#a beat a step is all you need to fight the urge to stay

[formulaforza]

—the seasons of love

or: the enemies to lovers situationship fic charles leclerc x female reader summ. winter, the first time. the start of the year, the start of it all. minors dni, nsfw warnings under the cut. 7k words part two part three part four part five

18+ because: brat taming, fingering, oral (f receiving), name calling, spit, unprotected sex, overstimulation, booty call!, masturbation (f receiving), voyeurism, mad sass, fucking porn without plot basically.

There’s nothing special about the club scene in Monte Carlo. If you’ve been to a club in any major city, anywhere in the world, you’ve been to a club in Monaco. It’s all neon lights and kaleidoscope colors and poorly lit dance floors and mid-tier DJs who think they’re the next coming of Jesus. 

Tonight is no exception. The air is thick and heavy with the scent of floral perfume and alcohol, the entire room shaking with the pulsating beat of the bass, reverberating off every single corner and shaking the liquor in your glass. Bodies move—yours included—half in sync with the music, half in step with their drunken stupor. Perched in the safety of Charles’s section, away from the swaying forms of laughter and shouting and screaming, your entire body thumps alone to the beat from the DJ booth a couple meters away. 

Across the section, Charles sits stoic on a couch, taking up a seat and a half and frozen like some magnetic force. His eyes are stuck on you in a way that pulls goosebumps from your skin, makes you irrational angry at him. You’re feeling particularly bratty today, egged on by the tequila and his visible annoyance. 

You’re on your way to interject into his pity party when your sister catches your arm, pulls you by your bicep to dance with her. Her palms are sweaty and cold and you hope that it’s the condensation from her cold glass that’s got her all clammy. The two of you have always been quite a sight after a few drinks. You get your tolerance from your mother, are both disastrous lightweights, feel the need to give any and everyone around you a show. 

The two of you twirl to the music with little effort, laughing like you’re seven and the hazard littered floor under your feet is the old brown carpet from the family room you grew up hosting dance parties in. It’s all hair and giggles and hands in the air like you just don’t care. Everytime your glance catches his, he’s staring back, nursing his drink and half participating in a conversation with your brother-in-law and Jo. 

“What’s his fucking problem?” you ask, leaning over to shout into your sister’s ear.

“He can’t dance,” she slurs. You snort. He can dance.

You whistle, loud and commanding and cat-call-ish even though he’s already watching you. “Charles! Get out here and dance, you fucking buzzkill!”

Your sister joins in on the fun, playfully swaying her hips to the music, tossing out an imaginary fishing line to her husband and reeling him over, calling along teasingly to Charles. “Yeah, show us what you’ve got, Il Predestinato!”

Charles rolls his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest defiantly. “I don’t dance,” he calls back with a soft chuckle. He tries to play it cool, like always, but everyone in the room knows you’re pushing his buttons. You always are. The reason he keeps you around is the same reason you stay around; your families’ relationship predates any animosity between the two of you. That, and the friend group was founded before you loathed each other and it would be too much work to try and split it up now. You’d probably never see Joris again. 

You dance closer to him, putting on a dramatic show and a poor fight against the urge to continue challenging him. “Come on,” you tug on his arm, just out your bottom lip into a pretty little pout. “Live a little.”

He’s never been able to turn down one of your challenges, however thinly veiled they might be. It’s his own personal sore spot, the one that you poke and prod as often as you can. Competition has always been the foundation of your mutual annoyance, it’s not going to suddenly change after some eighteen years of consistency. Finally, he relents, lets you think you’re pulling him to his feet, dragging him to dance with you and your sister. 

His moves are stiff and awkward, almost hard to watch. You laugh, because he’s wound up so fucking tight in two weeks you’d have a diamond. “See!?” your sister laughs, the contagion of it spreading to even the brunt of the joke. “I told you!” she continues, slinking her arm around her husband’s neck sloppily. His arm grips her side to hold her steady. It makes you feel sick. 

A smirk tugs on his lips, and for a brief moment, there’s a hint of something more in his eyes. Not annoyance or frustration. Something seven, something innocent and childish. It’s fleeting, and you take a deep breath because the music feels quieter now. You down what’s left of  your cocktail to clear your head, to calm the sudden flutter of nerves. 

The more he drinks and the longer he’s forced to dance, the lighter and more magnetic he becomes. “You know, Charles, I never thought I’d see the day,” you tease. He’s been in a near constant state of pity-party for weeks now, ever since his dumb ass got dumped by another girl wildly out of his league. 

He rolls his eyes, but his tone is as amused as it is drunk. “Don’t get too excited. It’s the liquor,” he retorts, a piss poor attempt at downplaying how much fun he’s having. He wouldn’t dare to give you the satisfaction. You lean in closer, brush your body against his, fueled by the noise and the alcohol. 

“The liquor doing the touching, too?” you ask. 

He’s always been a touchy drunk. Since before you and your friends were allowed to drink, he’s been hands-on. And maybe it’s because this is the first time he’s grabbing your hips, the first time his broad hand is flat over your stomach, but you’d never noticed him as this touchy with his girlfriends or his girls that appear when he’s around. Whatever it is, the more he drinks, the more comfortable he is with his hands on you, and the less you find the nerve to care. 

It doesn’t matter how many times he does it, though. Every touch burns your skin. It’s a sick little game you two play. Sick and twisted and so, so unlike the two of you. 

Watch yourself—he warns, hand on the small of your back. You play with fire. Well established and well documented, though; you never back down either. No, the thrill of annoying him is enough to dive head-first, to push his buttons until they stick. “Am I?” you ask, as innocently as the tequila can muster, taking hold of his wrist and moving it so his arm is wrapped around your midsection, fighting to settle in the space between your waistband and shirt hem. 

You respond to every one of his careful touches, ever lingering finger on your arm and your waist and your back. When you close your eyes, you imagine the nonsense patterns he draws on your skin like it’s on canvas in a museum, hung front and center just for you. Your inhibitions are slipping too, and you let yourself trail wandering fingertips over his body, too.

This isn’t the Charles you’re used to, the one you go head-to-head with every fifteen minutes. This is something entirely new, so far into uncharted territory you’re not even sure which way is north. There’s something particularly intriguing about the nerves bouncing around your gut. 

Everything fades away into the dark and crowded club. You don’t know if your sister and brother-in-law are still standing there, if any of your friends are. All you know if the electric charge of this, of every teasing remark and touch that draws you closer, forces you to test the waters of the newfound layer of tension. 

Everything is building, it feels like, to some grand crescendo of emotion and desire. Before there’s room to explore it, though, to dive deeper into the unspoken shift, the moment is interrupted by the return of the friends you didn’t notice leaving. 

The night drags on, the lines between annoyance and attraction blurring into some chaotic muddle of intoxication. Nothing is clear, nothing except the sobering and unignorable pull. It lingers in the air above you, in the space between like a secret just begging to be unraveled. 

You’ve got another drink now, because you can only think of one decision that would be worse than more tequila. In due time, you’re worried you’re a lost cause when it comes to that choice as well. His eyes stay on you, even from a distance, and you revel in the glory of his attention. Embolden by it all, you continue fucking with him. “Having fun yet, Charles?” you ask, knowing smile, voice dripping in subtle suggestion. 

He raises a brow, the corners of his lips quirking up. You don’t think you’ve ever spent much time looking at them, the soft shade of pink and the softer skin. “I suppose I can tolerate it,” he replies with teasing eyes. He’s irritated by your laugh, by your proximity, by your lips brushing against his ear when you whisper; you’re not the only one here trying to have fun. His jaw tightens but he doesn’t take your bait. Instead, he pulls you closer, sways in rhythm with you and replies, “I’m here to enjoy myself, not entertain you.”

He sends your brattiness running full-tilt. Forces you to carefully consider every movement, every ounce of playfulness that you allow to seep into your demeanor and the proactive sway of your hips. You grin at him every chance you get, sly and calculated, daring him to resist.  

You lean in close, brush against his ear and can blame it on practicality, on the bass and the music and the DJ if anyone were to question your actions. You rest a hand on his chest. “I know you love my attention.”

His breath hitches at your audacity, heart racing so quick you can feel it in your palm. He pulls you closer, dangerously close to your lips and says, “you talk too much. Maybe it’s time someone shuts you up.”

You scoff, low and teasing. “I’d like to see you try.”

[18 minutes later]

You step into the well-lit lobby less than a pace behind him. Your hands are interlocked, have been for every block of the darkened streets—since he grabbed yours and pulled you out of the club. “Admit it,” you giggle. “You love having me push your buttons.”

He remains stoic, jaw set as he pushes the button on the elevator. The tension is at a boiling point. You’re either about to kill each other, to be on the news for some grand double murder, or something so, so much worse is going to unfold. 

He leads you to the apartment without a word, but as soon as the door closes behind him, all is lost. Your head is bumping into the drywall before you even realize what’s happening, his lips harsh against yours, the pent up frustration and desire snapping like a dried twig. 

It’s fierce and passionate and while you never, not for a single moment in your life, imagined what he would taste like, you somehow knew it would be like this, cool and fresh and drunk. He licks into your mouth, messy and intense, teeth clacking and both of you fighting for some nonexistent upper hand. 

Fireworks are going off outside. They shake the windows with explosive gravitas as you’re blindly led by his backwards steps down the hallway. You realize that in an entire lifetime of knowing each other, this is the first time you’ve been in his place. It’s not what you expected, from what you can gather—all clutter and red cars and a boy who never had to drop his dream. “They’re going to look for us,” you say between sloppy, open mouthed kisses. 

He mumbles against your skin, strong hands on either side of your jaw. “Let them look.”

You walk through a doorway, into a bedroom clad with clutter and blue sheets. He would have blue sheets. There’s another firework, loud and booming, it makes you jump. You check your watch over his shoulder, pretend your hand doesn’t shake. “It’s almost midnight.”

“Okay.” Your knees bump into his and he sits on the edge of the bed.

You laugh, climb onto his lap, your arms strewn around his shoulders, broad and strong and you laugh again–this time into his mouth. What the fuck is going on. Seriously, what the fuck is this? “Happy New Year.”

He sighs, pulls his mouth from yours long enough to roll his eyes, to speak annoyedly into the hot air between your lips. “Yeah, whatever. Happy New Year.”

“Charles,” you mutter, hand on his chest. You think he’s going to regret this more than you will. People have always told you he’s the best kind of person. You’re not held in the same regard, and you know it. Some people are made to regret and others are made to be the regret. 

“Jesus Christ,” he laughs, but it’s curt and passive. Annoyed, as always, even when he palms at your ass, traces his hands along the bottom of your hiked up dress and pulls you down against him with a bruising grip. “Shut the fuck up.” You tug at the hem of his shirt, pull it off over his head in a swift movement. 

“You’re doing a piss-poor job at making me.”

He moves you like you’re a fucking doll, like it’s lightwork, tossing you down against the mattress and swapping your positions in a swift movement. The strength and agility of it makes your head spin. He’s not supposed to make your head spin, he’s supposed to make it ache. 

But no, no. You do ache for him. All of you aches for him, for his calloused hands and the roughness of his jeans against your thighs and the soft contrast of his lips against everything else. It’s embarrassing. You can’t believe he’s got you like this, hands pinned above your head while he buries his tongue in your mouth, grinds his hips against yours. The coarse denim is almost painful on your sensitive skin, but the growing bulge pulling the fabric tight is more intoxicating than any cocktail. 

“You’re such a fucking brat,” he says, bites a bruise against the skin just above your clavicle. “Spoiled little shit.”

He sinks to his knees, big blue or green or whatever fucking color his eyes are today watching you intently, boring into you with blown, hungry pupils.  His fingers trail along your underwear, pulling the thin, lacey fabric to the side, and then removes them all together. He gloats when he runs his thumb through your folds. “So fucking wet.”

“It’s not for you,” you goad. 

“Oh?” He nods slowly, spreading your slick with the steady digit, watching you carefully for reaction. “For who then?”

Your eyes flutter shut when the pad of his thumb presses against your clit, circles it slowly, teases you. He’s unfocused, his mind lapsing and giving you a much needed in, a clear shot to piss him off. “Your teammate.”

“Fuck off.” You first. 

“You’re right, Charles,” you speak slowly, careful to control your breathing, to hide every tell you might have. “Someone should shut me up. Do you know anyone?” Without warning, he thrusts two fingers inside you, curls them like someone had given him a diagram of your body. You gasp at the suddenness of it all. Yeah, he mutters, utterly delighted with himself. Yeah, I think I know someone.

You roll your eyes, push his head down, down, mouth onto your core. There, in the midst of licking a long stripe through your cunt, he fucking laughs, shakes his head with a subtlety you’d never perceive if it wasn’t for the tip of his nose bumping your clit when he does it. At least he can follow basic fucking instructions. 

His dick must hurt pretty damn bad, all hard and swollen in his pants, because he’s unbuttoning his jeans and freeing himself from the constraints of the fabric while lapping at you, the other hand still fucking into you with steady pace and hazy curl. You can’t see it, view obstructed by the mattress and limbs and hair, but you can tell by the way his shoulders move that he’s trying to get himself off at the same time he works on you. 

You’re not going to make his job that easy. You require all of his attention, pure and undivided and hopefully just as infuriated as you are. You reach down to the apex of your legs, pull his head up by his chin. “Just fuck me, already, you prick.”

He rises to his feet, shakes his head, “you’re a needy little thing,” he remarks. Needy? You haven’t fucking seen needy. 

He guides the head of his cock through your folds, spreading slick and spit and smacking himself against your cunt. 

Your lips purse into a sharp line. “Don’t tease me.”

“Why not?” He taunts, “you’ve been teasing for hours.”

“It’s different,” you grumble. 

“How?” You could strangle him, him and all his questions. What’s a person have to do to get fucked properly around here? You already sacrified your morals by pulling tight against the navy blue sheets.  A woman can only make so many sacrifices. 

You groan, heavy and exasperated. He’s such a pest. “It just–oh, fuck you–” without warning, he plunges into you, buries himself in your cunt until he bottoms out, skin on skin and the sore sting of him stretching you. Your fingers bruise into his arms, nails scraping over his shoulder blades with a gasp. He gives you no time to adjust to him, rutting into you with deep, measured thrusts. What was that, he prodes. Somehow, you find the poise to stabilize yourself, to reply smugly. “it just is.”

His objective isn’t your pleasure, no. That would be his prerogative, a side privilege, a requirement in his quest to get you to close your mouth and stop pestering for once. Making you come is just another box to check. 

You don’t fuck someone if you’re not going to finish, though. Sleeping with Charles might be a lapse in judgment, but being someone’s play toy, letting him reap without sowing, that’s a complete disregard of your dignity

Your fingers find your clit, circle it in just the right sequence, combining with the curve of his cock to push you closer, closer, closer to the edge of the fucking world. Your entire body burns, everywhere, all over, all at once you sweat. Tell me–he insists, voice short and breathy. Tell me when you’re going to come. “I thought you were trying to shut me up?”

“Just, fuck, just tell me.” He palms over your breasts, still covered by your bra and the fabric of your dress, however thin. “So many fucking clothes,” he grumbled, stalling inside you, hands slipping under your back, between you at the mattress to pull you off the bed. You hastily pull the dress over your head, toss it somewhere onto the clothing cluttered floor. Better? You ask. “Better,” he nods, bites your bottom lip roughly, licking against your teeth. One of the hands that explore the skin of your back make quick work of the clasp on your bra, dropping the straps from your shoulders and your back is against the sheets again, his hands groping at you, pinching your nipple between his middle and ring finger, working over it until you’re humming profanities and huffing into his mouth. 

Hate and desire is such a fine, blurry line. Anyone who tells you differently is a liar. 

“M’gonna,” you choke on your words. “I’m–shit–I’m coming.”

“Yeah,” He picks up his pace, maintains a steady, toe-curling rhythm. “Come for me,” his voice heavy and growled. “Come on my dick.”

You do. You come for him, hard and long, wrapping a leg around his hip in a failed attempt to still him, to just be full of him and nothing more. He’s stronger, though, and fucks you through the whole thing, faster, harder, big hands braced on your hips for leverage. You explore the idea that a person really could be fucked in half, forced right open. 

“Good try,” you sputter, shaky and broken words leaving your lips before you’ve found a gravity that isn’t him. You lean up to kiss him, wrap your hand around the back of his neck and pull him to meet you halfway. Your fingers tickle the short hair at the nape of his neck, raise goosebumps to his skin. “Maybe next time,” you hum into his open mouth. 

He spits a long string of saliva into your mouth when you move to close the gap. You laugh around it, down it in a single gulp and lick your lips, sticking out your tongue to showcase your empty mouth, big innocent doe-eyes watching his reaction, his eye roll and devilish smirk.

“Like I said–” you start, but he’s flipping you over, tossing you around like a ragdoll.  You giggle, high on the teasing and the taunting and then he’s fucking your face into the mattress. He’s got your hair gathered up into a ratty ponytail, uses it like a handle, forcing your back into an arch, your ass to perk up into the air. 

God, he’s so fucking deep, turning you into a mess of bruises and sweat stricken skin. Your hips bounce back against him, angle in any imaginable way in an attempt to feel him deeper, to feel him in your stomach and your chest and your head. To feel him everywhere that counts. 

“Putain, taking me so good, baby” he groans, lets the praise and the pet name slipping past his lips in a moment that goes unnoticed by neither of you. He smacks your ass with a firm hand, trying to mask his words after they’ve already been spoken. Your eyes roll back into your head and you come again, without warning. You decide before you get to think about it that it was the stinging imprint of his hand that pushed you tumbling over the edge. Whatever the real reason, you’re up two-nothing, or, depending how you look at it, he’s the one winning. 

That’s all any of this is, one big game. A power struggle. You’re always fighting to win, and this is not different. If there’s a way to lose at a game where everyone is supposed to win, one of you is going to fucking find it and force it on the other. 

You’re the one doing the flipping, now. The pushing and the shoving so he’s on his back. You straddle him and he gives you this look like he’s fully pussy-drunk, sick and euphoric and floating somewhere far from here. You’re so winning at this. “Jesus Christ,” you poke, “wipe your fucking drool.”

His entire face contorts when you sink down onto him. Everytime you think you’ve reached a limit, he finds a way to hit a spot impossibly deeper than the last. His hips lift up off the bed to meet you halfway, rutting into pleasure spots you didn’t even know you had, hand moving to your cunt, thumbing lazily at your clit, leaving you fuzzy and drunk in a mess of mumbled moans above him. 

When you come for the third time, messy and sweaty, nothing that leaves your lips is distinguishable, a mess of French and English and curses and nonsensical mewls. “Fuck you,” he moans, breath shaky when he pulls himself out of you. Your body clenches around air, aches for him to return. 

He does, after he moves you back into the position it all started in. “So close,” he tells you, sinking slowly into you, his sigh hot and alcoholic on your shoulder. His pace is slow, then fast, then slow again. He’s as rapid as his breath is irregular. You better pull out–you groan, every muscle in your body strung out and exhausted and you’re coming again. It’s blinding white behind your closed lids, ears ringing and muscles flexing involuntarily. He’s wrecked you, finally, left you a mumbling mess. 

He pulls out almost in sync with your orgasm, jerks himself no more than twice between your legs before he’s coating your stomach in hot stripes of cum, loud, guttural moans leaving his lips in a way that looks and sounds practically pained. “Christ,” he heaves, watches on as your fingers dance through his orgasm, spreading it over your skin and coating your fingers. You don’t break eye contact when you stick two of them into your mouth, swirl your tongue around them tauntingly, sucking them clean and pulling them from your mouth with a pop. You hold the clean hand up for him to see, palm facing him. When you turn it, you pull down all but your middle finger, flip him off cockily. 

He swats you hand away, “Never fucking again,” he tells you. 

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about me,” you scoff. “I never want to see the inside of this apartment again.”

“Why are you here, then?” He remarks, turning the corner into what you assume is the bathroom, tossing a towel to you from across the room. You clean yourself up before anything dries, before coming up with a quick rebuttal. 

You don’t come up with one, mind as tired as the rest of you. This game has been exhausting. “We’re never talking about this,” you say, pulling your dress over your head, stuffing your bra into your handbag because you aren’t sure you have the strength to clasp it closed. “Ever.”

“No shit,” he says, tosses your underwear in the general direction of you. 

You bend over to pick them up, step into them with the snap of the elastic. “Promise me.” You have no idea where your shoes are, but he’s already ushering you out of the room, herding you down the long hall with wide, swooping waves of his arms. 

“I promise.”

“Pinky,” you say, spot your shoes haphazardly stepped out of in the entryway. You don’t have any memory of them ever being on.

“Absolutely not.”

“Charles,” you lean against the wall to slip your heels on, hook up at him with a sober glare. He closes his eyes like you won’t be able to see them roll behind his lids, pinches the bridge of his nose and squints before dropping a heavy breath, holding out a pinky to you. You interlock it with yours. “Thank you.”

He pulls his hand from yours, turns the lock on his front door and swings it open, fingers wrapped around the edge, other hand gesturing out into the hallway. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

“With pleasure,” you say, stepping past him and into the well-lit hallway of sprawling marble floors. You stop in front of the elevator, press the button and wait for his inevitable comment. 

“The whole brat-schtick you’ve got going on isn’t as believable when your leg shakes underneath you,” he calls down the hall. You don’t turn your head to face him, just extend your arm in his direction and flip him off. You hear his chuckle as he latches the door shut behind you. 

Everything about today has been dreary–from the near constant mist that falls over the city, to the chilly temperatures, to the poor excuses for men that grace the screen of your dating app. This is not how Fridays in your twenties are meant to be spent, sulking in the dark of your bedroom after a miserable day at work. 

You’re supposed to be out, partying with friends and making drunken decisions that have you waking up in a stranger’s bed after a good night you hardly remember. 

God, you need to get fucked. It’s been months. Two months and ten days–not that you’re counting. Because you’re not. Counting. You aren’t. 

You’re just restless, basking in the loneliness of the night, unable to shake the weight of your thoughts, of two months and ten days ago. Of Charles and how infuriatingly good he’d made you feel. The complexities of your relationship, the shift in the very DNA of what you know, it makes your heart race–a messy muddle of annoyance and desire that yearns to be untangled. 

You give up on the dating apps, know that even if you do match with someone, there’s nothing that can be done to solve your problem tonight. You opt instead to scroll through social media aimlessly, searching for any distraction from the ache in your gut. Your hand unconsciously slips under the hem of your shirt, cups your breast while you scroll and scroll and scroll. It does little to quell your struggles. In fact, the game is over the moment you become conscious of your hand’s placement, the moment you start to massage your breast, to run your fingers over your nipple until it’s hard and perky. 

You switch to the other breast, fingers gently tracing over the skin, sending chills up your arms, pinpointing the ache in your core. Your hand slides down your stomach, dips below the waistband of your shorts, into your underwear. You’re so worked up–pent up, reaching a boiling point. 

