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covetyou · 4 months

Text

ghosted

ao3 ⋆ main masterlist ⋆ series masterlist

pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader rating: Explicit (18+ only!) warnings: sex toys (satisfyer "glowing ghost"), unprotected P in V, creampie, oral (f receiving), reader loves floor time (so does Joel), angst (but we fix it), some anxiety/depression adjacent things. word count: 5751 summary: As spring moves into summer, the only thing you're wishing for is to be so far from the events of Easter, and Valentine's and Christmas before it, that you could forget and move on. But, by the time the end of May is on the horizon, the time between still isn't enough - You haven't forgotten, and you haven't moved on.

A/N: thank you to everyone still sticking with this sporadic-installment-series-that-was-never-meant-to-be-a-series. our next visit to these two will be 4th July in stars and stripes, but until then, enjoy 💛

(and yes I know I am technically later than planned with this for non Americas folk - I couldn't get the ending to my liking until suddenly I could, and now its gone midnight. whoops!)

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If it was true that time flies when you're having fun, it was safe to say the opposite was true too.

You weren't having fun, and time was well and truly crawling by at a snails pace.

That wasn't for lack of trying. In recent weeks you'd spent more time out of the house than you ever had - lunch with friends, drinks with colleagues, solo trips to bookstores and farmers markets. There was barely a moment of time you hadn't filled with something.

It was probably a shitty coping mechanism, all things considered, but it was the best you had. You couldn't quite bring yourself to confide in anyone your secret shame of letting a stranger into your house and touch you like he belonged there. The even bigger shame of living in a place for so very long and not knowing how the door worked, not knowing the stranger was your neighbor, being so very consumed in your own life - woe is you - that you didn't bother paying attention to the lives of the people around you. So, you kept on willing the passage of time, and filling every moment you could with distractions.

It wasn't that you were usually one for wishing time away. A slow, warm spring before the blazing heat of summer consumed everything would usually be a good thing - even better now that you'd lived and experienced your first Texas summer and were soon to have your second.

What you were really wishing for was to be so far from the events of Easter, and Valentine's and Christmas before it, that you could forget and move on.

As it was, by the time the end of May was on the horizon, the time between still wasn't enough. Almost two months to the day, and it still ached and burned in you just as much as it always had, if not more. The embarrassment and shame of not knowing how to work a fucking lock was one thing, the fear of the danger you'd put yourself in was another. Then there was the sadness, the loss, the unexpected emptiness at losing something you weren't even sure you had to begin with. And then, in more recent weeks, was the longing.

And you didn't want to feel any of it.

When Memorial Day Weekend eventually rolls around, the blossoming heat of summer keeping you indoors, you lie there on your living room floor, a fan blowing not quite cool enough air across your sweaty body until a knock at the door disturbs the patterns your eyes were tracing on the ceiling.

The dimness in your vision doesn't go away, even as you blink away the dust and try to get your eyes to adjust. The sun had set, apparently. It wasn't completely dark just yet, but dark enough to cast the lower level of your home in shadow, and you hadn't even noticed. You technically had plans today - plans that had now gone to shit, much like everything else.

Hauling yourself from the ground, you unlock your door, no thought or care of who could be on the other side of it, because one thing was certain - it wouldn't be Joel. You'd lost hope of that weeks ago. Each time you opened it with a fools hope in your mind, you were instead handed a delivery and told to have a good day as you stared out into the street, disappointed that it was only a clitty-blaster-3000, or a new blender, and not Joel.

You mindlessly pull open the door, expecting to be handed a package you hadn't ordered, or to even see a friendly face coming to pull you out for plans you agreed to but didn't really want to do.

But there he is. Two months later - but not too late, you don't think - and entirely out of the blue. Nervous hands are thrust into his pockets with his thumbs twitching on the outside of his jeans, standing there like he didn't belong here at all, when everything in your body was screaming he's home.

This was far from the first time you'd seen him since March. The first time was barely three days after you pushed him away. April Fools' Day, of all days. Fitting, you thought, given how much of a fucking fool you felt whenever you remembered everything you'd done, and said, and felt. It turns out he was the owner of the truck you'd seen parked in a drive a little way down the street, father to the little girl you'd seen bounding out of that house so many times before. Neither thing made the hurt in your chest any less, and you'd driven past with a lump in your throat and tears in your eyes.

The same happens now, but you fight them back so you can see more clearly as his mouth twitches into a small smile, making you freeze on the spot. Your mind was already blank, but that freezes too, and you stare at him dumbstruck for a moment so long you're certain a flicker of concern dances across his eyes.

And you could close the door in his face, push him out and away just like you did on that day over two months ago, but you don't. As you come back around, finally letting your brain reconnect with the rest of your body, the only thing you can feel is relief and total utter joy at getting to see him up close again.

There's still shame too. That's been simmering low and mellow in you for so long now that it's fused with your bones - you're not sure you'll ever shake it - but it's the least important thing right now as you stand and look at him, more awkward and uncertain than you've ever seen him.

"Hi."

You're surprised it's you who speaks first, given how dry your mouth is all of a sudden, seeing him up close again and looking as good as, if not better, than he ever has.

"Hey," he says, before clearing his throat. "S'good to see you."

It's a voice you didn't want to forget, but apparently damn near almost had, given the way your body reacts to it. Deep and rumbling, with the slow southern drawl trickling down your spine like honey and settling between your thighs - though in all honesty that might just be sweat. It really is hot in here, worse now that you're standing, and the fan is doing absolutely nothing to help. You look a mess too - your hair, your clothes, your life - but he doesn't seem to mind, and you're grateful, because right now this is as good as you've got.

"Wanted to see how you were doin'. Figured we should talk," he says with another soft smile.

Stepping aside, you give him a small nod as you silently invite him into your home for the first time. Which should be funny, given the unknown number of times he's been through this door, but you're not ready to laugh about any of it just yet.

When the door closes behind him, it's soft and gentle, barely audible over the fan blasting warm air at you, and you wonder if it's always like that. If he's always quiet as a mouse, and you always too oblivious to notice - between the two of you, you didn't stand a hope in hell in figuring it all out until it was too late and blew up in your face. Now, here you are, egg on your face, the heat in the room not helping the heat in your cheeks, trying desperately not to send him away when you've just invited him in.

It would be easier if it all still felt like a dream, but it didn't. That had changed.

Joel had never been much of a normal man in your mind. He was more of a fantasy come to life. A fantasy that was slowly building into something more and more real with each encounter. Even now, stood in normal shoes, wearing a normal t-shirt, and even more normal jeans - just Some Guy by anybodies standard - he looks as beautiful and fantastic as ever.

"Wanted to talk to you sooner. Wanted to leave it up to you given - y'know. Everythin'. Didn't want you to think I was just bargin' in all the time when it was convenient for me," he says, this very normal man already making you feel both silly and elated that he was waiting for you as much as you were waiting for him. Obviously you could have gone to him first. You just couldn't do it. You almost had so many times, but the twist of your key in the door would twist something in the pit of your stomach too, and you'd stop before you even made it out the house.

You knew why. It was always the same thing. You didn't want to talk - not ever. You just wanted things to be okay, or not, and go on with your life. It was one of those childish things you had your mom to thank for - she wasn't great at talking about the important thing either.

The difference now was Joel. You wanted to talk to him, you wanted to work out everything with him rather than alone in your head. But prior to the door incident, that wasn't what this was and after - well, fuck - after, it seemed that it could have been like that all along but you were too damn late to do anything about it.

"Know you were angry with me - maybe still are - and I -"

"I wasn't angry with you," you blurt out, already aware of the lie the moment it leaves your lips. Joel is too, and he raises an eyebrow at you. "Okay. Yes. It pissed me off - you pissed me off. Happy?"

"No. Never wanted to piss you off, darlin'," he murmurs in return, and you can see that he means it by the way all of him softens, drooping in defeat at your admission.

"I... You embarrassed me, Joel. I feel embarrassed, okay? I feel like a stupid idiot, and I -"

You can already feel it all coming back. The swirling in your head, and the heat creeping up your chest and down your arms, not helped by this sweltering fucking house. It's like fainting, but instead of blacking out, a white hot rage is ready to ignite in you. And of everything, it's the thing you most never want to feel again. You'd take all the sadness, loss, emptiness, and longing of the last two months a million times over if it means you never have to feel this again.

" - and it makes me angry. And I hate feeling like that, like this, and I just couldn't come talk to you because I feel so stupid."

"Woah, darlin', c'mon now, we both know you ain't stupid."

"I don't know how to work a fucking door, Joel. Do you know how long people have had doors?"

Taking a deep breath, you close your eyes before starting up again, hoping Joel will take the lead and talk for you first, but he doesn't.

"And I thought we were on the same page. That we were both doing the same silly thing, and it was okay that it was silly and fun, because we were both in on the joke. And... I liked seeing you. I liked it when you were here and it just - it just feels like it was a lie, and what I got out of it isn't what you got out of it. And that's okay, but it still feels stupid. I feel like an idiot, and an asshole, and knowing that you knew so much more about me than I knew about you, I just-"

"Do you want to?" he asks. "Do you wanna get to know me? Just gotta say, and it's done. I want you to know about me - I never meant to hide anythin' from you like that. And I don't want you to be mad, and I don't want you to feel embarrassed, cause the way I see it, we both got shit to be embarrassed about. I was breakin' into your house for months, thinkin' I was invited."

You wince a little, and he just smiles, shrugging his broad shoulders that what's done is done, nonchalance easing your anxiety for the first time ever rather than making it worse.

"I used to stand out there in front of your door and talk to your doorbell like you'd talk back to me any minute," Joel says with a laugh. "Course, now I get that you probably ain't got it hooked up. Never did hear the fuckin' thing ring."

Fuck. Right. Yeah, he's got you there. You'd bought it when you moved in, at your mom's insistence, and never got around to connecting it to anything. You figured it just being there would be deterrent enough and, other than visits from Joel, it had been.

He laughs again at your poorly masked grimace, and any other time you'd maybe be infuriated by him finding humor in something you'd been hurting over for weeks. It's not until you meet his eye and see the silliness in it all too - neither of you really did have any hope.

"Right? It's dumb. Not you, not me, it's just dumb. I even used to tell you when I'd be over next, let you know when to expect me. Leave out a key or put the door on the latch if it's okay for me to come by. I thought I was bein' invited in, but I was breakin' in. Shit. You're embarrassed, and I'm a criminal, I guess we're both losers."

Any anger you had is gone in a flash as laughter ripples through your belly and out your throat. In a way, it's all true. Joel was just as fucked as you, had just as much to be embarrassed and fearful about as you. Unknowingly leaving your home vulnerable to intruders is one thing, but being an accidental criminal for months is another.

"I liked it. I... I never knew when you were coming."

"Hey, if that's what gets your rocks off," he says with a wink, and you laugh again. "I ain't one to judge, but we can explore that in safer ways than keepin' a door unlocked day and night."

You both realize what he said the second the word left his lips.

We.

As in us.

As in together.

And you think he might take it back as quick as he said it, but he doesn't. He just looks at you, half fearful that he said the wrong thing, half hopeful that he said the right thing.

"Okay."

With one word he brightens, and you can feel it in you too. Whatever it is is mutual. Has been since the red velvet coat, since the wings, since the bunny ears, and all the spaces in between.

"Yeah? Cause I'd like to start over, if that's okay with you."

"Well, that sounds like a terrible idea," you say bluntly, because honestly you cannot think of anything worse. Joel's slow steps towards you falter for a second as he tries not to let the disappointment in his face show, but you're already smiling. "You can pry Santa, Cupid, and Flopsy from my cold, dead hands."

And his laugh is glorious, cracking open the remnants of the walls you'd put around yourself and letting your bones soak in the warmth of him, just as his arms come to wrap around you, pulling you against his chest. He smells so familiar - that's one thing you know about him. You might not know about his favorite color, or what he likes to eat, or even his daughters name just yet. But you know what he smells like, how his smile lights up his eyes, and how his hands feel on you, anchoring you in place even as you send yourself dizzy breathing him in.

He's going to kiss you too. You know that, and you welcome it, but before he can, you pull back.

"There's so much I want to know, I don't know how I missed so much."

"You get one question before I'm kissin' you."

You think for just a second before looking down to where your fingers curl into his shirt - an old Fleetwood Mac tee, so washed and worn it's like butter beneath your fingers.

With a wry smile, you look up at him from beneath your lashes, unable to hold back the laughter in your voice. "What are you dressed as today? Don't think I know this one, you're usually on theme."

"This? I'm just your plain ol' friendly neighborhood Joel Miller."

His lips are on yours then, pressing a soft kiss into the curve of your mouth, eyes searching yours for one, two, three seconds, before he dives back in, kissing you in earnest, making up for all the in betweens you'd been wishing away.

You wrap yourself around him, clinging to him, damn near wanting to climb up him, as you make out like teenagers in the middle of your living room. His hands wander across your shoulders, down your spine, grasping at any softness he can find along the way until his hands settle - one on your ass, and one gently cupping the back of your neck.

And as you kiss, holding each other close like you were long lost lovers and not whatever this thing between you was, you can't help but think that Joel Miller may just be your favorite Joel yet.

"Now, I got a question for you," he mumbles into your mouth, each word chased by your kisses. You've never wanted to seem desperate before, but right now you don't care, and by the way he's holding you, Joel doesn't mind either.

"Why the fuck do you have a nightlight?"

Shooting him an inquisitive look, you follow his gaze over your shoulder.

There on your counter, little light blinking away, is your very own clitty-blaster-3000, a luminous ghost with its mouth set in a permanent O, glowing brightly in the darkness. Shit. You'd brought it down this morning to charge, needing to keep a watchful eye on it and its janky magnetic charger to make sure it charged fully. You'd totally forgotten about it, and now here it was, glowing like a beacon after being out in the sun all day.

You try to pull away from Joel, but with his arms locked around your body, and his mouth pressing soft whiskered kisses to your neck, you don't have the strength, or the inclination, to move.

"It's not a nightlight, I can go put it away, if you just gimme-"

He tucks you behind him, swatting away your arms as you feebly try to reach around and grab it from him. Truthfully, you quite like the idea of him holding it, using it, but you feel bad that he might not know what it is.

"Not a nightlight, huh?" He says, grabbing the toy from the counter, said charger immediately popping off and clattering to the ground. He inspects it, turning it over in his hands, bringing it so close to his face it casts shadows across his features with its glow. "Oh, I know what this is."

"What is it then, smartass."

"Other than Pac-Man's worst nightmare? It's one of them clitty-blaster-3000 things."

Eyes wide, you double over, cackling and holding desperately onto yourself so you don't totally fall apart in front of him. He laughs with you, though maybe it's a little bit at you too, but you don't mind.

"What?!" he says smiling as he watches you fight to right yourself, gripping his forearm with laugh weakened fingers.

"That's what I call it!"

"Yeah? It good?"

His eyes are burning into yours. You know where this is going, and there's a brief thought that maybe you should stop it, slow things down. But you don't. Instead, you bite your lip and nod, making a noise of confirmation as Joel fiddles with the buttons on the toy.

A second later, it whirrs to life, a gentle throbbing buzz meeting your ears.

Joel puts his thumb over the hole, the suction gently hammering away at his finger tip as he clicks up and up through the intensity until he's well past a level you can use it at.

"Shit, yeah. Can see how that'd feel good."

"I, uhm, like to tease myself with it."

"Yeah?" he says as it clicks back down through the settings and rests on the softest one again. "Is that how you use it? Just to tease yourself?"

"No," you say, gasping a little when he raises the toy to your neck, pressing the mouth of the ghost to you as if pressing a kiss to your skin. "I - I just kinda stick it on there, to be honest. But I go slow with the - with the settings."

Joel clicks up one setting, the gentle thrumming at your neck intensifying a little.

"Yeah? You take your time? Give her what she deserves?"

You forgot what this was like - how easy and good it was to give in to wanting him, and how easy it was to let yourself have him too.

"Mhm."

"Good. Can't say I ain't jealous though. Missed comin' here. Seein' you. Thought about you, thought about comin' to see you but -"

"Thought about you too."

"When you were usin' this?"

You nod, tilting your head to the side and sighing as he glides the tip of the toy across your pulse point, behind your ear, down the column of your throat.

"Can I use it on you?"

You damn near want to tell him he can do whatever the fuck he wants with you, but the words are lost when you nod again and he captures your mouth in another kiss, brutal in its softness as he guides you back to your couch and all the plush cushions you have stacked there. Since Christmas, your home décor skills have definitely improved. Things look a little less bare, the place looks a little more lived in. There's still pictures to hang and empty spaces on shelves to fill, but you know those things will come in time. For now, you're grateful for the comfy place you've made on your sofa as Joel sits you down, guiding you down with strong hands.

Your shorts are quickly pulled off, the toy pulled from your neck so Joel can kiss his own better trail across your flesh. You hold him to you, anchor him into your bosom like he might drift off like a spectre in the night if you don't, but he's as latched to you as you are to him.

And then he's on his knees for you, jeans straining as his cock swells, hands gripping your thighs then pushing your shirt up, exposing you for him. Panties soon follow your shorts, yanked down your legs in a joint effort by your left hand and his right as he can't resist lapping at your mouth, tangling his tongue with yours.

He's everything you tried to forget, and some of the things you did. He's strong, and broad. He's gentle too, and soft - his eyes, mostly, but some other parts of him too. He's silly, and playful, smiling into your mouth and nipping at you, the hand by your thigh teasing the buzzing toy over the delicate skin there and delighting in your shudder.

As he moves it closer, the sounds of the suction against your skin making you both giggle, he moves down, burying his face into your neck and breathing in. You already know that it's never been like this before - that this is something new, just like every other time before had been something new.

"So you just stick it on, huh?"

"Lube. With lube."

His face is between your legs in an instant, licking messily around your clit, not really trying to get you off, just aiming to get you wet. When he pulls back, toy in hand, he raises the glowing toy mouth to his own and licks, smiling at the sound of it suctioning to his tongue.

"That good enough?"

And you nod, giving in to his kisses again before he breathlessly spreads you apart with both hands, looking at your cunt like if he blinks it'll all fade away.

"You know I ain't seen this for three months?"

"You been counting?"

"I missed you," he repeats with a breathless kiss to your thigh. "Missed this."

He lights his way with the glow of the toy rumbling in his hand, pulling back your clit for just one second, barely holding in a groan, before he gently holds the mouth of the ghost to you, pressing until the obscene slurp is muffled by full suction on your clit.

And it's divine, just like it always is, but somehow made even better by the man doing it to you. Fascinated eyes don't stop watching as it hammers air lightly at your clit in a constant rhythm, and the sight alone makes you drip. You're grateful for the heat now, and the sheet you'd covered your velvet sofa with, saving you an undoubtedly messy clean up later.

The toy slips when Joel climbs back off his knees to press his mouth to yours, and the air splutters and ripples past your skin again, as Joel laughs into your mouth.

"The sound of this thing, jesus fuckin' christ. Sounds like you're -"

"Don't. Don't make me laugh, you'll distract me."

"I like it when you laugh," but he's already pressing it flush to your skin again, stopping the sound and sending the ripples directly back to your clit.

"Ohh, f- "

"That's it," he says, watching as your hips rock ever so slightly into the throbbing toy sucking away on your clit. "Fuck, that's it. Lettin' me get you off with this thing."

"Think I can get some fingers in and keep this right where you need it?"

"Mm."

"Yeah?" he says, swiping at your entrance with his middle fingers, carefully holding the toy in place with his palm. "Just like that. There we go. Right in there. Fuck, I missed this. Missed bein' in here."

"Fuck."

"That's it. You come on 'em. Wanna feel it."

"Joel, down. Move it down. Ple- ah."

"There?"

"Right there," you sigh, panting and barely making it through the words before your eyes snap shut.

And then Joel is in your ear, his breath fanning against you, cooling you for a second even as his fingers stoke the fire raging in your core.

"You're fuckin' beautiful," he murmurs, and you just know he's looking down at you, the picture of a perfect mess. A sheen of sweat on your skin, lips swollen and parted as you gasp, thighs spread wide, hips rocking into Joel's illuminated palm, t-shirt rucked high over your hips, hands on your tits, nipples pinched between your own fingers, moaning, panting, coming.

You twitch in his arms, burying your head in his neck and breathing deep. Something about the position you're in can keep it going longer, can keep that thrumming pressure on your clit right where it is, past your usual limit, dragging your orgasm on and on until you're gasping Joel's name.

He gingerly pulls the glowing toy off of you - its brightness dimmed only slightly since you lost sight of it between your legs - fiddling with buttons until he gives in and throws it to the side to run his hands over you.

With a light kisses to your parted lips, he apologizes, giving you softly muttered sorrys for ever upsetting you, for taking so long to come talk to you, and before you can return the sentiment, he sends you laughing again.

"And I'm sorry for breakin' into your house. Accidentally."

Your laughter makes him shift, and his face contorts as he gasps in discomfort.

"Fuckin' jeans. Pinchin'," is all he says, as he tries to adjust himself. You can see his zipper strain with the weight of his cock, stiff and unattended, behind the thick fabric.

"Take 'em off."

"Came here for you, not me."

"And if I want you to come for me?"

Joel blinks.

"Then I'm takin' my damn pants off," he says, taking his pants off. He sighs in relief when the pressure on his cock is released, groans when your hand palms him over the damp fabric, gasps into your mouth when you slip your fingers beneath his waistband, finding his cock slick and wet with precum, curses into your hair when you lick the salty taste of him from your fingers.

Tugging his boxers down a little more, his cock springs free, slapping his wet tip against his belly. In a blink you're on him, pulling off his shirt as you go to suck wet kisses into his neck, his chest, and letting your fingers toy with his nipples and the other feel down past his boxers, cupping his balls and rolling your thumb across the sensitive flesh before he pushes up into you.

He's solid. You're surprised he didn't come in his pants with how firm he feels slipping against your cunt. You meet his thrust, grinding down into his solid length, trying to hold your own shirt up so you can see the tip of his cock as he ruts against you.

"Does that feel good?"

"Fu - yeah. Y'always feel good."

"Y'know what would feel better," you whisper, scratching gently down his chest and watching goosebumps prickle his skin. With a shift of your hips, his next thrust pushes in, just slightly, before popping out and grinding into your clit again. His next thrust - slower, firmer - notches against your entrance and pushes in, Joel's hands on your ass dragging you down, until you're seated to the root of him.

It's a stretch. It always was. But over three months, and a decline in solo sessions, made it even more so.

Still, even through the stretch, you rock against him, looking into the eyes of Joel Miller, the normal, every day guy who lives down your street, and smile at it all, and the look on his face that says he couldn't be luckier.

"Said I wanted you to come, didn't I?"

And you meant it. You show him how much you mean it as you start to ride him, lifting higher and higher off of him before pushing back down. Your thighs clap against his, wet with sweat and slipping together with each movement, echoing around your living room.

It doesn't last long. It can't. It's too fucking hot, and you're woefully out of practice as the stretch in your pussy turns into a burn in your legs. You can see Joel's face start to pinch and contort, looking between your face, your bouncing tits, and the slip of his cock in and out of you, barely visible in the shadows.

But you can't keep going. You'll pass out if you do. Joel's hands register what you're doing before his face does, gripping tighter and holding you down on him, before his mouth opens in a gasp, his head falling back after losing something he was so close to getting.

You barely pull in a breath of warm air before Joel is dragging you down, flipping you unceremoniously onto your back on the floor.

It's cooler down here, even with Joel's body over yours. It's why you were on the floor to begin with, before he came back, before you let him back in. Joel fumbles against you, the sweat on your body acting more like a full body lube at this point, before he slides back in, knocking the air out of you as he fills you all over again.

Even though his knees will be bruised in the morning and your back will ache, he pounds into you, gripping your shirt and pulling you down with each thrust.

And it's just so fucking good you can't help but practically scream as he fucks you, moaning loudly into his ear as he groans and pants and swears into yours. Your fingers can't find purchase against his back, even as you desperately claw at him. There's too much sweat - it's too fucking hot in here - but you wouldn't change any of the desperate mess that you find yourselves in here on the floor.

He's growling, balls slapping against you, fucking you so hard you have to throw a hand out to hold onto the couch.

"I'm gonna - fuck - look at me. Look. Fuck. Fuck."

He presses in then, spurting deep in you, stealing the air from your mouth, and you from his, as you gasp and groan with each shallow thrust of his hips.

When he pulls out, hands going from bruising grip to gentle strokes, he rolls off of you, his back slapping wetly against the ground just as your pussy makes its own equally wet sound. And you laugh, because it's silly, just like it always has been, with or without a costume or a name that's not quite his own to go with it. Joel chuckles along with you, content and dozy from his orgasm, the evidence of it trickling out of you and making a mess of your floor as your stomach contracts with laughter.

The house cools down in the darkness - not much, but enough. Your hands find each other again too, and you each dance small patterns across each others skin until words come back to you.

You talk there on the floor, sweat drying on your skin, until the rumble of your stomach becomes too distracting to continue. You learn his favorite color, what he does for a living, his daughters name. You even learn the exact make and model of his truck, something you immediately forget.

And when he tries to excuse himself, too frightened of overstaying his welcome, you invite him to stay, and Joel Miller, the best Joel you've ever met, says yes.

next part

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#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller smut #joel miller fic #pedro pascal characters #coveted fics #big bawl jawl #never forget the balls #fic: dress up joel

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justporo · 4 months

Text

Instead of Roses

It's your birthday! And oh, your vampire knows how to treat you so well - in every kind of way.

MASTERLIST | AO3

Author's Note: Well, technically my birthday is already over by half an hour - but we'll say it counts. I wanted to write a *small* self-indulgent thing for myself as much as you as a treat. Don't we all know how these things go in the end around here... Have tooth-rotting fluff that turns into smut! Enjoy!

