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exhaslo · 5 months

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Corruption Ch8

(Villain!Miguel x F!Hero!Reader)

Ch1, Ch2, Ch3, Ch4, Ch5, Ch6, Ch7

Warning: Minors DNI, smut, fingering, doctor play?? grinding, mentions of sex, violence, blood, murder, twisted thoughts, experimentation, language, wannabe fluff, established friendship?

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Three months, Eight Days until D-Day

Today was finally the moment Miguel's been waiting for. The day that got you on your nerves. Today, was the day of the health examinations. To be precise, your full body examine given by none other than Miguel.

You were currently in your office, mentally preparing yourself. You could feel your nerves getting the better of you. You had been telling yourself about this for weeks now. Not even your hardest fights got you this nervous.

Recalling your last few weeks, you let out a grunt before sitting on your chair. You hate to admit it, but you took Miguel's advice. This super hero stuff was new to you and because of it, you kept getting injured.

Slowly, but surely, you were letting the Public Eye do their job and protect the people from the small issues. You just took on the villains and other high risk problems. It felt wrong, but nothing bad was happening to anyone.

"(Y/N), it's time. Please head to the twelfth floor for your examination. Miguel has a private room for the two of you." Lyla chirped as she appeared before you, "Do you still need that relaxing sedative?"

"Um, y-yea. Lyla, does...does Miguel know what he's doing."

"Yep. I made sure he studied hard for this," She teased, appearing by your door, "Let's go before you're late."

"Yes."

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Miguel pinched the bridge of his nose as he waited for you to arrive. Everything he needed was set up for him by the doctors he hired. You were just a few minutes from giving him everything he wanted. Miguel was going to enjoy this.

"S-Sorry I'm late, Miguel...I-I...I'm just nervous." You said, biting your lower lip as you tried to calm down. Miguel resisted a chuckle, finding you quite amusing,

"Well, relax. We're going to start with the normal stuff. Empty your pockets and step on the scale."

"Um, don't judge me...Okay?" You huffed, taking your shoes off and getting on the scale. Miguel raised a brow as typed on his tablet,

"For what? Your weight is below average. You need to eat more."

"I said no judging."

"I'm just stating facts," Miguel said.

You needed to gain more weight if you were going to produce the perfect child. If this was about you thinking that you were fat, then Miguel was going to have to convince you otherwise. Having you sit on the chair, Miguel took your blood pressure first. After that, he went to one of the main courses-your blood.

"Remember, after we take your blood, you're going to feel really dizzy from the relaxing sedative I give you. When you come to, don't push yourself." Miguel warned as he watched your blood drip into the bag.

"I know," You muttered, "Just don't bully me too much, okay?" You asked with a huff.

Miguel just smiled towards you, more focused on your blood. He was being a little greedy and taking a whole ounce from you. This was for the sake of helping you. Miguel was going to make himself into a superior being just like you.

For the sake of his experiments.

Once the blood was drawn, Miguel gave you a minute to relax. He checked your ears, eyes and mouth before giving you the drug. Once you took it, he waited a few minutes for it to kick in. Your body soon started to slump and you wavered in place.

"How's my good girl?" Miguel whispered with a hum, lifting your chin.

"Beeeetter," You slurred, smiling sheepishly.

Miguel couldn't hold back his laughter. He had you where he wanted you. The drug included a little truth serum along with a touch of the same drug that made people high. Taking your robe off, Miguel inhaled deeply at the sight of you. Your body seemed like it was glistering. Tossing the robe aside, Miguel first grabbed your arms, stroking down to your wrists.

"(Y/n), my dear (Y/n), how did you get your powers?" Miguel asked sweetly, watching you shudder,

"Mhm, I got bit....by your radioactive spider," You cooed, leaning towards him, "Mig, be careful~"

"Why?" Miguel smirked at how woozy you were.

"I can shoot webssss~" You giggled.

Miguel raised a brow in awe as he pressed against your wrist, watching the organic webbing shoot. He gasped in awe, eyes sparkling as he did it once more. This was fantastic! You were Miguel's little toy until that drug wore off.

Miguel had exactly one hour to ask you whatever he wanted. To do whatever he wanted to you. Wanting to return to your webbing later, Miguel hummed as he continued his examination. He still had to give you something professional by the end of his.

"(Y/n), why didn't you tell me about this?" He asked softly against your ear.

"I....was afraid that I'll be your next experiment." You whimpered, leaning against Miguel's chest, "I don't want to be cut up."

Miguel felt your body tremble as his hands massaged and examined your breasts for any lumps. His head was against your shoulder, just listening to your sweet, soft whines. Cut up? Oh how wrong you were. Miguel wasn't going to kill you like the others.

He had bigger plans for you.

Miguel grunted lowly as you squirmed against him. Moving away from you as he felt something stir within him, Miguel continued with the examination. He tested your reflexes while telling himself to focus on the main task.

"Did gaining these powers affect any part of your body?" Miguel asked, propping your legs up and removing your panties.

"I can shoot webs~ and stick to walls~" You cooed, giggling lowly. Miguel glanced at you,

"When was your last period?"

"Last week~"

"Still a virgin?" Miguel typed on his tablet.

"Yep. Waiting for you~ Migueeeeeel, I love youuuuu~" You cooed, holding you arms out. Miguel placed his tablet down before washing his hands, "I love you so much!"

"I know, (Y/N). I know," Miguel hummed as he put his gloves on, "I made sure you stayed single, my dear (Y/N). No one is allowed to have you now. Not when you are so, so special."

"Ah~ M-Miguel...d-don't-"

"Shh, the doctor is working," Miguel chuckled.

He wasn't exactly lying. Miguel was performing a full body examination of every part of your body. Spreading your folds, Miguel just scoffed. You were nervous about this part. Your pussy was just dripping for his attention.

It was a shame you weren't going to remember this. Sliding his finger inside your hole, Miguel inhaled to the sounds of your whines. He was just testing for any strange lumps, but this was nice. This stirred that same feeling he tried to ignore.

"Mig~" You whimpered.

Miguel wiggled his finger around, watching you squirm and whine. This was new. A different kind of experiment. Miguel wanted to see what would make you cum. He had watched you do it yourself enough times, how hard could it be?

Inserting another finger, Miguel hovered over you as you reached out for him. His attention was towards your face as you moaned against his touch. His fingers pumping deep inside of you with each thrust. Miguel felt his chest grow heavy as he felt eager for more.

"Why'd you become a hero, (Y/N)?"

"I-I wanted, ah~ t-to save you~!" You moaned. Miguel chuckled darkly as he curled his fingers,

"Save me from what? I think you're the one who needs saving."

Miguel inhaled deeply as you cam against his gloved fingers. Your breathing heavy as you calmed down from your high. Miguel removed his fingers and threw out his gloves before returning to you. Oh how delicious this was.

"Would you do anything for me? Because you love me?"

"Yes,"

"Even be my little trophy, waiting for me to come home and test your stamina?" Miguel's smile turned wicked as he hovered over you again, his pupils blown as he gave you a crazed look, "As I take over the city as the new powered individual, while you wait at home pregnant with the future of humanity?!"

"Mhm,"

Miguel grabbed your cheeks, forcing you to look into his insane looking eyes.

"Answer me, (Y/N), will you be my good girl and do whatever I say?"

"Yes."

Miguel broke into a fit of laughter as he stepped away from you. He leaned against the wall, covering his face as his laughter turned sadistic and cruel. Oh how delicious this was. How perfect you were for him.

Nueva York's precious Spider-Woman was being tainted. Miguel was going to turn you into his personal trophy. Now that he had your blood, Miguel was going to fix himself. He was going to rule over this city with you as his little obedient wife.

"Oh, (Y/N), you drive me insane." Miguel hummed, "Is it hard to keep your secret from me?"

"Yes. Sometimes it feels like you like Spider-Woman more than me,"

Miguel raised a brow as he put your panties back on. You looked like you were about to cry. Rolling his eyes, Miguel went to put your clothes back on.

"Before I knew it was you, I did find Spider-Woman more interesting; however, you were always in my line of interest," Miguel sighed, knowing damn well you weren't going to remember this, "But you were always mine."

"Miggy," You whined.

Miguel felt a shiver run down his spine as you called him that. Grunting lowly, Miguel set up his work and grabbed your wrist. He cussed lowly and had you sit on his lap, your chest against his chest so that he could work.

"Miggy~"

"Stop talking, (Y/N), I need to take notes of everything," Miguel grumbled as you wrapped your arms around his neck.

"I like this~ So warm~ I love you~"

Miguel grunted once more, finding it hard to concentrate. You were squirming against his lap, breathing softly against his ear. That eerie feeling in his chest return as he felt the urge to do something he had never thought of before.

"Miggy~"

"¡Maldita sea, no puedo follarte hasta que sea como tú! (Dammit, I can't fuck you until I become like you!)" He cussed out in Spanish, which was rare and only when he was really frustrated.

Realizing what he just admitted, Miguel cussed lowly once more. You were really testing him. Miguel had to behave. He couldn't risk his plan by giving in now. Shit, just the thought seemed so ridiculous. This was going to be Miguel's secret.

He was never going to let you know about this weakness in him. No one was going to ever know about this.

"I'm sorry, Miguel," You whispered, apologizing against his ear.

Miguel lazily glanced at you, wondering if you could ease his harden erection. It would be taking advantage of you for sure, but you would still do it. Wrapping his arms around your waist, Miguel just decided to grind his erection against your cunt.

"Miggy~"

"(Y/n), my little stress reliever," Miguel hummed as he took his dick out, rubbing it directly against your panties, "Who is your toughest villain?"

"Ah~ Uh, mhm~"

Miguel chuckled as you shook against his body, moving your hips against his. Your panties getting wetter as Miguel pressed himself against you more.

"D-Doc...O-Ock was ah~ h-hard...H-He hurt me, mhm~ r-really bad, but...you took care of me~" You moaned. Miguel grunted lowly as he felt your body shake from cumming again,

"Wrong answer," He muttered, groaning as he coated your panties white, "It's me."

Finally feeling some relief, Miguel cleaned himself up then you. He didn't want to hear any questions or concerns from you. Placing you back against his lap, Miguel continued to do his work on the computer.

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You whimpered lowly, feeling yourself come back to your senses. As you started to waver back into realty, you noticed that you were still in the doctor's office. Resting your head, you groaned softly as you tried to remember what happened.

Everything was a blur.

Turning your head to the side, you saw Miguel working intensely on something. His face just inches away from yours. Sinking that in, you gasped and went to jolt back, but Miguel grabbed you. He pulled you back into his lap, grunting angerily,

"Don't move. I'm focused," He spat.

"Miguel? Why am I-"

"Shh," He hissed.

You kept quiet, still feeling a bit woozy from the drug. Your body felt heavy and your vison was spinning. Relaxing against Miguel, you hummed quietly, enjoying this moment. You felt your eye lids slowly close.

"Tch, it's as if they know I'll kill him." Miguel hissed harshly. You nuzzled into him, whimpering softly,

"Hm?"

"Someone's getting comfortable. Did you forget that I'm your boss?" Miguel huffed, leaning back and glancing towards you.

"Mhm, you said....not to move," You whispered. Miguel's hand rested against your head, sending a shiver down your spine,

"Because you're reacting poorly to the drug. I didn't expect your body to be so sensitive," Miguel hummed, smirking, "But, since you were such a good girl for me, I'll treat you to dinner. We have to get your blood cells pumping."

"I'd like that,"

Your smile grew wide as you stayed in Miguel's lap for a while longer. This was nice. Maybe, just maybe, you could try and ask him out for a proper date. With how Miguel has been lately, there might be a slither of a chance he says yes.

"Oh, and (Y/N)?"

"Yes, Miguel?"

"If you call me Miggy again, I'll have to punish you." Miguel said firmly.

Your face turned bright red as you apologized and buried your face into his shoulder. You had only called him that in your wet dreams. Now you were worried about what else you said while you were drugged. Hopefully nothing more than just the little nickname you called him.

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Miguel kept you on his lap for another hour or so. He quite enjoyed the thought of having the city's favorite super hero on his lap. It won't be long until he joined the game and turned this city into his playground.

A villain's playground.

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Next Chapter

(Going on a short break, gotta finish Persona 3 Reload in time for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth!)

@tojishugetiddies @miguelsfavwife @foulsharkheart @club-danger-zone @ivkygirly @jollystrawberrycycle @amber-content @weirdothatwritess @smartyren @mangoslushcrush @nyxzoldyck6 @migueloharastruelove @chaoticlovingdreamer @sukioyakio @killjoy-nightshadow @heyohalie @the-pan-liquid @bokutosprettylittlebimbo @kpopscoups17130000 @pochapo @killerwendigo @barbiecrocs @miss-galaxy-turtle @oscarissac2099 @lazy-idate @lauraolar14 @migueloharacumslut @straw-berry-ghoul @daisy-artfield @sukunash0e @undf-stuff @iamperson12280 @nightingale1011 @reader-1290 @mcmiracles @keepghostly @marlyharper

#miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel spiderverse #spiderman 2099 #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel spiderman #miguel o'hara smut #atsv miguel #across the spiderverse #miguel x you #miguel x reader #spiderman miguel #miguel ohara #miguel x y/n

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tossawary · 2 months

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So, in SVSSS, Shen Yuan makes a few really interesting assumptions when he sits down to speak properly to Airplane Bro for the first time. The first assumption is that Shang Qinghua is a transmigrator. Two of the other assumptions he makes, connected to this first one, arguably contradict each other slightly in fascinating ways. (I will put the full relevant scene fragment / quotation from these chapters under the cut at the end.)

Shen Yuan's assumption that Shang Qinghua is a transmigrator appears to be built first and foremost on the fact that he heard SQH say, "WTF!" during the conference. Shen Yuan also reveals: "At the time, Shen Qingqiu hadn’t heard him particularly clearly, so he hadn’t paid it any mind. But afterward, the more he’d thought about it, the more suspicious he’d grown." (Ch5)

So, Shen Yuan belatedly decides that he hadn't misheard this one accidental slip during a chaotic attack that damaged him both physically and emotionally. He definitely heard that correctly! He's confident enough that he invites Shang Qinghua over to his house and then immediately and calmly accuses his fellow peak lord of treason. Shen Yuan very casually says: "How was it inadequate? You clearly overexerted yourself. You even found demonic creatures like the ghost-head spiders, Nu Yuan Chan, and bone eagles—none of which ever enter the Human Realm of their own volition. How could Shixiong rebuke you for inadequacy?" (Ch4)

Shang Qinghua sputters, jumps to his feet, turns red, blusters with offense, sneers, brushes Shen Yuan's hand away.

"“Why wouldn’t I? I have a clear conscience. Why would I fear a false accusation?” With a sneer, Shang Qinghua brushed away his hand.

“Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky?” asked Shen Qingqiu." (Ch4)

When Shen Yuan says Airplane Bro's ID, Shang Qinghua pauses and says, “You… How do you know my ID?” (Ch4) And the scene immediately switches from a confrontation between two peak lords regarding treason to a transmigration reveal.

But hey, let's go back to that first version of the scene! What if Shang Qinghua hadn't been a transmigrator? Shen Yuan must have mentally reviewed what happened at the conference and all of their previous encounters, but he still could have been wrong in this assumption. He might have misheard and misinterpreted.

In which case, throwing out Airplane's ID wouldn't have stopped the scene and Shen Yuan would now have to deal with a belligerent traitor who 1) isn't admitting to what he did and/or 2) may turn violent in self-defense. Shen Yuan even admits: "He’d only wanted to study Shang Qinghua’s reaction to this name to determine if he had also read Proud Immortal Demon Way—but given his reaction…he wasn’t just a reader, was he?!" (Ch4) Shen Yuan has no proof of Shang Qinghua's crimes and everyone thinks he's out of his mind with grief, probably searching for someone to blame, though Yue Qingyuan might indulgently open an investigation anyway and might actually end up finding something.

If this had been Original Shang Qinghua, this confrontation could have broken out into a fight. It was reckless. But I'm not reading it as "recklessly stupid" so much as "recklessly aggressive".

If Shen Yuan had been focused purely on revealing a fellow transmigrator, he could have opened this conversation with something like, "Have you ever heard of the writer 'Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky'?" And whatever answer he received then would have told him if he was dealing with a fellow transmigrator, who could be disarmed by this revelation, or if he was dealing with Original Shang Qinghua, who would just be confused and might try to kill him later for knowing too much. Once he had that information in hand, Shen Yuan could go from there.

But no, Shen Yuan opens with Shang Qinghua's crimes first. Which makes me suspect that he is angry with the man for causing the disaster at the Immortal Alliance Conference. If Shang Qinghua hadn't let in the demons, Shen Yuan wouldn't have been forced to push Luo Binghe into the Endless Abyss. I personally don't think that Shen Yuan would have minded here if this confrontation had turned violent. He's perfectly capable of dealing out violence. He's a pretty good fighter, even with the Without A Cure issue, and with his confidence here... I'm going to assume that Shen Yuan thinks he could take Shang Qinghua in a fight. He may be right.

He's probably also confident that Yue Qingyuan would side with him if he had to kill a fellow peak lord (a traitor) in self-defense. I agree with this assessment. I think Shen Qingqiu's reputation would take a hard hit, as would Cang Qiong, but Shang Qinghua is a traitor here. If they could find any proof whatsoever, then the other peak lords would probably begrudgingly go along with this story.

To be clear, I don't think that Shen Yuan is entering into this conversation thinking about killing Shang Qinghua. I think he would attempt capture first. But he IS entering into this conversation resolved to either 1) unmask Shang Qinghua as a transmigrator or 2) unmask Shang Qinghua as a traitor and accomplice to murder. If Shen Yuan is wrong, he cannot take this accusation back. He is either finding a "friend from his hometown" or he is making a very serious enemy here. If Original Shang Qinghua manages to pretend he's innocent and shake off these accusations, clearing any trial Cang Qiong holds for him, then he's presumably going to be secretly gunning for Shen Qingqiu from then on.

I do think Shen Yuan starts this confrontation off being angry - angry at Shang Qinghua, angry at himself, angry at the situation - underneath his calm. I think he's ready for a fight if necessary. I kind of think he might want one on some level. I think he's feeling a little reckless in his fresh grief and loneliness.

Because the other option is that Shen Yuan entered this conversation unprepared for the possibility of being wrong about there being another transmigrator and getting a really bad reaction from Original Shang Qinghua, and I'd really like to think that he's smarter than that. Shen Yuan can be pretty clever. It is totally possible that he is just not thinking beyond his assumption here, though. Shen Yuan can also get caught up in his own ideas and emotions sometimes.

I think this would make a fun Alternate Canon / Canon Divergence AU: "Shen Yuan is completely wrong about Shang Qinghua being a transmigrator and has just revealed to Original Shang Qinghua that he knows what the man did. Uh oh."

ANYWAY! That's just the first assumption that Shen Yuan makes: Shang Qinghua is another transmigrator. Connected to this first assumption are a couple other assumptions about this other transmigrator that are both also really interesting.

The second assumption is this: "As the one who’d masterminded the event (or the logistics of it), Shang Qinghua was subject to the irresistible pressure of the plot[.]" (Ch5) Shen Yuan assumes that the plot forced Airplane Bro to smuggle these beasts into the Immortal Alliance Conference, much like he himself was forced to push Luo Binghe into the Endless Abyss.

I would have to go check the Airplane extras to be sure, but we don't know that this is true. I do remember from the Airplane extras that the System would have been cool with Airplane Bro killing Mobei-Jun, who is arguably an incredibly important character to many PIDW plotlines. I've often interpreted this as Airplane Bro having far more freedom to make his own decisions. We the audience do know that the System forced Airplane Bro to stay with Cang Qiong Mountain Sect and to become the head disciple of An Ding Peak. We don't know for sure that the System put pressure on Shang Qinghua to make the invasion of the Immortal Alliance Conference happen. It's implied when Shang Qinghua gets the return home feature from the System that he doesn't see it often.

Shen Yuan doesn't know these things. Shen Yuan is assuming here their transmigration experiences are very similar. Shen Yuan doesn't really directly ask.

Personally, I do think that the System was involved somehow, even if Airplane Bro's consequences for failure or disobedience weren't nearly so dreadful. With a second transmigrator and their desires in the mix, and the beginning of the real plot with Luo Binghe, it's possible that System put more restrictions on Airplane Bro and locked him onto this path (freeing him after the original outline with the romance deviation is complete). I personally headcanon that Airplane Bro could have wriggled out of the Immortal Alliance Conference without any serious punishment from the System, because I think it's funny if Shen Yuan's most hated event could have suddenly not happened if only Airplane Bro had decided not to do it, but I think that that Airplane Bro didn't try to buck the System because 1) he was generally okay with keeping the plot on track and 2) he was unwilling to challenge Mobei-Jun by resisting any orders on this front. He chose to save Mobei-Jun, now he has to live with that.

Shen Yuan doesn't seriously take Airplane Bro to task for all of the deaths and injuries at the Immortal Alliance Conference. I think a large part of this is that Shen Yuan not-unreasonably assumes Airplane Bro was forced into doing it by the System and Shen Yuan simply doesn't really interrogate Airplane Bro thoroughly to be sure. I think he unconsciously wants this assumption to be true in part because that means there's someone who really understands what he was forced to do to Luo Binghe, he's invested in the Endless Abyss being necessary, but also because now he isn't alone generally and has someone to help him fake his death. Shen Yuan is first and foremost out to save his own skin at this point in the story.

To be clear, I think it's very reasonable for Shen Yuan to assume another transmigrator is also being strictly forced to follow the plot. He doesn't know Shang Qinghua is the author at first. He doesn't know just how different their transmigration experiences have been. The assumption is valid. It's just not actually certain.

The third assumption by Shen Yuan here is what really stood out to me during my reread. It's what made me start thinking more seriously about this confrontation and its setup. Shen Yuan thinks to himself: "As the one who’d masterminded the event (or the logistics of it), Shang Qinghua was subject to the irresistible pressure of the plot—yet he hadn’t released the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python that should have starred in numerous scenes. This was suspicious in itself, but if you considered the possibility that he had failed to do this intentionally in order to hinder the development of the plot—to sever the tragedy of Luo Binghe’s fall into the Endless Abyss at its roots—it made sense." (Ch5)

In the original PIDW, a Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python appeared at the Immortal Alliance Conference, and opened the Endless Abyss with its spatial-rift-creating scream. Mobei-Jun does it in SVSSS, appearing hundreds of chapters early. (I wrote a long meta piece on how I think Luo Binghe's seal works, and why it had to be something or someone with space-manipulation powers breaking it. It's under the "luo binghe demonic seal" tag.)

Shen Yuan noticed that the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python failed to appear and also decided that Shang Qinghua was genuinely surprised by Mobei-Jun's appearance instead. Shen Yuan assumes here that the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python's absence was an intentional act on the Shang Qinghua transmigrator's part in order to stop Luo Binghe's fall into the Endless Abyss. This is a WILD assumption. It's possible that Shang Qinghua just failed to get one. It's possible that there was one somewhere else in Jue Di Gorge, but they simply didn't run into the creature.

It's also possible that Shen Yuan is right. Maybe Airplane Bro decided to quietly remove the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python from the conference, single-handedly preventing 1) Luo Binghe's demonic seal from being broken and 2) the Endless Abyss from being opened. Maybe he thought the System would overlook this until it was too late? But something about this interference made Mobei-Jun suspicious and he showed up to investigate instead.

Or Shang Qinghua organized Mobei-Jun's appearance and interference somehow, because MBJ breaks the demonic seal cleanly in SVSSS, whereas PIDW Binghe needed the Xin Mo sword to completely remove the seal only partially broken by the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python. We really don't know what Shang Qinghua was doing. Or what Mobei-Jun was doing.

I think this assumption is fascinating, because Airplane Bro being able to omit the BMRP kind of contradicts the assumption that he was forced by the System to ruin the conference. Not completely, of course. Shen Yuan may be assuming that Shang Qinghua's System-given quest spoke of beasts generally, rather than the BMRP specifically, and Shang Qinghua was trying to work futilely around the System's wording in order to prevent Luo Binghe's fall. It's possible that the System did not tell Shang Qinghua directly to ensure the opening of the Endless Abyss. The System may have only demanded that he assist in the demonic invasion generally.

But these assumptions still bump up against each other in interesting ways, to me, even if they don't directly contradict each other. Shen Yuan thinks that pushing Luo Binghe into the Endless Abyss was demanded by the plot, but he also thinks Shang Qinghua's meddling with the BMRP could have stopped it somehow? Or that Shang Qinghua simply tried to stop it by removing a necesssary plot device and the System compensated with Mobei-Jun, because Luo Binghe's fall is an inevitable event? Shen Yuan thinks Shang Qinghua was forced to release beasts on the conference, causing a great deal of death and injury, but he also assumes that Shang Qinghua was able to pick the beasts on some level. Maybe he's assuming that Mobei-Jun picked the beasts and Shang Qinghua simply got rid of the BMRP somehow?