Your middle finger glides through your folds, grazes over your clit, teases the slick at your entrance before dipping in, collecting enough to spread it around. Your clit is swollen, needy like the rest of you, and the pad of your fingers do little to relieve the pressure. Your fingers move clockwise, then counter. Vertical and horizontal and every combination of every direction and even though you can’t remember the last time you were this horny, this desperate to come, you can’t. 

You slip in a finger, and then another, try to find the right curl and the right spot–to no avail. Now, you’re thinking about his fingers, about how much bigger his hands are, how his nimble fingers pumped in and out of you with sheet-gripping, whimper-inducing pace. 

Your phone taunts you, his contact behind the locked screen just waiting to be messaged. 

You try to resist. You hate him. He hates you. God, he knows how to fuck you, though; veiny hands and thick cock leaving you a writhing mess. Fuck. Fuck, why can’t your fingers move the way his did?

You cave, reaching over to grab your phone and text him. Hey. What are you up to tonight? It’s a mistake, you know that it is. He’s so damn annoying, there’s nothing about him that doesn’t drive you up a wall. Frustration makes the heart go fonder, you suppose, or maybe the cunt ache harder. 

Within moments, your phone is buzzing against your palm with his reply. Chilling at home. You coming over?

You roll your eyes. No.

Ok.

You bite your bottom lip so hard you think you might accidentally draw blood. It’s phantom, almost, the way you can so perfectly imagine the sting of him stretching you out, the soreness of his bruising kisses, the swollen, wet head of his dick slapping against your clit. Come over.

You couldn’t pay me.

Door’s unlocked.

Give me 20.

You’re in the bedroom when he knocks. Three times, you wonder why he isn’t just walking in. You ignore the banging, let the universe decide for you if he’s meant to turn back and walk his happy ass out of your building. The universe decides he won’t be doing that, though, because he knocks again. Louder this time. 

You pull yourself out of bed, feet creaking on the hardwood floors as you move to pull the door open. “I told you it was unlocked,” you grumble. 

“Eh,” he shrugs, dumb fucking grin on his face. “Wasn’t up for your games.”

You internally debate just how bad you need him here, if it’s worth all the trouble that is him. It’s not, almost certainly it isn’t. You invite him in anyway. 

“So, what’s the deal? Can’t get yourself off, so you call me?” He teases. Your frustrated blush gives you away before a witty comeback can slap the smirk off his face. “Oh my god,” he chuckles. “I was fucking around, but really?”

There’s no point in trying to lie now, not when your face has already betrayed your trust and revealed the truth. “Calm down,” you groused. “The last thing this world needs if your head to get any fucking bigger.”

He continues laughing like this is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to him. You want to smack the smile off his face, dimples and all. “The last thing this world needs is for this–” he gestures between the two of you, “–to become a thing.”

You mock his movements, the dumb look on his face. “This is not a thing. It’s just two friends–”

“–We aren’t friends.”

You sigh through gritted teeth. “Two not friends helping each other out.”

He crosses his arms over his chest, chews on the inside of his cheek while his eyes trace your finger, head to toe and back to head again. “You do know how ridiculous you sound, right?”

You breathe out in resignation, heading down the hall towards your room. “Can we just get on with it?”

“No.”

You stop in your tracks, turn on your heels. What the fuck is he here for, then? “No?” You close the gap between the two of you, plant your hands firmly on either side of his jaw and kiss him, all tongue and spit and rough lips. You knock him off balance, falling out of step when he kisses you back with a matching intensity, hands hovering over your hips. He doesn’t rest them there, you can feel the warmth in the space between your skin and his, the force that pulls you together. 

When he does settle his hands, it’s not to deepen the kiss, to swallow any more frustration. It’s to put distance between your mouths. “I want you to–”

You nibble on his earlobe, cut him off with your hushed words. “I don’t give a fuck what you want, I want–”

“Show me how you touch yourself,” he commands, voice failing to waiver to your hushed level, an air of snugness to him.

“Charles,” your voice cracks with his name, a hint of your under the surface insecurity peeking through, putting themselves on display for him. Here! Here! Look at me! 

“Show me, or I’m leaving,” he says, and it’s all throaty and husky. 

(Eleven minutes later)

Legs spread for him, two fingers moving busily against your core, circling your clit, teasing your hole. 

He stares at you like he can see your fucking soul, watches from his spot across the room, leant against the old wooden dresser, arms folded and ankles crossed. You stare back–harder, maybe–like if you win the little contest your cheeks won’t burn so bright, you won’t feel so exposed, so vulnerable, so embarrassed. 

Those feelings fade, they do, with each flick of your wrist. With every glance of his hungry eyes to your fingers, to your cunt, tracing their way up and down your body, you feel calmer and calmer. And when he runs his hand over his mouth, along the stubble of his jaw and off his chin, you’re closer and closer. 

It pulls whimpers, soft and slow and sweet, from your lips. There’s a sick thrill to it, to him seeing her like this, all needy and open and sensitive. It’s empowering, almost. 

He breaks no more than twice, watches every brow quirk, lid flutter, and lip twitch with raw, intimate eyes. He’s less interested in what you do to yourself, the curve of your fingers or the noises they create, than he is in the way you react to the movements. 

“You’re not even fucking watching,” you say, the letter sounds falling to your breath, hitching as your fingers angle just right. 

“Watching what matters.”

“Oh? And, uh–” you huff. “What’s that?”

He laughs, dimples digging deep into his cheeks. You’ve always thought they made his smile so childish, like you can’t take anything seriously when it comes from someone with primary-school dimples and giddy eyes. You don’t struggle to take it seriously, now. “You’re thinking about me.”

Your eyes flutter shut, a soft sigh parting your lips. “Says who?”

He pushes himself off the dresser, saunters over with heavy feet, stopping at the foot of the bed. “What are you thinking about?” He humors. 

Your eyes roll. You’re thinking about a lot of things. Half a dozen, atleast. About your fingers, the way they move against your swollen cunt, sticky with creamy slick, and how his fingers are that much longer than yours. About how loud he walks, how his heavy feet stand at the end of your bed, crossed arms that pull his t-shirt tight across his chest. About the fact that you’re not sure you locked the door behind him because you were so distracted by the way his sweatpants hung from his waist. About how he doesn’t bother to adjust or hide the protruding bulge under the fabric right now. About the curve of his cock, about how pathetic and full it makes you, utterly unable to spend time thinking about anything but how well he stretches you out. About his hair, flat and straight and wholly unstyled, how your hands would mess it up so nicely, tug and twist until he has something smart to say. Beyond frustratingly, he’s right. As you quickly approach a high, breath quickened and movements desperate, all you’re thinking about is him. “Things.”

“Mmhmm,” he hums, ever the rake, unsatisfied with your response. 

You add a third finger, steady pace and a held stare. The muscles in your leg twitch. You’re so fucking close. “What are you thinking about?”

He sways, rocks his weight from his left foot to the right, runs his tongue over his teeth. “Things.”

A coy smile upturns the corner of your lips. “Mmhmm,” you mock. 

He moves around the bed, trails his fingers over your skin; from your ankle, along the bone of your shin, a bruise on your knee. They stall on your thigh, trace small, soft circles on the inside of your leg. “You really want to know?” 

He’s such a tease, keeps moving up, up, up, over your stomach and through the valley of your breast. “I–ah– I,” you stutter through your words, fingers working tirelessly to push you over the edge. Restless, further irritated by his delicate touch, his fingers up to your jaw now, slotting themselves there, you nod. “Yes.” 

He leans over you, your lips inches apart, open and hot breathed. “Too bad,” he whispers into the space between, closing the gap and kissing you with an insatiable kind of fervor. Your fingers still, your other hand reaching to grip the back of his neck, to pull him deeper into the kiss. It’s a kiss that’s half as good as the sex, the breaking of the unbearable tension that’s filled the room while he’s watched, the promise of what’s to come. A lustful implication. His hand leaves your jaw when you pull apart for air, moving over your stilled hand. “Let me?” He asks, and it doesn’t feel like much of a question, the way he’s already slipping his fingers under yours before you can even squeak out an answer. 

There’s something entirely different about his fingers, like the way that you can’t tickle yourself. You can’t predict his moves, every movement of every ridge of his fingerprints is something entirely surprising. “Yeah, fuck, you make, ah, make yourself…” You give up on the sentence, your body failing your mind in its ability to spit out a comeback. Yeah, you wish you could tell him. Yeah, make yourself fucking useful.  

He laughs, slides his long middle finger inside you, pumps it twice and slips in another. You gasp at his sudden movement. “You’re embarrassing yourself, baby.”

Your back arches off the sheets. “Don’t call me that,” you seethe. 

“But,” he curls his fingers against the spot you’ve been trying to reach all night. A moan tumbles from your mouth and he smirks. “It makes my job so easy.”

“Fuck you.”

“I was going to let you come first, but,” he chuckles. He’s so proud of himself it makes you ill. “If you insist.” 

His hand stills, threatens to pull out of you entirely, but you’re covering it with your own, holding him there when you look up, hips instinctively grinding against him. “I’ll kill you. I will.” 

You’re pushing him out of your apartment by the end of night, locking the door behind him. Your leg shakes when you slide down the door onto the floor. This is the last time, it has to be. Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence. Thrice. Thrice would be a pattern. You won’t let it become a pattern. 

You wake up at seven-thirty and your hair is still in knots, your body still aching from him. You find a new bruise every time you look in the mirror. You can’t shake the image of his messy hair, of the feeling of the brown locks between your fingers and the sound he’d make when you’d tug on them. 

It won’t be happening again.

[seravphs]

ੈ♡˳·˖✶ — ITOSHI SAE x FEM READER

Even when you’re no longer dating Sae, Rin always comes running to you when they have a fight. 

wc — 1k

tags — angst, childhood friends to lovers to exes, reader treats Rin like her little brother

“You shouldn’t keep doing this.” 

Rin’s eyes shutter. That’s the only way to describe it. He’s so good at that - flicking the switch that turns it off. 

Or maybe it’s unintentional. It’s always a reaction, after all. The little stars in his eyes fade in and out, hints of the little boy he was. To you, he’ll always be that kid. 

He steps off your stoop. “You said-“ 

He shuts himself up, jaw closing around what he wants to say next. You know Rin, even now. He won’t want to show his hand to you. He was so cute as a kid, running to you with all his little cuts and bruises. Now he’s all wounded pride, too grown up to come asking for a kiss to heal the hurt. 

You grab his shoulder before he can walk away. He’s so easy to read it makes your heart ache. He’s half yours, after all. 

“I didn’t mean you should leave.” 

“I’m not going to stay where I’m not wanted,” Rin says stiffly. 

It’s a testament to your enduring relationship that he shared that at all. You let a huffed laugh escape you, reach up to ruffle his hair. He’s still so cute to you, even when he acts tough. 

“What if I said I wanted you to stay?” 

“There’s no need to lie.” 

“Don’t sulk, Rin-Rin. You know I’d never turn you away.” 

It’s true - even if you broke up with Sae months ago, Rin would always have a seat at your table. You had promised him. 

You usher Rin inside and sit him down on your couch. He hunches in on himself, bangs hanging in his eyes. You resist the urge to clip them up for him, not knowing how much coddling he’ll tolerate. 

“What’s wrong, honey?” You ask as you rummage through the pantry. Where is it? You know you bought it after the last week he showed up, just in case he came back. 

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says defensively. “I just wanted to see you.” 

Since he won’t be able to tell, you allow yourself to roll your eyes. You know Rin loves you, but that’s not why he’s here. Reaching into the fridge, you take out the rice from last night along with some other leftovers. The tea you took from the pantry goes into a cup to steep. 

“Whenever you’re ready, then. You know I’m not going to push.” 

Rin makes a muffled grunt that could either yes or no. You bring the food over to him. You barely set it down before he’s looking up at you with those sorrowful eyes and you can’t resist the urge to hold him any longer. You let him rest his head against your stomach as you stroke his hair, rubbing his back gently. 

Rin turns his head against you, further nuzzling into you. He’s only like this with you. He’s your baby, after all. You and Sae had practically raised him. When he tilts his head, you can see the crystalline clump to his lashes and the frown on his face. 

There’s only one person who can reduce Rin to that state. 

You let Rin have his fill of comfort before he lets you go to start on his meal. Then, you walk into the other room for some privacy before you give your ex a piece of your mind. 

Sae picks up half a second after the first ring. Predictably, he lets you speak first. 

“What did you do?” 

“Was I away for so long I forgot how the Japanese say hello? I could’ve sworn-“ 

“Hello, Sae. What did you do to Rin?” 

There’s a beat of annoyed silence. 

“Why is that any of your business? We’re broken up, remember?” 

You do remember. You’d been the one to call it quits, after all. 

“Rin’s with me-“

“Brat,” Sae‘s tone is all annoyance. “Running to my ex-girlfriend just because we had a fight?” 

“So you did do something!” 

“I’m coming over.”

“Don’t-“ 

He hung up. 

“Rin, honey?” You call into the other room, receiving a yes through a mouth of food in reply. “Sae might be coming here.” 

That gets him up immediately. The door flies open and Rin stands there, looking at you with betrayed eyes that batter your heart. “Why?” 

“No, I didn’t tell him to! He just said he was coming - listen, you don’t have to say anything to him, okay? You can just stay here. I’ll talk to him.” 

“I don’t want you guys to talk without me.” 

Even if he doesn’t say it explicitly, you know what the underlying meaning of his words are. He wants to hear what Sae has to say, even if it hurts. 

He doesn’t want the two of you to fight. 

There’s a knock at the door. You and Rin share a look before he’s sprinting for it, you chasing after him. There’s no way you can outrun him, but still- 

You won’t be able to bear the look in his eyes when he sees Sae. He always makes the same face every time. Big, starry eyes for his big brother, his hero - right before Sae opens his mouth and crushes those stars in his bare fist. 

The door opens. 

In thinking about Rin, you had forgotten something crucial. Seeing your ex again stops your heart. 

“Are you serious?” Sae says, annoyed. He’s dressed lightly, in a simple T-shirt and shorts. His hair is rumpled. “You can’t handle a little argument so you have to have her comfort you? How old are you?”  

“Don’t talk to him like that,” you snap. 

“Why are you even letting him into your house?” Sae asks. “We’re over.” 

“We’re over,” you remind him. You should’ve predicted that nothing productive would come out of seeing him. The lingering feelings of resentment from your failed relationship are boiling inside of you. “Rin and I are fine.” 

You try to shut the door in his face. When he doesn’t budge, you huff and walk away, back inside. 

“Where are you going? We’re not done.” 

“I’m taking Rin home,” you’re already snatching your keys off the table. 

“I can do it. He’s my brother-“

Rin comes up behind you, clenches his fingers into the hem of your shirt. Plays the role of a little brother so well as he can only do with you, because you let him. You encourage him to, actually. You had always wanted a little brother, and when Sae had introduced you to Rin, you had practically adopted him for your own. 

Sae’s probably regretting that decision now, seeing Rin’s silent choice. The minute Sae’s face falls, seeing this, you want to take it back, but how would Rin feel if you did? You can’t. 

“Alright,” Sae says, defeated, just the way you wanted but somehow it doesn’t feel good at all. “I understand.”

[too-deviant]

jackie and wilson.

previous | next masterlist.

pairing: luke castellan x unclaimed!reader

summary: you haven't been given a quest, but you have made it your personal mission to make luke castellan smile

word count: 6.2k

content: very juicy chapter. is all im gonnna say.

notes: i cant stay mad at my otps i fear

PART IV — better yet, she wouldn’t care 

“If I have to hear one more handjob joke, I’m gonna lose it. So please tell me you have good news.” 

Lee Fletcher’s dark blue eyes flitted up to yours, his lashes tickling just under his eyebrow when he did. His hands were fiddling with the bandage that wrapped around your hand, but they slowed when you spoke, “Bare with me, newbie.”

You sighed deeply, fighting the urge to fall back onto the cot that you were sitting on — you’d had the stupid bandage wrapped around your hand and wrist for what felt like eternity, but was really only five days. You should be thankful, really, since the last time you’d broken your wrist you’d been walking around with a thick blue cast on for a month, but you couldn’t help but be a little peeved. Capture the flag was today, and you hadn’t trained nearly as much as the others had due to your injury — when you probably should’ve been training twice as much, only because you were new and unfamiliar with the game. 

It was their fault for hyping it up; if they had just shut up about it, you wouldn’t have been as excited about taking part, broken wrist or not. But alas, demigods were barbarians — barbarians who thirsted to beat each other up in a controlled battle. Barbarians who didn’t have any regard for the new camper when they were climbing all over each other to see the freshly posted team setup, and trampled all over their perfectly good wrist. 

“Maybe you shouldn’t have been standing right in front of the notice board.” Luke had been saying all week. 

“Maybe you shouldn’t have asked me to accompany you there, then.” You replied every time. 

Lee narrowed his gaze, flipping your hand around carefully in his, kneading at curtain parts of your skin while checking you for reactions. When you showcased nothing but annoyance at your own shit luck, he leaned back with a cheeky smile, “Well, it’s looking good. I don’t think you need this anymore.” 

He lifted up the knot of bandage he’d removed from your hand and threw it with perfect precision into the trash can on the other side of the room, before turning and grinning at you. You couldn’t help but grin back, “You’re the best.” 

“I’m told.” He shrugged, feigning a humble demeanour. You stood, and he did so with you, looking at you pointedly, “But you should still take it easy today. It’s your first game, and you’ve been here for a week. Nobody is gonna judge you for stepping back today.” 

You scoffed, rolling your newly healed wrist around with a small smile, “I’m not stepping back for shit, Fletcher. I’m beating the hell out of Chris Rodriguez.”

“He’s on your team.” 

“I don’t care.” You rebutted. Lee rolled his eyes, but ultimately let you off with a wave. “See you later!” 

The past five days had been fairly tame. When the team setup was posted on Sunday afternoon, everyone went immediately into prep mode for the game. You knew they took it seriously, but you didn’t realise how seriously they did until you found yourself being pulled out of your sleeping bag at five in the morning so you could get a headstart on training with Luke. Although you didn’t see the relevance — after you’d broken your wrist, the boy hadn’t even let you look at a spear, so you woke up at the asscrack of dawn to…sit around and watch him train. 

Thankfully, Hermes had paired up with Ares for once, and Clarisse wasn’t letting you off easily. Whenever she could, she was dragging you to the arena and teaching you how to fight one-handed. So you were more than ready, skipping down the infirmary steps with an easy smile. 

“I think I see you here more than I see you anywhere else.” 

You paused, looking up and spotting Evan, leaning gently on the porch railing. You rounded the steps and stopped in front of him, “Hey. I’ve only been here twice.”

“In…” He checked his imaginary watch, “One week. That’s gotta be a record.”

You narrowed your eyes jokingly, “Okay. I’m still learning, leave me alone.” 

“We’ll see how much you’ve learnt later today.” He quipped, running a hand through his hair. He smirked at you, “Good luck.” 

“Thanks.” You slid out, sarcasm evident in your tone. He laughed, and you smiled, rolling your eyes. 

“Come on, clumsy. Let’s get to training.” He began to walk off, and you followed, presumably to where the Hermes team were gathering for last minute preparations. 

For this game, they’d paired up with Ares and Athena, Apollo taking lead for the blue team with Hephaestus and Aphrodite. Red team also had Demeter, and the boys of cabin twelve were on the blue team. It seemed like a pretty good split; or at least you thought it was, judging by the reactions of everyone when they read the pamphlet. You might have been reading it wrong, though. After all, you were crying out in pain and cradling a shattered wrist when it happened. 

Athena was always a good cabin to pair up with, was what Evie had told you when she was taking your measurements for armour. You presumed so, goddess of war and all. But you were a little wary about the Cabin Ten girls — Aphrodite was also a warrior goddess, after all. 

Evan led you around the back of the pegasi stables and through a mudded path. The only reason you hadn’t taken off running in fear that he was leading you to your imminent death was because the wood nymphs were out and about, milling around like bodyguards. They eyed you up at first, but a few of them recognised you from your impromptu baseball session with Luke last week and told them to back off. 

“Here she is, the woman of the hour!” Clarisse exclaimed when she saw you break through the trees. A few people glanced back and smiled at you politely, a sentiment you returned as Evan led you to the front of the crowd where she stood. 

Luke was beside her, and only nodded at you. You nodded back, a glimmer in your eyes that made his hands twitch. 

“Okay, now that our whole team is in attendance, we can begin.” The Ares girl said, conviction prominent in her voice. She was made to lead, that much was obvious. “You all know the deal. I won’t repeat it, not with the blue team so close by, but…” She sent a meaningful look around the whole crew, “You know where to go. We’ve been practising this, and in a couple of hours it’ll be time to bring home yet another win.”

“It’s pretty much all in the cards for us.” Luke cropped himself into the speech, “Cabin Nine have their special machinery but we’ve got wit, power and numbers. We’ll be fine.” 

“Speaking of cabin nine.” Clarisse hopped down from the wooden crate she was standing on, “I grabbed this from them just before the teams went up. Had to make sure they didn’t sabotage it.”

She pulled a long spear out from behind some other boxes, and let it shimmer in the light. It was beautiful, and you couldn’t keep your eyes away from it. Despite it being made from celestial bronze, the forger had clearly done something to make it shine a mesmerising silver. You could see your reflection in it as it glistened under the sun. It was double ended and if you squinted, you could see tiny spikes coiling around the first ten or so inches of each end. The shaft was smooth and engraved with something you could only make out when she walked over and handed it to you. 

“Wait.” You took it out of instinct, weighing it in both hands but giving a shocked look to Clarisse, “This is mine?” 

“You’re damn right.” She smirked, “Jake was having a field day making that thing, couldn’t stop talking about it. Especially when he added these,” She poked one of the spikes that coiled around the shaft and rubbed the tips of her fingers together with a wince, “They’re lethal. You’ll be unbeatable out there with this thing.” 

“Cool.” You gave it an experimental swing, and everyone in your vicinity took a long step back. You shrugged, smiling anyway, “Whoops.” 

You felt very powerful with your new weapon, and now that you had it in your hands, you could marvel at the engravings. They were images, battles fought — a lot of them recognisable. There was Perseus killing Phineus and Polydectes with Medusa’s head, Heracles and the Nemean Lion. There was even an engraving of Tantalus stealing the ambrosia and nectar from Olympus, for some reason. You’d have to ask Jake about that later. 

“We have two hours until we need to gather at the pavilion, so we won’t bore you with details.” A young girl who you’d seen around camp before stood up and addressed the crowd. She was very little, but she exuded authority even at her young age. “But if I see you lazing around, I’ll put my dagger through your foot.”

There was a chorus of nods and murmured agreement, so the little girl stepped back and nodded at Luke, who told them all to go get ready. The crowd dispersed, but you stayed firmly put as the boy made his way over to you, the little girl following behind him. 

“Sunny.” He tried not to smile, but you saw his lips twitch. He gestured to the girl beside him, “This is my little sister Annabeth. Newly appointed Counselor of Athena.”

