#alter tag : near

[rt-arts]

i have so much shit i forgot to upload here. ruegh

[sagau-my-beloved]

I've done it

Please excuse my primitive picture taking skills but he's finally done thank god

Technically speaking the pattern is here, for anyone wondering, but I made so many alterations that I'm not even sure if you could call them close to similar anymore, I made it about ten times more difficult than it needed to be

But it was all worth it because he's mine now and he's so soft and I'm never doing this again

[our-inspire-verse]

They deserved their own post.

[pronoun-note]

i support ourple crimes by felicia, disappointed immensely that we haven't viewed the full extent of The Horrors, though. very interested in the atrocities u could commit unrestrained:-)

I’ll say it. Since no one else has the guts to. I really do think Near makes his L doll have sex with his Mello doll. I’m TIRED of pretending he doesn’t, ok??????

[delusion-of-negation]

I bet guns mcgee has the best infodumps

he does, he is a fifteen year-old who dresses like a preppy posh boarding school student, but still has our accent. not posh. he's particularly good friends with jinx because they both love guns. however, if you really want infodumps, then ask dionysus about ancient greece, make sure you have a comfy seat beforehand.

[skartle]

yo yo fellow headmate here uhhh basically saw u post abt hating tord and like fair, u 2 hate each other in ur source but then u posted about hating edd and like aren't u 2 besties in source? hope u dont mind me asking abt it :X - ☢

Yeah I don’t mind talking about it, admittedly it’s a long story so I’ll put a “read more” for anyone who doesn’t care. Long story short through, he lied to me about some pretty important things and after that I lost trust in him and it got worse from there.

Long ver:

Around I think year 10 or 11, Edd started getting a lot closer to Tord and they ended up moving in together. I and matt would occasionally stay over (and where planning to eventually move in) so Edd wanted all 3 of us to be mates. We were neutral on the guy and agreed that being on good terms would make things less awkward, so we just went with it. Over time I started to dislike him and made Edd aware of this, but he still kept trying to get us to get along anyways.

When Tord finally moved out, Edd apologised for being an ass about it and I assumed that would be the end of it. Alas, that wasn’t the case and Tord ended up moving back in a few years later, we ended up getting into a fight that nearly ended with me getting killed and after this, I got another apology from Edd, with me again assuming that would be the end of it.

Since Tord turned out to be super shady, I looked into him and showed what I found to Edd. However, he revealed that not only did he know about all of this, but he also helped him with some of it. Asking more questions, I found out that he knew about Tord wanting to kill me, having a weapon stash, wanting to take over the world etc and chose both not to tell me and not to stop him.

I was rightfully really angry about this and Edd made it out like I was overreacting. We fought quite often over this, especially after I found out he was hiding even more from me, but I really liked him and didn’t want to throw away our friendship so we agreed to put it behind us.

All seemed to be going well, until I noticed that the weekly visits he was claiming were for his mother started getting longer and longer. I started getting suspicious and one night, I woke up early and noticed that Edd was also awake. He was sitting on the couch on his phone and out of curiosity, I stood behind him and looked at what he was doing.

He was texting Tord. What about? Oh nothing, it was just Tord saying that he didn’t want to get into a relationship with him because he didn’t want to upset me and Matt. Yeah, these “weekly visits to his mum” was actually him going out with Tord, intending to start dating him.

I was obviously pretty upset about this. To fool me not once, not twice but three times is insane! I found out Edd was posting photos of the two together and was able to guess where Tord lived based off of them, going to his house the next day. He accidentally informed me that they had been doing this for weeks and when I got home, I called Edd out on it. He not only admitted it but also told me that he had been looking for Tord or a way to contact him for years before that.

We haven’t been friends since then and when we’ve spoken, it hasn’t been pleasant. Why yes, I hate Tord with a passion, I have to admit that he’s only done it once and has as least tried to apologise/make up for it. Edd however, has done this on multiple occasions and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more I don’t know about yet. Every time he apologises, I believe him less and less.

Both incidents shouldn’t have happened at all, but I have to admit that I prefer a one-time occasion over a growing pattern of behaviour.

[cerealandchoccymilk]

(through gritted teeth) dont make the play fight into a real argument dont make the play fight into a real argument dont make the play fight into a real argument

[the-rot-hunters-journal]

WE CAME BACK TO 25 NOTIFS ON HERE???

anyways

were gonna be working on our rw story hehehoho

(you might see some of our system members here!!! theyre included cuz its fun for us to make self inserts :])

if anyone wants to ask any questions about ANYONE in this folder (despite there not being any info of anyone yet) go ahead and ask!! :D

[thedetectivesystem]

i need light being creepy to near… like the stalker shotacon kind of creepy. i suppose that’s what two faced charade is there for actually… what’s funny is that i have a little bit of chapter two done but haven’t started on chapter one !

anyway light should tell near that he’s too young to understand right now but he’s going to raise him to be his little wife :3c ♡ (he doesn’t know that near is actually 18, he just looks very young for his age)

[planetaryupscaled]

Tutoring 2: Hall Pass

Male Reader x Park Sooyoung (Joy)

Tags: 9k, age-gap, cheating, creampie, cuckold

The story is not ours; we simply alter the original story to our preferred settings.

“So you’re not mad?” Sooyoung asked her husband as they sat down at the kitchen table... the same place where I’ve had my way with her so many times.

“I don’t think I am,” Hyoseob answered, truthfully.

He tried to imagine what it would have been like for me and Sooyoung in the school shower, and then in the car. He tried to picture her glistening pussy lips around my throbbing dick, and how I licked and caressed her dear wife. How much better was it that his dutiful wife chose infidelity not once, but twice. She cheated, willingly, despites of the rules, and this thought made his loins burn. Sooyoung was behaving like a wanton slut, which was in stark contrast to her prideful personality.

Among all the rules broken, the rule about it being recorded was the only one he truly hoped she would follow. But deep down, he wanted her to break the rules over and over again, and he only wanted to watch. He had that burning desire, but he couldn’t admit it, especially to Sooyoung.

“I don’t like admitting it, but he makes it kinda hard to resist,” Sooyoung stated, averting her gaze. “He’s so much different from what you think he’d be. His thrusts are so deliberate and so skillfully measured and confident. It makes me so-” she said, unable to finish her sentence.

“Like just that one shower,” she rambled on, “I have no idea why I was so... receptive of his touch! I didn’t have it in mind to cheat at all and... suddenly it was already happening. I’m sorry, but his lips and his hands were so-”

Sooyoung stopped again. Her hands started fidgeting. The guilt was palpable, dripping from her words. Hyoseob had to make sure she was okay. He knew it was selfish, but he wanted to witness it himself, to see his wife being plowed like a wanton slut.

“Minho kissed you?” He probed. “Tell me.”

“Yes, well,” Sooyoung blushed and shrugged, “it was more intense and... amazing.”

“You kiss him back?” He asked again.

“A lot, actually. And... our tongues too,” she whispered in reply.

She was telling him everything, how it was just intense, amazing sex, that my abilities and stamina far outweighed his, but it was also just physical pleasure with no emotional attachment or love. Sooyoung swore to her husband that I meant nothing to her. He had to talk her into another meeting with me, this time with the recorder.

“Sounds like Minho has a fan,” He teased Sooyoung, but his tone gave him away. His heart pounded with both anxiety and excitement. Sooyoung cherished sex, and now she had shared it with someone other than him.

“Oh shut up,” Sooyoung said, but with a smile just lingering under the surface.

“So, what was the thing he said again?” Hyoseob asked.

“Yeah,” Sooyoung admitted as Hyoseob laid on top of her, “he said something like... ‘I’ll fuck you whenever I want.’” Her imitation of it was less than flattering.

“You want that?” Hyoseob dared to ask, excited at the idea of his lovely wife being taken against her will, during dubious consent, thrust into a willing participant by the magnificent skill of someone else.

“Maybe...” she purred, urging him to move his hips. Her admission sent shockwaves through him, as guilt and jealousy drove him deeper into his wife.

“And, ah, you wanted him to knock you up?” He asked, going a bit faster.

“Hyoseob, it was j-just talk,” Sooyoung purred. “I was just stroking his ego. But it worked. He cum so much inside me.”

“Yeah?” He panted.

“Yeah, babe.” she breathed. “So much. So thick, it clung to me.”

His breathing quickened as his mind conjured the image of Sooyoung sprawled beneath someone else in her car, in a damn near public parking lot. It didn’t take him long to cum deep inside her, unable to resist her words and description. She was more turned on by her cheating than he could have ever hoped for, so he told her that they needed it again and more. With the promise of more, they both fell into a deep slumber.

—

“I think we should stick with handjobs... reinforce the rules.,” Sooyoung suggested to her husband as she had scheduled another ‘Tutoring’ with me after school on Tuesday, but she was having second thoughts, wanting to reestablish the control they had lost. “I don’t think I want to have sex... with Minho again.”

“What?” Hyoseob asked, not believing his wife. “You’re joking,” He added. “If I sent you over there right now, you really think you’d only jerk him off?”

“Yeah?” Sooyoung answered unconvincingly.

He gave her a wry smile. “Then do it,” he said. “I’m giving you a hall pass to prove me wrong.” You haven’t done any ‘tutoring’ this week anyway.”

“Babe!” Sooyoung exclaimed, taken aback. “I can’t do that. It’s against the rules. And we were having this week off, remember?”

“That’s the point of a hall pass,” He chuckled, excited to see his wife relent. “Besides, you’d only be jerking him off, right? That’s well within the rules, even if it’s a hall pass.”

Sooyoung didn’t respond right away. She closed her eyes, trying not to be tempted by the challenge. It was as though she was afraid, afraid that she would succumb and more, prove him right in doing so.

“Don’t... don’t tempt me,” she said, finally. “Minho knows how to bend a girl to his will, honey.” She then cringed at her choice of words.

“Which is?” Hyoseob asked with a wide, hopeful smile.

She looked at him and then out into space. A smile spread across her lips, and her hand moved to his thigh.

“Just remember to record,” he said.

“Hey, I didn’t say I’m going over,” Sooyoung shot back, gently punching him with her other hand. “Remember, he got inside me last week, despite the rules. Twice, even. It’s... hard to resist him.”

“You said as much earlier,” He reminded.

“Yeah, he just feels amazing and does things that-” Sooyoung began before correcting herself. “…never mind.”

“That I can’t do?” Hyoseob said, finishing her sentence. Sooyoung’s silence spoke volumes, she took a breath, steadying her nerves. Then her eyes flashed in his direction, a devious expression growing.

“Okay,” Sooyoung said, “I’ll go, to prove you wrong.”

—

‘Im coming over,’ Sooyoung wrote, and soon after I met her once again at this house, and let her in through the back door. As it wasn’t conspicuous enough that Hyoseob’s wife snuck hurriedly across the street, looking up and down the street to make sure no one noticed.

“What about your parents?” Sooyoung whispered.

“Away, they usually are during the weekends,” I reassured, ushering her to their bedroom.

When we got through the door, I began feeling her up, eagerly ravaging her curvaceous yet trim body. Sooyoung initially did not react because she was unsure what to do. As my hands found their way to her soft, round ass, she began responding by kissing back with even more hunger. My fingers dug hungrily into the flesh hidden by her tight spandex pants. The ass she kept in shape for her husband. She hadn’t worn underwear, but she sure could feel my fingers running up and down her cheeks and inner thighs. Sooyoung spread them out, inviting me to go deeper.

Instead of shoving my fingers into her clothed fabric, I pushed her down onto the bed. My hands slid into the waistband and rolled her pants up her long legs. She lifted her hips as I tugged, letting the spandex to roll along with her panties.

“I can’t believe it’s been a week already,” I said, quickly removing her pink, silky, patterned top, revealing her round, fat tits, and tossing it over her other clothes.

“Damn, your tits look fucking nice,”

Sooyoung smiled as I stared at her body, groping and rubbing her left breast. My thick, erect member was tenting in my sweats. I pressed her tits together, climbed on top of her, and began licking all over them.

‘This is getting out of control,’ she thought. “C’mon, Minho,” Sooyoung whispered, pushing me to get my attention. Instead of slowing down, I licked and sucked her soft, creamy neck. “Minho… oh shit,” she whimpered, goosebumps rushing through her.

At some point, I must have angled my sweats down, because Sooyoung felt my swollen cock press against her opening, threatening entry. Her slit, wet with arousal, opened for me as I began sliding into this lovely wife.

“Unnnng,” Sooyoung groaned, helplessly succumbing to my touch, her pussy aching with anticipation.

It forces Sooyoung to admit her pleasure. She closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation. Sooyoung moaned in satisfaction, wrapping her arms tightly around my shoulders and neck. She knew her husband couldn’t compete in length, width, or technique, but feeling my size stretch and touch places that were severely under-stimulated brought her to new heights.

“I thought we were waiting till Tuesday,” I hummed as I lowered myself and dove into her neck once more. My cock slid almost completely into her tight warm hole, and my movements became quick, fluid motions that allowed me to pull almost completely out before driving deep inside.

“We were... ohhh,” Sooyoung groaned.

I was prepared to stretch, ruin, and ravish her, and all she planned was a handjob? The absurdity made her smile as she ran her fingernails up and down my back, enjoying the sensation of her tight pussy being stretched wide by someone that’s not her husband.

“Couldn’t wait, huh?” I teased.

“Hyoseob dared me to come over here and just jerk you off,” Sooyoung admitted, smiling up at me with a light sheen of sweat.

“How did that go?” I asked cheekily.

“Shut up,” Sooyoung smiled, squeezing me between her walls.

“Fuu-uck,” I groaned, shuffling my hips between her legs. “Nngg, you’re really gonna let me knock you up someday, aren’t you?”

“Hnnng, you keep that up and, oh god, maybe I will,” she gasped.

“Really? You like this cock knocking up your womb?” I pressed.

“Oh fuck,” Sooyoung hissed.

Sooyoung was getting increasingly vocal, moans of delight sounding out throughout the empty house as I kept slamming into her. My eyes were fixed on the beautiful teacher’s exposed breasts, rolling and flopping back and forth every time my body touched hers. Her nails clawed my back, and I grunted, feeling her walls tighten with each thrust. Her slickened insides massaging my dick, preparing for the next load...

I felt the cum start to boil over and surge to the end of my shaft. My cock was throbbing madly within her until it began releasing its hot fluids. I kept pumping, squirting over and over as I closed my eyes in satisfaction. Sooyoung felt her cunt ripple and pulse with each eruption. Her own juices flowed around the spewing shaft, coating my cock and dripping in a pool on the sheets under her.

I looked down at her. Her beautiful cheeks were flushed red and glistened with sweat. I pulled her head closer, pressing my forehead against hers, hanging low and grazing her face as I buried my softening dick in her womb, hoping to delay leaving her silky depths. She still moaned, feeling a gentle pumping within her. Sooyoung sighed, and we kissed.

—

Hyoseob smirked knowingly when his disheveled wife finally came through the door later that evening. Sooyoung didn’t even try to hide the slight waddle she’d acquired from the fucking, which made him snort a little laugh. She responded with a defiant glare, challenging him.

“We shouldn’t fool around with hall passes,” Sooyoung muttered, chuckling lightly.

“Did you record?”

“Not the first time...” Sooyoung said, a crooked smile creasing her face as she looked at him.

“How many times...” Hyoseob asked, trailing off. Sooyoung had been over there for two hours.

“How many...” she stalled. “Erm, three. Plus some foreplay here and there...”

“You slut!” He chided with a big grin.

“It’s your fault!” Sooyoung shot back. “Besides, how could you dare send him over there in the first place?!”

Hyoseob was as hard as a stone when he heard the news. Sooyoung pretended to be mad, but it was clear she enjoyed the whole experience.

“So… can we watch together?” He asked, hoping to experience some of his wife’s deviousness together.

“Oh yes, just make sure to hit ‘fast forward’ to skip all the dumb and unnecessary things. Minho was trying so hard to get me to clean his cock or whatever, but hell if I’m ever taking his dirty thing into my mouth... especially after sex... It smelled of us for gods’ sake.”

Hyoseob patted the seat beside him on the couch, inviting her to join him, but Sooyoung hesitated.

“Here?” she asked, rendering him a bit confused.

“Yeah? You’ve done stuff with Minho here, so what’s the big deal?”

“Nothing. You’re right,” Sooyoung decided and plopped down beside him.

She took the phone from her bag, a seductive smile on her face. It was clear the experience had opened a door Sooyoung hadn’t really anticipated. Now his wife seemed to be warming up to the idea of being intimate with another person, even if it was pure sex.

“So, before we watch this, we need to talk about the rules,” Sooyoung declared.

“Oh, come on!” He pouted.

“No, listen. I want the rules. The rules were: you need to be able to watch, you need to be able to say no, no intercourse, and once a week. We’ve broken all of them more or less. I told Minho before He left that we needed to abide by the rules from now on, that this evening was an exception. He can’t just fuck me whenever he wants... and vice versa I guess,” Sooyoung said.

“Abide by the rules from now on? Including ‘no intercourse’?” He asked. Sooyoung blushed at that.

“Well... I kinda thought you didn’t mind if we left that rule out from now on,” she said, somewhat shyly.

Sooyoung made a very strong point. Not one he had expected from her, either. Not just the sex rule, but generally. It was necessary to have some control over these things. Minho’s effect on her had become quite apparent. It was sex without consequences, and great sex at that. As a guy, he could relate. But her suggesting to snip that rule seemed so... it was just much more impactful.

“I think you have a point,” He agreed. “It was something that was out of our control, but now that the heat of the moment is over, it makes sense.”

Sooyoung smiled her response, but Hyoseob had a question.

“Just now, you didn’t want to watch the video on the couch. And before, you let Minho do you from behind, something you never let me. Is this a theme I’m sensing? Does Minho get to do stuff that I don’t? Like...” He trailed off, and his eyes shifted, staring intensely into hers.

“Well, yeah...” Sooyoung replied. “Isn’t that what you wanted though?”

Hyoseob gulped, realizing she was right. It was part of it, for him to give her experiences, he never could. He hadn’t thought that would mean ‘experiences he never would’, though perhaps not with such emphasis on ‘never’.

Sooyoung having experiences with others that should have been reserved for her husband, and then denying him the same liberties, was the ultimate tease. Sooyoung’s exploration of her sexuality with men other than him was an incredible thrill.

“I mean, yeah.” He relented and admitted.

“Good,” she purred. “Wanna watch me get fucked from behind?”

Sooyoung wasn’t shy of cursing, but hearing her put it so bluntly, combined with his knowledge that she was going to willingly cheat and break their wedding vows for some kid, sent a sharp heat straight to his balls. He’d never seen his wife like this, and she was irresistible.

“I want everything.” Hyoseob declared.

She giggled at that. She looked amazing. She was absolutely radiant; sexy, confident, and free. Sooyoung looked at him tenderly and lovingly, a sweet, promising look that only served to stir the building excitement and burning arousal.

There were three videos in total. One shorter, and two longer.

“We’ll probably have to save the last one for a rainy day,” she teased sensually in his ear, her hand trailing down onto his slack-covered bulge.

The first one showed Minho’s point of view of Sooyoung on her back, topless and with his massive cock between her breasts. She rubbed them up and down, looking up with desire and lust as his veiny appendage emerged and disappeared between her magnificent bosom. Hyoseob loins flared up as He was able to appreciate the sexual play at such close range and with Sooyoung’s large, firm orbs being groped and abused so well. Minho really knew how to push a woman’s buttons, he thought. It didn’t take long before his semen erupted from its tip, splattering over his wife’s chin, cheeks, and nose...

“He’s so virile... he gets hard again so fast... perks of being a young stud, I guess,” Sooyoung muttered. Hyoseob quickly shoved his pants down so she could get better access to his raging erection.

She was right when she said they’d probably save the last one, because He doubted he’d last all the way through the second video. The one Sooyoung hinted that she got fucked from behind. A view he never had.

Sooyoung clicked the video and resumed stroking him.

The angle on the video showed Sooyoung naked silhouette cascaded by the dimly lit room. Sooyoung, hands against the wall, presenting her fat ass.

“Ohh that looks like an ass that’s had some workouts,” Minho said from behind the phone’s lens.

“Less chatting and more pounding,” Sooyoung’s voice called from the dark.

Minho placed the phone on what Hyoseob guess was a dresser, facing the camera towards the back of his bent-over wife, her perfect figure illuminated perfectly by the nearby light, a tantalizing silhouette that invited and begged to be pounded. Minho’s hulking frame stepped close and shoved himself roughly into her waiting slit.

“Oh... oh-oh!” Sooyoung moaned, her hands suddenly clenching and gripping tighter against the wall, her hips twitching. “Harder. Fuck!” she begged.

Hyoseob turned his eyes from the video screen towards the same body parts, seeing the same hips on the couch next to him that Minho was grasping on the video as he fucked his lovely wife. Sooyoung noticed, her smile deepening. The sound of bodies slapping echoed from the device. Minho growled, grasping her tighter and pulling her to him as his hips rocked and pummeled his wife’s magnificent ass. Sooyoung’s large ass was quivering with the impacts and bounced, the flesh wobbling back and forth hypnotically. Minho fucked her mercilessly, relentlessly, hammering her from behind, but with deliberate purpose. Sooyoung started making a high-pitched sound. He had never seen her so receptive.

“Jesus, you really like that, huh?” Hyoseob breathed. Minho was fucking his wife so roughly.

Sooyoung merely nodded, as if embarrassed, turning her face to hide in the seat cushions. Minho grabbed and pulled her arms, pushing her back against him with a forceful thrust, burying his entire length deep inside her. Sooyoung’s walls trembled around him, squeezing his giant girth, wanting more. Minho eased most of his shaft out before plowing slowly, churning her insides with his cock, giving her a moment of relief. But it was temporary and she shuddered once again, clamping down and throbbing around the huge length.

“Unnnggh- Unnnng- Unnng,” she let out with each long, hard thrust.

