unprotected); 18+ only.

Word Count:  4990

AN:  This was requested by an anon with an excellent memory who remembered when I mentioned a sex pollen Carrillo piece in passing! Also, not edited. I'm sick and barely ran it through spell-check.

It’s Carrillo’s fault, this entire terrible situation.

If he hadn’t been so severe when he first met you, he could have a genial working relationship with you.  You wouldn’t have been afraid of him from the start.  You would have been willing to work directly with him, handed off your lab reports directly instead of filtering them through Peña and Murphy, through Trujillo.

He wouldn’t have gotten grief from Peña to try and make peace with you.  He wouldn’t have gone to visit you, a play at being a softer, kinder Carrillo who perhaps smiles and says thank you for all of your exemplary work.

He wouldn’t have found himself in your lab on this day—the day you’re running tests on a separate case for the Medellín police, separate from the Search Bloc and its pursuit of Escobar. Not testing cocaine at all:  a scatter of innocuous-seeming candy in your workspace.  Supercoco—chewy caramel with coconut pieces folded in. 

Any Colombian recognizes the green wrapper.  Carrillo smiles to see it, slips a couple of pieces into his pocket when you turn away for a moment.

Only this isn’t Supercoco.  It’s a version infused with the distillation of a plant found in the Amazon, then wrapped in the familiar green paper.  A powerful love drug, an aphrodisiac, passed on the sly in the bars and night clubs of Medellín.

It’s Carrillo’s fault.  He’d been so severe when he met you, he tries to make amends now by being casual.  You stare at him as though he has two heads as he asks you about your day, how you’re settling into your apartment, if you’ve had a chance to explore the city yet. 

You answer his questions with your brows furrowed.  Confused.  He’s hardly the same man who barked at you on your first day in Colombia.  A timer in the lab goes off, and you turn to one of your complicated pieces of lab equipment to read the ticker tape being spit out of the machine.

Your back turned, he snags another piece of candy and eats it.  He’s trying to be Casual Carrillo, not the flinty version of himself with a cold gaze and a grim set to his mouth.  He takes a second piece, chews it, feels a million memories from his childhood resurface at the taste.  But then you turn around, see what he’s eating, and your face—usually guarded and wary when he is around—turns to pure horror.

“No!”  You bridge the distance between the two of you, and you’re touching him before he can even register it.  Your hands are on his face, pinching the corners of his mouth, trying to force him to spit out the candy.  It’s pure instinct, like a mother forcing a toddler to spit out something poisonous.  You move on instinct, manhandling his face, and he moves on instinct too.

He spits out the half-chewed candy.

Which doesn’t help with the piece he already ate.  The piece already in his stomach, being digested.

“Shit, rinse out your mouth,” you order him, and you dart to the sink, pour him a glass of water.  You thrust it into his hand, and his heart starts to hammer at your panicky reaction.  What has he eaten?  Poison?  Some terrible, addictive drug?  Something that’ll do permanent damage to him, leave him with a weakened heart or a compromised liver?  Something that’ll shave years off of his life?

“What—” he starts to ask, but you gesture at the glass, so he does as he’s told.  He takes a mouthful, swishes it around.  Spits it out in the sink, then does it again and again.

“It’s some sort of love drug,” you tell him once he’s done.  You sag in relief against the counter.  “Medellín police found a bunch of it in a bust the other day.  The DEA contracts my lab out to the local force, so I’ve been running tests.”

“Love drug?” he asks, his stomach sinking.  “What does that mean?”

“Tests reveal organic compounds from a plant.  Like maca root, only…times a thousand.”

He swallows hard, and you catch the audible gulp, misunderstand it.

“You’re fine,” you tell him, and you gift him a rare smile.  “You didn’t eat it.  And anyway, there’s no long-term side effects if you had.  It just makes the user really, uh, friendly.”