You raised a brow, impressed, before looking down at the girl with a smile, “Hey, Annabeth.” You introduced yourself, trying not to show her how kind of scared you were for her to not like you. 

Luckily she nodded, “Hi. You better be good with that spear.”

“I’d like to think I am.” You joked. She didn’t laugh, simply telling Luke she was going to brainstorm and left you both alone in the clearing you’d been gathered in. You raised your brows at him, “I think she gets her stoic indifference from you.” 

He cracked a smile then, grabbing your spear from you and weighing it in his own hands, “Yeah. She’s a firecracker.” He looked at you firmly, “Think you’ll be good for this game? It’s not too late to back out.”

You snatched the weapon right back from him, rubbing his finger prints from the shaft with your sleeve and sending him a half-glare, “You just want an excuse to use this instead of me. I’m fine, JoJo.”

He raised a single brow, “Fine. But if you end up back in the infirmary, I’m not gonna kiss your wounds better.”

You smirked, backing away and pointing your free finger at him daringly, “You wouldn’t be able to hold back.”

He laughed, hand on heart, “Right.” 

You were quick to retreat to the Arena where you knew Clarisse was waiting for you. A good chance to break in the new armoury and swing a spear around that wasn’t made of styrofoam or rotten wood. You caught yourself a good sweat in an hour and a half, and Clarisse was covered in bloody dots from those spikes. Even if you were injured, they still didn’t stand a chance against those. It was a comforting thought. 

You would’ve practised the whole time had it not started raining — something that confused you greatly since the camp had a controlled climate. Clarisse just rolled her eyes, though, claiming that Chiron was upping the dramatics for the game. You were unsure that the centaur could just…make it rain, but you went along with it. You’d only been a demigod for a week after all. 

Not wanting to be completely soaked by the time the game started, you retreated back to the Hermes cabin, shortening your spear down with a click and tucking it into your belt loop before you sat down. You were still on the floor, still next to the six year-old who almost always rolled on top of you in the night — you had now perfected your rollover technique to get him off you without waking him up. 

You were re-lacing your combat boots when two shadows loomed over either side of you. Without so much as a glance away from your foot, you said plainly, “Stolls. What do you want?”

A twin pair of scoffs sounded and you just rolled your eyes. The one on the left spoke first, and you thought it might have been Travis, “Bold to assume we want anything.” 

“I mean, we do.” Connor added from your right, and the indisputable sound of a hard slap came right after. “Ow! Asshole.”

“Cut to it.” You moved onto your other shoe now that the left one was wound tight. You were always pretty speedy at tying laces, a fairly random skill but a skill nonetheless. 

“Well…” Connor started. 

“Luke put us on second offence.” Travis continued. 

“But we sorta hate doing second offence.” 

“Yeah, it’s way too much work.”

Connor leaned over your shoulder so his stupid grin was visible in your peripheral vision, “And we heard that you are on side offence. Which has a much lower maiming risk.”

“So you wanna swap spots?” You deducted, looking up from your feet and giving them a blank glance. They nodded, and you sighed, “Ok, first of all, there’s two of you and one of me. You’ll have to find someone else to swap with too.”

“Already done.” Travis nodded, “Sabine loves second offence.”

“Second of all,” You sent them firm looks, “Luke isn’t going to let you change the layout right before the game. Neither is Clarisse and neither is Annabeth.”

“Which is why we aren’t telling them.” Connor said like it was obvious, holding out his hands like he’d presented you with the best idea ever conjured, “Luke and Clarisse are on first offence and Annabeth is on last defence, right by the flag. No one will know.”

“Plus,” Travis sang, wiggling his eyebrows, “This is a perfect opportunity to prove to everyone how badass you are.”

“Yeah, Luke’s had you on a leash since you hurt your wrist.” Connor raised a teasing brow, “Why not show him what you’re made of?” 

You looked between them, and the silence that stretched seemed to serve as an answer because they were smirking at you and pushing themselves up and out of the door before you could utter a word. 

The rain hadn’t settled — Chiron and his dramatics, although it appeared Mr D wasn’t too much of a fan. God or not, he still got wet with the rest of them. You stood between Luke and Clarisse, the former shielding both your heads with his black jacket — Annabeth ended up squeezing between the two of you when she couldn’t keep up with her I’m too good to hide from the rain facade. You took it as a win, she was warming up to you! 

“Welcome to our first capture the flag of the summer!” Chiron bellowed, pausing for the cheers that resounded. “The usual rules are enforced. Magic weapons are permitted, the flag must be prominently presented with no more than two guards no less than ten yards from the flag! No killing or maiming, and no gagging or bounding of prisoners. Let the games begin!” 

There was a loud echo of cheers and battle cries as the first conch sounded — they only had twenty minutes to get into position and then they would be permitted to cross the creek into enemy territory. Annabeth was quick to gather up the flag guards and send them off to their agreed location with nothing but a sharp eye before she was pulling together the defensive lines and sending them off too.

“Hey.” Just before you could walk off, Luke grabbed your attention, levelling his eyes with yours as best as he could from under his helmet. He adjusted yours and patted your shoulders, “You got this, Sunny.”

You nodded, “Damn right I do.” 

It was hard to navigate the woods in the rain, which was still pouring almost torrentially over them. The forest floor had grown slippery and wet with the new downpour, but the campers traipsed through it roughly, boots squelching as they moved. You followed the side defence through mud and grass, dodging branches and puddles until you couldn’t hear the chatter of Luke and Clarisse from behind you. Then you stopped, and just ahead of you, Sabine did the same. 

It wasn’t long before Connor and Travis were pushing through the trees and greeting the pair of you with wide grins. Sabine rolled her eyes, “Shove off, punks.”

Then she was storming in the direction they came from, and you had no choice but to follow. It was hard to keep up with her long strides, but whenever you lost her in the fog you just followed the sound of her annoyed mutters. 

“Stupid kids. Can’t be trusted on last offence let alone second. It’s not fair. I punch one kid for cheating and Luke sends me to side defence. Side! Stupid punk has been out of it for too long, needs a reality check.”

You didn’t bother responding — whether you were going to agree or come to Luke’s defence, you had no idea. You just followed her to the edge where the second offence was lined up just past the edge of the shore. Evie and Evan gave you the same confused look. 

“Those Stoll fuckers wanted an easy out.” Sabine spat, pushing a stray curl back under her helmet and heaving her giant club over her shoulder. 

The twins didn’t question or fight the decision, simply shrugging and going back to where they were tracing their own tic tac toe game into the wet sand. You stood idly, hands fiddling with your belt buckle before the second conch sounded. Almost immediately did the first and side offences cross the creek and disappear into the woods, while you pulled your spear from the ground and followed the twins and Sabine across the water moments after they were gone. 

Then it was a waiting game. 

“Fuck Apollo, Marry Athena and Kill Hermes.” 

Evie scoffed, shaking her head, “No. No way. Athena would be way controlling as a wife, you gotta bag Apollo.” 

Sabine hummed, “No. I think Athena and I would be unstoppable together.”

You looked up from your shoes and between the three that stood before you. It had been two hours and the most action you had was seeing one of your own teammates get flung right back over the creek by some cabin nine contraption that you were not too keen on meeting. Your spear rested across the back of your shoulders, your arms swung around the shaft at either side as you contemplated your own answer. 

“No, see —“ You huffed, “I couldn’t marry Athena, but only because she conjures babies with her brain. I could never win an argument, I know that for sure.”

“But we all agree on killing Hermes, right?” Evan butted in with a laugh that was immediately shared by the rest of them. He settled down and squinted for a moment, “Ok. Fuck, Marry, Kill. Iris, Nemesis and…Hypnos.” 

There was immediate discourse, everyone speaking up at once with their own opinions. Sabine thought Hypnos would be a terrible lay — He’d fall asleep halfway through! — but Iris would be overbearing as a wife. Evie said Nemesis would be the best wife, she’d never let anyone hurt you, and you were just about to add on that Iris could let you eavesdrop on other people’s conversations whenever you were bored when a loud crack echoed through the trees. 

Then it was quiet. You all shared silent looks, baring your weapons and facing the enemy side. 

Another crack, a snap of a twig. Then a crash, like something being dropped onto a pile of leaves. 

A scream, and a manic son of Aphrodite breaking through the trees and aiming a large Kopis at Evan, who was quick to defend with his dual wielding swords. His teammates followed, and the rest of you jumped into action — you were only slightly panicked when you realised your opponent was a Hephaestus kid who was nearly double your height. 

You’d seen him around sometimes, he was only a year or so younger than you. Same age as Clarisse, and definitely the same level of skill in battle. What made him even scarier was that he fought with nunchucks…fucking nunchucks! And he was good with them, too. 

But you had been taught well. You were quick to defend your body and use both ends of your spear to deflect each nunchuck from making contact. At one point, he clipped your arm pretty hard, and that was when you realised they were ribbed along the edges making for a harder hit. You bounced back though, swinging every which way and not letting him touch you again. 

Briefly, you could hear your peers’ own battles. There weren’t any shouts of pain, or cries for help, so you put all your focus on the boy before you. He had a height advantage, and swung his weapon down on you fairly often, which left your torso open when you held your spear over your head. But your reflexes were like lightning, and no matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t land that second hit. 

Fuelled by his own frustration, he lunged forward and tried to wrap the chain of his chucks around the shaft of your spear. He attempted to no avail a couple of times, but then he clicked a button on one of the shafts and released a crackle of energy along it. You were shocked momentarily by the reveal of his electric nunchucks that you faltered in your defence and he managed to wrangle your weapon in his own on the third try. You pulled back hard, trying to regain control and prevent his disarm, but he just pressed that damn button again and this time the volts ran through his chain and up the entire length of your spear. 

The crack that resounded was huge. Too huge to have come from those tiny nunchucks.  

Where you were expecting a sudden and painful shock through your hand and arms you instead felt a massive give. You stumbled back, shocked, but regained your footing before you could fall onto the wet ground. Your spear was in your hands, and the nunchucks were still wrapped tightly around the middle. You looked up from them to see their owner crumbled in a heap on the ground, nursing his painfully red hands while the rainfall soaked his clothes even more. 

You’d completely forgotten you weren’t alone until one of his teammates dropped their shield and ran to his aid. You looked up, expecting to meet the dumbstruck eyes of Evie and Evan, only to see their gazes fixed elsewhere. You turned your head. 

There in the grass was a giant streak of black, stretching along the shore for nearly five metres. It took a second for you to realise that it was embers — the ground had been burnt completely from where you stood to where it ended. And standing just before it was Luke and Clarisse — the blue team's flag in hand. They weren’t moving, they were staring at the burn in the floor, at you.

Your chin wobbled a little until the echo of the other team reached your ears. You looked at the pair urgently, “Move!”

And they did. Even when the blue team kids you’d been fighting  before tried to stop them, they were held back and Luke and Clarisse led your team to an easy victory. 

They cheered, and the conch sounded. Chiron emerged through the wood and smiled at them in congratulations — the whole spark debacle was nearly forgotten, campers too busy either cheering or groaning to notice the burn streak on the floor. Chiron did, though, and soon though the short lived celebration quieted down as he asked about it. 

Eyes turned to you. You shrugged, “I don’t…I don’t know what happened, it just —“

But then there were gasps. All around you. And suddenly Chiron wasn’t looking at you, he was looking at the space above your head. And then so was everyone else. 

When you looked up, squinting past the rain, and your eyes fixated on that glowing lighting bolt that floated above your head, the world went quiet. A week of hearing everything about the glory of being claimed — how at ease you would be, how reassured you would end up. None of it was true. Because for some reason, the symbol that hung above your head sent nothing but trepidation running through you. 

You almost missed Chiron's next words,  

“Zeus. Law Maker. Striker of Lightning. King of Olympus. All hail.” He shouted your name, but it didn’t feel right in your ears, “Daughter of the Sky God.”

When you couldn’t stand the sight of it — when it started to make you feel sick, when the picturesque summer camp you were finally finding yourself in started to feel tight and uncomfortable, you looked down. Everyone was kneeling, eyes on the ground. It was comforting that they weren’t staring at you anymore, but when you searched the crowd for those baby brows that held you down, they were fixated firmly on the mud. 

After your claiming, Chiron dismissed everyone sharply. They left, all talk about the capture the flag win long left behind and replaced by canards about you and your family. Your lineage. You were very prepared to stand frozen on the other side of the creek for the rest of the day but the centaur ushered you into his office in the big house just as the rain stopped. 

The next hour was a muffled blur. You felt as if you had just been plunged underwater and all you could hear was your heartbeat in your ears — you vaguely registered Chiron and Mr. D asking you a load of questions about your childhood and whether there were any signs of your parentage along the way. You couldn’t answer that. 

They Iris-Messaged your mother — who was in her office and jumped up startled when the call came through. You might have been in a hazy funk, but you could tell the surprise on her face when Chiron informed her of your claiming was genuine. She’d had no idea. That, out of all things, angered you the most. 

“This new information will have caused quite a stir in Olympus.” Was one of the last things he said, “But you should be fine, since you’re seventeen.”

“Why does me being seventeen mean anything?” 

Zeus’ Cabin was subpar to say the least. Alright if you’re only going in there to worship the guy, not so alright if you’re planning on living there. There weren’t any beds, but there were alcoves lining the walls that you tucked your sleeping bag into so you didn’t have to look at the giant statue of Zeus that stood at the end of the room. For good measure, you chucked a spare blanket over its head — he could smite you for it, you didn’t really care anymore. 

You zoned back into reality when a knock sounded on your door, and you realised it was nightfall. Dinner time. You stood from your perch on one of the many benches that sat in the room — you thought they’d have better use in the pavilion, where Hermes kids were practically falling off the benches there were so little of them — and headed over to the huge double doors, heaving one open and breathing deep at the workout it took just to see who was at the door. 

It was Evie, and for some reason that made a pit of disappointment form in your gut. You sent her a weak smile nonetheless, “Hi.”

She smiled back, full of pity, “Hey. Just thought I’d come check on you, we haven’t seen you in hours.”

“I didn’t like them staring at me.” You said plainly, stepping out into the open air. The rain had stopped now, the sky clear, and you fought the urge to roll your eyes. 

“Yeah, I get that.” Was her heartfelt reply. You felt bad for being so plain with her, but there was really only one person you wanted to see, “But, um, it’s dinner right about now. Wanna…come with?”

You didn’t really wanna, but you were starving and almost certain that nobody would be bringing you any food, so you shrugged, “Sure.” 

The large door shut on its own when you stepped away from it, and Evie jumped at the sound. You folded your arms and walked alongside her in silence until you were forced to part at the pavilion. She tried to say something — maybe a goodbye, a good luck. Maybe a we can’t be friends anymore because you’re forbidden. You didn’t stick around to check, walking over to the empty Zeus table where you unfortunately belonged. 

You filled your plate, hungry from the workout of capture the flag and exhaustion from the day, but your appetite was ruined when you saw Luke walk in and avoid your eyes completely in favour of sitting at his usual spot at the Hermes table. You hadn’t seen him all day, he hadn’t seen you, and yet here he was; ignoring your existence like he used to. It sort of hurt. 

So you dropped your fork, leaned your elbows on the untouched wood and stared at nothing. Only hours earlier were you at the top of your game, happy and ready to use your skills in capture the flag, show your friends what you could do. Now? You were completely alone, completely miserable, and completely ready to go back to Vermont. 

You wanted nothing more than to climb into your bed and cry. 

People started to stand. Heading in the direction of the campfire that you were definitely going to skip. Some Hermes kids stood, Luke included, and started a slow stroll down there too, past your table and down the hill. Chris was talking animatedly to his friends on either side of him, but Luke didn’t look very happy with whatever it was he was saying. Before you could build up the courage to call out for him, beg him to look you in the eyes and still stay your friend, he was shoving Chris roughly, the boy falling into your table with a grunt. 

“What the hell, man?” He sneered, brushing himself off. Luke just glared. He scoffed, “You’ve changed, bro. And not for the better.”

Then he was walking off in a huff, and his friends were following him. Luke met your eyes for half a second before storming off in the opposite direction — and with the influence of the tug on your heart, you followed. 

He was halfway to the Hermes cabin when you caught him, and you were thrown back to the time he got into that…thing with Dean from Ares and you chased him all the way up the hill. This time, it was down, and you were a lot less out of breath when you reached out and tugged on his elbow. 

He turned to you, “What?”

You paused, hand falling to your side. You swallowed, shrugged, “I…uh…”

Luke tightened his jaw, eyes flicking above your head like if he looked at you any longer his facade would break. He took in a deep breath and met your gaze once more, “Go to the campfire.”

“What —?”

“Go to the campfire.” He was backing away, “Entertain your fans, give out autographs. Conjure some more lighting. I don’t know. Do something, but don’t do it here.” 

You weren’t having that. Your gaze hardened, “Hey. You’re not allowed to say that to me after you ignored me all day.”

“I —“ He went for a rebuttal, but came up short, licking his lips in frustration. “You disappeared.”

“I was in the Big House, being interrogated.” You explained, annoyance clear in your tone, “I would’ve liked it if my best friend was waiting for me when I got out but unfortunately he decided he hated me like everyone else and I had to cry alone in my cabin.” 

He paused then, taking slow steps back towards you and meeting your saddened gaze. His brows furrowed, “I’m your best friend?” 

You cracked a tiny smile, “Of course you are, idiot.” 

His nod was barely there, but you saw it. You also saw his smile, small like yours and gone in a flash. “I don’t hate you.” He said, “I don’t care that Zeus is your dad. It’s just…”

“He forgot about me.” 

“What?”

You shrugged, folding your arms. There, standing in the middle of the cabins and staring at Luke Castellan, you admitted out loud what you’d been avoiding since you left the Big House, “Zeus. He forgot about me. That's why I never got attacked by monsters, because my deadbeat father was so busy turning his kid into a tree that he forgot he had another one.” 

Even under the tears brimming in your lids and through the lump on your throat, you saw Luke flinch. A minute movement, but you caught it like you caught all of his other details. The freckle on his eyebrow, the scar on his forehead that other people missed because they were too busy staring at his big one. The flinch when you brought up the tree. Thalia Grace, is what Chiron had called her. 

“I’m sorry for avoiding you.” He said in a low murmur. “Thalia was a friend of mine and Annabeth’s. Brought back some rough memories.” 

“Oh.” You breathed, “Oh, gods. I’m so sorry.” 

You stepped forward and wrapped your arms around his torso before you could think about it. Big bad Luke definitely didn’t like hugs, but there you were; hugging him and staining his camp shirt with your salty tears. You couldn’t help it — you were so full of emotions that a single hug that he hadn't even reciprocated was bringing you to tears. 

Then he hugged you back, and you started bawling. 

Bawling like a baby into his chest while he stood there and held you. Crying about your dad who forgot about you, your sister who died while you lived a happy life, your nonexistent purpose in life because you were over sixteen now and there was nothing for you. Maybe being a forbidden kid was enough, but not really. You weren’t forbidden enough for them, apparently. 

“Sorry for shoving Chris.” He spoke into your hair. You pulled your head back enough to meet his eyes, “He was saying shit about you and Thalia and it pissed me off. I know that you want me to be better, happier or whatever, and I am trying but…”

“I don’t care.”

His lips shut with a smack, “What?”

You let out a sad chuckle, “Be miserable. I don’t care, I like you for who you are. Plus, I get it. Y’know? This isn’t the happiest life.” 

Luke looked at you with an expression so genuine and heavy that it sort of scared you, but you let it burn you. You’d let him burn you forever more. Then he let out a breath, tinged with relief, and relaxed his forehead onto your own. You stayed like that, heads pressed together and arms wrapped around one another, until footsteps bled into your ears. 

You pulled away from each other and spotted Annabeth, who was making her way over very quickly, trudging through the grass that was still wet from earlier. 

“Anna Banana.” Luke squinted, his new way of smiling, “What are ya’ doing over here?”

The girl stopped between the two of you and ignored her brother in favour of looking at you, “So, you’re Zeus’ kid.”

“Yup.”

“I knew your sister. She was my sister, too, for a bit.” She said, and you thought it sounded sad, but the girl hid her emotions well. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” You shrugged — it wasn’t anyone’s fault but Zeus’. You sent her a kind smile. 

She returned it, glancing at Luke then, “Don’t call me that.” 

He chucked, patting her on the head and yanking on one of her braids. She huffed and smacked his hand away, but smiled nonetheless. Then she looked back at you, “You were good with that spear today. Maybe Athena could pair up with Zeus for the next game.”

“Maybe they could.” You nodded. 

She nodded back, before announcing her departure and heading off. You looked at Luke with a proud grin, “She likes me.” 

He smiled fully, amused, “She does.”

“You like me.”

A little sheepish, “I do.”

“So who cares if daddy dearest doesn’t?” You settled on, tilting your head, “We got each other.” 

Luke nodded, and you admired the way he looked. He was handsome, that you knew, but he seemed particularly beautiful under the moon, alone with you.

🏷️ @katherines-imagines @lovingjasontoddmakemewanttocry @jennapancake @cobaltskiez @loveryoushouldcomeoverr @m00ng4z3r @ma1dita @woodlandwrites @tsireyasgf @theo-notts-doll @iammightsadyall @fennecswife @csifandom @evilwrongdoer @blueberryjune @dancing-inasnowglobe @acidaciruela @solshaven @rosieandthethorns @sofiacblair @obxstiles @lukecastellanirl (comment to be removed/added!) (also sorry if some of these didn’t work idk what’s going on)

[generalllimaginesss]

Here’s a little piece based on Megan Moroney’s song Reasons to Stay.

Warnings: angsty bf! Jack, toxic relationship (you can usually tell if I’m depressed or not based on what I post lmao), but like this is really really toxic so don’t read if that’s a trigger for you. I think I made myself go crazy while rereading it.

Reasons to Stay

I asked Jesus for a sign

And today I haven’t cried

It’s only 2 p.m. but that beats yesterday

So I guess that’s a reason to stay

The status of having an NHL boyfriend was alluring to a lot of girls. The fame was something that always felt new, thousands of people, strangers, screaming the name that you hold near and dear to your heart. The money eased the fear of bills and gave a freedom the average person would never experience in their lifetime. The influence that you hold as a WAG always playing in the back of your mind anytime your finger hovered over a button to post a picture, wondering if the caption was classy enough to hold your status.

The truth is that looks can be deceiving. The girls that threw themselves at Jack made for a constant state of insecurities to pool in your brain, sloshing around anytime Jack was home late or turned his location off. The money bought things that made you smile, a Louis Vuitton here, a Mercedes there, but the feeling of being in debt to the man that let hate spew from his mouth anytime you accidentally stepped out of line pulled at your being, anxiety grasping at the freedom, one not capable of being present without the other.

Was it really freedom?

Was it the price of freedom?

Maybe.

Maybe the price was the amount of tears that flowed when he rejected an outfit for you to wear.

“You’re not leaving in that. I don’t date sluts and that makes you look like one,” his reasoning rang, slicing through your ears and bouncing around anytime you bought clothes.

Today was a good day, though.