It makes way more sense that Mobei-Jun both collected the beasts and released them into the conference, using his spatial manipulation powers, and Shang Qinghua only helped with intelligence and keys to the security. Shen Yuan comments on how dangerous these creatures are. I really don't think that Shang Qinghua collected them personally or put them into Jue Di Gorge personally; I think that would have been pretty dangerous and that lots of people on An Ding Peak and beyond would have noticed during event planning and setup. And if Mobei-Jun did most of the work (and entered the conference properly himself in SVSSS, rather than just disappearing without being seen in PIDW, I assume), then I don't really see how Shang Qinghua could have done much of anything to stop a BMRP from getting in. Maybe he asked Mobei-Jun to avoid BMRPs, please, and that made Mobei-Jun suspicious?

My assumption here is honestly that Shen Yuan isn't thinking too hard about what Shang Qinghua is personally responsible for, because he just doesn't want to think about it. If this is Original Shang Qinghua, Shen Yuan can bring him to justice. If this is a fellow transmigrator, then Shen Yuan has an accomplice / friend. He's trying to move forward so he doesn't have to look back.

I don't think his assumption that Airplane Bro got rid of the BMRP on purpose is out of nowhere. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume another transmigrator, if there is one, might have been seeking to change the plot for the better somehow and the System didn't allow it. I just think this particular assumption is a little wild, because Shen Yuan doesn't really confirm it. (I haven't thoroughly reread the whole scene. I could be wrong about this.) Shen Yuan and Airplane Bro go on to have a different transmigrator argument, distracted by the revelation that this is the author and not another reader, and Shen Yuan doesn't try to confirm his theories. He doesn't ask Shang Qinghua if his wild (if plausible) assumption is actually correct. Like Shen Yuan doesn't really want to know for certain whether or not they could have changed things.

But, anyway, wow, that assumption is an interesting and funny Canon Divergence AU plot! What if Airplane Bro quietly removed the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python from his traitorous invasion, and Mobei-Jun didn't show up instead, so Luo Binghe's seal simply didn't break and the Endless Abyss never opened? Would the System still demand that Shen Qingqiu push Luo Binghe into an Endless Abyss that isn't here? Would the System glitch? Would the System simply have to recalculate because it wasn't specific about what it needed Shang Qinghua to make happen here? Would the System just let Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe go back to Cang Qiong again?

RELEVANT QUOTATION (end of "Chapter 4: Conference" into the very beginning of "Chapter 5: Bai Lu"):

Shang Qinghua said nothing but sighed along with him. “Ah, Luo-shizhi was a heroic youth, such a pity. Those demons brought such disaster upon us; they are truly hateful. The whole world mourns with us. Shen-shixiong, my condolences.”

“If Shang-shidi truly felt it was a pity, this tragedy would not have occurred,” Shen Qingqiu said faintly.

At this, Shang Qinghua stiffened. After a moment, he seamlessly smoothed things over with a smile. “What does Shen-shixiong mean by that? Is he rebuking our An Ding Peak for inadequate administration? If so, Shidi should truly apologize.”

Shen Qingqiu refilled his teacup. “How was it inadequate? You clearly overexerted yourself. You even found demonic creatures like the ghost-head spiders, Nu Yuan Chan, and bone eagles—none of which ever enter the Human Realm of their own volition. How could Shixiong rebuke you for inadequacy?”

“Peak Lord Shen—to make such outrageous accusations!” Shang Qinghua shot to his feet, his face rapidly changing colors.

Shen Qingqiu put his hand on Shang Qinghua’s shoulder. “Why is Shang-shidi getting so excited?” he asked solemnly. “Let’s sit down and talk. Let me say something. Do you dare respond?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I have a clear conscience. Why would I fear a false accusation?” With a sneer, Shang Qinghua brushed away his hand.

“Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky?” asked Shen Qingqiu.

In that instant, it was like a bolt of lightning from the heavens had struck Shang Qinghua in the head, rendering him unable to speak.

After a long time, he managed to stammer out, “You… How do you know my ID?”

In that moment, it was like Shen Qingqiu had also been burnt to a crisp by the aforementioned bolt of lightning.

He’d only wanted to study Shang Qinghua’s reaction to this name to determine if he had also read Proud Immortal Demon Way—but given his reaction…he wasn’t just a reader, was he?!

After three long seconds, Shen Qingqiu jumped on him.

“It’s you?! How could I not know your ID after reading your entire fucking novel?! If you hadn’t let something slip when Mobei-Jun appeared, I really never would have known what hole you’d really crawled out of, ‘Great Master’!”

Volume 1, Chapter 4: Conference

The moment Shang Qinghua had seen Mobei-Jun suddenly appear, he had accidentally let out a “WTF!”

At the time, Shen Qingqiu hadn’t heard him particularly clearly, so he hadn’t paid it any mind. But afterward, the more he’d thought about it, the more suspicious he’d grown.

As the one who’d masterminded the event (or the logistics of it), Shang Qinghua was subject to the irresistible pressure of the plot—yet he hadn’t released the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python that should have starred in numerous scenes. This was suspicious in itself, but if you considered the possibility that he had failed to do this intentionally in order to hinder the development of the plot—to sever the tragedy of Luo Binghe’s fall into the Endless Abyss at its roots—it made sense.

Volume 1, Chapter 5: Bai Lu

#tossawary svsss #tossawary rereads svsss #fic ideas #shen yuan #shang qinghua #spoilers #pidw shang qinghua #shen qingqiu #luo binghe demonic seal #black moon rhinoceros python #long post

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dojunie · 4 months

Text

MISDIAL; LJN [CH5] VOICEMAIL REDUX

[★]; [MISDIAL MASTERLIST] [PREVIOUS PART] [NEXT PART]

info;

lee jeno x fem!reader

college au

chaptered

very slow burn

genre; not-quite-friends to lovers, older brother mark lee, brothers best friend lee jeno, light angst, yn is a menace to society, story/character driven

warnings for this chapter; kys mention in joking manner

chapter wc: ...13K

a/n: i couldn't decide between posting this monster whole or cutting it into two parts, but two parts kind of makes the pacing weird, so here she is in all her glory! been editing this so long that i've gotten sick of looking at it so im just going to release it into the world now LOL, pls pls pls give me feedback on this chapter, im not 100% satisfied w it but i cant tell if its because it sucks or i've just been rereading it too much 🥸

current tl: @hibernatinghamster / @jenoxygen / @eaglesnotravens / @donutswithjaminthemiddle / @jvjsssnaa / @huangrenhyucks / @luvenshiti / @shiningdery / @jaeminsbebu / @aliceinwhateverland / @bebsky / @gem-gem / @jkjkseo / @jenosbliss / @pewpewpwe00 / @ti–red / @philanarose / @softbbyg0rl / @aaasteroidsky / @carelessshootanonymous / @en-boyz / @jlsavyy / @roseymerrie / @bangchanisemo / @skuezk / @jaehyuns-adorable-dimples / @ourbeautifulaffair / @jeonnyread / @jvjsssnaa / @episkeyjeno / @bockhyun / @jenojammin / @zarastrawberry / @peachie-bear / @itadaramaterasu / @alymii / @cuteejeno / @episkeyjeno / @nohunlee / @ooojisoo / @luv4jeno / @jydivrs / @pinkysinnerbaby / @jenojenoyes / @maeyoung / @axmdocs / @nctzennikki09

FORGET WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT NEVER BEING ABLE TO GET MAD AT SOMI, BECAUSE THIS TIME, YOU’RE REALLY GOING TO KILL HER.

At this exact moment in time, the Aegon Showcase is set to begin in about fifteen minutes. You’ve got half of a chocolate muffin stuffed into your mouth (courtesy of Somi sneaking a few snacks from the audience lounge, since the dancers technically weren’t supposed to be eating any of the guest refreshments), and you were about halfway through swallowing this chunk of bread when Somi said something that made you nearly choke.

For context: six and a half days have passed since you’ve last spoken to Jeno.

And you haven’t been counting, either. It just so happens that it is surprisingly easy to recall every passing minute when each one feels like it’s been put there specifically to test you.

The afternoon after the Balcony Incident, for example— a few fresh hours after you left Lee Jeno behind on that overlook with the full intention of never looking him in the eyes ever again. After a late breakfast with Somi you’d told her you weren’t feeling too well, that you’d be leaving a little earlier than planned (which, even though you’d said your pain was of the intestinal variety, wasn’t untrue; you didn’t feel well, if the widening pit in your stomach caused by that morning was anything to go by) and departed her penthouse a little after one.

You’d foolishly hoped that Jeno and his entourage would have plans literally anywhere other than Mark’s place for once, wanting to do nothing but silently mope around the apartment for a few hours once you'd gotten home, but you’d been naive.

You’d been so, so naive.

“Oh!” you’d heard. Renjun. Brown hair, big dark eyes peeking at you around the doorframe as you cradled your now-aching nose bridge. You opened the front door and crashed face first into something solid. “Hey, you. Perfect timing. Do you wanna come grocery shopping with us? Jaemin’s cooking tonight!”

“We’ll even let you ride in the cart,” Chenle chimed in from further into the hallway, grinning wickedly, but you couldn’t focus on either of them because they were both half-hidden behind what you’d smashed into with your haste to get inside. No gray flannel this time, but the same unreadable expression on his face as he, much like he did at the party last night, instinctively grabbed you to keep you from falling on your ass.

(Or his expression was unreadable. Until his eyes trained on something about your face that he didn’t like and his dark eyebrows furrowed with something akin to concern. Then you remembered you’d been crying all morning and surely looked like some sort of dried-out blowfish, eyelids puffy and swollen, so you averted your eyes and jumped out of his grip like he’d stung you.)

“Busy,” you told them quickly, “Sorry. Not today.”

Renjun pouted. Chenle squinted at you, obviously doubtful. And when Jeno finally moved out of the way, you didn’t even thank him for keeping you upright. You just kept your attention on the ground and beelined into the apartment.

Little did you know, that one word would become your mantra. Busy, busy, busy. But it wasn’t like you were completely lying, because you were busy. The Aegon showcase was in a week which meant you had practice every free hour with Somi and the others, and the last thing you needed was to get distracted by circling Jeno like some kind of sad, miserable shark. The good thing about being out of the house so often was that most of the week passed with no more Jeno-related incidents.

Thursday night ended up being the first time you’d seen him with your own eyes since you face-planted into him the previous Saturday.

You’d returned home at 10PM, sweaty and exhausted from a last minute choreo change that had, apparently, also wiped clean the memory of what Thursday nights meant in the Mark Lee household. Movie night. The tiredness you felt was so all-encompassing that upon the discovery of all seven of them sitting around the couch staring at you as you entered, there wasn’t even enough energy to feel awkward. Even then, you must not have looked as ghastly as you felt because Jaemin smiled at you like nothing was amiss, gesturing towards the dining table and the mountain of brown bags atop it.

“You’re late, Rockstar. Take-out’s gone cold.”

Jeno was sitting right next to him. Your muscles were like jelly. All of your bones hurt. Your brain felt like it was operating on nothing but fumes. (And this is what you blamed for your cowardice— the fact that you couldn’t even hold your head up to look in his direction in fear of catching his eye.)

After everyone had gone home and you had free reign of the kitchen once again, Mark hit you with a few more questions about the Aegon Comp; seemingly insignificant inquiries like how the parking situation was (which you didn’t understand the importance of, since he said he’d probably ride his bike there), and if he could sit wherever he wanted (which again, confused you, because the ticke you’d gotten him was one of the best in house). But in your state of fatigue you didn’t think to question it. All you wanted to do was eat something and go to bed, and that’s exactly what you did.

(If you’d had your wits about you maybe you’d have put two and two together. Maybe Somi’s words wouldn’t have caught you with the surprise they did. But as it stands…)

As it stands it’s Friday afternoon, the day of the Aegon Showcase, and half a chocolate muffin is stuffed into your face (technically now stuffed into your airway) as you come to the realization that your friend might secretly be trying to ruin your life.

“You really need to stop eating your food so fast,” Jiara murmurs, clapping you on the back with a little more force than necessary. “No one is going to take it from you. Smaller bites will go a long way.”

You gasp a breath when the chunk finally unsticks. Then, “You saw who in the audience lounge?”

Somi is nonplussed by your horror.

“I saw your brother out there trying to throw a skittle over a lighting fixture and still catch it in his mouth. When I was leaving with our food I think I heard a bunch of people cheer so I’d bet he managed to do it, which, when you think about how high these ceilings are, is actually pretty impressive—”

You fight the urge to grab her by her shoulders and shake her. “I’m not asking about the goddamn skittles!” you hiss. “Somi, you said you saw ‘them’ when you went out there. Them as in plural. Who is them?”

She makes a face like you should already know who. “Who else? Mark and the rest of his crew. And Donghyuck asked to bring a few more, so I guess those are who the other guys out there are. Why are you acting like you didn’t already know this? You were sitting right next to me when Donghyuck was practically begging to come!”

Your life flashes before your eyes.

Jeno’s car. The rain, pounding against the windows. Catching him looking at you in the mirror after Somi told them about the showcase, how it felt like the world outside faded away a little as some little message passed between you— when you felt like he was telling you something without saying a single word.

Then you remember it. In your distant, distant periphery, even though she’d been sitting not even a millimeter to your left when these alleged plans were discussed.

‘Yeah! I mean, I reserved like, a bajillion seats in advance because I knew I’d want to invite everyone who would even consider coming— I’ll definitely get the best row for you guys!’

“However,” she says after a beat, voice finally starting to show the tiniest bit of caution. You realize that your face has begun to contort on its own. “I am starting… to get vibes. That I maybe should have run that by you first? Would now be a bad time to let you know that I told them about the afterparty, too?”

Utter disbelief. The only reason you don’t leap on her once you fully comprehend what she’s said is because Gawon, who’d been watching this entire exchange with quiet brown eyes, puts a hand on your shoulder. She must be able to tell that you’re about to start freaking out, because her therapist-voice is fully activated when she clears her throat.

“Can I ask what's so surprising about this?” she asks carefully. “When we were telling Aegon about how many tickets we each wanted, you said you only needed one. For your brother, right?”

You thought of the ticket, the little envelope you’d held under your pillow for weeks as you fought with the idea of actually giving it to Mark. In the end, a few days ago, when you handed it to him and told him he could come watch you perform if he wanted to, he smiled so big that you felt bad for waiting so long in the first place. But you’d then quickly explained the caveat: that he was not to tell any of the others about it, because there was only one ticket and you didn’t want them hassling you about getting more. And Mark agreed.

Which is why you’d dared to assume that tonight would be safe.

“Yes,” you mutter. “The ticket was for him.”

“Which means you’re not surprised he’s here. So are his friends the problem?”

“The problem?”

You pause. That word makes it seem like their appearance here is actually detrimental to you in some way, like they’re just here to hassle or bully you or something, but that’s not really it at all. Your annoyance at them being here is rooted in the exact opposite. They’re not going to joke around and take it easy, or pat you on the back and tell you that you did well, like how they would if they’d come to watch one of their friends dance. They’re going to swarm you and coo and treat you like a five year old that just stumbled through their first ballet recital.

And as if that isn't bad enough, you realize with a start that you've actually got more to worry about than just being embarrassed by their innate need to baby you.

They, you remember yet again. Plural.

You quickly fix your doomsday-esque expression. "Uh. No, no problem, just... I'm over-exaggerating, forget it, Somi, when you said they, how many are we talking exactly?"

"Seven," she says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world, and you fight to keep your shoulders from sagging. "The three from the car, your brother, and three others I don't really know as well, but who're all just as cute."

Seven. Which means Lee Jeno will be in the audience as well. You should've already known that, fully aware that wherever Mark goes Jeno will follow, but you'd been so startled by the change in attendance that you'd momentarily forgotten that you were pointedly avoiding one of that seven.

Great.

A click echoes over the announcement system. You recognize the voice that follows as the organizer of the showcase, the cheerful woman from the promotional video, happily informing all the performers to head to their greenrooms for final warm-ups before the show.

Well. Even if you wanted to mope for longer about your predicament, your mind switches lanes to the task at hand. Somi and Gawon both titter excitedly at the update, but make sure to quickly give their final reassurances about not worrying too much about the people in the audience and using that energy to give your all on stage. They’re right of course, and you probably would have come to this conclusion on your own once you swallowed your knee-jerk reaction to gripe about everything involving your brother and his friends, but you can’t say that their enthusiasm doesn't do the heavy lifting of bringing you back to earth.

You've got a competition to rock, after all. You could worry about everything else after.

Adrenaline made the hour-long showcase go by in what seemed like fifteen seconds.

Just like that, a short chapter of your life closed with a bang; seven minutes on the stage, deafening cheers, Jiara and Guyeon pulling everyone into one big sweaty hug as soon as you were all out of the spotlight— then you blink and you’re in Gawon’s car with the windows down blasting down Gangnam on the way to Somi’s house, the girls in the seats around you singing along to the radio at the top of their lungs. The sun is setting, you’re heading to your celebratory afterparty, and what should be a picture-perfect moment is completely ruined by the fact that your mind has been in shambles for the last hour and a half. Why?

Because as you inch closer and closer to Somi’s penthouse, all you can think about is the fact that Lee Jeno is sitting up there biding his time before he can stomp your heart into a million more microscopic pieces.

What you didn’t mention about the moments after the performance was that, after rushing through changing out of your performance outfit to find your friends and get the hell out of there, you stumbled out of the greenroom to find a person. A person who was frowning out in the corridor like some sort of mopey ghost, Jeno in all his annoyingly perfect glory, caught mid-pace.

Upon seeing him your body rebooted, a hundred different emotions flashing through your system from the shock of him appearing in front of you at that moment. The only thing you had time to notice before his words ruined the rest of your afternoon was how… fidgety he was; Running his hand through his hair, rocking from foot to foot, crossing and uncrossing his arms over his chest. You’d always taken note of how still Jeno could be sometimes, not moving an inch for seemingly hours at a time, which was the main reason his current inability to stay still even caught your eye— but it was quickly overtaken by the utter despair you felt not soon after he caught sight of you and opened his mouth.

“Can we talk?” he’d asked. And he’d sounded so unsure of himself that you almost instantly crumbled to the puppy-dog eyes, before reality grabbed you by the neck and you remembered that talking to him was actually the last thing you wanted to be doing right now.

“Busy,” you’d forced out. “My friends are waiting for me outside.”

But he must’ve seen this coming because he looked nonplussed as you took a step back, his own feet matching yours stride for stride, hands coming out almost as if to calm you like one might a spooked horse.

“It won’t take longer than a few minutes,” he tried, “Five minutes, just five. I just— I really, really want to clarify a few things from Saturday. What I said on the balcony.”

He said it like there was a chance you might’ve forgotten what happened, which almost made you laugh in disbelief. Like it was possible to forget that shitshow, your first love telling you that he was kind of interested in you once upon a time, but did nothing about it because your brother came first. Though, once you fully realized that he meant he wanted to talk about that right now, the moment lost its humor.

Now? Here? You glanced up and down the hallway. Your friends weren’t around, nor were his, but you were hardly alone.

“I wasn’t being entirely—”

“You're going to the party, aren’t you?” You cut Jeno off. Very unlike you when it came to him, and with the way he blinked you had a feeling he knew that too.

“The party?”

“Somi said she invited you guys.”

“I— I wasn't sure you wanted me to come.”

“Somi invited you, Lee. Is that any way to treat your hostess? We can—” You swallowed. “Come by, and we can find a minute to talk then, but for now I really—”

“Have to go,” he finished with a small wince. “Got it.”

And once he’d metaphorically let you go, taking a step back to slip his hands in his pockets, you’d all but run away; finding Guyeon and Gawon waiting for you like they said they’d be, ready to leave and head to Alice’s house to pretty-up for the party in her gigantic flat. You were trying your best to keep up the energy when you got into the car with them, laughing along to their jokes and dancing along to the music, but you couldn’t stop thinking of what type of curbstomp Jeno was about to release on the suffering remains of your sixteen year-old feelings.

Even up until the final touches of your make-up, you were commiserating. What the hell could he possibly want to clarify?

Was he going to tell you to stop being weird around him and the others, because your mood was fucking up their vibe? To stop avoiding him so obviously, that it was as noticeable for everyone as it felt for you, that it was making it awkward for him?

Or could he mean that he was going to tell you he’d… misspoken? That he’d never really liked you the way you liked him, and didn’t want you to misunderstand— by interested in you he meant in the way all guys were interested in all girls, some lowly, surface level thing that he quickly got over when he realized his friendship with your brother could be jeopardized by it?

The last thought had stung a little more than the others, and you’d accidentally frowned so hard about it that it creased your still-setting concealer and had to wipe it all off.

After angrily redoing your base you’d forced it from your mind and got dressed, stealing a simple henley dress from Gawon’s closet upon realizing that you were not in the mood for sexy-cute like Somi had said the dress code was. Instead you opted for ‘hey, you can see my legs and that's good enough,’ and huffed your old leather jacket on top of it; the latter was sure to piss her off but she still owed you from the Mosquito Boy Incident, so she could kick rocks about it for all you cared.

You had a feeling that no matter what you wore, tonight wasn’t going to be very sexy-cute at all.

The party is just getting into the swing of things when you make it upstairs. It’s like the explosion of a birthday surprise when you and the girls walk through the door. This party is technically a celebration, and you guess a lot of these people must’ve been in the Aegon audience without you knowing it, because you’re getting congratulations and kudos and pats on the back like you’ve just won an olympic medal.

But your pride is short lived, tainted by a bolt of nerves when you think you spot someone that looks like Donghyuck in your periphery. Where Hyuck is, Jeno will be.

It turns out to only be a very tall girl with a pixie cut who winks at you when you whirl your head to her, but the stress of it doesn't ebb away. God. Is the whole night going to be like this? Walking on pins and needles until he finds you?

“You know, new girl,” A voice starts at your side, startling you further, “Your ice breaker back at that my party could’ve been that you’re a kick-ass dancer, instead of that bullshit with the mosquitos.”

Wooyoung. Your friends are suddenly nowhere to be seen when your turn to him, clearly having fucked off into the mass the second alcohol became available, so it’s just the both of you hovering over by this snack table. Though this is only the second or third time you’ve interacted with him past a greeting (you see him sometimes on campus, and he always waves at you like you’re best friends when you pass each other), you’re actually rather soothed by his presence.

“You wanted to know juicy secrets, not secret hobbies. If you asked me for an ice breaker and I told you I could dance, you would’ve kicked me out of that house.”

He laughs, a snickering sound, before eyeing two jello-shots a girl walks by with in her hands.

“Do a shot with me?” he pouts. “My friends are running late and I’m still painfully sober.”

A shot?

...Hm. A shot. Inebriation. You’re not one to like straight liquor because the burn in your throat is often more than you think the gag is worth. But if you’re looking to relax sooner rather than later… the pain might not be without its merit.

Liquid courage. Something you could definitely use right now, as skittish as you’re being. Maybe he’s onto something.

“Just one?” you pique, turning to survey the options. “Thought you were more hardcore than that, VP.”

One jello-shot quickly turns into four with Wooyoung involved, and your mouth is sweet with the taste of artificial dye by the time you actually spot Donghyuck, over by Somi’s balcony doors chatting up some pretty girl you recognize from your physical education class. The volleyball player. Xiaoting or something close, and you almost snort at the sight because she seems way out of his league. But he has a way with words that you guess you could be attractive when he wields it with flirtation in mind, instead of the intent to piss off like he always does with you.

The Smirnoff burning in your stomach must already be settling in because you only mildly bristle when you see him. Like you thought earlier: Hyuck is here, which means Jeno is here. And… and the Smirnoff must’ve already hit your brain, actually, because all of a sudden you’re feeling agitated and confrontational.

You don’t want to spend all night worrying about when he’s going to find you and drop the bomb. So what if he doesn’t like you! So what if he probably wants to forget the moment that happened out on that balcony never occurred at all? You lived your life without yearning over Jeno for years before you moved back here, so it won’t even be that hard to go cold-turkey when he says what he needs to and inevitably squashes the remainder of your heart in his fist. It’s fine. You’ll live.

You just need to rip it off like a bandaid first. And to do that?

“Hey, Woo, I think I need to go and look for somebody. You’re still down for that dance battle later?”

“I don’t play around with my challenges,” he says, grinning much too wide, “I’ll find you later, and then it’s on. Knock em’ dead, new girl.”

As bold as you suddenly are, you actually don’t want to go and interrupt whatever Donghyuck has going on just to ask him where Jeno is. So you’re on your own for a little, scanning the walls for him and the stupid clavicles poking out of his button-up, hair all windswept and eyes so dark. It’s nearly a minute of searching before you see something familiar— but it’s not exactly what you’re looking for.

Close enough, though.

It seems like Na Jaemin has actually spotted you first, since he’s already heading towards you when you spot his head of pink darting through the crowd. You don’t fuss when he musses your hair and gasps over the competition, applauding you in that sickeningly earnest way he always has, since you’re used to his preening and compliments. Not to say you’re not appreciative. It always makes your face hot when he coos over you like this. But you’ve got a mission in mind, and fretting at him over the pouting and cheek-squeezing will get you nowhere.