Pairing: Astarion/Fem!Tav (You) Warnings: explicit sexual content, porn with feelings, vaginal fingering, nipple play, vaginal sex, creampie, aftercare Wordcount: 3,1k

~~~

You woke from Astarion softly kissing your cheek. His lips on your face feeling like a feather caressing it. He whispered against your skin in between kisses, making his way down to your throat. You felt his cool breath brush over your skin, leaving goosebumps on the nape of your neck.

Being softly dragged from your dreams you needed a few moments until you could make out what sweet nothings your vampire kept murmuring against your pulse point before he pressed his lips to the delicate skin there again.

“Good morning, darling,” Astarion mumbled again when you slowly opened your eyes and began stretching with him leaning over you, loosely caging you with his arm he was propped up on. “Happy birthday, my sweet,” he continued, his words so low they were merely more than a rumble in his throat.

“Hm, is it?” you murmured back sleepily and turned your head a little so you could look at your lover. Astarion was smiling ever so softly at you, curls still messy from sleep but his crimson eyes glimmering happily at you. He was shirtless - but had pants on for some reason - while you remained pleasantly naked beneath the covers.

You rolled your neck and stretched your limbs - like a cat would after getting up from a good rest. Astarion eyed you lovingly, smile growing into his signature smirk. He was definitely up to something - but when wasn’t he?

“I know you said you didn’t know when your actual birthday is,” he explained, cocking his head to his side observing you as you raised your eyebrows at him and couldn’t resist a deep yawn that rolled over you - and another big stretch. “So I thought: wouldn’t today be just perfect?” Astarion concluded and kissed you fully on the lips before nuzzling his nose behind one of your pointy ears, tickling you.

You shivered and chuckled and tried to push him off. But this only resulted in the pale elf wrapping his naked arms around you and tickling you more with the tip of his nose at the nape of your neck.

Wiggling in his arms you tried to escape him but it was no use.

Rolling around your enormous bed while the vampire was teasing you - his hands joining in to tickle you at your waist - it threatened to turn into full blown melee combat. Even with your hand in his face and fingers spread to push him off, Astarion only laughed and doubled down on his attacks by trying to nibble on your fingers - damned vampire.

But as you looked around for a weapon other than a pillow that, shoved in a vampire’s face, emitted a loud hiss from the predator but nothing more, your eyes wandered over something on your nightstand. And suddenly you smelled it too!

Stopping your efforts to escape Astarion - and he apparently deemed you sufficiently teased by tickling - you saw that a nice plate of scrambled eggs with veggies, a bowl of fresh strawberries and a nice steaming cup of tea was placed there. Along with a single white blossom that you recognised from your tiny garden, placed in a random chalice that usually was meant for wine.

“You made me breakfast?” you asked, feeling how warmth filled your chest at the image of a half-naked Astarion standing in the kitchen of your small townhouse to prepare food for you. You moved around a little until you were laying on your side. Astarion softly wrapped his arms around you and scooched up to you until he was spooning you. He pressed another kiss to the crown of your head.

“Of course, isn’t that what spouses do for their partner’s birthdays?”

Your heart was about ready to melt.

You craned your neck to give your vampire a kiss.

The eggs were a bit burned you had noticed. But it all smelled delicious and he’d prepared all your favourite things for you. He was really trying so hard - and succeeding even harder.

“You’re the sweetest, Astarion!” You beamed at him.

The vampire looked very pleased with himself.

“I know. Aren’t I just the best” - you hummed in agreement - “handsomest” - another hum but with lips curling into a teasing pout - “most forthcoming” - you huffed lightly - “and smar-”

Grabbing a nearby pillow you smacked him in the face with it. “And so humble too,” you replied sickeningly sweet as Astarion hissed at you once more and shoved the pillow out of his face - his hair even a little worse for wear than before.

You giggled while the vampire acted as if he was brooding - the corners of his lips dragging up betraying him though.

“Insolent little mi-”

But once more you interrupted him by straining to turn around to grab his face and kiss him. With your mouth moving against his you tried to convey how much your chest was swelling with love for him at this lovely gesture. How much you adored him.

And just to be sure: “You’re the best, Astarion,” you whispered against his lips while you felt the vampire’s hands start to roam under the covers while he hummed happily - not only soothed but pleased.

His hands kept wandering as the kiss deepened and slowed. And you gasped lightly into his mouth, as you sensed what he was about to do.

“I have more in stock for you, my sweet,” the vampire murmured against your lips when he broke the kiss as you felt his fingers purposefully slide down your naked form beneath the covers before quickly diving between your legs. You turned your head away once more, closing your eyes and felt how Astarion moved his head to lightly bite down on one of your pointy ears.

“So much more.”

His voice was almost a growl directly in it. You were still on your side, Astarion wrapped around you. He pressed his lips to this spot directly below your ear and made you shudder.

“Oh?” you almost moaned as the vampire’s long fingers stroked along your core, already getting wet from that and his sinful promise.

“Did you get me roses too?” you tried to tease him. But the way his index began circling your clit was making it hard to keep even an edge of sass towards the vampire in your voice.

Involuntarily, you bucked your hips with a gasp when his fingers stroked along the sensitive bud between your legs more forcefully. You rubbed your ass against his crotch, snuggled up behind you. Even through the covers and his pants you felt that he was just as hard for you as you were wet for him.

“No roses, my heart,” Astarion replied, lips directly at your ear again.

“I thought I’d give you something even more pleasant instead,” he whispered and in time with his words let two of his fingers enter you, taking you by surprise.

A moan was ripped from your lips. You threw your head back and arched your spine.

“How thoughtful of you,” you replied breathlessly as you felt your lover’s fingers wandering to your clit again, covering it in your own slick. Astarion just laughed haughtily, knowing exactly the effect he had on you.

The heat pooling between your legs as you absent-mindedly pressed your thighs together for even more friction was quickly becoming like lava. And Astarion didn’t give you much of a break. His other hand was working its way to your boobs now. It began to squeeze them, the vampire’s long fingers spread out, squishing them together as more lewd sounds spilled from your lips.

“Fuck,” you cursed when at the same time his fingers entered your cunt again and with his other hand he rolled your hardened nipple between his thumb and index.

“Who, love?” Astarion teased. “Me?” Another finger entered you. “You?” His other fingers pinched the hardened peak of your breasts. The groan caught in your throat.

“Both, you bastard,” you pressed out followed by a desperate moan as the vampire worked your body like a musician did his beloved instrument. Caressing and teasing simultaneously, lovingly but with force plucking and stroking to elicit the sweetest notes from you.

Gods, you needed more. You tried to open your legs to give your lover better access to work his magic but felt the bed sheets restrict you. With a frustrated groan you kicked them away, aided by Astarion momentarily letting go of your breasts. But once you were freed of all fabric his hand was quickly back where it had left off, kneading your tits as they felt heavy with lust.

You opened your legs wide for Astarion with a dreamy sigh as he pressed himself against you from behind harder now, rubbing his hardened length against your ass. With a grunt he bucked his hips into you as he rewarded your eagerness by stroking your clit with the pad of his thumb now.

He was doing this for you, you knew. But as his grip on you became stronger, a little more desperate and you felt his hard dick press against you, you knew this was as thrilling for him as it was for you. And that made the moans coming from you almost turn into growls while you arched your back harder, desperate to give you both some more friction to work with.

To be desired and loved by a man like him-

Just knowing this made you almost unravel fully beneath his deft fingers.

Astarion had buried his face at your neck, his lush curls softly tickling you and sending electric shivers through you.

For a while the room was filled with nothing but breathless, needy sounds from each of you.

“Astarion,” you moaned as you were practically grinding against his hand, trying to get more of this delicious sensation. Your vampire merely groaned in response - barely taking in how desperately his name was rolling off your tongue.

Your lover’s hands were all busy with offering you all the pleasure he thought you deserved. And seemingly his mind was all filled with you as well as his face was buried in your hair, his gasps and moans brushing over you. You felt his hardened length twitch in need even through his clothes.

“Astarion,” you exclaimed again, even more desperation in your voice now, feeling as if you might perish on the spot when his fingertips hit just that spot as they dragged over your clit again.

“What is it, my love?” he replied, voice almost as desperate as yours.

“Me-,” you gasped and bit your lip hard as the way your nipple was teased sent another jolt through your entire body. The vampire just made a quizzical sound in response.

“Godsdammit,” you pressed out as he gave you not a moment of peace with how his hands worked your body. You could barely form half a thought.

“Fuck me, Astarion,” you almost shouted in frustration, your hands helplessly curling in the sheets. The tension inside you became almost unbearable.

But thankfully your partner finally moved to fulfil your request.

Astarion only shortly moved away from you to wiggle out of his pants while cursing profusely. Just by the way the bed was swaying under his struggles showed you how desperate he too must have been to answer your plea.

Quickly, you let your own hands take the place of your lovers’ so as to not lose any steam: squeezing your own tits with a moan. And with the other feeling how obscenely wet he’d gotten you. You were a heated, desperate mess already - and you weren’t nearly done.

Soon after, you felt Astarion roll around again, his arms wrapping around you once more, his hands covering yours, lacing with them. His dick was hard as granite as he moved to let it slide along your hot, wet folds.

For a few delicious long moments your lover was rolling his hips into you, making his twitching length slide along your slit again and again - precum mixing with your wetness - while his and your hands together played around with you.

Your pleasure became his and vice versa, as if there were no bounds between his body and yours.

The sounds you made rose in pitch and lewdness as you revelled in the sensation and how wonderfully debaucherous it felt to be touched and caressed like that by the love of your life. And yet you didn’t even have him where you wanted him.

“Gods,” Astarion breathed as he took you in. How you writhed in his embrace: so needy and yet giving him so much. His movements almost halted, to bewitched by you. So you reminded him of what exactly you wanted.

“Fuck me, Astarion,” you pleaded with him again, grinding against his cock and his hand now to get him moving again. “Fuck me hard.”

Astarion’s breath caught in his throat at your harsh and enticing demand.

“Fuck me until I see stars,” you kept begging, your words like the beckoning song of a siren in the vampire’s ears.

Oh how sweet you sounded as you requested such frivolity, tempting him.

And Astarion wasn’t one to resist temptation. Not if it was so much more rewarding to give in. Not if it was you.

Suddenly he could barely move fast enough to comply, even with his roguish quickness and dexterous hands.

His fingers that had been teasing your tits together with yours grabbed your already lifted leg to give him easier access to your core. And between your legs your hands quickly worked together to lead the head of his impatiently jerking cock to your entrance. But not before you hadn’t let your hand stroke along his erect length, earning a helpless grunt that almost became a whimper from Astarion as your palm dragged along his cock and then his balls.

“Fuck,” he swore.

And somehow you found it in you to reply even as the head of his cock was sinking into you. “Who?” you teased, voice dripping with sarcasm. “You or me?”

But the vampire had the upper hand now as he bucked his hips to sink into you to the hilt with a single hard thrust. “You,” he growled back as you yelped in surprise. “In every sense possible.”

You tried to grip for something - for balance or to help you cope with the sudden sensation of how full you were, you didn’t even know. But Astarion didn’t let your hand, still joined with his between your legs, escape. So just the other curled in the sheets until your knuckles showed white.

Still trying to catch your breath you already felt how he almost fully withdrew from you. You mirrored him by slowly breathing out

But Astarion caught you off guard again, thrusting into you again, forcefully. His hand wrapped around your leg spread you further for him as he did it again. Slowly but vigorously rutting into you in a ragged rhythm that left you near breathless.

“Astarion,” you managed to utter between two thrusts. You were barely able to cope with how hard he fucked you now but still the way his name fell from your lips coaxed him on. Meanwhile you nearly lost your mind by how well you fulfilled your wish.

His thrusts became faster and harder still as he lifted you almost off the bed in his eager need to feel you. Feel you as fully and entirely as he could.

The hand between your legs, still entwined with yours, made your fingers circle around your clit together again as you had forgotten about it; too lost in how roughly he fucked you.

With every single thrust he hit so deep he was already making good on making you see stars and you knew your release would shatter you completely - not just stars then but a whole universe.

Nearing the edge and with the vampire plunging into you forcefully and fast now, you gave up on trying to keep your balance. But your vampire kept you close and steady, rearranging his other arm not spreading your legs for him so you were snuggly with your back against his chest.

And so he could keep moaning into your ear while the sounds you made became more and more desperate whimpers: almost unable to keep up and also still begging for more. There was nothing left to form words anymore. Just him inside you and at the same time all around you as you felt the last of your threads came undone.

Your joint fingers between your legs mirrored his strong, fast pace and then-

You came with a scream and your voice breaking as Astarion kept fucking you through your orgasm. Floating somewhere far above your body, shuddering helplessly as the pinnacle of lust shook through you, you felt how Astarion came as well, dick twitching and spilling inside of you while he moaned your name over and over again like a credo. And even then he kept thrusting again, twice, thrice more in slow and hard movements, drawing out your orgasm for you and you drifted up even further.

Until you toppled over together in a shuddering, breathless mess, too exhausted to speak while you slowly returned to your earthly body.

Astarion carefully helped you lower your shivering leg and his arms held you carefully as you were almost laying on your stomach, him above you.

Still breathless and void of speech, he pressed a kiss to your cheek as you had your face buried in the pillows you were laying on.

Your vampire withdrew from you and began whispering soft loving words to you while his hands began rubbing your body.

When you finally had the breath and the mind for it you sluggishly mumbled something into the pillows.

“What’s that, my sweet?” Astarion asked who even with his vampiric senses couldn’t make out your words.

You turned your head slightly. “I said I love you, Astarion,” you repeated.

“I love you too, darling.”

“And then I said that I fear the eggs are cold now,” you repeated truthfully and yawned as a wave of blissful exhaustion from the earth shattering sex you just had washed over you.

From your lowered position you saw how your vampire stared quizzically at you. Then he burst into laughter. He slowly climbed off you and off the bed.

“Well, you insisted I’d fuck you first, so whose fault is that, my sweet, hm?”

Laughing more, he dodged the pillow that came flying for his head. Then he grabbed his pants and pulled them on.

“But just because it’s your birthday,” Astarion said with a pointed look, a dramatic sigh and a smirk on his lips “I’m making you fresh ones.”

And then with a wink he was off.

You smiled broadly - so hard your face hurt - and stayed there for a moment longer, reminiscing about how much you loved this stupid idiot.

Then you jumped off the bed, grabbed something to throw over your naked body and ran after Astarion to keep him company while he would inevitably burn another round of eggs for you.

~~~ If you enjoyed this you can support me by reblogging this! You can also support me on Kofi (pinned post on my profile)! ~~~ Taglist (DM if you want to be added please): @spacebarbarianweird @sunfire-ancunin @tragedybunny @dependsonthedream @tallymonster @magazzne @micropoe10 @aoirohi @my-bunny-prince @lumienyx @fayeriess @darlingxdragon @hereliesblackdragon @ayselluna @ajokeformur-ray @i-cant-get-into-my-other-account @rikuyrk06 @marina-and-the-memes @somewhatclear @miss-rebel-without-applause

#astarion #astarion x tav #astarion x you #astarion x reader #astarion ancunin #bg3 #astarion bg3 #fanfiction #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 spoilers #astarion x mc

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souliebird · 4 months

Text

[[and then I met you || ch. 21]]

Series: Daredevil || Pairing: Matt Murdock x Fem!Reader || Rating: Explicit

Summary:

A one-night stand years ago gave you a daughter and you are now able to put a name to her father – Matthew Murdock. Everything is about to change again as you navigate trying to integrate your life with that of the handsome and charming blind lawyer’s and Matt realizes he needs to not only protect his new family from Hell's Kitchen, but from the world.

chapter masterlist

Words: 4k

ao3 link

“Ahhhh.”

You open your mouth wide so Doctor Minnie can shine her flashlight down your throat. She hums and haws as she peers in, looking for who knows what, and when she concludes her search, she scribbles on your chart. Your chart is a piece of notebook paper with a wonderfully drawn crayon portrait in the corner, your name carefully written out across the top, and timestamps with detailed notes of each check up you have received today. These notes include squiggles that could be interpreted as cursive and the letters a, m, and q repeated over and over.

“You needs to drink more water and puts the towel on your ear,” your daughter tells you seriously. It is the same treatment you have gotten all morning, so you are well prepared for it.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

Minnie gives you a big smile, then whirls around to bark orders, “Nurse! We needs more water! Please, thank you!”

Matt is on the other side of the coffee table, sitting cross legged as he manipulates pipe cleaners around popsicle sticks. He and Minnie have been working on an art project for the better part of the morning - between your hourly check ups. He got his own checkup this morning and earned a band-aid on his cheek, but your daughter has been obsessed with making sure you are okay.

You are in no way complaining over her dotting - you more than understand this is how she is coping with what happened and you are more than happy to receive fake shots and orders to stay sitting on the couch. Whatever makes her feel safe and happy.

You know her father feels the same way.

He raises himself into standing, the smallest smile forming on his lips as he falls into his role, “Yes, Doctor. How many ccs?”

Minnie rubs her chin in thought, and you have to bite your lip so you won’t start laughing. She’s been so intense playing doctor, and you don’t want to discourage her. You are worried any teasing might upset her and that is the last thing you want to do at the moment, especially given the circumstances.

She finally decides on a number and declares, “Six!”

“Six ccs of water coming right up,” Matt tells her. He plucks your still half-full water bottle from the coffee table and starts towards the kitchen. Mouse watches him go, squinting her little eyes like she’s either judging him or trying to remember something.

Apparently, it is the latter, as she gasps, then calls after him, “And appy juice!”

Matt gives a dramatic gasp and turns to face the both of you, “And appy juice? Are you sure, Doctor?”

Minnie giggles, clearly amused by her Daddy’s antics. There’s a difference between teasing and playing along, and Matt is king at being Mouse’s partner in crime. You’ve seen a different side of your daughter come out when she’s around him - a little bolder and more sure of herself - and you want nothing more than to encourage that.

“It’s for me!” Your little one says between her laughs and that makes Matt smile brighter.

“Ah, a drink after a hard day's work. Six ccs of water for Mommy and one appy juice for the Doctor.”

“What do you say, Mouse?”

“Thank you, Nurse!”

As Matt gets your drinks together, you help Minnie out of her Doctor’s coat and you fuss with folding it as she starts to put her check-up toys back into their bag. She must be getting tired if she is asking for her juice, but she looks completely alert and like she could keep playing for another hour or so before slowing down. She woke up at her normal time this morning, but at some point in the night she wound up in your bed. You don’t blame her at all for that.

You’ve been on your own roller coaster of emotions this morning.

You woke up in a cold sweat - memories of being strangled flying through your mind - and the only thing that had been able to calm you was Matt’s arm around you. It helped to keep you grounded - remind you that you weren’t alone and that you were safe.

(“I love you.”)

No one can touch you or your baby if he is there and it isn’t some hindbrain ‘man protect woman’ nonsense.

Matt is a superhero in the most literal sense.

He has powers and an armored suit and fights bad guys.

It is hard to wrap your mind around and you have so many questions, but you both agreed to wait until Minnie took her nap to talk. This isn’t a conversation you can have over her head.

Minnie finishes picking up her toys just as Matt returns from his task. He lets her climb up onto the couch and settle against your side before handing over her juice. Your water gets placed on the table and you thank him before turning your eyes to your daughter.

“What do you want to watch, sweetie?”

“Penguins,” she answers, right before starting to nurse her juice. You found a video about the life of penguins that is toddler friendly a few days prior and it is quickly becoming a favorite. The documentary is a nice change from the cartoons that usually make up your television time and you are fine to watch it for the upteenth time.

Matt takes his place on Minnie’s other side, practically squishing her between you, and the three of you begin to quietly learn about the flightless tuxedo wearing birds. The video is a little less than thirty minutes long and by the time it is wrapping up, Mouse’s chin is on her chest, and she is snoring. In a silent agreement, you let Matt take care of putting her into bed for her nap. Though he has done it a few times now, he still cherishes the moment in a way you no longer do.

Your heart beats a little harder when Matt and Minnie disappear down the hallway. Your stomach swirls with anxiety over the talk you know is coming - though in a strange way you are not scared. You trust Matt to tell you the truth, but you are not sure you want to learn those truths. Doors you never even knew existed are opening to you and part of you wants to stay naive to the ongoings around you, but you know you can’t do that.

This is part of Matt’s world, and if he wants to be in Minnie’s, you need to know everything about it.

As you wait for Matt to return, you close your eyes and try to take a few deep breaths. It does nothing to calm your heart or mind, but it gives you something to focus on. You do not want to work yourself up by overthinking - that would just make things worse for everyone. So you count to five between inhales and exhales until you hear the door to the bedroom close.

(“I love you.”)

It feels like you stop breathing until the cushion beside you dips.

Your anxiety is flaring - your throat feels so tight and there is so much pressure on your chest. You know there isn’t a reason for your body to be reacting like this, but you don’t know how to stop it. You feel like you are trapped under your own worries, and you can’t escape.

“You’re terrified,” Matt says in a dull voice from beside you and you have to pry your eyes open to look at him. He looks so resigned and neutral, and your heart manages to pang for him between being crushed.

You don’t know what he could possibly be going through - you are finally alone with him, and your mind has decided you need to have an anxiety attack. Does he think you think he’ll hurt you or something just as ridiculous?

You may have only known Matt for a short time, but you trust him. He hasn’t done anything to break that trust and he has shown you he cares. He sat with you in the hospital and stayed with you after until he knew you were okay to be on your own.

He’s gone out of his way for you on so many occasions.

He’s made you feel safe.

Wanted.

Loved.

(“I love you.”)

Your mind is spinning and panicking and everything is so intense, but your mouth, as always, decides to work without permission.

“Will you hold me?”

The words shock you. You’ve never asked anyone to hold you - you generally don’t like to be touched - but when Matt’s arms are around you, the world seems a little more stable.

Matt seems just as taken aback as you are over the request. It takes him a moment to act, but then he chokes out, “Of course,” and opens his arms to you.

You turn towards each other, you bringing one leg up to tuck under yourself, and slot together. Your arms go around his middle and you press your face into his neck, while one of his hands goes to your hair to hold you in place and the other starts rubbing up and down your spine.

The relief is almost instant.

You release a long shaky breath and nuzzle yourself closer to him. He smells like your body wash and coffee, and he feels so solid against you. You feel like a shield has wrapped around you and nothing can get to you - not the all the day to day things you worry about like bills and messages you need to respond to nor all the evil things that lurk in the shadows.

For once in your life, you feel like you're not alone.

“I’ve got you,” Matt breathes into your ear and you believe him.

“You’ve got me,” you repeat into his shoulder. You can hear how watery your voice sounds and you tell yourself you won’t cry.

(“I love you.”)

You fall into a brief silence - you need a moment to recenter yourself and Matt seems to realize that. You feel him press a kiss to the side of your head as he continues to pet you and you have no idea why that helps to soothe your nerves. You let your eyes fall shut and focus on only him.

Once you don’t feel like you’ll get choked up if you start talking, you ask, “Is it okay if we talk like this?”

“Perfectly fine with me,” he whispers against you and you decide to just dive into it.

“You’re Daredevil.”

“I am,” he confirms.

“Will you tell me about it? From the start?”

You feel Matt take a deep breath and to offer him some sort of comfort, you curl your fingers into his shirt, holding onto him a little bit tighter.

“After I lost my dad and went to St. Agnes, they didn’t know how to deal with me. I didn’t have control over my senses, and I was angry at everything. I still don’t know how, but they found a man, Stick, to come help me - to teach me how to be Blind. He taught me more than that. He focused my senses, showed me I had control over them and how I could use them. And he taught me how to fight.” Matt’s words are steady and firm, but you can feel his heart pounding against you.

You absorb the words, a frown forming on your lips, “he taught you to fight? As a child?”

He sighs against you, then nods, “Yes. Stick believed there was a war coming between the Hand and the Chaste and they needed soldiers for the Chaste. I’ll…I can tell you more about that later.”

“Okay.” You want to know more about whatever the Hand and the Chaste are, but you can tell that is an entirely different conversation. One you aren’t quite ready for, yet.

“Stick taught me how to fight and how to use my senses to my advantage. He taught me how to channel my anger. My…my grandmother used to tell me the Devil was in the Murdock boys. And it’s true. I have the Devil in me - all my anger and rage. Stick taught me control. Then he left and I was angry he left, but I kept up my training. I didn’t need to enroll in martial arts classes to be able to learn - I could do it from blocks away. The boxing ring my Dad used to train at let me come in and use the mats and bags and I just kept at it.”

“Were you able to practice with people?” You ask. You know learning things in theory is way different than learning for practicality and fighting doesn’t seem like something you can just know in theory if you are a superhero.

Matt chuckles into your hair, “I got into a lot of fights in the schoolyard. I didn’t put up with bullies and no one wanted to admit I kicked their ass, so I never really got in trouble.”

With what you know of Matt and his personality and sense of justice, that makes perfect sense to you, and you say as much. He kisses your hair again before continuing on.

“When I reached college, I could…understand all the things I was hearing. All of the crime. I did everything I could - legally. I called the cops, I made reports, but more often than not, nothing ever happened. It made me angry - so angry - but my dad never wanted me to fight with my fists. He wanted me to use my head, do things the right way - so I tried. I really tried. For years. Then Foggy and I decided to start our own firm, to help the people in Hell’s Kitchen, really help them, and I couldn’t anymore. I couldn’t listen to the cries of kids being abused by their parents and people getting mugged and my city, the city I love, being poisoned. So, I let the Devil out.”

“And became Daredevil?”

“I did not choose that name,” Matt huffs, “But yes.”

You don’t remember much from when Daredevil first started appearing on the news - you were pregnant the first time you saw him, but you couldn’t pinpoint it. You have no idea what he was doing then.

So, you ask.

“How? How did you let the Devil out?”

Matt doesn’t answer you right away. He noses at your hair and traces his fingers up and down your spine and you have the feeling he’s thinking over his answer.

“I went after all the people poisoning my city. Not just the muggers and abusers. The drug and weapons dealers. The corrupt. There was a man named Fisk who was trying to take over the city, turn it into something it isn’t.”

“I know that name,” you say against him, “I read about it. There were…two cases? Legal ones.”

“Yeah. It was…complicated. It is complicated. We went against him as Nelson and Murdock and I went against him as Daredevil. He’s in prison now and he’ll be staying there,” Matt tells you and you have the feeling you will have to have a whole different discussion about Fisk in the future.

“But what about now? You are still out there fighting.”

“The city still needs protecting.”

It does, you know it does. Your attack is proof of that. You don’t want to think about it and the hands around your throat, so you press your face more into Matt’s neck and force yourself to fast-forward through the memory to something relevant to your current talk.

“You work with other…superheroes?” You ask. “Like Frank?”

“Frank isn’t a superhero and neither am I,” Matt scoffs, “But yes..I’m…learning to work with others. It’s not something I’m used to yet.”

“Tell me about them.”

He hums against you, then starts slowly, “You met Frank. He’s…we don’t get along. We have very different philosophies about how things should work, but he’s a good man. I’d rather be with him than against him and…I trust him to protect the people I care about. He’d fight tooth and nail for Karen - he has, and if I had to choose someone, besides myself, to protect you and Minnie, it would be him.”

Again, you believe Matt. From what you have seen of Frank, and not the Punisher, you think that trust is well earned. If Matt trusts him, you think you should too.

“And there’s Jessica. She is a private investigator and….very strong. Luke is also strong and..uh..bulletproof. He’s dating Claire, who you also met, she’s a nurse who got wrapped up in everything and helps when we get injured. And then Danny and Colleen. They are…” he trails off, like he’s unsure how to describe them and you do not push. You can’t imagine having to describe superheroes.

“What about Foggy and Karen?”

Matt shakes his head, “I try to not involve them in Daredevil things, but it ends up overlapping. They want to help, but I want them to be safe.” He pauses and you can feel him swallow, like he’s nervous. “I tell them everything, though. I used to think I had to keep my lives separate - one as Matt Murdock and one as Daredevil. I’ve tried to live as only Matt and I’ve tried to live as only Daredevil, but neither worked. I’m still finding the balance of living as both, and they help me. They give me rules to follow, make sure the plans I come up with are sound and that all options are considered. That is what I want with you. I want to be open. I want to be able to tell you everything and not keep secrets. I have seen what that does to people in my life and I don’t want that with you.”

You take in his words and let them mull over in your mind.

You can’t ask Matt to stop being Daredevil - you know you can’t. You heard what he said about why he needed to be Daredevil, and you understand that. He can’t sit by and do nothing, and by what he is telling you, he’s trying to be smart about it. He works with people to protect the city - to protect you. Yes, it scares you about all the risks he is taking and how they will translate into your life, but ultimately, the decision is his. If he wanted to keep you in the dark about everything, it would be a different story, but he doesn’t seem to want that. That makes it easier to accept and process - having as many pieces of the puzzle as you can helps you see the whole picture.

You shift slightly in his arms, tucking yourself even closer to him, and ask, “What are you working on now? With Frank?”

Again, he doesn’t answer right away. You let him think over his words as you process. Your anxiety has definitely decreased - you feel like you can breathe and that things are going to be manageable. You can speak with Foggy and Karen and get their perspective on things and it can help you come up with a game plan.

Having a plan is step one in everything being okay.

(“I love you.”)

“Jess, Frank, and I are…,” Matt starts slowly, “trying to help some street kids. They live in the sewers and don't trust the System or cops, but a few of them have gone missing and one has been killed, and they are scared. There's been guys in suits lurking near one of their hang outs and they don't appear in any government database, so we've been trying to track them down.”

Horror runs through you at his words. Someone has been hurting kids? Minnie’s face flashes through your mind and you press yourself closer to Matt.

“Street kids?”

“Mostly teens,” Matt amends. “I gave them information about St. Agnes but I more than get why they don't trust it. The System is horrible. The sewers are the only place they feel safe.” You feel him lick his lips again, then to your surprise, his voice changes from serious to almost fond. “They have a tent city. They let us come down there and bring supplies last week. Blankets and food and stuff. Frank got them a cellphone, so they'll be able to contact us if anything happens.”

