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#and maybe other posts/tags i've written about her?
roaringroa · 9 months
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i think i'm gonna use my old tumblr posts about her to ask her to be my girlfriend lmaooooo
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thegreatwicked · 6 months
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This obviously needed its own post and here it is, a collection of blog posts and resources I have found and used for my own writing, I hope they help you too! Go forth and write that spice!
The Smut Writers Dictionary By @maybeeatspaghetti Seriously, how many different way are there to write cock? Does anyone else wonder if they've used the word 'lips' too many times? Well, this is a good place to start!
The Ultimate Guide to Writing Smut This is the first one I found and I go back to it frequently! There's also some great information about specific areas of sex that may not be common knowledge for first time writers!
How to Write Smut By @urfriendlywriter Another great source of information from different verbiage to use and a few tips to hel you along (giggity)
Smut Thesaurus By @prurientpuddlejumper just what it sounds like and you can never have too many words at your disposal.
6 Steps to Writing Better Sex By @chaoschaoswriting If you're at a loss or just want some more help this is antoher fantastic blog!
Writing Prompts NSFW By @seidenbros Need some dialogue? Or a story idea? Have a look!
#100 NSFW/Smut Dialogue Prompts By @a-cure-for-writers-block More? More. This is also a fantastic writing blog with lots to offer!
Intimate + Sexual Headcannon Questions By @petalsprompts Good questions to ask your characters to get to know them better and make more well rounded characters!
Smut & Mature (18+) Master List By @pendarling A great list dialogue prompts, scenarios, and helpful bits!
Poly NSFW Alphabet By @smaoineamhsalach Another great way to get to know your characters and maybe a handful of ideas for story ideas.
Kink Prompts Another from the previous blogger above and I didn't know what half of these are! I'll work on a kink dictionary next!
Writing Smut 101: Overcoming Smut Shame @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 There's a lot to be said for this particular subject! It's hard to write stuff like this, so how do you get over it? Start here!
How to Write a Kiss Scene By @youneedsomeprompts Yes!!! I still struggle with this one! There's a thousand ways to kiss, find your favorite!
Smut Oneliners By @deity-prompts you can never have enough one-liners!!
How to Write a (Great) Sex Scene Another great article for new smut writers
9 Tips for Writing Steamy Scenes More tips to help you wirte good steamy stuff!
How to Write Erotica and a Damn Fine Sex Scene A WEALTH if information on writing, structuring, and helpful tips!
@saradikahas a fantatic blog with graphics for you to use to add some fun to your posts. Things like MDNI Banners, 18+ Content Warnings, Support Your Favorite Writers and Reblog banners! They are free to use but she does ask that you reblog her stuff if you do! She's also a very talented writer and she writes some AMAZING Din Djarin stories!
Gay Sex Positions Guide This is a WONDERFUL adition and thank you so much @b7bubby for bringing this to my attention, I didn't have any resources for writing M/M fairings but this is a much needed addition to the spicy community! i've never written an M/M pairing and I feel like such an idiot for overlooking the need for a resource like this!
Writing the Perfect Kiss Scene provided by @writers-potiona fantastic little guide to writing better kisses!
If you find any other great smut writing resources feel free to tag me so I can add them to this list! Good luck with your writing! Now go write that story and LET THE SPICE FLOW!!!!
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landograndprix · 6 months
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╰┈➤ ❝ desire • l.n c.l ❞ xiii
part twelve - book 2
➪ Charles hasn't paid much attention to you after your daughter was born but a certain Brit does.
➪ life is going from bad to worse but maybe a bit of alone time is exactly what you need.
➪ mom!reader x dad!Charles x lando
➪ last part before we continue on desire book 2! Very annoyed because the site I used to edit the text messages is gone and now I have to change the whole aesthetic of the fic. Tag list is closed.
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y/nusername posted to their story
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landonorris replied to your story
landonorris
pick up your phone
where are you?
babe text me back pls
text me pls
baby I'm sorry
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y/nusername
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liked by charles_leclerc, manon_roux and 548,534 others
y/nusername week 14. 🇧🇪
view all 1,114 comments
norrizz absolutely foul that they set you up with Danica all the time 😂
↳ bott_ass is like they want a cat fight on live television 💀
norris4 did you and lando break up?
milliexoxo didn't invite me for some waffles? Rude.
↳ oscarpastry pretty sure you were in the wrong garage 😉
carlandooo millie and Logan confirmed? 👀
oscarpastry she was just in williams garage, doesn't have to mean anything ofcourse but they've been seen together a couple times 👀
bobnorris did you break up with lando???
joris__trouche douce petite fille avec sa nouvelle amie 🦁 (sweet baby girl with her new friend)
↳ leclerc_16 it's been a while since I saw uncle joris in the comments 😭
landoooo why are y'all asking her if her and lando broke up?!
↳ norry4 just a stupid rumor going around again..
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y/nusername
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liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc and 746,523
y/nusername rien que nous deux 🌞 (just the two of us)
view all 1,109 comments
norrizz oh..okay :(
hannahh going on a holiday all by myself with a toddler sounds like a nightmare to me, you go mom!
norry4 who remembers millie getting excited about her holiday to Greece with the 'norris bunch' 😔
↳ lan4lan stop she was so excited when y/n told her 😭
yukisan when was this?
norry4 one of mils her vlogs
hamilt44n fastest kid in the pool 🏎 💨
bott_ass put me in your suitcase next time please 😭
landoscar wonder why they broke up..
↳ clsixteen nothing had been confirmed yet, jeez y'all need to calm down
julieeeexo hope you guys enjoy your little girl vacation <3
landonorizzzz guys lando is still liking her posts, it's probably nothing (I'm delulu 😔)
↳ charliecharlie charles is also still in her likes and guess what they are? Not together anymore :(
landonorizzzz girl shut up 😭
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y/nusername posted to their story
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manon_roux replied to your story
manon_roux
Hi there, it's been a while and I completely understand if you don't want to speak to me and feel free to ignore this message but I've been seeing all the things they've written about you and everything that's happened and I just need to know if you're doing alright, making sure zoë is doing good
I know we don't see eye to eye anymore but you were my best friend since we were little kids so I'll always think about you, I hope you understand that
I'd apologise a thousand times for what I said and did but I also understand you're done withe me
I'm asking for you to give me your whole story but a thumbs up to let me know you're okay would ease my mind
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Desire taglist; @fangirl-dot-cm @sainzluvrr @writingworlds @chezmardybum @lewisvinga @xjval @fanficweasley @rockyhayzkid @aundercover @thecubanator2 @minchedchilli @crimeshowjunkie @alisoncasey21 @eeviepepi08 @shamelesspotatos @sleepybrokenmelle @leireggsworld @janeholt3 @iamahalicinationn @dessxoxsworld @kapsylia @22yuki
Everything taglist; @thomaslefteyebrow @hopefulinlove @smoothopz @softboystarkey @honethatty12 @cixrosie @parkersmjs @ireadthensuetheauthors @celestialams @be-your-coffee-pot @heli991113 @kodzuvk @reality-is-a-con @80sloverry @bibissparkles @myescapefromthislife @lanando4 @elliegrey2803 @ravisinghs-wife @harrysdimple05 @minkyungseokie @pretty-little-bunny382728 @thatgirlthatreadswattpad @severewobblerlightdragon @cherry-piee @namgification @mycenterfold @devineendevers @celestialend @jsjcue @d3kstar @themislovesf1 @geehsf @mehrmonga @gentlemonsterworld
Lando taglist: @beatricemiruna @simp-for-fictional-people @landossainz @christianpulisic10 @bored-brunette2 @i83andrew @mcmuppet @justdreamersdream
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hs-is-loml · 10 months
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Still Love Him More. (t.b)
Pairing: Tom Blyth x Co-star!Reader, mention of Past!Charles Leclerc x Reader
Summary: some fans can't get over your past relationship with a certain famous ferrari driver while others are obsessed with your new boyfriend.
Type: Social Media AU! face claim is Rachel Zegler
Warnings: toxic fans? mentioned a slightly unhealthy past relationship with charles leclerc. (literally only mentioned and not pictured...), few grammar mistakes in the twitter threads. not a warning but tom blyth being the standard. UNEDITED
a/n: this was inspired by @sofs16 's jealousy, jealousy! + i'm deprived of charles since the f1 season being over rn so maybe i'm a little harsh with him in this... (written in 3am because why not)
masterlist
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y/nupdates has posted
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liked by y/nl/nsources, blindedbyblyth, 1ucygrayba1rd, and 26,936 others
y/nupdates y/n with rumored co-star boyfriend tom blyth at the knicks basketball game tonight!
tagged yourusername and tomblyth
view all 571 comments
y/nsidelove rumored? haven't they been dating since last year?
→ peetaspastry i think we all just assumed with the amount these two are together!
→ articarabella they are definitely dating! a few weeks ago y/n went on live and it was pretty much confirmed by them! they also mentioned how tom and her searching for a new place in new york
y/nforlifeee honestly, i don't know how people didn't figure it out sooner
thatonebakucorner who is this man and why is he with y/n😀
→ protectthewags it's her new love interest in tbosas
→ thatonebakucorner so what he's the her new love interest in her life too??!
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blythandl/nnews has posted
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liked by y/npleasegivemeachance, snowbairdsfall, fellforthebuzzcut, and 19,017 others
blythandl/nnews more pictures of y/n and tom during the tbosas
tagged yourusername and tomblyth
view all 236 comments
y/nintbosasera she found an european man with some height to him🙏🏼🙏🏼
→ finnicksspear not the shade to the vroom vroom ex😭
→ welovey/n people need to get over the fact y/n and charles have been broken up for over a year already...
blythfilms something about them just make sense
nevergettingoverthem i've never seen a photo of y/n looking so happy!
→ y/nineverymovie maybe it's because her ex's fans used to belittle her and criticized her on anything she did?
valntynemade i should've known that the f1 girlies would find this
→ staystrongy/n they never miss when y/n is spotted with someone
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tbosasmemories has posted
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liked by y/nupdates, th3hungergam3s, and 32,658 others
tbosasmemories behind the scenes pictures of y/n l/n and tom blyth while filming tbosas!
tagged yourusername, tomblyth, and thehungergames
view all 459 comments
lovelyy/n the casting and sets of this movie are impeccable
unfairodair only tom blyth would make people attracted to a murderous man with a buzzcut
→ watchingforthem the same thing happened with drew starkey playing rafe cameron
soundofsnowlanding the more pictures are released of tom and y/n, the more it makes sense why they fell in love with each other!
→ y/nineverymovie she always seems to laugh more when he's around
livingfory/nreputationera the best thing that happened to y/n and her mental health was getting away from her ex. not to mention how she can actually focus on her career now
→ carlosconfusion i don't get why everyone hates charles so much? what happened between him and y/n?
→ wagsforlife charles and y/n were together from around late 2020 to early 2022. during the relationship, y/n was receiving a lot of hate from charles' fans and took a break from all social media and acting until the press tour of west side story started. many fans still love them but as separate people and not a couple!
→ oneforthewags exactly, that! even though y/n isn't a wag anymore, we still love her and support her work!
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tomblyth has posted
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liked by yourusername, hunterschafer, mrsamclaflin, and 985,973 others
tomblyth to my favorite person who breathed life into this movie. i will never be able to thank the world for sending you into my life. you are the light in the darkest scenes. i am truly the luckiest person for having you by my side every day. you are beautiful, angel.
tagged yourusername
view all 89,342 comments
yourusername i love you
→ liked by tomblyth and 510 others
→ tomblyth and i endlessly love you.
songbirdsandsnakes snowbaird lives with you two
hunterschafer you guys are too cute!
variety hollywood's favorite couple ❤️
lunasteeples gorgeous girl
thehungergames two incredible leads
jesperjones a cast made up of the loveliest people :)
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yourusername has posted
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liked by tomblyth, vaughan_reilly, tchalamet and 1,041,109 others
yourusername i cried to him last night about how proud i am of him. he is so wonderful in this film. you will all love him as much as i do. but i still love him more.
but i also wanted to say that i came to adore this man through long days, fun nights, in-depth talks, and silly inside jokes. i spent every day with him and got to know his heart, his sense of humor, his charm, and first and foremost, his immense talent.
my sweet tom, you are unbelievably wonderful in every way. goofy, sincere, and lovable in every moment we have. i love working with you, but beyond that, i love knowing you.
view all 121,054 comments
tomblyth you forgot to mention that i also cried with you last night.
→ tomblyth besides that. i have never met anyone else that is as perfect as every aspect of you. no one will ever have my heart the way you do.
→ liked by yourusername and 649 others
→ yourusername you have me forever.
lilymhe loved the movie! and the amazing chemistry between the two of you!
vogue favorite on and off-screen pair
alyciajasmin beautiful people 🤍
nickkbenson biggest smiles
→ yourusername always!
florencepugh adore you both
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bookshelf-dust · 1 year
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healing
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billy hargrove x gn!reader
word count: 5,445
warnings: swearing, smoking, mentions of past trauma (starcourt), slight sexual innuendos??
a/n: hi! remember when i made you do a poll for my 1k celebration? and one bed with billy won? well this is that fic! i'm sorry it took so long to get here, but school was kicking the ever loving shit out of me. anyways, i really hope you like it. it's a little different than other fics i've written, but i think that's a good thing. just for context, this is post the end of season three, with billy and hopper being okay and jopper being in full swing. i think that's all i wanted to say. thanks again for 1k followers. that's still so wild to me. i love you. and billy loves you too <333
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November 1985
“No.”
“What do you mean no? You just fought an interdimensional being, don’t you want a vacation?” 
Lucas wipes both hands down his face, flopping down on the arm of the couch beside where Max sits with El between her knees, tying off one of the two braids she’s trying to make. 
“Max, can you help me? Please?” Lucas has been arguing about this for fifteen minutes. 
She rolls her eyes, but looks up from her work nonetheless. “Billy.”
The man in question crosses his arms, locking eyes with the redhead. “Maxine.”
Max finishes Eleven’s braid and she hops up to join Will where he’s working on a puzzle. Joyce brought it home from work a few days ago, and it’s been spread out on a card table in the corner of the living room since then. Will couldn’t watch The Golden Girls with Joyce from the kitchen table. 
“Just come with us, Billy. We all know you hate it here. It’ll give you a chance to get away for a little while.”
Except that’s not totally the truth. He doesn’t hate it here. Not with you around. 
“There’s a pool.” Will looks up, a little shyly, from the puzzle, fingers flipping around a single piece. “At the place Robin found.” 
Billy nods, and it’s enough to make Will smile at the acknowledgment. 
It’d been Steve’s idea, after everything that happened in July. He thought everyone going on a trip together might be a good idea. Go a little ways out from home, calm down. 
You and Billy started going to school, though Billy is still working. He found a job at a record store across the street from Melvald’s that opened after the mall went to shit. It definitely wasn’t his first choice, but it works. And he’s slowly fixing up the Camaro. 
Steve had offered to pay for the repairs in full, considering he did most of the damage when he rammed the side of it, but Billy couldn’t handle that. So far Max has only convinced him to let Steve cover the really expensive parts. It hurts Billy more than he’d care to admit—having Steve Harrington give him money. 
But he can’t lie, going somewhere away from Hawkins, even just for a couple days, sounds really nice. It’s the group part that’s bothering him. He’s still not used to everyone wanting him to tag along, but apparently major trauma brings people together.
There’s the slamming of car doors, and footsteps running up the driveway before the door swings open, Robin bursting in with a stack of movies in her arms. She’s followed by Dustin and then Steve, bags and keys being tossed every which way. 
Billy doesn’t see you for a moment and starts to worry maybe you aren’t coming. He’s already supplying excuses for having to go home, but Steve left the door ajar, and after a moment, there you are. 
You look sleepy, footsteps the quietest of everyone else as you carefully push the Byers’ door shut behind you. He watches as you accept a hug from Eleven, overhears her ask, “how did your test go?” 
He’s happy to hear you tell her it went well. It’s only after you’ve looked at her and Will’s puzzle and snapped a few more corner pieces in that you make a beeline for the open spot on the couch beside Billy. 
When you’ve settled, your knee bumps against his. “Hey.”
He looks at you, a little grin playing at the corners of his mouth. His arms are still crossed, thumb playing with the pendant resting on his chest. A chest surprisingly covered by a sweater, though the sleeves are pushed up. 
“Hey. Glad your test is over?”
That sound of his voice makes you smile, and he’s never been so grateful for something, even if it’s just an expression. “Yeah.”
You glance down at the new tattoo on his arm, a dark colored snake wrapping around the skin covering his elbow. You run your thumb across the tail that flicks across his forearm, and Billy relaxes into your touch. 
“You have work today?”
Billy shakes his head. You’re glad he had the day off. And you’d tell him so if it weren’t for the sudden bombardment. 
Lucas is suddenly standing in front of you, having returned from the kitchen where you think he and Dustin may have been cleaning out Joyce’s fridge. 
“Holy shit, thank god you’re here. I need you to convince Billy to go on vacation.” 
You glance at Max, assuming she’s already tried. She looks rather annoyed. “Lucas, would you sit down?”
The boy looks at Max, and she glares at him. Clearly he knows better and sits down next to her. 
“Billy doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do,” you finally say. 
The man in question turns to face you. You have to lean your head back some because of how close he is. 
“Are you going?” he asks, voice quiet and thick with something you don’t know that you’re supposed to notice. 
“Y-yeah. I was gonna. Robin only went on about it to me for an hour over the phone last night. I just think it might be nice to get away for a little while.” Billy doesn’t break eye contact with you, and while it makes you a little nervous, it tells you he’s listening.
“And I can watch Max for you if you really don’t want to go. Just make sure she doesn’t kill Lucas or anything.” Max snorts at your response, though Lucas looks at her in panic, already calculating how best to prevent that sort of situation. 
Your gaze softens and you fight the urge to reach out and run your thumb across Billy’s cheek. 
Please come with us. I want you to go. I want you there, you think. But it’s not what you say. You don’t know how badly he needs to hear it. 
“You really don’t have to go, Billy. Not if you don’t want to.”
“But there is enough space, man.” Steve stands behind the couch, handing El a scrunchie he retrieved from her bag. His voice is calm, informative. “If you decide to go. There’s plenty of room, and we’d be happy if you did.”
Billy could make some smartass remark. But he won’t. He knows that Steve is being honest, and that he’s not trying to be a dick. It seems that witnessing the guy who beat the shit out of you almost die not even a year after he moved to town really brings you together. 
Billy gives an acknowledging nod. “I’d be very happy if you did,” Eleven says. She loves having Jonathan as an older brother, really she does, but Billy lets her play with his hair. And in her books, that really ups the scale. 
He smiles at her, and El considers that a win. 
You notice him shift next to you, and then he’s leaning forward to whisper in your ear. “Come with me?” He cocks his head in the direction of the door. 
He gets up, assuming you’ll follow him. You always do. 
When you’ve shut the door, you move to the porch swing. It’s your favorite spot out here, and Joyce says it makes her happy to see someone use it. She used to sit there with Will in the mornings after Jonathan left for school and read to him. She did the same with Jonathan, but he was a much more fidgety kid, wanting to find something else to do. 
Billy lights a cigarette, and you watch where he fidgets with the ring on his middle finger. 
He’s standing a little ways away from you so as to not breathe the smoke directly in your vicinity, but you wish so badly that he was closer. You like having him close. The weight of his body next to you, the warmth, how solid his arm feels when it’s pressed to yours or when he slides down on the couch some and it's more so pressed to your side. 
“Which part of it are you worried about?” you ask him. 
He shrugs. “You really think they want me there? You think Max wants me around?” “Billy, I know she does. And I know that voice in your head is telling you that it’s a pity invite, but it’s not. And, besides…” you trail off, but he’s not having that. He needs you to reassure him. 
“Besides what?” 
You look up at him. “I want you to go. And yeah, I’ll be sad if you don’t go, but that shouldn’t sway your decision either.” You push your feet against the concrete porch a little harder, and the swing responds to the movement. You move quicker, now feeling very pleased with yourself. 
Billy almost laughs at the child-like look on your face, but you look so at home on the swing that he holds it in. A grin escapes nonetheless. 
“Say that again.” He stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray either Hopper or Joyce have left outside. He’s watching you again. 
“What?” He’s not gonna let you go all shy on him now. He needed to hear that. He needs to hear it. 
“You know what.”
“I want you to go.”
“Then it’s settled. Need to get out of this shithole anyways.”
————
The place Steve found is about two hours from Hawkins, with three bedrooms, a shockingly luxurious pull-out couch, and bigger common areas than you’ve ever laid eyes on. Excluding the ones in Steve’s house. In short, the rental is like Hopper’s cabin, if Hopper’s cabin were updated and substantially larger. It feels like the kind of place rich people have to take weekend trips. You’d rather not find out how much Steve is paying for the lot of you to stay there. 
Robin takes you on a grand tour while everyone else explores the backyard. Dustin is already determined to climb a tree. One of the rooms has two sets of bunk beds, dedicated to the four boys. “To ensure no cootie-spreading,” Robin proclaims. 
She and Steve will share the couch, with Max and Eleven in the smaller bedroom. 
Robin stops at the end of the hallway. “Which leaves…” 
You and Billy. 
You and Billy Hargrove.
Sharing a room. 
Sharing a bed. 
Speaking of, the man in question brushes past you, setting his bag on the floor at the foot of the bed. Robin takes that as her queue to leave and gives you a thumbs up on the way out. You hope she can feel your death stare on the back of her head, and she knows it, being quick to run down the hall. 
“So we’re roomies, huh?” Billy says, gathering his hair at the base of his neck. You hadn’t even realized he had a tie on him, and it takes him finishing off a lazy bun to realize it’s a blue scrunchie. You have to bite your lip to keep from saying anything. 
“I can sleep with Max and El, if you want. Or–”
That crease between Billy’s brows forms. “Why would you do that?”
You’ve gone all warm. You’d have to sleep in bed with him. And you sit next to him all the time, but this is different. Isn’t it?
Maybe it’s not so weird. You’re just friends. It’s like a sleepover, right?
“I don’t know, you might not want to sleep together or something.”
He cocks a brow, but you catch the double meaning of your words just in time. “You know what I mean, Billy.”
He sits on the end of the bed, and reaches out for you. You move towards him slowly, but the moment you’re within his grasp, Billy spreads his legs and grabs your waist, slotting your body between them. 
“You can go if you really want to. If you think I’ve got cooties or somethin’ and you don’t wanna share a bed with me.”
