#Cast Your Pod to the Wind | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shibaraki · 1 year

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IF TIDES COULD SPEAK (THEY’D CALL YOU HOME) ┊ BAKUGO KATSUKI

synopsis: an unlikely hero comes in the form of a barbarian. your stolen pelt is returned by his hand— but for a selkie that is more than simple kindness. it is a proposal.

tags: AFAB reader (referred to as a 'wife' once + 'baby' a few times), fantasy au, barbarian bakugo (+ the squad), selkie reader, brief non graphic suicide attempt, minor injuries, previous forced marriage + captivity, strangers to friends to lovers, accidental marriage + bond, magic elements, bathing together, sharing a bed, miscommunication, love as a choice, getting together, shapeshifters, angst + fluff, eventual smut, bakugo carries reader (he’s strong!!), oral + fingering (reader receiving), unprotected vaginal sex

wc: 25K+

↳ for the mermay collab hosted by the teahouse server ↰

The battle rages on behind as your bare feet carry you frantically toward the cliff side, incognisant to the uneven earth and jagged rocks cutting under your heels.

A magnificent orange glow is cast across the land. Blistering heat radiates at your back and seeps through the thin robes pulled across your shoulders. Fire eats away at the canopy above, at the dry grass in the gardens, at the place you deign to call home.

It is a sight you wish you had more time to savour. A draconic clan hailing from the north had descended upon the land and sought to reap the riches for themselves. The anguished screams of your once wretched husband still echo in your heart, dancing through its chambers like wind through chimes.

You fled with only one destination in mind.

Many, many moons ago, you had been stolen away by greed. A man that called himself king yet acted anything but kingly. Lord only in name. He speared your pod mate and took you, dirty calloused fingers sinking into your flesh, violently tearing the pelt from your back. Nausea churns in your stomach as you recall his grin, eyeing you greedily, desiring servitude that was not his to have.

“You are to be my wife,” he said, drunk on tales of rare creatures who would keep a hearth burning and bear his children if only he stole their hide. “Now you belong to me”.

Your pelt remained locked away in an armoured vault along with his other opulent treasures— goods that would now be burning, turned to ash. He had finally taken from the wrong people and must reap the consequences.

You are so relieved to be free of his clutches that there is no time to grieve the loss. This is your chance. With or without your pelt you are a selkie, and the ocean always welcomes her children home.

Guided by the tides' tumultuous song you sprint through the woods, treeline funnelling out on a plateau to reveal the edge of the cliff. You take a staggered breath, wincing at the pain in your chest. Now your momentum has slowed to a stop, the fatigue catches up with you. An ache seeps through your legs and your knees threaten to buckle as you shiver.

This is it, you think. You watch the waves below roll like dark ribbon. Steeling your resolve you spread your arms as far as they go, until the sinew holding your back pulls taut. Something acrid sinks in your gut and you feel distinctly ill. It takes all of your willpower to deny the fear pounding in your body as you step forward.

The wind billowed around you, swaying your human form towards the edge. Faux wings spread and a roar pushed to the limits of your small voice, sound whipped from your mouth and cast far asea. Eyes squeezed shut, you tip into the oncoming depths trusting your mother will catch you.

The sound is cacophonous. Not even your pulse can be heard over the waves; elemental fingers apply sharp pressure to the north and south of your body, shaping flesh until you're nothing but a pebble caught in gravity's path.

If you should concentrate you’d hear a frantic shout through the white noise. And between the milliseconds left before bone collides with the tide, a large clawed foot encircles your forearm. A rush of air swells in your lungs as you try to scream, the abrupt disruption of your freefall forcing your shoulder from its socket, talons tearing through capillaries as if your skin were wet paper.

Suddenly, you’re a sail without a mast, rippling over the open ocean. Dark and cloudless, not a speck on the surface. The spray is icy against your ankles, a million papercut kisses. In the mirage, you can see fleeting reflections. The silhouette of a dragon mid-flight.

You’ve no memory of hitting the sand or being carried along the shoreline. Your consciousness dips and peaks. The few times you come to are when your body is being jostled, a blurred figure looming above and unrecognisable. In one breath they are washing your wounds with water poured from a wineskin, the next you are flinching away from salve covered fingers as they poke and prod to stem the bleeding.

Warmth is the first thing on your mind as you wake. With a sudden gasp for air, all the exhilaration and adrenaline hits you as if your soul had been caught, suspended in that moment. Phantom touches skim the length of your spine and all at once you are overwhelmingly aware of your body.

The sharp noise startles a figure in your periphery.

“Back in the land of the living, huh?”

A broad, bare chested man sits at your bedside with his arms crossed tight and pillowed in his lap. There’s a single delicate braid by his ear, longer than his short-spiked hair and dangled loosely beneath his jaw. You’d find him beautiful if not for the searing glare.

“That was a fucking stupid thing you did back there,” he snarls. Brusque and overfamiliar. When you don’t respond he continues, “What’ve you got to say for yourself?”

You shrink back.

There’s an awful pinch in his brow. Concern seems to be superseding what was a show of honest anger. Dimly lit by a few oil lamps, from what you can ascertain there is no one else in the room but you two. Inhaling the residuals of healing magic you find that your throat is unbearably dry, tongue stuck to the back of your teeth. How long have you been asleep?

You couldn’t find a voice to ask, exhaling a pathetic whine. The silence provides a window of opportunity for him to further scold you yet he doesn’t take it, fuming as he recedes into his chair. “Don’t need to act so fucking skittish. M’not here to hurt you,” he exhales hard through his nose, reaches out and leaves his hand upturned on the edge of the bed. “Alright?”

Something draws you to this stranger. Inexorable, like the pull of the tide. You accept his proffered palm and it feels unsettlingly familiar. The skin is rough, battle worn and hot. Slowly, your fingers intertwine, and you see fair hair on the back of his knuckles.

Disorientation, loss and anxiety err on the edge of your consciousness. The lamp above his head gives him a warm hued crown, highlighting strands of gold. You can feel sleep weighing on your eyelids but you don’t yet want to look away. “Whatever,” his mouth sets into a frown. “Get some more rest or I’ll knock you out myself”.

When you come to the sun has risen and filters into the room in thin streams of light. Dust fairies dance around the bed. You squint as your vision sharpens, a dull throb reverberating through your skull.

You look at your body first, arm well bandaged and the rest of you bruised tender like an old peach. The wounds throb in time with your pulse when you shift, reminding you that they’re there as your thin clothing brushes against them with little movement. All you can remember is falling. How the waves had careened up the cliff side to catch you, only to have you snatched out of reach once again.

Wherever you are now it is obviously far from your Lord’s grasp. He has never bothered to take you to a healer. You are in a private office, tucked into a bed with soft blue sheets. The shelves are stocked with various medicines, salves, and analgesics. Herbs and chopped petals are stuffed in glass jars labelled with messy penmanship you can’t decipher. A metronome sits on the nearby wooden desk, ticking back and forth, filling the silence until the door is pushed open.

Whoever enters is trying to be careful. You can tell by how slowly they turn the handle and pause at every little complaint the hinges give. Their hair is green, richer than the later weeks in spring, with loose waves that bounce as they move. You watch wearily while they move through the space, humming under their breath and picking up a notebook from one of the desk drawers.

The healer, you presume, pinches the end ball on the metronome and brings it to a stand still. He hushes it as though it were an unruly child before turning on his heels toward you—

And immediately screeching as your eyes meet.

Loud enough for the entire country to hear, his abrupt shout seems to alert others in the building, causing a gaggle of people to burst their way into the room. A metallic tang fills your senses; magic ready, the man that sat brutish yet kind at your bedside wields explosive sparks in the palm of his hands, adorning chains with carved talons and beads and asymmetrical armour strapped to his left bicep beneath a red fur lined cloak.

“What is it, Deku?!”

You offer wordless gratitude to the final dregs of sedatives in your system. You barely flinch at the hostility in his voice, time seemingly slowed as your gaze drags to the companions at his back. First a woman doused in pink. And like the sun, her face glows the rich ochre of dawn, framed by silky salmon toned curls. There are horns protruding from the top of her head, bending like the junction of a tree branch.

Beside her is a large man. Red, red, red. Bright eyes split with a reptilian slitted pupil. Crimson hair styled into sharp spikes. He’s built like a warrior, tall enough to swallow most of the doorway, yet you feel no true fear when you look at him. Something innate in your gut tells you this is a kindred spirit. Energies aligned, you think he must be a shifter of some kind too. He locks onto you first, his alarmed expression smoothing into a wide toothed grin.

Last are two men who have managed to tumble to the floor amidst their rush to get into the room. Distinct gold bangs with a symbol of lightning, pale faced, an undercurrent of electricity thrumming below his skin. Dark shoulder length hair, white spools of rope wrapped around the crook of his elbow, grappling hook in hand and ready to strike.

“Sorry, Kacchan!” the healer, Deku, spluttered. He holds his hands up in surrender, shaking them in a placating motion. “Nothing, it’s nothing! All of you please calm down!”

Deku is quite the unfortunate name, you think. At his insistence the group lower their defenses and slump forward, relieved. All but ‘Kacchan’, who only raises his hackles further.

“Don’t fuckin’ scream like that if it’s nothing,” his upper lip curls to bear his teeth, moving fluidly as his group slinks past him to stand by your bed. “I damn near blew up the building”.

Distantly, “I couldn’t help it…!”

The frame jostles, mattress dipping as it takes on the weight of another. Head turned into the pillow you blink dazedly at the sharp toothed shifter. Propping his chin in his hand, his elbows are braced next to your thigh. “Hi. I’m Kirishima,” he chirped, unmoving as his friends wrapped themselves around him to get a look at you, all repeating his jovial greeting with introductions of their own.

“…Hello,” you rasp. The word grates the inside of your throat and tears well in your eyes as you fight the urge to cough. “Where am…?”

“Back up, losers,” ‘Kacchan’ forces his way to your bedside, shoving the group aside. There’s that odd sensation again as you stare up at him. Strong jaw clenched with eyes narrowed and blazing; sliding to where you lay, waning briefly. “Have some manners”.

“Since when have you cared about manners,” the pink woman, Mina, bemoans.

“Shut it!”

Deku’s nervous disposition dissipates quickly and he ambles to the opposite side of your bed, his notebook flipped open to a page covered in incomprehensible scrawl. While the others squabble he leans forward and flashes a trembly smile.

“Hi! I’m Midoriya Izuku, the one that fixed you up,” Midoriya—not Deku—lowers his voice into a more soothing tone. “It’s good to see you awake. Do you think you could tell me your name?”

You remember your name. Yours. The one given to you before human hands stole your hide. Midroiya’s pen scratches at the parchment as you recite it, his lips silently repeating it. “Great! Thank you. Now can I ask, how are you feeling?” he asks, eyes darting across your face, your body, scanning the bandages wrapped around your arm. “Any pain? Nausea? Loss of vision? Numbness in your limbs? Hallucinations?”

“Slow down, nerd,” Bakugo grunts.

Midoriya immediately appears sheepish, “I’m sorry”.

“It’s okay,” you say. “My mouth is dry and my arm hurts but I’m— okay, I think”.

“That’s my bad,” Kirishima speaks up from his place next to Bakugo, lifting a hand. Despite their difference in stature it was clear who led the charge and who fell in line. “I was rushing so I wasn’t very careful when I caught you”.

Your first thought is that he must have been the dragon. Your second thought is, ah, right. You had tried to fling yourself off the cliff.

As though he’d read your mind, Bakugo scoffs. “Not much choice when you’re saving someone that’s trying to kill themselves”.

Overlapping objections ring loud in your ears. “Bro, not cool,” Kirishima groans, similar sentiments sent loud and fast from the rest of his group.

“I wasn’t trying to—” your half lie is halted by the seething look Bakugo turns to you. Same as before, beneath it all is worry and confusion, unblinking as though you might disappear between the seconds. “I just wanted to go home,” you confess weakly, tethered by the restless twisting of your fingers into the linen.

“Home?” the electric blonde, Kaminari, murmurs.

Tension returns to your limbs, instinctively bracing for the greed you have learned to expect. You may get away with evading questions now, but the healer—if he’s worth his salt—would already know what you are.

“I’m a selkie,” hesitance bleeds into your tone, the confession coming quiet and small. Your chin dips as you swallow, canines sinking into your inner cheek. “The Lord whose castle you raided stole my pelt and kept me hostage for months. I figured it was long gone, so as soon as the attack gave me an opening I ran”.

The atmosphere is stifling. Silence befalls the group, equally stunned. Midoriya is the only one that does not react, kind eyes closely observing you.

A litany of emotions weave through Bakugo’s face as you speak. Disbelief, anger, regret. “Sick bastards,” he mutters heatedly from behind gritted teeth.

A head of pink hair rests by your knee. You’re taken aback by how informally they all behave towards you. “You still would have died though,” she says, bottom lip jutted, sadness colouring her features.

“I would have become seafoam,” you rectify passively. “It doesn’t mean death, not to my kind. It’s a sort of rebirth. My pelt is with the ashes now. I thought… it was my only option”.

“Wait. It got burned up in the fire?!” Kirishima straightens worriedly, eyes wide and apologetic. His fingers twitch as though he wanted to reach for you but thinks the better of it.

“Surely. I mean, I assume it was,” your mouth thins into a strained, rueful smile. “He kept it in the vault with all his other treasures. I watched his quarters go up in flames”.

Recognition passes over Bakugo’s expression but Midoriya is already stepping forward with his outstretched hands waving dismissively. “Okay, guys! No more stressing my, uh… patient,” he says, allowing some strength into his instruction. “Give us some space. You can ask more questions later. Please?”

Your new guests surrender with a chorus of groans. Bakugo squints pointedly at you over his shoulder as Sero ushers him out into the hallway. You feel rooted by its significance somehow. An unspoken instruction that you can’t decipher.

“Are you really feeling okay? No wooziness?”

Drawn to the gentle cadence your gaze meets Midoriya’s. He has set the notebook back onto his desk and rolled up his cuffs. “I’m okay,” you reply after a moment of consideration. “Thank you. You fixed me up, right?”

Rubbing at his nape, Midoriya shoots you a sheepish grin. “To the best of my ability, yeah,” he says. “I’m just a researcher and I don’t have an affinity for healing magic, but Kacchan insisted that I help”.

“You’re not a healer?” it’s then that you notice how untraditional his dress is for a doctor. A bishop sleeved shirt, six buttoned green waistcoat and dark pants. There’s a belt strapped tight around his hips, small satchels hooked into the leather, and an empty waist sheath clearly meant for a sword. “Ah. You really aren’t a healer,” you repeat blithely.

Midoriya giggles, nervous. “No— I mean, this is my office! And I guess I am an apothecary of sorts, but that’s only a small part of what I do,” he explains, gesturing to his various shelves and cabinets. “Kacchan could’ve taken you to the next town over on Kirishima’s back but I think he was panicking— oh, please don’t tell him I said that. He just doesn’t trust other people much. So you got shafted with me”.

When he leans down to untuck your bedsheets you bend your unharmed arm, propping your upper body onto your elbow and working in sync with him as he fluffs the pillows behind your back. Sat upright you hold your bandages out to him. “Thank you,” he mumbles, delicate as he slides his hand around your forearm, patting around his belt and satchels with the other.

Finding a small pair of scissors he tucks it beneath the top of the bandage and carefully cuts down the length of your arm. Your chest constricts as the inflamed skin is slowly revealed to the tepid air. There are ribbons of sutures running from your inner elbow to your wrist, puckered but thin and largely healed, sinew clumsily fused together.

“Sorry about my poor suturing,” Midoriya says as he overturns your arm in his palm, checking from root to stem. “Everything looks good, though. No infection or fever,” he continues muttering, thumb pressed to the shadow beneath his lip. “Your immune response was pretty quick. I wonder if it has something to do with your selkie blood…”

You barely register his apology, stuck on the jagged scar tissue decorating his own hand. The cautious call of your name breaks your reverie. Midoriya’s brow is furrowed, eyes wide in genuine concern that wanes when you try to smile at him. “Got lost in my head there, sorry”.

“I get it,” he breathes, glancing over to the largest cabinet in the room. Reaching the ceiling, stained dark wood, and looks slightly out of place alongside his other furniture. Misaligned, you realise. It is on four small wheels and placed an inch away from the wall. Odd.

You watch Midoriya stroll over with a bounce in his step. His biceps strain under the pale sleeve fabric as he grabs either side of his cabinet and pulls. The wheels squeak and it rolls away with some exertion to uncover a hidden door. Dust cascades through the air; he coughs into his shoulder, shaking out his hair.

“I’ve got a private washroom through here if you’d like to use it,” he explains after catching your questioning frown. The room is barely bigger than a closet. There’s a toilet, a tiny sink, and a tub that, given the width and depth, would require you to sit with your knees beneath your chin. A mere speck compared to home. If you closed your eyes and concentrated, maybe you could pretend you were resting in a tide pool along the shallows of a beach.

You stand for the first time in who knows how long. An uncomfortable prickling sensation crawls the length of your legs as the phantom turns solid and blood rushes to your toes. You grip at your bare thighs where the hem of your robe falls, flesh bursting through the gaps between your fingers, and you gasp through the pain. It’s as if you’re growing a new limb all together.

“Careful,” Midoriya murmurs kindly, hovering at your side in case you need assistance. You hobble over to the washroom, each step like treading on seaglass. He moves away once he is happy with your progress.

“It’ll take a while to warm up,” he warns. “But there are various medicinal soaps and salts under the sink that I’ve made, so you’re free to use them”.

The door is closed behind you.

Left to your own devices the first thing you do is fill the tub with water. You find that the bathroom has no lamp, illuminated only by the cool light flooding in from the main room. His warning had not been exaggeration — fingertips touching the bottom of the basin, the water comes slowly and remains cold up until your second knuckle. Then it warms, warmer than the sea, and with no salt at all.

Bare knees against the floor and skin pimpling under the thin robes, your breaths come quick, stumbling over the erratic jumping of your diaphragm. Indentations between each tile press uncomfortably into your skin, the initial pain dulling into numbness as you sit back on your heels. Beneath the sink behind you are the medicinal soaps and salts. You delicately take a small pot, squinting to decipher the handwritten labels in the dark.

Pulling back one of the lids you’re overwhelmed by an unfamiliar floral aroma. Inside are rocks— tiny, tiny pink rocks, with dried white petals. You pinch some with your already damp fingers, feeling as they immediately dissolve in the moisture, and sprinkle them into your bathwater.

Once full enough, you strip yourself of the robe and fold it neatly, left by the closed doorway. The cold air prickles, your nipples pebbling and the soft hair across your body standing on end, but the water is hot.

You dip your foot in and breathe a sigh of relief as the temperature suffused through your skin, swaddling you in warmth. You submerge yourself completely. As suspected the space is remarkably cramped. Your legs are bent, tucked against your chest with knees below your chin, arms folded around your shins to keep yourself together.

Enclosed in four walls again, shrouded in little to no light, you feel lonely. The type of quiet that makes you whisper. Your mind drifts to the stranger that had saved you, wondering where you might’ve met him before. You smile ruefully, cupping the scented water between your hands. He’s strong for a human. Imposing, you muse, staring back at the reflection held in your palms. Not only in his stature, but even his presence is difficult to ignore.

You bathe, scrub away the blood and grime until you’re a flesh wound. The temperature is cold by the time you’ve turned focus to your fingernails, neurotically picking away the flecks of blood dried beneath them. Drain the murky water, refill, repeat. No matter how harshly you pinch and pull, the feeling of being dirty does not go away, but you stay in the water at least until you feel like yourself again.

The towel you find is coarse to the touch. Sitting in the heated water has tended well to the knots in your muscles. Ungainly as you re-enter Midoriya’s empty office, you flop back onto the freshly made sheets with little guilt. You sit there for a while and let the air dry your body.

There is a pile of spare clothes on the end of the bed; neatly folded shirts, tunics, skirts and pants. You throw on a sleeved shirt and come across a simple beige kirtle as you parse through, the skirt falling just above the ankle, delicately sewn buttons lining the back. The fabric is very soft, though fitting and naturally cutting at the waist.

After putting on some thick knitted socks and a pair of hardy brown boots left by the desk you run both hands down your sides and spin on your heel, causing the free flowing skirt to plume. Satisfied, you slip out the door and creep toward the gathering voices at the far end of the hall. Phantom fingertips walk the length of your spine. Odd, but you put it down to the apprehension churning in your stomach. Gradually you are able to make out what they’re saying.

“Get your filthy hands off it,” Bakugo growls venomously.

“I just wanna feel,” another whines. You recognise it to be Kaminari. “Why is Kacchan the only one allowed to touch it?”

“Stop calling me that, fucker!”

You round the corner and the bickering halts with a harsh shushing sound. They’re all in the centre of a cramped lobby, few chairs lining the walls, woven tapestry hung from the ceilings. Kirishima stands in front of you wearing a pleased grin, comically large. The armoured plates on his naked shoulders clink as he moves. “Hey! You clean up nice,” he tells you. “Feeling better?”

“Much better,” you affirm, perking up at his sincerity. “I’m grateful to you all for watching over me”.

“Our Bakugo did most of the work, really. Got a little protective,” Mina, the one kissed by dusk, leans into your space with her plump mouth curled into a smile. The thin gold jewellery hung from her lobe to ear cuff glints in the late afternoon light. “Barely let us in the room”.

“Cause you idiots are too loud,” Bakugo grumbles, stepping forward holding a shiny garb. The fond undertones belied his annoyance, and everyone heard it loud and clear. Your skin prickled as he drags his eyes over your clothed body, evoking a sense of insecurity that is foreign to you. You aren’t sure what, but you wanted him to see something in you worth coveting.

Then your gaze falls to the fabrics folded over his forearm. Your heartbeat ricochets through your ribcage. A tide of emotion wells at the base of your throat. He handles the pelt with purposeful care. Shivers break out across your skin as he smooths a hand over it. Holding it out, he says your name as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

“Here,” he thrusts the pelt into your arms. You scramble and clutch it to your front. Something deep inside you shifts. “This is yours, right? We took it during the raid”.

You’re frozen to the spot, mouth gaping around words that won’t come. Bakugo frowns, the group members behind him glancing at each other and shrugging when they find no answer to your silence.

“Well?” he demands, embarrassment staining his ears pink.

“Yes,” you choke, bringing the hide up to your face and rubbing your cheek against it. So warm and alive. Brine fills your senses, overwhelmed by the smell of home. The relief is short lived. “Thank you for returning it, but…”

Losing strength, you try to convince yourself that he needn’t know— that the old ritual would not be binding if done with a human. If the Gods were merciful there would be no condition that tied you together for the rest of your lives. Yet you felt it the moment your pelt was handed back to you. You’ve been feeling his touch all this time, even before the bond had solidified. Heat rose to your cheeks at the realisation; such an intimate act, and it had been accidental.

From one prison to another. Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. Bakugo seemed good, in his own rugged way, and he was handsome even by faerie standards.

You wet your lips, breath shaken. “Bakugo. Do you understand the significance of what you just did?”

Bakugo’s expression darkens and he becomes rigid. You get the impression he hates being left in the dark. “What is it?”

“To…” your nails sink into the short velvety fur. “To a selkie their pelt is like an extension of their soul. In our culture, to find and return it is viewed as a…marriage proposal”.

Sero catches Kaminari and Mina as they grapple one another in a dramatic fashion, swaying on their feet. Kirishima puts a hesitant hand on his friend’s shoulder, eyes flickering between the barbarian and your slouched form. “Bro… don’t do anything hasty,” he faltered.

“Bakugo is married now?” Mina shrilled, promptly shut up by the hand covering her mouth. Sero sends you an apologetic grimace.

“Like hell I am”.

Hackles raised, voice sharp and commanding, Bakugo is staring you down like an enemy. Your knees threaten to buckle but you stand your ground, shielding your body with your thick hide. His hands remain by his hips, sparking as the tang of magic bleeds into the air. Despite making no move to attack you still feel his rejection strike you.

“Break whatever vow I just made,” he demanded. “Now”.

“I can’t,” you admit helplessly. “It’s more than a legal contract or a declaration of love. We’ve— it binds us together”.

The barbarian starts forward, upper lip curled into a beastly snarl, held back by the dragon shifter’s grip. Stumbling as you dodge, two familiar scarred arms catch you before your fall. “Kacchan, what are you—?!” Bakugo darts out to grab you and Midoriya immediately pushes you behind his back, shielding you with his body. “Stop it!”

“Midoriya,” Kaminari wheezes, tears beading along his lash line. “Kacchan accidentally got married. Can you believe it?”

Midoriya observes their exchange with a look of confusion. In the seconds that follow you see his eyes fall to the pelt folded against your chest, eyes brightening in understanding. Incognisant to this, Bakugo continues his verbal barrage. “Oi, Deku. You’ve got brain cells. Figure out a way to fix this”.

Mouth gaping like a fish out of water, Midoriya pins Bakugo with a pleading look. “Kacchan. Please tell me you didn’t personally give back the selkie pelt”.

“You knew and didn’t think to say anything?!”

“Why would I?” Midoriya returns, equally irritated. You press your face into the space between his shoulder blades, feeling the vibrations of his voice as they argue. “It’s common folklore!”

“You know I don’t listen to fucking fairytales, Izuku”.

Midoriya reaches back to brush your wrist and offer a comforting touch. You knock your knuckles to his own, grateful for his consideration but unneeding of it. While Bakugo’s furious refusal hurts, and his volume is harsh on the ears, you aren’t truly scared of him. More than anything your body remembers those warm palms— how he had held your hand, even as a stranger, and how he meticulously groomed your hide only knowing that it was of importance to you.

“There’s nothing I can do to fix this,” lowering his tone into something more apologetic, Midoriya’s shoulders slump in defeat. You step to the side, coming into view. Head bowed, weight shifting between each foot. You refuse to be subservient any longer but cannot ignore the guilt that churns in your stomach.

Bakugo sees you. Something flickers in his features; a brief glance, a rough exhale, it flies across his face like the shadow of an albatross and disappears, equally fleeting. Never taking his vermilion eyes off you he argued, “What about cheeks?”

The golden hour spreads her hands all over the room, air cooling when his spitting frustration dwindles to uncertainty.

“Uraraka?” Midoriya mused aloud. His softer countenance tempers your anxiety. “It’s possible she could do something… Let me go see if I have her recent coordinates written somewhere…”

Midoriya scurries back down the hallway, leaving you defenseless. Without thinking you ask the group, “Uh. Who’s Uraraka?”

Everyone’s attention falls to you and you resist the reflexive urge to cower. “She’s a witch,” Kaminari supplies happily, arms wrapped around Sero’s neck like a scarf. “An old friend of ours, but she’s pretty hard to find now. I heard her place is always moving”.

A building that could move with magic. The human world never ceased to be fascinating.

Mina nudges her elbow into his side and a shock of electricity sparks from his crown. “That’s outdated, dummy! You’re supposed to say occultist”.

Kaminari whines, rubbing at his ribs. “To-may-toe, to-mah-toe,” he enunciated, pouting. “Same thing”.