“How friendly?” he asks, using your cutely prudish American adjective for horny, and you give him the anecdotal evidence from the Medellín police about spontaneous orgies in local clubs, and then he tells you the bad news about how he ate a first piece before spitting out the second, and the way your eyes go wide and your mouth forms a perfect “O” of horror would make him laugh, if he weren’t so nervous about what is about to happen to him.

-----

You drive him home in his own car.  There’s no point in taking him to the hospital—the only treatment is to ride it out.

It’s hard to describe the way it feels when the drug starts to affect him.  Carrillo has little experience with any drugs beyond the morphine he was prescribed when he was shot and had surgery.  He remembers the morphine, even years later:  the warm, syrupy calm that spread through his limbs, erasing the pain of his wound.

This…is not that.

Twenty minutes.  Half an hour after he eats that fucking laced candy.  He feels it in his stomach first, right under his rib cage:  warm, but not calm.  Warm, but…alert.  Aware.  If the morphine put his senses to sleep, then this wakes them up.

Wakes all of his senses up, then as the warmth spreads—up into his chest, down into his gut—wakes his senses up even more.  Carrillo’s senses dialed up to a thousand.

Not just smelling your delicate perfume, but smelling the soap from your laundry detergent, the shampoo you used that morning.  The faintly chemical smell of your lab that clings to your hair and clothing.

Not just hearing you—your cautious questions of how he’s feeling, where you should turn next to get him home.  He swears he can hear your heart beating, the pulse and slush of your blood as it moves through your body.  Swears he can hear you breathing, can hear the quiet creak of your jaw as you clench it in worry.

Not just seeing you, the mousy little scientist that he managed to scare shitless her first day in Colombia.  Put the fear of God in you after the last DEA scientist got caught skimming Escobar’s cocaine from the bricks confiscated by the Search Bloc.  His own fault, how he barked at you that first day, and this is his fault too—not following the rules of your lab.  Now he’s not himself.

Now he sees you with the drug roaring in his veins.  The tight clench of your hands on the steering wheel.  The worried set of your jaw, the way you study him out of the corner of your eye.  He sees more, now, too:  the delicate shell of your ear, the tiny pinprick in the lobe of a piercing but no earring because of your lab protocols.  The way the line of your neck disappears into the neckline of your shirt, the curve as it meets your shoulder.  The thin silver chain around your neck, a locket, and Carrillo wonders if you’ve got some sweetheart back home who gifted it to you before you left for South America.

The thoughts rise in his head like carbonation, rapid-fire.  Usually so logical, so cool-headed:  now his thoughts are gummy, sticky.  He wants to lean against the seatbelt and put his mouth on your neck, follow the line of it into your shirt, then pull it aside and keep going.  Tasting you.  Such a sweet, mousy little thing—he wonders if you taste sweet, or if he’d taste the salt of your skin, maybe a bitter spot where you daubed perfume that morning—

“Shit.”  It comes out a groan, pained.  He lifts a hand and presses it over his eyes, and he feels how hot his palm is.  This is bad.  It’s so bad.  He’s not himself; he’s losing who he is:  Horacio Carrillo, the man who is always so staid…that man is fading into the background.  That Horacio is going quiet, ceding control to this other Horacio who is ruled only by want, by feeling.

-----

You manage to get him home, and he is still enough of himself to thank you. 

He’s also enough of himself to bark out that you need to leave:  take his car and go, leave him alone.

But Carrillo never really got to know you.  He put the fear of God in you that first day.  You’ve been ducking him ever since.  He has no way of knowing the type of person you are.

He has no way of knowing that you are the caring sort.  You’re soft-hearted.  You worry for people when they are hurt or sick; you check in on them.  You take care of them.

He has no way of knowing that while you are brilliant at your job and largely level-headed, your heart often drives you and your brain often follows.  Which is why you ignore his orders and follow him into his house:  your soft heart driving you to help a person in distress, when your brilliant mind is perhaps warning you to stay away.

-----

You follow him into his house, and Carrillo is still enough of himself to try and force you to leave.

“You gotta go,” he says, and his usually-crisp English comes out slurred, slushy and rounded off with his Colombian accent.  “Gotta leave.”