You snort, and Billy drinks in the sound, knowing he’s the one that made you laugh. 
“I don’t think you’ve got cooties.”
You realize in that moment that his hands haven’t left their spot on your waist, never straying anywhere else. The weight of them on you is enough to keep you focused on him, and he seems to acknowledge that. 
“Then what is it?” he asks, in that low drawl you fear could get out any answer he wanted from you. 
You hesitate, but say it anyway. “You don’t think it’ll be weird? Sleeping in the same bed?”
Billy fights the urge to rest his forehead against your stomach. He wants to tell you he’s wished you were in his bed on more than one occasion. Sometimes he just wishes you were there so it wouldn’t feel so cold, so he’d have someone to pull him out of his thoughts before they eat him alive altogether. 
“No, I don’t think it’ll be weird.”
You nod your head, and try to move back from him. 
Billy whines. “Uh uh. Nope.”
You go to put your hands on your hips, and they graze Billy’s on the way. He grabs hold of them. “You don’t want to have a sleepover with me?”
Billy’s looking up at you with those watery blue eyes, and you know this is a battle you’ll never win. 
“Really?”
He lets out a breath of a laugh, and your eyes fall to his neck when he tosses his head back. 
“Yeah, baby.”
Baby. 
It feels like every cell in your body has been sent into overdrive, like you can’t compute a single coherent thought. All because Billy called you “baby”. 
And if he’s being honest with himself, he feels the same way. He hadn’t meant to say it. It’s just that he calls you “baby” in his head all the time, and it just…happened.
“I’d love to have a sleepover with you, Hargrove.”
“Mhm. Thought so.” 
This time he lets the laugh out, and it’s a beautiful sound. The kind of sound you’d commit unspeakable acts to hear again. And this time, he does let his forehead drop to rest on your stomach. It surprises you, but you’re not mad about it.
“Oh, fuck off,” you say, and you can feel his chuckle against your skin.
When he quits, you find yourself just standing there, find your hands moving around his back. He’s always so warm. You rub your hands up and down his back, the denim of his jacket rough on your fingertips. 
You feel him shift, feel his change in position, the hard press of his chin against you. Billy is looking up at you, and you know he’s hoping you’ll return his gaze. His eyes bore into yours, and you hate to think of what you must look like from this angle. Clearly he doesn’t mind. 
You push a curl behind his ear, a shockingly perfect ringlet that’s too short to be contained like the rest of them. 
Billy would be taken aback by the gesture if it weren’t for the fact that you always go this easy on him. Like you know he’s healing, in more ways than one. 
“We can’t stay here forever, you know. I wanna go look around.” 
“Yeah,” he laughs. “I’m sure it’s riveting.” He lets you go anyway, following you down the hall to the rest of the cabin.
————
Your back rests on the base of an oversized chair, one that’s surprisingly comfy, your body in between Robin’s legs. She’s sitting next to Steve, watching you moderate El, Lucas, and Will play Twister. Dustin’s already out. 
“Right hand blue.”
“You’re kidding right?”
“Sinclair, have you never played this game before?”
Lucas scoffs, trying to reach the blue on the other side of the mat without toppling into Will. Max went with Billy to the store, but they should be back soon. You have a sick feeling they’re taking advantage of having been given Steve’s debit card. 
“Yes, I’ve played the game before. If you’re so good, why don’t you get down here and show us how it’s done, Harrington?”
“Yeah, Harrington, why don’t you show us how flexible you are?” Billy’s voice makes you look up from where you’ve been mindlessly twisting the spinner on the board around with the tip of your finger. 
He stands just inside the living room, holding the door open with his leg. He kicks it shut once Max has made it in. She heaves the paper bags she’d been holding up and onto the counter. Steve rises to help unpack them. You follow on instinct, handing the spinner to Robin instead, and Dustin is quick to take Steve’s spot before Mike can. 
Billy won’t let you take anything from him, but he will let you help figure out what the hell to do with all of it. “Do I even want to know how much you both spent?” you ask. 
He gives you that fucking smile, and you know you don’t. “Max said she wanted to have a spa night–whatever that means–with El, so we sort of split up. I’m sure Steve’ll live.” 
“For your information, Lucas,” Steve continues, clearly not ready to let the quips towards his limberness go, “I was the captain of the swim team.”
“What’s that got to do with being flexible, dingus?” Robin directs the two remaining players, the young boy in question having just busted his ass. 
“Swimming is an art form, Rob. You gotta learn to respect it.”
You choke on a laugh, and Billy is quick to rub your back while he chuckles into your shoulder. 
“Something funny over there?” Steve questions. 
You straighten, trying to wipe the smile from your face though it’s to no avail. “Nope, Steven. I’m sure you’re just incredibly stretchy. Like Mr. Fantastic.”
His brow furrows. “Mr. Fantastic?”
Dustin snorts, elbow deep in a bag of chips, and you quickly realize that you probably shouldn’t have given him an opening, but you don’t exactly regret it either. 
The lot of you spend the rest of the night in this fashion, playing games, eating way too much food, taking turns smacking the top of the television so your movie will keep playing. 
It feels like home. It feels safe. You wish it always felt this way. 
————
You’d just finished brushing your teeth when you hear the bedroom door click shut, hear footsteps you can tell are in search of you. 
You peek your head out of the bathroom and Billy grins at the sight of you in pajamas, a smear of moisturizer on your forehead you’ve yet to rub in. 
He squeezes in the small room, about the same size as his at home, to join you. There’s something about this moment, the domesticity of it, that makes your heart swell. It feels like something you could get used to, getting ready for bed with him. Neither of you have to say anything, you just do your own thing, but having him be there, having his presence–it’s more than enough for you. 
When you climb into bed, you try and read for a while, the sounds of Billy washing his face comforting you. You find it easy to read even when he does get in with you, the mattress sinking underneath his weight, the sheets rustling as he moves around experimentally, trying to get comfortable in a bed that isn’t his own. 
You feel odd though, reading when he’s right there, so it isn’t long before you close the book and slide further into the covers with him. Billy’s quick to turn on his side, wanting to see you like this. 
He watches you yank the blankets up to your chin, looking at him over a blur of fluffy white comforter. “It’s fuckin’ freezin’ in here,” you tell him.
“C’mere then.”
You burrow further into your pillow, fearing you know exactly what he’s going to suggest. “Huh?”
“You’re cold. You always whine about me being warm or somethin’ and I’m telling you to come here.”
“Billy.”
“Stop.” He lifts the covers up some, untucking you from them, and he wraps his arm around your back, tugging you into his side. 
Suddenly you’re pressed against him, having slid across the sheets easier than you’d have imagined. 
He’s let go of you, his arm hovering over your back. “You want me to hold you or no?” 
“Yeah.” 
Billy lets his arm drop against your side, his fingers splaying out over your back. He rubs his hand up and down your spine, hoping it’ll warm you up. “This okay?” 
“Yes.” 
He nods. You’re looking at him like he’s something special.
Billy realizes, in that moment, that that’s how you’ve always looked at him. Even before. 
He also realizes that your hands are tucked under your chin and your legs are curled up and into you like you’re afraid of making any contact with him. 
“You can loosen up, you know. It’s just me.” 
You let out a breath of a laugh, and he can feel it against the skin of his neck. 
“It’s okay, I promise. You can touch me.” Billy has this feeling that you’re afraid of hurting him. He’s sure you’ve noticed that he’s wearing a shirt to bed, something he never did before. And he thinks that you’re worried he’ll break. 
“You’re sure?”
“Wouldn’t have said so otherwise.”
He watches you unfold your hands and stretch your arm over him, hooking it around his hip. You want to rub up and down his side, but you’re nervous. 
It’s just me. 
“Do they hurt at all?”
Your thumb skates up a little further, and you don’t have to tell him what you mean. 
“Not all the time,” he says, voice low and thick with drowsiness. “At first, yeah, like hell. Now it’s just sometimes. They can feel a little tight, or just bug me. Depends, I guess.”
You nod, feeling brave enough now to slide your hand up a little further. Your touch is light, barely there. You close your eyes, trying not to think about when it happened. How he’d screamed. 
He can tell when you’ve calmed down some, because your arm relaxes and you hug him a little more firmly. You scoot in a little closer, close enough that your noses would touch if you tried to make them. 
“Goodnight, Billy.”
He makes the move, dragging the tip of his nose across your forehead. He kisses the top of your head, and you grin so wide you feel like a kid in a candy shop. 
“Goodnight, baby.”
————
When you wake up, you almost don’t want to disturb him, but you know you should get out of bed.
Billy is sprawled out on his stomach, having separated from you at some point during the night. His tank top is rucked up from the tossing and turning of sleep, and you look away when you catch a glimpse of pink skin. It doesn’t feel like your place to look. 
You wander out of the room, carefully shutting the door behind you. You make it down the hall, and find that Robin seems to be the only other one awake. You should’ve guessed. She told you once before that her body doesn’t seem to let her sleep in. 
Steve is still passed out on the pull-out couch, completely covered by the blankets. The only sign of him is a tuft of messy hair against the light colored pillow case his head rests on. 
Robin waves at you from her perch at the kitchen counter, a bowl of cereal in front of her. “Want some?” she whispers, pushing the box in your direction. 
You fill up your own bowl, having a feeling that Robin is about to ramble. 
“Sleep okay?” she asks. 
“Mhm. You?”
“Fine. Though, y’know, Steve is a horrific bed hog. Seriously, he was half on top of me the whole night. I might have to bunk with Max and El.” 
You laugh, and Robin takes that as her queue to ask what she’s been pondering since she woke up. 
“Was it okay? Sleeping with Billy? Well, not like that. Well, I’m assuming not like that, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I just meant like actually sleeping? Please stop me.”
You grin at her. “Please breathe, Rob.” She does, over exaggerating her inhales. “And it was fine.”
“Okay, good. I was kind of worried you’d be frustrated with my matchmaking tendencies. I just really want you two to be happy. And he seems so calm when he’s with you, and I realize I’ve just told you that I’ve been pushing you two together and I–”
You wipe milk from your chin, having almost spit out your cereal. “Robin, sweetheart, it’s okay, I promise. I know about your matchmaking tendencies. But I think we’re just friends, right?”
“Just friends, my ass.” You hadn’t even seen Steve get up, but he’s reaching for the fridge and pulling out a carton of chocolate milk. He really can’t say anything about Dustin’s eating habits when he has the exact same diet. 
“Oh my god.”
“Listen, I’m just saying, there’s been something going on between you two since before the world went to shit. I don’t know why you two tiptoe around each other like it’s not obvious that you’re in love.”
“Steve!” you exclaim. “Seriously, what the hell? I’ve been up for like twenty minutes and you two are schooling me on my love life?”
“Or lack thereof,” Robin says. 
“Okay, damn. You know what, I’m going back to bed.” 
Steve pushes your bowl back towards you when you attempt to get up. “No, you’re not. I’m just saying, there’s no sense in avoiding this. You both clearly feel a lot for each other, and I don’t see any reason to avoid it when you could be together.” 
He’s being vulnerable with you, his big brown eyes boring into yours and trying to convey how serious he’s being. 
“Just think about it, okay? There’s no harm in talking about how you feel with him. And don’t say that you don’t feel anything, because that’s a goddamn lie.”
————
Billy’s had his swim trunks on all day, but he hasn’t done more than sit in the shade by the pool while everyone else makes a mess and plays ridiculous games in the water. 
It’s killing him to watch you in there from time to time, swimming around or sitting in the shallow end. You told him once that swimming calms you down. 
It’s not until after dinner, when everyone has moved inside for the most part, though there seems to be the plotting of a water balloon fight out front, that he’s brave enough to head for the pool. 
You follow him out there, see him contemplating the water. 
“Whatcha doin’?” 
Billy drops the cigarette he’d been smoking, snubbing it out. “Thought about going for a swim,” he tells you. 
“That sounds nice.”
“Mhm.”
“I can go back inside, if you want.”
Billy turns to face you. “No. No, I want you to stay.” He wants you to see. He can’t explain why, but he does. 
“Okay.” 
He takes a shaky breath, hoping you don’t catch it. You do. You always do. 
“I just…wasn’t ready for everyone to see.”
“I understand, Billy.” 
You know what he’s really saying. He wasn’t ready for everyone to see. But he’s ready for you to see. 
“I can get in first, if that helps. And I won’t look if you don’t want me to,” you say. 
“That helps, yeah. And you can look. It’s okay.”
He watches you wade in, watches the way your swimsuit changes color as you tread water. 
Billy takes another deep breath, and he’s pulling his shirt off. He’s quick though, diving straight into the deep end, knowing he needs to get it over with. 
When he comes up, his hair is sticking to his forehead, and he flips it out of the way, giving you a glimpse of the broad pink scar on his chest. 
He meets you halfway, and you think he’s in a serious mood until he’s splashing you like a child. 
“You motherfucker!” 
You get him back, and he’s laughing. 
Billy is laughing and he looks so pretty in the last of the day’s sunlight, beads of water sliding over his collarbones and down his arms, and you feel like you could die. Like seeing him this way is enough. You don’t need anything else.
You try to return a particularly aggressive splash, but he catches your waist, pulling you up and over his shoulder. 
“Billy!”
“What?” His voice is teasing. He tosses the rest of the way over, your laughter fading out into the water. 
You come up, a brilliant smile on his face. Billy’s sure if you stood close enough you’d be able to hear his heart beating. 
When you’ve both gone quiet, your eyes drop to the scars on his sides, the way they stretch across his skin, mean and twisting. Some spots are darker than others, and while it hurts you to look at them, you know it must hurt him even more. But he looks just as beautiful as before, if not increasingly so. 
“See something you like?” Billy says it on instinct. To hide the fact that he’s worried you don’t really like it. That maybe you think he’s gross looking. But he knows that’s all in his head. He fucking knows it. 
“You’re fucking gorgeous, Billy Hargrove.”
You say it with such surety, such admiration, that he can’t even begin to doubt that you mean it. 
He smiles at you. It’s boyish. You’d do anything to see a million more of them. 
He moves towards you, the sky having darkened enough that the outside lights have come on, the lights in the pool too. All that remains of the sun is a slash of deep orange, though the night quickly pushes it away.
Billy’s got you backed up against the wall of the pool now. His hands find your sides.
It’s overwhelming, having him this close. You can feel his breath on your face, see the rise and fall of his chest, the freckles on his cheeks. 
When he kisses you, you think your heart stops. His mouth is warm against yours, and he tastes a little like chlorine, but you don’t care. Your hands find his face, and you’re smiling so hard that he pulls away because he wants to see. You don’t let him for long though, pulling him back, wanting more. He laughs into your mouth, and your chest aches with this feeling.
Eventually you do let go, and when you hold his eye contact, he knows what you’re going to say. He needs to tell you first, though.
“I’m in love with you, you know.”
“I know,” you respond.
He tosses his head back in a laugh, and you press a sweet kiss to his throat. 
“I’m in love with you too, Billy.”
“Damn right you are.”
You snort against his chest, lowering slightly to kiss his scar. His breath catches. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve you. 
“About fucking time!” Steve’s shouting and Robin is yelling, and Max would be making barf sounds if she wasn’t so pleased with seeing her brother so happy. 
“So much for that,” Billy says.
But you wouldn’t have it any other way. 
————
“I’m regretting this, Billy.”
“Stop whining.”
Billy wraps his arms tighter around your back, pressing a kiss to your jaw in hopes that you’ll let him keep doing this. 
“Get off.”
“No.”
“Get off, please.”
“Make me.” 
There’s the sound of a slap, your hand having met his ass.
He raises his head from where he’d buried it in your chest, looking at you drowsily. “You just spanked me.”
And you’d do it again. 
“Didn’t work, did it?”
“No. Shut up and take it.”
By that he means continue letting him lay on top of you, his entire body pressed to yours. It doesn’t matter to him that there’s an entire bed, one that’s made for two people.
You settle for playing with his hair, something he seems to enjoy, and you’d mess with him about the fact that he’s essentially purring if it weren’t for him looking so content. 
He might be heavy, but having Billy Hargrove sleep on top of you isn’t exactly something you just give up. 
He’s never had this before.
Hell, you’ve never had this before. 
And he thinks it’s healing him. More than the salve he puts on his scars, or the physical therapy, or fixing up the Camaro. 
You’re healing him. You. 
————
please let me know if you liked this! feedback is always appreciated!! comments and reblogs mean more than you know. <33
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sweeterthanficstion · 16 days
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— take me back to eden || l.s.k
pairing: leon kennedy x fem!reader --- fem pronouns are not used, but written with fem!reader in mind. reader is afab
tags: high school au, college au, re2r leon -> re4r leon pipeline, childhood friends to strangers to friends to lovers, fluff, smut, a fuck ton of yearning MDNI 18+, male masturbation, p in v, unprotected sex (don't be silly, guys), loss of virginity, hand job, cunnilingus sort of, creampie, praise kink, breeding kink if you squint (sorry...) porn with plot, porn with feelings (like. too many feelings it's sort of gross)
summary: You try to desperately reignite an old friendship with Leon before high school wraps up. What starts out as a simple effort to mend things blossoms into something you couldn't have anticipated. But as summer ends, Leon’s moving away for College, leaving you in Raccoon City. Or so you thought.
word count: 10k ish
a/n: gosh, hi, it's been a while!! i've been fighting writer's block for nearly a year, and it definitely was NOT part of my plan to post leon smut before the knight fic, but cough ovulation week cough and uh.. this happened? big thanks to cressie for feeding the brainworms, and vivi for cheering me on, and of course eva for encouraging me to write again <33
also for the sake of my own sanity we're gonna pretend kairo was released in the 1990s because i just REALLY wanted them to watch kairo. and if you can catch all the song/movie references i make throughout this you'll get a gold star, anyway, enjoy! <3
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playlist ⭑ masterlist ⭑AO3
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If someone offered Leon a thousand dollars to pinpoint exactly where in the timeline of your friendship you’d grown apart, he wouldn’t be able to. Maybe it was just fate taking her course, friends growing apart. He’s tried to make peace with it, chalking it up to the inevitability of growing apart, another lesson in the long list of things he’s had to learn to accept.
But it doesn’t stop him from missing you. More than he’s willing to admit, even to himself.
Between college applications and finals, Leon’s life is already at full capacity, he’s fast-tracking, tunnel vision set on finishing senior year and getting into Stanford so he can get the hell out of Raccoon City. And he’s got it, he’s got this.
But then there you are, barrelling back into his life with all the force of something impossible to ignore, as if you’d never really left his orbit, as if the universe decided it wasn’t quite done with the two of you yet. Your smile hasn’t changed, still sweet and sticky like molasses. It’s disarming when  you ask if he can tutor you, voice light and breezy, as if no time has passed between you at all— just a few sessions here and there! You tell him, just to save you from failing another semester of chemistry.
He agrees nearly blindly, the words out of his mouth before he has time to think them through.
It has been so long since you’d even talked to him properly, anything other than a ‘hi’ or a ‘bye’ muttered in the school hallways before you’re whisked away by your friends. He’s honestly elated you’d approached him at all—he tried not to show it, though.
And he did great the first few sessions. Sure, it was more than awkward at first—but Leon was partly thankful for it. It left little room for him to entertain the idea of staying friends with you again for long. You’d create a simple routine together wherein you’d come over to his place, he’d teach you everything from organic to physical chemistry, then you’d bid him goodnight and leave. Simple. Predictable. Routine.
But then you started to break that routine, a variable that he hadn’t accounted for. You’d kick his foot under the dining table while you worked on homework together, laugh at his jokes even when they’re painfully bad because you think it’s cute. Then when you have to migrate upstairs after his parents come home from work, you’d settle onto his bed, glancing around his room and teasing him about how little he’d changed—still the same movie posters, still the same boy you once knew. 
You tell him about your day, he tells you about his, then you’ll go as far as to stay a little longer some nights, both of you acutely aware of the time but not doing a thing about it. 
He finds with time, he’s learnt to enjoy your company again. It isn’t so tense, no longer like walking on the glass shards of your previously shattered relationship. It’s easier now, as if none of the vast ocean separating you was ever there to begin with. He tries not to dwell on the fact that this newfound relationship is built entirely on the twenty dollar bill you hand him each night.
Then one night Leon’s mother invites you to stay for dinner, he expects you to politely decline, hand him the twenty dollar bill for the tuition, and leave. 
But much to Leon’s surprise, you don’t.
It’s catalytic, like a domino effect that he’s helpless against stopping. It gets so much worse when you offer to stay behind to help clean up. All but glowing as you strike up casual conversation with his mother, as if you’d never stopped visiting over the past six years. You’re a sweet talker, always have been, you compliment his mother on her cooking, ask her for the recipe, she tells you you’ll just have to come over and help her make it one night. You laugh, meeting Leon’s gaze as you tell her you just might have to.
God, Leon’s so fucked.
Absolutely fucked when he catches himself thinking about you in the middle of class, eyes trained like a hawk on the door to the classroom, waiting to see if you’ll show or not. You don’t. He’s not really surprised. He finds he doesn’t exactly mind though. Frankly, it’s none of his business whether you show or not, and a part of him likes the extra attention he gets out of it when you ask him all the questions you’d know if you did show up to classes while he’s tutoring you.
You’ll have your pen between your teeth like you always do, run a hand through your hair as you watch him work, bat those stupidly pretty eyelashes at him when you don’t understand what he’s trying to say. 
“None of this is making sense,” You huff, shoving your head into your hands, elbows braced on his dining room table. 
You catch the glimpse of sympathy that flashes across Leon’s face when you peek at him through your fingers, and eternally cringe at how you must look.
“Just one more chapter, then we’ll be done.” He promises, tapping the eraser end of his pencil on your notebook. 
He’s got that boyish smile on his lips when you meet his gaze, his thin-framed glasses perched atop his face make him look so much cuter than you remember him being when you were kids.
Your heart constricts in the familiar way it always does nowadays. A sickening reminder that you have a secret; closely guarded in your heart, tucked away by lock and key. You’re in love with your best friend.
Well, your once best friend. The term "best friends" feels outdated, like it belongs to a version of you that no longer exists. It’s partly your fault— well, mostly your fault. The rift between you didn’t just appear; you carved it out with every sorry excuse you’d made at fourteen when you’d chosen your flashy new friends over time spent with Leon.
But what were you to do? Middle school turned to High School and you’d gone from the sad lonely girl at the back of the class to someone worth looking at. 
And Leon? Well, you convinced yourself he was only dragging you down, or that’s what you told yourself to help to ease the guilt every time you brushed him off.