He had kissed you goodbye, asking if you would be making dinner tonight.

He’d be home tonight, you thought, willing yourself to think positive and fighting against the urge to dwell on the fact that he had come home with a hickey the night prior. He insisted it was a hickey, but you weren’t too sure about that.

But he’s yours tonight, that’s all that matters. That keeps you going; the possibility that tomorrow he will be yours is your driving thought. So you went about your day as if the life you were living were a dream and that you were living the life as the girlfriend of a famous hockey player who made millions.

Maybe it’s normal to have to be small. Maybe you just have to compensate for the huge platform that he had. He had earned it after all.

Seriously, what did you do other than keep the house tidy and go to his games? That’s normal….right?

You just had to tell yourself that it would be ok. It would be harder and messier to leave than try to push through.

And when you’re drunk at 3 a.m.

You don’t call your ex-girlfriend

It’s been a couple months since you

Brought up her name.

So I guess that’s a reason to stay.

The guys had gone out after a win, guys only. No girlfriends or wives. That’s what Jack said, at least. They were celebrating the guys achievements, some records broken, and it was just for them.

That was fine with you. He had an amazing game: his second hatty of his career. He needed a night to let off some steam and just be a boy.

The picture of him and Nico with Jack’s ex looming in the background was just a coincidence, yeah? Jack said she was a puck bunny, so she’s probably just going from guy to guy.

As soon as he walked through the door, the smell of bourbon wafted through the air, attaching itself to every air molecule in the apartment and meeting you like a familiar friend. This wasn’t the first time he had come home in this state. It wasn’t even the 5th or 6th.

“You’re up,” Jack’s words were slower than normal, the effort to produce the words coherently proving to be more tasking than normal. He took in the view of you curled up in an Ugg blanket on the plush cushions of the couch, noticing the lines that the tears had been drawing for the past hour. He took note, but not responsibility. He told you where he was and what he was doing, no harm no foul.

“Just couldn’t go to sleep,” Your voice was weakened, something you despised about yourself. You used to view yourself as strong and independent. Sticking up for what was right was was something you took pride in, but being in a relationship with Jack had slowly chipped away at that, so nonchalantly that you were the skeleton of who you once were before you could do anything about it.

Jack’s balance teetered from the left to the right, making a ship at sea during a storm look like a walk through the park. He stumbled as he tried to take his shoes off, a cue that you learned meant you needed to help him.

He did so much for you, so would it really be awful to just help him out?

As you slipped one AirForce off, you took notice of the bruises that feathered his legs, probably from the intense game tonight.

You could feel courage bubble, coming to a boil before you made your next statement, “I noticed your ex in a picture that Nico posted…what’s that about?”

“Baby,” He slurred, attempting to tuck a strand of your hair behind your ear but pulling it instead, kissing your forehead after you winced at the tension. “You’re the only one that matters,” And with that he sucked you right back into his intoxicating blue eyes. They held a secret confession of his love for you. One that only you could see and he could feel.

But you don’t try like you used to

You don’t look at me the same

You used to say you’re sorry, now

Whiskey’s what you blame

How much can a heart take

‘Til it’s really your last chance

I’m a giver, but I’ve given all I can

We both know that I ain’t one to walk away

But I’m runnin’ out of reasons to stay

Things hadn’t always been like this.

Jack hadn’t always been like this.

He used to surprise you at work with two dozen roses, or wrote sweet love notes on sticky notes and stuck them to your vanity. He used to put in effort.

He used to want you.

What were you thinking, of course he still wanted you. He wouldn’t be in a relationship with you for the whole world to see if he didn’t want you, right?

He hadn’t bought flowers in a long time, though, and the sticky notes had slowly made their way to a drawer for safekeeping, none there to replace them. The vanity was bare, loneliness radiating from it every time you passed it, the feeling resonating in your soul.

It was as lonely as you.

Jack had come home drunk again last night, the smell of the liquor laced the words he shot at you with a poison that made them burn when they hit you. Everything that came out of his mouth felt like lashes against your skin.

“You’re so fucking boring, Y/N! You think you’re so perfect and you’re not! You think you’re better than everybody around you, but you’re not! You’re a fucking bitch, you cunt!”

He went on like that for at least an hour, going on and on about how he deserved better, how he could have anybody he wanted but settled for you.

It hurt even worse because it was so untrue. You battled with yourself for years because you compared yourself to those around you constantly. Jack knew this. He had been there for your breakdowns when your family had made you feel like a disappointment, or when you never thought you would be as pretty or talented as the other girls in the hockey scene.

Did he just forget this?

How were you going to smooth this over with him?

It felt like all you did was make excuses for him just to be able to live with him.

Why?

How did he completely change you? Wreck you? He had gutted out who you once were and left the bare beams that held you up. He had conditioned you to allow him chance after chance, no matter how bad he had fucked up.

And you just let him.

As the sun played a game of peekaboo through the curtains, you had made up your mind that you couldn’t justify the way he was treating you anymore. It was wrong.

The smell of bacon and eggs lured you into the kitchen to see him shirtless, standing over the stove as he busied himself with making breakfast. His back muscles flexed as he maneuvered about the stove. He looked perfect, as if he hadn’t verbally assaulted you and your character last night.

Before you could say anything, he had sensed that he was being watched, catching a glimpse of you as he turned his head slightly to the left.

“Morning. Didn’t wake you up, did I?” His voice was raspy, probably from partying for most of the night, but it sounded like he cared. It was refreshing.

“N-no. Um, I just felt like I should get up,” Reassuring him felt like an attempt to just keep the peace. Don’t say anything to set him off, don’t be combative. He’s cooking breakfast for you, so everything’s ok.

“Good. Hey, about last night…I’ll be honest I don’t remember what I said, but if it was bad it was just from me drinking too much. The boys may have gotten me to drink more than I normally do…” he trailed off as he plated the breakfast he had made for you, placing it on a placemat at the bar and pouring a cup of coffee for you, 3 creams and 2 sugars.

He remembered.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” You walked to the bar taking a seat.

The morning consisted of the two of you genuinely enjoying the presence of the other, catching up on what’s going on in each other’s lives and promising to not let it get this way anymore.

Before Jack left for practice, he had placed a kiss to your lips ever so gently, “I love you,” he whispered, his voice soft and sweet.

How was this the same Jack from last night?

You were sure that you had to be going crazy.

If I go find somebody new

I’d lose your mom and sister too

You know me and how much I hate change

So I guess that’s a reason to stay

And I ain’t perfect either, we all make mistakes

But that don’t change

The Michigan sunset was absolutely breathtaking. The orange and purple hues painting a picture so perfect that it could never be replicated on a canvas. The distant sounds of the guys on the lake could be heard in the distance, the chill of the wind carrying the hoots and hollers from the water to you and Ellen, sitting on the deck attached to the back of the house.

The smell of the deck and the sound of the hundreds of frogs from the water felt like a dream, one that you never wanted to wake up from.

“Jack would probably kill me if he heard me say this, but I really hope you two get married soon. I’d love to have you as my daughter, you know? These boys are a lot sometimes…” Ellen chuckled as she nodded to the boys in the distance.

The comment caught you off guard, a response in favor felt forced, but how were you supposed to tell her that her son was making your life a living hell?

“You’d have to take that up with him,” You smiled at her, not revealing the relationship that was slowly eating away at you.

“I promised to never pressure them to do something that they weren’t ready for, so I’ll let him choose the right time. I just know we all love you. Anytime the other two call home they always ask how you’re doing. I know they talk to Jack about you, too. We didn’t think he’d ever be ready to settle down with a girlfriend, much less one as amazing as you,” She went on, pulling her jacket tighter around her as the absence of the sun left goosebumps on her skin.

“It’s getting cold out here, let’s head inside and you can help me make dinner. I believe we have some wine if you’d like some,” She stood up and headed to the kitchen, waiting for you to follow suite, you smiled.

It was almost a sad smile, grateful that even though Jack wasn’t the man he should’ve been for you, his family loved you. They made you feel safe and loved. They were a safe haven from the toxic tendencies that Jack had taken up when the two of you were in New Jersey.

“I’d love that, Ellen.”

The sound of bare feet padding rapidly against the blades of grass that ran from the dock to the deck made you and Ellen turn your heads towards the window, watching on as Quinn, Luke, and Jack were racing towards the house.

Luke won, his long legs giving him an unfair advantage against his shorter counterparts. Quinn came in second as Jack has tripped over himself.

“What’s for dinner?” Luke panted, reaching for a water bottle out of the fridge and attempting to sit on the couch.

“You’ll find out after you change out of your wet swim trunks,” Ellen gave him a stern look, him raising his arms in defense as he left to go to his room for dry clothes.

You felt an arm snake around your waist, the smell of lake water and sunscreen following behind it. At first you jumped, worried that you had done something wrong.

He chuckled at the sudden movement, not realizing that he was the problem.

“Jumpy, are we?”

You smiled, trying to not cause an issue with him.

“Sorry. Wasn’t expecting you to be so cold,” You felt nasty as you lied through your teeth.

After a few minutes, he finally decided to retreat to the shower to wash the day off of him. You took in your surroundings while he was away.

Quinn and Luke played the Xbox while Ellen prepared the vegetables for dinner and Jim smoked the meat outside. You had been loving this family for years now. You and Ellen had become so close, easily somebody you loved as if she were your own mother.

Jack wouldn’t be the only person that you would have to let go of if you were to leave. As much as you loved his family, it was only natural for them to take his side, something that you understood and admired. You could only wish somebody would take up for you no matter what, and he had 4 people willing to do that for him.

You couldn’t imagine the thought of having to start over with somebody new, having to meet their parents for the first time and being disappointed that they weren’t Ellen and Jim. Being disappointed that their siblings wouldn’t pay the extra money when they accidentally forgot to keep your Snapchat streak going since it was almost 4 years long. Quinn and Luke texted you almost as often as they texted Jack. You were like their sister.

The thought of starting over was enough to have tears stinging at the corner of your eyes. Whatever Jack had done, you couldn’t expect him to be perfect. He’s human, after all. You’d stay if it meant you could keep the Hughes in your life.

I'm runnin' out of patience

Damn, I hate to say it

I'm runnin' out of patience and grace and at the end of the day

Findin' last resort reasons we're okay

Ain't a good reason to stay

“Jack you have purple bruises all on your fucking neck! How stupid do you think I am?!” You barked at him as he sat on the couch facing you.

“Stupid enough to think this is the first time this has happened,” His smug smirk and body language made you want to hurt him. You wanted to hurt him as bad as he’s hurt you for so long now.

“I hate you. I fucking hate you, Jack Hughes. You are the most disgusting person I have ever met and I hope your life becomes a living hell that you can never get out of,” The words came out calmly despite their harsh meaning. It was eerie, making the hairs on Jack’s neck stand up.

“Where do you think you’re going,” He watched as you made your way to the shared bedroom, hearing the sound of a suitcase zipper open.

He jumped up, heading straight for you, but froze as he watched you throw clothes into the suitcase. When that one became full you found another one to shove your clothes into, until the only things left were things you didn’t normally wear.

“What are you doing?” He spat, realizing that the grip he had on you was being relinquished.

“What does it fucking look like? I’m done. I’ve gone crazy trying to love you and I want out. I can’t do this anymore!” You tried to yell, but your throat constricted as it tried its best to sob. You refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing you like that, though. He had put you in this state of survival long enough.

“You’re going to regret this…” He trailed off, following you as you threw everything into your car.

“Maybe so, Jack. But I will never regret it as much as I regret falling in love with you. You are an awful person, and I hope everybody will see that one day,” You slammed the door shut and put the car in reverse.

As you made your way down the driveway and street, Jack’s figure became smaller and smaller. Nobody would ever make you feel this way ever again, and you felt sorry for whoever fell into the trap that is Jack Hughes after you.

*

*

*

*

HAHA IM SO SORRY!! Also this in no way reflects who Jack is in real life because I, obviously, don’t know him personally. This was so bad though, so I’m actually really sorry.

[katsukikitten]

𝓦𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓸𝔀𝓼 𝓽𝓸 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓢𝓸𝓾𝓵

18+ minors DNI | Smut, no warnings.

"I could keep you like this, you know?" His voice is pure sin as his long fingers squeeze at the fat of your hips. Pinning you to the mattress as he stays sheathed inside you, unmoving.

"G-Gojo, don't tease." But you knew damn well that's what the man lived for. Teasing, grating, annoying and burying himself under people's skin because he knew he could, knew no one would step to him and make him stop.

Knew he had to keep everyone at arm's length.

You try pushing at the dark blindfold he always wears and he grabs onto your wrist, "Don't you want to see me? What you do to me?"

The sound of your voice makes his cock twitch, he always left his blind fold on with you, especially when the two of you were tangled limbs and bruised kisses.

He hadn't intended to ever get this far, to come half a year down the road and still fucking you. Not because you felt good or because you were the best pussy he's had despite not having many.

But because of how your fingers felt in his hair after. How you'd hum songs he thinks he should know, the sound vibrating in your chest competing with the thump of your steady heart beat. How you share meals with him now, making something delicious or knowing exactly what take out he wanted. And you never ever forget dessert or his favorite soda.

That's why he has come back again and again.

And that's what scares him.

He lets his free hand run through his moon white hair, sighing in defeat when you slam the final nail into the coffin, "Please."

A desperate whine, truly a plea that you want nothing more than the intimacy of being seen and at your most vulnerable. To selfishly look into the eyes of the man you loved, to peer through the window and into his soul.

The idea of it makes him shudder.

Still he drops your wrist, settles his large hands back at your hips as you gently remove the blindfold. His long lashes kissing his cheeks before he lets them flutter open. His fingers squeezing at your sides again as they adjust to the low light of the night in your small bedroom.

It's always overwhelming when he first takes off his blindfold fully, more so than any fight. He can really feel you now, feel the plains of your skin, of the softness and roughness of it. The scars that littered your plush body and the few stretch marks. How your eyes sparkle and crinkle when you smile up at him. Your hair making a halo of sorts behind your head and in this moment he thinks you're truly beautiful.

He knew you were before he ever saw you, your aura said as much but to see you, to feel you, it was more than he could ever fathom. As if you alone had him trapped in his own domain, pondering all there was, feeling surreal under hus palms. And then you bring him back to Earth.

Crashing and burning.

With just a few simple, innocent words.

"There you are." It's soft, easy and genuine. Hand cupping his cheek, thumb sliding over the apple of it and it makes him dip closer. Makes his hips snap into yours roughly as he chases the feeling of your cunt clamping around him. Holding eye contact with you as best he can, not because it's hard for him because normally it is, but because the way you feel has his pretty eyes rolling into the back of his head.

Gripping at you until you think you'll bruise, grinding and dipping into you just right, the thatch of white hair at the base of his cock slick and rubbing against your clit just right.

You see stars, stomach clenching with each pointed thrust that hits that spongy spot inside you with ease. Making you cry out in pleasure. Scraping your sharp nails against his shoulder blades as you urge him closer, until all the two of you can see is each other.

The closeness makes him groan, makes the coil in your stomach snap, wrapping your legs around his waist and curling your toes. Pressing into him as if you needed him impossibly closer.

Still Gojo tries, for you he'd always try. Despite his worry or fear he has over what the two of you are cultivating at this moment he does not care.

Only cares about how your lashes flutter, how your mouth forms into a pretty o when you cum, how you cling to him desperately while he fucks you through your orgasm and into another and another.

Until you're panting under him, eyes hazed like you're drunk, nails biting into him weakly as he gets you to melt at his touch. Until you're clamping around him so hard with such a pretty preen he can't help but succumb to you.

Always and only you.

Painting your cunt in sticky ropes of white as he groans, looking you in your eyes and its enough to make you whimper. The intensity of it, the realness of it that he normally hides away.

He stays like that, panting above you before he lowers himself on shaky arms, nosing at your throat before he places soft kisses up to your jaw. Slow swipes of his tongue over yours as he gently pulls out of you. Placing his head in his normal spot on your chest, your fingers in his hair, nails scratching his scalp.

The steady beat of your heart is enough to make his eyes heavy, his arms wrapping around you tightly as he starts to drift.

He tells himself in his half conscious state that he won't use his blindfold tomorrow, not even a pair of sunglasses to shield him. As his mind's eye lets your starlit eyes dance across his psyche he knows he wants to see more.

That he'll leave them in that ugly bowl on your entry table by the door, just the same as kicking off the shoes from his feet.

Tomorrow he wanted to see you, all of you, even if he knew it would be like looking at the sun for him.

Even if it meant he'd go blind and only the outline of you would forever be burned into his retinas.

It didn't matter because in the end at least he'd still be able to see you.

[lixzey]

Letters

a/n: PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION ‼️‼️‼️This has very detailed scenes which may not be suitable for everyone. The last four letters will be the same, so heads up!

warnings: mentions of panic attacks, fighting, mention of a gun, slightly detailed murder, mention of a lot of blood, police officers, ambulances, implied post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma, and foster homes

The Fourteenth Letter

As soon as the plane landed, Timothée quickly made his way off of the plane—he was practically pushing through passengers just so he could make his way out—he had no time left to lose; he needed to find Y/n as soon as possible. Timothée was, without a doubt, scared. He wasn’t sure what would be waiting for him at the address he had in his hands.

What if he had the wrong address? What if the place was long gone? What if….Timothée couldn’t even bear to think about the worst-case scenario—even if it was possible. What if’s and maybe’s were scattered throughout his mind. Timothée wanted to think positively—that she was alright, safe, and sound at least—but those negative thoughts were inevitable, given the contents of Y/n’s letters.

Timothée sighed, running a shaky hand through his curls as he strolled to the airport’s exit. His heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest as he scanned the area for the car his manager had arranged for him, his mind racing with all the possibilities of what could be. 

When he finally spotted his ride, Timothée stepped in and gave the driver the address, urging the driver to drive as fast as he legally could. The driver looked at him skeptically, eyebrows knitted in confusion, but nonetheless did as Timothée asked. As the car weaved through the crowded city streets, Timothée’s phone rang all of a sudden. The young actor sighed, picking up the call.

“Timmy, darling?” His mother’s voice spoke from the other line. “Where are you?” 

“I’m on my way to a friend's,” Timothée lied, staring out of the car window. 

“Oh, alright,” Nicole hummed, though Timothée felt like his mother knew that he was lying. “Anyway, there was a young woman looking for you just fifteen minutes ago.” 

Timothée’s brows knitted in confusion. “Looking for me? Who was it?”

“I didn’t catch her name, but she left a letter.”

Timothée’s eyes widened slightly at the mention of a letter. “A letter?” 

“Yes, a letter,” Nicole confirmed. “Like the last time.”

“The last time?”

“A basket of letters. Did you receive them?” Nicole asked. “I asked Pauline to drop it off at the hotel you were staying at in Paris, since she was going the same way.”

“Oh,” Timothée said, gaping at the realization. The letters were delivered to his childhood home, and his mother asked his sister to drop them off. But who delivered the letters? Was it Y/n? “Who delivered the basket, Mom?” 

“The basket was left on our doorstep, sweetheart,” Nicole replied, sending shivers down Timothée's spine.

It was possible that it was Y/n who delivered the letters, but she sent them. She had mentioned in a letter before that she had used all of her extra money for stamps and such, meaning she had sent them in the mail. How the hell did the letters get compiled? Who the hell sent them to him, if not Y/n? Why the fuck were the letters delivered too damn late?

Finally, the car pulled up to the address he had scribbled on a crumpled piece of paper, snapping Timothée out of his daze. He quickly thanked the driver and stepped out onto the bustling sidewalk, his eyes scanning the old run-down building with a large signage with Oregon Sweet Angels Children’s Home written in peeling red paint on a fading yellow background.

Timothée took a step closer, peeking through the boarded windows for a sign of Y/n—or maybe a glimpse of what was inside, of old photos hanging on the walls, or if there was anything else left that could lead him to her, as it was obvious that the children’s home was long forgotten. 

The actor sighed as he sat on the steps of the old building, disappointed at the fact that he had traveled forty hours for nothing. Maybe it was stupid of him to assume that he could find her; he had received the letters too late.

Taking a deep breath, Timothée fished the fourteenth letter from his pocket. “Fourteenth, four more left.”

August 15, 2023

Dear Timothée, 

I just had a panic attack. I haven’t had a panic attack this bad since……

I heard a loud, echoing gunshot from outside of my apartment, and I just froze in place. I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, and couldn’t think. Because a gunshot tossed me back into the system for the remaining years of my childhood—if I could even call that a childhood.

It was the summer before I started high school.

My aunt still treated me like shit, the bare minimum, and all that. CPS still came by every week, making sure I was happy—I wasn’t—and healthy. It was annoying to act like I was okay, that everything was alright, and that there wasn't anything wrong when clearly there was. But who was I to complain? I was the orphan forced to be raised against the only family I had left's will. In everyone else's eyes, I was happy and loved. But not one of them bothered to look behind the damn curtains.

I constantly stayed in my room, making sure the door was locked and my headphones were right beside my bed.

Why, you ask?

It's because my aunt brought home a man, her fiancé; let's call him Leo. 

It's not that I didn't like Leo—he was kind, he always gave me books, and we'd bond over our shared love for literature—but they always fought. It wasn't like normal fights; they would yell, they would scream, and it involved a lot of hitting and breaking things—courtesy of my aunt, I suppose, because she was the only unhinged person I've ever known. Their fights would always revolve around cheating; my aunt constantly accused Leo of cheating when he didn't. He was loyal, even though my aunt wasn't the best pea in the pod. Leo loved her, but my aunt kept on looking past that, always believing things he wasn't even capable of doing.

I was honestly scared that Leo would one day realize that my aunt was not the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Leo was like a second father to me; he said he sees me as his own and that he'd love to adopt me once he and my aunt got married.

But all that never happened. 

I was sitting in my room, reading peacefully, when I heard them fighting again. At first, I didn’t pay much attention to it because their fighting was practically normal at that point, and I was used to it by then. I shook it off to the side and put my headphones on, but before I even got to play the song from my playlist, I heard a loud, deafening echo of a gunshot from the living room downstairs. I quickly got up; my ears were ringing and my vision blurred as I held the doorknob, opening it with shaking hands. I stepped out of my room, slowly creeping down the stairs, peeking over the railings.

The first thing I saw was Leo.

Lying in a pool of his own blood, slowly dying.

I stood there, frozen. The sight of the wound on the left side of his chest, where the bullet pierced through, sucked the air right out of my lungs. The white Persian rug underneath Leo’s pale and lifeless body absorbed the blood, staining it completely and making my mind blank out. All I could hear was the loud firing of the gun, taking Leo’s life in an instant, that easily.

My aunt stood there, the gun still in her shaking hands, as she stared down at her fiancé’s body, realizing what she had just done was not reversible. She didn’t notice me approaching Leo’s body. I wanted to scream at her; I wanted to charge at her and hit her again and again for killing the only person I had left who cared and loved me after I lost everything that I’ve ever known. But I just stood there as tears flowed down my cheeks, feeling hollow and broken inside—the first time I ever felt that way. After what felt like an eternity, my aunt finally looked up at me—the gun against her forehead—and before I could utter a word, she fired the gun, taking her own life just as easily as she took Leo’s.