Bakugo growls, ignoring their exchange in favour of pacing the room. Your pelt is a comforting weight as you follow the back and forth motions, taking the chance to really look at him. The fur lined cloak across his shoulders billows obnoxiously as he turns, jewels and talons strung around his neck knocking against his clavicle. Doused in sunlight, the markings painted across his bare chest are highlighted, and you notice the uneven skin beneath them— more scars.

He combs his fingers aggressively through his hair and his arm bulges beneath the armour strapped to his bicep. Kirishima tires of watching and cuts into his path, hands open in surrender.

“Stressing won’t do you any good, man,” the shifter reasoned. “We’ve all got your back. I’m sure Uraraka will know what to do”.

Bakugo huffs. You think there should be steam coming out of his nose. “I know, shithead. I just,” he takes a quick look at where you are awkwardly standing. “I don’t like this”.

There’s an abrupt yelp in the distance. Midoriya’s cry is followed by a crash, the sound of books tumbling from shelves onto the wooden floor. He stumbles out into the hallway slightly dishevelled, patting off the dust on his waistcoat and proffering a sheet of paper. Tucked under his arm is a rolled up map.

“Kacchan,” comes his breathless chime. “Here’s where she was last. But I remembered that she was planning on taking a short trip to the valleys near the coast to find more idiran leaves since they’re in season now. I mapped out all the areas where they usually grow, in case you—”

Bakugo snatches the coordinates and the map without ceremony. “Thanks,” he grunts, turning on his heel and making for the exit. “Come on, losers. We only got a few hours until it’s too dark to fly”.

The group works in perfect synchrony. Sero reaches under one of the nearby chairs and drags out a large bag, hoisting it over his shoulder. Mina does the same, pulling back the draping tapestry by the doorway and taking back a concealed sack. You watch as they walk leisurely behind Bakugo, in no real rush despite his demands, Kaminari lamenting how little they trusted him with their cargo.

Kirishima lingers behind, clapping Midoriya soundly on the back. “Thanks for everything as usual, man. We appreciate it,” he emphasised his gratitude with a strong squeeze.

“I’m always happy to see you,” you’re impressed by Midoriya’s reaction; a smile from ear to ear, sturdy and unaffected by Kirishima’s obvious force, his smaller frame belying his strength. “Just promise not to shift too close to the building. I don’t have time to re-thatch my roof”.

“I promise!” Kirishima traces a cross over his heart with his fingers. Their focus turns to you. You tense, feeling entirely out of place. “Sure you’re feeling alright? Have you ever flown before?”

“No,” you admit, needlessly smoothing the fabric of your kirtle down. “I’ve probably never been this far inland, nevermind flying”.

Midoriya’s eyes widened, though not unkindly. They’re sparkling, as if he were excited on your behalf. “Then you’re in for a real treat,” he beams, the intensity dimming within the next breath, sadness hemming his smile. “Just know you’re in good hands. Kacchan is a little abrasive but he means well”.

“And I swear I’ll fly carefully,” Kirishima interjects. It’s funny, a man so large exuding such gentility. “I’m a dragon shifter, if you hadn’t already guessed”.

You had sensed it immediately. Shifter energies were palpable and animated things. They hung in the air like a humid fog. Despite your similarities you are still so uniquely different. While you were tied to the pelt in your arms, Kirishima had no such restriction. You envied his freedom.

“You caught me…?” you say. He nods at your words. “Thank you, then. Again”.

“That was all Bakubro. He saw you before anyone else did,” as though on cue, Bakugo’s voice penetrated impatiently through the walls, demanding that you both get outside. Kirishima’s lips uptick affectionately.

“If I don’t get to see you again, well…” Midoriya begins to corral the pair of you to the door as he speaks. “I hope you make it home. And I’m really happy I could meet you”.

Surrounding Midoriya’s residence is a dense forest. The trees are tall, older than any you’ve seen, their branches reaching out and intertwining with one another to conceal your group under a canopy shrouded in gold. Further ahead it thins out onto a winding road. Built on a steep hill it dips in the distance, opening up to the many plots of land below.

The earth is soft under your boots. There are wildflowers at your feet. You try to step around each one carefully while Kirishima advances forward to the group with vigour.

Bakugo is saying something but you barely hear it, lost in your thoughts, besotted by the vast canvas around you; a sense of harmony as the pigments blend together. It is like a dream in which you can’t tell one side of the veil from the other, and nothing like the dreary castle you were once stowed away in.

Your moment in lucidity is soon interrupted. You instinctively pull the pelt closer to your chest before realising who had approached. “You listening or what?” Bakugo calls quietly, an attempt at being reposeful. Amidst your daydreaming Kirishima has disappeared into the overgrowth and the others are watching your interaction with poorly veiled interest.

“Uh, sure,” you blurt uselessly. He raises a brow and you feel ridiculous.

“Kirishima said it’s your first time,” he pauses and you nod in affirmation. A hand comes to rest on your back, breath caught in your throat, pressure pulling you close to his side. “Then you’ll sit up front with me”.

Your head bobs again, unrolling the pelt and knotting it tight to your waist, skin prickling under his close scrutiny. Bakugo brings his fingers to his lips and whistles, “Red!”

‘Red’ answered the call with a low room and a rustle of wings. The dragon’s head lifts, towering above the treeline, his body following as he steps out into the open. Amber eyes gleamed in the early evening light as he bobbed his head on a serpentine neck. His deep red scales shimmered with a faint golden sheen as he flashed his teeth in greeting.

You err on the side of reticence while Mina and Kaminari sprint toward the dragon whooping excitedly. Various lines of thick rope trails behind them and Sero picks up the slack, looping it thrice through their bags. He spins the cut end, undulating as the momentum builds, and throws it over Kirishima’s back to be caught by Kaminari and pulled taut.

“C’mon,” Bakugo leads you forward. He is surprisingly patient with you now. You’ve faced young whales and sharks yet still you feel dwarfed by the sheer size of the dragon, heart all pitter patter behind your ribs. It is the prey animal in you.

Kirishima snorts, lowering to the ground. The earth trembles, a gust of wind dancing through the grass. Another rope is flung around his neck, threaded through the horns protruding from his skull like a set of reins, dropping in front of you.

The hand by your hip slides further at your abrupt flinch, arm securing around your waist. “On three I want you to climb,” he commands, giving you no time to think. “One… two…”

Bakugo takes the weight like it’s nothing, lifting you higher so you can grab the rope. Molten heat. You pull yourself up, scrambling to straddle Kirishima’s upper back. The others are further down his spine, playing around at the base of his tail without a care in the world, as though they were not about to be thousands of feet in the air. Kirishima’s lungs expand for breath and you cling to a spike protruding from the dragon’s nape, grip flexing at the warmth that settles behind you.

Bakugo frames your body with his thighs, thick by the skirt bunching above your knees, and pulls the rest of the rope up to wrap it around your pelt. In an instant you are all too conscious of him as a man, the proximity plucking at your centre of gravity, a cold sensation spreading throughout your chest. “Sorry,” he mutters unprompted, so quiet you aren’t sure you were meant to hear it. You get the impression he doesn’t say it often. “For dragging you into more shit”.

You mull the words over as you relax into his hold. With that one sentence you think you understand him a little more than before.

Sero’s voice travels through the silence, “Good to go!”

Fastening his arm across your middle, solid and steady, Bakugo brings his boot hard down onto Kirishima’s shoulder. “Get moving, Red!” he roars.

The dragon’s movements are heavy, slow. Aligned with the winding road, he builds up speed. As though he’d shaken off his own mass Kirishima is suddenly quick on his feet and breaking into a run; forced back in the momentum your stomach swoops, upheld by inertia as your body follows the broad bounding movements.

Leathery wings snap open into the clearing. Your hands clutch at Bakugo’s forearm and he digs his fingers in harder, his lips warm against your temple. “I’ve got you,” he whispered, but all you can hear is the thundering wind and the blood rushing in your ears. You watch the steep edge approach and take a reflexive breath as it abruptly disappears.

Air pours into your lungs and then out again in a ragged, exhilarated gasp. The ground falls—and then you are gliding.

The cool air whips against your cheeks. Smooth and steady as a horse’s canter, Kirishima soars through the open skies, his magnificent wingspan bearing the weight of five riders. Below, the fields coalesce into one land. Towns and villages become an inscrutable speck. Incredulous laughter bursts from your throat, nerves evolving into excitement in the climb towards the clouds.

Bakugo mellows by the second, tension ironed down by gravity. There’s a particular satisfaction to his expression, contentment you’ve only ever experienced in the ocean’s depths, and yet, as he squeezes around you intermittently to remind you he is there, you can feel it too.

“You with me?” he shouts. “Not scared?”

You lock eyes and try to show him a tremulous smile, answering at the top of your lungs, “I’m good”.

Then he bares his teeth, grinning proudly. Over you comes the sense of being praised. Your smile widens.

Time moves differently in the skies. Closer to the sun, you thought perhaps things naturally moved slower. Change is always less apparent when you are walking alongside it. Instead, you measure the hour by the shadows cast chasing Kirishima’s tail, and eventually the skies darken.

Lowering his head, tilting a wing to swing out in a broad arc, Kirishima angles toward the earth. Bakugo raises up a battle worn hand, the lineaments of his face irradiated by streams of dim light threading through his fingers. He makes a specific gesture, signalling to the others of the incoming descent. Like the sun, you can’t look away from his raw brilliance.

Kirishima lands at the base of a mountain valley. It sends a gust of wind across the clearing. Through the dark you make out a familiar reflection of light in the distance. The lake is hardly an ocean, but you’re extremely comforted to be by a body of water.

Chest pressed flat to your back Bakugo’s natural heat spreads through your shirt. Helped down much in the same way you were boosted up, he seems determined to keep you near. You can’t say you mind it— a quiet attraction comes and goes as he steadies you on your feet. He clicks his tongue, muttering clipped insults that he doesn’t mean.

It’s decided you’ll remain there for the night. “You can bet your ass we’re having an early start,” Bakugo says, pointing at each of you with stubborn intent, squinted glare lingering on the less than enthusiastic members. Kaminari slumps forward dramatically and you worry his knees might buckle.

Kirishima leaves again, briefly, to circle the area in his full form while Bakugo starts on the pit. It’s lit by a whisper of fire from the returning dragon’s mouth, setting the tinder ablaze over the nest of branches; the dry, withered pine slowly releases years of energy soaked up from the sun, the air, and the ground, keeping the camp brightly lit.

Smoke swirls above and dissipates into the atmosphere. You are far enough from any large human settlement that you see the night sky in all its clarity. Around you now are the soft voices of acquaintances filtered between conversations; none you could hear properly, but the sounds were still soothing, coming in hushed tones that add to the intimate atmosphere.

Flames dance on their cheeks, illuminating the prominent parts of their faces. You’re sitting beside the water’s edge with your pelt strewn across your lap, close enough to feel the warmth as it crackles and spits, watching the way they love each other.

Kaminari has fished out a big bottle from his bag, dramatically popping the cork, and is steadily passing it around. Alcohol, you guessed. Sero took a heavy swig without flinching. Mina had tried to do the same and now has her head pillowed by Kirishima’s thigh, thick and sturdy as a human, and his fingers stroked through the curly by her temple aimlessly as he lost himself in discussion. Sensing your gaze, she meets your eyes and smiles dazedly, lids fluttering.

You look away, take a breath and notice the air tastes like sake and smoke. Darkness covers the lake. Under the waxing moon your face stares back at you, swimming among minnows and echoes of stars. It ripples where you dip your fingertips, mind empty, anaesthetised by the chill.

“You idiots never pace yourselves,” Bakugo’s voice rumbled over the flames and rolled over your skin. He is sitting closest to you, legs loosely crossed in the dirt . “If you throw up on Red tomorrow I’m not cleaning it up”.

Kaminari shakes the bottle in his direction. The bubbles fizz upward, some spilling out. “Such a stick in the mud, Kacchan. We gotta celebrate your marriage somehow!”

Sero cackles as the other two chime in agreement. You stroke your pelt, restless at the mention of your union, and it soaks up the water from your fingers. Surprisingly, Bakugo lets it slide, though not before scooping the loose earth into his hand and throwing it at an oncoming Kaminari.

Eyes of amber briefly flicker over your form in his approach. Kaminari drops into the empty space beside you and pulls the bottle from his mouth with a resounding pop, leaving behind a wet sheen, and tilts it forward. “You too,” he grinned. “Congrats. Our boy is quite the catch, y’know”.

“So I can see,” you smile, letting the gloom be pulled right out of you, your fingers wrapping around the bottle's neck. They grazing his own and spark static. Neither of you comment on it, his squinted stare fixed curiously on your expression as you bring the finish to your lips.

The aroma is rich, sweet like overly ripe bananas. You tip back, feeling it dry and bitter on your tongue. There are hints of vanilla and brown sugar, a sting to your throat that begs you to cough. You hear a quiet laugh.

“Too strong?” Sero teases lightheartedly from across the campfire.

Your expression twists, “It’s good. But it burns. Is that normal?”

“That’s why it’s good,” Kaminari snickers. You clear your throat, handing the bottle back, attention drawn back to the lake in a beat of comfortable silence. “Oh, hey. I did want to say— you can swim if you need to, y’know”.

“Hm?”

“Kiri has all sorts of weird urges if he doesn’t shift for a while. Gets all restless and snappy,” Kaminari gives a knowing look to the man in question. Kirishima nods at you, his features taut with sincerity. “So if you want to swim for a while or something we totally get it”.

You’re flustered by their earnestness, gripping at your pelt, all too aware of it. Slipping into your other form feels far too personal; well meaning as they are, they’re still strangers to you. “That’s— I’m alright,” you politely decline, “my needs as a seal aren’t really felt while I’m like this”.

A surprised noise resonates from Kirishima, Mina unmoving from her place in his lap but watching with rapt curiosity. “You’re practically human right now, then?” he asks.

“Practically,” you give a self conscious shrug. Somehow admitting it felt like stripping yourself. Confessing to a weakness. Unsettled, you deflect the subject back. “Do you keep your dragon traits as a human?”

“Nah, not while I’m in this form. I don’t even have my hydrogen glands— look,” Kirishima hooks his fingers into his cheeks to spread them wider. You lean in for a closer look. The glow from the campfire illuminates the back of his throat— barely, and ironically. His tongue wiggles as he tries to lay it flat. You’re not sure what he’s trying to show you. You’ve never seen a dragon’s maw before, but aside from the shark-like teeth his mouth really does seem the same as any other man’s.

“Pretty boring, right?” his words come garbled around his fingers and so he pulls them out, wiping the spit on his pants. “But even though I can’t breathe fire right now, I can do this!”

You stare in surprise as the skin along his forearm hardens into tough scales. He holds it out to you in permission to touch; they feel jagged under your fingertips, tough like the bark of an ancient tree. “That’s amazing. You have your own shield,” you breathe, awed.

“Damn right,” Bakugo interjects. There’s that unfettered pride again. Kirishima’s cheeks redden and you sympathise with him. In your short time with them you knew receiving praise from Bakugo felt like standing under the sun. “Should‘ve seen him as a kid,” he continues, eyes alight and mirthful. “Had scales like wet paper. Even cried when he first shifted”.

“D’you have to bring that up,” Kirishima groans, though not upset by it. He shares in the amusement, uplifted by the sound of his friends' laughter, and pouts playfully in your direction. “It was scary!”

Mina giggles. Her movements are sluggish and dopey as she waves her arm in Kaminari’s direction, who then stretches around the pit to Sero, who then passes it off to her. She takes a quick sip, free hand pinching Kirishima’s cheek. “Wasn't your first time an accident, too? That’s so cute”.

“He sneezed actually,” Sero supplies, smirk crooked, foot tapping Kirishima’s ankle in a preemptive apology. “Destroyed half his house”.

Kaminari slaps his knee, “Man, you were stumbling around like a newborn foal. It was hilarious”.

Bakugo grinned as the others bickered, a fond, radiant thing that lit up his whole face. He’s softer like this, drenched in warmth. Cloak tucked behind his shoulders you are given the view of his broad chest. And when he finally looks at you, his half lidded gaze has been softened by his third swig; though he remained considerably sober compared to his companions.

“What’re you starin’ at?” he mutters.

“Nothing,” you answer quickly, then, quieter, “It’s just nice that you’ve all been together for so long”.

“Since we were snot-nosed brats. We hail from the same clan. Deku too,” he replies, elbow propped on his knee, chin cupped in his palm. “Getting sick of seeing their faces at every turn”.

“Liar,” you hum amusedly. “What do humans call it…? Emotionally constipated”.

His eyes slide over you, brow quirked. With his friends distracted he is more emboldened giving you attention. “Got some liquor down your neck and suddenly you’re givin’ me cheek?”

“Guess so,” you feel yourself endeared by your not-husband. The pleasant honeyed sensation shrouding your body must’ve loosened your tongue. “Anyone can see they’re like family to you”.

The barbarian kisses his teeth and shifts himself toward you, an ugly look on his face. You catch his peek at your pelt. “What about you?”

“Me?”

Bakugo grunts. “Yeah. You got family?”

If not for the alcohol that question might’ve sucked all the joy from the air. You settle on a sad smile, dragging your fingertip through the dirt to draw a vague seal shape. “That’s hard to answer,” you intoned gently, barely audible over the crackling fire. “My memories of them are vague. The longer I stay human the more I forget”. He frowns, but you continue, unperturbed, “Usually it would be the same thing in reverse, if we weren’t bonded I would likely forget all of this”.

“And you’re okay with that?” he says, some edge to his tone. “You’re okay with being stuck here?”

The ‘with me’ goes unspoken but you hear it, and you fall silent. Because you have no answer. You’d had months to reconcile a pallid future— at one point you thought you would never again see the ocean, least of all your family. It was probable that they’d already moved on without you.

“I don’t feel stuck,” you admit. His actions and his words, albeit harsh, proved that to be true. Aside from the obvious differences from your previous capture, the biggest is that you are equally in possession of Bakugo’s individual liberty— you’re married, you mentally amend, not in possession. While it is true you wouldn’t be able to stray far from him with the bond established, you held your pelt, independence, control.

A near imperceptible tension seeps from him at your answer. “What about you?”

He scoffs, stretching out his legs. The soles of his boots drag in the dirt. “Do I look fuckin’ stuck?”

“No,” you murmur with amusement, turning to gaze at the flickering pyre. “A man that can fly hundreds of miles on dragonback in a single day certainly isn’t stuck”.

“Now you’re getting it”.

The other conversation has worn into soft murmurings. Kirishima drunkenly hands off the last of the alcohol to Bakugo, gesturing to the three who’ve surrounded him and fallen asleep. As the dragon shifter repositions himself to join them, curled together like a pack of seal pups, Bakugo takes a sip.

There’s probably only a mouthful left and you accept it when he offers. “You should sleep, too”.

You heed his instruction and lie down on your side, your pelt pillowed under your head. The smell of home swaddles you. “Early rise, right?” he nods, leaning back onto his arms. “How long do you think it’ll take to find the—uh, occultist?”

“A week if she’s where she’s supposed to be,” he scowls. You’re not sure what draws the heat to your face; the drink or his voice, now gravelly with fatigue. “Three at most”.

“Okay,” you exhale, eyes fluttering closed. “Thank you, Bakugo”.

A soft breeze dances through the brush. Your skin pebbles, shivers slipping down your spine. Something heavy drapes over you and encases you in a warm cocoon. Fluff tickles at your nose. Your fingers curl into the familiar red fabric of Bakugo’s cloak. He has pointedly angled away from you, ready to ignore any attempt at interrogation. The gruff act of kindness makes your heartbeat faster. Fondness settles in your chest, so big that it aches. His natural scent mixes with yours and it’s like being laid on the shoreline, stitching sea and land together.

“Don’t fuckin’ thank me yet,” the muscles in his back ripple as he tends to the dwindling fire, declaring with conviction, “Just follow me. I’ll fix this and get you home”.

You lick your lips, mouth dry from the alcohol. In that very moment you want to tell him that the ocean and the sky are like a two way mirror; that when you were up there with him, strangely, your body thought it was at home.

Instead, you close your eyes and watch the embers paint yellow and orange kaleidoscopes behind your eyelids.

Instead, you sleep.

The weeks that follow are arduous. Uraraka is nowhere to be found, and your group resorted to searching the areas of iridian growth Midoriya circled.

You weren’t used to hiking up mountainous lands, navigating forests or scaling dragons, not in the beginning. Rising with the sun, enduring unpredictable changes in weather, wincing through the ache that grew in your weaker human muscles, Bakugo found your crankiness amusing and irritating all at once; never missing an opportunity to comment on your lack of stamina, then using it as an excuse to assist where assistance is not truly needed.

But you saw through him, and let him. You did not need help climbing, yet your hands weaved together so he could pull you up. You’re soon practiced in saddling Kirishima, yet you always wait for Bakugo to put his arm around your lower back every ride. Your inner voice sings whenever he brings you food— begrudgingly, he throws it into your lap and grunts like the barbarian he is— or hangs his cloak over your head without a word as though you were a rack. It’s a little more charged every time you interact, and you found you liked being taken care of in those subtle ways that did not undermine your independence.

The others noticed and teased accordingly. They call him a dutiful husband and his aggravated explosions saw you driven out of two small settlements for startling livestock. You become closer to each of them. Their patchwork family makes room for you quicker than you know what to do with. And you enjoy it; learning about the people around you, peeling back the rind of their lives piece by piece with mundane questions, seeing what they’re made up of.

You learn Kaminari enjoys literature, dramatically reciting love tales in the night, referencing poems you’ve never heard. He’s charming but never with actual intention. It is somehow more endearing that he doesn’t know his own allure, finding comfort in the role of a jester. Mina is pure joy wrapped in flesh. Apologetically overbearing and well meaning. Like an older sister she showed you how to securely fashion your pelt—over one shoulder, a belt fastened around the waist, keeping it in place— and let you use her combs. She speaks fast when she’s happy, hits hard when she laughs and gossips avidly, picking up new information wherever she goes.

Kirishima looked at you with kindness and iron surety in his eyes from the start. Good natured and feeling— he has a heart so big that he apologises to a flower bed after he steps on it. There’s a natural fraternal air about him that sets you at ease and the group’s clear affection and appreciation for him diminished any worry about your own treatment as a shifter.

But of everyone else in the group you found Sero the most easygoing. Conversation came fluidly and your initial diffidence was thrown by how naturally you were able to fall into place with him. He lends an ear to any questions you have, practised in the art of human interaction; a man capable of adapting to any one person he comes into contact with. As such, he is the member sent to negotiate, collect information, and make arrangements.

When you make it to the last destination on the map you are drenched in a time-steeped sunset. Sero trudges back through the brush, returning from the nearby port town. Landing at such a late hour Sero had been tasked with finding the local tavern to buy a few rooms for the night, and the lazy thumbs up he waves from a distance is proof he accomplished his goal.

“They don’t get too many travellers passing through here so I swiped up three rooms,” he huffs, coming to a stop and brushing the dirt off his pants. “They’ve got a bathhouse, too”.

Bakugo makes a noise of approval, lifting a bag over his shoulder while Kirishima carries the rest under his arms and flashes a toothy smile. “Glad it went smoothly, man”.

“Thank the Gods,” Kaminari cheers, clapping his friend on the back. “You’re a lifesaver. I can’t wait to sleep on an actual bed again”.

“Uh huh. Two twin rooms for us lowly minions,” Sero continues, his grin curling into something more sly. You get a sense of foreboding. “And of course, a double room for the newlyweds”.

Mina whistles, slipping her hand into yours and tugging. You freeze, heart in your throat, and force yourself to relax, not yet used to how tactile they can be. She’s too invested in Bakugo’s response to notice. Your eyes flicker over to find him red faced and incensed, knuckles white with the pressure he has around the drawstrings of his bag.

Sharing a room with Bakugo. Alone. Thus far you’d all been together. Either under the stars or in caves, or packed into cramped quarters stuffed with wattle and daub if a villager felt kind enough.

“You've got exactly five seconds to explain why you thought that was a good idea”.

Sero quickly put his palms up in surrender. “You gave me a budget, Bakugo. They offered to lower the price as a wedding gift. I figured it would be okay for one night”.

Bakugo jerks his head in your direction, his steely glare unmoving. The tips of his ears are pink, too, frustration unfolding across his skin. “You don’t get to decide that,” he chided, tone harsh like a hiss.

Suddenly, Sero looks rather ashamed of himself. “Shit, I’m sorry. Should’ve asked,” he says to you, rubbing at his neck as his head lowers. It’s unlike him to be so wilted— and all because of your potential discomfort.

You meet Bakugo’s eyes, gleaming intensely, already trying to scrutinise your reaction. Mina hums quietly. She tightens grip on your hand again in reassurance, the other running along your bicep. “If you want I can swap with you”.

Bakugo snorts at that, as if the idea was ridiculous, but he doesn’t shoot it down despite his clear aversion to sharing with Mina. You understood his disbelief. They behaved much like siblings, squabbling and poking at one another. It’d rouse suspicion and you didn’t fancy being chased out of town for swindling the keepers for a discount.

“Thank you guys. But it’s alright,” you reassured, mouth lifting into a small smile and reciprocating Mina‘s gentle squeeze. “I don’t mind sleeping with Bakugo”.

A few beats of silence. You see Bakugo’s expression slip, jaw loose and eyes wide for a brief moment before it twists. He turns away from the group as a chorus of suggestive crowing erupts.

Understanding your mistake almost immediately hot mortification comes over you, stifling beneath the pelt on your shoulder. “Shut up, you useless fuckin’ perverts,” Bakugo snaps, flustered and wild, swatting at the nearest victim. Kirishima feigns a wounded noise.

“Hey, I didn’t do anything!”

“Just get moving,” the barbarian marches onward, tearing his way through the overgrowth and heading for the tavern. “And walk behind me!”

His choleric mutters continue, heard even at a distance. Tucking your chin to your chest, you hide your laughter in your silken pelt as you follow after him, mouth filling with a comforting briney scent. You think Bakugo undeniably cute when he’s embarrassed; a sight you’ve had the pleasure of seeing more than once on account of his pod. That feeling from the campfire returns, fills your chest, pulsing through to your fingertips, tempting you to reach out, to touch him.

More and more you’re inundated with the need to be close. You quell the urge and tighten your grip on Mina, her cheek squished to your shoulder, loose curls the colour of blossom tickling your throat. “Don’t worry. He’s not really mad,” she tells you furtively, as if it were a big secret.

“I know,” gaze lingering on Bakugo’s back, covered by that thick red cloak, you wonder if your scent still clings to it. Contentedly, “I’m getting used to it”.

The town is beautiful. Bursting with flora and fauna, accentuated by the dusk, ocean curling around the village in a way that reminds you of mother. Nature's cradle. You cling protectively to your pelt, scenting the salt in the air and hovering closer to Bakugo. If anybody could identify a selkie skin it would be fishermen. Stray drunken locals stumble by, arm in arm with boisterous cheer. You’re greeted like a long lost friend, neither person recognising your true identity. Humans really can be hearty and genuine at their core. Life before had been so desolate in comparison, so lacking in love and colour.

“Oi,” Bakugo beckons you to his side. When you don’t fall in line he grabs your wrist, pulling you close. His natural body heat lingers like a brand. “Make sure you call me Katsuki from now on,” he instructs under his breath.