Was it shitty of you to pay your way back into his life? Yeah, but you’re also sort of a coward when it comes to confrontation. There were a million better ways to try to fix what you broke, but here you are, handing Leon twenty bucks a week for a chance to be close to him again.
Either way life moves on, and you find yourself falling for him. Stupidly, helplessly, completely.
Leon finds he’s drowning just as you are.
He’s so far past the point of just fucked. He’s utterly infatuated at this point. You’re stunning, every bit as beautiful as the word allows, beautiful as he watches you across the gym at a morning assembly. You’re busy talking to one of those jocks on the football team, Calvin? Chris? He can’t remember, he doesn’t care. Or that's what he tells himself.
He cares. He cares entirely too much, especially when you curl a lock of your hair around your finger, smiling at whatever bullshit Chris must be spouting with that mouth of his. Leon sinks into his seat further, diverts his attention to the front of the auditorium, but his gaze keeps drifting back to you. He’s desperate to ignore what definitely seems like you flirting with someone who definitely isn’t himself. 
He’s not jealous though, Leon isn’t jealous. ‘Course not.
That’s what he repeats to himself later that night, alone in his bed when his hand curls around the length of his hard dick, tip weeping as he gives a pitiful tug, teeth sunk into his bottom lip. 
He tries incredibly desperately to stifle the whine that bubbles up his throat, hand moving on its own accord as his eyes flutter shut. He doesn’t even realise he’s holding his breath until he starts getting light headed, too caught up chasing his own high. He comes embarrassingly fast, one, two, three, four more pumps and he’s done for, your name the last thing on his lips.
Leon swallows thickly before the crushing reality that he’d imagined you as he came fills him with a burst of shame. He tries to push the thought aside as quickly as it comes, groaning as he moves to sit on the edge of his bed. 
Yeah. He’s fucked.
A few weeks later, Leon finds himself sitting on the bleachers after class. He wouldn’t be caught dead out here less than a few weeks ago, but you had given him such a sweet smile when you’d told him you had cheer practice, asked him if he’d be okay waiting just a little before going back to his place for tuition.
It’s not so bad, he thinks, as he flicks through the songs on his cheap mp3 player. But even with that distraction, you’re far more captivating. You're dazzling, to say the least—dress glimmering under the afternoon sun as you go through your routine. Leon watchs and tries not to stare. 
It’s when you walk up to him though, all but shimmering, glowing under golden hour, that it hits him like a freight train all at once. He’s fallen horrifically far from his pedestal, what he feels for you now is so much more than what he did for you as kids. Not just as a friend, and yet much more than a schoolboy crush. 
The next few events unfold very quickly—you sit down next to him on the bleachers, the skin of your thigh pressing to his where your dress rides up. He freezes, his own skin flushing a shade of pink that he hopes goes unnoticed. You press your ear against his headset, stick your tongue out between your lips as if you’re in dire concentration, trying to hear what’s playing.
“What’re you listening to?” You ask when you pull away, pushing the headset off his head before you slide them over your own ears. 
You light up at what you hear, “The Smiths? Seriously, Leon, you have not changed.”
He rolls his eyes, running a hand through his hair to fix it from where your hands had mused it. “They’re good,” His voice is soft despite the protest in his tone. It’s then, you realise, that he’s blushing. 
Cute, cute, cute, you think. There is a particular warmth that blossoms in your chest seeing him like this, one that only Leon can really elicit.
You smile brighter,  “Yeah, I know. I love The Smiths.”
Leon looks starstruck. Of course you do. 
It doesn’t stop there, much to Leon’s own disappointment. He’d hoped after the school year was over you’d go back to not talking to him, and he could move past this and never think about it again (yeah, as if). 
But you don’t. At this point he should just stop wishing for anything at all. Clearly the universe is working against him in the fickle way it always has.
You call him every few nights, ask how he is, what he’s doing, if he’s busy. Things friends would ask each other. Do you count as friends? Leon would like to think so. But then again, he probably shouldn’t be picturing a friend’s face when he’s tugging at his own dick.
You should come over sometime. You say over the phone one night, voice sweet even over the shitty receptor of his home landline. His back straightens a little at your words, the lilt in your voice, as he leans against the counter in his kitchen.
He imagines you lying on your bed, feet kicked up as you hold your flashy new flip-phone between your shoulder and your ear. He wonders what you’re wearing. 
Hello? Your voice crackles, and he’s immediately pulled from his thoughts. C’mon, it’s not that bad of an idea. You laugh on the other end.
He hesitates. Yes, yes, yes, his mind screams at him. Well, I mean… what for?
Lame fucking answer.
Do I need a reason to invite my friend over?
He goes a little rigid at that, mulling over his next words as he feels heat climb up his neck. So we’re friends again now?
The line goes quiet for so long he’s sure you’ve abandoned your phone and left the line open. He nearly hangs up, letting out a sigh as he goes to rehook the landline back on the wall before your voice filters through at the last minute.
Of course we are, silly! Well, I mean— I know the secret Kennedy pasta recipe now.
He smiles then. That you do.
When Leon gets to your place, the cold Summer night air is sharp against his skin. He’s barely touched the doorbell when the front door swings open, the wide smile on your face is contagious—a spontaneous reaction sets off in his heart. 
“Hi,” You grin.
“Hey,” He greets, albeit a little awkwardly. 
You’re endeared, to say the least.
You lead him through the familiar hallways of your home, past family photos he’s seen countless times before, into the family media room, tucked away at the back of the house. It hasn’t changed much from the last time he was here—God, what was that? Six, eight years ago?—he recalls fond memories of escaping your parent’s annual Christmas parties to watch Christmas Mountain while snuggled up on the couch together instead.
“What about that one?” You hum, legs pulled up onto the large plush sofa in your media room, tucking your knees under your chin as you wave a hand at one of the titles in the box of your father’s old DVDs.
“You wanna watch Kairo?” Leon sounds amused, pulling the title out of the box before handing it to you.
You shrug, flipping the case over in your hand, honestly having no idea what the movie is about or what you’re getting yourself into. You just want him to pick a damn movie and get on with it. He’s always been like this, indecisive and hesitant about most things—you’ve always been the opposite, headstrong and impulsive. Yet, the two of you have always been tied together with a gold thread of string, your mother likes to say so, anyway.
You and Leon. Leon and You. An apple and an orange, not the same yet still belonging side by side.
It’s Leon’s voice that pulls you back to the present, taking the case from your hands before he cracks it open and insert the disc it into the silver DVD player. The screen flickers to life, and you quit chasing the DVD logo with your gaze as it bounces across the screen to fish for the TV remote as Leon joins you on the couch. 
He sits at the opposite end, and you’re acutely aware of the distance he’s put between the both of you. You’re not surprised at how your heart sinks at the implications of his actions.
Leon finds the remote before you do, silence settling over the room like thick fog as he flicks through the DVD menu. You will yourself not to get too freaked out by the eerie music or the haunting silhouette of the girl pressed against the screen.
“I didn’t think you liked horror movies,” Leon muses, not really meeting your gaze as he flicks through to press play. “Most people I know say it’s not all that great but—” And he rambles. God, he rambles and you want to kiss his stupid mouth shut.
The first thirty minutes of the movie are slow but not short of horrifying. You’re not sure if you’re thankful or frustrated when all Leon does is talk about SFX or behind the scene cuts, or how they did this and how they did that —endearingly sweet in a way that makes your heart flutter. You’re semi-grateful for the distraction.
He’s a sweetheart in every sense of the word, asking if you’re okay after you startle from a jumpscare. Partially annoyed until you realise he’s not even teasing you. You find it twice as sweet, though, when you notice him all but staring at you in your periphery.
Charming blue eyes that set you a little more on edge.
“The movie’s on the screen, not my face,” You tease, finally meeting his gaze when you glance back at him, kicking him across the couch playfully. 
He swallows, praying for the upteenth time that you don’t notice the burning of his skin he feels at getting caught, before he glances back at you.
“I mean, I think I’d much rather look at you than the movie,” He shoots back, the honesty in his voice surprising even himself.
The air leaves his lungs the moment you turn to look at him, nearly giving yourself whiplash. Leon’s sure he should find this moment awkward, scary, any number of things, but he’s too distracted. You’re so tempting, sweet doll eyes, lashes that kiss your cheeks as you smile at him, and again, he finds himself starstruck. 
Your gaze holds his for a moment longer than it should, a gentle tilt of your head and he’s done for. The teasing smile lingering on your lips slips into something softer, the room feels smaller, the space between you even more so. 
“You alright?” You hum, you’re not even sure what you’re saying, you can’t hear your own voice over the blood thrumming in your ears.
Leon doesn’t really hear you either, he tries to, he does, but then your gaze drops to his lips and— God, is this happening? He’d ask you to pinch him if his voice wasn’t stuck in his damn throat.
You search his face, trying to find any hint of jest, but all you see is the way his eyes linger on you, tracing the curves of your lips, the line of your jaw. For the first time in a long time you find yourself nervous to kiss a boy. There’s a current between you, energy fizzling in a way that pricks your skin—fireworks, and he hasn’t even touched you yet.
Before you can give yourself the chance to second guess it, you close the distance, your lips brushing against his. His breath hitches, and you smile against his lips, a gentle hand cupping his jaw, curling into his soft hair. The rest of the room drowns out, all he can hear is his heart beating in his ears and all he can feel is the flush of his own skin and you. Impossibly close in a way that’s already got him hook, line and sinker.
The kiss immediately and successfully turns Leon’s brain to mush, letting out a shaky breath as you incline your head, a soft groan falling past your lips and tumbling into his. Your shoulders drop, another arm looping around his neck. It’s a lot at once, your body against his, the thrumming of his heart, the way he tries desperately not to fuck up the kiss, or give away that he hasn’t exactly had much experience in this department at all.
Leon only realises he’s still rigid when you pull away, your breath a hot puff of air against his face. He thinks you must’ve laughed, cheeks heating up, but then his eyes flutter open and you’ve got a look on your face that he can’t place. Your hand smooths down the golden locks of his hair.
“Are you nervous?” Your voice is so impossibly soft.
Leon blushes deeper. “Is it obvious?”
“A little,” You smile.
“I don’t– I haven’t–” He stutters, the words coming out a jumbled mess that makes your heart ache a little.
“Hey, no, it’s okay.” You rush to reassure when you realise what must be going through his mind. “Just… follow my lead, yeah?”
He nods, tight lipped then.
Your laugh is sticky sweet, alluring in a way that makes him feel all too light-headed. You lean in again, “Relax.”
He lets out a breath, and you take the opportunity of his parted lips to deepen the kiss properly, the muscle of your tongue flattening out against his bottom lip. Leon lets out a strangled moan—fireworks burst across your skin for the second time.
“You can hold me,” You mumble against his mouth, hands tightening in his hair. “If it’ll make you less nervous.”
Leon swallows thickly, nodding as his nose brushes against yours, lips already red and aching. One of his hands tentatively moves back into your hair, he tilts his head, trying to deepen the kiss the same way you had. His movements are albeit clumsy, uncertain; betraying his inexperience, but there’s a raw sincerity in his attempt that leaves you charmed. Slowly, he slides down against the sofa, pulling you with him, his body sinks into the cushions until he’s lying down, your body resting atop his.
You want more, more, more . Want to press your tongue to the seam of his lips, part them, taste him properly—you almost do, growing just as eager as he is as you push yourself higher atop him, bracketing his waist with your thighs as you press your lips to his harder. 
Your nose knocks his glasses askew when moving your head, and you feel him tense ever-so underneath you, as if realising it at the same time, and you can sense his confidence wavering.
You pull back just an inch then, he all but groans in protest. His nose bumps against yours, lips parted and eager for more. “Slow down,” You giggle. “M’not going anywhere.”
“Sorry,” He mumbles, his voice laced with embarrassment. The warmth from his blush radiates under your palm.
Without missing another beat, you reach up to carefully slide his glasses off his face. Leon blinks up at you. He looks like he’s short-circuited, giving way to a vulnerability that makes your heart ache. 
“There,” you whisper, folding the frames before setting the glasses atop the coffee table. “How’s that?”
You’re cruel, though, don’t give him a moment to gather his thoughts, let alone respond. It’s a bit of cat and mouse to you; tease, tease, tease. Gve in just a little, pull away a little more. 
You’re pressing your lips back to his again before another moment can pass. But Leon doesn’t protest; how could he when you’re so close, your bodies pressed together like this?
Leon’s confidence grows with each swipe of your tongue against his. His hands grow bolder, they move over your shoulder blades, down your spine, pressing against the curve of your back. A soft groan tumbles from your lips, your hips pushing down against his, he lets out a shaky moan in kind.
Cute, cute, cute. You’d drown in the soft sounds that tumble from his lips given the chance.
Your hands begin to wander, trailing down his chest, over his beating heart. You rub circles against his chest, as if to satiate the burning desire that’s stuck between his ribs. 
Your lips, on the other hand, begin their descent.
You start with the corner of his mouth, then you follow the line of his jaw, down the column of his neck, the divot of his throat (that rewards you with a mewl). You decorate his collar in a blossoming painting of delicate bruises, tug down the collar of his shirt enough to reveal as much skin as possible for your lips to work over.
A soft smile curls on your lips even as you kiss him, and you realise with a flicker of amusement that he’s shaking beneath you—It’s an endearing quiver, like a newborn fawn finding its first footing. His hands tighten in the fabric of your shirt, holding on as if trying to anchor himself.
“You okay?” You hum as you pull away, Leon assumes you’re gracing him with a breather before he registers your hands working his shirt up his body. 
It’d be rude to let you do all the work, so he shifts enough to tug it over his own head, discarding it on the floor of your theatre room bathed in blue—the movie long forgotten.
Leon’s large hands settle back against the swell of your hips, his thumb runs over the bone of your hip through the fabric of your shorts. He gives you a gentle nod. “M’alright,” He mumbles, but his voice has grown thick, stuck in the cavern of his throat.
“Do you… want to keep going?” You ask softly, your voice is tentative, as if dipping your toes into the deep end, testing the waters.
His mind screams yes, he settles for a “ Please ,” that comes out shakier than he’d like instead.
Your hands make quick work, moving down to undo the button of his jeans, fumbling clumsily in the wake of your excitement that you try incredibly hard to school. For the most part you do, refusing to cave too fast.
You’re acutely aware this is Leon’s first time—he doesn’t have to tell you, you can tell by his shaky voice, and shaky hands, by the way he looks at you as if you’ve just about hung the stars and the planets. To be fair, he’s always looked at you like that. Something akin to a sweet puppy.
Jesus Christ, you’re losing it.
When you finally pop the button, tug the zipper down achingly slow, Leon mewls, his hand on your hip curling into your flesh bruisingly. Fuck.
Your gaze meets his once again. “I’m gonna– I’m gonna go slow, okay? You’ve gotta tell me to stop if you don’t like anything, alright?” As desperate as you are to get your hands on him, you’d never forgive yourself if you ruined his first time.
Leon nods like he’s on autopilot, dutifully, as if the idea of you ruining anything for him is a stupid one. “Yeah, I will– Just, please, ” His voice grows impossibly quiet, “Don’t think I can wait–”
God. You go a little lightheaded.
Your hands make quick work of his jeans then, pushing them down along with his boxers. You’re blessed with a heavenly sight. His cock, pretty and flushed and all but drooling. It’s nearly erotic, has your head swimming. 
“Jesus, Leon.” You huff, eyes wide as you look back up to meet his gaze.
Leon swallows thickly, throat bobbing as his eyes bore into yours, blown wide, rings of blue barely visible. God what a sight. He doesn’t respond, can’t. His throat is thick with something he cannot place. You’re a vision to him like this—hair spilling over your shoulders, framing your head like a halo, thick eyelashes that flutter sweetly down at him. His cheeks heat, neck growing impossibly hot. 
Your hands dance over his stomach, his abdomen, tracing the contours of his skin as you watch his face to gauge each reaction, each shiver, every tremble of his lips.
You’re cruel, you’re so impossibly cruel and, oh— Nevermind. You’re an angel.
You giggle at his blissed out expression as your hand curls around the base of his dick. “That what you needed?” 
Leon’s eyes flutter shut, head tips back as your hand inches up. He resists the urge to buck right into the tunnel of your palm. “Mmhmm…”
“Can’t speak now either?” You coo sweetly.
Something soft bubbles up past his throat, a mewl, a whine, you don’t know what to call it, but God does it make your cunt flutter in time with your heart. “C’mon, Leon, let me hear you.”
And God does he.
You pull whimper after whimper from his pretty lips, tumbling out like prayer each time. You are the chappel he worships at, the altar where he falls to his feet. He thinks if he died like this he could be happy, would go willingly, accept his fate—
“D’you want… more?” The words echo around in his skull.
He couldn’t have nodded faster. 
You’re both giddy and giggling as you pull away, his hands eager as they pull your shorts and underwear off at once. If you could memorise the way he looked at you right now, you would. Leon’s eyes rove over your thighs, the space between them that glistens, in a way that makes you shy despite the hesitance in his own. 
“You’re pretty,” He says thickly, and there’s not a tease behind his words, not a jest. He says them with such sincerity you stutter to a halt. 
You blink, caught in his gaze. Leon watches you carefully, his own eyes wide, as if he’s not sure whether he’s overstepped some invisible boundary. The heat in your cheeks burns a little brighter, and you find yourself instinctively breaking eye contact, glancing away to gather yourself.
His words feel as if they’ve lodged themself in between the left and right ventricles of your heart. Suddenly, you feel the need to close the distance again, your hand slipping to cup his face, brushing a thumb over the flush of his cheek. 
He hums against your lips, hands climbing up your back, under your shirt, slipping under the strap of your bra. 
Your hips are gentle, moving over his instinctively, like something written into your DNA. The subtle brush over the underside of his length has him gasping—you preen internally at the reaction.
But you’re impatient, as impatient as he is, eager for more, eager to take, eager to please. You sink down over him slowly, revel in the silky stretch you’re graced with, moaning around his tongue as your heart feels like it’ll burst out of your chest.
The feeling is near incandescent to Leon, his mind already too far gone. 
“Eyes open, baby,” Your voice comes, shattering the haze of his mind. 
Baby, baby, baby.
He’s hardwired to comply.
You’re something holy above him, head crested by the glow of the moon spilling through the windows, wings of starlight, angel-song falling from your lips as your hips move over his. He wants to swallow each sound. You have the grace to let him.
Your body presses to his as you lean down, chasing his lips in a kiss that surely rewires his brain chemistry. Each moan you let out is like honey in his mouth, sweet and addicting, his tongue pushes past your lips, seeking out as much as you’ll give him.
You’re ecstasy. Entirely too addicting; Leon can’t get enough. Each time you sink down on him again, he’s sure it steals more breath from his lungs. And with earth-shattering realisation, he knows he’s not going to last. “M’close.”
He’s puppy-dog cute like this, pout on his lips, a cinch between his eyebrows that you smooth with your thumb. “I can tell.”
His hand moves to where yours are on his chest, taking one in his own, intertwining your fingers. It’s so fucking over for you. 
“I can’t—” His hips buck up into yours, but his movements are reserved, you clock his desperation to hold out immediately.
“God, Leon, please do. I want you to.”
It doesn’t take much longer than that. He comes within three, four, five ruts of your hips against his, a warning on his lips before you pull off him and his release coats the muscles of his abdomen. You’re left aching, but you can’t find it in yourself to mind, not when you have him underneath you like this.
“Shit, God,” He groans. “That was… fast.”
You sense the apology on his tongue and shake your head before he can get there.
“No, don’t. It was… it was good.”
Leon can’t believe his ears. It was good? He did good?
“Yeah?” You hear the anticipation in his voice, higher at the end, a question.
Smiling, you nod. “Uhuh. Plus, we can… Work on it.”
The implication of doing this again sometime is enough to have him mirroring your smile. 
But soon summer’s over and college is starting. You decide to take a year off, figure yourself out. 
But Leon’s always had big dreams. Before you know it he’s packed his life into boxes, ready to move across the country to California. You can’t lie to yourself forever, pretend that what you feel for him is superficial, that you won’t miss him with a longing that will linger for months.
Your heart aches the night before he leaves. His head on your stomach, looking up at you with those puppy dog sweet eyes, half lidded and hair mused from where you’d grabbed and tugged while he’d lapped at your sweet cunt all night.
“I’m gonna miss you,” The words slip out softly, surprising even yourself. Lately, you’ve found vulnerability escaping you more often around him. A tenderness you’re learning to grow used to again.
Leon’s gaze lifts to yours, sweet baby blues that you try to memorise even in the low light of your bedroom. “I’ll visit.”
“I know.”
There’s a sickening silence that follows. You ache to tell him everything, pour your heart out for him to pick up, but you don’t.
Leon promises to call you as soon as he gets to his new dorm, and he does. For the first few months, everything goes smoothly. You and Leon fall back into that regular routine—you call him every now and then, he updates you on his day, you tell him about yours. But as fate has it, the chasm between the two of you begins to split once more, you feel him drift away, caught up in his flashy new life. 
Turns out distance does make the heart grow fonder.
There are things Leon doesn’t tell you either. Like how he’s been binge-watching those awful horror movies you always mention nowadays (you’ve developed a weird fondness for the gore). Or that he’s started tutoring again. Or that he wishes you were here. God, he really wants to tell you that last one.
He thinks of you all the time, even when he probably shouldn’t—between classes, during his morning coffee before the 8 a.m. lab, while driving from his part-time job to campus. He thinks of you in the inbetweens, when his mind seems to wander. The thoughts come unbidden, when there’s a million other things he should have at the forefront of his mind, you’re there.
And then there’s the way he pictures you every time.
Leon’s not exactly proud of the number of hook-ups he’s had since college. One party turned into two, then three, then four. Simple drinking games blurred into long nights with countless girls underneath him who he now doesn't even remember the faces of.
Convinced if he shut his eyes, if he really focused, he could imagine it was you whimpering under him instead, your hands on his body, your lips melding around his name oh so perfectly.
It was never the same though. Never would be.
None of these girls sounded like you, none of them fucked like you, none of them felt like you did. Like they were made for him, like he could get lost in their cunts forever. It was pathetic, really, the way he’d so willingly chase that unmatchable high forever. Nothing would compare. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
So by the time semester break rolls around, he’s already packed his bags, and the four hour route from California back to Raccoon City has been set before he’s even finished his finals.