He curls his hands on your upper arms, pushes you backwards but not meanly.  Pushes you towards the door carefully so you don’t stumble or trip, but it’s another sense dialed up to a thousand—the feel of you under his hands.  The warmth of your body underneath the crisp cotton of your blouse, the way his fingertips bite into the surprisingly firm muscles there. 

“If you don’t leave, m-might not be able to stop myself.”  He pushes you towards the door, but already that driving want is roaring in him, and he doesn’t stop to open the door and push you through it.

He keeps it closed and pushes you against it. 

He traps you between the door and his body, so close to touching you.  There’s hardly any space separating you.  Millimeters.  Molecules.  Close enough to feel the heat of your body, the magnetism the fucking drug is convincing him is there—

Carrillo stares down at you; you gaze back with those widened eyes.  Nervous.  As scared as you’d been that first day, and it chastens him just a bit.  You probably think he’s a monster.

You take a breath, and the motion makes the locket around your neck move.  It catches the light and draws his eye.  Carrillo takes a hand from your shoulder and lifts the locket from where it lays against your chest.  He holds it between his thumb and forefinger, considering it.

“Your boyfriend give you this?” he asks.

You blink at the question, shake your head faintly.  “It was my grandma’s.”

A dumb thing, but the thought of you having a grandmother—of course you have two, as most humans do—reminds him that you’re a person with an entire history.  A family back home in the States.  Likes and dislikes.  And Carrillo knows none of it.

“You need to go,” he says in a low voice, ignoring the wave of lust that sweeps through him.  “I can handle this alone.”

You shake your head again.  “It was my lab.  My responsibility.  I can help.  I can get a cold shower going and then—”

He silences you.  He puts his finger over your lips, stills them.  The wrong thing to do:  now he knows how your mouth feels, and Carrillo grits his teeth and breathes shallow through his nose.

“If you don’t go, I’m going to want to—Dios, I already…you need to go.”

The last vestige of the sensible, stoic Carrillo wants to open the door, shove you out of it, throw the bolt.  That Carrillo wants to stagger deeper into the house, alone, and strip out of his clothes.  He wants to lay on the cool tiles and relieve the tension as best he can.

That Carrillo is gone.  Silenced, tucked away into a corner of his mind.  This Carrillo doesn’t push you away:  instead, he shifts his hand, traces his finger over the plump curve of your lower lip, and your eyes widen at his touch—

This Carrillo remembers something.  With his other hand, he reaches down.  Into his pocket, where a few pieces of the laced candy are.  The ones he pocketed on the sly and forgot.

He pulls one out.  Unwraps it clumsily with one hand while the other hand remains on your mouth, stilling your words.  Once it’s unwrapped, he holds it up for you to see, like a trainer teaching a dog with a treat.  Then he removes his hand from you, takes a step back.  It takes every single bit of his resolve to stop touching you, but he does.

He’s giving you a choice:  leave, as he’s ordered you to do more than once.  Or stay and join him.

In this moment, Carrillo still doesn’t know anything about you.  He doesn’t know what you’re thinking.  He knows so little about you, only knows that you avoid him, are frightened by his tough colonel of the Search Bloc routine. 

There will come a time in the future when he will be able to guess, with startling accuracy, what you are thinking.  He’ll know you better then.  He’ll know that as mousy as you seem, you have sudden surges of bravery.  Sudden moments of nerve.

That comes later.  Right now, when Colonel Horacio Carrillo gives you a choice, you startle him.  You don’t turn and flee. 

You shift your eyes from the laced candy in his hand to his own eyes, and you seem to see something there that informs your decision.

You don’t flee.  You open your mouth and allow him to lay the laced caramel onto your tongue, a perverse sort of communion.  It’s one of your sudden moments of nerviness, and you never blink once, never look away from him while you chew carefully, then swallow.

*****

It’s morally grey, at best.  The man is not himself.

It’s utter madness at worst.