Your mind spins at the idea of a bunch of kids living in the sewers. You knew it happened - New York is full of homeless people - but you never thought about it before. Guilt plagues you and you can't help but ask, “Can we help in other ways?”

Matt shakes his head, “Not in the ways you are thinking. We're going to find these guys and put a stop to whatever they are doing and right now that's the best we can do for them. They don't want to come up to the surface and if we try to force them, they'll move and still be in danger. After they know they can trust us and we put a stop to what is happening, we can start the next steps.”

“You'll protect them?” You ask, wanting to hear him say it.

“The kids may be under the streets of Hell's Kitchen, but they are still mine to protect.” His arms tighten around you, and you feel yourself melt against his chest, “And you are mine to protect.”

(“I love you.”)

“How do we protect you?” You ask, wanting to help in some way.

“Like this,” he hums, his fingers tangling into your hair a bit. “By reminding me what I am fighting for. Giving me a reason to live. I’ve been in the depths of Hell, just wanting to give up - give my life over to the Devil and go until my body stopped. I’ve been bloody and broken and alone. I don’t want that again. I want to be here with you. With Minnie. You’re my reason to get back up.”

(“I love you.”)

You press your face flush against his neck, your cheeks heating up at words. “Should I get a better first aid kit? Take CPR classes?”

He chuckles against you, and you feel it vibrate down into his chest, “That wouldn’t be a bad idea.” He pauses then tells you quietly, “Minnie has seen me in my armor, but I’m going to be doing my best to avoid getting injured in a way she can see. I have been working more on my defense - something I never really practiced.”

At the mention of your daughter, you pull back so you can look Matt in the face. Talking where you don’t need to look at his face has been helpful in calming your anxiety, but when it comes to Minnie, you need to look him in his sightless eyes.

“Are you going to train Minnie -”

“No.” Matt cuts you off before you can get the question out. “I’ll teach her how to cartwheel and other fun things, but I will never teach her to fight. I think everyone should take a defensive course to learn to get away, but I don’t want her to punch. I don’t want this anger inside of her. Minnie doesn’t have the Devil in her, and I won’t be the one to put him in her.”

You search his face and know he is telling the truth. You want your daughter to grow up to be a good person, to have as much passion as Matt does about helping the world, but the idea of her suiting up and fighting crime terrifies you. You are glad Matt feels the same way.

“Will you teach me?” You ask after a hesitant moment. “I was pretty abysmal at defending myself.”

He raises his eyebrows at the question, “You want to learn how to defend yourself?”

You shake your head, then lick your lips before dropping your voice just a touch, “I want to protect the people I care about, too.”

Matt tugs you forward gently until your foreheads are touching. You close your eyes again and let yourself start to smile.

“I’ll teach you whatever you want to learn.”

(“I love you.”)

a/n: we're over 100k words :')

@midnightreids @cloudroomblog @yeonalie @thychuvaluswife

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#soulie writes #fanfiction #daredevil #matt murdock x you #matt murdock x reader #and then i met you

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lexosaurus · 27 days

Text

Ghost Boy? In my college class? It's More Likely Than You Think

[ao3 link]

Warnings: None Words: 6,031

****

College was crazy.

Okay?

There was absolutely no reason why college had to be as insane as it was.

Alright, maybe there was a reason. A reason called, "We have four years to make these students professionals in their chosen field, and some even less time than that."

Danny understood. He really, truly did. He knew that to work in his dream job at NASA, he needed to learn not just how to locate the constellations in the night sky, but also about subjects like chemistry, biology, calculus, physics—a lot of physics.

But seriously, when the hell was a guy supposed to sleep?

Last night's problem set only had five questions, theoretically. But it was run by a completely sadistic site that Vlad himself must have designed—that bastard—because while submitting a correct answer seemed to mark one of the five outlined stars in gold, the site also seemed to be more than happy to remove the gold star if he got a problem incorrect.

Which meant that the theoretical five-questioned assignment ended up taking Danny many, many more questions than that.

Just when he had thought the hell was over, he realized he still hadn't begun his paper for his mandatory freshman writing class. So then, he got the absolute pleasure of writing an essay about a stupid, Victorian-era play he didn't read regarding the symbolism of a hat as it related to...foreshadowing, or something.

He didn't read it. He only signed up for this dumb writing seminar because the timing worked better on his schedule. He'd much rather be taking the writing class about horror novels. But unfortunately, that one happened during his mandatory physics course.

When it was all over and he finally caught sight of his pillow, he was pretty sure he’d shed a single tear. Did he remember sinking into the mattress? Closing his eyes, and drifting off?

No. He didn't.

He was fucking tired.

But apparently, the universe did actually hate him because instead of being roused by his alarm the next morning, he was shaken by his ghost sense.

Oh yeah, apparently Skulker found his dorm.

Joy!

No seriously, fuck that guy.

What the hell kind of sick weirdo wants to make a rug out of someone else's skin, anyway? Not to mention that Skulker had no conception of what a good time to hunt was, considering he seriously was trying to start chaos at five in the fucking morning.

Again, fuck that guy.

He only just barely had enough time to fly home, shower, hastily read over and submit his essay (he'd long since learned from high school that he couldn't trust himself that late at night to be coherent), and make a mad dash to his favorite bagel spot on the way to class.

However, the bagel guy—he had a name, Danny was almost sure—must have been under the weather today because, for some reason, he could not stop staring at Danny.

The instinct to run his hand over his face to check for post-fight ectoplasm splatters was a learned reaction at this point. But this time, he couldn't feel anything off. His skin was dry. Cold, like usual, but dry.

"Uh..." The bagel guy continued staring at him slack-jawed.

"Do I have something on my face?"

That seemed to shake the bagel guy out of his stupor. He blinked, his eyes darting around to catch the eye of a few other customers who, for some reason, were giving Danny a really wide berth.

Did he smell or something? Had he forgotten to put his deodorant on?

Oh god, did his parents do something to make national news again? Did the news use a family photo when reporting the story or something? Why was everyone looking at him? Seriously, what the hell was going on today?

The bagel guy locked eyes with Danny once more, briefly, before darting back down to the register and handing Danny his change. "One everything bagel with cream cheese for the, uh—for—coming right up."

"Thanks," Danny said, trying to be as friendly as possible. Jazz always said that he shouldn't judge people for acting strange. That they could be going through something personal.

So, Danny shook it off. Maybe he missed a chunk of ectoplasm on his hair when he was showering. Skulker had nailed his shoulder pretty well. The green, ecto-infused smoothie he'd sipped that morning was working its magic to mend his skin, but who knew? Maybe a little bit of blood was leaking through his shirt. It wouldn't be the first time that happened, anyway.

Or the last.

Amazingly, he did get his bagel. But when the man handed it to Danny, his eyes were almost popping out of his skull. His heavily accented, "Ah, here is one—ah, your—your bagel," sounded especially halted today.

But no. The big, gruff bagel guy wouldn't have stuttered. He wouldn't have been nervous to pass a bagel to a tired-looking college student either.

Danny must have misheard.

He darted down the sidewalk. He was going to be late for class. And it was because of his internal panic that he didn't notice the girl with her nose buried in her cell phone at first. Not until she almost crashed into him, looked up, and nearly jumped out of her skin.

"HOLY SHIT!" she yelled, her hands flailing beside her. Her phone flew out from her fingers and clattered on the pavement.

"Sorry!" Danny scooped up her phone from the ground and handed it to her.

She stared at him as if he were completely insane, making no move to take the phone until Danny leaned forward a little closer and pointedly said, "Here."

Whether or not this girl was hungover or still drunk from whatever party she'd been at the night before, Danny did not have time to work around her brain. He was going to be late for class!

"Fuck," she said, eyes still glued on Danny. She did, however, finally reach out and gently take the offered cell phone.

Which was all he needed.

Mission accomplished, he whirled back around intending on continuing his fast-walk-nearly-run pace to the science building, but caught the eye of a biker who seemed to go into a similar trance as the bagel guy and ended up crashing straight into a parked car.

"Oh my god!" Danny darted over to the strewn biker. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine! Stay back!" the man yelled, struggling up and holding his hand out to block Danny from seeing his face.

Was this guy...cowering at him? Like he was some sort of ghost?

No, no. This was silly. Now Danny was just being paranoid.

"Just stay back!"

An oddly phrased demand, and a little biting at that, but the biker did just crash into a parked car because of Danny and that other girl—who was currently holding her phone up at Danny—so he guessed he could forgive this random dude for being a little snappish.

Danny didn't have time to dwell on this stranger anyway, because holy shit his class was starting in ten minutes and if Danny didn't get his ass to the room right now he was going to be screwed.

So with one more apology to the biker, and one more glance to the strange phone-obsessed girl, Danny adjusted the strap of his bag back over his shoulder and took off down the road.

Not literally took off. Though, he really wanted to jet through the air today. He'd had these urges to duck out of sight and fly to class before, but it never felt so compelling as right now.

Unfortunately, the street was crowded as shit, and in between classes as it was, the building would likely be crowded too. Finding a discreet place to transform would probably take just as long as running to the classroom like his half-life depended on it. And so, the latter option it was.

Somehow, he managed to make it to class with five minutes to spare. Okay, maybe not somehow. Maybe he did risk using his flight to propel him forward a little bit. Could anyone blame him?

College was crazy. And anyone who thought they saw a guy not quite touching the ground when he walked could have just as easily been sleep-deprived and were almost certainly hallucinating. Humans couldn't fly! Only ghosts could fly, and Danny Fenton was clearly a human college student just running to class.

Gaslight, gatekeep, ghostboss—or whatever the saying was.

Energy was buzzing in Danny’s veins, and he found it a little difficult to stay in his seat. An aftereffect of only barely using his flight powers, he was sure. His body got a taste of being airborne, and now it didn't want to return to the laws of gravity.

Danny could forgive his ghost core for that. Gravity could be very exhausting sometimes. Especially when he was in the middle of a ghost fight and his enemy was hurling him to the ground.

But he was in a lecture, and it would look weird if this random college student was hovering over his seat, so Danny forced his butt onto the chair as he dropped his bag beside him.

Whispers fluttered around him, which wasn't too unusual. People often talked in pleading freak-out whispers to their friends after an especially grueling night of homework.

Danny was about to turn to his chemistry lecture buddy and do the same—because seriously, he was going to have nightmares over that damn assignment for weeks—when he realized that his chemistry buddy was not in his usual seat.

And then, a whisper caught the attention of his enhanced eardrum.

"...ghost..."

"...Phantom..."

Ah, that explained it.

Oh yeah, it was all coming together now.

They must have been talking about the ghost fight from this morning, the one with Skulker. This city wasn't Amity Park, so the students here weren't exactly used to ghost attacks. Of course, the initial fight was probably very exciting for them.

And, well, his parents probably were on the news that morning, but likely only to be interviewed about the attack. Maybe they ended up rambling about ghostly habits and migration patterns or whatever other bullshit theories they’d been churning with recently.

So then, the bagel guy must have recognized Danny as a Fenton, a child of Jack and Maddie, the infamous, kooky ghost experts.

The effects of that realization were delayed, but when they finally hit, he felt like his brain was hit by a semi-truck. Because, shit. He didn't know if he could deal with his bagel guy knowing who he was. He was going to have to find a new bagel spot, wasn't he?

Danny craned his neck over to the door. The lecture was supposed to be starting, but his chemistry buddy was nowhere to be found.

But then, to his immense relief that he wouldn't have to suffer through this lecture by himself, the door opened to reveal the tall, lanky form of Cameron, his chemistry buddy.

Danny eagerly moved his bag out of the way of Cam's seat, his woes of that fucking assignment hot on his lips, but before he could begin his trauma-dumping session, something strange happened.

Really, really strange.

As Cam began habitually walking over to his seat, he looked up, caught Danny's eye, and froze.

His mouth parted into a perfect 'o,' his eyes widened, and his eyebrows disappeared under his hairline. Then, he backed up, caught the bewildered expression of another student near him, and moved to another aisle.

Danny sat there too stunned to call out to Cam, though the intent was at the precipice of his being. Hurt stabbed his gut, and the social anxiety the A-List had trained his brain for in high school started creeping up his spine.

Did Danny do something wrong?

Why had Cam moved away?

What did that look to the other kid mean?

He tried to think of a reason why Cam might have suddenly decided that Danny was a weirdo freak that should be avoided, but the only thing he remembered doing between yesterday and today was the two texts he'd sent at eleven last night complaining about the assignment. But surely, everyone had complained, right?

Or was the assignment genuinely effortless for everyone? And Danny was just an idiot who didn't understand some really simple concept, and now Cam had suddenly realized that he'd picked the wrong chemistry buddy to sit next to in class?

That must have been it.

Why else had he moved away?

Danny turned around, looking to the back of the lecture hall. But all he could see was a sea of faces all looking at him.

Okay, honestly, what the fuck was wrong with everyone today?

He whipped out his phone, paranoia striking through his gut like a spear. Maybe he'd accidentally revealed himself during the fight? But he checked Google, searching for Phantom's human identity, but all he got at the top of the search were old Reddit threads theorizing about which historical figure he could have been, and celebrity news sites spouting completely absurd clickbait-type theories about his past.

Is Danny Phantom Napoleon's son?

Could Danny Phantom be Related to George Washington?

New Theory Suggests Danny Phantom is Alexander the Great!

Yeah, like Danny was leading legions of ghosts around Europe anytime soon.

As Danny wracked his brain for what the hell he'd done to deserve the wrath of having his classmates stare at him like he was some sort of weird alien species and everyone was plotting on how to initiate first contact, the side door opened and the professor came darting in the hall with a stack of folders all but falling out of his hands and a muttering of breathy, "sorry, sorry," light on his lips.

The muttering broke out into jilted, uncomfortable laughter, and Danny still couldn't help the feeling that they were laughing at him.

He tried to brush that off as just the remnants of his high school on him and keep his attention focused on his short, salt-and-pepper-haired professor who looked like he couldn't remember if he was going to a beach party or Burning Man today, and decided to dress for both.

Yang put the manila folders down on the front table, miraculously without spilling any of the contents inside, set his bag down on the rolling chair beside him, and picked up a piece of chalk to face the board.

He held a hand up and began writing Chemistry 101 — Stoichiometry on the board.

Behind Danny, the snickers grew louder.

Was there some inside joke that he just wasn't getting? Had his classmates prepared some sort of prank for the teacher today and Danny hadn't read the email? Was it April Fool's Day, even though logic and reasoning told Danny that it was only October?

"Sorry I was late, everyone," Yang began. "Now if you don't mind, I want to begin by going over a few problems from last night's assignment. I noticed a pattern in the problems everyone was getting wrong..."

Someone coughed rather obnoxiously behind him.

Danny felt ice begin to build in his stomach.

"...so as you can see here, I noticed a lot of people forgot to calculate the used excess of iron to find the amount of excess reactants. Remember, guys, you can't just subtract the bigger and smaller masses in the problem..."

Another obnoxious cough.

Yang didn't break stride. "...you have to actually convert it to moles and set up your mole ratio, and then convert back to grams. I mentioned this in class but it seemed like too many of you—"

"Professor Yang?" the impatient voice of Brittany, one of his classmates, said from behind.

The class broke out in a fit of whispers and giggles, this time not even trying to hide their restlessness.

"What is it?" Yang turned around, his chalk still hovering on the board.

And then he looked at Danny. His eyes bugged out like a cartoon, sticking out beyond the rims of his glasses. His jaw opened and closed like a fish, and he dropped the chalk on the floor.

Now, the class was roaring with noise.

Danny stared eye-to-eye with the professor for ten seconds or ten minutes. He didn't know which, and it didn't matter anyway, because then Yang's thin lips opened to exclaim a word that may as well have electrocuted him all over again:

"Phantom?"

Confusion and panic hit Danny like a sledgehammer.

How did Yang know he was Phantom? Had he been revealed? Did everyone know he was Phantom?

And then he heard the whispers.

"It's really him! It's Phantom!"

"Why is he here?"

"It's Phantom!"

No!

How did everyone know his secret?

Danny had to stop this.

He had over four years of hiding his ghost half from his parents, the world, and most impressively, his parents. Over the years, he'd honed his ability at lying and using his silver tongue to smooth over situations with such practiced ease, he was expecting his Oscar in the mail any day now.

Which is why, like an utter pro, he jumped up from his seat and shouted, "It's a lie, I'm not a ghost!"

The room went silent, and then was launched into a frenzy.

"Phantom!"

"Is he delusional?"

"It's really him! It's Phantom!"

His panic was bordering on hysteria as it stampeded over him, beating his core so furiously that Danny thought it was going to jump through his ribcage.

He stood, his gloved hands held out in front of him as he began his best at pleading with the masses, but before he could grovel too much, Professor Yang's voice sliced through him like a knife, calling out, "Phantom! What are you doing in my class?"

Wait...

Gloved hand?

Danny looked at his hands again. They were gloved.

And glowing.

The relief was so heavy on his shoulders, his back, and every inch of his skin. It was also mortifying.

Because here he was, in his Chemistry 101 class not as Fenton, but as Phantom.

"Holy shit," Danny muttered.

What. The. Hell.

No, really.

What the hell?

How was this happening?

Had he really been so tired that he'd forgotten to change out of his Phantom form after Skulker's fight?

No, hang on—had he been walking around in his Phantom form all morning?

How had he not noticed?

Then all the memories came flying back to him at once. The bagel guy acting weird, staring at him like he wasn't sure if he should seriously give a ghost a bagel because "Do ghosts need to eat? Is human food poison?"

And then the girl. She hadn't screamed because she nearly crashed into a stranger, she screamed and threw her phone in the air because she'd nearly crashed into Phantom. And that's why she was recording him after, too. She was recording Phantom, a ghost that wasn't native to this college town.

Danny thought he'd die of cringe-fail right there because that meant she also recorded the biker crashing into a parked car and was probably uploading it to TikTok later. He was sure it would be trending in minutes.

That was, if she hadn't already uploaded it to Tiktok, and it wasn't already trending. His phone suddenly felt heavy in his pocket.

He looked around at the faces of intrigue and excitement, feebly attempting to squash the anxiety that was currently tap dancing over his skin. Okay, so his initial attempt at acting hadn't gone so well. That was okay; nobody could be perfect all the time. If he just channeled the inner cool and suave hero that he was, he could totally save the situation.

For sure.

He floated a few feet in the air. His legs felt awkward sprawled out, and he tried to form a ghost-tail, but somehow his sense of self was too strong for that today. No matter, to balance it out, he splayed his arms out wide and began doing jazz hands, saying, "It's me! Danny Phantom! Just here checking your classroom for ghosts!"

There was a moment of collective pause before his brain caught up with what his mouth said, and then he scrambled, making a big show of ducking around the room to search for...ghosts, or something. He lowered to the floor to check under the auditorium chairs, flew to the front of the room to peek around the tables, and finally went up to the ceiling to glance around the four corners of the room.

Once he felt embarrassed enough, he stopped in the center of the room, puffed out his chest, and said, "Good news, citizens! There are no ghosts in this room!"

Whispers and mutters once again broke out from his classmates, along with a few giggles. In the front of the classroom, Yang's head was craned up to look at him, his expression showing pure bafflement.

Okay, Danny was bombing this set. He was catching onto the vibe of the room, and had come to this very astute conclusion: there was no saving this.

Time to abort the mission.

"Well, that will be all! Have a fun class learning about chemistry!"

And then, without another word, he jetted through the wall and into the hallway of the building, turning invisible immediately. Fortunately, with classes having started several minutes ago, the corridors were mostly empty. Only a few stragglers remained, booking it down the halls and trying to duck inconspicuously into their classrooms.

Danny cut around a corner of the hall where, thankfully, no one was standing. That didn't stop him from triple-checking over his shoulder (it was just the water fountain, Danny) before he let his ring wash over him.

Then, when he was sure he was human again this time, he ran down the hall and pushed open the auditorium door to his class which, by the looks of things, hadn't calmed down from their encounter yet.

The door hit the wall with a bang—oops, he thought he hadn't pushed so hard—and then every head was turned to him.

"Sorry!" Danny rubbed the back of his neck and gestured vaguely to the clock on the wall. "I lost track of time."

The room was...silent. Incredibly, confoundingly silent.

That wasn't good.

On instinct, Danny glanced down again to make sure that he was wearing his red hoodie and blue jeans and not his Phantom black and white jumpsuit. He was, in fact, wearing the right clothes. And out of the corners of his eyes, he saw the glint of his black bangs.

So then, what the fuck?

Alright, there was no need to panic. He was human, his classmates were human, they'd just met Phantom, and now Danny was busting in the classroom late. It wouldn't be the first time he was late to class, anyway. Lots of students were late for chemistry!

With his brain sufficiently pep-talked, he pointed as inconspicuously to his seat as he could and said, "I'll just...take my seat."

No one responded, so he took that as his cue to begin his walk of shame up the steps of the auditorium aisles to his usual seat near the front, which was still amazingly void of students anywhere near it.

"Phantom?" a voice rang out from the spattering of students around the room.

Danny missed the next step and ate shit on the floor. His bag hit his back heavily, and he could have sworn his shoe nearly flew off his feet. He scrambled to stand, his hand missing the railing only once, before he managed to stand back proud and tall. Sort of. His backpack had slid off one shoulder, and his body was hunched forward and he tried to regain his breath because holy shit, it actually really hurt for his torso to land on the corner of the step.

He rubbed his sternum, sure it was going to bruise, and coughed out, "Uh—what?"

"Phantom!" the voice, now too familiar, repeated. "You're him. Phantom."

Danny glanced up, and dread not only slammed into him with the force of a semi, but also backed up and floored it into his soul again. And again.

Because that voice was none other than his Chem 101 buddy, Cam.

No, Danny was a magnificent actor. He surely could save this one.

What did people always say? Something about the third try being a charm?

He could really use a charm right now. Unfortunately, Murphy seemed keen on watching him suffer instead.

"No—no way! I'm not a ghost! I'm totally human, guys! See?" Danny said with quite a lot of conviction, waving his hands beside his body like some sort of circus display.

It was so conclusive of a performance, that Cam simply laughed.

Shit. This was not how he wanted today to go at all.

"I can't believe I never put it together before! Did people really buy that in your hometown?"

"What act? I'm not acting!" Danny insisted.

But his classmates, it seemed, were even less convinced.

"Seriously, it's so obvious."

"How did no one notice?"

"They're literally the same person it's crazy."

"What? No! No we're not the same person!" Danny insisted, trying not to sound desperate and hopelessly failing. "He's my—uh—twin? Yeah, that. He's my twin."

"He's obviously not," a classmate said.

"He is. He died in the womb," Danny refuted.

"Okay, now you're just being ridiculous."

"Does it sound better or worse if I say that my mother drank ectoplasmic smoothies while she was pregnant and that's why he turned into a ghost?"

"Fenton!" Professor Yang called out.

Danny felt his blood turn so cold they started forming frost in his veins.

And then, he refused to look down because he was pretty sure ice crystals were glueing his feet to the floor.

In his panic, he'd totally forgotten that this was, in fact, a classroom. With a professor. And not just any professor, his chemistry professor. As in, the guy that had the sole power of crushing all of Danny's dreams of working for NASA via the power of the curve.

Yang took a step back, colliding with the chalkboard behind him and smearing white dust all over his brightly-colored shirt. But he ignored this, instead finding it more pertinent to fold his arms and regard Danny with a look of pure incredulation. "Are you really Phantom?"

"What? No!" Danny said. However, as luck would have it, that gasping answer caused him to inhale the wrong way, and coughs shot up his throat to overtake his body.

And then like the valiant superhero he was, he began having a coughing fit. In front of his classmates.

He knew Sam and Tucker always called him a dork, but this was really unfair.

"You okay, Phantom?" one student asked.

Danny tried to argue, "I'm not Phantom," but unfortunately for him, he hadn't stopped coughing yet.

Taking his silence for a confirmation that he was in fact the elusive ghost known as Phantom, another classmate commented, "I didn't know Phantom breathed."

Not-so-quiet whispers and mutters broke out around the class at once discussing theories of his cardiovascular system.

All while Danny was doubled over, trying desperately to reclaim what little of his dignity was still left. As well as reclaim some of the oxygen that his body seemed more than willing to push away for some reason.

Seriously, was he out of karma yet?

Okay, Universe, if this is your way getting back at me for reading the Cliffnotes of that book for the essay last night, I get it. Cheating is bad, blah blah blah. I'm very sorry in a deeply remorseful way, so can we please stop ruining my life now?

"...so he wouldn't need to breathe!" A classmate's voice had stepped above the rest.

"That's what I said!"

"Dude, he's literally fallen asleep on my floor once. I'm telling you he needs to breathe."

That voice must have been Cam's.

Danny took a deep breath, regaining control of his lungs. "Wait, guys!"

But it was too late. And, oh god, why were people now giggling over their phones? Had someone taken a video of him earlier? Was he trending online right now?

If this got back to Sam and Tucker, he was never going to live this down.

"Okay, okay!" Yang's voice rose in volume. "Class, settle down!"

The class went silent.

"Alright, I know we are all curious to know about Fenton's secret double life—"

"I don't have a secret double life!"

"Sure you don't, Phantom," Cam said.

"—But please, we do actually have quite a bit of material to cover today, judging by the very impressive homework scores from last night. And, by the way, class, might I remind you all that my office hours are on Mondays and Wednesdays from two to four. I won't name names, but I'll just say that if you need to make it a point to come for some review, you know who you are."

Was Yang looking at him?

"Regardless, if Fenton is done screwing around with his ghost powers, we do need to get through the material sometime this year."

"But I'm not a ghost!" Danny protested.

"Dude, you're standing in a block of ice," a classmate argued.

"Holy shit, he froze his legs to the floor!"

Danny felt frost on his cheeks. "The A/C system is broken! Everyone knows that!"

"The ice is glowing."

"So? A lot of ice glows."

"Fenton, please." Yang had never sounded so disappointed in his life. "I'd expect anyone in this class to know that ice is made of which elements?"

Danny hated where this was going. "Hydrogen and oxygen."

"And please describe the bonds to me."

"The hydrogens have a double bond with the oxygen, and then there's two pairs of electrons leftover."

"What shape?" Yang pressed, pushing his wiry glasses up his nose.

"Bent."

"Good, thank you. So we have two hydrogen and one oxygen in an H20 molecule, yes? And so tell me, would that configuration with those two elements cause anything to glow?"

"Um, no." Danny had the sudden urge to die. "Water does not glow."

"But, interestingly, ectoplasmic water does glow, correct? Because....?"

They'd touched over ecton science earlier in the semester. "Because ectons are larger and can sit closer to the nucleus which results in atoms fusing and due to the greater amounts of energy they emit, some this excess energy can be seen in our visible spectrum."

Yang smiled and then gestured to the seat devoid of any humans near it that Danny, previously Phantom, had been sitting in at the start of class. "Thank you, Mr. Phantom. Now, if we're all done dillydallying, we have some stoichiometry to go over."

It took Danny more than a second of the awkward silence that followed to realize that oh yeah, his feet were literally frozen in place.

"So..." He glanced around the room, meeting the expectant gazes of his classmates. "Just to be clear, none of you care that I might potentially be..."

A ghost?

Phantom?

Some sort of weird mutant hybrid thing?

"Danny, you're the only one making a big deal out of this," a classmate answered.

Danny guffawed.

"Yeah, it's whatever. You're dead, so what? We're all dead in college. You're not special."

"I have a biology lecture later right after this for my weed-out course and going to that is basically the same thing as dying, I'm pretty sure," Cam joined in.

Danny resisted the urge to smack his forehead with his open palm.

He turned back to Yang. "And if I were maybe the—uh—being that kind of has saved humanity from being invaded by ghosts give or take one or two times, would that maybe get me extra credit on the next test?"