Hyoseob’s eyes bulged as he watched his wife cum on another man’s cock, knowing she was experiencing something He could never give her to that extent.

“God! Harder! HARDER!” Sooyoung cried, and just like that Hyoseob came to the sounds of Minho fucking his wife better than He ever could.

“Christ!” the present Sooyoung said, sounding somewhat disgusted as his cum trickled over her hand. “You could’ve said something! I’d gotten a towel!”

Sooyoung rose up and headed off to the nearest bedroom to clean her hand.

—

Sooyoung couldn’t really concentrate the following day. A few times, she caught herself staring off into space, thinking of how nice Minho’s long, thick cock felt when he was on top of her, pummeling her body. But she had to go the entire weekend, and then some, before she could have it again. In her mind, that was simply too long a time to wait to get off like she did last night.

But it wasn’t just sex that had her brain distracted. The conversation with Hyoseob had gotten Sooyoung thinking of all sorts of dirty, taboo ideas. Hyoseob had admitted he liked it when she did things with Minho, such as exploring new things. Giving up some of her firsts for Minho, even. Like doggy, or a fucking her tits. She wasn’t sure what that entailed, or what she could do with that information, but she stored it away in her mind.

Sooyoung spent the rest of the weekend running track, lifting weights, and other physical activities to force her life back into normalcy, in addition to her school work. She decided she didn’t want sex to dictate her life, so while she looked forward to tutoring Minho on Tuesday, she dedicated her time to her life’s chores and commitments.

—

‘What are we doing for the tutoring?’ I texted her when she arrived at school on Monday. ‘Can we meet between classes? I need some help to get my balls drained before class so I can focus ;)’

‘Stop it, Minho,’ was all she replied, feeling a tingle of warmth and arousal ran down her spine nonetheless.

‘I was just kidding’ I replied.

I had responded with some teasing ‘Are you going to be wet on Tuesday’ and ‘Can’t stop thinking about it’ but eventually didn’t push it any further. She would assume I was probably too afraid to scare her off for the upcoming sessions, regardless of how horny I was. But throughout the day, Sooyoung felt increasingly needy herself, unable to resist fantasizing about our upcoming session.

It was hard for her to understand how her student having such a big dick had her so riled up... though some of my otherworldly skill probably had something to do with it. In addition to my prowess, I had been respectful. She supposed not every boy would have behaved so well and been so understanding, even if I relentlessly teased her for doing far more than the rules allowed.

Though my skill in the bedroom, the only reason Sooyoung would ever return to me was the thrill and pleasure it gave her husband. Hyoseob loved the humiliation of someone like me enjoying his wife, and her doing things with me that she would rarely, if ever, do with her husband.

Like allowing my cock between her tits. Or how I made her orgasm like a slutty nympho just by fucking her in a position she wouldn’t normally allow. All of this, combined with the non-committal, almost primal pleasure, made the whole experience tantalizing. It certainly was a lifestyle Sooyoung could learn to enjoy, if she didn’t already.

“Wait up, Ma’am,” I called to her after school as she was heading to her car. She crossed her arms, unintentionally revealing her generous cleavage.

“What is it?” Sooyoung asked, ignoring her sudden nervous excitement. She hoped I wouldn’t put her in such an awkward position out in the open.

I went to the same school where she worked, so we were bound to run into each other. However, it did not make it any less awkward. Even though no one was particularly close, there were still a lot of people around. I leaned against her car, and she leaned back against the same vehicle to play it casual. Just some teacher talking to some pupil. Nothing suspicious about two young adults standing next to her vehicle talking to one another, right?

“What did you want to talk about, Minho?” she repeated.

“So about tomorrow... just what should I expect? You know, for the tutoring,” I said, attempting to stall the conversation. I looked over her with a mischievous glint. Sooyoung’s heart raced, unsure whether she should regret this situation or revel in it.

“If you’re here early, maybe we can just fu-”

“Not today,” Sooyoung said with an all too friendly smirk as she casually pushed herself off the car, trying to end the conversation. “And no more about doing stuff between classes.”

I scoffed and began rubbing my bulge. She frowned, and as my smirk lingered, her gaze was drawn downward.

“H-hey!” she stammered, taking a step away. “That’s hardly appropriate. Especially with students walking by,” she hissed. Sooyoung wanted nothing more than to reach over and grab my cock, squeeze that long, veiny piece of flesh she loved so much.

“Well, when else should I talk to you about it?” I chuckled, taking the same step she had, closing the gap between us.

“You could’ve just texted like you usually do... but fine, hop in and I’ll drive you home. We can talk about it on the way,” She relented, trying to shut me up before anyone noticed and hoping to keep the conversation focused on the actual tutoring. “Now knock it off,” she finished.

I smiled proudly as I entered the passenger side. Sooyoung rolled her eyes and suppressed a groan before getting into the car with me, pushing thoughts away and putting the vehicle in gear.

We talked about the tutoring and homework and stayed relatively cordial the rest of the ride, with only a few irrelevant comments from my part because I couldn’t help but admire her tits and ass.

“So, do you ever teach in class? Like theory or whatever?” I asked.

“Pff, just how much do you skip, Minho?” Sooyoung laughed. “Yeah, sometimes. Usually, around football season so any day now. I even have my own classroom.”

“You gonna tutor me on that stuff eventually?” I asked.

“If you think you have use for it,” She replied. “I have booked the classroom a few times this semester for your actual tutorage, in fact.”

“Oh I’d love to have you in a classroom,” I teased. She looked over, amused, and wondered what I would do with such an opportunity.

“Would you want a private lesson, Mister? Detention maybe?” Sooyoung teased back.

“Oh please, Mrs. Sooyoung, I didn’t mean to pass my paper, could you give me an oral exam? To see if I deserve extra credit?” I grinned.

Sooyoung laughed pulling up at her house. “Then I think you’re in luck,” she said, turning the car into her driveway and switching the engine off. “Jokes aside, we can’t fool around at the school... not more than we already did anyway,” she said, not able to conceal a smirk at the memory.

“You mean to tell me you and Hyoseob never done anything naughty at school?” I replied.

“None of your business, and don’t you try any funny ideas there either.” Sooyoung glared at me. I raised my hands defensively, “Alright, alright.”

As I walked her to her door, my eyes lingered down to her breasts and ass. Sooyoung opened the door and turned to me. “See you tomorrow, then?” she asked.

I smirked as my gaze traced her body. From her big cleavage strutting out in front of her, to her waist and down to her wide childbearing hips, my eyes feasted on her, while she tried her best to ignore the reaction her body had.

“Damn, Sooyoung,” I sighed. She blushed and smiled up at me. “Your ass was so hot, stretching and jiggling as you got out of the car. Wish I had recorded that instead.”

“Glad you were entertained,” Sooyoung retorted.

We stood there in the doorway for a few moments, staring at one another. Sooyoung was waiting for me to leave, and I was ogling her body and thinking God knows what. Sooyoung looked stunning, especially given that her work attire frequently consisted of tight-fitting workout clothes. Tight shirts, shorts, or yoga pants, with a sweater tied around her waist. A bit lewd, maybe, but she wore it flawlessly. Sporty and sexy all in one package.

“You leaving?” Sooyoung inquired, ignoring my leering.

“When is Hyoseob coming home?” I asked.

“In about two hours, why? We’re not-” Sooyoung tried to say something, but I interrupted her by pushing her inside and closing the door behind her. Sooyoung stumbled backward, her mind reeling from the forwardness.

“We are not doing this,” Sooyoung said, though with much less vigour as my hands gripped her fat ass, making her gulp hard. My tongue trailed from her earlobe up to her ear. “Minho, please,” Sooyoung pleaded.

My hands ran down from her wide hips, fingers pressing against the hem of her tights. Sooyoung shuddered in an oh-so-delicious anticipation as she realized how badly she’d longed for my touch these past days. Sooyoung realized she had subconsciously chosen to wear an outfit just for me. To tempt and agitate me. She wanted my warm embrace and confident assertiveness. She wanted my greedy lust to break her body and willpower, only to be soothed by my caring patience, stamina, and thickness.

“Bedroom?” I asked, eager to sink my cock in this lovely, formerly faithful wife.

“Yeah...” Sooyoung answered breathlessly, her pussy wet and her cheeks flushed red as she was powerless to resist me, so powerfully she wished I’d bend her over, rip off her tight-fitting garments and-

“Sooyoung? Are you back?” Hyoseob’s voice cut in through the silence, right at that moment.

“Hyoseob! Why’re you home so early? I thought you were staying at the office all day for your important deadline!” Sooyoung answered nervously, fidgeting with the front door for me to get out, looking as Hyoseob came out from the kitchen.

“Eh, they cancelled the deadline; was a miscommunication with the client, and a chance for me to… Sooyoung, what is going on?” He didn’t sound angry, but he had every right to be. Sooyoung was in the process of breaking the rules again, and probably several of them. She had no mind to record it, as it was full steam ahead.

“Well, what do we have here,” Hyoseob scolded playfully. He approached, inspecting her up-and-down as he circled Sooyoung and I, now somewhat frozen from the sudden shock.

“You’re a sight to see, baby,” he murmured and stood before us. “But not what I expected to come crashing through the door,” Hyoseob continued, “but I understand the appeal.”

He smiled as his wife’s mouth bobbed up and down with no words emerging. Her words were caught in her throat before she eventually found her voice.

“Don’t be upset babe, we were talking... then... I mean,” Sooyoung stuttered.

“Relax, I’m not angry,” Hyoseob assured. “Why should I be? Look, it is pretty hot to see you almost fall over, all stunned and panting at Minho.”

A nervous, giddy chuckle erupted from Sooyoung. She licked her lips and blinked slowly.

“Sorry to barge in like this,” I stated, my grip on Sooyoung’s waist still. “Just thought...”

“You’d fuck my wife?” Hyoseob replied.

“Listen, I’ll just leave,” I said.

“Leave?” Hyoseob asked in mock surprise, smiling coyly. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’ve started it. You can’t stop now.”

“Okay?” I breathed.

“Hey, this is my chance to watch it live. Consider it another hall pass,” Hyoseob said.

Sooyoung didn’t think they’d do any more hall passes, especially so soon after her last one, but she wasn’t going to argue, instead turning around and pressing her round butt against my bulge. I smirked, pressing back, reaching up to the rim of her short shirt, tracing the fabric, and skimming my fingers against the hem of her spandex tights, which I began rolling down her hips.

“Wait,” Sooyoung said. “Didn’t you say something about a bedroom?” she added, meeting Hyoseob’s stare. His eyes widened. ‘That’s right, I’m taking him to our marital bed,’ Sooyoung thought as she looked at her husband. If he was so accepting, let’s see how far he’d let her take it.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me upstairs. She was powerless to stop herself now that she had free reign and was absolutely in heat; she needed to be fuck senseless like the horny slut she’d become, right in her and her husband’s marital bed, with her husband watching no less. Sooyoung entered the bedroom and stood by the footboard, pulling me in behind.

“Lay on your back,” I told her. “I wanna see those huge tits jiggle as I stretch out your pussy,” I added.

Sooyoung didn’t respond, but obeyed nonetheless, feeling even hotter from hearing the lewd order. She laid down, ready and wanting. She heard the sound of their breathing, mixed with Hyoseob’s, who silently sat watching on a chair off to the side.

I began stripping off, her gaze fixed on my body. It seemed like an eternity since we’d had each other. She had to admit her disappointment at having her fun cut short. But hopefully, we’d have a lot more time and wouldn’t have to rush or wait for Hyoseob’s arrival.

I moved closer to her, climbing onto the bed until my cock was above her face. A shiver went through her. Sooyoung laid down, extending a hand to wrap around my hovering girth. I chuckled as her soft grip met mine, her fingertips barely touching on both sides. My foreskin was tight and firm over the bulging cockhead, with a wispy cum beading on the slit. She raised her head, extending her neck, and touched my tip with her tongue, her eyes closed and breathing heavily. The wet tongue licked the bead, and she salivated at the unpleasant taste. She was in disbelief about her own actions, doing something so dirty with someone other than her husband. The shame fueled her even more, but she couldn’t push herself any further than this. She lowered her head back on the pillow, allowing the thick piece to hang in front of her, dragging along her chin and grazing over her tits, drooling even more heavily as it made its way, coating the firm boobs and pebbled nipples.

Sooyoung looked up to see me looking down at her, a smirk flashing across my coarse features. Sooyoung understood what I was looking for, what I desired. Despite her embarrassment, Sooyoung was hungry for my dick after tasting the copious amounts of delicious delight I could provide her with. However, as I climbed down her body, I did not align my cock with her. No, I wanted to show Hyoseob how much better I was without even using my cock, so I sunk down the married couple’s marital bed and buried my head between her flawless thighs.

“Oh god,” Sooyoung mumbled in pent-up anticipation for the oncoming onslaught.

*

Hyoseob sat in a chair in the corner of his own bedroom, watching me sink my head between his wife’s spread legs, obscuring his view of her dripping entrance. It was a hard feat to understand how well Sooyoung responded to my touches. It wrecked him as much as it aroused him, and witnessing the events before him was the worst kind of train carnage he couldn’t pull his eyes from.

“Oh- Ohhh,” Hyoseob heard his wife moan, a deep, almost painful groan escaping from her chest. His dick stirred when he saw her lost in pleasure. Her knees were drawn in the air, and her heels were sliding down my wide back, pushing her pelvis forward and mashing her opening against my tongue. His sexy prideful wife was being ravaged by one of her students. Right in front of him.

Sooyoung began panting as her hands took hold of my head, entangling her fingers in my hair and ensuring my face remained rooted in place as I tongue fucked her sopping, hungry pussy. my hands gripped this wife’s athletic thighs as she ground against mine, the bed creaking and rocking in the process. Sooyoung reached back with one arm, holding onto the headboard, while her other kept my head pressed in tightly, her jaw jutted out and her eyes focused.

I worked her like a pro. With each twitch and whimper, labored groan, and gasping squeak, I reacted accordingly, guiding her into a boiling heat that was gradually building in her core, until my skilled tongue finally broke her open, sending her shuddering into an explosive orgasm that drenched my tongue in her juices.

I knew right away that Sooyoung and her husband had never done or come close to accomplishing anything like this before. Nothing in our long sexual history compared.

“Fuck! How...” Sooyoung groaned as her convulsions subsided. She drew her arm back and lay there exhausted, my lips smirking against her sticky thighs.

My cock hadn’t gotten the pleasure it craved, and the impatience was evident in the rigid shaft. I was tall and proud on my knees above her. Sooyoung turned her head, realizing that my cock had not only missed her, but also been neglected. My thick piece had bobbed and bounced, waving and whipping in the air, and landing all over their sheets. I chuckled as the disheveled teacher regained her composure.

“Fuck, Minho, how’d you get so good at that?” She sighed as her fingers and gaze moved down my body. “It’s crazy how fast you can get me off, it’s unfair.”

“Had plenty of practice,” I told her.

“Yeah? With who?”

“Minju, Hana, Sujin, Eunha, so on,” Minho bragged.

“Eunha? Our neighbor?” Sooyoung asked.

It wasn’t typical of her to be so nosy, but Hyoseob could tell, my already extensive experience interested her. Meanwhile, He sat, enraged and jealous. Not only did I get to fuck his wife, but I also had free access to every teen girl in the neighborhood.

“This dirty cock has been in a lot of dirty places, then,” Sooyoung purred while stroking my cock between her legs, enticed by my obscenities. Hyoseob was taken aback by how hot she was, not just because I was in front of her, but also because she was so responsive to it. This was a very different Sooyoung, one who clearly enjoyed the experience and knowledge one had to offer, he thought.

“Turn over,” I instructed, “Get on your hands and knees for me.”

“God, yes,” Sooyoung hissed.

And just like that she was on all fours, knees far apart, her tight entrance exposed, wet, and more than ready. That big sexy ass I could fondle and worship for hours strutted out for mine to feast. I noticed her shaking from anticipation, the pleasurable experience in her pussy still burning and spreading like wildfire, warming her entire body from the inside out.

“Yesss...” she groaned as my cock head settled down against her outer lips, coating the bottom in her leaking juices. It was a hell of a tease.

“Unnh! Minho, come on. Just... FUCK ME!” Sooyoung begged.

“What’s that? What is it that you want?” I teased.

“Please.” Sooyoung inhaled sharply. “I want you!”

“If I fuck you, and I’m not your husband, what does that make him?” I teased, nodding in Hyoseob’s direction.

“A cuck-UGH!” Sooyoung groaned out as I started to push my cock inside her unfaithful hole, taking control.

I fully leaned over her and crawled my hands around and under her, getting ahold of her full tits, cock lodged deep within her as I mounted her. “That’s what I thought,” I muttered, before starting my slow pace.

Hyoseob’s dick throbbed wildly. What could He say about such a display? It was unlike anything he could have imagined or experienced. His own wife was having the time of her life right in front of him, and with someone else, not to mention, her student. He’d never seen her so hot.

“Minho! You’re so BIG. Fuck me!” she moaned, in complete surrender and acceptance of a situation.

“Damn, you are tight... i can’t believe how fucking tight you are!” I pounded her harder. The bed creaked rhythmically in tune with my hips snapping against her big ass.

The bedroom echoed with the sounds of flesh slapping against flesh, and the wife’s moan rang in his ears. Hyoseob could hear our breathing become heavier as I brought her to climax again. Sooyoung’s breath caught in her throat for a moment before she cried out in delight as I fucked her straight through her orgasm without mercy.

“Like that, Hyoseob?” I taunted him over the moans and whimpers that his lovely wife couldn’t restrain. “Like watching me make your wife cum?!” I asked.

It wasn’t the first time Hyoseob saw Sooyoung do sex acts he’d always fantasized about, but seeing live in front of him was both magnificent and terrifying, given that he couldn’t ever be the one to do those things with her. Or perhaps the only difference between my cock and him was that I knew how to please her far better than her husband could.

“Like to see me breaking your wife? Defiling your wife in your-fucking-bed?” I groaned, thrusting firm and hard. “I’ll never grow tired of a pussy like this! Never! What a fucking MILF!”

Sooyoung was so into it, fully submerging in the wild ride I was giving her. I wasn’t holding back, giving her the kind of rough treatment that no one else could give. That only I could. That her husband certainly couldn’t. Her insides wrapped around mine like a fist as I pummeled her from behind.

I gave Sooyoung long, deliberate, penetrating, slow, torturous thrusts before pounding her hard and deep, letting my cock bury its enormous mass inside. Her huge breasts, undulating back and forth on the surface, would slide a little, causing her hard nipples to briefly rub the fabric.

“He’s fucking me so hard, Hyoseob,” Sooyoung whimpered. “This is all your fault!”

“Holy shit,” He muttered.

“I’d never fuck this shithead if you hadn’t pushed for this!” Sooyoung cried.

“Oh god,” Hyoseob groaned, feeling his impending orgasm rise and then subside as he forced himself to stop jerking.

“Unnh-NNH! MINHO!”

“Tell him how deep my cock is going inside this sweet married pussy. How it stretches you,” I teased.

“Minho, uggh- your cuh-cuh-cocks SO DEEP! Fuck me harder... faster. My pussy is a-and, I need you t-to fuuuck-AAAA.” Sooyoung was incoherent as she exploded. Her body collapsed underneath me as her arms and elbows gave out from my force.

I’m panting profusely and abruptly pulling out of Sooyoung. “Get in there,” I instructed, getting out of bed.

Sooyoung rolled onto her back, allowing Hyoseob to climb between her thighs and eagerly plunge himself between us. The contrast was noticeable. He struggled to fill her with his own member, just as I did. She wrapped her arms around him, keeping him close as we rutted together.

“Feels really nice,” Sooyoung assured him earnestly, panting into his ear, but his depraved brain refused to believe her, unable to shake the fact that she had just been fucked hard, pounded deep, and railed thoroughly by someone much bigger.

“Shit... you’re so much looser,” Hyoseob said bluntly. Sooyoung closed her eyes, enjoying his body and ignoring what he had just said. She let out a series of pants and groans, but was lacking. I had really stretched her. He just hoped it didn’t mean that his relationship with his wife had changed.

“Oh god, keep doing it!” Sooyoung gasped and groaned beneath her husband, writhing her body as the waves of pleasure crashed into her. She writhed and contorted in front of him, receiving his shallow thrusts with relative ease.

But her orgasm never came. She panted and bucked against him, but the friction just wasn’t there enough to bring her over the edge. Hyoseob didn’t think Sooyoung realized it, but He wasn’t enough anymore. Not anymore. Not after being taken so far, stretched out, and then slammed, with so much weight and girth. It made a huge difference. She clenched hard around him but didn’t get it where she wanted. She needed something more than him.

The realization burned through him and almost made him cum right away, but instead, Hyoseob felt a tap on his shoulder.

“I’m going back in,” I smirked. “I’ll take care of it.”

I pushed him away and crawled back between Sooyoung’s thighs, forcing him to sit back and jerk off while he watched his wife being fucked by another guy. I don’t think Sooyoung noticed his withdrawal, especially since I reinserted my cock inside her. Sooyoung threw her head back and let out a howl. I picked up right away, maintaining the exact same pace of deep, hard strokes inside of her.

Hyoseob felt hurt being forced to climb back to the chair in the corner, hearing how much Sooyoung enjoys someone else more than him, but at the same time, he felt an intense arousal of humiliation to witness this sight. The way I’m dominantly forcing myself inside her lovely wife, pinning her in place and rekindling her pleasure. She cried for more.

“Take my cock! Take it like a slut!” I kept going.

“Uhnnnh... feels soooo gooood,” Sooyoung panted, clawing and pulling.

I paused just long enough to grab Sooyoung’s wrists and pin them above her head, taking on a male dominant position of ownership. As a bull over his cow, or in this case, a stud mounting his breeding mare. Hyoseob thought back to their lives together, him and Sooyoung. Everything they had experienced together, it all leading to her get fucked by another man.