“Yes, thank you, I did hear you cheering over everyone else at the end, no I wasn’t hiding my swag from you on purpose, thank you, you can stop pretending to cry now. Where is Jeno?”

The idea of you looking for Lee Jeno on purpose must startle him, because there’s a second after his clear offense at you brushing him off where he registers what you’re asking for and actually looks a little concerned. “Jeno? No-Jam? Why? Did he say something to you?”

“What? No, I just need to talk to him about something. Thought he’d be hanging around you.”

Imperceptibly, Jaemin lightens.

“Oh. He’s downstairs hefting handles out of Somi’s car, because blondie forgot half the drinks in her trunk. He got volunteered by Chenle as Mr. Muscles and left with her like five minutes ago, so he should be back any minute.”

Damn it. Forlornly, you glance at the door, but there's nothing. No movement. Nada. There goes all your building bravado.

“But before he returns, young lady, should we talk about how that red tinge to your lips better be from the non-alcoholic jello-shots?”

Ah. Whoops. Not only no movement, but now you’ve gotten yourself trapped in the sights of Na Jaemin, who likes to pretend to be staunch on things like laws and teenage innocence and waiting to do things until the government says you’re allowed to. You constantly forget that you’re not yet the drinking age, because no college student handing out drinks at a party ever gives a fuck about the fact that you’re legally not quite legal yet. No other college student besides the one standing in front of you.

“You’ll stunt your growth if you drink before you’re supposed to!”

To this you glance at the cup he’s holding, clearly half full of something, and nearly go to laugh and ask him what his excuse is since he’s barely 21 himself, but then you think of something funnier. Without really thinking about it you snatch the cup from his hand and hork it down. Your eyes are locked with his the entire time so you get to see his surprise grow into shock, then expand into disbelief as you chug, and chug, and chug.

There’s a lot of… some peach flavored crap in here, burning like murder all the way down, to the point that you’re more bewildered than smug when the cup is finally drained because, “Fuck, Na, what is that shit? Are you trying to black out?”

“Language!” he hisses, genuinely startled for the first time you’ve seen in a long time, which makes you laugh, “And of course not because that wasn’t mine, you little brat! I was holding that for Somi!"

“Oh,” you reply, only mildly shifted by this news. Sorry, Som. Now you know it must be peach Schnapps. She loves Schnapps. “What, so you’re not drinking tonight at all? Are you DD?”

“No! I’m not drinking, and I’m offended that you don’t already know I hate the taste of alcohol. Mark, who may I remind you is in this room and would’ve just shit himself if he’d seen what you just did, is playing designated driver tonight! He’s…”

And as he glances towards the kitchen you follow his gaze. You’re expecting to see your brother, most likely laughing over something his friends are saying, maybe even trying to dance-battle someone if he's having a particularly good time. Instead you see your brother chatting up Jeon Soyeon.

Jeon… Soyeon. Nabi Bar, Jeon Soyeon. Who you haven’t spoken to or even seen since that awful night in Gangnam.

And you nearly gasp in terror at the sight.

Jaemin doesn't finish his sentence, and you dart your eyes to him when you realize this. He doesn’t look very pleased by what he’s seeing either, though you’re guessing for an entirely different reason than the one that’s just made you go cold.

“What?” you ask a little too quickly. The front door opens, which should be your cue to look for who’s just come in, but you can’t tear your eyes from the sight of Soyeon and Mark. What the fuck? What the fuck? “Do they know each other?”

“Know each other?” Jaemin scoffs. “Hard to quantify.”

It would be very, very bad for you if they knew each other. Very bad. If not already clear, Mark still had no clue you weren’t where you said you were on the night of Nabi Bar. If she happened to mention your involvement in that shity, shitty idea, you had no doubt that Mark would go all holier-than-thou on you in front of all these people, and that you’d probably have to dive off of the balcony to escape the reaming.

He doesn’t look particularly comfortable, near pressed up against kitchen island because Soyeon is so close to him, hand rubbing at the back of his neck in that way you’re well aware means he’s getting flustered; but you see him laugh at something she says in the next second, and it doesn’t seem like his fake laugh. Mark’s fake laugh is terrible, and even from a distance you can spot it like the flashing lights on an ambulance, a beacon of distress just the same. So he’s laughing for real, at something… Soyeon is saying?

But you hardly recall her being very funny.

“What does that mean, hard to quantify? Do they have history?”

“Something like that,” he murmurs. “Nothing you need to worry your pretty little head about. Anyway, I think Jeno is—”

“You never look at anyone with any kind of attitude, and just now you rolled your eyes at her.”

“I didn’t roll my eyes. I blinked. For a long time. Something in my eye. Dusty in here.”

“Somi has this place deep cleaned twice a week.”

He stares at you like he’s begging you to drop it. You stare back, unwilling. “You know, Na, the longer you stall, the more time that all this illegal alcohol in my blood has to make me more bold and reckless and unruly. If I don’t get an answer from you I might just go over there and ask her myself. How do they know each other?”

You’re bluffing, of course— there’s no way you’re about to go over there just to see what they’re talking about when you could safely squeeze that information out of Jaemin instead. In reality, you were only pressing because you wanted to know if they were close enough for Soyeon to know you and Mark were related. If not? Then perfect! You’d forget it all and be on your merry way, reverting back to your original plan of finding Jeno, because there’d be no chance Soyeon could spill the beans.

But if Soyeon does know? You might have to leave this party a little earlier than scheduled.

“You want the whole, grown-up truth?” Jaemin finally relents.

“Might I remind you for the hundredth time that I’m only a year younger than you?”

“A year and a half,” he acquiesces with a sigh, “And Jeon Soyeon may or may not have slept with your brother to get him to do their midterm project last year.”

It comes out like he’s reading the headline from a newspaper and you made the mistake of swallowing right before he opens his mouth, choking violently on your own spit. He pats you on the back as you hack and cough before continuing.

“None of us are really sure about exactly what really happened because Mark kind of shut down after, wouldn’t tell us anything. But it was pretty clear he liked her before. She’s kinda his type, you know?”

Edgy, pretty, and fucking evil, yeah, after having to chase a few of them away in high school you’re well aware of his type! This was not what you wanted to know about when you asked if they were close! What the hell?

“He told us they’d gone all the way right before she asked him to do their entire music production project because she was too busy caring for her sick little sister. He, being the bleeding heart he is, pretty much refused to listen to us about how convenient the timing was; he even got mad when Chenle did some sleuthing and found out that Soyeon’s parents facebook, which was filled to the brim of photos of their family, didn’t have any trace of another kid in their midst besides her. Wouldn’t believe us until after the project was turned in, when he tried to meet up with her for weeks and she ghosted him every time.”

He frowns. “At the end of it, he wasn’t… It wasn’t good. He was pretty crushed.”

Now you regret chugging his drink for fun. Even before it you’d been feeling further than chill, pleasant and buzzing from your shots, well prepared for whatever hell was to arise with Jeno. Now you felt loose; too loose, fingertips tingling at your sides because of this news, heart pounding in your chest, body so warm from the alcohol that you felt like Jaemin would hiss if he’d laid a finger on your skin.

To play games with you, that’s one thing. But Soyeon has laid her hands on your brother?

“And, knowing all of that,” you say slowly, clearly, “You’re still letting him sit there and talk to her?”

“I want to kick her away,” Jaemin says flatly. “I’d be lying if I said I trust that girl as far as I can throw her. But it’s not really up to us to get involved.”

“Who is us?”

“His friends? I mean he was pretty clear when it happened that he did not want to talk about it—”

You bark a laugh, but there’s no humor to it at all. “So he can pout and gripe about the sanctity of discussing your problems with people, the embarrassing, the horrifying, but when it comes to him he gets to keep secrets? Forget how hypocritical that is, you guys are listening?”

Jaemin, finally, seems to catch the heat in your words. “Uh. He told… I mean, before you get all up in arms, she may be over there apologizing for all we know. Maybe she’s repenting.”

You both stare at her as she tips her head back in laughter, the salacious flirty kind where you’re more focused on being attractive than actually enjoying the joke, before she puts her hand on his chest in a, ‘Wow, you’re so funny, take me now,’ kind of way, leaning in to say something to him that she clearly doesn’t want anyone else to hear. Every hair on your body stands up when Mark doesn’t push her away.

He’s not seriously buying her shit again, is he?

“Jaemin, are you willing to bet your life on that?”

“What?”

“Everything you just said about Soyeon. You know that for fact?”

“Well, no, Mark didn’t actually tell us about it so I can never be sure, but… but with what we could gather, it was pretty cut and dry. Chenle actually also found out she had a boyfriend at the same time she did all that stuff with Mark. We just couldn’t bear to tell him that after the fact, so we never… Hey, where—”

You’re sober enough to make it through the throng of people without stumbling, but not sober enough to fully anticipate what you’re really about to do. The goal is just to separate them, somehow, to get that harlot away from your brother, and then you’ll go and deal with Jeno. If people greet you as you pass you don’t hear or see it; all you can grasp is her, touching him, laughing with him, cheating, lying, people-using—

“Mark,” you nearly hiss, “I need to talk to you. Now.”

Mark jumps a foot in the air when you grab him but Soyeon, for some reason, doesn’t look surprised to see you in the slightest. She does, however, raise a sharp blonde eyebrow at your tone.

“What,” Mark splutters, “Right now?”

“Yeah,” Soyeon sighs, continuing to trail her eyes up and down Mark’s face instead of looking at you, “The grown-ups are talking, sweetheart. Can’t you give us a second?”

Mark turns back to the sensual softness of her voice like a moth to a flame, and you want to smack him. “No. Not a second now, not a second later, not a second tomorrow or forever. Now, Mark.”

And that was where you made the mistake that turned this whole night sour. Only when Soyeon realizes it’s her you have a problem with, catching on from the agitation in your tone that you’re not just here to bother Mark for fun, does she slide her unreadable gaze to you.

“You know I haven’t seen you in a while, Little Lee.”

“For the better,” you mutter. “Seriously—”

“I was so surprised when Yuqi told me you two were related.”

She’s talking to Mark but looking at you, eyes squinted a little, like someone analyzing a germ under a microscope. So she does know. Great. “I couldn’t believe that this girl was the same little star you used to tell me about when I met her. She’s grown up a lot, you know? Doesn’t take after you at all, Markie.”

“Soyeon,” you say again, “Let him go.”

“Why? So you can keep throwing your tantrum? Every time you open your mouth it gets harder and harder to see the resemblance. When you’re so…”

She doesn’t need to say it, and it’s honestly probably better that she didn’t, because you would’ve leapt at her if she’d gone as far as she’d been intending to dig with that comment. You’re aware you don’t resemble Mark, physically or otherwise— in accomplishment, in talent, in patience, in perfect unmarred reputation. You’re well fucking aware.

“Soyeon,” Mark finally says, thankfully lurching a little in your direction like her evil witch's spell is finally wearing off, “I don’t think there’s any need for that, what the hell is going on? Do you two know each other?”

Soyeon opens her eyes comically wide. “You don’t know?”

And you feel Mark stop. What the hell are you doing, you want to scream. Why are you even pausing for this bullshit? Come on! But he doesn’t. He stands there and he stares at her, as if searching her face for any sign of truth, and Soyeon takes this as her cue.

“Little star is a big girl now! Her own fake ID, clinging along with her baby bottle to any club the adults want to go to, even catching her own ride home with any wasted guy that smiles in her direction! Don’t you live together? What a handful she must be if she can sneak out under your nose, Markie.”

The blood rushing in your ears makes it hard to tell if it’s only you that’s losing your hearing or if the rest of the people hanging around in the kitchen really have quieted to watch the rising altercation, but you don’t dare move your eyes from the girl to check. The baby bottle comment, outing your fake ID, all of that is rage inducing on its own— but it’s a cold, stomach twisting madness that grabs you when you latch on to the last part of what she’s just said. Catching your own ride home?

Was she referring to Yoobin?

Your fingers unfurl from Mark’s jacket.

“What do you mean, catch my own ride?”

Soyeon laughs. Under normal circumstances, it would be a pretty sound. “Did you think we didn’t see you leave? Blowing up our phones like there was some big emergency— We sent that guy out there to keep you the company you wanted so much, God, we got tired of babysitting you. You stopped calling and neither of you came back inside. What, cause your brother is here you’re going to try and soften it up now, huh? Tell us all you didn’t go home with that drunkard, when you love to tell people you’re no stranger to a bar?”

Yoobin, who grabbed you, touched you, tried to drive you home in his wasted state with clear intentions on what he wanted in return.

Yoobin, who Soyeon and Yuqi and their friends had sent, knowing you were panicked, knowing he made you uncomfortable, knowing you were looking for them.

Soyeon who stopped hearing from you and laughed it off. Soyeon who stopped hearing from you for days and didn’t bat an eye, knowing what she’d left you alone with.

Soyeon, who’s straight, pretty nose cracks under your fist in the same way Yoobin’s did, except this time you don’t run away when she screams and collapses and you realize what you’ve done. Except this time you hit her again— or you try to at least, lunging for her with your eyes ablaze, unsure what you’ll do when you get there but 100% sure it’ll hurt worse than a bloody fucking nose— but don’t quite get there, because someone has lifted you off the ground, two iron-bar arms wrapped like vices around your ribs, the worlds tightest back hug.

In your right mind you might’ve placed the sandalwood and the bergamot, or recognized the rolled up sleeves of his oversized button up, ivory and forest green, but as it stood—

As it stood, as you shouted and thrashed and fought, you only made out one thing.

Mark Lee, your own brother, helping Jeon Soyeon to her feet, two hands firm on her arms to hold her up; his surprised voice the last thing you hear before Lee Jeno hauls you out of that house.

“Wow, Soyeon. Is that true?”

(”Rockstar is going to wallop that girl,” Donghyuck mutters, staring at you like they all are from behind the pillar separating the kitchen from the living room, alerted to the worsening confrontation by a sheepish Jaemin.

“No she won’t," Jaemin tries, clearly feeling guilty, "She knows better than that.”

“She’s gone still. And I’ve never, ever seen her eyes that wide before.”

“That’s control. It’s restraint. She’s not going to hit her.”

Renjun, then, “If you really believe that then why do you look so nervous?”

“Her fist is balled up,” Jisung comments quietly.

“It’s restraint!”

“You weren’t there the day that she knocked the socks off of Park Gyubin, right? When he tried lifting her friend’s skirt up in the cafeteria?”

“She…” Jaemin glances at Donghyuck, “She’s tried to fight men before?”

“Tried to? I thought she was going to kill him. Y/N hit him so hard he had to get his retainer refitted. She’s got a right hook like her brothers. I bruise when she hits me, you know.”

Renjun again, “Why do you sound so proud of that?”

“She… Well, no, look, look! She let go of Mark. They have to be deescalating, she—”

“Does deescalating usually involve getting closer to the object of your anger?” Jisung asks.

“She—”

“Here it comes,” Chenle announces excitedly.

And then Jeno is across the room.)

Jeno realizes before you do that you’re not going back home tonight.

His apartment looks the same. Obviously. It’s only been three weeks since you were last here. Like before, Jeno doesn’t bother with the lights, kicking his shoes off in the entryway the same way, except this time you have two shoes of your own to place next to them instead of the sad and lonely single. Three weeks ago, but it feels like it’s only been a day or two since you did this whole song and dance; following him to the bathroom, sitting on the counter as he stoops under to rummage through his first-aid bin, gritting your teeth when he rubs your knuckles with the antiseptic, smiling weakly when he apologizes for the sting.

You’d cried in his car.

When Jeno carried you out of Somi’s apartment you thought the stinging in your eyes was just discombobulated rage. But when he set you down on your feet in the elevator and you began to come down from the adrenaline high, the burning just intensified as you understood what just happened. You’d only been able to keep the tears at bay until he told you to put your seatbelt on in his passenger seat and it all became too real.

Though you’re not sober enough right now for it to feel like a problem yet, you know you’ll want to kill yourself tomorrow for allowing yourself to devolve in front of him like that no matter the circumstance. In the moment, you weren’t even entirely sure what you were crying about. Was it the craze of fury wearing off after punching Soyeon, and the jitters it left behind? Or the fact that even when Jeno was tugging you towards the elevator up there, you’d stood and waited for Mark to follow for nearly an entire minute, just for him to never come out?

You’d like to chalk it up to adrenaline and inebriation, but deep down you knew exactly what it was that had your eyes brimming with those tears.

He’d chosen Soyeon. The girl who’d lied to him, cheated with him, fucked him over for a grade and left you for dead on the streets of Gangnam, and he’d stayed in that house with her instead of coming out to check on you. And you weren’t really one to catastrophize, but how couldn’t that signal the definitive end of Mark putting up with your shit? The nail in the coffin of his patience with you?

You knew things had been rough lately with you moving in, the thread of butting heads over little things like curfews and the people you hung out with, but you hadn’t thought your relationship had deteriorated to the point that he’d ever… that he’d ever choose someone else. You’re his sister. No matter how mad he is, he’s supposed to choose you.

But he didn't. And in Lee Jeno’s passenger seat, like a giant baby, you cried about it.

In proper Y/N fashion the only thing that had chuffed you into sucking it all up and swallowing it into the depths of your soul never to be seen again, was Jeno’s building appearing on the horizon. The threat of him asking you if you’re alright and actually having to confront those feelings was terrifying enough to jar you out of your self pity.

But he hadn’t asked you about your red eyes. He hadn’t said anything, actually. He just tugged you out of the car and into the elevator. Herded you into his apartment. And tipped his head towards his bathroom just like before, except this time he was smiling. In the soft, polite kind of way that let you know he was well aware of what just transpired in his car, but was simply... letting it be.

(And you always knew Jeno was rather observant. But man, the thought behind that smile could’ve made you burst into tears all over again.)

On the counter, holding out your hand for the steps that would never come, you blinked back to the present when Jeno stopped at the healing salve. You’d been waiting for him to bust out the gauze again, already lamenting the next week of your life with the itchy fabric tight around your wrist, but all Jeno does is raise an eyebrow at you when you don’t hop off of the sink after he puts the kit away.

“What are you waiting for?” he asks.

You blink down at your hand, shiny with the balm, and then back up at him. “The rest of it.”

“The wrap? I didn’t think you needed it.”

“But that’s what you did last time I was here.”

“Because the last time you were here you didn’t know how to punch someone properly. It looked like you got her the right way this time. When I was tugging at that wrist in the elevator just now you hardly seemed to notice, when you could barely close your fist a few weeks ago.”

…Oh. Only as he mentions it do you roll your hand around in its socket, flexing your fingers under the bathroom light. Your knuckles look like shit, the newly forming bruises and angry skin, but it doesn’t actually ache like it did that night with Yoobin.

Well you’ll be damned. So straightening your wrist really does work.

“Oh,” you mumble. “I guess I don’t. Wasn’t really thinking about it.”

“Of course you weren’t. Probably thinking about what you wanted to eat, right?”

“What I— What?”

What you wanted to eat? When did you discuss that you were hungry?

“Heard your stomach grumbling in the car, so I’m assuming you haven’t eaten since before the competition. There’s a pizza place down the street that I think you’d like, a jajangmyeon shop too, but their delivery takes ages. It’s up to you.”

You stare at him, clearly not following. Jeno is relaying this to you like tonight was planned, as if it was always in the cards for you to be hanging out at his place tonight like a couple of pals, leaning against the door with his arms crossed, the perfect picture of normalcy. He thinks you’re going to be here long enough to eat? He’s not planning to have you shipped out of here in the next half hour?

But then you realize that there isn’t really another place for you to be shipped to. Mark’s apartment is… not really an option. The idea of going back there tonight almost makes your stomach roll, actually.

But if you don’t go back, that doesn’t leave much in the realm of locations to hide out at. Somi’s brother is coming home tonight, she’d squealed as much this morning, and considering how rare it is that he’s not busy in other countries you abhor the idea of intruding on their reunification. You don’t have many other friends here that you’re close enough with to just show up at their place at 10PM unannounced, not that you’d want to given that your little spat with Soyeon is probably all over everyones instagram stories right now, and is surely the only thing they’ll want to talk about.

You don’t have very many options right now. And Jeno probably knew that from the moment he decided to bring you here.

“Thinking pretty hard over there,” Jeno hums, “for what is supposed to be a two choice question. Unless you don’t want either?”

“Pizza is… fine.”

“Just fine, or actually good? I can check to see if there’s any—”

“It’s good, Lee.”

He smiles like he’s got you in the bag, and then stands up straight. “I’ll order it then.”

You nod emptily and make moves to follow him out of the bathroom, right on his tail, which is why you nearly crash into him when he whirls back around to stop you. “Oh. Almost forgot.”

“What? Forgot what?"

But you only grow more confused when Jeno speeds off towards his room without replying. There’s a creak and a shuffle, doors opening and closing before Jeno returns with a bundle of fabric bunched up in his arms.

“Can’t imagine it’ll be very comfortable to hang out in that dress all night.”

He holds out the mass; what appears to be a heather gray hoodie and black sweatpants that, even bunched up like this, still look miles too long for you. He sees you eyeing it and you fear he’s going to do something awful, like politely offer to go and get you something else as if he hasn’t already done a hundred other things for you tonight, so you quickly oblige. Once you relieve him of the pile he laughs, tells you he’s going to put the order in for the pizza, and closes the door on the way out.

You stand there unmoving for much too long, the heap of fabric clutched to your chest.

There’s so much to unpack. Being here again. The fact that he was supposed to break your heart today instead of doing all of... this. How casual he’s being about it all. The brother-slash-bestfriend shaped elephant in the room. The clothes.

But, for the sake of not collapsing under the weight of all of that turmoil, you decide to just focus on the latter; the most immediate and least heart wrenching of the bunch. His clothes. You’re going to wear his clothes.

Yet another of your old dreams coming to fruition in this apartment. Lucky you.

Jeno is laying across the long part of the couch when you exit the bathroom, footsteps making no noise because you’re padding along on top of the ankle hems. He’s dressed differently too; gone is the jeans and the ivory button up, in its place a black long sleeve and navy blue sweatpants just like yours, except his actually fit. He’s texting furiously on his phone when you round the corner, eyebrows furrowed with something like irritation before he sees your looming figure in the corner of his eye and looks up.

"I put an X-Men movie into the DVD player," he announces, squinting back down to his screen, "Couldn't think of a better time than now to finally get into it, since you'll be here to explain all the things I don't understand..."

But he trails off as he stares at his phone, eyebrows furrowing at something before he frowns and stands up. The look is gone when you shuffle towards the couch and he looks up again, smiling at you like you like nothing is wrong, before he says, "I need to make a call though. Start the movie, yeah? I'll be back before things get interesting."

You stare at him. Probably shouldn't miss the opening scene if you really want to 'get into it', you nearly say. But you've been on this earth for long enough to recognize when someone wants a little privacy.

You want to ask if it's Mark. If he's the one Jeno had been messaging back so agitatedly just now. But the fear of it not being him, Jeno instead just trying to sort something out with like, a truant project partner or something, makes you stuff it down again. It'll just make you look even more pitiful.

"Sure. Most of the intro is fan service anyway."

He opens his mouth like he's about to say something else but then his phone starts to ring and he only smiles tightly at you instead. Then he's gone down the corridor, into his bedroom, and when the ringtone finally stops you can barely hear his voice much less make out what he's saying. Hm.

A different day and you might've snuck off after him to eavesdrop just to see for yourself. But after tonight?

You simply watch him go, and then tumble onto his couch with the exhaustion of someone who's just run up and down the building a dozen times.

You don't even have the strength to reach over for the TV remote; you just lay there and revel in the softness of the cushions, and at how tired you suddenly feel. Rehearsal all morning, giving it your all on stage, the energy-leeching atmosphere of a house party, the alcohol sagging through your veins. Not to mention the emotional confusion. Crying always takes it out of you.

So it's no wonder that you forgo turning the movie on to just take a moment to breathe in the pleasantly dark living room, closing your eyes for what you intended to be a brief second, just to gather the last bits of your patience and sanity for the night ahead... only to fall victim to what happens to most people when they say they're just resting their eyes.

You fall asleep.

At least for a little while, you do. A brief, dreamless, blissful unconsciousness.

It’s so blissful in fact, that when you’re startled back to life by a knock at the front door a few minutes later— blinking the haze out of your eyes and seeing Jeno’s ceiling instead of your own, understanding with a sinking hopelessness that you’re not waking from a nightmare, that all of tonight has really happened— the dread is almost crushing when it all comes back.

But there isn't even any time to mourn. Because you realize that if someone's just knocked on the door, like the good homeowner he is, Jeno will be out here any second now to open it. He'll come out here and he'll see you and you'll be sucked right back into that nightmare, pretending like everything is fine when you both know that tonight was supposed to go so, so differently. Sitting next to each other and eating next to each other and attempting small talk for the sake of keeping things civil until you can escape this place in ten hours.