Raccoon hasn’t changed, still the same sleepy city tucked away between twin mountain ranges, the smell of pine heavy in the air. His house is how he left it, so is his neighbourhood. He drives by the familiar faded sign of Emmy’s Diner, the Police Department with its big white hollywood-style letters and rusting iron gates.
He heard that you work at the new video store down the road from his house now. Flashy, neon signs and all. Leon wonders what it’s been like for you, staying behind when he left for college, how the city has cradled you in its unchanged arms. If you’ve missed him like he’s missed you.
He pushes the glass panelled door to the video store open, the store bell tinkling in wake of his arrival. He’s fidgety. Leon hasn’t been fidgety in a very long time. He does not remember the last time he hesitated around a girl. Well, he does, it was you when he was awkward and nineteen, but since then? It has been a long road. Too long.
But then he spots you, and it’s as if the world narrows down to this one moment.
You’re leaning against the counter, eyes downcast, lazily flipping through a magazine. The overhead lights catch the strands of your hair—it’s shorter now. He wonders when you had it cut, why you chose the new style. A part of him aches, realising just how much time has passed, how long a year can be when he’s not in your orbit.
Without thinking, he beelines for the horror section, eyes scanning the rows of movie titles as his fingers brush over each DVD spine. He glances at you out of his periphery, half-watching the way you absentmindedly flip through your magazine.
Come on, come on, come on.
H, I, J, K… 
Bingo.
He slides Kairo across the counter, heart stumbling in his chest. You don’t even glance up as you take it into your hands, half-focused on whatever glossy pages have your interest, but you do smile when you register the title in your hands.
“Good choice,” you hum, your fingers already moving to punch the movie code into the register.
“Yeah? You think so?” His voice is a little rougher than he intended, but he presses on, tries to act casual as he leans up against the counter. In honesty, he feels like a dork. “Most people I know say it’s not all that great…”
Your fingers freeze over the buttons. That voice, those words. Your eyes shoot up to meet his. 
“Leon?”
“Hey.” He smiles, catching the way your expression shifts, disbelief melting into something warmer. “What’s wrong? Looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”
You laugh suddenly, that bright, familiar sound, filling the empty space between you. For a moment the months apart don’t seem so long. “God, you did not just quote Scream at me.”
Leon’s dusty blonde hair falls into his eyes as he drops his head to hide his grin. “Yeah that was… Not my best.”
Shaking your head, you slide the DVD back across the counter, still smiling beautifully at him.  “You didn’t tell me you were going to be back in town!” You sound breathless as the words escape you.
“Just for the semester break,” He says, his voice steady but soft. “Figured I’d come back before you forgot what I look like.”
You blink. Something in his expression must’ve given him away, because then you smile—small, almost shy. “I missed you too,” you hum, and the words hang in the air like they’ve been waiting to be said.
But just like that you bounce back, as if the vulnerability in your tone was never even there at all, drumming your fingers across the countertop. “You shoulda told me, we could’ve planned something nice.”
“Oh, like a date?”
You blush. Blush. Fuck. You don’t remember him being this forward.
“Are you suggesting something, Kennedy?” You tilt your head, honeyed gaze and all.
Damn you and those fucking eyes, he thinks.
“Well, I was thinking… maybe we could go to Emmy’s after your shift? You know, catch up, and I can tell you all the terrible jokes I’ve collected since I’ve been away.”
Your smile widens, and there’s something in your eyes that makes him feel like he might’ve just found his way back home. “I’d like that, Leon. A lot.”
Emmy’s diner hums with a life that he’s missed. The sound of casual conversation, plates clattering, the soft croon of Bob Dylan from the old jukebox. It’s how he left it. Same peeling leather booths, linoleum tables, vinyl floorings, bottomless pots of coffee and the smell of sizzling burgers over the griddle in the back. 
You share a booth at the back, your boots propped up on the round metal base of the table while you watch Leon with a small pout as he stands by the counter, waiting for a takeout box. The old fluorescent lights cast a soft glow over him, highlighting the little changes—slightly broader shoulders, a more defined jawline, longer hair, no glasses. But he’s still your Leon.
When he turns back, takeaway box in hand, he catches you in the act—a fry pinched between your fingers, dragging it through his ketchup in lazy swirls. You beam up at him, your eyes crinkling at the corners, and Leon feels his chest do a violent lurch, feels his heart rattle in the cage of his ribs, clawing to jump out and into your waiting hands.
It’s the kind of smile that would have driven him crazy when he was younger—when he was all nerves and stuttered words around you. And God, if it doesn’t still have the same effect.
“You know,” Leon starts as he settles into his seat, “there’s a fine line between sharing and stealing. You’re definitely crossing it.”
You roll your eyes, pushing the fry basket back towards him in a silent peace offering. “You weren’t going to finish them anyway.”
Leon chuckles softly, he doesn’t know what to say then, no witty quip on his tongue or eager reply.  “It's about the principle," His voice finally comes, something soft. "But I guess I’ll let it slide this once." 
You laugh, and the sound is like a balm, soothing the ache in his chest. “How generous of you,” you reply, playing footsies with him under the table. It’s in this moment Leon realises, everything he’s ever wanted is right in front of him. He’s spent so much of his life chasing. Chasing, chasing, chasing, he’s always been chasing. 
Now he thinks he’d like to slow down.
And that’s what he does, when he takes you home that night, you twirl through the door of his old home, giddy as you track the familiar path to his bedroom. It’s how you remember it, same posters on the wall, same black Paul Reed Smith tucked into the corner.
Leon, however, is so much gentler than you remember him being, careful hands sliding up your waist as he walks you back towards his bed. Your calves hit the edge, breath caught in your throat as you tilt your head up to meet his gaze. His lips find yours, slot perfectly, he groans against your lips and you melt into his embrace.
Leon’s palm slides down to the underside of your thigh, lifts it up enough to help you back onto the bed. 
Your words get caught in your throat, but they’re not needed—not now, not with Leon. He’s always known you like the back of his hand. His lips move over your face, your cheek, your jaw. Your arms settle around his neck.
It’s like muscle memory to Leon now, the way he slots his knee between your thighs, how his hands move over your torso, up your body.
Your mind wanders—a dangerous thing in times like these—and you find yourself growing a little jealous. You're not dense; you know he’s probably had other girls in his bed between his time away in California. You wonder if they were any good. 
Leon doesn’t let you dwell on those thoughts, has your voice catching in your throat as his fingers tease the underside of your breasts. He looks up at you, those same deep blue eyes studying you, yet unreadable all the same. Your skin burns beneath his gentle touch. Hot, hot, hot everywhere he touches.
One of his hands come up to cup the same cheek he had kissed earlier, his touch featherlight. He looks at you—part adoring, part like he’s planning your ruination.
“Leon… Please. ” You beg desperately then, and in response he groans. As if he’s waited too long to hear you say his name like that again, all needy and breathless.
“Makes me wanna wreck you,” He murmurs against your mouth, his breath hot and heady, “when you talk like that. So fuckin’ sweet.”
And God if that doesn’t do it for you. A whine falls past your lips, eager, tender, desperate, and Leon’s sure he’s never heard anything as beautiful in his life.
Your skirt is off in a flash, so is his shirt, then yours, then his jeans, so on and so forth until your bare cunt is pressing against his thigh he’s conveniently slotted back between the apex of your legs. He presses his knee up against your wet cunt, mutual groans filling his bedroom. All it takes is a tremble of your lips, and Leon’s kissing you twice as hard.
“Tell me what you need,” He’s eager to please.
“You.” You, you, you, always you.
There’s a reverence in your words he cannot shake, a promise laced into the moan that tumbles from your lips. His hands smooth over your abdomen again, spreading your thighs wider to accommodate him in the space between.
“Yeah?” He hums, one of his hands runs from the corner of your jaw to your chin, the other gives a purposeful squeeze to your waist. “I need you too. Want you.”
The sincerity in his voice floors you, hits you harder than any kiss, any touch. This isn’t just lust, this is Leon, raw and open, offering you something more than you’d expected. Something you’ve always wanted but were too scared to admit. You feel the sudden sting of tears kiss the corners of your eyes, startling yourself. 
“Leon…” you start, your voice barely above a whisper. He cuts you off with a gentle kiss, one that’s soft and sweet, filled with a promise that leaves you breathless.
"You’re it for me. I’m yours," he whispers into your mouth. "If you’ll have me."
Your heart stumbles over itself, caught somewhere between disbelief and a feeling you’re not sure how to put into words. “I’ve always had you.”
He laughs softly then, “Yeah. Guess you have, huh?”
It’s now, he realises, you’d never left his orbit in the first place. You’d always been there, one way or another, a constant in his life he’d never be able to shake despite how hard he’d try. You really are it for him.
“I want you too,” You blurt, the words tumbling out too fast. “I want this, want you. I always have.”
The rest is unsaid. He kisses you again with a smile, your hands drift over his back, trace the contours of every plane of muscle, press against the space between his shoulders. His hands run over the curve of your breasts, the dip of your waists, caress the skin of your thighs and leave gooseflesh in their wake. You can’t stand it—how utterly gentle he is. It makes you want to cry.
You take Leon’s hand, leading it down to where you need him most. With precision you drag his fingers up through your folds, tantalisingly slow before pressing the pad of his index to your clit. You let out the softest of whimpers at the sight, his hand on your cunt. Fuck. You don’t take your eyes off the sight before you, even as you push his fingers back down, until you slip just the tip of his finger past your walls.
Your gaze flicks up to gauge his reaction, and you're more than pleased at the sight before you. Leon Kennedy, his eyes wide, mouth hung open in a small ‘o’, like he’s never seen pussy before.
“What’s wrong, baby?” You hum, amusement dripping from your lips—but your voice comes out in between panted breathes, unable to still your thump, thump, thumping heart.
He looks back up to meet your gaze, shaking his head as a grin stretches across his lips. “No, sweetheart, don’t play your games with me.” He huffs, withdrawing his hand, leaving you whining, before he pushes your thigh up to your chest.
You’re disappointed by just how fast he manages to school himself, no longer desperate for more, now invested in the waiting game.
“You want it that bad?” He croons, voice a teasing lilt against the shell of your ear, kissing the skin behind it as his body comes back down over yours. Your leg hooks around his back, hands on his shoulders, in his hair. 
“Are you gonna make me beg?” Your laugh is soft, breathlessly incredulous.
He grins against your skin as he presses a kiss to your neck. “I wouldn’t mind that.”
His lips trail a path from neck to collar, tender kisses that intensify into bruising hickeys so fast your head swims. He litters your chest in lovebites, his hand moving on its own accord as he presses two fingers against your sopping cunt. He teases you, drawing circles around your entrance, grinning against the valley of your breast as he kisses down your sternum when your cunt flutters against his hand.
He drags his fingers up, up, up, presses them to the bead of your clit in a way that makes you squirm, another round of featherlight circles that makes you keen.
“Leon, holy shit—” Your teeth sink into your bottom lip, watching as he sinks his fingers into your cunt, right down to the knuckle.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
You don’t have to look at him to hear the shit eating grin in his words.
The pads of his fingers press against ribbed flesh, scissoring you open. When he pulls them back out, palm against your clit, a moan bubbles up past your lips. He shushes you, sweet nothings whispered against the cavern of your throat. 
His hand, glimmering with your arousal, finds its way to your lips. “Open,” He murmurs, and so you do, lips parted for his fingers to press curiously against your tongue. Your heart hammers in your chest, thighs pressing into his sides as you blink up at him. You’re beautiful like this, a picture of pleasure that he wants to sear into his mind, brand across his heart so he won’t forget. 
You moan around his fingers and his heart stutters pitifully in his chest, he needs to hear you like that again. “Want more, sweetheart?” His voice is rough as he pushes his hips against yours teasingly, has your eyes fluttering shut and rolling back. “Need words, baby.”
Leon chuckles as you struggle to speak around his fingers pressing to your tongue, a muffled yeah caught in your throat. He placates your whine that follows with a kiss to the underside of your jaw, lining his hips up with yours as he goes.
He sinks in as deep as he can get, searing hot, like he’s desperate to melt through, skin to skin, atom to atom. You push back, chasing that same euphoric feeling, a groan falling from your lips as you choke around his thick fingers in your mouth. You twist your neck, your nose pushing into his cheek as you seek his warmth.
“Got you,” He mumbles into your skin, voice ragged. A forearm is braced by your head before he pulls his hand from your mouth, moving to hold your body. His hand presses into the gentle curve of your waist like it was made for the palm of his hands. Smearing your spit across your skin as he goes.
When Leon’s with you like this, your body beneath his, he’s so sure this is how it’s meant to be. God, you’re perfect in every sense of the word—surely this is fate’s crashing course, isn’t it? Driven together by some higher power, an invisible thread of gold looped around both your fingers.
Has to be, surely. Feels too good when his hips push into yours, shared moans tumbling from both your lips, when his lips find yours once more and he’s swallowing each one like a man starved. You’ve missed the way he feels, how he stretches you out so deliciously, fills you up and seats deep inside you like he’s made for it. 
Your hands on his shoulders blades dig burning half-moon crests into his skin, dragging your nails down his back, eliciting a low groan from deep within his chest.
“Shit, pussy’s fuckin’ made for me,” He all but groans into your ear, dick pushing in at a steady pace, sickeningly slow in a way that makes you ache.
Please, please, please, your mind screams, begging for him to hurry up, give you more. You’ve waited so long to have him like this again, why should you wait any longer?
Leon’s laugh vibrates against the shell of your ear, “Beggin’ already, sweetheart?”
Oh. You’ve said it out loud.
“Don’t tease,” You plead with him.
“Tease? No m’not teasing, that’d be cruel,” He croons, “M’just taking my time with my baby.”
You want to sob. God, he is cruel. You think this must be karma for all those times you’d teased him when you were younger, worked him so close to the edge then pulled him away—
But then his hips slam against yours and a sob lurches from your throat. “Leon!” You cry, nails digging deeper into his back you worry you might draw blood.
“God, just look at you, sweetheart,” He pulls back enough to meet your gaze, hand on your hip moving to tilt your chin up to meet his gaze. “Crying on my dick. Fuck. ”
His hips are bruising, not an ounce of mercy in the way he ruts into your cunt.
“Can’t,” You whine, tears in your eyes.
He shakes his head, hair falling into his face, obstructing your pretty view, as his hand cups your jaw. “Yeah you can, baby.”
“No, it’s– too much—” You try to get him to understand, you won’t last like this.
He knows before the words even leave your lips. “Aw, pretty baby, gonna come f’me already?” 
More tears spill from your eyes, he kisses them away with gentle lips, almost humorously different from the pace of his hips. “That’s okay,” He decides, “You wanna come now, that’s fine. Jus’ means you gotta keep taking it till I'm done.”
You’re so fucked.
“Can you do that, sweetheart?”
In the haze of your mind you comply.
“Good girl,” You arch your back at the praise, he slips in deeper if that’s even possible. “Good girl, come for me. Let me see you.”
Who are you to deny him?
You come with a soft cry of his name, words sticky with the tightness of your throat, a babbling mess underneath him as he works you through it. He’s not a complete dickhead though, he slows down to accommodate the ache between your legs, gives you a moment to collect yourself as his hand moves to interlock with yours, holding it by your head.
“How was that?” He asks you on the comedown. 
You’re burning bright, you feel like the sun, your heart ablaze in your chest. Your mind is left in a haze, and when it ebbs away, it’s as though sunspots linger in your vision. You look at him, really look at him now, rings of blue in his blown out eyes, hair tousled, lips red and raw. 
You kiss him in lieu of a proper response, tongue and teeth, messy and desperate as your hands hold his face. He groans against your mouth, you feel his dick pulse between your tight walls and you preen internally. Even after all this time you still have him wrapped around your finger.
You giggle at the thought, drowning in the gilding golden haze of the pleasure he’s given you.
“What’s so funny?” He hums, smile sweet on his lips. 
“Nothin’,” You hum, eyes half-lidded.
He grins a little wider, something cunning. “Come again, sweetheart, didn’t quite catch that.” His hips roll into yours, a moan falls past your lips.
“I said– Oh. ” Nevermind.
Another roll of his hips.
“Speak up, baby,” Another, another, another.
You give up trying to get any words out, fruitless attempts reduced to whimpers as you melt into the mattress below him. Your hands wander back over his back, shoulder blades and muscles shifting under your palms as you sooth the ridges that have emerged from where you’d left your stinging mark.
You're tight as sin, sucking him back in salaciously. Leon’s not going to last much longer at all. 
He makes as much known. He whines and you swallow each sound like it’s a sweet prize. His hips snap into yours at a brutal pace, whimpers falling from your lips at each time he drives it home. He has half the mind to pull out, but then your legs are wrapping around his waist, trapping him, keeping him firm in place.
“Sweetheart– fuck , baby–” His words carry the weight of protest but you’re stubborn, always have been.
“ Please Leon?” You’re so sweet, aren’t you? “Want it inside, want you to come in me pretty please–?”
He couldn’t say no to you if he tried. “Shit, that’s what you want, baby? Huh? Need me to fill you up real good?” His voice is low in your ear, a bark that matches his bite.
“ Yes. ”
“Fuck, sweetheart. Yeah, I’ll give you what you need, alright?” He placates, and you’re sweet as you mewl in response. “Yeah, anything you want.”
“M’so close,” He’s brought you to tears again, and this time he lets himself relish in the sight of them dribbling down your cheeks. “So close–”
Leon’s thrusts grow shallow with time, you feel yourself teetering on the edge of ecstasy once more. “Let me feel you, baby,” He mumbles into the skin of your shoulder, his hand gripping yours in a knuckle white grip, the other so tight around your hip it’s sure to leave behind bruises in the morning.
Not a thing you’re saying is comprehensible anymore, slurred words sobbed into the crook of his neck as your cunt does the talking for you. You flutter around his aching length, clamping down around him as the pressure building at the base of your spine snaps in half, a broken cry of his name tumbling from your lips.
Leon reaches his breaking point in quick pursuit, tumbling over that edge just as you do, fucking his release deeper into your cunt. “So sweet, so sweet, so sweet,” He chants, a babbling mess of emotions as you milk him dry. “So good, s’good, baby, fuck. ”
For a few moments, you are nothing but two bodies, twined together, panting and huffing as you catch your breaths. Leon’s hand, still in yours, squeezes reflexively. His face falls into the crook of your neck as his fingers dig further into the flesh of your waist. You hear his breathing grow ragged, his body trembling above you. You think you hear a whine slip past his lips, only solidified when he pulls back and you catch the glassy look in his eyes. 
“We should do this again sometime.” You grin playfully.
“Jesus, Sweetheart.” Leon shakes his head, wet chuckle caught in his throat. “I plan on doing this a lot more often than sometimes. ”
You hum, your knuckles tracing the curve of his cheek before you sweep his hair out of his eyes. “I’d like that.”
There’s a pause then, words hanging in the air. “But at least let me get it right this time. I’ll take you out to dinner, how’s that?”
“Perfect.”
"I meant it, you know." His voice is quieter now, more vulnerable. "About wanting to get it right." He looks at you like he's seeing everything he's been chasing, right in front of him.
You tilt your head, a soft smile playing at your lips. "I know."
Fate is curious, you think—tugging at the golden threads that make up the spider's web of your universe as she pleases, weaving people together and pulling them apart with equal ease. You realise, as you lie with your head on Leon’s chest later that night, that fate has been kind to you. Leon's strong arm envelops you, grounding you in a way only he ever has. Home is inbetween his arms. You listen to the gentle beat of his heart, steady in his chest, pounding beneath your ear. 
Without much thought, you find yourself holding your breath, syncing the thump of your heart with the beat of his, a satisfied smile curving your lips when your breathing finally falls perfectly in time.
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likes n reblogs r very much appreciated <3
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novaursa · 1 month
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The Secret Flame
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- Summary: You sneak out of the Red Keep again. And as alway, Harwin is there to chase you down.
- Paring: targ!reader/Harwin Strong
- Note: reader is referred to as Y/N, is twin sister of Rhaenyra and has striking resemblance to her grandmother, Alyssa. For more of my works visit my blog. The list is pinned to the top.
- Rating: Explicit 18+
- Word count: 3 599
- Tag(s): @sachaa-ff
- A/N: I've never posted anything so fresh in my life. This work is just written, like a few minutes ago. I don't usually post my works so soon. They tend to sit way longer before being posted, especially if they are supposed to be made into a series. Those works are posted once all parts are complete, or way, way close to being done. I've slept like two hours, maybe. My blood is 90% coffee. Luckily, it's my day off. 😅 As always, I'll see how you guys like this before it becomes something larger. Enjoy! ❤️
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The chill of the night air is a welcome contrast to the stifling warmth of the Red Keep as you slip quietly through the hidden passageways beneath Maegor’s Holdfast. You’ve navigated these shadowy tunnels since you were a child, memorizing each twist and turn like a whispered secret shared only with you. The cool stone beneath your hands feels like freedom as you push through the last concealed door, emerging into the moonlit streets of King’s Landing.
The city is alive, even in the depths of night. You breathe in the scent of the sea mingled with smoke and distant perfumes, savoring the feeling of anonymity that only these stolen excursions bring. You’ve always felt as if you were a dragon bound in chains within the walls of the Keep, and here, at least for a little while, you are free.
You keep your hood low, concealing the distinctive silver-gold hair that marks your heritage. The cobblestones beneath your feet are slick from the earlier rain, and the shadows dance with flickering torchlight as you weave through narrow alleys, away from the watchful eyes of your father’s guards.
The tension between you and your father has grown unbearable in recent moons. He sees in you too much of his mother, Alyssa, and perhaps that is why he clings so tightly. You can’t breathe under his watchful eye, can’t stretch your wings when he’s always hovering, reminding you of duty, decorum, and the precarious balance of the realm.
But here, no one knows you as the princess, no one sees the crown’s burden pressing down on your shoulders. Here, you are simply a shadow among shadows.
The night hums with the distant laughter of taverns and the murmurs of lovers hiding from prying eyes. You’re about to turn a corner when a rough hand reaches out from the darkness, yanking you into an even darker alley.
“Now what’s a fine lady like you doing alone in these parts?” A low, sneering voice slithers out from the gloom. You tense, instinctively reaching for the dagger hidden at your hip, but there’s no time to draw it before you’re shoved roughly against the wall. Two more men step into view, all grinning like wolves who’ve cornered a lost lamb.
“You’re far from home, aren’t you?” one of them taunts, his breath reeking of stale ale. 