She arched her back and pressed her breasts against my chest, squirming under me as the heat built up again, more and more, until, with the clench and tingle of pleasure in the stomach and thighs, Sooyoung lost herself in an orgasm, feeling an enormous pressure rising, climbing up from the depths of her pussy, pushing upwards, stretching. Sooyoung squirmed beneath my dominance, gasping, unable to grasp reality as every cell in her body became electrified in response to my hard pummeling.

I then slowed down, letting Sooyoung come down, sinking my lips against hers, and we began to kiss intimately.

“Minho...” She whispered in a raspy voice, gazing into mine.

Sooyoung could hardly speak. She tried, but the words fell short and were barely audible, a quiet and excited stuttering, but as the fog lifted and reality returned, and she started to remember the moment, her tone shifted. Her voice grew stronger, more aware of her situation. “Fuck...” she continued in a less reverent whisper. “Jesus Christ, what is going on...”

“Well... we’re cucking your husband,” I said bluntly.

“Are you mad? Am I in trouble?”

Sooyoung let out a giggle and let me drop my head to her neck, causing her giggle to turn into a moan as I began licking her soft skin while humping her womb.

“Are you going to talk?” I breathed, my full cock sinking slowly into her. “Come on. “Let him hear.”

“Oh my g-uuuh.” Sooyoung trailed off, the words cut off, distracted by massive tool filling her up, touching her walls.

“Now tell me again. Tell him, the reason you have allowed me to defile you,” I teased, not relenting my pace, while whispering in her ear.

“Ohhh,” Sooyoung moaned, shivering, clutching my muscles. Sooyoung whimpered, gritting her teeth to her effort. But not responding was beyond impossible. She had never felt so full.

“Your husbands’ too tiny, isn’t he?” I egged her on.

“My husband is great, I swear, but you’re so big and he’s not,” Sooyoung got out, my fat cock-head poking into her, brushing into a particularly sensitive spot in the inner wall.

“That’s right,” I said with satisfied smirk.

“Ohh!” Sooyoung groaned.

“That’s why you needed to cuck your husband.”

“God Minho...” Sooyoung moaned.

“Just answer.”

“Yes,” Sooyoung blurted out. “My husband is great, I promise- oh my! But he couldn’t fulfill all my needs, my cravings.” Sooyoung paused and closed her eyes. I slowed down because I didn’t want her orgasm to take her away just yet. “That’s why, fuck, I needed you here. So you could give me what I really needed.”

Sooyoung returned my gaze, a loving, heated expression on her face. I kissed her, pressing our lips and tongues together. And we resumed our fucking, moaning together and filling the bedroom with the sounds of flesh slapping, groans, and grunts.

Hyoseob raised his hand to stroke himself, rubbing his dick furiously. His body and mind were filled with emotions and stress. Sooyoung hadn’t been lying about his size, and watching how I held nothing back as my thick meat began stretching his wife again, plunging into her over and over... He had no idea how we were doing it; with our perfect fit, it must have felt like heaven. His eyes burned with a desire to break down. He is unsure whether he is feeling shame, happiness, anger, or passion. He closed his eyes for a second to concentrate on his wife’s agonizing moans and the obscene slick sounds of her being pounded so deliciously and thoroughly.

“Hyoseob, watch me make your wife cum again,” I said.

He could only nod and bite down his own moans, proving my statement correct. The display in front of him became more and more lewd and heated as she moved her mouth to my ears and allowed me to feel her warm breath, while our hips went insane, slamming into her like a high-powered machine.

“You want it,” I told her.

“Ah! Ah! Uuungh,” Sooyoung got out, a half groan, half whisper.

“Oh yes you do. Cum on my cock!” I commanded.

“Minho...” Sooyoung moaned in her raspy voice.

“Don’t bother to fight it, Ma’am.”

“Minho I’m so close, I’m going crazy here, just take my womb.”

I pummeled down deep, thrusting firmly and keeping my base flush. Sooyoung’s hips rose from the sheets and began bucking upward, meeting my heavy thrusts. Our speed increased together. “Minho!” she kept saying my name like a mantra. Sooyoung grunted as I pushed deeper inside of her. She had to scream as I kept my promise.

“Okay,” Sooyoung hissed after an eternity.

I smiled and slid off of her. Sooyoung leaned back into the mattress and spread her legs, arching her hips, watching as my cock come out covered in our collective fluids, thick, sticky, and white. It was hard to comprehend that all that had been inside her, and even more was still spilling out. It was so thick and creamy.

“I haven’t cum this hard since forever,” Sooyoung moaned.

“You did amazing. I can’t wait for a lot more,” I told Sooyoung.

“Yee-ees, me too, baby.” Sooyoung wrapped her arms and legs around me and kissed me eagerly as her eyes flashed towards her husband, a little unsure, maybe even scared, her glance uncertain, her pupils wide, and then she just looked straight at him.

“You okay, Hyoseob?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, yeah... just hard to get over how much of that got in you,” Hyoseob said, laughing. While his expression was undoubtedly one of shock, he was actually doing more than fine. Watching his wife pleasured by another man is an image that will stay with him forever, and the experience left him oddly satisfied. It almost made him happy that she had gotten to experience something like this.

“Well, anyway,” I said, standing up. “I am drained. And we’re not in a real session, so I’m heading out.”

“Sure thing,” Sooyoung said. “And the session tomorrow? Let’s... Let’s put that one on hold for now, okay? We need a bit... a bit of control, I think.”

I nodded and began to dress up. It was reassuring when Sooyoung, the smart person she was, took the steering wheel. When the dust settled, she still considered her husband’s turmoil. Hyoseob was probably complacent enough for us to do more, but Sooyoung was probably right in pulling on the emergency brakes.

“So,” Sooyoung turned to Hyoseob after I left. “Wow, huh.”

He simply nodded, trying to process the event that had transpired. Sooyoung got up and moved in beside him.

“What just happened?” He asked, dumfounded.

“Well, we cucked you,” Sooyoung said, studying his expression as she waited for his reaction to her words. “Was it too much?”

“I... think so. I’m glad you got to experience it... but watching it in front of me was a bit much, perhaps.” He explained to her. “Like, yeah, you’re hot as hell. This entire event is extremely hot, and seeing another man fuck you so well is quite thrilling. But hearing you moan and say all of that... it was almost too much for me. I’m not sure if I can handle seeing it live... especially since he asked me to join in...”

Sooyoung nodded understanding. “So you think we should move on from this whole thing?”

“No! No, I love it. It makes it harder for me to return to the same things later,” he laughed. Sooyoung also giggled. “No, I’m all on for it still, but I think we need a cooling period,” he replied. “At the very least, I participated in real life... However, the videos are quite good.

“Sure thing,” Sooyoung said, with a warm, understanding smile. “And I won’t do anything until you’re ready for it to continue. If ever. I only enjoy this if you enjoy it.”

“You’d do that?” He asked. “Despite everything?”

“Of course... I know I failed before, but I would try with all my might. I don’t want to risk everything for something like that, and honestly, I don’t think Minho would either.”

They linger like that for a bit.

“Sooyoung, can I ask you something?” Hyoseob started. Sooyoung nodded. “Why is it so different? I mean, aside from the obvious physical things. You’re so much wilder with Minho.”

“Aside from how his bigger size just hits differently?” Sooyoung asked, shooting him a smirk, which He returned. “Well... I don’t know. Honestly, maybe it was always there, I just never brought it out. The raw physical aspect. And with Minho it is just that, so much more raw and physical action. I don’t love him, nowhere close, and I don’t think for a second he loves me. And for women sex and emotions are entwined and psychological. With Minho, there is no relationship like that, so it’s purely physical. It’s like I can let go more, if that makes sense. Have good sex with no repercussions, if that also makes sense.”

Hyoseob paused for a few seconds. “I guess that makes sense, yeah. When did you get so smart?” He joked.

“Shut up,” Sooyoung said, slapping his chest. “So everything okay? Anything more you wanna ask, because I want to answer everything you want to know as far as I can.”

“No, I think I’m good. Let’s put a breather on this whole thing then take it from there.”

“Okay, got it,” Sooyoung said with a smile, wrapping a hand around his husband, and cuddling into him as she laid her head on his chest. He placed an arm on her shoulder and held her close, her soft boobs pressing against him. The cuddle made them fall asleep, together, exhausted from the day’s adventure.

[avengersbtch]

You're Lucky Your Beautiful - Armando Aretas

Armando Aretas x Reader

Warnings: This fic does not follow to the film’s timeline.  I have altered the scenes!!

A/N Pre relationship flirting?? Or maybe pre- pre-relationship flirting lol idk but it’s cute, I think. I’m a sucker for pre relationship fics and the build up!!! 

Summary: Y/N pinged the location of Mike & Marcus’, leading to Armando meeting y/n for the first time and a roller coaster of emotions in one night.

Word Count: 3.4k

The hunt for Mike, Marcus and Armando was plastered on every news outlet known, you felt useless watching every news reporter talk down on Mike and Marcus as you were trying to look for them. Marcus felt more like father figures to you than your actual parents did so watching everyone jump at the opportunity to talk down on their reputation they built was crushing, you also knew for an absolute fact that everything they were saying was false and you would bet your life on that too. You had no feelings toward Armando, you neither liked nor hated him. Mike obviously felt deeply for his long-lost son, but you had never met him, so seeing him on the news didn’t really inflict any feelings. All you knew was that he was the key to the case and after Mike insisted he ID the suspect, Armando agreed reluctantly. 

You were snuggled on your cream cotton couch sitting on your laptop trying to track down or contact the boys without the Feds knowing. They had pulled you off their case, knowing how close you were and took most of your personal belongings or tapped the rest assuming Marcus might contact you. This laptop was your backup, backup laptop, so thankfully they didn’t find this one.

Just as you were going to call it a night, your laptop pinned an advancement on their case, a location. Of-course Mike had gone to Tabitha’s, probably not wanting to get you involved in whatever mess he’s in. You immediately jumped and ran to get dressed to be some sort of assistance, now you weren’t physically or skill-fully equipped for combat, you could admit that, however expertise excelled behind a computer, and everyone knew that. Either way you know they could at least use a safe place to stay and whatever else you could offer.

You slipped in black jeans and a long sleeve black fitted top with a hoodie, with the aim of staying as inconspicuous as possible. You quickly slipped into your sneakers as you jump into your car, following the reports of their location. You’d probably get fired for doing what you were about to do, especially given there is a high chance an actual criminal is tagging along to their adventures. That obviously being Armando, but you decided would deal with that later. 

Speeding down the highway, you could hear the sirens closing in and the gunshots becoming more consistent. As you neared the scene, you could see multiple cop cars, large four-wheeled drives, and vans at all different angles. This would be a nightmare for you to find them. You drove into an alleyway, noticing the traffic moving in the same direction and slowly parked behind a large dump bin. Exiting the car, you left the ignition running to assist in easier escape. As you walked out the alleyway, you peeked out of the corner of the wall seeing a large black van on fire. 

“Guess it wasn’t that hard to find them” you chuckled rolling your eyes at the current state of the vehicle they were using. You watched them jump out the moving van just as the van light and exploded right before your eyes. You count three. Meaning they were in fact accompanied by Armando. Great. You eyed the three of them, as they ran in your direction, you eyed the scene making sure there were no witnesses and no threats. When you deemed it safe, you stepped out of the alleyway in full vision. They all paused, Mike squinted as if recognising your figure and slowly stepped closer. 

“Y/n?!” He questioned in surprise, obviously not expecting to see a familiar face.

“Y/n? Mike what are you on about?” Marcus followed until he spotted you “Y/n!” He confirmed once he ID’d you. More for himself really. 

“let’s have a family reunion later, hurry up my car’s around there” you pointed in a hurry as you ran off expecting them to follow you. You couldn’t waste any time, you need to get the out of here before they were spotted again. You slip into the driver’s seat waiting for them to get in, taking longer than usual you turn to see Armando still outside of the car. 

“Dude, get in the car. We need to go” you hissed. Did he not understand the severity of the situation?

“How can we trust her?” Armando asked looking over my shoulder at Mike.

“Who else do you have right now? get in or I’m leaving. I really don’t care whether you live or die” I whisper yelled, pre-emptively interrupting their conversation.

“Armando, get in. We can trust her” Mike sighed. Armando’s eyes flicked over to you and back to Mike then back over to you until he decided to trust you and slipped in the back seat near Marcus. You rolled your eyes, setting your car into drive and shaking your head, as if you were begging for him to trust you. 

The drive back was silent, almost awkward giving you were aiding the escape of a fugitive. Deciding to break the long silence, you joked “So I see you guys decided to quit you day job and harbour a wanted fugitive”. 

“Ha ha y/n, just get us to yours please. We need to get to Dorn’s tomorrow morning. Armando is our only lead to ID the suspect, they’re going lengths to try and kill him” Marcus explained, and his eyes remained on the road watching for any unwanted noise. Your eyes flicked to Armando through the rear-view mirror. His eyes also trained on the road and his surroundings. You had to admit, he was extremely good looking, even with his bud light shirt and his burnt jeans, the only thing you could focus on was his shining eyes. God damn. You trained your eyes back to the road in front of you and kept driving almost smacking yourself for checking him out.

“How did you find us?” Armando asked in curiosity, though his face did not emote. If it wasn’t for the question, it was almost like he didn’t give a fuck. 

“Oh uh, I, I uhm I’ve been tracing the feeds on your location. Just about everyone is looking for you. Though they’ve been pretty late to finding you guys after the uh crash” you stuttered honestly shocked at his interest. Not sure whether he’s asking you because he wants to know or testing you. 

“Armando, y/n’s the brains behind the operation. We’ve known her since she was a kid. She’s not with them, relax we can trust her” Mike supported you, confirming your concerns. He was just testing you.

Arriving at home, you parked in your driveway, telling them to follow you as you walked up a short flight of stairs to your door. You felt a sense of nerves inviting Armando into your home and you weren’t sure whether that was because he was a criminal or extremely attractive, which was truly concerning. Walking into your home, everything remained as you left it with your laptop on the couch where you were seated, the chips and red bull beside you on the mahogany coffee table. The house wasn’t messy but looked lived in with there being left over steak and chips on the table that you hadn’t yet cleaned up from dinner, some cups in the sink that required cleaning from the night prior that were on display with the dim kitchen light still on, illuminating the small kitchen and the remaining condiments that you had not packed up yet. Your home was small along with your kitchen, so any small mess would look like a lot. 

“Sorry guys, the house is a bit of a mess. I had just finished dinner before your location pinged” you lied slightly trying to excuse the mess. “there’s leftover food if you guys are hungry and give me a sec, I’ll get you guys something to change into” you offered as you walked to fetch them clothes to change into, unsure of what  or why they were wearing those clothes. 

“What man does she have that lives here?” Armando’s thick accent echoing from the room. It sounded more pronounced than usual, Furrowing your brows, you continued to listen as you selected clothes for the three of them. 

“Why do you care?” Mike asks accusingly which makes you chuckle slightly. 

“I’m just saying, is he gonna walk in here, and see us all here and rat us out? we need to be smarter than that, or do we trust everyone that you say we can, because that didn’t work out with Tabitha” he answered defensively, and Mike threw a knowing hum as I finished collecting their clothes. 

I walk out of the spare room with the clothes and smile sweetly in hopes that maybe he’ll finally trust me and explain “My brother comes and stays at mine when he’s in town. No one is going to come in, like I said,  you can trust me” 

He stares at me again as if he doesn’t give a fuck, his eyes give away nothing and I wait expectantly for some sort of comeback. 

“Don’t worry about him y/n, he knows no one’s walking in. He just asking questions he shouldn’t” Mike waved him off as Marcus in the kitchen where he was already hammering my snacks. 

Armando still staring and this becoming increasingly awkward, you handed him some clothes, not noticing which ones you offered him, he took them without fight and walked to the shower without a single thank you, causing you to mutter “a thank you would be nice, it’s not like I’m begging for you to stay” 

“Enojado te queda bien” he mumbled as he slammed the door. You furrowed your brows, unsure of what he just told you, he could have insulted you for all you know. You had known this man for all of five minutes and he was already getting on your nerves. Slipping off your hoddie, you noticed Mike and Marcus plating some of the leftovers which you were happy about, you followed in to help them and although the man in the bathroom was pissing you off, you did feel bad for him given he was just in prison and was now on the run because someone was trying to kill him so Ultimately, you decided to plate him some too before they demolished it all. 

“Your son is showering I think, so you guys can go next. The clothes are on the couch” you announced as you plated the food. Marcus paused plating and eyed out the plate in your hand.

“I thought you ate” he asked knowingly, well it was more of a statement that caused you to roll your eyes.

“Don’t give me that look Marcus, I’m putting him a plate before you demolish the food” you explained in defence. 

“Mhmm” he hummed offering me a side eye while he returned to plating his food. 

“Marcus don’t mhm me! As much of a dick he is, I’m not heartless” you argued again defensively, there was most definitely nothing of what Marcus was insinuating. He was a criminal for god’s sake! Yes, a gorgeous one but nevertheless a criminal.

You moved to dish as the boys went to eat dinner on the couch, given the size of your house, there was really no room to fit a dining table in the kitchen or living room, so you opted to have a multi-use coffee table instead. As you were washing the dishes you heard the bathroom door open, forcing yourself not to turn your head only so you didn’t offer Marcus anymore ammo to suggest anything further, continuing to clean you dishes. You felt the warmth of his presence near you as you assumed he was reaching for the food you’d plated him, the closer he got, the harder it was to keep your eyes trained on the dishes, let alone your focus. You moved your eyes slightly to see him eyeing the food out with caution, any tension remaining sprinting out of your body as you rolled your eyes at his distrust.

“it’s not poisoned Armando” you stated obviously unable to hide the second eye roll. His eyes lifting with his head still facing down and lips tilted in a slight smirked. Soon after his head followed the position of his eyes, looking straight at you with a smirk. His eyes slowly skimming your now slightly more exposed body up & down until he finally reached your eyes again. Your brows furrowed yet again, analysing the situation that just occurred.

“Are you? Are you trying to piss me off on purpose?” you questioned with your voice an octave higher.

He chuckled at your question and flicked his head in demand “Can I have a fork Mami?” he asked with the same smirk on his face.

You were embarrassed to admit the baby name caught you off guard, he had your head turning to the forks trying to identify the purpose of the utensil he requested, then turning back to him trying to figure out what game he was playing.

You turned you back to the forks and him at least twice until you demanded an answer “Why are you trying to piss me off, what’s your game?” you asked furiously as you grabbed him a fork.

“Like I said, Angry looks good on you mami” he stated as a matter of fact. Your eyes widen in shock and if you were flustered before, you were a walking mess after that comment. You stood in the kitchen staring at his back absolutely flabbergasted at the sudden change, you needed a second to breath, to process the two comments he made. One minute he was as cold as Antarctica, next he was playing jokes and calling you very cute nicknames that may or may not have sounded 10 times better in his accent. You pinched yourself and walked to the living room hearing Mike call you in the background, deciding to sit on the floor far from Armando and turned straight to Mike.

“Did you like the food?” You asked Mike, trying to ignore the hot stare on your left. You could feel him staring and eating at the same time.

“Thank you so much y/n, for the food but also for putting yourself on the line for us, I know what risk you are taking.” He thanked with sincerity.

You smiled at his sincerity “Mike, you know I would stop everything for you guys, next time just come straight to me please?” you asked honestly, and he smiled back and nodded acknowledging your heartfelt request. You, out of instinct turned your focus to the burning stares on your left, forgetting your internal feud and notice him staring intently this time, no playfulness or smugness, just wonder and awe at your loyalty. His focus re-trained, noticing you starting he smiled, not one reaching his eyes but one that you could tell meant something. This smile sparked something in you, it was probably also seeing him eat like he hadn’t eaten in months, which may have truly been the case, given that he was in prison, but whatever it was it had you inclined to personally ask him if he liked the food.

“Are you enjoying the meal, Armando?” you asked as you looked at him innocently, and while it may as well could have been innocent. Armando’s heart melted at little at your concern, he could see the worry in your eyes, the need for him to say yes that he was enjoying it. Not that he would be lying if he said yes, he hadn’t eaten a proper meal in months, let alone a home cooked piece of steak but that face would have made him say yes anyway.

The jokes and games for a second forgotten, lost in your eyes and he smiled softly as he answered “Yes, thank you y/n”. She smiled and looked toward her lap with a slight blush on her face leaving Armando weak for more. He coughed almost to break the spell you had put him under and looked at Mike, his brows were raised almost as warning but right now, he really didn’t care, he just wanted to make you smile again.

“Ok, well! I’ll take that as my cue, Mike you wanna go sleep?” Marcus announced awkwardly. Mike caught on quick and jumped at the offer agreeing at least three times that he was tired.

“Oh uh of course, I have a spare room, there is a mattress under the bed too if you guys want to take the spare room?” you blinked, shaking yourself out of whatever head fuck that Armando caused as offered the room.

“Yeah, sounds good, Armando are you good to take the couch?” Mike asked not really giving him an option. Armando just nodded while finishing of his food.

“Armando can take my room, I’m okay on the couch tonight” I offered, knowing they’d only be staying here tonight.

“No. the couch is fine” He answered, causing you to frown a little as the dismissive tone on his voice. But little did you know, he didn’t want you sleeping on the couch.

“Honestly it’s fine, you guys are only here for one night and no offense, but you’ve been sleeping in a prison for ages, I fall asleep on my couch all the time” You over-explained hoping he would take you up on your offer. You looked at Mike and Marcus for encouragement and when they weren’t going to assist, you threw them a glare that forced them to convince him to take your bed. He reluctantly agreed and thanked you to which you smiled at again. God he should have said yes sooner if he’d known he’d see your smile again.

The boys cleaned up their plates and went off to bed as they had a so aggressively agreed they needed to do. You noticed Armando had finished his plate, so you offered him more which he politely declined. To say you were confused was an understatement, one minute he was mean and defensive, then flirty and now nice. He was difficult to read and even harder to please.