The idea almost gives you hives. You can't do it. You can't. There has to be another way. What if you make something up? A sore throat? A sudden headache?

But there's no time to think of anything fancy because in the next second Jeno's bedroom door clicks open down the hall, and panic flies up in your throat.

So you do the only think you can fathom. Before he can come around the corner and see you freaking out, you fling yourself back over and pretend to still be dead asleep.

As foolish as you immediately feel, it must work at least a little bit; you hear him come into the living room, hesitate, and then continue on past the couch on lighter steps as if worried about making too much noise. You even steady your breathing when he’s opening the door for the pizza guy— smooth inhale, smooth exhale, spaced just far enough to replicate what someone sounds like when they’ve been out for a while.

Shit. Will this actually work?

When he closes the door and the room falls to silence your heart picks up a little bit. What is he doing? Is he staring at you, trying to see if you’re faking?

Is he wondering if he should wake you up to eat? Oh, God! What if—

“Are you up?” he whispers. And you almost choke trying to swallow down the instinctual response that rises in your throat.

With surprisingly great effort, you do nothing. Say nothing. You don’t even stir. You just pray to whatever God is out there that Jeno will take the hint, eat his pizza at the kitchen island, leave you out here and go to bed. You get excited when you hear his steps again and think he’s going to pass the couch straight, but of course a second later you feel the couch dip somewhere off behind your back and you nearly curse.

“Guess not,” Jeno mumbles. "I forgot that you knock out so easily."

A few more seconds of what feels like an endless quiet, only his shuffling making sound; through your squeezed-shut eyes you see the light of the TV flicker like he’s just changed the channel, and with it you hear what must be the intro to a gameshow or something— excited chatter, ringing bells, audience cheers. But the volume is turned down so low that it feels like the show is playing in another room. Is he keeping the volume low because of you?

Is he… going to stay out here?

“So you won’t mind if I think out loud,” he says suddenly, and your eyes nearly fly open in surprise. What?

But he sounds serious. “Like a test run, almost. For what I wanted to talk about earlier at Aegon. Since I still don’t really know what the hell I’m going to say even after losing sleep over it all week, and I know you’ll try to stop me if you’re awake. I should just try it now, right?”

Try it... now?

Your fake deep-breathing almost hitches in panic when you realize what he’s getting at. Sweet God, please, no. What he wanted to talk about earlier? He wants to get into that now?

“Jaemin scolded me for springing it on you like that after your showcase, by the way. I didn’t realize that I might’ve cornered you until later and I’m sorry about that. I just really, really wanted to talk. Because I didn’t before, and everything got all…” he sighs, heavily. “I’m thankful that you told me to get lost earlier, because I think I can explain it better, like this. I can start from the beginning. I know how thorough you are about things like this.”

You hear the beep of a digital watch somewhere in his house as your face scrunches up in confusion. It's officially midnight, if the watch is making noise to denote the hour, but the realization of the time only comes second to the slow bewilderment slipping through your gloom.

From the beginning? The beginning of what? What the hell does any of that have to do with firmly rejecting you?

“Before we met, because of the way Mark talked about you, I had this idea in my head that you’d be some sort of perfect, flawless angel. That you’d be a little version of him; neat and proper and just a little bit naive, too nice for your own good. A rule follower.”

He laughs at this, a genuine laugh at the memory, and your frown deepens in embarrassment. “Then I actually laid my own eyes on you for the first time, and I realized I couldn’t have been more off.”

You remember it clearly, the first time you’d made a fool out of yourself in front of him and the rest of Mark’s friends. Fourteen years old, running inside the house after walking home from class with your own crew; you’d completely forgotten that you were supposed to bring your skateboard and a change of clothes to school because you all planned to ride around the park that day, the first warm afternoon after a mushy spring, and they said if you didn’t come back out in sixty seconds or less they’d leave you in the dust. So you stormed into the house, past the living room with all of them in it without even a glance or greeting since you hadn’t realized it wasn’t just your brother in there, hurled off your uniform in favor of your outfit staples at the time— an oversized tee that you stole from Mark, hand-me-down cargo shorts that also came from your brother’s closet, and your most cherished possessions: a Yankees baseball cap and your beat-up blue Nikes.

But you couldn’t find your skateboard and the clock was running out, so you howled down the staircase, “If you moved my skateboard again from where I put it I’m going to kill you in your sleep!” only for Mark to shout back up, “It’s a tripping hazard! It’s in the hallway closet! And aren’t you grounded right now? Where are you even going? Does mom know?”

You hadn’t replied. Just snatched the board from where he said he’d stashed it, barreled back down the stairs, and was fully preparing to toss your brother some half-assed explanation, but then you’d seen him. Seen them. Mark’s new school friends, all lounging on your living room couch, staring at you as if you’d come into the room with a bomb. Lee Jeno (who’s name you’d only later find out) appeared the most stunned by your tornado-like appearance.

You could only imagine what they were seeing. Some rowdy tomboy, technically on house arrest but running out to wreak havoc on the town regardless, threatening to kill people in their sleep for tidying up. Exaggerated, obviously, but you remember being mortified halfway to Sunday by how cute they all were and that this was their first introduction to you— and in that mortification, sprinting out of the house without telling your brother anything at all.

You’d gotten a good scolding for that later.

“And it’s going to sound kind of stupid,” Jeno continues, and if you didn’t know any better you’d think you heard the smile in his voice, “But because of that, I got this idea in my head that Mark must’ve only been seeing you through those rose-tinted glasses. The type every older brother has for every younger sister, the ones that make everything they do look cute and miraculous and perfect even if they’re clearly evil to everyone else. Not saying I thought you were secretly some sort of demon or anything either, ‘cause I know you’d roll your eyes at me right now if you could. Just that the girl I saw that day was nowhere near the delicate little thing he’d described. And I got... curious. I started wondering what you were actually like.”

Your face is getting hot again. You’ve never, ever heard him speak this much in one sitting, and the idea of him ever paying this much attention to you is mind boggling. But you don’t let yourself lean into whatever feeling of hope is whistling through your head.

So what if he made a game out of trying to separate your real traits from the things Mark got wrong about you six years ago? Sometimes you liked to make up season-long dramas about strangers you saw on campus. It doesn’t mean anything now.

You want to scrunch into a ball. You aren’t sure how much more of this monologue you can handle, even despite the consequences of rolling over and breaking the facade just to get him to stop. The heat in your face is spreading to your neck, your stomach, every inch of your skin, it’s making your stomach churn with discomfort.

“But then the next year you came to our school,” Jeno says with finality, like this is supposed to be some important distinction. “And it stopped being as casual of an interest. The months went by and at some point I stopped looking for you just to see if you were doing something Mark didn’t know about, and started looking for you just because I wanted to know what you were doing. We’d come over for movie night and while Hyuck and Jae argued for hours about what they did and didn’t want to watch, I’d be wondering if I’d get to see you. You probably won’t remember this, but one of those nights I even ordered an extra curry bowl just so I’d have an excuse to knock on your door to tell you about it. And I thought that was a normal thing to do.”

Jesus Christ. Do you remember? Of course you remember! You’d been reading at your desk with your headphones in, which meant Jeno had to come all the way into your room to get your attention— tapping the side of your earbud with two gentle fingers, laughing all crescent-eyed at you when you yelped in surprise. The sight of him in your room for the first time was like a grenade going off in your tweenaged mind; you’d had to calm down for nearly an entire minute before going downstairs to get your food.

“I thought it was just Mark rubbing off on me. He cared so much about you that I thought my sudden interest was simply overprotection by relation— that he was the reason why I couldn’t stop looking for you. ‘Cause in my mind it couldn't be anything else but brotherly. Mark was pretty clear about what he thought of the people that liked you so I knew it couldn’t be that; I wasn’t stupid enough to let myself be interested in you like that. Right?”

He laughs again, but it doesn’t sound nearly as sweet this time. “I’m rambling, huh?”

Yes, you are. You are.

“I’ll cut to the ending then,” he replies like he’s read your mind. “I realized I did in fact ‘like you like that’, at our graduation.”

And your eyes pop open. It’s completely involuntary, and if you’d been facing him you would have been screwed. But you’re still looking deep into the cushions of the black couch; wide eyes staring into a deep, dark, nothing.

“I hid behind that brotherly excuse for three years. My eyes followed you in the hallway because I wanted to make sure you were okay like Mark would’ve wanted me to. I offered to drive you home from school when he was busy because that’s what Mark would’ve asked me to do anyway. Everything I wanted to do I told myself I was doing because I was just a good friend. You know?” A beat passes before he hums to himself. “But I guess you don’t, actually. Because you liked me authentically, like you do with everything. The night of our graduation, the backyard barbecue your parents threw for us. You remember that, right?”

Duh. You’d bawled your eyes out on the front porch halfway through because only then did it fully sink in that they’d all be leaving you behind, these losers you swore you didn’t even like, before wiping your face and moodily rejoining the celebration.

“Jaemin and Donghyuck were having fun like it was their last day on earth. Even Mark didn’t seem too worried about the fact that we’d be leaving our whole lives behind in a few weeks when we drove off to SNU. I asked him if he was going to miss anything and he listed a dozen things, the friends of ours that were going to different colleges, his parents cooking, his backyard, his bedroom, his electric keyboard. And I remember feeling frozen when he didn’t mention you. In hindsight I know that it was probably because he’d still be coming back home every break, and you had a whole year of high school to finish so it wasn’t like you were going anywhere, but at the moment I felt like someone just yanked the blanket off of me. Three years of pretending and it only took one conversation for it to smash through all of that and hit me like a truck. If Mark isn’t worried about it, why the hell has the idea of leaving you here been haunting me for the last week and a half?”

Oh.

“It was then, I think. That I went, ‘Ah. So this hasn’t all been because of Mark, then,’ and everything I’d ever done under the guise of brotherly obligation popped into context all at once. And as if it wasn’t enough being in my own head, I was still in the middle of talking to Mark as I realized that not only did I like you more than I’d ever liked anyone— I was looking directly at the person who would surely strangle me to death if he ever found out that I liked you more than I’d ever liked anyone. So I pretended it never happened. I said ‘yeah, me too,’ the party ended, I went home, the summer went on, and before I knew it I was on campus and had a million other things to worry about. I saw how well you seemed to be doing when Mark would show me your Instagram posts, how much fun you were having, and I let that make me feel better about being such a coward. Over time, without you around, I convinced myself that things were better like this. That it never would have worked out anyway.”

There’s a moment of silence so utterly long that for a moment you genuinely think that this is going to be it. That he’s going to have said all of that and just… sighed, gotten up, and gone to sleep, leaving you alone to be in misery over what you’ve just heard until morning.

But that’s not it. He’s got a few more words for you. The worst of them all. A string of syllables at first, ones that instantly shatter every bit of emotional resistance you’ve built for yourself these last few days— and then a sentence that has your blood turning to ice in your veins when you realize what it means.

“But then you came back to Seoul,” Jeno started simply, “And a lot of things I thought I knew for sure don’t feel quite as concrete anymore.”

You inhaled.

You exhaled.

And tried to understand what the fuck that last part was supposed to mean.

But then before you could he continued on, his voice soft, casual, innocent. Too innocent. “Like how I used to be sure that you snored when you were sleeping,” he murmured. “Has it been so long that I've forgotten? Or are you not actually asleep, Rockstar?”

[♥︎]: and there it is, folks! please leave a like if you enjoyed! it REALLY gives me the motivation to work on this faster!

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ataleofcrowns · 3 months

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Chapter 12 Progress [08/APR]

Hey gang, I've started posting updates on my Patreon now that I'm actually making some damn progress on this chapter, so I figured to cross-post the latest update here as well. These are usually for members only but it's been sooo long, the ones I'm posting in April are all going to be for free 🙏🏼

This progress report focuses on a specific section of what I'm working on regarding CH12 and, more specifically, Kham.

About Kham

This one is turning out to be a bigger branching route than I expected. For those not in the know, I described in my dev sneak peek from last month how the opening scene of CH12 will involve the Crown dealing (or not dealing?) with Kham. It will be a bit of a culmination of all the choices you've made regarding Kham so far: did you inform her of the assassins in CH5, did you decide to trust her/were you honest with her in CH6, and did you choose to ask her to mediate for you in CH10?

Particularly that last decision will lead to the biggest difference in scenery: if you asked for Kham's help, you will get a scene at the palace involving her and the peri trader. If you decided not to ask her, however, the story will instead see you investigating the peri trader personally.

Initially, these were both two very clear branching paths with two very clear-cut consequences, but I decided it made more sense to offer additional variation. Choosing not to ask for her help with the peri trader will NOT lock you out of being able to ally with her... but the circumstances of it will be quite different compared to a player who has trusted Kham from the start and asked for her help.

You can, of course, decide not to ally with her on either branch as well, if you don't think she can be trusted. In which case, you should be prepared to make an enemy out of her: there's no fence-sitting on this one, and there won't be any chances to make an ally of her later on in the story. Similarly, if she turns out to be untrustworthy, and you make an ally out of her now, there won't be any takebacksies later... so you might end up stabbed in the back.

This is your one and only shot, so choose wisely.

About D and X

I'm currently working on the branch of the Crown dealing with the peri trader without Kham's involvement, and it's a pretty fun variation. There are some undercover detective vibes going on, and it's nice to write a scene set in the city as opposed to the palace for some variety. Though I've also dabbled in the route with Kham's help, and the Crown really flexes their royal authority in that one. Can go no wrong with either option in terms of entertainment, imo!

What's also been fun to explore further is how the main LI's subplot is starting to affect things in the story. I do have to note that for the branching sequence with the Kham choice, there's a bit of a spotlight on D and X since those two were gone for a whole chapter, so they get to spend some special time with the Crown in the first half of CH12. But R and A will be back for the rest of it!

I'll give you some D and X route crumbs this week since I've been chipping away at that one first, and hopefully I'll also have some on R and A next time:

For people who aren't on D's route, they'll get to find out something special about D that D romancers became privy to in CH11. It doesn't change much for the Crown on those routes, just some D lore you may enjoy and an opportunity to grow your friendship further.

As for D romancers, you all may or may not get a potentially devastating sequence depending on how your Crown handled their little court scene in CH11. If you managed to protect D, then all the better, but if you couldn't stamp out the court's protests... well, let's just say your Crown is going to have to be the one to inform D of any bad news.

Plus there's that damned letter to worry about. I'm sure that won't become any kind of problem at all.

For people who aren't on X's route, things are peachy! Honestly, all of the drama that happens for X romancers is not a big deal for everyone else, since X's romance with the Crown is the thing that causes them to act out. X friendship players are coasting in that regard, you just enjoy seeing X get to be their usual menace self.

For people who are romancing X, people on their low route might start noticing something different about them. Their actions in the high and low romances will be the exact same, but the vibes on the low route will be off, to say the least. You can still recover to a high route! But it will require having to pierce through that mask X is so fond of wearing...

High romancers: kick back, relax, and enjoy your upcoming romance content guilt-free LMAO

That was it for this week!! I wish I could give you an estimated release window, but I've been wrestling with this chapter, and I'm frankly deeply afraid I won't be able to finish it before summer rolls in 💀

Please keep your local struggling writer in your thoughts and prayers, and as always thank you for your patience and support 🙏🏼

#progress report

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skyeslittlecorner · 4 months

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The little kings scenarios you have are the best! Here's a cute idea: you know how kids think you're the best when you do things they couldn't do? How about a scenario where they think you're the absolute coolest after rescuing them from...idk, something 😅 Like it's hard to imagine them being in grave trouble (maybe except for levi my poor bby) but for the sake of this ask, the little kings ran into trouble and the mc, in all their human capacity, saved them in the nick of time.

These little guys are a thousand times more powerful than their own subjects, let alone humans. Time to give them a problem they can't solve by force (or at least they shouldn't). It's good that in the eyes of children the smallest problems can be the weight of a collapsing world, and it's good that we are here to save them.

A small spoiler for ch5 in Mammon's part.

Satan will do anything to avoid going to the dentist, even as an adult, let alone as a child. But if you go with him, maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe. It's not even about the pain, he just doesn't like it when someone picks at his mouth. It's true that you won't find a magical solution, but you can hold his little hand. And let him squeeze you when he hurts. Also, you can buy him a dog chew. Either way, you will be his most favorite human in all worlds.

Mammon, as a child, had a big problem with too much power in too small a body. When he appeared at the door of your room at night, barely holding back his tears, you didn't think twice and just lifted the covers. He climbs onto the bed with you, and you feel how stiff he is. Help him massage his cramped muscles. The pain will soon pass, and he will hug you like the greatest treasure in the world.

Beelzebub is the easiest one, you just save him from Bael lmao. Not that he's hurting him, but he won't let him sneak out to Paradise Lost, and Beel has such a terrible urge! Take this little king on a trip to Gehenna and you will be a hero. Plus, you'll kill two birds with one stone, because little Satan won't be bored either. In fact, you can try to collect them all like Pokémon and feel like a full-fledged royal nanny.

Leviathan looks like he's even afraid of his own shadow. At first, he doesn't even trust you, but the more time you spend with him, the better he feels. His comfort zone will become the zone around you. Barbatos thinks he's constantly levitating somewhere close to you, like a planet around the sun. There is no threat in his palace, but in Levi’s eyes, nothing will threaten him only thanks to your presence.

#whb #what in hell is bad #whb satan #whb beelzebub #whb leviathan #whb mammon #skye's little talk

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rose-tinted-kalopsia · 4 months

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≡;-꒰ 𝐉𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐀𝐇 ꒱₊˚ ପ⊹ I 𝑺𝒐 𝒊𝒕 𝒈𝒐𝒆𝒔...

╰┈➤ ❝ jeremiah x afab!reader | smut nsfw 18+ mdni

tags : angst, friends with benefits, forbidden love/"we shouldn't be doing this" vibes, hints at friendship betrayal, the pain hits more if you've read main story ch8 and xavier's myth ch5, kissing and making out, mentions of nipple play, mentions of oral (f and m receiving), fingering, clit play, vaginal sex, unprotected sex, cumshot, dirty talk, praise, cursing, use of nicknames "pretty" "princess" "milady/my lady", lmk if i missed any tags!

wc : 4.5k

an : LOOK. BEFORE YOU SAY ANYTHING. before you "roxie... what—" me !!!!! writing for him is probably a one-time thing, but listen. he's CUTE!!! and if he's cute, i will write for him...!!!!! (sorry, xavier)

You didn't really know when it started.

After all, what were the odds for you to be strolling around long enough, just to chance across this quaint little flower shop that would eventually became part of your every being?

He'd been arranging some flowers out in the front when you first saw him, light brown, curly hair shining with a gleam under the sunlight. He was humming some kind of tune—it wasn't one you particularly knew, and yet, oddly enough, it was one you found familiar, in ways you couldn't really describe.

In retrospect, the flowers were pretty. Pastel colors blending in with limes and greens, a splash of vibrancy against a largely black exterior. Blues and yellows seemed to be predominant amongst the hues, almost tiny and star-like—a galaxy of flowers, you remember thinking.

And something about it had you easily magnetized.

"Hi!" You'd walked up to him without really thinking; lamely telling yourself in your head, that, hey, maybe your apartment could use some extra decorating...!

(It didn't, but now that you'd approached the florist like this, you felt compelled to at least buy something.)

Jeremiah, however, had been completely spooked by your sudden appearance. One look at you, and his eyes went wide and his humming immediately ceased—you could have sworn a hint of recognition had passed in his eyes, but it was gone before you could truly make out what it was that you saw.

"W-whoah!" he'd laughed, hints of both nervousness and awkwardness glaringly obvious to you—and any busybody that happened to be passing by, for that matter. "Uh!? Sorry, I wasn't expecting anyone so, um... Early?"

You could feel it was a feeble excuse.

Sure, it had been your day off, and sure, maybe it was odd for you to be out and about in the morning at all—but it hadn't been that early. You almost wanted to say something about it out loud... but something in you told you to cut him some slack.

Instead, you'd offered a smile.

"No, I'm sorry. Are you not open yet? You have some beautiful flowers, and I couldn't help but want to look at them a little..."

It was amusing to you how easy his expressions were to read. They had changed seamlessly from bewilderment to joy, and he instantly gestured inside. "Oh! We are open! Wow, maybe I'm just really distracted this morning, haha! But hey, thanks, I'm actually pretty proud if them myself. Though I get some help from a friend in taking care of them, I think they're pretty too..."

You'd known from the start that he was quite the talker, but as a smile played on your lips, you thought that you didn't really mind so much, anyway.

He looked cute, and his voice was just as cute.

But the store, you later realized, would take your breath away in an instant.

The inside was just as majestic as the outside. You found that despite the fact that it looked rather small from a distance, its exterior was actually quite misleading. The inside was beautiful—a floor and a loft worth of flowers, and, you could spot all the way in the back, a door that seemed to be leading out into a garden.

And was that... a greenhouse?!

He had probably noticed the awe on your face when you stepped in, and couldn't help but chuckle. "You like?" he grinned, obvious pride twinkling in his eyes.

"Well... yeah! I can't belive I haven't found this place before. Don't you get a lot of customers?"

"Hmm... Sometimes. Depends on the day, really. But as it goes, if you know the place, then you know, right? Welcome to Philo!"

He turned momentarily before offering you a single yellow blossom, its petals unfurling like puffs in your hand.

You eyed it curiously.

"This, is...?"

"It's a zinnia flower. I thought its colour matched your eyes a little, so think of it as something to keep you company while you look around!"

That day, you picked out a lovely bouquet of little blue periwinkles, and learned that his name was Jeremiah.

From then on, you would chance upon him more, and more, and more—taking the occasional detour whenever you were free, or even timing your lunch breaks enough so to at least be able to catch a glimpse. For the flowers, of course, you would tell yourself, because each visit, Jeremiah would give you a single stem. "On the house!" he would say, and you would smile.

The first day you met, he'd given you a yellow zinnia.

The second day you met, he'd given you a sunflower.

The third day you met, he'd given you a white camellia.

And the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth, and onwards—a single flower, handed over with a dismissive excuse of it going with your hair, or your outfit, or your smile—most often accompanied by a nonchalant remark on how pretty you looked.

Sometimes, after that, you'd talk a little. He would ask you about your day, and you would ask him about his day... You've even learned, by now, the things that he liked. Flowers, a given, but also literature—poetry. Though he remarked that lately he hadn't gotten around to reading anything, he's always been quite fond of them.

You found that these little tidbits made him feel less... mysterious, in a sense, and more real. It went without saying that the more you went over to visit, the longer you'd stay—the longer you'd stay, the louder your heart would beat.

In the end, it wouldn't take long before you realized it yourself, but you were no longer going to Philo for simply... the flowers.

And on one particular night, having made it just in time for closing hours, things had started taking a different turn.

...That night had started off innocent.

Cheerful greetings, cheerful chatter—now, you'd grown accustomed to telling him all about how your day or how your week had gone, and then you would never fail to fluster at the way he'd listen to you so attentively. His eyes, you realized, were almost as bright as the sun—honey-brown like his hair, with specks and glimmers of sapphire when the light hit just right enough. If anything else, you thought that a sunflower suited him better than it did you—the cheerful bounce in his curls, and the way his laugh would tinkle in the air and send butterflies into your stomach without even trying.

Perhaps, down bad was an understatement for you.

But no matter how close you had gotten to this boy, you couldn't help but feel as if there was an unknown barrier between the two of you.

That night, Jeremiah gave you a rose.

Cleaned of its thorns, and as pure and pristine as all the other white flowers he'd housed in his store—he tucked it behind your ear, and his gaze softened in a way that you had never seen before.

The air between you was heavy.

But neither of you would make a definitive move.

"Hey, so how are the flowers all doing?" He broke the silence, but his eyes remained steely on yours.

"I'm... taking care of them like I promised to. I still have that bouquet, and I still have all of the other ones you gave me..."

"Hmm." A smile played at his lips, and then he began to list the recent flowers he'd given to you, for the past couple of weeks of your sporadic visits—

"Let's see. Azalea, petunia, iris, lily... a yellow tulip, some lavender—" He stopped, and amusement shone in his eyes. "Hey, don't tell me you're keeping them all in one vase! And with the others, too? That won't make for a pretty bouquet, you know, the colours will all just clash too much!"

You watched as he laughed, but your eyes only furrowed. "What do you mean? I don't have a greenhouse like you do! Might I remind you that I live in an apartment?!"

"I know, I know! But... You didn't really have to keep them..."

"Why not? They're from you..."

Jeremiah's gaze softened.

And then, again, came that same, pensive silence.

And again, you felt like you were drawn to him.

You couldn't have known why.

Despite whatever butterflies and giddiness he'd often bring upon you, it wasn't as if you'd spent all that much time with him—perhaps, you'd try to visit every week if you could, but that was it, wasn't it? A small chat, a few glances... a flower, and then a wave goodbye—

Yet here you were, like a moth to a flame.

"Penny for your thoughts, milady?" he mumbled out as if to bring you out of your reverie, but it almost seemed to you that he was having the same trepidations.