"No."

Well, that was a brutally quick response.

Danny shrugged. "It was worth a shot." He reigned in on his core's fluttering, and the ice began to melt around his feet.

He tried to ignore the obvious phone flipped his way as he did.

Shit, this was going to be all over social media later. How embarrassing. He could only hope that Tucker wouldn't find it. But who was he kidding? If he checked his phone, he bet he already had about sixteen messages from Tucker laughing at his misfortune.

Once he finished freeing himself from his ecto-ice like some ghost toddler, he began a very graceful and humiliating trek to his seat, complete with multiple instances of him bumping into chairs as he trudged down the row. When he finally reached his seat, it was just his luck that the rusty hinges let out an obnoxious creaking wail as he lowered himself down. He winced, hissing out apologies, but in the silent hall, the sounds of the withered metal were almost too much to bear.

It was for that reason that his entire body refused to unclench until the professor was well underway with his lecture about excess reactants and whatever else they were going to be quizzed on next week.

He tried his best to pay attention and not check his phone for the no doubt endless notifications. He'd already made his presence too obvious in this hall, anyway. Professor Yang would have been thoroughly annoyed if, after everything, Danny decided to spend the remainder of the class on his phone.

Miraculous as it was, he did manage to survive the lecture.

After class when he finally was able to check his phone, he saw that the world was too focused on the viral posts about Phantom being spotted outside of Amity Park to give any attention to the little itty bitty post of Danny, in human form, frozen to his lecture hall floor.

As it turned out, that post only had two likes—one of them was Tucker—and one comment from a random user reading, "lol why phantom freeze that dweeby kid to the ground???"

Danny didn't resist the urge to facepalm this time, and in fact did it so hard he was surprised he didn't give himself a concussion.

Well.

At least his secret was safe.

****

"You really don't care that I'm Phantom, do you?" Danny asked, looking up from the barely clean dorm room floor that his back was currently stretched out against.

"No?" Cam glanced from his notebook. "Why?"

"Uh, I figured the whole part where I'm a part ghost would have been a little weird?"

Cam's thin brows shot up to his hairline. "You're only a part ghost?"

"Yeah? Why, what did you think?"

"Oh, I just figured you were legit dead or something."

Cam uttered those words with such nonchalance that Danny reacted immediately, shooting up from the floor so hard he accidentally switched into his Phantom form.

"You thought I was dead?" His voice echoed when he spoke, and his ghostly tail wiggled underneath him.

Cam's pointed look and handwave were explanation enough.

"Okay, you know what? That's fair." Danny swiped his notebook off the floor and forced his adrenaline-spiked body back into human form. "That's actually super fair."

"Yeah I mean, being a ghost is sort of Phantom's whole shtick, anyway."

"Right but like...wait, you didn't even care that you thought I was a fully dead and deceased ghost taking college classes? And you still wanted to do homework with me tonight?"

Cam, once again, only gave a very lazy shrug. "Well, yeah. I just want to pass this class, dude, and we've already established that we should tag-team team this class instead of trying to rawdog it by ourselves."

"I mean...I guess?" Danny blinked at his friend, his mind reeling with astonishment. "You're weird, you know that?"

"Says the ghost-human person or whatever. Now, are we gonna finish this prelab assignment, or are you gonna keep having an existential crisis about your place in the Universe?"

Danny slid back on the floor, propping his knees up to lay his notebook against. "No, you're right. We need to finish this prelab."

"Thank fucking god."

****

[read more of my stuff here]

#danny phantom #fanfiction #dp fanfic #identity reveal #my writing #aka danny accidentally shows up to class as phantom

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matchingbatbites · 8 months

Text

praline sweet

Mature | 1.8k | Read on Ao3

This is a belated birthday gift for @tboyeddie! Sorry this took so long, I had like 4 versions of this going at once and couldn't figure out which one to actually use! I wanted to give you something soft, though, so hopefully this fits the bill! <3

CW: Omegaverse, Alpha Eddie, Omega Steve, Pre-heat fluff, Rated mature for a little dirty talk and some indecent thoughts

The call is unexpected, when it comes. Robin's voice is familiar on the other end of the line, but what she says-

“Hey, Steve hit his pre-heat today, and the party is bringing him stuff to add to his nest, just to make our scents stronger. Pick out a t-shirt or something and bring it over when you have the chance, yeah?”

Eddie blinks, almost pulls the phone away to look at it, make sure it's real, because what?

“I uh, I didn't know Steve was so close to his heat.”

“Yeah, it's kind of early, but he said that's not weird. All you need to worry about is bringing something to add to his nest. Got it, loverboy?”

That's kind of a big deal. Omegas in pre-heat want to be surrounded by the scents of their pack, to have that sense of familiarity as their bodies slowly adjust in preparation for what is basically a three day sex marathon. This is Steve's first heat that Eddie is really aware of. He'd apparently had one a couple of weeks after the spring break from hell, but Eddie had still been hospitalized at that point.

So now, three months later, Steve's heat seems to be right on time. The fact that he apparently wants Eddie's scent in his nest makes the alpha nearly kick into a purr. It ignites something deeper, too, the desire to bundle Steve up in the nest, to hold him and keep him safe, to stretch him open on the alpha's cock and help him through his heat instead of leaving him to suffer alone-

And yeah, killing that train of thought immediately while he's still on the phone with Steve's best friend.

“Yeah, sure. I'll head over this afternoon.”

“Perfect. Thanks, Eddie.”

Eddie can't resist bringing a few things with him to Steve's. He grabs a couple of shirts, soft ones he's worn so much that they nearly have holes in them, and an old sweatshirt that used to belong to Wayne, that Eddie snagged for his own not long after he moved in.

Somehow, Eddie makes himself wait until after lunch before he heads to the Harrington house. He's nervous the entire ride over, only because he doesn't know how this is going to go.

The thing between him and Steve is new, like three-weeks-old new, like only-Robin-knows new. It's a gentle bond built through joking and talking and just spending time together, and it's so, so fragile, at least to Eddie.

Because Eddie's never dated anyone - much less courted an omega before. What if he fucks it up? What if he does something wrong that makes Steve break up with him and their friendship is ruined and Robin fucking kills him for hurting Steve? Fears that he has yet to voice, that he’s shoved to the back of his mind every time he's seen Steve since they started dating.

He tries to shake it off, but he’s still nervous as he rings the bell, announcing his arrival. It’s not long before the door swings open to reveal Steve on the other side. He looks a bit rumpled and sleepy, like he’d been napping before Eddie showed up, but he chirps when he recognizes the man on his doorstep.

Eddie grins as Steve blushes at the involuntary reaction, but doesn't comment on it. “Hey, Stevie. Robin said you needed some stuff for your nest, so I brought you a few things.”

The omega seems to melt a bit at the gesture, and the scent of praline pecans fills the entryway as Steve says “Thanks, Eds. You wanna come in?”

Eddie nods and follows Steve inside, waiting briefly for the younger to lock the door behind them before he guides Eddie up the stairs to his room. He passes the clothing over to Steve, who immediately takes one of the shirts and presses it to his face, inhaling Eddie’s own black tea and clove scent.

“I didn’t realize your heat was so close,” Eddie says as he props his hip against the desk, and Steve glances at him as he begins to add the shirt into his nest.

“Yeah, it’s actually early. I was gonna talk to you about it, but I wasn’t expecting it so soon. I, uh. I think being around you made it happen faster.”

Eddie tamps down the alpha pride that swells at the admission, that Steve’s omega is reacting to him, to his presence. “Well, we can talk about it now, if you want?” he asks instead, and Steve turns to look at him, the second shirt in his hands. He wrings it nervously before turning and tucking it into the walls of the nest, a bit closer to the head of it this time - easier to smell. Eddie’s Alpha preens.

With that task done, Steve takes a breath and turns to face Eddie once again.

“I like you, Eddie. Like a lot. I had some time to get to know you even before we started dating, and I really, really like you. I know we’ve only been together a few weeks, so it feels way too soon to ask you to spend my heat with me - I don’t want you to feel like you have to, just because you’re my alpha - but I’d really love it if you would stay for some of my pre-heat? If you want to, no uh, no pressure or anything.”

His alpha. Steve called Eddie his alpha.

Eddie’s been so worried, so scared of fucking things up that he’s been taking it slow, carefully feeling out each step before moving on to the next. He hadn’t realized that Steve was so far ahead, that he was already so comfortable with claiming Eddie as his after only a few weeks of dating, not even courting yet. And Eddie wonders-

He’d already been half in love when he asked Steve out. Had Steve felt the same?

For the first time since he decided to take that chance, to ask Steve on a date, Eddie’s worries disappear as Steve’s claim instantly quells the alpha’s fears. He crosses the room to stand in front of Steve, and can’t resist reaching out to touch him, one hand settling on Steve’s neck and the other on his waist. The omega hums softly and leans into the contact, and Eddie smiles.

“Stevie, sweetheart, honey. I would love to stay with you; for your pre-heat or your full heat, whatever you want.”

Steve blinks at him, hazel eyes wide with surprise. “You don’t have to, Eddie-”

Eddie shakes his head. “I know, but I want to. Gotta make sure my omega is taken care of during his heat, yeah?”

Hands snap to grab Eddie’s shirt as Steve actually trills, the sound high and delighted before it shifts into a pleased purr. Eddie laughs and tugs Steve into a sweet kiss, and feels the vibrations against his hands, his lips. It quickly peters off into a gentle hum as they just stay there, holding each other and trading soft kisses.

“I am a little disappointed,” Steve says after a moment. “I was kind of hoping we could have our first time before my heat hit.”

Eddie shrugs and rubs his thumb over the twin moles on Steve’s cheek. “I mean, we still have a few days, technically. If you're, you know, feeling up to it. If not, our first time doesn't have to be during your heat. I can help you this time without fucking you.”

“You say that, until I’m in the middle of it, crying and begging you to fuck me, to come in me and knock me up.”

And fuck, the mental image that conjures up. Eddie takes a deep breath to settle his Alpha, to calm the sudden desire that shoots through him at just the thought of it. The scent of sweet praline floods his senses, and he can practically taste the teasing undertone as Steve grins at him, clearly aware of what he’s doing.

Eddie gives a playful growl and goes to respond, but is cut off when Steve's hand shoots up to his face, covering his mouth as he yawns wide. He forgot that Steve had been sleeping when he showed up, and probably hasn’t slept enough to satisfy his instincts.

“Is this what the next few days are gonna be like? Lots of naps?”

“Not just naps. There’s also cramps and snacking,” Steve corrects, and Eddie just shakes his head fondly. He reaches over to grab the sweatshirt and passes it to Steve. “Well, let’s get you back to bed, then. I need to run back home and grab some stuff since I’m staying, and I’ll feel better knowing you’re all cozied up and safe.”

Steve smiles, something soft and gooey, but as he takes the sweatshirt and holds it up, reading the logo on it, it shifts. He looks at Eddie, unimpressed but with a teasing shine in his eyes as he says “Atlanta Braves? Really?”

Eddie just shrugs and doesn’t bother to hide his grin. “Wayne's from Georgia.”

The omega just shakes his head before pulling off the sweater he’s currently wearing and slipping on the navy sweatshirt. “This feels wrong,” he says even as he tucks his nose into the collar, eyes fluttering as he inhales the alpha’s scent, and Eddie chuckles.

“I’m sure the Cubbies will forgive you this one time, sugar.”

Steve rolls his eyes but smiles as he climbs into the nest, and Eddie watches as he bundles himself up in the soft blankets. He looks so fucking cozy, and the alpha can’t resist leaning down to press a kiss to Steve’s forehead. “I'll be back soon, okay?” he says, earning a soft chirp from the sleepy omega.

It only takes Eddie about half an hour to collect what he needs and get back to the Harrington house, and Steve is still asleep when he makes his way back into the bedroom. He toes off his shoes and shakes the omega gently, trying to wake him as carefully as possible.

“Stevie?” he says and gets a soft grumble in response. Eddie huffs a laugh and tries again. “Baby, I’m not gonna get in your nest without permission. You gotta invite me in, sweetheart.”

Some part of Steve’s sleepy mind must recognize what Eddie’s asking, because a hand appears from the mess of blankets to grab Eddie’s shirt and tugs him closer. The alpha smiles and lets himself be pulled forward until he’s laying with Steve, their arms wrapped around each other and Steve’s face pressed into his neck.

Eddie’s purr rumbles low in his chest as he starts to doze, and the room is flooded with the scent of spiced pecans and home.

#cj i hope you like this!!#we've talked before about pre-heat fluff and i just wanted to give you some of that #i did try to make it spicy but they were not cooperating 😔#so fluff it is #steddie #steddie fic #steve harrington #eddie munson #steve x eddie #joey writes #omegaverse

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owliellder · 1 year

Text

Loving Takes Time

Leon Kennedy x afab Satyr Hybrid! Reader

MDNI 18+

Trigger Warning for the nature of the content

Description: Leon goes with Chris to just look at hybrids up for adoption, not really expecting to bring such a strange one home.

Warnings: Not proofread, Dub-Con, Unprotected Sex, Major Size Difference and 5-Year Age Difference, Leon is a PERVERT but he's still gentle 🫶

Tags: One-shot, Female Reader uses she/her, No use of y/n, Leon is 5'11", Reader is 4'0", Virgin Reader, Smut, Somnophilia, Picture Taking, Lactation, Fingering, Cunnilingus, Cowgirl Position, Belly Bulge, Dirty Talk, Ass Play

Words: 8.9k

Author's Note: Okay now I know this is a pretty strange/questionable one, but I've had this idea in my pocket for awhile and, once again, this is pure self-indulgence because if I could be ANYTHING in the world I would be a satyr 😭 They're the cutest little scampers!!!

Please forgive me for my transgressions 💔 I honestly felt so guilty writing this even though a lot of these tags reflect me (please don't hate me)

Cross-posted onto AO3

"I'm serious, we're just going to look!"

"Chris, 'just looking' always leads to either you or me getting something." Leon emphasized with hand quotes, giving Chris an incredulous look.

Both men were sitting in Chris' car that was parked in the relatively empty parking lot for the Hybrid Adoption Center. Leon had expressed *once* that he thought having a pet would be fun, but he knew a pet would be hard to manage with his field of work. He'd been partially aware of hybrids, yet he was less than convinced on the idea of having what was essentially a pet person.

"Look, I know. I get it-" "I don't wanna hear it. We're just here to look." Leon cut Chris off, waving his hand dismissively before opening the passenger door. "Even on the off chance I find one that I like, I'm in no way prepared to bring them home." He slid out of the car, Chris following suit. The older man followed Leon around the front of the car, shaking his head with a small chuckle. "Alright, alright.. Whatever you say, ya big grouch."

If Chris hadn't had to make an appointment to see the hybrids, then Leon would've found any excuse not to come. He did try, don't get him wrong, but Chris is notoriously persistent. A worm in his ear.

Once the two had made their way inside the adoption center, Chris confirmed his appointment to visit with the hybrids with a nice old lady who happily greeted them from the front desk. "There's still a couple in the back looking, but I'll let them know their time is up. Give me just a minute-" she quickly stood up and walked out from the front desk and into the back kennels.

Good. A little time to look around. Leon thought to himself with a small hum, moseying around the front room. He carefully looked at the various items; clothes, leashes, collars, bags of food, toys, treats, everything. He had a feeling that he was going to end up with some random puppy hybrid today, so it was worth it to look at all this ahead of time.

After only a few minutes, the old lady returned with the couple, nodding with a smile as they promised to come back once they'd made up their mind. Leon silently wishes Chris would give him the luxury of choice like they had.

"Leon! C'mon, let's go!" Chris happily exclaimed, only to be shushed by the lady. Apparently most of the hybrids are pretty sensitive to the sound as it echoes back in the kennels. At least the older man listened to someone here. "Lead the way." Leon held his hand up, letting Chris walk in front of him through the door to the kennels.

What they walked through were the puppy hybrids first, probably the most popular. And the noisiest. They were super excitable, which was undeniably cute, but at the end of the day Leon wasn't looking for a high-maintenance pet. He needed one with self-sustainability, and preferably one that wouldn't smother him either. The last thing he wants is to feel guilty every morning leaving for work. So a puppy hybrid? Out of the question.

Chris was quietly ooging out over every single hybrid they past, all the way through to the quieter kitty and bunny section. All cute, a cat hybrid seemed to be most aligned with what Leon wanted. None of them really caught his eye, though.

Near the end of their little walkthrough, Leon decided to look through the puppy kennels one last time, furrowing his brow when he noticed an empty kennel in the back. It being empty isn't what confused him, it was the kennel card still hanging on the chainlink fence that did it.

Making his way over, he carefully studied the card. No picture and a pretty vague description was provided. A... goat? They have a goat with the puppies back here? Reading on, he noticed that it said you were twenty-five years old, five years younger than he was. Guess you'd been there at the shelter for awhile too.

You weren't in the main kennel area, though. Probably hiding in the back. It was strange they had you with the puppies, they were so barky, but maybe they had no other place to put you? That's the most reasonable explanation.

Chris noticed Leon looking at the empty kennel with pursed lips, walking up behind him with crossed arms. "Out of everything here, you zero in on the kennel that has nothing in it?" Leon turned to face Chris, responding with a simple "... there's a goat in there" before going back to trying to see through the small square hole at the back of your kennel that led to the employee-only side, hoping to catch a glimpse of you.

"You're joking. A goat?" Chris raised an eyebrow, pushing Leon over to the side a bit so he could read your kennel card as well. "Aren't those for farms or something?"

"Yeah, I thought so too.." Leon hummed, crouching down next to Chris' legs as he continued to try and look through the hole. The old lady from the front desk soon made her way back to tell the two men that their time was almost up, only to find them studying your kennel.

"She's a shy one." She spoke up with a smile, alerting both men of her presence. "Hides when people come through the door, but she is easy to entice with a little snack?" The old lady noticed Leon seemed most interested and decided to bend down as best as she could to hand him a small peppermint candy.

"Okay..." Leon seemed a bit confused yet accepted the peppermint anyways, tossing it in his hand a couple times before slotting it through the fence. It didn't take long for you to appear, poking your head out through the square hole with your nose sniffing away. Perky goat ears and small curled horns, seemed standard enough.

It wasn't until you very cautiously stepped out, eyes on the three standing in front of her kennel that Leon seemed more interested than before. From your hips down you had fur, full blown goat legs that ended with the daintiest little hooves. He noticed your tail once it wagged a couple times at the scent of the peppermint. It made him crack a smile. Now that's interesting!

"Oh wow, she's..." Leon started to speak, his voice quickly trailing off as the suddenness must've started you. "Yes, she's a bit more 'animal' than the rest. The livestock usually are." The old lady seemed to know what he was going to say. It must be confusing to a lot of people.

"Small, too." Chris chimed in, arms still crossed as he looked down at you, watching you crouch low and stretch your arm to reach for the peppermint to avoid getting any closer to the chainlink fence.

"A pygmy goat. Regular goat hybrids tend to be a foot taller, but she's only about 4 feet. Very small little lady." The old lady chuckled softly, watching you scurry back through the hole to hide after successfully grabbing the peppermint. "I can take you into one of our meeting rooms if you'd like to get a better look?"

Before Leon could respond, Chris decided to just accept the offer for him, laughing as he watched the other man's face fall with annoyance. "Oh come on, don't be so sour." Chris firmly grabbed Leon's arm and hoisted him up from his crouched position before nudging his forward. "Lead the way, miss."

The colorfully painted walls of the meeting room were rather welcoming as both men wandered in. On the back wall sat a bench with some old cushions and blankets sitting on the seat. Chris took the liberty to sit down while Leon leaned against the wall next to it, grumbling quiet nonsense to himself.

The old lady excused herself to go retrieve you from your kennel, leaving Chris to poke fun at Leon for his sudden interest for only a moment before she returned with you on a lead.

She was right, you were small. "Alright, sugar, easy now." You were also very obviously nervous, hiding behind the elder woman's legs as she walked into the room with you. She gently pet the top of your head, fixing a few strands of your hair that got stuck wrapped around your tiny horns. "Just remember to move slow with her and you'll have the perfect little lap pet."

The old lady's voice was soft as she slowly made her way over to Chris, handing him the end of your lead as he nodded in agreement. You tried to follow the lady as she walked back out of the room only to be stopped by the lead, causing you to start whining with your ears pinned to the sides of your head as you stared at the now closed door.

"Hey," Leon was crouched down again, clicking his tongue to try and get your attention, "hey it's okay, she'll be back soon." You whipped your head around to look at him, freezing where you stood as you watched Leon reach a hand out. You sniffed the air a bit, staring both men down, almost as if you were sizing them up.

"Pretty cute, huh Leon?" Chris whispered. He was really laying it on thick and as much as Leon hated to admit it, you were growing on him. "Here, sit down on the bench and I'll give you her leash." As he spoke, Chris scooted to the side more to make room for the other man.

After carefully standing up to not scare you, he sat down on the bench next to Chris, taking the loop on the end of the lead as it was offered to him. Leon was a little nervous only because you were nervous, what if you bite?

It took some time, but with a lot of gentle coaxing and few extra peppermints provided by the old lady, you were soon standing in front of Leon's legs, chin resting on his knees as he scratched behind your left ear. During that time Leon had introduced himself to you, and though you didn't respond, your ears perking up to listen was enough confirmation that you heard him.

"You're breaking." Leon frowned at Chris' remark, eyes locked on your relaxed face. He could just barely see your fluffy tail wagging, moving his hand around to lift your head up as to scratch underneath your chin. The second he heard that happy little chitter from the back of your throat he knew it was over.

Chris gave a small 'oh' when he noticed Leon's smile forming. "You broke." The younger man only sighed in response, now using both hands to massage your furry ears. "I'll go get that lady." You jumped slightly when Chris suddenly stood, but Leon was quick to distract you with another peppermint.

The paperwork to take you home was relatively simple, thankfully. Leon took every recommendation from the elder lady about what items to buy, along with taking the blanket that was kept in your kennel. Something that already smelled like you would help ease you into a new home, or so he was told.

You were surprisingly easy on the ride home, both men staying quiet with the radio playing low just in case you panicked. Chris helped Leon set up all your stuff before bringing you inside, leading you over to where your blanket was laid out in the medium sized cage now set up in the corner of Leon's living room. You stayed in the cage as the men said their goodbyes, now left alone with Leon.

He gave you time to settle, only choosing to react to you once he noticed you quietly crawl out from the cage and begin surveying the living room from where he sat on the couch. "Hey there, little lamb."

His voice startled you slightly, making eye contact with him for a brief moment before offering him a shy smile. "Hi.." You whispered back in response, looking around as you slowly stepped over to Leon. He hadn't heard you speak until now, so this hopefully meant you were growing more relaxed around him.

"Quite the change." Leon hummed and you only nodded, looking off to the side as you rested your chin on one of his knees again. "It's a lot quieter here though, yeah?"

"Yeah..." Your voice was so sweet, even if just a whisper right now.

"Good." Leon cooed, reaching down to rub your ears. "How ya feeling?"

You shrugged, eyes still darting around the room even as they became lidded with the gentle caresses on your ears.

"What about a bath?" You looked back up into his eyes at the suggestion, eyebrows raising up. It had been awhile since you were given a bath..

Your reaction must've been enough as it prompted Leon to stand up, bending down a bit to hold onto your hand before leading you up the stairs and to the bathroom attached to his bedroom.

Luckily most of his living room and the bedrooms were carpeted, so he didn't have to worry about you slipping there. The tiled kitchen and bathrooms were another story as you immediately slipped with a yipe once stepping into the bathroom, furry legs shaking as you held yourself still as best as you could in an awkward half-splits position.

The man lifted your arm up above your head by your hand, lifting you up a bit in the process so you could reach the rug in front of the bathtub without anymore risk. "I gotcha, kiddo. Don't panic."

He kept one hand on the top of your head as a single to stay where you were while he turned the bathtub faucet on, plugging the drain once the water was warm enough. He was directed to buy a specific soap for you, so he used that to create some bubbles in the bath in hopes of giving you a little bit of fun.

You were carefully lifted up and into the water as soon as it was ready and the faucet was turned off, sighing softly at the warmth. You were always so anxious in the shelter which meant your muscles were always stiff. This was a nice change of pace.

"Wash off that shelter stink." Leon chuckled when you closed your eyes, sitting down on his legs before grabbing an empty cup to scoop and pour the soapy water over your head.

The attention you were receiving was unfamiliar, but definitely not unwelcome. His fingernails scratching your scalp was heavenly and you couldn't help but coo at the feeling.

"That good?" The man asked, smiling as you tilted your head towards his hands whenever he moved them.

"Mhm." You tilted your head back as he massaged his hands down your neck, using a clean washrag that he grabbed from underneath the sink not too long ago. He was able to get away with washing your whole upper body before asking you to stand up, offering his hand to you to use for balance. Along with the soap he bought for you, he also got a short bristled comb for your fur.

He kept his hand up for you, countering your pressure with a bit of his own so you felt steady while he began to lightly comb out the fur that started below your navel. What was once a dingy grey was now the cutest white fur on your belly and on the inside of your thighs, it was even on your butt and the underside of your tail.

While combing out your soggy fur, Leon had started to grow curious. All the other hybrids were just naked humans with a few specific animalistic features, yet your entire lower body was just goat.

He slowly spun you around at some point to comb your backside. "I need both my hands for this, love. Can you put your hands on the edge of the tub for me?"

You were reluctant to let go of his hand but agreed anyways, shakily placing your hands on the slippery white porcelain. It bent you over just slightly, which is what Leon needed to reach the rest of everything.

Unbeknownst to both you and Leon, your tail was quite sensitive at the base. He paused at the small gasp you let out when he grabbed your tail, giving you a worried look. "Are you okay? Did that hurt?"

"Uh-.. oh uh.. no it didn't hurt..." You weren't quite sure how to respond. That was a new feeling. It didn't hurt, though, that you knew.

Leon rationalized the reaction as him just startling you with the sudden grab. But then your tail wiggled faintly in his grasp as he slowly began to comb out your fur again, only leading him to wonder further.

He'd get the fur on the lower end of your legs last since you had to balance more for that, but right now he needed to worry about the thick patch of fur covering your genitals. Your little puckered hole was already on display for him which definitely didn't have him half-hard in his jeans since he had to lift your tail to comb the fur around it and you didn't seem too bothered by the exposure.

He let go of your tail, which stayed up, to pour another cup of water over your furry backside after noticing you begin to shiver, moving his hands lower to part the fur covering your pussy so he could comb that out as well. Unfortunately was a bit more tangled down there, probably due to the movement of your legs, and with it being denser fur, Leon had to take extra precaution when getting the tangles out.

He wasn't complaining though, your cute little pussy was definite eye-candy to the man. The bath was an easy excuse to touch it a bit, running the tip of his index finger through your folds a couple times before refocusing on detangling the fur around it. The little gasp you made mimicked the one you let out when he grabbed your tail. Interesting.

"Mr- uh.. Mr. Kennedy?" His eyes slowly drifted up to your face, noticing you were looking back at him from over your shoulder. "Don't worry, we're almost done, okay? You were pretty tangled down here, didn't wanna hurt ya."

Leon's words eased you some, finally letting your tail rest against your ass again as he moved down to the backs of your thighs. Not wanting to keep you in the cooling water much longer, the man hurried the rest of the bath up before rising you off with a detachable shower head.

It was amazing to him just how much water you held onto. He had to squeeze out the entirely of your legs, your tail, even your ears before he could wring out your hair. Seeing your perky nipples made it worth his while, however.

By now you were a shivering mess wrapped in two towels, standing on the rug as you would for sure slip on the tile when you were dripping water like this. Leon was so nice to you, setting up a small desktop space heater he had bought some years ago for you in front of your cage. He even carried you downstairs to the carpet.

The second the towels were taken from you, you immediately began to shake off the water, causing Leon to laugh.