He packed his plate up as well; you watched as he then stood at the sink cleaning his dishes as you moved to the couch crossing your legs. He was wearing a black tank top that had his tanned arms on display, biceps flexing every time he scrubbed a little harder, at this point, you were staring at him unashamedly. Well, that was before he called you out for it.

“You gonna keep staring, or you wanna help” he smirked still washing, but you were not going to let him have this one, not while you had the confidence to stare at him.

“didn’t I give you a top plus the tank?” You asked knowing that you were calling him out for choosing to look so fucking sexy right now. Ok maybe it wasn’t much of a comeback, but hopefully it would catch him off guard, the same way he did to you. He paused washing, indicating it may have had the desired effect, causing a small smirk to lift on your lips.

He looked up, rinsing off the last dish “Where’d your hoodie go?” he asked back almost in retaliation walking closer to you. You just lifted your shoulders with a cheeky confused look on your face “Tienes suerte eres hermosa” He commented in Spanish again.

Brows furrowing yet again with a slight frown “What does that mean?” more confident to ask.

He smiled so softly and leaned in close to your face, your eyes followed his movements and face still. As he moved closer to your ear, your eyes moved straight ahead focusing on his voice. “You are lucky you're beautiful” He translated. Your head turned so quickly looking directly at him, your faces almost touching. He looked down at your lips and then back up your eyes, his head moved slightly and opted for a soft peck on the cheek as he whispered goodnight.

This man would be the absolute death of you, you knew this for sure.

[cherubfae]

dunmeshi + crushing on a strong beast-like reader!

ft. laios, marcille, chilchuck, namari, mickbell, & kabru

tags: sfw, bit of blood/gore, alcohol consumption, gender neutral/ implied afab reader (use of they/them), reader wraps their chest!, reader is implied to be a canine-like beast but left ambiguous (wolf, fox, coyote, etc) lovedrunk and flustered babies, pre-established relationship, reader can be interpreted as a beast-man, magically altered being, were-beast, etc!!, they can turn into an actual beast

a/n: I flustered myself writing this lmao, clearly i do not have favorites whaaaa-- haha! it's good to be back. I hope all of you are well and you enjoy this fic!! kabru's got unintentionally longggg <3 -- noah

Laios

Holy crow!! You are so, so, amazing!! This man will watch in awe as you easily strike down your enemy with a single downstroke of your blade. It glides through the monster like butter, a gust of wind from the blow kicking up dirt and debris.

You scoff, nose twitching in disgust as you shake off the bits of blood and gore that cling to the sharp steel. Your eyes drift upwards, ears perking up at Laios's interest. Eyebrow lifting into your hairline in question.

"O-oh, ah, good job!" Laios sputters, a rosy hue coating his cheeks. Lips tilting into a slight smirk you nod in response. You give him a thumbs up, winking your eye playfully at the blonde.

"Happy to help! By the way, why're you all red?"

Laios gulped, "Ju-just kind of warm in here, y'know? M'okay." He tugs at the collar beneath his chest armor for effect, his golden gaze looking anywhere but down at you and your pretty smile. He absolutely doesn't want to fixate how the points of your fangs jut out ever so slightly from beneath your upper lip, and how much he would very much like to touch them.

Marcille

She's no better than a man, she's no better than a man, she's no better than a man--

Marcille, despite the shame that digs deep into her gut, cannot tear her eyes away from you as you wash away the soot and ash covering your arms. Your shirt had been torn by the blast of one her explosive spells, leaving your arms and a bit of your bare torso exposed.

Tracing the path your veins map out, Marcille swallows thickly. Your arms were defined with muscle, not too bulky. You had clearly worked hard to get where you are. A much more experienced and capable dungeon explorer.

"You alright, Marcy?" Your voice floats to her ears, making them twitch. Suddenly bursting into a panic, Marcille blubbers out a screech.

Floundering, she squeaks, "Ah! Yes!! I'm so sorry-- your shirt!! I can fix it!" She grasps her staff, crowding herself in front of you. You wave her off gently, patting her shoulder.

You grin, fangs poking out. "Nah, s'alright. Got another one in my pack." You turn your back to her, peeling off the remains of your shirt, adjusting the wraps around your chest and back before kneeling down to rummage in your rucksack for a new tunic. Marcille damn near passes out.

Chilchuck

Normally he hates being shoved out of the way and pushed around like he's some kid, but with the absolute onslaught you bring during fighting, he's glad to have you looking out for him!

You are so many things: strong, swift, quick on your feet, and can be incredibly brutal when you need to be. You aren't just a threat to an enemy you face, you are a promise. You see to it that any foe will not harm your party.

Chilchuck himself isn't immune to the way you seem to get a bit more feral when he is threatened."He-ey!! What are you--!" He can't stop the way his heart leaps into his throat. His surprised gasp cut short when you scoop him up into your arms, dodging a long bow arrow barreling towards him.

With ears ringing at the deep, low snarl rumbling in the back of your throat, Chil blinks owlishly. He follows your gaze to see living armor being taken down by Izutsumi. Sighing in relief, the halfling relaxes in your embrace. He is incredibly lucky to have you looking out for him! Glancing up at you, his face explodes into a red glow upon seeing your tender gaze already transfixed on him.

Yeah, you might end up being the death of him.

Namari

A person after her own heart!! She revels in the rush of adrenaline that courses through her veins when she takes down an enemy, but you're even a step further than her!

Not only are you strong but you are an amazing asset to the team! You're incredibly versatile with weapons: axes, swords, lances, daggers, bows-- you name it! But what's really killer about you are your claws and teeth! How you can turn into an actual beast when angered enough, determined to fight for those you love. Namari has never met someone quite as unique as yourself. She just wished you weren't in Laios's party, but in hers.

You are immaculate, Namari thinks. She can't help but stare at you from across the bar, watching with an immense yearning as you laugh heartily with Laios and Marcille throwing your pints of ale up in a toast.

"Why don't you go talk to them? O-oh shit, here they come!" Chilchuck slurs from behind his own pint, cheeks flushed pink from the alcohol. Namari sighs, too buried in her own thoughts to register her friend's words. Setting down her cup fingers sliding along the lip of the glass. She clumsily reaches over for the pitcher, gasping as it nearly tumbles off the edge of the table. You catch it with ease, smiling with that same kind smile she loved.

Pulling up a stool, you settle down besides the two on the opposite end. Smiling, you refill your friend's drinks before filling up your own tumbler once more. Chilchuck downs his drink in one go, hiccupping softly. Folding his arms in front of him, he rests his head atop them for a quick snooze.

Snickering, your gaze turns to Namari, who suddenly feels like she's sobering up at a rapid pace. You're absolutely beautiful in the orange glow and warmth of the tavern. Drowning out the sound of the drunkards, she can barely focus on the words you're saying, her eyes going cross-eyed as she tries to read your lips.

"Let's get you home, Namari. I think you need some sleep." You gently muse, standing from your stool. Waving over your shoulder at Laios, you help Namari up, leaning her against your body. Marcille lifts Chilchuck up onto her back like a rucksack, despite his protests he ultimately relented. (They totally bickered like a teen daughter and her middle-aged father about wanting to stay five more minutes)

The night air was cool against your flushed skin. Namari shudders, tucking her chin and nose beneath the wool collar of her shirt, pressing herself closer to you and your warmth. Her hand slides carefully into yours, wobbly smiling when you lightly squeeze her hand. Even in her drunken stupor, she can't fight the awe of how easily you sway her stubborn heart.

Mickbell

If Kuro isn't the first to rush to Mickbell's aid, it's you instead. The more you help rescue him, the more he will start to rely on you, so don't you slack off!!

Mick gets an absolute kick out of watching you blast any sort of enemy away with your strength and he'd never admit out loud how much he enjoys the view, especially if you're defending him.<3 it makes him feel all giddy when you swoop in and save him.

Today was no different than before. A morgue of ghosts swarm the immediate area, dropping the temperature down a few levels. Accompanying the specters, is a lone basilisk. It's dual heads watching Mickbell like a lion on a hunt. Warm puffs of breath cling to the air as Kabru readies his sword, Holm making his way to the opposite end of the basilisk, a jar of holy water in his hands.

The basilisk lets out an ungodly shriek and surges forward. Knocking Mickbell back, you press your body over his, effectively becoming a shield over him. You're snarling, teeth exposed with intent to bite. Mick curls his hands against your tunic, eyes squeezing tight and prepares for impact.

"Now Holm!" Kabru slices downwards as Holm slices upwards, decapitating both heads. Mumuring a silent spell, Holm swirls the jar of holy water around like a lasso, shooing away the ghosts.

Gently prying Mick's hands from your shirt, you place a warm palm to his chilled cheek. His downcast green eyes open immediately, and he throws himself into your embrace, winding his arms around your neck. "Gaaah!! That was so scary!!" Over your shoulder, you miss how Mickbell gives Kuro a cheeky grin and a thumbs up.

Kabru

He has met all sorts of travelers and merchants and dungeon experts. While Laios is one that perplexes him, Kabru's curiosity in you reaches a certain level of fondness he isn't quite equipped to deal with. He knows he will be able to rely on you in the heat of battle at any given time. Your strength is plentiful, but even you have your limits.

"Does it still hurt?" Kabru softly asked. He sits beside you on the stone floor, shuddering at the slight chill that seeps in through his clothing. You lift your gaze to him, blinking slow. Kabru notes how your pupils dilate ever so slightly when you face him, something he feels hopeful for. You return your attention to the wound on your leg neatly wrapped in bandages-- a direwolf bite.

Giving a noncommittal shrug, you finish your handiwork, setting the bloodied old bandages ablaze. "I've had worse. If the wolf had broken my bones, that'd be another story. I don't want Rinsha wasting her mana on me. I can keep up just fine, I won't slow us down."

Kabru takes your chin between his thumb and forefinger softly, forcing you to look at him. "I didn't ask if you could keep up, I asked if it still hurt. You got hurt because you saved me from that direwolf, I've failed you." There's a tenderness in his azure stare.

"It hurts a bit," you whisper, unable to glance away. "You never fail me, Kabru." You smile. Kabru looses a small breath.

"I won't let that happen again. You have my word." For a moment, the world stills and the two of you find yourself leaning in. You can feel his warm breath on your lips, hyperaware of his large palm sliding down your arm to rest on your waist. Your hands slid to the front of his tunic, curling your knuckles into the fabric. He gasps softly when you tug him to you, lips almost touching when--

"HEY KABRU!" The shrill voice of Mickbell jerks the two of you apart. You gasp sharply as your leg knocks into the adjacent stone wall. Kabru is instantly at your side fretting over you.

Mickbell stares you two down from the doorway at opposite end of the room, mouth drawn into a confused expression. "Uhh, hey. Just wanted to know what's for dinner. You two good? Why do you look so red?" He shrugs his shoulders half a second later, deciding he really didn't care to know the answer. Wiggling himself between the two of you, Mickbell sighs and folds his arms back behind his head with closed eyes; completely oblivious to the shared flustered looks you and Kabru are sending one another.

|| please don't repost, reuse, or edit my works in any way! I do not give permission. Tumblr is the only site where I post. All characters belong to their rightful owner and the story belongs to me © CHERUBFAE 2024 ||

[sailorrlino]

Rodeo | lmh (m)

𓆩⟡𓆪 Pairing: hitman!Minho x arms dealer! F. reader

𓆩⟡𓆪 Summary: Minho’s relationship with you is like a good weapon - uncomplicated, refined, and trustworthy. He likes it that way. When you appear on his target list, his relationship with you becomes quite the opposite - complicated, rough, and unreliable. 

𓆩⟡𓆪 Word Count: 18,249

𓆩⟡𓆪 Genre: Cyberpunk | Smut | Angst | Peers to Something

𓆩⟡𓆪 Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately. 

𓆩⟡𓆪 Warnings: Violence, world building, murder, discussion of murder, depictions of blood and fight sequences, brief mentions of drugs, depictions of wounds and treating them with syringes if you don’t like needles, explicit language, depiction of an anxiety attack, angst and self-doubt, Minho being an idiot, gun fights and scenes with weapons, some vague terms and references specific to the world building, sexually explicit content featuring oral (f. receiving), vaginal fingering, unprotected sex, cum eating, bodily fluids, and mentions of spit in several places. I think that covers everything, for the most part. 

𓆩⟡𓆪 A/N: This is what happens when writers just write what they're inspired for. After almost two months of being unable to write, I got this random idea and I just went with it and took advantage of the moment and... genuinely had so much fun writing this. It got so much longer and more complex than I meant to, but I hope you enjoy.

𓆩⟡𓆪 A/N 2: This work is heavily inspired by Fallout 4, Blade Runner, Altered Carbon and the lovely song Rodeo by WayV. I imagine Rodeo playing during the shootout scene at the bar. Additionally, a fun fact: I use the nato alphabet to communicate Minho's targets and reader's target in this spells out 'reader' in the nato alphabet :)

𓆩⟡𓆪 Posted: Sunday, March 3 2024

𓆩⟡𓆪 Disclaimer: All members of Stray Kids are faces and name claims for this story. This is entirely a work of fiction and by no means is meant to be a projection, judgment or representation of real-life people. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios.

| Masterlist | Ask | Tag List Request Form | Song Inspiration

Any work is good work. 

Minho isn’t so sure that his father would say that as he crouches down next to the body on the living room floor. His thigh muscles protest, aching and tight from hours of sitting crouched across the street in the chill of a high-rise building waiting for his prey to enter this very building. 

Neon light bleeds through the foggy window behind him. The room is awash in watery pink as he pulls out his scanner with one hand and leans forward with the other, pressing his gloved fingers to the man's chin to push his head to the side. It rolls easily, giving a fleshy sound that might make someone squeamish as the man’s cheek hits the floor. 

Any work is good work, Minho thinks as he scans the man's non-existent pulse with his watch. He sees the blue ring of the biochip flash beneath cooling flesh, his watch flashing green with a soft buzz. The man’s entire life flashes on the screen - full name, date of birth, ID number, blood type, and place of work. Everything about him casts a sickly green glow on Minho’s sharp face.

Tapping a few buttons on the watch face, he waits, holding his wrist near his mouth as the sound of a dial tone chimes once. It’s silent in the apartment, though he can hear the hum of airborne traffic a few blocks off as the roar of adrenaline winds down. 

“Receiving,” a male voice answers. Minho doesn’t know who it is - he just knows he’s one of any of the Delegators who work for Collect Co. 

“Collection request number alpha-echo-tango-delta complete, served by Collector 102598.” 

“Collected alpha-echo-tango-delta confirmed. Please place a beacon before you leave. All credits for this Collection have been transferred to your account. Please wait five to seven business days before funds are available for use. Your next collection is in four hours, seven minutes, and eight United Seconds.” 

The line goes dead. The glow of the watch makes him squint before he can lower his brightness, scrolling to his bank account. He sees the credits added with a transaction pending. When he was a kid, the number glowing at the bottom of the screen to indicate his balance might have excited him. Now, it’s just a number on a screen that confirms the power won’t go out at his apartment and that he won’t go hungry.

Minho’s knees crack as he stands. He groans and leans backward, pressing his hands into the small of his back. A series of cracks slither up his spine, making his eyes roll back as he shuts them for a moment and shivers. 

He’s so goddamn sore.

Leaving the body on the carpet of the living area, he goes over to pick up the handgun resting on the counter. The energy weapon glows at his touch, syncing with his interface briefly before he holsters it inside his jacket. 

While he is technically within the law to eliminate targets for Collect Co., Minho finds that most people find it unsettling when Collectors walk around with weapons. He hasn’t given much thought to what people think about him, but it certainly causes a lot less trouble when he looks like an average businessman going to and from work instead of a licensed killer.

The gun isn’t technically legal, either. He would probably get away with it if a United Enforcer stopped him. The hitmen of the privately funded but government-sanctioned Collect Co., do not technically outrank the government’s militia, but no one with a badge is going to tell a Collector no. Not if they can help it, anyway.

Tossing a beacon on the counter for the cleanup crew to track to the apartment and get rid of the body and clean, Minho heads outside into the rain. He ducks his head down against it, water sliding off the slicker jacket he hugs a little tighter. He feels warmth kick in and his mouth twitches at the sign of the heating system in the body armor on his chest is doing its job. A nifty little upgrade from you, he knows. 

At the thought of you, Minho turns north toward the speed train, remembering that he needs an adjustment on his armor that is out of sync with his watch, and JumpPacks. He already used the last one about five hours ago and he feels the numbness of exhaustion buzzing at his edges, a warning sign that if he doesn’t get a jump or sleep he’s going to pass out.

Whichever comes first. 

Smears of color splash across the wet sidewalk as he jogs down the steps to the train. It smells wet and foul, making him tuck his chin to his chest as he rushes to the fast-closing door of the train. He steps over the threshold just as the doors clang shut, the hissing of an airlock barely finishing before it launches forward. 

He tenses to avoid being pitched forward into one of the standing railings. As the train rocks, the fluorescents above nearly blinding him, he finds a seat toward the back of an empty car. This late at night, there are only two other people in sight, both of them curled heaps of clothes on a seat, fast asleep. 

Sleep tugs at him the moment Minho sits down. He has a twenty-minute ride to North Ward Three, dropping his head against the back of the seat and closing his eyes. 

The light still hums behind his closed lids, making a splash of colors. There’s no sound save for the whine of the magnetic rail beneath his feet and the occasional mechanical creek as the vehicle sways. 

He melts into the seat a little, limbs loose. Fuck he needs a JumpPack. The last forty-eight hours awake are wearing him thin at the edges, stretching him like fabric over a surface far too wide. The forty-eight-hour mark is when he starts to decline, and as soon as he starts to creep toward seventy, he knows it’ll get messy. 

Minho is a lot of things, but he is ultimately human. The JumpPack can help him push beyond shaky hands, imagining things that aren’t there and the foggy thinking, but they won’t keep him sharp forever. 

As if proving his point, Minho hangs somewhere between awake and asleep, suspended in a dreamy space where he can still feel the rocking of the train but doesn’t feel the ache in his limbs or the pressure growing behind his eyes. 

He flinches when the chime echoes above him at the next stop, eyes flying wide for a moment as his gaze sweeps the train car, his hand on the inside of his jacket where he grips the handle of a very nice knife. 

No one enters the car. It’s just him and the other two sleeping people - he isn’t sure they’re even alive, really - and he relaxes, cursing at himself. This time when he drifts, he does so with a little more awareness, hand tucked warm against his chest and wrapped firmly around the blade.

It’s a unique little knife, snug in the sheath that’s buckled to the leather harness under his jacket. The handle is firm and made from non-conductive material that fits his exact grip from the meticulous measurements you took of his hand. You crafted the blade from a metal alloy you’d been playing around with and lined it with a highly conductive silver alloy you’d perfected.

When the button on the end of the handle is pressed, 5,000 volts of lethal electricity pulses through the sliver, finishing off a victim if he manages to fuck up a killing blow. It’s saved his life a few times in situations like now when he’s exhausted and his guard is blurry, or when someone has decided to make him the target for robbery. 

A lot of your little gadgets have saved his life. You like to remind him every time he visits you. He doesn’t mind, though. You’re an easy enough arms dealer - easier than anyone else in the city, really. You don’t ask the kind of questions that he doesn’t want to answer, and you’re always two steps ahead of him. Even your prices are fair, which he used to find suspicious. 

But Changbin and Jisung both swear by your tech and your business, and Minho is just happy that he doesn’t have to worry about you trying to give him a shitty deal or fuck him over. 

The Collection industry is made for fucking over. He knows the system can be fucked with, especially the closer to the top you get. 

Almost everyone tries to fuck Minho over. More than once he’s shown up as a Collection Request. He doesn’t know if it’s the system trying to clean up after itself or someone pulling strings to get him out of their way. It’s probably both, but every time it happens, he’s managed to evade it. 

A Reverse Collection, those in his industry call it. In a way, it’s sort of like a pop quiz. He gets attacked or shot at, and if he wins, he passes the test and reverses the Collection, earning him more time without any coworkers trying to murder him. The Delegators don’t seem to care which Collector murders the other, and he’s never suffered for coming out on top. 

Any work is good work. 

Minho snorts at the thought, feeling the deep twinge in his extremities as he rouses himself, the train coming to his stop. 

Rain sluices the streets in North Ward Three. Here, the streets are busier with an assault of people, smells, and sounds. LED umbrellas float along like jellyfish as people walk from pleasure house to food stand to fight arena. The hologram advertisements and neon signs are louder here, inescapable. 

“The United Republic stands for justice, equality, prosperity and freedom, bought by the noble sacrifice of the United Church. Join us today-” Minho presses the ad blocker on his watch. 

Immediately the holograms vanish and there’s just the neon watercolor reflecting off the umbrellas as he walks down the stairs of Neon Rodeo, the orange lights making his eyes throb as he reaches the door manned by two guards. 

They know him immediately but they scan the biochip in his neck anyway. When they’re pleased, they step aside and the door slides automatically, the base vibrating his ribcage as he steps into the dingy light, hesitating to let his eyes adjust.

True to the name, there is neon fucking everywhere. The servers are dressed in chaps with LED lights and glittering tassels, their cowboy hats flashing smiling faces on top of their head. The neon here is low-grade and covered in layers of dust, giving the air a dusky, burning sort of glow as he walks around tables.

Eyes follow him as he goes. The regulars are familiar with him, tipping their head in greeting though he doesn’t do more than watch them from the corner of his eyes. The servers all slow-smile at him, teeth too white and too glittering. He finds them more unsettling than attractive, and he quickens his step to the unmarked door at the back where Hyunjin sits on a stool.

Hyunjin is perhaps the most unsettling thing in the Neon Rodeo. His eyes are a strange grey, looking at Minho as he approaches. There is a predatory gaze in Hyunjin’s eyes that never fades, a sort of knowing in them that Minho can’t shake. Minho knows Hyunjin is entirely human, but every time he approaches the man, Minho is suddenly unsure. 