And that nickname.

He would call you by it often—it fell from his lips almost naturally, and then onto your ears equally as naturally. You've always liked the sound of it, reveling in the way he would treat you so sweetly like this, smiling to yourself at the way his eyes would squint in joy whenever he said it.

But, in this situation....

...Closer.

You chanced it, this feeling, and leaned in.

Jeremiah drew in a shaky breath... but he didn't move.

Instead, his eyes—so telling, his eyes—would move downwards over your face, before settling onto your lips.

"...'Miah," you whispered, and you saw him gulp at the nickname. "Can I kiss you?"

Moths, near a flame, never end well. Surely they don't.

But Jeremiah, despite knowing that, had never been happier to oblige.

That night, was the first night he had kissed you. The first time that both of you had given into the thrumming of temptation always in the air; the first time he had you pressed against his counter, hands roaming fondly over your body, kissing you almost as if his life depended on it.

And from that night forward, things changed substantially.

Weekly visits turned to daily—nightly. Chancing upon closing hours became more planned and deliberate, and then the situation would be the same. Lips crashing upon lips, fingers gripping tightly onto fistfuls of hair, the soft resounding of hushed moans into each others mouths.

You no longer remembered when he started becoming more daring, either. When he started sliding his hands underneath your top, when he started kissing at your neck, fingers rubbing your nipples fondly... You don't remember when you made it into his bedroom, having him trace his hands over your thighs, pushing you apart, fingers slipping into your cunt and sliding through your folds in a way that had you absolutely speechless. Or, neither could you remember how on some nights, he had his head between your legs—licking, and sucking, and eating you out, waves of pleasure coarsing through your veins like never before.

No, at this point, you really didn't remember—how many times your night had been filled with him, how many times you would come all over his mouth—his fingers—

How many times you'd moaned his name.

Perhaps, you thought, it might have been the same for him. Your hands, pumping his cock with fervor, tongue swirling around his tip, drinking up ever last drop of cum he would offer you. You knew, by now, that he loved it when your fingers fell through his hair, stroking fondly at his curled tresses, or digging into his scalp as a testament to your passion.

And yet, you'd never gone further.

Each night, you would see a hint of regret flash in his eyes, and though he would hold you, and kiss you, and do everything to ensure you would sleep soundly right beside him...

The ambiguity of your relationship was clear.

The nights would be for pleasure, but there would be nothing more.

No professions of love, no promises of commitment...

Perhaps, the butterflies you'd always felt around him, had also simmered down to nothing but racing heartbeats in anticipation of his touch.

"Does that feel good, pretty?"

Now, Jeremiah had his fingers in your pussy, drinking up the lust in your eyes, watching the way your mouth would hang open in breathless pants.

"Mhm... 'Miah... 'Miah, you're so good..."

He smiled up at you, thumb grazing over your clit, sighing when your head fell back with another moan.

"Staying quiet really was never your strong suit, huh? I love having you like this. You're so, pretty for me, my lady... So pretty..."

"M-Mia—aahn—"

He leaned up to kiss you, his lips feeling home on yours, your back arching to meet the thrust of his fingers.

"You're adorble," he mumbled, lightly onto your lips when he pulled back. "Really adorable. So adorable, damn, I'm so lucky."

Another moan from your mouth, and you tensed beneath him. "C-close!" you cried, "M'gonna— gonna cum!"

"Mhm? Real close, huh, pretty?"

His finger brushed on the spongy spot in your walls, and your high came crashing immediately.

"'Miah! Oh, fuck—'Miah, 'Miah— Jeremiah—"

You groaned as he rode out your orgasm, his fingers slowly pulling out of you, drenched in your slick, and you trembled beneath him with pleasure.

"'Miah..."

"Aww... Now I'm hard for you again..." He almost whined as he pressed against you, the feeling of his bare cock on your folds making you hiss in pleasure.

"Should I..." you panted, chest heaving as you struggled to catch your breath. "Do you want me to suck you off again?"

Your offer came out genuinely, and you propped yourself up on your elbows as if to prepare yourself—but he shook his head, guiding you back down. Jeremiah smiled and placed kisses all over your face, rolling over to lay down next of you as if to make a point. "No need, princess. We've done enough for tonight, right?"

You expected this.

Jeremiah never went too far; always keeping your activities to a minimum, always shaking his head when you asked for more. His self control was impeccable—but it was ironic, almost, considering that these activities had already very much become a nightly adventure.

But you pouted.

Instinctively, you reached out a hand for him to hold; "Why do you hold yourself back when you're with me?"

"What do you mean?"

You could at scoffed at the obviously feigned innocence on his face when he turned to look at you.

"This. You won't let this go... further. Like there's—there's something stopping you, or..." You paused, and squeezed his hand "Jeremiah, what... are we? What are we doing?"

It was a question you'd never dared to ask, but one that you had always felt burning in the back of your mind.

He didn't answer immediately.

You probed him further.

"Even when we're like this, it's almost like... You're still so far away from me. I just... I want to understand where this is all coming from, because, 'Miah, I think I—"

"Don't..."

His voice, interrupting you, was twinged with guilt. He shifted closer enough to cradle you into his chest.

"We're just... We're friends, right? Who just... fool around, from time to time..."

The more words fell out of his mouth, the more he seemed to sound... regretful.

You looked up at him with a searching gaze. "Is that why you'll never really go further than this? Because we're... friends."

He nodded, slowly.

But something wasn't sitting right with you.

It was almost as if he knew something; as if he was hiding something so desperately from you that it was taking every ounce of his being not to give in and tell you everything.

"'Miah..."

"...Ah, fuck—please. Not that nickname, not right now..."

You couldn't understand the pain in his voice.

"...Jeremiah, then."

He looked at you, chewing on the inside of his lower lip, and his eyes held a glimmer of something you couldn't quite understand.

"Do you... Want this, Jeremiah? Is it... Is it not enjoyable for you? If— If you don't want to anymore, then we could just—"

"N-no! It is! God, it is! You're so perfect for me, princ—" the nickname caught in his throat, and he gulped. "Y-you... You always feel so good. I more than want it, I love doing this with you—!"

"Then why are you so sad?"

Your words hung in the air, the silence that followed laying thick with a mix of your emotions. It was almost like he took a moment to process the truth of what you'd said, and then he looked away, gaze flitting to the bedsheets, grip tight around your arms.

"'Miah..."

"No, don't... I— Please. Please, I just—I want you so bad. To have you beneath me—to fuck you, to make love to you... You don't even know how much. And even more than that, I... The more we do this, the more I realize that I don’t want to just fool around with you..."

"Then why don't you? Jeremiah... all this time, I—"

"You're not mine."

You paused. His voice came out barely a whisper, and though he refused to look at you, you could make out the tiny glistening of tears in his eyes.

"What... What do you mean?"

"You... You belong to someone else—"

"No, I don't! I don't have any other man in my life, 'Miah, you know this—"

"But you should!"

"...What? What are you saying?"

He finally looked at you, moving you onto your back once more, clear, pure conflict in his eyes, even as he leaned down to nip at your jawline. His hot, warm breaths were against your skin once more. Immediately you felt your hair raise up, all manner of thoughts seeping through your mind in an instant, desire stirring inside of you—

"'M-Miah..." You drew in a sharp breath. "W-wait, you're not— not making any sense, what's going on...?"

"I can't—I'm not—I'm not supposed to be doing this with you..." His voice shook, but he rolled his hips against yours, and you had to let out a gasp. "I'm not, but I... God, you're just so tempting..."

"I don't... U-understa—ah, shit—!"

"Wh- What's your... call..." Jeremiah let out a shaky breath near your ear, his eyes pleading, his cock resting neatly between your folds, the heat of his touch sending your mind into overdrive. "You— Is it okay? Can I put it in? You... Y-you said..."

Oh...

You swallowed thickly, melting under the intensity in his eyes, failing to hold back a whimper at the way he was sliding against you.

"Yes," you breathed, immediately, wrapping your arms around his neck. "I said yes... I still say yes..."

His hips stuttered at your words, and you could see him grit his teeth as he bit back a loud moan. "O- once. Just once. Once, and I'll pull out, I promise... Just once, let me be inside you..."

Despite the fact that you had already given him consent, he seemed almost as if he was reassuring himself more than you. It didn't sit right with you—something was wrong, and you knew it. Jeremiah wasn't drunk, to have been possibly saying this while not in his right mind, but, this... this was...

What was holding him back?

You, being in such a situation where you understood nothing, didn't know what to do.

Should you stop him...?

Something in your mind was screaming at you to tell him to calm down; what if he didn't truly want this?

But his cock was rubbing so nicely into your clit. You could feel the pool of arousal gather within seconds of him rutting against you, and how—how could you think?

If this were up to you, you've wanted this for so long.

And he was asking you...

He was asking you if he could finally put it inside of you...

You shuddered at the thought, your walls clenching around nothing.

Fuck.

"You can take me, 'Miah," you whispered, breath shaking. You steeled yourself to keep from bucking your hips upwards. "But you have to promise me... Promise me, promise me, that you won't end up regretting it..."

Something flashed in his eyes.

Uncertainty, perhaps—

Jeremiah let out ragged pants, but for a moment, he didn't speak.

Ah...

You moved your hand slowly, trailing his skin before resting to cup his cheek.

"...Do you truly want this, Jeremiah?"

"Yes," he breathed. "Fuck, yes..."

"Okay. I want this, but I'm not forcing you. You have my consent, but I... I want yours."

He sighed, and leaned into your touch, something like a hopeless resignation now made clear in his eyes. He was like a deer in the headlights, almost—so embrolled in whatever internal conflict was at the forefront of his mind, that you almost pitied him. With a pout, you kissed him, slowly, softly, and he lay his forehead to meet yours.

"What if," he whispered, "there was... someone out there, who's loved you all this time?"

"...'Miah?"

"What if... What if I'm stealing you from him? What if it was never supposed to be this way? I just... I feel like... You were never supposed to be mine to hold..."

It wasn't something you could understand at a surface level. You knew that there was more to it—things he couldn't say out loud, and things he couldn't make you understand no matter how hard he tried to.

So you sighed.

"Well, 'Miah, I haven't met him, whoever he is."

"But you hav—"

"The point is that I'm here, now, with you. And, if... If, it makes you feel better, then..." You swallowed your pride, swallowed all the feelings you might have grown for him through your time together, swallowed all hope that you could ever have a normal relationship with him. "We're just... friends, right? Fooling around, like you said. Just... like we've always been doing."

Your heart buzzed, numb, almost.

The look in his eyes told you he didn't believe you; almost as if he'd known, all this time, that you've fallen in love with him, very likely just as he had with you—

But you didn't pay it any mind.

If nothing else, you didn't want to lose what you had now.

It was okay, like this.

You could live with it.

Maybe.

All things considered, your words seemed to bring him to relax just a little bit, and he nuzzled your nose, the fondness in his eyes resurfacing and drowning out any remaining traces of guilt. "Okay," he nodded, "you're right. Of course. We're just... fooling around. Friends, just... fooling around."

It was a false sense of security.

Somehow, the both of you knew it deep in your hearts that you were lying to yourselves.

But it didn't matter, right?

Not when the first push of his tip through your walls had you gasping your air, not when the feel of his length moving right into your cunt felt so perfect—so right. And along with you, Jeremiah let out quiet whimpers, sinking into you slowly, slipping in inch by inch, allowing the both of you to savor this very feeling.

"Holy shit," he cursed, breathless, gritting his teeth as he looked at you almost pleadingly—"How can you feel so good?"

By now he'd bottomed out and your bodies were flush against each other, feeling the echoing of your heartbeats in sync, heavy pants filling the equally weighty silence that followed. Leaning forward slightly, he moved to rest both of your legs on his shoulders, and you couldn't help but moan at the way the slight adjustment had him shifting deeper within you.

"'M-Miah—"

"Fuck, can I... Can I move?" He placed a chaste kiss on the skin of your calf, before letting his hands fall down to your waist, his grip firm yet gentle, his eyes still searching yours almost expectantly.

"Please..."

You could have melted at the way he smiled at you.

And then Jeremiah wasted no time in pulling out, before slowly easing back in. The way your name fell from his lips in a drawn-out moan had you tingling, and you held him tight against you, eyes closing at the way he stretched you out.

He felt so... warm. So safe.

Each of his thrusts were thoughtful, intentional; slow, but long and deep.

Filling.

"S'good, Miah..." you whispered, latching your hands onto his soft curls. "You fit so well..."

"I know... haah... I can't believe we're—I think I'll ruin you for him—"

You didn't dare dwell on his words and only clenched around him at a particularly deep thrust, having the both of you moan in synchrony.

"Fuck! My lady, please— g-go easy on me...!"

"Y-you're the one w-who's so deep—ah—!"

You pulled at his hair, feeling the way the sensitive head of his cock would delightfully brush against your most delicate spot. Your eyes clouded with want, raking your nails over his scalp, shuddering at the way he would moan and moan, on and on about the pleasure of your heat.

"Mhm... so good, 'Miah, s'perfect..." You moaned in tandem with him, whispering praises, matching his thrusts with every movement of your hips. It was too much, almost, even though all he was doing was thrusting into you, doe-like, unfocused eyes transfixed upon your face.

If you weren't lying to yourself, you were inclined to think that he, too, mirrored your exact thoughts.

"Princess... Fuck, my princess..."

Ah. That nickname.

The way his cock would twitch inside you at the mere sound of this nickname from his lips had you gasping, and you wondered, truly, why it had him so worked up. This wasn't the first time you'd seen him so attached to it—but you adored it; you reveled in the way he would use it on you.

"S-say it again," you breathed, heart racing at the wet sounds of your pussy with each of his thrusts, every roll of his hips pushing him so deep inside of you, gliding against that spongy spot. You could barely hold back your moans anymore, words turning into broken, unintelligible whimpers.

"You..." Jeremiah closed his eyes, gritting his teeth, and you felt lightheaded at the image of it in front of you. "Y-you... You like it? When I call you princess?"

Another whine escaped from your lips, and you continue to coax him, pleading him, praising him—anything to get him to bring you closer to your high.

And he listened.

"Fuck, princess— princess, princess, princess— my princess, my pretty, pretty princess—"

Your eyes rolled back as he picked up his pace, precise with his thrusts as the bed rocked steadily beneath you. Cries and moans spilled from your lips, your hands falling to twist into his sheets.

Perfect.

He was perfect.

You'd barely started grinding your hips upwards to meet his thrusts, and then your body was tensing with pleasure

"'M-Miah!" Your fingers raked down to his back, gripping tightly when he hissed into your ear. "M'cumming, 'Miah! M'gonn— I'll—!"

He thrust hard and deep inside of your cunt, and you trembled, crying out his name, mouth falling open—

Jeremiah buried his face into your neck as he pulled out of you, spilling his load all over your chest, broken chants of your name.

"I—fuck—shit—" He whined into your skin, barely lifting himself enough to relax your positions, crawling back over to give you the sweetest of kisses.

"Jeremiah..." You stroked his cheek once more, gently, lost in the way that his eyes would look at you with so much adoration that your heart could beat right out of your chest.

"I..." he started, a pout forming at his lips. "I'm sorry, my lady..."

He didn't explain why, but he didn't need to.

You could see it in his eyes.

His eyes, his ever expressive eyes, holding so much warmth and so much love—

He loved you.

Even though you had dared to reach this illusion of mutual agreement, even if you'd promised yourselves only just a short while ago that this wouldn't happen.

That it couldn't happen.

And you closed your eyes.

"I know," you whispered.

I love you, too.

Your words would remain unsaid.

⁺₊ / an: flower language is cute and the flowers mentioned here represent things like compliments/love/growing attraction! the zinnia symbolises welcoming back a missing friend! because jeremiah would totally flirt via flowers... haha... florist, right....... did i just make myself more attached to him? 4.5k wordcount says yes!!

© rose-tinted-kalopsia. all rights reserved. do not: steal, copy, repost, reupload, modify, or claim any of my works as your own, regardless of credit given. absolutely do not use my works for AI training and other related purposes.

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hbyrde36 · 1 month

Text

Times Like These (The Anniversary Edition)

CH 1 CH 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10 Ch 11 Ch 12

Chapter 13: Epilogue

WC: 5937 | AO3 link | Explicit

A soft knock on hollow wood roused Eddie from sleep. It felt strange to wake up normally, not crying out or gasping for air—actually, waking up at all felt a little foreign after weeks of hardly sleeping at all.

“Ed?” Uncle Wayne’s voice carried through the door.

Eddie glanced over his shoulder. Steve hadn’t moved, was hopefully still fast asleep, so he gently extracted himself and pulled on the first shirt within reach. He tiptoed to the door, only opening it enough to look out, and used his body to hide the view of his bed. Wayne was safe, but he and Steve hadn’t even really labeled what they were to each other yet, let alone discussed if they were okay with other people knowing.

Wayne looked down at Eddie's chest, frowning, “‘M sorry to wake you when you’re finally gettin’ some sleep, but the kids‘re here.”

“Like, Max?”

“Like, all of ‘em.”

Oh, what the fuck.

Eddie scrubbed a hand over his face… and then nearly jumped out of his skin when Steve’s voice, mid-yawn and raspy with sleep, came from the bed behind him.

“Ugh, what are they even doing here, do you have Hellfire today or something?”

Wayne lifted a single eyebrow. “Who’s your friend?”

“Uh—”

There was a rustle of fabric as Steve moved around behind him, getting dressed. Well, putting a shirt on anyway—Eddie’s shirt.

Oh.

Eddie looked down and, yup, that was Steve’s polo shirt he had on.

God he was such a dumbass sometimes.

Wayne craned his neck, trying to see over Eddie’s shoulder—and clearly Steve didn't care if the other man saw him or he wouldn’t have spoken up, so Eddie stepped back, letting the door open the rest of the way as Steve slid up beside him. It seemed this meeting was happening right here, right now, whether he liked it or not, so he might as well accept it.

“It’s nice to meet you, sir. I’m Steve, Steve Harrington.” Steve smiled, sticking his hand out for Wayne to shake, which the older man took—as if they weren’t all standing in Eddie’s bedroom doorway at who knew what time in the morning, in their fucking underwear!

But it was fine.

“Good to meet you too, son. I hear you’re one of the people I have to thank for findin’ my boy and gettin’ him to help. Didn’t see you ‘round the hospital, else I would’ve shown you my gratitude sooner.”

Steve's smile faltered—and fell. “No. I, uh—I wasn’t. I’m sorry I wasn’t there, I should have been. I–”

Eddie took his hand, squeezing, and leaned in to press their sides together.

Wayne shook his head. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, and anyways it looks like whatever it was has worked itself out now. S’long as you boys are bein’ safe, that’s good enough for me.”

“Wayne!” Eddie hissed.

“Go see to your audience. They’re mighty interested in that fancy car out there, which I'm assumin’ belongs to Steve, so….” Wayne glanced between the two of them, chuckling. “Have fun with that.”

For the second time in as many minutes Eddie felt like an idiot. Steve’s car was parked right outside the trailer, hiding him had never been an option. Again, he reminded himself that Steve didn’t seem to mind, had known his car would be out there for all to see in the morning when he decided to stay last night.

“Try and keep it down though, will ya? I’m gonna go catch some sleep before my shift tonight.”

Wayne shuffled away down the hall and back out to the living room where he’d spend the day sleeping on an old rollaway bed. Eddie felt a pang of guilt, like he always did when he thought about all the things Wayne had sacrificed to raise him, up to and including giving him the trailer’s only bedroom. He tried to give it up, on multiple occasions, but Wayne wouldn’t hear it.

“I guess it’s time to face the music about disappearing, and—” Steve glanced down at their clasped hands.

Eddie looked down too, considering. This thing between them, whatever it was, felt so new, and fragile. It was one thing for Wayne to see them together, Eddie was already out to his uncle and accepted by him, and Steve had known that, but the kids? That was different—it was a lot.

“We don’t have to tell anyone anything you're not ready for, Steve. We can always say you came over to hang out and it got late and you slept on the couch. They wouldn't think anything of it.”

“No. I don’t want to hide, not from our friends.” Steve chewed on his bottom lip. “Unless—you don’t want them to know?”

“Sweetheart, I would tell the whole world how I felt about you if it was safe. Of course we can tell the party. I think we can trust them, and technically, all of them but Will and El saw us make out once already, not our fault they don’t remember.”

Steve grinned, and pulled Eddie in for a kiss. It was little more than a peck on the lips, a light little thing in comparison to all they’d done the night before, but it still took Eddie’s breath away.

They pulled apart reluctantly, and set about finding and putting pants on. Eddie wondered if he should offer to switch their shirts back, but he was sort-of loving seeing Steve in his clothes, and as much as the polo was something he’d usually not be caught dead in, it was much softer than it looked, and came with the added perk of smelling like Steve.

“So, um, what is it we’re telling them… exactly?” Eddie asked as he slipped his shoes on. Maybe It was silly to feel so nervous about asking the dreaded ‘what are we’ question after they’d already said I love you, but he couldn’t help it. It was all feeling a little too good to be true.

Steve strode right over, taking Eddie’s face between his hands. “Boyfriends?”

Eddie nodded, sagging in relief as he raised his hands to cover Steve’s where they cradled him.

Steve leaned in the press their lips together one more time, whispering, “even if that word is too… small for what this feels like.”

For a moment Eddie could do nothing but stare in awe at the boy in front of him. He wasn’t used to things working out. He’d never expected to fall this hard for someone, and he’d certainly never dreamed that someone would love him with the same ferocity, but there it was being reflected back to him through Steve’s eyes.

“You’re something else, Harrington. You know that?”

Just as Wayne had said, the entire group of kids, minus Erica, were clustered around Steve’s car almost like they were guarding it, or making sure Steve couldn’t take off and drive away without going through them first.

As soon as they set foot outside, Dustin threw himself at Steve, wrapping arms tightly around his middle before suddenly pulling back to punch him in the chest.

Steve rubbed at the spot. “Hey!”

“You ignored me… for weeks! I was worried about you!” Dustin yelled, hitting him again.

“I know!” Steve shouted back, then sighed, deflating. “I know, and I’m sorry. I was going through some stuff, and I got really in my head about it, but I shouldn't have pushed everyone away. That—that wasn’t cool.”

“What happened? And why did Eddie get to see you before I did?”

Eddie stepped in then, he couldn’t let Steve take all the flack when they were at least equally to blame for this whole mess. “Don’t be too hard on him, Henderson. It was my fault. I–”

“No,” Steve cut him off, taking his hand and lacing their fingers together. “Eddie and I had a… misunderstanding, but–uh, we worked it out”

Dustin’s eyes widened, tracking the movement, head tilting as he seemed to really look at them for the first time. “Steve, what are you weari—what the hell is happening right now?”

Eddie didn’t know what he expected, but It wasn’t quite the reaction he’d hoped for. “Look, if this is going to be a problem for you guys, at least—”

“No! God, no." Dustin shook his head, holding his hands up in front of him, placating. "I’m sorry. It’s not—it’s fine!. It’s… pretty awesome, actually.”

Lucas cleared his throat. “We’re just surprised, is all."

“Yeah! Because of Steve’s reputation and everything.” Dustin clarified.

Max snorted. “I’m not.”

Mike, Lucas, And Dustin gaped at her, while El and Will quietly watched from the sidelines.

“What do you mean you're not surprised?!” Lucas snapped.

She rolled her eyes. “Are you morons blind?”

Mike crossed his arms, face pinched as he rounded on Steve. “So what, you just decided to suddenly be gay now? Or were you gay this whole time and just messing with my sister before?”

Eddie had never wanted to snatch that little prick up by the back of his neck more.

“Keep your voice down, Wheeler! Before you out us to the whole damn trailer park!” Eddie hissed quietly, realizing far too late that the front of his trailer probably wasn’t the best place for this conversation, but they were in it now.

In his defense he hadn’t expected any outbursts. Surprise? Maybe… probably, but no outright hostility—though young Wheeler only seemed to be pissed at Steve rather than both of them, so maybe it was more of a personal thing than a gay thing?

“Sorry.” Mike grumbled.

“And no, we’re not ‘suddenly gay’ now, and it’s not something you choose or decide, shithead. It’s more like something you discover about yourself, when you’re ready. Some people figure it out at a young age, like me.” Eddie tried very hard not to let his gaze flit towards Will, who in their limited interactions had started giving off a vibe. Instead he looked at Steve, and smiled warmly. “But, for others it takes a little time.”

“Like me.” Steve said, smiling back at him with a soft look in his eyes. A look that completely dissolved as he turned to Mike, “And I’m bisexual, Michael. So, no, I wasn’t messing with your sister. Liking Eddie now doesn’t mean I didn't like her then. I like boys and girls.”

“Wait, that’s… Is that allowed?”

Oh.

Suddenly the boy’s anger at Steve might make little more sense.

Steve softened. “Yeah, Mike. That’s allowed.”

After a moment of silence Mike bristled, realizing everyone was looking at him now. “Whatever. I’m going back to Max’s.” He kicked rocks, literally, and ran across the way to the Mayfield trailer, sitting down on its steps, sulking.