I fell onto my knees as the ringing of the gunshot replayed again and again in my ears like a fucking merry-go-round, choking out sobs as I stared at the lifeless bodies in front of me. I didn’t know what to do. Again, I wanted to scream and shout, but nothing came out of my throat other than raspy breaths. I knelt there like an idiot for what felt like forever, wondering what I did to fucking deserve this. How the fuck could anyone hurt a little kid? 

Eventually, I grabbed the phone—Leo’s phone—from the coffee table and dialed 911 with my hands shaking. A little while later, the police and ambulances arrived, and immediately one of the RMTs rushed towards me. I was still kneeling in front of Leo’s body, so the RMT wrapped me in her arms and slowly escorted me out to one of the ambulances. I was shaking and sweating while one of the police officers who responded asked me questions about what happened.

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t. 

The scene kept replaying itself again and again. I just kept on crying silently, until the RMT who took me out of the house said it was better to take me to the hospital first to recover from the trauma, and a psychiatrist would be better given what I had to witness. I just sat there until I saw bodies getting loaded into the other two ambulances—Leo and my sorry excuse for an aunt’s bodies—in black body bags. I never, ever expected that I’d see someone I loved die in front of my eyes again. First my parents, then Leo.

I was then whisked away to the nearest hospital. The hospital where I woke up three years prior. I was back to square one, now a literal orphan. No more family. 

I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I spent a week in the hospital, crying and crying again and again until I ran out of tears. Psychiatrists, therapists, nurses, and doctors all tried to help me open up, but none of them were ever successful.

After my stay at the hospital, I was thrown into foster care—Oregon Sweet Angels Children’s Home—for good this time. I spent my first few days stuck in bed; I didn’t have the energy to mingle with the other kids my age—I was thirteen, turning fourteen in a few months at that time—no one wants a broken girl for a friend, and it’s sure as hell that no one wants to adopt a teen who has nightmares each and every goddamn night.

Now, the trauma’s haunting me. Every fucking time, and this one isn’t all of it.

I’m all alone now. 

My parents died, Leo got murdered, Ava moved out, and Julie’s moved to another state. Who do I have left now, Timmy? Do I have you? I'm scared that everyone I’ll love will leave me. You weren’t even mine to begin with, but I’m still scared to lose you. 

I've been praying again and again for somebody to save me—a knight in shining armor, for all I care—but no one’s been heroic enough. All that I did to try to undo it, all of my pain, and all their excuses. I was a kid, but I wasn't fucking clueless. At eleven, I understood that someone who loves you wouldn't do any of this. All of my past, I tried to erase it. But now I see, would I even change it?

What was I fucking made for?

All my love, 

Y/n

Timothée felt his heart clench, tears pricking his eyes, threatening to fall as he finished reading the fourteenth letter. Y/n had been through so much, so fucking much. She was just a little girl—a little girl who had already gone through hell and back again and again. Timothée felt his stomach twist with guilt, even though it wasn’t his fault.

Or was it?

Had he received all of her letters earlier, Timothée would've reached out to her sooner. She had been so alone and traumatized for years, living through a nightmare that a child should never have to experience. Timothée pressed the letter to his chest, wiping away the tears that had fallen down his cheeks with one hand. He stood up, tucking the letter back in its envelope and putting it back in his pocket. 

Timothée took a deep breath, turning around to take one last look at the children’s home—the place where Y/n spent four years of her life alone—before making his way back to the car that was waiting for him.

He wasn’t going to give up. He was going to find Y/n, he was going to be the hero she desperately needed, and he wasn’t going to stop until he did.

@helens3amstuff @gatoenlaciudad @thebetawolfgirl @lovemelikecrazyiloveyoucrazy @tchalamss @ashlynnmalfoy @crazycat-ladys-blog @michakune @mxltifxnd0m @spencerr3idd @dangelnleif @sthkate @ferrjulie @imnotoverlyobsessive @mel-vaz @zunin-msty @lovely-maryj @meowmeowmau @bobthe-turmpetman29 @saintcosette @ashisabitgay @ladyladybuggg @nyrasunderwrld @remussbitch @jadahxx @starrystormwritings @ell0ra-br3kk3r @dreary-salem @drewsandsebastianswife @greenapplegrass @lilianelena39 @haybellewrites @cloudlst @si4ana @ev3ningrain @ttulipwritezz @lilmaymayy @bullets-from-another-dimension @siriuslycaptainofthedawntreader @reg-arcturus-black @marina468 @3stelar @timhalamet @st4rf00k3r @idli-dosa @jimins15thhair @blacksgarden @loving-and-dreaming @thefriendlyneighborhoodmomfriend

[bubbles-for-all-of-us]

For the asks - "I wish you would write a fic where..."

Would you ever do a follow up to little bat? 🖤🖤

Can be read as a follow-up to Little Bat but also as a standalone. For a summary: your boyfriend tried to choke you after getting greedy that you were outshining him. Xaden came to your rescue but while the threat was taken care of some damage remained.

Things hunting us

“She has to train”, Garrick muttered under his breath as he and Xaden looked over the cadets filling up the training grounds. “You told me that ten times today”, Xaden pointed out keeping his tone low. “Proves my point that you’re not listening”, Garrick said through gritted teeth. Xaden didn’t need to look at his friend to see the frustration. Things had been uneasy ever since the attack. With people mostly fearing for themselves. Weary eyes bouncing around the rooms.

“She was nearly choked a week ago”, Xaden still felt as if someone was choking him now. He was confused. Mostly. With himself. He wasn’t sure why he had stayed the night after. Well, he had told himself that he stayed to protect you. Keep an eye on you. But then he stayed a day after. And one after. Until being close got too much and now he was running away in full speed. “Xaden, I get it believe me. I had a go at that fucker myself but rules are rules”, Garrick pointed out, “You, I, we can’t keep making excuses for her, we don’t run this place”.

And he knew it was true, it was. Xaden had been covering up for you ever since and even he was running out of ways to fill in your absence. He dragged a hand over his face as he rounded the corner on the second floor. Stopping hesitantly before his knuckles beat against the wood.

“It’s Xaden, can I come in?”, shit did he sound desperate? He should have kept his tone more raw and cold. He heard ruffling on the other side. Slow movements followed right by. Then the doors swung open. And here you were. Hair in a messy bun. Dark bags beneath your eyes. One's that weren’t there the last morning that he left you. So you probably hadn’t been sleeping well.

“Hey”, you rasped out, wrapping our sweater tightly around your shoulders. “Hi”, he muttered back. And here it was that urge to keep you locked up. To keep you away from everyone. To keep you safe. Bubbling deep within. “I thought that we should try going to the communal floor today” if only people who feared him saw him. With his soft voice and all. “I’m fine thanks”, you breathed out, stepping back and reaching to close the door but Xaden pushed his boot forward, blocking the way.

“Yn, you can’t keep doing this”, his palm pressed against the wood. You didn’t fight it. You stepped back as well. Letting him into your room. “He’s taken care of”, Xaden promised but you shook your head. Turning back only to twirl back angrily, “And who is taking care of this?”, you pointed. Your neck was a canvas for all the colors possible. Angry finger marks were even more visible than the night of the attack. An angry tear slipped past your cheek and Xaden instantly stepped forward.

“Look at me”, he said softly but you simply hooked your head. “As your wing leader I am ordering you to”, his tone was firmer this time. Demanding. Angry eyes met this. But anger was good. Angry meant that there was still a spark left in you.

“Own it”, he said, you let out a bitter chuckle, “You’re inside”. “No, you own it”, he said once more. Keeping his grip on the side of your face firm but not enough to harm.

“Some weak ass shit tried to go the easiest route”, Xaden searched for your eyes but you didn’t give in. Emotions were all over the place. “He couldn’t outrun you so he took the coward's way out. He abused the power he had over you”, he continued. He wasn’t big on speaking. But words came easy when they were shared between you both.

“From here on now. You will not shed a single tear over him. You will scrap him out of your head because he didn’t deserve you. And you will walk out this room with your head held high and show everyone that if they try messing with you they will not walk away from the fight”, now your face was cradled in both of his palms and for the first time you glanced up at him.

“But it wasn’t me, wasn’t me who stopped him”, your voice was barely a whisper. “So what”, Xaden shrugged. “So they can easily do what he did”, you whined, feeling the panic rising once more. “No they can’t”, Xaden said firmly, and when he said that you were gonna argue back he added quickly, “They can’t because if they even breath in your direction I will make sure that they regret that they were born”.

Silence filled the room. For a moment it felt as if the two of you were not even here. That nothing else mattered that it was just too. But then you stepped back. Putting distance between you both, “Why are you doing this? Why are you being so nice?”, you muttered. You had heard endless stories of how ruthless this man was. No heart. No soul. But you had seen none of that. He was nothing like people portrayed him.

“Because I want to”, he shrugged, lips curving into a grin. “No, Xaden”, you pointed a warning finger at him. “I do, now”, he said, reaching to undo his leather, “Wear this while you’re at it. Lunch starts in ten minutes”. You caught his flying jacket midair. Instantly pressing it to your chest. But your brain was screaming at you, “We can’t wear other cadets' clothes”, you argued but Xaden only hummed in answer, “Shift in the rules”. His fingers tilted your chin up, “Now that you’re mine you can”.

[dreamauri]

┊𝗞𝗜𝗦𝗦 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 𝗔 𝗙𝗜𝗦𝗧 ┊─ ୨୧ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ :🪴: ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ୨୧ ─ ┊as spies from opposing countries, you each ┊try to beat each other to success, but sometimes, ┊you're going to need to be frenemies. ┇︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶︶꒷꒦˚₊   ┇ . 🌿 :: pairing — ( spy! max verstappen x spy! fem! reader ) ┇ . 🫧 :: ⁠genre — ( fluff )  ┇ . 🌿 :: ⁠word count — ( 1, 588 )  ╰ 🫧  :: ⁠ content warning — ( drugs, fernando being a better spy )

★ ☆ vote here if you would like to see more ━━━━━

( fic master list | general master list ) ( requests )

You hated the heels, how they clicked with each step as you walked through the crown on the hardwood flooring. You didn’t also fancy the crowd, but as a social species and with a job as such, you had to put up with it. ‘There he is,’ You thought recognizing the face you were present for tonight. Champagne glass in hand, you reached to put your hand on the guy's back when you were pulled away from your waist swiftly.

You found yourself walking past, looking up with a death stare at the smug face of the dutch blond. “I was waiting for you.” He smirked, leaning down. God you hated his smirk. “Get lost, verstappen.” You faked a smile trying to pull away only for him to dig his nails into your waist and pull you even closer. “That’s not a nice thing to say to your date, my love.” He took your free hand twirling you gently.

“Never thought I’d get to see you in a dress,” He leaned down, taking a sip of your champagne. “Navy looks good on you.” He chuckled and you gave him a death glare, watching him swallow the golden alcohol. He wiped his mouth in his suit sleeve, looking past you at the guy both of you apparently were after. “He’s mine.” You growled lowly, pulling yourself out of his grip. 

“I would love for you to-” Max cut himself off, putting his hand on his chest taking in a deep breath. His eyes glanced down to the alcohol champagne that was bubbling just a bit more than normal. “You silly girl.” He realised. You smirked, turning him around and pushing him from his back, leading him out of the party. “He calls her silly yet he falls for the oldest trick in the book.” You mock, walking down the halls and pushing him in an empty room. “You stay here, and don’t blow my cover or I swear on god it’ll be the last time you see the moon.”

Max rolled his eyes playfully, plopping on a cushioned chair. “You’ll come save me after you finish, right? You’re not going to leave me here, all alone.” “I’ll think about it.” Max watched as you exited the room with a slam from the door. He cozied up, taking off his blue bowtie. The drug would kick any minute now and he didn’t want to choke to death while being passed out. 

★ ☆ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Come on, sweetheart. Let's go.” Max awoke immediately when he heard the door open with a click. He watched the party host’s knocked out body splay on the leather couch and you tuck something in your bra. “Come on.” You urged Max, wrapping one of his arms around your neck and pulling him up on his feet. He got up with a pained moan, leaning all his weight on you. He pathetically attempted to try and reach into the top of your dress for the flash drive you were going to fight over later.

“Save your breath.” You smacked his hand away, sliding the window open and hopping out. Max followed soon after, landing on his face. It wasn’t a big fall since you were on the ground floor, but you should’ve taken a photo of the Dutch, you’ve never seen him be so ridiculous. With a shove in your passenger seat and buckling him up, you drove out of the estate, not giving the mansion one last glance. 

“Please die so I can dump your body in the river,” “Not a chance.” Was the last thing Max said before he passed out again. When woke up again he found himself in a dingy apartment, the sun stinging his eyes with the after effects and hangover from the drug and alcohol hitting him like a rock. The flat was empty, probably a temporary place to stay for this mission. It was quiet as well, minus your voice from the bathroom, talking to someone on the phone. 

“Aww c'est trop mignon. Dis-lui de le mettre sous un oreiller pour la fée des dents, je passerai, promis.” [Aww that’s so cute. Tell her to put it under a pillow for the tooth fairy, I'll stop by, I promise] Who the fuck were you talking to right now? Max watched in the reflection from the window as you held the flashdrive between your teeth, phone pressed to your ear as you brushed your hair into a ponytail. This was his chance. Maybe not.

He hadn’t realised he was cuffed to the bed, and had fallen flat on his chest just a few inches from your ankles. You looked down at him for a few seconds with an unimpressed and amused look. “Excusez-moi, les idiots se lèvent. Rendez-vous à X dans quelques jours.” [Excuse me, the idiots up. See you at X in a few days] Max pushed himself to stand up, looking at his half naked body, dressed in only his boxer shorts, ankle cuffed to the foot of the bed.

“If I didn’t know you I’d think you were up to some errotic shit.” You gave him a fake smile and a muted chuckle. “Well you don’t know me, and you're wrong.” “I mean, you’re in nothing but underwear.” The two of you stared at each other silently for a few seconds. “I value myself too much, why would I sleep with a man like you.” “I’m very good in bed, just so you know.” Max put his hands on his hips proudly. “I doubt that, virgin.” “I have a girlfriend.” “Where is she from? Your Imagi-nation? Sounds like a lie to me.”

“Girls you’re both pretty,” You and Max turned to the Spanish man at the door. Fernando looked between the two of you, putting his hands in his pockets with a smug smirk. You felt yourself groan putting the flash drive in your bra, locking the bathroom door shut. “I see you got busy.” The Spanish man teased the Dutch, looking around the room with a smirk. “We didn’t do anything.” Max defended, crossing his arms. “The hickies say otherwise.” Fernando chuckled, going through drawers and cupboards. “They’re bruises. I feel it on my face.” Max corrected, looking at the locked bathroom door. “That actually sounds like something you’d do, Verstappen.” “Are you really going to leave me out here for him to kill me?” “She left you for the sharks.” Fernando noted, hearing the bathroom window click open, knowing you climbed out.

 “Make this quick. I’ve already passed out twice in less than 8 hours.” 

★ ☆ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“I hate you so fucking much fernando.”  “I love you too, hermosa.” [beautiful] 

It was a gathering at this point. Dutch, French, and Spanish spies all in one room. Only the Spanish spy was the one who wasn’t tied up on the floor. You wiggled on your seat, trying to get up on your knees only for Max to squirm under you. 

“Can you stop fucking moving?” “Can you stop being a pussy?” You spat back, shimmying your back up against his chest to try and get a better angle to untie your binds. Fernando from across the room, sitting on a desk, watched with a small smile, leaning back in his chair with his hands entangled behind his head. He had tied you and Max on top of eachother, purely for entertainment. 

“That’s my-- Y/N!” The small high pitched scream left his mouth had the rest of the men in the room laughing and you angry. “Bitch.” “Me the bitch? Y/N your heel is on my dick!” With a huff, you tipped your bodies back slamming Max back on his chest, hammering the air out of his lungs.

“Well, I have what I need,” With the shut of his laptop, Nando gets up waving goodbye and exiting the dimly lit basement.

You take a few seconds before managing to lift your body up so you were doing a handstand on your forearms. Carefully, you slip your body through the gap between your and Max’s bodies. You manage to untangle yourself, now facing each other in opposite directions. With your face to his, you gave each other dirty looks. 

“You’re ugly as fuck.” “Can you shut up, Y/N?! Can your mouth do anything else?” “It can suck pussy better than you!” “Oh shut up. I can suck dick better-- No-” “Haha- got ya.”

You did eventually push him to sit up, managing to untie the rope. You rubbed your wrists as you stood up, with a groan. “USB’s mine.” Max stood up groggily. He was in no shape to fight right now, having been fighting against fernando earlier, while you only got caught without being beat up.

“Look, you’re gonna fall apart, and he’s already across town. So I suggest you stay down.” “Aww, you care for me.” “If I had a knife I'd dissect you and frame your heart in my office.” “You love me so much.” He rolled his eyes, walking past you. Or he attempted to, because he received a straight punch to his gut that sent him curled on the floor.

“I wont punch you again if you help me.” “How about go fuck yourself. I’d give you a knife so you can dig my heart out rather than work with you.” “Aww, that’s so romantique.” [romantic]

[pendarling]

Being Held

Villain pushed Hero’s hands away from them and stood up painfully, their entire left side was killing them, but the last thing they needed was the sympathy of an enemy.

“Gosh, you’re so cold. Why won’t you let me help?” Hero raised their arms, almost anticipating for Villain to faint into it as they stumbled around. Despite the amount of blood lost and the dizzying sensation in their head they refused to let their knees give out.

Of course, Hero wouldn’t wish harm over anyone, but a part of Hero was hoping for Villain to just lose enough strength to tip right into them.

The criminal clenched their teeth, and looked to the floor, Hero’s eyes were annoyingly calm, but hid a sight of arrogance. “It’s obvious. I shouldn’t trust any hero.” Villain squeezed their eyes shut and thought of their mission’s plan, a pursuit to end their target, a high working official of the government branch. If they hadn’t been so weak— if they hadn’t wasted their time protecting Hero right before the blast. Maybe…

Their face hardened and a small trace of a blush reminded them of their act of… passion. Hero felt their expression change, and they smiled back warmly. That cursed grin of theirs would be the death of them.

“What’re you thinking about?”

“Nothing!” Hero watched Villain fight to shrug off the painful headache again.

“Let me just show you my thanks.” They took a few more steps forward, and grasped onto Villain’s side to support their weight a bit better. Villain breathed heavily against their shoulder, and this time they didn’t feel the urgency to pull away, their eyes already blurring around them.

Somewhere in their darkened heart, Villain could feel something change. It wasn’t like this before, with all their failed plans to kill Hero, they didn’t expect to have felt something deeper than the urge to get rid of a nuisance. It should’ve occurred to Villain that they weren’t looking to beat Hero anymore, they were only trying to garner attention. It made them hold their breath as a crimson colour painted their face.

What would the others think?

“You don’t tell anyone about this, alright?”

Hero chuckled softly and pulled Villain closer, almost encouraging them to stay where they were. “Whatever you say~” They rubbed a hand gently around their back, and whispered closer their ear, “It’ll be our secret.”