"Hey, hey!" He held up the towels in front of his body as protection from your misting, laugh falling to a giggle when your tail vigorously wiggled. "Didn't know I took home a sprinkler system."

"Sorry-" You were still shaking off when you started to speak, so you waiting until you were done to continue talking. "Sorry, Mr. Kennedy. It's habit."

He folded the towel and draped it over his arm before patting your head. "Nah don't worry about it, sugar."

You leaned up into his touch, letting out a giggle of your own as he hooked a finger around the curl of your horn to move your head side to side playfully.

It was, again, surprising just how quickly you warmed up to the man. After you were mostly dried off from sitting in front of the small space heater, you started to follow Leon around as he moved about the house. Though you stopped on the edge of the carpet whenever he walked into the kitchen, he'll have to get some rugs for you, you were close behind him everywhere else.

Leon took a week off of work to allow you time to fully get to know your surroundings. He could more than afford the time off and it was nice to have a mini vacation away from work. Besides, you were fun to watch.

Just like he'd wanted, you were mostly self-sustainable, able to get your own food and go to the bathroom once he added rugs to tiled areas. He also bought a couple step-stools that had rails you could hold onto, one placed in the kitchen so you could move it about and the other in the master bathroom for you to reach the sink.

Leon did also buy a couple indoor cameras to keep an eye on you when he went back to work. You quickly learned where they were so you could ask him questions throughout the day seeing as he could talk through the camera back to you. You always made sure to ask if you could have a specific snack to eat, sometimes even telling him where you were going in the house if there wasn't a camera able to see you.

A few months in had lead to a very comfortable routine between you two; Leon would leave before you were awake, come home around 6-7pm, you would come running from wherever you were to hug his waist, he would make dinner while you two talked, the both of you would sit on the couch and watch a movie if it was a day he didn't come home exhausted, you and him would go to bed, and the cycle would repeat. At some point you even started sleeping in his bed with him, curling up towards the foot end of the bed next to his legs.

The weekends were spent going on walks to exercise your legs. You liked climbing and jumping around on big rocks, so hiking was always a good option. He also spent extra time cuddling you, massaging your little legs, playing with the split in your hooves, even experimenting with a gentle tug on your tail every so often. You always got so embarrassed with his teasing, it made him laugh.

When Leon had to leave for a mission, he would have Chris come and stay at his place. You didn't like this at first, it threw off the delicate balance between you and Leon, but just like with everything else, you settled after the first couple times he had to go on a mission. You were never told the nature of his missions, he didn't want you to worry or be upset if he never came back. This also kept you decently happy when he was away.

You really bonded with Leon and he bonded with you. How could he not? You were adorable.

As previously mentioned, you would always come running to greet him when he got home from work, which is why he was a little off-put not seeing you after getting home one day. It was the middle of the week and it had been a normal working day. You seemed alright on the cameras a few hours ago, having told him before he went on lunch that you were going to take a nap on his bed. It's been longer than your normal naps, so he was hoping you didn't get stuck somewhere and hurt yourself.

"I'm home, little lamb! Where are ya?" Leon yelled out, pausing to listen for any sign of movement before making his way back to his bedroom, but not before giving the guest bathroom and bedroom a quick glance on the way.

You had obviously been on his bed, given the sheets were all messed up, but where the hell were you?

It wasn't until he strode into his bathroom that he noticed his tall laundry basket was tipped over, some clothes pushed out the top which held the attached lid open a crack. He knelt down on one knee and knocked on the lid with his knuckle before lifting the lid up, eyes landing on you curled up in the bottom. Your eyes met his and you frowned, ears lowered as you turned your eyes down.

"Hey kiddo, what're ya doing in there?" Leon made sure his voice was anything but accusatory. "Did you get stuck?"

He glanced up a bit to make sure your horn wasn't hooked in one of the holes, and it wasn't.

"No..." You muttered, pulling one of his dirty shirts over your face. Oh now you were hiding from him, that won't do.

"C'mon, out with ya." His voice was gravelly as he lifted the lid up all the way and reached in, putting his hands under your armpits to pull you out along with the shirt you kept in front of your face. He held you so you were sitting on his forearm snuggled up to his stomach, reaching a hand up to pull the shirt away from you before tucking his other arm underneath your fluffy butt.

The position had you at eye level with him. He noticed your face was a little flushed, so he reached a hand back and pressed the back of it to your forehead. You didn't have a fever, that's good at least.

"You gonna tell me what's up?" Leon asked, scoffing playfully when you shook your head no and covered your face with your arms. "You'll be mad at me."

Leon's eyebrows furrowed with concern, carefully peeling your arms away from your face so you could look at him. "I would never get mad at you. You know that." He whispered, moving his hand around to support your back, thumbing rubbing soothingly at your skin.

It was true, he'd never gotten mad at you before. But this was different, you felt different. You were acting different and you didn't know why. You couldn't explain to him what was wrong even if you wanted to.

The dejected look that fell across your face as you averted your gaze was telling enough. He couldn't drag that information out of you, but he could hopefully make you feel better in the meantime.

Leon smiled and leaned forward to kiss your forehead, beginning the short walk back to the bed as he muttered against your skin. "Ya hungry? You've been back here awhile.."

He felt you nod, smiling as he gently placed you down on the bed. "Lay down and I'll bring you a snack. I'll even lay with you."

Your tummy fluttered at the idea of Leon cuddling with you, so you nodded again, much more enthusiastically this time. Your tail was wagging when he returned, quickly moving to press up to his side when he sat down next to you on the bed and handed you a sliced apple and some water.

It was little things like the laundry that Leon began to notice more and more over the next couple weeks. He would come home and have to go on what was essentially a hunt to find you because your cute ass was always hiding somewhere different; under his bed, in his closet, in the laundry basket again, and even right by the front door, somehow managing to pull down a couple of his jackets from the coat rack and make a little nest to curl up in.

Leon asked Chris about it one day at work while watching you pace around in the living room from one of the cameras, worried there was some lack of enrichment that he was somehow failing to provide. You were so happy before, but now you were right back to being the same anxious mess he saw at the adoption center all those months ago.

"You should call and ask that lady. She might know something." Chris shrugged, taking a sip from a can of soda. "I don't know much about goat hybrids, let alone females hybrids." He huffed out through his nose with a smile, but Leon only tightened his lips in response. Chris did have a point though, it could be something to do with your specific breed and gender.

Once Leon got home, he quickly found you with some of his dirty clothes under the bed again before giving the old lady at the adoption center at the call. The one thought he was avoiding was the possibility of you being sick to some degree. You were part prey animal, and those types of animals tended to hide their sickness. He learned this from trying to research what was wrong with you himself.

He stepped out of the bedroom and closed the door behind himself. You would sometimes skitter off to hide somewhere else after he'd already found you once that day, so he didn't want you disappearing while he was on the phone.

It was hard for Leon to explain over the phone what you'd been doing, but once he mentioned you making a nest out of his jackets did the lady know what the problem was. You were going into heat soon.

"Heat? The hell is that?" He scratched the side of his face, turning to look at the bedroom door to make sure it was still closed. Having that whole ordeal explained to him had him running a slow hand down the entirety of his face. Guess they can kick in for farm hybrids anywhere between 21-28 years old.

Of course. You were a girl. He really should've known all this when he first got you.

He had to help you manage it too. From what the lady said, you'd be a complete mess soon since you'd already been acting strange like that for a couple weeks now.

However, Leon wasn't completely opposed to the idea of *helping* you. In fact, he was a bit excited at the prospect of getting to explore you a bit more intimately. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he liked you. Liked you. Always so cute bounding around the house, snuggling up to him at night, giving him little pecks on his cheek when he picked you up. You were so hard to resist.

Not to mention that he couldn't keep his hands from straying whenever he helped you bathe. He would spread your pussy lips apart and use the excuse of making sure everything was clean to get a better view. Your little ass wasn't any safer with his thumb rubbing circles on it whenever he had to hold your tail up. You made the most precious noises when he touched you.

Alright, he could do this. Helping you with your heat seemed easy enough. All he needed to do was just take a week or two off of work again to tend to your needs. He definitely wasn't going to turn down getting to spend extra time with you. His little lamb.

About three days into his time off from work was when your heat fully started to kick in. You woke up in the middle of the panting, sweating, and restless, helping yourself out of the bed and down the stairs into the kitchen to drink some water. It helped for a short period, but when you woke up again, you were laying in a small wet puddle on the bed.

You started to cry because you thought you'd wet yourself, waking Leon in the process. He seemed confused, trying to make out what you were babbling about until you pulled the blankets back. Seeing the puddle made you cry more and Leon had to reassure you multiple times that everything was alright.

He sat up with his back up against the headboard and pulled you onto his lap, letting you weep into his bare chest. You were clearly a bit more emotional than usual, but Leon didn't mind, especially when he could feel a small wet spot forming on his boxers from you. He just whispered sweet nothings to you while rubbing your back, silently relishing in the feeling of your wet little cunt pressing on him.

Leon kept you up on his chest even once you calmed down, explaining your predicament the same way to you as the old lady had explained to him over the phone, faintly ghosting his fingers over the wet fur surrounding your crotch all the while.

He occasionally moved his hand around to pet and squeeze your fluffy ass cheeks, rub his thumb over your asshole again, or to stroke your tail, gauging your reactions. More emotional, even more sensitive.

You sighed and gasped at every touch, eyes having closed at some point during his explanation. Leon seemed to understand what was going on with you, so you didn't see much reason to worry. He'd make sure you were okay.

"You just need a little extra loving this week. That seem okay?" Leon hummed when you nodded, bringing his hand back down to part the fur covering your pussy. "Good. Who doesn't want some extra love, right?"

You jolted a bit when his index finger began to run up and down through your dripping folds, only relaxing again once his other hand came up to rub between your shoulder blades. "Easy, girl, easy..."

Your legs naturally parted further for him, tail staying lifted. "That feel good, little lamb?" Leon whispered, adding his middle finger to continue stroking your folds when you gave him a small moan in response.

"Yeah it does.. yeah..." A groan rumbled deep in Leon's chest, rubbing the tips of his fingers over your slit as slick consistently leaked from it. It had already started to drip down past your clit, saturating the fur on your stomach before eventually dripping onto his boxers, right above his bulge. It was wet from before, but feeling the new spot form was driving him insane.

Despite not being able to see it, the man spread your outer lips apart. He groaned when you whined and lifted your hips slightly, eyebrows furrowing again when your tail wagged a couple times.

"You like that?" Leon breathed out a low chuckle as he moved his fingers down to stroke your wet clit. "Like when Mr. Kennedy plays with you like this?"

"I-oh-.. yes, sir.." Leon paused to pull you up a bit further on his chest to kiss you, fingers quickly returning to massage your clit. You didn't quite know how to kiss back, so you just did your best to follow his lead. The kisses on your lips made you feel warmer than you already were.

His free hand had moved down your back to your tail, grabbing it firmly to so he could lightly tug on it. Your moans only increased in volume at that, panting with your lips still pressed on his. You were steadily leaking now, the combined feeling of his fingers on your clit while he stroked your tail causing you to gush. His fingers and the top of his palm were completely drenched.

"Such a good girl~..." Leon sighed, moving his fingers off your clit so he could pet the fur around your pussy. "You're so soft here, baby.."

You'd been blushing already, but his sweet words were only making it worse. Your pussy was aching now, hips jerking back subconsciously for his touch.

"Hmm? What is it, sugar?" He knew what you wanted, he just wanted to hear your delicate voice again. "P-please-.. keep playing with me, Mr. Kennedy..."

Oh, you were just darling. "Atta girl, using your big girl words.." Leon smirked, moving his index and middle fingers back to rub your clit. Your head was growing foggy now, face buried in the juncture of his neck to breathe in his scent. It was so strong there, musky and warm, reminded you of cinnamon.

He dipped his middle finger into your wet hole down to the first knuckle accompanied by a particularly rough tug to your tail, pulling a squeal from you in the process.

"I know, oh, I know~..." Leon cooed quietly into your right ear. His hot breath tickled, making your ear flick forward. "You're so tight, baby.. Squeezing around my big finger..."

He slowly sunk his finger into you further. Your legs were trembling on either side of his waist, small hands grasping onto his pecs as breathy moans and whimpers poured from your lips. Once he curled his finger, you came, whole body shaking as you let out a cry.

Such a pretty sight for Leon, watching you drool onto his chest, all dumb from just a finger. He could get used to this.

With lots of encouraging words and caresses to your tail he was eventually able to get two fingers into you, pumping them in and out of you, curling them every so often just to hear you whine for him.

The fullness was so new to you, and with the man filling your senses combined with the sensitivity your heat provided, it wasn't long before you were clamping down on his fingers again, cumming for the second time with a weak gasp that fell into whimpering and panting.

"There ya go.. easy, girl.." Leon moved his hand away from your tail to push your ear closer to his lips, kissing the soft inside as he whispered into it. He carefully removed his fingers from you to bring into his mouth, swapping his hands so the other was now flat on your lower back. Your slick tasted so sweet, like honey on his tongue. He'll be tasting more of that later.

He planted one last kiss to your lips before shifting down on the bed so he could lay back down, arms tightly wrapped around you as he rolled onto his side.

You fell asleep in no time, the sound of Leon's steady heartbeat soothing your fast one back to a regular pace.

You must've been feeling the effects of your heat come the next morning, considering you slept until the late afternoon. You just seemed more fatigued, totally understandable.

Before you'd woken up, Leon managed to do a bit more research of his own. He wanted to stay informed on how this whole heat thing would go, taking note of the various effects; hypersensitivity to touch and sound, fatigue, cravings, increased libido, lactation?, clinginess, flushed skin, and that excessive slick would last throughout the whole heat. Everything else would come and go in waves, apparently.

He was sitting on the couch, phone in his hands when you emerged from the bedroom, rubbing at your eyes with a small yawn. Without saying a word, you walked over and stood in front of his legs up. Leon could only smile as you crawled up onto his lap, pushing yourself underneath his arms.

You had your back flush against him, leaning your head back so it was resting between his pecs. Thankfully your horns were short enough that they didn't poke him.

Your furry legs were parted around his, arms hanging loosely at your sides with your tail tucked beneath your butt. There, you fell asleep again.

The man placed one hand on your leg to play with your soft fur, turning his attention back to his phone as he continued to read. Soon he was looking down at you, an idea in mind. He shook your leg a bit to see if you would wake up and you didn't even stir. Fantastic.

Smirking, Leon opened the camera on his phone and flipped it so it was front-facing. He'd gotten pictures of you in the past, usually more candid photos of you cuddling with him, but nothing like this.

He moved his hand from your leg to your crotch, parting the fur with his fingers to reveal your still dripping pussy. It was always nice to look at the cute pictures he'd gotten of you when he's at work or on a mission, so what's the harm in getting just a few more? He already knew he'd be missing this when he had to return to work.

Leon made sure to get the wet spot you were forming on his sweatpants in view, taking some pictures with and without his fingers caressing your glistening folds. He brought the phone up to give the photos a good look, smirk widening before bringing it back down to focus more on your breasts.

Lactation. They did seem a bit more pronounced than usual. Taking a simple video wouldn't hurt, right?

Once pressing record, Leon rubbed his free hand across your chest, gently massaging one breast at a time. He circled his index finger around one of your nipples before giving it an experimental pinch, his breath hitching when couple droplets of milk beaded from it. Oh wow.

He massaged the one breast a bit more firmly before moving to pinch your nipple again, groaning to himself as a few more droplets beaded and collected on his thumb.

Leon placed the phone down after ending the recording, hurriedly placing both hands on your breasts as he began to massage both of them a bit more firmly. Pinching both your nipples made you whimper in your sleep, though he barely registered it when his eyes were flooded with the sight of more milk droplets falling onto his fingers.

Jesus, thats amazing. He swallowed dryly, only continuing for a minute more until deciding to give your probably very sensitive breasts a break and let you sleep.

You woke up when Leon had to move you off of his lap, whining as you watched him stand up from the couch. "I'll be right back, little lamb." He shushed you, placing you on your side with your head on one of the plush decorative pillows. He needed to take care of his hard-on before he exploded and he can't really do that with your hot and wet little cunt pressing right on it.

The rest of the day was spent with Leon holding you up with one arm while he did chores, your head on his shoulder. You whined and complained and cried until he picked you up, wanting to stay as close as possible to the man.

Something about your heat must kick in at night because you were more awake after the sun had set, clinging to Leon like your life depended on it. You didn't understand, but something in you ached, you *needed* him. It was hard convey, so you just went back to whining and complaining as he got ready for bed.

"Baby, you gotta let me brush my teeth I-" he was cut off when you suddenly fondled him through his sweatpants. His scent was strong down here, you really liked it. The man spit into the sink before reaching down to place a firm hand atop your head. "Hey hey, careful with the equipment."

You giggled and wrapped your arms around his waist, the side of your face squished against his stomach with your tail wagging happily. He hummed and finished brushing his teeth. "Alright, go and hop in bed. Go on." He shooed you away with a playful grin, giving your ass a gentle smack when you turned to trot off.

Reaching around, you rubbed over the spot where he smacked your butt, looking over your shoulder at him for a brief moment. It made your tummy flutter like before.

You crawled into the bed and watched the bathroom door until Leon walked out, smile immediately returning as he walked over to his side of the bed. He got in next to you and sighed, laying with his arms behind his head. His eyes were closed but he could just tell you were leaning over him.

"What's up, love?" Leon hummed, peaking one eye open to look up at you. You weren't tired, you were achey. You can't sleep when you were achey. "D'ya need somethin'?"

You thought for a moment before nodding. "Yes-.. yeah.."

"Whaddya need then? You know how to use your words." Leon closed the one eye, a smug smirk tugging at the corner of his lips as he felt you move to sit on his chest.

"Will you-... uh.. will you play with me again, Mr. Kennedy?" He could feel your tail wagging, soft white fur rubbing side to side across his skin.

He raised an eyebrow, yet his eyes remained closed. "Ask nicely, sugar."

You groaned, eyebrows furrowing with frustration. You wanted him to look at you but his eyes were closed, now he was making you repeat yourself. So mean. "Please, Mr. Kennedy..."

"Please what?" Leon's laugh only frustrated you more, tears threatening to spill from your eyes as you struggled to think. "Please play with me!"

Noticing your shaky tone, Leon opened one eye again, smirk falling to a kind smile. "Okay, alright, don't get your panties in a bunch."

"...my what?" You sniffled, blinking away your tears as he sat up onto his elbows. "Don't worry about it. Can you hop off for just a second, sweets?"

You nodded and slid off to the right, watching him shimmy off his sweatpants, left fully naked with a semi. He rolled onto his side and moved closer to you, pressing his hand to your chest to gently guide you to lay down.

"I'll play with ya real nice.." He grunted, watching your legs part for him as he slotted his head between them. He was craving the taste of that honey-sweet slick on his tongue, and after placing his left hand around the inside of your thigh, right hand spreading you open, he dove in.

Not wanting to waste a single second, he began to greedily lap at your folds, moaning in tandem with you as he swallowed every drop of slick you were oh so graciously offering to him. Your soft fur tickling his face was the last thing he was thinking about, tongue tracing every perfect inch of your cunt.

Your moans and gasps were music to his ears, chuckling into your cunt as he looked up to your face. So blissed out already. You'd be the death of him, though he'd die a happy man.

Leon wrapped his lips around your clit, swirling his tongue around it as he gently sucked. You were wiggling a lot, you needed to stay still.

Pulling away with a growl, he sat up on his knees and grabbed both your ankles with his hand. He lifted them up so your ass was lifted slightly from the bed before diving back down into your cunt. That was way better.

While his right hand held your legs up, his left hand wandered down to your puckered hole, occasionally dipping the tip of his thumb into it following a few circles around the rim. It was already wet enough from the mixture of your slick and his spit. Plus, it was right there just waiting to be toyed with.

His cock was throbbing for you, desperate to feel your tight, silky walls wrapped around him. He pulled his mouth away from you after a minute with a gravelly laugh, taking a moment to enjoy the sight of you with your legs held up, crossed at the ankles, along with your weeping pussy.

He was smart enough to leave his phone close by on the nightstand, so he was able to reach over and grab it without jostling you too much. This picture was going in his wallet, that's for sure.

"Mr. Kennedyyy..." you whined, weakly attempting to pull your legs from his grasp.

"Relax," Leon tapped the bottom of your hooves with his thumb before slowly letting your legs fall back to the bed. "Mr. Kennedy just wanted to savor the view."

He sat up against the headboard, patting his lap with a smile. It took you a second to recollect yourself enough to crawl onto him, Leon helping you by offering a hand for you to balance with.

"Perfect, riiiight there.." He sat you just right so his dick settled into the part in your fur that he made, then placing his hands on the point of your hips to begin leisurely grinding you down on him. The wet shlick from his dick gliding through your folds was absolutely divine. He had to keep himself from plunging into you.

"Pl-ease, sir..." you brokenly whined as his tip caught your clit, causing you to jerk your hips forward.

"No need to beg, my lamb. You'll get just what you need.." He moved one hand to grab your bicep to help keep you lifted up as he positioned his cock at your hole. "I'll be so careful, as gentle as I can..."

Your face contorted in a silent cry as he began to push you down onto him, rubbing soothing circles into your hips. "You're doing so well, sugar" He grunted, "my big, strong girl~.."

Leon was so careful, just like he promised you, giving you all the time you needed to adjust and stretch to his length. Your eyes were shut tight, ears pressed back against your head as you whimpered. He made you feel so full, it really did satisfied that achey feeling you had.

"God that's so hot.." The man whispered to himself, grabbing his phone again to take a picture of the obvious bulge in your tummy from his cock, putting his hand next to it for reference. He moved his hand over it and pressed gently, listening to your drawn out whimper.

"Oh I bet you're- fuck- just loving that, huh baby girl?" Leon growled at the feeling of your walls wrapped around him, slick started to leak down his shaft and to his balls.

Wanting to give you a bit more time, he started to grind you on him again. "Gah- noo, too- ngh~.. too full, Mr. Kennedy.."

"Yeah?" Leon purred, swiping his tongue across his bottom lip as he watched your face. "Too full?"

You nodded with a whimpered out "yes", hands clenched in fists at your sides, unsure of where to put them.

"But you're making Mr. Kennedy feel so good, sweetheart.." He barely lifted you up before letting you slide back down to the base, hands hovering close to your waist.

"...yeah..?" You panted, body starting tremble with adrenaline, nipples perked up. "Soooo good.." Leon responded, hunching over to pull one of your nipples into his mouth. Your hands flew to his arms, digging your nails into his skin as you gasped.

The man growled again at the taste of what little milk he got, furrowing his brow as he started to lift you up and down on his cock by holding onto your sides.

Your pussy squelched and dripped around his cock, dragging moan after moan from your beautiful lips. All he could do was focus on bouncing you now, leaning back to watch his cock disappear into your fur-covered cunt each time he dropped you down onto it.

He almost laughed when he saw your ears bouncing with you, but he didn't want to make you feel embarrassed. No, he'll save that for later when he shows Chris the pretty pictures and video he took of you.

Your walls quivered and clenched around him, tip bumping into your cervix, leaving him grunting as he neared his own high. Pulling out was going to be a difficult task, you cradled his cock so well.

He couldn't get you pregnant, right? No, surely not.

"Mr- ah! Mr. Kennedy..!" Your voice warbled, crying out for him as your tensed up with your orgasm.

"Oh shit.. yeah, yeahhhhh~..." Leon let out a strained groan as you tightened around him like a vice, rutting into you a few more times before spilling his load.

Most of it spilled out and around his cock since he continued to bounce you shallowly on it for a few seconds longer.

You breathed heavily as you tried to catch your breath, leaning forward to fall against his chest with a whine.

The two of you sat for awhile, Leon just soaking in the euphoria of it all. Soon, he delicately lifted you off and laid you next to him, brushing a couple stray strands of hair from your sweaty forehead.

He cleaned you off, but not before getting one last picture of your spent cunt dripping with his cum.

The man'll wait until tomorrow morning to get you in the shower with him. For now, he'll just pull you closer to him, pet the back of your hair while you sleep.

There's still about a week more of this heat of yours, then he'll have to head back to work. He'd stay home forever if it meant taking care of you.

Thinking back, that old lady from the adoption center was right. You did end up being the perfect little lap pet.

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lululandd · 1 year

Text

part-time psycho;

pairing: yandere!ghost x f!reader

wordcount: 1,921

warning: mentions of murder, implied cheating, jealousy, possessive behaviour

note: please understand this is fiction, i do not condone any of these behaviours irl (also on ao3)

summary:

He’d be out drinking with his work friends, he said. Won’t drink too much because he had to drive home after, he said. You don’t have to pick him up because he doesn’t know what time he’ll be back, he said. Some of his friends might get super drunk and he might have to drive them home, he said.

Those were the things you remember him saying before he kissed you goodbye.

You were roused from sleep by the sound of the front door slamming, and then people talking. There was an unfamiliar voice besides Simon’s, but you try not to listen too hard. But even your sleep-addled brain noted how odd that there were giggles and chuckles one moment and then… dead silence. Something felt wrong, the little voice in your head—the voice that kills people in horror movies, Simon would say—tells you to go check to see what it is. Groaning a little to shake the lethargy from your bones, you get out of bed and walk towards the stairs, but you only made it halfway down.

A woman was sitting on top of him, on the sofa. The woman Simon introduced you to months ago. His co-worker, his teammate, the person that has taken a bullet or two for him and vice versa. You can’t lie, she intimidated you from the very beginning. Their apparent closeness, their easy banter that you can never follow, the countless inside jokes, the way her hand always landed on him when she thought you weren’t looking, and her features. They were so similar to yours, and you don’t know which is worse, whether you came into his life first, or her.

Drowsiness left you as anxious dread seeps in. They spoke too quietly for you to hear, but you don’t care. Friends don’t sit on each other's laps like that, and certainly not facing one another. Feelings of inadequacy filled your mind as you walked briskly towards the front door and took off, grabbing whatever coat was on the hook. You just had to get out of there, far away from what you had just witnessed. Wiping the tears that blurred your vision, you notice your feet take you to the nearest pub, and you stand outside dumbly for a couple of seconds.

That night was bitterly cold, and you wished you had taken a thicker coat. Putting your hands in your pocket, you realise you have no money. You didn’t take anything but the spare house keys, your phone, and the coat on your way out. The slippers you're wearing are the fuzzy kind meant for indoors. Digging in your pockets, you hoped past you left a couple of quid in there. You found two tenners in the inner pocket, and you shuffled inside to get a drink or two.

The pretty bartender with the large earrings noticed you immediately and asked whether you need help and if she should call the police. Glancing at the mirror behind the bar, you saw you were a complete and utter wreck and she was right to be worried. You made sure to convince her that you were just sad and not some victim of domestic abuse before ordering some shots. She gave you a worried look before grabbing the drinks.

You downed both drinks in quick succession as soon as they arrived. The first burn hadn’t even registered fully before you chased it with another one. Today’s not the day for sane choices and comfort, you need to dull the pain as quickly as you can.

It’s funny, being tipsy. Your brain doesn’t even know when it started, you suddenly are. It doesn’t matter much anymore that Simon had brought a woman that looks much like you home, you can live just fine without him. It’s not like he’s the best boyfriend anyway, he left so often and so long sometimes you don’t feel like lovers. Maybe he had already demoted you from that position long ago and you were too stupid and blind to notice.

It took you a while to realise someone was sitting next to you. Letting out a deep sigh that definitely lasted longer than you thought you could, you didn’t even have to look to know it was him.

“Will you be coming home tonight?”

You’ve heard this tone before. It’s the careful one he uses when he knows you’re upset. The voice that is laced with sympathy and understanding. But this time you don’t know if that question was borne out of malice or legitimate concern, so you ignored him. The glass of water that the pretty barkeep gave to you looks very interesting right now.