You glare up at them, defiance burning in your eyes. “I assure you, you’ve made a grave mistake tonight,” you hiss, your voice edged with the fire that runs through your blood.
“Is that so?” The leader laughs, leaning in closer. “I think we’ve found ourselves a little bird with some fight.”
Before you can spit back a retort, there’s a sharp whistle from the shadows, and suddenly the men stiffen. The leader barely has time to turn before a strong hand grabs his collar and slams him face-first into the wall beside you. He crumples to the ground with a groan.
“Seems you lot forgot whose streets you’re crawling through,” a familiar voice says, smooth as velvet and rich with amusement.
Ser Harwin Strong steps into the faint light, his broad frame and easy confidence radiating a quiet authority that sends the other two men stumbling back in fear. His hand rests on the pommel of his sword, but it’s the smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth that unsettles them more.
“Run along, boys, before you find yourselves missing fingers or worse,” he advises in a tone that suggests he’s making them a very generous offer.
They don’t need to be told twice, bolting into the night like startled prey. Harwin watches them go before turning his attention to you. The glint in his dark eyes tells you he’s more amused than surprised to find you here, as if he half-expected it.
“You have a peculiar way of taking your nightly strolls, princess,” he says, the smirk widening into a grin. “I should have known I’d find you stirring up trouble.”
You roll your eyes, gathering your composure as you adjust your cloak. “I can handle myself, you know.”
“Clearly,” he chuckles, giving a pointed look at the discarded dagger still in your hand. “But I doubt King Viserys would agree if he knew his daughter was sneaking into Flea Bottom on a whim.”
You lift your chin defiantly. “I wasn’t in Flea Bottom.” 
He arches a brow. “You’re not far from it.”
Silence hangs between you, broken only by the distant clamor of the city. The moonlight catches the chestnut in Harwin’s eyes as he studies you, his expression softening into something less playful and more sincere. “Y/N… You know I can’t let you stay out here. I’m supposed to be your protector, after all.”
“Are you my guard now, too? I thought you were just Rhaenyra’s Gold Cloak protector.”
His lips twitch at that. “Rhaenyra doesn’t run off nearly as much as you do.”
You let out an exasperated sigh, stepping away from the wall and back toward the street. “You’re insufferable, Harwin.”
“And you’re reckless,” he counters, reaching for your arm as if to steer you back toward the Keep. “Come on, before you get us both into even more trouble.”
But you’re not done with the night just yet. You twist free of his grip, darting back into the alley. “Catch me if you can, Ser Breakbones!”
For a heartbeat, Harwin simply stares after you, caught between disbelief and admiration. Then he shakes his head with a low chuckle and gives chase, the sound of his footsteps pounding behind you as you race through the winding streets.
The thrill of it all—the wind in your hair, the laughter bubbling in your chest, and the sound of Harwin’s voice calling your name—feels like flying. You know he’ll catch you eventually, but for now, you’re just out of reach, teasing the line between freedom and the inevitable return to your gilded cage. 
But that’s part of the dance, isn’t it? The chase, the daring escapes, and the knowledge that while he may be tasked with returning you to safety, a part of him enjoys the game just as much as you do.
And for tonight, that’s enough.
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The pounding of your heart echoes in your ears as you dart through the narrow streets, your feet barely skimming the cobblestones. Harwin is right behind you, his heavy boots making it clear he’s gaining ground. You can’t help the exhilarated laugh that slips past your lips, feeling the cool night air whip through your hair. For a brief moment, you almost wish he wouldn’t catch you, just so you could revel in the rush of freedom a little longer.
But then you hear his voice—low, deep, laced with a blend of exasperation and amusement. “Y/N, you’re only making this worse for yourself!”
You glance back just in time to see the determined gleam in his eyes, and before you can react, his hand closes around your wrist. You let out a surprised gasp as he spins you, tugging you close until your chest is flush against his. You can feel the heat radiating from him, his breath ghosting over your lips as he stares down at you with a mixture of desire and reprimand.
“You truly are a wild thing, aren’t you?” His voice is husky, rough with the thrill of the chase.
“Perhaps,” you murmur, a sly smile tugging at your lips, “but you seem to enjoy it.”
Without giving him a chance to respond, you tug him into the shadowed alleyway beside you. The darkness wraps around you both, cloaking you from any prying eyes that might still be wandering the streets. There’s a moment of tension, of anticipation crackling between you like lightning in a summer storm.
You push him back against the stone wall, your hands fisting in the front of his tunic as you pull him down to meet your lips. The kiss is fierce, hungry—born of a shared need that has simmered beneath the surface for far too long. Harwin’s hands are quick to respond, gripping your waist with a possessive strength that sends shivers down your spine. He tastes of salt and warmth, of nights spent in armor and the fire that burns within him.
There’s no room for words now, just the frantic rustle of fabric as your fingers work to loosen his breeches, his own hands tugging at the ties of your skirts. The air is thick with the scent of desire, mingled with the cool, damp earth and stone around you. Your breath comes in ragged gasps as you free him, your bodies already pressing together with the desperate anticipation of what’s to come.
When he moves into you, it’s with a practiced ease that speaks of all the times you’ve stolen moments like this before. Your head falls back, a soft moan escaping your lips as he fills you, the familiar stretch and heat drawing gasps from both of you. For a heartbeat, you both remain still, savoring the way you fit together, the way your bodies seem to crave this connection as much as your hearts do.
“Gods, Y/N,” Harwin groans, his voice low and strained. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
You smile against his lips, your nails digging into his shoulders as you start to move, setting a rhythm that’s as familiar as it is intoxicating. “Better than dying in the Keep, caged and suffocated,” you manage to whisper, your voice breathy with desire.
He lets out a deep, rumbling laugh, but the sound quickly fades into a grunt as your hips grind against his. The tempo between you quickens, each thrust driven by pure, unbridled need. There’s a primal urgency in the way you cling to each other, as if the world outside these walls doesn’t exist, as if all that matters is this moment, this passion, this escape.
His hands grip your thighs, lifting you slightly as he presses you harder against the wall, deepening the angle until you’re both lost to the rhythm of your bodies. Every movement draws a gasp, a moan, a whispered name into the darkness. Your nails rake down his back, desperate to hold onto the sensation building within you. He’s rough and tender all at once, his control fraying with each stroke as he buries his face in the curve of your neck.
“Y/N… you drive me mad,” he rasps, his breath hot against your skin.
You bite down on your lip, stifling a cry as he hits a particularly sensitive spot, pleasure coiling tight in your belly. “Good,” you manage, your voice breaking on the word as your hands slide into his hair, tugging him closer, demanding more.
The pace is relentless now, both of you moving in sync, lost in the frantic need to reach that edge together. You’re barely aware of anything but the feeling of him inside you, the way your bodies collide with a desperate intensity. His name slips from your lips again and again, a plea, a prayer, as the pleasure builds to an unbearable peak.
When release finally crashes over you, it’s like wildfire spreading through your veins. Your body trembles, tightening around him as you shatter, a cry breaking free from your throat. Harwin isn’t far behind, his grip bruising as he thrusts deep one final time, a guttural groan spilling from his lips as he finds his own release. He holds you there, chest heaving, his forehead pressed against yours as you both ride out the last waves of pleasure together.
For a long moment, there’s only the sound of your ragged breathing mingling in the darkness. The intensity slowly ebbs away, leaving behind a warmth that’s almost tender as you both come back to yourselves. Harwin’s thumb traces a gentle line along your jaw, his eyes soft as he studies your flushed face.
“Reckless, wild, and impossible,” he murmurs, but there’s no scolding in his tone, only fondness.
You lean into his touch, a contented smile tugging at your lips. “And yet you keep coming back, Ser Harwin.”
He huffs a quiet laugh, pressing a lingering kiss to your lips, slow and sweet this time. “How could I not? There’s no taming a dragon, but gods be damned if I don’t love the fire.”
For a moment, you allow yourself to savor the warmth of his embrace, the comfort of his presence in the midst of all the chaos that defines your life. But the night is waning, and the world beyond this alleyway is still waiting.
Reluctantly, you begin to disentangle yourself, smoothing your skirts and adjusting your cloak. Harwin mirrors you, straightening his tunic and tightening the laces of his breeches. There’s a lingering heat in his gaze as he watches you, as if he’s already thinking about the next time he’ll chase you through these streets.
“Come,” he finally says, extending his hand with a grin. “I suppose I should get you back before anyone notices your absence… though I doubt I’ll be able to explain why you’re looking so disheveled.”
You smirk, taking his hand as you step back out into the moonlight. “That’s your problem, Ser Breakbones. I’ll leave the excuses to you.”
With a chuckle, he leads you back toward the Red Keep, but not before stealing one last kiss under the stars, a reminder that, for all the rules and restrictions of your world, some fires simply can’t be contained.
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The flickering light of the hearth casts dancing shadows on the walls of the private dining chamber, illuminating the worn but sturdy wooden table where Lord Lyonel Strong and his son, Ser Harwin, sit across from one another. The aroma of roasted meats and spiced wine fills the room, yet Harwin barely touches his food, his mind lost in thought as he absently stirs his cup of wine. 
Lyonel watches his son with keen eyes, noting the subtle tension in his posture, the way his gaze drifts toward nothing in particular as if he’s waging some silent battle within himself. They’ve shared these private dinners often, moments away from the demands of the court, but tonight there’s a charged undercurrent in the air that neither man can ignore.
After a long silence, Lyonel clears his throat and decides it’s time to broach the subject. “You seem distracted, Harwin. A rare occurrence for you.” His tone is gentle, probing, as he carefully measures his son’s reaction.
Harwin’s head snaps up as if he’s been startled out of his thoughts. He forces a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It’s nothing, Father. Just tired, perhaps.”
Lyonel isn’t convinced, but he decides to tread forward nonetheless. He takes a deliberate sip of his wine before speaking, choosing his words with the precision of a man accustomed to walking the tightrope of politics. “There’s been much discussion in the Small Council of late regarding alliances and… strategic marriages.”
Harwin tenses slightly, though he tries to mask it with a casual nod. “That’s always the way of things, isn’t it? Who’s being sold to whom for power and coin this time?”
Lyonel’s eyes narrow, noting the edge in his son’s voice. “In this case, it concerns someone close to you. The King is making plans for Princess Y/N. It appears he’s leaning toward a betrothal to the heir of House Blackwood.”
The words hang heavy in the air, and for a moment, Harwin’s face betrays nothing. But Lyonel’s sharp eyes catch the brief flicker of something—shock, anger, and something dangerously close to despair—before Harwin schools his features into a stoic mask. 
He swallows hard, the lump in his throat making it difficult to speak. “House Blackwood,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “She’s… she’s to be sent away, then.”
Lyonel arches a brow, watching the way his son’s knuckles whiten as he grips the edge of the table. “It would seem so,” he replies slowly, studying every nuance of Harwin’s reaction. “The marriage would be advantageous for the realm—bringing the Riverlands more firmly into the fold, securing loyalties through blood ties.”
Harwin’s gaze drops to his plate, the food now entirely forgotten. His mind races, a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions churning within him. The mere idea of Y/N being wed to someone else—of her being taken away to some distant castle, away from the Red Keep, away from him—it’s unbearable.
And Lyonel sees it, clear as day. The horror settles over him like a weight as he begins to piece together what Harwin’s response truly means. He knows his son—knows that Harwin has never been one to be so easily unsettled. For him to react this way… there must be something more, something deeper beneath the surface.
“Harwin,” Lyonel says, his voice now laced with a quiet urgency. “You’re taking this news rather hard, considering it is not your place to determine who the princess marries. Why does this trouble you so?”
Harwin clenches his jaw, fighting to keep his emotions in check. But his father’s probing gaze is relentless, cutting through the defenses Harwin has so carefully constructed over the years. “It’s not—” he begins, but the words catch in his throat. He can’t find a plausible excuse, can’t weave a tale that would satisfy his father without revealing too much.
Lyonel’s expression darkens as he begins to draw his own conclusions, his shrewd mind piecing together the puzzle. His eyes widen slightly in realization, a flicker of disbelief crossing his features before settling into grim understanding. “Harwin…” he breathes, the name laced with a mixture of disappointment and concern. “Tell me you haven’t done something foolish.”
Harwin’s silence is damning. His hands tighten into fists on the table as he struggles to find the words, his heart pounding in his chest. He doesn’t need to confirm it; his father already knows.
The weight of Lyonel’s realization crashes down like a hammer. He leans back in his chair, rubbing a hand over his face as he exhales a long, weary breath. “Gods help us,” he mutters, more to himself than to Harwin. “You’ve gone and entangled yourself with the princess, haven’t you?”
Harwin’s gaze remains fixed on the table, shame and defiance warring within him. He knows there’s no point in denying it now. “It wasn’t supposed to happen,” he admits hoarsely, his voice thick with emotion. “But I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop myself.”
Lyonel closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as the full implications settle in. “You fool. Do you have any idea what this could mean? What could happen if this gets out? The scandal, the danger—not just to you, but to her?”
“I know,” Harwin snaps, his voice strained, as if the very acknowledgment of the truth is tearing him apart. “But I… I care for her, Father. More than I should. More than I’ve ever cared for anyone.”
The raw confession hangs in the air, and for a moment, Lyonel can only stare at his son with a mixture of anger and pity. He sees the turmoil in Harwin’s eyes, the desperate, reckless need that has clearly consumed him. This isn’t just a passing infatuation or a dalliance. It’s something far deeper, something that could lead to ruin if it’s not carefully managed.
“Harwin,” Lyonel finally says, his voice low and grave, “you’ve put us all in a precarious position. If the King suspects, if the wrong person finds out, it could be the end of not just you, but our entire house. You must let her go. The marriage will happen, and you cannot interfere. Do you understand me?”
Harwin’s fists tremble as he fights back the overwhelming urge to protest, to scream that it’s impossible, that he can’t just let her go. But he knows his father is right. He knows the reality of their situation, knows that they are both trapped in a world of politics, duty, and expectations that neither of them can escape.
“I understand,” he finally grits out, though the words feel like ashes on his tongue.
Lyonel’s gaze softens slightly, a hint of sympathy bleeding into his stern expression. “I do not doubt your feelings, son, but some battles are not meant to be fought. And this is one you cannot win. You must think of what’s at stake.”
Harwin doesn’t respond, unable to trust himself to speak without betraying the depth of his anguish. Instead, he nods stiffly, forcing himself to swallow the pain that threatens to overwhelm him. He can’t imagine a future where Y/N belongs to someone else, where she’s out of his reach, but he knows he may have no choice in the matter.
Lyonel watches him with a heavy heart, knowing he’s asking the impossible of his son but also knowing it’s the only way to avoid disaster. “Be careful, Harwin,” he warns quietly, his voice tinged with regret. “Love is a powerful thing, but it can also be a weapon if wielded recklessly. Do not let it destroy you.”
The room falls into silence once more, the crackling fire the only sound between them. Harwin’s gaze remains fixed on the flames, but his thoughts are far from the warmth of the hearth. They’re with her—always with her—no matter how impossible the road ahead may seem. And even as he tells himself to let go, to do what’s expected, he knows in his heart that the fire between them isn’t something he can simply snuff out. It burns too bright, too fiercely, and like all dragonfire, it may yet consume them both.
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si1verghosts · 3 months
Note
Hi!
3. A kiss on the forehead😌
helloooo dear anon!! i am sorry this took so long i could not for the life of me figure out to write but then ! i wrote this on the 4th and i realized it could work... maybe... sorta. this may not be what you were expecting/wanting but there's forehead kisses in there.... somewhere 🫡 also, if u are not american i apologize for giving you a july 4th fic 😭 but the holiday is relatively inconsequential here like theres no patriotism it's just a backdrop if u know what i mean.... anyway, i hope u enjoy <33
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you taste like the 4th of july
di leon s. kennedy x fem reader (no use of y/n)
wc: 3.5k
18+ | cw: mentions of drinking | tw: thoughts about death and dying
tags: established relationship; fluff (i guess??); slight changes to canon to suit author's headcanons
read on ao3
a/n: for the past few months i've been working on this very insane multi-chap post di leon fic 😵‍💫 this was written with that in mind But does not have a place in that story... probably.... idk!!! either way, i think it can be read as a standalone just fine
additionally, there is a scene in here where leon picks the reader up. i would just like to say like... he gets thrown into concrete walls on a biweekly basis and gets up and walks it off without issue so i think he can lift anyone no matter their size or shape!!
not beta read or proofread - sorry if any of it is gibberish i've had a wicked migraine the past few days... will maybe attempt to proofread once i can see correctly again 🚬🧍‍♀️regardless, all mistakes are my own
i do not own leon or any other resi character mentioned, etc etc, please don't sue me <3
please do not use my work to train any sort of AI chatbot and/or writing generator.
-----
"It was a good day, wasn't it?" Leon asks, wrapping his arms around your waist, resting his chin on your shoulder as you stand over the patio table, cleaning up the abandoned plates and platters.
You hum. It was; a beautiful, cloudless July 4th, spent with Leon's friends in the backyard of your home. The only ones missing were Ashley and Ingrid; the former having a standing family commitment and the latter planning to spend her holiday on the beach, away from the country and your fiancé.
Typically, Chris hosted the Independence Day cookout, but Leon offered up your new home as this year's venue, citing your in-ground pool and the plenty of extra space you have for guests to stay. In reality, he just wanted the chance to out-grill Chris - he'd been preparing since Memorial Day; testing different spice and sauce combinations as well as stocking your freezer full of large cuts of meat.
He'd started before you were even awake, chopping and seasoning in the kitchen, slowly loading up the smoker. You'd joined him on the patio a few hours later, watching from your pool floaty as he poked and prodded at various things.
You don't even eat meat, didn't know the whole thing was so involved, but you did enjoy the view; worn blue jeans hugging his frame as he crouched to check a thermometer.
You had taken a short break from the water, tying up lights and setting a few little decorations around before your guests arrived. Rebecca was the first, tucking her jugs of pre-made cocktail and platter of deviled eggs into your fridge before joining you on the patio.
Chris wasn't far behind, unloading two coolers filled with beer and containers of homemade potato and pasta salads. He'd handed one off to you, grinning, "Claire made one just for you this year."
You'd thanked him, making another attempt to get him to share his family's recipes with you. It was futile, you probably couldn't even waterboard it out of either of them.
Claire had arrived on her motorcycle shortly after, pulling a bundle of fireworks out of her saddlebags. "Sorry I'm late," she said - even though she wasn't - dumping the pile on the ground, thankfully far away from the grill. "Had to stop for these."
Leon had crouched down to inspect them, listening intently as Claire told him about all the different varieties she'd purchased while you relaxed back into the pool.
Sherry arrived next, Jake trailing behind her. She'd left both him and her bags of chips at the table, giving Leon and Claire quick hugs before immediately joining you in the water.
She'd slipped in right beside your floaty, grabbing your hand to get a look at your engagement ring - she'd yet to see it, having been so busy with work. Her eyes widened at the ring as she pushed her sunglasses up to rest on top of her head, "Leon picked this out? Our Leon? Leon Kennedy? Are you sure?"
You'd giggled at her astonishment, "Ashley helped him out; took him to one of her favorite jewelers."
"I should've guessed," She nods. "For my 20th Birthday, he bought me this crazy cute pink tennis bracelet and I was like, 'no way you picked this out alone.' He fessed up that he got a little help from a friend named Ashley.
"At the time, I thought it was just some girlfriend - or hoped, I guess. Back then, I spent a lot of time hoping that Claire and Leon weren't just… working; I liked to think they were taking time for themselves, that they were happy," she had trailed off then, looking off to the tree line behind your house for a minute. Blinking the mist from her eyes, she shrugged, continuing on, "Anyways, I'm thankful to Ash for that bracelet, it was there with me though… a lot. And I'm thankful to you for making him happy, like I always wanted him to be."
With that, you slid off the float to give her a hug, holding her tight as you whispered your thanks. You had worked to bite back your tears - if she didn't cry, neither would you.
Luckily, Jill had walked in a few seconds later, providing a distraction in the form of the most ridiculously large watermelon. "Hey, Kennedy," she shouted, pulling Leon out of his conversation with Claire as she gestured to the melon tucked under her arm. "Can't burn this, can I?"
Leon had thrown his head back with a laugh - in previous years, Jill had always brought boxed brownies with extra crispy edges and Leon invariably had to make a comment about them. "I don't know," he had shrugged, "When it comes to you, Valentine, I'll never say never."
Jill had reared the watermelon back, acting as if she was going to throw it at him. Leon had thrown his arms up, shielding his face, causing everyone to crumble into laughter at the scene.
"It was nice," you agree, reaching to pick up the barong machete he had given Jill when she asked for a knife to cut the melon. "We do have kitchen knives, you know," you scold mockingly, gently waving the blade around.
"I know," he says, releasing you to reach around and pluck the machete out of your hand. "It's good to exercise these every once in a while, though."
You roll your eyes at him, "It's a machete, Leon, not a horse."
He waves you off, slipping through the patio door to wash the blade in the kitchen sink. You take the opportunity to speed clean, knowing it'll be a much harder task once he returns and wraps his arms back around you.
Thankfully everyone had taken care of their own plates and cups - they'd tried to stay and do more but you had ushered them out of the backyard, wanting Chris, Sherry and Jake to depart before the traffic picked up with the crowds leaving the city following the fireworks shows. Jill, Claire and Rebecca had taken up on your offer to stay, at least, piling into your guest rooms. You were glad to have them, secretly plotting to drag them to brunch once you all woke.
You finish piling the platters as Leon makes his way back outside. Before he can get his hands on you and derail your progress, you point to the stack, "Take those inside."
He frowns, "Can't it just wait until tomorrow?"
"We'll get ants; come on, five minutes and it'll be done."
He sighs, but doesn't protest further, carrying the heavy plates inside as you follow him with the utensils. You stack everything by the sink before turning to him, "Is there any of Becca's cocktail left?"
He cocks his brow, tilting his head, "You really want to try that again?"
It's a valid question - you had given it a go earlier and despite everyone's warnings to take it easy, you had thrown back a large mouthful right off the bat. You ended up wincing in pain, "Fuck, that burns. What'd you put in there, Becca?"
She'd shrugged, "Oh, you know, a splash of this, a splash of that. And," she teased, drawing out the vowel, "A bit of my own creation."
"Your own creation…" You had muttered, trailing off before it hit you, "Test tube alcohol?"
She had giggled, grinning, "Takes some getting used to."
You had tried another, much tinier sip. You were able to enjoy the sweetness of the juice for a moment before the burn kicked in again, causing you to curse once more, louder.