“Hey Steve, so now that you're talking and leaving the house again, can we have a sleepover?” Dustin asked.

Steve gave him an unimpressed look.“ Shouldn’t you guys be going after him or something?”

Lucas waved a hand. “He’ll get over it.”

Dustin tipped his chin in agreement. “You know how he gets, he’s fine. Now, what do you say?”

“I don’t know guys.” Steve said.

“Pleeeeeease?”

Steve slid his eyes sideways, looking to Eddie for an opinion.

Eddie shrugged. As much as he wanted more alone time with Steve—like, a lot more—he knew he wasn’t the only one who’d been missing him.

“Fine. But you all need to get your own rides, and give me a few hours to get ready. Seven o’clock at the earliest, you hear me? And make sure your parents know where you’re gonna be.”

The kids all lit up, even Max cracked a smile.

“Yes!” Lucas cheered, before turning with Max to go back to her house.

“Thanks, Steve!” Dustin shouted over his shoulder, him and Will joining the retreat, only El lagged behind.

“Everything alright, El?” Steve asked.

“I am really glad you’re feeling better. I wanted to come see you right away but–”

Steve drew in a breath, a horrified look of realization coming over his face. "Oh my god, El, you remember too! I'm such an idiot, I didn't even think!"

Eddie squeezed the hand he was still holding and felt his own heart drop. With everything else it hadn’t occurred to him either.

"It's okay. Robin told me you were sad, too sad to see anyone.” El said.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie, I should have realized—I should have checked on you. Are you okay?”

“I think so. I told my Dad everything. I felt bad… guilty at first. I thought it was all my fault because I was the one who failed to stop Henry so many times. He says it's not, and I am trying to believe him."

"He's right," Eddie said. "None of this was anyone’s fault but Vecna’s. Trust me, I felt the exact same way throughout the loops. I thought, here I was, given chance after chance and I just kept screwing it up. It wasn’t my fault, or yours, or Steve’s. We did the best we could, and yeah, it took a few tries to get it right, but we did. We did it together. El, you were absolutely incredible in there, facing him down on your own. I never would have gotten out if it wasn’t for you. You saved me."

“I think we all saved each other, but I am sorry that I did not remember, that must have been scary by yourself.”

"No. No more apologies. That’s not on you or Steve, and I won't have either of you feeling guilty about it for another second.” Eddie said, his gaze flitting between their faces. “Okay?”

El nodded, offering him a small smile.

Steve sighed. “Okay.”

A short while later they were walking into Steve’s house. Eddie had snuck back inside to leave a note for his uncle about where he’d be before they took off in the other boy’s BMW.

“Sorry about the mess,” Steve said as they crossed the threshold into the living room, rubbing a hand nervously at the back of his neck. “I, uh, I didn’t realize how bad it’d gotten.”

Eddie looked around. The air was stale, beer cans strewn around the coffee table, a few left where they’d fallen on the floor, along with several pizza boxes, some dirty clothes, and the couch was piled up with a pillow and blankets in a heap. It was very not like Steve, but it also wasn’t that bad. “You call this a mess? That’s adorable. You’ve seen my place man, c’mon. This is nothing. We can have this picked up in ten minutes—tops.”

“No, this is my problem, and your arm–”

“Is fine.” Eddie insisted. “Why don't you go get us a couple trash bags.”

They worked together, and just as predicted it didn’t take long at all. He gathered up the laundry, tossing it all into the washing machine, while Steve took care of the trash and wiped down the tables, the two of them meeting in the middle to straighten couch cushions and fold blankets.

“Were you sleeping down here?” Eddie asked.

“Tried to. I was struggling, and angry, and I missed you. Thinking about sleeping in that bed alone after all those memories came back just—” Steve shook his head. “Not that down here was any better. I know it was only a short time that you were here with me, really, but it’s like you seeped into the walls.”

When Steve finished with the blanket he was working on, he hugged it to his chest and sat down. “It was one of my happy memories, one of the places I went when I was running from Vecna. Here, on this couch, with you.”

Eddie tilted his head, taking a seat beside him.

“You’d just cooked for us. I was so tired, and you tried to make me go to bed, but I wouldn't listen.”

“And you fell asleep anyway.”

“And you let me sleep on your shoulder for the whole movie. That night—that was when I really started to fall for you, in that loop at least.”

Eddie rested a hand on Steve’s knee. “Me too.”

They moved on to the kitchen next, which was in pretty good shape apart from a sink full of dishes, something Eddie couldn’t really help with, so he hopped up onto the counter to supervise and keep Steve company.

Well, he tried to hop up on the counter at least, a task that was made much more difficult with the use of only one hand. After his second failed attempt, Steve gripped him around the waist and lifted him up on his perch before wordlessly getting to work.

Eddie swallowed hard, feeling his cheeks warm. He could get used to being manhandled like that, and judging by Steve’s little smirk, the other boy felt the same way.

It should have been boring sitting there watching as Steve scrubbed plates and glasses, but as corny as it sounded, Eddie was just happy to be around him. Steve kept looking at him too, to the detriment of his task, as he repeatedly sloshed water over himself when he got stuck staring for too long.

The third time it happened Eddie had to laugh. “What? Is it my hair?” He shook his head making his curls bounce around wildly. “Have I been walking around with bedhead all day and you didn’t tell me?”

“No, it’s just— a part of me can’t believe you’re here? I know it was my own doing, but I was going crazy all alone in this big fucking house.”

Eddie rested a hand on his shoulder, just able to reach from his spot.

“I should be used to it by now, the whole being alone thing. I’m sure you’ve noticed that my parents aren’t around much. It’s… not a new thing.”

“I did.” Eddie admitted. “I figured you’d talk about them when you were ready.”

Steve smiled sadly, returning his attention to the sink as he went on. “I was eight the first time they left me alone for the weekend. I was terrified, slept with all the lights on, thought every bump in the night was a robber breaking in. The older I got the longer they would stay away. They’d swoop in every now and then, just long enough to make sure I knew how disappointed they were that I wasn’t living up to their expectations. When my dad found out I wasn’t going to college they stopped coming home altogether.”

“What about graduation?”

“They stopped by, about a week after the ceremony, to yell at me for not having a job yet, even though I’d already told them I had the interview at Scoops. That’s the last time I spoke to them in person.”

“Wait, they didn’t come home when you got hurt at the mall? I know they would have thought it was just a fire but, didn’t the hospital call them?”

Steve tensed, and very deliberately did not look at him.

Eddie sighed. “You didn’t go to the hospital, did you?”

“Didn’t need to.”

“Baby, you were drugged and tortured.”

“That’s actually part of why I didn’t go. Didn’t think I could handle facing another guy in a white coat.”

It was hard to argue with that, and of course it was in the past now, but that didn’t stop Eddie from wanting to. “So you were just here alone after all that?”

“No, um, Robin–” Steve broke off with a breathy laugh. “Ok, this is going to sound fucked up but that was another one of my happy memories, actually. Robin, she snuck out of her house and into mine that night. She didn’t need to sneak, of course, it’s not like anyone else was here, but she didn’t know that at the time. It was crazy, this girl who barely tolerated me before everything went down—suddenly, here she was, climbing through my bedroom window, insisting on taking care of me.” He shook his head. “I don’t think I could live without her now.”

“Pretty sure she feels the same way about you, sweetheart. So it’s been almost a year since you’ve seen your parents?”

“Yeah, they bought a place in Chicago when my dad was offered a new position in his company there. Said I could stay here until they sell the place, as long as I had a job and kept it clean.”

“I’m sorry.”

Steve gave half a shrug. “It’s—I don’t need or want them in my life anymore. If anything I'm grateful it’s allowed me to still be here for the kids through all this shit without having to deal with them.”

“Still, you deserved better.”

Steve shut the faucet off, drying his hands before wedging himself between Eddie's legs where they hung off the counter, throwing arms around his waist. “Thank you.”

Eddie yelped at the contact, the front of Steve’s shirt was cold, and wet, and it was seeping into Eddie’s clothes now too, but he only held Steve tighter, and didn’t let go.

“I think we’re both going to need some dry clothes after this.” Eddie said.

Steve nuzzled into his chest. “How about a shower first?”

This wasn’t exactly how he had pictured it when Steve suggested they take a shower together. Not that Eddie would have turned the opportunity down, under any circumstances, but the plastic bag tied and taped around his casted arm, while necessary, was decidedly unsexy.

He looked ridiculous.

However, Steve didn’t seem to agree, if the hungry looks he was throwing Eddie’s way as they undressed were any indication.

Though Eddie was more than capable of washing his own hair one handed, had been doing so since the hospital, Steve insisted on taking charge from the moment they stepped under the spray together, working shampoo into his scalp until it formed a lather, letting it run through the end of his curls as it rinsed out.

Eddie was in heaven, the feel of Steve's fingers combing conditioner through his hair was unlike anything else, and the occasional tug when he got caught up on a knot had a warmth blossoming low in his belly, and something else growing between his legs.

He tried to hold it in but a quiet moan slipped past his lips as Steve coaxed his head back, rinsing it again, and it was all Eddie could do not to palm himself.

Suddenly Steve’s broad chest was pressed up against his back, mouth hovering just behind his ear. “Don’t hold back on my account.”

Eddie shivered, trying to press his ass back to feel if Steve was as affected as he was, but the other boy was keeping his hips a polite distance away.

Tease.

Next, Steve took up a bar of soap and a washcloth, and began to painstakingly wash him from head to toe, reaching around to get Eddie’s front and finally pressing his own hard length against the swell of his ass.

Eddie moaned again, long and loud this time so Steve would know exactly what he was doing to him.

It was as close to being worshiped as he could imagine, and he’d never felt so cared for and so fucking turned on in his life, convinced that if anything more than water touched his cock right now, he’d be painting the shower wall in seconds with his release.

Thankfully Eddie got a short reprieve as Steve stepped back to turn the soap on himself, and he took several deep breaths, purposely not turning around to watch the show that was happening right behind him. He thought he knew where this was going, and he didn’t want their fun to be so short lived because he couldn’t get himself under control.

But then Steve was done, and in the blink of an eye he spun Eddie around, pinned him against the wall, and dropped to his fucking knees, and Eddie knew he was screwed. He would never last, but the exquisite image before him certainly would—seared into his brain forever.

He wasn’t too far gone to check in though, to make sure Steve wasn’t pushing past his comfort zone. “You don’t have to.”

Steve licked his lips, glancing up at him through his eyelashes. “I want to.”

Jesus Christ

“Are you sure?” Eddie reached down to cup Steve’s cheek, running a thumb over his bottom lip. Steve’s eyes fell shut, the tip of his tongue darting out to lick at it like a reflex.

“Fuck.” Eddie breathed.

“Please?” Steve begged, letting his mouth fall wide open. He knew exactly what he was doing and any lingering worries Eddie had completely fell away.

“Since you asked so nicely.”

Eddie caressed Steve’s face one last time before letting it go, taking himself in hand, and began to feed his cock inch by inch between Steve’s lips.

Predictably, Eddie had come embarrassingly fast, but so had Steve once they switched places, and after a final rinse off they both collapsed, naked and partially damp onto Steve's bed.

“We can’t fall asleep. The kids–” Steve mumbled.

“They won’t be here for at least another hour. I won’t let us fall asleep, I promise. I just want to hold you for a while.” Eddie said, throwing an arm over Steve, pulling him in close.

“This was one of my happy memories. Laying in here with you.”

Steve turned in his arms to face him, running fingers through his sodden curls.

“The last night before we went after Vecna, when everyone fell asleep in the living room but you and I snuck up here.” Eddie tucked himself under Steve’s chin, hiding his face. “Did you…”

“Did I, what?”

“Did you kiss me that night? On the top of the head?”

Steve groaned like he was embarrassed. “I thought you were asleep!”

Eddie chuckled. “Almost. I was never sure it wasn’t just a dream.” His lips dragged against the skin of Steve's neck as he spoke, and he was just starting to suck a bruise into the side of his throat when the doorbell rang.

Steve groaned.

“They’re early,” Eddie grumbled as they both untangled themselves and got up.

Steve went right for the dresser to pull clothes out for them, and Eddie couldn’t help but notice a certain t-shirt in the other boy’s hand.

“Mine.” He snatched it up greedily. “But I’m not putting it on yet, my hair is still too wet.”

“As long as you put pants on. I don’t think we need to scar them like that—although maybe it’ll make them think twice before showing up early next time.”

“That’s an idea.”

In the end, Eddie did slide a pair of sweatpants on, for his own modesty, and followed Steve down the stairs to answer the door, a towel slung over his shoulders to catch any drips.

Steve grasped the handle, raising his voice as he threw the front door open. “I thought I said seven o’clock you—” And clicked his mouth shut abruptly when he came face-to-face, not with Dustin, Max, or any of the others, but Robin and Chrissy standing on his doorstep.

Robin crossed her arms over her chest, eyes narrowed as she took them in. “Dustin called me.”

Steve grit his teeth. “Oh that little–

She shrugged. “Scoops troop for life.”

“Wait, did he tell you about us?” Eddie asked.

“No, just about the sleepover. I–” Robin glanced over her shoulder at Chrissy. “We—assumed the other thing when he said where and when they’d run into the two of you.”

Eddie scoffed.

Run into them, as if the gremlins hadn’t been lying in wait, ready to pounce.

Chrissy nodded. “Oh, and fair warning I'm pretty sure the kids also told Nancy and Jonathan about your little shindig too.”

“Great.”

Eddie wound his arm around Steve’s lower back, rubbing his thumb back and forth along his side. “Hey, like I said this morning. No one has to know that you’re not ready to tell. I can keep my hands to myself while they’re around, and we can make sure the kids don’t—”

“And like I said,” Steve gently cut him off, leaning into him. “I don't want to hide, and maybe I don’t want you to keep your hands to yourself.”

“Ugh,” Robin groaned. “You guys are gonna be gross about this aren’t you?”

“Don’t be homophobic, Buckley.”

“At least put a shirt on.” Robin rolled her eyes, shoulder checking him on her way by as she and Chrissy finally came inside.

“Fine.” Eddie whined, giving Steve’s side one last squeeze before he yanked the towel off and rubbed at his head. In a huff he headed for the bedroom, and Steve’s swim team shirt. At least time he could actually enjoy wearing the Harrington name like a brand across his back.

“I’m really happy for you guys. It’s good to see you like this.”

He heard Robin say to Steve as he climbed the stairs, while the rest of them headed to the living room.

“What, vertical?” Steve asked, a hint of laughter in his voice.

“No, smiling.”

The sleepover turned out to be exactly what everyone needed. They had won the war, and now, finally, their little group was complete again.

Nancy and Jonathan did eventually show, and stayed for quite a while, though they didn’t sleep over—they also seemed very unsurprised when he and Steve told them about their relationship.

Was it possible he and Steve were not as subtle as they thought?

Even Hopper and Joyce paid a visit on their way to dinner, taking advantage of their most trusted babysitters to have a night out for themselves. Steve was the one to share their news that time, again to less than surprised faces.

Joyce got teary eyed, hugged them both, said how happy she was for them, and how it didn’t change anything. Eddie just hoped Will had been in earshot, so he’d know he had a mom who was ready to accept him whenever he was ready to accept himself.

Hopper was pretty quiet about the whole thing, but made a point to hug Steve and shake Eddie’s hand before they left, which was a shock all on its own, and probably the closest thing Eddie was going to get to a stamp of approval.

He’d take it.

Later that night, or early the next morning depending on how you looked at it, considering it was nearing 2am by the time everyone else fell asleep and Steve and Eddie had snuck away, they were finally back in bed, as wrapped up in each other as they could be.

“So, what do we do now?” Steve asked softly.

Eddie kissed the corner of his mouth, and reached down to knead his ass. “I didn’t think you’d want to fool around with everyone else right downstairs, but if you insist—”

“No,” Steve huffed a laugh, wriggling around till Eddie moved his hand. “I mean, you’re graduating soon, right? And I guess I’m wondering what your plan is, what’s next for you.”

“Stevie, I’m just starting to accept the fact that we’ve survived this insanity, I have no plans. I guess I’d like to get a job? Sort of over being the town drug dealer after all this, y’know?” Eddie reached up to tuck a stray piece of hair behind Steve’s ear. “What about you, big boy? What do you want now that the Upside Down is gone for good?”

He couldn’t help recalling how Steve’s last answer to a very similar question had been to make it to 21, and hoped that had changed now.

“I don’t know. Robin will be heading off to college in the fall. I thought once about following her, but I was too worried about being that far away if something happened. I never thought we’d be in the clear like this.”

“Where’s she going?”

“Indianapolis.” Steve heaved a heavy sigh, as though the nearby city was on another planet.

“That’s only like an hour away!”

“But, what about the kids?”

“You know they’re not really kids, right? And they have parents.” Eddie propped himself up on his elbow to look the other boy more solidly in the eye. “Vecna is gone, for good this time. They’re safe. Besides, the little shits will be driving before you know it, and until then you can visit whenever you want.”

Steve looked down, fingers playing along the sheet. “You trying to talk me into moving away, Munson?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“What about you—us?”

“I could always come with you… if you’d want that.”

Steve’s eyes snapped back to his. A little wider than they were before. “B-but what about Wayne?”

“I’m almost twenty years old, I think it’s time for Wayne to have his bedroom back, and me moving out is probably the only thing that’ll make him accept it.”

“Isn’t it a little soon for us to be talking about living together?”

“Maybe—probably,” Eddie grinned, letting out a long breath. “But, we’ve established that we’re both crazy, right? And we have time, it’s not like it would be happening tomorrow.”

“Seriously though, you would do that?”

Eddie reached for him, and they shuffled around until they were wrapped up closely together again. “In a heartbeat. As long as you want me around, I'll be here. So yeah, I’m all in.”

Six months later found them, and all the belongings they could fit in the back of Eddie’s van, flying down the highway towards their new place—a two bedroom apartment in Indianapolis they’d be sharing with Chrissy and Robin while the girls went to school.

The two friends had finally managed to get their own shit together after that first post-Vecna sleepover. Bolstered by how open Eddie and Steve were and how accepting the group had been of them, the very next morning Chrissy finally worked up the courage to make a move—to Robin’s immense relief.

Then Chrissy received an acceptance letter from the same school Robin was attending, and all the pieces just sort of fell into place.

Steve sold the BMW. They wouldn’t need two cars in the city, and it was worth more used than Eddie’s van would have gotten brand new. Indy wasn’t like Hawkins, there’d be plenty of public transportation, and the money he made would be more than enough for the two of them to live on until they found jobs.

“Are you sure this is okay? That we’re not moving too fast doing this?” Steve asked from the passenger seat, as they took the final exit that would lead them to their future.

It wasn’t the first time Steve had said those same words over the last few weeks. He’d also asked the day they put their deposit down, the day they told Wayne they were leaving, and the night they started packing. Steve seemed to think Eddie was going to suddenly change his mind or something, as if he was less than absolutely head over heels in love.

“You say that like we haven't spent every waking moment together since we got together. How many times do I have to tell you I'm all in on this, on you, before you believe me?”

“Sorry.” Steve sunk down in his seat, cheeks going a little pink.

Eddie held his hand out over the center console, whining and wiggling his fingers until Steve finally cracked a smile and took it, lacing their fingers together.

“Do you think we’ll be happy here? That it’ll feel like home someday?” Steve asked.

“I think wherever we are will always feel like home, as long as we’re there together.”

Special thanks to @penny00dreadful for being the best beta, friend and cheerleader.

Reblogs are always appreciated! 💜💜💜

Permanent taglist(open): @hitlikehammers @pearynice @penny00dreadful @bookworm0690 @wonderland-girl143-blog

@goodolefashionedloverboi @themagicalari

Fic taglist: @cranberrymoons @thoroughlycollected @blubblesandink @finntheehumaneater @brbsoulnomming

@estrellami-1 @hellion-child @manda-panda-monium @spicysix @kikidoesfanfic

@dreamwatch @lawrencebshoggoth @stillfullofshit @lil-gremlin-things @mamafaithful

@klausinamarink @starlight-archer

#steddie fanfic #time loop #eddie munson #steve harrington #stranger things #steddie #steve x eddie #steve harrington/eddie munson #steddie fic #robin buckley #chrissy cunningham #the party #finally getting to the happily ever after

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revasserium · 1 year

Text

stargazing

malleus; 818 words; fluff... btwn ch5 and 6 bc i can't stop thinking about malleus turning up to vdc cause mc invited him during one of his midnight walks

“hey! horns!”

“hm? are you still referring to me by that name, child of man?”

the night is dark and thick around you as you flash malleus a smile, leaning on your opened windowsill. at the lilt of your head, malleus pauses, going still as he watches you — so young, so naïve, so… unrelenting.

“what, you don’t like it?”

the prince is a thing of thorn and edge and cool, flickering green flame. still, something like amusement warms his chest as he turns, slow and then slower, his curiosity blossoming inside him like hunger, sharp and sweet. he wets his lips, whets his indelible curiosity against his better judgement and lets the curiosity win. briefly, he wonders if the sayings are true — that it might be a thing of murder, that it might hold so much power.

he takes three long steps towards your window. like this, he almost has to look up to meet your eyes.

almost.

“i don’t mind it.”

you laugh, the sound soft and feather-light in the velveteen night. it reminds him of the firefly lights — tiny and effervescent as they are, glittering still against the ever-encroaching darkness, mindless of their own futility.

“so… were you ever gonna tell me you were — what, the crown prince of briar valley?” and here, he finds you laughing again, as if this were some joking matter, as if his position weren’t pressed into the brittle of his bones, sewn into the rigid line of his shoulders, laced into the poison of his smile.

you slump down, resting your cheek against one of your folded arms.

“where is that, even?”

malleus allows himself something akin to laughter as well, letting the sound bubble through him. before he met you, he would’ve thought it felt like poison — roiling in the cauldron of his stomach, bitter and dangerous. but now, he thinks it might feel something like singing, the sound pouring from him, spilling out of him sweet tea or song.

“nowhere of consequence to you, child of man.”

“hm… so, it’s a secret, then?”

he finds himself oddly entranced by the teasing sweep of your lips, by the way your eyes are just a shade too bright. in them, he finds the crescent moon — he finds himself too, but not as he’s always pictured himself. to you, he’s just another student, tall and imposing and strange, but up until now, you’ve had no reason to think otherwise of him. and still, and still…

“not in the slightest.”

“so, show me.”

“would you like to see it, one day? i suppose it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.”

you brighten, impossibly. and malleus, not for the first time, finds himself held still by your excitement, by your unwavering trust. by your unassuming nature. has anyone ever looked upon him with such pure, wonderous hope? with not a hint of expectation or hesitation, not a thread of fear or trepidation?

no. he doesn’t think they have.

and yet, here you are, plain as the swinging, silver moon, cut across the star-strewn sky.

“i’d love to!”

“then i suppose you have to stay here long enough.”

“hm?” you cock your head at him and he find himself smiling.

“well, if you were to find your way back to that other world of yours… i might never get to show you briar valley.”

but to his surprise, you simply shrug, waving a hand through the air as if shooing off butterflies.

“oh, i’m not too worried about that. aren’t you like, the most powerful mage ever?”

malleus chuckles, fighting the urge to press a finger to his own lips, to swallow back the sound.

“one of, yes.”

you shrug again, propping your chin on the heel of your hand as your eyes travel up the length of his horns, and then back down again.

“then i’m sure you’ll find a way to bring me back for a tour of your hometown. it’ll be easy!”

malleus nods thoughtfully, watching as you cast your eyes up towards the cloudless sky. you point at the stars, exclaiming about some constellation or other, and he follows your gaze, leaning back against the cool brick of of the wall next to your opened window, letting your voice wash over him like water from a babbling brook.

yes, he thinks, he really would like to show you briar valley one day — be it tomorrow, or the day after. or, perhaps, years from now. still, it’s an invitation extended, and he’s not one to go back on his word.

and yes, he muses, if you were one day to find your way back home, he would find a way to bring you back, even if it took him the rest of his life to do it.

#malleus draconia #twst #twisted wonderland #malleus draconia x reader #malleus draconia fluff #twst fluff #twisted wonderland fluff #malleus headcanons #twst imagines #twst scenarios #malleus scenarios #floofy floof floof #i just cANNOt get the hilarity of mc/yuu calling malleus “horns” outta my head #like i get why they chose “hornton” but “horns” is just so much funnier and much more... vibey???#its giving ukai calling asahi “manbun” ukno like that kinda thing #and yeah -- yeah; i'm a malleus bitch now. we have arrived.

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a-kaash-me-outside · 1 year

Text

not fair // masterlist

in which your boyfriend is perfect in every single way... except for one and kei can't just sit back and watch you suffer...