Nightcrawler.

Minho has heard the whispers about Hyunjin. He believes them, too. Everything about Hyunjin is like a carefully balanced blade, ready to tip in either direction. His senses are honed to perfection and he has a habit of both blending in and standing out depending on his mood. 

And he can kill. Minho has seen the lethal man in action a single time when someone tried to push past him into the Builder’s sanctuary. Hyunjin had been so fast that even Minho had a hard time keeping up, struck by how efficiently and quickly the former assassin moved.

Unnatural. Everything about him is uncanny, which is in line with everything Minho has heard about the underground sect of killers. What Minho does is legally sanctioned murder. The Nightcrawlers do something far more sinister, their skills going beyond the natural desire for order in the United Republic. 

Agents of disorder and chaos. That’s what some say. Minho isn’t sure where his opinion lands on the spectrum, but he gives them a healthy distance and respect either way.

Even the way Hyunjin sits on the barstool is unnatural, one foot kicked up on the bar between his legs, the other stretched out in front of him as he leans forward, his hand on the front lip of the seat. 

“Hello, Cowboy,” Hyunjin greets, voice deep and smooth. 

His hair is blonde today, slicked back out of his face, the ends touching his shoulders. He’s dressed in a black button-up with a cow print pattern across the shoulders and white, beaded tassels outlining the pattern. His dark pants are tight and he makes no effort to hide the gun on his waist or the knife handle peeking out the top of his cowboy boot.

“I don’t like when you call me that.”

Hyunjin’s smile makes the hair on Minho’s arms stand on end. “I know, but I like it.”

The guard makes no move to let Minho in and he tries not to show he’s irritated. By the way the grin spreads on Hyunjin’s face, Minho can safely assume he isn’t doing a great job. “Is the Builder in or not?” 

“Who is to say?” 

“Just tell her I’m here.” 

“If she’s in, she already knows.” Hyunjin nods toward an empty stool at the bar. “You can wait, Cowboy.” 

Gritting his teeth, Minho turns on his heel to sit on the stool a few feet away. Hyunjin’s uncanny eyes follow him, never leaving him once. Minho ignores him in favor of asking for water at the bar, the headache pressing behind his eyes growing more intense with the loud music and the choking smell of cigars. 

When the water comes back, it’s warm without ice. He glares at the bartender who has already moved on to paying customers. The water is tepid and a little sour, making him cringe. He’s pretty sure it came from the faucet, but he sips on it anyway, eying the grimy fingerprints on the glass. 

A cowgirl slides up next to him, her pink vest pulled tight across her chest, showing sweat-slick skin. She smells like vanilla, the scent overpowering as she leans in, lacquered lips grinning.

“Don’t,” Minho grunts, sipping the water. “Not interested.”

“But you’re so pretty.”

A severe reprimand dies on his tongue as Hyunjin appears like a wraith, leaning in close to murmur, “Builder is ready for you, Cowboy.” 

The cowgirl cowers away from the Nightcrawler, pressing up against the counter and fleeing as soon as he slinks away. If Hyunjin is offended, he doesn’t show it. He slips back onto the stool with that same eager lean, watching Minho through narrowed eyes as the Collector gets up and walks briskly to the now-open door. 

Minho doesn’t turn around when the door shuts behind him, immediately cutting off all sound. The door leads to a step of steps, mirrored walls on either side with glowing orange light strips above them. He climbs the stairs as quickly as he can, his head swimming a little as he gets to the top. 

The entire second floor is a massive, open-concept workshop. Tables covered with papers and instruments are placed in a chaotic maze, glowing screens with slow-spinning schematics and drawings giving the space a clinical, blue light. Workbenches with user interfaces hum along the corners of the room. Closed metal doors and offices stretch down a hall toward the pack, all under high-tech padlocks and surely protected with some sort of weapon system, if Minho had to guess.

Amid the organized chaos is you. The Builder. 

Minho hates calling you that. He thinks it’s a little ridiculous of a title, but it suits you. There is nothing in this room you haven’t built and no weapon on his person that was not carefully crafted by you. He hesitates to watch you, standing at the edge of your luminescent domain as you lean over something, a small welding tool in your hand. 

“Do you need a formal invitation, Cowboy?” 

He doesn’t mind the name from you. He tells himself that it’s because, despite his predisposition to not liking people, he doesn’t dislike you. You’re easy to deal with, sort of like the weapons you make. You make his life functional and you’re to the point. He admires that, and he’s willing to take a little bit of prodding and joking from you as a trade-off.

Wordlessly, he floats toward you. You don’t look up to greet him, but you kick your foot out and hook the toe of your boot underneath the leg of a stool to pull it out for him to sit on. He can smell a hint of jasmine and amber wafting from where you sit, making him clench his jaw as he fights a shiver. 

“I don’t have long,” he says, forgoing the seat. “Just need JumpPacks and wanted to drop off my armor. It’s having trouble connecting with the interface of the watch. I hit it pretty hard last night and I think I damaged the receiver.” 

That gets your attention, drawing your sharp gaze up to him. But instead of dropping your eyes to his chest where the flexible armor stretches across his chest, you zero in on Minho’s face. 

Your silence is uncomfortable, but he remains unmoving, willing himself to stay in place under your calculating gaze. You lean forward, eyes drinking him in, examining him the way you would a schematic for a weapon or a complicated piece of data. 

Minho busies himself with looking at you in return. There’s a crease growing deeper in your brow and your pretty mouth - he doesn’t remember when he started thinking it was pretty - begins to dip, displeased at something you find in his face. 

“When is the last time you slept?”

“Are you psychoanalyzing me?” You level a stare at him and he feels his mouth twitch. Minho thinks besides the occasional joke from Jisung - which he defines as Jisung accidentally hurting himself - you might be the only person who makes him want to smile. “Fifty-two hours, eighteen minutes and forty United Seconds.”

“No to the JumpPack,” you say finally. “Sleep.”

“I have another target in three hours, twenty-eight minutes and fifteen United Seconds.” 

“Down the hall and second door on the right. Sleep for two hours. It won’t kill you.” He opens his mouth to protest you cut him off, “I’ll be done by the time you’re up. Take off your armor.” 

His hands open and close. You’ve never declined a JumpPack before. You’ve definitely never offered sleep before. He stands buoyed by his confusion before he reluctantly sheds the jacket. It crinkles in the silence as he shucks it from his shoulder and neatly folds it, placing it on the stool you had intended for him to sit on. 

Next, he sheds the holster, his gun, and a few knives clanking as he does. You seem amused by the amount of weapons he’s managed to shove in the leather straps and he shrugs a little at your arched brow. 

Minho’s shirt is more armor than a shirt. It’s made from highly coveted synthetic material with hard but flexible geometric pieces stitched in that sync with his watch to turn on a light energy shield, pulse when there’s an energy weapon aimed at him, and generally keep anyone from being able to stab him. You’ve also added little things like warming sensors and anti-theft. 

Delicately, Minho peels off the shirt. He marvels as it moves, surprised at the give and flex of the material every time. He hands it over and you snatch it, tossing it on your work counter as if it’s not the most expensive piece of technology he owns. 

Immediately he’s covered in goosebumps. Your studio is bitter cold and you always wear sweaters and jackets with sleeves pulled over your hands. You’re dressed as such now, the too-long sleeves on your arms pooling over your hands as he stands there, trying not to shiver. 

You pay no mind to his armor, instead standing up and twisting your mouth in a frown as your gaze skirts his chest and stomach. For a second he feels self-conscious, which he thinks is a little ridiculous as he glances down his chest. He realizes there is bruising blooming across him, spider webbing across to show when the armor unsynced and he took a few hard punches. 

Minho holds his breath when you lift your hands, as though you’re going to brush the tips of your fingers over each wound. Your hands are smaller than his and far more delicate, nimble fingers reminding him of artists. His mother was an artist. Her slim hands and careful brushstrokes are one of the few things he remembers about her. 

That, and that she chose to leave him.

Minho finds himself so hypnotized by your hands that your voice startles him when you say, “Three hours, twenty-seven minutes and five seconds, Cowboy.” 

You drop your hands and step away. He nods and sheds his watch as well, handing it over. “Alright.” 

With heavy footsteps, he follows the directions to the appointed room. He’s a little off balance, his hip catching the corner of a table as he goes. He curses loudly, hands shooting to his hip where pain blooms from the jab. Your laughter trills behind him and he scowls over his shoulder at you, but you’re unfolding his armored shirt. 

Muttering under his breath, he goes to the hall to the second door on the right. He’s never been in the hall before, but there are several doors lining each side. He carefully tries the handle, glancing up at the ceiling where a camera stares at him. 

The handle gives under his hand easily and he swings the door open to what looks like a very small and well-kept medical room. He raises his brows as he steps in and closes the door behind him. There’s no lock on the door, his finger brushing across the handle to find one. He thinks about grabbing the chair tucked into the desk and sticking it under the handle, but the thought evaporates as quickly as it forms.

He’s not in danger here. 

Slowly, he trods to the cot. It’s a standard size with a thin mattress and scratchy blankets. Carefully, he sits down and immediately his body sighs. Minho’s eyelids flutter as he sags for a second, shoulders rolling inward as he curves in on himself, exhaustion pressing in. 

He needs to take off his boots, but his arms feel heavy. He promises himself that he’ll do it in five more minutes before he gives up and lays down on his side, kicking his feet up boots and all onto the cot. The room is cool so he reaches for the blankets, uncaring that they scrape against his bumps and bruises. 

The last fifty-some-odd hours begin to press in on Minho, a physical force that squeezes everything out of him until he’s fading fast into a heavy, dreamless sleep. 

-

A gentle knock pulls Minho from a heavy sleep. He feels the dregs of it like a weighted shadow he can’t shake off, groaning and blinking at the ceiling a few times. His limbs feel heavier than ever and his neck cracks as he rolls it to the side to look at the room he’s in.

He suddenly remembers where he is, flinching a little as he sits up, movements jerky with nervousness. The room is still dark and cool, the itchy blanket falling to the floor as he sits and stares toward the door where there’s another knock. 

“Come in,” he rasps, voice deep and rough with sleep.

A crack of light appears in the doorway as you slip in. You’ve got your arms full of stuff, using your elbow to smack the touchpad near the door. Dark orange light fills the room, gentle enough that it doesn’t hurt his vision but bright enough to see that the stuff you’ve brought in is food and several bottles of water and some sort of blue liquid.

Minho eyes all of it warily, straightening as you stand in front of him, holding it out. He doesn’t move to take it and your mouth presses in a flat, firm line. “I know Collectors don’t have to be smart, but I do assume you know how to utilize the main food groups of the pyramid.”

He can smell the jasmine and amber again, soothing. “Why did you bring me food?”

“Because you look like shit, Cowboy. Don’t go losing your mind over a small gesture of goodwill.” 

Chagrined, he snatches the items from your hand. He immediately realizes that there are energy bars, protein bars, and packs of gel that will replenish immediate levels of hormones and vitamins. He eyes you curiously as he sets the pile on the bed next to him, ripping a foil back open with his teeth.

You cross the room to lean against the medical table in the corner, crossing your arms over your chest. When he doesn’t eat right away, you raise your brows, waiting. He pops the end of a gel back in his mouth and squeezes, immediately tasting blueberry and lemonade. It’s not half bad, making him hum in fascination.

That gets a grin from you, his mouth twitching at the corner again as he works the gel in his mouth to break it apart.

“Fixed your armor. How hard did you knock the watch?” His guilty expression tells all and you scowl. “It’s made with durast carbonate. It’s pretty shockproof.” 

“Didn’t mean to. Some guy’s goons jumped me when I was calling in the Collection. It um… took a bullet.” 

“How did they get the jump on you, hmm?” He stares. “Were you tired?” 

Instead of answering, he tosses the empty gel back on the bed and picks up a protein bar. He looks at it, squinting his eyes in the dim light. It’s peanut butter flavored, which he enjoys. He rips it open with his teeth and tears into it, realizing just how hungry he is.

Minho has no idea when his last meal was. He thinks you know his line of thinking, but you don’t say anything more. You’ve already gotten your barbs in and you don’t intend to poke until he’s truly annoyed or embarrassed, which he appreciates.

Without another word, you push off the desk and head to the door, slipping back through to leave him alone while he chews absently. 

Alone, Minho realizes the importance of accepting food from you without second-guessing it. He slows his chewing, contemplating about that. 

Minho’s relationship with you is like a good weapon - uncomplicated, refined, and trustworthy. Your tech has never failed him, you’ve always been reliable for a fast turnaround time or understanding of what he’s asking for, and you’ve never sold information about him.

Ever. He had tried to buy information from you on himself through multiple channels and pseudonyms just to see if you would, but he’d been met with steely silence each time. 

He eats with a little more enthusiasm as he realizes he does trust you. You’re as steadfast as the guns you build, and there is a confidence in that that he can at least resonate with.

Examining the contents of the blue liquid, he realizes it’s electrolytes and mineral compounds. As he takes long gulps, he realizes he feels infinitely better already, senses sharp, aches a little less terrible, and his headache is gone entirely. He’s not at a hundred percent, but he’s a hell of a lot better than if he had waited around for his next Collection. 

When he finishes, he crumbles the trash together and tosses it into the incinerator. He hears the fire hiss as it destroys the waste and sends the fumes somewhere to be turned into energy. 

In the main part of your lab, Minho spots you. He hesitates in the hall for a moment, watching you play with his watch. Movement in the corner of the room makes him tense up, hand going to the knife in his boot. He realizes it’s just Jeongin sliding across the room on a rolling chair, pushing away from his computer to examine what you’re doing.

Minho only relaxes marginally. He’s still getting used to seeing your apprentice in your workspace, and though the youth is excitable and intelligent, Minho refuses to let Jeongin near any of his builds. The trust he’s established with you over the last three years does not extend to apprentices he’s only known for a few months, no matter how much you trust them.

You trust the Nightcrawler too, and Minho cannot fathom why. 

As though sensing you on the edge of the room, you turn and look at him over your shoulder. The corner of your mouth lifts up and you beckon him eagerly before hunching over whatever you’re working on again. He strolls over, crossing his arms over his chest to lean against your worktable on the other side of you, eyeing Jeongin on your other side.

“Hello, Collector. How are you today?” Jeongin asks politely, giving Minho a smile that touches his eyes.

Minho says nothing. You elbow him sharply in the ribs and he coughs, clutching his stomach as he mumbles, “Fine, you?”

“Doing great, thanks! This piece of tech is a marvel.”

“My watch?”

It is his watch. A green light flashes on the underside of the face, the bio scanner that connects with the one with his neck to monitor his nervous system. You push the watch toward him and he carefully picks it up, brushing his thumb across the cool, glass screen.

An interface lights up again. He can’t figure out what’s so special until you gesture for him to put it on. It fits nicely, the perfect size. As he slides it into place and looks at the watch face, a diagram of thin body armor comes up, spinning. Except it looks different than the diagram that he’s used to, giving you a questioning look. You point to the corner of the room at a mannequin.

He walks over to it, cocking his head to the side as he stops in front of it. It’s far different from the armored shirt he wears. The contraption is equal parts ribcage and the thorax of a spider. The material looks like leather but feels hard to the touch like metal. 

Skirting his fingers to the hem, he bends the bottom of the shirt, watching as it flexes easily. It makes no sense to him how something could be so hard and flex immediately. If he were to guess, whatever the cloth is made from is a newer technology than he has access to. Perhaps more bio-engineered spider web. 

Minho’s fingers skirt inside of it, brushing across a strange, prickling fabric. It doesn’t hurt, but he brushes his fingers back and forth, rubbing the material between his fingers. It’s abrasive, but he can’t imagine what it is.

Blue flashes on the diagram on the watch. He pauses and presses his fingers to the needle-thin fabric. The watch flashes again and lines of color light up on the diagram, showing his nervous system in different, complex colors. He raises his brows. It’s far more sophisticated than what he came in with.

“The needles,” he calls, not taking his eyes off the contraption. “Do they connect with me?”

“Yes. When you put it on, it syncs with your biochemistry.” You get up and walk toward him. “You won’t even feel them. They’re the smallest on the market right now, and incredibly accurate. They use them in military armor to report back live health reports and status during enfighting. They’re more accurate than the sensors lined in your last one.”

“What’s the point, though?” 

You reach out and tap the watch. He watches curiously as a series of icons pop up, each a different color. “Inside of this,” you instruct, tapping the hard shell, “Is a series of chemical compounds. When you have on the armor underneath your shirt, you can tap to inject what you need. The needles don’t push deep, but they’re high-grade enough to break the barrier needed to disperse the compounds.” 

Minho looks up at you, silent. You don’t notice his trepidation, carrying on as you go into salesperson mode, explaining everything. “Blue is elektrolytes,” you instruct, pointing to it. “Green is a chemical compound of cortisol and adrenaline. Yellow is endorphins and an incredibly high-dose painkiller.”

“And purple?”

“Jump,” you deadpan. “But a compounded version Jeongin and I have worked on that lasts longer with less damaging effect. You should be able to sleep easier after using it. And you won’t need several JumpPacks a day to keep going. I can give you refills too, since it’s non-addictive.”

Minho stares. “What?”

“What part didn’t you get?”

“This is for me?” You scowl but he immediately notices the way you divert your eyes. You glance up at the ceiling, shifting from foot to food. “This is worth a million United Credits at least. I can’t afford it.”

“Do you see a price tag?”

“You can’t give me this for free.” 

“Of course I can. It’s just a prototype, so if it accidentally malfunctions and sends all injection options to your body at once and kills you, well…” You shrug. “At least you didn’t pay me. Consider yourself a test subject. I’ve never integrated the needle network into armor before. I don’t have the builds the military uses, just intel. I had to do it from scratch, so it might not work. Your current armor doesn’t protect you from plasma. This does.”

Minho doesn’t buy your bullshit for two seconds. He knows you wouldn’t give him this if it would risk killing him. For all your jesting and affectation, Minho has learned how to read you pretty well, and the way you blow him off and scoff tells him everything he needs to know. 

It is a favor and a gift, and a new sort of olive branch that he is unsure how to accept or take from you. Taking this gift worth more than his entire salary complicates things.

Did you make this specifically for him? He’s not sure. But the fact that he wants the answer to be yes is worse than anything else he can think of. 

Minho has peers. You’re a peer. Always have been. Anything else would complicate the simplicity of the relationship, and Minho immediately steps back and removes the watch. You watch him with razor-sharp intelligence, drinking him in as he holds out the watch to you. 

“The one I have is sufficient enough, Builder.” 

You snatch the watch from him, pivoting on your heel and walking with a ramrod-straight spine back to the table. For a second he thinks you’re going to kick him out but then you take a breath and melt into a smile, though a little sharp at the edges and not reaching your eyes.

“Fixed the connection. I also reinforced it again. Give me a moment to sync to your old armor.” 

Old armor. As if the new one is still his. His stomach flips and he grimaces. 

The affectation in your voice makes Minho uncomfortable. He doesn’t move, watching you tap viciously against the screen on your work desk. Jeongin spins a pen in his hand, glancing between the two of you nervously. When he notices Minho glaring at him, he grins awkwardly and pushes his chair behind one of the clear screens, his face distorted by blue lettering and diagram.

Wordlessly, you hand him the watch and turn away when he takes it. You say nothing else, moving on to a different project as Minho delicately picks up the shirt. He slides it over, feeling the warmth seep into his cool skin. He meticulously pulls the hardness with weapons on, followed by his jacket.

Fully dressed, he waits for you to say something. He doesn’t know what he expects - or wants - you to say. But he pauses anyway, eyes on your bent shape. His gaze flits to your hands, delicate fingers typing wildly, tense as you wait for him to leave. 

It feels like a stone has sunk to the bottom of Minho’s stomach. He doesn’t move for a few minutes, torn between walking out and preparing for his next Collection and staying to… what? He doesn’t know. He has no idea what to say or do, but he feels the palpable shift in your mood. 

So Minho chooses the easiest option. He nods to himself and heads toward the exit. You don’t spare him a second glance but he certainly looks at you out of the corner of his eye. Your jaw is clenched and you tap with a ferocity that thinks might shatter your desktop interface. 

As soon as the door opens, Minho is drowning in thumping base and synth again. Hyunjin leans on the stool, this time with his back against the wall and his glittering eyes focused on Minho. Though the former Nightcrawler wasn’t in the room, Minho has a sneaking suspicion that Hyunjin knows everything that happens in the Builder’s workshop. 

Hyunjin’s smirk is all-knowing and Minho storms by him, hating him for it. 

Rain no longer falls from a dark sky. Opaque, charcoal skies stretch above him, lines of moving air traffic creating layers of latticework. Looking at the watch - which shows his normal armor once more - tells him it's in the early morning hours now. 

The streets are not as busy as the night before. There are still glaring advertisements and he spots a group of cloaked United Church members walking around to accept alms and recruit, but the energy is muted outside of the clubs and pleasure houses. 

Morning commuters fill the speed train tunnels. United Travel Agents lurk in the crowd, watchful eyes on anyone causing trouble or trying to double up on the scanners as travelers pass through, machines charging their United Credits as they go. 

Minho falls into the dull buzz of morning travel. Glancing at his watch, he knows he has enough time to go home and change. He likes to receive his calls while he’s at home anyway. He tries not to replay the last conversation between the two of you. The offer you’d made him. The meaning behind it, whatever it may be. 

It’s nearly impossible, but he manages. Especially once he gets into his apartment, sinking into the routine of showering, changing, and sliding back into his clothes like a second skin. As soon as he reties his boots, his watch begins to ring. 

“Receiving,” he answers, straightening up. 

“Collection echo-tango-foxtrot-bravo has been assigned to Collector 102598. You have five United Hours to complete your Collection.”

“Collection accepted.” 

The line goes dead. Minho slides his weapons into their holsters, then pulls on his rain jacket. It always rains in the city, like God is weeping for what he has become.

Any work is good work. 