Leon had shifted his attention from Chris to you at your exclamation. Seeing the jug of Rebecca's cocktail in front of you on the table, he quickly pieced together what was happening, calling over to Rebecca from his place by the grill, "You trying to kill my fiancé, Becks?"
"Absolutely not; that'd be a stupid thing for me to do," she'd shot back. "She's the only one who can keep you in line, and we kind of like you like that."
"Well," you start, rolling the word around your mouth, "No. But yes - there's gotta be some sort of trick to it, right? Everyone else drank it just fine."
"The trick is," he starts, voice low, reaching out to grab ahold of your hips, "To not drink it. Let me make you some tea instead."
"Fine," you pout, relaxing into his grip, not bothering to argue - tea won't make you hate yourself in the morning.
He moves his hands from your hips, sliding his fingertips along your spine. "Go wait outside," he says, releasing you with a featherlight kiss to your forehead, "I'll bring it out."
With a brush of your lips against his cheek in thanks, you slip away from him, heading back out to the backyard and pulling off your shorts, settling onto the ledge of the shallow end of the pool. The air has cooled with the setting of the sun, becoming a comforting warmth instead of an overbearing heat. You dip your legs into the water, thankful you insisted on having a pool when you and Leon were house hunting.
Someone is still setting off fireworks; they're a few miles away, though - you can hear them more than you can see them. Resting back on your palms, you close your eyes, imagining what bursts of color may be accompanying each sound.
Leon joins you a few minutes later - just after the fireworks had died down - sporting his swim shorts and carrying your tea. He bends, setting the mug next to you with a kiss to your temple, nosing at your hair. "Earl Grey," he reports before drawling, "How terribly unpatriotic of you."
"You going to arrest me for treason, Agent Kennedy?" You laugh, reaching up to squeeze his thigh below the hem of his shorts. "You're the one who made it; they'd nail you as an accomplice."
He falls into a crouch, leg muscles bunching under the pads of your fingertips as he shifts closer to touch his lips on your cheek. "They can hang us together, then," he remarks, voice a bit too serious for it to be just a joke. "Side by side, off the same branch."
You sit back just enough to get your eyes focused on him, reaching your other hand out to thumb at his bottom lip. "Dulce et decorum est pro cor mori," you whisper, tacking on a hum in question.
He cocks his head at the unfamiliar words, nipping at your nail playfully, "English please, baby."
You consider him for a moment, the translation of the true phrase running through your mind; how sweet and honorable it is to die for one's country. The old lie, it's come to be known as - fittingly.
It's a similar sentiment to one that's grown to become your fear; that he'll die for the sake of the country, under orders from the government, believing it was his duty.
But you think your spin on it may be true; would be willing to find out.
You don't want to weigh him down with the thought, though, choosing to reel him in for a kiss instead. "I love you," is the answer you settle on, laying the words down right on his tongue.
He seems content with your translation - the method of delivery likely having something to do with it - humming into your mouth. He kisses you back lazily for a long, languid moment before he pulls away, "As much as I'm enjoying this, I've been wanting to get in there all day," he says, nodding his head towards the water.
"Go," you chuckle, giving him a gentle push away from you with the hand still resting along his face.
He lays another quick peck against your lips before standing, padding around the edge to the steps. He pauses for a moment to pull his shirt over his head, skin honeyed under the soft glow of the lights you'd hung around the patio.
A second later, he slips under the surface without hesitation; kicking off the steps, moving quickly to the deep end. He almost shimmers as he glides along the floor of the pool, the rippling of the gentle waves he'd created making him seem like some sort of mirage as he passes by you.
He comes up for air once he hits the far wall, tossing his hair back, smoothing the water from his eyes. He doesn't rest long, though, beginning to swim short laps across the width of the deep end.
You observe him, sipping your tea slowly, appreciating the way his back and arms work with each stroke. He continues long enough for you to nearly drain your cup, stopping short when another trio of fireworks set off in the distance.
Setting your mug down, you eye him, preparing to slip into the pool to soothe him if you have to, but he relaxes once he connects the sound to the flashes in the sky. The tension that had flooded the line of his shoulders drains into the water as he shifts to wade backward, moving closer to where you sit.
You finish off your drink as he starfishes out across the surface of the water, floating just a few feet in front of you. You wonder if you could use him as a floaty, pinning up a note in your brain to try it out sometime.
"I'm glad you insisted on a pool, sweetheart," he sighs, breaking your companionable silence.
You hum, pleased, kicking your legs out gently and causing the water to lap against his skin. More fireworks sound out; he doesn't tense this time, but he does get his feet back under himself, moving to where you sit along the ledge.
Sliding his hands up your legs, he pillows his head in your lap, wet hair fanning out across your thighs. You shift your weight back onto your right hand, laying the other along his jaw. His eyes flutter closed as you brush your thumb along his cheekbone and the scar that runs beneath it.
He picks at the tie of your bathing suit absentmindedly, tugging at the strings when you slide your hand into his hair, scratching at his scalp. "Sherry said something to me earlier."
He makes a noise urging you to elaborate, not bothering to open his eyes.
"She told me that when she was younger, she hoped that you and Claire were living your lives; that you were doing more than just working, you know? She said she wanted you guys to be happy," you explain, working to keep your voice even.
He cracks his eyes open, picking his head up to watch you as you continue. "She thanked me," you swallow thickly, "for making you happy, like she always wanted you to be."
He smiles at your words, and it's a beautiful thing. You still get all twisted up inside with how gorgeous he is; neurons overclocking themselves with the thrill of being the subject of his attention.
"I owe you a thank you, too, baby," he starts, pausing to nose at your wrist.
"You don't owe me anything, Leon," you tug at his damp strands still between your fingers, highlights catching the yellow glow from the lights around the patio.
"I do," he says, the words sending a jolt through you. You never intended on getting married, yet here you are now, eager to hear the phrase on the altar.
He kisses the thin skin of your wrist, lips lingering as if he can feel the thrum of your heartbeat; knows that the pace has picked up under his affection. "All this," he pulls back, taking a hand off you to gesture to the pool; the backyard; the house; to you. "It's something I never thought I'd get.
"Sherry's right - you're behind basically every bit of happiness I have now, sweetheart; I owe it all to you." He reaches up, untangling your grip from his hair, thumbing gently at the ring he put there, "Thank you."
You can't respond verbally, will burst into tears if you do. In lieu of speech, you lean forward, pressing your lips against his insistently.
He seems to get the message; understands that the pleasure is all yours, that you'd give him anything and everything you can - knowing he'd do the same for you.
He gets his arms back around you, continuing your kiss as he lifts you from the edge of the pool and into the water with him. You wrap your legs around his waist, safe and secure in his hold.
His teeth catch along your bottom lip and the neighbors down the street set off fireworks, the bright bursts of color painting your backyard in reds and blues and greens and oranges. The sparks reflect off the surface of the water as he slides his nose against yours and not for the first time, you think this may all be a dream. Maybe you died four years ago and this whole thing has been some sort of afterlife; you aren't sure you'd done anything worth this treatment, though.
Maybe it's more supernatural in origin; an intricate hallucination weaved by a Djinn that's got you chained up in some dark, damp basement as it feeds off your blood. Or maybe you just went crazy and the pool is actually a padded room, Leon's mouth against yours a product of your mind working to distract itself from your reality.
Whatever the case may be, it certainly feels real when he shifts his hold on you, hoists you up higher to get at your neck, laying kisses up and down the column of your throat, nipping at your jaw.
But before he can venture much further, the neighbor's fireworks show grows into an extravaganza, the relentless popping and bursting becoming a nuisance, shattering the illusion of your teeny-boppy movie moment.
"Jeez," Leon mutters, breath hot against the saliva cooling on your skin, causing you to shudder. "Did they buy out a whole tent?"
"Did you check that Claire actually went to bed?" You ask, shaking yourself free of his hold. "She could've joined them; brought everything I wouldn't let her set off here."
He hums, letting you down into the water, considering your words - even though you said it as a joke, it certainly is a possibility. You seem to come to this realization at the same time, eyes narrowing at each other as the spray of fireworks continues overhead. "We should…" He starts, nodding towards the stairs.
"Yeah," you agree, already beginning to move.
You pause to grab your towels, wrapping your own around yourself, throwing the other over Leon's shoulders when you catch up to him at the patio door. Stepping inside, you hear someone knocking around your kitchen.
Luckily, it's Claire. She steps back from the cabinet she'd been rifling through to face you and Leon with a frown. "Isn't this shit ridiculous?" She remarks, pointing to the ceiling in reference to the fireworks.
"You're one to talk, Claire," Leon shoots back. "Didn't you just set off about five hundred dollars worth of them in my backyard a few hours ago?"
"Yes, a few hours ago," she reiterates. "Nothing should be set off after the show at the Capitol is finished - after that, you're done; you missed your shot; better luck next year."
"Exactly," you nod in agreement at her reasoning, "They should put you in charge."
She grins at your words, moving to continue on, but Leon cuts in before she can start; "What is it that you were clawing through my cabinets for?"
She sighs, displeased with his interruption, setting her hands on her hips. "Where do you keep the ibuprofen?"
Leon shoos her out of the way, padding across the kitchen to get the medicine himself. Claire relents without argument, attention immediately shifting back to you as she leans over the counter. "So," she wiggles her eyebrows, "It seems like that pool was a good investment, huh?"
You bite at your lip, ears burning with embarrassment that she'd seen you and Leon necking in the water like teenagers - even though you shouldn't be flustered; it is your house, after all.
Leon sets the bottle of ibuprofen and a glass of water down in front of Claire, annoyance evident with the way he uses a bit more force than really necessary, causing the items to clack against the marble.
"What?" Claire questions, glaring at him. "It was cute."
Leon huffs in response, unable to hide the flush that crawls up his neck at her words. You can't help the giggle that bubbles out of you, enjoying the way they bicker like siblings.
Claire leaves Leon to stew, tossing you a grin as she collects the bottle and glass, bidding you goodnight once more before she leaves the kitchen.
You move around the counter to Leon, steps careful in an effort not to slip on the water that has dripped off him and onto the tile. The neighbors must've ran out of fireworks while you were distracted by Claire as it's silent when you wrap your arms around him, tucking your face into his neck. "Still a good day?" You ask, voice muffled against his skin.
He slings an arm around you, fingers fanning out along the small of your back, "Still a good day."
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fatesundress · 1 year
Text
⭑ observations. tom riddle x reader
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part ii here.
summary. you've been going to hogwarts for four months, and find this whole school-wide obsession with tom riddle a little bit ridiculous, and a little bit contrived. surely not all the rumours are true...
tags. smut (minors dni -_-), fem anatomy, fingering, reader who is soooo in denial, trying to worm into tom's brain like a parasite and failing miserably (me projecting), i think reader is implied to either be short or tom is implied to be tall, ooc tom because i am so far from the belief that he would ever just spontaneously hook up with someone but… it is what it is.
note. this is my first post so support is much appreciated!! god forgive me, i've never written smut in my life, and it's safe to assume any smut i write within hogwarts is a university au — these people are all 18+ tyvm. also, i tried my best to make reader fairly neutral, but it's late, and if i've fumbled over some description bc i'm sleepy i shall fix it in the morning ♡
word count. 5.1k
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Your first observation is that nobody has Tom Riddle quite right.
He’s beautiful, yes (obvious, repetitive, shallow), and undeniably intelligent (being paired with him in Potions has proved that in a matter of weeks), untouchable (this one is a bit interesting), and, above all, unusual. The latter you like the most. It makes you feel unabashedly exceptional in all the very unexceptional gossip about him. No one ever uses that word to describe him. A rarity of charisma and charm — austere, refined, and clinically polite. Unusual has a negative curve to it that most people don’t attach to the elegant litheness of Tom Riddle, but your observations cannot be stated without the word.
It’s prompted and peddled by Selwyn’s much-too-enthusiastic vehemence in the wake of your first.
You narrow your eyes at her and say it again, no less certain than the first time. “Tom Riddle has not had sex with half the school.”
It’s a bit of a jump. Some necessary context is removed.
Riddle, once more, rarity of charisma and charm and austere blah blah blah, has been rumoured since you arrived this year from your last school to be some silent conqueror, oh-so nimble with his hands and nimbler even with his other appendages, and you — you’ve only been here four months and it’s laughable how many people believe it.
Backtrack to untouchable (this one everyone agrees is a primary characteristic of Tom Riddle, there’s no debate there) and the reason you find it interesting. Untouchable doesn’t exactly work if everyone in the bloody castle has been touching him this whole time. And it’s not as if he could hide it, not as if people wouldn’t be giddy to tell their friends of their exploits with the beautiful, revered Head Boy. And such exploits would be whispers among the halls in a matter of hours. You’ve considered this, with almost scientific determination, and it’s impossible. Tom studies all day, and when he isn’t studying he’s corralling Slytherin first-years away from forbidden corridors, attending to Dippet’s newest errand, escorting third-years to Hogsmeade, dining with the Slug Club, and — point is, someone would have noticed by now if he was disappearing into broom closets with a new lay every weekend.
But Selwyn shakes her head, because this rumour is such an integral part of Tom’s allure. He is, somehow, both untouchable and a master at touch. Distant until he isn’t, and then he can break you apart with practised, perfect hands. It’s all very mythical.
“Look,” she says, “maybe if I’d only been here four months, I’d think so too, but everyone else knows—”
“Maybe it’s because I’ve only been here four months that I have the objectivity to recognize how ridiculous you all are. He’s not a god, Selwyn, he’s a scholar, and an obsessed one at that — has it ever actually occurred to you he might not have had sex at all?”
This, now, is sacrilege. 
Selwyn gapes at you, and you shake your head in surrender before you burst out laughing at how offended she looks. “Fine, whatever. Consider the matter dropped. I give up.”
You don’t really give up. It’s very fun research.
Your second observation is that unusual is not an apt enough word for Tom, and maybe you don’t possess the vocabulary to think of one that is.
You’re in the Restricted Section. This is unrelated to your Tom research, and perfectly sanctioned, with a key granted by the librarian who you feel sorry to admit you have not remembered the name of, and the library, by all means, is still open. It’s a late Thursday night, but not past curfew. You’re there with a study partner you rather wish you weren’t — Gregory Godefrey, Gryffindor (the alliteration is nauseating), and the only half-decent fellow in your Ancient Runes class, but not especially bright. You feel more like his tutor than his partner. In short, the regular books on the topic you’re writing your end-of-term essay on are slim pickings, and thus — Restricted Section.
“So,” you say, “the scriptures might look the same, but they’re written in vastly different time periods, so the meaning has changed. If you were to charge a spell with one of Ashe’s runes now, there’s almost no doubt you’d get a completely different result.”
“I don’t get it,” Godefrey grumbles sleepily into his sleeve. “How’s anyone meant to use runes if they can just change like that?”
You sigh, shaking your head. “Any magic can change, Godefrey. Half of the stuff we learn is based on intention and skill. Uagadou barely even uses wands — all of this is arbitrary.”
“My head hurts.”
“Then… just… just go to bed. I’ll finish up here and we’ll try again on the weekend.”
He grins with heavy eyes, lugging his bag over his shoulder and leaving you a packet of sherbet lemons you bitterly wish he’d pulled out sooner. “Wicked — you’re the best. See’ya.”
“See you…” you mumble, unwrapping one and popping it in your mouth.
You don’t stay for long, twirling the key to the Restricted Section around your finger as you tuck your books back into their shelves.
“It’s ten past curfew,” says a voice from behind you, all cool, measured authority, and you nearly collapse.
You stare up from where you’re grabbing onto your knees for balance, your heart halfway out of your chest.
Tom Riddle is there, his Head Boy badge somehow still glittering in the dim light of the library, and it’s only by the half-smile quirking at his lips that you can detect his words weren’t some sort of threat.
“Right, thanks.” You gather your breath. “I was just leaving.”
“Pity about Godefrey.”
You blink. Having worked with Tom in Potions since September, you’ve become perfectly adjusted to speaking to him… only about Potions. He indulges in polite small talk, he smiles freely, but your distance from him is the same as it is with everyone else, if only for the fact that, you suppose, you aren’t actively pursuing anything closer.
Oh. That is interesting — would he be so easily intrigued? It’s a bit cliché, but you suppose he is too.
You’re making an awful lot of assumptions from the words ‘pity about Godefrey,’ and then, you don’t actually have a damn clue what Tom could mean by that.
“Sorry?” you ask.
“Godefrey,” he repeats. “I assume you’re being made to tutor him.”
Right. He must have seen him on his way here. That would make sense.
“No, actually. It’s entirely voluntary — he’s my study partner for Ancient Runes.”
His chin lifts in some nearly imperceptible way, smiling still, and you know he’s a polished thing, an unusual thing, but it reads as an especially fake smile then. “Ah.”
… Oooookay?
“Well —” you start, a mechanical smile of your own forming — “curfew, then.”
The charm fixes onto his face like a damn ornament. You want to flick it away with your finger. “Of course. I’ll see you in Potions?”
You nod, leaving the key behind the librarian’s desk as you slink awkwardly away. Into the corridor. Off to bed. Yet another note to scrawl on the enigma of Tom Riddle.
You see him again first thing in the morning. You’re yawning into the archway of Slughorn’s stuffy classroom, eager to dump your bag over your table and empty the many contents necessary for today’s lesson. 
There’s one girl, the oldest of the Lestranges, who glares daggers into the back of your head every class. Tom is, as always, nonplussed, asking you about your morning as you both prepare your phials and ingredients. You can’t help but shake your head at him this once, a bemused smile on your lips as you glance between him and the Lestrange girl.
“Have I offended her somehow, or is it just that I’m paired with you?”
He laughs under his breath. “I daresay that is the offense.”
You can’t help it. You’re mumbling to yourself in amazement at the bizarre, borderline cultish devotion this school has to Tom Riddle. “Unattainable commodity that you are, Riddle…”
“Well," he begins, his smile small but his voice amused, “I hope you don’t think of me as quite that far outside your grasp."
You freeze.
Are you — have you missed something? Has your casual (really, very casual and not at all unwarranted or peculiar) research for the sake of dispelling Selwyn’s obsession skewed your memory of Tom? Has he always said things like this to you? Have you always read into them like this?
One of his eyebrows rises, and it might be his notorious flattery — but if so, he makes it sound like an obvious truth, and you stammer over the jar of foxglove in your hand. Then you look away, unscrew it, do well not to put too much weight on his words.
“Hm. I have no need for you to be within it, Riddle." You say it with all nonchalance you can muster. To spit it at him in some aggressive dismissal would be to treat it like a big thing. 
It isn’t a big thing. He’s talking to you like he talks to everyone else.
But you catch the barest flicker of disappointment on his face, a flash of something that might even be annoyance. Then, though, it’s gone, and he’s back to that same unshakable, confident smirk.
As the lesson proceeds,  he’s once again the sharpest thing in the room.
You watch for him in the library that weekend, a bit distracted while you and Godefrey study. Without your guidance, there isn’t much studying occurring at all. Godefrey is sort of skimming the pages of a textbook, yawning, as always, like he’s never had a good night’s sleep in his life, and you’re suckling sherbert lemons until the roof of your mouth feels raw.
“What was it you said about Calarook’s Method?”
Your eyes snap from the empty doorway to Godefrey’s face. “Huh?”
“Calarook’s Method.”
“Oh.” You sink boredly into your seat, twirling your quill between your fingers. “It revolutionised the usage of runes globally. She incorporated — um — a much simpler means of translating the scriptures for different methods of magic.”
“Ohhhh, I remember now. Did you write that down?”
“Yes, Godefrey, I wrote it down.”
The final hour before curfew dwells agonisingly longer than it should. It feels like three, at least, until you’re packing your things and bidding Godefrey goodnight, tired legs dragging you down the corridors.
And then you straighten. You stand tall. (You’re absolutely normal about the sight before you.)
Tom smiles at you as he turns the corridor to approach.
“On patrol?” you ask in a friendly tone.
You’re… friends, right? Being someone’s Potions partner for four months qualifies as some degree of friendship, does it not? After all, he did say not to think of him as too far outside your grasp. That was a line if you’d ever heard one, but — you could be Tom’s friend the way everyone is his friend: wholly detached until you were needed.
“Leaving detention,” he answers with a timbre to match.
Your eyebrows raise at that.
“Leaving the second-years I watched in detention, I should say.”
You shake your head. “I should have known.”
“And you?”
“Studying again.”
“Ancient Runes?”
“Mhm.”
“...With Godefrey?”
“That is the concept of a recurrent study partner, yes. It’s recurrent.”
He doesn’t look very much like he appreciates your sarcasm.
“So, then,” you mutter, clearing your throat. “Curfew, I suppose.”
“You performed well in Potions today,” he says after you. It feels like the sort of thing someone says when they don’t want someone to walk away.
You bite your cheek between your teeth — such assumptions will get the better of you. Such assumptions will lead you down a path of crude, obsessive analysis (though you suppose you’ve been doing that all this time, haven’t you?) where you think, in some unspooling knitwork, that there are really only a select few reasons he could want such a thing. Your mind draws to the irresponsible conclusion, as he walks toward you again, a new glint in his eyes, that it’s exactly the sort of thing someone says before rumour has it they disappear into the nearest broom closet with the one they approach. This, you’ve decided an observation ago, Tom Riddle does not do.
“Thank you,” you say carefully. “So did you.”
“We make for a good pair, don’t you think?”
Crude, obsessive analysis. “Slughorn certainly does.”
“And I am asking you.”
He stops a respectable, inviting space before you. His weekend attire is a grey jumper and black slacks, his dark hair in its regular, pristine waves, hands laced behind his back. Everything about him is a request to be met, and not to step forward and close the distance himself. Close the distance, pristine waves, inviting space — you’ve lost your damn mind. You sound like Selwyn. The sugar of a whole packet of sherbet lemons has rendered you imbecilic. You’ll be off to bed, then — sleep this absurdity off.
“Of course, Tom,” you say with a polite smile. “It’d be hard to disagree with the grades I get in that class.” You grab onto your bag to have something to do with your hands, to perhaps signify you’ll be making your exit now.
He seems a bit amused to have to contort himself through the specifics of his meaning. “I was referring to our… rapport.”
“Rapport?”
“We work well together. We communicate efficiently.”
We communicate efficiently? Damn if you couldn’t suddenly make sense of the rumour he’d be applying for the DADA post in the future — that one was definitely true.
“Yes, we do.”