~ ᴛsᴜᴋɪsʜɪᴍᴀ ᴋᴇɪ x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ ~ 27652 ᴡᴏʀᴅs status: in progress mar23 ( 5 / 6 chapters posted ) fic & masterlist updated every monday! ~~

the general vibe: 18+ very nsfw, cheating, really nasty smut, first names, seriously a lot of smut, very subtle feelings in the beginning, plot gets more prevalent as you get further into the chapters what you're getting yourself into: degradation, dom/sub undertones, rough sex, guys really a lot of smut, reader is pathetically needy ngl, i wrote this 3 years ago, size kink (but not like that), dirty talk, eventual cucking, afab reader she/her pronouns, will provide tags for each chapter!! ~~

yes, this was crossposted from ao3, you probably have already read it there !! ♡

ch1. "i don't know if you can handle me"

ch2. “well, what are you calling me for?”

ch3. “you ruined me too, i guess”

ch4. “what? you want to watch me fuck your ex?”

ch5. “don’t question me again or i’ll leave”

ch6. (coming soon) “i hope you had your fill of feeling in control”

♡ ʀᴇʙʟᴏɢs ᴀɴᴅ ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴs ᴍᴇᴀɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ♡

#tsukishima x reader #tsukishima smut #tsukishima kei x reader #hq smut #hq x reader #haikyuu smut #haikyuu x reader #tsukishima x female reader #masterlist!

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abitohoney · 7 months

Text

Insatiable

CH1 - I Don’t Bite AO3 link

CH1 || CH2 || CH3 || CH4 || CH5 || CH6 || CH7

Vampire Sevika x female reader

Rating: Explicit, MDNI, NSFW

Story Tags: Vampire Sevika, Soft Sevika, liaison reader, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Grinding, Sexual Tension, Biting, Drinking, Smut, Clothed Sex, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Assault, Vaginal Fingering, Cunnilingus, Minor Character Death, Vampire Silco, vampire Ran, definitely took some creative liberties on vampire lore here, Menstrual Sex, Menstruation Kink, Strap-Ons, Overstimulation

Word Count: 3.3k

Story Summary: As the new liaison between Piltover and the Undercity, you've been guided by the enigmatic escort Ran to meet with their boss- and fearsome criminal kingpin- Silco, as well as his alluring right-hand woman Sevika. You're well aware that plenty of shady things take place in the depths below, but there's something particularly mysterious about these three that you can't quite put your finger on.

AN: This is already in process over on AO3.

The ride down the lift that carried passengers between the starlit skies of Piltover and the dark bowels of the Undercity was no different that night than any other. Ran, your escort, stood in silence just behind you, uncomfortably close despite there being more than enough room to leave you breathing space. Their ebony lips curled into a small smirk when you peered at them from over your shoulder. You offered a shy smile in return before returning your attention to the iron bars of the gate in front of you.

The clear lights from the lampposts above slowly faded the deeper you traveled, replaced by the sparse neon lights barely visible through the thick smog rising from the sump level in the depths below. It pained you to know there were people forced to live in such conditions, but that was part of your job, the reason you traveled to the Undercity once every week.

- - - - - - - - - -

You had been hired as a liaison to work between the Piltover council and the Undercity’s industrialist Silco. It was your responsibility to oversee negotiations between the two, a bit of a messenger and peacekeeper for lack of a better term. You were a neutral party, working to find terms that would favor, or at least be most agreeable, to both sides.

Your first meeting with Silco and his right-hand woman Sevika had been admittedly both terrifying and unnerving. Though you were privy to many rumors, and excessively debriefed by your employer, it did little to prepare you for seeing them in person.

Silco, criminal kingpin, driven to convert the Undercity into the independent nation of Zaun, was a thin, pale, heavily scarred man that simply exuded power and control. Mismatched eyes; one, sitting among the scarred side of his face- a contrasting fire among a black abyss, the other, arguably just as terrifying in its seeming ability to see your soul- a beautiful shade of blue. Lips thin, pulled into a serious taut line. Dark slicked back hair with trails of silver flowed like an extension of the scar on the left side of his face. Suit tailored as if straight from one of Piltover's finest, a regal mix of dark red, black and gold trimmings and accents. His voice was cool, calm, but with a clipped edge that left no room for arguing. He spoke almost poetically, with metaphors and eloquent rhetoric, clearly far more educated than a majority of his Undercity peers. Though he spoke softly to you, his tone almost sensual in nature, you suspected that could take a frightening turn if he were cross.

Sevika, Silco’s second in command, was equally a sight to behold. Tall, muscular, dark, and brooding. She too donned scars, but considerably smaller, vein-like and glowing a lovely blueish-purple against her rich brown skin. They ran along her left check, traveling down her neck, under her leather choker, then disappeared beneath the collar of her leather top. Her eyes, a rare and lovely shade of gray, glowed eerily red and purple at times. She too had dark hair, cut in a short angled bob, half pulled into a tie at the back of her head. But her most notable and unnerving feature was her left arm; a mechanical, electrical, and hydraulic amalgamation- including gears, tubes, and enough joints and movable components to make it a fully functional extension of her body. She typically kept it hidden between her maroon cape, but you had more than once gotten a glimpse when she lifted that arm or shifted such that her cape fell aside. Sevika's voice was unique too. Deep, a bit raspy, and noticeably sultry. At least it seemed that way when she spoke directly to you. She, however, was more straight to the point with her words. She didn't use fancy language or long-winded stories to convey her thoughts. She said exactly what she was thinking and nothing more. And similar to her employer, she too had a tone you suspected could strike fear into anyone who pushed her buttons.

Even your escort, Ran, another of Siclo’s lackeys, was wrapped in mystery and danger. Though they spoke very little, it only served to drive that fear and unease deeper. Their appearance, though slightly less unnerving than Silco or Sevika, still left the impression they were not someone you’d want to trifle with. Their short, black, choppy hair hung diagonally across their face, obscuring their left eye. Dark black makeup painted their lips and surrounded their eyes, a stark contrast to their pale complexion. A leather harness wrapped around their seemingly out of place crisp white shirt, twin blades resting in the sheaths at their back. Similar to Sevika, Ran’s right hand appeared to be a prosthetic, or included some sort of dark metal covering.

Admittedly, the three of them intrigued you despite the fear they instilled. However, Sevika was the one to have piqued your interest the most.

The meetings, held weekly and late in the evening at Silco's office above his establishment- a bar or club of sorts- always started with just you and Sevika, typically for an hour or two before Silco would finally appear. At first you thought it simply was that he was just a busy man, running late and nothing more. However, after several failed attempts to initiate the discussions you were sent to hold on behalf of the Piltover council with Sevika, you started to suspect she was intentionally calling you in early. For something entirely different.

Each visit Sevika would sit on the large settee beside you, arms spread across the back and legs spread wide, a cigarillo or glass of liquor in her prosthetic hand. Her human hand always rested near your neck, fingers occasionally brushing along the sensitive flesh, subtle enough to be considered unintentional, but it sent chills down your spine each time.

Some nights she would listen to you talk about anything and everything you could come up with. Some nights the two of you would sit in comfortable silence. On rare occasions, she would grace you with little tidbits of her own life, to which you hung on every single word spoken in that enticingly deep voice of hers, your eyes glued to her full lips.

- - - - - - - - - -

You were pulled from your thoughts at the sudden jolt of the lift coming to a stop. Your body lurched forward, not prepared for the abrupt halt.

Ran’s metal hand reached out, finding purchase on your shoulder and preventing you from falling face first into the iron bars.

You gasped softly, quickly grasping one of the bars and righting yourself. “Sorry,” you murmured awkwardly to Ran who then stood beside you. “And thank you.”

Their dark lips pulled into a crooked grin. One that had you wondering if they were amused by your slip. They said nothing though, removing their hand, but not without first dragging the very tip of a metal finger along the side of your neck.

The touch sent chills down your spine. It was so subtle, so casual, you weren’t sure if it was intentional. But you weren’t about to ask.

Ran stepped past you, flashing one last smile to your stunned expression.

You followed, feeling suddenly more apprehensive about the night’s meeting than usual.

You sat on the dark burgundy settee in the dimly lit room of Silco’s office, trying to keep your cool as you waited for his arrival, which over the past few visits had been suspiciously later and later.

Sevika, seated beside you, absentmindedly ran the fingers of her human hand through the hair just above your neck. Twirling the strands, her fingertips brushed along the stretch of sensitive skin below.

It took every ounce of willpower not to simply purr, or let your head roll forward, close your eyes, and just relish in the sensations. You were only brought out of your daze when you heard her husky voice beside you.

"You're a lot prettier than our last liaison."

Turning your head, you peered up at her curiously. Had you heard her right?

Gray eyes, almost glowing in the faint light of the desk lamp several feet away, were trained on your exposed neck. Her dark taupe lips pulled up at one corner of her mouth.

You could feel the heat begin to spread across your cheeks. "Are you- are you trying to court me?" you asked incredulously, your voice barely above a whisper.

"Court?” She chuckled– a deep, sensual little laugh, eyes drifting to yours. “You mean, am I trying to seduce you?"

When you only offered her a shy little smile, she continued in a playful tone, "That depends. Is it working?"

"Yes," you admitted, heat flooding your cheeks and ears when you realized what you just confessed. Before you could attempt to cover it up, she spoke again.

"Then why don't you be a good girl for me and lie down so I can do this properly."

That was not what you’d expected. Not at all. You expected her to be surprised, or put off. She couldn’t possibly have been serious. But she was.

Your chest tightened, the implications of the situation quickly setting in. Any ounce of confidence you had remaining was gone in an instant. And you suddenly felt terribly unprepared for whatever was about to take place.

Sevika must have taken notice, as she tried to coax you on.

"C'mon, sweetheart. I don't bite," she purred, then raised a single brow. “Unless you want me to.”

The sinful curl of her lips revealed pearly white teeth, including a pair of eerily pronounced canines. Thick fingers made a long sensual drag along your neck as her hand left the back of the seat. The cushions rose as the weight of her lifted when she stood to leave you the room necessary to lie back on the large settee.

“What if Silco comes in?” you asked, eyes darting between the door and Sevika’s far too tempting smile.

“He won’t be here for a while,” she assured you.

Again, you were left to wonder if that was intentional. If Sevika had planned these early arrivals to have alone time with you. To do whatever it was she had planned to do right then and there.

Despite your trepidation, you finally complied, pulling your feet up onto the settee and turning to lie across it. As you let your head fall back to rest against the arm, Sevika bent down, looming over you while she grabbed a pillow from behind your arm and placed it in the gap beneath the incline of your upper back and neck.

"Thank you." Your words were so quiet you were uncertain she could even hear you. Your eyes tracked her movement, but you focused on her prosthetic hand, finding it too difficult to look into her eyes.

Her human hand tapped the valley between your thighs, just above your knees.

You lifted your gaze to hers in question.

"Make some room for me, sweetheart." It was a command, but spoken with a hidden promise behind it.

Heart hammering in your chest, your eyes remained on hers as you spread your legs just wide enough for her to place one of her own knees between yours. The other knee came to rest on the opposite side of yours so that she was straddling your leg. Even in her kneeling position she towered over you, blocking what little light the tiny desk lamp could offer.

Your eyes fell to the point where her knee was touching yours, hovering there for a moment before traveling up the length of one of her thick thighs and across the muscular planes of that teasing strip of exposed abs. They continued up over the rise and fall off her soft chest, then the leather choker surrounding her neck. Over those thick, dark, smirking lips, and her pronounced nose, before your gaze finally landed on her gray eyes. Even without the light of the lamp, those eyes somehow seemed to glow in an eerie mix of red and purple.

"You aren't scared are you?" she asked, observing your fraught expression and tense posture.

"No," you whispered with a small shake of your head. "Just- just nervous," you admitted.

Her brows raised as she spoke, "Nervous?"

Averting your attention to the leather bracelet around her wrist you replied shyly, "I- I just don't want to disappoint you."

It wasn’t a complete lie. This was a powerful woman who clearly was experienced, likely much more so than you. And you desperately wished to please her. Though not for the reasons or in the ways you should as liaison. But another part of you also worried if this was right. To allow her to have you like this. This certainly wasn’t part of your job description. Not to mention this could certainly appear as if Sevika was trying to win some sort of favor or advantage in what was supposed to be an even, fair deal between Piltover and the Undercity.

And yet, your body seemed to speak louder than any voice of reason. And your body wanted nothing more than to give Sevika whatever she wanted.

Your gaze slowly drifted back to her seductive grin and glinting eyes.

She placed the palms of her hands on the arm of the settee on either side of your head, her cape further shrouding you in darkness. She bent down to bring her face closer to yours, noses nearly touching. "I'm certain you won't," she purred, her warm breath fanning across your face as you took a deep breath.

You were drowning in her scent; a heady mix of fine liquor, cigarillos, and smoke. Your lips parted and breath hitched as you watched her descend further, mouth inching towards yours. Her head tilted just enough to allow space for her nose to fit beside your own. Heat flooded your body and you closed your eyes. You felt her lips pause a hair's breadth away from yours. The room was utterly silent save for the breaths you two exchanged through parted lips. The heat that had invaded your body was instantly replaced with an ache that concentrated in the apex of your thighs and spread down through your legs. A breathless moan escaped the small gap of your open mouth when you felt the tip of her tongue snake teasingly along your bottom lip. Her name fell from your mouth in a breathless whisper. Suddenly, it felt as though the room had begun to spin.

When her soft lips finally connected with yours in a passionate kiss it nearly took your breath away. Moaning against her mouth, your hands instinctively grabbed the collar of her top, trying to pull her closer while you pressed your mouth to hers fervently. Her nose rubbed along the side of your own, brushing along your cheek when she adjusted the tilt of her head to deepen the kiss.

Her metal hand slid down to rest against the seat to support her body as her human hand slipped under the front of your shirt. It left a trail of heat as she slid it up along your abdomen to cup a breast through the thin material of your bra. Her tongue delved into your mouth, tip gliding hungrily along the backs of your teeth.

When her tongue receded, you attempted to replicate her movements, your tongue dipping into her mouth and brushing along her teeth. The sudden gentle press of a sharp canine into your tongue had you gasping against her mouth.

Her throaty chuckle elicited another deep moan. She released your tongue, only to lick along it with her own.

Releasing your grip on her collar, your hands slipped up and around her neck, burying your fingers in her silky hair.

Sevika moved her mouth to your chin, kissing a line along your jaw. She pressed her knee against the apex of your thighs.

A wave of pleasure rolled through your body. You tilted your head back against the pillows, softly moaning her name.

Her lips pressed against the taut, exposed flesh of your throat. Burying her nose into your neck, she inhaled deeply. A low groan pulled from her chest as she kissed, sucked, and nipped her way to your pulse point. When your fingers pulled at her hair, forcing her mouth closer, she released something akin to a growl.

Your mind was in too much of a daze to determine if that sound was a threat or a result of her pleasure. Either way, it only urged you to pull her even closer.

A pair of surprisingly sharp teeth grazed along that delicate point in your neck, threatening to sink in deep and break the flesh. The fingers that were gently groping your breast moments ago pressed harder into the softness, nails leaving little crescent moons in their wake.

“Sevika,” you moaned wantonly as you ground against her knee.

Her breath was hot and heavy against your skin, as if she was getting off to just the taste and smell of your skin.

Or what was beneath it.

And then, without warning, she was gone. With nothing more than a startling, loud growl of frustration.

You blinked several times, still lost in the haze of arousal. Your hands rested at your sides, fingers twitching at the loss of Sevika’s silky hair between them. As your vision came into focus, you found Sevika standing beside the opposite end of the couch, her back to you. Her body was almost heaving, breaths ragged and shaking her body.

“You need to leave,” she growled quietly without facing you.

“What?” you asked, slowly sitting up.

“I said you need to leave!” she growled, much louder this time as she glared at you from over her shoulder. Her normally gray eyes flashed a bright purple, but her mouth was obscured by her cape.

You wanted to ask why. What you had done wrong. What about the reason you came there in the first place. You hadn’t even had the chance to speak to Silco yet. But her anger, her tone, her glare- it all left no room for questions. So you quickly gathered your bearings, or what little you could, and made your way to the door. With your hand on the knob, you paused. Swallowing hard, you turned one last time towards Sevika.

She still refused to look at you. Even with her cape covering most of her body, you could see- even feel - the tension.

What the hell happened?

With a resigned sigh, you opened the door and stepped out, closing it softly behind you.

Ran stood leaning against the railing not more than a few feet down the hallway. They glanced up at you, their exposed brow raising in surprise.

“I- I guess we need to reschedule,” you explained quietly. You silently prayed Ran wouldn’t ask why. You had no idea what you’d say. You certainly couldn’t tell them that you and Sevika were doing something so unprofessional in Silco’s office.

Why had you even let that happen?

You knew why. Sevika was incredibly attractive. Everything about her exuded power and charisma. But she also seemed to have this oddly soft side beneath that hard exterior. Both sides of her drew you in.

Thankfully, Ran said nothing. Not a word. It was one time you were actually quite grateful for their typical silence.

The walk to the lift and subsequent ride up to Piltover would have been more awkward than usual had your mind not been swimming with questions, worries, and concerns. You just couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. Had Sevika regretted her advances?

As Ran opened the lift gate and watched you step out, you promised yourself you would apologize to Sevika for what had happened next time you met with her.

Assuming there would be a next time.

CH2>>

#arcane #sevika #arcane sevika #sevika x reader #arcane sevika x reader #fanfic #honey writes #ran #arcane ran

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exhaslo · 24 days

Text

Over-Time Ch6

(CEO!Miguel x Shy/Clumsy!Reader)

Ch1, Ch2, Ch3, Ch4,Ch5

Warning: MINORS DNI, sexual thoughts, eventual smut, slow-burn, mentions of sex, bullying, cussing, fluff

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"Slow and steady wins the race,"

You whispered repeatedly to yourself as you carried Miguel's coffee, snack and your smoothie. You knew well enough that if you rushed then something was going to spill. This was your first official week as Miguel's secretary without Lyla.

You had to be perfect!

It was nerve wracking. Especially with that small incident you had last week. Sure, Lyla reassured you that everything was fine, but it wasn't. You had started to dream about Miguel-your boss! You've heard of workplace crushes...

But Miguel was the CEO?

If your feelings were to ever come out, Miguel might see you as a gold digger. It frighten you. Miguel was kind, handsome and worked hard for his company. You would hate to see him give you a disgusted look if he found out you liked him.

"That's the new secretary. We might actually be able to get away with shit now that Lyla's gone."

"Shh, she might hear you."

"It's fine. She bumped into the CEO on day one and almost cried during the interview I heard. She's a pushover."

Biting your lower lip, you hurried into the elevator. You had just started and there were already rumors. You always were the easiest one to bully. Was this place really going to be any different than your last job?

Once you reached your floor, you couldn't stop thinking about the rumors. Everyone already thought of you as a crybaby and pushover. You knew they were going to intimidate you for favors now.

Taking deep breathes, you knocked before entering Miguel's office. You forced a smile as you placed his coffee and snack on his desk.

"Good morning, sir. You have your first meeting at 9am. Until then, you have received multiple proposals from new business partners who want to collaborate with Alchemax."

"Perfect score," Miguel smiled as he grabbed his coffee, "(Y/N), you don't have to be so tense. Relax."

"S-Sorry."

"Don't apologize. When we're alone, you can just be yourself." Miguel reassured you.

And just like that, all of your worries went away.

"Thank you. Um, I know I won't be of much help, but is there anything I can help you with?" You offered.

"Your company is more than enough,"

---------

Miguel had noticed the grim look on your face when you entered his office. He wanted to ask you what was wrong, but it might have been strange. He wasn't to that level with you yet. Miguel wanted to be more forward, but you still needed to adjust to the job.

Just having you by his side was enough for now.

The day went pretty well, Miguel had to make sure you knew that. Since it was your first day solo, Miguel wanted to keep reminding you of how well of a job you were doing.

"Hehe," You hid your smile behind your tablet.

Miguel was in awe. You were so cute. With all the bullshit in his life, Miguel had to wonder how someone like you just landed on his lap.

"Our last stop is just the labs, correct?" Miguel questioned. You pressed the elevator button, nodding,

"Yep. Just a usual check up on some of the projects. Some of our partners want an update by the end of the month so this would be a good start on reviews."

"Perfect."

Unable to resist, Miguel reached forward and patted your head. He loved the dazed look you gave him. Quickly moving his hand away as those dirty thoughts returned, Miguel cleared his throat. He had to behave himself.

Watching you enter the elevator first, Miguel had ever thought to press the emergency stop and fuck you then and there. How sweet would those moans of yours be? How good would your feel squeezing against his dick?

"Um, it was floor 18, first, right?" You asked, double checking.

"Hm?" Miguel followed you inside, glancing down at your tablet, "I forget how many floors are dedicated to labs. Yes, we can start there."

He HAD to stop thinking like this. Standing beside you, Miguel just inhaled deeply. There were many things he did as a CEO that he wasn't proud of. Treating you like a fuck doll was not going to be one of those things.

KABOOM

"Ah!"

Miguel flinched as the elevator shook. He quickly grabbed you as the two of you fell on the floor, the lights shutting off and the elevator freezing in place.

Holding your head against his chest, Miguel groaned as he slowly looked around. The power was off and it seemed like the two of you were stuck. Rubbing your back, Miguel resisted a groan as he got a good whiff of your perfume,

"(Y/N), are you alright?"

---------

Your heart was racing a mile a minute as you sobbed quietly. The explosion had spooked you to your core. The only thing that was comforting you was Miguel's embrace as he kept you safe. Honestly, you could stay like this forever.

"(Y/N), are you alright?" Miguel asked softly. You raised your head, sniffing softly,

"Y-Yea...What...What happened?"

"Not sure, let me make a quick call," Miguel said.

Right as you were about to leave his embrace, Miguel pulled you back in. You squeaked, glancing at him, but Miguel kept you firmly in place, his hand rubbing your back as you trembled.

"You're shaking," Miguel whispered as he was on the phone, "Yes, what happened?"

You could faintly hear the other person on the line. Apparently there was an explosion in one of the labs and it shut off the power.

"Tch, get it back on. I'm stuck in the elevator." Miguel hissed before hanging up, "Just relax for me, (Y/N), it's going to be okay."

"I-I know...I-I know....but...A-Are you sure it's okay....for me to be like this?" You stuttered against his chest.

You felt Miguel's chest rise as he scoffed.

"I wouldn't have suggested it otherwise." He said softly, "You're still so nervous around me..."

Miguel's tone was so gentle. His hand stroked your cheek, wiping away any tears you had. Did Miguel not know how he was making you feel? This just made you want him more.

"Sorry," You whispered, "It's...It's just weird...you know....You're the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world...I'm just a clumsy worker."

"You're more than just a clumsy worker," Miguel said with a chuckle, his grip tightening around your waist, "You don't give yourself enough credit, (Y/N)."

"Y-You know...it's embarrassing" You whispered, smiling softly, "To be complimented by someone as great as you. It makes me feel better,"

"I'm not that great," Miguel hummed lowly, focusing on your lips, "I'm still one of those greedy and scummy CEOs."

"Not to me,"

"Hn," Miguel tilted his head as he made eye contact with you, "You know, (Y/N). You're different than the other girls. I like that about you, but it also makes me want to make selfish demands."

"Like what?"

You weren't sure what came over you. The atmosphere this elevator was giving off was throwing your sense of judgement out the window. You and Miguel were so close to each other, enjoying each other's embrace.

Both of you unsure of when this elevator was going to turn back on. Honestly, you felt the tension. You only thought this moment happened in movies.

"If I say...you might hate me," Miguel sighed, his lips inches away from yours before pulling away, "I enjoy what we have."

"So do I," You rolled your lips inward as you thought, "I won't hate you, Miguel...I just...I just want to do the best I can...So make whatever selfish request you have."

"Hm, don't regret it then."

You gasped softly as Miguel swapped places and pinned you against the elevator wall. His body hovering over yours. You could feel your heart racing as his hands stroked your cheeks, drawing you closer to him.

The look in his eyes were lustful. As if he was already swallowing you whole before even doing anything. Your body was starting to grow hot from just the eye contact.

Right as you thought he was about to kiss you, the elevator turned on. Miguel cussed lowly, helping you up,

"Guess this is fate telling me to wait," He said with a hurt chuckle. You furrowed your brows and squeezed his hand,

"J-Just....let me know...when...." You whispered shyly.

You knew damn well what was going to happen. Miguel was going to kiss you and you were totally ready for it.

Feeling Miguel squeeze your hand back in response, you glanced towards your boss. He gave you a smile before letting go of your hand as the doors open to the floor you needed to be on.