You blink at the unexpected request. The muscles in his face are tight, twitching, and his nose flares the longer you stare. Given names are important to humans in this region. Sharing them is an intimate thing, a sign of your close relationship. “Are you sure?”

“Wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t sure,” he punishes your questioning with the fleeting tightening of his grip. You can’t help it. He’s pink again and you like it. “I’m your husband, yeah? So call me by my fuckin’ name”.

The keeper waits surreptitiously by a sheltered stairwell leading to the inn above her tavern. A small Elven woman, uncloaked, the lantern overhead creating a halo of light to circle her ginger crown. She perks up when Sero hands over a small velvet sack, the drawstrings pulled tight. “For the rooms,” he emphasises, coins chiming dully against one another as he shakes it. The woman takes it and cradles the payment to her breast, exchanging the gold for three keys.

You’re guided up the stairwell and into the building, presented with a narrow corridor. There are numerous doors, decorative runes carved into the frames, a coloured piece of string hung from each handle corresponding to the colour of the keys. “It’s good to see some youngins pass through. We only ever get the same old geezers around here,” she says, “Makes for a mundane life”.

The crows' feet wrinkle by her eyes when she smiles, laughter lines framing her mouth. She hands out the keys to your pod who all rush in childish excitement to see their rooms. At last she turns to where you stand stiffly beside Katsuki.

You’re handed a key. The stem is long and thin and made with copper, the key wards in the bit uniquely shaped to your door. Threaded through the bow is a lavender string. “It isn’t much but I hope you will be comfortable for the night,” with a wink, she adds, “Congratulations to you both”.

“Thank you. We will be in your care,” your reply is tremulous, undecided whether to be pleased with the sincere acknowledgement of your marriage or nervous to be seen through. At your side, the large barbarian grunts.

It is uncharacteristic of him; always very respectful of his elders. You lean against him, just a nudge. His attention snaps to you and you smile innocently. “Be polite, Katsuki”.

Like it was meant to be spoken only by you, Katsuki’s name sits right in your mouth, lips shaping around the characters softened by warm intonation. The reaction is instantaneous. His jaw ticks. His faint blush returns. His stoic expression wanes as he looks to the keeper, who is observing the interaction with mirthful eyes. Lowering his head he mutters, “We appreciate your hospitality, ma’am”.

“You’re quite darlin’ together, aren’t you,” she comments heartily, mostly to herself, as if airing her thoughts. “We got good food and drinks downstairs, do come if you’re hungry! Blessings be upon you”.

On her departure you enter the room. Spangles of light dusted the air. While it clearly isn’t lived in, it is homely. You canvas the space. Two square-headed windows facing the street are covered by thin cloth. There is an old, tattered tapestry strung across the wall to cover up a fist sized hole, a patterned glass vase and various other unique tchotchke adorning the shelves. You drag your fingers across the brick fireplace opposite a wide double bed, mattress made of wool but compensated by the many feather pillows and blankets.

“This is good,” you say, “homely”. Though there is an animal hide on the floor, which you find rather… untoward. A soothing musky smell with overtones of caramel and vanilla rising through the cracks in the floorboards from the tavern below. You breathe it in deeply.

“It’ll do,” Katsuki voices his agreement and drops his bag with a conclusive thud. “Let me hide our stuff and we can meet with the others for food downstairs. You haven’t eaten in hours”.

The small consideration makes your heart flutter. “Ah. I’ll be there soon,” you tell him. He squints at you, attempting to mentally pry the answers out of you. “I’m okay, Katsuki. I just need a minute”.

Pausing in the centre of the room, Katsuki scrutinises you. You fidget under his intense appraisal, undecided whether it pleases you or not. It is strange to want something that often leaves you feeling excruciatingly… exposed.

You wait apprehensively and wonder if he’ll comment on your use of his name— needless, this time. After all there are no ears or eyes in these walls. You’re not sure what you’ll do if he asks you to stop.

“Are you sure?” you nod, mouth strained in a thin smile. Bakugo frowns but ultimately gives you your space. “Make sure you catch up. If you’re not down in ten minutes I’m coming back”.

“I will,” you land heavily on the edge of the bed, wrinkling the sheets as you unclip your pelt. The collar of your ill-fitted shirt slips forward with the motion to reveal cleavage, and Bakugo immediately averts his gaze.

“Whatever,” he rasps, unexpectedly shy. The door slams as he leaves. You right the collar, tugging it back up, lips pressed thin to repress the laughter that bubbles in your chest. Aimless and left to your own devices you take a solitary moment to groom the pelt in your lap, marbled and downy-soft. Brushing through the coat, fingertips trace the rings of black and brown.

Things are so different. Being a person is more overwhelming than you imagined. Being locked away had kept you in a state of inertia, suffocating in numb misery, but now you were left to grapple with the immense spectrum of human emotion. Urges and wants that you had never experienced before meeting Katsuki.

You swallow, staring at the spaces between your fingers. Spaces filled with short tan fur. Selkie marriages were simultaneously complicated and simple. Rather, they were so simple that they bore unnecessary complications.

A stolen pelt creates a one sided bond but upon return it is consummated. Between two selkies in courting pelts were exchanged, solidifying their promise to one another, deeply unified by their magic. Elder podmates said that it meant they belonged to only one another. Abandoning the tides, in a way.

Since being a pup the voice of the sea was a ceaseless whisper you were always aware of. Yet since Katsuki held your seal skin, unknowingly cradled your very being and returned it to you with only sincere intention, that voice had gradually been ebbing away.

Would there come a day that you no longer recalled your identity as a selkie—? No. You quickly smother the thought. The immaterial, chimerical magic that made up your very being could never be forgotten. And deep down, you knew Katsuki would not let you. Indeed, you can only picture his surly retaliation if you ever woke up and could not recall your lineage.

With that you get to your feet. Ten minutes would soon pass and his probable wrath was enough motivation. You consider the pelt in your grasp and give a surreptitious glance around the room for somewhere to hide it. Taking it into a tavern full of drunken strangers and mariners seemed like a much worse idea.

After rolling it up tight you stuff it behind the pillows at the head of the bed, further pulling over the coverlets. The hallway is quiet when you step out. You lock the door, tensing at the loud click. You can hear muffled laughter rising through the floors.

It grows in volume when you step out into the evening air. Slurred conversation and bickering pour through the tavern windows. At front is a large, arched door, overshadowed by a dark blue awning. The wood panels are weatherworn and rustic, covered in rivets. You reach for the brass handle. It’s heavy in your palm as you turn it, using your full strength to push forward.

First, you are met with a crescendo of boisterous cheers. Stepping inside, your eyes are drawn to the green dyed sailcloths hung from the rafters above the bar. The establishment is modestly sized, enough that there is a longtable set up in the centre of the room and a fair few smaller roundtables dotted with stools.

Across the far end of the tavern is a line of small booths, separated by wooden screens decorated with mosaic carvings. Oil lamps are hooked on the walls, casting a warm sepia hue that seems to cohesively bring everything together. It felt welcoming, and intimate, like approaching a friend by the fire.

You try to seek out a familiar head of blonde hair. The place is busy but nobody bats an eyelid at your entrance, lively enough that you cannot hear clearly above the overlapping voices around you, intermingling with the low playing of music.

“Lost, stranger?”

You startle.

She finds you easily, like she’d been waiting. Mina curls an arm around your back, pressure light as if she was suddenly worried about being too familiar. It tightens when you lean into her and she smiles with more vigour.

“C’mon. Let’s get you something to eat”.

The distance between you and them is barely that of a crevice, but it is daunting, yawning like a trench. Over in the far left booth, both secluded and closest to the bar, is a group of friends. Directly beneath a lantern strung onto a hook, Katsuki is bathed in orange and nursing a drink. The others are tucked away in the booth, cups and plates lining the table top. Their laughter slows as you approach and you battle the urge to recoil from everyone’s eye. Mina, sensing the discomfort, begins to rub her hand along your back.

“All of you scoot up,” she asserted, wiggling her pointer finger. “Make some space for us!”

They move around on the long, curved seat to make space. You end up on Katsuki’s right, sandwiched in by Sero who smiles, though awkward, earlier remorse persisting as you take your place beside him. “What’s the verdict, are you happy with your room? Best I got from Bakugo is a grunt”.

“Yeah, I like it. You did good picking this place. It’s cosy,” you glance over toward Katsuki. “Beats a cave. The fireplace is nice. I wonder if it works…”

Mina tucks into Kirishima’s side where he sits across from you. Most of the plates are piled up in front of him, food aplenty to sate his dragon-sized appetite. His chin dimples as his bottom lip juts forward, “You guys get a fireplace? That’s so unfair”.

“C’mon, Kiri. The fireplace is there for…”—Kaminari leans in, suggestively lowering his voice and nudging Katsuki’s left arm—“…ambiance”.

You feel a gentle nudge. Katsuki, ignoring his friend's harmless influx of innuendos, slides a glass across the table toward you. “What is it?” you ask, bringing it to your lips. The liquid is dark, red like fresh blood, but it smells fruity. Before he can tell you, you’ve taken a sip.

It is weighty on your tongue, unlike anything you’ve tasted before. Cherries and jam and oddly well paired notes of spicy tobacco. The corner of his mouth curls into a barely there smile, pleased at the immediate delighted sound. He brings forward a large opened bottle and presents it to you.

“Barmaid gave us this to share,” Katsuki taps at the calligraphy on the label. “It’s wine. Expensive too, usually”.

“Guess marriage does have benefits,” Sero gibed, raising a glass of amber liquid you assume to be beer. Expression open in sincere merriment, he declares, “To the happy couple!”

Six glasses come together, toasting to your accidental bond, alcohol spilling over your hands. Katsuki’s cup is there too, his monotonous voice blending into their hurrahs. A hand slides from the back of the booth to rest upon your shoulders and you lean into it, heat prickling over your skull at the feel of his bare skin. Blood thinning, belly full, inhibitions lost to bliss.

Mina brings her hands together in a succinct clap, weaving her fingers. “Another round!” she beams, and the enthusiasm stirs once more.

The evening crawls on. Your modest group barely puts a dent into the chaotic din but it sure can eat. You’re made to swallow your fill under Katsuki’s direction—watching you closer than he did anyone else—and savour the dishes, heady and complimented by your flavoursome wine.

Stories pass through loosened lips, new and old. You don’t mention it when Kaminari repeats himself twice over— nobody else does, either. You all sink into the balmy atmosphere, sharing food and conversation, relaxing entirely for what felt like the first time in months.

Sero chokes on his drink as Kirishima recounts the story of when he and Katsuki first became friends. How the tiny blonde barbarian would sneak up on him through the bushes, throw rocks at his tender head, and challenge him to battle all in pursuit of friendship.

Your shoulders shake, burrowing into Katsuki’s side to sap his warmth. Bare skin pebbles as your fingertips skim his ribs, poking near his armpit. “Would it kill you to communicate like a normal person?”

Trembling mouth pressed firmly together, Katsuki refuses to give anyone the satisfaction of making him laugh. You see through it plain as day. “Shut up,” he grumbles.

“Didn’t even flinch when ma threatened to eat him if I came home with any more teeth missing,” Kirishima continued, sighing happily. “My bro is so manly”.

Steadily the energy begins to dwindle into a pleasant hum. You’re together, drunk on wine and laughter and a sense of harmony. Being with them is startlingly effortless. It feels like family.

In the recesses of your mind you think, I don’t want to let go.

“Hey,” Katsuki says, sharper when nobody hears him. “Hey, shitheads”. You lift your head from where it had come to rest on his shoulder, cheek slightly numb. “Think I’m going to head up”.

You hear a chorus of sluggish objections with no real heat behind them. While he’s fighting off their interrogation you simply watch him, awkwardly angled and ignoring the twinge in your neck. The bead in his braid glints in the low light.

Sensing your stare, Katsuki looks down at you, dappled by lamp light. The flames dance in his irises, gaze unbearably soft, as it had been that first night by the campfire. You hold your breath when he sets his thumb with his tongue and uses it to wipe a crumb from your cheek. The touch is like a spark to flint. A fleeting sort of hope stirs in your chest, like this is all you’d been waiting for, that the universe was finally making things right for you.

Then he snatches his hand back, as though waking up to what he was doing.

“I’m going to bed. You idiots better behave,” he groused, returning his focus to the group. You mourn his attention. “If we get kicked out early I’ll kill you”.

“You love us too much,” Mina tucks her drunken smirk into the cradle of her palm, arm almost slipping with the weight. Cloudy eyes follow Katsuki as he forces his way out of the booth like a bull. “Admit it!”

Bending at the waist he meets her stare head on and deadpans, “Die”. Mina merely laughs and plants a kiss on his forehead that he aggressively rubs away as he leaves.

You stay a little longer but find your mood dampening. Katsuki’s absence makes known an ache usually quelled by the weight of your pelt, almost as though his presence had placated that innate yearning for home. The thought leaves you dizzy.

“I think I’m going to go, too,” you announce out of the blue.

Expressions fall, concerned. Kaminari tilts into your space. You barely even blink at the proximity now. “Everything alright? Y’dont feel sick or anything, do you?”

“No, not at all—“ he frowns at you, unconvinced, “—I just feel like going for a soak before bed. Sero, you said there was a bathhouse?”

Sero perks up at his name and nods loosely, head barely held by his neck. “Yeah! They’re around the back, apparently. Just walk beyond the stairwell,” he shoots you a thumbs up. “They’re mixed but only guests can use ‘em, so don’t worry about it being crowded”.

That’s comforting to know. If luck was on your side it would be empty. You duck out of the tavern with a final wave and a promise to see them in the morning. Thankfully the boisterous chatter grows dull as you step into the night air, stopping to look up the stairwell. You hope Katsuki can sleep through it.

Heeding Sero’s instructions you follow the beaten path around the back of the tavern. There you discover another building, smaller, but with a steeped tile roof and shuttered windows. Curious, you gently lift the green dyed curtain hung in the doorway and enter the earthen-floored threshold.

You are led to what you guess is a small changing area. Cabinets left open, again each handle corresponding the key colours. You find a lavender ribbon and peer around the empty space, contemplating getting undressed.

Gathering courage you pull the strings in your shirt slack, slipping your arms from the sleeves and pulling it over your head. Tepid air breathes over your skin as you push down your pants, stepping out of them where they pool at your feet. Your clothes are folded and left on the shelf, boots lined neatly by the doorway.

Further in is an open space covered in tiles of smooth green. There are low stools and basins with natural running water, washcloths and soaps. While unpracticed you are at least somewhat familiar with bathhouse etiquette. Sitting hesitantly, hissing as your bare thighs meet the cool wood, you dip one of the cloths to soak and begin to scrub at your body.

The knots in your muscles become undone with the repetitive motions, again and again until you’re lathered in bubbles. You breathe in, feeling the humidity cling to your lungs, and rinse away the soaps.

Eventually you dub yourself clean enough to enter the baths. The seafoam tiles soon taper to stone that borders the baths. You take in the tall ceiling with beautiful carvings along the walls and high placed glass windows allowing the moon to shine in easily. The patterns are comfortingly familiar. Shells, waves, gulls, rock formations and arches. Though the bathhouse is much warmer, hot tendrils of steam rising from the bubbling water.

Penumbral light glinted on the water's surface. It held a distinct earthy scent, rolling in from the nearby springs. Again, you are reminded of a tide pool, but deeper. Clear and clean and natural. What immediately seizes your attention is the familiar man sitting close by, a head of wet golden hair still somehow holding its shape, the loose strands that typically make up his braid now tucked behind his ear.

Katsuki tips back to rest on the bath's edge. A thin white towel is laid across his face. Your gaze follows the slope of his shoulders, roving over his defined chest, skin pink with the heat. Rivulets run between his pecs to his sternum, lower body distorted below the water but patently bare, same as you. You exhale a breath you hadn’t known you were holding and quickly look away from his lap.

Time spent with Katsuki taught you that he hated being treated delicately. Tip toeing around this was not an option. You would join him in the baths and behave as normal. But—

Humans were fickle about nakedness. Where should you sit? What is an appropriate distance? Straying too far could make him defensive, yet getting too close might—

“Are you going to stand there all night?”

Startled, the soles of your feet almost slip on the smoothed stone. “You knew it was me?”

Katsuki scoffs. The towel remains over his eyes, obstructing his view, that which you were grateful for. Your previous indifference had so abruptly burgeoned into apprehension. Just the thought that he might see you this glaringly bare and skinless, a body without boundaries, made your stomach swoop. It is a peculiar sensation; you wanted him to look and you didn’t.

“Nobody else thinks that loud. Unless you’re Deku,” you can imagine his eyes rolling, the exasperation clear in his voice, though not unkind. The corded muscles in his shoulders shift beautifully as his arm stretches across the bath’s edge, wrist limp to allow his fingertips to breach the surface. He flicks the water in your direction, creating capillary waves. “Just— fuckin’ get in already”.

“Right,” you laugh quietly under your breath, descending the steps into the baths. The heated water is soothing, climbing the length of your lengths, eventually coming to rest above your hips.

You sink near to him and pointedly keep your eyes above his collar. Katsuki neither twitches nor acknowledges your approach. In fact, you aren’t sure he is even breathing. It occurs to you that he too could be nervous, tempted to look but refraining. The possibility of being wanted by him brings a sudden sharp sort of awareness that slides through you and heightens your senses.

Outstretched fingertips brush featherlight between your shoulder blades where you lean back against the wall. You sit with your knees close to your breast, relieved to be covered. “I thought you were heading to bed,” you comment quietly.

“Saw the path and followed it,” he replies, stiff shoulder jerking as he shrugs. “Wanted some quiet”.

A deep pink flush is spreading across his collarbones, clawing up the column of his throat. Your rational mind knows it is caused by the steam, yet the greedy part of you, the part so distinctly human, wants to know if you affect him as much as he affects you.

These feelings had gradually been accumulating since the very beginning. You’ve no idea where to put them. The voice in your hindbrain all but panics at the idea of leaving. You’ve spent a lifetime listening to your instincts and they’re telling you to keep your place at his side.

You inhale until the pressure in your chest is smothered by your lungs and your heart beat slows. Exhale. The water shifts in sync with your subtle movement. Emboldened by the wine in your veins you slide closer. The soft hair on your legs prickles, everything in you gravitating toward him. Katsuki doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Always staring,” a flustered growl snaps you back to reality. “You got something to say to me?”

“No,” you answer too quickly.

“Good,” his upper body sinking lower. After a length of silence it must get to him. Voice pitched low, as though afraid to disturb the atmosphere, he mutters, “Ever had a bath this big, back at that shitty castle?”

You snort. He turns at the sound and the surface ripples as you quickly smother it with your wet palm. It’s easy to picture the searing glare beneath the face towel. “Sorry. It’s just,” your mouth pulls into a tipsy grin. “All things considered, this place is pretty small to me”.

“Dumbass. You know what I meant,” he huffs, not bothering to hide his fond exasperation. “The sea doesn’t count”.

Humans are cute, you concluded. Trying to emulate the ocean in their warm wooden structures. “It counts,” you insist, moving closer still. You’re giddy in the water, with him. Like you’re sharing some special part of yourself in a strange way. “Have you been?”

A rough hum, “Where?”

“The sea”.

“Which one?”

The steam must be making you light headed. You’re tucked to his side again. Thigh to thigh. Skin against skin. You are acutely aware of your shared nakedness. His arm has slipped over the bath's edge to drape around your shoulders. “The closest, obviously. Or any of them,” you knock your knees together. “It’s not like you to be purposefully obtuse”.

“Big attitude for a little fish,” he mutters, free hand reaching for the towel, sliding it up to his hairline and revealing a crooked grin. Your heart squeezes. “Course I’ve been in the ocean. Flown over it on Red a few times too”.

You want to do that, too. To bear witness to the wind driving the currents from above, feel the sea salt spray sharp on your cheeks, touch the unreachable seam where your two worlds become indistinguishable.

“Never bathed in it, though?”

“No,” he drawled, an impatient edge to his tone. “I don’t plan on giving the finfolk an eyeful of my dick anytime soon”.

You laugh, “Like you are now, you mean?”

Katsuki tears off the face towel before you’ve any time to process it. The water thrashes. You daren’t look away. His stare has a certain ferality, pupils dilated, fair lashes damp from the steam and clumped into little spikes; it pins you in place like prey.

The blush across his chest is matched in his cheeks. A droplet slides down the delicate slope of his nose. You feel the surface of the water calm and settle just above your breast. You watch his gaze flicker reflexively to them, then to the ceiling, then clamping shut with a growl. Apprehension pulses through you and your thighs clench.

“You—” he inhales sharply, gathering his thoughts. You track the movement of his tongue as it swipes across his lips. Thickly, Katsuki asks, “What are you trying to do here, exactly?”

A sense of dejection comes over you and your immediate response is to feign innocence. “Soak with you,” which is no more than a half truth. You attempt to create some distance and his arm coils around your waist. Any effort to twist away from him proves futile; a snake that constricts the more you struggle. He doesn’t allow you to slip away, hand hot at your hip.

“Yeah?” but there’s no real bite, no vitriol as he drags you closer. “Soaking, s’that what you call this? Rubbing up against me, practically climbing into my lap?”

You might feel demeaned if not for the lust hemming his words. His grip is bruising, fingers kneading soft flesh. You can see this for what it is— a choice, a question. He’s confused, and wanting. Presenting an opportunity for you to change your mind in the face of his callousness. Katsuki is kind, in his own way.

Your palms come to rest over his sternum, pushing with no real effort, an accomplice in whatever cat and mouse game he was trying to play. His breathing picks up, abdomen clenching. You stare where bodies meet, low light reflecting off the wet sheen. Beneath your touch his heartbeat ricochets around his ribs.

Katsuki calls you. Your name is barely above a whisper. Peering up through your lashes as his hand comes to cup your nape, the other massages simple shapes into your hip, his fingers splayed across your navel. You exhale shakily as his pinky fits into the crease of your thigh.

He cradles your nape, guides you into his magnetism, and then you’re tilting— your world with it— into a careful kiss. Static blankets your thoughts. Katsuki’s lips slot over your own, a gentle press that quickly grows feverish as your tongue traces the seam of his mouth.

Exhaling harshly through his nose he drags you over his lap, the bath water splashing onto the stone tiles, holding you to his front in a way that makes it difficult to discern where you end and he begins. You have all of him now. Half hard under you and tense like he was exerting effort not to do anything about it. Hands wandering, mapping out the topography of your body, clutching greedily at your thighs. Smoke fills your throat, a tang of explosive magic lingering in the grooves of your teeth.

Minutes passed imperceptibly. You leave it feeling as though all the sinew in your body had unravelled, undone in his embrace like loose skeins of yarn. Katsuki doesn’t appear any more composed than you are; staring at you, slack with hunger, jaw relaxed the way a beast would do to taste the air. Palms cupping his cheeks, thumbs moving in idle back and forth motions under his eyes, you smile—

“Katsuki,” you murmur reverently. For reasons you can’t understand, it wakes him up. Snaps him out of his stupor. Panic flits over his features and you’re being pushed away, deposited back into the water. It rocks with the abrupt movement, waves breaking against your chest as he brusquely wades toward the steps with the small towel barely covering his modesty.

Echoing louder now, “Katsuki?”

And he was gone.

You stare at the entrance to the baths for a long time, willing him to return. You stare until your eyes sting and you’re forced to blink. All that’s left is the soft sound of the running springs, your shallow breath, and the muffled chanting of a few drunken men.

An emptiness makes home in your chest. Bereft, you follow in his steps, exiting the baths and heading to the changing room. You pat yourself down, rough towel absorbing the moisture, and pull on your clothes.

A hopeful spark catches when a figure ducks in under the curtain. Snuffed out, then, when Mina greets you cheerily. She seems to have sobered up for the most part, more coherent than you’d last seen her.

“You took a dip too?” she bounces on the balls of her feet as she undoes her shirt buttons, oblivious to your somber disposition. “I saw Bakugo come from this way too. Looked a little constipated if you ask me. I thought hot baths were supposed to relax you, not—”

Finally, she looks at you. Her voice stops as her brows pinch into a frown. You offer a brittle smile and endure the scrutiny. “Did something happen?” she asks worriedly.

Your throat closes up. Your teeth sink into your cheek and lower your gaze to the tiled floor, cracks overlapping as your vision blurs. Mina reaches for you. She halts in your periphery, thoughts and actions misaligned. A flash of hesitance, and then determination. She strides across the threshold to pull you into an embrace. Her arms slip around your shoulders, crossing over one another at your nape, tightening.

The tension begins to soften. Your body slumps, sinking into her kindhearted warmth as the rigidity weakens with your resolve. Bowing into the crook of her neck, you inhale her gentle scent. A soliflore smell, a flower you don’t know the name of, earthy undertones and hints of saké.

Your eyes are wet. Tears cling to your lashes as you blink. The moths dancing in the lamp light blurs, small specks of white stretching and flickering like pallid butterflies. Breathing shuttered, there’s a thickness in your throat that squeezes your voice into a frail whisper.

“Thank you”.

She hums, rubbing a comforting hand along the top of your spine. Her natural heat seeps through the thin fabric of your shirt. Though her arms are muscled they are also supple, like her chest, like her waist. You haven’t been held like this since you last saw your podmates.

After a few beats she asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”

You shake your head, grasping your bearings, “No”. It’s best left between you and Katsuki.

“If you’re sure,” Mina gives a final crushing hug before releasing you. “I’m bunking with Sero tonight. Knock if you need anything”.

“I will,” you say on the end of a shuddering exhale. “I’ll see you in the morning”.

She hums, watching apprehensively as you make your way through the changing rooms. The retention of her heat clings to your clothing when you step into the cold night air. Your boots rub at the sore skin around your ankles, fitting loose, having foregone tying the laces. They encumber your steps, obtrusively loud and ungainly on your journey up the stairwell.

A closed door should not be so daunting. Your hand hovers over the handle, steadily turning it, flinching as the locks click open. Low light floods in from the hallway and your eyes adjust to the darkness between blinks, the shape of a figure under the covers sharpening into view. Katsuki is laid on his back, hand disappearing under the pillow beneath his head where your bunched up pelt resides.

Hesitant, you shut the door and kick off your dirty shoes. You tiptoe around the frame and climb into bed. You try to alleviate your weight, balanced between your hands and knees so the mattress won’t dip, yet it is futile. “I’m sorry, Katsuki,” you whisper, feeling fragile as you lower into the linens. He’s awake, you can tell despite his efforts to appear otherwise, because you feel him stroking your sealskin between his thumb and forefinger.

“…Shouldn’t have done that,” his cadence is unsettlingly calm; gently sheathing the sharp words. “We’ve been getting too comfortable, letting shit influence us. It was just the magic talking”.

What?

“It’s not—”

“Go to sleep,” the volume raises in momentary frustration, but as quick as it came, anger dissipating. Dropping his head into the pillows he looks as defeated as you feel. He closes his eyes. “I won’t fuckin’ do anything to you so just. Sleep”.

You try, fitfully. The atmosphere is unbearable, keeping you glued to the far side of the bed lest you accidentally touch one another. Pressing your fingertips to your lips, you remember. You ache. You stare into the shadows and wonder at what point did the intentions become so crossed.