He steps closer. “And I remain far outside your grasp.”
You blink, and there’s a stark, sinking feeling as your eyes drift over the unmarred ivory of his skin, his jaw, his throat, his — no, absolutely not his hands — and you let yourself wonder for the first time if the rumours, albeit exaggerated, have even a shred of truth to them. One exploit, perhaps, to satisfy his endless curiosity. Something academic, like — oh, God, like the way you’ve been studying him for weeks. His hands carving a path down someone’s body to etch it in his memory, another skill added to his arsenal, a new way to work his fingers without a wand, a new way to work his mouth without a word.
It’s only a moment that you wonder it. Some flash of pictures in your head. It is, nonetheless, a moment far too long, and one you don’t know that you can return from.
Tom looks at you from under his eyelashes with an expression that suggests he's the only one in on a very funny joke, and the air is… different. Thick like the Potions room but in a way that’s entirely unfamiliar, not cloudy with the steam of cauldrons but hazy with the proximity of him, cologne and quill ink and something you can’t catch because you’re trying too hard to breathe it all in at once.
But he steps forward again, and seems to say in the slow way he moves, that if you’ll let him, he'll place a hand on your shoulder, and if you’ll allow that — well — then he'll move that hand up to gently frame your cheek. And then, and you no longer consider yourself at all versed in the realm of Tom Riddle, but you think you know what’ll come next.
You allow all of it. You know very well in advance you’re going to allow all of it.
And still, like it’s a surprise, you shiver at the feeling of his hand on your cheek, at the gleaming, certain look in his eyes. Your gaze flickers to his lips for just a second (a fleeting, tiny second you pray fruitlessly he doesn't notice) but his lips curl into the barest of smiles. Something so like him, small but unrestrained, like it never had any hope of growing bigger, but then — you’ve seen the way he grins at you sometimes when you say something stupid in class — you know he’s capable.
“You know what I'm going to do, I assume," he says quietly. It's not a question, per se — more of a statement, and he keeps his eyes fixed firmly on yours as he says it. He's so close you can feel the warmth of his breath. And then he leans in so slightly it might be imperceptible if you weren’t staring, holding your damn breath. “Are you going to let me?"
“I..." You're humiliated to find you are actually struggling to speak. His lips are so close to yours you can feel the ghost of them, can imagine what they might feel like on you. Your mouth is very dry. “We’re… friends, right?”
His voice only wavers for a moment, even as his lips inch ever closer to yours. His voice is tauntingly low, and there's an intimate sort of smile there, a chastising, humorous gleam to his eyes. “Friends," he breathes, and then his lips do close that short distance, and you feel the barest trace of his mouth against yours — his lips, soft and supple against your skin. A moment's kiss. Gone as quickly as it came. “Should we be friends?”
You gape at him, breathing far too heavily for such a chaste kiss, and you imagine your eyes are blown wide, and you lick your lips for a reminder of his taste but it isn't enough. You don't think before standing on your toes to find his lips again. Of course, Tom is stood impeccably straight, his chin almost pointedly jutted so that he can look down at you, and you actually — it's horribly embarrassing — you groan, or whine, or make some sound of blatant discontent at the fact that your kiss doesn’t reach him.
To his credit, his laugh is a very small one. Had it been the other way around you would have been far less forgiving. “I suppose the answer is no, then?" he says, with the implication that the next move might be yours.
“Tom," you as good as hiss (really very foolish of you to use the word forgiving to describe Tom Riddle), “you're being... you're being mean." And you refuse to make the first effort again, even though you probably appear to be a train wreck, your chest is heaving, and you... you want him.
“Am I?" he asks, and he tilts his head to the other side, almost as if to get a better look at you. “How so?" You think he's enjoying himself far too much. But he remains where he is: close enough for you to reach him if you would just yank him toward you and be done with it, and far enough away that you can't take that step without giving him the win.
You stare at him for a long moment, and then with teeth gritted so tight you might chip one, turn to walk away. Tom makes some very hollow, annoyed sound at your stubbornness, and thank god you feel him behind you: soft, lulling, not so immovable as you. 
You stop. His fingers brush your hair to the side. His mouth hovers over the skin of your neck. You shudder.
“Tom..." you sigh, half-exasperated, half-sighed, half-surrendered, but he doesn't answer or stop or do so much as acknowledge your mumbling. He only presses forward, until his breath is right by your ear and his lips, soft, gentle, are against the junction of your exposed neck, and you feel his mouth, the gentle pressure of his lips against your skin... so tender, so light that it doesn’t feel at all like something merciful.
It feels singularly, purposefully cruel.
Your third observation (if you can manage the thought) is that Tom is driven by your reactions. Every little mewl, every shudder, every gasp, he wants more of. He wants whatever you're willing to give him, and you suspect it wouldn’t be hard for him to take it all. Every movement of his hands, his mouth, his — oh, oh no — his tongue, abide by whatever you respond to most. He draws in patterns. He stops. Appreciates the speed of your pulse on the curve of your throat for a moment and then tastes it again. It doesn't seem like he particularly cares what he gets out of it. The intrigue for him is having the proximity (he greatly enjoys that you’ve allowed him it) and capacity (that, you think, he’s always had) to make you fall apart.
He's spinning you then, so you're pressed facing the wall, his chest against your back, and the way he whispers against your skin makes you shiver. You dare to think he feels it, his chest heaving against your back, his breath warm and steady by your ear. And as he kisses you you can't help but imagine what might happen if he were just a few inches lower, if he were to sink to his knees, kissing the soft flesh of your chest, and down, and down, and down…
Your eyes flutter closed, and it's clear you like what he's doing by the sound that escapes you — something loud enough for him to stifle your mouth with his palm. Perhaps a little too much. Perhaps you’ll be embarrassed about it later. But right now his tongue is brushing against your skin again, and there’s something very dizzying and hot that starts with his mouth on your neck and works its way down until it's a challenge just to stay standing. You wonder if he can tell just how weak in the knees you are right now, whether that only makes him push forward, and —
And that must be it. He must know, because you think you're trying to say something but you can't form the words, and he has to feel the reverberations with his teeth bracketing little violets on your neck, he must feel the way your legs buckle, how you're held up only by the weight of him behind you.
He must know.
He pushes forward, his fingers bury in your hair, and he pulls your head back slowly — not necessarily to expose you further, but to better see your face. Your eyes lock with his over your shoulder, and there's that hunger there, lips swollen with the print of you... and his voice, when he speaks, is as if he's only barely stopping himself. “Do you want me to stop?"
You shake your head before you think he’s actually finished the question, swallowing the cotton-dry feeling in your throat. No, no — him stopping is the very last thing you want — you feel entirely rational and not at all melodramatic in saying you might just die if he stops. You want more, and he's looking at you like that’s the only thing he’s ever wanted.
He bites down gently on your neck, and you gasp as your knees finally go out from under you (you almost think he planned for this with how quickly he catches you), and you wonder if he'll do something you can't bear; if you'll be reduced to a mewling, drooling mess before he's finished with you.
Your fourth observation — which really is the last one you can muster before it starts to melt into something else — is that you make him human in the only way he can understand: panting into him, fingers in his skin, white-hot and damp at the centre of his obsession. The object of his affection. You make him understand something more singular than ambition. 
Want.
And then his spare hand is dipping past your skirts, and you dig your fingers into his wrist — the combination of the hardness pressed against your back, his hands marking a path to forbidden territory, his finger curling into your mouth as his lips continue their assault on your neck — it's too much. It’s deliriously, disastrously not enough. Your vision is starting to blur.
His fingers stop at the curve where your thighs part and you bite gently down on him to quiet the noise that wants to escape you. He hums against your throat, continuing to kiss and lick and bruise you. You're dazedly aware of the cool air on your thighs as your skirts halo your waist, the heat inside, the shudder as his fingers find your core, and carefully begin to circle you. You feel self-consumed, immolated, devoured and spat out again. You feel like you're still falling, and Tom is the only force that keeps you standing.
He draws in slow, expert patterns — and you think, nonsensically, somewhere very distant where you still have sense, that they can’t be expert, he must have read something or observed some — oh. He’s pushing the thin fabric aside until his fingers are pressed directly against your flesh, and he makes a satisfied noise in the back of his throat as the evidence of how much you need this soaks his fingers, as they begin to sink in without resistance. Oh. Right. You don’t remember exactly what you were saying. 
You gasp at the feeling of having him inside when they finally curl into you. 
His finger is pulled from your mouth with a small pop, and you can’t even really muster the capacity to be embarrassed by the lewd, wet sound of it. He watches you over your shoulder, at his fingers vanished between your legs, at the drool clinging to the digit he’d quieted you with. He’s smiling into your neck now, proud and grateful all the same.
“Mine,” you think he murmurs, but it’s more something you feel than hear, some vague, hazy consonants pressed to your throat. It would be very like him, so you decide that yes, that’s probably what he said. And there’s something funny about it — the idea of being his — about what it means for him to want you so badly that he says it out loud. It feels a little bit like he’s yours, too.
Tom’s breathing is harsh, the fingers inside you moving as if they have a will of their own. Every muscle in your body constricts and squeezes around them; every cell, every neuron, comes roaring to life; and you’re fucked. You’re so completely fucked. His teeth scrape against you again, wholeheartedly pleased. This is what he wanted to see — the utter loss of you — when you are nothing but sensation, barely aware of your limbs as they slump against him. Tom is it; Tom is the only thing you can think of.
Tom is, inexplicably, upsettingly good at this.
“Look at you," he says softly. And his touch changes; it becomes slower, more deliberate and careful.
You’re trembling hopelessly. The way you coil and collapse under his touch is just further encouragement. He doesn't even bother to speak anymore, only pants, his eyes half-lidded, his lips swollen and slick when they attach to your throat again. Your whole body is on fire, and he's the one setting you alight — there is not a single inch of you that is not alive with the feeling of him, and you can barely breathe through the slow, heavy rush of it. 
You think you cry at the divine curve of his fingers carving inside you, slow and soft and then intense — when you grip his arm for more friction, and one of his hands is coming up to wipe a tear away but the feeling flares in your abdomen and you're only half aware of it, really — you think your eyes have rolled back. You think you've gone somewhere else. 
He keeps you just on the precipice, just shy of losing control, just far enough to leave you craving for more.
“To—Tom," you sob, gasps cleaving his name in two — you're on the brink of something incomprehensible, building inside you to something you can't help but think is about to shatter, your eyes clenching shut as you grip him so hard you're certain your fingers will leave marks. “I'm gonna—"
“I know," he breathes against your neck, hands running a familiar path along your body; he's so very, very proud that he's made you like this. He just barely bites into the spot above your collar, curls his fingers, and then you’re falling — something unfurls inside you and can’t be collected, something hot and depthless that your hands can’t clutch at from where they’re clinging so desperately to him — and you think, coming down from it with trembling, debilitating ecstasy, that he looks very much like he’d be proud to make you like this over and over again.
You're flattened, and that triumph in his eyes — the absolute satisfaction of seeing you this way, of knowing that that he's the one that did it to you — that feeling fills your mind and makes you collapse even more, makes you want to melt and flow into liquid at his feet; to give in, do whatever he says, even if all he says is just be like this for him.
He slowly removes his fingers as you come down, and your eyes are blinking for focus when he turns you around, his thumb coming up to brush over your bottom lip and you sigh at the taste of yourself as he pushes it inside your mouth. His other hand brushes away the damp, stray hairs that have fallen across your face, almost reverently, a silent worship as he takes you in, appreciates everything you just gave him.
He smiles gently at your half-blinking, half-vacant expression, his thumb still in your mouth; he watches you for a long moment in silence. His eyes are heavy-lidded and he's got a small quirk at the corner of his mouth as he pulls his thumb away and swipes it once more over your lip.
You're still not quite sure you can find words. Still not sure they'd form right as your tongue darts over the residue of Tom's finger and you flush impossibly hotter at the feeling of your own arousal on your mouth. Tom fixes your hair behind your ears and it doesn't seem like he's ready to stop taking you in in this state — your hair wild,  lips swollen, throat bruised and dress askew — and he leans in so tenderly it startles you, pressing a faint, almost imperceptible kiss to your forehead.
“Tell Godefrey he’ll be needing a new study partner. I think you’ll find yourself committed elsewhere." And with that he turns on his heel, perfectly composed, and disappears into the darkness of the midnight corridor.
Oh God, you think, and you’re too stunned to even react as you watch him vanish. It takes you a moment before you regain your senses, and you can only just manage to sputter out a breathless, miserable sigh into the air before you.
You are so completely, utterly fucked.
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syoddeye · 5 months
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more reading recs
because one post isn't enough. we are hashtag blessed with fic.
as requested, i've highlighted fics with noncon and/or dubcon elements in orange. beyond that, you are responsible for reading tags, warnings, and summaries.
pairings are indicated, although these may change or may not be established yet.
there is no method to this madness, no specific order. these are listed here as my brain remembered them.
i've checked all the links maybe three times, if they're broken, i blame tumblr's formatting.
without further ado...
Slasher Handler by @dragonnarrative-writes - Ghost x Reader
"Simon does serial killer things. What a rascal!" Another fantastically written Simon, with wonderful dashes of Gaz and Price. It's put the term 'romance knives' in my vocabulary. There are many quotable bits and moments that made my blood run cold with how normal the ~situation~ feels, but everything has to be experienced firsthand.
The Far Shore by @deadbranch - Soap x Reader
DB's fic collection is rich, and The Far Shore is no different. I fucking loved Pacific Rim, so when I saw her first mention a PR AU, I did imaginary backflips. DB's Readers are some of my favorites because of how complex and realistic they feel, and when combined with the visceral depth of the neural handshake AND Soap? Compelling. The dynamic between them is fascinating. I almost can't wait for it to be finished so I can go back and dissect it.
Falling into Place by @mortuarywriting
Morg's brought the first COD Isekai AU I've read, like a little treat, with A/B/O to boot. The first chapter hooked me and cracked me up. Their dialogue reads so well, it truly feels like I got sucked into the universe. The panicked ramblings, the over-explanation, the 'oh shit, we don't even have a shared cultural touchstone' moments. I cannot wait for more.
Carvings by @femalefemur - Price x Reader
Cyn's got this amazing thing going on called 'Top Quality Worms' where she takes me by the hand and leads me down a rabbit hole I didn't know I'd find so cozy. Carvings is one piece from her incredible list, featuring a bloody, possessive Captain Price. Somehow, out of this entire piece, Price snapping a pen really did it for me. Did someone say loss of control? Oh no, not my kryptonite!
Under Your Spell by @groguspicklejar - Gaz x Reader x Soap
This fic had me at the pairing tag. Lured me right in. No hope for me, and I'm not mad about it. The way Gaz and Soap play off of each other in Under Your Spell is spine-tingling in more ways than one. The definition of scaroused. Kelsi writes a wonderful Gaz. The first two paragraphs in part two, Split My Skin, describe him perfectly to me.
Chokehold by @ccrites - Soap x Reader
Chokehold is a chef's kiss read. Starts off as a cute and sweet gym read, and uh, well, it does get sweeter, in a way. Without spoiling anything, there is a brief cab ride that made me take a lap before things got really going for Reader. CC's Soap is a delightful tease that is tender all at the same time. I'd join his gym in a heartbeat.
Knight/Princess AU by @a-small-writer-in-a-big-world - Price x Reader
I've read and re-read this AU series a dozen times. It's so gd cute, I might need to see the dentist about how it's rotting my teeth. Seriously, it makes ME want to be a princess. Specifically Price's princess. Bear writes such a sweet and gruff Price, catch me holding a hand over my heart and just sighing. I'm also a big fan of multiple POVs and the insight into each character.
Martyr in the Making by @eilidh-eternal - Ghost x Reader
I had a tattoo touch-up the other day, and while waiting, I thought about this fic: the dream and nightmare of being tattooed by Simon and the rest of the 141. It's a dream for obvious reasons (probably unhealthy for me) and a nightmare because of, well, you'll have to read the story. Getting a tattoo can be such an intimate experience. You put yourself into someone's care and get something permanently etched onto your body. When Reader sits for Simon, you're right there with her, the two of you on an altar.
Liquid Smooth by @cordeliawhohung - Gaz x Reader
Bodyguard!Gaz save me, save me, bodyguard!Gaz. Ugh, Gaz is fucking incredible in every flavor, but there is something that hits different about the guy when he's flexing those 'VIP protection' skills. There are several tiny moments in Liquid Smooth that made me audibly whisper, "God, I wish that were me." If you have a conifer tree allergy, you might not be able to handle the god-tier pining. (I'll see myself out.)
pornstar!Gaz by @cordeliawhohung - Gaz x Reader
Gotta include the series that I drop everything for whenever I see an update. Another fantastic depiction of best man Kyle Gaz Garrick. The charm, the jealousy, the care...My personal favorite installments are Whispers and Threesomes.
plus size puppygirl!reader / Simon & Reader / Punishment by @secretsynthetic - Price x Reader x Ghost
Ghost gets his Captain a puppy, and Synth gives us a tasty Price x Reader x Ghost story. I've linked the intro and a Simon x Reader snippet, but my personal favorite is Punishment. Punishment is a deeper dive into Price the disciplinarian: "how the hell do i get a mutt like you to fuckin’ listen?" I'd gush about it, but again, this is another one to read and experience firsthand. One of my favorite recent explorations of a PriceGhost dynamic.
~~
i'll probably cobble another one of these together in may 2024. my fic backlog is something else. i blame it on all the massive talent. mwah.
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illarian-rambling · 8 months
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Aw balls. I almost forgot an intro
Hi, I'm Katie! I'm a writer with two ongoing wips that I like yammering about, so ima do it here!
Pronouns: she/her
Age: 19
Other interests: art, dnd, the Magnus Archives, anything Cosmere related, martial arts, Critical Roll
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My wips are set in the same universe, on the planet of Illaros, fifth from the last star left living in the universe. There's a continent, some islands, and other assorted junk down there. The gods have a dyson ring, but they don't like to talk about it.
Honor's Outcasts follows a rag-tag group of delinquents trying to survive psycho pirates with family ties, a siren theocracy, magic that rots in your blood, and the Horrors. Their number includes such mighty heros as: a kid who can explode people with her mind, a buff shark lady who survives regular eldritch encounters by not paying attention, a mute aroace siren man with a bitchy attitude, and the world's sweetest gang mamber. Of course, they're one big family, and what's family without a little religious terrorism?
The Mystery of the Mortal God asks what happens when magic and science collide in a world where ethics panels haven't been established yet. Set a few decades down the line from HO, this story follows a cowboy witch with a chip on her shoulder as she discovers a mysterious robot laying broken and confused on the side of the road. At the same time, in a city on the other side of the globe, a blue blooded detective investigates a cold case suddenly gone hot. In time, all players will meet, including the mage who set this whole conundrum in motion.
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Anyways, if you're here, feel free to say hi! I'll mostly be posting whatever bullshit comes to mind, but maybe you'll get lucky and something entertaining will come out? I certainly hope so!
Have a bitchin' day <3
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An addition! Here are my characters' playlists! (And intros for those who have them) (All instrumental because I can't write while listening to vocals)
Izjik Meautammera +intro
Sepo Kaiacynthus +intro
Twenari Devaris +intro
Djek Kagura +intro
Daedryn Whitenight
Astra DuClaire +intro
Mashal Darezsho +intro
Ivander Montane +intro
Elsind Cavernsight +intro
Avymere Spearsong +intro
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A second addition! Please feel welcome to check out my new Illaros library! These are short stories written (mostly) in my setting that I've shared before on here, but I figured I'd put all the links in one place :)
Down in the Deep Dark - 2,500 words - The tale of how Izjik and Sepo met
Violating the 4th - 11,000 words - Coverage of the first Surgeon case from the POV of Ceyrel (Ivander’s detective partner)
Rel's Haunting - 16,000 words - A story of a fallen angel, the dead god who made them, and finding wonder in the supermarket
Full Saturation - 2,000 words - A short horror story set on modern Earth about saturation diving and places better left untouched
And for some one-shots:
Mashal and Ivander hanging out
Izjik making Sepo a flute in the Trench
The cast of Mortal God gets a beach episode
Mashal teaches Astra to ride a horse
Again, have a bitchin' day!
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hxhhasmysoul · 9 months
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jjk tags and fags - translator assigned genders / fandom assigned genders
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The people who translate this manga and anime just can't fucking help themselves with constantly assigning genders to characters.
Yuuji is not gendering Uraume in any way in what he says in the manga:
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And he says the exact same thing in the anime: Ore dake hyoyketsu ga amakatta Sukuna kanren dana. That roughly translates to: The ice around me was half-hearted likely due to the connection with Sukuna.
He doesn't mention Uraume by name, which is very typical in Japanese which is a very context reliant language. But in the context it is clear that he is referring to Uraume's connection to Sukuna.
Uraume's gender is ambiguous on purpose, Gege is very deliberate in this.
Uraume of course isn't the only one.
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Other characters and their tags and fags.
Kenjaku
People who know them closely, like Tengen, always refer to them without gendering them. Sometimes the people who don't know them well gender them according to presentation like Takaba, or like Chousou who heavily associates Kenjaku with Noritoshi Kamo. And also those who think Kenjaku is Getou.
The fandom is super bad about Kenjaku, people insist on calling them he/him and making really homophobic and transphobic comments regarding their motherhood. Or the Getou fans just erase Kenajku and pretend that everything Kenjaku does is actually Getou...
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Tengen
She literally in open text says how she wants to be gendered. People use the preface where she says that technically as a cursed spirit she doesn't have a gender to pretend the next line doesn't matter. When the opposite is actually true. Even if Tengen could decide to forego having a gender after her evolution, she says nah, grandma, don't call me a guy. And then proceeds to indulge in masc presentation, Queen!
I personally get more annoyed when people use they/them for Tengen than he/him. The he/him people usually just read casually and remember all the times the translators called Tengen master and they haven't really paid that much attention to her scene with Yuki. But I've seen people use they/them on purpose to ignore Tengen's words.
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Kashimo
Kashimo is never gendered by the other characters. They use the personal pronoun "ore", which is associated with men but not used by them exclusively. It is rather harsh sounding pronoun, and as @/cursedvibes says it fits Kashimo who speaks in a crude and masculine way. Kashimo's modern day presentation isn't very gendered looks wise though.
But presentation =/= gender. Regardless if it's looks or speech.
Fandom will say well in the past life they looked like a guy and it's just rude to assume based on that :/
Also even if, maybe new life new gender who knows.