They wanted to argue, but Villain knew it would be pointless to tell Hero off. Besides, the outcome might force them to pull away, and right now, they’d much rather stay right where they were. Instead, Villain only held their face nearer to them, gradually growing comfortable to the change. For once, they weren’t fighting for their life around Hero, they could simply relax.

~~~

MASTERLIST

[ichosetenderplaces]

Howling For You

!Prince!HybridPiglin!Technoblade x !Knight!HybridRabbit!Reader

Now playing: It will come back by Hozier

You know better, babe, you know better, babe

Than to look at it, look at it like that

You’ve been at Prince’s side from the point you’d first met at the youth military training camp, albeit a bit unwillingly. Having been rivals since you first knocked him into the dirt on the first day - you two didn’t exactly get along. Granted, you certainly didn’t know who he was at the time - not until Sam decided you could be of use at the castle at the end of your youth training. At first, you took up the opportunity with absolute enthusiasm…and then you’d seen him step out of the royal’s carriage with the King on your way back to the castle. You did everything in your power to avoid him and his father. The camp was much too small to avoid him forever though. The Prince didn’t immediately notice you, in fact, the one who did was King Philza. Your wonderful, friendly, enthusiastic King decided the second he’d seen you that you’d be shadowing Sam as Prince Technoblade’s personal guard - sealing your grave as his eyes landed on yours. 

You know better, babe, you know better, babe

Than to talk to it, talk to it like that

From that point on, you’d become Prince Technoblade’s second shadow. Much to the delight of Sam and the King. Not that he didn’t make it incredibly difficult. He tried every trick he could possibly think of to be rid of you. He ran, hid, accused, and did everything to try and convince his father to get you demoted. Unfortunately for him, you’d dealt with his special brand of personality for nearly four years at this point. You knew exactly where he’d be, where he’d go, and what exactly he’d do. He was overjoyed once he realized he could order you around and send you on wild goose chases. Unfortunately for you, you couldn’t talk to him the same way you did at the camp. After all, he is royalty. So, you’d follow his orders, say ‘Yes, your Highness’, and be on your merry way looking for books in the library that didn't exist, food he didn’t need or want, and do whatever he pleased. 

Don't give it a hand, offer it a soul

Honey, make this easy

He soon grew tired and ran out of random errands to send you on, so you stayed right behind him. You often watched his sparring practice with Sam. The older going easier on him in the presence of the King. You weren’t the only one to notice this, and Prince Technoblade became more and more frustrated. He locked eyes with you, the one contender who continuously beat him at the camp, and got an idea. The sweat rolling down your forehead from the hot armor only continued to make you more nervous. You saw that look in his eye, the need to be taken seriously, the competitiveness, the frustration. And then, he doesn’t even spare Sam a glance before he starts walking towards you. 

Leave it to the land, this is what it knows

Honey, that's how it sleeps

Internally, you fought back the urge to take a hesitant step back as he neared closer to your spot by the wall. Keeping your face blank in neutrality, he stops before you. The sweat starts to make its way down your neck. 

-“You. Spar. Now.”

The same curt tone he always took on when addressing you. Especially when requesting you spar with him. Atleast at the training camp you were allowed to tease him for being so rude. But here, with the King watching, you figured it’d be a death sentence.

-“Yes, your Highness.”

He tosses you a beat up practice sword. One that was recycled through the lower guard before ending up here. It’s chipped and cracked in plenty of places, but you were never one to be picky with your choices. Most armor and weapons are not made for someone of lower stature and weight such as yourself. 

-”And lose the armor. It’ll be an easy fight if you’re bumbling around because of its heaviness.”

What you’d give for half his own self confidence. You start shrugging off the heavy chestplate and leggings. The cool breeze that envelops you is almost enough to make the spar worth it. Almost. You pick up your practice sword and get in position. Sam is giving you a look, not that he needs to, you already know to throw the fight somehow. But, he’s already frustrated with Sam for going too easy, he’ll catch on immediately if you do the same. His wrath is not something you can afford. You’re not like Sam, he won’t give you a glare and a cold shoulder. He’ll do something much worse, you’re sure of it. 

Don't let it in with no intention to keep it

Jesus Christ, don't be kind to it

Honey, don't feed it, it will come back

It’s not like you can just humiliate him in front of the King. The King could do much much worse than Prince Technoblade. Winning is not an option, but losing on purpose isn’t much of one either. He takes his position, and you think of anything and everything you could possibly do to get out of this. And then, you look down at your sword. Your cracked, chipped, brittle sword, and you get an idea. He lunges, his powerful swing shakes your sword as you block, and you feel it crack the slightest bit. As he takes another swing, you angle your pathetic little sword just right. You feel the blade fracture and break as it rings down the length of your arms. The tip of his blade lightly grazes your cheek before you hit the ground underneath him. He looks at you with an expression you’ve rarely seen, gobsmacked surprise. 

You hear the King gasp and stand as Sam rushes over to you still on the ground. Prince Technoblade grabs your upper arm and lifts you the second Sam has made his way over, still looking at you with that foreign expression. Then his ruby eyes land on the cut on your cheek and his eyes narrow with a wince of sympathy. He opens his mouth to say something but Sam beats him to it. 

-”Are you alright?”

Sam had always tried to treat you with a hint of delicacy due to your nature as a hybrid rabbit, but you were never having it, always demanding to be treated the same if not harder than your peers. Especially with the Prince around, you didn’t need him getting any bright ideas on how to make your life any more difficult. You stood, offering the Prince and Sam an awkward smile before replying.

-”Yes Sir, I’m fine.”

He goes to reply before the Prince responds, in his usual rude curt tone before softening it slightly. 

-”Go to the infirmary, and do not return until it is properly cleaned and bandaged.”

An unusual case of kindness from the Prince, something you are not going to take for granted. His usual attitude being curbed by sympathy. Something you didn’t know he could garner towards you. Giving him a slight smile at his little act of kindness, you reply. 

-”Yes, thank you, your Highness.” 

He gives you a slight nod before looking at Sam and his father. As you walk towards the infirmary, you faintly hear them talk about future spars and taking better care of the training swords. The mention of future spars makes you stop in your tracks. You look back, and see Sam giving you a meddling smile. The way your stomach drops makes you feel down to bedrock as the Prince and the King agree to future spars. Sealing your fate twice in a row in only a matter of a couple months.

You know better, babe, you know better, babe

Than to smile at me, smile at me like that

You know better, babe, you know better, babe

Than to hold me just, hold me just like that

As time continues to go by, the Prince slowly gets used to your presence behind him. Sam is often now needed elsewhere to continue training new recruits for the royal guard. You are still among them, but your time is mostly taken up by the Prince. Something that you are beginning to hate less and less as the days continue on. After so many months of you calling him ‘Your Highness’ he demands you call him Technoblade as all his close servants do so - only in the presence of no one but yourselves that is. You two continue to spar, but without Sam or the King watching over you. After your first ever spar, though he never let you know he knew, he demanded you always give it your all when it’s just the two of you. And you’ve held yourself to that ever since. 

When it's like this, there are no onlookers, there are no real rules, there is just you, him, and your blades. Unfortunately for you, you seem to lose a lot more these days. He has shot up in height and muscle while you only continue to refine your skill. A fact he seems to only point out more and more these days. 

-”Are you sure you’re big enough for that sword? You’re only a little rabbit after all.” 

-”This ‘little rabbit’ knocked you on your ass ten minutes ago, you brute.”

He chuckles, and you smile right back. Oh, how he starts to crave seeing your rare small smiles at him. Just as you crave hearing him chuckle at your small spitfire responses. It fills you with a warmth you know better than anyone, one that you know you’re not allowed to have. He is no better, a warm embrace makes its way across his heart before he even realizes it's there. 

I know who I am when I'm alone

I'm something else when I see you

You don't understand, you should never know

How easy you are to need

On days where you’re busy with Sam, and he has another guard he doesn’t care for, he becomes acutely aware of your typical presence that is not there. When he reads, there is no quote for him to parrot back at you. As he spars, there is no challenge or invigorating comments you make at him. There is a silence that grows uncomfortable, a silence he refuses to face. For he fears that if you were aware of this craving he has for you, you would become just like the potential brides the noble families pitch at him. It is a baseless fear, but it reaches down into his soul, and it will not let go until he knows he has nothing to worry about. He can try and distance himself, but it only ends in him needing you more. 

Don't let me in with no intention to keep me

Jesus Christ, don't be kind to me

Honey, don't feed me, I will come back 

You begin to try and put some distance between you and him, but it does nothing but confuse him and leave you with a gaping hole in your chest from the guilt. The day after always leads with you being kind to him and going back to normal. It’s a vicious cycle of trying and failing to stay away from each other. This only fans the flames of your growing softness for each other. He always comes back, just as you do.

It can't be unlearned

I've known the warmth of your doorways

Through the cold, I'll find my way back to you

Oh, please, give me mercy no more

That's a kindness you can't afford

I warn you, baby, each night, as sure as you're born

You'll hear me howling outside your door

Soon, you’re named Technoblade’s official personal guard. Your training with Sam dwindles to only aptitude tests. And none of your feelings have changed. You will not risk your spot as Technoblade closest confidant. Not until you know nothing is at risk. To be closer to him, you are moved to your own quarters nearby. Something that you both secretly take enjoyment in. He begins to seek you out after your shift is over. On long, hard days, the only person he wants to see is you. He feels the warmth from your doorway and an embrace from that soft smile you give him while inviting him in. To smile at him so softly as his tired eyes meet yours is a mercy you can’t afford. He feels like a selfish man taking you away from anyone else. But, you’ve always been his long before the two of you had ever realized. You feel selfish just like he does, you are only a knight, comparing yourself to those fancy noble women has always stung you. You will not take him away from a woman you believe he belongs to. Though you should’ve realized long ago, he has always been yours.

As the day approaches night, and you’ve retired to your quarters, you hear a small knock on your door. Knowing exactly who it is, you rush to open the door with a small smile. You see the man who’s loved you since the day you knocked him into the dirt, and in his eyes you see an emotion that mirrors your own. You yearn for him just as much as he yearns for you. He takes a small step closer and finally bridges the gap in between you two. You look up at him with a blush and begging eyes as he leans down and captures your lips with his own.

Don't you hear me howling, babe?

Don't you hear me howling, babe?

Don't you hear me howling, babe?

Don't you hear me howling?

Don't you hear me howling?

Don't you hear me howling, babe?

[igotanidea]

Taken: Dick Grayson x f!reader x Jason Todd (part 2)

part 1

***

No.

No. no. no. no.

This was not happening.

This must have been some kind of crazy dream and he was about to wake up from in a second and everything was going to be fine.

Yes.

Absolutely.

He was about to open his eyes in his own bed with Y/N by his side, sleeping softly on her belly with messy hair and slightly parted lips, looking all cute and innocent.  And she would be all warm, soft, happy, protected and 100% safe in his embrace.

And he would hug her close to his chest making sure it will stay like this forever, kiss her and never let her go, regardless of her best effort to wriggle out of his embrace and start the day.  She was always the responsible one…..

And she would smile at him with her pretty smile and look at him with her beautiful eyes giving him the loving gaze and…

“Dick?”

He raised his head abruptly, being thrown out of his reverie and forced to crash with reality. And the realization that this was all true and not a nightmare brought a few tears to his eyes.

It all came back.

Y/n.

His poor girl, his love, his light, his heart.

Neglected by him.

Broken and abandoned.

And the car accident that he heard happening through the phone.

And there was nothing  he could have possibly done about it, forced to listen to the crashes and that deadly silence on the other side, desperately calling her name, hoping for a word of answer or even a single breath of a prove she was ok.

Honestly at this point Dick wasn’t sure which of those circumstances were worst.

He was currently sitting on the chair in the hospital, outside of the OR, Y/N was currently operated in. And everything was too much. The bright light, the whiteness of the walls, the sounds and that overwhelming feeling that all of it was in fact his fault.

“No…” he whispered with pale, numb limbs.

Honestly, it was a miracle he was able to sit at all. If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s been here for what seemed like hours now, he would probably be pacing nervously back and forth.  

Right now he only felt like screaming at the world about the unfairness of everything.

“Dick….”

“What?!” he snapped standing up abruptly, running hands through his hair in the mix of panic, guilt and the sudden urge to punch something.

“Please calm down……”

He looks at Jason with fury in his eyes. How dare he? How dare he ask him to be calm when his girlfriend was fighting for her life in the operation room. How dare he be so calm sitting on the hospital chair?! How dare he after everything that happened?

Yeah, he knew.

Dick was always a good detective and the moment Jason fell to his knees after hearing Y/N’s car crash and started weeping Grayson connected the dots pretty quickly. At that moment it all made sense. Jason held much more than friendly feelings for Y/N. Much more.

 And that brought a hurricane of emotions.

How? When? Why?

And most importantly – did she feel the same for Jason? Was she going to leave him?

“CALM DOWN?!” Dick yelled taking a few steps towards his brother, standing inches from him and eyeing him with a murderous gaze, but not doing anything. “DO YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELF?!”

 “you might want to step back…..” Jason hissed warningly

“Or what?” Dick narrowed his eyes

“Or you’ll be grateful you’re in a hospital.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m just saying…..” Jason smirked vindictively, almost baring his teeth.

“Well I think it would be better  if you just shut up after everything you did to her.”

“I did to her? You were the one to brush her off! She needs love! She deserves love!”

“Oh so now you love her?!”

“I do!”

“Well too bad, cause she’s mine!”

“Not for long though…..”

The chances of them beating the shit out of each other on the hospital corridor were skyrocketing by a second and who knew what might have happened if it wasn’t for the clueless doctor coming out of the operation room.

It took the MD a second to figure out what was happening and his gaze turned from confused to stern immediately. He’s had enough experience with crazy, strange, straight-out-of-shitty-romance -novels incidents happening in his hospital and was not in the mood to deal with another one.

“Sit.” He hissed and it was hilarious how two grown up men complied with his order without a single word.

“Is she……?” Dick started, watching the doctor with wide eyes, begging for as little as a scrap of information.

“Can I…..?” Jason muttered at the same moment and when they spoke in unison their murderous gazes met again.

 “Are you family?” the doctor asked and boys’ faces fell instantly.

“I’m her boyfriend ……” Dick stuttered and that word made Jason clench both his jaw and his fists.

 “Not a family.” Doctor replied sternly

“But…..”

“No.”

“please?” Dick knew well enough he was making a fool out of himself in front of his younger brother (who apparently also happened to be his opponent for Y/N’s heart), but he couldn’t care less. He hadto know if she was alright. He just had to. And if it required stooping to begging he was going to do it. Anything for her.

“She’ll live…..” the doctor rolled his eyes in a bit of annoyance.

“Can you…..?” Dick tried to ask something more, but he didn’t even get to finish the sentence when Jason jumped to his feet, towering over the doctor backing him against the wall, grabbing the front of his lab coat.

“TALK!” Jason yelled. Just like Dick he was desperate to know anything about Y/N’s current state but unlike his brother he was not going to ask nicely. Yelling, punching and threatening was way more his modus operandi.

“Jason!”

“Fuck off Grayson! I care about her!”

“Are you suggesting that I don’t!?”

“You’re just going to take this doctor’s shit?!”

“Both of you calm down now.”

The calm deep voice coming from behind made everyone turn their heads towards the direction of the door.

“Mr. Wayne!”

“Bruce?!”

“Let the gentleman go, Jason.”

“I’m not taking orders from you.” Jason scoffed not letting go.

“From what I can tell I’m the only one entitled to Y/N’s medical information so I suppose you do take orders from me.”

“You’re fucking bluffing” Jason’s eyes narrowed, the vein on his forehead pulsing as he weighted the options. Not knowing about Y/N or surrendering to Bruce.

“Try me.” Bruce retorted, his face resembling an expressionless stone.

“Fuck!” Todd cried out, dropping the doctor to the ground, not caring about delicacy.

Bruce smirked.

“Now. Shall we doctor?”

And acting like he owned the place (which was not that far from the truth) Wayne started walking towards the office.

“Bruce…..” Dick whispers desperately, with a broken voice and equally broken expression.

“Don’t worry Dick. Everything’s going to be fine.” Bruce patted his shoulder reassuringly.

***

It took Bruce ten minutes to gather all the necessary information and enable Dick to get inside Y/N’s hospital room.

Obviously Jason was about to fight tooth and nail to get the same privilege as his brother but no one cared.

Why was he always the bad one…..?

He loved her too…… He deserved to be able to see her…..

Anything…… just to hear her breathing and see she was alive…  anything to be close to her……

Instead he heard hard no.

Which was heartbreaking.

Soul shattering.

Simply unfair and punishing.

Making him feel like an outcast. Again. Over and over and over again.

Like he was just a piece of shit.

Of course he could have fought, but what was the point? It would end up with him being injected with a sedative and kicked out.

And just a thought of being tortured…again…… made him retreat into himself.

But it hurt like hell.

Only because he fell in love.

And he felt like crying at the simple thought it was Dick sitting beside her bed, holding her hand, brushing her hair and kissing her forehead.

Would she even want that?

He could remember how soft and sweet she was when he was the one kissing her. The way she touched him, hugged him….. how she melted into him… Not Dick… him.

Her lips, hands, skin, curves, her body and her taste.

So perfect…..

And then she run….

And he was hurt…. scared for her, for himself, for them….

Was there ever them…..?

Jason was conflicted, shuddering and not knowing if he ever stood any chance to be with her.

Could it be possible that she wanted him the same way he wanted her……?

Please…..

Please…..

Please….

***

Meanwhile Dick was indeed sitting next to Y/N’s bed, rubbing her soft, pale, limb hand whispering soft words that made no sense but helped him keep himself together.

He almost expected Y/N to look pale, small and fragile in the hospital bed, surrounded by all that medical equipment and encompassing white. He didn’t have much experience with hospital, since all his life he’s been home-patched, but all the stories he heard always portrayed the casualty of the accident in such way.

But not Y/N.

She was as beautiful as always and even all the bandages and tubes and fuzzy colours of the surroundings could never change it. She was strong… she was a fighter…. She survived and now she was just resting after all that.  

His pretty, brave girl.

His Y/N, who was going to open her shining e/c eyes soon and see him as the first person.

“I’m here baby….” he whispered, putting  a strand of hair behind her ear “Not going anywhere. Ever. Please come back to me…. I need you…. I love you, baby…”

He brushed her cheek softly. He probably shouldn’t have, but at this point all his reason and logical thinking was out the window replaced by the sheer need to feel her soft skin.  Honestly he didn’t care about any rules as long as it didn’t mean he was putting her life or health in danger.

They say people in coma can hear when you talk to them, when you call upon them, touch them.

Well, she was not in come, but regardless he wanted.. no, he needed her to feel he was here. She was safe now, he was going to make sure of it.

“I’m so sorry my love….” Dick whispered, rubbing her hand gently. She was so warm and soft and it brought him hope. He was given a second chance to care for her. To keep her safe and protected and he was not going to waste it. “I’m so sorry for everything… I promise I’ll be better. Just please… open your eyes…..”

Sure, life doesn’t work magically and he wasn’t really expecting his words to bring the effect, but miraculously Y/N stirred in the bed and he could feel her fingers squeezing his hand.

“Y/N? Baby? It’s me… It’s Dick…. Honey, can you hear you hear me?” he asked, putting enormous amount of energy to keep his voice calm and not scare her or to take her in his arms and hold to his chest.

That would be unwise, she still had to recover and get back to health

“Dick……?” she asks faintly, opening her eyes slowly.

Oh, screw that.

Without any thinking he wrapped his arms around the girl, rubbing her back, kissing the top of his head, letting the tears fall down, rocking back and forth with her bruised body so close to his.

“Y/N…..” he muttered repeatedly as if that word were the sweetest one in the whole wide world. “Y/N… Y/N…. Y/N…..”

“Hey…..” she smiled softly, getting lost in his embrace.

“I thought I Iost you, baby…..” he held her a bit tighter making her grunt a little. “sorry my love.” He pulled back slightly looking straight into those beautiful eyes, showing a bit of tiredness and weariness. What he saw, however, was the shining orbs, the view he would be happy to watch solely for the rest of his life is she only let him. “Y/N….” he pressed his forehead onto his, cupping her cheek and chuckling a bit nervously a bit hysterically. “You’re all good, baby…..” he couldn’t help his wandering hands that seemed to cup her cheeks almost out of their own volition.

“Dickie….”

He almost whimpered at the word. She was the only one to use the diminutive form of his nickname and the only one allowed to do so. And he could have never heard that coming out of her sweet mouth.

“I love you….” he blurted. “I love you… Oh, I love you…..”

“I love you too, Dickie boy….”  

“Do you remember what happened?” he kissed her forehead “How do you feel? Is there anything I can get you?” Dick’s natural chattiness branched off into the series of question that she didn’t even have the chance to answer because of the speed.

Dick Grayson was babbling.

Because she came back to him. And only then he realised how stressed he was.

“Dickie…. I….”

“Shh…” he kissed her temple, holding her to his chest again “don’t worry about anything my love. We’ll get you discharged from this hospital immediately. I’ll take care of you. I swear. Not letting you out of my sight. I love you so much……”

“Oh, Dick….” She cooed touching his cheek and wiping those traitorous tears. “I;m so sorry….”

“Sorry?” he frowned a bit confused “for what? Listen to me, baby…” he softly put a hand under her chin making her look up at him. “None of this was your fault. You hear me? Nothing.”

“But … but Dick…. Dick I…… I did something….”

“I know.” Dick simply said, putting a finger on her lips and brushing her hair. “I know, you don’t have to say a thing….”

“No….no you don’t know…. I…. I kissed Jason and….”

“I know.”

“You…. Do?” she looked at him with shock written on her face.

“Yeah, baby, I do…..” he smiled “I’m not mad, I swear….”

“Is he here now?”

“He’s sitting outside.”

Outside.

Jason was sitting outside.

That thought made her heart drop a little.

Partially because he was here at all serving as a reminder of her mistake.

But the bigger part of her heart dropped because she wasn’t even sure if that was a mistake anymore. Maybe it was what she truly wanted.

Poor Y/N was so confused remembering everything that happened before her accident.

Jason’s lips on hers.

His calloused hands moving across her body.

His scars under her fingertips.

“Dick…..” she stutters

“Yes babygirl?”

“Please hold me……”

“Of course, anything for you….” He smiled moving to sit on her hospital bed, hugging her.

In any other circumstances it would be a sweet, loving scene.

But right there, right then… they were both terrified.

Unsure of what was coming for them.

Unsure of their own feelings.

......

@fullbelieverheart

[grippingbeskar]

request incoming!!- so I don’t know if you’ve seen the last of us specifically the second one. This scene (https://youtu.be/RHNohvRHd1M) where happy shows mercy for dinner. I was wondering if you could make that into a fic with din and the reader where the two are basically in the same exact situation, Reader tries to save mando. Whoever they’re fighting, almost kills the reader and then din says “she’s pregnant.” and whoever they’re fighting shows mercy or goes to kill the reader anyways but din saves the day. you can choose the ending!!!

thank u ❤️❤️

warnings: illusion to smut, mentions of child loss, pregnancy, early pregnancy, i have no idea how baby stuff works so i’m guessing the size of the baby but like it’s early on is what i was trying to get at 😭

a/n: okay i am a big tlou fan and i know this request has been here for a hot minute but it just took me a while to get in the mood but thank you so much for this! i love this scene in the game, it’s such a memorable moment. thank you so much for your request!

“Stay quiet. I’ll go around.” Din says in a whisper, his hand pressing you down flat onto the sandy ground. “Do you understand? Wait. Here.”

“Okay!” You whisper-yell back, rolling your eyes. You know Din’s face is under there, serious as ever, and though you know you can protect yourself, his new found obsessiveness over your safety has some primal heat shimmering through you. It makes you nod once more and tuck your legs in out of sight, and his thumb swipes softly over your cheek before he rolls out of cover and disappears.

Ever since you’d told Din you were pregnant, he was relentless. You thought he was protective before? Now, you couldn’t even take a step without him right beside you, making sure you didn’t fall off balance. He took care of everything— making sure you were safe, cared for, even avoiding collecting bounties and skirting the Outer Rim, refusing to let you near anything that is even remotely dangerous.