Katsuki valued the right to choose above all else. You liked that about him. He respected and surrounded himself with people who steered their own destiny, marching to the beat of his own drum; a rhythm you had fortuitously interrupted. In his mind he’d given into a temptation, and that act of indulgence was somehow the same as losing in battle.

Katsuki viewed your relationship as an infliction he needed to fight against.

That knowledge hurts you in ways you hadn’t expected. The words “we’re getting too comfortable” reverberated around your skull. Perhaps he was right. Somewhere along the lines you forgot that these truly were temporary circumstances, childishly wishing that maybe he’d come to love you, that you could simply accept this reality and grow into each other like a child into new shoes.

You blink. Linens rise and fall with his shallow breath. Katsuki’s mouth is open, the corner of his mouth wet with drool. His lips smack together as he bundles you closer. Unconscious, yet still seeking you out. He’s devastating even when he’s not trying to be.

Sleep feels impossible.

Then you wake.

Morning spills her dewy light throughout the room. Katsuki’s side of the bed is empty— made up and tucked at the corners. Cold. You are suddenly a distance apart and scrambling to make it all better again.

You push up into a sitting position. The bedsheets shift and pool around your hips, creasing the perfect slate Katsuki left. You rummage for the pelt hidden behind the pillows, dragging it out and around your shoulders, ducking your nose into the dark fur for comfort before tying it to your midriff.

Judging by the sun’s position you would guess it is still quite early. Sluggish movement can be heard through the thin walls, indicating that others are awake. Knowing Katsuki he would want to set off early to find Uraraka, especially after last night.

Another figure joins you in the hallway. Kaminari remains unaware of your presence as he fiddles clumsily with the key, squawking when it almost slips between his fingers. He’s dishevelled, shirt half tucked into his belt, cuffs undone and hung off his wrists; there’s still an impression of his pillow printed on his left cheek.

Having finally turned the lock, Kaminari spins on his heel with a happy hum. The tune escalates into a shriek as he notices you standing a few feet away. “Holy—! Warn a guy, would ya?” he clutches at his chest, exhaling harshly. “I think my heart just stopped”.

“Sorry Kaminari,” amused by his shrill intonation and melodramatics, you smile for the first time that morning. It exaggerates the bags under your eyes. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a baby,” he falls into step with you, knocking your elbows together on your way out into the stairwell. “I don’t think you can say the same, though,” his mouth twists into a smirk, “did Kacchan keep you up all night?”

Normally the teasing wouldn’t bother you. In many ways you saw it as a sign of acceptance into the group. Now you wince like somebody had carelessly pressed a bruise on your body. Kaminari, for all his obliviousness, knows when to drop the masquerade.

Your smile tightens uncomfortably as his fingers circle your wrist. In daylight you are left feeling exposed, unable to temper the regret written so plainly across your face. His mouth opens and shuts, searching fruitlessly for the right words, only to be interrupted by a callous shout from below.

Katsuki’s voice is incredibly distinct. He’s yelling, which is nothing new, but now it is with genuine frustration. Kirishima, Mina and Sero are there alongside him, speaking in low tones as you would to an untamed animal.

Kaminari tugs at your sleeve and gives you a meaningful glance, gently coaxing you to the bottom of the stairs. He must’ve at least connected Katsuki’s poor mood with your own. “Kacchan, my man. It is too early for all this shouting,” he implored, settling back into his jovial self.

You collect yourself, trying to retain shape and rationality as Kaminari draws Katsuki’s ire. Those vermillion eyes rove over you, head to toe, before flickering to the man on your right. Fast, like he’s afraid to look too long. Nostrils flare. The warm puff of air from his nose is visible in the cool air.

“It’s late enough. What took you so long?” Katsuki snarled, poking a finger harshly between Kaminari’s eyebrows. “The keep told me cheeks is planning on leaving today, so all of you get moving”.

Kaminari pouts, rubbing at the spot. The pale skin turns slightly pink. Unheeding of the wary scrutiny he is receiving, Katsuki charges onwards in expectation that everyone will follow. Kirishima raises a brow at his shape verbiage but doesn’t comment. He takes you under his arm in a half hug, sharing a look of understanding with Mina and the others.

Sero recounts their findings. According to the townspeople, Uraraka, the occultist, landed her abode miles outside of their bounds and set up wards in the valley to confuse strangers. It steered them in opposing directions and sent them in circles, practically making her impossible to find. You’re worried clear up until your group crests the precipice of a steep hill several hours later.

You take in the gentle undulations of earth and fauna. Grass tall enough to brush your shoulders, wildflowers and weeds hugging the barely worn path, sparingly tended nature left to flourish. The magic becomes apparent with proximity. It hangs in the air like humidity, an unnatural sheen muddying your vision. Katsuki continued with brass-bound determination; weaving skilfully through the runes, barrier fracturing under the pressure of his explosive palms.

There’s a quaint cottage in the middle of the glen, done up with a sweet ivy on the walls, latticed strips of wood around the windows, and a cobbled chimney towering from the pink tiled roof. Each windowsill appeared to have a different unidentifiable herb growing on it. A small, circular stained glass window in the door refracted the afternoon light, a knocker below it. Hanging by the door frame is a wind chime, shells tied to strings producing delicate crisp sounds in the breeze; in the effort to knock, Katsuki shoulders it carelessly, and the tune turns sour.

His fist comes down with hard momentum, stopped midway by another. “Be careful,” Kirishima gently chides. Katsuki shoves his hand off, sparing him an incredulous glare, which the shifter subjugates with a pointed reminder: “She won't help you if you bust her door down, bro. Play nice”.

Katsuki grunted his understanding, jaw clenched. He raps his knuckles on the wood. The sound is dull, and you stare down at your scuffed boots as an unpleasant pang of anxiety knocks around your chest. A voice shouts from inside, somebody scurrying around, then the door is pulled open.

“Can I—Bakugo?!”

“Uraraka,” Katsuki greets bluntly, giving a short nod. It is the first time you’ve ever heard him say her name. His hands flex at his sides, restless. Through gritted teeth he adds, “Deku sent me. I need your help with something”.

“Oh,” Uraraka exhales in disbelief. She steps back, pink slippered feet in your periphery. “Come in, then. I haven’t seen you guys in forever…”

Their voices fade into the background. All at once subconscious acts like breathing and blinking become tiresome. Hearing him let go of his pride felt so final. You fall away, stuck in a cold fog. Your gait is uneven as you remind yourself to put one foot in front of the other, incognisant to the worried looks thrown your way.

You remember being seated on a plush feather-pillowed sofa. Hands running over your shoulders, grounding you. You reach for your pelt, sinking fingers into the downy fur, and find no comfort in it. Now you’re here it feels more like a husk, leaden and hollow, ready for you to be stuffed into.

“You married a selkie by accident?” Uraraka blanched, her volume rousing you from your haze. “You know, Bakugo, for someone so smart your ignorance is truly astounding”.

“Can you fucking reverse it or not?”

“Reverse it. Are you kidding? You’re not. Gods, Bakugo—breaking a soul bond isn’t common,” Uraraka snaps, rubbing roughly at her eyelids as she loses patience. You feel a pang of guilt, that which worsens as it unearths the hope that perhaps she wouldn’t be able to separate you from him. “Most of the methods are based on myth. You realise it will be incredibly painful, and possibly for nothing?”

You take in the surroundings while they continue to bicker. The cottage is modest. A small foyer leads to the living space, rugs of various shapes and colours laid to insulate a path through the house, runes and scrawls carved into the hardwood walls. Logs presumably for fuelling the hearth monopolise much of the space, spilling out from the nook in which they’re stacked. There is nothing particularly otherworldly, at least not where you can see it. Uraraka obviously lives within her means, a humble and frugal person despite wielding magic of her calibre.

“I do have something I can try, ” she sighs with a sidelong glance. The skin on her lip breaks between her teeth. Your prolonged silence has likely done nothing to reassure her. You try to feign interest, to smile and express gratitude, but she grimaces.

“What do we have to do?”

“Essentially I can sever the bond at the stem but not the root,” the group is quiet, tense as they listen. Mina’s grip is bruising, as though making sure you were still there. “The dissolution of your marriage will only be complete when the selkie returns to the sea. Within a day or two they’ll… forget you”.

You sense the atmosphere darken. Katsuki shifts his weight in your periphery. Neither one of you can look at the other. Whether he’s threatened by your feelings or ashamed of them you can’t be sure, but what you know is that they are real, sown and tended in the weeks you spent together.

Kirishima exhales a shuddered breath. His big body crouches before you, warm hand resting on your knee. Kaminari and Sero linger on either side, watching over the scene, wearing grief plainly on their faces. A broken part of you wants to laugh. They are acting as if this is your wake.

“Are you sure about this?” he implores, discreet and unintentionally cruel. If you were to say no, what of you then? Nothing to do but follow them on their journey, dragging along like the hide of some shorn animal. Stuck waiting for Katsuki to resent you over an incredibly frustrating and misplaced presumption that he played a part in fabricating your thoughts and feelings.

Uraraka’s method may well cleave the ties created in your accidental matrimony. You trust in her capabilities because Katsuki clearly respects them. You’ll say yes. And after it all, when your soul has been excavated, when you’ve gone home crying to your mother, rocked to sleep in her gentle undertow, you will still stubbornly want him.

The thought comes unbidden, a sudden clarity that overcomes you. At that point he would have no room to question your will. “I’m sure,” you say, still breathless with the realisation. “You can go ahead with it, Uraraka”.

Hesitating in her movement, Uraraka considers you for a moment longer before disappearing down the hall. When she returns she pulls seven tear shaped crystals from a velvet satchel. Dread churns in your stomach, sensing the energy emanating from them.

She begins to recite machinations beyond your comprehension. Opalescent rays of light burst from within her enclosed fist where it pressed against her mouth, dappling sentient shadows across her face, now taut with concentration. Her features ripple and distort, not unlike a reflection on the ocean's surface, then fades into obscurity as the spell settles into its conduit.

Uraraka hands the lustre of the stone to you, knuckles pale as she squeezes the magic out into your cupped palms. As a pup you would try to drink sunlight, specks chased across the seabed as the clouds shifted, caught like a cat to a mouse only to remain empty handed. Light was not made up of solid matter— it was intangible. To be felt, seen, but not touched.

Yet it is swirling in your hands like that lovely warm wine from the night before, slipping through the thin cracks in your fingers. “Drink it,” she coaxes gently.

You look at Katsuki. His eyes flicker up to meet your own. There’s an awful urgency coursing through your body, frozen like a fawn, something inside willing you to stop. Begging him to speak up. He lowers his gaze, expression pinched and inwardly furious.

Heel to chin, you tip your head back as if drinking from a cup. Her magic is entirely flavourless, waning with your own imagination as if it were allowing you to choose the taste yourself. The consistency is like steam; inhaled rather than swallowed, and hot on the roof of your mouth.

Elemental magic was external in the way it bursts forth from the user, often causing flesh wounds or dramatic change in the terrain. You think of Katsuki, the calamity at his fingertips, juxtaposed by the tender manner in which he would always touch you, cauterising your fear. Uraraka’s magic is unforgiving and uniquely invasive. It is so much worse than being burned.

It spreads through your sinuses like searing wildfire, pressure balloons behind your eye sockets, undoing the seams that make up the very fabric of your being. Waves of nausea engulf you, throat tight and constricted. Breathing laboured and irregular, you fight against the urge to retch it all up.

It’s too much. The incorporeal spell pierces through your mind, tearing at the bond, more overwhelming than anything you’ve ever been dealt. Knife-like pain persists after her chanting stops. You wince and cradle your head, weeping as it passes. Left in its wake is a muted soreness throbbing across your brain.

“Hi,” Uraraka is before you, ducking to examine for any injury. Careful, her fingers encircle your wrists and pry your hands away. “You’re okay. Can you look at me?”

You squint, reluctant to blink and irritate the soreness around your eyes. “How’s your vision?” she asked, sotto voce. Her touch is deliberate and gentle, slightly pulling down your bottom eyelids, petting over your jaw and down the nape of your neck, feeling for something. “Does anything feel wrong, or out of place?”

Wrong? your mind echoes. Out of place? Cold is creeping into your muscles, gritty and dense like wet sand. You’re unnerved by the veil of apathy that settles around you. “I don’t think I’m injured. The light is more intense. Hurts,” you admit, voice breaking.

Everything that remains the same yet is somehow more drab, lacking colour and difficult to look at. Your friends, clinging to each other. Your Katsuki, staring back at you. “But I can still see everything”.

“Good,” she breathes, relief entirely palpable. If this is success then you wonder what the worst outcome might’ve been. “That’s good. If you reach for the bond, is it there?”

You’re not sure what she means. Seeking connection you clutch your sealskin to your front, kneading at the familiar fur. It’s minor but it’s back— the voice belonging to the tide, beckoning you to shift again. “I don’t think so,” you reply.

“Then there’s only one thing left to do,” Uraraka smiles and covers your hands with her own. You sense the tips of her fingers ever so slightly across your collar where they brush the pelt bunched in your fists. “You’re free now. You can go back home”.

Her soothing countenance might as well be dry grass to your precipitous anger. “Right,” you deadpan, voice entirely devoid of emotion. Best kept that way, lest you release all your bubbling frustrations onto a woman that only wanted to help you; in her eyes—and the rest—you were just another trapped, useless selkie.

That anger carries you to your feet. You want to cry but the tears don’t come. When you exit the cottage with a curt bow and a ‘thank you’ you find yourself in the lead for once, marching ahead of the group. They remain a few feet behind, muttering amongst each other. Without the view of Katsuki’s back you feel lonely. Even so you keep your hurried pace, too afraid to turn around and be inundated with questions.

The journey back passes in a blur. Hours, surely, because you’re ready to pass out from the exertion. Loose dirt and geosmin clings to your clothes. Shadows stretch across the emptying streets as dark cloud cover canopies the town, sparse instances of light rainfall that stick to your skin. There's a chill in the air now, a bite to it that rattles your bones and quickens your breath. It’s damp, imbued with the scent of sea salt.

You don’t stop, not when the desperate calls of your name begin. Further up the dock is lit golden, lanterns lining cobbled roads and emitting a warm orange glow. You trudge through the quieting bustle, workers scurrying to shelter, while enduring a pervasive sense of wrongness.

You don’t know what to do with this freedom, this precipice, so joyless and empty. Slowing to descend weather-worn steps onto the beach there’s a presence at your heel. “Shit. Would you slow—!” Katsuki moves to stop you. His fingers flex, start to close around your wrist. Then they hesitate and fall away, clenching at his side until all the blood recedes from his knuckles. “You don’t need to immediately run off into the damn water”.

“It’s easier this way,” and quicker, you think.

“What?”

Listening to the sea sings an ancient litany, you let your anger wash away with the oncoming tide. The whiplash is intense. Your lips tremble, pulling into a tearful smile, laughter bubbling up through your chest, choked by the swell in your throat. “I think I understand why you’re always yelling now,” cumulus clouds pass overhead and bring with them a curtain of rain. “Being human is very melodramatic”.

Katsuki clearly hadn’t expected that, of all things. His expression softens in his surprise. The short hairs by his temples are laid flat, braid swinging in the breeze, the fur around his cloak dark and saturated. “That’s what this is? Baby’s first tantrum?” his tone is mean, and your hackles would rise if he were not visibly deflating. Katsuki reacts to vulnerability like a wounded dog. He laughs despite himself and scratches at his neck, “Fuck. I thought you’d be happy, or something close to it”.

Standing a few feet behind him, Kirishima, Sero, Mina and Kaminari are linked together, waiting to approach. They remain in your line of sight as you consider the barbarian in front of you. A cold shock billows through his cloak, a wave crashing onto the shore. He shivers, but remains stubbornly rooted to the steps.

“I’m not happy,” you lamented. “I’m going to miss you. You are an impossible man, Katsuki. Impossible to forget. I wish you’d believe that”.

Katsuki’s mouth opens and shuts. Silence falls once again, and he can’t find the words to fill it. Your fingers work at the belt keeping your hide secure, tugging it loose and letting the sealskin unfurl, blanketing the length of your body.

Mina takes this as an indication that you are leaving. She rushes ahead, stumbling past a stunned Katsuki, gathering you into her arms. The pelt is trapped between your bodies as you curl into the embrace. You feel yourself warm up, the wet winds rolling off the sea obstructed by three larger figures trailing right behind her, encasing you in a group hug.

Constricted from all sides, the arms around your waist tighten. Mina’s nails dig in, and she shakes you gently in an attempt to scold you, “Don’t go leaving us without a proper goodbye”.

Kirishima is at your back. He must be. The height, the rough skin, the hard spikes in his hair poking at your nape where he inhales deeply, memorising your scent. Sero flanks your left, resting his head on the shifter's shoulder as dark eyes watch you. Kaminari bears down his weight, slumping against your right, a sour metallic taste at the back of your throat as the grip on his magic loosens with emotion.

It feels wrong without Katsuki. You crane your neck and look for him. The sight of him dithering off to the side, alone and wearing a visage of muted guilt, makes your insides twist. Your hand bursts through a crevice in the huddle, coaxing him over.

He comes. Mina drags him into the middle without fanfare, and enclose around you in a last ditch effort to keep you together. “This is the worst,” Kaminari snivelled. “It’s like my parents are divorcing all over again”.

Katsuki weakens to it. Gives a quiet, choked laugh and it blows warm across your temple. You’d know his hands anywhere. Hesitant, they rest on your hips. You close your eyes and centre yourself in the present, tilting your head to rest on his collar. The motion drags your lips up to his jugular and you kiss the words against the damp skin, thicker than intended, “I’m—really, so happy I met you all”.

The briny air greets you when they finally step away. Mina rubs harshly at her eyes as your feet sink into the sand. There are stragglers by the port but nobody along the beach, so they trail after you to the shore, equal parts unwilling to leave and curious about your selkie form.

You’re pointedly aware of their presence as you shake out your fur. You hold it to your face for a moment, blocking out the wind, the light and the rain with how insulated it is, before setting it on the sand. Kaminari coughs, the group spinning on their heels when you begin to undress. Katsuki does not.

Kicking off your boots as you fiddle with your shirt strings, you consider the barbarian, impressing his appearance behind your eyes for a final time. “What will you do after this?”

Broad shoulders rise and fall as he sighs. Looks up to the sky, frowning, a blush on his cheeks. “Go further inland to one of the bigger cities to find something to pay back Deku, I guess. Circle around, head back, and then home”.

Shirt discarded, you unbutton your pants, letting them fall down your thighs, and step out of them. “How long will you be in the city?”

Shrugging, he grunts, “A week at most”.

That’s good. Long enough to wait out the final stages and prove his place in your memory. You nod, spine straightening with determination. “When you circle back I want you to stop here again. Just for a day”.

That half lidded gaze slides over to you, squinting. Pointedly kept above the shoulders. Searching. “Why?”

The tide crawls further ashore. A wave breaks around your ankles. Your toes wiggle in the sand, sinking as it is displaced, a small smile curling at your lips. You bend to grab the pelt and slide it around your shoulders like a coat. It’s comforting, familiar. Energy thrums at the surface of your skin, ready to pull. But you wait.

“In a week. Promise me?” you say without explanation.

Katsuki swallows. Eyes boring into yours. His jaw shifts. Then he nods, tersely. Reassured by this you hold the coat tighter, chin tucked as you steady your breathing. Consciously, you reach inward, drawing upon the pelt.

And you change. Falling to your knees, cold water biting at your thighs, you crumple in the sand, body shrinking as flesh and fur meld together. It’s painful after so long, unsettling to be snapped back abruptly into your hindbrain, but the discomfort eases quickly, like stretching a muscle.

You lift your upper body, nose flat and wide and twitching, scenting the air. The sand sifts under bootstrapped feet. A human approaches, beautiful and familiar, lowering into a crouch as you freeze. Forearms resting on his knees, he holds out his fingers. Faintly smoky, a mix of spice and earth.

The way in which this man appraises your form is uncomfortably solemn. Vacuous expression betrayed by the gentle light in his eyes. He smiles ruefully and readies himself to speak. Alight with a bitterness that is vaguely accusatory in the oncoming darkness he says, “Already forgot us, didn’t you?”

It steals the breath right from your lungs. Recognition strikes through you. Bakugo Katsuki. The thought is alarmingly fleeting, almost evading your grasp. Nostrils flaring, you drag your body forward to wipe the look of self-deprecation from his face. You nudge your snout into his hand, not shying away from the fierce elemental energy radiating from his palms. You unhinge your jaw, canines gently indenting the heel, as if to scold him.

He laughs, disbelief bleeding into the sound. It beckons his pod, more humans— one not so human. “Don’t fuckin’ scare them,” Katsuki calls over his shoulder. Not once do his eyes stray from you.

A thick tang of draconic magic overwhelms your senses as the largest in the group mirrors Katsuki, making himself impossibly small, aware of his magnitude and the imbalance between your species. “Wow…” the shifter, Kirishima, breathes in awe, genuine rather than tainted with greed. “So cute”.

More people come closer. Their faces filter through your memories in bits and pieces, stitching together into a patchwork timeline. “Yeah…” Mina echoes the sentiment. She gets on her knees, doesn’t care when the waves drench her skirt. “You’re beautiful like this too,” holding her hand an inch away from your skin, she asks, “Can we pet you?”

Five fingers to your scruff, one hard pull and you could be torn from your rudimentary shell. Human hands are dangerous but not these ones. You give a short tonal whine and hope she interprets it as permission. They do, taking turns tracing the marbled fur and clawed flippers, murmuring awe filled words.

The tides are high, wrapping around and coaxing you into their arms. You look toward the horizon and the itch grows. A seamless vista of clouded sky. Warm mouths litter the top of your head with kisses, their blunt human teeth behind soft lips, juxtaposed by rough, barely decipherable mutterings of something that sounds mournful.

Mina sniffles as Kirishima helps her to her feet and they wade backwards toward the port. Katsuki cups your muzzle in his palms, searing where his thumbs swoop beneath your cheekbones, brushing over the whiskers by your nose. “Stay safe out there, yeah? Don’t get eaten by a shark or whatever,” he bends, bringing your foreheads together as if to impress his thoughts onto you. “I won't wait around for a weakling”.

You can only hope he saw the promise held in your eyes as you stare at his retreating back. The swelling waves pull you into the current, submerged until only your head is above the surface. In the distance your pod breaks into cheers. They line up on the beach, jumping high as their legs will allow, waving their long arms in the air.

A descending chorus of trills build in your own throat, mellifluous and loud enough to cut through the wind and the waves. Noise becomes muffled as you’re submerged into the dense water. Wrapped up in brine the ambience fills your head. It pushes out rational thought, drawing only instinct to the forefront.

Your vision adjusts quickly to the dark the further you swim. Stretch your flippers and sweep them down like a dragon's wing, flying through the depths until you tire. Coming to an ocean shelf, there you rest. Cradled by a moving, ever evolving element. Creatures big and small pass by. Fish with vermillion scales haloing wide faces dart in and out of your dreams, shimmering under weak streams of sunlight.

The shifting tide keeps you cognisant. You linger close to the surface to monitor the sun. Days pass and you are unbearably alone. It is harrowing; this unending, sombre ache. You think of Katsuki. Repeat his name until it sounds foreign. You recall his handsome face, the way his eyes always seemed brighter in the early dawn, how his nose would wrinkle if you stared too long, like he’d tasted something bitter. You miss him.

Come the week’s end you’ve become something else, something new. Irrevocably changed by love’s hand. You recognise that you exist in two worlds: as a selkie, tethered to the seabed and embraced by buoyancy, and as a human, struggling against the currents, compelled back to land—

To Katsuki.

You glide through the waves, riding them as they swell and break onto the shore. Undulating your body, the hitching motion pulls you forward, wriggling up into a cluster of rock pools, safe from any onlookers. You wait there, chin propped on the shoulder of a jagged stone to observe the beach.

He finds you there beneath an almost oppressive dusk. The approaching footfalls command attention, announcing his arrival. You slink into the shadows for a moment, detailing the subtleties in Katsuki’s expression on his march along the sand, pinching more and more as he casts he searches the beach. The breeze ripples through the notorious red cloak, fur collar tickling his cheeks. Shirtless, wearing his scars proudly. His pants sit low on his hips, adorning various belts and jewels. Warmth curls up in your chest at the sight of him. Giddy. You remember him.

You lift your head. His focus immediately latches onto the movement. A croon rumbles in your throat as he approaches. He climbs up onto the rock, towering over you, his body obstructing the evening sun. It halos around his golden hair. The braid by his ear falls forward as his head tilts, squinting to get a good look at you.

The laughter lines by his eyes deepen, brow creasing. Almost slipping as he climbs down, Katsuki frowns at the lack of traction on the surface. You laugh and it comes out like a rough snort. The shallow pools splash loudly under his boots upon landing. He curls his upper lip at you, “Laugh at me and I’ll kill you”.

You do so again, more deliberate this time. He senses your sarcasm and flicks water at you. Your whiskers twitch, subtly tasting the air. He slumps hard on one of the flatter ridges and clicks his tongue. “This better be you and not some random fuckin’ seal I’m talking to,” he mutters, embarrassed.

Unwilling to prolong your reunion any longer, you shed your pelt. Joints slot into place, the sealskin receding, your human form unearthing as it loosens and pools around your naked lap. Katsuki watches the air bite at your skin, nipples pebbling as you shiver.

“Katsuki,” you rest your cheek on his thigh, knelt between his legs. You let him take it all in. Satisfied with his assessment of you his fiery eyes meet yours.

“Almost didn’t come. Figured you wouldn’t be here,” he intoned gruffly, chin dimpling as he juts his bottom lip. “You were supposed to forget about everything”.

You nod, mouth curling into a helpless smile. Your fingers flex and you feel the muscles jump underneath, “I know”.

Katsuki exhales a long breath, fists clenched tight in his lap with obvious restraint. “Why didn’t you?” his eyes track the movements of your hands. “It worked, I know it did. Cheeks doesn’t do shit halfway. I felt when… So what the hell are you doing back here?”

You pause when his words register, suddenly off kilter. There it is again, the displeased wrinkle on the bridge of his nose. You had never considered that he, too, would’ve experienced the connection. Admittedly a naive oversight on your part—but he never mentioned it. You figured it was just a selkie thing. Perhaps, all that time, he had been contending with his own feelings as well as yours. Wondering if he could trust himself, if they were true.

Vows dissolved, he still chose to come back for you. To bet on that slim chance. Just as you did.

The knowledge compels you to touch him more, to reassure, to lean further into the clutch of his thighs. The intrusion forces his legs wider and when you reach to cradle either side of his taut jaw he lowers to close the distance.

“I felt it, you know. Before you offered me my pelt I felt you touching it,” you begin, watching how his expression splits open as your eyes meet. “I knew it was safe with you”.

“That’s stupid,” he utters, though you can hear that he doesn’t mean it. Embarrassment slowly stains his cheeks pink. You can feel him twitch, smothering the instinctive urge to snap at whatever made him feel so intensely.

“Maybe,” you pull back a hair's breadth to lightly knock your heads together. “My point is, I was drawn to you before all that, in such a short window. I think… I didn’t forget you because those feelings grew naturally”.