Minho leaves the apartment to take another life. 

-

The water runs red in Minho’s shower. He stares it for a while, hot water rushing down his neck, shoulders and back in rivulets. It turns pink the longer he stares, the wound on his leg bleeding less and less. 

The irony is not lost on him that if he had accepted your gift, he might not have taken a gnarly hunting knife to the thigh. He was lucky that it was an energy weapon, the blade cauterizing the wound immediately. He’d had to pick the wound back open to flush out the dead, burned skin and pour burning antiseptic on it.

Shifting, Minho examines the wound. Pain blooms in his thigh as he turns, making him suck in a sharp hiss. The wound is to the bone. He knows he’s lucky it was not a well-made weapon, the ion pulse too weak to sever his limb. Still, it’s a deep wound and it would surely fuck him up if he didn’t have the next twenty-four hours to himself. 

If the knife had been one of yours…

A pulse of frustration echoes through him. He presses his closed fist to the old tile of the shower wall, feeling the dissonance between the scalding water and cool tile steady him. His knuckles are sore from the last Collection - which had gone wrong in every way possible - and he’s brutally aware of just how much everything hurts. 

Yet the ache isn’t what bothers him. His Collection target getting the jump on him from inside intel isn’t what bothers him. Minho has had that happen enough times that he no longer feels surprised when a Collection knows he’s coming.

What fucking bothers him is the ripple effect of his rejection of your offer made. 

Minho shuts off the water and steps out the water carefully. He can barely put weight on the leg, gritting his teeth as he grabs a towel and hobbles out of the bathroom, the steam billowing out into the tiny apartment and dissipating. 

Blue neon lights from the shop across the way burn in his window. He hardly needs to turn the lights on in his own home to see in the dark, the ever-present glow of blue guiding the way. 

Carefully, he sits on his bed. Another pulse of pain from the wound makes him shiver and take several deep, steadying breaths. He peels back the towel at the waist, revealing a single, thick thigh with a horrible cut right in the meat of it. 

“Fuck,” he whispers. Walking around has made it bleed again, scarlet trickling toward the towel. 

Trying not to disturb the wound, he reaches for the medical kit under the bed. The metal is cool to the touch as he flips the latches, rummaging around the bandages, antiseptics, and gels until he finds what he’s looking for.

Minho takes the single, long syringe and uncaps it with his teeth, spitting the cap on the floor somewhere. He flicks his hand a few times, holding it up to make sure there are no bubbles in the vial. Holding his wound carefully with one hand and with the syringe in the other, he inserts the needle deep into the flesh, the sting minor compared to the throbbing ache the cut itself emanates. 

The compound burns as he injects himself. He clenches his teeth, pushing down on the plunger with steady pressure. He can already feel the numbness spreading in his leg as the local anesthesia takes root. He knows he’ll be itching when it wears off, the tiny nanobots working to stitch the muscle and tissue back together already making his skin crawl. 

DeepStitch is an expensive thing to have. He pulls the syringe out carefully, glancing at the medical kit. It only came with one, meaning he was going to have to replace the vile. Medical compounds made for healing abnormal wounds cost a fortune, especially the type with micro-technology to assist the process. 

Tossing out the empty syringe, Mingo lays on his bed, uncaring if he’s damp and in a towel. The numbness in his thigh spreads, making him shiver. He tries not to think about the fact that there are thousands of microscopic bots working on internally stitching his muscles an tendons as quickly as they can before the blood in his body deteriorates them.

The medical advancement of this world is beyond Minho, but he’s grateful for it as he drifts in a half-sleep. He finds it harder to sleep after using JumpPacks, his body unable to adjust from the constant state of false energy and adrenaline. 

It makes him think about your stupid fucking offer again. A piece of armor that could sync with him and balance his hormones and chemical compounds at the tap of a wrist. Something that high caliber for a low-level contract killer was beyond him. 

There was crazy, and then there was that. 

Minho wonders if you’ve been charging him fairly, suddenly. He’s always thought the weapons and tech you provide him with were good prices. They were well-made but always within his budget, albeit he stopped looking at what you were billing him a long time ago. Now that he knows you’re willing to offer something that he’d only find on a United Praetor in the military, he wonders if you’ve been cutting him deals.

He’s never asked the others. Changbin and Jisung seem friendly with you, enough to make Minho wary about asking them questions. Though they’re the closest things that Minho has to friends, he doesn’t trust them whenever it comes to you. 

Jisung already thinks it’s sweet that Minho is nice to you, and he hates that. Even if it’s true. 

Time fades away as Minho circles his conversation with you over and over again. He examines every moment of it. When he can surmise nothing else of the interaction but you offering an olive branch of friendship, something a step beyond peers, he goes back to all of his other interactions.

He remembers almost every one of them. 

Minho’s memory is fine-tuned. It has to be in his line of work. But the memories of you are particularly sharp. He’s able to recall the way you always poke fun at him to the exact line of his tolerance, the way you always know how to get in a good jibe without actually pissing him off. The way that you let Jisung and Changbin have it in front of him for his benefit, especially after they’ve irritated him, like you’re giving him a gift or saying I’m on your team. 

Thoughts of you ultimately lead to other things like the way your eyes reflect the blue light of your many screens. Or the way you always smell like jasmine and amber. The way you pull your sleeves over your hands in sweater paws because it’s bitter cold in your studio to avoid explosions and corrosion of items. The way the nickname Cowboy runs so smooth off your tongue, making his toes curl. 

Minho’s fingers twitch when he thinks about brushing the backs of his knuckles against your soft skin. He’s thought about it before and immediately cringed at the fantasy. Now, between exhaustion clinging to him and the numb limb, he doesn’t jerk away at the idea.

He finally falls asleep thinking of you and what it would be like to accept that olive branch. 

-

The ringing of Minho’s watch wrenches him from sleep. He sits up straight in bed, gasping and hand shooting toward the nightstand where there’s a draw with one of his guns. He realizes that his wrist is vibrating and when he looks at the screen, he sighs with equal parts tension and regret as he realizes it’s work calling. 

Fuck. He slept for almost twenty hours straight. 

Clearing his throat, he answers. “Receiving.” 

“Collection romeo-echo-alpha-delta-echo-romeo has been assigned to Collector 102598. You have five United Hours to complete your Collection.”

Information flashes on Minho’s watch and he feels the world disappear from underneath his feet. Your name, age, permanent place of residency address, and anything the government has both legally and illegally obtained flashes before him. He’s never even seen your full name before and there it is, glowing on his watch as he stares at the information.

It feels obscene to know any of this. He flicks his wrist, turning off the display. He doesn’t want to see any of it, doesn’t want to see when you were born, doesn’t want to see what ward you pay taxes in, doesn’t want to know your criminal history. 

Minho’s ears are ringing. The Delegator does not confirm that Minho has heard or received the assigned target for Collection. Minho stares at the wall, his vision blurring at the edges as the name - your name - echoes in his mind over and over again. He hears it at the same rhythm as his pounding heart, pumping blood through his system as his watch flashes a high heart rate warning. 

Your name. Your full government name and ID number. He’s only ever known your first name, but you’ve always been Builder to him anyway. Minho can’t remember if he’s ever said your name, and suddenly he wants to. He wants to know what it sounds like shaped by his mouth, what it tastes like on his tongue. Wants to say it so many different ways, laughing, smirking, sighing– 

Three years and he can’t believe he’s never so much as said your name, and now that very name is on his list to kill. 

Indecision roots his feet to the spot. This isn’t like a Reverse Collection where other hitmen try to kill him and he can get away with killing them instead, clearing his name for a little longer. This is a direct and finite order to eliminate you. There is no alternative to this Collection. 

Irreversible. 

Running his hands through his hair, he looks around his apartment. It looks unlived-in and completely impersonal. Just like the impersonal way he calls you Builder, as though not using your fucking name makes it more sterile. As if it keeps you further away from earning his trust.

Which you have earned. Implicitly. Minho can think of no one else he would let take care of him. That he would sleep or eat in the presence of. That he trusts not to kill him in his sleep while he’s unarmed. 

Now he’s supposed to murder you?

Bile turns in his stomach. He hears the ticking of the clock on the wall. Every second inches closer to the decision he has to make.

Will he or won’t he? 

Minho grabs his gun from the nightstand and walks toward the door.

He’s only a few steps toward it when he realizes he’s not dressed or prepared for whatever he is about to do - what is he about to do? He has no idea. All he knows is that he is dazed and his hands are starting to shake and his heart rate is climbing, his watch flashing a warning. 

The room begins to tilt as his breathing comes out in haggard breaths. He stumbles a little bit, the blood pumping through him roaring in his ears. He belatedly realizes he’s having a panic attack, blindly trying to get back to his bed where he can sit. 

What does one do during a panic attack? He has no idea, he’s never had one. He thinks of the last time he saw someone panic and immediately bends over to put his head between his knees, gulping air through his nose and out through his mouth. 

What was it that Jisung said about panic?

It’s hard to remember. He thinks maybe there was counting involved, so he breathes in for seven seconds and then out for seven seconds. Does it again. And again. 

Slowly, the world swims back into focus. He can feel the twinge in his thigh as he comes down from the momentary lapse of panic and judgment. When he trusts that he’s not going to vomit on his bare feet, he slowly sits upright, looking around the neon-blue room. 

Quiet blankets the apartment. The world outside is faint. He can hear the clock on the wall as the minute hand moves, each marking the passing of a United Second. With a deep breath, he moves. 

There are no thoughts as he goes. His mind is a single list of action items, marketing them off as he goes. Get dressed. Check his weapons. Arm himself to the teeth with things you’ve made him. Message Jisung a cryptic, one-word text that only the other Collector will understand. Arm a bomb. Leave. 

It’s clinical. 

Minho had always understood with absolute clarity the reality of his line of work. He’s always had a failsafe - or a killswitch, so to speak. From the first day of work, Minho’s only purpose was to kill until he died. He was always meant to die. And he tells himself that the single, little safe space he has in the world he started saving for… well. If you ever needed it.

Any work is good work. 

Clouds hold in their rain. The night feels ominous. Minho glances up at the choked clouds, wondering what they’re up to. The Ministry of Weather controls the atmosphere in some parts of the city. Minho does not travel in those parts of the city - those assassinations are beyond the abilities of a Collector and reserved for Nightcrawlers. 

Paranoia is imminent, but Minho tries not to look over his shoulder every five seconds. The mysterious nature of Collect Co. is still something he doesn’t understand, so it’s difficult to unravel the nature of his assignment. Without a doubt, whoever placed Minho as the Collector knows you supply his weapons.

That simple fact branches out into multiple possibilities. Perhaps the person who wants you gone simply thinks Minho is the best person for the job because he’s in your tentative circle of trust and a familiar enough face to slip through you’re defenses. Or perhaps the problem is him and they know he won’t complete the Collection, earning a job termination and his name showing up on the Collection list. 

Either way, it’s on purpose. Of that, he knows for sure. 

From his years working for Collect Co., there are only a few things that Minho is sure about. Delegators do exactly what their title suggests - they delegate kills. Callers are a tier above Delegators, calling the shots working the network of requests that come in for contracted kills. Legals do all of the paperwork and research before agreeing to a contract, and at the very top of the chain is the Floorman. 

Beyond that, Minho has no concept of the hierarchy or who is hiring Collect Co. for jobs. There are obvious manipulations to the system and it’s impossible to work objectively within a private company that works with but not for the government, and Minho has little doubt that the financial benefactors are who really control assignments. 

Which leads him back to the root of the question: why you? Is Minho the problem, or do you have enemies so large that they hold sway in Collect Co. He doesn’t consider that your deeds are nefarious enough to warrant a hit. What you do is illegal but you sell to the military, too. 

So it begs the question: is it you or him who they really want gone? 

Maybe it’s even a combination.

Still, he attempts not to seem paranoid. It’s easier than it should be, Minho’s mind so singularly focused on getting to you as he takes the train and traves to North Ward Three that he doesn’t have time to look around every corner or see if he’s being followed. There are other ways of keeping tabs on him, anyway. 

The rain still holds as Minho gets off the speed train and ducks into the street. He keeps to the sides, activating his ad blocker as he’s immediately slammed by a screaming neon world. His gaze and gait must be sharper than he realizes, because people veer away from him, his energy repelling them.

From the corner of his eye, he notes Watchers - people responsible for keeping an eye on what’s going on in the street for their employer - take note of him. Some melt into the doorway of their workplace, and others call for runners.

Trouble. Minho looks like trouble and he can sense the shift as they catch wind of him. 

The Watchers are no threat to him. Their entire purpose is to close the doors and pull back when they catch a sense of danger in the air. They’ll stay out of his way and won’t engage with him unless he threatens their clubs and shops. 

Minho has little intention of doing that. He wants to make this as painless as possible. 

Neon Rodeo burns like a dying sun. The orange falls over him as he jogs down the steps and lets the guards scan him. If they notice anything is off, they say and do nothing. Neon Rodeo is perhaps the only business without a Watcher, and it’s only because no one would dare interrupt the business with the Nightcrawler inside. 

Synth rattles Minho from the ground up as he steps inside. The cowboy hats and their little smiling faces float like phantoms in the night. He only has a singular goal and he looks at no one else as he heads towards the back, sidestepping sweaty bodies and perfumed hair. 

It’s full tonight, the weekend crowd packing the bar from corner to corner. It’s no matter. He cuts his way to the back where Hyunjin sits on a stool. Today, Hyunjin’s hair is blood red and his eyes are sharp, unnatural green. For a moment, Minho thinks of a chameleon before Hyunjin kicks a leg out and blocks the hall leading to the door. 

“Your patronage has been terminated, Cowboy.” 

Minho’s heart flips. Are you that angry with him? He drinks in Hyunjin’s dress and slowly his anxiety turns to understanding. Hyunjin is dressed in all black today. His shirt is armored and in place of pants with tassels are tactical trousers with pockets and weapons strapped to his thighs.

An assessment of the Nightcrawler tells Minho that there are weapons he doesn’t see. There’s a plasma pistol on his hip, a bandolier of small knives strapped across his chest, knives in his boot, and another plasma pistol on this calf. 

Hyunjin’s fingers drum against his thigh as he watches Minho with those unsettling eyes. “Want to try, Cowboy?”

“I need to speak with her.”

“No.”

“I’m not-” Minho grits his teeth. “I’m not Collecting.”

“Didn’t say you were.” 

Hyunjin knows. He doesn’t know how the Nightcrawler knows you’re a Collection on Minho’s list, but it’s clear in the way Hyunjin leers. 

“Look, you can go in with me. Let me get her to safety.”

“And what do you think safety is, Cowboy? Even if you’re not lying, they’ll come after you too.” 

“Listne, Nightcrawler-”

Hyunjin grins. It’s unnerving, and there isn’t much that unnerves Minho. “No, you listen. I tolerate you because I am ordered to. Now, I don’t have to. My only orders were to say no and to not harm you.” He leans back and spreads his hands and shrugs. The neon lights catch his blood red hair. “I’m always within my right to make a judgment call.”

“I’d never hurt her.”

“You’re not friends, last I checked.” Hyunjin cocks his head to the side. “You don’t have friends, right? That’s why you reject acts of faith?”

“What do you know of acts of faith, Nightcrawler?” 

“You’d be surprised, Collector.” 

Hyunjin is unmoving. Minho’s fingers twitch and Hyunjin’s eyes follow the movement. For a second, Minho wonders if he could beat his adversary to the draw. They could do it like an old fashioned movie, the bar the perfect setting for it. Hyunjin is totally unmoving and relaxed, not moving his hand toward his weapons.

He’s that confident in beating me. 

United Seconds are ticking by. Every minute Minho doesn’t make his collection is time lost. He licks his lips ready to mount another argument when Hyunjin’s eyes flicker and look over Minho’s shoulders. His eyes narrow a fraction as they dart back to Minho.

“Here’s an act of faith. Let’s see what you do this time.” 

The energy in the bar shifts. He feels the tremor go through the air and the hair on the back of his neck stands on end. Minho turns his head to the side, not enough to fully look back over his shoulder but enough to see the group of Collectors disperse in the crowd. 

Both, Minho realizes. The Collection had been for them both, and it was a good excuse to get them in the same place. He grits his teeth as he realizes how predictable he is. They might have come even if he didn’t arrive, but they might have sent a smaller force. 

Glancing at Hyunjin, Minho watches as the Nightcrawler does nothing. He waits for Minho, raising his brows and smirking. 

Act of faith. 

Normally, Minho doesn't believe in public acts of violence. Collectors are mostly prohibited from killing in public or endangering the lives of United Republic Citizens unless entirely unavoidable. 

Now, though, he causes a scene and pulls his gun, swiveling around and leveling it at the nearest Collector he has a clean line of sight on. He feels the hum of the weapon and the click of the safety as he squeezes the trigger, the pulse of the weapon barely perceptible as it fires. 

Plasma weapons are bright when they fire. It’s nearly blinding in the dark as he shoots, screams shattering the bar as the world turns into pops of energy and sizzling air. He ducks down as someone shoots at him, instincts kicking in as he grabs the leg of a table and yanks it toward him. 

Behind him, Hyunjin lets out a manic laugh and stands from the stool. He drops a small device next to Minho, drawing his attention for a second. Minho watches as it expands with a shimmer of translucent energy - a shield. He looks at the Nightcrawler who crouches with him, grinning as he peers over the table and shields with his green eyes. 

“There are eight. They’re just going to pin us here and shoot at us like fish in a barrel.”

“Is there a way through that door?”

“Sure there is. If they want to melt it down, I’m sure they have plasma blades, judging from the look of their very nice weapons. They can’t blow it without leveling the street.” 

“Does she have a way out the back?”

“No, then I would have two doors to watch.” 

A spray of metal and plasma ricochets off the shield that has molded to the shape of the table. Hyunjin gestures as if to showcase his point and Minho grits his teeth. Peeking around the table, he can see patrons hiding under tables and covering their heads. Collectors stand spread out, fanning the entrance and blocking the way, but they don’t come any closer.

They want to make the Collection, but they don’t want to face a Collector and a Nightcrawler together. 

“Aren’t you some sort of unmatched assassin, Nightcrawler?” Minho asks, checking the mag on his plasma gun. “Can you just take them all out? That should be light work for you.”

“I’m good at not being seen, Cowboy. I’m not inhuman.” 

“Oh good, so you’re actually useless when visible?”

Hyunjin’s face darkens. “You’d be surprised how often you don’t see me.” 

The threat isn’t lost on Minho but it doesn’t have time to sink into its full effect as bullets rain down on them. They cringe together to ensure they’re behind the shield, which whines under the plasma assault and flickers. Minho thinks it will hold, but it’s only as wide as the table it molds to and the table isn’t very large.

Hyunjin reaches into his pocket and pulls out a grenade. Minho grabs it, looking at him with wild eyes. Hyunjin pulls his hand away. “It’s a flash grenade,” he snaps. “I’m not going to kill everyone.” He pauses and smirks. “I don’t do that anymore.”

“That’s hardly less settling.”

“You know,” Hyunjin muses, pulling the ring from the grenad. Green light pulses on it slowly, counting down until it starts to release blinding white flashes. “One day you and I are going to have a talk about why you think your profession is so much different than mine.”

“One is legal, for starters.” 

Hyunjin lobs the grenade. “Right, so what you’re doing right now? This is legal?”

Minho is spared from having to answer as the world explodes in white. He and Hyunjin move at the same time, letting the memory of where the Collectors stand as they close their eyes and shoot. Minho’s shot blind thousands of times and it usually pays off.

It does for the most part now, the pair of them dropping Collectors as they shoot. The white light fades and there’s only a single Collector left standing by the door, his gun aimed at Minho. He swivels to shoot, but a bullet hits the Collector in the shoulder, twisting him backward from impact as he squeezes the trigger of his gun. 

The shot catches Minho in the shoulder, knocking him back a step. He curses but keeps his weapon trained on the fallen Collector until he hears high-pitched screaming. It stops his heart, the sound of the Collector’s voice reaching a level of madness that echoes even after he gargles and goes silent.

Minho looks at Hyunjin with an accusatory glare but Hyunjin juts his thumb behind him in answer, pointing to where you stand at the door with a heavy pistol in your and. Minho blinks a few times in surprise. 

“I think the nano-tips work, Jeongin.” You glance over your shoulder where the younger boy stands on the stairs behind you, armed to the teeth. “Remind me to write that down.” 

Silence stretches in Neon Rodeo, save the soft quivering crying and sparking sign that’s been shot over the bar. From the corner of his eye, Minho sees it flash between Rodeo and Odeo over and over again, bouncing between the two words as the ‘R’ tries to fight for its life.

Then there’s you. 

You stare at him with a guarded expression, drinking him in. Your gaze lingers on his arm, reminding him that it does in fact burn where the plasma bullet graze his shoulder. Next to him, Hyunjin shifts. The Nightcrawler barely moves forward, sliding part of his body between Minho and where you stand in the doorway to your studio, Hyunjin’s hand resting on top of his gun. 

“You gonna kill me, Cowboy?” Your voice wavers when you ask. By the twitch in your lip, Minho can tell you’re upset that it does. 

“No. I want to help.” Hyunjin snorts and Minho is reminded of his earlier question. What do you think safety is? “Consider it an act of faith,” Minho offers and Hyunjin’s snickering turns to curiosity. “I’ve rejected yours in the past. Let me off you the only one I have.” 

No one moves. Minho slowly lifts his wrist toward Hyunjin, displaying the information. The Nightcrawler looks it over and raises his brows, looking back at Minho. “What strange turn of events, Minho.” 

It’s the first time Hyunjin has ever used his name. He says nothing as the Nightcrawler heads over to you, murmuring quietly. Your face is inscrutable as you nod and look over your shoulder, saying something to Jeongin. He nods fiercely, face set in determination that makes Minho’s mouth twitch a little. 

The three of them join Minho wordlessly as he turns on his heels and heads up the stares. Hyunjin’s watch flashes and lets them know that the United Enforcers are three minutes out and they need to get where they’re going.