You were carrying his child. Something he never thought possible for himself. When he’d found you, a mud covered runaway looking for a quick escape off a backwater planet, he never could have foreseen what came next. Falling in love with you, showing his face, having a child… he had every right to want to protect this. Protect you.

You knew he hated bringing you here, but you were running low on supplies and needed to refuel. You wouldn’t make it to a safer planet before you’d be running on rations, and Din refused to feed you anything other than real food. It was your fault. You’d distracted him from taking any real stock. Being pregnant had also come with some other… consequences, that kept his mind occupied. And hands. And mouth.

The blaster fire in front of you knocked you back to reality, hearing the familiar sounds of Din’s grunts as he made his way through the gang of Imperials. The small supply store you’d hoped to be in and out of quickly had now turned in to a shootout, both your own and Dins faces attached to several bounties in the Inner and Outer Rims. You’d spent most of your first few years with him outrunning them.

The blaster fire continues, and every urge in you screams to help. Get your blaster out and fire at something. You know you can do it— you’d learnt from the best. Where Din has his attack dog senses on high alert, something has been awakened in you too. An urge to protect— and it’s on fire in your chest. You can’t sit here and do nothing. You know you aren’t Din, but you have to do something.

The blaster fire has thinned out, and just as you think it’s all over, Din shouts.

Loud. It’s nearly a scream, but through the modulator it’s lower. You hear two— no, three, maybe— three sets of footsteps rush in, and Din groans in answer to loud thud. It sounds like something hitting beskar, and the clatter of weapons on the ground confirm your suspicions. They are beating him.

He has time. You know, realistically, he does. It’s beskar they are kicking through. Their legs will break before they ever breach the armour— but he’s hurting. You can hear it. Every kick makes him wince, and you can imagine they are going for where he’s been shot. Hitting him over and over and over—

You roll out of cover before you can think, and there’s two men standing over Din’s crumpled body. You shoot, one dropping instantly over the top of him. It takes him a second, but before he can respond, you’ve shot the next guy and he topples over too.

“No!” Din shouts, still trapped under two dead bodies. He thrashes, and you can see the blood leaking out of his side. You take one step forward, but you’re yanked back by your hair before you reach him. “Don’t touch her!”

“You fucking bitch.” Someone seethes behind you, and slams their knee into your side. Something crunches, and blaring pain shoots through your chest, causing you to wail and crumple to the ground.

Whoever’s behind you doesn’t let you get far, still holding you by your hair with your neck bent up painfully. Their free hand smashes into your side again, and you feel yourself cough up blood as you try to scream out.

“Stop. Stop. You want me— let her go. You…” His voice is strained, and he’s finally got out from under the dead weight to stagger to his knees. His gloved hand is holding his side, and your eyes go fuzzy looking at the blood. “You don’t want to do this.”

“She’s wanted by the Empire just as much as you. Though maybe they won’t mind that I only take one in alive, considering the carnage.” Din is still panting, getting up on one leg, but falling back to his knees.

His helmet is locked on you, and you try your best to tell him not to offer himself. Your mouth opens and despite your best efforts, nothing comes out. Instead, just a tear falls, cutting through the dirt down your face. Images flash behind your fluttering eyes, of the life you might of had with… with the tiny little thing in your stomach, hardly bigger than a jellybean. The thought makes you choke up, blood dripping out the side of your mouth.

A hand still holds your head up, scalp feeling like it’s being wrung out.

“Just take me. I’ll go. She has nothing to do with this.” Din puts out his hand, and tries to stand again. The sound of him hitting the ground for a second time makes your eyes force open, and it’s then that you see what he’s doing. He’s not really staggering, but a discarded blaster is tucked next to the rock on the right of you.

Too out of sight for your enemy behind you, but you can see it. Din can too. He just needs to get closer.

A searing cold touches the highest point of your neck, and the light flashes off the edge of the blade. It’s sharp, already drawing blood.

“One alive is enough.” The enemy repeats behind you, and Din panics.

“Wait!” He shouts, his gloved hand shaking ever so slightly. There was genuine panic in his voice, a waiver you don’t think you’ve ever heard. “Wait. Please.”

“Why should I? This scum killed my men. You’re lucky I haven’t already slit her thro—“

“She’s pregnant. Please. She’s pregnant.” Din is breathless when he talks, and your stomach drops. You feel the blade drop slightly on your neck, instead the cold blunt side rests lower, closer to your collarbone.

The man behind you keeps his hold, and after a few seconds, he just scoffs.

“Bullshit. She… Fuck you, Mandalorian. You can’t trick me.” The blade doesn’t move, and Din shuffles in the sand. He’s close enough. He just needs a second. One second of hesitation.

“It’s… true. Please—“ Your voice is scratchy, but your hand manages to rest on your stomach. Din watches your movement, and you can see him straining with effort. To get to you. To save you. Both of you. “Please. We didn’t—“

“Shut up, bitch! Even if you are, it’s one less rebel scum to deal with.” He bends down to yell in your ear, and your eyes screw shut. If he’s this low to you, it means he took his eyes off Din.

Din wouldn’t miss his chance.

The weight drops off you before you can register the sound of the blaster shot, and blood sprays the side of your face. Your eyes are still screwed shut. You were shaking— fear creeping it’s way up your throat and all the way down to your toes. You weren’t usually afraid for anyone but Din, but now… you hadn’t even thought about what it meant to have someone else to think about. Someone who relies on you—

“Hey, hey… you’re okay, mesh’la. Look at me.” His hands— real, warm hands, press lightly on your face. His thumb strokes your cheeks, the sensation grounding you to him, but your breath was still heaving like you’d been winded. Your eyes open slightly at the sound of his soothing voice. “Look at me, baby. There you go. You’re okay.”

“Din. Din— I’m sorry… I thought he was… I thought that—“ You were crying, sobbing into his arms as he wraps you into him, timing your shuddering breaths with his own.

“You’re okay. Fuck— we’re okay. Shh. Shh, there you go.” Your head buried itself in the crook of his neck, one of the only soft places he has in full armour. It’s suffocating, but being surrounded by him like this calms your racing heart. “Udesiir, cyar’ika. You’re okay.”

You don’t remember how long he holds you, but it’s long enough that your breathing returns to something slow and controlled. When you shuffle out of his lap, dried blood is still caked on his side from where he was shot. Panic claws at you, eyes wide, but Din holds your face and shakes his head.

“It’s okay. I’m— I’ll be okay. We just need to leave, cyar’ika. Okay? You think you’re okay to fly?” When you nod in his hands, he scoops you up despite the pain he must be feeling, allowing you to bury yourself closer. He limps outside into the heat of the planet and takes off, his jetpack soaring you higher and higher.

The ship was docked… somewhere close, and Din’s low groans were getting more strained by the second. You could tell you had no truely serious injuries, more the shock and fear paralysing you, and the panic for your child. When Din flies you both into the Crest, he collapses on the main hull, and you’re on him in the next moment.

“I’m…okay. I just—“

“Let me take care of you Din.” You whisper, raising his shirt and moving his armour so you could see his wound. He shakes his head, but he’s too weak to push you off.

You wince when you reach for the med kit, but bring it back to him with a gentle efficiency. He was always so rough with himself, treating his own wounds with none of the care and kindness he does for you, so even though your head is fuzzy and every breath hurts, you make sure your fingers are soft on his skin, cleaning around the wound and sewing him up as quickly as possible.

You dress the wound, poorly at best, but it will hold until you are in a safer sector. You were lucky you fuelled up first, at least enough the get yourself out of here.

When you finish the last of the dressing, you look up to find Din already staring at you.

“Cyar’ika.” He rumbles, his hands free of the gloves cover your own. “You need to rest. Let me look at you.”

“I’m okay. Bruised ribs, but I would… I would know if something was… wrong.” Din growls, an almost animalistic sound of anger coming from him. He holds you tighter, one hand easily covering your two shaking ones. “I’m— we’re okay.”

“I knew I should never have stopped here. I’m sorry— I’m so sorry—“

“Stop, Din. It’s not you’re fault.” He groans, and you know under that helmet he’s grimacing. The guilt eats at him all the time, and you’d be damned if he let himself add this to the list. “This is the life we live. We need to… adjust. It will take time. But we’re okay, now. Right?”

“I’ll never let anything happen to you. Both of you. I will never let anything like that happen again. Ever.” He sits up with a grunt, pulling you close. “My cyar’ika.”

Your hands fall in sync to your stomach, both of your hands fluttering above the skin like you were afraid to push to hard. To wake what was growing beneath the surface. Disturb it, as if the two of you were not worthy of waking it.

“My ik’aad.” He pushes his helmet up enough to press a soft kiss to your shoulder, and sighs at the taste of your skin. “I love you.”

“I love you.” You repeat, and with his arms around you again, you know you are safe.

.

.

.

.

.

translations:

mesh’la - beautiful

udesiir - relax/calm down/take it easy

cyar’ika- darling/sweetheart

ik’aad - child (under three)

[tokkiwrites]

fIRE NECTAR : Qu’est-ce que l’incassable ?

➛ in which the allure & danger of one man makes you question all but your heart.

ʕ•̫͡•ʔ c.w : 18+ joel miller x afab reader, fem reader, no outbreak au, mob boss joel (kind of), stalking themes, mention of cheating, alcohol, violence, some angst, age gap, mentions of infatuation, p in v sex unprotected, pet names, degradation, f and m receiving, knife play, mentions of blood, mentions of being pure. (the pic doesn't represent readers body, its there just for the aesthetics. lmk if i missed anything) not proofread

─────

'Perfect is a word lost at the bottom of wine bottles perfect is a foreign word, to me. you and i both have uncountable mistakesㅡ lost wars. i want to be your good, but I dont want to be what im not. I'd surrender my arms, I'd lose all fights.. for you.'

─────

everyone says you're lucky. lucky you have what most only dream ofㅡ You've been with your boyfriend for almost 5 years now. You two met when you were only 19, and he was 20. life has been great. You're even planning on moving in together on your 5th year anniversary, buying a pet, and spending more time together. you can't express the happiness you feelㅡ or felt, better said.

it's been six months. six grueling months that have kept you up wondering if this is what you really want, who you really want. it was all so peaceful until you met him.

enter Joel Miller, the man who beat the shit out af a creep who tried to touch you when you were out with your friends at a club. that happened six months ago. six months ago and a few hours. you'd been lying if you said seeing someone bloodied up because they wanted to protect you didn't pull at your heart.

your encounter with Joel was short and sweet, unfortunately. you told the officers at the scene he was the reason you turned out safe and that you think he's a nice man for that, scrunching up their nose as they tried to make sense of what you just said: Joel Miller a nice man? maybe when alseep, all though even in he sleeps, he's probably dreaming of destroying everything in his way.

Police prefer not to entangle with him. they did it many times, but when he hit 35, doing the same shit they gave upㅡ sort of making a pact for the sake of everyone's well-being. He was a nice man. Losing loved ones and years got to him, the wrong people got to him first, and so he built his own life climbing the steps of crime.

He was a nice man.

.

.

.

You hate it when you do this. You go outside more often than you did 6 months ago to that same spot ㅡ where you first and last saw him. you don't go at night, but after you finish work every day, hoping he's searching for you like you are for him. it's like a fix, and he's the drug, only you had no time to indulge into him.

only the image of his bloodied knuckles project onto your closed eyelids as you fall asleep.

ㅡ

As the neon lights flickered against the rain-soaked streets, you found yourself standing outside the club. Your heart raced as you pushed open the heavy doors, the bass thumping through your veins. "Hey, beautiful," a smooth voice whispered in your ear. You turned to see Joel, his dark eyes smoldering with intensity. "I've been waiting for you."

"I shouldn't be here, Joel," you protested weakly, torn between loyalty to your boyfriend and the magnetic pull of this dangerous man. He chuckled, a shadowed glint in his eyes. "But you couldn't stay away, could you?" You bit your lip, feeling the weight of his gaze like chains around your heart. "I need to leave," you said, but your feet refused to move.

"Liar." Joel urged, his voice low and persuasive. "Just one drink." Against your better judgment, you found yourself nodding, allowing him to lead you deeper into the pulsating club.

You swallowed hard, the guilt of betraying your boyfriend warring with the intoxicating thrill of being with Joel. "I can't do this," you whispered, but even as the words left your lips, you knew they were a lie. Joel's lips quirked into a knowing smile. "You're not fooling anyone, sweetheart," he said, his voice sending shivers down your spine.

ㅡ

Before you could respond, the sound of your phone goes off, causing you to wake up. Your eyes shoot open, turning to see if your boyfriend is yet awake. his side is empty, only the wrinkles on the sheets remembering his presence.

As you reach for your phone, its vibrant screen illuminates the dimly lit room, casting shadows that dance across the walls. With a delicate touch, you unlock the device, revealing a text from your almost beloved:

── had to leave early, sorry for that, babe. Can't wait to see you tonight. Love you ❤️

The words, though tender, fail to dispel the lingering echoes of Joel's presence in your mind. Your brain flickers back to the dream and the moment you met Joel, its façade a beacon amidst the city's nocturnal.

The memory of Joel's voice, velvety and commanding, resonates in the recesses of your consciousness, a siren's call luring you into the depths of uncertainty. Despite your protestations, the tendrils of temptation coil around your resolve, entwining with the delicate fibers of loyalty that bind you to your partner. With each heartbeat, the dichotomy of emotions swirls within, a tempestuous maelstrom of desire and guilt, desire Joel, and guilt for the betrayal it entails.

his gaze, a smoldering ember amidst the darkness, kindles flames of longing that lick at the edges of your conscience. his eyes that cut like knives.

And yet, beneath the veneer of steadfast resolve lies a flicker of uncertainty, a gnawing doubt that whispers of the inevitability of succumbing to the intoxicating pull of his magnetism. In the depths of your soul, you grapple with the unsettling truth that the want you feel for Joel might stem from something deeperㅡ it was something carnal. It consumed you for so long.

────────

'About time you escaped, imprisoned isn't what I'd imagine you'd want your heart to be written upon.'

────────

.

.

.

Amidst the throng of pedestrians, a familiar silhouette emergedㅡ him. it felt like seeing an old friend. no, like finding an old toy that brought you joy. only that toy was stolen, which is why you had to hide it; hide it so good you had to forget about it.

With a jolt of recognition, your gaze locked with his, a fleeting moment suspended in the maelstrom of time. 'Will he recognize me?' Joel's eyes, obsidian pools that mirrored the depths of your soul, held a myriad of emotions: recognition, intrigue, and perhaps, a hint of longing. at least you hoped so. wanted so.

With a wistful smile, Joel broke the spell that bound you, his voice a melodic symphony amidst the murmur of the city. "Happy to see you're fine."

You returned his smile, a fragile facade that masked the tempest of emotions raging within. "Why wouldn'tI be?" you replied, your voice a whisper lost.

"I was honestly thinking something might have happened after that night...seeing that you almost always visit the club." he quirks his eyebrows. "nothing happened."

but it did. he ripped the heart out of you and kissed it goodbye all at once, leaving you to deal with it all whilst he carried on with his drug escapades and crime shenanigans. nevertheless, you smile, swallowing back your own thoughts as it seemed.

"I've been following you, y'know?" joel admits.

my, and what a strong grasp he has onto your heart right now.

"You'veㅡ seriously?" why did you sound happy? when joel tells someone this, their first reaction is to go wide-eyed and back out. but it is rare that he feels such a pull towards someone. someone like you. maybe you reminded him of when he was so untaintedㅡ the thought of danger strangling him to the point he couldn't help but give in. "Tell me why."

you've been caught. isn't this what you wanted?

"I- uhm...I don'tㅡ"

"Don't even bother lying. What would an angel like you want from someone-" joel steps closer. "like me." a sense of inevitability washed over you. you were reminded of the immutable truth.

The words, uttered with a conviction born of desperation. "It's you that i need." you can't believe your own courage. maybe you were just drunk on his scent.

they slip past your lips like a plea. absolution and complete submission, you surrendered. this was your god, the one you've prayed for all those nights when your boyfriend was fast asleep. it was wrong, but oh, how sweet, like honey wrong is.

you weren't scared to kick everything away for a mere second of this. just a touch of his fingertips. that's all. you found solace in that.

"Do you wanna go back to my place, sugar?"

──────────

'Love is an apple, and i am the serpent forcing it down my throat.'

──────────

rough, red, and raw. that's how his kisses were. he made no stop until he had you splayed over his bed. he was eating you with every stare, like a predator. you needed him to do something, dive into you. it was carnal.

"If you wanna stop, just say so, yeah?" joel causes you to look back up at him. nipping at your lower lip, you spread your legs further apart as to invite him further.

"I want you to hurt me, Joel." and how could he refuse you? you looked so pure and beautiful all spread under him, waiting for his command. "that so." and you whimper a pathetic 'mhm'.

"I never made you out to be this kinda girl, all though ㅡ" he retracts, reaching out into his back pocket to take out his switchblade. "I don't mind it." joel chuckles before yanking you up by your hair and pulling you to the ground. "Kneel." he commands. and you obliged, intoxicated from his presence alone. "This what you want? huh?" he asks, traching your neck with the tip of the knife as you shiver. "pathetic slut. forgot you've got a man at home?" he taunts "bet you've been dreamin' bout me stuffing you up with my cock, yeah?"

you nod, eager not to let him slip through your fingers. "Yeah.." he drags the kife down, cutting through your top, knicking your skin and exposing your breasts. the slight pain drowns you as you press your thighs together. "Look at that." he tuts, mocking as he drags the knife over the small cut to gather the blood, bringing it up to your mouth.

"lick" and lick you do, swirling your tongue around the blade, keeping eye contact as the metal aroma washed over your tastebuds. "atta girl. good little slut." joel chuckles as he proceeds to unbuckle his pants. "now imma let you suck my cock, butㅡ" after hes done freeing his shaft from his briefs he holds the knife up to the side of your neck. "if you stop I'll make sure you won't like it."

you weren't scared at all. maybe it was from all of the time you spent yearning that totally disrupted your sense of fearㅡ You wanted to make him proud and not regret what he'd done until now.

so you take his member into your mouth, slowly sucking on the tip before trying to take more. you lied if you said he wasn't huge, your jaw already hurting once you made it halfway. the knife was still digging at your skin, his eyes fixed on your every move. moving you head up and down, you felt as joels muscles tensed, his breath growing shallow as he snaked his free hand around your hair again.

"Just like that. yeah, keep doin' that.." tears well up in your eyes as your core tightness, still not dwelling on you that you're on your knees, sucking Joels dick whilst he holds you at knifepoint.

"ok, thats enough, angel-baby." he pushes you back, motioning you back onto the bed. " all fours."

"n-no.." You muster up. "What's that?" joel furrowed his brows. "Not all fours..wanna see your face." You stare up at him, and you swear you saw his gaze softened. "what the fuck are you doin' to me, girl..?" he laughs, pulling you up and placing you on the bed, the sheets enveloping you.

"been dreamin' about this, baby. look at you..." he groans, undressing your delicate skin. "you're a fuckin' dream." he trails kisses from your stomach to your knee and traces his nose back up to your lips before he crashes his onto them.

you cling onto that kiss, it awakes you from the deepest hole on earth, pulls you to the heaven, then plummets you down againㅡ you needed this.

joel breaks from the kiss, sitting like that for a second. he then traces his digits between your folds that dripped with desire. "so wet for me, angel. all f'me.."

"please, mmhg.." whining, you try to rub yourself onto his fingers, but he quickly slaps you again, this time on the side of your thigh. "don't be a greedy whore." he clicks his tongue before leaning down spreading your pussy lips as he does, blowing onto your sensitive clit. you jump and moan in frustration. "i know, baby, i know." he spreads your legs further, finally landing a soft and teasing lick between your folds. it doesn't take long for joel to go at it, sucking and licking at your cunt like theres no tomorrow, your desperate pleads to come only fueling him. "not yet, angel-baby." he gorans, picking himself up.

"please fuck me, Joel." you plead. "needy thing." and with that he lines himself up with your hole and eases in. your whole body vibrates as a sting spreads through you, and you squeeze around Joel. "fuckkㅡ so fuckin' tight." he moans before plunging straight into you. your tongue luls out, tears on the brink of your eyes as you cand only squeal out pathetic moans and incoherent blathers. "shitㅡ ! squeezing me so good, baby."

joel fucks into you harder and harder, the bed creaking whilst you let him take over you. he grabs your hips pushing himself even deeper into your cunt, groaning when you arch your back, breasts perking up. "fucking angel. my pure angel." ㅡ you can only moan and cry as you feel your orgasm approaching. desperately, you clench around his cock, sending joel into a frenzy.

"gonna come, baby?" he's stern and rough with his request. "hhhaㅡ y-yes, plea-se..." you don't know if you're crying because you feel too good or because of how long you've waited for this.

"go ahead, angel-baby." you writhe as the knots in your core begin to untie, shaking under joel whilst he fucks you through it. it doesn't take long for him to reach his limit, digging his nails through your thighs, gritting his teeth and moaning your name.

"gonna come soㅡ fukin' deep inside of you- shit!" he almost growls, and you not your head dizzy. "p-leasee...insideㅡ!" and you don't wait more than two more seconds as joel spills his warm seed inside, painting every inch of you. he leans down, leaving a tired kiss upon your forehead.

"thank you."

────────

'wandering companionless, I've finally found you.'

────────

⏜⃞♡⠀⠀🐰 hey, guyyyyssss, i honestly dont know what this is. It's kind of shitty but i wanted to try writing something more. i incorporated some verses of poems i wrote, so i hope you enjoyed it!!! love ya

[vamossainz55]

Lost Conversations - mv33

a/n: old drabble i wrote over christmas that i forgot to post

❛ i didn’t know where else to go. ❜ + max

tw: alcohol, swearing (i think?), angst

It's 3am when you hear your doorbell ring. For a second, you think you're still half dreaming, but the subsequent drilling of you bell helps you realize that it was far too persistent for it not be real. You’re tired, using all the little energy you had left in your body to push yourself up and on your feet. 

Who the hell’s that? You can’t help but think to yourself as you shut your bedroom door behind you. It was too of an ungodly hour to be a stranger, and you were pretty sure robbers were not the type to ring doorbells before entering houses.

You’re grateful that all the lights are off, the possibility of feigning absence being an open option. Hesitantly, you walk to your door with your phone clutched tight to your chest. Despite Monaco being known to be safe you still didn’t want to risk it too much. 

As you get closer to the door the ringing is replaced by heavy, drawled, and tired knocks. 

You fight the urge to ask who’s outside, so instead, your hand presses against the wooden frame, peeping your eye through the small opening. 

Despite the dim-lit doorstep and the flickering of one of your lights you recognize the brown matted hair almost instantly. Your jaw clenches and your hand balls into a fist, why was he here? 

His head is down, shoulders slack with an arm stretched in front of him to lean on your wall. Even from the little you could see you had no doubt of who it was. His hair is a bit more grown out than what you’re used to seeing, the wispy ends tickling his ears. You had always asked him to grow it out. You never understood why he never listened. 

You’re too in your thoughts to even notice the way Max pushes himself slightly off the wall to look at your door. His face is crystal clear; blue tired sunken eyes with rosed up cheeks presenting themselves towards you. 

“Y/n? Are you home?” His voice pulls you back into reality, drawled and scratchy in the way you had grown too familiar with. That way he curls his question at the end of his sentence is enough to let you know that he’s had just the right amount of drinks to convince himself of making every bad decision possible.

Whether you were his first bad decision of the night you didn’t want to know. 

The thing is, it’s been months since you've seen Max (eighty three days to be precise), the last time being when you two had called it quits. 

If you were being honest you were surprised you two hadn’t bumped into each other since, but Max as always was caught up with racing. You weren’t going to complain of course since racing only meant he was far from Monaco, which was far from you.

There's another ring to the bell, painfully reminding you that for some reason he’s still there. The image of him grows bigger in the little view and you have to step back, the unrealistic worry of him being able to see you being too much. Inbetween the ringing you can hear Max’s soft curses as he resorts to knocking once again.

His voice hasn’t changed at all, his all too familiar accent rolling off his tongue to just echo in your ears. 

You could walk away if you wanted to, leave Max knocking at your door for however he would want to but for some reason you can’t seem to move your feet.

You're rooted to the ground, briefly entertaining the idea of opening the door. Your better judgement knows what you need to do but the little voice creeping in the back of your mind is just loud enough to stop you from turning away. 

If he rings one more time, it’s a sign, the voice says, I’ll open, so you stay put, heart beating in your ears as you wait for his next move.

Instead of the doorbell, the next thing you hear is Max's voice.