The more you speak he progressively gets pinker, flustered and mad about it. It births an odd, primal urge to sink your teeth into something. To bite his cheek white, watch the blood retreat under the skin. Instead, you slide your hand lower to rest on his neck and his own cuff your wrists.

“That first day, you apologised to me because I never had a choice,” there’s a soft grunt in acknowledgment. His pulse dances under your palm. “I’m making one now of my free will. And you—can say no, if you want,” you stutter, then, suddenly realising the real possibility of him rejecting your request altogether. “But I want to be here with you”.

The last rays of sun stretch across the land, cosseted behind soft clouds as it sheaths. Katsuki considers you quietly. There’s a soft sort of intent in his eyes, wearing the revelry of dusk. You kneel in the rock pool, literally and figuratively bare, heart pounding in your throat as he readies himself to respond.

“Back at the bathhouse…” he hesitates, promptly clears his throat and struggles to look at you.

“Nothing was influencing me that night. Except maybe the wine,” you admit timidly, abashed at his sudden demurity. “I’m sorry”.

That garners a reaction from him. In true Katsuki fashion his tongue clicks behind gritted teeth and applies pressure to your wrists, pulling you up. “Come here,” he tells you. You uncurl your legs and begin to stand moving with all the grace of a newborn fawn. “Oi, don’t—!” jerking his head to the side, he averts his gaze from your naked lower half, glaring at the shoreline. The sea-scented air prickles your skin, heat gathering where he has you held. “Expose yourself to everyone in the fuckin’ country, won’t you? Come here,” and then he’s hooking behind your knees, making them bend, gathering you into his lap in bridal fashion.

“What’s the problem?” you mutter. Heat creeps up your neck, feeling defensive and distinctly embarrassed by his behaviour. “I don’t see how my nakedness is any different here than it is in the public bathhouse”.

He holds you closer, voice vibrating through his chest as he roughly insists, “It’s different”.

Your pout softens into a small pleased smile, letting him manhandle you until he’s satisfied with his grip. He bends, incidentally baring his throat stretching for the pelt discarded by the rocks. Tucking your nose to the underside of his jaw you revel in how his arm tightens around your lower back.

Katsuki draws the pelt into your lap, covering your modesty. You laugh at how sweet and boyish it seems. “Laughin’ at me again, huh?” two fingers pinch at your cheek, pulling until you whine. “Got a death wish?”

Kneading at the sealskin coat your affections roar into existence once more with an intensity. “You wouldn’t hurt me,” you grin, and he abandons the pinch to stretch his big hand across your face. Thumb on your left cheek, fingers on your right, he squeezes together until your mouth is misshapen and pursed.

“Sure about that?” he warns, tone steeped in fondness. It is exhilarating to have him touch you again, more freely than he ever had before; it is as close to ‘I believe you’ as you think you’ll get.

You smile with your eyes, locked with his. Close enough to count every fine eyelash. Your words come garbled as you say, “You still haven’t given me an answer”.

Katsuki exhales shallowly through his nose. His throat contracts as he swallows. The pressure releases. His hand cups your face, flexing with uncertainty. You shudder when he dips to press your lips together. You’re kissed without hurry, besotted by his firm but cautious movements. He relaxes as you lean into the rhythm, humming proudly. The soft, wet sounds of your mouths meeting again and again echo over the crawling waves.

Katsuki pulls away first, eyes still closed but smiling to himself. He licks his lips and rasps, “I guess you can come along with us,” as though that was all the answer he needed to give.

Alight with excitement you squirm in his lap, earning a quick slap to your hip. Katsuki ignored your grumbling and set to covering your body entirely. “Hold onto the corners,” he says, draping the hide over your shoulders, comforting warmth enveloping you as you obediently take the corners. “Put your arms around my neck. Do not drop it”.

You do, curtaining both of your bodies with the pelt in the process, fingers interlocking at Katsuki’s nape. Your faces remain a whisper away. It feeds a skin hunger that plagued you for days. Satisfied, he then unties his cloak to slide it over-top, layering the two to keep you covered.

Your stomach swoops as Katsuki pushes to his feet, carrying you in his arms with no sign of exertion and much better balance than before. His bicep bulges, fingers flexing under your thighs. “Where are we going?”

Sand and broken shells crunch under his boots, gait leaden like wading through mud. Mariners whistle suggestively in your direction as he climbs the steps to the dock, making his teeth grind. “Taking you back to our room,” he grunts.

You flush with heat at the implication. “You still have the key…?”

Without disrupting his pace, Katsuki’s nose nudges along your temple to press a kiss there. “Said my shitty wife left something behind,” you feel his mouth pull into a smirk, “so they gave me it to go take a look”.

A pleasant sensation erupts in your stomach. Fluttering like butterflies. “And the others?”

Darkness covers you when he ducks into a narrow alley. Katsuki meanders along the winding path with unfettered confidence. “I sent them on ahead. Said I’d catch up on foot,” he explains, eyes darting over the surroundings, striding back out into a familiar road leading to the tavern. “Wanted to be alone”.

You’re carried up the stairwell despite the stern assertion that you would be just fine on your feet. In that same vein, Katsuki is clearly just fine taking all of your weight— proud of it, you think. Unwilling to put you down.

He shoulders into the room and kicks the door shut. It is as you remember. Dim and homely, accented by a lamp that casts a soft yellow glow over the bed. Heavy footsteps take you forward, and you are swiftly deposited on the mattress. You bounce a fraction, losing purchase on the pelt and cloak. Both layers peel away, rumpled under your back, leaving you splayed out and bare.

Katsuki stands next to the bed, watching the rise and fall of your chest. His features are tender in the light, smoothing his hard edges. It flickers in his irises. Gaze hungry, restless.

Your body can’t help but react to Katsuki’s silent observation. The ardent stroke of his eyes across every part of you like it were his hands themselves. Heat races through you and coils between your legs. Feeling exposed, you try to close your thighs.

There’s a hand on your knee, stopping the movement, firm but gentle as he pries them back open. Katsuki moves closer and kicks off his boots. The mattress dips under his weight. One knee on the bed, your legs part further to make space for the intrusion, wrapping around his waist without second thought.

“This okay?” he murmurs, barely above a whisper. You exhale shakily, hands roving along the thick of his arms to clutch at his shoulders. The buckles on his pants bite into the back of your thighs. You can feel his arousal swelling through the fabric.

Rocking your hips, your feet cross at his lower back. “Yeah. I want…” his eyes flutter, almost rolling up into his skull, pupils dilated. You chase the phantom feeling of his lips with your tongue and he tracks the movement. “Kiss me again”.

“Thank fuck,” Katsuki groaned, the sound dwindling into a low chuckle. His forearms settle either side of your head, pressing all his weight down, pinning you to the bed. Taking up your vision until only he is in your orbit. The braid by his ear hangs loosely, the bead cold where it brushes your jaw. You tremble, fingers threading into his hair to scratch gently at his scalp.

Your mouths slot together and he kisses you full, nibbling your lips until they part. Pushing deeper, tongues sliding over teeth, stealing the breath from your lungs. He handles you with indecision. Careful kisses followed by rough ones; grabbing at the soft parts of your body a little too hard, smoothing the flesh with his thumb in apology.

It’s overwhelming how much he wants you. And you try to return the fervour, arms sliding around his back to keep him close, undulating your hips to feel the tremors wrack through him.

The talons strung around his neck graze over your chest as he descends. Kisses left on the corner of your mouth, cheek, jugular. He takes your pulse between his jaws and you whine, clenching at his waist. Katsuki moves away, laving his tongue along your throat.

“Wanna touch you,” he says. Goosebumps break out across your skin as he blows cool air over the wet stripe left behind. “S’all I could think about. You’re fucking distracting”.

“Yes. Please,” your eyelids flutter, leaning back to hear your throat. “Please”.

“Needy,” he mumbles, a satisfied lilt to his tone. His hand slides down to your ass, grabbing one cheek and filling his palm with it as he spreads you open. “Bein’ too quiet. I like it when you say my name,” he rasps. “Gonna let me hear it?”

Fingertips brush against your sex. Heat flushes under your skin, anticipation and understanding unfurled within you. “Katsuki,” you sigh into his mouth.

Katsuki flashes a predatory grin. Pleased, and pink all the way to his ears. Breath puffing over your lips he says, “Again”.

“Katsuk—ah,” his thumb circles over your swollen clit, sparks zipping up your spine. Your breath hitches. You chase the touch, his four fingers splayed low on your navel; the other cups the back of your knee to keep you spread as he descends from throat to chest, forging a path of wet kisses, stopping intermittently to softly suck at the flesh and coax blood to the surface.

You’re wet. Wet enough, warm enough, that the still air feels cold on your skin. His lips wrap around your nipple and you arch up into the sensation as he slowly sinks a finger inside of you. You take him to the knuckle, and he waits, gradually pulling out until you’re clenching around a fingertip.

Again and again he fucks you on his fingers, adding another, curling them up mid stroke to brush the most sensitive part of you, spreading them to work you open. You mewl, steeped in pleasure as it diffuses through your belly, pooling between your thighs.

Katsuki watches you, peering up through heavy eyes, mouth full of your breast. He flicks his tongue over the pert nipple, coming up and switching to the other, lavishing you in attention. You exhale, tremors wracking your body. Cradle the back of his head, grip tightening reflexively when he hits that sweet spot, and the groan rumbling in his throat prickles under your skin.

Satisfied, he continues lower. Throws your legs over his broad shoulders, laid flat along the bed. The mattress jerks when he ruts into the sheets, still confined in his pants. You hold his gaze as his cheeks hollow. Saliva pools into his mouth and he tucks his chin, spitting it on your clit, massaging it over with his thumb.

You shudder, hips canting. “Shit, look at you,” he pants, voice so thick and supple you want to wrap yourself in it. “Keep your eyes on me, yeah?” he litters kisses across your inner thigh, pressing praise into the sensitive skin there. Your heels dig into the thick muscle at his back when he dips to kiss your clit, licking in and around his fingers. “I wanna see your face when you cum”.

You’re pulsing around him, frantically chasing the feeling. It’s— overwhelming, like you can’t breathe through it, and every string in your body has been pulled taut, wavering on the precipice. You reach to grasp his forearm. The muscles flex under your palms, pave unrelenting, and tears begin to sting behind your eyes.

“Fuck, Katsuki,” you gasp, breathlessness abated by the sudden rush of air to your lungs. “Feels so good, I can’t… Katsuki I can’t—”

A broken sound reverberates throughout the room the moment he stops, pulling back and leaving you empty. You can barely believe that it came from you, squeezing your eyes shut in shame. But then he’s right there, crowding into your space, caging your body with his own. “Oi,” he softly takes your jaw, “What did I say? Look at me”.

You squint up at him. You take in his swollen lips, lidded stare, the sheen of sweat on his brow, hair matted to his forehead, arousal and spit coating his chin. For the first time you think you might understand, just a fraction, the greed of those who kept you. Because now you desire to be the one to take. To keep. To stow away his shamelessness and be the only one to see it.

“You hurt?”

“No,” you whisper, blinking away the haze. Katsuki tucks his knees up higher against your middle, tops of his thighs shelving your splayed legs. You feel yourself clenching around nothing, empty. “I’m sorry”.

“Don’t fuckin’ apologise,” he tucks his nose against your temple, indifferent to the sheen of sweat. You inhale his musky scent and slide your arms around his shoulders. “Got too in your head, huh?”

His cock twitches in his pants, still hard and pressed to your thigh. Gathering your bearings you subtly rock your hips into his lap. You shiver at the sharp hiss by your ear, the drag of his soft lips over the shell. He nips at it in warning.

“You want to keep going?”

You nod, playing with the thin hair at his nape. He rumbles and it feels like a purr, pushing up only to pull at the belt buckles around his waist. Impatient, you reach to help, pulling the leather out from the loops, fingers trembling.

Katsuki frees his hands and lets you work at the buttons. He wears a small, crooked smile on his face as he watches, chest rising and falling with every anticipatory breath. You pull them down his hips, a trail of light hair leading from his bellybutton to his cock. He shifts, hooking into the waistband and pushing them down his legs, kicking them off the bed.

In your impatience your fingers wrap around his length, playing with the soft skin. You circle the blushing tip, smearing pre with your thumb. He throbs, abdomen clenching with a guttural moan that shoots straight to your own.

“So impatient,” he cups your jaw and forcing you to meet his eyes. “Get me nice and wet?”

“Yeah,” you rasp, detailing how his pupils expand as you slide his cock through your folds. The corner of his mouth twitches. He grins as he dips to kiss you. It is more chaste than the last, a kiss for the sake of kissing.

Then the grip on your jaw tightens. Firm and unyielding. Katsuki’s big hand engulfs yours, squeezing his dick, teasing the tip at your entrance. “Gonna make you cum on my cock. But you’ve got to listen to me and relax. Okay?”

You desperately want to dig your heels into his lower back, to drag him inside and fill up that awful emptiness, to take him to the hilt and keep him there. Instead you acquiesce, forcing yourself pliant; rewarded with a soft kiss, he presses his forehead to yours.

“Take a deep breath for me,” he tells you. You inhale, ribs expanding as your lungs bloat. Slowly, Katsuki pushes his tip past your entrance, and begins to sink his cock into you. His expression shutters, eyes rolling shut as his face scrunches up. Strained, he says, “Breathe out, baby. Slow”.

You exhale, ending on a long moan as skin meets skin. He settles in the cradle of your hips. “Good,” his voice is gravelly, strained. His nails bite at your waist, “And in”.

Repeating the motions your muscles clench around him as he pulls out, as though your body couldn’t be without him. He huffs through his nose and you feel it hot on your cheek. It continues like that. He fucks you slow and deliberate, pinned to the bed like a butterfly, guiding your breathing. You cannot look away from him. He’s devastating. He’s yours. Wild spikes are tousled around a flushed face, mouth kiss-bitten and slack with awe. “Katsuki,” you whisper, each more frantic than the last.

The earlier intensity does not return, rather, it accumulates inside of you with every inhale, suffusing through you like a warm, pleasant fog. The pressure has you bursting at the seams, undone by the indelible drag of his cock, how his pelvis pressed so perfectly against your clit, little incantations of your name murmured into your hair.

“Ah, fuck. Katsuki, I’m—” your thighs seize either side of his waist, toes curling as the words catch in your throat. “M’gonna…”

“I’ve got you,” he fucks you a little deeper, gritting his teeth. The muscles in his neck flex with exertion. “In and out, baby. I’ve got you”.

Those practised breaths quickly stagger into uneven whines as you’re tipped over the edge. Ley lines erupt behind your eyelids. You arch back into the sheets—pelt and cloak rumpled beneath—as the pleasure quakes through you.

Katsuki fucks you into your orgasm and then beyond it. You cradle him to your chest when his rhythm stutters, releasing a long groan as he spills into you.

Together you collapse back on the mattress, rolling onto your sides. He slides his arm beneath your head and hooks your knee over his hip, keeping himself nestled inside you for a while longer. You lie there until the fog recedes, leaving a sated contentment in its wake.

In that instance you can no longer tell where the line of your own body ends and where Katsuki’s begins. You feel warm, comfortable against him. All the fears and hypotheticals that sought to fill the hole in your chest have faded. You realise in those intimate few minutes that home is what you choose it to be. A place, a concept, a person. Home is the ocean, said to cover more than half of the earth, fissuring inland and stretching further than the eye can see; it is a current that will always run in your veins. But humans, too, are made of the sea. Water, minerals and tissue. Home is in the blood that rushes to Katsuki’s cheeks when you kiss him.

This is where you belong.

Eventually Katsuki decides he needs to get up. Your objections go ignored, silenced when he returns dressed with a damp cloth to wipe you down. Once he's done he pulls up the bed covers and manhandles you under them, declaring that he needs to go downstairs and pay ‘that woman’ for the room.

“Won’t be long. Don’t even think about getting up. I’ll need to buy you some clothes tomorrow…”

Grin hidden under the blankets, you call out to him before he goes. He stops in the doorway, softened by the lamp light. Feigning innocence, you jokingly ask, “Before you go, could you pass me my pelt?”

Your heart races when he reflexively goes to do so, only for him to halt halfway. His eyes narrow, lips thinning into a smirk:

“Real fuckin’ funny”.

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugo katsuki x reader #bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader

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netegf · 1 year

Text

inside

pairing: ao'nung x reader

For a hunter, driving spears through fish bothered Ao’nung more than it should have. It was something about the piercing of skin, the quick flush of pink-stained waters that too callously left no trace. The action of it – cutting through the body – violating the sanctity of in and out.

Today, he made a promise to say the words explicitly. Your two feet dance in the reef’s low tide before submerging completely. No hesitation, just numbingly cold waters straight up to the thigh. The feeling of his hot hand tightly woven in yours made you feel that way – lending the power to jump in headfirst like a dare he gives, but is too scared to take. Ao’nung tightens his grip and nervously makes a call for his ilu.

“Let me guess." You puff out your chest like a boy from long ago once did. "‘If I want to live here, I have to ride’.”

His lips loosen at the jest because, frankly, his voice doesn’t sound like that - but more compelling is your cute laugh that bubbles through the ocean surface. He sucks his teeth, shakes his head like he regrets tugging you by the fingertips out of your marui pod a few moments after eclipse – he knows he doesn’t – and finally lets his eyes give you a warm once-over. “Eywa, you are aggravating.”

If it's a lie, that's for him to know. Though, if the devilish grin you wield like a weapon is any indication, then something tells him his walls never stood a chance. To that so-nourishing ground that willed water to move when it shifted, his armour was so breakable. You were made to seep through it.

“Try it,” he murmurs, shoving his spear into your palm. “Like I taught you.”

Shakily, you take the tool and bend forward into the water. Ao’nung’s arms quickly wind around your waist, keeping you steady, grounded. You make a sudden thrust of the weapon that impales into nothing and feel droplets of water smack emptily against your face.

“Fuck, that was bad." When the chuckle escapes his lips, Ao’nung winces. He hadn’t meant for it to sound so harsh, but it did, and it always seemed to.

You narrow your eyes. Irritated, he can feel it. But the water licks where it stings, fish swim together in rhythmic circles, and his laugh is pretty.

“Watch it, fish boy. I taught you that word.”

He bites his lip. The water is no longer hot, and fish tickle at his feet. “Did I use it right?”

“Yes, teacher’s pet, you’re the perfect student,” you roll your eyes. Grumbling then, “apparently, only when it comes to bad things.”

Pinching at your hips, his hands spin your body around so that your chest heaves for his eyes to see. He places a chaste kiss on your collarbone. Looking up to meet your eye-line, he reasons, “you only teach me bad things.”

“Yeah? Well, they suit you.” A playful bite to the hook he threw first, but something about those words makes Ao’nung ache on the inside. Suddenly, he jolts and lets his hands rest at your back, your body falling until it teasingly hovers just a few inches above the water.

“Do they?” His lips turn all the way up. Eyes twinkling at the precariousness of your position and your pretty face of shock an unintended bonus. He plays the game – makes the empty threat of dropping you. “Think carefully.”

Seconds later, laughter explodes from both of you. Vibrating against the water as your fists come up to slam against his chest and squeals of ‘they don’t! they don’t!’ sloppily soothe Ao’nung’s anxiety. He pulls you up and your hands cup tenderly at his soft cheeks.

“Say something nice.” You whisper. Ao’nung feels dizzy from the warmth in your stare. His casts his eyes down, not wanting to be seen. Not knowing how to release the words that are stuck in his throat. The truth that scratches. The sickening vulnerability of insides clawing their way out. He is hiding, his forehead pinches, and you notice it.

“What’s on your mind, pretty boy?” Eyes closed, he leans into your touch. Then he brings his hand behind your neck, gently pushes until your head rests against his hard chest, and all you can hear is his heartbeat hammer, hammer, hammer. You trace the pretty ‘X’ of his sternum.

“Nothing. Just you.”

Perhaps for too long, the two of you sway together in the water. When the coolness of it sinks back to your ankles, Ao’nung’s spear is back in your hand, and there is a certain clarity in the way he keeps you cradled inside his arms.

It is in the pearls he keeps in his pockets for your collection. In the meatiest bites of fish that he leaves to the side for you to eat later. In the warmth of his body ghosting yours when you finally catch a fish - in the way he taught you - spear right through the inside.

It is his love, inextricably. The action of it. Inside everything.

reblogs/tags are appreciated <333

#ao'nung x reader #aonung x reader #ao'nung #aonung #atwow #avatar 2 #calling ao pretty boy... check #i fear.. this makes no sense

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lovemyavatar · 1 year

Text

STAR GIRL

| Lo’ak x F!Avatar Reader |

summary: you’re lost, caught between worlds. what could possibly go wrong when a lonely forest boy offers some distraction?

warnings: mentions of grief and death, Neteyam is a lil bitch, pure Lo’ak fluff

dialogue in italics is Na’vi translated to English

chapter one chapter three

Chapter Two

Something pokes the bed you’re laying in, the entire structure swaying beneath you. Your face scrunches against the pain of sore muscles tensing.

Rustling overhead pulls you closer to the surface of consciousness. Your eyes are unusually heavy as you try and fail to pry them open. Your brow pinches with uncertainty. Typically, waking up in your human form isn’t difficult. The moment your Avatar falls asleep, you’re back.

A loud squawk and the deafening sound of large wings beating against the wind startles you. Your eyes pop open, a rough gasp leaving dry lips.

You blink once, twice, three times. Your gaze darts from side to side, pure confusion settling in. The cold metal of the link pod isn’t in front of you. Your arms wiggle at your sides, something rough scratching against your skin.

“You’re finally awake!” A small voice shouts beside you.

You lurch upright and instantly regret the action when the hammock beneath you rocks violently to the side. Your fingers clutch the edge with a vice grip. Your head jerks toward the voice, coming face to face with a child.

“I thought you’d never wake up!” A huge grin splits her face.

Your stomach rolls when the hammock shifts again at your aggressive movement. Instinctively, you look down, but quickly close your eyes at the sight of nothing but branches and vines below.

Slowly, your gaze returns to the girl perched on a nearby branch. You immediately recognize her as the same girl who visited you the night before in the Tsahik tent. She’d hidden behind her brother the whole time, so you hadn’t gotten a good look, but the intricately woven necklace she wears is a dead giveaway.

Dread tightens your chest. Something is wrong. You never came to in your human body. Somehow, you slept through the night in this hammock, and woke up still in your Avatar.

It shouldn’t be possible.

“Come on, there’s so much I want to show—”

“Tuk!” A strong voice scolds, the twisted vines supporting your weight vibrating with the force of his feet landing behind the girl.

Her ears flatten as he grips her shoulder gently, guiding her behind his legs. You blink up at him, eyes wide with alarm. Your heart slams in your chest, breath quickening with each passing moment.

Something is very, very wrong.

“Go back to your chores.” The man who brought you here the night before speaks lowly in Na’vi, eyes never leaving you.

A tremble wracks your entire body. You’re hyperventilating, but there’s no stopping it. Panic swells within you, filling you whole.

“But—”

“Now, Tuk. Unless you want dad to find out you were with the demon.”

The little girl pouts, lips pulling into a frown. She crosses her arms and sticks her tongue out in opposition before casting you one last glance and jumping down to a lower branch.

Neteyam turns back to you once he’s sure Tuk has made it onto solid ground. His stiff shoulders relax slightly at the sight of you doubled over, hand to your chest. You’re breathing quickly, and for a moment he wonders if you’ve somehow gotten into something toxic.

He regards you curiously, head tilting to the side and dipping to see your face. It’s contorted in pain or sorrow, he can’t tell. For a moment you’re stable, until you gasp out and flail your arms. The nivi (hammock) sways to the side.

He has no choice but to lunge forward, hand clasping around your forearm. He curses under his breath, not wanting to touch you but knowing his mother will kill him if you somehow fall to your death on his watch.

He yanks hard, your body frantically clambering onto the branch beside him. He instantly releases his hold and you crumble into a heap on the rough surface.

“Come, I will take you home.” He says, hoping it will break whatever spell has come over you.

Your eyes flick up to meet his, wide with unease. As you try to catch your breath, the pool of dread in your stomach whispers that you may not have a home to go back to.

A week has passed, and you still aren’t used to the new normal. Not even close.

You grunt with frustration and reach onto the tips of your toes, arm outstretched above you. For the last hour, you’ve been collecting as much yovo fruit for the lab as possible. Now that you’re able to roam Pandora freely, it’s become your job to sustain the food source.

At least, you’ve made it your job.

The last seven days have been extremely difficult. Transitioning into your new body, your new life, is the most challenging endeavor you’ve ever been forced into.

Admittedly, part of you had always wanted to be Na’vi. You wanted the freedom to explore the beauty of Pandora without restriction. Breathing the air, laying beneath the stars, all without returning to the cold, lifeless confines of the lab. It was always a dream. Something you fantasized about.

But abandoning your human body forever? The thought never crossed your mind.

A seizure. That’s what Meg said.

When you were caught in the storm, laying in a broken pile in the forest floor, something unexplainable happened. Your human body should’ve been safe in the link pod. The moment your Avatar fell unconscious, you should’ve woken up unharmed. But you didn’t.

You died.

Simple as it was, it still didn’t feel real. You’d seen it. Confirmed it for yourself as you hugged your own lifeless body with tears streaming down your face. One version of you was gone, buried six feet below the Pandoran earth just steps from the lab.

And yet, here you are. Reborn as something else. Someone else.

In a sense, you’ve been grieving. Though part of you now has exactly what it always wanted, it arrived at the expense of your human connections. Your human life.

It wasn’t much of a life from the outside. You lived and worked in a metal box, only witnessing the amazing world around you when there was time to boot up the link pods. But it was your life. And you loved it.

You just want to feel useful. That’s why you’ve been out here, collecting food for your colleagues. Or, former colleagues now. You can’t sleep for more than a few hours anyway, not unless you camp out outside the lab.

You’re too aware of everything that could be just beyond the trees to comfortably sleep outdoors. So, you’ve been staying in the lab for as long as your Avatar’s lungs can handle the oxygen rich air.

Your fingers finally manage to grab a piece of fruit. You jump down, a victorious grin pulling at your lips.

Something snaps from behind and you spin around quickly, fear licking up your throat. Instantly, your heartbeat doubles. Your eyes roam the nearby tree line, but see nothing out of the ordinary.

A hand presses against your chest, willing your heart to slow down. Just as you’re about to turn around and continue your efforts, a pair of large, yellow eyes come into view. Breath catches in your throat. Any progress you’ve made on your heartbeat is out the window as it slams against your ribs.

The Na’vi steps forward tentatively, now aware that you’ve see them. A glint against the light confirms they’re holding a bow, aimed directly at you. In a flash your hands come up beside your head in a show of surrender. You can only hope they know what the gesture means.

They emerge from the thick forest, eyes narrowed threateningly beside the taunt string of their bow. Your lips part, ready to speak Na’vi with a native for the first time to ensure they won’t shoot you.

Instead, they surprise you by quickly lowering the weapon. A lopsided grin takes over their face, demeanor instantly relaxing. Through the panic a surge of realization passes through you.

“What’s up, Star Girl?” The boy you recognize as Lo’ak greets you in perfect English.

Despite the way your heart still pounds uncomfortably, your lips can’t help but pull into a relieved smile. He seems friendly. “Pointing another arrow at me already?”