There will come a time in the near future when he will ask why you didn’t leave.  Why you ate the candy.  You’ll tell him a half-truth:  that it was professional curiosity, how taking the drug would feel.  You’ve never tried the drugs you test in your lab; you always rely on your equipment and anecdotal evidence from those who do inject or smoke or eat the various drugs.  But there is always the curious part of you, the most essential part of being a scientist, that wants to know how it feels.

Why not try it?  It isn’t cocaine or heroin or LSD. 

There will come a time in the further future when he will ask again, and that time, you’ll tell him the whole truth:  that yes, you were curious about the drug.  But more than that:  you were curious about him.  You were terrified of him and attracted to him in equal measure (you blamed the fact that he was usually in uniform), which made for a weird combination of emotions every time you had to deal with him.  The sinking fear in your gut that he’d turn his flinty gaze on you…paired with the fluttery swooping in your gut of burgeoning infatuation.

That all comes later.  Right now, there’s nothing but the sweetness of caramel lingering in your mouth, almost cloying, and Colonel Carrillo staring at you like he wants to devour you.  You inch around him, move away from where you’re trapped between him and door. 

You make your way deeper into his home, and you sit on his couch and wait.  He follows and sits beside you, but he doesn’t touch you.  He clenches his hands into fists in his lap, his knuckles white with the effort, but he doesn’t touch you.

That means something, you think.  Says something about his character, even when he’s drugged.

Fifteen, twenty minutes after eating the laced candy:  you’re ready to be devoured.

*****

Carrillo doesn’t know exactly how the drug works—if it affects men and women differently—but he can guess when you start to feel it.

Your face twists into an expression of concentration, as if you’re surveying how you feel.  Like you’re checking in on your pulse, your breathing, your temperature.  You narrow your eyes, and he wonders if you’re making mental notes that you’ll later print in your small, neat handwriting in the little notebook you keep.

Carrillo?  He’s in hell.  Twenty minutes of waiting for you to sink to his level, and every cell of him aches for relief.  He’s not in any physical pain—whatever formula the chemists use for their so-called love drug, it’s meant to be fun, not painful.  But it’s like pain, the endless want he has, the lust that’s sunk its claws deep into his gut.

The twenty minutes pass like twenty years.

Then you swipe your palms along the thighs of your jeans as if they are sweaty, and you breathe out a shaky, “holy shit,” and he knows you’re finally in the same place as him so he pounces, damned near:  a graceless move, quick, that bridges the distance between the two of you.  He presses himself against you, cages you against the arm of the couch, and when he bends his head to kiss you, you raise up to meet him more than halfway.

He knows it’s just the drug, but you kiss him with a passion he’s never experienced before:  not with his now-ex-wife, not with the handful of girls before her.  Every other kiss before pales in comparison to the heat behind your kiss now:  the fierce way you slot your mouth over his, how eagerly you slide your tongue against his without an ounce of the shyness he associates with you.  He can taste the sickly-sugary laced-candy, but he swears he can taste you too, and when he groans in your mouth, you answer with your own whine.

There’s only a small sliver of him that is still him, and that tiny shred of the sensible Carrillo manages to break away.  You’re both tearing at each other’s clothing—your shaky hands fumbling at the buttons on his shirt, his hands tugging the hem of your blouse out of your jeans.  But he breaks away with every remaining bit of his inner strength, and he gazes down at where you’re awkwardly splayed across his couch.

“Not here,” he pants.  All of this will shame him when he’s sober, he thinks, but he can try to be a gentleman, can claim you on a proper bed and not on an uncomfortable couch.

He stands up, and a wave of dizziness washes through him.  He staggers, and you sit up and reach out to steady him.  You wrap a hand around his wrist and stare up at him.  Your eyes glitter black because your pupils are so wide that the color of your irises is little more than a crescent—but he thinks he sees concern there underneath the lust.

“You okay, Colonel?” you ask, confirming his suspicions.  Even now, under the influence of the drug, he’s seeing your caring nature that he’s never been privy to before.  It sobers him up just enough.