The silence stretched for a painful amount of time before it was Simon’s turn to sigh. “Would you believe me if I told you I was drunk and rejected her advances?”

You were bitterly reminded of how she was sitting on his lap earlier. How close her face had been to his. How her hands had been curling on his neck, and his hands probably sitting on her waist. You didn’t see or didn’t remember, but that’s where your mind placed it, the only logical place it could be.

He slid his car keys your way. “Wherever you’re going, at least take the car. Don’t take cabs this late at night.” And when you didn’t react, he left.

You left the pub after your fifth glass of water and a repeated play of Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’—the staff were laughing while you heard one yell out profanities from the backroom—to check on the car. It suspiciously had your wallet, his hoodie, some cash haphazardly thrown on the front seat, and a large knife when you checked the glove box. You looked at your phone and mass texted your friends to see which one of them was awake and kind enough to let you crash at their place for the night.

One of your best friends replied, and you decided to go there immediately. They kindly offered their place for a week or two, but you ended up leaving on the second day. You had calmed down a little, and your friend suggested you talked this out instead of just making more and more assumptions in your head.

“The longer you’re not talking, the more your brain makes shit up.”

You joked that they just wanted you out asap and it ended up in a pillow fight that made you forget about your problems for a little while.

Driving home was the hardest. The scene keeps replaying in your head and your brain racks up the jealousy. How long have they been going behind your back? Is he just dating you because he can’t have her for some reason? Was whatever he was saying true, that he rejected her advances?

You found a parking spot not far from the house because for some reason you didn’t want him to see you coming.

As you opened the front door, you were met by two set of eyes looking bewildered at your direction. Simon’s arms were still on her waist while hers were draped over his shoulders.

Fuck these people.

Fuck him.

You threw Simon’s car keys on the floor and walked out, ignoring his pleas for you to wait and listen.

There was only one place to go now. Your parents. They welcomed you graciously, knowing you had a fight and wanting some space from your boyfriend even when you didn’t tell them at all about what happened. A week went by without any calls or texts from Simon, you decided it was time to go back and pack the fuck out of your stuff to live with your parents for a while. Why should you even think about being with him when he doesn’t even try to apologise. Living with your parents has reminded you what love could–should–be. Waking up next to each other every day, knowing they’re safe and within reach and not whatever it is you have with Simon where he goes missing for months at a time without contact. It was nice waking up to the sight of your parents chattering about, jokingly telling you to not burn the house down as they go to work, reminding you of your teenage years.

Thankfully Simon wasn’t home when you went to pack. It’s decided that you’ll only take your clothes for now and leave the paraphernalia for later. If you’re lucky, his job called while you were away and you can pack in peace.

But you weren’t so lucky.

“You’ve lost weight.” You jumped at the sound of his voice. Simon was a deathly quiet man when he needed to be. You didn’t hear the front door being open and shut or even his footsteps. He looked awful, his face unkempt with bloodshot eyes, his hair mussed, and his clothes dishevelled.

“I’m not wearing makeup so I look shit.” You retorted.

You had to look away as soon as you saw him bristle. He stayed silent for a while, his gaze focused on every facet of your face before going back to staring you down.

“Why are you lying?” His voice came as a quiet snarl, a low gruff that sounded like it hasn’t been used in days.

“Because that’s also what you’re doing.” You threw the meanest look you could towards him, and you’d like to think that’s why he broke eye contact with you. Unable to help yourself, you continued, “Rejecting her advances my ass, Riley.”

Hearing his last name, he proceeded to cut across the room and reached for you, strong arms instantly curling around your waist as he turned you around to face the open armoire. You felt the need to run, to fight back, but what else could you do but submit? The man is 193 centimetres of pure trained muscles that can hold you full nelson for however long it takes him to fuck you in front of the mirror until he feels satisfied, while you run out of breath carrying the neighbour’s fat tabby for two minutes. You are a little rabbit at the mercy of a wolf.

Weak.

Pathetic.

“I'm truly sorry you had to see me when I tried to lure her into a false sense of security.” He pulled you even closer, your back gently bumping against his chest. “If I drove you to where her head is buried will you finally believe me?”

Only half the words registered in your mind, “Simon this isn’t funny.”

Trying to wriggle away awarded you with a hiss and him nuzzling on the crook of your neck.

“Wasn’t joking, love.”

“Simon.” You pleaded desperately. You felt sick. You knew he was a dangerous man, but he had told you, convinced you, that he would never hurt y–

Realisation hits in a revolting wave of nausea. He had never said he wouldn’t hurt others. “Simon?”

“Yes, dear?” He muttered, lips pressing intently against the sensitive parts of your ears.

His hold no longer felt safe, there’s desperation and a dangerous kind of hunger lingering underneath his touch. “D-did you keep a trophy? Of her, I mean.”

You think if he could just show you some sort of proof, you could somehow take it and just start running.

“Why the fuck,” Simon’s voice was suddenly laced with seething fury that you flinched in his arms. “Would I keep trophies of people that caused you pain?” His statement chilled you to your core and you stopped trembling for a moment.

A choked, terrified whisper escaped you. “S-Simon?” Sickness curled your stomach, your knees buckled as you swayed. You don’t know when your Simon had left and replaced with this monster, or whether there was a Simon at all in the first place.

You felt his lips twitch and curl into a smile on the junction of your neck. "Yes, love?"

“Why was that plural?”

#simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #yandere simon ghost riley #yandere!ghost #yandere simon riley #yandere mw2 #scuffed writing #scuffed yandere #call of duty #yandere call of duty

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jtl07 · 2 months

Text

[edit: now on ao3!]

okay here's a cafe au that we're just gonna noodle here ("we" lol - me, it's just me and my silly shenanigans) where basically Ava's going in for coffee and normally, idk, normally Mary is the one to get coffee when they're working together but Ava was being too annoying so Mary sent her out to get coffee and pastries.

when she steps into the cafe Mary had recommended, she immediately is grateful because at the register is one of the most beautiful women Ava's ever seen. sure, she has a strict looking bun and an unreadable expression, but Ava can work with that - especially when she notices how the woman's gaze flickers downward briefly. (Ava sends a thank you to Mary also for doing laundry yesterday)

as Ava steps up to the counter, she notices a nametag on the woman's chest - it's one of those "hi my name is" stickers and it's slightly askew, as if it had been haphazardly slapped on - which seems at odds with the rest of the woman's look (Ava notes that her shirt is actually tucked into her pants) but Ava's not one to judge. "hello, JC," Ava greets, giving the woman her best smile.

the woman frowns. "i'm not -" blinks, stutters, "um, yes, hello, welcome to Cat's Cradle," settles back into her unreadable expression by the end of the sentence. then, she gives Ava a soft smile. "what can i get started for you?"

Ava rattles off the order, throws in a couple extra pastries because why not, gives her name and her payment and stays close to the counter to watch JC make her drinks. she notices a couple other folks working too because wow, how the heck did this cafe employ the prettiest people: a taller guy with a rakish smile wearing a shirt that seems a size too small (let's be real: Ava's not complaining) and a nametag that says Camila; a shorter woman (omg, she's around Ava's height!) with a gleam in her eye and the bounciest curls and a nametag that says Beatrice. their voices are too low for Ava to make out what they're saying but whatever they're talking about prompts JC to shake her head, a bit of a blush on her cheeks, a smile lifting just at the edges of her mouth as she walks over to hand Ava her order.

"thank you," Ava says, hopes it doesn't sound as breathless as she's feeling but whatever, who can blame her when this murmurs so softly and genuinely to come again soon. 'oh i will,' Ava thinks, barely clothing her mouth from spewing the words (she does spew the whole story to Mary who rolls her eyes and chucks a piece of her pastry at Ava's head)

apparently, JC isn't the woman's name.

Ava figures it out the third time she visits (okay it's the same week, sue her - actually please don't, she doesn't get paid enough to afford a lawyer) because the real JC and Camila have been wearing those fancy carved nametag pins but Ms. Badass Barista (she's seen those guns, holy shit) is still using the "hi my name is" sticker.

today, the nametag sticker has Evelyn written in a fine cursive that distracts Ava enough that she fumbles her order. she at least manages a "thanks, Evelyn" as she steps back from the register and she gives herself a high five for not being a complete disaster.

watches 'Evelyn' pause, her hand frozen on the register for a moment before she blinks, a smile blooming small and shy. it makes Ava's breath catch and she's high off the feeling for the rest of the day.

the name written on the nametag changes everyday. sometimes it's more masculine, sometimes it's more androgynous, sometimes written in heavy all-caps, sometimes with doodles of flowers and sparkles decorating the edges. Ava never knows what the expect, and though she doesn't know why the woman's name changes everyday, Ava loves a good game; can understand wanting to try something new - for the heck of it, for the life of it.

so she makes it a point to say the woman's given name at least once or twice whenever she visits, watches her reaction closely. some days she gets a smile, some days a laugh, some days no reaction at all. ('Archibald' had gotten a grimace from the woman, snorting cackles from JC and Camila).

then, one day, Ava steps up to the register and the woman doesn't have a nametag, the shirt bare save for the cafe's logo. Ava tilts her head curiously, notes also the way the woman has clasped her hands in front of her, something small turning between her fingers.

"so," Ava says slowly, spotting JC and Camila not-so-subtly eavesdropping from the back, "what should i call you today?"

the woman clears her throat. "well," she begins, bites momentarily at her bottom lip; it distracts Ava enough that she has to ask her to repeat the question: which one had fit her best?

Ava thinks back to the different names and the different reactions the woman had had to each of them. the way they sounded in her own mouth, rolling off her own tongue. and Ava may be all sorts of desperate for this woman but she also cannot lie. "none of them?" Ava winces, but the woman doesn't seem disappointed at Ava's answer - in fact, she almost looks relieved.

"i ... have a complicated relationship with my real name," the woman says softly, eyeing the item in her hand. "it was chosen appearances, for a legacy i have no intention to uphold. but it's the name i was born with. i thought maybe i just needed a new name. but now i'm not so sure."

Ava smiles as gently as she can. "a name can be something that grows with you. something you can make into your own."

the woman smiles, nods. breathes in deep, then takes the item in her hand - a nametag, Ava realizes - and affixes it onto her chest. stands up straight and waits.

Ava lets her eyes curl around the letters in time with her tongue, tracing the name before setting it free: "Beatrice." the difference is clear, between all the other names and this one. the way Beatrice simultaneously softens and straightens, acceptance - of what is, what will be; of who she is. and Ava thinks -

"it's beautiful." doesn't stop there: "just like you."

a blush rises high on Beatrice's cheeks and on Ava's own but she won't take it back, not now, not when it's true.

"ask her out for dinner!" comes a hissed command from the back and Beatrice sends a glare over her shoulder and Ava giggles, which turn louder when Beatrice finally starts to laugh as well.

'it fits,' Ava thinks as Beatrice makes her order - after hammering out details for their date - watching her move, watching her be herself. 'it's you.'

#writing shenanigans with jt #avatrice #tentative title: by any other name #gosh i really don't have much practice writing meet cutes do i lol

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pearlessance · 2 months

Text

Fishnets & Old Fashioned's

Summary - Tommy Miller wants a big titty goth gf and isn't above begging on his knees to get one.

Pairing - Tommy Miller/goth!bartender!Reader

Warnings: explicit sexual content MDNI, begging, dom/sub undertones, switch!Tommy and switch!Reader, tongue piercings, nipple play, dirty talk, semi-public, hair pulling, vaginal fingering, kneeling, body worship

[crossposted on AO3]

There are very few things in the world better than a nice, strong drink after a long day at work. In fact, it tended to be Tommy Miller’s favorite part of the night. That—and chatting up the prettiest girls in his favorite bar.

Tommy and Joel would often go together after a particularly rough day in the unforgiving Texas heat, and the best bar in town was the best for no reason other than the bartender. Frank was a mean, old bastard—but Christ could he mix a perfect Old Fashioned. It was exactly what Tommy craved after a day like today, where everything went wrong and nothing went right and his calloused hands were marked up with cuts and splinters.

Except Frank, apparently, wasn’t working today. And you stand in his place behind the rickety mahogany bar. A small slip of a girl, nearly half Frank’s size but somehow no less intimidating. In fact, Tommy finds himself even more intimidated by you, with your dyed hair and ripped fishnets beneath a tight, black tank top that sports the white skull of the Misfits logo.

He sits at the bar beside Joel, but his eyes never leave you. Your fingernails are painted black, thumbs sticking through the netting over your hands, and Tommy thinks you look terrifying and captivating and lethal and beautiful all at once. It’s rare to see girls like this in the deep south—girls who embody the shadows as a fashion accessory, girls who look like they may sprout horns or claws at any given moment, girls with siren eyes and fatal lips and switchblade curves.

Tommy Miller will be the first to admit that you scare him. Tommy Miller will also be the first to admit that yeah—he’d definitely let you eat his soul.

You’re mixing a cosmopolitan for some uppity lady at the other end of the bar, and he watches your nimble fingers as you place the lime garnish and slide the glass to the customer. You give her a pretty smile, and Tommy admires the crimson stain on your lips and wonders if it’s possible to seduce a succubus.

When you walk over to them, he can’t help but attempt to immediately create rapport. He doesn’t know the Misfits well but has heard their new song on the radio once. He leans in and asks, “You gotta name, vampire girl?”

You don’t laugh, but it doesn’t deter Tommy in the slightest. You brace your hands against the bar and say, “Depends on who’s askin.’”

“No one special,” he says with a casual shrug. “Just the man of your dreams.”

The cutest snort leaves your nose, and it feels like a win. “Let me guess,” you say, pointing a finger at Tommy. “Old Fashioned. And for you…” For a moment, you narrow your eyes at Joel. “Either Jack and Coke or Johnny Walker on the rocks.”

It’s like witchcraft, he thinks. Because you’re completely right and Tommy’s only ever known Joel to order a Jack and Coke—and suddenly he’s fumbling, trying desperately to turn your attention away from his brother. “How did you do that?”

“Experience,” you say. “You need a double? You look like you need a double.”

He does—but Tommy isn’t sure whether to take your words as an insult or not. He finds that he doesn’t really care either way, because you're looking at him now and he’s grinning like a madman and desire creeps up his spine as you lean over and fill a glass with ice. Tommy’s always been an ass man, swore up and down once he always would be—but holy fuck, he feels himself changing. “A double would be great, darlin’. Maybe I can get a little something on the side, too,” he says with a playful wink.

“Jesus,” Joel huffs.

You set to work on mixing their drinks—Joel’s first, and then Tommy’s. When you set his on the bar, there are two glasses—one that looks like his normal Old Fashioned, and a shot glass filled with a clear liquid. “A little something on the side,” you tell him. “You guess what it is and I won’t charge you for it. Guess wrong and it goes on your tab.”

His first instinct is to say it’s vodka—it’s still like water, completely crystalline. But when he tries to pick it up to smell it, you put a black-painted finger up.

“Nope. That’s cheating.”

“It could be anything,” he argues. “What if it’s gin and I guess vodka?”

The corners of your pretty mouth turn up into a smirk. “Is that your guess? Vodka?”

“No,” he says quickly. “No, no—uhm…,” he stutters. Tommy has no goddamn idea and knows he’ll never be able to guess correctly, but you seem to be enjoying his struggle, so he flounders a bit longer than necessary.

But then you raise the stakes.

You lean forward, layered silver necklaces glittering in front of your god-blessed cleavage, and he has to try not to stare too long. He definitely stares—but not enough to be weird about it. “Guess correctly and I’ll give you my number, casanova.”

It feels a little like gambling. Tommy knows he has a way with women, knows a flash of his dimples and a little southern charm goes a long way around here. But something tells him it’s just not gonna work with you, and he wants you so badly that he’s willing to make himself look like a fool if that’s what it takes. “How long ‘til the offer expires?”

With a glance at an imaginary watch, you say, “I’m here until two. After that…who’s to say?”

Tommy sits there and watches you walk away, watches you give that pretty smile to another man who orders a shot of tequila.

When he takes a sip of his Old Fashioned, he wonders what the fuck is in it because it’s the best goddamn drink he’s ever had. Better than anything Frank has ever made him, better than any he’s gotten at that fancy bar in Houston he went to a year ago—smokey and bitter and strong and delicious.

Joel calls him stupid, says he’s insane for even looking at a girl like you, mentions how much younger you are and how you’re likely just entertaining him for tips. Tommy orders another drink anyway and promises to get a cab home when Joel insists he’s ready to leave.

The crowd dies down the longer the night stretches on, and you keep placing drinks in front of him moments after he finishes the one in his hands. Once, when you have your back turned, Tommy dips the tip of his index finger into the shot glass.

But before he can bring it to his lips, you’re suddenly standing right in front of him. Your hand flits across the bar and encloses around his wrist. You click your tongue and his gaze is transfixed on the flash of metal in your mouth. “Cheaters don’t get prizes,” you tell him.

Tommy watches dazedly as you bring his finger to your lips. “Cheating? I would never do something…” he loses his train of thought, because you suck the tip of his finger into your mouth, cleaning up the clear liquid, and he can feel the metal barbell pierced through your tongue. It sends a jolt of electricity dancing along his spine and he wonders how it would feel against other parts of him. When you pull away slowly, Tommy clears his throat and blinks a few times before he can resume his sentence. “…I’d never do something like that,” he finishes.

Two in the morning approaches way too fast, and while it may seem a little strange that he’s sitting here all alone for so long, pondering over this clear liquid, he finds that he loves watching you move. You’ve got some kind of dark magic about you, he thinks. Men throw themselves at you, some even more so than Tommy, but you never give them half a chance. He watches as you turn those siren eyes on them and take the words right out of their mouths, watches as you state clearly and silently that while their attempts interest you, none of them ever hold you.

He thinks about the phrase god is a woman, but wonders if the devil is, too.

After the last call, Tommy remains the last person in the bar. You graciously allow him to keep seated even as you clean the sticky bar top and turn the chairs upside down and lay them on the tables. You emerge from the back room a little after two-thirty with a black backpack shaped like a bat and a ruby leather jacket. “Last chance, casanova,” you say. “Got a guess yet?”

Tommy licks his lips. “I need a hint.”

“No hints. Time’s up. Guess.”

There’s the faintest smile on your face, and Tommy hopes that even if he guesses wrong you’ll take pity on him and give him something. He gives it his best shot; “Tequila?”

You don’t answer. Instead, you lift the shot glass to your mouth and swallow half of it. You slide it to him, and even though Tommy is more of a dark liquor person, he drinks the remaining liquid and cringes at the taste. “Should’ve followed your gut instinct,” you say.

Tommy hates vodka. Even more so now than he did the morning after prom. Still, he can’t help but laugh. “Oh, come on, darlin’,” he says. “I guessed it once. That’s gotta count for something.”

Through a soft laugh, you ask, “Why are you so determined? It’s just a game.”

Because he’s spent the last three and a half hours fantasizing about what a great lay you would be. Because he knows deep in his bones that you’d do some shit that’d make a man fall in love. Because he wants to unravel your pretty mystery and drink in that hypnotic poison. Because yes—it’s just a game, but Tommy Miller is no fucking loser. “I like to win.”

You let him walk you out, even let him walk you to your car at the back of the dark lot. Don’t you know how dangerous a situation this could be? All alone with him, beneath the cover of night…he isn’t a bad man, but something tells him you wouldn’t mind it even if he was. You say goodnight, and Tommy calls a cab and fights the urge to return to the bar the following night.

He waits until the weekend, like a normal person, despite the fact that he thinks of nothing but dyed hair and silver necklaces and fishnets and tongue piercings until then. He doesn’t carpool with Joel to work Friday morning, because he has every intention of staying at the bar and playing his hand until the early morning hours again.

But before he arrives, Tommy decides to turn his charm up a little. He stops at a local florist on the way and spends probably too much time deciding on which ones you’d like best. He settles on a half dozen roses whose color reminds him of that crimson stain on your lips but stops short at the checkout. Behind the counter, a bouquet of the very same roses is set in a half-empty vase—except the petals are dark and wilted. Tommy knows immediately that those are the ones he needs.

The florist raises her eyebrows in concern when he asks specifically for the dead ones, and Tommy promises he’ll pay full price for them if that’s what it takes.

He walks out of there with a bouquet of dead roses and sits on the same stool at the bar as last week. You’re serving someone across the room, a tray of margaritas in your hand. Tommy admires your long legs, thinks fishnets look even better on your thick thighs than beneath that one Misfits top. Your leather boots shine beneath the low lighting, and he has the sick desire to be crushed beneath them. When you finish serving the group of girls in the booth and turn back to the bar, his heart races in his chest.

You make him nervous, Tommy realizes. He wants to please you, wants you to like his gift, wants you to give him that pretty smile you always give everyone else. But when you set the tray behind the counter you don’t even look up at him before you start mixing another drink. Tommy thinks about how that makes him feel, how dissatisfied he is without your attention. But then you slide an Old Fashioned over the bar and give him something even better. “You miss me or something, casanova?”

Tommy hands you the dead roses and nods. “Like hell, vampire girl. You gonna let me take you out or what?”

You inhale the sickly sweet scent of the flowers, and when you look up at him through those dark lashes all the blood in Tommy’s head rushes straight to his dick. “You don’t wanna go out with a girl like me,” you say.

He folds his arms over one another and leans across the bar. “And why’s that?”

You laugh like God, Tommy thinks. And for a second he’s lost in the sound, the cluster of clinking glass and murmured voices fading into the background of his mind. But then you give him the sweetest, most innocent smile and say, “Because I’ll break your heart.”

“So?” The question is paired with a shrug, and it comes out of his mouth before he can stop it. But Tommy, once again, is more than willing to look like a fool to have you if only for a night. “C’mon, sweetheart. Give an old man a chance. I swear I’ll make it good for you.”

“Would you now?”

He nods once. “The best date you’ll ever have.”

“You don’t even know what I like to do outside of here,” you say. It’s a reasonable concern, and a true one. But he wants to know.

You snort and shake your head when he suggests playfully, “Picnic in the cemetery?”

“Right next to dear old grandma?”

“Be the first woman I ever bring home to meet the family, baby.”

Another man at the end of the bar snaps his fingers in the air to get your attention and Tommy suddenly feels like fighting. He doesn’t, though—and reminds himself when you giggle at someone else’s joke that you’re just working, just doing your job.

Friday’s are slower than Saturdays, it seems, and by midnight the only people left in the bar are you, Tommy, and a guy in a booth half passed out. You emerge from behind the bar with your backpack slung over your shoulder.

“I’m gonna step outside for a minute. Keep me company?”

It’s the most exciting thing he’s heard all night. Tommy jumps to his feet, the bar stool scraping noisily against the sticky floor. He lifts the partition up for you to walk through. “Ladies first.”

The midnight air is cool against his skin, and he notices as he leans against the siding of the bar that you smell like cherries. Cherries with poisoned pits. You pull a little metal box from your backpack, and Tommy watches you pull out a joint, place it between your lips, and light it. He watches you inhale deeply, watches you lick your lips, watches that metal barbell in your mouth like it’ll grant him his salvation.

Tommy can’t help himself. His words spill out of his mouth. “You are so pretty,” he says.

You laugh lightheartedly and turn those siren eyes on him again and he’s weak in the knees. He takes the joint when you offer it. Tommy hasn’t smoked weed since he was twenty-one, but the taste is nice, somehow earthy and fruity at the same time, and your eyes are searing him to the bone. “Thanks,” you say softly. “You’re pretty too.”

He chuckles and passes it back to you. “Well ain't you a peach,” he says. “If I’m so pretty why don’t you let me take you out?”

There’s a moment of hesitation before you answer. And for a split second, Tommy thinks you might actually give in to him. But then you ask, “Have you ever been with a girl like me, casanova?”

No, he hasn’t, and maybe that’s a part of the appeal. All he knows is that he wants to slip his fingers underneath your black tank top and fill up his hands with your softness. He flashes you an award-winning smile and answers, “First time for everything.”

A soft snort leaves your nose. “So, no, then,” you say, the smallest bit of disappointment laced through your tone. You take another long drag from the joint and smoke swirls around your pretty hair. “Probably couldn’t even handle it.”

His mouth falls open in mock astonishment. “And how do you figure that?”

“Call it intuition,” you say. “Or experience.” Tommy takes the joint from between your fingers and his lungs ache as he inhales. Your eyes stay there, right on his mouth, even as he slowly exhales and licks his lips.

It’s right then, as he watches your siren eyes darken, that he knows he’s made a dent in that black heart of yours. Or at the very least, he knows he’s making progress. The thought excites him so much he can’t hold back his smile. “You ain’t ever experienced me though, darlin',” he says.

“You’re persistent,” you say. “I’ll give you that.”

The weed is going straight to his head, creating an airiness in his limbs. Tommy asks playfully, “What’s it gonna take to convince you? A fancy date? Maybe dinner and a movie? Maybe we’ll take a day trip to San Antonio and visit that old school gothic cathedral they have down there. You ever seen it?”

“No,” you say with a shake of your head. “It sounds cool though. I’d probably like it.”

Tommy nudges you with his elbow. “Name the time and place and I’ll take you, vampire girl.”

“That wasn’t a yes,” you tease.

He hangs his head between his shoulders and quickly decides he’s not above a little groveling. “Come on,” he says. “Just one chance. What’s it gonna take? Name your price, baby. Want me to pick up some roadkill and set up a taxidermy date?” You let out a pretty laugh, and it feels like such a victory that he keeps going. “How about I build you a haunted house? A personal one all for you—I work in construction, you know. I could make it real nice. Ghost hunting? There’s an abandoned building just up the road, looks creepy as shit.”

You’re smiling so hard the apples of your cheeks are flushed the sweetest shade of pink. “That old apartment building? You wanna find the ghost of the maintenance man?”

Tommy shrugs. “Hey, if that’s what you wanna do, I’ll grab my wrenches for a summoning circle. Go all out for you,” he says. You shake your head, and he continues. “I mean, anything you want, I’ll do it. Sell my soul? Tell me where to sign. I gotta pen in my back pocket. You wanna drink my blood?” He pats the side of his neck, right above his jugular vein. You let out another laugh, and it brings so much joy to him that Tommy can’t help but laugh with you. “I’m all yours. Swear it. You want me to beg on my knees?”

“Now there’s an idea,” you say through your giggles.

And he knows it’s a joke, knows you’re not serious, and maybe it’s the weed making him feel so carefree and blithe but he fucking does it. In the front of the bar, where anyone could pull in and see him, Tommy Miller drops to his knees in front of you and places his warm, calloused hands on the back of your fishnet covered thighs. Your skin is so soft, he thinks, and he has to fight against the urge to lean forward and bite the supple flesh. Instead, he looks up at you through his lashes, noting the way your laughter stops and your breath stutters. And because his inhibition has been shattered by his need for you, he says lowly, “Is this what you want, sweetheart? You want me to beg for it?”

He watches your tongue dart out to wet your lips and swallows the low groan at the back of his throat. “Maybe,” you say, breathless.

Tommy leans forward, eyes never leaving yours, and presses a wet kiss to the soft flesh of your thigh. He can’t resist his smile when he feels goosebumps break out across your skin, and so he does it again. This time his lips are much greedier, much closer to the inside of your thighs, and he daringly decides to taste you. He can feel the rough edges of your fishnets across the flat of his tongue and wonders how he’s gone thirty years of his life without ever dating a goth girl, wonders how he’ll ever go back. He wonders how the fuck you’re so magnetic, how just existing this close to you makes his cock throb in his jeans.

His mouth nears the edge of your black denim shorts. Tommy expects you to stop him, expects you to laugh or shove him away. But you don’t. You instead slide pointy, black painted fingernails through the thick curls of his hair. Your touch is gentle, and lazy — such a contradiction to his desperate movements.