He chuckles lowly and lifts one arm through the bow. His eyes unabashedly rake down your form from head to toe, long fingers curling against the weapon now slung across his chest. Heat prickles at your skin under his pointed gaze. You take a moment to remind yourself that he isn’t checking you out, but most likely judging your clothing.

“What are you doing out here?” He takes a few slow steps toward you, as if to gauge your reaction.

You gesture to the basket of fruit that now lays overturned on the ground beside your feet. It was balanced on your hip as you collected fruit, before you were startled by his presence.

His eyes meet yours, instantly captivating. Your breath slows. Just like in the Tsahik tent several nights before, there’s something burning beneath his gaze. Some kind of intensity that demands your attention. Holds it captive until he’s ready to let you go.

He hums low in his throat, and your stomach flips. Without looking away, he slowly crouches down in front of you. Oh, Eywa. You tear your eyes away, finding something interesting in the sky as he starts collecting your discarded food.

Lo’ak stands to his full height, several inches above yours, and offers you the now full basket. You accept it gratefully, a thank you on the tip of your tongue when he surprises you by taking a piece of fruit from the top.

“Hey!” You can’t help the reaction, though part of you instantly regrets it.

No matter how drawn to him you feel, you don’t know him. He’s a stranger, and you’re an outsider. That makes you the enemy. He’s already pointed an arrow at you twice, simply because of who you are. You know you shouldn’t be scolding him, but the protest just spilled out.

“I’m sorry, did you need this?” He holds up the small purple fruit and inspects it for a moment before large yellow eyes flick back to yours.

“Kinda, yeah.” You deadpan, unsure what he’s doing.

He holds it out toward you. Your fingers reach for it, only for him to yank it back against his chest at the last second. You gape at him, mouth falling open in shock. He merely sends you a heart-stopping grin in return.

Slowly, he takes a few steps backward. Toward the dense forest. Your eyes widen, fingers tightening against the basket at your side. His eyes glitter with mischief as he gestures to the price of fruit.

“Come on, Star Girl. Let’s see if you can keep up.”

In a flash, he’s gone. You’re left standing there, frozen with wonder. Did he really just…?

Without giving it much more thought, you take off after him. Leaves and vines brush against your limbs as you break through the tree line. Your eyes land on his broad shoulders a few yards ahead and you tear into a sprint.

It takes some effort to keep your footing through the dense forest. Roots and diverse flora litter the ground, scraping against bare feet every so often. Your eyes track his graceful form as you race through the trees.

He veers off to the side, taking a quick turn to the right. His eyes, bright against the muted browns and greens of the forest, shine as they meet yours over his shoulder. You barely manage to catch the smirk pulling at the corner of his lips as he pushes forward and out of view.

A grin splits your face when you turn the corner and see that he isn’t too far away. Though you’re sure he’s going easy on you, catching him would still ignite a sense of pride within you.

There’s a small clearing just past the trees. He heads straight for it, and you don’t hesitate to follow. Smaller bush-like plants inhabit the space. He weaves through them easily. You aren’t nearly as coordinated and end up ramming into one of them.

Soft leaves scratch at your side, but that isn’t what captivates your attention. You instantly stagger to a halt at the sight of a lizard floating past your face. Wings, splayed out on its back like propellers, lift it into the air. Brilliant yellows and reds glow against the quickly eclipsing sun.

A few feet away, Lo’ak watches you curiously. The yovo fruit rests lightly in his palm, forgotten at the sight of your childlike wonder. Your chest heaves from the effort of the chase he’d just given, but you pay it no mind. Your full attention is on the small animal flying in circles in front of you.

Your eyes are wide, mouth agape as you track its every movement. Something churns in his stomach, but he quickly squashes the feeling. It’s intriguing to him, how you look at something he sees as normal with such regard.

“You’ve never seen a kenten (fan lizard) before?” He speaks lowly, as to not startle you.

Your gaze never wavers from the animal, voice light with admiration. “Not in person.”

Without warning, he rushes forward into the field. You gasp out in surprise and finally turn your gaze to him, just in time to see why he’s made the sudden movement. A dozen or more kenten emerge from the plants all at once.

A hand moves up to cover your lips as a joy-filled laugh bubbles in your chest. It’s almost hard to believe that the sight is real. You turn around a few times, completely surrounded by the amazing creatures.

Bioluminescence glitters against the darkened sky, illuminating their path as they fly up toward nearby trees. You’re transfixed, utterly entranced by the sight before you.

Off to the side, a proud grin pulls at Lo’ak’s lips.

“Can I show you something?” He breaks the silence only after the last kenten has disappeared from view.

His voice trembles slightly, nervousness tightening his stomach. He doesn’t want to push you too far, and end up losing your attention. You let your eyes fall from the tops of the trees, now dark as the lizards burrow into their leaves.

You meet his gaze, breath hitching. There’s something so intense about the way he looks at you. You fidget under the scrutiny, chewing on your bottom lip in thought.

You should go home. It’s late, sun barely peaking out past the shadow of eclipse. By the time you get back, it’ll be completely dark, and you still don’t trust yourself to stay safe all alone in the elements of Pandora.

But…you have to admit that you’re having fun with Lo’ak. More fun than you’ve had in years. In just this short time, he’s brought out a side of you long forgotten beneath the weight of your scientific duties. His whimsical nature has allowed you to be carefree.

He’s helped you—if only for a brief moment—forget about the troubles plaguing your everyday life. A wonder has been reignited within you, the lens with which you see the incredible beauty of the moon you call home.

Tentatively, you nod in agreement, ignoring the small voice in the back of your mind saying this might not be a good idea. He smiles triumphantly and takes a few steps to close the distance between you. He drops the piece of fruit he’d stolen into the basket you’re still holding and gestures for you to follow.

You go further into the forest than you’ve ever been before. Anxiety pulls at your chest. In all your years on Pandora, you’ve never set foot on Omatikaya land intentionally. Aside from the night you got lost in the storm about a week ago, you’d stayed far away.

It’s practically law. The rules are understood by all humans. Step onto their land, and you will die.

Your head is on a constant swivel as you hike through the trees. Lo’ak maintains a slow pace to make sure you can keep up, looking back occasionally to check that you’re still there. By the time you arrive at your destination, eclipse is in full effect. The world around you has come to life.

It’s more breathtaking than you could’ve ever imagined. Warm moisture collects in your eyes, but you’re quick to whisk it away. You never thought you’d have a chance to see any of this in person. Despite having an Avatar, you were never fully here. Not like this.

Lo’ak stops at the edge of a massive pond, turning watch your face as you take it all in. It’s roughly circular in shape, and teaming with life. Two trees stand tall in the center, curved branches twisting their way toward the edges. A wall of stones shelters the back side, a small waterfall cascading down the smooth surface. Vines and plant life entwine high above the clear water, almost blanketing the entire area.

Through the surface of the water, fish and other animals swim happily in their habitat. They’re glowing, just as the earth itself glows. Gorgeous colors across the spectrum pulse and glitter all around. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Topping this sight is a challenge that doesn’t seem possible within your lifetime.

Suddenly, your dumbfounded stupor is interrupted by a loud splash. Cold water splatters across your face and torso. You take a step back, free arm coming up to shield yourself from the impact.

“Lo’ak!” You chastise his laughing form as it emerges from the water.

“Come on, Star Girl.” He beckons you closer with a wave of his hand, water rippling at the surface with a gentle shimmer. He curses his own heart silently as it skips a beat at the sound of his name on your lips.

You instantly shake your head in opposition. There is no way you’re getting your clothes wet before having to walk all the way home. It’s already dark, and you’ll be freezing for the entire journey.

“What? Can’t swim?” His teasing grin only widens at your hesitation.

With a sigh, you glance over your shoulder. Toward the direction of the lab. Despite how amazing this has been, you know it can’t last forever. Duty begins to weigh you down once again.

“I really should be getting back.” Your voice lowers regretfully.

His smile falters for a split second before he pulls it taunt again. He swims to the edge of the pond and extends a hand toward you.

“Okay, that’s fine. I’ll walk you home. Can you just help me out?” His large eyes glitter against the moonlight as you step closer.

The second your hand slips into his, he yanks you down into the water. A surprised yelp is swallowed below the surface as you tumble into the pond. You’re submerged for only a few seconds before you break free with a gasp. The chilled water prickles at your skin, sending a shiver up your spine.

“Hey!” You splash water against his face. “Not cool!”

He laughs loudly, head twisting to the side to avoid your attack as much as possible. Through the annoyance at being wet, you can’t help but return his smile.

He treads water only a foot away. This close, you’re able to fully take him in for the first time. The freckles that dot his skin have come to life, glowing against the glistening droplets of water that trail down his face. His shoulders, broad and strong, poke out of the water every couple seconds as he keeps himself afloat.

The beads tied into his braids click together as he whisks water from his forehead. Your gaze dances across the area, noting how the blue lines running over his skin almost form a symmetrical pattern. His lips, top one fuller than the bottom, twitch into a smirk.

Slowly, he allows himself to slip into the water. You watch curiously as his expression gradually disappears until all you can see are his eyes. They burn a hole through you for a searing moment before they’re gone too.

You peer down into the crystal clear water, but lose sight of him as he swims away quickly. Not more than a second later, something brushes against your ankle.

A surprised yelp escapes before you can stop it. A hand comes up to cover your lips, embarrassment heating your cheeks. Almost a minute goes by without event. You’re about to give up, swim back to the edge and get out, when a gentle grip circles your calf.

There’s barely enough time to take a breath before you’re beneath the water. Your eyes don’t bother closing as you twist around, coming face to face with a grinning Lo’ak. Glowing fish swim around you both, paying no mind to your playing in their home.

He’s so close. Only inches away. His eyes freely roam your face, almost like he’s searching for something. You shove against his chest, a tiny smile breaking through your annoyed facade.

A gasp of air fills your lungs as you break through the surface. He’s not far behind. A few minutes later you’re perched at the edge of the water, knees pulled tightly to your chest. One of your arms wraps around them protectively, while the other leads a delicious yovo fruit toward your lips.

“So, Star Girl?” You break the comfortable silence that’s blanketed the two of you for several minutes.

“You’re from a star, aren’t you? The same one as my dad.” Lo’ak takes a bite of fruit beside you. He quickly wipes away a stream of juice as it glides down the side of his chin. Your eyes track the movement.

“I’ve never been to Earth.” Your voice drops with a tinge of sadness, gaze tearing away, instead flicking up toward the sky wistfully. “And I do have a real name.”

His head tilts curiously, large yellow eyes boring into your profile for a long moment. He decides against pushing the subject and chuckles lowly, reaching into your basket for another piece of fruit.

“You don’t have to remind me. The clan hasn’t stopped talking about you.” He leans back onto his free hand, exposing his toned chest and stomach.

You have to force your eyes away again. “Well, that’s comforting.”

Another comfortable silence fills the small space between you. Warm evening wind rustles the wet material of your clothing, but you don’t mind. The shiver you expected after being submerged never comes. It’s as if the air blankets you, protects you from feeling cold.

“What’s it like?” Lo’ak suddenly speaks up, adjusting his body so one of his legs is bent at the knee, while the other dangles into the waters edge. He’s facing you completely now, every bit of attention directed your way.

You know exactly what he’s asking. He wants to know what it’s like to be an Avatar. To be part human, but also part Na’vi. It’s probably an insane concept for him. The only reason he’s somewhat familiar with the idea is because his dad used to be one.

A heavy sigh weighs you down, eyes flicking up to meet his. You shift so that your position mirrors his, though your legs cross together.

“It’s like I exist between two worlds.” The statement couldn’t be any truer due to your current predicament. One he knows nothing about. “And I don’t really belong in either.”

Something tugs against his heart. He relates to that struggle in ways you’ll never know. He’s always been an outcast. Different than his siblings in every way. They’re perfect. Perfect children. Perfect soldiers. They do everything that’s expected of them.

But Lo’ak? All he does is screw things up.

“My whole clan thinks I’m a freak.” He lifts his right hand, showing you his fingers. “Demon blood. That’s all they see.”

Your gaze shifts from his hand to glowing yellow eyes. They pour into you with sincerity. He’s showing you a side of himself, a vulnerability that no one else gets to see. Your bottom lip finds a home between sharp teeth.

Without thinking, you take his hand in yours. His breath hitches. He almost pulls it back in surprise, but your hold tightens a fraction. He watches you curiously as your hand slides down to clutch his wrist. His eyes fall closed for a moment. Your fingers don’t even meet around the appendage.

Your other hand moves up to rest against his, palm ghosting against rough skin with every movement the two of you make. Your heart soars in your chest and you desperately try to keep your breathing steady. Tentatively, small fingers intertwine with his much larger digits.

His eyes flutter open, meeting an intensity he never imagined could reflect back toward him.

“Doesn’t look too bad to me.” Your voice is barely above a whisper, heated gaze matching his.

Before he even knows what’s happening, he’s leaning toward you, heavy lidded eyes flicking down to glossy lips.

“There you are, baby bro!”

He rips his hand from yours, the force of it knocking you forward. A breath later, Neteyam bounces around the corner, an easy smile on his face. It instantly falls as his eyes scan the area, posture stiffening at the sight of you.

“What is this? Disobeying dads orders already?” His tone has lost all playfulness, all familiarity when he realizes what’s going on.

Lo’ak’s head drops, ears flattening. His eyes pinch tightly with the effort of containing his anger. Leave it to perfect Neteyam to ruin another moment in his life.

His gaze flicks up to his older brother, narrowed in warning. “Just go and pretend you didn’t see us.”

“And let dad find out I knew you were with the vrrtep (demon)?” He finishes the insult with a scoff, and you seethe silently.

You aren’t supposed to know what he’s saying. Even still, it’s obvious he’s been mocking you at every possible opportunity. Under normal circumstances, you would never let it slide, but he is the oldest son of the Olo’eyktan. You have no choice but to take it in stride.

Lo’ak straightens beside you, jaw clenching. His lips part in protest, but Neteyam is quick to speak over him.

“Oh, no. No way. Come.” His judgmental gaze flicks harshly to you. “Both of you”

“Speak.”

Neytiri’s lethal glare pins you both in place as it jumps between you. You’re situated on the floor of the Sully family tent, the same spot you were none-too-gently dragged by Neteyam moments ago.

“I was hunting and ran into her. That’s it.” Lo’ak’s voice is cold, devoid of any of the emotions he showed you just minutes before.

“Neteyam?” The weight of his mother’s wrath is momentarily lifted as she looks to her oldest son.

Lo’ak’s teeth grind. Of course, she wouldn’t believe his word. Why would she when her favorite child is standing right there to confirm or deny? His gaze burns through his brother until their eyes lock. He silently demands, pleads, that he back him up for once.

His lips purse, chin lifting in deep thought. Hands clasp behind his back, shoulders rounding. “They were talking. Nothing more.”

Neytiri lets out a quick sigh, of relief or anger you aren’t sure. Her attention returns to Lo’ak and you straighten, fear licking up your spine. You know she would never hurt her own child. But you’re nothing to her. She despises you, actually, and you’re sure she thinks this whole thing is your fault.

“You are late. Neteyam has to leave his duties to get you. How does this look for son of Olo’eyktan? Hmm?” Her head tilts to the side, wide eyes boring into him scrutinizingly.

“I’m sorry.” The words are hallow, rehearsed. Insincere as if he’s said them thousands of times.

“And you. Trespassing on our land again.” Her glare penetrates you, a thick swallow scratching down your throat.

Panic grips your chest. Words jumble in your brain until you’re saying the worst combination possible. “Technically, the first time I was unconscious.”

Lo’ak’s head jerks toward you, a surprised breath fanning your profile. He can’t believe you’ve just spoken to his mom that way. He doesn’t know if you’re brave or stupid, but either way it’s something he would never dare. Even Neteyam covers his mouth in shock across the room.

Neytiri hisses, face contorting in pure rage. She advances on you, but before she makes it more than two steps the entrance of the tent flaps open with a new arrival.

“Whoa, whoa, hey.” Jake practically sprints to her side, cradling her shoulders gently to guide her away from you. He positions her to face him and peers down into her pinched expression.

“What’s going on here?” His voice is tender, soothing his mate instantly.

A fraction of tension releases.

She takes a deep breath, eyes closing for a long moment. When they open, they don’t burn nearly as bright. “Neteyam found them. Alone.”

His attention shifts to the two of you and he deflates, disappointment evident in the way his ears twitch. “What did we tell you, boy?”

A frown mares your face, stomach twisting with the knowledge that they’ve forbade him from seeing you. Your gaze falls to the floor, feeling smaller than ever before.

Lo’ak watches you crumble, heart clenching painfully. He doesn’t know why he cares so much. He just does. From the first moment he saw you, he’s been drawn to you. Something deeper ignited below the surface that day. Something darker. A sense of protectiveness so strong, it actually scares him.

A seed of hatred, of self-loathing, has been growing roots within him for years. Being the family disappointment will do that. But right now, in this moment, he’s never hated himself more.

He hates that he’s dragged you into this mess. Into his world of constant berating and lecturing. He’s used to it after withstanding the pressure almost daily for years. But you’re innocent. Inquisitive. You still look at the world with wonder.

He would never forgive himself if your light was dimmed because of his inability to do anything right.

“This demon is nothing but trouble.” Neytiri pushes out of Jake’s hold, stalking to the back of the tent with crossed arms.

“Honey, he got into plenty of trouble before she came around.” Jake throws his hands up as if to say what can we do?

Lo’ak’s fists clench in his lap.

“You will stay away from our son.” Neytiri turns suddenly, a long delicate finger pointed in your direction. She grunts with disgust, head twisting to regard her oldest child. “Neteyam, take her from here.”

He instantly nods in agreement, as if standing at the ready to follow any order given. His long legs put him at your side within seconds. Four fingers wrap around your bicep, hoisting you up harshly. A wince scrunches your face, feet stumbling to catch on the floor.

Lo’ak lurches to his feet, unable to stop himself at the sight of Neteyam’s tight grip.

“Bro, don’t touch her like that!” He slaps his brothers hand away from you. It releases instantly and you fall back a step, hand coming up to rub at the throbbing area.

“Hey!” Jake yells out, voice deep with authority.

Neteyam is quick to shove against Lo’ak’s shoulder, lips twisting into a frown. “Defending the vrrtep (demon) already?”

“Don’t call her that!” Both of Lo’ak’s hands smack against Neteyam’s chest, hard, sending him back a few steps.

He wastes no time in stalking forward, fist raised as if to punch his younger brother. Jake forces his way between them, a hand on each of their heaving chests.

“That’s enough!” His voice booms within the tent, putting an end to the foolishness immediately.

Neytiri looks on, eyes wide with horror, hands covering her open mouth. It’s as if she’s never seen her sons fight. As if they’ve never laid a hand on each other before this moment. A certain devestation wells behind her bright gaze.

It turns to you, narrowing into a deadly glare. “You will go away from this place! And never come back!”

Several long beats of stunned silence fall over the room. Your heart races, ramming against your ribs uncomfortably. Nothing but ragged breathing fills the space. You’re still trying to process what the hell just happened when the entrance of the tent flaps open again.

“What is the meaning of this shouting and yelling? They say my family has gone crazy!” Mo’at enters quickly, eyes wide and lips pulled into a firm line of displeasure.

She scans the area, grunting in aggravation when her attention passes over Neytiri. She bows her head respectfully to her mother, ears flattening.

“You.” Your back stiffens, eyes flicking toward the powerful woman hesitantly.

Arms wrap around your waist protectively, sure you’re about to be cast out or worse. Mo’at regards you carefully, head tilting from one side to the other. She approaches you slowly, fluid movements bringing her to your side in only a few strides.

Her chin tips upward as she unsheathes the dagger always dangling from her neck. She swiftly pokes the sharpened bone into your shoulder. You wince against the twinge of pain, but it’s gone as quickly as it came.

Her eyes fall closed as she swipes fresh blood across a waiting tongue. After a moment of deliberation, they pop open, pupils blown wide.

“Eywa is strong within you.” She regards you with a controlled curiosity, now walking in circles around your deflated form.

Tension is steadily rising. It’s palpable against your skin as heavy stares bore into your very being. Several minutes go by. No one dares move a muscle as she performs a small ceremony around you, murmuring to herself and gesturing her hands smoothly.

She straightens suddenly, shoulders squared with decisiveness. “She will stay, and learn our ways.”

“Mother!” Neytiri is quick to protest, pained voice hiding none of her displeasure.

“Tsahik has been given a sign. It is done.” Mo’at shushes her with a dismissive wave.

Jake curls Neytiri into his arms, brow pinching with uncertainty. She glares at you defiantly, and you’re quick to glance away. Neteyam doesn’t look much happier, though he seems more concerned with his mother than anything else. Lo’ak simply peers up at you through dense lashes, a small smile curling the edge of his lips.

“Come, child.”

Before you can even form a coherent thought, Mo’at grips your elbow gently and guides you from the tent. At once, you’ve been invited into the clan as a guest. The Tsahik has given her blessing, something no Na’vi will take lightly. And yet, you haven’t been accepted. Not even close.

You have no idea where you’re going but, strangely, feel safe with Mo’at. You cast a fleeting glance over your shoulder as the woven flaps flutter closed. Tense voices roar to life the moment your presence is gone. Your ears twitch at the sound, trying but failing to pick out any words.

With a sigh, you’re resigned to following this new journey blindly, hoping you haven’t just walked into some kind of trap. The last week has been nothing short of a whirlwind, and you have a feeling it won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

taglist:

@bajadotcom

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witchofthesouls · 2 months

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Wondering how Tarn and the Nurse's story would go if they shared a world with Fusian Cannon Wedding Megatron.

The idea of fusion Cannon Wedding Megatron!AU is that the senate reserved the right to take any sparkling from unconjuxed parents ostensibly to be put in a worthy home while simultaneously making it cost prohibitive for all but the elite. Even for the upper middle caste it was incredibly burdensome. But if you could get an audience with a priest of the 13 they could interview a couple deem them worthy and chose to wave the fee.

Megatron, the agnostic, due to Gladiatorial WWE-esque Theme Shenanigans actualy ends a priest of Megatronus because he refused to be a fake priest in such a way that the last Priest of Megatronus decided "welp this is my best bet as a secuessor." Megatron ever the political activist used this to perform legally binding weddings for any sparked couples he came across.

Cue the Revolution and the risk of Deceticon newsparks being stolen increases. But there are treaties to return kiddos to their parents or next of kin. So if con, bot, neutral, or implausiblely compatible alien sparks up or is sparked up by one of his Decepticons, they are kidnapped and brought to the alrer at gunpoint for now High Priest Megatron to Marry them off "for the children's sake." The DJD has brought runaway 'juxes to the alter.

Now the DJD still has the Doner Cause because it's a way of protecting the bitties. Megatron initaly gets wind of the situation of with the Nurse and is relatively chill. Right up untill he realizes that the nurse was never married to the sire. Nevermind their Caimen with very diffrent rules and cultural norms. (Also their the mentee of a very scary Healer). Kaon doesn't even have to pull a witnessed act shenanigans to help his ship set sail. He just has to include a question in his routine report that Tarn is continuing providing doner support as outlined in the Doner clause. "As the cowardly tratitor abandoned his lover the moment he found out she sparked we did not find out he had sparked her after he was dead. Is it possible to posthumously conjux them for the security of the sparklings?" Kaon knows damn well posthumous conjuxing isn't a thing.

Shenanigans are about to ensue.

This is great because Megatron's manifesto would have revisions about religion, so instead of an atheist society, he more likely written about freedom of religion for anyone to practice. Just as a final Fuck You to the Senate with their harsh stance.

And because of the wild shenanigans, I think the Decepticons would have strong civil and family court proceedings.

Deadzone and Nurse were (ex) fiances, so Megatron could be chill with that.

But not with Tarn also sparking up the Camien. Now that's a whole-ass security risk!

Megatron wouldn't need to demand Tarn to return. The Peaceful Tyranny bulleted itself to the main flagship, ignoring everything else to get it situated after the consequences of too much excitement at the "fake" resort wedding.

A poor, sleep-deprived and absolutely exhausted Nurse would have been scooped up and thrown into the shower and polished to high-hell. You were vaguely aware of quick, sure servos working your back and sensory panels, and Helex was hogging the dryer.

This was no dignified walk. The entire Justice Division burned rubber and left scorch marks on their stampede to the Altar. Every other 'con jumped out of the way and booked it elsewhere because no one wanted to be in the vicinity that had the D.J.D. that hyperfocused.

Shockwaves rippled across the base that it wasn't a gruesome execution but a wedding.

Out of all the mechs, Tarn's.

The gossip mill was set aflame. Information between truth and rumors clashing, especially when the newlywedded mech was spotted with strange, blue Energon painted bright on his chassis.

The reality of it was far less fantastical.

You were a sack of photon-potatoes over Tarn's shoulder as he carried the cradle-pod of newsparks under his opposite arm.

At the daunting reveal that Megatron the bomb of Megatronus Prime's ordained lineage with the markings and proven insignia, you took a short break in the private sideroom (with proper permission from the High Priest) to freak out over your own lack of preparations and courtesies for said High Priest.

You did invoke part of an old bonding custom from Caminus' initial vorns when the Titan carried the survivors of the Tribal wars composed of different peoples.

You and Tarn get married with each other’s Energon painted upon the chassis.

Not only Megatron officiated the ceremony, but allowed a generous honeymoon package of timeoff and a few gifts.

#ask #bookandyarndragon #transformers #transformers idw #idw #mtmte #the donor clause au #fusion canon wedding!Megatron #tarn #reader insert #cybertronian!reader #cultural misunderstandings #culture clash #pregnancy #sparklings #bitlets #megatron #kaon #helex #religious imagery #maccadam #my writing #megatron knows few fears but the intensity between Tarn's and Nurse's gazes would make a lesser mech sweat #kaon was not afraid to shock anyone that interrupted his OTP's wedding again #no one knew what to expect when nurse needed a moment and called for tarn #but they all lost because no one betted on them painting each other in their respective Energon #tesarus is mildly ticked because no one was complaining about the blood if he has a smidgen-#*kaon shocks away Tess' grumbling*#nurse has been given a husband by her own god's Conjunx's head priest and by Solus you will do your best to make it work!#nurse will make a name for camiens so cons will break out in cold sweat when around other camiens

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hash-mashh · 9 months

Text

i’m bored and i have some time before my friend comes over so here’s a visual inventory of my tmbg collection(as of 9/10/2023)!! i’d like to note that i’ve been collecting for a while, and i can’t really afford “rarer” items so that’s why my collection is a big bunch of littler things.

i have subcategories,extra info on items, and a written inventory under the cut. feel free to read!

my signed items. i bought BOOK already signed, but marty beller signed my chess master after the show on 7/7/23.

oh, speaking of the 7/7/23 show here’s what i brought/bought that day. not pictured is a flood patch that’s currently sewn on a bag.

my handmade items! this was before i able to buy any “real merch”. not pictured are my clay johns, accordian, and chessmaster figures(remind me to add them in later!).

oh. ohhhh, yes. i’ve had these since i was little little kid so these items are the “oldest” in my collection. i guess you could consider me a lifetime fan!

these are all the cds i bought yesterday. not pictured is cast your pod to the wind, which is also in the else case. needless to say my wallet is empty now. i was going to get a mink car cd but it was to beat up to be worth it :’-)

okay, these don’t really count for my collection, but these are the cds i have borrowed from the library at the moment.

finally, my favorite items! some of these aren’t worth much but they have strong sentimental value.