You take the lead then, hurrying out the door but not out into the street, ducking into a noodle shop three doors down from Neon Rodeo. You shout in United New Mandarin at the woman behind the counter, shocking him - not that Minho knows anything about you at all - and the woman waves you off.

Through the shop and into the stock room you lead everyone, hoping over bags of flower and starch until you reach a table that you climb up on and pull a vent from a ceiling. It’s far too large to be a normal vent, and his questions are answered when he realizes it leads to a small garage that faces the next street over. 

Once into the garage, Hyunjin takes the lead out into the street, weapon up. Minho brings up the rear, falling into a defensive unit as you go. Jeongin walks closely behind Hyunjin, his steps a little clumsy but his head on a swivel. 

Good, Minho thinks. Jeongin is alert. 

“Decided not to kill me?” you whisper as you skirt out into the street and hug the building face. 

Minho can barely hear you over the fabric you’ve pulled up over your face. He blinks and thinks to do the same, pulling the hood up on his jacket and sliding up a black gaitor over the lower half of his face. 

“I was never going to kill you.”

“Hard to tell with you.” 

“I… don’t have an argument.” 

And he doesn’t. He realizes that he’s kept you at arm's length despite your best attempts to spark some sort of friendship. What reason could he do that other than sparing himself if he had to kill you one day? It makes the most logical sense.

“I thought we were friends.” That makes him pause. You notice a few steps ahead of him that he’s stopped, looking at you. “We stopped being just business acquaintances over a year ago, Collector. My normal clients don’t get to test my new hardware or request as many JumpPacks as you do on the house.”

“They’re on the house?”

“Of course they are!” you snap at him. “Do you not look at your billing, Collector? How do you know I’m not overcharging you?” 

“I stopped looking once I trusted you weren’t robbing me.”

“See, that’s a funny word coming from you. Trust.”

A whistle catches Minho’s attention. You both turn to see that Hyunjin and Jeongin are nearly three-blocks away at the entrance of a nondescript shop. Color floods Minho’s face when he realizes the pair of you had stopped walking to have your argument and he curses himself as you start moving again. 

“I do trust you.” You say nothing to his comment. “I’m sorry I didn’t accept the armor.”

“It wasn’t about rejecting the armor, Collector.” The world Collector sounds dirty in your mouth. He suddenly wants to hear you call him Cowboy again. “It was about rejecting me when I thought we were already friends. I was wrong.”

Hyunjin leads them down into an alleyway that is void of anything besides dumpsters and murky puddles. The smell turns Minho’s stomach but he resists the urge to gag as Hyunjin bends down to pull up a sewer grate. He flashes his flashlight inside and nods before jumping down and vanishing. There’s a light splash as he lands and calls up for Jeongin. 

Minho crouches close to you as Jeongjin adjusts to follow Hyunjin down. 

“You weren’t,” he says as Jeongin jumps. You turn to look at him, confused. “Wrong. You weren’t wrong.” 

You look him up and down, hesitating. Hyunjin calls your name and you turn away from Minho, checking your legs and arms to make sure your pockets are zipped. Minho watches as you jump. He realizes his holding his breath until he hears your feet splash.

Quickly, he scrambles to the grate, pulling the top with him. Looking through the hole, he sees the orange light of glowsticks as you and Jeongin crack and shake them, lighting up the tunnel in a very small ring of light. Hyunjin has turned off his flashlight and looks up at Minho, gesturing for him to hurry.

Minho holsters his weapon and jumps down, bending at the knee as he lands to absorb the fall. His boots splash loudly in the tunnel, echoing for a few seconds. His shoulder wound aches as he straightens up. Hyunjin is already lifting Jeongin up to pull the great back over the hole. The scrape of metal on the concrete sounds much louder in the watery tunnel, making Minho cringe.

Looking both ways, he sees the sewer is less of a sewer and more of a tunnel. The cloth pulled over his face does little to keep out the rancid smell, and he winces when he sees fat, black rats scattering on the edges of the orange light. 

Something touches his arm and he jerks, hand going to his gun. You lean back and apologize, holding out a glowstick. He relaxes and takes it, fingers brushing yours as he does. He instantly gets a chill down his spine, though his fingers are warm where they brushed yours. 

Minho clears his throat and holds the glowstick up, looking around the tunnel. He can hear the faint echoes of dripping water and every movement of the group feels loud in the pressing silence of the dark. 

“What is this?” he asks, looking at you. 

It’s Hyunjin who answers, “Nightcrawler shit. You’re welcome.”

“Should we expect any of your former coworkers, then?” 

“They’re not so bad.” Hyunjin unholsters his weapon as he begins walking south down the tunnel, throwing Minho a sharp grin. “It’s the Darklings I worry about.” 

You fall into step behind Hyunjin immediately, ducking your head to murmur something to him as you go. The glow of your light gets farther away as Minho stands staring at Hyunjin, unsure if he’s serious or not. 

Jeongin steps up next to Minho. “He was joking about Darklings, right? The People Underneath are a myth?” 

“Have you ever heard Hyunjin tell a joke?” 

Minho leaves Jeongin thinking about it before the younger rushes to keep up with him, feet splashing wildly. 

-

Whether Hyunjin was joking about the Darklings or not, they don’t run into anything except rats and roaches in the underground tunnels. Minho finds himself itching to ask the Nightcrawler questions and demand where they’re going, but he doesn’t, 

An act of faith. 

It was an act of faith when Minho showed Hyunjin the safehouse on his watch. It was one of the few things that Minho protected more fiercely than his life, and he was hoping that when Hyunjin saw the coordinates, title of ownership, and Minho’s information, he’d gain a little trust. 

Minho had been right. Hyunjin, though still sharp at the edges, has become unnervingly benign with Minho, addressing him by his name. It’s not much to most, but he knows among killers it’s a huge step. One that means a little more trust, if not at least peers. 

You remain quiet for the most part. Your eyes stray toward Minho often and when he catches you looking, you don’t look away. Your gaze is hesitant and questioning, as though you’re trying to figure him out like one of the schematics on your screens. 

Biting into a protein bar, he quickens his pace to fall into step with you. “What will you do with your lab?” 

Your lips twitch. “Chemical fire. There’s a stop-line in the frame of the building so it should be controlled. I promised not to burn down Neon Rodeo when I established my office there.” 

“Who owns that place, anyway?” 

“Bangchan.” The name sounds familiar. “Reformed Nightcrawler.” 

“You keep unusual company.”

“Better than none.” 

That gets a little bit of a laugh from him. You smile when he does and he swears it’s brighter than the glowsticks you carry. “I deserved that one. I’m working on it, alright.”

“How do Jisung and Changbin deal with you?”

“The same way I deal with them.” You hum, nodding in understanding. For a few minutes, it’s just wet steps echoing in the tunnels. “What made you decide to come with me? I assume you have your own fallback plans.” 

“I do, but I don’t know. I wanted to accept your olive branch.” You look at him. “I wanted to trust you.”

He nods. His gut twists a little at that, both anxious and pleased. He’d been right about offering an act of faith in return for the one he scorned. Now, he just has to keep you alive, which he grows more confident in doing. 

“Where are we going?” 

He looks up at you. “Hyunjin didn’t tell you?”

“No, just said to trust you.” Minho’s brows shoot up and you snort. “I know. Whatever you showed him convinced him.”

“It’s a safe house on Isla de Suenos.” You look up at him sharply and he gives a soft grin. “My mother belonged to a very well-off family. I’m not supposed to exist, and she had to decide at a young age whether or not I was worth throwing away her family and their power. A single safehouse purchased with offshore accounts and through a network of money-changing and bought secrecy is the only thing she could give me.”

“She didn’t choose you?” He shakes his head. You think about that for a second and he lets the words sink in, waiting for the pity, which he hates. Instead, you hum. “No wonder you don’t choose people either.”

Your candor is a relief. You don’t tell him sorry or try to comfort him. You accept this as a fact of life, a normalcy that a mother would choose wealth and power over a child. “There are no records tying us together, but the title of the house is under what my name would have been if she’d taken me. Lee. My family name would be Lee.”

“What is it now?”

“I don’t have one. My father was servant-class. We don’t have family names.” 

“He worked for your mother’s family?” Minho nods. “Lee. I like it. Will you keep it?”

“Maybe. It’s who I have to be, now.” 

“No longer the Collector?” He shakes his head. “Good. Perhaps I like you more as just Lee Minho.” 

Minho bites back a grin. 

By the time they get to the surface again, they’re just outside of the city-proper on the northeast shore. Here, the night is bitter cold as the salty air blasts off the ocean, dark waves rushing and receding against the shoreline. 

They take a brief break once their topside, Minho gasping deep breaths of fresh air in as he gulps down water. Now that they can see without the glowsticks, they toss them into the trash and breathe in silence. 

Carefully, Minho peers at the wound on his shoulder. It’s caterized from the heat of the plasma, but the burn hurts something vicious. He has no medical supplies on him, and he examines the chawed flesh with mild concern. 

Seeing the injury, you get up wordleslly from the rock where you sit and come over. Your hand digs in one of your pockets and you produce a packet of burn gel and antiseptic, wordlessly gesturing to the wound. He nods and you offer a tentative grin before ripping the antiseptic open with your teeth, spitting the crinkling material on the ground.

With steady hands, you squeeze out the translucent gel on the tips of your fingers and peel the damaged parts of Minho’s shirt away from the flesh. He sucks in a breath when you apply the cool gel to the wound, the stinging of the antibiotic catching him off guard. You shoot him an apologetic wince before continuing to press it lightly into the burned flesh. 

You smell like jasmine and amber. Minho breathes it in deep, a soothing scent mixed with the salty air of the seat just a few yards away. His eyes flutter shut as your fingers work his shoulder, deft and skilled like an artist. 

“My mom liked to paint,” Minho says automatically, unsure where the comment comes from. “That’s one of the few things I know about her. She had artists hands. You have hands like hers. Graceful.” 

“Hmm, I wouldn’t say I’m an artist but I do draw designs for weapons a lot.”

“It’s a kind of art.”

“I suppose it is.”

Your closeness makes Minho dizzy. Instead of chasing you away in the past, he lets you linger and spread the burn gel on his shoulder. He doesn’t open his eyes, letting the sound of the ocean and the press of your steady fingers lull him into a moment of relaxation. 

He can almost pretend you both haven’t thrown your life away to head to some house he’s never been to with little to no plan but to arrive there alive. 

“Does it hurt?” he shakes his head at your question. You voice is soft and raspy, rising the hairs on the back of his neck. You’re so close he can feel the heat radiating from you, making him lean in on instinct, seeking the warmth. “If you let me give you better armor, plasma won’t hurt you.”

Minho’s eyes flutter open. “You brought it with you?”

“Of course I did.” Your face is inches from his, eyelashes fanning your bright, glittering eyes as you look up at him. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Hyunjin’s voice shatters the moment before Minho can respond. “Hello, yes, the child and I are still here.” 

“I’m not a child!”

“The child and I need to leave, however. Seungmin and Felix are waiting to escort us. I believe your friend left transportation for you, Minho.”

You whirl around. “You’re leaving? What do you mean you’re leaving?”

“I have some Nightcrawling to do with Bangchan and Seungmin. I’m taking the child to stay with Swan.” 

Minho has no idea who Swan is. He sees the uncertainty color your face as you regard your guard - your friend. “You would do that? Take him to stay with her?” 

“Of course. Swan likes strays.” 

“I am right here,” Jeongin reminds everyone, crossing his arms over his chest. “And I’m not a child.”

Hyunjin grins at him. It’s real and not a leer, something that Minho doesn’t think he’s ever seen. Hyunjin grabs Jeongin by the shoulder, pulling him along before flicking his poison-green eyes toward Minho and you. “Enjoy your evening. I’ll be around, Minho.” 

“Wait!” you bolt over to them, catching everyone by surprise as you throw your arms around the two of them and squeeze. The smile on Hyunjin’s face is so soft that Minho has to look away, equal parts something like jealousy and feeling like he’s intruding. “Here.” 

You divest several items from your pockets, shoving them into their hands. Medical gels, a few gadgets, and a little Scorpion figurine that you shove into Hyunjin’s hands. He raises a single brow in amusement but you say nothing to the Nightcrawler, rushing back to stand at Minho’s side. 

Hyunjin and Jeongin lift their hand in waves to Minho before turning and heading down the beach at a slow pace, their feet sinking into the sand. Cold wind whips at Minho as he stands watching with you silent by his side, waiting.

Without a word, he turns and beckons you, heading up the rocky coast before heading back down precariously to a tiny cove with a boat buoyed between the rocks. It’s hardly a safe-looking boat and he realizes it probably wouldn’t have carried them all, but it’s something. 

Minho climbs into the boat carefully before helping you step down into it. The rocking water throws you off balance and he steadies you, hands tight on your waist. You mutter an apology but he doesn’t let go until he’s sure you’re okay, eyes searching. 

A moment of tension passes, his fingers pressed into the fabric of your hips, your closeness overpowering the sea air again. You clear your throat and it passes. Minho lets you go as he finds the key and plugs it in to turn on the engine.

You busy yourself with untying ropes, your steps unsteady as the vessel moves unpredictably beneath your feet. Once you manage to get rid of all the lines, he begins to navigate out the cove backward, turning the wheel violently from side to side as he fights the tide. 

Thankfully with every swell that pushes the boat into the cove, it drags it back out. It takes about three swells before the craft is pulled into the ocean proper and he throws the throttle in reverse, water rooster tailing for a moment as he does. 

You join him at the helm and stand close as he turns it around and drives. Wind rips at his jacket, blowing back the hood. He’s thankful for the face cover fighting the icy wind, squinting as he drives in the late hours of the night across a rippling black ocean. 

The water gets rough as he turns to the east, glancing at the coordinates on his watch every once in a while. Your hand shoots out to grab his forearm on a particularly violent dip. He curses, pain radiating from his shoulder as you do. You immediately shout an apology and let go, but Minho snakes an arm around your waist, pulling you tight.

For a second, you stiffen, looking up at him uncertain. He remains steadfast in his hold, willing his heart to slowdown as he drives, determined to keep you from falling off the boat and into the water before you can even make it to the safehouse. 

You relax into him after a second, pressing closer and letting him hold on as you go. He relaxes when you accept his help, breathing out a slow breath that he didn’t know he was holding. 

It takes almost forty five minutes, but the dark shadow of Isla de Suenos materializes in the night. The city is a spec of light on the misty horizon as the waves begin to slow down until he can let down on the throttle, bringing the boat to a troll instead of a plane. 

The collection of islands that surround the massive, man-made mountain in the middle of the seat are all only about seven acres in size and are privately owned. The level of exclusivity is something Minho is incredibly unfamiliar with, and he gets nervous as they approach the barely visible shield surrounding the collection of islands.

“Minho, there’s a-”

“It’ll let us through.” He squeezes your waist on instinct, hoping it’s true. As the boat passes, he holds his breath. He feels the biochip in his neck flicker and then they’re through the shield. The water is falt calm on the other side of the energy wall, tapping gently against the hull. “It’s biometric.”

“And you were sure that was going to work?”

“Mostly.” 

“Mostly is not a great attitude in the invention field, Minho.” 

It takes a second, but he realizes you’re calling him by his name and not Cowboy. He likes the sound of it on your tongue, though he doesn’t mind the diminutive. 

Even in still waters, he doesn’t remove his arm around your waist, the protective instinct still high as he steers the boat according to his watch. Islands with lights hidden behind thick jungle and rockface slide past them. 

The beacon on his watch flashes and he turns the boat, trolling to a long, empty dock ahead of them. The island is no different from the rest, covered in sprawling jungle and foliage that look monstrous in the ominous night. 

Quickly, you tie off the boat and disembark. Your steps on the dock feel loud in the quiet night, the two of you hurrying along and up the shore until you hit the stone stairway that leads through the trees. Though he isn’t holding you close to him anymore, you still keep yourself pressed close, the back of your hands brushing as you begin the climb up the island. 

Minho has no idea what the house looks like. He only knows that it’s coded to his biochip and that it’s always been there if he needs it. He doesn’t know if it’s stocked or if the electricity is on, or if it’s been raided and taken over. He doesn’t even know if there are codes to get access.

It is the most unprepared he has ever been. 

A large estate springs up among the trees. The entire building is constructed on a platform with foliage and trees brushing along the foundations. It’s made up of windows and metal framing, the windows dark and hiding whatever exists within. 

It is exquisit. Minho has never seen an estate or a luxury home before in person, but he knows that’s what this is. The thought seems a little silly as he leads you toward the modular home, steps quiet as he glances around. He cannot imagine that anyone but he and his could enter the grounds, but he’s still on edge. 

At the door, there’s a single bioscanner. He leans his neck toward it, letting it flash over his biochip. The scanner turns green and he hears the hiss of an airlock. Glancing at you and shrugging, he tries the handle and pulls the door open toward him. 

Inside, the air is cool. He steps in first, hand on his gun as he looks around the interior. It’s sparkling clean and decorated with dark wood furniture and greenery. He takes a few steps inside, flinching when automatic lights come on and cast a warm, gold glow in the house. 

“You’ve been living as a fucking Collector when this existed the entire time?” you deadpan from the door.

No kidding, he thinks, turning to look at the multi-story wonder that is the home. It’s three levels of tropical opulence, making his head spin at all of the possibilities. 

“I didn’t know what was here, honestly.” He turns to look at you and nods. You step inside and pull the door shut, tapping the screen beside it. The locks click in place again and with another tap, he sees the windows darken to privacy mode. “I assumed she didn’t leave me something grand.” 

“It’s a good start on an apology. She’s still a bitch for leaving you and I think you should let me fight her.”

A ripple of fondness goes through him and he smiles at you, uncontrolled and large. You shoot a shy one back before looking away at the wonder of the home. 

Unlike him, you seem to relax immediately, kicking your shoes off to wander around the house. He follows suit after a moment of hesitation, peeling the cover off of his face and kicking of his shoes. He leaves his holster open on his weapons, hands hovering near them as he follows you.

The house is extravagent. Smaller than he originally thought, with only three bedrooms and two bathrooms, but the spaces for each are massive and sprawling with greenery. It feels like the jungle is a part of the house - and he realizes it is, at least in the atrium. There’s a large pool and something that looks like a hot spring behind the house, hidden from the world by think palms and palmetto. 

Each room is richly designed and cleaned, as though it has been kept for him all this time. He’ll have to worry about that at some point, unsure who has kept the house in such a presentable state while it’s existed. 

After you’ve fed your curiosity, you drift to one of the rooms with a private bathroom. He takes the room across from you, feet dragging as the exhaustion hits him. His limbs feel heavy and peeling off his shirt with the injure arm makes him curse and hiss. He doesn’t bother looking in the mirror, knowing the old bruises from a few days ago are still there.

Steam fills the bathroom. He’s a little put out when he realizes that the stone shower has a wall of glass to reveal the jungle on the other side, but he realizes there’s no one to watch him. He shakes the uneasiness and steps under the scalding water, moaning as he closes his eyes and lets it run down him.

A screen with a dozen or more settings sits in the rockface of the shower, but he doesn’t know how to use them. He hits another button hoping for what is more water pressure and instead gets a heavenly waft of eucalyptus. He leaves the settings alone, settling for tranquility over scrubbing himself.

Minho doesn’t know how long he stays in the shower. His fingers prune and the crust and blood eventually peel away. He spends a short amount of time scrubbing his own skin, eager to get out of the shower and check on you. 

Now that he has you, a new sort of stream of conscious has made itself permanent, always wondering where you are and if you’re okay. 

Steam clouds the bathroom as he steps out, wrapping a towel around his waist. Water clings to him as he ruffles his wet hair, strolling out into the bedroom. He walks toward the table by the door, rifling through his things looking for medical gel. 

A knock draws his attention and you open the door a crack, making a sound of surprise when you don’t expect to see him standing right in front of you. Your eyes dip down to where the towel is on his waist and back up, immediately opting to look at the ceiling. 

Minho’s lips pressed into a firm line, trying to eat the smirk threatening to take over.

“Sorry, I assumed you were still in the shower. I - um - brought more gel for your shoulder.” 

He steps away from the door, leaving drips of water as he does. “Come on in.”

“Are you sure?”

He shrugs and then winces, the burn pulling taught as he does. You enter immediately, shutting the door behind you and ripping the top off the packet as you do, eyes focused on the wound. You’ve got your fingers slathered in gel and pressing to his shoulder before you realize the forwardness, pausing to glance up at him.

Now, Minho does smirk. “I’m at your mercy.” 

“Sorry. I know it’s hurting you and…”

“You don’t want me to hurt,” he fills in, remembering your words from earlier.

You nod and chew your bottom lip as you work. He studies you closely. He doesn’t know if it’s his acceptance that you’re more than just someone he buys weapons from, the exhaustion or the little sliver of feeling he’s always pretended wasn’t there, but Minho suddenly feels a little bolder. 

A little braver. 

“I never had a chance to thank you.”

“For what?” You throw the antiseptic on the table and rip open the burn gel. “Anything. Everything. I don’t think I’ve ever said thank you.”

“There’s a lot of things you haven’t said.”

“So let me.” You dart a look at him, nervous. When you don’t interrupt he continues, “You were right. We stopped being industry peers a long time ago, and I’ve purposefully ignored multiple favors from you to keep the illusion that simple relationships meant I couldn’t be hurt. Or hurt others.”

“And now?”

“I realize it was silly.”

“Hmm. At least you admit your faults, Cowboy.” 

He smiles. You finish applying the gel, but you don’t move away from him. You linger, looking up through silky lashes at him. Your face takes on a dreamy look, mouth parted a little and he feels heat coil in his stomach at that look. 

“Why’d you offer me that armor?”

“I was afraid of how often you were working. I knew you were getting hurt and I wanted to help. Why’d you reject it?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

There’s a long pause. Your gaze drops to his mouth. You’re only a few inches away, the ghost of your breath against his neck. “What if I want you to?” 