Carrillo nods.  He twists out of your light grip and takes your hand in his.  He tugs you to your feet and feels how you sway against him too.

“N-not here,” he repeats.  A fresh wave of lust courses through him, nearly knocks him to his knees like the incoming tide.  “I don’t…not here, okay?  C’mon.”

You nod and allow him to lead you back to his bedroom.  He keeps his hold on your hand, unwilling to give up the tame touch, and when you squeeze his hand—maybe you’re nervous—he squeezes yours back in reassurance.

-----

That small, quiet voice that was sensible Carrillo is silenced the minute he gets you in the bedroom.  The drug takes him over completely, and he’s almost relieved to cede all control to it.  He’s always so tight-laced, so straight-edged. 

This Carrillo is nothing but id:  driven by desire, chasing pleasure.  He feels like little more than an animal, and he finds that he likes it. 

Your clothes don’t survive him.  He tears at your blouse and the buttons ricochet across the room.  He’ll find them for weeks afterwards; he’ll send you home in one of his plain white T-shirts the next morning, and the sight of you in such a tame outfit will make a curling wave of lust course through him, though the drug will have worked itself out of his system by then.

He tugs at the clasp of your bra, fumbles it but then unlatches it, and he pushes it off of your arms to reveal your breasts, and Carrillo sways closer to you.  He touches you there first, cups the soft roundness of you, and he feels how diamond-hard your nipples are.  He bends his head and puts his mouth to you—suckling, nipping, licking at you, and he feels your hand thread through his hair to hold him there.  He hears the keening whine you loose, the throaty way you say his name.

Not his name.  You whine out Colonel, his stupid fucking title, and he lifts his head.  He stares into your dark, unblinking eyes.  He reaches up a hand and grips your chin, firm but not hard, because even underneath the raging animal lust burning through him, he doesn’t want to hurt you.

“Horacio,” he tells you.  “Say it.”

You do, and it’s no mousy whisper.  Your tongue darts out and lays a wet line on your lower lip. 

“Horacio,” you reply.  You say it carefully like it’s a new word for you.

“Say it again,” he demands, but you only get the first two syllables out before he’s muttering a curse at hearing his name in your mouth, the intimacy of it, and he seals his mouth over yours in a fierce kiss.

The rest of your clothes—your jeans, your panties—fall away as he strips you.  There’s no art to it.  No seduction, because you strip him just as fiercely.  You tug at his belt and undo it, pull it from the loops of his pants with a snap as the leather whips against the air.  You get him out of his uniform shirt and t-shirt underneath it but then he pushes you back against the bed and you fall, naked and gorgeous. 

Horacio pounces.

There is a part of him, terribly small and far away, that worries you don’t want this.  The straight-edged part of him despairs that this is just the drug, that you’ll be horrified in the morning. 

His worrying will be needless.  He’ll wake before you in the morning—the consequence of being in the army so long—but when you finally wake too, you’ll only be a little shy.  You won’t have any regrets, and you’ll prove it to him by climbing onto him, by riding him slowly in the pre-dawn Medellín morning.  And neither of you will be drugged when you do.

Now, he stretches the length of his body over yours, feels the feverish press of his skin to yours.  You open your legs to him, but when he settles between your spread thighs, you hook your feet onto his pants, reach down with your hands, and clumsily try to work the rest of his clothing off of him.

“Eager,” he mutters against your mouth, and your lips are slick, swollen from how much he’s already kissed you.

“Please,” you reply.  You gaze up at him, blink as if you’re trying to clear your head.  “Please, Horacio.”

Then you shift the hand that is already reaching down, and you touch him—your hand slips under the low-slung elastic of his boxers, and your warm hand is on his cock, and the sudden touch makes him jump and twitch in your palm as you grasp him firmer, start stroking him.

“Fuck,” he chokes out.  “F-fuck, cariño.”

If he can be grateful for anything, it’s that he got dosed in your lab and managed to get home before this moment.  You told him this drug was circulating though Medellín clubs and bars, and Horacio cannot imagine succumbing to this sharp, all-encompassing desire in public.  He’s grateful he got you to his bed, where you have privacy.