"Until then, business as usual." Miguel hummed. You followed behind him, smiling softly,

"Mhm,"

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Next Chapter

@timidquindim @decentsoupperson @ivkygirly @reader-1290 @daddyfroglegs @eepybunny0805 @ddreabea @iamperson12280 @migueloharasoulmate @tojishugetiddies @koko-1025 @hyeinwluv85s @daisy-artfield @migueloharastruelove @a-lil-whore @hcqwxrtss123 @the-pan-liquid @tojisfav @pochapo @bubblegumfanfictions @brighterthanlonelythoughts @ghstypaint @mangoslushcrush @synamonthy @scaleniusrm @moonspectorx @dorck26 @a060403 @lunablackcosplay @soraya-daydreams @lovefanfic1 @mymrsweirdnessshipperstuff-blog @pretty-pink-princesss @corpsebridenightamare @razertail18 @gachagator @droolingmuttt @miguelsfavwife @ryzguy06 @raideaters-blog @manishkaworld @keidilla @byjessicalotufo @pigeonmama @k3ythesapphic @acesangels @stealingyourturts @angel-xx-1 @amberbalcom14 @ofmenanduhhhwellmen @oscarissac2099 @keepghostly @zeyzeys-stuff @k3ythesapphic @nightingale1011 @uncle-eggy @safixiovi @flaps200 @dahehow @weirdothatwritess @gerblinradio @electronicchaoschaos @mafiaanomaly @keyisloved @unwrittenletter @reader4life @leenasgirl200 @oscarissac2099 @mari0-o @cinnamoro1l @leryg0 @hizzielover

#spiderman 2099 #miguel spiderman #atsv miguel #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o'hara smut #miguel o'hara x reader #across the spiderverse #miguel o'hara #miguel x you #miguel spiderverse #miguel x fem!reader #miguel x reader #miguel x y/n

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underdark-dreams · 2 months

Text

Thank you everyone who has read this fic along its life! I finally got up the courage to tie it up with a bow. Here's the final chapter of my Rolan x Tav series Sage and Soldier, with links to the other pieces:

Blades and Spells [Fluff - First Meeting]

Good Night for Company - [Pining - Feelings Realization | NSFW] [ch1] [ch2]

[ch1] - [ch2] - [ch3] - [ch4] - [ch5]

A Strand to Climb - Ch.6

After the end of the world, there's a wizard's tower in the Upper City.

Tags: Mild Angst, Fluff, NSFW | Word Count: 4.8k [Read on AO3]

There was no time to celebrate the death of the Absolute—not when Tav and her companions stood trapped on its back like one of the doomed cities of Netheril. Not when her ears had already begun swimming and popping from the breakneck speed of their fall.

Tav yelled something back to the rest, some stupid bit of encouragement meant to keep them all on their feet. What else could they do but hold on, after all? They were all helpless, exhausted from battle, keeping their footing however they could as the brain’s pulsating flesh descended from the sky.

When they punched through the misty cloud layer below, Tav’s stomach leapt straight up into her throat. They were sailing across the Upper City, and the high spire of Ramazith’s Tower was rushing forward to meet them.

Too soon, her ears rang with the sickening, rib-shaking crash as the dying Netherbrain collided with the column of the Tower. Her shout of horror was lost to the explosive crumble of masonry and the whip of wind. She had only a second to fear the worst.

The impact spun the creature on its descent; Tav was knocked hard to her side, forced to scrabble for purchase on the monster’s slimy flesh as it careened sideways. Her limbs skated ineffectually over the brain’s folds—she was sliding toward the edge—

Not like this, her mind screamed in protest.

Tav yanked the sheathed dagger at her thigh and plunged it into the dying Absolute. Two hands gripped the hilt with all her might, even as her legs swung over the side of the Netherbrain like those of a limp ragdoll.

“Hells, we’re headed for harbor—!”

Behind her, Wyll’s yell of warning cut through. Tav understood at once—if they hit the Chionthar still standing on the back of the Netherbrain, its mass would pull them deep underwater with the strength of a vortex. She craned her neck blindly.

“Gale!” Tav shrieked for him, mad with panic. What if he’d fallen in the Upper City? What if he was gone, and she was beseeching a void?

Then she heard Gale’s voice call out for the Weave, and his spell hit hard along her spine. Her boots lifted unnaturally, the feet within them tingling with the power of flight—

The Netherbrain banked hard over the central City Wall. They were low enough now that Tav could make out figures with upturned faces—people watching the monster’s fall from the sky and fleeing away on foot, as if all pushed back by the same bank of wind. With one more lilt, the fleshy ground under her veered straight for the ancient wooden river docks.

A sharp glint of hope. If they timed their jump just right—if Gale’s spell lasted—

“Fuck this—” Beside her, Karlach was of the same mind. She was crouched low for balance, inching forward to the edge of the Crown for a better position.

Tav used her dagger for leverage to push herself crouched. “Aim for the roof of the Counting House!”

She heard the others fighting to their feet behind her. Gravity was accelerating their fall; sharp rain and river mist buffeted against her face as they swung rapidly for the water. But first, they passed beside a wide expanse of flat stone ramparts.

And then—they jumped.

—

Tav’s limbs cried out in exhaustion; her rain-soaked leg plates jangled heavily with each boot tread. She dragged herself through the streets of the Gate on adrenaline alone.

Those streets were in chaos. Though the battle was newly won, each corner she rounded brought a fresh skirmish.

Newborn mind flayers stumbled about in swarms, hungry and rudderless without direction from their Elder Brain. Many still dripped with blood from the death of their human forms. Those Baldurians who weren't running from them with crying children in their arms had snatched up tools and blades alike to run the creatures through with the ruthlessness of survival.

The chaos helped. Grit and blood and thudding bodies distracted Tav from the one sight she wanted to turn her head to, yet couldn't bear to see.

As her boots climbed the cobbles north toward the Upper City gate, Rolan’s tower crumbled over and over in her mind’s eye. She felt like retching. Her lungs were on fire.

Please let him be alive, please let him be alive, please let him be alive—she prayed to any god who might still be listening.

A child’s scream brought her up short on reflex.

Silfy—the timid one from the Grove, the little girl who cried when Tav caught her stealing a worthless trinket. A young mind flayer was reaching for her, one long-fingered hand directing its neural heat where she stood frozen in terror.

Tav’s teeth ground in her skull. She was so thoroughly fucking done—her longsword scraped out of its scabbard and arced straight toward the creature’s throat.

Just as the blow connected, an arrow shaft pushed out between the mind flayer’s dark eyes. It crumpled lifeless to the pavement in a heavy heap. Silfy turned tail without a backward glance; Tav squinted through mist and smoke, trying to identify the Flaming Fist who still held her shortbow poised.

“Lia!” Tav could have sobbed in relief. “Thank gods—is Rolan—?”

“I don’t know—” Lia’s voice was desperate as she ran closer. “Cal and I took the Sundries portal to fight with Cerys. Last we heard, Rolan was up manning the turrets.”

Tav could have swayed and collapsed where she stood. Only adrenaline kept her upright.

“I’ll find him,” she shouted above the surrounding chaos, half to herself, half to wipe that terrible fear from Lia’s face. She pushed away into a sprint without another word to her.

He’s not dead—he wouldn’t die like that—

Would she even be able to find Rolan’s body in the wreckage if he was? Tav’s knees wanted to give way at the thought. She gasped air into her lungs, wresting that image of him out of her mind with everything she had.

When she rounded the road from Flymm’s Cargo, a powerful wall of heat nearly knocked her back on her rump.

The ancient prow of the Blushing Mermaid was ablaze. Flames the height of ten men towered into the gray skies above, unaffected by the steady drizzle of rain. Her steel chestplate grew painfully hot as she forced herself up the crest of the hill.

Shouts and acrid air clouded her senses as she dashed beside the scene. Tav caught sight of Zorru and Danis, leading a bucket line all the way from Gray Harbor; their voices cracked from heat and smoke as they yelled directions.

All at once, like the emptying of a giant basin over their heads, a crash of water fell over the blaze and its surroundings. The cobbles under her feet were abruptly drenched; Tav slipped and careened forward, catching herself hard on both hands in a clang of plate armor.

There was a deep, ominous creak from somewhere above her. Knocked breathless, Tav nevertheless craned her head back.

The heavy wooden spindle on the ship’s prow that jutted over the street was already weakened from fire; now it was soaked through from the magical downpour. As she watched dumbstruck, it splintered with a slow twang. Then the wood snapped clean down the middle, and the length of it swung downward, straight for her legs.

Tav scrambled forward on hands and knees. Her boots and gauntlets scraped over the wet stones toward safety—

Footsteps were sprinting closer. There was a shouted incantation and a flash; Tav smelled roses as the Weave enveloped her completely for the space of a blink. Then she landed flat on her stomach in the middle of the street.

Thoroughly winded now, she coughed and wheezed for breath. The blaze and heat of the fire was strangely distant from where she lay.

As her lungs finally filled again, Tav realized she wasn’t just lying on pavement—something soft under her torso had cushioned the fall. She lifted up with a groan to look down at what she’d fallen on top of.

Rolan was entirely covered in soot and masonry dust from horn to foot. The effect was that he blended almost completely into the gray cobbles at first glance. Only when he opened his eyes did she recognize the two golden flames staring back at her.

“Tav!”

Rolan sat up so suddenly his horns nearly collided with her forehead. His hands gripped around her forearms with bruising force. “The Brain—I thought you’d—”

Her body had begun to violently shake as she took him in, each inch of his face strained with anxiety and streaked with dust and thoroughly alive—

Unable to go another second without him, Tav threw both arms around his neck. Rolan gripped her ribcage in turn, so tight and so long that her vision went spotty from lack of air. She couldn’t care less; in this moment, she would have dissolved right into him if she could have.

“I thought you were dead, Rolan,” she gasped into his shoulder. “Your Tower—the Netherbrain crashed right into it.”

“Only the observatory.” Rolan’s voice was muffled against her hair. “Never planned to use it anyway—not much of an astronomer—”

Tav could have laughed hysterically if she wasn’t so out of breath. Rolan continued against her neck.

“I was following it to the harbor, Tav, I had no idea what became of you—but then the fire, there were people inside—”

“You had to help,” she finished. She felt tears streaming fast and hot down her cheeks. The strength of her relief could’ve bowled her right over again. “I know, I know, just—”

They released each other at the same time. The kiss was stained with sweat and grime, yet it was the most satisfying one Tav had ever felt. She gripped Rolan’s face between two gauntleted hands, crushing his mouth against her.

“Lia’s okay,” she gasped out when Rolan’s lips finally left hers. “I met her south of here. She and Cal went with Cerys. Cal must be fine too, she would’ve said,” Tav added in a rush.

Rolan jerked his head in acknowledgement, his expression punch-drunk as he took her in. He was smoothing her hair back with both hands as if the motion was the only thing keeping him grounded at the moment.

“Are you all right?” Her voice was very small.

Rolan nodded at her again. Clearly spell-spent and dusted in plaster, he looked like his own ghost. “Are you?” Despite all that, his baritone reverberated warm and familiar in her chest.

“It’s so quiet,” she whispered hoarsely. Her words fell in almost comical contrast to the distant sounds of shouting, fire, and steel meeting illithid flesh.

But she could tell from the way Rolan’s eyes moved over her expression that he understood. The tadpole was finally gone—her mind was entirely her own again.

Rolan’s spark was beginning to return. “Can you stand?”

As he rose, Tav wobbled experimentally to her feet along with him. Her knees were bruised from the tumble, and her calves threatened to cramp from exertion—but she put on a brave face.

Unconvinced, Rolan kept an arm looped behind her back just in case; one hand fastened along her waist. Walking with him close at her side, the adrenaline began to ebb in her veins. Bone-weariness was instead closing in like a shroud.

“We should find Cal and Lia,” she said, trying to sound purposeful. Her boots dragged with each step.

“Yes,” Rolan agreed. He was holding her very firmly—practically supporting half her weight. “And we should be sure your friends made it safely from the docks.”

Tav gave a mumbled assent. It was difficult to care about any of that now, though she knew she should. She found herself staring up at his profile beside her.

“Rolan?”

He looked down in concern. “What is it?”

“After that…will you take me home?”

“My darling—” His lips pressed firmly to her brow. “Yes.”

—

Tav shifted on top of him with a mumble.

Rolan froze with arms still looped around her; perhaps the crinkle of scroll parchment had awakened her.

But then her face snuffled back into the bare crook of his shoulder. The dead weight of her across his chest assured Rolan that she was still fast asleep.

It was a lucky thing that he’d settled with reading material at arm’s length—the small pack of rare scrolls Tav herself had gifted him. She’d been out cold since dawn, when they all made it back to the Tower. It was nearly twilight now, and the sun’s last orange rays were fading fast through the high windows of Rolan’s bedroom. The distant streets had grown quiet as the city retired to nurse its wounds for the night.

Rolan hadn't seen much of her battle with the Netherbrain. Tav hadn't been in a state to tell many details once it was finally over, either. She could barely keep her eyelids open. The only thing clear was that she was completely exhausted from it.

Before anything else, Rolan coaxed several very potent healing elixirs down her throat. Then he drew them a bath and helped her out of her bloodied armor. She leaned heavily against him under the water. By the time he wrapped her in a towel to dry, he practically had to carry her back to his room.

The only hint of her fire came out when he’d tried to guide her toward the bed for sleep. Tav refused to go anywhere near the large four-poster frame that had belonged to the Tower’s previous archwizard. In fact, she declared that the whole thing was to be burned, mattress and all.

Rolan couldn’t decide whether he was more amused or touched by her vehemence.

Instead, she’d grabbed a fistful of the blankets and dragged them away in order to fall against the massive direwolf pelt rug in front of the fireplace. It was no feather bed, but still leagues more comfortable than how either of them had slept on the road to Baldur’s Gate.

Especially so with Tav draped over him, Rolan had since decided. She’d promptly held him to her and drifted off. Her bare torso was a comforting weight on his chest. Her cheek pressed against his shoulder as she slept, little steady breaths tickling against his neck.

Home. That’s what Tav had called this, hadn’t she? Silently, Rolan leaned his cheek against her hair as he read.

Lia and Cal had moved all their things into the Tower the same day its ownership changed hands. The few of Rolan’s possessions remaining in their Heapside flat had been left in a little pile just inside his bedroom door. Among them was the small leather scroll pouch Tav had gifted him on her arrival to Baldur’s Gate.

By this point, Rolan was certain he could find a much larger wealth of arcane knowledge in his new library. Still…it felt important to study from these first.

For one, they were certainly beyond anything he’d managed to teach himself from hand-me-down textbooks back in Elturel. Whoever she’d stolen them from must have been an advanced practitioner of the Weave. Or perhaps just a man with the wealth and fancy to build a collection, much like Lorroakan had been.

They were also a gift from Tav. That simple fact made them more valuable to Rolan than most of the wealth he’d inherited along with Ramazith’s Tower.

Had she collected them one by one in her travels here, thinking of him while she did? A warm affection bloomed in his chest at the thought. He’d have to ask her when she finally woke.

It was as if she sensed the thought.

With a deep inhale, Tav arched and stretched full-body against the length of him under the covers. Her hands both landed to tangle in his hair against their makeshift fur bed.

“Morning,” she purred sleepily against his neck.

Rolan decided then and there—he could very much get used to waking up like this. However, it seemed the right thing to correct her.

He kissed her brow. “Evening, actually.”

Tav raised her groggy face from his chest then, wiping one corner of her mouth. His eyes left the page to watch her blink around his bedroom in a daze. The blood-orange light of sunset was stretching long and dim across the floorboards now.

“Oh,” she said softly, a single word holding great recognition. Her wide eyes flicked to his face.

“Have—have I been laid on top of you like a dead fish this whole time?”

“I’d never call you that,” Rolan assured her calmly. “But yes.”

Tav looked at him in appraisal for a long moment.

“I think you like it,” she decided, and laid her head back down over his heart. He chuckled to himself and raised his free hand to smooth the hair back from her face.

Tav sighed happily at the gesture. “What are you reading, Rolan?”

“One of the scrolls you gave me.”

“Oh? Tell me about it, then. I’m curious.” One hand had gravitated suspiciously close to his ear. Sure enough, her thumb and forefinger began tracing along its edges to the pointed tip.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Rolan sighed. He’d always been unable to ignore the shivers that flowed down his spine when she touched him there. “I’d tell you regardless.”

“I'm sorry—” Her touch fell from him immediately. “I don’t do it on purpose, really. They’re just so pretty.”

Rolan cleared his throat. “It’s fine. You can—go on. If you like. Just know it’s a bit distracting.”

After a moment, her fingers cautiously returned. She was careful to keep the motion smooth and predictable this time. Rolan focused back on the page he’d pressed to fall flat before she woke.

“This one teaches a technique for arcane portal conjurement. The linking of two locations with a path carved through the Weave.”

Tav swiveled on her chin to look up at him. “Like the one from the Sundries to your library here?”

Rolan hummed in assent. “I've read about wizards who linked much more distant places together. The distance from here to Waterdeep, for instance. It requires a tremendous bit of spellwork.”

“How on earth?” She frowned at him in curiosity. “Where do you put a portal if you can't see where it's going?”

“Not sure yet,” Rolan mused, already being drawn back in by his reading despite her affectionate intrusions. “Most likely it requires two casters to sculpt the spell properly. I’ll need to understand the basic mechanics first.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Tav replied. She snuggled back into to the warmth at his neck.

“Of course I will.” Rolan shook the parchment out with his hand to punctuate the statement.

Tav let out a quiet exhale of laughter—but she said nothing to question him. It made Rolan swell with pride a bit.

He held her for another quiet moment as the fire snapped and danced in the hearth beside them. Its light seemed to burn brighter and even warmer now, with the sun finally gone behind the horizon.

When Tav shifted further over his lap, he didn’t think anything at first. Perhaps she was still trying to get comfortable on their makeshift sleeping arrangements.

Then she ground the heat between her legs over his half-hard cock, and a reflexive sound was pushed from Rolan’s throat.

“Tav,” he groaned.

“I’ve always loved that confidence of yours.” She had propped herself up with hands on his chest to gaze down at him. The covers fell back to bathe her lovely bare shoulders and breasts and stomach with firelight. “You don’t understand, it’s like catnip to me.”

“Where's this coming from?”

“What? Is it not enough that I just woke up naked with the most handsome, brilliant young archwizard on the whole Sword Coast—”

As she showered him with teasing flattery, Tav canted her hips harder against his own. Rolan leaned back against the tips of his horns with another involuntary groan; the scroll fell away dangerously close to the fire, forgotten.

“Tav,” he repeated more forcefully, pushing himself up on one elbow. Her face above him was full of mischief. “You’ve just been through hells—are you sure you’re well enough to—?”

“Yes.” She threw her head back in a moan with the word. Rolan’s hands flew instinctively to her hips. She was already rocking and grinding in rhythm against him, leaving a wet patch of heat where their hips slotted together.

“You’re unbelievable—” Rolan held her arms back insistently, forcing her to look at him.

Tav panted and bit her lip as they watched each other. He was of half a mind to return the favor. Look at the pretty hero of Baldur’s Gate, fresh from battle and already writhing on my cock—but the clear desire between her legs had rather scrambled his own thoughts.

Instead, Rolan did what he could manage to tease her. “Tell me how you feel right now.”

“Hot.” Her voice was low and tempting; her eyes were dark with desire. “Wanting you. Needing you inside me—”

Even without leverage from her palms, Tav managed to shift over his ridges in a way that made Rolan twitch and shudder under her.

“Good gods—I want you too,” he heard himself gasp out.

It was all the encouragement she needed. His grip had gone slack in distraction; with one hand guiding him, Tav angled herself up and sank down over the hard ridges of his length.

Her tight, wet heat all around him nearly knocked him breathless. Rolan lay back and ran his hands up her thighs. The firm muscle there led him straight to the lovely swell of her hips, and he gripped each hand with nails dimpling into her flesh.

Strong and soft—Tav was somehow both of those things at once. As she sat adjusting to him, her eyes certainly had never been softer than they were now, moving over his face.

“I missed this,” she breathed.

Rolan nodded in silent agreement. From tonight on, he swore to himself, neither of them would ever have a chance to miss this.

When she began moving, it was slow and deliberate. Her hips glided up and down to take him—so warm, so perfect. Rolan glanced where their bodies met, watching his length disappearing into her again and again. The sight was almost too much; he felt compelled to close his eyes.

Instead, Rolan pushed himself seated. He couldn't be close enough to her.

Tav folded her arms around his shoulders at once, adjusting to the new angle without breaking rhythm. Her face was bathed in firelight.

As he took in every inch of her, Rolan caught sight of an old blade scar under her jaw. He’d never noticed it before now. He leaned to press his lips against it.

She tilted her head with a soft sound, opening up the rest of her throat to his mouth should he want it. And he did—Rolan kissed and nipped at the flesh there while Tav rode him, her voice softly gasping and whispering his name over and over like a prayer.

The rhythm of their hips together increased to something desperate. Rolan felt heat licking under his skin, burning like flame everywhere their bodies touched. She clutched desperate fingers over the deep ridges along his shoulder blades.

“Come in me,” she gasped. “Please.”

That one little word was his undoing. Who was he to deny the woman who had just saved everything he loved in the whole Realms, herself included?

Rolan forced his mouth away from Tav’s throat to watch her come apart. She was already close—he could tell from the way her mouth fell open, the way her walls twitched and gripped him tighter each time she bounced down onto his lap.

“I love you—”

He wasn’t sure she heard with the way she arched and tensed into him—but then she already knew, didn’t she? Tav’s arms were trembling around his shoulders when she came, as if he was the only thing keeping her anchored down to earth.

When he felt the coil inside him unraveling, Rolan buried his face into her shoulder again. She was whispering praises against the tapered shell of his ear—things too sweet to even commit to his own memory. Rolan clutched at her back with both hands as he finally shuddered and spilled inside her.

He kept his arms locked tight around her middle as the twitching waves at his core echoed and subsided. Then they tipped backward together, their bodies still connected, to land in a soft pile of fur.

For a long moment, the only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the way they both panted against each other. Lying on top of him again, Tav’s lips brushed against the trail of ridges below his collar bone.

Soon enough, one of his long fingers began tracing over her back. He practiced the shapes of his somatic spell components along the empty expanse of her skin. She was so soft and smooth there—so unlike the way Tieflings were formed.

He felt goosebumps raise where his fingers touched. Tav shivered against him.

“That tickles,” she mumbled into his chest.

“Apologies, darling,” Rolan told her. Some other time it would be very interesting to investigate how ticklish she was. For now, he stilled to press his palm against her lower back instead.

Tav heaved a deep sigh against his chest. “What are we supposed to do now?”

Rolan crooked his head down at her. “What do you mean?”

“Now that it’s over.” Tav propped her chin on both hands to meet his eye. “I can barely remember what it feels like to just…live my own life. You know?”

Rolan carded one hand back through her hair. He understood the feeling well.

“There’s still plenty to occupy both of us,” he assured her. “I need to complete the Tower repairs before the next storm, which could be any day knowing Sword Coast weather. And the Lower City is in a state of absolute ruin. I’m sure you’ll have a hundred people knocking on my door come morning, asking for their hero’s help with a hundred different things—”

To his surprise, Tav sat up on his lap in a huff. The motion reminded him he was still softening inside of her.

“There you go spoiling my fun,” she complained good-naturedly. “Here I expected you to be thrilled at the prospect of finally having me in your bed day and night, with no mortal peril hanging over either of our heads, no less. And you only want to discuss Baldurian civics—”

Rolan felt himself beginning to laugh at her, a relaxed and throaty sound. “Is that what’s troubling you? Tav, I thoroughly intend to fuck you often and well.”

“You’d better,” she warned, but the corners of her mouth had begun to twitch. He wanted to devour her.

“And since you’ve declared my own bed permanently off-limits—”

In one motion he rolled their bodies to pin Tav under him. It earned him a little ‘oh’ of surprise; he was conveniently still buried between her legs. “You’ve put me in the position of having to be resourceful.”

“Big change for you, that?” Tav teased. But her legs crossed behind his flanks to keep him close. As they did, one of her heels inadvertently rubbed against the sensitive base of his tail.

Rolan hissed in air between his teeth. He saw her eyes spark with recognition, and leaned down to kiss her senseless before she could do anything wicked with this new information.

By the time they surfaced from lips and tongues and teeth, he was already achingly stiff inside her again. Her hands ran down his front, flowing over each concentric pattern on his chest with open want. It sent a shiver all the way down his spine, from neck to tail.

The way Tav looked at him—the way she touched him as if he was perhaps the loveliest thing she’d ever seen. He decided it would take him years to get used to. Maybe he never would.

Rolan kept still regardless, waiting for her to finish her explorations. All traces of teasing were long gone from her now.

Tav’s eyes reflected the warmth of the dying fire as reached up for him. She passed one more deliberate hand over the planes of his face, as if she’d like to memorize the feel of them. Her fingers landed to gently clutch around his jaw.

“My wizard,” she said softly.

Rolan had never been one for pet names; even from the people he cared about most. Those words should have sounded diminutive and sentimental to him, even spoken by Tav.

Instead…

They fell sweetly against his ear, flowed like honeyed wine down his throat, and nestled into a space that glowed with warmth somewhere behind his ribs.

And why shouldn’t they? He was her wizard, after all.

#sage and soldier #rolan x tav #bg3 rolan #bg3 fanfic #rebgrrl writes #underdark-dreams #spicy #nsft #crying (me)#holy rolan empire

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