"I miss you..." He finally looks up and you notice the flush of his cheeks and the red in his eyes. He's gently swaying side to side, as if the wind would blow him away from your doorstep at any moment. 

There's a certain desperation in his eyes, one that elicits the all too familiar pang in your chest that you had already promised yourself you'd ignore. Its clear that he doesn't know you're there, but you still feel like his eyes are piercing into yours, begging you to turn your door handle. 

You have to lean back, heart racing as you press both your hands against the door. There's a silence that envelopes you both briefly, and for a short moment you think that maybe, just maybe, Max had seen you.

But he hadn’t. 

"I know I fucked up. I'm sorry." his voice cracks.

It's wrong, you know it is, every fiber in your body is telling you to step back, to let old skeletons rest in their grave, but you can't help but be selfish. You'd be lying if you were to say you didn't want to hear what he had to say. 

" l know l shouldn't be here. I know you deserve better. I know I said I didn’t need you, but I do.” 

Ring one more time, I’ll open. Please. You think again.

“Please y/n, I didn’t know where else to go.”

You wait, breath tight in your chest and fingers wrapped around your door’s handle, hoping for him to press the bell, but he doesn’t. 

Instead, you watch him walk away, head down and stumbling over his feet. 

You let out a shaky breath. 

Sometimes things just aren’t meant to be. 

[flightlessangelwings]

Ktober 2023 Day 10- Stripping

Cassian Andor x fem!reader

Word count- 1.6k

Warnings- s.mut (18+ ONLY!), established relationship, pining, riding, feelings, no use of y/n

Notes- I actually kinda struggled with what prompt to write Cassian for cause I kept changing my mind but then this fell into place and works perfectly! I still maintain that Andor is the best thing Star Wars has done recently I'm obsessed with how amazing it was!! Prompt list made by me! Enjoy!

@flightlessangelwings-updates is myupdate blog so please follow that too and turn on post notifs to stay up to date on my new fics!

~

Cassian sighed dejected as he knocked on your door. It had been a long day, and when he hit a rough patch, Cassian usually found himself at your place to seek refuge. You were a comfort to him, even if all feelings were left unspoken. And the moment you opened the door and he saw your face again, all his trouble felt like they melted away just from looking into your eyes.

“Cassian,” you breathed as you stepped aside to let him in, “What happened? You look rough.”

“Things have been difficult lately,” was all he said as he stepped into your apartment.

You guided him into the living space and sat him down on a chair before you sat across from him, “You want to talk about it?” you asked with a pleading look on your face.

“Not particularly,” he sighed. Cassian’s eyes trailed down your figure to your hand, which you had placed on his knee in a comforting manner. He swallowed hard as he felt the warmth spread from his knee all the way to his chest… and to his cock.

Noticing the way he shifted in his seat, you let out a deep breath, “I think I know what you need tonight, baby,” your tone dropped as you saw his eyes widen.

You let go of where you rested your hand on his knee and stood up. When Cassian tried to stand with you, thinking you were going to lead him to your bedroom, you placed a hand on his chest and silently guided him back down to sit. He whispered your name, but before he could ask what you had in mind, you raised a finger to his lips, effectively silencing him.

Cassian both loved and hated how much power you actually had over him.

You flicked something on, and music started to play as you swung your hips slowly to the beat of the rhythm. Cassian looked you up and down, and adjusted his posture to open himself up to you more. 

“Like what you see, Cassian?” you asked in a low hum, catching how his jaw tightened the more you shimmied your hips.

“You know what the answer is,” he replied in a breathy tone, as if he was holding himself back.

A smirk lit up your face as you danced your way closer to him, straddling his lap. You allowed Cassian to rest his hands on your hips, gently guiding your motions as you swayed over him. You were calculated in your movements, and made sure to brush against his cock a few times before staying teasingly far at the same time. Hovering closer to Cassian’s lips, you felt his breath on your skin. But, you broke away before you closed the gap.

Cassian let out a frustrated grunt as you lifted yourself up off his lap and continued to dance for him. But, his annoyance vanished when you grabbed your shirt and slowly lifted it up inch by inch to the beat of the music. Teasingly slow at first, you only allowed him glaces of your skin. You wanted to make him wait, you wanted him to want you so desperately that he couldn’t fight his urges to keep his hands to himself.

Agonizingly slow, you started to expose more and more of your skin to Cassian, and you saw the way his eyes darkened with every peak you gave him. Finally, you lifted your shirt up and off, leaving you topless before him. Cassian clenched his fists involuntarily as he raked his gaze over your chest. He had seen you many times before, yet when you stayed sensually to the music that played, something felt different.

You came back to where he was seated and straddled him once more. This time, Cassian didn’t put his hands on your hips, but on your breasts. You moaned softly as he squeezed and pinched at your soft skin, and you arched your back into his grip.

“Cassian,” you moaned as you rocked your hips against his, feeling his cock underneath you.

He breathed your name as his eyes looked up to meet yours. Locks of his hair fell into his eyes, but it only framed his face better. This time, you couldn’t resist and you leaned in and took Cassian’s lips with your own. He groaned into you as you continued to move your hips back and forth.

Breaking away with a gasp, you pushed yourself off of him once more, and you heard his grunt of frustration over the music. You couldn’t stifle the laugh you let out as you turned around and shook your ass for him. Cassian had come to you many times before, and the two of you started an unofficial routine. He came to you when he needed a release, when he needed to let off some steam. And in return, Cassian made sure you were safe from any threats. But this… this was something new and different.

You had never felt this bold with him before. You had never teased him like this before. And you certainly never gave him a strip dance like this before. It was exhilarating watching him fight to hold his composure as his eyes darkened. And something in you told you that he was enjoying this just as much as you were.

Perhaps more.

As you swayed your hips to the music, you hooked your fingers under the hem of your pants and slowly pushed them down. This time, however, you decided not to tease Cassian as much. You kept a slow but determined pace as you shook your ass to the music while you pushed your pants down.

Cassian let out a low rumble as he fought to keep himself seated for the show you put on. You never told him not to move, but like everything with the two of you, it was unspoken. But as your ass bounced out of your pants, Cassian’s cock strained and screamed at him and it became harder and harder for him to stay still.

When you turned back around, you were bare for him, and you kicked your pants away. Your eyes trailed down his seated form and landed on his cock tenting in his pants. “I think I’ve teased you long enough, Cass,” you cooed as you sauntered over to him.

“I would say so,” he huffed in agreement.

You straddled his hips once more, but this time you reached down and freed his cock from his pants. Involuntarily, you licked your lips as it sprang free and at full attention. “Fuck…” you breathed as you wrapped your hand around it and stroked it a few times.

Cassian whispered your name, causing you to pause and meet his gaze, “Sit on my cock,” his tone was low and commanding, yet not harsh. Like it was a question and a statement at the same time.

“Anything you want, Cass,” you moaned as you lifted your hips and lined his cock up with your pussy.

He rested his hands on your bare hips, guiding your body as you sank down onto his cock. You let out a loud moan as you impaled yourself on him and your hands grabbed into his shoulder for balance.

“That’s my girl,” Casssian purred as he let out a gasp of his own at feeling your wet tightness around him once more.

You whimpered as you sat yourself on his lap, his cock fully sheathed inside you. Time seemed to stop for a moment as you met his eyes, and your heart fluttered in your chest. But, Cassian was not yours to have, not really. This was just an agreement between the two of you, just a release.

Feeling the rhythm flood your veins once more, you lifted yourself up a bit and lowered back down. You moved your hips to the beat of the music that still played faintly in the background, and your mind swam in the pleasure that was his cock. 

“Fuck,” Cassian hissed as he watched you bounce and rock on his lap. You felt so good, and it took biting his tongue to keep the praises from flowing from his lips.

“Cassian,” you moaned as your eyes fluttered shut and you dropped your head back. You started to lose your rhythm as you bounced on his cock, focusing more on the pleasure than the music.

“That’s it sweetheart,” Cassian groaned as he bucked his hips up against you.

Together, the two of you found a rhythm, and you grinded against each other in desperate need for release. Moans and groans from both of you filled the room and drowned out the music. You moved faster as heat rose in your body and you felt the familiar tingle build within you.

“Cum for me,” Cassian purred.

As if on cue, you came hard, clenching and trembling around Cassian as you screamed loudly. Cassian groaned as he wrapped his arms around you and yanked you close, pounding into you until he too hit his peak. He bit down on your shoulder to stifle his own groans as he spilled himself inside you.

Once the two of you were spent, you collapsed forward into his shoulder. Cassian’s arms stayed wrapped around you, holding you close as you settled yourself on his lap. Faintly, you were both aware of the music in the background, but the sounds of your beating hearts drowned it out.

Cassian wanted to tell you how much he cared about you, how much he craved seeing you time and time again. But, he also needed to keep you safe, and that also meant keeping you at arm’s length. But, at least for now, he could savor the feeling of you in his arms as you breathed heavily. For just that moment, you were his, and everything was perfect.

[treedaddymcpuffpuff]

Beneath Miles of Stone - Part six - John Wick x Plus Size Fem Reader

Summary: John has been in prison for nine months. He’s content to stay if it means appeasing the high table and keeping peace between the owners of each continental. However, he meets someone who erases that willingness. Peace be dammed.

TW: gore ; violence against women ; death ; vomiting

“This actually looks great,” she says while covering up the slash in his gut with less gauze than it usually needs. “It’s much smaller.”

He hums. It feels better, too. Her magic touch has given him the ability to breathe and eat and move without horrible pain.

She remembers when she first saw him and thought he had pale skin, but she realizes now that that sallow color was because he was in agony and probably dancing tiptoes around sepsis. He turns more golden-toned by the day as he heals.

“Bet you can’t wait to get out of here and move around more,” she comments, pulling his shirt back down. He savors the feeling of plump, gentle fingers brushing his skin.

While the thought of a good stretch and a couple hundred crunches to bring back his wasting body does sound good, he dreads the thought of not being able to see her again. He would have to start fights on purpose - accrue broken limbs and bloody wounds - just to get back down here. It doesn’t sound so bad. He’s used to getting the shit beat out of him, after all, and, if it’s on his own terms, staying handcuffed to a bed and injured is a fair trade for seeing his nurse.

“I would like to feel the sun,” he says, honest enough.

She places her hand on his shoulder. Even through the cotton fabric of his shirt, he feels the comfort of her skin. He leans a bit into her touch. “You will,” she says softly.

What good is feeling the sun, though, if she is still underground?

It’s 4PM. She’s usually asleep right now, but she picked up an afternoon shift and plans to work 16 hours until 7 AM the next morning. Usually, pick up shifts are the shittiest ones, but John is her patient again and she has an easy assignment. Plus, free lunch today for all staff and no Benny.

You can’t get much better than this.

She sits down to chart with her deli sandwich by her side, and notices that no one is in the hallway, which is strange for this time of day. It’s a bad idea, to just shrug that off, but she finds herself lolled into a false sense of security.

It’s the shiny red hue that catches her eye. Everything is so white and grey in here that it’s hard to miss the bright liquid puddling on the floor around a corner. She blinks, rubs her eyes, convinced that it’s a trick of sleep deprivation at first.

She gets up, pushes in her chair out of habit and because she’s afraid to walk over and look.

See enough dead bodies - stuff enough of them in bags while you’re busy and overworked - and it becomes natural not to balk at them. This is not the kind of dead body she’s used to.

It’s a guard, she can tell by the dark blue uniform, but his face is bludgeoned  in so much that he’s unrecognizable. A spike of brown hair sticks up from the black and purple viscera that is his face.

Blobs of pale flesh dot the floor around his body.

She fights the urge to vomit on his corpse, swings around the corner and presses her back to the wall with her hand over her mouth so she doesn’t have to look or scream.

It takes her a moment of holding back bile to remember that there’s a code button on the desk at the nurse’s station. She tries to run to it but her feet feel like anchors and she doesn’t make it two sluggish steps before there’s a gun pressed to her face.

“Hello nurse,” the rogue inmate greets. “I think you should sit.”

She looks at the blood speckled floor, hesitates, he taps the barrel on her cheek. “Sit.”

It’s cold down here, but she barely feels it, too consumed by the adrenaline that comes with having a gun level with your brain.

She hears loud shouting from somewhere down the hallway. The man with the gun kneels down beside her, shading himself behind the desk. “Shut up, or I’ll fucking kill you,” he hisses, droplets of sour spit landing on her cheek.

More shouting, gun shots, yelling. Footsteps running in the opposite direction. 

The guard gets on his heels to peak over the counter, and she watches the gun bob sideways in his hand. There’s barely enough time to contemplate taking it before he’s trying to haul her up by the arm.

“Come the fuck on!” He hisses as she tries to stand quickly on slow, shaking legs and stumbles forward.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” There’s another inmate. The only thing she notices about this one is that he’s bigger.

“This is called leverage,” the man holding her arm tells the other, jerking her again.

“That’s called liability weighing you down.” The other one doesn’t have a gun that she can see.

“So kill her?”

Her heart blips.

“I don’t give a shit.”

“I got keys.” This from another prisoner behind them.

The two others look at him like he’s an idiot.

His eyes widen when he sees her. “Thought you locked them all up?”

“We had to kill one,” gunman says, looking directly at her. “They got violent.”

It would be comical if she were watching this in a movie. Three prisoners bumbling around and arguing about what to do with a stray nurse.

“I think we should use her, they’re not gonna shoot us if we’re holding the gun to her head.”

“If she were a tiny girl, I’d say sure,” the other argues, “but making sure she stays with you is more trouble than she’s worth.”

“So lock her up,” third inmate shrugs.

“Too much time. Give me the gun and I’ll kill her.” The bigger of the three tries to reach for the gun but gets the barrel pointed at his head instead.

“Get your own,” he growls.

John grabs the biggest one by the back of the neck and smashes the front of his neck with heavy metal. His whole body folds in half, and, as he goes down, his face smashes off John’s knee.

Her eyes are focused on the blood pouring from his nose and mouth instead of the fight happening between John and the other men.

He twists a wrist until it breaks, grabs the gun, and then her attention is back on the fight when the shot goes off into the guys head. As quick as the bullet is out of the barrel, John is aiming at the other man and pulling the trigger. The gun clicks empty. He uses it to hit the other man in the face while the metal tube clears his feet out from under him.

The original gunman tries to grab him, but he’s too quick. He brings the metal to his temple and smashes again.

She watches him join his colleagues on  the red concrete.

Then she mistakenly looks up at her savior and remembers why you never meet your heroes.

Handcuffed to that bed, he had begun to seem so docile and helpless. Standing here in front of her with blood - not his own - splattering his face, he is tall, broad, angry, unchained, transformed into something bestial.

She feels herself hit the wall without realizing she’s been backing away from him.

Blood pounds so hard in her ears she has to focus when he talks, but something about the way he speaks tells her that she needs to listen like her life depends on it.

The commanding baritone of his voice captures her like a deer in headlights.

He says her name and grips the metal in his hand harder. Her eyes dart from the makeshift weapon back to his face. She tries to swallow the dryness in her mouth.

“Are you okay?”

“What?” She squeaks, gripping at the wall.

“Are. You. Okay?” John takes a few steps toward her and she cowers under his massive shadow.

“I.. I don’t know.”

He loses patience, stalks up to her. She braces for impact by screwing her eyes shut and turning her head.

Leaden, calloused fingers touch her face without harmful intent, spreading a  feeling into her skin that makes her shiver despite the furnace of his touch. She opens her eyes, looks up at him, and sees he is focused on her left cheek where a bruise is almost faded away.

“Tell me,” he presses, using three fingers on her chin to turn her eyes level with his own.

“I’m okay,” she whispers.

Loud shots pop down the hallway. Two prisoners round the corner with guns in their hands, running so fast they hit the opposite wall and tumble into one another.

John’s head snaps to the commotion. The two men lock eyes with him. She tries to shrink back into herself, become invisible, but it doesn’t work and they see her, too. Here she is, caught in the middle of a prison riot in her baby blue scrubs, a fragile case of soft meat ready to be pulverized.

“Is that your hostage?” One of the men asks, motioning toward her with the gun.

John turns around to face them while pressing her back into the wall behind him.

He smells like sweat and metal and damp earth. She becomes sandwiched between his balmy body and the freezing wall, overwhelmed and unable to breathe with any sort of stability.

“Can we borrow her?” The other asks. Neither of them stop walking toward John. She can’t see around or above him but she hears the thick footsteps of them getting closer.

Five guards run around the corridor, guns raised.

He is perfectly still, her human shield, almost as if he is building up or waiting for something. She tries to stay just as still as him while tucked behind his body like a coward.

“Put your weapons do-“ the security guard can’t finish his sentence before a bullet bites into the flesh of his shoulder.  Messy shot from one of the inmates. Blood rains, and John moves.

Most of the things he does are too fast for her to see, but the crunch of bone is unmistakable when he twists an inmate’s arm around until it snaps and grabs the gun from his limp hand.

The man screams, drops to his knees. His companion swears, scrambles, points his weapon at John, but there’s  already a palm slammed into the bones of his nose. Another sickening crack. She fights the urge to vomit.

It’s like the guards have as much trouble seeing his movement as she does, because they are dropping and screaming and wild-eyed. It’s hard to understand what’s happening to them until she sees blood flowing and spurting from bullet holes in lower limbs.

Eleven men on the ground, and John still stands unharmed.

Ringing ears, the steady roll of hot blood, screaming. Bodies.

Loud, sudden sirens rip her from the heavy descent of shock. She snaps back into reality when John grabs her arm and pulls.

A millisecond later, he tosses her into a treatment room, slams and locks the door. Gunshots ring in muffled sequence behind her.

She wonders what is wrong with her, why she can’t find moving legs underneath her. She feels slow again, almost like she’s trying to get somewhere important in a dream and unconscious gravity is weighing her down with debilitating force.

She slides down to the floor, puts her head in her hands, the room tilts and distorts around her. She shuts her eyes as tight as she can, but she still feels like she’s riding a tiny boat in a huge, angry ocean. She leans to the side and vomits from sea sickness.

Bile splatters up from the floor onto her scrubs and hair and skin.

She puts her head down to stop the spinning, folds into her own body for some kind of comfort. At least she doesn’t realize that she’s crying right now.

John presses himself into an alcove, reloads, thinks. It takes a second. He catches his breath. How does he get her out of here? He can’t leave her in the infirmary. Someone with enough force can easily break down the door that she’s behind and get in. If he drags her along while he fights through the prison, that’s still her neck on a silver platter no matter if he’s confident he can protect her or not.

He could barricade himself in the room with her, wait for things to settle, but he doesn’t know how long this will last. He guesses two to three days at most before enough people are dead that the police can infiltrate and kill the rest. Too much waiting for something to go wrong. This has to be quick. If he didn’t have to keep one eye on the door he left her behind, he could easily incapacitate everyone in here in decent time. If he brings her with him, he can’t do things efficiently or quietly. It will have to be succinct, sparing, a running sprint - he will hurt her from the manhandling he will have to use in order to keep her major organs and arteries safe.

At least she’ll be alive.

No more disabling shots, now. He can’t afford them. Lethal hits: head, femoral, mesenteric, radial arteries.

He exits from the bloodbath into her clean room, shuts the door, leans down and grabs her shoulders. He measures. Carrying her, although viable, would slow him down and make him sloppy. He calls her name, makes her look at him.

Sick stains the corner of her mouth and her clothes and she looks like she already got the piss beat out of her.

“John,” she says like a tiny, terrified child, huddling away from him.

He grimaces. Her shell-shocked stare makes his heart burn. He pulls her into his lap, smooths her hair. She resists initially because of fear, but easily gives and sobs into his chest. He holds her to quell the screaming child. He understands this cry all too well.

“Listen to me,” he tells her, and immediately she quiets.

His voice captivates the chaos, brings her down into the atmosphere. She clutches at him, urging him to keep talking, tell her it’s going to be okay.

“I’m going to get you out. But you have to stay beside me, keep calm, and do as I say.”

“What about you?” She asks. “Are you getting out?”

He looks at her incredulously, baffled by the concern she still has for him despite everything she has just seen him do.

He doesn’t know why it takes him this long, why the realization just hits him now. Sitting here with her holding onto him like he’s the only thing securing her to the earth, and It’s right there in her face, as clear as spring water. She is completely infatuated with him.

He tilts his head down at her, studies the look on her face, memorizes it, tucks it away for later, then does something irrational and born from basic instinct and ancestral need.

She doesn’t understand why he’s wiping the vomit off her mouth until his lips touch hers. She stills, pulls back for a minute, but he grabs the side of her neck and holds, takes. She gives. There is no prison, no violence, no fight here once her mouth agrees with his own.

He tastes like copper and sweat. His tongue is as much of a weapon as his hands are. It pushes past her lips and tangles in her mouth.

Life pulses weak and out of focus, a dying heart in the background of their embrace, until he releases his grip and she pulls away.

Her heart tries to run out of her chest, and she’s not sure if it means to flee toward or away from him.

She’s suddenly very aware of her body invading his space. He is solid and strong; lean, long thighs supportive under her bottom. She still feels self-conscious, though, wonders if he thinks she’s too heavy and is just too polite to say so. At the same time, she’s clinging to him so tightly that she thinks he’s the only thing holding her down to earth.

He cradles her cheek in his palm, keeps her eyes on him. “You follow me, you listen to me, you let me put you where I want you. Understand?”

She nods, eyes wide, brought back into the present by his pressing tone.

“What are you doing?” He asks, urging her to repeat his demands.

“Following you, listening to you, going where you want me to go.”

“No,” he says, “staying where I put you.”

She looks confused.

“If I put you on my back, you stay there. If I shove you into a corner, you stay there, if I pull you, you keep up, even if your feet drag and your body hurts. You move how I move you.”

“I’ll slow you down.”

“You will if you don’t listen to me,” he corrects.

“Just leave me-“

He cuffs her on the cheek, not enough to hurt, enough to stop her from talking and startle her.

But it does hurt, the faintest sting on her already sensitive skin, and she recoils, scared. He pulls her back. “Do you understand me?” He punctuates her name. 

“Yes.” It is a quiet whimper from her mouth. 

It’s hard to watch people die, even more difficult if the person you admire is doing the killing. He’s been through this, what she experiences now. Reluctance to kill turns into blood lust while trust and reliance turn into trepidation.

Even though they are traveling up, it feels like a journey to hell. He murders easier than he breathes. Limbs are twigs, heads are targets, and she feels like a suitcase that he has to carry around a busy airport

She wishes this were a quick blur, but instead the fighting and the screaming seem to move in slow motion. John does what he says he’s going to do, and she experiences every bit of his raw strength as he pulls and pushes her body. At one point she feels envious of the dying men because at least they only get a few seconds of his fury before it ends.

And as much as he attempts not to hurt her, he fails. Still, when they get out into the dying wintery sun, she holds onto him. Bruises are forming on her arms and her collar, her light blue scrubs are scuffed with dirt and blood, and her face turned from crying to stoic and lightless a long while ago.

He takes her phone from her pocket while they sit on the curb and his warm arm wraps around her shoulders while he dials 911. Her blunt nails dig through his shirt into skin as she clings.

“You did good,” he says. “You’ll be okay.”

She hears him, but she’d rather cling harder than answer. She’ll only be okay if he stays with her.

He cringes in her silence, pulls her closer, ass numbing on the freezing wet sidewalk.

He grabs her ruddy blue hands and tucks both under one of his own. As the city sun goes down and leaves them in shadow, her shivering increases. Just as he’s about to carry her to warmth, the ambulance and police arrive outside the prison.

She knows he has to go, so she holds him tighter. He untangles her hands, kisses her on the head, and then he’s gone like he never existed in the first place.

She looks for him in the crowd of people that surround her and flash lights into her eyes and ask her if she’s okay. She searches even as she’s being loaded into the back of an ambulance. As they drive away, she watches them bust down the prison doors and wonders where John Wick has gone.