Minho needs no other permission. It’s like a dam giving way, the past few days able to wedge their way in and open him up to let the rawness spill out of him. He surges forward, catching your mouth against his as he does so, hands shooting to your waist. 

You don’t push him away. Worse, you melt into him like it’s natural, hands skating up his arms and around the back of his neck to pull him in closer to you. Your mouth is warm and minty and addicting, scattering his thoughts to the stars as your lips move against his. 

Heat is trapped between your bodies. He feels like he’s burning up from the inside, squeezing your hips as his tongue brushes against your bottom lip. You open up for him easily, like you were always made to and he groans. 

Every time he has ever held back from you fuels him forward. He presses into you, turning you to push you on the mattress. You go willingly, opening your legs to let him slot between them. He leaves over you, mouth hungry. Devouring. Ravenous. 

You gasp between kisses, nails grazing down his flexing arms. He wants to fucking drown in you as he bites the edge of your jaw, tasting the soap on your skin. You smell like jasmine and amber, though now he can smell the eucalyptus too, driving him insane. 

You. 

The one thing he’s let himself trust. The one person he’s let in, even when he didn’t want to admit it. The one person he wants to have more than anything else. 

Greedy hands scrape up his chest. Your fingers are warm and searching as he nips the tender flesh of your neck, tongue laving over the bite to soothe it. The sounds dripping from your mouth are so pretty, driving him inside as he traces his desire with tongue and teeth. 

The fabric of your shirt scrapes against his skin, itchy and in the way. His hands pull at the hem and he hesitates, looking down at you through a heavy-lidded gaze and panting. You not frantically, hands pulling at his to guide the shirt upwards and off, revealing warm skin.

Minho wants to taste every part of you. You create art with your schematics and your weapons, but you are art. He worships you with tongue and teeth, hands brushing up your stomach to cup your chest. His tongue pulls a languid moan from you as he flicks it over the peak of your nipple. 

Fuck.

He’s greedy, sucking gentle on your pert bud, ensuring to scrap his teeth along the sensitive flesh. You writhe underneath him, unable to remain still. His other hand works you too, tweaking your stiff peak as he trails spit-slick kisses across your chest to wrap his lips around that nipple too. 

Minho looks up at you through his lashes. You’re a rendering of pleasure, head pressing into the bed, chest pushed up, a sheen of sweat on your collarbones and neck. It drives him wild, cock throbbing heavily as he trails his mouth toward, fingers pulling your pants as he goes. 

Your fingers twist in the sheets. Everything he does affects you and he’s drunk on it, heart thudding in his chest as he drops down to his knees. His towel falls and the cool air makes him shiver. He feels the sticky tip of his cock brush against his leg but he ignores the ache between his thighs, fixing his eyes on what’s between yours instead. 

Pretty and wet, all for him. For him. He gets to have you. But he doesn’t yet, making you wait and feel the personal hell it’s been for him to pretend he wasn’t yours as he kisses up your thighs, licking warm skin and digging his teeth in. 

“Minho,” you half gasp, half wine. He smiles against your knee, giving it a gentle peck. “Please.” 

“Yeah?” he switches legs, biting your calf. “Want it that bad?” 

“Need it.” 

He brings a hand up to your dripping cunt, dragging a curled knuckle through your wetness. You let out a keen and he grins against your leg even more, hypnotized by the way your petty little hole clenches at the contact.

Minho drags it out. Plays with you, dragging that knuckle slow-soft through your folds, avoiding your clit. You let out a sound that’s almost a sob and he chuckles, bringing his hand up to suck at the stickiness on his finger. 

“Hmm. Sweet.” 

“Bet it’s better from the source,” you shoot back, trying to make a jab and failing with how weak your voice is. 

“True,” he agrees, leaning forward. 

Your taste blooms on his tongue as he licks up your center, slow and patient. He savors the taste, humming as he does. You buck under his mouth and he grips your thighs, pulling you open. You’re warm and wet and perfect, and he listens to your breath hitch as he licks you slowly, making sure to circle around your clit each time.

One of your hands shoots to his hair. He doesn’t mind as you pull. The sting feels good and spurs him on, eating you out properly. He loves the sounds you make for him, loves the way your thighs twitch as he sucks your click into his mouth, tongue flicking over it. 

It’s wet and messy and just the way he likes it, slick dripping down his chin as he presses himself in further, desperate to fuck you into sanity with just his mouth. 

He doesn’t have a problem doing it. You buck against his face and he lets you, holding his tongue flat for you to grind against. Your fingers in his hair have him in a vice grip and he moans, a steady stream of mhmmm dripping sweet from his mouth into your heat. 

“Fuck,” you gasp. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

“Come on,” he mouths against you. “Take what you want, baby.” 

The endearment slips from him more natural than anything he’s ever done. His fingers squeeze your thighs as you undulate against him, his entire attention fixated on you as the begin to shake. Your hand twists in his hair and he groans, equal parts pain and pleasure as you come apart. 

He hums in satisfaction, keeping his mouth working on you, drinking you in as you continue to tremble. The power trip that comes with seeing you come is unmatched, lighting a fire in him as he licks you to oversensitivity.

“Minho,” you beg, voice squeaking. He grins, kissing your cunt before he mouths his way back up to you, capturing your mouth with his. You’re eager to taste yourself, tongue licking at him more than anything, smearing your slick on his lips. He feels his eyes roll back. You’re going to kill him. “More.”

Minho would conquer the world and call it yours if you wanted him to. There’s nothing he wouldn’t give you. Pretending otherwise was the great folly of man, he realizes, as he shuffles you up the bed and climbs between your legs, standing up on his knees.

You watch him, pupils blown and fucked out as he heaves. He can hardly catch his breath as he reaches down to take his cock in his hand, pumping leisurely as he watches you. The way you look at him like you’ll consume him whole makes him shiver. He wants you to. Want you to burn him up until there’s nothing left. 

Leaning down, he drops his cock out of his hand in favor of sliding a hand between you’re legs. You’re a mess of spit and cum, making the glide easy as he slips a finger into your heat to work you open. Your head falls to the side, giving him access to suck at your jawline as he fucks you open with his finger, adding a second when he knows you can take it. 

Your hips roll up to meet his thrusts as he scissors his fingers open, pressing against your warm walls to push the stretch further. You’re putty in his hands but he’s a mess in yours, too. He’s shaking by the time he slips his hand from between your legs to press the crown of his cock at your entrance, hesitating. 

Minho looks up at you. He already knows there’s no going back for him, three years of his own stubborn delusions robbing him of what could have been. But he asks, anyway. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve been sure for a long time. It was you who needed convincing.” 

“What a stuipd man I am.”

“Yes,” you agree. “But mine.” 

That drives him wild. Simple words and yet the very action of you claiming him erodes the last bit of resistance. He pushes into you and goes slow with a considerable amount of effort, shaking and panting as he tries to keep it together. 

You’re warm and tight and twitches of pleasure ripple through him from cock to stomach. Minho swears he comes alive for the first time as he seats himself in your cunt to the hilt, barely able to catch his breath as he ducks down to press his mouth against yours.

It’s not delicate, but it isn’t the same ferocity as earlier. It���s something else that lingers between madness and relief. He only begins to move when he feels your hips wiggle. He smiles into the kiss, retracting his hips before surging forward again. 

Delirious. That is the only word that comes to mind as he starts to fuck you slow and deep. Your mouths bump together but you’re both breathing raggedly, shaking together. Your hands card through his hair, soothing and soft. His lashes flutter as he drops his head further. You press your lips against his forehead as he picks up the pace, letting your hands worship him as he fucks you.

How could he ever think he was sparing you from him? How could he ever make the mistake that if he kept on the fringes, you wouldn’t leave him ruined like this? It seems unimaginative now. Like something that was always meant to happen. 

No wonder Collect Co. knew he would go running to you like a dog when they assigned you to him. Everyone else could admit it except him, an egregious error on his part.

But Minho has you now. Gasping his name and moving in his arms. Rolling your hips to meet his, your cunt clenching on his cock as he fucks you harder. He wants to dig into you and never let go. Wants to sink in to the very core and live there. 

“Mine,” you growl as though you can read his thoughts. “Even though you tried not to be. You are mine, Lee Minho.”

When you say his full name like that, voicing the boy who could have been and now who is, he starts to come apart. His pace quickens as he chases your second release, holding you tight to him as he feels you clench longer and longer around him until you’re sobbing his name and spilling down his shaft.

Minho all but growls your name as he comes. Never again will you be Builder. You’re his. First and last name his to say. The acknowledgment almost makes him cry as he slows his thrusts, gasping for air as he tosses his head back, heat escaping between the two of you. 

Finally, he stops fucking you, hands linked with yours as he leans up to catch his breath. He’s still seated in you, feeling the cum drip between where your ass is pressed against his thighs. He doesn’t care, feeling the sweat and the water from his shoulder drip down his back.

His arm burns where he’s used it. He’d been unaware of the pain while lost in you, but he feels it now, throbbing. He doesn’t care. He’d do it again a thousand times.

Slowly, he unravels from you. Your hands don’t let him go far, pulling him down next to you to roll toward. He smiles, tired and dreamy at the edges as he lets you. The bed is soft against his balmy skin, the cool air helping calm him down. 

Finally, both of you can breathe. He knows that he needs to shower again, but he doesn’t want to get up. He wants to keep you near. Now that he’s all in, he wants to stay all in. 

“We should call this place the Jungle Rodeo.” He cracks an eye open at you to realize you’re hiding a grin as you look up at him. “You know, since we can’t go back to Neon Rodeo.”

“What is it with you and rodeos?” 

“You find Cowboys at the rodeo.” 

“Oh?”

“And you’re here… so… it’s a rodeo.” 

He blinks at you. “Your intellect is astounding.” 

You laugh and it’s like taking a JumpPack straight to his bloodstream, a rush of energy and euphoria driving him upward and toward you. He smothers you with kisses, driving by the need to taste you again. You let him, giggling. 

“What do you say then, hmm?” he growls, nipping your bottom lip. “Want to go for another ride?”

“That joke was terrible.” 

“You know what they say. When at the rodeo.” 

You laugh again and Minho is a goner once more, just like he was the first day he met you at Neon Rodeo. 

-

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[askablindperson]

In what way does alt text serve as an accessibility tool for blind people? Do you use text to speech? I'm having trouble imagining that. I suppose I'm in general not understanding how a blind person might use Tumblr, but I'm particularly interested in the function of alt text.

In short, yes. We use text to speech (among other access technology like braille displays) very frequently to navigate online spaces. Text to speech software specifically designed for blind people are called screen readers, and when use on computers, they enable us to navigate the entire interface using the keyboard instead of the mouse And hear everything on screen, as long as those things are accessible. The same applies for touchscreens on smart phones and tablets, just instead of using keyboard commands, it alters the way touch affect the screen so we hear what we touch before anything actually gets activated. That part is hard to explain via text, but you should be able to find many videos online of blind people demonstrating how they use their phones.

As you may be able to guess, images are not exactly going to be accessible for text to speech software. Blindness screen readers are getting better and better at incorporating OCR (optical character recognition) software to help pick up text in images, and rudimentary AI driven Image descriptions, but they are still nowhere near enough for us to get an accurate understanding of what is in an image the majority of the time without a human made description.

Now I’m not exactly a programmer so the terminology I use might get kind of wonky here, but when you use the alt text feature, the text you write as an image description effectively gets sort of embedded onto the image itself. That way, when a screen reader lands on that image, Instead of having to employ artificial intelligences to make mediocre guesses, it will read out exactly the text you wrote in the alt text section.

Not only that, but the majority of blind people are not completely blind, and usually still have at least some amount of residual vision. So there are many blind people who may not have access to a screen reader, but who may struggle to visually interpret what is in an image without being able to click the alt text button and read a description. Plus, it benefits folks with visual processing disorders as well, where their visual acuity might be fine, but their brain’s ability to interpret what they are seeing is not. Being able to click the alt text icon in the corner of an image and read a text description Can help that person better interpret what they are seeing in the image, too.

Granted, in most cases, typing out an image description in the body of the post instead of in the alt text section often works just as well, so that is also an option. But there are many other posts in my image descriptions tag that go over the pros and cons of that, so I won’t digress into it here.

Utilizing alt text or any kind of image description on all of your social media posts that contain images is single-handedly one of the simplest and most effective things you can do to directly help blind people, even if you don’t know any blind people, and even if you think no blind people would be following you. There are more of us than you might think, and we have just as many varied interests and hobbies and beliefs as everyone else, so where there are people, there will also be blind people. We don’t only hang out in spaces to talk exclusively about blindness, we also hang out in fashion Facebook groups and tech subreddits and political Twitter hashtags and gaming related discord servers and on and on and on. Even if you don’t think a blind person would follow you, You can’t know that for sure, and adding image descriptions is one of the most effective ways to accommodate us even if you don’t know we’re there.

I hope this helps give you a clearer understanding of just how important alt text and image descriptions as a whole are for blind accessibility, and how we make use of those tools when they are available.

[love2poetry]

loml

⤷ mcu!peter parker x artsy!reader

𝜗𝜚. . . synopsis. you are both peter's love and loss of his life

𝜗𝜚. . . general tag. mostly fluff & some angst

.ᐟ. . . content warnings. if you see any grammar mistakes, keep them to yourself pls thx<3 might be cringe tbh

♫⋆｡ our field of dreams, engulfed in fire your arson's match your somber eyes and i'll still see it until i die, you're the loss of my life

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪ sophia's letter ! i wrote this as it's raining and can you guess what scented candle i have lighting? 😝 anyway i went through a depressive episode for no reason so i took a hiatus, but i might be back for the summer. i often go through another one when school starts so im gonna do the most now. i was thinking of making a part two for this using 'peter' but idk. anyway, HIIII NEW GRACIE ALBUM THIS WEEK RAGHH

prequel

wc. 1,926

spring had just began, more warm days after months of freezing cold weather. today, however, seemed to be one of the few cold, rainy days february had left. you had finished homework earlier today, always wanting to have your weekends free as much as you can, so you decided to occupy your mind with something else more calming. 

after finishing the last of your ap psychology assignment, you walked to your kitchen and made yourself a quick matcha. as you measured the green powder into your cat mug - a lovely gift peter got you because one of the cats in the bug is a calico, like your own cat - a thud was heard from your room. it was followed by an 'ow' quickly after, causing a small smile to form on your lips.

peter.

at the sudden noice, autumn, your calico cat, run cautiously out of your room. after finishing your matcha with some creamer, you also walked to your room. 

peter looked towards the door upon sensing you. his spidey sense usually only triggered when danger was near, however, when it came to you, peter was able to feel you. he couldn't describe it, but there was something in you that made him feel safe. it was a warm feeling that ran down his spine, and maybe it was because he was in your room, but he could also smell the vanilla lotion you love to use. everything about you made him feel like he was engulfed by a soft blanket.

so it was no surprise that the first thing peter did was offer you a smile. you automatically smile back of course. how could you not when he looks at you like that, like he was going to somehow bring you the moon he often photographed because it made him think of you. 

'it's raining,' peter pointed with a boyish grin. the obvious pitter patter coming from your windows made you tilt your head playfully. 'you don't say.'

peter patrolled the streets of new york everyday as his alter ego, spider-man. but on days like this, he likes to use the weather as an excuse to come see you earlier instead. he has a build in heater in his suit of course, but in his opinion it doesn't work as well as a good cuddling season with you.

peter sets his masks down on your night stand. 'cuddles?'

you took a sip of your matcha as you walked to your desk. 'i have to work on my portfolio.' you heard him walk to your dresser that sat on the corner of your room where you had a drawer with his clothes to change to after patrol. 'i thought you were done with it?' 

'yea, it's just,' your fingers glossed over your sketches. junior year was ending and soon college applications will start. it had been your dream to attend the art school of chicago, and now that applications are around the corner, you want to make sure everything is perfect. 'it doesn't feel complete.'

once peter was out of his wet suit and into his favorite pair of bright pink hello kitty pants matched with a plain white tee, he sneaked his arms around you, taking your comforting scent in. you felt him place a kiss in your hair, 'i think it's perfect.'

you turn to look at him with an unimpressed expression. his smile widens and he can't fight the urge to kiss you any longer. peter gently presses his lips into yours. he's always been delicate with his kisses, especially after being spider-man. you knew it was his way to ground himself after a day of fighting criminals, so you let him be as soft as he needed. 

you loved it that way. you loved him that way.

peter pulls away first. 'i have some photos i took last week. you could draw some if you need.' 

peter's hobby went hand in hand with your art. thanks to being spider-man, he was able to take some shots of new york no one else would be able to obtain, and he often let you sketch them, so often that half of his storage is pictures he takes for you to draw. the other half is probably of you.

you hum in agreement, still looking into peter's eyes. you have never loved brown as much as you do now. 

'tomorrow.' peter took your mug in one hand, then used the other to hold your hand while he drag you over to bed. 'today, we cuddle.' he set your bug on the night stand. 

you smile. 'okay.'

you two settled under your warm covers with you closest to your mug incase you want a sip, but before you could find a comfortable position, peter stood up, muttering a quick 'wait!'. 

you frown, but understood what he was doing when he pulled a lighter from your drawer in the night stand. he lit up the candle that rested on top. apple pumpkin. you bought a few pumpkin scented candles last fall, and peter grew to love this specific one. he wasn't a fan of scented candles because of his enhanced smell, but this one was subtle enough for him to enjoy without getting a headache.

once peter returned to bed, he wrapped his arms around your waist with his head on your chest. he slightly tilted his head to plant a kiss into your skin. 'i love you.'

his whispered confession filled you with butterflies. you don't know what you did to be lucky enough to love this boy in your arms, let alone be loved back by him. one of your hands wrapped around his back, while the other caressed his check, slightly squishing his face. his chuckles echoed in the room along the rain when you started kissing his face. 

two kisses on his right check, two more on the left, three on his forehead, and one on the bridge of his nose. 

'i love you more.'

a bright smile stayed on peter's face as he shook his head. 'that's not possible.' your smile matched his, 'i think it is. no, i know it is.' 

'i love you most.' before you could disagree, you felt his hands sneak under your shirt, cutting you off by tickling your sides. you squeak in surprise and try to squirm away. your laughter fills peter's ears, 'okay! i can't breathe!'

peter paused his movements and you inhale to suggest, 'we both love each other equally.'

peter makes a thinking face. 'i'll let you have this win,' he rolled his eyes playfully before settling in your arms again. 

the two of you stayed intertwined in bed until you felt peter's breathing slow down, indicating he had fallen asleep. his weight was on your side now, but looking down at him you decided you wanted to engrave this moment forever. 

swiftly, you reached for the small sketchbook you keep on your night stand. thankfully, you had left a pencil there too. you sat up slightly, making sure not to disturb peter's slumber. his arms tighten around you making you freeze, but the light snores coming from peter tell you he is still deep in his sleep.

you find a clean page and begin drawing shapes until you like how they all sit together. you move to the face proportions, not focusing on shading yet. your hand makes the hair part look effortless, and it may be from the many times you've drawn these curls. moving back to the face, you use your finger to blend the lines better.

finishing the rough draft, your focus goes to the nose, moving to the freckles you have memorized. 

'stalker.'

peter's deep voice caused a blush to creep into your cheeks. it wasn't the first time peter caught you drawing him, he has seen the many sketches and paintings you've done of him, but you still shy way when his eyes follow every detail of him you've embedded into your mind. 

if only you knew peter feels the same. to know the person he loves more than anything has memorized him, his body and soul, fills him with an indescribable feeling. he does the same with his camera. most of his photos are moments you've shared together that he wants to remember forever. 

peter not having storage on his phone from all the candid pictures he has of you is his version of when you learned to draw the lines that form around his eyes when he smiles.

'shut up,' you nudge your leg against his. there's smiles on both of your faces as peter snuggles closer to you. 

the room is rather dark by now, only the candle peter had previously lit and another lamp you always have create a cozy atmosphere. the warm glow of the lamp reaches your features enough for peter to see and he takes his time to draw his own painting of you in his mind. 

the flickering flame of the candle mixing with the apple pumpkin scent ignite a perfect portrait of peter you ache to fabricate, you take a mental picture for later.

you could be here with peter for all time. 

neither of you knew that it was only momentary. 

peter climbed through the window, a plastic bag in hand. he pulled his mask off, wet hair falling over his eyes. 

the loud thunder from outside shook his apartment. it started raining earlier that day, so peter decided to cut his patrolling short. he hadn't done it in a while.

his body was freezing from the harsh wind that he old suit would have kept him warm from. he walked towards a basket full of his clothes that sat in a corner, that was his dresser for the time being, and grabbed a gray shirt. 

when peter picked up the shirt, he caught a glimpse of what once were a bright magenta hello kitty bottoms, is now a dull shade of pink. with a sinking feeling, peter decided to put them on as well.

he made it to his twin size bed where he left the bag and took out the single purchase he made. 

a small scented candle. apple pumpkin.

once lit, he set it on the small dining table his studio apartment came with. he stared at it until the soft scent filled his nose. his throat closes when memories of you that are still imprinted in his mind come back. peter feels his left eye twitch as tears threaten to spill, but he refuses to cry. 

he can't afford a breakdown. he has no one to turn to anymore. peter doesn't know if he can pick himself back up if he breaks. it was easier with tony because he had may and friends who cared about him. but especially because he had you. 

now may is gone, he's a stranger to his friends, and every detail of peter you had memorized has been erased. 

peter turns back to his bed and pulls the covers to get in. he continues to stare at the flame emotionless, slowly dissociating from his lonesome. 

even after everything, peter can't comprehend how you could go from perfectly drawing the creases on his lips without a reference to not even remembering his name. 

do you still have those pieces of him? 

do you still draw him even now like it is muscle memory?

is he in your dreams like you are in his?

you will continue to occupy peter's mind until the day being spider-man finally kills him. you were his deepest love, and now his greatest loss.