The first time he fucks you, Horacio gets no further than freeing his cock from the confines of his pants, shoves his uniform slacks and his boxers down just enough for his aching length to spring free.  You moan as you stroke him—he’s slick with pre-cum—but he breaks free from your grip and shuffles forward.  He pushes forward until he’s touching your slick folds, and then he pushes into you, unable to stop himself, but your hands reach down and grasp his ass and pull him into you, and once he’s buried to the hilt, you wrap your legs around him.

The first time he fucks you, Horacio can’t manage intelligible words.  Not in English, not in Spanish.  He can only grunt like an animal, can only breathe harsh, ragged breaths as he thrusts into you.  You’re unbearably wet, unbearably hot.  It’s like fucking some tight, searing thing, and the heat is everywhere—your cunt, your bared skin, your panting mouth, your hands gripping his shoulders.  The heat sinks into his skin, into his tense muscles, into the very bones of him.  It’s like he’s being unmade at the molecular level, broken down into base elements, and his grunts turn to snarls as he fucks you harder, deeper. 

You?  You take it.  You take it eagerly.  You wrap your legs around him.  You wrap your arms around him, and even if he wanted to stop, he’d have to untangle himself from your limbs.  Each jarring thrust where he’s completely buried in you makes you groan, and even you have an animal quality to the sounds he’s pulling from your perfect lips.  When the crown of his cock hits the end of you, you groan, but it’s throaty—almost a growl.

A moment later, he feels a sting of fire on his back where you dig your fingernails into him.  Where you scratch long lines of burning into his skin, like a brand.  He’ll carry those marks for days, feel how they burn under the spray of his shower.

Then you aren’t just taking it anymore.  You start to fuck back against him, lifting your hips an inch off the bed, tilting your pelvis enough to grant him more depth to you.  You find his rhythm and meet him thrust for thrust, until you’re moving not as two people but one.

The first time he fucks you, Horacio has no clue how long it lasts.  It goes by in a blink.  It lasts for hours.  It’s nowhere near long enough before he feels the burning tension at the pit of his belly snap and spill over like molten metal poured out of a crucible.  He can’t even warn you that he’s about to come because it happens so quickly—a particularly deep thrust where he swears he can feel himself breeching the entrance of your womb, where you hiss in his ear some phrase he won’t remember.  The tension snaps, and he breathes out your name, and he comes inside you, brands your perfect cunt with his spend.

But the feeling of him filling you must be the last bit of stimulation you need because you come a beat later too, and the sensation of your cunt rippling against him when he’s already so sensitive nearly makes him cry.

It gives you each a moment of reprieve.  Horacio’s burning lust recedes just enough that he gazes down at you.  He feels a sting of guilt—you’re disheveled, your hair wild and your eyes leaking tears down into your temples.  Your lips are swollen as you struggle to catch your breath, and you look so gorgeously, thoroughly fucked that he leans down and kisses you gently on the corner of your mouth.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

You nod.  You reach out a gentle hand too, curl it into a loose fist and run your knuckles lightly over the side of his face.  It’s an oddly sweet gesture, soft, and when Horacio tilts his head into your touch, you uncurl your fist and cup his face.

This is the moment, he will realize later, where love takes root.  This simple, intimate moment between the two of you.  Eye of the storm, where he kisses you sweetly and you cup his face.  The love won’t blossom or fruit for a while yet, but this is where it reaches its tender shoots into him.

But the realization won’t come until later.  For now, the receding tide of lust reverses, comes rushing back in.  He’s still buried in you, still hard as steel, but everything is getting warm again.

“You okay?” he asks again, but he’s already pulling out a fraction, pushing back into you, his hips making small movements.

“Again, Horacio.”  Your thumb strokes along his stubbled cheek, and you nod up at him.  “Again, please.”

You ask so nicely.  He pulls out long enough to finally strip out of his clothes, but then?

Then he obliges.