ALL THE ITEMS I HAVE:

CDs-

Lincoln(1988)

Flood(1990)

Istanbul(Not Constantinople)(1990)

Why Does the Sun Shine?(1993)

John Henry(1994)

Factory Showroom(1996)

Severe Tire Damage(1998)

No!(2002)

They Got Lost(2002)

The Spine(2004)

Here Come the ABCs(2005)

The Else(2007)

Cast Your Pod to the Wind(2007)

Here Come the 123s(2008)

Here Comes Science(2009)

BOOK(2021)

Vinyl-

State Songs(1999)

Handmade Items-

Cardboard Mojo Chessmaster(Signed by Marty Beller)

THEY cotton mask

They Might Be Giants pin

Air dry clay John figurines(with corresponding air dry clay accordion and Chessmaster)

Misc. Items-

Flood patch

Here Comes Science t-shirt

BOOK book(Signed by Johns)

i have no clue why you’ve read this far but thank you for sticking around!

#book of hash #tmbg #they might be giants #tmbgareok

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impala-dreamer · 1 year

Text

Teachable Moments

A Short Story

~After watching the latest episode of The Winchesters with their new cast, Y/N and Jensen keep the party going with Drake once the crowd leaves. Drinks are poured, old episodes are watched, and things get very interesting...~

Jensen Ackles x F!Reader, Drake Rodger x F!Reader

4,806 Words

Warnings: NSFW! Age Gaps but no one cares. Instructional Moments. Sexy Naked Stuff. Oral and Such. Threesome. Little bit o' Voyeurism. Dom!Jensen if you squint. Sharing is caring!

Impala-Dreamer’s Masterlist ~ Patreon ~ Published Works

There was garlic on their breath from the spaghetti dinner but no one cared. The cheap red wine had been plentiful and the whiskey they now sipped was old and rich, something that Jensen had kept safe for a special night. There wasn't anything particularly special about that night, except that he wanted the whiskey.

With the watch party done and the night winding down, they sat on the big gray sectional in the rented living room and let the television capture their attention.

Drake was the only newbie left and he sat opposite Jensen on the sofa, his long frame tucked into the tight corner. He looked horribly twisted with both legs up on the cushion, each jutting out in a different direction, but his young limbs could take it. His head was drooped on his hand, elbow digging into the arm of the couch.

Y/N was laid out on the lounger between Jensen’s legs, her head on his chest, arms around his waist. Behind her, Jensen was so deeply relaxed that he seemed to disappear into the plush fabric. The backwards ball cap he wore was forever in danger of popping off as the bill hit the back of the sofa.

They were comfortable and warm, a little bit tipsy, and impossibly contented.

It was a good night.

As the television flickered blue light across their faces, a rumble hit Y/N’s ear and she startled. “Your stomach is growling so much, Jay,” Y/N said with a laugh, pressing her ear to the middle of him. “Jesus… It’s like a mosh pit of carbs in there.”

Lips set on his glass, he grinned. “Dinner was good. Too good.”

Drake agreed with a burp. “It was.”

“Gross.” Y/N rolled her eyes and hid her laugh in Jensen’s sweatshirt. “Boys are so gross.”

“Yup.” Jensen dipped his chin towards her and let out a belch that put Drake’s to shame.

Disgusted but laughing, she pushed away and cleared the air around her with a frantic wave of her hand. “Two peas in a pod, you two. I’m doomed.”

Playfully, Jensen lunged at her, pinching at her sides. She swatted him away, fooling around and flirting while Drake watched on from the corner. He kept his face straight ahead, pretending to watch the screen, but his eyes were on Y/N, on Jensen, on the way they teased and touched and moved against each other.

When they leaned in for a kiss, Y/N noticed him staring and quickly avoided Jensen’s lips. She bit down into the corner of her mouth and eyed Drake with a hint of interest, but then seemed to change her mind. She smiled and slid back down over Jensen, returning her gaze to the t.v.

An old episode of Supernatural was playing on TNT and she slapped Jensen’s chest when she saw the scene.

“Oh! This is my fave! Shush!”

He cringed at her slaps. “I wasn’t saying anything- geeze-”

“Shhh…” She said again, sitting up a bit to stare at the screen. “This is my favorite Dean kiss…” She sighed dramatically as Amara lifted her hand to Dean’s cheek and pushed up on her toes.

“This?” Jensen laughed and swallowed the rest of his whiskey.

Y/N swayed dreamily. “Yes.”

He laughed. “Why this one? Out of fifteen seasons, this is your favorite?” He turned to silently ask Drake for help, but the young man simply shrugged.

Y/N shifted between his legs and leaned back, her head resting on his shoulder. “Because… I don’t know. It’s like… He really wants it but he doesn’t and he can’t help it. He’s so drawn to Amara but he knows it’s wrong and everything about her is so… intoxicating and… I don’t know, it’s so hot.”

Jensen smacked his lips and grinned proudly, a bit of color floating over his freckled cheeks. “I am a good kisser…”

Y/N shook her head gently. “Yes, but-”

“But?”

“But that’s not you. That’s Dean.”

“But it’s me kissing…”

Again, Jensen looked over at Drake, seeking back up, but there was none to be had. Hazel eyes were hazy from the liquor and wider than they should have been as he watched the couple interact. He pushed out a smile and another shrug, unable to help.

Y/N rolled her eyes and turned to look at Jensen. “No. You don’t kiss like that.”

He laughed, a little shocked and a lot intrigued by the look on her face. She was serious and passionate and it made his dick twitch.

“I don’t?”

“Nope. That-” She pointed at the screen. “-is not a Jensen kiss.”

“You think so?” he teased, leaning closer.

Y/N mirrored him, eyes narrowing as she bent close. “Yeah. I do.”

“Hmm…”

Jensen’s hum landed on her lips and Y/N fell into him. Her eyes fell closed as he licked gently at her mouth, her lips parted as his hand lifted to cradle the back of her head. She melted against him, limbs tingling, breath stuttering. She moaned deeply and Jensen smiled over her lips.

Drake had forgotten to be respectful and look away, instead turning so he could see them fully. He sat squished in the corner, mouth hanging slightly as he watched Y/N squirm. Her lashes fluttered and his stomach tightened. She moaned again and his mouth ran dry, fingers tensing on his thighs.

Finished proving his point, Jensen released her and Y/N swayed a bit, letting out an innocent, drunken laugh.

Proud, he looked over at Drake. “She liked it.”

Stunned, Drake nodded. He shifted in his seat, feeling strangely aroused and physically unable to tear his gaze from Y/N. “Yeah. S-seems like it.”

Y/N settled herself and then looked up, her eyes locking with Drake’s. Her cheeks burned. “I’m sorry, we’re making you uncomfortable…”

Quickly, he corrected her and untwisted himself from his pretzel pose. “No. No. Not at all. I just-” He froze, realizing that the words waiting in the queue could be considered inappropriate. Especially when said to his new bosses.

“Just what?” Y/N pressed the tip of her tongue between her front teeth and waited, watching his brain struggle.

He swallowed hard. “It’s just- I’ve… I’ve never made a woman moan just by kissing her. I’m…” He paused to laugh at himself and drag a hand through his hair. “Impressed, I guess.”

Jensen tucked his chin to his chest and chuckled. Y/N raised a brow, intrigued. Their eyes met and Jensen shrugged almost imperceptibly, a silent agreement made.

“It’s not that hard,” he said, twisting his head to look at Drake while his left hand rose to caress Y/N’s cheek. His fingers slid softly against her skin and curled gently behind her ear. She was caught in the touch, her eyes dimming as his thumb ran across her bottom lip, plucking it open. “You just have to… cast a spell…”

She took a breath and Jensen swallowed down her gentle exhale as he kissed her. He pushed himself into it; lips moving, fingers tensing, back rolling. He licked into her and she gasped, moaning even deeper than before.

When he let her go, she sat still for a moment, stunned and aroused. Her flesh burned, her heart pumped a little faster. She smiled and tucked her lip between her teeth.

Jensen sat back and tossed his right arm over the back of the couch, proud of himself. He looked over at Drake who was staring in awe. “See? Easy.”

Woken from the spell, Y/N slapped his shoulder. “Did you just call me easy?”

He laughed. “I know better than to even suggest such a thing. No, I mean- making you… hot is easy. If you know how.”

She squirmed a bit and hid her smile behind her hand, caught in a torrent of truth and put on display. Jensen eyed her until she had no choice but to look away, and he grinned.

“Just like that.”

Drake was captivated, watching her devolve from a strong, take-no-shit woman into a melty, innocently sexy girl.

His voice cracked. “Incredible.”

Y/N set her gaze upon him, enjoying the look of wonder in his hazel eyes. “Don’t let Jensen impress you,” she warned. “He’s really just a frat boy with a few skills up his sleeve.”

Mockingly, Jensen pushed the sleeves of his hoodie up to his elbows and made a showing of there being nothing there.

Y/N rolled her eyes. “Anyway…”

Drake leaned closer, drawn to her lips and the way she teased her husband.

“It’s not hard, no, but it does take a little… finesse.”

She winked and her smile nearly knocked Drake over. He sat back and exhaled slowly, cupping his fist by his lips.

Jensen watched keenly as the two eyed each other and with a nod from Y/N, stepped things up a bit.

He cleared his throat and ran a single finger across his stubbled upper lip, eyes landing on Drake. “How ‘bout you give it a try?”

The young man stumbled visibly, his mind tripping over itself. “Um- what?”

Jensen gestured toward Y/N and tried again. “See if you can make her moan…”

An awkward laugh rumbled through Drake as he looked back and forth between Y/N and Jensen, eventually staying locked on her. “What? Really?”

She reached across the sofa for him, her palm up and open. “Come ‘ere.”

Cautiously, Drake slid a big hand into hers and pushed up from the corner. She led him to sit at the foot of the lounger, sandwiching herself between both men.

“Don’t be nervous,” she whispered, dragging her hand up Drake’s arm to hold his shoulder. She pulled gently and he leaned in.

His eyes were wide and dark, slightly glazed. He reached for her cheek just as Jensen had, but held it just a breath away, hovering, giving her space to pull away if she wanted.

“You’re… sure?” he asked, looking at both in turn.

Jensen laughed softly. “Go for it. Show us whatcha got.”

Y/N scraped her bottom lip with her front teeth and let the plump flesh go slowly. Every ounce of his attention was locked on the simple movement, and Drake’s hand came down a little closer.

“I’m sure,” Y/N told him, leaning in so that his hand made contact. She closed her eyes, soaking in the warmth and newness of him. “If you want, I mean… You don’t have to.”

Drake sucked in a quick breath and his fingertips curled at her temple. His thumb jerked towards her lips and he swallowed hard. “I want to,” he whispered, “I really want to.”

Her next breath came out like a prayer that parted her pretty lips and ghosted across his face. He shivered and went for it, kissing her quickly and shoving his tongue between her teeth.

Shocked by his forwardness, Y/N gasped and couldn’t think to kiss him back. She smiled when he pulled away, sweetly looking down and squeezing his arm.

“That was… nice,” she said simply.

He sighed, disappointed. “So, not great.”

Y/N hesitated, not wanting to hurt his feelings. She shrugged. “No… not great.”

Drake’s posture collapsed. “Damn.”

Jensen leaned in, pressing himself against her back and setting his chin on her shoulder. “Don’t give up… How you gonna learn if you don’t keep at it?”

Y/N nodded. “He’s right.” She licked her lips and let her hand slip from his shoulder to the open collar of his white henley. She teased at the exposed skin at the base of his throat and Drake’s eyes took on the glow of blurred interest once more. “Try again,” she urged, batting her lashes.

He lunged for her but she pressed her palm firmly to his chest, holding him off.

“Slowly…”

This time, he was gentle, barely pushing into her, his kiss lingering, hand floating above her cheek. He hummed softly and Y/N tried to feel it, but there was little to latch on to.

Behind her, Jensen chuckled under his breath, amused not judging. “So close.”

Drake backed up and looked hopeful, but his glow faded as Y/N turned her gaze away.

“Still shitty?”

Quickly, she shook her head, smiling at him. “No. No. Not shitty. Very sweet.” She let her hand slide up to his jaw, holding him gently. “You’re so sweet.”

He frowned. “Sweet? That’s… that sucks.” He shifted away, dejected, and hung his head.

Jensen picked up the slack. “Hey- you just gotta… make her… feel it.” His arm slipped around Y/N’s chest and his hand found her cheek, pulling her head to the side. “Like this.”

Again, he kissed her, shoving everything he had into it. Y/N’s knees would have given out had they been standing but instead, she melted into him. Her shoulders rolled and a deeply delighted moan fell from her lips when he pulled free.

Her eyes were heavy, her body warm. Turning back, she reached for Drake and tugged his sleeve until he returned to her. “Your turn…”

He thought about giving up, of retreating to the other side of the couch or grabbing his coat and heading home. And yet, the taste of her was still sweet on his tongue and he wanted to try again, wanted to make her sway against him, feel her heart race beneath his lips.

He turned back and dove in.

She gasped at his attack and her eyes fell closed when his tongue swept across her lip, begging, tasting. She opened for him and he cupped her cheek, hungry fingers gripping her face and holding her captive.

He pushed his desire into her and she let go, moaning heavily when he bit down on her bottom lip, plucking it roughly while he backed away.

Y/N sucked in a quick breath, swaying a bit, and blinked to clear her head. “W- wh- wow.”

Pride swelled in his chest and Drake laughed nervously. “Better?”

“Fuck…” She squirmed against Jensen and hooked her fingers into Drake’s collar, pulling him close. “Do it again,” she begged, “please…”

His eyes flickered up to Jensen quickly and the older man nodded, giving his consent.

Jensen watched as Drake went back for more, popping up on his knees and towering over her. He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and Y/N craned up towards him, humming and whimpering desperately as he kissed her harder, snaked his tongue in deeper. She clung to his shirt, nails nearly ripping the thin fabric. With her body stretched, Jensen took advantage, brushing the hair to the side and sinking his teeth into the crook of her neck. Her back tensed and shivered; her moan made his cock twitch. He pressed harder into her which pushed her into Drake and Y/N’s body tingled with whiskey-tinged arousal.

“You two are gonna kill me,” she laughed, raking one hand through Drake’s dark hair and leaning back to rub the other against Jensen’s growing erection.

His lips burned on her pulse. “Oh, I think we’ll keep you alive for a bit longer.” He winked at Drake who laughed.

Hazel eyes narrowed on her mouth. “Probably.”

Another breathtaking kiss had Y/N clawing at his chest and spreading her legs to fit him between. He dropped down, moving like a jungle cat to lick at her lips, tease at her ear.

Jensen tugged his hand through her hair and yanked her head to the side, taking control of her lips while Drake pawed at her tits through her shirt.

Trembling and love-drunk, she floated between them, her body glowing with desire. “Please…” There was no more to it, simply a prayer for more, for the same, for whatever they wanted to give her.

Jensen laughed against her lips and gave Drake’s shoulder a quick shove, pushing him back. The boy sat back on his knees and watched in wonder as Jensen snaked his right hand into her shirt and plucked her left nipple between two thick fingers.

“You’re a fast learner,” he said, smirking as Y/N let out a blissful cry. “Wanna see how fast I can make her cum?”

Drake tried not to seem so shocked, but his jaw dropped and a silent nod said it all. “Fuck, yes.”

Jensen grinned and tucked his bottom lip between his teeth. “Watch closely…” He tugged on her nipple again and Y/N’s back arched off of his chest. “...you’re up next.”

She was like putty in his hands, squirming beneath his touch as his hands curled around her. She lay back, weak and wound up at the same time, her brain on the verge of total shut down. The only thing keeping her grounded was the expert and familiar way Jensen’s fingers plunged into her cunt and the startled and enamoured look in Drake’s eyes.

Jensen’s wrist strained against the tightness of her jeans and something about being clothed yet so exposed made it all even hotter for her. Drake was staring as she bucked against Jensen’s hand and she kept her eyes on his young face, enjoying the attention. She shuddered and held her breath as she came, fighting back the urge to scream lest she scare him.

When the tremors faded, she sank back against Jensen and twisted her neck to kiss him, licking into his mouth and humming darkly.

“So fucking good, baby,” she tugged at Jensen’s lip and he tapped his middle finger against her clit, making her body jerk. “Fuck…”

Green eyes lifted with a smirk. “Wanna give it a go?”

Drake swallowed hard. “I don’t think it’ll be that quick,” he confessed, mouth watering at the sight of her glowing skin and drowsy eyes.

Y/N laughed and stretched out, enticing him with a flutter of painted lashes. “You can take your time… I won’t mind.”

He grabbed for her, his long fingers curling around the back of her neck and tugging her up. She sat up and teased his lips with her tongue as he struggled with the hem of her shirt.

“I got you, brother,” Jensen laughed, helping to pull the cotton up over her head. With a quick snap, he opened the clasp of her bra Y/N wiggled free, laying back against his chest and showing off for Drake. “Like what you see?”

“So much…” Drake exhaled heavily and sank down, lips puckered and ready for a taste. He licked at her lips and then fell down, nipping at her flesh with cautious and explorative bites.

Y/N tugged on his hair, scraped her nails across his scalp, egging him on. She drooped against Jensen and turned to kiss him, desperately lost in the hard suckle of Drake’s mouth.

“Oh, he’s… good at this,” she gasped, eyes rolling as Drake scraped her nipple with his teeth. “Wow…”

“Yeah?” Jensen hissed and grabbed her, pinching her cheeks with one hand and squeezing. “You like that?”

She nodded in his grasp, barely breathing as he licked into her.

Drake slid on the sofa as he kissed his way down her belly. Nerves gone, he popped the button on her jeans and tugged them down off of her hips, yanked them from her ankles. She whimpered pitifully when his mouth fit against her covered pussy. He breathed out, hot and damp against the cotton and her shudder was intense.

“Oh, fuck-”

Jensen sucked down her squirming cry and cupped her tits, massaging and tugging at her sensitive flesh while Drake teased down below.

“He good at that, princess?”

Jensen’s voice clouded her head and she nodded dumbly. “Yeah… so good…”

Still covered by the thin fabric, the tip of Drake’s thick tongue pushed into her and Y/N bucked her hips against his face, near to trembling all over again. Hungry, he snuck a finger inside her panties and tugged them aside. She shivered at the sudden cool and then moaned as his lips found her clit.

He lapped at her flesh, moaning happily as he felt her thighs close in around his head. He shut his eyes and pushed a testing finger into her, then another, going deeper until her hips bucked.

Jensen cleared his throat and looked down at him. “Hurry up down there,” he growled. “I want a turn.”

Y/N pouted. “Don’t make him hurry,” she groaned. “It’s so good…”

Jensen nipped at her lips, teeth snapping dangerously close. “Is it? You gonna cum so pretty? Show him how wet you get?”

She gasped. “Yeah- fuck- please…”

Drake pumped his arm, fucking up into her with his long fingers. She cooed into Jensen’s mouth, struggling to break through and find that sweet release.

Jensen kissed her hard and then whistled swiftly to grab Drake’s attention. “Add another finger and curl them to the left. Up and back.”

Drake’s brow creased in question but he did as instructed, crooking his fingers deep inside.

Y/N sucked in a loud gasp and came almost instantly; a warm gush of wetness flowing freely down Drake’s wrist.

“Fuck…” He stared for a second and then dove in, licking up her juices and humming happily.

Shivering, Y/N grabbed at Jensen’s ear and tugged him down, kissing him frantically. She was trembling and burning with pleasure, desperate for more.

Recognizing her needy kiss, Jensen clenched his jaw and stared into the depths of her. “You want him to fuck you?” he asked, green eyes dark with possession and lust.

She was too stunned to answer, too focused on the press of Drake’s tongue against her cunt. She whimpered and Jensen’s eyes narrowed.

“Do you?”

She faded, eyes unfocused as the pleasure saturated every inch of her.

“Well?” Jensen’s tone dropped and she sucked in a sharp breath. “Answer me.”

Her eyes rolled, her jaw fell, tongue drifting out to reach his lips. “Yes…”

Jensen licked at her tongue and she shivered. He cleared his throat and addressed his protege. “Well? You heard the lady.”

Drake gaped up at him with swollen wet lips and wide eyes. “Yes, sir.” He pushed himself up onto his knees and fumbled with his jeans, nearly falling off of the end of the sofa.

Jensen gave Y/N a tiny shove. “Help him,” he whispered and she went, floating as if in a dream.

Up on her knees, she barely reached his shoulders and she tipped her head back, staring up at him seductively. She reached for his zipper and his hands closed around hers.

“We can stop if you want,” she said, momentarily clear.

He shook his head and slid his hands up her bare arms and around her shoulders. “No…” His fingers curled around the nape of her neck and he bent to taste her sweet kiss again. “Don’t stop.”

She slipped the denim from his hips and fit her hand around his cock, gasping at the heft and length of him. “Oh my…” She sucked her lip through her teeth and pumped her hand, eyes large as she watched him fall into a mess of arousal. His mouth dropped opened and his eyes shut tight, his chest filled with a deep breath. “Feel good?”

His eyes were like slits and he smiled like a fool. “So good.”

She leaned closer and tugged his shirt up so she could lay a kiss on his chest. Humming, he pulled the shirt up and off, tossing it aside to lay with her clothes at the foot of the television.

On screen, Dean was fretting about life, still fighting against his feelings for Amara, but no one was watching anymore.

Jensen moved out of their way, sliding across the couch so they could fumble over each other while he tugged his hoodie off.

With space to move, Y/N laid back and Drake fell down, crushing her into the cushions. He breathed heavy into her and she drank him down, wiggling her legs around his trim waist. His cock nudged at her cunt but he held back, cautious hesitation flooding his eyes.

She rubbed at the back of his neck and rolled her hips. “Do it,” she urged with a whisper. “I wanna feel you…” She pushed her lips into him, sucked his tongue into her, close to crying with need. “Please, Drake… please fuck me…”

His blood was boiling, fingers trembling over her delicate skin. He looked to Jensen who nodded silently, and then broke free. He pushed into her and Y/N let out such a beautiful cry that he thought his heart would burst. He pulled out and she whimpered, he thrust back in and she yelped through clenched teeth. Her nails crested his biceps and his hips bruised her thighs.

“Fuck, Y/N…” He breathed her name like a song and sat up on his knees, drawing her hips upwards with his strong hands.

She rocked back into him and turned her face to Jensen, excited to see him disrobed and relaxed, casually fisting his cock. She licked her lips and called to him with a familiar gaze.

“Yeah?” He climbed to his feet, his cock hanging long and hard against his left thigh.

Y/N nodded and opened her mouth, stuck her pink tongue out, waiting.

He settled on the couch beside her head, knees digging in, denting the cushion. He leaned back on his heels and stroked himself a few times while watching Drake’s dick slide slowly through her slick cunt.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he grit, heart racing, cock throbbing in his fist.

Drake shivered and dropped his chin, his body moving like an ocean wave as his fucked into her. “You ain’t kidding.”

Drool was spilling from her lips and Y/N moaned, reaching for Jensen with a weak hand. She scraped at his thigh until he closed the gap and bent over her, teasing her lips with the head of his dripping cock.

“That what you want, princess?”

She whimpered absently and lifted her head, taking him in as deep as she could.

“That’s it,” he praised, eyes rolling closed as her lips sealed tight around him. “So good, baby…”

Y/N went limp between them, filled and fucked and flooded with pleasure. She came hard just as Jensen struck the back of her throat, and Drake hissed, feeling her body seize tight around him.

Jensen growled in warning. “Don’t you dare cum in her.”

Drake sucked back a breath and strained to control himself, finally pulling out and grabbing the base of his cock.

Y/N reached a hand down between them and rubbed her thumb across his swollen head, making him explode and spray hot across her stomach. She moaned blissfully and the vibrations sent Jensen reeling. He jerked his hips and came on her willing tongue, panting as she swallowed down each delicious drop.

A familiar guitar riff echoed the room as the credits rolled, and Y/N rolled onto her side, hiding her face in a throw pillow as the boys dressed. She was glowing and warm, buzzing with orgasmic wonder.

“That was… unexpected,” she hummed, biting her lip as Drake bounced into his jeans.

He laughed and pulled the zipper up. “Extremely.”

“But good?”

He dropped his chin and looked up, still a little shy despite everything. “So good. Fucking amazing.”

Y/N felt her cheeks heat up and hid a giggle in the pillow.

Jensen shook his head at their flirting and tossed a damp kitchen towel at her. “Don’t mess up the couch,” he teased.

Y/N rolled her eyes and sat up, clearing away the guck from her belly. “Like you haven’t spilled a hundred things on this seat.”

He grinned and shrugged. “Yeah, well…” Slipping back into his hoodie, he pushed the sleeves up and tugged on the strings. He sighed, contented. “What next?”

Drake’s head popped through his shirt and he squinted at Jensen, unsure. “Uh…”

Y/N laughed and threw the dirty towel back at her husband. “Next you get me a refil and some chips or something because I’m starving.” She fished for her panties on the floor and tugged them up. “And then we’re gonna start the next episode because- drama!”

Both guys laughed and Jensen set his hands on the back of the couch, leaning over to gaze lovingly at her.

“You serious?”

“Hell yeah,” she answered, grabbing the remote before even finding her shirt. “Sam’s in the cage with Lucifer! We gotta hurry!”

Drake gave a little shrug and plopped back down on the couch. “She’s right,” he said, looking over his shoulder at his boss. “Oh! And… Cas-”

With a sigh, Jensen relented and grabbed the whiskey from the nearby kitchen counter, quickly refilling their glasses.

She was right, though- it was a good episode.

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#jensen ackles x reader #drake rodger x reader #one shot #it's good read it

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amphiptere-art · 10 months

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Remember asks are open.

RBB. travels of the cube.

This ask series has been modified slightly. It is now simply a collection of sporadic travel events with a couple of asks afterwards or perhaps before to flush out the in-between. The current event is stop ya silly siren. Where after Blue Moon was saved from drowning in the sea has now latched onto the main mast terrified. Captain Eclipse and Sun were able to figure out a way to calm down Blue Moon and allow him to help by being their wind. You're currently going down into the ship with the mysterious navigator moon.

Cruel copy.

This is a Lord Moon world. Where everyone has technically die but been brought back from the dead without their memories. Or at least fragmented memories. Causing confusion and stress. The latest events that happened were Wizard went with gladiator to return werewolf to Butler by going to Witch. Gladiator left soon after while Wizard stayed behind and tried to talk with Butler. The conversation was going okay before it wasn't and Wizard left. Butler is now having a crisis.

Empty cup ask

This is the world of Honey and Cider. A Lord Lunar universe with the added twist that the servant eclipse isn't pretending. They are very much sentient but are very broken due to trauma. The wither storm has dragged you into the fray because he is bored. Right now everyone is attempting to figure out how to entertain honey and cider. While also entertaining the guests that the void has dragged in. The current guests being a pod of Mers.