“Let me take you out,” he says. “I can make you feel so good, sweetheart.” And to prove his point, he does the one thing he’s wanted to this whole time; Tommy Miller softly bites the inside of your thigh, delighting in your sharp inhale. He kisses the sting away, tasting you again, taking your scent deep into his lungs. He wants to devour you, he thinks. He wants you to devour him. “Please,” he pleads, sliding his hands upwards to rest on the decadent curve of your ass.

Your hand in his hair tightens, pulling at the dark curls lightly. “Well, since you asked so nicely,” you say. There’s a too-long pause, and Tommy’s grinning like a hopeful idiot, and then you tilt your head and whisper, “No.”

He lets out an exasperated breath and presses his forehead against your abdomen. He can feel his cheeks warm from embarrassment, but then he looks up at you again and the mischievous glint in your pretty eyes makes the chagrin worth it. “Goddamn, girl,” he says. “You are mean.”

There’s no argument to be had from you, but your siren eyes stay fixed on him even as he stands from his knees and Tommy swears that dark desire still lingers in them. Especially when he straightens to his full height, towering over you, and places both palms against the brick wall of the bar. He cages you in, and you’re trapped, and more than ever before Tommy thinks he sees that demeanor falter. “Just a little bit,” you reply.

“Wanna know somethin’?” He leans his head down, presses a kiss into your hair, and says, “I can take it.”

You take your crimson stained lip between your teeth, biting so hard the matte color smudges the smallest bit. Tommy knows he’s getting to you, he can see it. But you still resist him and say with a shake of your head, “Break’s over.”

He lingers at the bar until close and asks one more time as he walks you to your car if you’ll go out with him. Still, you say no again and as he’s laying in bed that night, Tommy Miller decides to cut his losses. He still wants you — Christ he wants you, but he’s not willing to beg anymore. He’d done all he could do, and he doesn’t want to make your workday miserable. He doesn’t want to be one of those guys.

Still, when he comes back for a drink with Joel after work on Tuesday, he can’t hide his disappointment when he sees Frank standing behind the counter. They talk about you, though, when Joel tells Frank that Tommy ‘has it real bad for that scary chick.’

They go to a different bar that weekend instead of their usual. Tommy still has fun though, and chats up a pretty blonde girl who’s real nice to him. He doesn’t have to beg her on her knees, and it’s a nice change of pace. She even kisses him and moans into his mouth when he grabs a handful of her ass.

Except she’s got glossy pink lips, and her legs are bare beneath her white, pleated skirt, and Tommy wants the feel of fishnets in his hands. He wants the softness of your body, wants the warmth and the curves and the fucking chase. He wants to work for it.

She offers, but Tommy doesn’t go home with her. Instead, he sleeps alone in his bed. And the next night after work, he goes to see his very favorite bartender.

He walks in alone—Joel’s at home, helping Sarah with some art project—and it’s still early in the evening, but the bar is packed full of people. Tommy catches a glimpse of those fishnets that haunt his every thought, and watches you bend over to pick up straw wrappers from one of the booths. His usual seat at the bar is taken by some college kid, so Tommy sits at the very end.

Immediately, he can tell your nerves are shot. It must be overwhelming, he thinks, to be the only person working on a night like tonight. So when you walk past him, smelling of poisoned cherries, he snakes a hand out and wraps his fingers delicately around your wrist. You startle at first, but your whole body deflates when you see him. “Oh, thank God,” you say. “Come help me.”

Tommy doesn’t hesitate. He stands to his feet and lets you tug him back to a room with a padlock on it. While your fidgety fingers work in the code, he asks, “What’s the occasion?”

“Beginning of summer break,” you answer with a sigh. “And word got out about our new buy one get one deal on specialty drinks. It’s been busy all day.” The lock clicks and the door swings open. You flip the light switch and point to one of the three kegs beneath the shelves of sealed liquor bottles. “I can’t lift it,” you say. “And the one out there is empty.”

With a curt nod, he lifts the keg easily — it’s not any heavier than the steel beams he’s been carrying around at work. But he still sees the way your shoulders sag in relief, and tries his damndest to keep his eyes away from your low cut top. It’s a failed attempt, but Tommy thinks it’s gotta count for something. “Where d’you want it?”

The corners of your mouth turn up just slightly, and he can hear the innuendo on the tip of your tongue, but you never say it out loud. You just tilt your head, and Tommy follows you behind the bar to help you replace the empty keg. When he lifts up the partition to let himself through, you stop him with a hand around his bicep. “You’re staying a while, aren’t you?”

It hadn’t been the plan, truthfully. Tommy had just wanted one of those perfect Old Fashioned’s and to resign himself for the night. But your eyes are wide, and your dyed hair is pulled into a disheveled pointy tail, and the fishnets underneath your shorts have sequins on them, and you’re just too goddamn pretty. So he touches the tip of your nose and says, “Anything for you, vampire girl.”

Your answering smile is worth sitting in all this chaotic energy, Tommy thinks. It reaches those bright eyes made up with all that black and silver eyeshadow. “I’ll buy your drinks,” you say. “As payment.”

He nods, even though he pulls up the calculator on his phone to keep track of his drinks tonight and decides to put the cash into the tip jar the moment you’re not looking. Tommy settles into his stool and watches you flit around the room, watches you take orders and make fancy drinks and uncap beers. It’s so busy, but you’re juggling it all impeccably and he finds it admirable.

Somehow, even with the mass of people, you never fail to place another drink in front of him the moment he finishes one. You thank him way too many times, explain that having him here just in case is comforting, and Tommy’s glad to hear it. He keeps his comments and those dirty thoughts to himself, even though they push behind his teeth, sitting on the tip of his tongue. He and his whiskey and orange peel are perfectly content to sit in the corner and eye fuck the bartender, thank you very much.

He has to replace the keg one more time, it’s that busy, but he doesn’t mind it at all. Especially when you bend over to pick up a case of some hoppy IPA before he can grab the keg. There’s next to no room in the closet, and your ass is less than a hand’s width away from his jeans, and he has to close his fucking eyes. He wants to ogle you, goddamn does he want to—but Tommy Miller knows himself. Knows that if he starts looking, he’ll want to touch, and if he starts touching, he’ll want to fuck.

So he clenches his eyes shut tight and follows your orders. The night dies down slowly, and when you make the last call and start taking dishes to the back room, Tommy wipes the peanut shell dust from his fingers and holds his hand out to you.

At first, you stare at it, confused. And then when he points to the white rag in your hands you shake your head and say, “No. That’s like, illegal, isn’t it? Working for free?”

“It’s hardly free, darlin’. Give it here.” He reaches for it again and nearly loses his train of thought when you bite your bottom lip in contemplation.

But then you nod, and hand him the cotton towel, and watch him for just a moment as he turns and starts wiping down the empty tables. He creates a pile of watered down, half empty glasses on the bar, saving you an extra trip, and turns the chairs upside down when he’s finished. Everyone slowly filters out, and when you emerge from the back again the bar is empty save for Tommy and all your tables are bussed and clean.

He’s sitting at the bar, finishing his last drink, and your shoulders sag in relief that the night has finally, finally come to a close. He sits in silence as you count out the register and take the extra cash to the back room. When you start counting out your tips, you split it and push half to Tommy. “Here,” you say. “For all your help. I made more than I planned for, anyway.”

“I didn’t earn those,” he says, pushing it back toward you. “Keep it.” And he means it—he truly, truly does. Tommy would like to think he’d do it for just anyone, which is partially true. That southern charm is deeply rooted in him. But you’re…you, and apart from the fact that he wants to fuck your brains out, Tommy Miller also just straight up likes you. You’re funny, and kind hearted when you’re not putting on that mean-girl front. He can tell you’re good. And it makes him feel good, helping when he can.

But despite all that, he’s still Tommy fucking Miller. And he does, very much, want to fuck you. So he crosses his arms across the bar, leans in close and whispers, “You can repay me another way.”

A cute little snort leaves your nose, and you laugh and shake your head, but you don’t reject him. “Oh, yeah? And how’s that?”

“Guess,” he prods.

You narrow your eyes slightly, and Tommy can see the outline of that silver barbell pushing against the inside of your cheek. “A date?”

His mouth pops open in mock astonishment. “Oh, my my! I thought you’d never ask, sweetheart.” You’re laughing, and Tommy’s cheeks hurt from smiling so hard, and he wonders when the last time was when he felt excited about a date. A date with no promise of sex, just a simple, clean date. He takes your hands in his and presses a kiss to each of your knuckles. “Yes, of course I’ll go on a date with you, vampire girl.”

Your giggles die down, and the silence is comfortable but..heavy. He can tell something’s weighing on you, and he wants nothing more than to grant you ease.

“What is it, baby?”

Those pretty eyes of yours flicker down to his hands, calloused and rough and huge around yours. “Seriously,” you finally say. “Thank you for all your help. I don’t know what I would’ve done without it.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “No big deal,” he says. “Really. Should be a crime to not help a pretty girl in need.”

The corners of your lips turn up into a smirk, and he can see that you’re fighting it, but the joy is so plain on your face. You pull your hands from his and say, “Let me grab my bag. You can walk me to my car.”

Tommy nods once. “Yes ma’am.” He waits patiently for you to grab your things, and after you guys leave and you lock the door he tosses his arm around your shoulders. “You don’t work on Tuesday’s or somethin’?”

You stop in front of your car—black, and shiny, and he can see through the windshield that you have a glittering bat-shaped air freshener hung around the mirror. “You stalking me now, casanova?”

He shakes his head. “No. Just missed you is all,” he confesses. And it’s the truth, the god damn truth, and it’s so fucking weird for him to miss a girl he barely knows but here he is doing it anyway. It makes no sense that he’s had more fun watching you work than he did kissing that blonde girl last weekend. Tommy takes his arm from around your shoulder and gently takes your chin between his fingers instead, forcing you to look up at him. He notices the way your breath hitches, the way your pretty eyes are swallowed up by something dark. “That a crime?”

It’s a stark contrast, how different you look right now. All innocent and starry eyed and not at all mean. You look sweet, Tommy thinks. And he wonders if you taste that way, too. His mouth waters at the thought, and he runs his tongue along his teeth. “No,” you breathe, gaze following the movement. “N-no, just…”

“Just what? Hm?”

Your cheeks burn, and Tommy loves the pinkness against your skin, and he knows you have nothing to say. He knows you’re getting nervous. Eventually you exhale and say, “I don’t…know.”

Tommy likes that he makes you nervous. He likes you like this, all trembling fingers and honeyed eyes and sugary lips. But even more than that, he likes it when you look up at him through your lashes and softly, so fucking softly it’s barely audible, say, “You can kiss me if you want.”

He doesn’t waste a fucking second. He goes easy, at first. He presses his lips to yours firmly and discovers he’s right in his assumption of your saccharine. You taste a little like cherries and a little like moonlight and a little more like home. It reminds him of hot Texas nights under the stars, and being a little too drunk, and he kisses you deeper. Allows his tongue to swipe over your bottom lip, and you reward him with the sexiest little sound.

Your lips part for him, and Tommy is nothing if not a man starved for you, and so he drinks you in. That metal in your mouth feels even better against his tongue than he’d ever imagined. You’re so soft and his hands are on your hips and he can’t stop himself from squeezing the supple flesh, from pulling you closer, from pulling back for a wretched breath of air. “Goddamn, baby,” he grumbles, grinning from ear to ear, and then your mouth is on his neck, and his morals are somewhere on the floor.

Because he wants to do this right. For once in his life, Tommy Miller wants to take a girl out. He wants to do it real classy, too—wants to get to know you, wants to take you out to a nice dinner and tell you how beautiful you look in your fishnets, wants to take you to some uppity museum in San Antonio and show you fancy paintings and that gothic cathedral that made your eyes glitter when he mentioned it.

But your mouth is so hot, and your hands are tangled in the curls at the nape of his neck, clawing at him for reprieve. His heart is beating so fast. He swears it almost stops when the words tumble out of his mouth because he really, really does not want to ruin this. He sounds desperate because he is. “Can I touch you?”

“You are touching me,” you quip. He can feel you smile against his neck, and Tommy’s head falls back in frustration. You know that’s not what he means, but you don’t say no, and so he decides to show you.

Tommy hooks his arms around your thighs, grinning at the little gasp you make, the way you cling to him with all your might. He lays you back against the hood of your car and wraps his hand around your neck, and kisses you like he’ll never get another chance to.

And this time, you let out more than a whine. You’re moaning into his mouth, breathing fast, wrapping your legs around his waist, and pulling him in. It takes him by surprise, and Tommy laughs softly.

“Eager little thing, aren’t you?”

“No,” you immediately say, defiant. “I just know what I want.”

His heart hammers behind his ribcage. He wants to keep hearing your voice, wants to ingrain the sound of it into his skin like a tattoo. “Tell me, baby.”

The low flickering of street lights illuminates your face just enough for him to see the deep, dark flush of your cheeks. So dark it nearly matches that crimson color on your lips.

When he realizes what’s happening, Tommy shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. “Don’t go all shy on me now, vampire girl. After all that talk?” He clicks his tongue and leans in close. His breath is warm against the shell of your ear. “Now, I know you can use the word no. I know you’re real good at it, too. You gonna say it now, baby?”

Despite the way his cock throbs in his jeans, pressed against your thigh, Tommy hopes you know he’s not one of those guys. He won’t do anything you don’t want him to do. He won’t even make you feel guilty for saying no, if that’s what you choose.

And when you open your mouth to speak, he half expects some smart remark to come out. Something like in your dreams or you wish. But your words are breathy and your siren eyes are wide as you whisper, “Touch me.”

His fingers curl around your neck—not squeezing, though. Tommy’s real gentle with you. “I am touching you,” he parrots.

And then you fucking beg. Literally, beg, and Tommy Miller feels like a teenage boy about to cum in his fucking pants at nothing but the word, “Please,” in your mouth.

He inhales a shaky breath, willing himself to calm the fuck down. This isn’t about him, he thinks. This is about you. It’s about showing you just how much he likes you, about proving himself a man worthy enough to touch you. And Tommy’s not sure if he is, not yet anyway, but he knows he can make you feel good.

The metal of your silver necklaces are cool against his palm. He moves his hand down your sternum slowly, over the curve of your breast, and stops just below the end of your cropped shirt. It’s black, of course, and modified—cut to shreds, really, only covering the most intimate parts of you. The fabric is soft and billowy and a size too large. He’s thankful for the extra room, though, because it makes it a little too easy to slip his hand beneath the curled edge and shove it over your breasts.

Your bra is black too, made of silky lace. Tommy takes one of your breasts in his hand, and it spills out between his fingers, and he silently confesses to himself that, yeah—he’s definitely not an ass man anymore. He leans down and presses a wet, open mouthed kiss to the flesh, and he can feel your nipple harden through the sheer lace. He hooks his thumbs beneath the band around your ribcage and pushes that up too, to join your top.

And bared to him, you’re even more beautiful than he imagined. And he tells you as much. “Such a pretty little thing,” he murmurs against your skin. Tommy holds both of your tits in his hands now, and slides his thumb over one nipple while he surges forward and takes the other into his mouth.

A shudder leaves you, and your hands fist themselves in his hair. He can feel your heartbeat against his fingertips, pace picking up when he swirls his tongue around the hardened peak. And when he bites down gently, you let out a gasp and push your hips up against his.

You don’t utter a word, but Tommy thinks suddenly he has you all figured out.

He kisses a trail to your other breast, spreading his spit lingering on the first with the pad of his thumb. He’s rougher this time, sucking harder, scraping his teeth against the sensitive skin.

“Oh, God,” you moan, fingernails scratching at his scalp. “You’re so…”

The words go unfinished, because he presses a hand to the seam of your shorts and all the breath seems to leave your lungs. All the thoughts seem to leave your brain, even—and Tommy thinks you look real fucking cute right now. “So what, baby? Hm?”

You’re shivering, wiggling your hips to generate some kind of friction, but Tommy doesn’t give it.

“C’mon, sweetheart. Use those words of yours. I know you can.”

“Surprising,” you admit. But he takes it as a good kind of surprise because you're pretty putty in his hands.

Tommy undoes the button of your denim shorts. He hooks one arm around your hips and jerks you down the hood of your car. “This what you want, pretty girl? Don’t want me to ask for it. You want me to take it. S’that it?”

You don’t answer, but he knows. He knows. Tommy unzips your shorts real slow. And he’s a little surprised to see that beneath all that black exterior, you’ve got baby pink panties on. Not crimson, not seductress red—pink. And they’re the sweetest things he’s ever seen. He trails his fingers along the edge and watches you squirm. “Please,” you say, begging again. Begging for him. “Touch me. I need you t-to, right now. Please.”

He slips his hand beneath your shorts, beneath your fishnet stockings and the pink cotton. And what he finds surprises him. “Aw,” he cooes, pressing a kiss to your collarbone. “Guess you really do need me, huh? You’re so wet, baby.” He runs the tip of his middle finger through your slit, exploring you, memorizing, gathering your slick and bringing it upwards. When he circles your clit, he laughs at the way your back arches off the hood of the car.

“Oh, fuck—yes,” you tell him. “Right there.”

Tommy presses harder, begins to move his fingertip faster. “Here, baby?”

You’re nodding, eyes squeezed shut. “Yes, fuck, yes yes—mmh.”

He closes his mouth around your nipple again, using his free hand to keep your legs spread as far apart as possible. When he snakes his finger down and presses it into your sweet pussy, it takes a significant amount of strength to keep your legs open. You fight him, and your moans echo in the empty parking lot. Tommy is only vaguely aware of the passing cars on the freeway, and finds himself thankful you parked in the back of the open space. “Feels good, hm?”

“So fucking—mm—so fucking good,” you say. The praise is enough to convince him to slide another finger in, and it’s met with a pretty moan of approval.

His cock has never been this hard, Tommy thinks. It’s pressed against your thigh still, and every one of your little movements makes it worse. It makes him near delirious. He wants to bury himself inside of you but knows to save it for later. When he knows more about you, when he knows what it looks like when you cum. He’s got his fingers hooked upwards, caressing that sweet, soft spot, and his pace is unforgiving. He wishes your shorts weren’t in the way, but he does what he can with the clearance you’ve granted him. “Dirty little thing,” he says. “Wanna be touched so bad you spread your legs out in the open.”

Your nails are sharp, leaving indentations at the back of his neck. It only spurs him on more, that little bit of agony. “Don’t stop,” you tell him. “Don’t stop, please—yes—oh God.”

Tommy presses his thumb against your clit, sliding it through your dripping pussy with each rough thrust of his fingers. He can feel you squeezing around them, sucking him in even deeper. “There you go, baby,” he says, pressing a gentle kiss to your jaw. “You gonna cum for me? Hm? Pussy’s so fuckin’ wet.”

When your legs start to tremble, Tommy keeps his pace steady. He wants to tip you over that edge, wants to see the way you look when he makes you feel this fucking good. He leans back, breath coming fast, and admires how absolutely fucked out your look. Mouth hanging open, moaning his name, brows knitted together in concentration. Your hands bury themselves in his flannel, desperate for a tether to keep you grounded. Tommy grins, hand on your thigh leaving to instead wrap around your neck.

“Such a pretty girl,” he says through his smile. “You look so good when you fuckin’ behave, sweetheart.”

Your back arches off the hood of the car and your knuckles turn white in his shirt. “Oh, fuck—I’m gonna—”

“I know, I know. Cum for me, baby. Cum all over my fingers—yeah, just like that.” Wetness flood between your legs, filling his palm, and it’s so fucking hot that Tommy moans in response. “Yeah, there you go,” he says, cock throbbing in his jeans. “Good girl, such a good fuckin girl, baby.”

It’s even better than he imagined; you look ethereal. He traces the arch of your body with his hand around your neck, moving it down the slope between your breasts, between your ribs, down to your hips. You fit so perfectly in his hands he starts to wonder if you were tailor-made for them.

When your fingers loosen and fall away from his flannel and your breaths begin to slow, only then does he slip his fingers out of you. He caresses your pusy in his hand, chuckling darkly when he slides over your clit and you let out a sharp gasp, thighs clamping closed around his hips at the sensitivity. When he finally pulls his hand from your denim shorts, his fingers come away glossy and covered in your slick.

Tommy locks eyes with you, raises his hand to his mouth and moans as the heady taste blossoms across his tongue. “Mmm. Better than bourbon,” he says through a low laugh. He licks his fingers clean, and you watch with rapt attention.

He takes a step back, adjusts himself, and holds his hand out for you to take. You let him pull you upwards, off the hood of the car, and he can feel your siren eyes on him as he pulls your bra and t-shirt back into place and buttons your jeans. Your legs are still shaking the smallest bit, and it feels like a victory. “Uhm…thanks. Again,” you say.

A smirk tugs at his mouth. “Turn around,” he orders. He’s a little surprised with how quickly you obey, as if any defiance that once existed within you had been snuffed out the moment he existed within you. Tommy watches your shoulders shake with anticipation, but all he does is pull your cell phone from your back pocket.

He calls himself, saves your phone number under 🦇🖤Vampire Girl🖤🦇, and tucks the device back into your pocket.

“Tuesday at ten,” he says, gathering your hair in one hand and laying it over your shoulder. He leans down, lips less than an inch from your throat. “Let me know where to pick you up.”

You nod softly. “Uhm, I—uh…yeah. Yeah, okay. I’ll see you Tuesday.”

Tommy kisses your jaw and leaves without another word, feeling like a goddamn king.

[PART TWO]

[masterlist]

#ao3 fanfic #pearlessance #ao3 writer #joel tlou #tommy tlou #tommy miller #tommy miller x you #the last of us hbo #tlou fanfiction #tommy miller smut #smut #x reader #reader insert #bd/sm switch

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avonne-writes · 4 months

Text

Happiness, you’re a cat

A HS AU one-shot inspired by @alienoresimagines 's post

I'll probably post this on AO3 tomorrow. Edit: posted on AO3

Bucky hates hospitals. The sterile smell, all the sick and dying people, back-breaking waiting room chairs. Thankfully, he has never had to stay in one overnight, but he did hit his head in a goal post once when he was ten, and his mom spent hours in the ER with him to get his concussion looked at. It was just after his dad left. What a miserable fucking time.

Unsurprisingly, he isn't keen to go back there anytime soon.

He feels like he might have to though, because at the rate things are going, they’re gonna have to amputate his right arm. A few months ago, Brady showed him a gory Reddit thread about a guy who, apparently, fell asleep in the lotus pose and his legs got so fucking wrecked that they had to cut them off. The pose restricted his blood flow or something and they couldn't restore it. He can’t remember how long the man was contorted like that. What's the point of no return?

His elementary school teacher used to tell his mom that Bucky would do crazy things for the people he liked. Well, she must have been right because Bucky's going to risk his arm just to let Gale sleep for an hour longer.

Gale. Gale, Gale, Gale.

Bucky's heart skips a beat every time he lets himself stop for a moment and think about things. Happiness floods his chest and makes his limbs thrum with excited energy. Three of them. His right arm is currently fighting for its life, crushed under Gale’s curled up body. But he puts the pins and needles out of his mind and concentrates on the positives.

Gale has been his boyfriend for a whole month now. A month! Bucky's longest relationship so far lasted three. He doesn’t let himself think about the fact that this means that they may be past one third of their time together. He can’t think about that or he’ll get anxious. Who knows, perhaps they'll stay together forever. It was their one-month anniversary today - Gale said it was stupid to call it anniversary because the word literally comes from "year" in Latin, but he did accept Bucky's invitation to watch a movie with him in Bucky's room.

Since Gale is a total movie nerd, Bucky was looking forward to showing him Moneyball, but Gale pillowed his head on Bucky’s chest and fell asleep ten minutes in. The movie is at two thirds now, and Bucky's arm is on fire from being pinned so long.

He doesn’t care.

He turns his head to look at Gale the best he can, and he knows that all the pain is worth it a thousand times over. So close that his eyes can’t focus, he sees the slope of Gale's nose, his long, pale eyelashes and the soft, parted lips he spent an hour kissing yesterday. Bucky has never had anyone sleep on him before. It’s the most amazing, comforting feeling he has ever experienced. They breathe together. Gale's body is warm against his, and his arm draped across Bucky's torso fills Bucky's stomach with butterflies. God, he wants to reach out and stroke it. There are small moles sprinkled on it. There’s one on the heel of Gale's palm, and he’s aching to pull it to his mouth and kiss it.

Ah, why is he such a loser? Gale is right here in his arms, in his bed, and he’s still in pain because he wants more and he knows it's too much and his crush is so bad, so... ugh, it's fucking embarrassing. Bucky flushes hot and cold, then hot again. Happy in his misery.

He'd feel it if his arm was beyond saving, wouldn’t he? Or, technically, he wouldn’t feel it. That would be the sign, he thinks. Prickling pain is good.

Gale told him he had trouble sleeping lately. What's a better anniversary present than letting him rest as long as he needs it?

It's a bigger problem that Bucky can’t pay attention to the movie anymore. His senses are entirely consumed by Gale. The weight of him. His blond hair. His smell. Bucky takes a deeper breath, trying to memorize it. If it clings to his clothes, he’s gonna hide them from his mom and sleep with them tonight. Gale is like an angel in his sleep, and he just wants to - to squeeze him tight and never let him go. Man, he needs help...

Unable to resist any longer, he raises his - still alive - left hand and brushes Gale's right with a fingertip. When Gale’s breathing doesn’t change, Bucky smiles to himself and starts tracing the lines of Gale's bones with his index finger, then the divots of his wrist. He draws a J over the back of Gale's hand, then a heart. He’s just about to start a G when the skin shifts under his touch, and Gale’s inhale hitches.

The moment Gale's consciousness returns, he shoots up into a sitting position, lifting all the weight that has been crushing Bucky's arm at once. Bucky whines and sobs dramatically in pain, so much so, that after a moment, Gale starts snickering.

"What are you doing?"

"Pins and needles." Bucky gasps and sits up too, shaking his arm desperately.

Gale rubs his forehead like some middle-aged dad looking at his dumbass kid. Bucky grins in return. He doesn’t know why but he enjoys this. The sight of his smile makes Gale laugh again. His chin-length hair is flat on the side that rested on Bucky’s chest, and there's a blush creeping up his neck.

"Sorry for falling asleep." He says. Bucky can’t look away from the blue of his eyes. He’s hypnotized.

"You can always sleep here."

Gale casts his gaze down, then glances back up, a little shy. "Thanks, Bucky."

"I would've let them amputate it for you." Bucky tells him, holding out his arm.

Gale gives him a look of pained amusement. "Do I even want to know what you're talking about?"