If Gege was trying to obviously gender Kashimo the 3rd person pronouns were right there yet remained unused.
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Kirara
I've written about Kirara's pronouns before.
I read Kirara as a woman and I explain why in the post above. I don't mind non binary readings because it's really not super clear.
And I don't even have some huge issue with people calling Kirara a high femme boy, though I personally don't read her like that at all.
As long as it's done in a kind and not transphobic or homophobic way. But alas the fandom is there to disappoint quite often.
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Angel
I don't know how are people confused about her gender this far along. I didn't remember that her gender was revealed when she actually started interacting with the other characters because Tengen'd spoken about her many chapters earlier. But Angel is very clearly gendered as "she/her". And she's been in the story for many chapters now.
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erinwantstowrite · 2 months
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Hi!!!! I Love love love your fic, and I have a question! An inquiry if you must lol. I was reading the tags again, and I noticed the skip Westcott tag. Are you going to approach the topic? Like, other than Peter suffering that trauma, when he eventually opens up to the bat family, will he talk about it?? Will dick talk about his own experience with Tarantula? I'm so excited to see your take since you put some hints that skip was maybe his caretaker at some point? Like foster dad or maybe I'm genuinely just tripping and mixing with other fics.
ALSO incredibly excited to see what happened to him with the experiments!!! It's extremely vague but im so needing that angst!!!! I really want to see more of Peter's life before coming to Gotham, before even meeting Tony!
hiii!! ty for the love!! :)
i spent ages looking for an ask i got a while ago about this topic but i can't find it for some reason? so if anyone is able to find it for me, i'd like to link it to this post and i'd appreciate the help!!
EDIT: perpetuallypanicky found the post!
(warning for under the tag: talking about Skip Westcott and Tarantula, which covers the topic of SA. please take care of yourself)
Peter will eventually talk about Skip Westcott. I can't say how much he says because I haven't actually written the conversation yet, but at the moment, it's more alluded to that it is talked about. It's a conversation for way later in another part of the series I have planned for LoF, which actually has an entire plotline about Peter's past and how it connects to his future. But he will open up and talk about it at some point. I think in the road trip arc (chapter 15 I think?) I have it planned for Peter to talk about Skip in some context with Dick (mainly, he tells Dick the most he's ever told anyone about the day he was bit by the spider), but not fully.
(And if that changes, it will 100% be warned in the beginning with the other trigger warnings I put in beginning chapter notes.)
That's mostly because Peter still hasn't processed that yet. He hasn't even told his therapist (I briefly mentioned a few times in Peter's POV's that he has gone to therapy, but I should probably make sure it's known that he doesn't go so often that he's gotten through the biggest parts of his past).
As for Tarantula... I talked about this in the Lost Post (this thing disappeared???) so I should probably mention it again. But Tarantula did NOT happen in this au.
There's a huge reason for it, and that's because I hate Devin Grayson, the writer who put that shit in there. I don't want her attached to LoF in any form, even if I'm writing to bash it.
That's not saying that Dick isn't still a survivor of SA. He's still going to have that be a part of his past as well, with some of the other instances. (There's another instance with Catwoman that's just... no.) So I'm not erasing that part of his history. I just hate Devin Grayson.
Which means that when Dick does find out (and he will), there's gonna be a big reaction. For the most part, when it comes to What Happened, I won't be going into details, nor flashbacks, stuff like that. It'll be about the impact of those times, and how Peter and Dick are recovering, though they do talk about it.
Also, Skip was Peter's last foster parent before Tony, you're right. He's probably just a little older than Dick, I'd say, around mid thirties? He was responsible for Peter for a little while but Peter ended up running away that day he got bit, and Skip hasn't fostered since.
And as for the experiments: I'm excited to write about it more. Peter and Dick also talk about this, and in some more detail than the Westcott talk. It's about time that Dick learned how Tony got Peter's complete trust,,,, a little sneak peak into that,,,, :)
There's actually so much about Peter's backstory that I sometimes wonder if there's things that I wouldn't be able to get to in LoF... It just means that I've been considering writing a prequel one day
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mvskedxrtist · 7 months
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Let’s take a crack at a Hazbin request:
Reader (whatever gender you’d like) x Lucifer, I feel like he’d have some fun kinks? So maybe the reader giving Lucifer a reward after he was instructed not to touch himself for the last few days, being constantly edged to an orgasm but just barely not getting to and quickly becoming a mess.
I’m thinking specifically edging, praise, maybe some light degradation about how pathetic he’s being, getting oral and fingering
(Everything else I leave to your capable hands :3)
-💜
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Such a Good Angel
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Wᴀʀɴɪɴɢ: Edging, Mommy Kink, Praise, Fingering, Light Degration, Oral (M Receiving), Cockwarming, Nipple Play
Nᴏᴛᴇ: Another request means another star in my sky of smut. Thank you for requesting! I'm surprised at myself that I've had so much motivation to post but it just means y'all get this earlier than expected. Also: requests are open! I take 3 requests at a time, please read the rules and how to requests, also remember that I don't just do Hazbin so please look at other fandoms I've written for. Last but not least, I'm starting a tag list!! So if you want to be tagged for all posts just comment! If you want to be tagged for a specific fandom, just comment that as well!
Tᴀɢʟɪsᴛ: @hobbylobbyy
AFAB!Reader x Lucifer Morningstar - Such a Good Angel
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It was a few days before the infamous call Charlie gave to her dad to visit the hotel. And in the days before, you had made a cute bet with Lucifer. If he could go a week without touching himself or trying to get off, then he'd get a large prize that'd last the whole day. If he didn't, well there would be a punishment in store for the big boss of hell.
And he was doing ok for the challenge. There were a few times he almost lost himself in the pleasure an came but he stopped himself which impressed you quite much. And then the day that Charlie called him, was actually the day before the end of the challenge. And you decided to just add one last thing for this challenge because of Charlotte's call. If Lucifer did rekindle his relationship with Charlie, the challenge can end right there and he'd get his gift.
So when Lucifer came back very giddy and excited but exhausted, that just told you all that you wanted.
You led Lucifer into bed and kissed him passionately as you slid his shirt up and started rubbing his nipples gently. "So cute under me, baby~" You chuckled and squeezed his nipples gently, hearing his soft high pitched moans. "H-hah~ mommy~" Lucifer held your arms gently until you released his nipples and pushed him down onto the bed more.
"My sweet fallen angel~ so sensitive already~ You're doing amazing for such a needy boy~" You teased him and chuckled softly, taking his pants off. Lucifer looked completely flushed but smiled at you, squealing gently when your mouth enveloped his entire length. "M-mommy!~" He could feel his eyes roll back and released his wings out quickly out of the stimulation.
You looked up and chuckled, pulling his cock out of your mouth but sliding your fingers into his asshole. "My, my, Luci~ crumbling like a little bitch in heat~" You taunted him and started fingering him faster, looking at his already teary face. "N-nghh~ t-too much Mommy~" He panted heavily and looked like he wanted to stop you but he let you continue the immense pleasure.
Lucifer looked like he was about to cum all over himself but whimpered loudly when you pulled your fingers out of him. "What was that for, Mommy?!" "I'm not done yet, Lucifer.~ And don't you want to be a good angel for me?~"
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aggro-my-beloved · 3 months
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Oh, My Darlin' Sam Collins x Reader Imagine
note: this was meant to be posted a lot sooner, but i struggled to be satisfied with the finished product. I've re-written this 3 different times and still am unsure about it so please let me know if you liked it by reblogging or interacting with me!
pairing: samuel collins x gn!reader
summary: post-quinn, tank has been trying to rebuild their social life and relationships with pack members. little do they know, their is one relationship david has been withholding them from kindling. when they make a surprise visit to solstice bar, however, the alpha's hands become tied...and the attractive bartender with the nice accent catches this wolf's attention — part of the pick your poison series!
warnings: mentions of alcohol, midwest emo band things, and protective alpha davey (he and tank are twins!)
wc: 1.8k
estimated reading time: 8.75 mins
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“Sorry, I can’t let you in. We’re full.” David’s palm was inches away from Tank’s face. They suffered a momentary flashback of when they were kids and he would do the very same thing at their attempts to go on a rollercoaster they did not exceed the height requirement for, or trying to sneak into the theater for an R-rated film after buying tickets to a Disney feature. 
“Seriously?” They quirked a brow, going as far as to crane their neck and view the barren parking lot. If not for her vehicle tagging alongside David’s, Milo’s, and one she hadn’t recognized upon her arrival, a tumbleweed blowing past would be fitting for the sight. “It’s 8 o'clock on a Tuesday.” 
“Still busy. Asher’s here trying to kiss up to the staff to let him and Christian’s band play. Private meeting.” He scowls. While Tank enjoyed the live demos played before them, they understood it was not David’s favorite type of music. He doesn’t even label it as that. 
“I’m sorry, but wasn’t it you who said I should stop secluding myself from others?” Their slow-building anger urges some prominent veins to adorn their neck. David’s eyes try not to linger on the piercing bite marks credited to Quinn, the sight of them still makes his insides wrinkle with guilt. 
“I’m here to support the pack’s business. Here, maybe…” they pause for a moment to rifle through the knapsack hanging from their shoulder, “this will change your mind.” David rolls his eyes at their license photo staring back at him. Tank was arguably the worst pick for posing in pictures. If their eyes weren’t closed in the shot, the morsel of food jammed between their teeth was the focal point. 
David merely glances at it and deadpans. “It’s fraudulent.” 
Tank replies, “It’s not.” 
“You’re underage.” He tries.
“We’re twins!” They scoff. “The fact that you’re older by a minute says nothing about my naivety, Davey.” The tips of the bouncer's ears scorching something rosy makes Tank hum in delight. 
“I’ll…I’ll eat it.” 
“David, why are you so set on keeping me from your hard work?” Their brows are furrowed, and much like the siblings' stubborn attitudes, remain unmoving.
The truth is, David would love nothing more than to share his second home with Tank. He and Milo built this place from the ground up and cranked it into a full-fledged business with some help from old connections of Gabe. The only thing stopping him from letting Tank in was…
“Sammy I promise you—“
“Call me that again and the deal is off.” The vampire’s rasp shoots out like venom, coating the room in a tense air. 
“Alrighty, Mr. Collins,” Sam is nonetheless impressed with the alternate name—he releases an exhausted sigh to show it. Nevertheless, he allows Asher to plead his case. The younger of the two momentarily struggles to pull out the compact disc, and finally hands it to the bartender when he does.  “Just give it a couple of spins through this week and see what your customers think. It’ll grow on you, I promise.” 
“What in the hell is this drawing?” Sam brings the CD to his eyes to squint at the black squiggles across it. 
“What drawing? That’s our band’s name!” Asher clarifies with a small laugh. For being known to have sharp senses, this drummer could have him fooled. 
“And that would be…?”
“Howl’s Highway.” Asher flashes him a boasting smile. Sam only lets out an unimpressed grunt. 
“Subtle name. Definitely won’t come back to bite you in the ass.” 
“Sheesh, no wonder you and David get along so well.” Asher still has his roommate’s ten-minute-long speech echoing in his mind about how such an epic name was one step closer to a covert breach. 
“What’s your intermission consist of? Shifting mid-set and running out all our returning customers?” 
“Pfft, no..” Asher rolls his eyes, before shifting them down to the notes app on his phone and pressing the backspace button several times. 
“Hey boys, hate to interrupt your top-secret meeting.” An unfamiliar face draws Sam away from the disc, and he’s enamored by their aura immediately. He can sense they’re a shifter, most likely a wolf by the way David looms behind them with crossed arms. 
“Hey, look who finally emerged from their cave!" Asher chuckles and untucks a free barstool beside him. "Pop a seat, let me introduce you to Sammy--ahem, forgive me--Mr. Collins. This is one of our pack members, Tank."
“There’s no need for that. They’re just here for a plate of fries to go. Milo!” David alerts the chef. He hears a distant clatter, followed by a string of swears, and can only assume his colleague is checking his hair in the stainless steel frying pan yet again.
“On it!” 
“I’d also like a drink for my trip over.” Tank raises a finger and seats themselves beside Asher on the open barstool.“Have you closed the deal yet?” 
“I don’t know. Sam, have I?” Two pairs of eyes turn in the vampire's direction, but he only finds himself lost in one. A glance is enough to entice him, and though he’d never admit it, he’d be trying to recreate the exact shade of Tank’s irises in his dreams tomorrow morning. 
“Yeah, why the hell not?” He mutters, never breaking eye contact with the new acquaintance sitting at his bar. “What can I get for you to drink, darling?” They feel an unfamiliar scorch of their cheeks at the pet name but do nothing to object to it. This newfound sweltering in the pit of their stomach is something they’ve only felt once or twice, and they’d be damned to extinguish it. 
David, however, has different plans.
“It’s all good, Sam. I can make it. Go ahead and take your break.” David slinks behind the bar.
“But I just got here half an hour ago…” his southern drawl becomes even more present with the mild fear lacing his words. He becomes suddenly aware of how tense David’s stature is, and the clenched fists at his side. 
“Go take a break or I'll cut you early. Understood?” David snarls, and Sam takes a step back towards the swing door of the kitchen. A few seconds go by before he concedes.
“Yes, sir.” He retreats behind the kitchen door, both confused and frightened by David’s sudden change in attitude. As he’s wandering the kitchen to find any leftover appetizers from the lunch rush earlier in the day, his ears perk up at the hushed voices from outside. 
“What crawled up your ass?” He hears the Tank ask.
“Yeah, what did Sam do?” Asher jumps in.
“Nothing.” David insists. “What do you want?” Sam can practically hear the sneer in David’s voice, complemented by clinking glasses.
“Ooh, ooh, Bud Lite please!” 
“I wasn’t asking you, Ash,” a few seconds later, the noise of air decompressing and a bottle cap being flicked is heard.
“I want the nice bartender back. He seems less… aggravated.” Hot as fuck, is also another attribute Tank associates with him, but decides not to indulge. 
“Well the nice bartender just went on break, so it looks like you’re stuck with me.” 
“That’s okay, I can wait.” Sam snickers at their persistence. Milo turns his head to see what’s so funny. Sam waves him off and clears his throat. Perhaps the fryer is so loud, or the bar is so slow, Milo couldn’t care less to acknowledge the commotion outside of the kitchen. 
The wolf decides to break the silence when he brings the fryer baskets up from their grease bath and allows the fries to cool down. “Whatcha thinking for dinner? We’re fully stocked on everything from the truck this morning.” 
If he answered honestly and told Milo he’d lost his appetite, that he just wants answers as to why David has a sudden vendetta against him communicating with this pack member, that would only result in more questions. Instead, he eyes the shifter piling a styrofoam box with freshly cooked and seasoned fries and halts him short of his walk out the door. 
“Why don’t I send this out, if you make me a batch of those small hamburgers…the ones with the toothpicks in them?” Milo snorts, and genders:
“You mean sliders, Sam?” 
“Yes, those. I’ll be right back.” He spares him a thankful smile, and cracks open the kitchen door to concentrate back on the trio’s conversation. Sam isn’t sure whether he should feel disappointed that the focal point of their chat was back on Asher’s band. 
“Play track four—that’s my favorite!” The drummer suggests to David, who grumbles as he fiddles with the CD player stowed in one of the bar cabinets.
“What’s the name of the song?” Asks Tank.
“The Voices in the Basement Are Getting Loud Again and the Basement is My Brain.” 
“…oh.” 
“A side of fries to go,” Sam reintroduces himself by swiftly taking a seat beside the empowered person at the bar and offering them their still steaming box of food. 
“Oh,” their tone morphs to something of interest as they readjust their body to face Sam with a pleased smile. “Didn’t you hear?” Without breaking eye contact, they undo the tabs of the styrofoam box and flip the top open with ease. “I’m staying to eat now.”
“Ain’t that somethin’,” says Sam, who harbors a pleased grin. David clears his throat, now towering over the two with folded arms and an unimpressed glaze over his eyes. 
“It’s something alright.” 
“David, come help me with the trash!” Milo’s voice beckons the Alpha to stand down from the bar and retreat to the kitchen, much to his dismay. 
“Saved by the bell.” Sam jokes, before offering Tank a tilt of his head. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but…you seem like you can handle yourself in the face of trouble. Is he always this protective of his pack?” Tank’s fingers drum against the countertop as they ponder how to word their answer. 
“He’s just been wary about me hanging around vamps lately because of…some trouble I got into. Let’s put it this way, the other guy had it coming.” Tank tilts their chin up, unintentionally revealing a few of the remaining marks left by Quinn. Sam doesn’t need to study them hard to figure out the vamp was feeding out of spite, not biting for their equal pleasure. 
“I’m sure he did, messin’ with a member of one of Dahlia’s most reputable packs. Care to share this fella’s name so I can add him to my shit list?” He inquires.
“How about we share a drink first?” Tank smiles, before sliding the plate of fries closer to his direction. Eagerly, Sam plucks one from the platter and bites down on it, his fangs sparkling beneath the dim lights of the bar. 
“I know just the one.”
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outmakingmoonshine · 7 months
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I wrote this in the tags on this post by @sydcarmyfan pointing out that Carmy has touched all of Syd’s tattoos and they asked me to make a post about it, it's kinda long so I've put it under a cut.
Like the above post mentions the placement of Carmy's hands on Syd's back in 2x03 puts them directly over the broken wishbone, the three of swords tattoos and the anchovies
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If the hand placement is deliberate then it specifically places his hands directly over the tattoos that relate to him/their love story the most. The broken wishbone, he’s fulfilling her wish/dream by making her his partner in The Bear and kinda breaking it by being “shitty”, there's something in there about "wishing on a star" too... and the three of swords which the SydCarmy meta writers have written about much better than I can. (And also the anchovies tattoo but I have no idea what that's related to yet, although Carmy does have a fish tattoo so that's how it relates until I know more lol.) This touch on these two specific tattoos happens in a scene which is arguably the start of him breaking her heart and her wish…it's the first time she sees him after he ditched her at Kasama and after he tried to avoid Claire but caved to her hounding him on the phone so whether Syd's aware of Claire yet or not, the wall has already been torn down and the ball's already in motion. It’s also when he starts to ditch working with her on their joint wish/dream, kinda breaking her "wish" of working on it with him.
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It's worth noting that the point of a wishbone is to break it so this might not have a negative connotation and could just relate to him being so focused on getting that wish for her while...on the other hand..literally..he’s breaking her heart while trying.
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@sydcarmyfan pointed out when Carmy placed his hand on Syd's back in 2x02 he also touched her other two tattoos, which was during a scene/montage when they were both more comfortable and relaxed around each other, being more open about their personal lives, history, family etc, and those other two tattoos seem more related to Syd’s family life/history. The car with mom on the license plate and the c’est pas grave tattoos. So the themes of the tattoos he touched in each scene also relate to the themes of their dynamic within that scene.
The car is obviously about her mum and maybe something to do with driving to Sheridan Road? Idk yet but my theory on the c’est pas grave tattoo (which translates to “it’s not serious/it doesn’t matter/nevermind”) is it relates to whatever reason Syd feels like she needs to hide or ignore her feelings like they “don’t matter” or they’re “not serious” to anyone else but her…or maybe she doesn’t even allow herself to take them seriously and that’s why she just swallows her disappointment and internalizes and suppresses her feelings all the time.
I don’t think Syd’s ever really been emotionally nurtured because the version we see now of Emmanuel as the devoted father telling stories of her mother lovingly doesn’t really add up. If he was that loving devoted father making her smile and laugh so animatedly while she was growing up why is she so emotionally avoidant now? There’s a weird distance in their relationship like she has a huge wall up when she's around him, even more than around when she's around Carmy or Marcus tbh. He obviously knows her better, he raised her so he can see through her and confront her about more things but she still never really lets him in and he never seems willing to push enough. I get the feeling he wasn’t really there for her as a kid and he learnt to be a decent father too late. I also get a vibe from him like he feels kinda guilty about something / has regrets / kinda feels like he failed her. Idk he seems to walk on eggshells around her imo like he's very careful what he says to her and how he words things with her. He definitely feels the distance between them and it bothers him more than it bothers her. You can tell he tries to connect with her, but she’s always the one who’s resistant.
My theory is the distance is because he became an alcoholic after her mom died because he couldn't cope with losing her. Maybe Syd spent most of her childhood feeling neglected and alone, like no one cared about her and what she wanted or needed so she learnt to suppress her emotions and now she just keeps following that pattern because she doesn’t know any different. By the time Emmanuel got sober it was too late, she'd already learned this toxic way to cope with all the feelings of loneliness and rejection. And she's still so wounded by his neglect that she only gives him a surface level relationship now.
She’s also lowkey disrespectful to him in some ways or she just lacks the respect you would expect her character to have for a father who is clearly trying and we know Syd isn’t a disrespectful person. Definitely not to be disrespecting her only living parent and kinda dismissing him the way she does for no reason. So I think there’s something important we don’t know about their dynamic.
I also think this could be why she cut Carmy off from asking about her dad in 2x02 because he already said something like “at least he was there for you” and I don't think she wanted to explain that maybe he actually wasn’t.
There’s a reason that the main point of Emmanuel's only scene and dialogue inside the restaurant in 2x10 was to reveal that he doesn't drink and I don't think it was just to highlight the contrast between him and Donna because it would've made more sense to have donna show up as a drunken mess outside The Bear if they wanted that contrast so badly but she seemed sober when talking to Pete.
(Here's where I insert my headcanon that Emmanuel & Donna have already met at al-anon meetings and he’s been integral in her recovery so far, probably not even realizing they are future in-laws.)
I think Carmy's gonna find out Syd had a very similar childhood to him but she was actually going through it all alone. While he FELT alone she really WAS alone dealing with an alcoholic parent with no siblings to understand or to just share the emotional and psychological burden with and all he's been doing is dumping pressure on her that she didn’t really ask for...but she wont tell him directly that she crumbles under pressure, she tried to tell him a story to let him know she crumbles under pressure with the Sheridan story in 1x05 and again with the pasta/Ragù story in 2x02 but he consistently keeps leaving her alone to fend for herself with a major workload when the whole reason she came to The Beef was to work WITH him and spend time WITH him. That’s what Syd values, that’s what makes her happy. Quality time and food are her love languages, these things are the way to her heart and this anxious white man is bending over backwards trying to make her happy BY AVOIDING HER TO WORK ON HIMSELF SO HE CAN BE ENOUGH TO MAKE HER HAPPY😭😭 He's trying but he's so clueless and Syd won't give him a clue!
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