Blue Moon and black star show

This is the main storyline ask Tumblr. And is the only Tumblr where I might be selective with asks, and will update with actual written story.

This takes place sometime in the future. Approximately probably about a week after RBB-earth finally came to the daycare. You can ask all characters in red blue and black. Although I'm going to mainly focus on Black Star Blue Moon and RBB Earth. Currently you guys have convinced a black star to leave and try and get help. Blue Moon has been talking to some of the asker's about their new strange behavior.

Sulky star cluster

This has reblog conversations. Which makes it so that character in that conversation is unavailable for asks. Although they will have conversations as long as it is set up properly.

This is a star holder Glam Rock Freddy world that has been taken over by black Star. Who has made it a refuge for Eclipses. There is the ones black Star directly took into the Plex, and then others who came along and set up a city outside of the Plex. Currently Cygnus is talking about repairs in a reblog conversation. Rigel is getting his bike repaired with sundown eclipse and those that live with him. Antares is at the library with Honey, Cider, and chapter trying to enjoy himself.

Stardust arcade

Completely unattached to tsams. It is a unique cast of characters trying to figure out how to be nice to everyone. The world is split between new AI and old AI. Robot rights have just started to get settled. But the new AI are making it a struggle for the old AI. Making it a struggle of verses with only you asker's and blood moon the therapist in works.

Ask the amph greater universe.

This also includes all role plays I make. Meaning that reblog conversations happen more often.

I decided to change up this thing to just be a general area to ask any of my characters. Whether they be DCA, Tsams, or fantasy. This is a place for you to ask whoever you want in an environment where they are in their universe. There's nothing to update because I just made this. This ask blog is not timeline sensitive. hopefully. I do like to consider the asks before. This ask blog can also be crossover sensitive. Meaning that to some extent, All crossovers are cannon within this ask blog.

In many of my asks your physical. The only difference is that in most it is your avatar, while an RBB it is the cube.

Also I will note some of these asks blogs are semi-story. Meaning that the previous ask is taken into consideration. This includes RBB-TfTC, CC, Empty cup, And maybe atAGU. There's only one ask blog that is selective. That being BS&BM ask. And that's mostly for a plot purposes.

#red blue and black #ask red blue and black #cruel copy au #ask cruel copy au #sams #tsams au #tsams #sams au #Blue Moon and Black Star show #ask the Blue Moon and Black Star show #empty cup ask #empty cup #ask the amph greater universe.#crossover story

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secondtechnicianrimmer · 4 months

Text

Space Corp. Directive #1215225

For some ungodly reason, you fancy the second technician, but you'd be damned if you ever admitted it.

Pairing: Arnold Rimmer x (F) Reader

Warnings: None! A bit of ya know snogging

Chapter Four: Time Slides

The Cat had told you about it ages ago, when you asked to hear about how he first met Lister and Rimmer. There were hundreds of stories from those early days, how Lister awoke from stasis to find the whole crew dead, how they faced sickness and time leaks and the dreadful Queeg, how Lister was actually a god to all Felis Sapiens, and how Rimmer had once duplicated himself out of spite. That thought certainly kept you happy for a few nights.

But one of the most intriguing stories had been about this machine, a VR video game sent in a long-awaited post pod. Better Than Life could give you everything and anything you wanted: a different job, better friends, a new life. And it had been completely forgotten about.

After hunting high and low through the ship’s countless rooms, you finally found the disc, covered in dust and horribly scratched. Feeling deflated, you almost didn’t bother seeing if the old thing worked, but you took it back to your quarters and slipped it into your personal computer.

It took a few minutes, the disc was well over 3 million years old now, as was the computer system designed to play it. With a little help from Holly, you got the game booted up and ready.

“Holly? Could you deadlock the doors?” You settled onto your bunk and got yourself comfy. “I don’t wanna be interrupted.”

“No prob, mate. Doin’ it now.”

The headset felt uncomfortable and clunky as you lowered it onto your head. Static filled your eardrums, then a start up sound, reedy with age.

You closed your eyes. Or were they closed for you by the game? You didn’t have a second more to think about it.

When your eyes opened again, you had to narrow them against the smoke billowing out all around you. The game had placed you in a stark, metal corridor, not unlike those of Red Dwarf, except here the lights were low, casting purple and red shadows across your path.

You walked forward, following the corridor until you reached a huge, metal door. It opened for you, and bright, white light spilled out.

“Ow!” You raised your arm to shield your eyes. “Fuckin’ hell, that’s-”

You were on Callisto.

Blinking against the harsh sun, you tried to get your bearings. After years of unnatural light and synthetic oxygen, standing in the middle of the market square of your home moon felt almost too much to bear, even if this too was artificial. But it felt real. The stone cobbles beneath your feet, the gentle wind tangling in your hair… It felt so real, you could cry.

The warm sun, the source of all life in this system, greeted you like an old friend. Basking in her light, you held your arms aloft and breathed in home.

“Oi! Move it, sweetheart!”

You jumped back, eyes wide, just as a man rushed past, pushing a flower cart so heavy, he was almost walking horizontally.

“Sorry! Sorry.”

The market was heaving, just as you remembered it. If what the boys said of Earth was true, then all human life had died out in this system long, long ago. Three million years. Everyone you knew, everyone you loved, everyone you saw in this market every day, was gone. But you’d known that for a while now. So why did it make you so sad?

“Maybe not your best idea…” you said out loud to yourself.

Across the cobbles, a woman behind a stall called to you, offering up soaps pressed into the shape of flowers, stars, and moons. A clock chimed at the other end of the square, marking noon. There was music in the air, and the smell of freshly baked bread. If this really was all gone, you decided, you should enjoy it while you could.

Arms swinging, you took your time at every stall. Obviously, you had no need for money aboard Red Dwarf, but you noticed that every time you wanted to buy something, you could find exactly the right amount of change in the pockets of your Atalanta IV jacket.

“C’mon, darlin’! Fresh fruit and veg. You won’t get this lot past Saturn, I’ll tell you that for free, my love.”

“Celebrate the New Lunar Cycle properly, ladies, gents and others! We’ve got everything you need to throw the ultimate Gratification Day celebration.”

“Fuuurrrss! Get your genuine synthetic Ganymedian fuuuuurs.”

Nothing had changed. Life here looked just as it did the day you left for the stars.

“What do you do…” you mused aloud. “When you can do anything.”

It came to you fairly quickly. Really, you only came here for one reason. The moment The Cat had finished describing how the game worked and what it was capable of, the idea popped into your head and made itself at home there. But there was something else you wanted to try first.

You blinked and you were indoors. It was the very definition of an expensive, elegant restaurant. Of course it was. This whole world was built from pictures in your mind.

A high ceiling arched above your head, where chandeliers twinkled like bursting stars and wide windows opened up the night sky to you. In a blink, you’d arrived at evening. Time changed however you wanted it to here.

Round tables covered in pristine white cloth dotted the room. The guests, all dressed up to the nines, sipped champagne from sparkling crystal glasses, while penguin-like waiters zigzagged between them, holding silver trays aloft. At the entrance, the maître d' knew your name and bowed as you approached him.

“Oh, God.”

You looked down, suddenly panicked. You weren’t dressed nearly nice enough for a place like this. But as soon as you thought of it, your comfortable shirt and joggers transformed into the ceremonial uniform you’d only worn once or twice.

“Okay, this might be a bit much.”

You didn’t have a chance to change. Through the low hum of chatter and the light scrape of cutlery against plates, you heard someone calling your name.

And there they all were, sitting around a table as if nothing had happened. Alive. They were all alive. Montgomery, Falstaff, Mortimer, Stanley, Talbot and Shallow. Your captain, your friends, your crew. Dazzling in their own dress uniforms, they raised their glasses as you shakily approached their table.

“You’re late, Lieutenant!” Major Montgomery declared, though she was smiling. “Come, take a seat.”

“You almost missed the starters.”

Captain Falstaff, the head of Xenolinguistics aboard the Atalanta IV and your friend, poured you a drink as you sat down beside her.

On your other side, First Officers Mortimer and Stanley were eagerly tucking into their dinners.

It had been eight months since you last saw their faces. To hear their voices again almost made you shudder. It was too ghostly, too ghoulish. These people, your friends, they were long dead, as you should be. It was good to see them smiling.

Second Lieutenant Talbot beamed at you across the table.

“First class place, this,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to come here.”

“They wouldn’t let the likes of you in, usually,” Officer Shallow snorted.

They bickered like schoolboys, just as they always did, just as you remembered.

In fact, everything was as you remembered, like these people had been plucked from your mind and placed here to entertain you. The major’s dark hair, greying around her temples. Captain Falstaff’s habit of tugging at her earring. The ring of laughter that always leapt up whenever Talbot told a story.

They existed now, only in memory. But you’d brought them back. You weren’t sure how to feel about that but it was good to see your friends again. You’d missed them so much.

Together, you ate dinner and told stories of old times. Though you’d only been on a mission together for a few years before the disaster that upturned your life, there were plenty of good memories to revisit.

Who knows how long you spent there. It could have been days, for all you knew. Time meant nothing here. What felt like hours could be just a few minutes in the real world, you really had no clue.

In the middle of Shallow reminiscing about their first days together aboard the ship, his gaze was caught by something over your shoulder. He smiled and gestured with one hand.

“Friend of yours, Lieutenant?”

Confused, you looked around, only to find Rimmer standing behind you. His appearance startled you so much, you shot up out of your chair.

“Arnold?”

You blinked at him, trying to figure out why and how he could be here in your world, and all the while, you couldn’t put your finger on what was so different about him. He was dressed in his usual emerald green uniform, smart as ever. But he looked off somehow, like there was a piece missing, but you couldn’t think- Oh.

“Your-”

You stared at his forehead, where the tell-tale H should have been.

“You’re-”

Surprise morphed into pure shock as Rimmer smiled and took your hand.

“Come with me. Excuse us, gentlemen, ladies.”

He led you away from your old crew, following a winding path through the tables. So startled and so dumbfounded by the feeling of his hand in yours, you barely took any notice of where he was taking you. All you could do was stare at your entwined fingers, entranced by the sensation of his skin touching yours at last, his long fingers strong and deft.

When you next looked up, you were outside a familiar door. The restaurant had melted away without you noticing, and had transformed into the apartments you called home before you left for the next galaxy.

The change in setting was jarring enough to bring you back to your senses.

“Rimmer-”

He somehow pushed open the door to your flat without needing the key, and pulled you inside.

“Arnie, wait. What’s going-”

You didn’t get a chance to take in your home, which you hadn’t seen in three million years. The moment the door closed behind you, you were pressed up against it.

Rimmer’s body crowded yours, his big hands on your waist, his lovely curly hair brushing your cheek as he bent his head and murmured by your ear.

“I love it when you call me that.”

You gasped softly as his hands slipped down to cradle your hips, his fingers pressing in just as his lips grazed your neck.

You didn’t stop to ask how this could be possible. The Cat had said that Better Than Life knew what you wanted most in all the world, all the cosmos. Turns out, he was right.

“You’re all warm,” you whispered, not trusting your voice not to shake as you let your hands rest against his firm chest.

“Hmm, whose fault is that?”

Rimmer practically purred the words against your throat. His breath tickled your skin, then his lips followed, pressing soft, tiny kisses up the length of your neck until he’d reached just below your ear. You practically melted in his strong arms.

Still, through the heavy haze that drowned your senses, there was a seed of doubt.

“This isn’t right,” you said, tilting your head back so that you could meet his eyes. “You’re not real.”

Rimmer smiled softly. And there was another giveaway that this place, as wonderful as it could be, was nothing more than simulated pixels and a clever mind probe. You couldn’t recall Rimmer ever smiling at you so sweetly. The game was learning.

“But I’m here, aren’t I?”

He took your hands again and led you deeper into the living room. You itched to explore your old flat, now more like a diorama of early 22nd century living than a warm home. But you couldn’t look away from Rimmer’s eyes.

“I’m talking, walking… You can touch me, at last. I know how desperately you want to touch me.”

He smiled again, a wicked smile that made your face burn. That was a little more like him.

“It’s all in your head. I know everything you know. Which means I also know all the naughty things you think about doing to me.”

He finally let go of your hands. Rimmer flopped down on the sofa, making himself comfy. Still his eyes didn’t leave yours.

“It’s enough to make a computer simulation blush.”

You looked away, more annoyed than embarrassed. Your Rimmer, the real Rimmer, also liked to tease you, to argue with you, and you never let him get the better of you.

“Shut up.”

“He’d probably like most of it. Some of it he’d love.”

“If you’re made up of my wants and desires, you’re just saying what I want to hear.”

“You’re not the only one who uses this machine, you know.”

That got your attention.

“Arnold?”

Rimmer shrugged.

“A few times.”

Your mind whirled at the idea. This could very well be just the game telling you what it knew you wanted to be true. Rimmer had never mentioned the game and had only a faint recollection of it when Cat brought it up, but he was good at hiding his feelings. Much better than you, anyway.

With a sigh, you motioned for Rimmer to get up.

“Would you just come here?”

He smiled up at you, his head cocked to one side.

“You want to sate your curiosity, is that it? Before you risk everything and make a fool of yourself, you want to see if it’s worth it. If I’m worth it.”

He uncrossed his legs, a blatant invitation.

“What I’ll feel like…”

“Rimmer-”

He shook his head.

“You don’t call me that when it’s just us. You like to call me Arn. Arnie.”

“You’re not him. You’re just a computer game.”

“Handsome one, though.”

He winked at you. And that was very Rimmer.

You couldn’t help it, you smiled. This was a game, one you’d designed for yourself and chosen to play. You knew this is how it would go when you put on that headset. So why fight it?

“I said, c’mere.”

Slowly, Rimmer stood up from the sofa. When he spoke again, his voice was low and soft, just as you’d imagined it would be.

“He’d love you bossing him about. He’s ever so respectful of authority.”

He stopped in front of you. Had he always been so tall? It was driving you wild.

Those hands rose up to rest on your hips again, so warm through all your clothes. Your breath hitched as he bent his head, though only to graze the tip of his nose along your cheek.

“He thinks about you in your uniform, you know,” he murmured, and squeezed your hips for good measure.

Your heart jumped. Rimmer had only seen you in your uniform once, when the Dwarfers found you in the wreckage of the Atalanta IV. But you weren’t fully conscious for that, so where did the game get it from? Unless it wasn’t lying and Rimmer really had logged in recently.

There was a glint in his eye as he reached up to tuck your hair behind your ear. You watched the corner of Rimmer’s mouth as he grazed his fingertips along the underside of your jaw, his touch so light you had to hold back a shiver. You could watch him explore you for hours.

But if this was your paradise, a world you shaped for yourself from your own wants and desires, then this is not how it would go.

You reached up and slipped your fingers through Rimmer’s hair at the base of his skull and pulled tight. It made him gasp, his eyes squeezing shut, but his open mouth told you it wasn’t out of pain.

Tucking your foot between his, you forced him to twist round until his back was against the door. He hit it a little harder than you intended, but, Io, if it didn’t send a thrill through you.

You leaned in close, your fingers still tightly fisted in his hair, and watched his mouth as he panted breathlessly.

“So handsome…” You pressed your face into the crook of his neck and grazed your teeth there, retaliation for earlier. “I knew you’d be a good boy for me.”

“Oh, darling…” Rimmer’s back arched away from the door, keening under your touch. “Been so long since I’ve been able to feel anything, you’re going to make me- God, been three million years since anyone touched me, darling…”

That made you bite your lip, swallowing down a groan. The idea that none of this was real was growing fainter and fainter in your mind, drowned out by the soft whine Rimmer let out as you pushed your knee between his thighs.

“Christ, darling…”

He huffed, flustered, then suddenly, his eyes met your again, a lot softer and darker than they were earlier.

“Or is it ‘love’?” he said. “Been three million years since anyone touched me, love. Christ, love.” Rimmer raised his eyebrows. “You’ve wondered about that. I know you have. Wondered what I might call you. ‘Lefty’ is for the others but you want him to think you’re special. And I’ll let you in on a little secret… He does.”

His hands found your hips again. Your dress uniform had disappeared and you were back in your shirt and joggers. Rimmer’s hands were so warm, you could feel every inch of them through your clothes.

“I’ve seen all his little fantasies…”

Rimmer pulled you closer, moving your hips until you were practically grinding against each other. It made your voice catch in your throat, your mind going blank.

He grinned, a very Arnold grin that was as arrogant as it was charming, the kind that left you unsure if you wanted to punch him or kiss him.

“He’s a noisy one.”

You didn’t doubt that at all. The way he went on, always needing to have the last word and whining constantly about the others. You knew he’d be a talker, but the thought still made your blood pump a little faster.

“Don’t worry,” You took his wrists and pinned them down by his sides. “I’ve got lots of plans for him, as soon as he gets his body back.”

“If he gets his body back.” Rimmer gave you a pointed look. “You should tell him. Me. You should tell me how you feel.”

The change in conversation made you frown.

“But you just said, what if he never gets his body back?”

“Why should that matter?”

“Well, we wouldn’t be able to…”

You looked down at his wrists, still held tight in your hands; your tangle of legs that allowed him to rock his hips into yours and offer you the friction you’d be craving ever since you entered the flat; and his lips, so close to yours.

He still hadn’t kissed you. Maybe something in the back of your mind simply revered it too much. A quick fumble against the wall, that was fun, that was dizzying, but a kiss? That was too intimate, something weirdly sacred.

Who knows how many times you’d watched Rimmer talk about his favourite telephone poles, or the exciting possibility of aliens, or one of his past lives, drenched in military glory, and daydreamed about how it would feel to slip your hand around his jaw, run your thumb across his cheek, and kiss him so sweetly, he never doubted himself again.

“You like me for me,” Rimmer bent his head and brushed the tip of his nose against yours. “You’re probably the only one in the cosmos.”

You frowned.

“Don’t say that.”

“You see? Always the first to defend me.”

His soft, fond smile made your chest lurch.

The change in pace was disorienting, and the mist was starting to clear from your mind. You had almost forgotten where you were for a moment, forgotten that this wasn’t real and this wasn’t Rimmer.

“You love me. I think that transcends the physical.”

You blanched.

“No one said anything about love.”

“No, no, you’re right. What do I know? I’m just a projection of your psyche.”

Your gut twisted.

It was a sensation you knew you would have no chance describing to anyone else. He spoke so casually, as if it were an undeniable fact, as if you feeling anything more than an embarrassing affection for Rimmer was comparable to the mechanics of gravity or thermal dynamics.

But it wasn’t true. It wasn’t. You weren’t in love with the idiot, you just fancied him a bit. Years in deep space without much in the way of physical touch made you do stupid things. He was handsome. He was funny, sometimes. He was nice to you. That didn’t mean you liked him. That definitely didn’t mean you loved him. The idea was laughable.

But the Rimmer that wasn’t Rimmer was looking down at you, his gaze soft yet steady. He wasn’t real, but he was a projection of your wants, needs, desires, and dreams. Everything he said and did was constructed by your own mind. But you couldn’t deal with that right now. You just couldn’t.

“I should go.”

You carefully untangled yourself from Rimmer. He didn’t protest but you could feel his eyes on you as you straightened out your clothes. Cheeks burning, you tugged at your shirt, pulling it back into place. You hadn’t even realised he’d undone a couple of buttons.

“Thanks for-” You flapped a hand in his general direction, then, feeling painfully awkward, you added, “You were lovely. See you later.”

You turned to leave. You weren’t even sure where you planned to go. Back to the restaurant? To see what else there was to explore here? None of that seemed to matter now. Your heart was pounding in your ears, your body still warm from Rimmer’s wandering hands.

You didn’t get far. One of those lovely hands wrapped around your wrist before you could take another step.

“Wait! Before you go…”

Rimmer gently pulled you back to him. He was so tall, his inclined head meant his curls fell across his forehead, where his H should have been.

“Just one little kiss?” Rimmer raised his eyebrows, his gaze already drifting down to your lips. “That’s what you came here for isn’t it?”

And there it was. The truth at last. Ashamed, you had to look away.

While working in the ship's darkroom, Kryten discovered that the developing fluid had, over the millions of years that Red Dwarf had been drifting aimlessly through space, mutated. They could make photographs come to life.

Not only that, you soon found that you could step through and explore photos and slides, so long as you kept within their borders. Lister soon found a way to change history. Idiotic as this was, it was exhilarating too. You had time travel.

Then it all went blank for a while. As Kryten later explained, after everything had calmed down considerably, changing one aspect of history meant that Lister never joined the Space Corps. This led to no Cat, no Kryten, and no you.

The next thing you knew, everything was back to normal. Despite the odd, sickening feeling that sat in your chest - a by-product of suddenly not existing in one time stream and reappearing in another - you felt okay.

You only heard the shouting when you were halfway out of the cargo bay door.

“I’m alive!”

It made you stop in your tracks.

“Textures! I can feel, I can fondle! Don't you think it’s incredible! I! Am! Alive!”

The explosion rocked the cargo bay. By some miracle, you, Cat and Lister were well out of its reach. It didn’t seem to bother the boys, this was all just another day for them, but when you realised what had happened, you thought you might be sick.

Later, when Rimmer was bemoaning being a hologram again and Kryten was explaining everything that had happened one more time, just so you could wrap your head around it all, it dawned on you that you’d missed an opportunity you would never meet again.

For just a few minutes, Rimmer had been alive. He was here, he was solid, he was real. You could have touched him. You could have held him. You could have grabbed him by his stupid face and pulled him into a kiss so outrageously good, he’d never ever want to stop.

But you missed it. You missed him. And now you were stuck again, uncertain and confused and scared of your own feelings.

It’s why you wanted to try Better Than Life. It’s why you wanted to find Rimmer here. You thought if you finally got to feel him, feel the warmth of him, feel his hands against your skin and his mouth against yours, it might cure a crush that had been steadily growing with every passing day. And the game knew it.

“Just one kiss.” Rimmer raised his index finger. “One kiss, darling. I know how badly you want to. You’ve been dreaming about it for so long now.”

“Shut up. I haven’t.”

Rimmer spread his hands.

“Arguing with yourself. I don’t need to point out the irony there, do I?”

“Arnie…”

He smiled.

“He really does love it when you call him that. And if it helps, he’s been dreaming about you too.”

The question sat on the tip of your tongue but you refused to give this Not Rimmer the satisfaction. Still, your mind span. It must have shown on your face because he smiled.

“It’s true, darling. He dreams about exactly this. Just you and him. He dreams about what you might do to him the moment you get him alone. And I’ve seen all your dreams too. I know everything. That one the other night? My, my… Shutting him up at last by sitting on his f-”

You were playing right into his hands, you knew that. You also didn't care. Time to get what you came here for.

You cupped Rimmer’s face between your hands and pulled him down to kiss you, hard. He let out a little ‘mmpf!’ of surprise, just like you knew he would, because the thought of him being sweetly stunned, and the little noises that came with it, had always turned you on, and this game was designed to please you.

Rimmer soon got over his shock. He kissed you back, matching your intensity, and let you push him up against the door without a fight. It was his hands finding your hips again that brought you back down to reality.

Heart hammering, you broke away.

Rimmer’s eyes were still closed, his lips slightly parted. When he did finally open them, he looked dazed, like he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t think at all. You knew how he felt.

There. You’d kissed him. And it was good. You got what you came for. You should go now. Who knows how long you’d been in the game. What if the boys were looking for you?

But then Rimmer smiled softly. He reached up and brushed his fingertips against your cheek. You both knew it would be your last chance to touch each other. You weren’t coming back here.

“You know,” he said quietly, all the mischief and antagonism gone from his tone, like your kiss had knocked it out of him. “I’m serious, love. You should tell him. He’s never going to believe it otherwise.”

“He won’t believe me anyway. And what if he doesn’t feel the same way? And he’s a hologram, I-”

“He will. He does. And… So what?”

Rimmer’s smile was a little sad. But then his gaze dropped to your mouth. He licked his lips. It was such a human display of nervousness that for a moment, you found yourself forgetting again.

“Can we…?” He swallowed thickly. “Could we do that again?”

You were only human.

Smiling, you ran a hand over the slope of Rimmer’s broad shoulder, the other slipping round his jaw as you leaned in and pressed your lips to his.

That should’ve been it. It should’ve been enough. A quick kiss to sate your curiosity, just as Rimmer said. But then he squeezed your hips, and as you tilted your head to the side, you felt him let out the softest, tiniest moan.

You gripped Rimmer tighter, one hand on his strong upper arm now, the other looping around his neck so that you could play with the little curls at the nape of his neck again. And all the while, a thought, translucent and frail, whispered through your mind.

You should stop. You should really stop…

Rimmer groaned into your mouth, low and rough, pressing tighter against you as his lips moved against yours. He kissed like a man who’d only gotten the slightest bit of physical attention while he was alive, and had spent the last three million years craving more.

Before you knew it, you’d pushed him back down onto the sofa and fallen into his lap, your hands cupping his jaw, his still on your hips. You bit his lip, hoping to make him moan again.

Rimmer’s big hands slipped up your back, just as your fingers found their way into his hair. You couldn’t resist rocking against him, just to see what he’d do.

“C’mon, pretty boy, I wanna hear you.”

Rimmer’s hips jumped, his fingers tightening around you. He moaned against your lips, his mouth falling open, and you took his jaw between your fingers, grateful for the opportunity to press your tongue against his.

It was only when he whispered your name against your mouth that the fog began to clear. The illusion became more obvious. He didn't taste of anything. Didn’t smell, feel or look right. He wasn’t your Arnold. And this was nothing more than a dream.

You broke away but didn’t get far. Your lips brushed his, sharing one breath as you gazed at each other, stunned and warmed and dizzy with the need to go further. But this wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.

You smiled and ran your hand through his lovely, curly hair one last time.

“Off,” you said, and the game dissolved around you.

You yanked off the headset and pulled in a lungful of air. It felt like you’d been swimming up for hours, your arms and legs aching, your chest about to burst, and had finally broken through the surface.

Standing on uncertain legs, you glanced at the clock and saw that you’d only been gone for about an hour. The boys probably hadn’t even noticed you were gone.

Feebly, you found your way out into the corridor, hoping to put the game back where you found it and forget all you’d seen there. But then there he was, the very man you were hoping not to bump into for at least a week.

Rimmer looked pleased to see you, but you were too frazzled to enjoy it. Your heart was still thumping, thanks to his wandering hands.

“Ah, there you are!”

His green H glinted under the bright lights, a jarring and permanent reminder of just how pathetic your situation was.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, smiling.

It took a moment to get your tongue working. It was frankly a little disconcerting to suddenly be having a normal conversation with the man you’d just made out with in a VR game.

“You have? Why?”

Your voice was croaky from lack of use. Hopefully he’d think you’d just woken up from a nap.

Rimmer rolled back and forth on his feet, moving from his heels to his toes, his hands held tight behind his back. He was too excited to notice the game and its headset stashed awkwardly behind your back.

“Chess?” he asked.

You smiled.

“I’d love to, Arnie.”

Next Chapter

Master List

#arnold rimmer #red dwarf #chris barrie #arnold rimmer imagine #arnold rimmer reader #arnold rimmer smut #arnold rimmer x reader #arnold rimmer x you #arnold rimmer you #red dwarf fic #red dwarf imagine #red dwarf smut #my post

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