"Brady showed me this thread -" Bucky launches into the story, happy to be able to talk to Gale again after more than an hour of silence. Gale listens to him attentively, and when he slips his hand into Bucky's, Bucky's suddenly aware that none of the nerves died in his palm. They're very much alive and pump giddiness into his veins. Moneyball draws to a climax in the background, forgotten.

~~~

It's 4 p.m., and the bright-hot light of the sun blasts Bucky's face through the window of their apartment. He’s lying on his back in their bed, and Gale is asleep in his embrace, his head resting on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky's arm tingles with pinprickles of pain. Volume so low it's almost muted, a movie drones on in their TV.

It's Moneyball again.

The irony isn’t lost on Bucky. Every single time he tried to watch this thing with Gale in the six years they’ve been together, Gale fell asleep. Every. Single. Time. He’s starting to think it’s some sort of message he's supposed to understand. John, stop making me watch baseball films and footage. Or, John, I have a Pavlovian reflex to nod off as soon as I hear the word baseball. He can hear these things in Gale's voice, although Gale would never say them, only Bucky would if he did an impression of Gale. It would make Gale laugh, so Bucky grins up at the ceiling just imagining it.

Fuck, his arm hurts like a bitch. And the sun feels like fingers made of light trying to pry his eyes open. His t-shirt is growing damp with sweat at the collar. Over his head, with some effort, he manages to grab Gale's actual pillow, the one Gale discarded in favour of Bucky's chest. Bucky puts it on his own face to block out the light and tries to fall asleep too.

This exam period has been a real clusterfuck. He was on coffee 24/7, would have walked around with an IV drip of the stuff if he could, just to push through. Gale simply reverted to his antisocial insomniac persona, and they decided by mutual silent agreement not to even try to touch each other until it was over.

It's done and dealt with now. Grades added in their college accounts, pat on the head received gracefully by Gale for being the only one who passed Applied Nuclear Physics on the first try. Obligatory Let's get wasted! party attended two days ago, call with Mom suffered through hungover yesterday. Now, there's nothing else on Bucky’s agenda but sleep for 48 hours straight. And making Gale watch Moneyball.

He's gonna make him do it before they get married, he swears.

Gale is so tired that he’s sleeping with his mouth open. Bucky can tell. It doesn’t take a genius, given the suspicious damp spot he feels on his shirt. He doesn’t mind a bit of drool. Or a lot. He’s gonna let Gale sleep as long as he needs.

But by God, his arm feels like it’s gonna skip the whole amputation step and just fall right off. He yawns against the pillow on his face and tries to take his mind off it.

He can smell Gale's scent on the fabric, he notes happily. Gale's left leg is tangled with his own, Gale's once icy foot tucked against his calf, now warmed by Bucky's heat. You have the coldest feet in the whole fucking galaxy, he informed Gale a few weeks ago, sitting on the couch with Gale's legs on his lap. Gale just pressed one of those feet to the tender skin of Bucky’s inner thigh, half inside his shorts, and told Bucky to guess the size of the Milky Way or lose a piece of clothing.

There's a reason why Bucky isn't the one planning to be an Astrophysicist...

He wonders what it’s going to be like once they graduate. His heart skips a beat. Does Gale hope for the same things he does? They've talked about marriage in the abstract, playing around with the fantasy of it for a bit, but it's not a fantasy anymore. It’s within reach, Bucky can feel it. And that suddenly makes his hopes so much harder to share - he’s scared of losing them all on a mistake.

But now that their exams are done, it can occupy all his thoughts again.

It's time. Anticipation thrums through his bones. He has been aching for it long enough. He’s got the ring. All he needs to do is ask.

Drifting between daydreams and reality, he reaches for Gale’s hand on his abdomen. He traces his knuckles with his thumb and lingers on his bare ring finger, lost in thought.

When Gale pulls in a sharper breath, he shifts his touch to Gale's wrist.

Gale groans and lifts his head away from the wet spot on Bucky’s shirt. Blood flows rapidly back to Bucky's arm and makes him grunt in pain. He tries to shake the pins and needles out of his limb, while Gale just climbs over him like some lazy cat and collapses on his other side. He takes up the same pose he had before, just mirrored, but upon noticing the pillow on Bucky’s head, he nuzzles his way closer until both of their faces are covered by it. They're pressed so close together that the tip of Bucky's nose brushes Gale's cheek.

"We've blinds." He mumbles.

Gale hums and falls back asleep. Bucky’s arm lies squished under him. Moneyball stays on until the end credits roll down.

#mota #buck x bucky #clegan #john egan #gale cleven #my writing #hs au

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mintmatcha · 5 months

Text

Inevitable Things: chapter five

Aizawa x reader fic

cw: cisfem reader, no quirks, office au, miscommunications, slow burn. full tags available on AO3 (linked in masterlist)

previous chapter | masterlist | next chapter

Fridays are the only day you carve out time for lunch. Less than coincidentally, Fridays are also the only day lunch is catered.

“Here-” Izuku jams his bowl of take out into Katsuki’s face. “Does it smell like there’s peanuts in here?”

Bakugo Katsuki, Izuku’s fiance, is only half as ornery as he looks. A premature wrinkle has formed in between his brows, a sign of his almost constant annoyance. His straw colored hair is a sharp contrast to his deep red eyes, currently narrowed in disgust.

“Get this shit out of my fucking face,” he groans. “I’m not a fucking allergy alert dog-- I can’t smell peanuts.”

“To be fair-” Ochako interjects through a mouthful. She’s the opposite of Katsuki: dark hair, round eyes, a smile so sweet that it makes your teeth hurt. Her cheeks are always flushed, spots of broken blood vessels spattered like freckles. “Peanuts do have a smell.”

“Did you ask him to smell for penis?” Denki says, too loud to be genuine. “Kind of homophobic to ask a gay guy that.”

Both men give him identical deadpan stares.

“That’s just his fucking country-ass accent.” Katsuki brushes Denki off and turns back to the curly haired man. “Why would chicken have peanuts in it anyway?”

“The o’l.” Izuku stresses.

“The what?”

“Some places use peanut o’l.”

“Say oil.”

Izuku sneers a bit in return, smoothing out the curves of his accent. “Oy-I’ll.”

“Jesus christ, I’m marrying a hick.” Katsuki leans back in his chair and meets your eye with a jerk of his chin. “Can you believe this?”

You snap back into focus. Your own lunch is untouched, fork still in its little plastic wrapper. Hunger nips at your stomach, but nausea wins over today. The cafeteria isn’t very busy, but in the next couple minutes everyone will start pouring in. The lot of you arrived early to get the best seating-- a little couch and coffee table in the corner, a perfect place to eat and people watch.

“Oh, yeah, uh- Izuku, they have an allergen free option.”

“Well, yeah, but-” He tilts his head as he talks, watching you with those wide, green eyes, like he sees something just below the surface. “It doesn't have chicken-- are you good?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.” Katsuki fingers a piece of Izuku’s food and pops it into his mouth, much to the man’s dismay. “You’ve been making that sad little face all day.”

You pout a bit harder at that. Shit-- you thought you were being subtle. You haven’t been able to walk this whole Aizawa thing off yet, despite all of your attempts. No amount of emails, meetings, and other petty office bullshit managed to distract you from the absolute shock and humiliation of… whatever that was.

Embarrassment.

Embarrassment? You’re certainly not the prettiest girl in the office, but embarrassing? That makes your gums ache, like a punch to the nose, and it makes you feel dirty, like the fall to the ground afterwards.

“You’re doing it again.” Ochako points to your face and it’s apparently sadness. “What’s going on?”

You hem a bit, before condensing it the best you can.

“I’m having issues with a guy.” What an understatement.

A collective glance is shared between the group.

“Touya again?”

Again, Touya haunts a room he’s never been in. You debate what to say. If you admit to it being someone new, they might start sniffing around and jump to conclusions-- though Aizawa would certainly be the last assumption they would make, you still can’t risk it. Besides, you don’t need a gaggle of 23 year olds dissecting your every move. They’re going to jump to some stupid conclusion, like you’re dating Toshinori, if you aren’t careful.

“Yeah, it’s Touya,” you lie, as sheepishly as you can. “Oops.”

“Jesus Fucking Christ.” Katsuki rolls his eyes so hard that you imagine his brain must hurt. “Again?”

“Shh, just tell us what happened,” Izuku urges, elbowing his partner rather sharply.

“I don't know where I stand with him. It's so-- Ugh, I thought things were going to start going well and then it was just ice cold.” You press your palms into your eyes and sigh. The pressure feels good and helps with the remnants of your hangover. You need an electrolyte drink, stat. Maybe another fucking drink too. “And I’m not even sure why I’m surprised because it’s ice cold a lot.”

When you look up, Ochako is offering a hand, palm up and open. When you take it, she giggles a bit, squeezing gently.

“I think you need to prioritize yourself.”

Denki nods in agreement, cheeks stuffed with food. He’s finished his meal and started stabbing bits of yours. You just push the whole bowl towards him in defeat and slump down into the couch.

“Stop giving men who treat you poorly the time of day.” Ochako says. “When you let them in again and again, you’re basically, like, giving them permission to do this stuff.”

“Yeah!” Denki says through a mouthful. “Cut that fucker off! Don’t even talk to him!”

“Oh, I dunno--” You glance between them. “I think that’d be mean.”

Conflict makes your head spin. It’s so much easier to roll over and take whatever people give you, negative or otherwise. It’s what made your relationship with Touya work-- and it’s what’s allowed you to stay in this job for so long.

“Good!” Denki says. “He deserves it.”

“You deserve to be a little mean and a little angry when people treat you poorly.” She smiles again, wider this time. “Grow some balls. Stand up for yourself.”

“Yeah! Balls!” Denki agrees.

You suck on your bottom lip and turn the idea over in your head. Are you even angry at Aizawa? Or just hurt and confused? Right now, those things may as well be the same thing-- they certainly burn the same in your chest. Cruelty isn’t your usual indulgence…

But it’s someone else’s.

“What do you think?” You turn to Katsuki, who’s been scrolling through twitter for a bit now. His face doesn’t change when he speaks, locked into a general annoyance.

“I think you should kill that fucker.”

You turn to Izuku, the rational one of the couple. He shrugs, straw in mouth and completely unamused.

“Oh, I also think you should kill him,” he says, tone matching Katsuki’s.

Not helpful.

“Listen--” Katsuki leans forward, elbows on his spread knees. He uses a fork to articulate as he speaks. “I’m the expert on being a cunt-”

“-we don’t use that word!” Ochako grimaces.

“And it’s the most freeing and addictive thing you can be.” The tongs of the fork point directly towards you, as sharp as his gaze. “More people should be cunts more often. The world would be a happier place.”

Ochako gasps. “I don’t agree with that at all!”

“Oh please, miss goody-goody,” Katsuki sneers. “You wouldn't need to go to kickboxing five times a week if you let your anger out day to day like a normal motherfucker.”

The girl of the group puffs out her cheeks, but does not argue back. Izuku pats her shoulder affectionately. His food is still untouched, but his free hand guards it from Denki.

“I'm telling you. Try it out. You’ll like it.” Katsuki leans back into his seat. “Or don't. Your life.”

“Question-” The other blonde pipes up. “Did you, like, do something?”

“Kaminari!”

“I mean, like, was there a catalyst?” “A fight or a date or-?”

You know exactly what drives Touya away everytime, but Aizawa is a new beast. Did you breathe wrong or--

“Oh, I uh,” A realization hits you. “I ignored a couple texts, I guess.”

Suddenly, you’re very aware of the outline of your phone and how it presses into your pocket. If there wasn’t a chance of you flashing the group pictures of their boss, you’d check it immediately, but you can’t mentally handle the risk.

“What an overreaction,” Ochako sighs. “Dump him forever and move on-- Mr. Hizashi and his wife-”

“We aren’t like that.” Ugh. You love Hizashi, but the trio relationship isn’t your speed. “Besides, I don’t like blondes.”

The two toe-heads of the group roll their eyes in a practiced synchrony. Ochako’s smile changes a little bit, something tighter and brighter; is she excited that you aren’t interested? Interesting and a bit gross: she’s too young for that. They’re more than ten years older than her-

(How old is Aizawa? He went to school with Hizashi, so he’s at least 38-- but you could have sworn there were whispers of his fortieth last year. You’ll have to snoop.)

“We’re in agreement. Be a cunt, move on. The end.” Katsuki turns away from you, done with this topic. “Izuku, just fucking eat it already.”

The boy takes a deep breath and runs his fingers through his curly hair. “Well, alright, but if I get hives, you’re the one who has to deal with me.”

…

Be mean.

You’re written it on a sticky note and placed it under your computer monitor, like some sort of fucked up mantra. The mere idea of it feels antithetical to who you are at your core; you enjoy helping people, you love making the world better. That’s why you work like a dog for the company-- you know it’s improving the lives of its customers. If Toshinori wasn’t sick, you know he’d be doing even more too.

On the other hand, being nice has led to your own detriment many times. Touya has hurt you, your parents, and now even Aizawa. And you can’t even blame Aizawa, can you? Texting him was your mistake--

You rest your forehead against your desk. There’s still a sticky spot from when you spilled your coffee yesterday. God, yesterday feels so close and yet so far away. How does a man yoyo between yelling at you, sending you his weiner, then telling you that you’re embarrassing? The idea of ‘always wanted you’ goes flying out the window.

Just as you try and put yourself to work, you hear it. The familiar lopsided stomp. Fuck, it’s him, probably looking for his afternoon coffee. He’s been by much less than usual, a fact you’re very grateful for, so you haven’t even thought about the pot since before lunch. You glance over and see it’s empty. Crap.

As you start to get up, the sticky note catches your eye again. Be mean. That’s right. Why are you popping out of your chair for this, this, this--- total fucking cunt? Your chair squeaks with the force you sit down with. You try to embody Katsuki with your face - furrowing your brow and yet keeping your mouth unaffected-- and your worst nightmare turns the corner.

You keep typing and hope Aizawa doesn't notice that it's the same words over and over again, hit in the same rhythm. P-e-a-n-u-t-O-i-l P-e-a-n-u-t-O-i-l P-e-a-n-u-t-O-i-l P-e-a-n-u-t-O-i-l. He waits a long moment, then clears his throat louder. You don't gift him your attention until he grumbles something under his breath, shifting his weight on to his other leg. Just as he begins to say something, you interject.

“I had more important things to focus on,” you lie. “You can figure out how to brew coffee, Mr.// Engineer.”

You throw in that last bit without thinking, but the bite rolls so easily off of your tongue. It’s nothing like your usual tone, but it feels so, so right. From the corner of your vision you can see his literally reel back, blinking hard,

“That’s how it’s going to be?”

You don’t respond. P-e-a-n-u-t-O-i-l P-e-a-n-u-t-O-i-l P-e-a-n-u-t-O-i-l P-e-a-n-u-t-O-i-l. Your fingers shake from the adrenaline boost. Ochako was right; don't even give this man the time of day.

“It's going to be like that?” He yanks the pot from its stand. “Fine.”

You have to muster all of willpower not to grin as he starts slamming open the drawers and scrounging around for supplies. It takes a whole ten minutes before he presses brew, then another five before the pot is almost half full. The whole time he grumbles to himself, leaning his whole weight against the flimsy table.

This is good. Too good. The vindictive rush of power feels almost sexual in the way it satisfies. Teeth dig into your lip as you hold back a smile even harder.

Embarrassment? You'll show him what embarrassment really means.

Finally, he pours himself a cup. He doesn't fill his thermos nearly as much as he normally does, most likely trying to leave as quickly as possible. Just as he starts to turn, you get up out of your chair and walk over. You take one of the little disposable cups from the stack and take your time adding three sugars and two cream, each one at a time, as he lurks there. Then, you pour the coffee, thick and oddly gritty into your cup. You finally meet his eye when you take a swig.

Aizawa’s face is set hard, small eyes narrowed even tighter. His lips are screwed up with annoyance, wrinkling his low bridged nose. Pissed would be an understatement. Just as you brace for another yelling match, he turns away, marching down the hall.

“Enjoy the fucking coffee.”

Oh, Katsuki was right. Being mean tastes good.

….This coffee, however, does not.

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vettelsvee · 5 months

Text

AFTERGLOW | Mick Schumacher

f1 masterlist | wattpad | ao3 | instagram

mick schumacher x vettel!reader

summary: mick's girlfriend knows that something's wrong with him. after talking to her dad and her stepmother, she decides to face her boyfriend.

word count: 2956

warnings: angst. bad language. mick being aggressive. use of y/n.

you can send your one shots requests here! feedback, as well as comments and reblogs, are truly appreciated!

If Sebastian's retirement announcement had hurt you, the way you boyfriend had been acting towards you, for no apparent reason, hurt even more.

You were on you father's terrace, with your legs stretched out on a chair in front of you and the sun shining on your face as you watched the latest news about Taylor Swift. Beside you, Hanna was tending to her baby, who was in her arms playing with a small plush toy you bought her that surprisingly become her favorite. Sebastian appeared out of nowhere carrying a tray full of snacks and drinks, which he carefully placed on the table before immediately caressing the heads of the women in his life. The German sat beside his wife facing you, his eldest daughter.

As much as you enjoyed visiting your family for no reason, today's visit had a reason with a name and surname: Mick Schumacher. Since both of you had finally decided to start a romantic relationship, everything had been a bed of roses. However, the past few weeks have been hell. The boy's behavior towards you had changed radically. What used to be a daily routine filled with laughter, gratitude and support had turned into distance and avoidance, as if they you college students living together during the school year because they had no other choice.

Before starting to speak, you poured yourself some lemonade that Vettel had made hours earlier with her, and took a slight sip despite being really thirsty. You felt nervous as you began to initiate the conversation, but the warm looks you father and stepmother were giving you helped you relax.

"I need to share something with you," you began, "because if I don't tell someone, I feel like I'm going to end everything I've fought for all this time. Plus, I feel like you're the ones who can help me the most in this regard," you added.

The couple exchanged curious looks, not knowing what you were referring to. Any idea passed through Hanna's mind, while the Aston Martin driver could only think of the possibility that his little one might be pregnant. Hanna could see the panic in her husband's face; she simply placed her free hand on the German's thigh and gently caressed it, trying to calm him down. They shouldn't jump to conclusions too quickly, and that seemed to be what his wife was telling him as she gave Sebastian a glance.

"I've noticed that Mick has been behaving very strangely lately," you began to explain. "I don't know what's going on in his head, but we hardly talk, we don't usually go out of the house like we used to and... well, let's say we don't show as much affection to each other anymore," you said apologetically, trying not to get angry at the laughter your father was making. "I feel like the Mick I've known all this time has been just a mirage, and I don't know what to do about it."

Sebastian and Hanna exchanged knowing looks, and the woman let him speak first.

"Y/N, I understand what you mean, but you have to know the pressure Mick faces daily," the blonde explained lovingly. "Formula 1 is like that: it doesn't just drag you, but also those you love the most. Your boyfriend has many eyes on him, and as if that weren't enough, he bears the responsibility of carrying on his father's legacy."

The older blonde agreed with her husband. She passed the little one to Seb, got up quickly and sat next to you,now cry out of frustration, and started to caress your hair lovingly as a comfort.

"Your father is right, Y/N, and I have to agree with him because I've been with him for almost twenty years," Hanna commented. "Every person has a completely different way of dealing with stress. Sebastian used to yell at me every time he breathed, and look," she pointed at him, "here we are. Some people open up to anyone they meet, and others shut themselves off to avoid worrying those they love the most," she stated. "Just because Mick isn't like he was a few weeks ago doesn't mean his feelings towards you have changed. Sometimes, they just need space and a little time to silence the demons in their heads."

You nodded, taking a sip from the glass you held in your hands to calm your nerves. You let out a sigh you had been holding in for quite some time, worried about the possible reaction the two in front of you might have. They continued to talk about more trivial matters, and that conversation, although short, had been very meaningful, was set aside, although not for the girl, who continued to torture herself wondering what she could do to make Mick feel better while listening to talk about baby care and nurseries.

"Thank you, dad. Thank you, Hanna," you replied, getting up from your seat and looking at the adults. "I guess I needed the advice of someone who might have gone through the same thing as I am right now," you objected. "I promise I'll do my best not to despair anymore. I'll let you know when I know more."

The couple got up shortly after you, already heading towards the door, possibly to return to the apartment you shared with Schumacher. Sebastian, still holding the baby, opened the door, unable to say anything else. Hanna, on the other hand, smiled warmly at you and gave you a hug.

"Remember, we're here for you, sweetheart," your father's wife said kindly. "Communication is key in any relationship. If you see that Mick is still not ready to talk about it, give him space, but don't forget to remind him that you're there for whatever he needs."

You nodded and left the residence, leaving the driver and his wife somewhat worried about what could happen between you two.

You opened the door to your home with trembling hands, feeling a pressure in your chest from the concern about the scene your eyes would encounter as soon as you entered.

The first thing that greeted you was the sound of hooves scratching the parquet floor, which soon grew louder as Angie approached rapidly to welcome you home again. You bent down, leaving your belongings aside, and took some time to caress your furry friend, whom you had grown fond of since the moment her owner introduced her to you. While admiring the way the animal's tail moved, you began to hear the running water from the shower, a sign that Mick was home, as you had hoped.

Sitting on the couch and staring at the TV, whose screen was filled with deceptive advertisements for food and clothing, you heard a door open and steps that seemed to be approaching you. You took a deep breath and prepared yourself for what was about to come when you saw her boyfriend walk past you, wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist, drying his hair with another smaller towel.

You decided that things couldn't go on like this, so you approached the boy more angrily than you thought, who was preparing dinner, obviously, just for himself.

"Yes, love, I had a great time with Seb and Hanna. Thanks for asking how my day went!" you shouted sarcastically.

Schumacher turned around, leaving the wooden spoon on the bowl in which his salad was being prepared. Your face was fully red, and your aggressive demeanor reminded him of Sebastian's moments of fury at Red Bull. The German looked at you coldly, and you only felt his blue eyes radiating hatred, something you had never seen in the boy before.

If you weren't up for games that night, neither was Mick.

"I don't care how your day went," the blue-eyed one responded disdainfully, "but if you had such a great time with your perfect family, maybe you should consider moving in with them."

The driver’s statement hurt you more than if you had been stabbed in the stomach. You couldn't believe the words coming out of the mouth of the one you considered the love of your life. When you opened your mouth to reply and yell a thousand worse things at him, the words got stuck in your throat. Schumacher made a move to leave, but you reluctantly took his hand to keep talking to him. For you, things weren't going to stay like this.

"After everything we've been through to get here, is this how you're paying me back?!" you exploded, releasing all the anger you had accumulated. "Is this the way you planned to treat me from the beginning?"

The driver turned to you, his jaw tense. His arms were crossed, and he was squeezing his clenched fists tighter and tighter.

"I don't know what you're talking about, blondie," he spat with disdain. "If you feel so bad, maybe you should reconsider what this relationship means to you."

You approached him with fury, and began to hit him in the chest with your hands. You were tired of, at any point in your life, the people she loved the most ending up hurting her.

"You have no idea what you mean to me!" you got closer and closer to Mick, who seemed to feel small compared to you. "You became my everything when I had nothing, but now you've become a stranger with whom it would seem ridiculous to say that I've shared traumas from my life that no one knows."

"You have no right to judge me, Y/N!" roared the boy with a voice filled with aggression. "You don't know what I have to face every day: criticism, expectations, my father, you, the team..." He raised his hands in the air as he spoke. "Do you think it's easy being in this messed up world?"

"It's not just about you, Mick!" you exclaimed, tears starting to blur your vision. "It's about us and everything we've been through together!"

Words continued to fly in the room, laden with pain and anger, exchanged between the couple as if in a tennis match. You had reached a point where the argument wasn't focused on trying to resolve whatever was happening between you, but on hurting each other with hurtful comments, fighting to see who could inflict more damage.

"This makes no sense, Y/N," Mick shouted in frustration. His gaze was filled with panic and accumulated anger. He felt it increasingly difficult, at that point in the argument, to contain his rage.

"Love, please, calm down," your voice trembled. "We're not getting anywhere, just giving the neighbors a free show that we'll regret later," you pleaded.

Schumacher didn't relent. He felt a wave of helplessness washing over his body. He reached out his muscular arm and grabbed the first object he could find, a frame with a picture of him with you and Angie on a day you spent in the mountains, and threw it against the wall mercilessly. The sound of impact and shattering glass echoed throughout the room, accompanied by the sobs and gasps of air from the young woman.

You couldn't help but step back, feeling increasing pressure in your chest and filled with fear. You knew the boy was losing control of the situation, and you were afraid it would escalate to physical violence against you. You had experienced that kind of abuse with your mother, and you didn't want to relive it with the same person who once told you that love didn't hurt.

"Mick, stop, this isn't you!" you cried out in anguish. "What's wrong with you?"

The German clenched his fists tighter.

"I've already told you, Y/N: you don't understand! You can't possibly understand. The pressure, the expectations... it's all overwhelming," he sighed anxiously, "and I feel like it's going to break me at any moment."

You approached him slowly, but at a safe distance, in an attempt to calm him down that you hoped wouldn't be in vain.

"We're in this together, sweetheart. Why don't you confide in me instead of shouting at me like a madman in an asylum?"

"Because I don't want you involved in this," Mick looked at you with a mix of anger and pain. "You've had enough worries in your life already."

You went cold, speechless in response. The blonde seemed to have calmed down. Now, his gaze begged you to keep speaking because, if not, he would go crazy at any moment.

"Mick, I love you," you continued as best you could, "and that means I want to be there for you, even in the toughest moments. You can't expect me to walk away when you need me the most."

"It's not that simple, Y/N," the driver paced back and forth, seeking a way to remedy everything he had caused during those weeks of tormenting Gunther. "The pressure is overwhelming, and the comparisons with my father are becoming less bearable," he confessed. "People don't care how hard I try. They always end up making me feel like I’m not good enough."

The blonde took a deep breath, struggling to keep calm while seeing that the root of the problem was surfacing:

"And how do you expect our relationship to work if you shut yourself off? I can't guess what's going on in your head if you don't tell me," you said in a barely audible whisper.

"Because I don't want to be a burden to you!" he retorted. "I don't want you to see me as a failure."

Determined to end all the fuss, you took a step forward and, despite the boy's protests, ended up taking his hands and directing his gaze to yours.

"Mick, you're not a failure: you're human," you said. "Making more or fewer mistakes is completely normal, and I'm here to support you and make you see that," you expressed sincerely. "I don't care what people think or say about you. To me, you'll always be the best at what you do, and there won't be a comment that will change my mind."

He looked at you. Angie had clumsily approached the boy's leg, stroking him and causing him some tickles with her fur, something that made you laugh in that moment of tension.

"What do you want me to do, Y/N? How can I move forward with all this?",

Feeling her resistance beginning to dissipate, you rushed to give him a hug, something the boy didn't reject. You both had missed each other, and the gentle caresses you shared in that brief moment were proof of that.

"Start by trusting me. Share what worries you and what you're afraid of. You don't have to fight alone: you know I'm here for whatever you need."

Mick, with his eyes full of tears threatening to fall, held you tightly to his chest, trying not to hurt you.

"I'm sorry, Y/N," he whispered with a trembling voice, "for everything. My contract with Haas... it's over. Gunther doesn't trust me for next year."

You quickly pulled away from Mick. You had been left in suspense, and your boyfriend's pale face had already given you many clues, such as why he had told you before the cooling of your relationship that he didn't want to continue racing, or how Seb's retirement didn't affect him as much as you had thought it would.

Mick had faced very painful and traumatic experiences, such as his father's accident. However, although his dismissal might seem less significant than the former, for his girlfriend, it was more serious because there was nothing worse than someone compromising your mental health, and that was exactly what Gunther Steiner had been doing to her guy.

You approached him with slow steps and hugged him once again.

"Darling..." you whispered, trying to sound as understanding as possible. "It's okay, alright? Gunther doesn't deserve you. Besides, I'm sure that when something bad ends, something better begins."

Schumacher collapsed into your arms, tears finally escaping from his eyes. The mask he had been wearing for all the previous weeks had finally shattered, revealing a vulnerable version of himself that he didn't want you to discover.

"I feel like a failure," the blonde sobbed with a choked tone due to the tears. "I've fought so hard, I've given everything I have even when I couldn't anymore... and it seems like it's never enough."

You hugged him tighter, tenderly, hearing the boy's quick heartbeats loud and clear.

"You're not a failure, Mick," you revealed to him. "You have so much talent and you can do great things, it's just that you started your career in a crappy team with even crappier treatment," the boy laughed, music to your ears. "This is just a bump in the road, and you and I are going to get through it together."

"I don't know what I'd do without you, love," Mick looked at you tenderly, mentally regretting his behavior over the past few weeks.

"I'll always be here for you, truly," you continued, gently stroking his cheek. "You're so much more than race results, and I won't stop telling you until you believe it, even when you get tired of hearing me say it so much!"

You ended up laughing heartily, initiated by Mick. Maybe you weren't the perfect duo in the eyes of others, but you were for yourselves and those who knew you best.

If the invisible string theory was real, you and Mick were proof of it. You could even say the same about the multiverse hypothesis: in this one, and in millions more, a stubborn blonde couple, no matter the problems you had to face, would end up together, whatever it took.

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